The main trade-off we have all made in recent years is loosing our guaranteed presence in the local phone book and replacing it for a potential global presence on the internet via search engine (Especially Google)
The problem for small businesses is that in an effort to avoid spam and time wasting search results the Google Algorithm now favours large business who ironically are more likely to be searched by their brand rather than their product.
How has this happened?
Early forms of Search Engine Optimisation relied largely upon the sheer number of back-links to determine the authenticity of a website. This lead to useless directories and link farms. These links were easy to get and could be largely automated, it still happens even this blog will receive many attempts of reply comments that are packed with back links despite the fact that these strategies are now proven to work against SEO with later algorithms.
The next generation changed to make a greater reliance on the content around the back-links and once again the SEO consultants found the way around this through automated or outsourced spinning of articles or even just constantly reposing the same articles wherever possible.
Once again this was closed with the checks for duplicate content and more advanced algorithms that can check to real writing as opposed to simply keyword stuffing.
Currently Social Media shares and discussions are sharing a weighting similar to that of relevant back-links.
Why is this a problem?
If you are a small business your social media sites aren't likely to extend legitimately beyond your circle of friends and your close clients, optimistically 100 - 200, these people aren't likely to be engaged in a great deal of conversation about your product as they already know about it anyway and will be self concious about "spamming" their friends walls.
On the other hand a major brand doesn't need to worry about SEO, because people are already talking about their product a linking their new products as part of their normal day to day activities.
What is the Solution?
Unfortunately it's not as simple "Tick and Flick" solution (yet) the need now is to make content that people will genuinely want to read, follow and share. This doesn't mean writing 250 words about your chosen keyword. It means to educate, amuse or reward your audience so much that they feel the need to pass your content to their friends.
Saturday 29 June 2013
Wednesday 12 June 2013
Why Social Media is Crucial to SEO
I've said it before and I'll say it again, to understand SEO you have this about how your post adds value for the reader and for the broader internet community. It requires a bit of a mind shift from the old method of "Make it look to hard from them to try" to "explain what I'm doing so they will trust me to do it for them".
Social Media give you the change to showcase your prowess by giving people enough information via Facebook Blogs etc for them to have a try themselves and realise the importance of deferring to an expert.
There is however a more direct co-relation between social media and SEO. As the internet is being cluttered with web masters, SEOs and others all scrambling to attention it is getting increasingly difficult for the search engines to differentiate between legitimate content and elaborate webs of sites used to draw a user to a target site which may or may not suit their needs. It is relatively easy to get backlinks for the sake of backlinks, especially if you invest a few dollars on odesk or a similar outsourcing site. The days of SEO being a function of the number of backlinks are long gone now though, even relevant backlinks are loosing their value because is it getting easier for people to devise ways to make content appear relevant.
The way around this? Getting human input.
The very nature of social media means that if something holds a genuine interest for someone they will share it or like it so that other people know it is interesting. Social Media profiles are linked to real people and the social media sites themselves are getting increasingly good at weeding out the bots. This means that it is fair to say that if a lot of people are discussing and sharing a certain site it must be relevant and quality.
The Challenge.
This is all well and good if you are selling items people are interested in. People love to share pictures of their latest dress, wheel rim or a movie they have just seen, they are far less likely to share a picture of their accountant or follow news of an Quantity Surveyor's latest job.
This is where the challenge for On-line marketers gets a little bit real. One solution is to ensure that your business is on as many review style sites as possible, especialy ones that are relevant to your industry, for example a restaurant is more likely to be found by a foodie through a trawl of eatability.com.au then a search for "Vietnamese Restaurant in Newtown". In relation to Trades people, these are sites such as truelocal.com.au which will allow a showcase of your products and allow users to review them, BUT good reviews are read as being submitted by the owner and punters are more likely to put the effort in to post a bad review when they are angry than a good review when they are happy. Profiles Sites such as BusinessChecker.com.au are reviewed independently which gives the user a sense of comfort that they didn't just buy their good review.
One Strategy for building a social media presence is to offer a discount to new customers who have liked your Facebook or Google + page, verifying they really did it can be a bit of work for your front line staff though and there may be large number of unlikes once the offer has been redeemed.
I would love to hear other strategies people are using to build up a social media presence on a B2B or service industry space.
Social Media give you the change to showcase your prowess by giving people enough information via Facebook Blogs etc for them to have a try themselves and realise the importance of deferring to an expert.
There is however a more direct co-relation between social media and SEO. As the internet is being cluttered with web masters, SEOs and others all scrambling to attention it is getting increasingly difficult for the search engines to differentiate between legitimate content and elaborate webs of sites used to draw a user to a target site which may or may not suit their needs. It is relatively easy to get backlinks for the sake of backlinks, especially if you invest a few dollars on odesk or a similar outsourcing site. The days of SEO being a function of the number of backlinks are long gone now though, even relevant backlinks are loosing their value because is it getting easier for people to devise ways to make content appear relevant.
The way around this? Getting human input.
The very nature of social media means that if something holds a genuine interest for someone they will share it or like it so that other people know it is interesting. Social Media profiles are linked to real people and the social media sites themselves are getting increasingly good at weeding out the bots. This means that it is fair to say that if a lot of people are discussing and sharing a certain site it must be relevant and quality.
The Challenge.
This is all well and good if you are selling items people are interested in. People love to share pictures of their latest dress, wheel rim or a movie they have just seen, they are far less likely to share a picture of their accountant or follow news of an Quantity Surveyor's latest job.
This is where the challenge for On-line marketers gets a little bit real. One solution is to ensure that your business is on as many review style sites as possible, especialy ones that are relevant to your industry, for example a restaurant is more likely to be found by a foodie through a trawl of eatability.com.au then a search for "Vietnamese Restaurant in Newtown". In relation to Trades people, these are sites such as truelocal.com.au which will allow a showcase of your products and allow users to review them, BUT good reviews are read as being submitted by the owner and punters are more likely to put the effort in to post a bad review when they are angry than a good review when they are happy. Profiles Sites such as BusinessChecker.com.au are reviewed independently which gives the user a sense of comfort that they didn't just buy their good review.
One Strategy for building a social media presence is to offer a discount to new customers who have liked your Facebook or Google + page, verifying they really did it can be a bit of work for your front line staff though and there may be large number of unlikes once the offer has been redeemed.
I would love to hear other strategies people are using to build up a social media presence on a B2B or service industry space.
Thursday 6 June 2013
Sustainable SEO
People keep talking about how their ranking have been affected by changes to the Google algorithm, being "punished" or dropping ratings. I will admit with the Penguin 2.0 changes that have gone through in the past couple of weeks I have also noticed changes to the ranks of sites that I manage, fortunately nothing catastrophic though.
Be base the stability of my results by the simple question that I ask every time I do anything on my own or client SEO:
"Does this help the Reader"
Lets face it, Google are ad massive business interesting in shareholder return they are not the benevolent society they'd like to put themselves forward as. They do know however that in order to remain relevant with their users they need to be able to answer the users question as accurately as possible and hopefully give the user some knowledge for nothing. Spam and misleading links hurt Google's cause no one wants to search for Sheds and end up on a site offering extended gentleman bits.
If you hurt Google they will hurt you back.
What NOT to do
Be base the stability of my results by the simple question that I ask every time I do anything on my own or client SEO:
"Does this help the Reader"
Lets face it, Google are ad massive business interesting in shareholder return they are not the benevolent society they'd like to put themselves forward as. They do know however that in order to remain relevant with their users they need to be able to answer the users question as accurately as possible and hopefully give the user some knowledge for nothing. Spam and misleading links hurt Google's cause no one wants to search for Sheds and end up on a site offering extended gentleman bits.
If you hurt Google they will hurt you back.
What NOT to do
What to Do
To do it the proper way is time consuming and more difficult but that is great news. This means that those of us who put in the time and effort to get it right will be rewarded whilst hopefully educating and entertaining our clients.
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