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Bad Press Equals Good Google Rankings?

2010/12/07 By Leave a Comment

We’ve all heard the saying, “Any press is good press,” but few of us considered bad press an important aspect of internet marketing.

Here’s the story: A designer eyeglasses seller called DecorMyEyes (I’m not going to link to them) followed shady business practices with its customers, harassing them, overcharging them, and threatening lawsuits.  As a result, the company was rewarded with high rankings on Google.  How did this happen?  Vitaly Borker, owner of DecorMyEyes, received so much bad press from reputable sources such as the New York Times and Bloomberg that Google rated him as having high levels of credibility.

A Google fellow, Amit Singhal, wrote, “We were horrified. I am here to tell you that being bad is, and hopefully will always be, bad for business in Google’s search results.”

Although the business received complaints on numerous sites, these complaints were not increasing the site’s rankings; it was the media’s bad-press articles, which often linked to the site, that were driving the increased rankings.

This story does have a happy ending, but not for DecorMyEyes.  The underhanded company dropped from their competitive first page ranking for ‘designer eyeglasses’ and is now ranked somewhere near the 14th page.

This doesn’t mean that harassing your customers should be the latest tactic in search engine optimization, as Google has altered their algorithm to weed out bad businesses.  How they can do this is a mystery, but I suspect they are utilizing sites such as Yelp and The Better Business Bureau to qualify businesses.  It wouldn’t surprise me if Google figured out a way to read star ratings on business-rating sites, but, unfortunately, the enigma that is the Google algorithm remains secret.  This does not, however, affect strategies for mobile marketing and other internet marketing strategies.

We’d all love a link from The New York Times, as one such high-quality, high-authority link can skyrocket a site on SERPs, but this example shows us that there is no easy (evil) way to get into these sources.  The best we can do (imho): continue to write quality content and press releases and hope the big-time media sources pick up on them.

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Google Patent Places SEO Emphasis on Categories

2010/11/11 By 1 Comment

A recent Google patent sheds new light on how Google categorizes pages.  In the patent, Google provides the following example of the categorization process:

“Cleaning Supplies,” “Lawn Care,” “Maintenance,” and “Decorative,” represent subcategories and can also reflect specific items. [...]

“Brooms,” “Mops,” “Vacuum Cleaners,” “Rakes,” “Mowers,” “Flamingos,” “Gnomes,” reflect the specific items to which individual documents and potential search query terms are associated.

The category hierarchy could equally be defined as a list with each category including a full item description. For instance, “Flamingos” could be expressed as a list item, “Household>Lawn Care>Decorative>Flamingos.”

What does this mean for internet marketing companies?  I agree for the most part with this article.  With the new patent in mind, it would be highly recommended that SEOs pay closer attention to the keywords they use, especially paying attention to hierarchies and focusing not only on the target keyword phrases (“pink lawn flamingoes” for example) but also on the hierarchy of categories.  In the example, an SEO may want to focus on the additional phrases of ‘household’, ‘lawn care’, and ‘decorative’.

This new patent forces SEOs to think on multiple levels when optimizing pages, so, in addition to including target keywords in the content of the page, they should take into account the big picture and really know their product in order to categorize it appropriately.  As always, content is still an important factor of SEO, but it may be a good idea to consider categories in the META and title information as well.

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How to do SEO for a website using Google Instant

2010/09/14 By Leave a Comment

The following information comes from our affiliate partner Axandra, a leader in search engine marketing and purveyors of IBP, Axandra’s SEO software of which we are affiliate referrers. If you click any of the links in this post you will be taken to Axandra’s website and should you make a purchase we will receive credit for the referral. If you do that let us know. We appreciate your business.

What is Google Instant?

Google Instant, which we posted on late last week when it was officially announced, is Google’s new way to display search results while the user is typing the query. Google tries to complete the query during the input.

For example, when you enter “bike h” then Google will display the results for the keyword “bike helmets” because Google thinks that this is the most likely query.

Google Instant will not display the search results for the keywords “bike h”, which are totally different. If you want to get the results for “bike h”, you have to click the search button.

What does this mean for your website?

It’s very likely that the search behavior of searchers will change. Until now, people had to think to refine their queries. With Google Instant, surfers get suggestions while they are typing and many of them will select one of the suggestions.

That means that some search terms will get many more searches than before while the number of searches for other terms will decrease.

How to get more visitors with Google Instant search

Google Instant automatically completes the search query of a user while typing. Google uses the keywords of Google Suggest to complete the query.

That means that the keywords that Google Suggest uses will get even more traffic than before. For that reason, your web pages should be optimized for the keywords that Google suggests.

To find the keywords that Google Suggest offers for your keywords, do the following:

1. Download IBP and open the keyword manager in IBP.

2. Select “Google Suggest” as the source for keyword suggestions and enter your main keywords.

IBP will return the Google Suggest keyword suggestions. Repeat this with your main keywords to get a comprehensive list. The number of searches for the keywords does not matter because Google Instant counts this differently.

After collecting your keyword list, optimize as many different pages of your website for as many of these keywords as possible. IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer will tell you how to change your web pages so that Google will display them in the top 10 results for these keywords.

This is a very important step! If you don’t optimize your web pages for these keywords, you’ll miss a lot of traffic!

Do not change pages for which you already have high rankings. Optimize new pages of your website for new keywords. The more pages of your website you optimize, the better.

Google Instant is not a new ranking algorithm. It is just a new way in which Google displays the search results. Some keywords will now get fewer impressions, some keywords will get more impressions.

It’s important that you adapt to the change. IBP will help you to change your web pages so that they get the maximum number of visitors through Google Instant.


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Google Caffeine is live: what you need to know

2010/06/15 By Leave a Comment

Get top 10 listings with AxandraLast week, Google announced that their new web indexing system “Caffeine” is live on all Google pages. What does this mean for your website and do you have to change anything on your pages?

Google Caffeine is the name for the new method that Google uses to index web pages. In contrast to Google’s old method, Caffeine can index new web pages faster:

“Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered. Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before.”

Google changed they way in which they index the web because they want to show new pages more quickly in the search results.

What is the difference between the old system and Google Caffeine?

Google’s previous system updated the search index in batches.

“Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks.

To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you.”

With Google Caffeine, Google’s search index is updated continually:

“With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index.”

That means that new pages will be displayed in Google’s search results sooner if they are relevant to the search query.

Caffeine is not a ranking algorithm update. It does not change the way Google ranks web pages so you don’t need to do anything different from the way you do things now. Caffeine just means that new pages will be shown much quicker on Google’s result pages.

To get your own website on Google’s first result page, analyze the web pages that currently have top 10 rankings on Google. The pages that now have a top 10 ranking on Google have done everything right to please Google’s latest ranking algorithm.

Analyze the top ranked pages and check how and where they use their keywords. Also check which web pages link to the top ranked pages and how they link to the top ranked pages.

Doing this is a lot of work if you do it manually. For that reason, we suggest the Top 10 Optimizer by Axandra. The Top 10 Optimizer automatically analyzes the web pages that currently have high rankings for your keywords and it compares them to your own website.

You will also get detailed instructions on how to change the content of your web pages and the links to your site so that your site will be listed in Google’s top 10 results.

For questions or assistance with Google page rankings or with Axandra’s Top 10 Optimizer call us at 888-875-6812.

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How to build a lead-generating machine in fewer than 30 days!

2009/03/27 By Leave a Comment

Are you currently using SEO, Social Media and Email Marketing in your company’s online marketing strategy?
Are you confused by which marketing advice to follow to be successful online?
Or do you think your business is doing just fine? Is it, really?

If you aren’t using SEO, Social Media and Email Marketing, you should know that doing so can add tremendous value to your business and help you obtain market share that you may not be getting now. Applying these useful techniques to set up and maintain an effective and efficient marketing strategy to reach potential buyers doesn’t have to be easier said than done.

Join Autoconversion for a free live Webinar that will introduce you to our List Builder product, which explores the core online marketing techniques adhered to today by top marketing agencies.

Topic: Build a Lead-Generating Machine in Less than 30 days!
Date: Wednesday April 1, 2009
Time: 11:30 am – 12:30 am EST (Eastern Time)
Join Us: Register to Attend

The AC List Builder program is a unique blend of SEO, Email, Video, and Social Media that can be set up and put on auto pilot for your business or run full-service by our team of experts, creating the ultimate customer experience and producing the highest quality leads you can generate on the Web.

In this webinar you will see:

  • Why and how a blog can work in conjunction with your website
  • Why you want to be employing permission-based email marketing
  • Examples of how to implement a good list-building strategy
  • How offering coupon incentives can attract customers
  • And more…

This webinar is no joke, despite being held on April Fool’s Day. Spend an hour with us to take advantage of seeing how we do what we do and what you can expect from doing these things on your own or having us help.

The Webinar is free and open to all, but space is limited, so register now!

Should you have any questions please contact your host, Ryan Gerardi, on LinkedIn.

Click to Register

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Automotive workshop scheduled with ADAGP for Sept. 28

2008/09/08 By 1 Comment

On Wednesday September 10, 2008, Scott Rainville (Tell All Video) and Ryan Gerardi (AutoConversion) are speaking at a seminar in Southeastern Pennsylvania with ADAGP, the Automobile Dealers Association of Greater Philadelphia. The seminar is titled, “The 32% Factor – Utilizing Blogs, Email, SEO, Video and Social Media to Quality Leads and Develop a Customer Audience”, the concept inspired by information released in a study last year by Cobalt, Polk, and Yahoo!.

In the seminar, Gerardi and Rainville will be discussing this “32%  Factor” and leading an exercise for dealer attendees to experience hands-on participation in preparing an Email Marketing campaign that utilizes their Blog, SEO, and Video Marketing techniques.

“There is an abundance of theoretical information and ideas made available to Car Dealers in the form of newsletters, blogs, and seminars, but a deficiency in applicable information dealers can take back to their dealership and apply. Our goal with this seminar is to give attendees a simple and useful technique they can remember and easily apply in their jobs at the dealership,” states Gerardi, Founder/CEO of AutoConversion.

Space is limited but this seminar is open to ADAGP Member and Non-member dealers. See registration page for pricing and sign-up information.

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