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.

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 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.

In essence, SEO (search engine optimisation) is two areas: keywords and links. Whilst most people who have a website have thought about keywords and most website designers will help include these in the important parts of your web pages, links are often an afterthought, if considered at all.

This can be good news for your businesses as if you haven’t bothered seeking out links then your competitors probably haven’t either. If you start getting the type of in-bound links that the search engines like, then your site will soon start to rise to the top of the search results, bringing you much more traffic and enquiries.

Why are links so important?

The search engines need to be viewed as a popularity contest. Just because your website says that you sell cheap widgets doesn’t mean Google believes it. You need other websites to point Google towards yours, with each link acting as a vote of confidence. This means that Google finds your site more often and pays more attention as other sites it trusts are telling it about yours.

Where should you get links from?

There are many different types of link and it is important to build a diverse link profile, so seek links from a wide range of sites. Here are a few of the more common areas:

1. Directories. Directories list and link to other websites. It is a good idea to request links from popular general directories, such as DMOZ and Hot Frog, as well as niche ones that specialise in listing sites from within your industry. Quality is key with directories, so if it looks like a site full of spammy listings then move on and find another.

2. Blogs. Commenting on other blogs is popular in the link building world as you can choose the text displayed in the link and the page on your site that it links to. Blog comments can also bring high quality traffic but you need to leave a valuable comment and not spam them with some meaningless drivel.

3. Link requests. Send an email to other websites asking them to link to yours. If it is someone you know, such as a supplier or friend, then they will probably not hesitate to help. If it’s an unknown website then you may need to provide a reason why they should, e.g. an interesting article or special offer they can link to.

How do you find these links?

There are numerous ways of finding links but we only have a few hundred words here to try and describe what can be a full time job. Have a play around with these search strings and vary the words to find an array of sites that are easy link targets (substituting the word ‘keyword’ for your keyword or keyphrase):

If you are looking for directories then try typing this into Google:

keyword “add URL”
keyword “submit site”
keyword “suggest website”

Want to find relevant blogs? Try these and see what comes up:

keyword “add comment”
keyword “powered by Wordpress”

The entire ranking algorithm that Google uses is based on the concept of link popularity, so focusing on this area can bring in huge improvements to your search engine rankings. By doing nothing but building links, we have helped many businesses reach very high Google rankings for very competitive keywords. It really does work, so best of luck!

Last week saw PubCon, an SEO and online marketing conference in Las Vegas. Each year thousands of professional web developers and marketers meet up to hear about the latest changes in the world of search engines and PubCon 2009 offered a lot of information for them all to think over.

One of the most prominent speakers at the event was Matt Cutts, head of Web Spam at Google. Whenever Cutts speaks, search engine marketers listen, as there are very valuable insights into the ways Google works and the possible changes in how they rank websites.

Even though Liberty was not in attendance, we have kept an eye on what was discussed and have chosen to highlight a few of the points which were discussed as potential future rankings factors.

1. A website that loads quickly = good

The time it takes your web pages to load could have an effect on how Google ranks your site. Cutts said that while a site with slow pages won't necessarily drop in the rankings, one which acts quickly could rise. This is good news for businesses that invest in quality websites and hosting. This is an SEO factor that you have complete control over and if you give users a better experience, then Google could recognise this by rewarding your site a more prominent position in the search results.

2. Repeating keywords in footer links = bad

Cutts was asked to review specific websites and on one there were many keyword rich internal links which he viewed negatively. Many of these links were from the footer and to deep pages within the site. If you have a website where you have stuffed keywords into the anchor text of your footer then this may be something you want to re-address.

3. Blocking the Internet Archive = bad

Sites that block the home of the Wayback Machine can be viewed as waving a spam flag at Google. Many websites choose not to let the Internet Archive index their site, something that Cutts believes is the type of behaviour associates with spammy websites. You may want to check to see if your site is blocking archive.org and if you have no legitimate reason for this, get the block removed.

Whilst neither of these two negative factors is enough to get your site Google slapped, it’s always sensible to follow best-practice guidelines as it may only take a few of these spam indicators to push your site from one that is ranking well to one that is never seen in the search results again.

On that topic, another comment was made, regarding domains that have been banned from the search results – that it may be easier to write it off and start again. It looks like Google engineers may not be able/want to sift through websites that have been penalised, looking through on-page SEO and link quality, so re-inclusion requests may go unanswered. If you have been involved in black-hat practices then you might have more luck starting a new domain and trying again with a little less trickery.

The Lincoln House Hotel is a stylish and well respected bed and breakfast on the outskirts of Cardiff city centre. The management of the hotel approached Liberty Marketing in early 2009 looking to increase the number of enquiries and bookings, which had been falling since the start of the economic downturn. Together we agreed on an online marketing and search engine optimisation strategy which could be rolled out over the course of the year.
 
How did we improve their online marketing?
 
SEO advice & copywriting - The hotel was having a new website designed so we helped by advising on keywords to target and re-wrote elements of their site so that the chosen keywords were used in a stronger way.
 
Pay Per Click advertising - A small Pay Per Click advertising campaign was set up on the Google Adwords system to bring in quick traffic and enquiries at a low cost, while the SEO elements were being worked on.
 
Advertising advice & link building - We started reviewing other websites in the travel and accommodation industry to see which were worth advertising on and which would be useful to seek inbound links from. This was done so that the search engines take the site more seriously as well as to bring in quality traffic.

How has this helped the Lincoln House Hotel?
 
Online marketing has now become a core part of the hotel's marketing strategy. The search engines are paying attention to the site a lot more than before, with Google now showing it on the first page for keywords such as "bed and breakfast Cardiff", which it used to be on the 3rd page for. This has meant that website traffic has been rising month on month and the site now receives a few thousand visitors each month.
 
"We would like to take this opportunity to thank the staff at Liberty Marketing Ltd for all the work you have done promoting our web site. During the deepest recession this country has ever had we have had an increase in enquiries and bookings and have maintained our turnover of previous years" - Kathy Howard, Lincoln House Hotel