It is worth the watching as a basic refresher. It covers 5 things:

1. Words in page
2. Titles
3. Links
4. Words in links
5. Reputation

Numbers 1 through 4 are quite easy to understand and grasp, but number 5 is a little different. Why? Well, its not actually a technical aspect of SEO in that, you cant really code something or develop a solution that makes it “work”. Its the single factor that attempts to account for the human touch in SEO and it incorporates social media and your offline and online networks in order to create something valuable that it applies to the search algorithm.

I would go so far to say that if you worry about reputation more than the other 4 aspects, then they will be forced to fall into line and will work naturally for you regardless of site code and structure.

Believe it or not, that’s what I have experienced in the past. Havent you alwasy wondered how “that site” is at number one when its obviosuly coded to the same level of quality as the site at, say, number 6 on the search results page? That is because its affected by the things you cant see in code, and that’s the “reputation” that’s referred to in the video above. Lots of SEO geeks dont like this as it removes the power they believe they have in making web pages rank well but manipulating code. Go figure.

I’m not saying you should ignore the way your site is built and how it has been coded to meet search engine criteria, but I wouldn’t get hung up on it when it can be over shadowed by forces above and beyond its reach and outside factors pointing into your site. Focus on what’s important people!

Most of us in the industry knew this was coming and there was speculation as to the effect it will have on the results in both relevancy and of course with Search Engine Optimisation. Many people joined the initial google testing experiment that allowed them to gather data on social search and allowed us to see what the results where of doing various searches under different conditions, such as when your logged into your google account and when your not, different geographical locations and of course trying to account for your particular social network and the influence it will have on the results but from the information in the post I think Google have went even further. (I can see some SEO’s starting to scratch their heads right now).

Google Social Search

According to Google (and aside from suffering a minor baby boom in their offices) they have been enjoying the creation and integration of social search as they see it as a major way to increase the accuracy of results for individuals due to the trust factor involved with a social network.  For example, when you perform a search, traditionally you count on Google to return the most relevant results for that search but once that process is complete, you are basically at the “mercy” (for lack of a better way of putting it) of the resulting website, its information, content and brand.

Once you establish that the website is authentic, something we do very quickly if the brand is recognisable such as Amazon, E-Bay or similar, we continue the decision making process about the host site and whether we wish to continue the transaction, book the flight, make the enquiry or contact them by phone etc. and now social search brings a whole new aspect to this process.

Social Search Consequence

By including your own social network in the results, effectively Google are increasing the need for a good quality brand, integrity and high level of service from businesses as we can see references to the products, the recommendations, the complaints or the company name from a group of people that are on line, connected to you and whom you already know and consequently trust (to varying degrees of course) and the experiences that they have had with the subject you are searching for.

Having found someone who has already experienced something first hand, and whom you have a relationship with, you cna then gather feedback and information about the matter at hand directly and on a much more honest and reliable level.

Basically, companies (and indeed individuals) need to be on their toes now if they want to maintain standards in their every day business practices and this will mean offering much more personal, polite and direct customer service.  Not a bad thing in my opinion!

Social Search Setup

Their is no Opt in or opt out of social search it seems and Google have said that results will appear whether you are signed in with your Google account or not.  This in itself has annoyed some people as it means the standardisation of results, where the number 1 result for “Product A” is he same for both you and me, has effectively been disrupted (but not removed yet) as depending on the size of the searches social network and their activity, the social part of search will serve to produce different results for each and every individual and this cannot be managed or manipulated by any third parties in the same capacity as a website can be created and coded or grown to place for specific search terms in results.

This will in itself make for a very interesting year ahead and a very different view of search engines.

Anyway, have a watch at the video below to see what other features social search will include and if you feel like it, don’t be scared to pipe up and leave your opinions on social search and what it means in the comments below.  I would be very interested to hear another point of view.

Author: Jaimie Sirovich

Download the WordPress SEO Pager plugin

The SEO-image plugin does this for you and once configure, sets up all the images with “Alternative” and “Title” attributes.  Alternative text in images is the small segment of text you see when you hover your mouse pointer over an image on a website and this also serves to tell the search engines what the photo or image is along with the title.

The plugin can be set up and configure in different ways to suit the requirements for your site and the plugin.

Author: Vladimir Prelovac

Download the SEO Image plugin for WordPress.

While companies that perform search engine optimisation would know the rules and guidelines for SEO by simply reading and following the official google SEO handbook, this simply covers the technical aspects of approaching website optimisation according to Googles (and most other Search Engines) requirements.

Adopting the correct mentality

Most people I speak to are under the impression that with search engine optimisation there is some secret technique or method by which you can guarantee reaching that number 1 position on the search results and the benefits of traffic associated with it and they view this aim with a very selfish attitude, an attitude of “I deserve to be there because I have a great product/service/idea so I should have no problems making it work for me”.  This is absolutely and completely the wrong mentality to adopt.

Google’s perspective – its a business

Here are the facts.

Yes its true, Google is a business and a damn successful one. The majority of us however forget this and see it as something that’s free, and here to cater to our needs (search), and herein lies my point. Googles business is essentially as a service provider and its main focus is to provide results to searches, but not just any old result plucked out of thin air. Imagine you performed a search and the results did not satisfy.  Would you stick around and continue to use that service?

No, you wouldn’t, you would change and use a service that provides RESULTS that are relevant to you and the search you are performing. Google realise this, but businesses tend to forget this when they approach the market via search engine optimisation. Remember Google owes you nothing. It owes its users something very specific however and that is quality results.

Mental Shift towards Quality Content

Its time for businesses to make a mental shift when its comes to SEO.  Google will list you, and rank you for any given keyword or phrase at different levels but its all based around one thing.  Quality. There is absolutely no point in a business (or  individual) posting content and trying desperately to rank it when it simply cannot compete with other content of a higher quality.

What is quality content then?

This is the ultimate question.  Who or how is it  decided what is quality content and what makes information more valuable or of a higher quality than another? For me it is dictated by a specific set of factors but in reality it could be range of different aspects that are decided by YOU not by Google. Quality content cannot really be defined unless you are aware of who you are and what people want and the relationship between these two variables. I believe that Google are continually adapting to meet this need. The algorithm created by Google, at this time, relies heavily on backlinks to decide where and what quality content is.

Google looks at the amount of backlinks that a set of information has as a vote of confidence, a thumbs up or a recommendation from readers and visitors and ranks that information accordingly. They hate it when people pay for these recommendations and that means allowing money to influence decision makers and provide backlinks for financial gain as their point of view is that the backlink should be freely given due to the quality of the content or the level of satisfaction the viewer has gained from reading or watching the information provided.

Of course, people do pay for links and sites charge for giving them. My advice?  Dont, its simply not worth getting penalised or removed completely from the rankings for the “quick” method of generating backlinks with money.  You and your visitors are much better served by spending that same money, time, effort or expertise by creating strong content people will enjoy.

So what is the point of Search Engine optimisation then?

This doesn’t mean that search engine optimisation (SEO) is not without merit, its a matter of deciding the context and merit of focusing your efforts and achieving goals. SEO is continually taken out of context, at least in my experience, and people are continually under the expectation that by performing it then they are guaranteeing results.  Any SEO preformed is only as good as the website it is performed upon so what makes people think that slapping together a basic site with little valuable assets and then performing SEO will get them anywhere.  I’m afraid it simply doesn’t work like this.

Dont try and outsmart Google, work with it.

The whole point of SEO is to make your website match the criteria set out by Google and ensure your site is meeting these requirements to the maximum effect, that’s what optimisation means.  Basically you want to follow the rules as closely as possible so when you publish information Google is happy to list and rank it.  But that’s the first step in getting rankings, it wont necessarily produce these backlinks you need to help increase the importance of the information itself.  That can only be given by the people who want to read it and give value to it freely, and you cannot always influence that decision, unless your content is top quality. (Again that word quality).

The point is, don’t try and make Google make you number 1,  make Google want you to be number 1.

The more useful, helpful or quality your content is to your target audience the more it will rank, its really that simple and churning out repetative, meaningless information will not endear you to search egnines or users alike.  It is pretty obvious you cant beat it with under hand tricks or ways and means of rewriting the same old stuff again and again.  No one will want to read it, and why would they. Get creative, get relevent, get real.

Lets define a keyword.

A keyword or more commonly a key phrase is a particular set of words a searcher will type into a search engine to find a specific result. While referred to as a keyword in general it is generally accepted that this is actually more than one word.  For more detail on keywords and the process behind choosing them you can see my other post Keyword targeting for Businesses explained.

Understanding keywords

Keywords are not generally set in stone, they are not permanent and they can be affected by a variety of external elements.Trends and trending circumstances can serve to create new keyword combinations, things such as breaking news, a new development or a political crisis for example.

Time is also a major factor in marketing to a keyword, for example, do more searches occur for Golf in the Spring and Summer than the winter months.  All these aspects are critical in adapting to current market gaps and its demand, all generated by searches from individuals.

Taking it a step further even a mood can affect a keyword.  Think about the economic crisis, downturns in the market and the credit crunch, these search terms where basically non existent 3 years ago but today they are being dictated by the mood of the economy and the people, a completely new set of important terms.

Business and the keywords they need

In the business world you will have heard the term “keyword” brandied about quite a bit when it comes to marketing and specifically when it comes to search engine rankings and marketing. But do you really understand the significance of a keyword and more importantly does the person who has broached the subject understand what a keyword is?  Many can talk about it with convincing authority but in  fact they fail to take into account various other factors.

Many of the businesses I speak to will have an idea of what keyword they want to be number 1 for when they are marketing a website or service. It inevitably turns out that this is not where they should be aiming for however after some research and analysis is performed and on occasion some quite surprising results can be produced.

Taking into account the points above, small variations in even the simplest of terms can have massive changes in results, for example if you happen to be searching for a job the tendency would be to assume that searchers will type something like jobs in New York. Analysis could show that simply changing the word jobs to work or employment can have incredible differences in returns and traffic but also competition. Moving forward in keyword marketing without proper research is like sending a blind man into a forest and asking him to find the only apple tree.

Preparing your keyword research

There are a variety of methods to establish the correct keywords any individual or business should be targeting and these are serviced on three different levels by:

• Keyword research tools
• Website analytics’s software
• Search Engines

Keyword research tools can include WordTracker (probably the most accurate) and Googles Keyword Tool to help display approximate searches by day, month and also the advertisers currently paying for top ranking privileges. These results are external reports showing the use of search engines by location from anywhere on the net.

Website Analytic tools, such as the free Google Analyitics can report back on what keywords are generating traffic to your site currently and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of this can provide valuable data in conjunction to an external tool in regards making decisions and creating strategies for meeting ranking targets.

Finally there are the search engines themselves and performing a normal search will allow you to see the competition for your industry, and this has only recently become more complicated. If you do a search on google you should also be aware these important points:

• The results in google.es will be different than the results for google.com
• The results for a search FROM the UK in google.com will not necessarily return the same results for a search performed in San Francisco on google.com even if the search term is exactly the same
• The implementation of personalised search results (when you are logged into your gmail account) can cause a totally different set of results if the results have been manipulated by the user previously.

Thus as you can see the selection of specific keywords and phrases is far from an exact science.

Keywords searches and language

This speaks for itself really. A search for job in English will obviously be a search for trabajo in Spanish but lets not dwell on multi lingual search criteria. Lets focus instead on keyword formation.

To illustrate, an English person from the UK may search for “new employment opportunity” but an English speaking person in New York may search for “new opportunity in employment”. This single change in the structure of the keyphrase can also prove (although not always) to produce another completely different set of results!

The need for keyword analysis and research

As you can see the variations and intricate knowledge and awareness required to effectively meet keyword requirements is extreme and is only one small part of the overall SEO strategy. In some cases people have even said to me”why bother if its impossible to target?”.

The point is that its not impossible to target keywords, its just damn difficult. After all would you prefer to place your business in a totally useless position on an assumption or would you prefer to have an educated idea of where you could and should be, no matter the inaccuracies involved?

You decide.

Having taken a refreshing step back from the depths of the social media environment over the last week in order to celebrate various special occasions (3 to be exact, 17th March – St. Patrick’s Day, 18th March – My big old birthday and 21st March – Ireland win the Grand Slam in the Six Nations Rugby Tournament for the first time in 61 years) so you can imagine I wasn’t in front of a computer screen too much.

It has allowed for some excellent reflective time however, regarding lots of different views, opinions and options on the internet and in social media in general.  I have had time to listen to the views of social media pundits, users both casual and serious, business, and even those who have simply “heard” of it but don’t indulge or are not convinced of its advantages or even its role.  Its helped me make some decisions regarding my own route and what I wish to achieve as well as how to achieve it.

Its going to take some time to make it work though.

Theres that word again.

“Time”

Its the single consistent word I have encountered throughout every single interaction I have had with all of the above mentioned peoples and entities.  “I don’t have the TIME” or “How much TIME will it take”.  Over the last few weeks I have spent every possible waking minute trying to understand, comprehend and decide on how people can, could and should be making the time for the benefit of their business especially as budgets are being cut and cash flow is drying up, surely then we need to take that cut in expenses and invest in a more hands on approach to being effective in our TIME online and especially in the social media sphere.

Let me give you an example.Lets take twitter.

I have spent time on twitter simply understanding how it has been shaped by people online and what the accepted “ethics” and “etiquette” are. This took some time.  I pretty much have that side of it resolved now and am happy with the way its progressing and will continue to meet and build relationships as I currently am, but in my OWN TIME.

Something that also took me time to understand was the number of followers on and how the size of the follower count relates to the person being followed. Initially I was desperate to build a large following in the belief that the more people you are in contact with the more ears you have a hold of and the more effective you can be.  I have come to the conclusion that this isn’t true (at least in my case).

I have decided that I will be very very particular about who I follow on twitter now, and I will also not let the numbers of followers decide or affect my decision on my own count and also in regards the people I decide to follow myself.

I don’t want Quantity.

I want… no I NEED quality and quality takes TIME.

Having reflected now, I am surprised at myself having taken so long to come to this conclusion. For quite some time I have preached to my clients about the value of quality SEO rather than quantity SEO. Instead of being obsessed by the numbers of visitors to the site the bottom line should be addressed against various horizontals but to put it simply:

If I’m getting 1 sale a day from 1 visitor a day via quality SEO then I can realise and quantify the exact value of this effort and return.

If I’m getting 10,000 visitors a day and 2 sales a day then I have to be very cautious how I calculate the return.  I have to account for the sale of course, but I also have to account for the LOST sales as well, the ones that where not addressed properly because of the number of enquiries that may or may not have been serious, but the most important issue I have to address is the cost in TIME it has taken me to make the sales.

There it is again you, that word.  “TIME”

This all comes back to social media and the channels we use and the time we have to spend working on them and developing them effectively against the time it takes us to understand them, apply ourselves to them effectively and grow them responsibly. What social channels have proven most effective for you, have you tried enough of them to decide effectively or are you simply “going with the flow” and jumping on the closet major bandwagons as that’s where the party seems to be at and you heard from somebody that it was where you had to be.

Maybe its not a bad idea to take the social TIME online and decide where you need to spend it to satisfy your aims.

Many people and businesses believe that there is a “secret” method used to become the top website.  Surely there exists some rapid way of securing top placement results and getting all that juicy targeted traffic?

Yes there is, if you don’t know what your doing, so choosing a reputable company or individual to perform your works is essential.

The result of “blackhat” or unethical SEO is inevitably blacklisting and a ban from the search engines meaning you revert back to ZERO nevermind a complete lack of results in the meantime.

Always ensure that the application of SEO is done legitimately by checking out your service provider or SEO specialist thoroughly via their client list, testimonials, philosophy of process and application and their on-line reputation. It’s a simple matter of asking around, something you would do with any business in any type of industry.

If anyone ever claims to “have a contact at Google” or guarantees you amazing results overnight, then walk away, no… in fact RUN!

Some of the things to be wary of are:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamdexing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyword_stuffing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaking

How to find a quality SEO service.

There are a variety of way to source a good quality SEO company and some of them are not immediately obvious.  Mopst people looking for SEO services will immediately do a search on Google. It is also not necessicarily true however that a good quality SEO company will be at the top listings for search terms either, although this would certinaly go a long way to qualifying them as reliable service providers but also this would imply that they are expensive and possibly beyond your allocated budget.

One of the most reliable places to begin would be a business forum, on twitter or indeed by asking some of the top Bloggers (usually individual SEO experts) who they would recommend, if it is not apparent already on their site and by gathering this feedback and recommendations you can begin to formulate and decide on who would provide the best quality service for you and your business against your budget.

On the subject of Budgets, make sure you establish a realistic amount for your SEO. A completely pointless exercise is contacting any provider without having a budget in mind.  The reason for this is that the whole campaign or schedule of works will be dictated by this budget over time in order to establish how the works will be deployed.

Countless times I have had people ask me:

“How much does SEO cost?”

the only reasonable response and the one people do not want to hear is the only truthful answer:

“How much have you budgeted to spend?”

As Second advantage to establishing a budget is that you will be aware and comforatble with the allocated cost of the SEO.  This allows you to factor the cost into your overall business expenses and avoid any surprises.  The only reason that you would deviate from your allocated business plan, in this case, is if the required works you establish change dramatically or extra works are required on top.  Again, a good service provider will be able to assess, account and advise for this in advance without disrupting the work already in progress and then incorporate it into the overall campaign.

SEO Budget Comparisons

The final advantage of establishing a budget, and possibly the most important in the initial stages of choosing a provider is the ability to compare quotes across different companies.  By establishing a budget and approaching three seperate companies you can then state clearly what you wish to allocate to the campaign and they can respond clearly to the services provided for that amount.

For example, call any three companies and ask the question “How much is SEO?”.

In response you will get one company offering it for 1,000 Euros, another for 12,000 Euros and a final for 50,000 Euros.  You are left totally in the dark in regards to which company will actually give the best value for money.

By approaching them with the statement:

” I have a budget of 10,000 euros, what services can you provide against this for the next 6 months and what results would you expect to achieve?”

The three responses you will get back will be a lot more detailed, more relevant and more COMPARABLE.

The key point here is the comparability. Because you have defined the parameters of the project more accurately via this simple statement the responses will be more accurate and as they are constrained by the budget and time frame then the decision on which service provider to choose is made so much more simple.

In essence, it is a complicated and analytical process covering a wide spectrum of disciplines and requirements. Most of these misunderstandings have developed because of these factors:

• Technology develops at such a rate that it is difficult to stay on top of all the options.
• There is a misconception that SEO is easy, that doing one or two things will work and when this does not happen frustration and disappointment prevail.
• Very few people understand the full extent of what SEO involves and how the practice of SEO is actually implemented. A business simply wants effective results.
• We all see how SEO is cheap, but when presented with the facts the reality becomes apparent that cheap SEO is a waste of money.
• We see huge variations in prices for SEO and become suspicious at the super cheap and also the super expensive.
• It is difficult for a business to understand the requirements of website design and development in relation to Search Engine Optimisation.
• No one actually KNOWS categorically what SEO involves (Yes this sounds strange but I will expand upon this in another post).

Over the next few days I will be doing a series of posts expanding upon some of the areas involved in SEO and dispelling and clarifying these misconceptions.

Post 1: SEO Services and SEO Budgets
Post 2: SEO and Keyword Density
Post 3: Linking and Backlinking
Post 4: Writing content for your Visitor
Post 5: Is W3C validation worthwhile?
Post 6: Permalinks and Clean URLS
Post 7: Website Submission

To view the full sized image click the graphic or here.

The diagram above aims to explain in simple terms the relationships between:

keywords vs traffic vs competition vs quality

To view the full sized image click the graphic or here.

Most of us are under the impression that we need large quantities of traffic in order to generate sales or enquiries via our website.

This is not necessarily the case. Search Engines are a service provider and want their users to find the correct information, something relevant, something needed, otherwise the user will simply switch to a different search engine to get the required results.

When we search we all begin in the general, usually one or two words. For the sake of an example lets choose the word “car”.

If I own a car dealership I would naturally think that I want to be in the number 1 position in the Search Engines for the word “car”. But do you really need it and will you make money, or could it actually cost you money AND reputation.

Using the diagram I can example my reasoning.

In the first blue triangle I choose 1 keyword.  Following on to the pink triangle I see that it has the highest traffic at 5. The third navy triangle immediately tells me however, that it also has the highest possible competition with 5 and the green triangle shows me that the quality of the visitor will be considered a 1, or the lowest quality.

Why is the traffic so high?
Because the word “Car” is popular and searched for by millions of people.

Why is the competition high?
Because so many different companies, manufacturers, fans, collectors or clubs want to be gaining that traffic.

Why is the quality so low?
You sell Cars. Most of these searches will not have made any concrete decisions regarding the reason for their search and may not even want to buy a car.  Also you may be restricted by real factors such as the model of the car and your geographical location. If a person does order a car will it be affordable to ship it to them and still be a competitive price or will you be wasting valuable time and effort dealing with these general enquiries only to miss the ones that are REAL sales.

So what now?

Well lets choose 4 keywords now and put them in this context:

Model  +  Type + Action + Location

Based on this and to illustrate this 4 word phrase could be:

HONDA CARS for SALE in my TOWN

Where the capitalised words are the important keywords in the search and words such as the, in or, but, and are irrelevant.

Looking at the triangle diagram now, in the first blue triangle we choose 4 keywords, in the second pink triangle we see that the amount of traffic is much lower, at 2. The third navy triangle shows me that the competition for this phrase is also low at 2 but the final green triangle shows me that the quality of the visitor is a high 4.

Why is the traffic so low?
The traffic is lower because the searcher has made a much more specific, refined and relevant search related to your product in your area.

Why is the competition high?
The competition is lower because of the localisation of the search.  Your will be competing with the other businesses in the same geographical location as your current location or where your business has been established. A much more manageable competition pool.

Why is the quality so high?
Again it is because you have refined your product to match the search as closely as possible. The search engines will recognise this and hence produce your page as the most relevant to the searcher.  The searcher is satisfied because they have found exactly what they are looking for and so they are much more likely to make an enquiry and much more likely to be converted into a client, producing a sale.

I have simplified this process to help illustrate the importance of researching the keywords you use in your website and also reflect the advantages of being more specific in your product descriptions and the types of service you offer within your geographical location. Of course there are always exceptions to the rule but these are few and far between.