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WNW Design Ltd are proud to announce the launch of the Busy Bees Cleaning website.
Busy Bees Cleaning And Domestic Services are based in Lympstone and offer their services to the East Devon area. They specialise in domestic cleaning, holiday lets cleaning, carpets cleaning and well as end of tenancy cleaning and garden maintenance.
Browse the website www.busybees-cleaning.com for more information.
With the festive season knocking at your door, searchers are busy looking for the best deals online. However, at the same time they are not willing to buy from unreliable or unfamiliar online stores. Addressing this concern, Google recently launched Google Trusted Stores that will help online shoppers to identify and locate trusted online stores that provide excellent customer service.
Google Trusted Stores is a certification program that Google will award to certain online merchants in the form of a ‘Trusted Stores Badge’. However the participating sites must meet a number of shipping and customer service standards/metrics in order to receive the badge which they can display across their website to attract more sales.
These metrics include:
Shipping
High percentage of orders with on-time shipping
Low average days for product to ship
Service
High percentage of issues resolved quickly
Low number of customers needing assistance with an issue
Tom Fallows, Google Commerce Team Product Manager anticipates that the program will help reduce the risks associated with online shopping.
The Google Trusted Store badge is awarded to e-commerce sites that demonstrate a track record of on-time shipping and excellent customer service. When visiting a qualifying store, shoppers can hover over the Google Trusted Store badge and see metrics on the store’s shipping and customer service performance.
The program is still in closed beta testing with online stores like O.co, Wayfair, BabyAge.com, and Beach Audio signing up for the trials. It is reported that over the next several months, Google will do extensive testing of the badges and other aspects of the program to determine the overall impact of the new program on the test sites. All of the merchants included in the program are required to share information with Google related to customer service and shipping.
To receive the Google Trusted Store program, merchants must voluntarily share data about their shipments to Google and also let Google collect customer service metrics when shoppers seek Google’s help with a problem related to purchases on that site. Once accepted to the Trusted Stores program, Google will provide the merchant with an official badge to display and offer the customers up to $1,000 of protection post purchase. To apply, click here.
There are more details on this program in the video below.
About the Author:
Rene is the marketing manager of ineedhits.com – a global search engine marketing company. He also leads the marketing for Gooruze.com – a web 2.0 style community for online and digital marketers. Rene has been in the industry since 1997 with much of that time spent helping businesses embrace the best of the internet and digital world.
Is your website bringing in at least five new inquiries per day? If not, you need to look at its functionality.
Your website acts as a “storefront.” You should put as much thought and care into your website as you would to the display in your store’s window. Your website needs to attract customers and keep them coming back for more. The following should give you a place to start and a guideline of what a good website should have and what it should do:
1. Where Do Your Eyes Go First?
You only have a few seconds to catch a visitor’s attention. That means you need to make sure that you capture their interest immediately. You need a headline that stops them thinking whatever they’re thinking, and think instead: “hey, this looks interesting! I need to read this.”
2. Do You Know Right Away What This Website is About?
Don’t have any distractions from the message you are trying to get across. If you start talking about how great your company is instead of what the visitor is interested in, you lose them.
3. Is the Important Information Immediately Visible?
Site visitors want to know details as soon as possible. If they have to work too hard to find out what you’re offering, they will likely leave. You need to be clear on what you want them to do. Don’t sell more than one thing from your landing page. Decide on the main action you want them to take, and talk about only that. The best thing to do on your landing page is to provide your client something that will sign them up to your list.
4. Can You Easily Find the Benefits of the Product/Service?
Too many websites cite features rather than benefits. Features won’t get the visitor’s interest. They want to know what’s in it for them. Make sure your website makes it clear to them how your product or service will change their lives.
5. Is There a Clear Call to Action?
If the visitor likes what he sees, it is important to get him to take action quickly because delaying may lose his interest. Don’t have more than one call to action. This will only confuse them.
6. Are the Colors and Images Aesthetically Pleasing?
If your website has too many colors and pictures, it may put visitors off rather than catch their interest. Moreover, too many images will take too long to load, and if visitors have to wait, they will lose interest.
7. Is the Font Easy to Read?
Don’t use fancy fonts that are hard to read or colors that are too light. If visitors have to strain their eyes in order to read, they will lose interest and leave.
8. Are There Long Sentences or Long Paragraphs on the Page?
Keep your sentences and paragraphs short, and use bullet points. Long sentences and paragraphs make it difficult to read and understand.
9. Are the Menu Buttons Clear?
Make sure your site is well designed and that buttons and links are easy to click on. Your page should also have a “contact us” and “about us” page.
10. Is There an Easy Way to Contact the Business?
If your website is working well, it should generate inquiries for you. Make sure visitors can find out easily how to contact you. If you are not contactable, your visitors will think that you are not reliable. They want to know that they can contact you in the future if anything goes wrong with their purchase.
11. Can You Find Out More About the Owner or Employees of the Company?
Prospective customers want to know that they are dealing with a real person. That is why having an “about us” page is so important. Have a photo of you and a photo of your business at least. Make sure the visitor knows what makes your company different.
12. Do Your Visitors Feel Personally Connected?
If you connect to your visitors in a personal way, they will be more likely to become customers. Tell them your story and tell them what makes you different. Have a conversational writing style and be honest.
13. Is the Writing Corporate or Conversational?
Your language should be easy to read, conversational and at about a year 9 level. This will be to your benefit because customers will identify more with you. Big corporations write differently, making customers feel like a number.
14. Is There a Visible Contact Form?
A contact form is really the only way to capture the prospect’s details. Make sure you have one with a powerful magnet to help your visitor decide to join you.
15. Do You Have an Irresistible Offér?
You should offér a powerful magnet to give your visitor a reason to give you his contact details. This must be a problem you solve for your visitor or something he really needs.
16. Is There Multimedia?
Some people prefer watching a video or podcasts to reading. Offering these will make your site more appealing.
17. Are There Links to Social Media?
You can connect with your customers in different ways. Perhaps they will not want to sign up to your newsletter, but would prefer to follow you some other way: Facebook, Twitter or some other social media website. Make sure you have these available on your website.
Now all you need to do is to decide what needs to change on your website, and plan to implement those changes.
About The Author
For more information on how to design your website to attract prospective clients like a magnet, sign up at Attraction Marketing for your free copy of “10 Magnets to attract clients.” www.masterattractionmarketing.co.nz
Software engineer accidentally publishes internal letter to the public
Consider this a lesson in how not to use Google+.
And to think, the Circles feature was designed to give you more control over who sees what…
A Google software engineer, Steve Yegge, had some less than favorable things to say about his employer’s social networking service Google+. You know, the one that Google says “is Google.”
He crafted a lengthy and very critical post about Google+ to share within Google, but accidentally shared it publicly (hat tip to Frederic Lardinois). Of course, others were able to capture it before he deleted it.
Here are some quotes from the rant.
“I was at Amazon for about six and a half years, and now I’ve been at Google for that long. One thing that struck me immediately about the two companies — an impression that has been reinforced almost daily — is that Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right.”
That’s how it began. Good start, in Google’s eyes no doubt, considering the building rivalry between those two companies. In fact, much of post talks about how Google does most things better than Amazon, except for a few. Eventually, he talks about how Google’s “doesn’t get” platforms.
Here are some of the Google+-specific quotes:
“Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo). We all don’t get it. The Golden Rule of platforms is that you Eat Your Own Dogfood. The Google+ platform is a pathetic afterthought. We had no API at all at launch, and last I checked, we had one measly API call. One of the team members marched in and told me about it when they launched, and I asked: “So is it the Stalker API?” She got all glum and said “Yeah.” I mean, I was joking, but no… the only API call we offer is to get someone’s stream. So I guess the joke was on me.”
..
“Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that’s not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there’s something there for everyone.”
“Our Google+ team took a look at the aftermarket and said: “Gosh, it looks like we need some games. Let’s go contract someone to, um, write some games for us.” Do you begin to see how incredibly wrong that thinking is now? The problem is that we are trying to predict what people want and deliver it for them.”
“You can’t do that. Not really. Not reliably. There have been precious few people in the world, over the entire history of computing, who have been able to do it reliably. Steve Jobs was one of them. We don’t have a Steve Jobs here. I’m sorry, but we don’t.”
He also talks about how Microsoft “gets platforms” better. “So yeah, Microsoft gets it,” he says. “And you know as well as I do how surprising that is, because they don’t “get” much of anything, really. But they understand platforms as a purely accidental outgrowth of having started life in the business of providing platforms.”
He also says Amazon gets it and that Facebook gets it.
Google has said flat out that Microsoft is its “main competitor” (words of Eric Schmidt). And Amazon and Google are competing more and more. Obviously Facebook is a direct competitor to Google+ specifically. You wouldn’t think this is the kind of message Google would be happy about its employees putting out in public.
Yegge put up a public follow-up post, saying, “Sadly, it was intended to be an internal post, visible to everybody at Google, but not externally. But as it was midnight and I am not what you might call an experienced Google+ user, by the time I figured out how to actually post something I had somehow switched accounts.”
The post was taken down at his own discretion, he says. “I contacted our internal PR folks and asked what to do, and they were also nice and supportive. But they didn’t want me to think that they were even hinting at censoring me — they went out of their way to help me understand that we’re an opinionated company, and not one of the kinds of companies that censors their employees.”
A couple of interesting comments in response to Yegge’s explanation:
Pedram Keyani (Facebook engineer who has worked for Google and Microsoft): “I’m glad you are shaking things up and telling it how it is. I joined Google in 2005 but after a few years of I couldn’t take how little the company cared about connecting people. Fight the good fight.”
Theodore Ts’O (Google engineer): “The bits about the pro’s and con’s of SOA (and what you have to do so you can use SOA sanely from an ops and development point of view) are definitely worth publishing in a cleaned up fashion. Definitely a well written rant, even if it was published in the wrong place. :-)”
Liz Gannes interviewed Bradley Horowitz, VP of product at Google this week. While she notes that Yegge’s post was not a topic of discussion, she says, “First, Horowitz does think Google+ is a larger platform play rather than just a product, in that it will be a layer on top of all of Google’s products. And second, his team severely ‘underestimated the appetite for this product,’ and it is currently rushing to push out all sorts of things users are asking for, as well as other stuff they haven’t anticipated.”
We haven’t heard what kind of consequences Yegge faces from the company, if any. Rip Rowan, who shared the post on Google+ before Yegge deleted it, says, “Hopefully Steve will not experience any negative repercussions from Google about this. On the contrary, he deserves a promotion.”
Now Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt is using Google+. Maybe he’ll accidentally post an internal message publicly too. Keep your fingers crossed.
About the Author:
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow WebProNews on Facebook or Twitter. Twitter: @CCrum237 StumbleUpon: Crum Google: +Chris Crum
Yes, you read the title right. My company recently performed extensive search engine optimization on a client website, and the results were staggering. Within a month, organic search traffic had dropped by over 60%. Inbound leads from organic search had dropped by over 50%. And the client was absolutely thrilled with the results.
So when is less organic search traffic better? And when are fewer leads from organic traffic better?
Less traffic from organic search traffic can be better when the site attracts the wrong kind of traffic, and fewer leads can be better when the site attracts the wrong kind of leads.
To give you some background, this particular client offered a highly-specialized service to B2B companies. The reputation of the company and the quality of the service commanded a high dollar figure per engagement. They were THE major player in an industry that they had practically invented. However, their prior search engine optimization company did not factor in any of these very important considerations while optimizing the website.
The firm in question was clearly from the “traffic-at-any-cost” school of search engine optimization, and they didn’t ever engaged the client with the type of questions that you would expect from a real business partner, including the most basic questions, such as “Who is your target market?” They were not a marketing partner – they were a traffic delivery mechanism. They were not actively involved in the client’s success, because to them, increased organic search traffic was the sole measure of success.
They certainly were not lacking in technical skill – they were able to deliver quality rankings for competitive keyphrases. And the methodology was not suspect, as all techniques were well within the terms of service of all major search engines. So what exactly was the client justified in complaining about?
It turns out they had plenty of legitimate complaints. Although rankings and organic search traffic were up, sales were down. Additionally, web form leads were coming in and the phones were ringing, but nothing was closing. The sales staff was spending a lot of time following up on leads that were, quite frankly, junk. Outbound prospecting had come to a standstill because salespeople had marching orders to follow up on inbound leads, which were certainly abundant.
After a brief analysis, it quickly became clear what the root of the problem was. The prior search engine optimization company, with their “traffic trumps all” mentality, had turned the site into a magnet for do-it-yourselfers, small firms or individuals with very low budgets, and visitors looking for frée advice.
In their quest to obtain the most organic search traffic possible, the prior search engine optimization company had erred with the most fundamental building blocks of the campaign – keyphrase selection. Instead of carefully selecting keyphrases that were suitable to attract the high-end clientele that the client was accustomed to, they successfully (in the sense that they achieved high rankings) targeted keyphrases with modifiers such as “free,” “advice,” and “ideas.” All of these keyphrases were immensely popular, all of these keyphrases were difficult to achieve high rankings for, and all of these keyphrases should not have been utilized in the campaign in the first place.
When you optimize for low-quality phrases (“low-quality” obviously means different things, depending on a company’s goals) you receive low-quality organic search traffic in return. When low-quality traffic submits a form lead from a website, it stands to reason that the lead itself will also likely be low-quality. This was, of course, exactly what was happening to our client.
After our analysis, we broke the news to the client that the campaign had been fundamentally flawed. They were not happy to hear this news, but it did match up with their experience. We also told them quite frankly that moving forward, we would be emphasizing traffic quality over quantity, and by extension, lead quality over quantity. They were quickly convinced that organic search traffic was not the most important metric in a search engine optimization campaign, and were excited about a new, ROI-based approach.
Luckily, we did not have to throw out all of the work from the previous firm. They had laid a solid foundation in terms of tactics, which allowed us to recalibrate the keyphrases and realize results in a very short amount of time.
So, to revisit our accomplishments, organic search traffic decreased by 60%, leads were cut in half, and sales increased dramatically. The slowing pace of the incoming leads was more than offset by the quality of the leads – many leads derived from the Fortune 500 companies with whom this client was accustomed to working. Previously, visitors from these desired companies had been turned off by keyphrase modifiers such as “free” – they were serious people looking for a serious solution and they recognized that what they needed was not going to be free.
For too many people, including practitioners, search engine optimization has a very strict meaning – acquire rankings and traffic from related keyphrases. Until more companies realize that search engine optimization is a marketing tool to be judged and evaluated just like any other, there will be countless examples of campaigns deemed a huge success by those who worked on them, but as failures by those who have to deal with the aftermath.
About The Author
Scott Buresh is the founder and CEO of Medium Blue, a search engine optimization company, which was awarded a prestigious American Marketing Association award in both 2008 and 2010. Buresh has been featured in respected publications such as Entrepreneur, Success, Dírect Marketing News, Business to Business, Search Marketing Standard, Public Relations Tactics and the Atlanta Business Chronicle. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including ZDNet, WebProNews, MarketingProfs, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to How to Build Yóur Own Web Site with Little or No Money: The Complete Guide for Business and Personal Use (Brown, 2010), The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Atlantic, 2008) and Building Your Business with Google for Dummies (Wiley, 2004). Medium Blue is an Atlanta search engine optimization company with local and international clients.
Panda victim blames Google Analytics glitch
Late last week, it was discovered that Google had rolled out another version of the Panda update earlier in the week. Industry voices have dubbed the update “2.5″. Google dubbed it “one of the roughly 500 changes we make to our ranking algorithms each year.”
SearchMetrics put out lists of the top winners and losers from the update. Some sites were surprising, some weren’t. Interestingly enough, eHow and EzineArticles, which were previously “padalized” were not on the loser list this time. EzineArticles would not offer comment, and eHow (Demand Media) told us that they’ve been pleased with the results of a massive content clean-up initiative they’ve implemented this year.
Another previous victim, HubPages, was even able to make the winners list this time around. Some of the more surprising “losers” were press release distribution services Business Wire (which actually just patented its SEO strategy) and PR Newswire, and tech blog TheNextWeb. There have been some questions raised over the accuracy of the SearchMetrics data, however.
“I’m glad to say we had a good summer as far as traffic is concerned,” Rod Nicolson, VP User Experience Design & Workflow for PR Newswire tells us. “We’ll continue to monitor closely, but so far we’re not seeing any unusual changes to our traffic due to Panda 2.5.”
TheNextWeb Editor in Chief Zee Kane tells us, “We haven’t noticed any effect right now but we’re still digging in. Will hopefully know more over the course of the next week.”
We’ve reached out to SearchMetrics for comment, but are still awaiting a response. We’ll update when we receive one.
DaniWeb, which has been an ongoing sub-plot of the Panda storyline throughout the year, due to its victimization and full recovery, was hit again by the most recent update. In fact, Dani Horowitz, who runs the IT discussion community, is the one that tipped us that this was even going on.
Horowitz and her team have of course been doing some investigating themselves, and documenting this a bit in a Google support forum. In it, she writes:
So, everyone, thanks to DaniWeb’s handy dandy systems administrator, we have come to a conclusion. Our ‘time on site’ statistic decreased by 75% at 1 pm on August 11th, and has been holding steady at the reduced number, as a result of Google Analytics rolling out their new session management feature.
There have been MANY reports across the web of the bounce rate and time on site being inaccurate every since August 11th, especially when multiple 301 redirects are involved (which we use heavily).
As a result, we have been hit by Panda. Or so I gather.
Now, this is not confirmed, but could a Google Analytics change, and inaccurate data on Google’s part be responsible for sites losing over half of their traffic? If so, that’s not cool.
Google, who famously won’t reveal its secret recipe for search rankings or even list each of the factors without revealing the weight of each, has been historically vague about its use of Google Analytics metrics in search. Michael Gray recently wrote a post suggesting that you can almost guarantee that Google is using your Analytics data, but he mentions how Google always manages to sidestep questions about its use (or non-use) of data for bounce rate, exit rate, time on site, etc.
Another interesting side-story to the Panda saga is that Google-owned sites have done well (according to the Searchmetrics data). The timing of the most recent Panda update, which Searchmetrics counts YouTube and Android.com as major winners for, is interesting given recent Senate discussions about Google favoring its own content in search results. A Google spokesperson gave us the following statement on the matter:
“Our intent is to rank web search results in order to deliver the most relevant answers to users. Each change we make goes through a process of rigorous scientific testing, and if we don’t believe that a change will help users, we won’t launch the change. In particular, last week’s Panda change was a result of bringing more data into our algorithms.”
The Panda update has appeared to favor video content throughout its various iterations (and not just YouTube). I can tell you that video has some major SEO benefits regardless of Panda, and that it is also great for increasing time on site. If a user is watching a video on your page, they’re on the page for the duration of the video or at least until they lose interest (so use good video content).
Even Demand Media told us after they announced the eHow clean-up, that it wouldn’t much affect its YouTube strategy.
About the Author:
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Follow WebProNews on Facebook or Twitter. Twitter: @CCrum237 StumbleUpon: Crum Google: +Chris Crum
Like millions of other website owners, I use Google Analytics to analyze my website stats. And while I actually like GA a lot, it isn’t perfect. My biggest pet-peeve with the software is the fact it doesn’t provide real-time results. It has a lag time of at least an hour or two before you can view most of your data, and a full 24-hour lag time on full data reporting. With all the brilliant engineers Google employs, that particular flaw hasn’t ever made any logical sense to me.
That negative aspect of GA has been bugging the heck out of me for years. Well, finally, that’s all about to change and fast.
How fast? By the time you read this article or shortly thereafter, GA will be providing real-time analytics. All I have to say is, it’s about time!
Google Analytics Announces Real-Time Reporting
On September 29th, John Jersin of the Google Analytics team announced:
“Today we’re very excited to bring real time data to Google Analytics with the launch of Google Analytics Real-Time: a set of new reports that show what’s happening on your site as it happens.
You’ll find the Real-Time reports only in the new version of Google Analytics. If you’re not already using the new version, you can start by clicking the “New Version” link in the top right of Google Analytics. Real-Time reports are in the Dashboards tab (though they will move to the Home tab in the updated interface next week). You will have access to Real-Time reports if you are an Administrator on your Analytics account, or if you have access to a profile without profile filters. Real-Time does not support profile filters.
We just turned the reports on for a number of you, and over the coming weeks, everybody will have access to Real-Time. If you can’t wait, sign up for early access here: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/realtimeanalytics/.” Source: (Google Analytics)
Obviously, this is great news. But having access to real-time data will be wasted if you don’t follow the practice of testing your marketing to obtain optimum results. While testing sounds like common sense on the surface, you’d be surprised how many marketers don’t bother testing at all. They operate blindly – throwing a bunch of crap against the wall to see what sticks. That’s no way to run a business and is a recipe for disaster.
So Why is Testing So Important? Testing allows your business to operate as efficiently and profitably as it possibly can. Or, in the words of Pat Benatar, testing allows you to “hit the competition with your best shot!” Testing is crucial to your overall business success. I can’t emphasize that enough. In my opinion, you should test every aspect of your marketing to make sure you’re obtaining maximum efficiency and profitability.
Me personally, I’m a fanatical tester. I test different advertising methods. I test the color of my websites. I test font styles and sizes. When I write articles and ads, I test headlines and copy. I test forum signatures. I test various website analytics programs for accuracy. I test domain names for SEO effectiveness. I test mailing list services for efficiency. In a nutshell, I test virtually everything, as it relates to the marketing of my business.
But whatever you do, don’t just test blindly. Closely monitor and record your results, so that your findings are as accurate as possible. Google’s Website Optimizer is an excellent free, multivariate testing software that allows you to test virtually every aspect of your marketing.
Split-Test Your Marketing
For example, Google Website Optimizer gives you the ability to split-test your marketing. What’s split-testing?
In a nutshell, split-testing is basically a method of testing multiple versions of your sales pages and ads in order to determine which version performs best, and is the most profitable. Testing should include fonts or font size, the size and wording of your headline, the images you use, the price of your product, paragraph text, text color, etc.
If that first definition wasn’t layman enough for you, here’s another one:
Split-testing is the method of creating multiple versions of your ads to see which version converts more visitors into sales.
Always Track Your Advertising
In order to ensure that you’re not throwing your money down the drain, when it comes to your marketing campaigns, it’s important to always track your advertising.
Always make sure to carefully track the results of your direct mail, pay-per-click ads, ezine ads, banner ads, etc.
Advertising is measurable by the amount of responses you get per dollar spent, and you can quickly analyze your results to determine whether or not your advertising is profitable, or if you need to make adjustments to your ads. If you’re not effectively tracking your advertising, you’re foolishly leaving money on the table. That’s what amateurs do, not professionals.
One last thing: Testing isn’t something you should do every now and then. For best results, you should develop the habit of testing your marketing constantly.
About The Author
David Jackson is a marketing consultant, and the owner of Free-Marketing-Tips-Blog.com – Powerful, free marketing tips to help grow your business! http://free-marketing-tips-blog.com
When I teach my SEO classes, I begin by telling the students all the things that SEO isn’t. I’ve always felt that it was important because they’re often expecting to hear some secret formula for SEO success. And why wouldn’t they, with all the myths and outright wrong/bad information that constantly swirls through the SEOsphere? When I finish telling them that everything they thought was SEO really isn’t, they stare at me with their mouths hanging open. So I tell them what SEO actually is:
Making your website the best it can be for the search engines and your site visitors.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t do much to alter their blank stares. After all, it’s an incredibly open-ended definition of SEO. Still, it’s the only one that truly encompasses what good SEO is all about, as well as why you need to do it. While my method of SEO has always been based on that principle, more people are coming around to it in the wake of Google’s Panda Algorithm.
Pre-Panda, many people built thriving businesses using the following basic SEO process:
* Buy a keyword-rich domain name that encompasses the products you want to sell.
* Build a templated website around it.
* Link internally to the product pages with descriptive anchor text.
* Use those same keyword phrases in the Title and H tags.
* Submit the website URL to lots of directories.
* Drop links to the website in other people’s blogs and forums.
Voila! Instant Google Success!
They’d repeat the process hundreds of times with different types of products, and then run on autopilot. While it might not have worked on every site they created, the sheer volume of websites they ran would be enough to make them a decent living.
So maybe there was a secret formula after all?
Perhaps, but after Google’s Panda Algorithm was implemented, many (but not all) who followed and succeeded with that formula for years suddenly lost a good chunk of their revenue.
What Changed?
My own speculation, based on numerous websites that I’ve reviewed where this happened, is that Google finally decided that there needed to be more to a website than having “SEO in all the right places.” And it makes sense. Why should one site do better than another just because they read up on SEO and knew the best places to stick their keywords? It shouldn’t. And by allowing exactly that to happen, Google was enabling sites with old-fashioned, by-the-book SEO to beat out potentially higher quality websites.
The result was Google not always giving their own users (the searchers) the best, most relevant sites for the search query at hand. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not totally blaming Google here. It has to be a daunting task for a machine to know the difference between an okay (but great with SEO) site and a great (but perhaps not so great with SEO) one. Especially when so much of how Google tried to determine relevancy and quality was based on links – and even more on anchor text. It simply became too easy to game that system.
Giving Google What They Wanted
I certainly understand and even empathize with those site owners who’ve lost a significant portion of their income. They were just giving Google what it wanted. And because it worked so well, they had no reason to go above and beyond their basic formula. Why build a brand for your company when a keyword-rich domain would provide a better return on investment? Why spend time becoming an expert in your industry and educating your target market on the intricacies of your products when you could hire someone to write low-quality “SEO articles” and submit them to article directory sites instead?
Interestingly enough, many of the business owners I’ve talked to who have been getting by with formula SEO all these years have told me that they have tons of happy customers. Yet there are no obvious signs of this online, such as glowing reviews on Google Places or other online review sites (there aren’t bad ones either). How are customers even supposed to remember the name of a company called something like WoodAndMetalDiningRoomChairs.com? (I just made that one up.)
Mainly, customers found these websites through Google, made their purchase and received their merchandise. There’s nothing wrong with that, but there was also no personal connection made. This is further illustrated by the fact that if you look at social media sites, you won’t see much chatter about these companies. In fact, many of them don’t even use social media, or simply have cursory accounts. Again, they didn’t need to.
No Marketing Budget
A marketing person, plan, or budget was never necessary nor even a consideration. Sadly, for those companies, they don’t have much choice anymore if they want to stay in business. But ironically, now that they really need a marketing budget, there’s no money in the till to go toward it.
If I’ve just described your business and websites – even if you haven’t lost a portion of your revenue (yet), you may have thought you could hire a new SEO company to mix in a little extra SEO mojo and fix up your Google problems. But while they might find some on-page or off-page things you could be doing better, I wouldn’t count on that to bring back your lost traffic and sales.
So What Should You Do?
You need to seriously rethink your online strategy. You need to stop saying, “Well, it always worked for me in the past.” You need to build a brand and you need to market the heck out of it. You may even need to consolidate all your related keyword-rich domain websites into one big brand website. (Don’t do that last one without consulting a professional.) You need to learn everything you can about social media marketing and start doing it. You need to get in contact with your happy customers and ask them to write reviews online as well as to evangelize about you to everyone they come in contact with. You need to also keep in contact with them in a variety of ways.
All of those things are going to make a much bigger difference over the long haul than rewriting your title tags or adjusting your keyword density. The big takeaway here is that while your website may already be the best it can be technically for search engines, it’s time to make it the best it can be for your users. Both parts of that equation are equally important. It’s not going to be quick or easy, but if you want to stay in business, it’s probably going to be necessary.
About The Author
Jill Whalen is the CEO of High Rankings, an SEO Consulting company in the Boston, MA area since 1995. Follow her on Twitter @JillWhalen. If you learned from this article, be sure to invite your colleagues to sign up for the High Rankings Advisor SEO Newsletter so they can receive similar articles in the future!
