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.

These 11 SEO tips for e-commerce sites can help you tackle your e-commerce site’s SEO in favour of ranking higher in the search engine results, and get more visitors, customers and sales for your online store. Many of these tips apply to just about any type of website, too.

1. Create unique content on each of your product and product category pages.
2. Discover what shoppers are actually searching for.
3. Create pages for categories people are searching for.
4. Interlink your pages using good anchor text.
5. Allow people to share your products on social media sites.
6. Get valuable backlinks.
7. Avoid duplicate content issues.
8. Use descriptive URLs.
9. Let visitors leave reviews.
10. Include a sitemap to help Google find all your pages.
11. Update your website content regularly.

Once you know what is a good keyword and how to do keyword research, then you can find the keywords which you should be using for your on page SEO. WordPress combined with a good free SEO plugin like All in One SEO Pack makes implementing most of the following keyword related on page SEO factors simple as can be, but let’s take a look at where we need to make sure to effectively use our keywords.

Keyword(s) In Title Tags - The title tag is the line of clickable text which appears in Google’s SERPs for each ranking page. This is also the text which appears at the top of your browser’s window in naming or identifying the page which you are currently browsing. It’s important to work your best (most relevant, highest searched, lowest competition) keywords into your title tags as Google will consider this over most factors when indexing and ranking your page and in general in determining what it’s about.

Keywords In Heading Tags - Effective use of heading tags helps Google know what is most important on your site, and what text it should pick out over the rest. It’s been estimated that most people when opening a new page will first instinctively read the top left of your page before other elements. Consequently, your most important message using your most important keyword that you want to get across should be here and ideally using the H1 tag.

From here, less important keywords should be put in H2, and even less important but still noteworthy keywords should be in H3, and so on. An effective use of heading tags is a valuable skill to have in on page SEO.

Keywords In the Body - There is no substitute for good content, and in SEO a large part of good content is effectively including keywords where applicable. This means no over saturation because as I mentioned in the last chapter this will get you penalized and possibly de-indexed. A number of SEOers have argued for years over just the right saturation which will get you ranking well but not penalized and they have thrown out different figures to try to answer this magical ratio.

My advice is to not waste your time trying to crunch ratios as there is no perfect ratio. Besides, you have better things to do with your time and other ways to optimize your site. Just make it look natural and don’t over think it and you’ll be fine.

Words Surrounding Keywords - This all may seem a bit redundant, but the words around the keywords are just as important as the keywords which you include to begin with.

Google not only looks at the keywords which you are targeting, but it looks at the words surrounding them to get a better idea of what your site is about, not to mention that it does this to check you on keyword stuffing and make sure you’re not doing anything “black hat” which could get you in trouble.

Keyword In Domain Name - This takes some careful planning, but many SEOers agree that this has a decent amount of bearing on how Google ranks a site for a keyword. In continuing with this point, you can set your site up as it expands to be more SEO friendly by naming subdomains after keywords, as well. So be as specific as possible when naming if you can. For example name a subdomain of a music site “Gibson-guitars” rather than just “guitars”.

Note the use of the hyphen in the example. Hyphens represent spaces, so if you are using keywords in your URLs, break them up. While keywords in the subdomains don’t carry quite as much weight as the top level of the domain, they’re nonetheless important and helpful to Google in identifying what your site is about.

Why Hire A SEO Company ?

Do SEO Services Really Work?

People often ask “does SEO work or is just smoke and mirrors?” well I think that is a very valid question worth asking. To those professional SEO Consultants like myself who have been doing search engine optimization (SEO) for over ten years, for those with even a little SEO knowledge this may seem like a very odd question!

Google and any search engine is looking for the best site to rank for your particular target keyword phrase. When you understand how Google chooses the best site you can then manipulate your site to take advantage of that. You accomplish this by doing two things:

Search engine optimization aims to put your site link right there in the Organic column when someone types in a search phrase related to your site. You can’t buy your way there! You have to earn it. So you can imagine how powerful it can be once you harness this method and put it to use for your Web pages!

This method will take time but in the end, your result will be well worth the effort. Often people get frustrated and give up with this method because there are too many aspects that need to be covered. This is principally because they just don’t have the right tools or know how. In reality doing basic SEO is a simple step-by-step process that anyone can do, for more competetive search terms you could use SEO services provided by a professional SEO Company.

 ”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.”

SEOMoz Top 10 Links for November

1. Does Google consider SEO to be spam? SPOILER: Not white hat SEO. (video)
2. 17 things I wish I’d known when starting my first business Neil shares the insights he gained through starting and running his own companies
3. 16 Insights into Google’s Rating Guidelines Did you catch Google’s leaked official guide for quality ratings? If not, or if you just didn’t have the time to go through it, Dr. Pete distills the 16 main insights he pulled from the guide
4. HIVE 2011: Opening Skit – Translation Box A comedy skit about when developers and designers try to communicate. There might be an app for that. (video)
5. Why Most Social Media Departments Fail Tamar reminds us that social media is not all fun and games. As businesses or professionals, we need to set goals and make sure social works seamlessly with the rest of our plans.
6. Google Reader redesign: Terrible decision, or worst decision? Brian, a former Google Reader PM, talks about how the Reader’s redesign is not only unpopular, but also misses the point of what Reader’s for: reading.
7. 4 Tricks for Building Your Email List E-mail marketing still remains a powerful source of business for returning, loyal customers. (At least, I hope that you’re reading this e-mail.)
8. MC Hammer launching his own search engine
9. What does “(not provided) keywords” really mean There’s been lots of talk about how Google’s promise that only 10% of traffic won’t show organic keywords; however, David’s research seems to suggest that number is closer to 25%, at least for the sites he works on. Relatedly, there’s currently an online petition, Keyword Transparency, to protest this change.
10. David Calvo juggles and solves Rubik’s Cubes

Your web design is the face of your business online. Through designing, you are going to make an impact on your customers. While creating any website, the basic aspects of web design are-

Website Content

The content is the substance of the website and should be relevant to the site. It should target the customers and visitors.

Usability

Time on site is very important so make your website design user-friendly with the interface and navigation system simple and reliable.

Appearance

The graphics and text should include a single style that flows throughout for consistency.

Visibility of the site

The site should be easy to find via most search engines. Optimisation is a process of making something functional and effective. Web design optimisation is a continuous process of improving the design to achieve business goals. Designing an optimised web page so it loads quickly is very important to Google, you want your website visitor to quickly find the information they had come for.

The reasons for investing in search engine optimisation are varied. These include increasing download speed, increasing its search engine ranking and applying modern web standards.

Now the question arises whether optimisation of web design is possible or not. Here, we are going to discuss the ways SEO applies to web design.

Optimise Graphics For Web Use

Even today, a large number of people use dial up connection for web use. With slow browsing speed, they don’t want to wait for pages to load. And as a business owner, you can’t afford to loose a single customer. If you have a graphic intensive site, all you need to do is optimize your graphics for web use. Here optimizing means compressing the size of graphics for fast download.

Emphasize On Content

Make sure that the content of the website is laid out effectively. If you only concentrate on look and ignore the content, you can’t make an impact on your customers. You need to provide a concise, convincing message and information about your website, if you want your visitors to buy your product or service. Make sure that your content is simple and easy to understand.

Install A Navigation System That Compliments Search Engines

Navigation systems are built to help visitors find their way around your website. Therefore, they should be designed carefully to make them search engine friendly. Search engines need a chain of hypertext links starting at your home page that will take them page by page in your entire site. The problem is that if JavaScript and flash systems replace plain hyperlinks, the search engine may not be able to find the underlying pages. You can optimize the flash and images for better use and quick downloading.

Emphasize On Color, Shapes And Font Size

Things like color, shape and sizes of font can make a big impact on overall message. Using blue, green, silver, grey as color can create a calm effect. Using rounded corners instead of hard edges within your design can enable a soft and personalised feeling.

Keep It Simple

Look at some successful websites like Google that is very simple. Do not use bloated features. Keep your goals as well as visitor’s needs in mind when adding a feature.

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.

Search Engine Optimization relies upon five key ingredients: keywords, metatags, consistency, expert advice and creativity. Incorporating these elements in your article writing can and will increase your profits and traffic to your web site.

1. Arguably the most important element in search engine optimization is keywords. Keywords in integral in article marketing as they are what allow search engines to pull your article from the millions of others available on the internet according to their relevancy. It cannot be over emphasized how important good keyword research is to search engine marketing.

2. Metatags allow search engines to accurately list your article in their data bases. While it may seem that metatags are more important than keywords, they are not. There are many websites that do not use metatags. Many people think that metatags are now much less important than they once were due to being ignored by some search engines.

3. Consistency is also important for search engine optimization. It is essential that you develop a consistent pattern for optimizing your search engine potential. It is recommended that you follow up on your efforts, this allow you to assess what did and did not work as well as why or why not. Search engines monitor how often you update your site which helps determine how often they visit your site for new content.

4. Never under estimate the value of expert advice. There are professionals as wel as businesses that are quite adept at Search Engine Optimization. If you are just getting started, consulting someone with more experience in this are can be a worth while expert. Under their guidance you to can become an expert in this field.

5. Creativity can be your best friend when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. Thinking outside the proverbial box can put you in the winner’s circle when it comes to increased profits and traffic from Search Engine Optimization.Tips For Search Engine Optimization: Five Important Keys To Starting Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization relies upon five key ingredients: keywords, metatags, consistency, expert advice and creativity. Incorporating these elements in your article writing can and will increase your profits and traffic to your web site.

1. Arguably the most important element in search engine optimization is keywords. Keywords in integral in article marketing as they are what allow search engines to pull your article from the millions of others available on the internet according to their relevancy. It cannot be over emphasized how important good keyword research is to search engine marketing.

2. Metatags allow search engines to accurately list your article in their data bases. While it may seem that metatags are more important than keywords, they are not. There are many websites that do not use metatags. Many people think that metatags are now much less important than they once were due to being ignored by some search engines.

3. Consistency is also important for search engine optimization. It is essential that you develop a consistent pattern for optimizing your search engine potential. It is recommended that you follow up on your efforts, this allow you to assess what did and did not work as well as why or why not. Search engines monitor how often you update your site which helps determine how often they visit your site for new content.

4. Never under estimate the value of expert advice. There are professionals as wel as businesses that are quite adept at Search Engine Optimization. If you are just getting started, consulting someone with more experience in this are can be a worth while expert. Under their guidance you to can become an expert in this field.

5. Creativity can be your best friend when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. Thinking outside the proverbial box can put you in the winner’s circle when it comes to increased profits and traffic from Search Engine Optimization.