In SEO, the goal for a number of businesses seems to be to rank for their industry's main keyword. It may be an absolute dream for a small shoe shop to optimise its website for the keyword "shoes" for example, but the reality is that it may be nearly impossible when the competition is made up of big-name brands such as Office, Barratts and Schuh, whose budgets and resources will be far greater in comparison.

This may seem obvious, yet we occasionally meet businesses who think this type of goal is realistically achievable and the best course of action. Beyond that, there are some marketers working for big-name brands who care so much about the 'head' term that they risk neglecting other keyword areas and search terms, which could have a potentially damaging effect on their overall SEO efforts.

The head term vs. the long tail

To highlight the difference between the head term and the 'long tail' (the rest of the searches related to head term), we used the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to work out the difference in search volume as a percentage.

According to the Keyword Tool, [shoes] on exact match (i.e. Google users typing in the exact phrase "shoes" into Google with nothing before or after it) is searched for 165,000 times per month in the UK. This statistic alone sounds amazing - imagine being on page 1 of Google for that keyword and receiving a share of the visitors! But how many people use Google for any keyword containing or relating to "shoes?" The answer: 9,140,000 UK searches per month!

This is the broad match figure: according to Google's definition, broad match includes "synonyms, singular/plural forms, relevant variants of your keywords and phrases containing your keywords."

To give you an idea, this will include other high-volume keywords...

- "wedding shoes" (49,500 UK searches per month)
- "shoes online" (27,100)
- "cheap shoes" (18,100)

...All the way down to the really specific searches:

- "discount womens shoes" (58 UK searches per month)
- "buy ladies shoes online" (22)
- "uk online shoe store" (12)

If you compare the keyword [shoes] on exact match to its broad match version (e.g. the Long Tail), [shoes] occupies only 1.8% of the entire share of searches in the market:

Therefore, someone chasing [shoes] and nothing else risks missing out on 98% of the market searching for shoes using Google.

The risks of chasing the head

We recently heard of an example of an independent shoe shop that only sells ballerina pumps, whose website coincidentally ranked well organically for "shoes" searches relating to their location (e.g. "shoes london"). Although this sounds great on the surface and would have been great for general exposure, it was actually quite useless to them. Using them as an example, they probably found the head term for their industry & city to be:

- Not specific enough: If someone is searching for shoes, are they looking for tennis shoes, running shoes, kids shoes, ladies shoes, boots, trainers, sandals...? Unless they happen to be looking for ballerina pumps, the site appearing for their search would have been worthless to them, unless they sold all types of shoes imaginable.

- Harder to convert: For the above reason, it is much harder converting this type of traffic into customers, especially if it is not what they are really looking for. Likewise, it would be a surprise if they were unable to convert people searching for "ballerina pumps in london," for example - the type of product they sell twinned with their location.

- More expensive: In this instance, if the ballerina shoe shop were to use Google AdWords and target national traffic, the approximate CPC (cost per click) for "shoes" is £0.65, according to their Keyword Tool. However, "ballerina shoes" and "ballerina pumps" are £0.47 and £0.36, respectively. The latter two search terms may get fewer people searching for them - due to their specificity - but they are cheaper, more specific and therefore easier to convert for this particular shop/website. They could effectively be spending less money in advertising but earning more back in the sales they receive from this type of traffic.

Grabbing the tail

As the long tail is generally a less competitive sector of the market compared to the head term, it is usually a lot easier to target and chase this type of traffic.

So instead of going all out and aiming for "shoes," time can be spent building links and writing content that targets the long tail searches, examples of content including advice articles, news stories, top tips and how-to guides. Go for enough of them and combined they might actually thwart the head term in terms of volume. Not only that but they will likely draw in a better quality of traffic to the website, who will be more likely to buy the products or services on offer to them.

Yesterday we made a discovery regarding one of Google's advanced search parameters. When you do a Google search, if you exclude a keyword by putting a minus sign in front of it (e.g. -keyword), you are not only excluding results that contain that particular word in their on-page copy, but we also now believe that it also excludes any webpage with at least one link pointing to it with that word in the anchor text.

Liberty team member Steve made this discovery when he responded to a tweet by Rand Fishkin, founder of SEOmoz. Rand had seen the "Weirdest SERP" (which stands for Search Engine Results Page) for the search query ["johnnie walker" -johnny] and couldn't figure out why the third result was ranking (here is a screenshot that Rand posted). The third result was an Edinburgh web design company that didn't have the words "Johnnie" or "Walker" anywhere in the text on its homepage, let alone the full phrase, yet it was ranking for that keyword. Steve examined the site's backlink profile and assessed that the site had quite a few in-bound links pointing to it with "Johnnie Walker" in the anchor text. It turns out that Johnnie Walker is a member of staff at the company.

Steve offered this explanation to Rand, and while he thought that the "anchor text likely helps" with its high ranking, he believed that it "just doesn't seem like it would be enough for such a tough-to-rank SERP."

This was a fair enough point. A typical search for ["johnnie walker"] in the US would show Johnnie Walker whisky's official website, Wikipedia pages for the whisky brand as well as the BBC Radio DJ and other pages talking about and relating to the two. While some of them had spellings of both "Johnnie" and "Johnny" on the page, others only had the former. So why are all of them removed when the word "Johnny" is excluded from the search query?

The answer lies in the anchor text of in-bound links pointing to the pages. Steve's next step was to look at the backlinks of the official site's homepage, the relevant Wikipedia pages and other sites that ranked normally for ["johnnie walker"] (i.e. without excluding the keyword "Johnny"). He discovered that other sites were linking to those pages - perhaps naturally - with the incorrect spelling of the whisky and the radio DJ: "Johnny Walker." Regardless of whether or not the word "Johnny" appeared within the text on the page, if the word appeared in the anchor text of at least one in-bound link to the page, Google would remove it from the results if "-johnny" were included in the search query. Therefore, sites such as the Edinburgh web design company were ranking for the ["johnnie walker" -johnny] search because they didn't have the word "Johnny" appear in either instance: it doesn't appear in the on-page text, nor does it appear in the anchor text of any in-bound link pointing to the page.

What is interesting to note is that in its Web Search Help section, Google explains how the keyword exclusion parameter works and claims that:

"Attaching a minus sign immediately before a word indicates that you do not want pages that contain this word to appear in your results." (Our emphasis)

Perhaps this statement needs updating - it is potentially misleading, as "pages that contain this word" suggests that the word must be visible and apparent somewhere on the pages, whether it is somewhere in the copy or in its META data. Obviously, the anchor text of any in-bound links are not actually contained within the page - they appear elsewhere on the Web.

So what does this all mean for businesses? Is there any way to take advantage of this discovery? Sadly, not that we can currently think of. Only an extreme minority of people use minus keywords when conducting searches - those who do are often SEOs, perhaps conducting research and therefore using advanced search parameters to make deductions. However, for those purposes alone, it is still something to be aware of as it could affect the results and conclusions of one's research. If that is the case, it can affect a business via its in-house staff or the online marketing agency that it employs.

As we prepare for the introduction of The Bribery Act 2010, agencies and companies that pursue a paid linking strategy could end up in deep water.

Paid linking has always been a somewhat dubious technique and one that Google specifically singles out as being against their guidelines. The recent action taken by Google against major US retailer JC Penney is a good example of why the use of paid links isn’t a good idea. Following the discovery of a paid linking strategy, Google imposed a harsh penalty on the retailer, seeing their site drop significantly in the rankings.

The new Bribery Act could bring more than just a Google penalty. The bribery law states that an offence is committed by a company when:

• A person "associated" with the commercial organisation (i.e. performs services for it) bribes another person;

• The bribe is intended to obtain or retain business for the commercial organisation or retain an advantage in the conduct of the organisation's business.

In short, it will become an offense for a company to knowingly themselves, or through a third party agency, make payments to a company or individual in order to gain competitive advantage; which is exactly what paid linking is. You are paying someone to link to your site thereby gaining competitive advantage in the search results.

It is important to note that The Bribery Act 2010 was not created specifically to counter paid linking and therefore those using this strategy will no doubt find a way to skirt the wording of the law. Any links promoted as advertising are difficult to pin down as bribery, but greater consideration will now be placed on the wording of link requests. Those posing as expenses may slip through whereas blatant payments for links will stick out like a sore thumb.

Bottom line: if you want to avoid a Google penalty and avoid the long arm of the law then it’s best you stick to links that don’t require payment.

The New York Times has recently investigated the “black hat” SEO techniques employed by large US department store, JC Penney. In an article entitled "The Dirty Little Secrets of Search," the newspaper brought in an SEO consultant to find out how JC Penney had all of a sudden leapfrogged almost all other online retailers for some very competitive, very juicy terms.

You can read the full article here but the summary is along the lines of:

• The Times and their SEO consultant spot a tonne of link building, including a lot of paid-for links.
• The Times sent Google the evidence it had collected and the leader of their Web Spam team, Matt Cutts, responded by saying "I can confirm that this violates our guidelines” and that Google would take “corrective action”.
• Google did as they promised and started placing rankings penalties on the retailers’ website which promptly saw it fall down the search rankings for numerous search terms. For “living room furniture” it went from 1st position to 68th within a matter of hours and for “Samsonite carry on luggage” it fell from 1st to 71st.
• JC Penney claims no knowledge of these practices and fires its search engine marketing firm.

This isn’t the first example of a very large brand being slapped by Google. BMW and Go Compare have both previously been penalised for over-eager SEO tactics that fell foul of Google’s guidelines. If you have bought links or are thinking of doing so then consider the fact that if the search engine is willing to upset brands of this size, then they won’t have an issue doing the same to your site.

We often take on new SEO clients who have been penalised by Google for just such practices. Unfortunately, overcoming a penalty can take considerable work and a long time. Whilst it does take longer to rank at the top with more ethical SEO campaigns, the long-term positions and peace of mind are worth the wait.

Google just announced that it will be putting a notice next to any websites that it believes have been hacked. If your site has been subject to a malicious attack then in the search results, under the title, the phrase "This site may be compromised" will start to display.

In a post on their Webmaster blog, Google announced..."To protect the safety of our users, we show this warning message for search results that we believe may have been hacked or otherwise compromised. If a site has been hacked, it typically means that a third party has taken control of the site without the owner’s permission. Hackers may change the content of a page, add new links on a page, or add new pages to the site. The intent can include phishing (tricking users into sharing personal and credit card information) or spamming (violating search engine quality guidelines to rank pages more highly than they should rank)."

While Google has placed malware warnings in the search results before, the interesting development here is that even without malware, potential visitors could still be warned away from your site. The "violating search engine quality guidelines to rank pages more highly than they should rank" could have a serious impact on sites that have used black-hat techniques to get to the top of the search engines. Any site that Google deems to have broken the rules may not only receive a ranking penalty, pushing it far further down the results, but the stamp next to it warning users away may lead to a much larger drop in visitors.

Whether you are a fan of Google's new Instant search or not, if you are running a PPC campaign then this post will be of interest to you.

There appears to be a glitch in Instant search that could be costing top spot advertisers dearly. Whilst Instant search is turned on, if a search returns Adwords ads above the organic SERPs and you hit enter twice in the search field you will automatically open the number 1 Adwords result. This costs whoever is in the top spot, but the user won't have made the choice to click the ad, so what will they do? Click back, because they were expecting a Google search results screen.

This will have a detrimental effect on top position bounce rates and could be wasting a great deal of advertiser's budgets.

Google has now launched “Instant Previews”, which provides a preview of the organic search results without a searcher having to click through to the site itself. These previews appear on the right hand side of the Google search results screen when you click the little magnifying glass icon next to the search results.

This new addition comes hot on the heels of Google's launch of Google Instant. Unlike Google Instant search, Google Instant Preview is by default turned off, the magnifying glass must be clicked to activate this new feature. The preview istself is a graphic overview of a search result that highlights those sections which are most applicable to the search term used making it easier to see whether a site is worth visiting or not.

Google Preview will start showing up from today, 9th November 2010 and should be available in 40 languages and to all users within a couple of days. Google claims that during the testing of Google Instant Preview, those using Instant Preview stated that they were about 5% more likely to be satisfied with the results they clicked. This new visual comparison seems set to change the way visitors evaluate websites and choose whether or not to visit them.

At this point Google Preview doesn't extend to Google Ads, even though every Google Ad ends up at a web page. Google has thought about the option, but isn’t including it in the initial launch. Although incredibly fast and powerful, Google Preview still finds including sites created in Flash difficult with the majority of flash sites not yet being turned into a preview. Unlike Google Instant, which shuts off when your web connection slows, Google Instant Previews is available even on poor internet connections.

In a report published today it was revealed that the internet in the UK alone is worth £100 billion to the economy, representing more than a 7% share of total national income.

The study, carried out by the Boston Consulting Group on behalf of Google, the internet’s most successful company, places a value on the UK internet market for the first time.

If it were an industry in its own right the internet would be more than twice the value of the UK hotel and restaurant market and nearly as big as the financial sector, which accounts for 9% of Gross Domestic Products in 2009.

However, the research did find that there is a digital divide in the UK, with certain parts of the country – namely Scotland and Northern Ireland – lagging far behind London and the south-east.

In an interesting twist in the report, it turns out that British consumers are more willing to spend money online than can be typically seen elsewhere. E-commerce drives a large section of the internet’s expansion; as a proportion of retail sales, online transactions in the UK are high.

To emphasise this point, the UK has the largest e-commerce market in the world when measured by the amount spent per capita. The popularity of buying goods and services has also fueled a boom in the amount companies are prepared to pay for online marketing as heavy spending can help attract users to their sites.

The online advertising market in Britain is worth £3.5 billion and is the biggest anywhere outside the US.

It is forecasted that the internet economy is to continue to boom with 10% year on year growth projected for the next 5 years. If this trend comes to fruition then the internet economy will contribute up to 13% of GDP by the year 2015. For an idea of scale the current internet economy is already larger than the utility and transport industries put together.          

The report also highlights the success of small firms using the internet to increase global sales. The UK now exports goods and services which are worth £2.80 for every £1 it imports. Google’s annual turnover was £23.6bn last year which encompasses very nearly a quarter of the £100 billion contribution the entire internet made to the UK economy in 2009.

In late 2009, a well known and established promotional products supplier wanted to launch a new website, targeting a different type of buyer.

Why was Liberty brought in?

Keyword research was needed and so was an analysis of competition. The company recognised that this wasn’t a strength of theirs so asked us to advise on target keywords. MyBrandedMerchandise.co.uk was born and in early 2010 the SEO strategy started.

The goal of the website was always to take a large share of the search engine traffic. Thousands of searches take place for the chosen keywords each week and it is vital that MyBrandedMerchandise becomes one of the most visited suppliers.

After writing keyword rich content for the main pages of the site, we started to build links from other websites, in order to convince Google that the website is worth showing high in the results.

Within weeks, the promotional products website was appearing in the first few pages of Google for some of its keywords and within six months it was on page one for almost all of them.

What has working with Liberty meant?

1. A website that did not exist only a few months ago now receives thousands of visitors a month.

2. The business has been able to pause its Google AdWords campaign, yet traffic figures keep growing.

3. New enquiries are flowing in and the business is busier than it has ever been.

4. New sales take place each week.

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.