Articles by topic: SEO blog

SPAM emails offering content writing services

One of the negative points of being easy to find in search engines, is that it leaves you open to more SPAM emails! We regularly get emails from companies offering link building services, cheap web design and many other potential outsourcing opportunities that we would never use! Before you say it, we do use some protection such as Captcha forms etc, however we like to make sure they are as a few barriers as possible to prevent potential clients from getting in touch!

The most recent one I received really made me laugh. It was a content writing service, where they offered very low cost content writing at something like $2 per blog post! Usually these types of companies are international, and the quality of grammar isn’t going to be great. Lets face it, for $2 per post you get what you pay for! Content is one of the most important parts of your online campaign, and if it’s not up to scratch then in one way or another, your campaign will fail! So the fact that the title to the SPAM email I received was ‘content writting’ (where writing was spelled incorrectly) really made me chuckle!

Remember, there is no substitute for good SEO content writing!

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Google penalises spammy page titles

As a regular user of Twitter, I noticed a tweet from Shaun Anderson (aka the hobo) that caught my attention. He had written a blog post about a case where a client had contacted him saying that had dropped in the rankings. On analysis of their site, he discovered that Google had heavily penalised the website for using ’spammy’ page titles. Now, a recommended maximum length for a title is approx 60-70 characters, and if your title extends this then it is normally ‘chopped’ off at the character limit when the results are displayed in Google SERPS. We would recommend adhering to his limit to avoid a ’spammy’ looking title in the eyes of both users and the search engines, and also because some browsers won’t actually display more than this character limit either.

In the case of Shaun Anderson, the clients title was long but not malformed, but was packed full of relevant keywords totalling around 500 characters!! Crazy, I know! When he performed a search for the website, Google actually didn’t display the title at all, only a full stop where the title should be. To anyone that does not know the website, that would appear extremely untrustworthy! Not only has the site been knocked down the rankings, but it now also looks ‘dodgy’ which will no doubt reduce the organic traffic even further.

There are a lot of people still trying to manipulate the search engine rankings through clever techniques, and it appears that as ever, Google is slowly cracking down on all of this kind of behaviour. If you’re using some page titles that aren’t properly optimised, we would recommend updating them accordingly now or risk facing the wrath of Google!

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May 2009 Page Rank Update

The end of May 2009 saw another update to the Google Page Rank, the second update of 2009 which indicates Google is sticking to the afore mentioned quarterly updates (as oppposed to the previous monthly updates). As with every Page Rank update, we have seen many sites gaining and losing rank. No doubt many SEO companies are getting calls from their clients asking them to explain why they have dropped from a Page Rank 5 to a Page Rank 1 overnight. Some of them might have inexplicably lost rank, whereas others may be being penalised as Google continues to crack down on websites that have purchased inbound links to their site. It has been common practice with some SEO companies to purchase links to websites in order to try and manipulate the search engine results, which has always been a ‘grey area’ in terms of ethical SEO practices. However Google is now cracking down on websites with paid links, and as such these sites are losing both Page Rank and dropping in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages).

Many people are now talking about the relevance of Page Rank, and how important it actually it is now. The general consensus is that Page Rank is now more of a guide, and that having a Page Rank 7+ is really more SEO vanity than anything else. During analysis of a website, Page Rank is taken into consideration however you should always investigate the inbound links to the site to get the full picture. What is more important at the moment, is domain trust and domain authority. More on this to follow soon… :)

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Reputation Management through SEO

Reputation management is something that is becoming more and more important for businesses, especially in the online environment. There are a number of ways that you can protect the reputation of your brand, and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is just one of those ways.

To provide an example, a local restaurant owner types in the restaurant name in Google, and discovers that the top 3 links in the SERPs are actually negative reviews from customers that have posted on websites. Their own website actually appears much further down the page. The owner of the business was extremely worried by this, and didn’t want potential customers to see bad reviews in Google before they got to her website.  So how do you go about protecting your reputation in this way?

Well, the first step was to improve the SEO of the restaurant website by working with a reputable SEO company so that it was ranked #1 in Google.  Ranking for the restaurant name required only minor investment as the name of the restaurant wasn’t particularly competitive. This made sure that the restaurant appeared above the reviews. The second step involved creating a number of press releases that were posted on other local websites (which had a good page rank) that appeared above the reviews, pushing them down the rankings to the bottom of page 1.

The thing about reviews, is that they tend only to be written when a customer has had a bad experience. Rarely does a customer write a review about a good experience, but this can be changed. At the end of the meal, every customer was given a card and asked to write a review on the same specific website, and there were incentives for doing so. Adding a review resulted in a discount code for a free drink with their meal on their next visit. Although these reviews could have been good or bad, the restaurant was confident that a very high majority of their customers left satisified. Additionally, in order to claim their free drink they would be a returning visitor. It’s unlikely that they would write the review if they didn’t want to go back!  The reviews on the website, diluted the current negative reviews and also lowered their ranking to the bottom of page 2 in the SERPs, as Google favours ‘newer’ content in this format.

The final push to the campaign was actually building links for lower ranked websites. This may sound surprising, but by raising their position a few places it pushed the negative reviews down to the 3rd and 4th pages of the Google SERPs. Generally speaking, most users rarely go past the 2nd or 3rd page in the Google results, so this was seen as an acceptable result.

Hopefully this example shows how SEO can be used to manage reputations effectively. Don’t fall for classic mistakes, such as writing your own reviews or getting friends and family members to write them. If you do this and you’re found out, it can be even more damaging to your reputation.

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How much does Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) cost?

We got a lot of enquiries for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), where the client wants to know ‘how much SEO costs’ before we know anything about their site or what it is that they are trying to achieve. I would be very wary of any company that gave you an answer before asking you some key questions or performing an initial analysis of your website.

The amount of work required for each campaign will be different depending on a number of factors, which include:

  • The current status of the website & current ranking
  • The industry of the business
  • The keywords they are hoping to optimise for
  • Other specific goals or requirements

Before an accurate cost can be created, it is important to know the current status of the website and how well it is currently doing. A website could already be reasonably well optimised which means that less work would be required to the on-page optimisation, and they could already be on page 2-3 of Google for their chosen terms. Alternatively, the website may require a complete rebuild in order to address any issues and may not have been cached by search engines. Even worse, the website may have been blacklisted for using spam or black hat techniques!

Performing a competitor analysis on the chosen keywords will enable you to discover how competitive the industry you are trying to rank for is. This will also give you the crucial information about how much work is required to both the on-page and off-page SEO, which is where you will be able to work out the cost of the campaign. You may discover that the keywords selected are too competitive to realistically optimise for without considerable time and investment, so you can research less competitive long tail variations of keywords that still yield a high volume of traffic.

So as you can see there is a lot to consider before a cost can accurately be created. The total cost will be dependent on exactly how much work is required and the rate of the SEO Company. If a company has offered a price before considering these factors, ask exactly what their strategy is what you are getting for your money. There shouldn’t be any hidden costs, and if they have not created a proper strategy then your campaign is likely to fail.

SEO can be expensive. Because of this reductions are normally offered if payments are made in full at the start of the campaign, but many companies offer flexibility in monthly payment schemes. In this instance, the bulk of the work is done upfront and there is normally an ongoing cost for maintenance, link building campaigns and monthly reporting.

If you have any questions about the cost of SEO, or simply want to find out more, then feel free to contact Elevator. We also offer a free SEO initial analysis report which will help provide you with an insight to the status of your site and how much work is required for you to achieve your goals.

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