The New Google Pay Per Action (PPA) Program
It is finally here. The 800 pound gorilla in search marketing is in beta with its new pay-per-acton program. Adsense advertisers can now sign up into what could be the ultimate traditional PPC killer. What has stopped many site owners (big and small) from using Pay Per Click is the uncertainty about the return on investment. With PPA, the advertiser defines an action such as filling a contact form, sign up for a newsletter or the purchase of a product. When someone completes the defined action, Google charges the advertiser. Basically it works like a commission based transaction between Google and the advertiser.
Let's go with a practical example for both PPC and PPA:
You advertise for widgets. When a searchee googles widgets your site comes up on page one. The user clicks on your listing; with traditional PPC you autmoatically are charged for the click. With PPA you are not. Once on the site, if the user decides to purchase a widget (That would be the defined action), Google then charges for the purchase. If the user decides to navigate away, the advertiser is never charged.
How this new system will affect SEO is hard to say. Sites still need to be optimized for both the users as well the search engines. Optimization is not just about rising in the ranks. It is about providing a great experience with speed, clean coding and pages that are compatible with all browsers and systems.
PR Update Under Way
As of January 10th Google is performing its usual quarterly PR export (give or take a few weeks on the minus/plus side).
Some sites are showing a PR0 where before they had i.e. a PR4 or PR5. Do not be alarmed. During a data export this may happen and it has little consequence to ranks. PR is calculated on a continuous basis and the export/update is just a courtesy Google extends to users. It will take a few days before the export is done so be patient!
Indexing Pictures?
Every SEO will tell you that pictures cannot be recognized by the search engines. If you have a picture of an actor on your celebrity fan web site, no search engine will be able to tell who he is. By using an "alt" tag, you can describe what the picture is about but the SEs will only see the tag, not the image.
A new company promises to go where not Google, Live or Yahoo! have gone before.
Polar Rose, a company based in Sweden, is building a technology aimed at indexing images by using complex 3D and mapping calculations to add a description to any photo in any site.
If the company holds to its promise, it will affect how SEO is implemented and will add a new dimension to optimization. It would be quite feasible that images will have to be optimized to be better "read". Possibly, the use of color correction and contrast tools will enhance readibilty and therefore indexing. Will a blurred or low contrast image be analyzed as well as a clean and snappy one? How about black and white? The possibilities are endless. Also, will a large company such as Google implement a similar technology or simply buy it?
Stay tuned!
The right keywords for effective SEO
Many times we see prospective customers trying to chase very high competition key phrases and wanting immediate results. I will try to illustrate this with an example:
Mr Jones calls us with a new web site. He is starting to sell Ipod widgets. He is looking to optimize the site for "Ipod widgets" as his primary keyword. After a short look at his competition, we see that there are many established sites competing for the same key phrase. The same pay per click phrase goes at $4 for top results in Google and tapers down to $2 for the bottom of page one. One way or another, he is looking at least $400 a day to generate 100 to 200 clikthroughs to his site. Considering his margins are low, he cannot possibly stay in business by spending upwards to $12,000/month in PPC costs. He also knows that the only way to be profitable is to sell on the Internet as his local market cannot support the revenue he needs.
The solution? Through keyword research we identify alternate key phrase that do not have as much competition both in the natural as well as the sponsored results. By using Overture and Wordtracker, we can identify the number of times any key phrase is searched. The result is driven traffic to his site through lower PPC cost as well a more effective way to make sure SEO reaches desisered results with a lower budget and a shorter time frame.
What is going on with Live Search?
As you probably all know, Microsoft has been heavily focusing efforts on its new search engine,
Live Search. Although results have been steadily improving, Live still has ways to go. What used to be an advantage of Live, which is fast indexing of new sites, is now becoming a longer feat. Google, with the aid of Sitemaps submission in XML format, is indexing sites in as fast as 48 hours. I am talking complete indexing, every single page!
Returning to Live.com, we sometimes see sites that are either irrelevant to the search terms or that have extremely little information. These sites grossly outrank much larger competitors with not only more content but many more backlinks. If you have the Pagerank toolbar installed, you will see pages ranking very high on Live with a PR0.
Keyword density and frequency seem to favor a heavy hand on Live. We are seeing a site with a keyword count of 10 in 7 lines of text and #6 for a single fairly competitive keyword.
What does this mean for search engine optimization? Well, for now do not worry about having targeted keywords showing heavily in your copy. Backlinks are not that important if Live is your target search engine. I am writing this post now and of course this information could be obsolete tomorrow. I can't imagine Live sitting on the current algorithm without making some substantial changes.
ODP is down
If any of you has been trying to submit a site to DMOZ sometimes between October and November, you may have gotten a "Service is unavailable" message. AOL is trying to fix the issue but as you can probably gather, there was a (likely) catastrophic event. Due to the amount of scripts running in the directory, as well the massive amount of data, this is not an easy feat. Please be patient and keep checking.
SEO Services and Your Web Site
Prospective customers call us for an obvious reason: they want to increase internet exposure through our SEO services. At times, we get to run an analysis of web sites that are poorly designed and definitely not user friendly. I am not necessarily talking about poor code, but a general lack of content, call to action and a inefficient navigation structure.
Why am I saying this? Because, not matter if you get to be on page one in Google search results, you still need to capture the reader's interest and make sure he stays on you site.
First, content. Please take the time to write content. There is no excuse for not having useful information on any site. Even for someone who, for example, is a photographer or artist, there is an opportunity to describe who you are, your technique, what the art is about etc. I am bringing this example up because one may argue that if you are selling visual art, how can you possibly have a lot of content? Search engines look for content as one of the ways to determine a site's relevancy. Images can't be read by search engines. A good search engine optimization company will point these factors out and not just take your money.
Second, a call to action. All the effective SEO in the world will not do any good if you can't solicit a strong customer motivation to use your service or product. Explain why it should be you and not a competitor; you do not have to use pushy sales tactics, but there is nothing wrong in offering incentives, such as quantity discounts, guarantees or anything else that prompts a prospect to say: "Yes, I like this company and I will give them my business".
Third, a poor looking site says a lot about your company. It is a store front and an ugly store front does not entice people to come in and stay. Beauty has always attracted people and a good design will open the door to the opportunity of more and longer visits. Once the visitor is in, make it easy for him to stay and see everything. Navigation and links should be laid out in an easy to find manner.
Yes, I really have not talked SEO services. Search engine optimization is only a part of a comprehensive strategy to accomplish one task: to attract and retain customers.
SEO Services Shouldn't Be Hurting Your Site
Because of the high exposure of our site in the SEO industry, we are literally bombarded with exchange schemes. Many SEO companies are under the very wrong impression that any link to their site will increase their ranks. Here is how it goes:
You are contacted by a webmaster who says he posted a link to you site from www.zzz.com. He is asking if you could link to his site, www.yyy.com. Here is the problem: what he is doing is a 3-way link exchange, which is basically playing with fire. On the surface, it looks like a good strategy because you get an incoming non reciprocal link and so does he. The major flaws are the following:
-The site he is putting your link on is basically a dump full of outgoing links, basically a link farm. If it does have a PR now, it is very likely that as Google and other engines catch up, it will be penalized or banned.
-Once you are found out as part of the 3 way link, you may be banned or penalized as well.
If anyone with half a brain out there thinks that the very smart people at the major search engines are not able to find out this obviously bad SEO practice, well, it is definitely time to change careers. Sorry about the harsh words, but we are so fed up with the incompetent SEOs who not only push this scheme with their own sites, but they use it with their clients. It is bad for the search engine relevancy results and the SEO industry in general.
SEO Company News: Google and the Orion Algorithm
Some recent news organizations around the world have reported that Google has acquired the rights to use the Orion algorithm.
The Orion algorithm is the work of Ori Allon, an Israeli student working at the University of South Wales in Australia. The concept behind the technology is not new: it revolves around the ability of a search engine to respond to queries by sifting through results and provide snippets. Furthermore, it provides results based on a wide understanding of the search.
The Orion model was originally designed to work with search engines. As every searcher knows, all SEs sometimes return results that are not relevant to the keywords. Often the user has to click on the web site only to find out it is unrelated to the topic, creating a negative experience.
Orion gives the searchers an expert review of a term results by returning related topics and other useful information to expand knowledge. Let’s go with an example: If you were to conduct a query for the key phrase American Constitution, the search would come up with direct results related to the topic as well as the names of the Founding Fathers, the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 etc. In essence, Orion would function as a researcher who can understand a key word not with “tunnel vision” but as a comprehensive, broad request to elaborate on a topic and provide a more complete view. Without a working prototype available to the public, we can only assume Google’s interest in Orion is warranted.
What are the implications for a SEO company trying to optimize a web site? Orion is likely using a much more sophisticated approach to search engine results compared to present attempts to provide snippets before someone clicks on a result. The snippet feature is only part of what Orion is about. The algorithm behind this technology focuses on taking search engine queries to the next level, which is something many prominent figures in the SE industry have promised in the last recent years.
If the algorithm is implemented in Google search, content is going to play an even more important part in the optimization efforts. A heated debate is currently happening in many well known SEO forums on the importance of content vs acquiring incoming links to climb ranks. The mere fact that Mr Allon is now working at Googleplex, points at the seriousness on the part of Google management to study the technology. Whether Orion is going to translate into a feasible component of web search or be shelved as many other projects in the past, all remains to be seen.
Choosing a real SEO Company
If you wonder why we are posting regarding choosing a real (vs bogus) SEO, I would like to explain.
Too often we receive inquiries about guarantees. It goes like this: "We guarantee top results". No one can guarantee top results. This is not from us: Google says this it its webmaster guidelines. The reasoning is simple. Search engines are not controlled by SEO companies. If you hire a lawyer to defend you from a lawsuit, do you ask for guarantees? If you do, no one will give them to you. The reason is simple: an attorney is not the judge or jury and SEOs are not the search engines. What you do when choosing a lawyer is to check references, success rate, experience. Do the same with an SEO company.
Beware of $150/month SEO. If it is too good to be true, it probably is. There is absolutely no way an SEO can do effective work for competitive phrases for this little. It would take below minimum wage and even foreign companies cannot compete. This of course does not hold true if the SEO uses "canned" software that cuts work to a fraction. What you get is what you pay for: run of the mill SEO that thousands are doing and will give you no competitive edge. The game is to outrank the competition, not to follow the mass.
This is why we call ourselves an
ethical SEO company. We do not resort to gimmicks, secret techniques or unethical ways to put a site temporarily on top of the search engine only to see it disappear because of questionable tactics.
