The 5HITS

Bruce Clay has just launched their Australian search engine optimisation (SEO) blog. You can catch all the latest SEO related news, updates and events on the new Bruce Clay blog. The new SEO blog was launched in line with SMX Sydney and you can catch all the action from all the sessions there now. The focus of the blog will be updates, information, research, events and interviews, all from an Australian perspective. The goal as we understand it is to become the leading SEO blog in Australia within 6 months.

Coming up on the blog are interviews with some of Australia’s leading in-house SEO’s who work and manage some of Australia’s largest websites. Also watch out for 1 day training from Bruce Clay based on the recent 1 day training done for SES New York and others. The first session will be in Tasmania in May 2009. You can now get the latest and best right here in Australia.

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jeremybolt for all the latest blog updates and news.

And yes… the 5hits will continue.

With Twitter going mainstream and the number of social media experts, strategists and consultants on the scene, I thought it was high time to interject with some thoughts, seen as everyone else is. If you read my previous post “Brands on the rise” this ties in closely. Getting your brand socialised will become increasingly important in the future, for Internet Marketing.

So what should you consider for your business from a social media strategy, other than the need to show a return and the potential difficulty in measuring a return, be it financial or otherwise?

Also, while many agencies use social media as another channel for creative ideas to generate brand awareness or sales, this is not about campaigns using social media as a channel. This is about companies engaging with social media in a well thought out strategy. Setting up processes with the objective of increasing brand awareness and sales through ongoing relevant and value adding interaction with customers and potential customers. If you do have a campaign, you would these social media processes to deliver on the campaign and own them, not let your agencies own them.

Key activities to include in your social media strategy include:

1. Social media policies
2. Social media audit
3. Social media strategy
4. Social media operationalisation and ongoing monitoring

1. Social Media Policies

Have you got any guidelines, advice, communication for staff as to how they may or may not interact with online media while on company time, through the company network or as an ambassador of your brand. If you have people in your workforce under 55 years old, in fact if you have people in your workforce, trust me they are engaged somewhere, be it LinkedIN, FaceBook, FlickR or Twitter.

Do you have formal advice for them on:

• Whether they can represent the brand, e.g. commenting on an industry issue n a blog as a member of your company
• Whether they can mention customers, e.g Twittering about a new pitch or a customer experience
• What internal information can be discussed, e.g. Blogging about staff cuts
• Privacy e.g. including pictures from the office party of drunken colleagues in fancy dress in their public FlickR account Read more…

Google has finally come out and confirmed the “Vince change” which favours big brands.

Outrage, arms thrown in air, search engine optimisation (SEO) has changed for ever…

So what does this mean? Firstly Google admits making a number of changes continually, so this is 1 of 3-400 annually which occur annually, and it is a change, not an update. So put your arms down and read further.

Matt Cutts at Google has tried to explain it, we think it goes further. According to Google, the dial has been turned up from brands and thus related generic keywords, searchineland gives great examples around “air tickets” and airlines.

What Google has said, via the Matt Cutts video:

Trusted sites, potentially brands will rank, as they are trusted. Trusted essentially means:

• PageRank
• Legacy (Age)
• Quality and unique content
• Technical soundness of the site
• No spam
• Good linking structure and outbound links to other quality sites
• Good inbound links from other quality/ expert site

COMMENT: If you give users high quality search results, they will keep on using your search engine. So whats new?

Given the average length of a query is 3-5 words and 25% of all searches each year are new, this only impacts a small number of search terms. Matt Cutts has confirmed this as well.

ISSUE:The change may only affect a small number of search terms, but… most brands are related to products, and if they are a big brand these products are generally popular. Take air tickets for example, which has significant search volumes behind the term. I believe that if you looked at the affected seach volumes as a % of total search volumes this may tell a different story. Effectively, this means that most of the generic terms related to large brands are searched on a lot, they are generally highly competitive terms. Saying the long tail is not affected is fine, but who targets long tail search terms, other than SEO’s who guarantee # 1 rankings.

Read more…

Bruce Clay Australia is holding more search engine optimisation training in April from the 6th-8th, just after SMX Sydney. You could theoretically enjoy the ultimate search week, hear the stories at SMX Sydney and then learn the how to implement them, from Bruce Clay, President of Bruce Clay Inc.

We have been holding search engine optimisation (SEO) courses now in Australia since 2007 and more recently they have started to get booked out. Testimonials from past attendees are available on the Bruce Clay SEO testimonials Training page and to date, touch wood we have not had a bad one.

The training is 3 days and the pricing has been slightly revised, as well as there currently being an early bird special at $2,550 for the 3 days including access to the SEOToolset. We generally hold the training at a hotel ensuring a comfortable environment and good catering.

We are very often asked, Why Bruce Clay SEO Training?, why are our courses different?

We believe the key reasons our training is different, include :

1. The training is structured to take you through a learning process, leaving no one behind. We have marketing directors sitting next to web developers with neither getting bored. I might add, knowing what html is will help but you need be no more technical that that.
2. We go into detail, a lot of detail. Including our methodologies, site structuring, linking etc. with real life examples and experiences shared. This is not a part of our selling process, we share all the knowledge we have. You implement what you learn, you will get more traffic to your site. Read more…

So where is the spend going? Interestingly enough, into search. Per eMarketer, search is predicted to grow by 15% in 2009 and 30% by 2010. This is against display ads 18% , Classifieds -6%, Sponsorships -8%, Email marketing 8.5% and video 113% all by 2010. In this data, Search makes up 45% of online spend in 2008 and will move to 48% in 2009 and 48,7% by 2010.

This can only be good news to Google and those providing paid search and search engine optimisation (SEO)services. Video ad spending while good news, comes in varying forms and channels, from Youtube through to display video. From the data this breakdown was not available but no doubt there would be some overlap.

While this data is based on the United States and is based on various assumptions, we believe Australia will follow a similar trend. In fact the update and increase in growth in search may even be more dramatic, given the speed on adoption and innovation rates with Australian online marketers. Within the last 18 months it is clear that corporate Australia recognizes the opportunity from search and is prepared to invest accordingly.

Social media as a channel to market is still clearly emerging in Australia. Most corporates know they need to be involved and many are finding the best way to execute challenging. Search is also clearly integrated into social strategies.

So what does this mean? Some core considerations for 2009 are: Read more…

Bruce Clay has released 2 new tools, the first being the new SEMToolbar, something we have been excited about for awhile.

You can download the SEMToolBarhere. The SEMToolbar is a browser plug-in that can extract data from the key search engines being Google, Yahoo and Microsoft as well as other sources and then deliver that data in a variety of ways through the browser and search results. You can set up any search engine you like to check results in, not just the aforementioned.

Since we have been road-testing the toolbar, here are some of the features we have found particularly useful.

At the touch of a button. (i.e very quickly), you can:

From the SEOToolset perspective:

• Run the Keyword Density Analyzer while in the webpage you want to review
• Run a Check Server command to view aspects related to your server, including block-lists and cloaking checks
• Use the W3c Markup Validation Service
• Review the keywords and domains you manage

From a search engine marketing and search results perspective:

• number search results
• quickly check different search engine results without leaving the page i.e. move between Google.com, Google.com.au and then Yahoo etc. Read more…

Merry Christmas to all 3 of you who read my blog. I hope you all enjoy what I’m sure is a well deserved break, a Merry Christmas if you celebrate Christmas as I do and have a blessed new year.

Now, where would we be without forecasts for the new year and what might arise. As any good SEO would I turned to Google rather than think for myself and looked at the first result for search predictions 2009. Who knew Craig & Janes world predictions for 2009 would be #1. From them amongst other things including Victoria Beckham getting pregnant and many top companies going bust, there was nothing related to search other than what Im sure will be searches, if nothing else.

Moving further up the tree I found some digital marketing predictions. Some interesting takes on this included:

• Twitter providing unprecedented access to corporate personnel
• Listening programs through social media to “feel the pulse”
• Having less but more meaningful digital friends (quality v quantity)
• That social networks will be leveraged with the current budget squeeze

OK, enough nonsense, maybe lets try the proverbial horses mouth, Mr Cutts from Google himself. He reckons in 2009:

• Pay less attention to ranking
• Universal search will continue to expand
• That there will be improved indexing of engagement objects, specifically video

As Bruce Clay has also reiterated, analytics will become increasingly important, and after all, has always been the true measure of success. Is your traffic going up? And of course lets see what the shiny new Google spider brings forth in the new year when engagement objects become more integrated with the ranking algorithms.

Don’t brace yourself though, from past experience Google Australia is highly cautious with search results Read more…

So Google has just anounced, if you are logged in you can manipulate your search results, and would not rule out these manipulations being included into the algorithm in the future at some stage, bringing a human power element into the mix and potentially giving Google an edge over purely software driven search results. Google Searchwiki, you can read more at Searchengineland.

The Google folks are all very smart people, at least the ones I have met appear to be. But, I have the following question?

If search results are mainly about discovery and the answering of questions. Why would you manipulate them, so you know the answer or potential answers before you search. I can see the fun side, like me ranking this blog #1 for the term “search engine optimisation” on our office gmail login and seeing who realizes first. Also potentially very niche searches who want to see very specific results only for a group of people. But why would I edit search results when I am looking for answers.

It will also be interesting to see how the comments get handled and whether they are spammed out of existence or not. Maybe the community will rule on this one.

Anyway, watch this space, and my blog going to #1

I don’t usually review tools, but Google have just released their new search based keywords tool. Now you can make sure you don’t miss any of those additional keywords you maybe meant to include, but didn’t buy.

The cynics might think extra keywords = extra revenue, if everyone has the keywords = more competitive bidding = higher cost per click and more profits to the big G. Google also gives the disclaimer that using the tool will not necessarily improve your campaign performance. But this tool is a help to those consulting and doing keyword research. At a glance you can see the keywords, suggested bids, search volumes and other information, as well as being able to sort by field for the website or an entire category.

You can also create a search on the term and view the search term with Google Insights to get additional information.

Putting the new search based keyword tool to the test:

Using Belldirect, a newish share trading entrant to Australia with a clean website. Share trading and online share trading is the key search term for sites like these.

The tool produced a list of 190 keywords with search volumes of 25 to 23,000 for the term “share trading” and split these between those relevant to your site and then keywords related to your search term. First thing to notice is the Google AdWords tool gives the search volume on “phrase match” at 27,100 for October and 18,100 average and 130 closely related and 70 broadly related terms. That’s a difference in excess of 20% both ways on search volumes. The outcome was similar for other popular sites and keywords. Google does however say the data is updated every couple of weeks, so no doubt this is due to timing differences in the cut off of the data and also to keep webmasters guessing as to search volumes.

But, the real value is this tool telling what keywords your Adwords campaigns is missing, so no opportunities are missed to appear for more keywords or pay Google more cash.

Questions for Google

• Thanks Google for an extremely useful tool, but please tell us which search volume number more accurate
• You get limited keyword ideas if your Adwords billing address is outside of the US or UK. Does this Read more…

We know the number of web pages is growing exponentially, more and more content is out there.

We know that around 75% of small businesses do not even have a web presence, try searching for a butcher in your local suburb. This will grow over the next 3 years.

We know that large companies can afford good web design and search engine optimisation (SEO) firms to help them build their rankings in search engines.

We know that Google is largely dependent on search related revenue and continued growth, and it is thus critically important for them to keep users engaged with search results.

We know that human beings are creatures of habit and that most will not act more than around 30% of the accepted norm.

Finally, we know search is a set of software based rules, search engines cannot see the patterns or form opinions, it is rule based.

So what? I hear you think?

Well, if most established sites and companies can afford large websites and the best SEO advice money can buy, the chances of a smaller company ranking for a highly searched on term does not look so good from the start, and we know search users will use similar key terms to find things. In fact Google helps with the suggest feature. So other than for obscure, long tail items, pretty much,  you are going to see the same culprits ranking for certain keywords, being branded, well known large organisations. Right? In fact search users get comfort they have used the right search terms when they see brands they recognise in the results who provide the product or service they are after.

So if 20% of all keywords provide 80% of the traffic and there is big dollars behind these search terms, how will Google keep users engaged in search results which have the potential to become increasingly similar for similar terms, other than to encourage them to click past the first page of results.

Read more…