I often come across businesses who want to improve their performance in Google – often through organic search.

Most of them use Google Analytics, and all want more traffic from Google.

When we begin optimising a client’s website for the search engine/s, the process begins by getting a feel for how they’re doing so far.

Apologies for the screenshots using the ‘old’ interface of Analytics, but there are bugs in the new version that haven’t yet been resolved.

The first step is to isolate Google organic traffic using a simple segment:

Remember that from this point onwards you’re only looking at the organic traffic from Google.

It’s easy to confirm this by going to Traffic Sources, Search Engines.

From here you want to know which pages are working at bringing in traffic from Google. So go to Content, Top Landing Pages.

Note that you’re more interested in landing pages than top content, as these are the pages that are ranking in the search results and generating visitors.

It’s at this point that quality starts to come into play. Take a look at the Bounce Rate column. If some of the figures surprise you, then you might want to drill down into the page to see what keywords are sending you traffic.

Click on the page name link, then choose Keyword from the third drop-down along.

From there you’ll be able to see which keywords are responsible for the high bounce rates. You’ll either understand these, or identify opportunities for improvement.

If you want to see the bigger picture, go to Traffic Sources, Keywords to see how the website as a whole is doing.

You want to focus on two main areas:

1 – keywords that you should be getting traffic for but you’re not (or not enough of it)

2 – keywords that generate large proportions of visitors with high bounce rates

You can ignore any keywords that have nothing to do with what you sell. Unless there are high volumes, you can’t use these to your advantage, and it’s not worth trying to fix an essentially benign problem.

The key is quality through relevancy.

Getting high volumes of visitors who aren’t interested in what you sell is meaningless.

Ranking highly for phrases that no-one searches for is pointless.

Effective SEO begins with identifying relevant keywords, and selecting which to target based on the number of searches and levels of competition.

Only then does the task of optimising the website begin.

Share and Enjoy

Google has changed. At least when viewing results from the US, Finland, Greece, Romania and others:

It’s odd that in the UK, France, Hong Kong and other more civilised countries, we’re still seeing the old interface that suddenly looks a little dated:

What’s of particular interest is that the URLs are now being displayed above the page excerpts. The same applies to the AdWords ads.

Yesterday:

Tomorrow:

One other noteworthy change. At a higher resolution, you can see that there’s been a definite move to the left hand side of the browser.

Old and stale:

New and vibrant:

Prediction: people will either love it, hate it, not notice or not care!

Share and Enjoy

There are more myths of Search Engine Optimisation than any other field of online marketing. Too many companies follow bad advice, act on incorrect assumptions and miss out on an abundance of Google-originated targeted traffic.

Once the optimisation of the website is complete, mistakes often continue, with an astonishing number of businesses and individuals incorrectly measuring the results of their labours.

The following is a list of factors to consider when trying to gauge the results of your optimisation efforts.

Realistic expectations:

Time – don’t expect newly optimised pages to start ranking in first place a few days after uploading the changes. Even though new content may be indexed relatively quickly, it can take weeks, months or even longer for the full impact of the changes to take place.

Moving target - Google change their ranking factors on an ongoing basis, and both you and your competition are constantly adding new content, adjusting and reoptimising your websites. The result is a constantly changing environment. Never forget that rankings may rise or fall as a result of changes made by your competition. You can’t always take the blame or credit for the results.

Data depth – traffic from Google drying-up or exploding tomorrow means nothing. Short-term fluctuations are meaningless, as are small data samples. Looking at a trend over the last two weeks is as pointless as celebrating a 200% surge when you only get 4 visitors a day from Google.

Quantity vs. quality:

Quantity of traffic is meaningless. You may start getting an additional 200 visitors a day from Google, but if they’re looking for something that you’re not selling, then nothing has been achieved.

Ultimately the number of targeted visitors you get from Google is all that matters.

If most Google-originated visitors are leaving within a few seconds of arriving, then you’re either attracting the wrong people or the page they’re landing on isn’t working correctly.

Keep an eye on bounce rates, pages per visit and time on site to get a feel for what’s working and what isn’t. But be careful – see below.

Don’t blend your data:

Food blenders are great for making sauces, soups and smoothies, but blend everything and you end up with baby food.

The same applies to your SEO data.

When analysing organic keyword performance, you might notice a reasonable number of visitors for a targeted keyword that has a high bounce rate. With a little Analytics kung fu you should be able to isolate the page/s where this is occuring and then address the issue accordingly.

It’s important to remember that the data in your Analytics account is by default for the website as a whole. So if KEYWORD 1 has a 50% bounce rate, that might be spread across a number of pages, some of which are performing well, while others perform poorly.

Making decisions on keyword bounce rates has to be based on individual pages.

Get funky with Analytics:

Google Analytics allows you to quickly and easily segment your organic traffic from the search engines, and using Advanced Filters will identify which keywords are producing more than 50 visitors a day with bounce rates below 50%, for example.

Judicious use of these features will allow you to recognise two important data streams:

- traffic that should perform well but doesn’t – requiring optimisation of the relevant pages for conversion (aka the visitor experience)

- targeted, worthwhile visitors from Google – ultimately the true measure of success for your SEO efforts.

Don’t get distracted by…

- Rankings for specific keywords. These can change with alarming regularity, and never forget that results will vary according to location, search history, user settings and more. Ultimately the number of targeted visitors you get from Google is all that matters.

- The number of backlinks. Yes it’s a factor to take into consideration, but ultimately the number of targeted visitors you get from Google is all that matters.

- PageRank. If you’re still obsessing over this then there’s little I can do to help. Try to remember that it’s 2011. Ultimately the number of targeted visitors you get from Google is all that matters.

Notice a theme?

Ultimately the number of targeted visitors you get from Google is all that matters.

Share and Enjoy

About once a week I’m asked what guarantees we offer for our services.

Sadly, in life and marketing there are no guarantees.

Yet of all our marketing services, it’s SEO that produces the most requests for a guarantee.

I could guarantee that you’ll be in the top-five listings for some of the keywords that we’ll optimise your website for.

So I can choose phrases with no competition, like “Who does Dave Collins think he is“.

I could guarantee that in the unlikely event we don’t achieve these positions for absurd keywords that no-one searches for, we won’t charge you next month.

Or I could just be honest and explain that we’ll make sure that your main pages are well optimised and correctly setup, but that ultimately much of ensuring your website ranks in first position for your chosen keywords lies beyond our control.

SEO usually works, and it often works very well.

But we won’t offer meaningless guarantees.

Update: Yes I do know this is a subject I wrote about less than four months ago in The myth of SEO guarantees, but the subject keeps coming up!

Share and Enjoy

If you’re wondering whether your SEO tactics might land you in trouble, then they probably will.

SEO tactics aren’t a good idea. It doesn’t matter how clever, original or discrete you think your tactic is, Google have seen it before.

At best, whatever you do might work in the short term. At worst, it could get you penalised by Google.

Imagine you were asked to sit down with a  representative from Google, and they asked for explanations for your SEO actions.

If you could provide legitimate answers to all of their queries without having to lie or blur the truth, then your SEO practices are probably reasonable. As such they are unlikely to get you in trouble.

If, on the other hand, you had to evade questions or hope they didn’t pick up on some of the things you’ve been doing, your SEO practices are probably questionable, and carry the risk of penalty.

You might think that SEO Black Hat techniques sound cool. But how cool is watching your Google traffic dropped to zero overnight?

Share and Enjoy

Most online businesses fall into one of three SEO buckets.

Those who have no SEO strategy, those who have a poor SEO strategy and those who trust idiots to handle their SEO for them.

If you have no SEO strategy then it might be worth tapping into the greatest source of free, targeted traffic in the history of commerce.

If you have a poor SEO strategy then you should probably do something about it.

And if you allow an idiot to handle your SEO, or think you might be trusting idiots to carry out such an important aspect of your website’s marketing, then now might be a good time to take us up on a free SEO consultation.

We’ll take a quick look at your website an let you know where things stand, with no obligation to use our services.

Is an Idiot handling your SEO? Free consultation.

Share and Enjoy

I’ve been promoting software online for more than eleven years, so am entitled to reminisce a little.

I remember with fondness the good old days of Search Engine Optimisation. When I could optimise a client’s web page and see the results within a few days. When I would optimise different pages for different engines. When “invisible text” was as devious as it got. When using software to submit to thousands of websites was good for link popularity.

Today that’s changed. Today SEO has become more difficult and potentially more dangerous than in the good old days.

I recently came across a website that was ranking quite poorly in Google. The company admitted to having “tinkered with SEO” around the middle of last year.

Opening up a twelve month date range in their Analytics account confirmed that this was indeed the case:

The DIY SEO Catch-22 is simple.

To learn SEO you need to practice and develop your skills, yet doing so is dangerous.

Medical students don’t stitch wounds on their first day at University. They practice with bananas. The catch, however, is that bananas don’t cry out in pain, bleed or get infected. At some point the nervous medical student has to practice their skills on a live patient.

If SEO is to be handled by someone within your company, the first thing they learn shouldn’t be how to optimise a page or even how to choose keywords.

The first thing they learn should be the fundamentals. Assessment, hygiene and caution.

Too many businesses are complacent about the traffic they receive from Google, and are happy to experiment with little regard for the potential consequences.

If you’re happy to watch your Google traffic drop from 5,000 to 400, then by all means allow the intern with a copy of SEO for Dummies to optimise your website.

If you don’t want to experience the effect a Google drought can have on your business, make sure your SEO student learns the potential consequences of their actions before adjusting a single word.

Extensive damage can be caused in minutes. Recovery can take years.

Share and Enjoy

It’s that time of year again. The thrill of the new year has worn off, and some of the more diligent companies have realised that almost 15% of the year has gone by, with many of their 2011 goals untouched.

At least that’s my theory for why we always start getting a surge of enquiries for our services around the middle of February.

It’s also the time of year when I get asked what guarantees we offer for our SEO work.

Please allow me to set the record straight.

I can not guarantee anything regarding your search engine rankings. Anyone that claims to do so is deceiving you.

I could offer you something like this:

“We guarantee to get your website in the top three slots for at least five of your keywords. In the unlikely event that we don’t achieve this, we won’t charge you for the following month.”

This provides the less-than-scrupulous SEO company with a number of opportunities.

The first is the choice of keywords. If your name is Steven Kraigwarna and you’ve written a book on Time Scheduling For The Perplexed, I probably could get you top position for the keyword “Kraigwarna Time Scheduling Book”, but how many people are going to be searching for this?

The second is the free month approach. Essentially they’re saying “If the work that we do for you this month doesn’t work, we won’t charge you for when it doesn’t work next month“. How’s that for an enticing deal?

As a company with a great track record of providing Genuine SEO Services, I could choose to make wishy washy guarantees.

I could guarantee that your website will be SEO ready, that I will monitor the results of what we do, that I won’t use any dodgy tricks or techniques.

But if you’re looking for tangible SEO guarantees that won’t be enough.

A reliable SEO company will tell you outright that there are no guarantees. They don’t control Google’s updates, they can’t affect your competition, and there are no special tricks that will boost your rankings.

SEO doesn’t always work, but it usually does.

We don’t offer any guarantees, other than we’ll do all the right things in the right way, and that we know what we’re doing.

If an SEO company is telling you otherwise, walk away.

Share and Enjoy

You may have noticed that ads displayed on Google are starting to look a little more discrete. In days gone by they were pushed to the right hand side of the browser, were clearly marked as Sponsored Links, made heavy use of mixed case in the display URL, and the few that were placed above the organic listings were clearly highlighted with a strong background colour.

Today we see ads that are physically closer to the organic listings, Sponsored Links has been replaced by Ads, display URLs have to use lower case in the domain portion, and the now-common ads above the organic listings use such a subtle pale yellow background that it’s almost impossible to notice on my monitor.

The ads are slowly but surely blending in with the organic results.

Google have to balance between three quite distinct interests: Google themselves, their advertisers, and the searchers – the people who use Google to find what they’re looking for.

It appears that the searchers are now being pushed slightly down the order of priorities.

Advertisers will start to see increased click through rates, and Google will make more money.

It’s win-win. At least for as long as the searchers don’t realise they’re being misled.

Share and Enjoy

Why do people still believe the idea of keyword density?

Personally I blame Web Position. Many years ago, when their product was a desktop product called WebPosition Gold, they used to produce reports based on individual pages, containing nonsensical figures:

“A word count from 123 to 467 is suggested for the Body Text area. Your word count is 939 right now so you might consider decreasing your word count in the Body Text. A keyword prominence of at least 23% is suggested for the Body Text area. Your prominence is 4.6% right now so you might consider increasing your prominence in the Body Text.”

To this day there are still people who believe that you need X words in the title, Y keywords in the meta tag and a keyword density of Z%.

There are also people who genuinely believe the world to be flat.

Both ideas are absolute nonsense, based on out-dated hokum.

Google do a good job of finding the content on your pages. You can certainly help them, and if you know what you’re doing you can tweak your chances a little.

But applying meaningless figures onto out-dated silly ideas is pointless.

Share and Enjoy