Archive for August, 2008

Google’s advice on SEO companies

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 by Matthew Phelan

With the increasingly availability of SEO services, improving your site’s search result ranking has never been easier. However, according to the search engine leader Google, it is always important to choose the right company.

Appearing on its Webmaster Help Centre, Google’s article advises site owners to be cautious of unethical firms when deciding whether to hire an SEO company. The search engine giant states that, ‘deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time, but you can also risk damage to your site and reputation.

So what exactly is SEO? An acronym for search engine optimisation, SEO attempts to increase the amount of traffic to a website by improving its ranking in search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN. SEO companies manage this process by providing services that include reviewing and developing site content, keyword research and offering technical advice.

Although the services offered by SEO firms are clearly beneficial, Google emphasises the importance of selecting an ethical provider. Site owners should make their selection with care and research both the advantages and damage that particular SEO companies could do to your website. Sustainable SEO firms, such as London based 4Ps Marketing, vigilantly follow the Google quality guidelines to focus on the long term benefits for site owners. The practice of some unethical SEO providers can result in the removal of you site from Google listings.

Despite the importance of researching SEO firms, before this is even attempted, Google suggests that it is a good idea for site owners to become familiar with how search engines work. An excellent place to start is to visit the Google Webmaster Guidelines, and a review of this article can be read here; Webmaster guidelines

Google also highlights that SEO can be carried out in-house, without the aid of an optimisation company, by using the free resources that can be found on Google Webmaster Central. However, it is important to remember that SEO is a continuous task and that, to do it properly, it can be time consuming. With this in mind, hiring an SEO company can be extremely helpful, but it is imperative to choose the right one.

So how exactly do you choose an ethical SEO firm? Google stresses the importance of becoming educated consumers, and the best way to do this is to ask questions. Good examples include:

• ‘Can you show me examples of your previous work and share success stories?’
• ‘Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?’
• ‘Do you offer any online market advice?’

Ethical SEO companies, such as 4Ps Marketing, will always answer yes to the above questions.

According to Google, it is additionally important to be aware of the illicit behaviour practiced by some rouge SEO firms. Avoid companies that send spam emails or claim they can guarantee a ‘number one ranking’. Firms should always make it clear what they intend to do to your website, so avoid secretive companies because manipulative content could result in your site being removed from Google listings.

Although SEO clearly demands that site owners do their research, Google maintains that hiring a SEO company can be beneficial. The message from the search engine seems clear enough: with the possibility of site damage from unethical firms, sustainable SEO is the only way to go!

Source: Google

Related article: Google webmaster guidelines

Author: Vicki Cole, 4Ps Marketing, London, UK

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Googlebot & Web 2.0

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 by Matthew Phelan

Review of Google’s “A spider’s view of Web 2.0″

In the fast moving world of web 2.0, balancing user needs with attempts to improve your site’s search ranking can be challenging. However, a quick read of Google’s ‘A Spider’s View of Web 2.0′ makes it clear that putting your users first is the best way for your website to be recognised by the search engine giant.

Primarily a guide for webmasters wanting to create Ajax-enhanced websites, ‘A Spider’s View…’ connects the importance of creating sites with the user in mind and the need to design websites that can be easily read by the Googlebot spider.

As Google highlights, ‘many webmasters have discovered the advantages of using Ajax to improve the user experience on their sites, creating dynamic pages that act as powerful web applications’. Despite these benefits, Google is quick to emphasis that Ajax can only be viewed by users with a JavaScript capable browser. Therefore it is important to think about the needs of users without such capability, for example those using screen readers and mobile devices.

According to Google, one of the easiest ways to test your site’s accessibility to this type of user is to put yourself in their shoes. By exploring the site in your browser with JavaScript turned off, or by viewing it in a text-only browser, such as Lynx, you can see what your site will look like to a user who cannot benefit from Ajax.

Viewing a site as text-only can also help to identify other content which may be hard for Googlebot to see. Thus considering user needs can help improve your site’s ranking by alerting you to content that may need to be altered to be indexed by Google.

In addition to putting your users first, the design of your site is important to ensure that it can be easily indexed by search engines. Google admits that ‘while Googlebot is great at following and understanding the structure of HTML links, it can have a difficult time finding its way around sites which use JavaScript for navigation.’ With this in mind, Google advises webmasters to provide HTML links to content in order to create a site that is crawlable by Google and other search engines, such as Yahoo! and MSN.

Although Google advises that site structure and navigation should be built using HTML and ‘spiced up’ later with Ajax, the search engine understands that webmasters may have links requiring JavaScript for Ajax functionality. However, ‘A Spider’s View…’ suggests static links and Ajax can coexist by formatting links so that they offer a static link as well as calling a JavaScript function. Such formatting means that user needs are catered for as sites will have Ajax functionality for JavaScript users, while users without this can ignore the script and follow the link.

Despite this ability to provide users with different experiences based on their capabilities, Google insists that site content should remain the same. This means that if a website includes an Ajax powered slideshow it should also offer an HTML version to ensure that non-JavaScript users receive the same quality of information. Offering a HTML version will allow the Googlebot to view the content, and thus catering for the user will increase the amount of information that search engines can crawl.

Although Google’s golden rule for webmasters is to ‘create pages for users, not just for search engines’, a look through ‘A Spider’s View of Web 2.0′ suggests that pages designed for users (structured through HTML) can actually be pages for search engines too.

Source: Google

Author: Vicki Cole, 4Ps Marketing, London, UK

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I am Mercedes

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 by Matthew Phelan

Mercedes follow Orange "I Am" campaign

Hot on the heels of the "I am" Orange campaign we are now treated to a TV advertisement from Mercedes attempting to build an association between its customers and the Mercedes brand.

Mercedes have integrated their online advertising with their off line, meaning a Google search for the term "I am Mercedes" displays the I am campaign in 1st page search results. Mercedes are not pushing people to search for this campaign but they have integrated it. However Orange who are pushing people to search "I am" are not appearing in the 1st page results and have obviously not integrated their campaign.

Mercedes results / 19th August 2008.

1) YouTube options
2) Corporate site through organic listings
3) PPC listing

"I am" Orange campaign

If you search "I am Orange" the Orange campaign appears number one in Google search results but as the advertisements direct you to search "I Am" the campaign must be judged on that. It is still very surprising that Orange still do not rank within the 1st page of Google search results, for a term that they directly ask people to search on. This is a text book case of not integrating SEO with the rest of a media campaign, let alone with the rest of SEM.

The simple answer to this would be to direct people to search "I am Orange" instead of "I am", although as a marketing campaign it does not have the same impetus. The correct answer would be to go back in time and re-plan the campaign with SEO and SEM in mind. In reality the best thing Orange can do is learn from this and ensure it doesn’t happen again.

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