It is no secret that Google is growing from strength to strength, not only improving its own search engine but also investing in video (YouTube), blogging (Blogger), browsers (Chrome), mobile phones (Android) and so much more.

In an editorial piece, The New York Times makes the argument that Google - in a position to place its fingers in many pies and look after its own invested interests - could potentially manipulate its own search results to its advantage, showing its own interests above those of the competition.

Whether Google decides to play completely fair or help itself is a contentious issue. Revealing its algorithm will force Google to do the former and play fair. This piece offers some possible solutions:

"Some early suggestions for how to accomplish [a fair editorial policy] include having Google explain with some specified level of detail the editorial policy that guides its tweaks. Another would be to give some government commission the power to look at those tweaks."

It is true that revealing elements of Google's secretive algorithm would clear this. For example, if YouTube were to rank higher than other video-sharing websites, it would be noticeable whether the ranking appears naturally or forced by Google.

However, there could be other wider implications of revealing the algorithm. Google's success so far is because its algorithm is a secret. Even so, as Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan points out in his take on the New York Times piece:

"Google constantly speaks at search marketing and other events to answer questions about how they list sites and how to improve coverage... Google is constantly giving interviews about its algorithm..."

Although the algorithm is a secret, Google helps webmasters, not by telling them outright what the algorithm is, but by telling them how they can help themselves with regards to how the algorithm operates, and why it displays the search results it does.

After all, what if everyone knew the algorithm? Google's Marissa Mayer explains (originally printed in the Financial Times but reproduced on Google's Public Policy Blog):

"If search engines were forced to disclose their algorithms and not just the signals they use, or worse, if they had to use a standardised algorithm, spammers would certainly use that knowledge to game the system, making the results suspect ."

We are reminded of an incident last year when a Google search for "ugg boots" displayed seven spam/fraud websites within the first page (top ten) results. In this instance, the websites used suspect, black hat SEO techniques to get to the top of Google for that keyword. Surely revealing the algorithm would only encourage such practices - both good and bad; white hat, black hat and everything in between - affecting the quality of the search engine results shown, and in turn damaging Google's reputation as (mostly) showing the most natural, "neutral" results. Otherwise, Google would have to invest much more heavily in moderating the results and weeding out those websites manipulating the algorithm, which is likely to be a larger number if the way Google operates is disclosed.

All of this is without even considering governmental intervention, as mentioned in the second half of the above quote from the New York Times piece. Some of the bigger sceptics on the WebmasterWorld forum have expressed their fears that, amongst other things, the government may suggest changes to the algorithm from which they themselves could benefit.

Whatever the outcome, although Danny Sullivan believes the First Amendment and the fact that Yahoo survived a similar incident will save Google from such a fate, it will be interesting to see what - if anything - transpires, whether such action would be seen as a necessity as Google continues to grow and dominate the search engine world as well as other industries.

Liberty went ahead and invested in an iPad this week, partly to improve the team productivity when out of the office and partly to show off. After using it for a few days it looks like it's only really good for trying to impress technophobic clients.

Right now, for search engine marketers it's a very disappointing tool, and here's why...

1. No decent SEO apps - Only one or two exist right now and they are nothing compared to what we are used to on the iPhone. Simple things like source code analysis and ranking tracking aren't available yet.

2. No AdWords access - Safari keeps crashing when you try to do anything within the pay per click system, meaning all that account management work we had planned to squeeze in between meetings and when travelling isn't going to be happening.

3. No browser SEO plug-ins - Without Firefox we can't enjoy all of the tools that make our job easier. Everything, from checking links to viewing code, has to be done the long way.

4. No keyword tool access - As with point 2, Safari falls over when trying to use the Google keyword tool, so keyword research is one more thing that either has to be done in the office or on a laptop/net book

5. No flash - Flash may be the enemy of most search engine marketers, but it's nice to be able to view videos that are not on YouTube. Right now we can't see a lot of SEO training videos that we subscribe to, such as the SEOmoz whiteboard Fridays. And we like our whiteboard Fridays.

A lot of these should be ironed out and improved over the coming months, but if you work in Internet marketing and are planning on using an iPad for business, then we advise you to save your cash for the time being.

P.S. Don't get us started on the lack of tethering to an iPhone.

One of the most common questions we are asked by our clients is “What kind of clicks can I expect when I am in position 1?” Another is “How many more clicks will I get at the top of the page, compared to the bottom?” Valid questions when choosing to employ an SEO firm and ones we’ve struggled to answer, until now.

We’ve spent some time this month and put our heads together to conduct a little research that we hope goes someway to answering these questions. As you surely know, page 1 on Google is the much revered promised land of Search Engine Optimisation, but did you know that by battling your way to the first position, your site could enjoy three times the traffic that a competitor in 3rd place receives?

We compared Click Through Rates for a dozen of our retained SEO clients by looking at their Google Adwords data, their Google Analytics data and our ranking tracking software. We compared traffic levels against where they were in the search results month on month for each keyword and the results averaged out as:

As you can see, there are drastic differences between the click through rates you can expect if your site shows at top of the Google rankings on page 1, or if you are somewhere in mid-table or towards the bottom of the page. Our research shows that if your organisation finds itself as rank 1, you can expect just over 51% of all people searching on that term to visit your website. This then falls quite dramatically...

Position 1 = 51.4%
Position 2 = 27.4%
Position 3 = 16.8%
Position 4 = 12.7%
Position 5 = 10.8%
Position 6 = 8.3%
Position 7 = 6.6%
Position 8 = 6.2%
Position 9 = 5.3%
Position 10 = 4.8%

Interestingly, the difference between the listings ‘below the fold’ (i.e. the lower half of the page that you often have to scroll down to) is quite small. Perhaps people click the first listing impulsively but when they get down to the second half of the page, take the time to read through the lower listings?

If you are carrying out SEO work or want to appear at the top of the search engines then hopefully this gives you an idea of what to expect. Compare these figures with the search volumes found on the Google keyword suggestion tool and you will have an idea of the visitor levels your site will receive.

Please bear in mind that whilst we ran this for a dozen sites, that’s still quite a small number and if we had the time or resources then we would have done more. Also, the figures varied quite widely depending on the market and the type of keywords involved.

Your CTR will obviously depend on how compelling your listing is in the search results, so spend time to ensure keywords are included within your page titles, meta descriptions and the URL (if possible), as these are the three things that users see in the search results. Also try and include words that will enhance CTR, such as “free trial”, “low cost”, “high quality” or whatever works for your target market.

A SURPRISING trend has come to light as the internet continues to develop. Retailers that succeed online are rarely the same as the successful giants found on the high street. Conversely, in our city and town centres we visit familiar shops with long established brands whose digital presence are often significantly newer, smaller and – crucially – a lot more profitable.

Well over a decade ago when online shopping began in earnest, the vast majority of businesses at the forefront of their offline markets concentrated on where they were doing well, and perhaps failed to see the possibilities for the future. These days, when shopping for clothes on the high street, Top Shop and Marks & Spencer remain omnipresent, with an established footing in almost every city. But online, it’s ASOS.com and Net-A-Porter that shoppers prefer.

So why is it that Play.com and Amazon sit comfortably at the top of the ecommerce pile, enjoying huge market share, while Zavvi, which was formerly Virgin, went out of business in very quick time, and HMV’s foray into the online world in no way reflects its dominance of the high street?

The online and offline markets differ greatly. Many of these large, established, offline giants stumbled into the world of online retail assuming the transition would be simple. This has been far from the case. Offline businesses often have to push their message onto consumers and convince them of their need for such products, and convince them to visit stores in order to prove they are the best-placed supplier. The internet features a ready-made market and, so long as your business is at the top of the search engines for popular search terms, you can capture the individuals already interested in your offering.

In reality, it is often a lot less expensive and less risky to attract business via the web than it is in the physical world. Yet many firms really struggle to capture an online audience which is anywhere near as profitable as what they are used to. This is usually down to the adaptability and attitude of the management.

Not only are different skills needed to succeed in ecommerce, but a different attitude is key. Many offline businesses simply do not set themselves up to win online. Trying to transfer traditional customer service approaches and pricing onto the web just doesn’t work. While a consumer might be willing to pay more to browse around a department store and receive one-on-one service, more often than not, on the internet, they want lowest cost and quickest delivery. So long as your website looks reputable and you appear in the search engine results, or are well positioned within the social media networks, you will start carving up a share of the market.

The other factor holding these bricks and mortar organisations back is their ability to change direction quickly. Decision makers within the large retailers are often slower to adapt to new consumer trends, which simply doesn’t work in the digital world. This isn’t completely their fault as an online store can open a new department in a matter of days or even hours, but how long would it take for Marks & Spencer to open up a section of brand new products in just one of its stores? Whereas a 50% off sale can be orchestrated within hours and start impacting profits almost immediately online, a high street retailer has to plan such events well in advance and can’t produce the point of sale items and advertising campaigns in such a short timescale.

There is hope for the traditional retailers and a way they can fight back – by combining their offline brand power with the new online marketing strategies.

The advantage that offline retailers have over new internet start-ups is existing marketing budgets and recognisable brands. Where they fail is to put these two together in the same way as an online marketer would. If they were to fight their internet competitors on their own turf – the search engines – and price themselves more competitively they would be able to use their brand recognition to not only attract a far greater share of traffic, but also convert a lot more of it too. If this were to happen, then it wouldn’t take long for the lists of most popular internet retailers to start filling up with brands that we’ve recognised for decades.

 

Article originally published on WalesHome.org: http://waleshome.org/2010/06/why-do-high-street-giants-stumble-online/

On the official Google blog there is a new announcement that the Beta version of an encrypted Google search is ready for use by general web users.

In a nutshell, by visiting https://www.google.com (rather than http://www.google.com) an encrypted connection is put in place which means third parties are not able to see the search terms you use and search results you view.

Immediate differences between the standard and more secure versions of Google are highlighted in the blog post: “The service includes a modified logo to help indicate that you’re searching using SSL and that you may encounter a somewhat different Google search experience, but as always, remember to check the start of the address bar for “https” and your browser lock indicators: Today’s release comes with a “beta” label for a few reasons. First, it currently covers only the core Google web search product. To help avoid misunderstanding, when you search using SSL, you won’t see links to offerings like Image Search and Maps that, for the most part, don’t support SSL at this time. Also, since SSL connections require additional time to set up the encryption between your browser and the remote web server, your experience with search over SSL might be slightly slower than your regular Google search experience. What won’t change is that you will still get the same great search results.”

The article also states “Google will still maintain search data to improve your search quality and to provide better service. Searching over SSL doesn’t reduce the data sent to Google — it only hides that data from third parties who seek it. And clicking on any of the web results, including Google universal search results for unsupported services like Google Images, could take you out of SSL mode. Our hope is that more websites and services will add support for SSL to help create a better and more consistent experience for you.”

This has been implemented after Google suffered recent criticism over data security when it collected information from open Wi-Fi connections. How the general public will react to encrypted Google search and how large the uptake will be is anyone's guess, though it is easy to see, even within a day of release, that this will make life more challenging for website owners and search engine marketers.

Early tests show that in the website analytics data, the referrer field isn’t complete when vistors come from the https version of Google. This means that the more people use encrypted search, the less you know about where they came from and the keywords used to bring them to your site.

Recently we published three posts about SEO and online marketing jargon (read them here). In this post, we take a look at some of the more unusual SEO slang that you may have come across.

Algoholic - Someone who pays close attention to search engine algorithms in order to improve and optimise their website(s) accordingly.

Bad neighbourhood - A phrase made popular by Google, linking to “bad neighbourhoods” can have a negative effect on a website’s search engine rankings. Known web spammers and link farms are examples of bad neighbourhoods, which the search engines recommend avoiding.

The Big G - A nickname for Google, which highlights its importance and relevance as the biggest search engine and also as the main rule-setter in the SEO world.

Caffeine - The codename given to the latest version of Google’s search engine, which is due to be launched after Christmas. Previous other codenames Google has given its updates include Vince, Big Daddy and Florida.

Dofollow - When the nofollow attribute was introduced in 2005, the term “dofollow” started to become synonymous to regular, followed links, those that pass on a SEO benefit to the search engines.

Google Bowling - The act of sabotaging a competitor’s site by intentionally trying to incur them a penalty and therefore banning them from the search engines. For example, if Site A is aware that buying links from a dodgy site is bad practice, rather than buying the links for themselves, they might buy them  for Site B - a direct competitor - in order to get them into trouble with the search engines. A major worry years ago, Google now claims to have ways to find out how links are acquired and even who has acquired them on your behalf.

GYM - The initials of the three main search engines: Google, Yahoo! and MSN (although MSN’s search engine has recently been renamed Bing).

Keyword cannibalization - An issue with a website’s architecture whereby a number of pages on a site are competing for a single keyword term or phrase. This can be confusing for the search engines as they will not know which of the pages to show in the search results for the relevant keyword.

Link condom - The method of providing a outbound link but purposefully not passing on an SEO benefit. For example, a website might reference a link that it knows to be dodgy for the purpose of a research article, in which case it could add a link condom to it (such as the nofollow attribute) so that the search engines do not think the linking site is willingly acknowledging a dodgy site in order to help its rankings, otherwise the linking site itself might get into trouble.

Link juice - The passing of trust and authority from one site to another.

Link love - The effect that a website will rank better in the search engines if it has numerous high quality inbound links pointing to it.

Spamdexing - The method of deceptively modifying web pages to increase the chance of them ranking higher in the search engines. The term is a combination of spamming and indexing.

Spider trap - A set of web pages that cause a spider, crawler or robot to get trapped. An example of an intentional trap would be one that stops spiders from collecting email addresses from a website for the purpose of sending spam emails. Also known as a crawler trap.

Splog - A spam blog, which has little to no use to human visitors and has been created solely to spam the search engines. Not to be confused with “spam in blogs”, which might concern a genuine blog with human readers that occasionally receives spam in its comments sections.

Stickiness - The act of reducing a website’s bounce rate and therefore improving its “stickiness”, meaning that a visitor will be more inclined to stay on the site and access other pages before moving on, rather than leaving straight away.

This morning Google revealed that the new, faster search engine it has been working on, codenamed ‘Caffeine’, is almost ready to roll out.

The message on the web page where the Caffeine test system was live until a few hours ago reads:

"We appreciate all the feedback from people who searched on our Caffeine sandbox.

Based on the success we've seen, we believe Caffeine is ready for a larger audience. Soon we will activate Caffeine more widely, beginning with one data center. This sandbox is no longer necessary and has been retired, but we appreciate the testing and positive input that webmasters and publishers have given."

If you didn’t have a chance to play around with the Caffeine system then here are the main things we found:

1. The system has been created to include more real-time results and search results pay more attention to social media sites than the existing Google system.

2. The look and feel hasn’t changed. Behind the scenes is where changes have been made, to speed up indexing and increase the relevance of search results.

3. The database which Google pulls on for search results is larger. Many more web pages have been indexed, so competition is greater for many keywords.

At Liberty, we have been testing the system quite extensively and can’t wait for it to be released. Many of the search results we monitor show a higher quality of website and pleasingly for a search engine marketing firm, many of our client’s websites are displayed a lot higher for many keywords than ever before.

This is a follow up post to Confusing search engine marketing and SEO jargon made simple (A-F) and More confusing search engine marketing and SEO jargon made simple (G-N).

Outbound link - Hyperlinks leading out of your website to other websites are known as outbound links.

PageRank - The value given to a web-page by Google. Ranging from 0 to 10 (with 10 being the best), the rank is primarily made up on the basis of in-bound link quality and quantity.

Paid link - When a website pays another website, search engine or directory for a link. Although not a black hat SEO technique per se, Google frowns upon such practices, however commercial sites must pay in order to appear in the Yahoo! Directory. Also known as Pay For Inclusion (PFI).

Pay Per Click (PPC) - The advertising system where businesses pay for each click their advert receives. The adverts are mainly displayed on search engine pages and once clicked, the user will be sent through to the website belonging to the advertiser.

Reciprocal link - When two websites exchange links with each other, this is known as reciprocal linking. An activity that used to be more popular than it is today, since the search engines started discounting the value of reciprocal links. Also known as link exchanging or link partnering.

Robots file - The robots.txt file is stored within a website and tells search engines what they can do with the website, such as the pages not to show in the index and links not to follow.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - The process of improving a website’s rankings in the search engines and therefore its traffic volume.

SERPs - Stands for Search Engine Results Pages and is simply the results you see when you perform a search query.

Social media - A term used to describe a variety of websites where people meet to share information and often express their opinions. Blogs, forums, video hosting sites, user review sites and wiki's, are examples of popular social media sites.

Sitemap - A page on a website that lists and links to all of the other accessible pages on that website. Useful not only for users but for the search engine spiders.

Spider - A search engine robot that jumps from website to website, via hyperlinks, for the purpose of scanning information to add to the search engine’s database.

URL - The Uniform Resource Locator, or more simply, the address of the webpage.

White hat SEO - Techniques used to improve website rankings that confirm to best practice guidelines and do not try to manipulate or trick the search engines into ranking a specific site.

Freed & Co Solicitors approached us to help with their online marketing and SEO (search engine optimisation). They were having a new website developed and wanted to come up on the first page of the search engines for a mix of local and national keywords.  Their original site was built as a flash image, so had not been indexed by any search engines and didn’t contribute towards the marketing of the business.
 
How did we help improve their online marketing?
 
SEO copywriting – As the site was being developed, we advised them on the keywords to compete for. We then created new copy as well as amended existing copy, so that it held these keywords in the right places and presented the company well.
 
Inbound link building – A link building campaign took place for a number of months, to help give the site credibility within the search engines.
 
Pay Per Click advertising – A small but focused Google Adwords campaign was set up to bring in some quick traffic and new enquiries.
 
How has this helped the business?
 
Within a month of starting, website traffic was over 300% higher than it had ever been before and online enquiries had started to come in. Within a few months the website could be found on the first page of Google for national keywords like "property development solicitor" and local ones like "commercial conveyancing Cardiff" and "solicitor in Cardiff" and they had their first introductions as a result of this SEO work.

According to a recent report by Advertising Age, an exciting new deal is in the pipeline between Yahoo! and Microsoft. If it goes ahead, Yahoo! will use Microsoft’s Bing as its search engine instead of its own, effectively joining forces to become a more serious competitor to Google.

The deal could have a huge impact on Search Engine Optimisation. comScore reported that Google commanded an impressive 65% share of the search engine market share in June, while Yahoo! and Bing held 19.6% and 8.4% respectively. If all of the current Yahoo! users were to continue using Yahoo! via Bing, their combined share would reach 28%, which could really begin to challenge Google in the future.

So what does this mean for your SEO? A number of possible things. If your website currently ranks well in Yahoo! but not in Bing or Google you could really be in trouble of not ranking at all. Alternatively, a website at the top of Bing and Google but not for Yahoo! could see a considerable increase in traffic, as Yahoo! users will now see their site via Bing’s engine instead.

Pay Per Click advertising could also see a major change. Either Yahoo! Search Marketing will be replaced by Microsoft adCenter, or the two will merge. This could affect the Cost Per Click and positioning for many of the Sponsored Links found when a search query is made.

In recent years, Google has been criticised for its strict rules and T&Cs as well as its somewhat monopolistic nature towards the World Wide Web. This is fairly understandable, given that two-thirds of all Internet searches are run through them. However the Ying/Bahoo! engine could encourage Google to relax or change some of its policies and prices, especially if the combined alternative becomes popular enough to claw away some of Google’s dominant market share. This could have a radical effect on AdWords, AdSense and other Google services in the way that they’re operated and managed - perhaps a potential sigh of relief to many search engine marketers.

Overall, the important thing to understand is that change could be on the way, with this new partnership being a possible indication of things to come. Anyone who believes that Google will remain the king of the search engines forever will be hugely unprepared if Bing and Yahoo! meet or even overtake its share of the search engine market. Of course this might not happen at all, but it’s best to be ready, just in case.