Archive for the ‘Featured Articles’ Category
This question “Should a good SEO company rank for [SEO] ?” has popped up a number of times when I meet people to discuss SEO. Also for some SEO firms it’s a point of boasting or a sales pitch, saying that they can rank for some great terms like :
- SEO
- Search Engine Optimisation
- Search Engine Optimization
- SEO consultant
- etc.
Note: I’m not slamming anyone company in these examples, well maybe one, but this is not the point of the post. I want to give some tips on picking a SEO company so that you know the right questions to ask and know when someone is pulling the wool (a little) over your eyes.
Reality Time
A sad fact in this matter is that people searching for [SEO] are more likely to be other SEO companies, rather than potential clients looking for some SEO help. So the fact that they rank for SEO probably doesn’t even help their bottom line. Here is a little comparison between the number of searches for [SEO] and the number of searches for [cake recipe] using a popular enough keyword [house prices] as a scale. This graph relates to the worldwide view rather than just Ireland.
It just can’t be that there are similar enough numbers of people looking to bake cakes, as there are people looking for information on SEO. My tip would be if a company says they rank for a keyword, give it a check on google trends or on google keyword tool for adwords to find out exactly how popular it is.
Looking at the amount of enquiries I got last year, and the % of them which came from the keyword [SEO] I would have to say it was close to zero. I would hazard a guess that the a lot of my manual comment SPAM for SEO tools and link building etc, is from dubious firms putting these keywords into their browser and going through the first few pages of Google results to find some links. So the fact that a company ranks for [SEO] doesn’t really help them, rather it probably wastes a bit of their resources, unless they are using it for bragging rights.
Final Thoughtson hiring a SEO company
If you are going to hire a SEO company, ask more about what they do and how they do things. What is their approach to site structure ? And how to they go about procuring back links ? Don’t be fooled when a company says that they are are #1 or #2 for a particular {keyword}, and therefore they must be good and they will be able to get you to rank at a high position too. Rather, ask for real life cases they have worked on, and what the resulting traffic increase has been because of their SEO efforts. Request Google Analytics data (or some other statistical report) of before and after the SEO campaign, and if necessary verify with their client that the SEO company has actually done this.
An aside : And oh, here are our SERPs for SEO 
so we do rank somewhere, but just not that high, but then again we are not looking for new clients, so that’s okay.
A question that pops up every now and again from people is “what’s the best way to get my new indexed in the search engines?“. There is no magic formula, no snake oil or special product necessary. All you need to do is take at least 1 of the steps highlighted below.
- Get a good inbound link into your site. Use your existing sites (if you have one) or beg, borrow or ask a friend. If you are nice maybe I would help you out. Remember search engines won’t find your site easily if it’s not linked. They need way of discovering your website. Thankfully there is a 2nd way, where you can tell them directly that you have a new site (see next option).
- Take advantage of the the Free FluffyLinkUlator, which has details about the submission pages for the search engines (google & yahoo!) and for DMOZ.org (a respected directory).
submit to the search engines
And for people thinking of paying someone a few hundred €’s for links from directories, don’t bother. For a fraction of the price you can submit to thousands of them yourself with Louie’s Directory Submission Service. Personally I am not the greatest fan of investing silly amounts of time generating these types of links, due to the limited benefit they bring. But for a new website, it can be an easy way to start to get some inbound links, and start to receive some traffic.
Next Steps
Once you have done this, and your site is appearing on Google/Yahoo ! it’s time to organise a sitemap, get access to their webmaster consoles to see check your site’s status. More on that anothertime !
Just trawling through some of the papers this evening I see an interesting story about Ryanair. Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has decided to block all bookings on it’s airline that were make through partner websites. O;Leary is quoted as saying
“We want to cause as much chaos for the [websites] as possible”
Websites like lastminute.com, v-tours, tui and Opodo all face a new headache come tomorrow morning, when flights booked through these sites will be cancelled.
Breaking ties with affiliates
So why is Ryanar pulling such a stunt (which apparently they are legally allowed to) ?
- is it more of the Michael O’Leary Marketing machine for news headlines ?
- is it a way to get more for these bookings, i.e. when these flights are cancelled it will possibly cost more to rebook them ? This would help the company raise a few more €€’s for their problematic fuel bills ? also sales of insurance and car rentals are lucrative things that Ryanair are missing out on for these ticket sales.
- it could also be another way that Ryanair can tackle scraper websites, who regularly send requests to flight prices to see when is a good time to buy. Services like Farecast (recently acquired by MSN) can cut into airlines profits buy profiling costs of flights.
Personally I think it is a mixture of point 2 and 3. Is normally thought that by using affiliates and third parties to drive traffic and sales, you can really grow your business, the reason for this move really confuses me.
Bouncing around TradeDoubler.com today I noticed they had an offer for a free affiliate marketing hand book. It’s right down there where you log into your account on the RHS. It’s quite comprehensive and is well worth a read , click here to download the PDF. It’s from the IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) or it at least has their stamp of approval, so it must be along the right lines.
On page 31 there is an interesting break down on what areas of the google search page get clicked on. According to them its broken down into 4 areas:
- Area A : Top ads, normally highlighted sponsored ads, get 26% of clicks.
- Area B : Product listing, depending on the query can get up to 20% of clicks.
- Area C: Actual SERPs position, index of pages relevant for your search query, which gets 40% of the clicks.
- Area D : Sidebar Ads , on the right hand side receive around 14% of user clicks.
If you are new to the world of affiliate marketing it is well worth a read. There are plenty of people who would charge a few $$’s for such a ebook, this one on the other hand is FREE so you’ve nothing to loose by reading it.
Blackhat SEO event in Munich
If anyone has a spare USD $5k lying around and is interested in learning about about the darkside of SEO, from one of the industry leaders, QuadsZilla, then you should get yourself to SEOktoberfest. Living in Munich, I’ve had the pleasure of going to the Oktoberfest for the last 6 years, and it’s one hell of a party ! If you do ever happen to be in Munich, either at the Oktoberfest or another time, do drop me a line .
It seems that all my comments on blogs in the past few days are getting labelled as SPAM. I started to wonder after a few days when my comments weren’t showing on blogs that normally welcome my comments. I checked with a few friends and checked on some of my other blogs, just to confirm this. It appears that my name / email address / URL / IP address combination are somehow triggering these filters. It came as a shock, as I don’t really bombard blogs with comments, I guess that for every 50 or 60 blog posts I read, I leave 1 comment.
Getting off the Akismet Blacklist
After reading around, a little the only solution I’ve come up with is to contact Akismet and fill out a support question. And wait until you hear back from them.
So for now I will be taking it easy commenting on blogs. I’ve tried to change the name, leave the email address and IP address and omit the URL, and it still thinks I’m a spammer. 
Knowing when you are blocked by Akismet
I would be really nice if there was a way to find out if your name / email address / URL / IP address were indeed flagged as SPAM, but maybe this would counteract the good work that Akismet does. Actually, thinking a bit more, there might be one way, if your comment is held in moderation by wordpress, and it’s supported by your theme, it will display a notice, saying that you need to wait for your comment to be approved, that it’s awaiting moderation. Some themes even display your message to only you (using session variables). And when it’s flagged as SPAM you don’t see any difference on the blog post once you’ve added your comment.
Let’s see when I can get back to commenting on other people’s blogs …
A quote from Techcrunch says “Google Continues To Test A Search Interface That Looks More Like Digg Every Day“. Personally I think this is cool, but I wonder how long it will take until it’s over run by spammers, and people trying to unfairly manipulate the results.