So, based on this, it’s obvious why so many webmasters become nervous, especially since the Panda update a few months ago which affected sites’ rankings based on the quality of their content and various other metrics.
So for now, it’s clear that all SEO agencies and companies alike, as well as online business owners, need to direct their attention and focus towards updating their content more frequently. Not only is this often times difficult, but it requires a lot of resources. If you find yourself to be outranked by queries from fresh and new content which you use to rank for, then you’ll obviously have to think about creating new content more often.

What Google said:

“We completed our Caffeine web indexing system last year, which allows us to crawl and index the web for fresh content quickly on an enormous scale. Building upon the momentum from Caffeine, today we’re making a significant improvement to our ranking algorithm that impacts roughly 35 percent of searches and better determines when to give you more up-to-date relevant results for these varying degrees of freshness.”

Now, if you go ahead and think of that 35 percent figure again, what I’m thinking is that, potentially, Google means to say that around 1/3 of search engine related queries involve or relate to fresh and/or updated content.

Freshness ranking is not new, just apparently improved?! So, this pretty much goes to say that 35 percent of the searches in Google are impacted by this. That is larger than the Panda update which impacted 12 percent of the searches conducted.

What type of searches does it impact? Google said:

• Recent events or hot topics.
• Regularly recurring events.
• Frequent updates.

Well here is my concern and my two cents on this situation:

Has competition and online user activity increased so much that there is not enough room for everyone to compete on only one search engine?
If this is true then that means Google obviously has to find a way to create enough virtual business and information trading space by installing a system whereby being found online and making sales comes down to how active and relevant you are.

This definitely takes the field of SEO so much further and directly creates more work for us SEO’s but, for how long and is this also not going to be responsible for creating a lot of potential spammy results through Google cause, let’s face it, it doesn’t take a genius to update your blog or website and there are numerous plugins that you can install on your blogs that pull in data from various feeds etc.

This situation will inevitably spur on software developers to create even more auto content generating tools to automatically update the content on your site. These days it seems that Google is playing the money game and potentially rigging the system to its advantage. Have a look at the posts below and make up your own minds.

Brand VS Affiliate Spam
Google enters Make Money Online Niche

Other factors that have also created concern are the fact that Google has implemented ads at the bottom of search results, (read more here) which, combined with video & image results on the first page of Google, basically means that we are now competing for the first five of the ten spots available on the first page of Google seeing that most users only click on the results in the top fold of their screen which happens to display only between four or five results unless you scroll down of course. Some of this is old news to some but for the uninformed, this stresses a huge area of concern which has pros and cons for online users from all walks of life.

Resources:

http://searchengineland.com/google-search-algorithm-change-for-freshness-to-impact-35-of-searches-99856

http://www.webpronews.com/google-algorithm-update-focuses-on-freshness-and-recency-2011-11

http://socialmediatoday.com/jamesamartin/384642/google-algorithm-update-freshness-counts-even-more-now

http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/8244-google-s-freshness-update-what-s-the-effect-on-websites

Don’t guess internet behavior based on your own – you’re wrong!

Define a goal

Every website has a goal, a reason for existence. The times of just being there for the sake of it are over. Even more so, your website’s goal should be supporting your integrated business model. In the best case scenario, you should define a multitude of goals. Even though not every business is suitable for the internet, keeping your finger on the wrist never hurts.

What is your website’s goal? Do you have an E-commerce site? It’s clear you that should know your conversion rate (which influences website visitors becoming customers), sales funnel, drop out percentage and returning visitors… But even if you’re not running an online shop, there are several metrics you should be monitoring that will give you valuable info, at no cost whatsoever!

Tagging

Before we look at the key metrics, what can we measure? By default free reporting tools will have standard metrics that share a lot of information. But did you know that with a few easy tweaks this tool can go far beyond your expectations? Common reporting tools have a code that is added to each page. It collects data from the visitor, such as language, origin, computer compatibility, popular pages and other data.

You can extend your arsenal however – you might have fancy pdf files that you’re offering for download; product and service descriptions, pricelists or anything else. Imagine the capability of having an overview of document download rates, allowing you to define your most popular products. It tells you how engaging your site is as well.Do you have an enquiry e-mail address instead of an enquiry form? Add a code to measure the number of clicks on your ‘mailto:’ enquiry. Compare this to the actual emails you receive through that referral. See any discrepancy? Act on it. Check the number of views your 404 error page gets. That will tell you something about site quality.

Key metrics

In Google Analytics you can go to these reports and click the “add to dashboard” button which allows you to see these at first glance.

• Bounce rate
  This is one of the most important metrics for your site. A high bounce rate (over 50%) will tell you that there’s a huge gap between what your visitors expect to find on the site and what you offer. Maybe you’re running a PPC advertising or SEO campaign. If you have a high bounce rate (1 page/visit), you’re throwing money out the window. Identify the pages with the highest bounce rate and improve them. Every website is different though, so evaluate this according to your website.
• Average Time on Site
  How much time are visitors spending on your site? Are you offering your extensive expertise? You even might want to divide long articles onto different pages to see how many people go to page two. It will show you how engaging your content is and how much visitors read this content.
• Keywords
  Which keywords (PPC vs. SEO) are pulling in the bulk of visitors? Why stop there? Check that metric in perspective and look at it cross-linked to your goals. Which keywords are converting? And which aren’t? You’ve got work to do.
• Actions
  Downloads and clicks on email links are by default unknown. Add a sample code to the link and see how engaging (converting) your site is, usually between 2%-3%. Identify the weak pages that convert poorly and optimize them.
• Goal Abandonment Rate
  Did you define a goal? Splendid. Now, how is your funnel abandonment rate, plainly stated, how many people are leaving your store with their wallets drawn? Identify your weak funnel pages and optimise these ASAP because you are losing money!Did you know that you can even check the progress of each individual field of an enquiry form? See how many people almost send you an enquiry but don’t quite get there.
• Conversion Rate
  Conversion rates are like missionaries in early colonies; how many people were converted to their belief? How many of your visitors are converted into prospects, clients or any role you define?
• Map Overlay
  Where are your visitors coming from? You probably have a good idea locally. But in times of expansion do you know where to turn?

Add value

Throw in a value for each goal you define on your site and you’ll see what’s going on for real. Define a real site value by working backwards. Let’s say for every 100 completed enquiry forms you make 25 sales. Each sale has a $20 margin. So $20 x 25 = 500 ÷ 100 = $5. In theory, each completed enquiry form brings you $5.

Online business compared to real life offers a priceless source of information about your customers. You would be unwise not to take advantage of that. Take that step ahead over your competitors and get smarter today. But remember, reporting is not the goal itself. It’s merely a tool to achieve your goals. So spend time where it benefits most, and you will soon start seeing the results.

You can’t copy a great artist either. One of the biggest crimes for any website (SEO-wise) is to include duplicate content on your site. This includes stealing two fabulous lines from one site. Plagiarism in any form must be avoided, or risk your work sinking to the bottom of the rankings faster than Jennifer Lopez’s film career.

You can’t put a price on fame – so research the very best keywords before you begin ranking for arbitrary keywords that make little sense. If you own a car rental site, look towards the holy union of ‘car rental’ plus whatever city you live in. In time, your understanding of the keywords in correlation to your websites will improve – this is a priceless skill; for everything else, there’s Google AdWords Keyword tool. Keep your writing to the point, filled with the correct amount of keywords and relish in improved rankings and a steady growth. Your personal fame is a measurement of your creativity; continue writing and find success in your growth as an SEO writer.

That is why being on the coveted 1st page of search engines is all that matters. Putting your time, effort and finances into constructing a website that is buried deep in the search engine results, will be like constructing a huge billboard for your business and then placing it in the middle of the desert. Unlike politicians making empty promises to win your trust, search engines will ensure that you reap the benefits if you ‘follow ‘them. In layman’s terms, follow their rules and you will be sure to benefit from the exposure of your top rankings.

There is a saying that goes ‘You are who Google says you are’ and that simply translates to the following fact: If search engines do not rank you in the top 10 for you industry related keywords, they do not see you as a formidable force in your industry (and web users will use the same analogy).

Ask yourself this, ‘Will you pick up and read a newspaper dated 1999 or one which was printed last night?’ The answer is quite simple. So say NO to copying content from other websites and receive fresh, never before crawled content. Say NO to meta data spamming and non-friendly search engine optimization practices. Say NO to harmful elements on your site that can give you a quick boost but will ultimately affect your site negatively. Say NO to digging your own site’s grave!

Be part of the online revolution! We offer services ranging from online business development, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to Pay Per Click (PPC). We will secure your ‘billboard’ on a spot next to a busy freeway, which is the only pathway to all major cities. Ensure your online success and say YES to R.O.I Media!

Internal Linking serves multiple purposes:

1. To increase Page Rank of internal or ‘deep’ pages.
2. To build relevancy of a page to a keyword or key phrase.
3. To ensure that your site in its entirety is spidered, even those pages that are not referenced in your main navigation.

Increasing Page Rank of Internal Pages

Google allocates a value to every page of your site. For this they use Page Rank. Many refer to Page Rank as the “juice” allocated to each page and the website as a whole. Your homepage is seen as the most important page of your site and therefore the Homepage will always have the highest Page Rank value.  This Page Rank is then distributed between the lower pages of your site as illustrated in the image below:

The links that point from your home page to internal pages are usually found in the Main navigation of the site. This allows your Homepage Page Rank to flow naturally to the internal pages that are being linked to. The ‘juice’ gets distributed evenly across the pages that are being linked to.

Building Relevancy of a Page to a Keyword

The first and most important step of any successful SEO campaign is without a doubt Keyword Research. You have to have a very clear objective of which pages you want to rank for and for which keywords or phrases. When creating your internal linking structure you cannot just link to pages using any random text you feel like. You need to use the targeted keyword of the page you are linking to in your anchor text.

Links act like votes for the pages that they link to. So, if you link to a page using “click here” enough times, that page will start to rank for the keyword “click here” in the Search Engines. Go ahead and do a search for the poor guy who ranks NO 1 for “Click Here”!

Ensuring your whole site gets spidered and indexed

Making sure your website and all its pages are spidered by the search engines is in all probability the easiest thing you can do to increase your rankings. You see, the more pages of your site are indexed in the Search Engines the more content you have to offer the user. The more content you have on your site, the more keywords you will inevitably have in this content. And the more keywords you have the better the chances of ranking for those keywords.

So why would Search Engines not be able to spider all your pages without internal linking? Pages can be hidden from search engine spiders when linking is done in a way that the spider cannot read to follow those links. This would happen if your site uses a script-based navigation system for example. Also, image-based navigation may be crawlable or spiderable by search engines, but the search engines can’t see images and therefore can’t assign any relevancy from the image to the page that is being linked to.

Well that’s all I have for now. I hope you got all of that, but if you didn’t, don’t despair! Just give ROI Media a call and we’ll sort you out.

However, with great power comes great responsibility. Many unethical SEO companies
peddle suspect online marketing strategies to a naïve public. Due to the
involved nature of search engine algorithms and society’s rudimentary
understanding thereof it is frighteningly easy to fall prey to such companies.
The following are a few supposedly “sure-fire” strategies to look
out for.

If a company promises you submissions to ‘thousands’ of search
engines head for the hills. How many search engines do you know of, let alone
use? Google, Yahoo, MSN? There are less than a hundred and fifty credible search
engines worldwide. Flinging your site onto countless random search engines will
only get you into ‘link farms’, irrelevant junk pages that get filtered
out by proper search engines. More seriously – your efforts could get your site
blacklisted in the long run.

Repetitive submission to a single search engine is also not a good idea. You
simply cannot force an engine to index your site. If you didn’t get indexed
the first time there is probably something wrong with your site. Get it fixed
and resubmit, bombarding a search engine time and again is the equivalent of
getting an essay topic wrong, getting a poor mark and then handing the same
essay back to the teacher. Your marks won’t improve and you will most
likely end up aggravating the very authority figure you are trying to win over.

Further unethical practices include keyword stuffing, ‘cloaking’,
doorway pages, multiple domains with identical content, buying links and obtaining
links from bad neighborhoods. These strategies are all referred to as ‘Black
Hat SEO’ and involve attempts to improve a site’s rankings in ways
that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception.

‘White Hat SEO’, on the other hand, creates content for users,
not search engines, and then makes that content accessible to the spiders, rather
than attempting to derail the algorithm from its intended purpose. These strategies
add value to a product AND they work.

As with everything in life there are rules and if you break them you are bound
to be found out sooner or later. That said; play nice and the chances are that
proper SEO
techniques will do wonders for your business as an online marketing strategy
tool.