Here's a rap tutorial about how web standards and proper design can affect the ranking and conversion of pages on your site. Nice!



Carl Panczak, General Manager, Sydney

Labels: Search Engine Optimisation, Web marketing, Web standards

In May this year (2007) Google announced the arrival of Google Universal, a new way of integrating search results to combine images, video, maps and regular search results all on the same result page.

If you’re not taking notice of this new development, you’ll be left behind when it rolls out of beta and into the mainstream results.

I was at a SEO/SEM conference last week and was lucky enough to lunch with Bruce Clay (one of the world's top SEO people) - he speaks with Matt Cutts every other day (Matt Cutts is Google's principle "webmaster SEO" spokesperson: www.mattcutts.com). Google intends to fully roll out Universal Search this time next year, although it's already in beta phase. Here's an example of what we'll all start seeing more of: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=darth+vader&btnG=Search

Google is already displaying more images and video (so THAT'S why they bought YouTube for a squillion bucks), and maps (for local search) so that a user's search experience will be fully catered for when they visit Google. Bruce also said Google was rolling Google Universal because Google has very 'unsticky' pages. Even though Google gets a ridiculous amount of traffic each day, time spent on their site is very low. They're hoping that with content from Google Video and YouTube imbedded into the search results, people will spend more time on site and have more chance to click on Google Ads (where Google makes most of its money).

Bruce said that from an SEO/SEM perspective we should be getting our clients to think about providing more video content - creating it, posting it on YouTube, link to the video heavily so that it has a strong chance of appearing at Google for search results (not just at YouTube). Companies who do this now will have a real head start when Google Universal rolls out in earnest.

It’s not much fun playing catch up.

Chris Thomas, Search Engine Optimisation Specialist

Labels: Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation

It’s an interesting process SEO. Sometimes even keyword research can be enlightening; it’s been fascinating to watch key phrases change over the years as searchers have become more in tune with searching and search engines. Instead of typing ‘full blown’ questions into search engines (like the www.askjeeves.com model – now www.ask.com people now type in phrases which hardly make sense! And when this happens, it’s very difficult to insert those weird phrases into your ‘sales’ copy.

Recently, we came up against one such situation where we discovered a popular key phrase but found it incredibly difficult to get it "on-page". The phrase was: ‘pre pay credit card’. We discovered it after the customer gave us some reports from their AdWords campaign. They supplied us with visitor and conversion data. Over the period of one month there were 304 visitors for ‘pre pay credit card’, and 42 conversions (or applications). That makes the conversion rate of the key phrase ‘pre pay credit card’ an astonishing 13.8%!

I’LL TAKE IT!

Wouldn’t it be nice to have one of the client’s web pages ranking top 3 for that lovely key phrase!

The next challenge was how to get it on the page and integrated into a sentence. We thought we’d done it by simply wrapping the phrase in quotation marks… Like this:

"Get your (Customer name) ‘pre pay credit card’ by applying online now."

The customer wanted it, but they were unable to due to the phrase not meeting certain conditions (‘acceptable marketing language’) as set out in the reference guide supplied by the major (global) credit card vendor. Obviously it would be more appropriate to use ‘prepaid credit card’ (which makes tons more sense), but we’d already optimised the home page for that phrase! Dammit.

To get around the problem we decided to get a bit more lateral. We sat down with the client to discuss some work-arounds including:

• A FAQ section to each page, with questions like "Is this a pre pay credit card" and then an answer "No, this is not a pre pay credit card, it is a prepaid credit card..." etc – Turns out, this was ok!


• We were also allowed to put variations in the Title tag and Meta-tags, just not on the page.

We’ll be implementing the idea in the next few weeks… Let’s hope we hit the top! I’ll keep you posted…

Chris Thomas, Search Engine Optimisation Specialist

Labels: Search Engine Optimisation

SEO - Search Engine Optimization - is a set of methodologies aimed at improving the position of a Web site in search engine listings. Primarily, to achieve high rankings in search engines, a web site must be optimized for keywords relevant to the Web site’s subject. The keyword phrases you choose to optimize for should be equivalent to the queries users are likely to enter into search engines when seeking the product or service your Web site offers.

It is important that you optimize your site for the right keywords. Choosing popular single-word keywords is unlikely to yield satisfactory results. If, on the other hand you have very specific words that are unlikely to be found on many of your competitor’s sites, such as the name of your business for example, then it would be foolish to ignore these. But it is much better to choose a number of two- or three-word keyword strings to optimize for. For instance, if your site is about apples, “apple” is a mandatory keyword, but if you select a number of multi-word phrases such as “apple orchards”, “growing apples”, “buying apples” then success is more likely.

Another issue to consider is synonyms. Very often users will use different words for the same thing. However, be careful not to use every synonym you can think of. Most search engines have algorithms that include synonyms in the keyword match. But using relevant, on-topic phrases is likely to give you extra street cred by search engines.

The way you use the keywords you have chosen to optimize for can make or break your SEO campaign. It is important to use these terms frequently, but be careful - overkill can lead to being blacklisted by search engines. Try and aim for a keyword density of 1-3% for your primary terms and 4-7% for the rest. Anything over 10% is likely to be frowned upon by users and search engines alike. Where you use your keywords is also important. Search engines place higher relevance on keywords found at the beginning of pages, blocks of text, headings and titles.

Aim for about 10 keyword phrases to optimize for. It is not worthwhile thinning out your attack by tailoring your content for many more.

So content is king. Keywords alone will not shoot you to the top of search engine listings but choosing the right ones for your site and using them intelligently in your content is the first step to claiming pole position in Google.

Isaac Forman, Designer

Labels: Design and Usability, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation