The main problem for Google in the past was deciding which comments were legitimate and which could be considered “comment spam”. This 3^rd party system would allow Google to assign less value to comments that would be seen as manipulative and more value to “useful” comments. Google would track the overall Google activity of the author of each comment by tracking their Gmail, Google+ and Youtube usage. Commenters would have to build up their credibility with Google to have their comments seen as having SEO weight.

It goes without saying then that we have seen the end of “NoFollow” tags on comments and as long as Google sees the authors of comments as credible, link juice will be passed on to the sites which they link to in the comments. Google will however limit the value of excessive links from legitimate commenters over a short period of time, so commenters would be advised to use this tactic sparingly. The highest value would be given to links that are on-topic, haven’t been posted an inordinate amount of times and have good click-through rates.

So it would appear that Google has created a very enticing commentary system that webmasters should definitely consider implementing on their websites, although it’s way too early to say if Google will give adopters of its commentary system preferential treatment in their algorithm. We feel that the SEO implications of this system are significant enough to warrant adoption. Promoting Google+ does seem to be the priority of Google at the moment, and this system proves that point.

People have been using black hat SEO techniques to artificially manipulate organic rankings for a long time. And it worked. These individuals did everything from using invisible text stuffed with keywords to building massive link farms. The SEO professionals that strive to perform white hat Search Engine Optimisation and sticking to Google’s guidelines have often felt that their success is somewhat unfair. Sites with obvious black hat SEO often outranked their white hat competitors. To be fair, Google has improved this over the years. In the late 90s you could get away with basically anything. However, although the ethical route does pay off with hard work, even today certain black hat strategies still work.

Could it be that the game might finally change for good?

Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team recently made the following statement:

“What about the people optimizing really hard and doing a lot of SEO. We don’t normally pre-announce changes but there is something we are working on in the last few months and hope to release it in the next months or few weeks. We are trying to level the playing field a bit. All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly SEO – versus those making great content and great site. We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect. We have several engineers on my team working on this right now.“

A popular example of Google’s recent crackdown is the link network, buildmyrank.com. The site has openly admitted defeat and offered a refund to their customers after Google deindexed the majority of their network.

I am not sure if Google will phase everything in gradually. We have, however, seen some surprising results during the last month. One of our clients’ sites was competing with a website that was using obvious black hat SEO techniques. This site dropped out of the SERPs completely a few weeks ago. We have also seen quite a few dramatic positive shifts for our clients, possibly this is due to Google penalising all the black hat competitors and therefore shifting white hat sites up the rankings.

All this cracking down proves that you need to be very careful about anything you do. You might get penalised even if your intention was not to be black hat. Be sure to read up on Googles guidelines and remember that if you always strive to optimise for the user, you can feel safe. Google has sent a message to the webmaster tools interface of sites that violate their guidelines. If you find that a site you manage might possibly be one of these, take the steps to remove all suspicious SEO activity. Remove bad backlinks where possible, remove spammy content and meta data.

Many sites out there are in existence to make money and one of the most common ways to do this is through advertising. Google understands this, especially as it is thanks to advertising that Google has become the internet giant that it is. However there are sites that go overboard in this respect with big blocks of ads above the fold. Google says that less than 1% of searches will be noticeably be affected by this algorithm change, but webmasters and designers alike should take note of this. Using this method of adverts first and content later could negatively affect a website’s Search Engine Optimization efforts.

Google stated that webmasters who believed that their websites were negatively affected by this should consider how the website uses the above-the-fold area and whether the content on the page is hidden or otherwise hard for users to read quickly. The type of device used to view the website is also a factor. Webmasters are encouraged to use Google’s Browser Size tool to see how their website is viewed on screens of different sizes and resolutions. A webpage’s content might be easily accessible on a PC, but hidden on a mobile device.

The best advice is to keep the advertising near the bottom and the sides of the webpage and the content near the top. This will also help the Googlebot read / index your website quicker.

In true Google philosophy and all in the name of making the web a friendlier, easier place to be, this is just one of the 500+ changes that Google has undertaken to make to their algorithm in 2012 .

As mentioned in my previous post(s), it seems that Search Plus Your World has caused quite an uproar. When Twitter accuses Google of manipulating search results and not having the best interest of users at heart, you should take notice. In this article I will attempt to wrap up my thoughts on this issue.

Will Google Plus survive?

I have not touched this issue before in depth, but it has been lingering in my mind for quite a while now. Last month Larry Page announced that Google Plus reached 90 million users. Facebook has about 800 million users. To the casual observer this might seem that Google Plus is gaining significant ground on the social giant (it has managed to get more than 10% of the amount of users in less than a year!).

For the following reasons, I do not think that this is the case…

There are a few problems and gripes I have with Google Plus. As much as I love Google and what they do, I’ll quote a post I read from one of my ‘friends’ on Google Plus (just before he abandoned using the Social Network) : “I do not want all my eggs in one Google basket”. This however, might be a personal thought process and not the consensus of the majority. What bugs me personally though, is that although I have a significant number of people in my circles – my news feed is basically empty. When I scroll down for a couple of seconds, I already start seeing posts from weeks ago. I am sure many people will echo my conclusion : there is nothing going on on Google Plus. You might be asking yourself – ‘Why do they then have 90 million users?”. The answer is simple. Because every person with a gmail account got signed up to Google+ automatically when it officially launched. I have a Google Plus account, I am part of the 90 million, do I ever use it? The answer is no. Technically, there is nothing wrong with Google Plus – but when no one uses it because there are no others using it, it creates a vicious cycle. I predict that Google Plus will die slowly (although I hope not). Facebook is just too big and established.

The only saving grace will be if Google Plus fills a different segment of the market – perhaps a social network focused on businesses…

SEO in 2012 and beyond

One cannot predict what changes Google will make to their algorithm in the future, perhaps links will play a smaller role, perhaps social search will dominate or (as discussed above) Google Plus will fade away.

I cannot foresee search evolving into something inherently social unless Facebook, Twitter etc decides to play along and open up all public content for Google to index. This will in turn depend on Google to position results in an unbiased manner. If and when this happens on large scale, SEO will be a totally different ballgame. As I have mentioned in the past, SEO ultimately boils down to ensuring that a website is optimised for the user. This aspect will never go away. Websites will always need relevant quality content, the site will always have to be user friendly and designed in such a way to deliver a great user experience.

At this point in time however, an SEO specialist cannot ignore the social aspect of search, it should benefit your SEO client noticeably if you include social in your SEO efforts.

Google’s social rival, the massively popular micro blogging site Twitter, are on the forefront of the accusing camp. After the new search algorithm was launched by Google, Twitter accused Google of trying to drive traffic to their social network by manipulating search results. A Twitter representative made the following statement: “For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results any time they wanted to find something on the internet. As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter, as a result, Twitter accounts and tweets are often the most relevant results. We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organisations and Twitter users”.

Personally, I think Twitter has a point. Twitter has had a massive social impact over the last few years (the “Twitter Revolutions” for example) and breaking news can often be found first on Twitter. If results from Twitter (or any other site for that matter) is the most relevant, the information should be available first in Google search results. This also ties in with the aforementioned Search Engine Optimisation. If you have to compete with only slightly relevant data from Google itself, you’re in for a losing battle. One option is to embrace the change from a social marketing perspective. But is this really best for the user?

In conclusion, it seems that many are worried that relevant results get pushed down in favour of Google + content. Fundamentally, relevancy is what it all boils down to. Google might not be in the wrong here, they are certainly entitled to promote their social network, but they should not compromise the quality of their search results in the process.

Twitter/Facebook - image credit - www.cbsnews.com

Having all the Personalised content from Google Plus mentioned above weaved into search result pages might not be welcomed by everyone. And at first glance it might seem to completely change the way we approach SEO. A lot of us in the field of Search Engine Optimization have been preparing for the day that search gets social. The option to switch between Global and Personalized results however, came as a surprise. Users can choose whether or not they want to use personalised search. This essentially means that current SEO practices still play the same role as always.

One cannot, however, predict the changes Google will make in the future, and tapping into the SEO potential of Personalised Search will play an increasingly important role in a Search Marketing campaign. Google might require us to be logged in at all times to use any of its features, including search. Even if this happens, I believe traditional SEO will remain alive and well. In its core, SEO is about optimization for the user, to optimize websites in order to facilitate and improve the search experience. This will always remain relevant.

The Next Step: Online Marketing

Blind Designs realised in 2009 that launching an online marketing strategy could have a magnificent impact on their business. They approached SAbest and we launched their Google Adwords (Pay per Click) Campaign in February 2009. Just 7 days after launching their campaigns, they had 192 visits and 20% of the visits were from Google Adwords and 6.67% from non-paid adverts. 72% were new clients visiting their website through Google.

We initially started only with Pay per Click advertising, but after a successful year of Pay per Click campaigns and remarkable return on investment, Blind Designs launched search engine optimisation on their website in conjunction with their Adwords campaign.

We started their search engine optimisation in February 2009. Within 8 months of optimisation, we managed to get them to the top listing on the first page of organic searches when searching their most competitive keyword: Blinds.
SEO especially, builds complete brand trust and awareness, as people perceive companies that rank on the first page of searches as the market leaders and the most trusted in the industry.
This meant optimum visibility online in all searches.

The Proof Is In The Pudding:

You will notice in the block below the difference in visits from 2009 when they started with Pay per Click right through to 2011 when they also added search engine optimisation to their online marketing plan. This also shows the impact the two products combined have on each other, and on customer trust and brand association.

Visits
Campaigns

PPC:Feb 2009 – Feb 2010: +20%
SEO:Feb 2009 – Feb 2010: +6.67%

PPC: Feb 2010 – Feb 2011: +20.58%
SEO: Feb 2010 – Feb 2011: +21.88%

PPC: Feb 2011 – Aug 2011: 24.37%
SEO: Feb 2011 – Aug 2011: 24.73%

This clearly states the value of doing Pay per Click and Search engine optimisation together. The performance of various keywords, and their conversion rates are closely monitored and adjusted according to the results achieved.
Focused landing pages were created for the Pay per Click campaigns, ensuring higher conversion rates as the captive audience got the information they were looking for immediately, with substantial call to action areas. Their average conversion rates from Feb 2011 – Aug 2011 was 12.07%. Other advertising campaigns expect an average of 1% conversion – and the trackability is minimal.

The Future Of Blind Designs:

Due to their online visibility, Blind Designs maintained a steady growth of 5% annually, even through the recession period.
The brand has become trusted as word of mouth is backed up by online presence – and will always be viewed as one of the market leaders for blinds in South Africa.
One last word from Paul O’ Brien is that Google Adwords should form part of every company’s strategy to some agree.

With Search engine optimisation (SEO) you not only build brand awareness, but more importantly, you gain trust within your industry. The higher the ranking of your site in the search results, and the more frequently your page appears on the results pages, the more visitors and sales you’ll have, because you are targeting people who are looking for your product. Being listed on top of search engine results also almost automatically cements your company as a market leader.

Trust + brand awareness + more visitors = more sales.

So what is SEO? SEO (or Search Engine Optimisation) is the process of structuring a web page so that it is found, read, and indexed by search engines as effectively as possible. It improves the visibility of your website in search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.

These search engines use crawlers to follow links from one page to another and retrieve the contents. This is indexed and added to their databases. Search engines’ web crawlers rank sites according to their relevance to search terms, which is calculated using criteria such as the extent of keyword matches and the number of sites linked to a website. Done properly, SEO ensures that, when users search for terms relevant to your business, they will find your website every time.

Unique content counts. Having professionally written, relevant copy on your site (different from the content on other sites in wording, structure and topics) can provide a big boost for your site’s rankings. Frequency of content change is also a must – not small changes to existing content, but new content which shows that your website is active and dynamic.

Two prevalent methods have given you the tools to do just that – get yourself known.

The first of these is similar to an online banner marketing campaign, except you can splash your adverts across many websites at the same time.  This we call Google Display Networks (GDN), and the adverts run across all the sites that have opened themselves up to this kind of marketing.  The beauty of GDN is that it creates awareness before people necessarily know about you and actively go looking for you or your products.

Furthermore, Google almost ‘tracks’ the user’s general application of the web, so if they are on certain websites often, and your advert is relevant to them, it will show to them when they go to other sites.  Kind of eerie, but from a marketing point of view phenomenal!

Having had said that, Display Network allows for a lot of awareness and positioning, but not necessarily a conversion to a sale or direct response.  People often see something, and then go in search of it later, which is why the second method is absolutely vital, we believe.

This second method is Search Engine Marketing.  This is also the most effective way of advertising online, as you have a captive audience that are ready to engage and interact with you.  The quickest way to get your product, brand or service ‘out there’ on Search Engine Marketing is by making use of Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising as it is immediate and guaranteed when managed correctly.  Besides this, Pay Per Click is flexible and can be changed and optimized real-time.

That said, however, to have a complete online visibility and presence, and to ‘dominate’ search engines cost effectively in the long run, is by optimizing your website and website content in such a way that your brand will be on the top of all major search engine listings.  This is called Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).  Search Engine Optimisation is done over a period of time, and thus does not necessarily yield immediate success, but in the long run is the most cost effective way to market yourself online.

Our advice, then, would be to start with GDN en PPC, get results and increase the proverbial bottom line, and then proceed to SEO – and eventual online success!

According to Wikipedia black hat SEO’s are classified as follows – Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. White Hat SEO’s are then defined by Wikipedia as follows – White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the spiders, rather than attempting to game the algorithm.

Now as you can probably see from this there are flaws in these statements because what do you construed as an action to game the algorithm. Isn’t including your keywords in your page titles an attempt to game the algorithm? Who defines what is seen as white hat and black hat. Because of this obscure divide between “good and evil” it is really something SEO have a pet peeve with.

I do however think because of the nature the only way to clearly define black hat and white hat is by having a real person review it. Link buying is something that is considered black hat if it is only done to increase search engine rankings. Now this is a really interesting topic and we could debate it for hours but top SEO’s have all admitted that if you look at some of the most competitive search queries you would find that all the ranking websites have bought links in the past.

So now when you buy links for your company are you trying to game the algorithm or are you just trying to catch up? Well this really is a difficult question to answer and I won’t even try to but this just shows the obscurity of these classifications. I do however believe there are cases where you can clearly see a tactic that is trying to game the algorithm for “evil”.

Clocking for instance is something that has been extensively used in the past to game search engine algorithms and most search engines are really good at detecting this. But what about cases where there is a justified reason for using clocking? Clocking is basically when the page that a crawler sees and the page an actual visitor sees differs. What about situations where the website needs to first confirm information before it can show you it’s content? Is it then okay to serve different content to a crawler than to a real visitor?

In my opinion there is definitely cases where these tactics are negative and the aim is to make irrelevant content relevant to search queries but for the most part SEO’s are simply trying to have their clients rank for search queries that are relevant to their products or services. I believe this is where we should look for right and wrong rather than in the tactics that are used.