SERP (search engine result page) definition

SERP is an acronym for the term ’search engine result page’. A SERP refers to the results pages shown by a search engine such as Google on entering a keyword or phrase (or query). For example, if you enter the keyword ‘news’ in Google, the first website at the top of the SERP would most likely be the BBC website if searching on Google.co.uk

Multiple pages are also referred to as SERPs. For example, it could be used in a sentence such as:

“After checking the site to see how it ranked for it’s chosen keywords, it was in the top 10 in all the SERPs.”

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Social networking sees exponential growth

Between the months of February 2008 and February 2009, Facebook has seen an increase in over double the amount of traffic. Throughout the world, Facebook sees an unbelieveable increase of 5 million new members every 7 days! Facebook also received 36.03% of all US social networking web traffic, showing nearly a 5% increase on the previous month. This also means Facebook is slowly catching up with MySpace who dropped from 57.08% to 52.21%.

Many are putting the success of Facebook down to it’s applications such as Twitter. Twitter are now announcing a new beta version of their software that will further integrate Facebook functionality, which many believe is going to accelerate it’s growth even more.

When it comes to business, the best method of receiving new clients has always been through a word of mouth recommendation. Eventually it maybe the case where social media actually replaces the standard method of searching, as search engines simply categorise websites based on indexing data and algorithms and then associate their value and relevance. Now no matter how good the programming, surely this will no substitute for a human recommendation? A human analysis can be so much more detailed than an automated process, so it seems this really could be a very real possibility. The only reason Google does not use human analysis is because it would simply be impossible to do it manually on such a large scale.

Currently a lot of online marketers are having success with driving lots of traffic to websites from Social Media sites, the trick however is converting this traffic into sales. It is now possible to create business and company profiles in Facebook, LinkedIn etc enabling users to network their company in much the same way they do with their personal profiles. Some believe however that the growth of social media will be short lived, and that eventually the phenomenon will pop when it reaches its critical mass. From experience however, if that were to happen I don’t think it would not disappear entirely, it would simply evolve just as the dot com businesses did. Either way, we will be watching the progress with some interest over the next months.

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Improved SEO for Flash

There has always been a dislike for Flash for many SEO companies over the years. In many cases, most SEO companies will recommend against the use of all rich media, or changing it in such a way that you actually lose the impact of the original design.

At Elevator SEO, we understand the importance of Flash and Rich Media in a website. It serves a different purpose to standard HTML and CSS pages, and we employ a number of techniques and methods to make sure that it is accessible as possible to the Search Engine Robots to allow the content to be indexed.

In order to help people optimise their Flash sites for search engines, and to encourage developers and designers not to be put off by the burden of SEO, Adobe has launched a new Search Engine Optimization and Technology Centre. The purpose of the site is:

“Ensuring that search engines can crawl and index your rich Internet applications (RIAs)—so that your content can be found by others—is of critical importance to building and maintaining an online presence. While Adobe and the leading search engines are making significant strides in making SWF content more searchable, you can take additional steps now to improve your search ranking positions further.  The SEO Technology Center helps explain what the challenges are and provides practical steps, examples, and best practices that you can follow to overcome them.”

This is yet another turning point for Flash and SEO. In the future we hope it will be possible to maintain the look, design and interaction of your Flash websites without having to sacrifice the benefits of SEO.

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Cheap SEO

With so many SEO companies to choose from, it can be very difficult to distinguish between them and work out which SEO company is best for you. When times are hard, and the recession tightens its grip around the budget of most companies, it is often very appealing to go for the cheapest option. Companies are also tempted to take on the job of SEO themselves, which can lead to disasterous consequences as we wrote about in our post on the dangers of DIY SEO.

So why not go for the cheapest option? Well there is certainly no harm in trying to get a competitive price, although when marketing budgets are limited, SEO companies generally thrive as they are a cheap and cost effective method of marketing your product or business online. However if a company is offering prices that are too good to be true, then you would be right to be suspicous. Here are just a few things to look out for:

  1. What are you actually getting for your money? Is it just a homepage optimisation, or are you getting a full service for your whole site including an on-page and off-page strategy?
  2. What are the associated monthly fees? Are you getting a cheap deal upfront, and then being hit hard by a monthly cost?  If so, what are you getting each month and how much time are the SEO company actually spending on your site?
  3. If you’re getting a report such as an on-page optimisation report, is it a generic report based on a template? In order to save costs, SEO companies offering cheap services normally have templates for all their reports which are simply filled in by a junior web programmer. These reports are normally non-specific containing quite general information about your site. In a lot of cases, these are recommendations and best practices as opposed to actual issues with your own site, and as such involve quite a lot of analysis from your side to check all the points listed in the document.
  4. Additionally, these reports can lack the crucial amount of detail required to optimise your site properly, and can often miss elements of your site that might infact get you penalised or removed from the search engine index (normally a naive mistakes as opposed to any kind of black hat intent).
  5. Finally, you may find it very hard to get hold of the company once the invoice has been paid. The account managers might have 100’s of clients each and so the proper amount of time isn’t being invested into monitoring your site’s progress and reporting back to you. For a successful campaign, it is imperative that the traffic is analysed and your site is adjusted as required.

To find out more about a full service SEO company then check out the information provided on our website or get in touch to speak to us directly. Remember that the success of your website / online marketing campaign can have a huge effect on the success of your business, so think carefully before investing your money.

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Uncertainty around Page Rank update (March 2009)

During the first couple of weeks in March there have been many sites seemingly affected by a Google Page Rank update. Unfortuntely, most webmasters are complaining after seeing their Page Rank drop quite drammatically i.e. from 5/10 to 0/10. There is normally some fluctuation that occurs during the update of the Page Rank algorithm, which is commonly known as the Google Dance. However, changes aren’t normally as extreme as they appear to have been this month.

There is a lot of uncertainty around the update to the algorithm after Google announced that it is only updating 3-4 times a year now as opposed to the monthly change. A lot of webmasters are claiming that this recent change is due to a glitch with the Google Page Rank tool bar, but others think that a new element has been added into the algorithm. Most of the sites heavily affected are blog and news sites, which have all dropped to a Page Rank of 0. SEO experts think that this could be related to the introduction of an age-deflation factor, where news and blog items over a certain age lose their importance.

Personally we do not think that a Page Rank update her happened just yet, although everybody is waiting to see what happens when the first update occurs.

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