Case Study – Organic SEO – Getting Listed On Google Page One

The objective of this post is to blow away the myths around putting your website on Google page one. The evidence is clear to see in the screenshot images attached to this article. Have you ever thought about ‘making a little extra money’ running a website that sells other peoples products for commission? this is common known as ‘Affiliate Marketing’ and I can tell you now Google does not like these sorts of website, just do a google search for ‘google guidelines handbook’ and you will soon get the picture. Ok so bye now you just know what a challenge that would be marketing an ‘affiliate website’ on the internet depending on Google for FREE clicks and the sole purpose of your website, just to make you a little extra money.

What im about to show you now is proof of how I created a brand new website only six weeks ago and within a few days of listing my first products I made sales from 100% FREE traffic sent to me by Google.co.uk

YES thats right a website built at the begining of the month that had orders by the end of the month, in fact the stats go something like this:

BETWEEN 26 December 2011 and 15 January 2012 over 2000 page views, grabbed over 200 Google page one rankings for my keywords inlcuding 8 NUMBER ONE’S for a website that I designed and built using FREE software and FREE marketing techniques to get 15 sales with Amazon that they will pay me commision on.

The myths im going to blow away are:

it can take three months at least to get a google page one ranking in the natural results for competetive keywords and phrases

You cant a decent ranking on Google page one without building loads of links

Im sure their will be many un-answered questions in your mind after you see the evidence below, but rest assured their is no spamming, no black hat techniques, no breaking the rules in anyway. Everything is above board and nothing to hide, except my formula of course, guess what you never know, ask me and i might eve begine to share that with you too.

heres the proof:

1 Domain reg date

2 over 200 Google page one rankings

3  over 2000 page views

4 FREE organic traffic from Google is the top traffic source

5 and here proof i made my first sale within 3 days

6 and here proof i went on to make 13 more sales in 15 days

So if your SEO Company is dragging its heels in getting your webite listed on Google page one maybe its time you had a chat with me.

Over the last week SEO Experts around the globe have been debating Google Freshness Update

Thе freshness update follows οn frοm whаt Google ѕtаrtеԁ last year wіth “Caffeine”. Thе nеw search algorithm determines whеn сеrtаіn search queries ѕhουƖԁ return more timely content, instead οf older pages thаt mіɡht rank higher. Sο content freshness іѕ given more importance.

Google Engineer, Amit Singhal, announced thе update οn Thе Official Google Blog:

Given thе incredibly fаѕt pace аt whісh information moves іn today’s world, thе mοѕt recent information саn bе frοm thе last week, day οr even minute, аnԁ depending οn thе search terms, thе algorithm needs tο bе аbƖе tο figure out іf a result frοm a week ago аbουt a TV ѕhοw іѕ recent, οr іf a result frοm a week ago аbουt breaking news іѕ tοο οƖԁ.

Whісh 35% οf searches wіƖƖ bе impacted? Here аrе thе examples Google hаѕ provided:

• Recent events οr hot topics. Fοr recent events οr hot topics thаt bеɡіn trending οn thе web, уου want tο find thе latest information immediately. Now whеn уου search fοr current events Ɩіkе [occupy oakland protest], οr fοr thе latest news аbουt thе [nba lockout], уου’ll see more high-quality pages thаt mіɡht οnƖу bе minutes οƖԁ.
• Regularly recurring events.Sοmе events take рƖасе οn a regularly recurring basis, such аѕ annual conferences Ɩіkе [ICALP] οr аn event Ɩіkе thе [presidential election]. Without specifying wіth уουr keywords, іt’s implied thаt уου expect tο see thе mοѕt recent event, аnԁ nοt one frοm 50 years ago. Thеrе аrе аƖѕο things thаt recur more frequently, ѕο now whеn уου’re searching fοr thе latest [NFL scores], [dancing wіth thе stars] results οr [exxon earnings], уου’ll see thе latest information.
• Frequent updates. Thеrе аrе аƖѕο searches fοr information thаt changes οftеn, bυt isn’t really a hot topic οr a recurring event. Fοr example, іf уου’re researching thе [best slr cameras], οr уου’re іn thе market fοr a nеw car аnԁ want [subaru impreza reviews], уου probably want thе mοѕt up tο date information.

The Content Freshness Update Is A Good Move

Wіth internet users looking tο Facebook аnԁ Twitter fοr more timely аnԁ relevant updates, the freshness update bу Google іѕ a ɡοοԁ mονе.

Justin Briggs wrote a great post evaluating the Google freshness update here: http://justinbriggs.org/methods-for-evaluating-freshness

Highly respected Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz also posted a video in his daily blog: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-freshness-update-whiteboard-friday

There have been more reactions to the algorithm update. There seems to be a divide over whether or not Google putting relevance on freshness will indeed provide better quality for readers. Most of the skepticism comes from those are unsure whether or not Google will know when recency should truly be important.

 ”As we announced just over a week ago, we’ve made a significant improvement to how we rank fresh content. This change impacts roughly 35 percent of total searches (around 6-10% of search results to a noticeable degree) and better determines the appropriate level of freshness for a given query.”

The update, which seeks to build on the Caffeine web indexing system, has said to be affecting approximately 35% of all search queries. For example, if you search for “upcoming Brooklyn theater shows” Google understands that the search results should not include shows from last year.

The freshness update follows on from what Google started last year with “Caffeine”. The new search algorithm determines when certain search queries should return more timely content, instead of older pages that might rank higher. So content freshness is given more importance.

Google Engineer, Amit Singhal, announced the update on The Official Google Blog:

Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today’s world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day or even minute, and depending on the search terms, the algorithm needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old.

Which 35% of searches will be impacted? Here are the examples Google has provided:

• Recent events or hot topics. For recent events or hot topics that begin trending on the web, you want to find the latest information immediately. Now when you search for current events like [occupy oakland protest], or for the latest news about the [nba lockout], you’ll see more high-quality pages that might only be minutes old.
• Regularly recurring events.Some events take place on a regularly recurring basis, such as annual conferences like [ICALP] or an event like the [presidential election]. Without specifying with your keywords, it’s implied that you expect to see the most recent event, and not one from 50 years ago. There are also things that recur more frequently, so now when you’re searching for the latest [NFL scores], [dancing with the stars] results or [exxon earnings], you’ll see the latest information.
• Frequent updates. There are also searches for information that changes often, but isn’t really a hot topic or a recurring event. For example, if you’re researching the [best slr cameras], or you’re in the market for a new car and want [subaru impreza reviews], you probably want the most up to date information.

With internet users looking to Facebook and Twitter for more timely and relevant updates, this “fresh” update by Google is a good move.

Ads Above The Fold

Matt Cutts said that Google was testing algorithms that determine how much content is available above the fold on your web pages.  He cautioned that sites that have ads that obscure content could be in trouble.  Check your site – do your website visitors see the content easily and readily on your site or is it obstructed by ads and other distractions?

10 Algorithm Updates

http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/11/ten-recent-algorithm-changes.html

23 questions to ask yourself about your content quality

While Google has dropped some hints here and there on what it considers to be a low quality page or article, Google has now been clearer than ever as to what it’s looking at.

“Some publishers have fixated on our prior Panda algorithm change, but Panda was just one of roughly 500 search improvements we expect to roll out to search this year,” writes Google Fellow Amit Singhal on the Google Webmaster Central blog. “In fact, since we launched Panda, we’ve rolled out over a dozen additional tweaks to our ranking algorithms, and some sites have incorrectly assumed that changes in their rankings were related to Panda. Search is a complicated and evolving art and science, so rather than focusing on specific algorithmic tweaks, we encourage you to focus on delivering the best possible experience for users.”

Google lists the following as “questions that one could use to assess the ‘quality’ of a page or an article”:

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
• How much quality control is done on content?
• Does the article describe both sides of a story?
• Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
• Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
• For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
• Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
• Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

The company is careful to note that it’s not disclosing actual ranking signals used in its algorithms, but these questions will help you “step into Google’s mindset.” These questions are things that Google says it asks itself as it writes algorithms.

Singhal also reminds webmasters, “One other specific piece of guidance we’ve offered is that low-quality content on some parts of a website can impact the whole site’s rankings, and thus removing low quality pages, merging or improving the content of individual shallow pages into more useful pages, or moving low quality pages to a different domain could eventually help the rankings of your higher-quality content.”

The Google Quality Rating Guidelines is a handbook used by Google Search Quality Raters from around the world to rate the quality of results from specific searches. URL Raters are given a URL and a search query and instructed to visit the landing page and assign a rating based on guidelines from the handbook.

The latest update for 201 1 of Google’s Quality Rating Guidelines was leaked online a couple of weeks ago, in this video SEO London Rod Gardner London takes a look at the Google Quality Guidelines Handbook issued to users of Google’s Human Rating System. The video highlights what makes a bad website and how they rate usefull content.

Google’s Criteria for a “Useful” Webpage is rather broad and states that a single query can have many useful webpages. As with any manual rating system the answers will be subjective, however raters are asked to decide if the webpage is a “good fit” for the query. Some examples state that the page may be “highly satisfying, authoritative, entertaining, and/or recent (such as breaking news on a topic).”

Pages earning the “relevant” rating will still need to fit the query but will have less helpful information compared to useful pages. This may include information that is older or only addresses one part of the query.

The “slightly relevant” or “off topic” ratings are saved for web pages which Google wants to avoid. In these sections Google asks raters to look past tricks tricks like including search terms in the URL, page title and copied or repeated keywords when assigning a rating to the page.

Finally, the document also discusses what makes a page bad enough to be marked as “spam”.

Catch the attention of search engine users, gear them to your website and convert them into long-term clients!

• Grow your contact list, add BIG INDUSTRY NAMES to your client list.

Learn some crucial tricks and tips and give a massive boost to your marketing career.

• Use Google sitemaps to instantly place newly-created pages on the website in the Google Search Index

• Learn Google Analytics, determine the direction  of your visitor flow and design successful online campaigns

• Do not remain dependent on SEO companies to generate revenues for you. Plan your SEO strategies that work best for your online business.

• Get notified by Google Alerts, keep track of your online activities and monitor your Internet business interest

• Promote your products, study your market and analyze the price structure offered by your competitor…all this through Google
  Froogle

• Log on to Google eBlogger, offer detailed information of your product or service, interact with people and attract qualified traffic to your website.

• Use Google Groups to create business networks with targeted customers

• Monetize your website content, keep yourself up-to-date about keywords being bid upon and find out the limit to which
  advertisers are ready to pay by participating in Google Adsense program

• Optimize your adwords cost with relevant, targeted ad campaigns and achieve an above-normal visitor conversion ratio

• Get a deeper insight into techniques of generating search engine optimized content

• Enjoy huge volumes of traffic, increase your sales and quickly become a competitor to reckon with

Get your FREE copy now! Try it out yourself!

http://www.seogoogle.biz/get-your-website-listed-on-the-first-page-of-google/

Do you think you will have a similar opportunity of checking out a book with as much ease?

If Google moves to this kind of user experience, which it very well could, given that it’s already in place on Image Search, it could be good news for sites that rank beyond the first page of search results. Most people probably don’t click through to very many second, third (and beyond) pages when they’re searching. At least not most of the time. They may, however, be more inclined to do a little more scrolling. Granted, they may have to click to show more results (as seen in the video).

It’s a pretty nice user experience in my opinion. They don’t make you click at all though. It’s more like scrolling through your Facebook News Feed or Twitter timeline (both of which are pretty popular activities).

Google is always talking about improving the user experience, and I think this would do just that. Another reason why I believe they may end up going forward with this is the speed factor. Google has been all about speeding things up lately. The most notable examples of this include the launches of Google Instant and Instant Pages, which loads the result Google thinks you’re going to click on before you actually click on it.

Tell us what you think and leave a comment on this discussion below

The standards of SEO have changed drastically. Getting high ranking is just not enough now. Getting hordes of traffic is not enough. What you need is conversion. The number of people visiting your site should change to leads or sales. Google Analytics can help you in analysing the traffic trends on your website, and direct you in making the right changes in your SEO techniques.

Creating Filters:
With filters, you can weed out the data you don’t want in your reports. For multiple filters, you can create multiple profiles to track different filtered data. However, have one master profile that has all your data. You must create filters within your Profile Settings page. Here is more on creating multiple profiles. Andre Scholten of Yoast.com also stresses that in order to get the right ranking in Google Analytics report, a new filter is needed. He says, “Well, you can’t specifically track the exact position of the keyword that was clicked like you can do with AdWords. But it is possible to determine the page he was on. A ranking tool can tell you over and over again that a certain keyword is around position 15 in Google while Google Analytics claims he is on page 1 (position 1 to 10). This effect can come from ‘personalized search’ or ‘local results’ that can influence the Google rankings dramatically. ” See his tutorial on how to use and understand the filtered data here.

Advanced Segments:
Advanced Segmentation is a tool with which you can filter the Analytics data in a report, without having to create separate profiles. You can then keep track of different groups and traffic sources and also analyse their behaviour. These segments can be created from the control bar at the top of any report, or the Advanced Segmentation section underneath the list of your reports. To set them up, click on “Advanced Segments”, click “Create new custom segment” and then you can add your dimensions and metrics. You can segment organic visits including your brand name, or visits that are made after words like – ‘help’ or ‘ways’ or ‘buy’. You can go in depth, analyse for instance the referral traffic that you are getting and their conversions. Here is a very helpful blog on Advanced Segmentation.

Custom Reports:
It is of prime importance to customise your Analytics. You should know what works for you. Now, you may be happy by knowing general stuff about number of visits, from where, bounce rate etc. But how does all this relate to the most important word- conversions? This you can gather from ordering a customised report. On the dashboard- Follow these steps:

Custom Reporting–>Manage Custom Reports–> Create new custom report–>

At this stage, you can drag and drop your metrics and dimensions. You can always, save the report and modify the metrics to see further insights.

Creating Goals:
Setting up goals is the best way to achieve conversion. Google Analytics helps you evaluate how well your site is moving towards the goal in your mind. A goal varies for every site- and so does the funnel. This is the process of setting up a goal:

Overview section–>Edit–>Add Goal ( in the Goals section).

Now you can set the sales as a goal for an e-commerce site and time spent on a page for a publishing site as your goal.

After that Name the Goal–> define URL Destination as the Goal Type–> For Goal Details select Head Match for match type, and /feeds as the Goal URL

Here is the detailed process of setting up and analysing goals.

Google Analytics looks simple but has has many layers and provides data that you can filter-segment and then customise it to set better goals that lead to conversion. Being an SEO, reviewing these customised reports will help you work better on your site and convert every visit into something profitable. The conclusion is simple- Get more out of Google Analytics.

Getting page views at any cost is not a good tactic. It never works in the long run, even if it may work for a short while. Beware of any company that recommends you employ any of these techniques.

1. Cloaking

You can design your website to be efficiently catalogued by Google, and you can specify which sites should be cached or ignored by Googlebots. Designing your Web site so that search engines see one thing and visitors see totally different content is called cloaking. This can be done with redirects or with programming, and it’s strictly verboten.

Nobody likes to be tricked this way. If they’re looking for a website on knitting, they’ll be very ticked to end up on a website about horses. Or ads. Let’s face it, the redirected site is never about anything fun. Cloaking your Web site is a sure-fire way to get banned from Google and probably the worst thing you could do for Google.

2. Duplicate Content

Spam sites sometimes try to collect page views by duplicating the same content on multiple pages. Don’t copy and paste large amounts of text from your own pages, and certainly don’t violate copyright by copying content from elsewhere. Google has been known to ban sites that duplicate too much content or at least severely penalize their ranking in search results. This can occasionally cause problems, because some spamming Web site might be duplicating your content. If you find someone violating your copyright this way, you can let Google know.

3. Have a Robot Write Your Web Site

Just as it’s a bad idea to duplicate content, it’s a worse idea to get a machine to write your content for you. There are programs out there that duplicate the same content but make a few changes here and there. If Google catches you, and they’re pretty good at catching this, you can kiss your page views goodbye. Write your own content. That’s as simple as it gets. Don’t buy “instant AdSense” Web sites. If this really made lots of passive money, they wouldn’t be selling them.

4. Add Keywords that Don’t Relate to Your Content

When you list keywords, do list keywords that directly relate to your site, and don’t repeat the same keyword multiple times. Spamming keywords by listing every word in the dictionary is a great way to have your ranking lowered in Google. Likewise, don’t use the trademarked names of products made by your competitors as keywords. At best it’s a bad user experience, at worse it can get you sued by those competitors.

5. Link Exchanges and Bad Neighborhoods

Linking ordinarily would make you a good neighbor and a good citizen of the Internet. However, just because someone links to you does not obligate you to link back to them. Sometimes you do get judged on the quality of the friends you keep. Google calls spamming sites bad neighborhoods, and linking to them could lower your PageRank. Link exchanging programs, paid link placement, and other schemes to manipulate PageRank are far worse sins. You may get away with it for a while, but eventually Google will catch onto the sceme, and your search results will drop like an anchor.

6. Hide Text

Don’t try to hide keywords by making the background color the same as the font color. This is called keyword stuffing or fontmatching. Google and other search engines are increasingly sophisticated at catching this, and they’ll likely remove any offending Web sites from their search engine index. Likewise, watch how small you make the text. In a variation of keyword stuffing, some people try to put teeny tiny text at the bottom of a page. It doesn’t work.

7. Title Stacking

Don’t try to add extra <title> tags for more keywords. This cousin of keyword stuffing is called title stacking, and it won’t win you any friends at Google. One title per page, although you may separate that title with a dash to hit a few more keywords that do relate to your content, such as “Pie Crust Recipe – Homemade Pastry Dough.”

8. Distribute Viruses, Trojans, or Other Malware / Badware

If your site is distributing a virus, trojan, or other badware, Google’s going to remove you from their index for the public good. This should be a no-brainer. Double check any software you agree to distribute to make sure it isn’t harmful, and make sure your server is secure, so that hackers don’t decide to hijack your Web site and distribute malicious software for you.

9. Doorway Pages

Doorway pages or Gateway pages are pages that are optimized for one key term but are really designed to be gateways to lead you to different content. For instance the “blueberry,” “strawberry,” and “orange” gateways might all be designed to get you to go to “fruit punch.” Doorway pages usually have very little in the way of original content and often cloak or redirect users to the intended Web site. Be aware of affiliate programs, because some of these may look like doorway pages to Google.

10. Automated Inquiries

Google doesn’t appreciate robots writing your content, and they’re even less appreciative of robots checking your ranking. Automated Google queries and automated link submission are both against Google’s terms of service, and both of them can get your site banned. They tie up computing resources for everyone.

In Conclusion

Optimize your Web site for Google by designing a clear, well organized site. Gather traffic by writing original content. Don’t try to trick people or take the lazy way out of making a good site. Focus on the ‘User Experience’ (users spend more time on your site surfing deep into relevant pages that will indicate to Google that they delivered a very relevant result)  also build your popularity on social networks such as Google+, Facebook & Twitter as this is probably the biggest signal to Google that likely to boost your rankings.

Googles New Focus On Local Search

Google’s main mission in constantly working on the site is to provide search results which are the most relevant to the things that people are searching for. This is why they have begun to put such a strong focus on local search. They feel that providing people with results that are easily within their reach on a physical level is going to provide them with a result that they are more likely to actually use. They also are doing this for a number of other, more complicated reasons, such as providing search products for use in mobile devices. In these cases, people are often searching for something because they are already out and about, not at a computer, so local results are going to be much more practical for them.

You can also see the focus that Google is putting on local search by the improvements that they are making to the products which are involved in local search. Maps, for instance, is an area that Google has been putting a great deal of work into lately. This doesn’t just mean the actual Maps function itself, but the search results that it provides to people. The local business listings which appear in maps are an important part of local search. New opportunities have arisen such as the opportunity to sponsor business listings, showing again that this is a new key area of focus for Google.

Because the most important search engine in the world is putting so much emphasis on this area of search, local business owners need to get on the bandwagon sooner rather than later. When it comes to search and getting your site to perform in the rankings, you need to always be moving, and to keep pace with the current developments as they arise. In this case, that means that people need to start being aware of local search and to start taking measures to make sure that they are rising to the top of their local search results.

There are a number of things that people can do that can help them in terms of local search. One of the most important is making sure that your Google local business listing is correct and complete. You may also look into sponsoring a listing, as mentioned earlier. However, just like SEO for regular searches, there are some things you can do on and off your site to make it rank better in local results.

First of all, you need to make sure that your website has a complete contact page which includes a physical address, as the search engines will spider this. You may even include that information on every page of your site in some form and see better results. Also, rather than just worrying about links to your site containing anchor text, you now want to build links to your site which are listed with the address of your business, such as would appear in a Yellow pages directory.