The latest news and views on what is happening in Search Engine Optimization and Online Marketing
From time to time I find myself saying to a client “spend less on my SEO services and more on Pay Per Click. My fees to manage your PPC are less and it will improve your SEO”.
That’s a bit of a strange one for many to get their heads around but I’ll be laying out how it works in this post.
I had only just finished my post Is Yelp a waste of time and doomed to failure when I went to check on Yelp’s own review page about itself.
As usual I expected to see lots of grumbling from reviewers that their reviews had been filtered and lots of grumbling from business owners that positive reviews had been filtered after they turned down Yelp’s sales team (an accusation by the way, not proved ﾅ yet!).
People are now judging Yelp by its political leanings, not its ability to provide quality reviews.
Like many in the SEO world I’ve been watching Yelp’s progress over the years. So far it has burnt its way through more than $100 million and is still failing to make any profit. Some even suggest that the current business model makes profit almost impossible.
Although they recently posted 69% growth in revenue most of this seems to be coming from global expansion. They grow larger, but it is the same loss making business simply on a bigger scale, driven on by venture capitalists who hope one day someone will figure out how it could actually turn a profit.
Oh so many people spend a great deal of time fretting over having a keyword density of 4% or 6%. Is it enough? Is it too much and they’ll get penalised?
And advice on the internet is pretty hazy because the SEO community seems divided between those who feel it is of no importance at all and those, including me, who can see it still plays a part.
You may have noticed a number of organisations and individuals starting to drop the use of SEO in their titles and marketing. One of the highest profile names to do this was SEOMoz which has now simply become Moz.
Even I have started to morph from SEO specialist to SEO and Online Marketing Specialist. What is going on?
In a recent forum discussion someone asked what looked like a valid question. He said, ﾓif I go to a mechanic and ask him to fix my car he will give me a price, but if I go to an SEO specialist and ask him or her to rank me top of Google, he or she can’t give me a concrete cost ﾖ what kind of industry is this?ﾔ
There then followed lots of alternative analogies from said SEO specialists such as ﾓSEO is more like surgery, you are told a price but then asked to sign a disclaimer that you won’t sue if it goes pear shaped.
In 30 pages I’ve compressed down what most individuals and small businesses really need to know about Google Adwords
So often when I mention Google Adwords, or any PPC concept come to that, I hear a sort of distressed gurgle. Luckily I’ve learnt to translate that!
It means one of two things: “I’ve tried it and lost a lot of money” or, “What has that got to do with SEO?”
Today I’m going to ﾓcoin a phraseﾔ and explain how the future of SEO is going to look because the rapidly changing landscape of this industry is highly misunderstood by many web-masters.
Internet User Optimisation is the name I am giving to a new aspect which will play an ever more important role in where a page or site ranks. I’ll be telling you what it is and how it fits into site optimisation.
There is a common misconception that, if you practice SEO, you need to get on forums so that you can create links (usually in the signature line that shows below each post) because SEO is all about link building.
Choosing a forum is as important as being part of one .. avoid those that are abandoned or full of spam
The truth is that in terms of link building those shown on forums have a very small significance but they can have a much greater value in another way.
With Google displaying reviews in an ever more prominent way both in Google shopping and in its’ organic search results this is obviously becoming an increasingly important factor in SEO.
It’s not so much that good reviews effect your rankings directly (although this can be true in Google Shopping and Google+ Local) but that some nice yellow stars attract internet users to click through to your site.
