Online Behavior and Small Business

Online Behavior And Small Business (InfoGraph)

When it comes to small businesses, the online world is becoming increasingly significant. Not only for small business owners — 90% of whom say having an online presence is important — but also for their customers, who are using the Internet to perform key actions such as search for local businesses, and (hopefully) purchase. In fact, of Internet users, 97% say they search for local businesses online, with 61% of local searches resulting in phone calls. And nine out of 10 people call or visit a business when found via local search.

Google gets tough on link buying domains

Well Google are well and truly on the SEO war path when it comes to cleaning up their search results. A whole raft of recent announcements and actions leave little doubt that they mean business. First of all came the war of words with Matt Cutts of Google writing on the Google blog: "As "pure webspam" has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to "content farms," which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. In 2010, we launched two major algorithmic changes focused on low-quality sites. Nonetheless, we hear the feedback from the web loud and clear: people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content." This was rapidly followed by the Scraper update targeting plagiarised content. Cutts says: "This was a pretty targeted launch: slightly over 2% of queries change in some way, but less than half a percent of search results change enough that someone might really notice. The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site’s content."

Shortly after came the announcement of the Google Chrome extension that allows users to block any sites they consider as low-quality. In effect the extension means that you are now able to filter your own content. Though criticised for being a reactive, user driven and manual system the argument is that the information collected will likely be integrated into the Google algorithm. In fairness to Google the very recent 'Farmer' update seems to back up this point.

Only live so far in the U.S. The Farmer update has taken a big swipe at the content mills churning out shallow and low quality content significantly reducing the number of top placements for many. Google report that the changes has already had a noticeable impact on nearly 12% of queries. The idea of course is to free up the organic search returns for quality content.

And Google's efforts to rid their search results of invalid or gamed returns haven't stopped there. Grassed up by the New York Times American retail giant JC Penney have felt the force of Google's wrath over the last couple of weeks for a less than white hat link building policy.

Guilty of buying their way to the top of Google on dozens of search terms in the pre Christmas online retail frenzy, JC Penney has now found many of it's page rankings in free fall as Google manually re-calibrate their positioning. What had they done to deserve such severe treatment? As The NY Times reported: "There are links to JCPenney.com’s dresses page on sites about diseases, cameras, cars, dogs, aluminium sheets, travel, snoring, diamond drills, bathroom tiles, hotel furniture, online games, commodities, fishing, Adobe Flash, glass shower doors, jokes and dentists — and the list goes on." Not big and not clever. Other than clever in the sense that such high positioning across so many search terms boosted their Christmas sales in a highly competitive and recession ravaged market place.

Exposed so publicly Google had little choice but to censure the company who straight away went and fired their SEO company claiming complete ignorance to all the underhand link buying shenanigans. Hmmm.

But JC Penney haven't been the only ones caught breaking Google guidelines. The Wall Street Journal have this week reported on another major retailer: Overstock.com. penalized by Google for links it had encouraged on university websites: "The incident, according to Overstock, stemmed in part from its practice of encouraging websites of colleges and universities to post links to Overstock pages so that students and faculty could receive discounts on the shopping site. Overstock said it discontinued the program on Feb. 10, before hearing from Google, but said some university webmasters have been slow to remove the links."

Ouch.

Whilst there has been talk of Google getting tough on gaming example of censure in action have been relatively few and far between. It seems to be heating up out there on several fronts and the message is clear. Play by the rules or face the threat of having your online profile severely compromised in the form of search penalties.

Why take chances? Play nice, play white hat. Build your success on quality content, authentic links and increasingly important, on a strong social reputation. Why run the risk of upsetting Google and missing out on all the success that sustainable internet marketing can offer you?

Contact our SEO specialists at TOP PAGE for quality link building strategies.

Google 'Farmer' Update - Top 5 Content Farm Losers

In a move that SEO though leader Danny Sullivan labels the 'Farmer' update on his Google Forecloses On Content Farms With "Farmer" Algorithm Update analysis, Google has this week come down hard on the very many sites out there propagating less than useful content. The Farmer update is the latest in a flurry of relevance enhancing initiatives rolled out by Google over recent weeks. Activities that also include the 'Scraper' update (credit Sullivan again for the name), the release of the Chrome extension to black flag low grade sites and the punishment of both US retailers JC Penney and Overstock for flouting Google guidelines when it comes to paid links.

Referring specifically to the Farmer update Google's Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts wrote on the Google blog: "Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible. This requires constant tuning of our algorithms, as new content—both good and bad—comes online all the time.

Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

Though currently only live in the States, the Farmer update has sent out a crystal clear message to content providers and SEO companies – you better make it good. Whilst of course quality is often a subjective matter and quality can be tough for an algorithm to define – To quote Google engineer nicknamed moultano on Hacker News: "The central issue is that it's very difficult to make changes that sacrifice "on-topic-ness" for "good-ness" that don't make the results in general worse," the issue is clear. If you choose to sail too close to Google's new definitions of poor quality content then be prepared for the consequences. Analysis of the fall out from the Farmer update by Aaron Wall at SEOBook reveals for example that the Top Five Content Farm Losers have been;

1. ezinearticles.com
2. associatedcontent.com
3. suite101.com
4. hubpages.com
5. buzzle.com

Good riddance to bad rubbish many of you may feel. After all who hasn't been lured onto an ad infested page of trashy, empty and virtually meaningless content only to click away once the charade had been revealed? The combined time wasted webwide on content farm vapour must total countless human livetimes..
Oddly enough one of the highest profile flouters of Google's quality content dive Demand Media's eHow.com seems to have actually benefited. Whether these gains are sustainable remains to be seen however as there's plenty here to come out in the wash.

For quality original content to drive true visit : SEO Copywrting

Perhaps this will be one algorithm update that the SEO community can (largely) agree is a good one. With less weak content clogging up the top search positions there's more room for well conceived, well crafted web pages. Work of quality and worth that genuinely deserves to be found. Good for users and good for ethical SEOs basing their campaigns on delivering sites offering genuine content to meet genuine searches.

Why Google Places is Good News for Your Business

Do you sell locally? Frustrated that big business marketing budgets have stopped your website getting to the top of Google? Tired of seeing national chains elbowing you off page one? Well new changes to the Google Places SERP could be exactly what you need to energise your online marketing. Read on....

SEO and online marketing may never be the same again after Google last week started to roll out changes to their universal search page display. Changes that radically impact on the way that results are delivered. Simply referred to as Place Search, (Google Business Centre having evolved into Google Places in April), for any search that Google deems local it now grabs the information stored against your Google Place listing, factors in your organic search relevance and returns your listing packaged and positioned above the rest of the normal organic listings at the top of of the first page.

Great news for businesses that operate on a local level.

Why are Google focusing on local search? With more than 20% of Google searches already geo-related it seems the new Google Places SERP algorithm has been put in place to meet this location based demand.

"Our goal is to help you feel like a local everywhere you go!"

Says Jackie Bavaro of the Google Blog, adding:

Place Search results will begin appearing automatically on Google when we predict you’re looking for local information.

"With Place Search, we’re dynamically connecting hundreds of millions of websites with more than 50 million real-world locations. We automatically identify when sites are talking about physical places and cluster links even when they don’t provide addresses and use different names."

Gone is the 7 pack list of local businesses accompanied by a simple map. The map has now been transferred to the far top right of the page and the 7 pack replaced by local listings created out of Google Places extending almost all the way down the page and replacing the bulk of page one organic results. As well as containing the page title, description and contact information, the new packaged local search returns also include reviews relating to the site – in effect a compressed local business listing.

Google Places losers

Bad news for non local sites optimised well enough to mid first page placements but without a local business listing. The travel industry must be going completely mental at the moment with highly optimised and until recently high profile pages crashing out of view. An SEO nightmare. For example, how can travel or hotel room booking companies like Bed Booking expect to successfully market hotel vacancies when their rankings are being demoted below individual hotels that have local listings? Surely too, those searching for hotels might also be suffering a dis-service. Isn't it preferable to go to a site with a range of hotel options based on a geographical location (an aggregator for want of a better word) and refine the search themselves, rather than have to trawl through every single option individually. Travellers – be prepared to be presented with a frustrating and time consuming slog when it comes to comparing accommodation options

The jury's still out when comes to business that covers a variety of areas and have optimised dedicated landing pages aimed at achieving strong area by area returns. A plumber based in Cheltenham with a well put together Google Places listing (we'll come to that later), whilst potentially enjoying the boost of increased local profile with his Google Places pack listed above the organic returns of non Cheltenham based plumbers won't win coverage in other areas optimised for. Gloucester, Stroud or Cirencester for example.

Paul Keller of Search Influence says:

"In the past businesses in suburbs who wanted to rank for ‘the big city’ had a hard time getting on the map. This may continue to challenge suburban based businesses with this new Google update. Those with strong organic rankings who previously ranked organically for their targeted "big city" could count on traffic from the searchers who ignored the map and went straight to find what they wanted in organic rankings. This update, though, adds an additional factor to what Google considers relevant in regards to geography, which may pose a problem for suburban-located businesses."

To what extent widening the Services Area in your Google Places addresses the situation remains to be seen. Andy Williams of Impact Media comments:

"your physical location is always going to be the deciding factor when you are ranked. Companies physically closer to a searched for location will more often than not appear ahead of a company that simply covers the area."

As with any SERP changes or Google layout evolution these new challenges also present great opportunities too. In this case, lots of opportunity for local business.

Google Place winners - why Google Places is great news for your business

Google Places is actually very good news indeed for local sites that are well optimised and enjoy good reviews and coverage in local directories such as Qtype and Yelp. Companies with multiple physical locations will also benefit by creating a Google Places profile for each separate area.

As Andrew Shortland of Search Engine Land says:

"For local businesses that focus on both organic and local SEO, at first blush, this change appears to offer even more opportunity to acquire qualified traffic. If I were a business focused on local customers, I would be truly excited about the possibilities."

Ding Dong.

Ding – get your organic SEO ship shape and SEO fashion.

"the chance is there to leap back up into the running for companies with strong websites,"says Miriam Ellis of Search Engine Guide.

Ensure that your titles is key phrase focused and your description compelling.

That your tags and code are clean, lean and committed to the SEO cause.

Add fresh, well written content that informs, entertains and persuades.

Blog.

Submit regular articles and press releases to inspire links.

Build relationships in your vertical based on content and reciprocity that inspire a network of strong inbound links – remember collaboration will almost always trump competition.

Apply a local focus to link building. Gaining links from relevant local sites will revel a local relevance.

Local copy content - include information relating to areas you cover.

Dong – focus on local search

Are you even listed on Google Places?

Is your listing optimised?

What about submissions to local directories?

Reviews? Google is really pushing it's sentiment analysis – play to win. Over one in eight Americans say online customer evaluations influence their decision making, Use reviews to help your rankings, click-through-rates and conversions.

Executing an Effective Local SEO Campaign

What are you waiting for? If you don't have a Google Place listing, lack reviews or already struggle with local search optimisation you could soon be invisible. Talk to a local search specialist straight away to take advantage of the new Google geo-search. Don't delay though – claim your listings before the competition grabs all the top spots.

It's not just Google Places either that is focusing on the importance of Local Search. Cover your local bases and support your site with listings on other sites such as:

Yahoo Local

Qtype

Bing Local

Best of the Web Local

Superpages

Citysearch

InsiderPages

Localeze

Yelp

Local.com

Yellowpages

Hotfrog

Lets take a look at some more comments and opinion on the Google Places local search revolution -

Eric Ward on Search Engine Land says:

"I personally love this change and it makes sense. Why should Google direct the searcher to a third party directory that charges for inclusion, has marginal content but a huge SEO budget, when Google can simply direct the searcher to where they were headed anyway. Now go ahead and call me a Google kool-aid guzzler, as you always do and I almost always am, but explain to me how this is a bad thing? This is brilliant."

"Now is the time to take a long, clear look at your website to see if it’s as awesome as you can possibly make it. Is it optimized? Is it usable? Is it rich in solutions to users’ problems and answers to their questions?"
Miriam Ellis.

"Work on the local pages, work on the review pages, work on the site SEO, leave the ppc to those who have $ to burn or don’t know better. It’s been a great strategy and from what I see so far with new layout, little guy local still has a great shot at page one."
Michael Dorausch

That's what the SEO experts say. What do you say? Are you up for the Google Places challenge?

Want to know more about how a killer combination of natural SEO, local optimisation and Google Places can send your online business sky-rocketing?
Then call me, TOP PAGE and speak to Chris Horner on 01242 227876

SEO

Chris Horner

Chris Horner: "SEO & Entrepreneur
"

Google Caffeine - Speed is King

Well it's official, after months of speculation in the SEO and Internet Marketing world Google Caffeine is now finally here. Unlike the May Day algorithm change Caffeine represents more of a technical indexing adjustment to improve the speed and efficiency with which pages are indexed and served. It a system change at the Google end of the search relationship largely in respect of how data is collected, not what data is collected. As Vanessa Fox at Search Engine Land say: "Caffeine itself is not a ranking algorithm change. It’s an indexing infrastructure change." She does concede however that: "That doesn’t mean that it won’t impact rankings."

Perhaps the two main questions raised through the introduction of Caffeine are:

a. What exactly is Caffeine?

b. How can you use the Caffeine update to your advantage?

What is Caffeine?

The internet is far bigger than anyone, even Google, could have predicted. The sheer volume of information and the rate at which new information is now added online is deafening. With the rapid addition of video, images, news, blogs and other forms of quick-fire content the internet is quickly becoming a vast repository of data. All data that needs to be indexed.

In the early days Google would update its index approximately every 4 months. From 2000 this reduced to a 1 month re-indexing.

In 2003 Google switched to an incremental indexing system crawling approximately 10% of the web nightly, indexing it and then and pushing that segment live. Caffeine is the first major change to Google's indexing since then.

Caffeine now analyses small portions of the web on a continuous basis sending it live as soon as it is indexed rather than in batches. A rolling, real-time indexing serving fresh, timely search returns. Matt Cutts draws an analogy where he describes the pre-Caffeine system as the bus that collects you at the airport. The new Caffeine update represents a shiny new limo ready and waiting to which you away to fresh search results. Nice.

According to Google Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than their previous index, so whether it's a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now link to fresh, relevant content much quicker than has ever been possible.

Caffeine also massively increases Google's ability to scale up the size of its index. as well as adding more information parameters such as anchor text, meta data, keywords, regional, link information or other signals to help define a page's relevance.

How can you use Caffeine to your advantage?

Google is in a hurry and Caffeine is all about speed. The internet is growing exponentially and to cut through the noise you need to move quickly. Align your offering with Google's ambitions and you will benefit.

Don't waste Google's time with duplicate content. Make it easy by offering your unique content and URLS on a plate through HTML site maps, XML site maps, RSS feeds, Google product feeds. Note the increasing importance of video in modern SEO. Feed the Cafferine index a Video Sitemap with information about your video content. Be sure to flag up video content on your site Google might not otherwise discover. The same applies to Apps. Caffeine makes them visible. A mobile Google Apps search on an Android or iPhone and will quickly and easily return Apps.

The frequency of updating new content is also important. Use social media to keep your content fresh and your site in Google's eye-line. Do yourself a favour too and ensure that your content is original, considered and adds value to the user experience.

Site and hosting speed will also start to factor more as Google looks to scythe through the internet to quickly reach relevant search returns. If you aren't delivering well engineered sites using robust, speedy architecture then expect to lag behind the competition.

Talk to your SEO for more information on how you can turn the Caffeine update to your competitive advantage.

Call Top Page NOW on +44 (0)845 052 9467 and talk to Chris Horner

Posted by Chris Horner SEO
TOP PAGE

Improve your SERPs following the MayDay release

SEOs and business owners around the world are studying the fall out of what's been labelled the Google May Day update. So far, so unhappy, with many web masters and SEO professionals reporting falls in traffic, especially long tail traffic, sometimes by as much as 50%. Clearly when visitor numbers drop in these sorts of volumes the implications when it come to sales and profits can be significant.

So what's going on? What is the May Day Google algorithm change? Why are websites suffering and more importantly what can they do to fix things?

Now while there's nothing new about Google tweaking their algorithm, in 2009 Google made non less than 350 to 400 changes, says Google SEO guru Matt Cutts, this one seems to have taken people by surprise. Happening at and about the same time as the Google search interface changes people have been struggling to to explain
both the reasoning and implications of the changes. The good and the great including Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz, Frank Reed at Marketing Pilgrim and Vanessa Fox at SearchEngineLand have all commented on the changes and shared analysis.

Could it be an indexing change designed to support the speed of Caffeine? Could it be a link valuation shift where even good sites are being punished from bad links? Has there been an increased bias given to authority/brand sites. Tedster at Webmaster World suggested a phrase match shift where Google has introduced new technology that regards particular types of long tail as less relevant.

Google themselves haven't been too forthcoming about the specifics of the change though Vanessa Fox quotes Matt Cutts as saying: ”this is an algorithmic change in Google, looking for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries. It went through vigorous testing and isn’t going to be rolled back.”

Google went on to confirm that May Day constituted a rankings change, not a crawling or indexing change, so even though pages are still being crawled they are now considered as less relevant..As Fox noted: "Based on Matt’s comment, this change impacts "long tail" traffic, which generally is from longer queries that few people search for individually, but in aggregate can provide a large percentage of traffic."

Matt Cutts interviewed by Rand Fishkin SEOmoz June 9th 2010


So what can you do if your site – say a large e-commerce site is failing to claim the rankings, and more importantly the traffic that it used to? First things first make sure you check out the pages that are ranking above you. What factors can you identify that might help them? Anchor text, rich content, strong internal linking, strong external linking? Google's definition of long tail relevance has changed and you need to find out specifically what they are looking for. Remember too that Google craves compelling content. It's rich, high quality content content that will always be rewarded with links and high ranking – not fusty old corporate catalogue.

It's worth also asking yourself whether it's such a wise move putting all your long tail traffic eggs in the one Google basket. If a relatively minor change like this can wipe out such a large proportion of your traffic then isn't that a rather fragile strategy upon which to build your online marketing?

Hopefully this will teach some of the newer web marketers that Google is only one of MANY ways to get traffic, and focusing even closer on a single algorithm is only asking for trouble.
A strong SEO plan must encompass a range of marketing; strong social presence including Twitter and Facebook and especially blogs. You need to engage your audience too with great content and as well as getting out there and building links. Create that virtuous circle.
With an SEO strategy covering multiple 'touch points you’ll never lose 50% of your traffic just because one aspect of your marketing fails you..
For many organisation the algorithm changes may in fact present opportunities. As Frank Reed at Marketing Pilgrim says: "The long tail has always been a target of any good SEO campaign especially by the smaller players. Now there’s a chance to make even further inroads against the big boys. Study up!"