On August 10, 2020 Google rolled out a HUGE algorithmic update. And the results to the SERPs are as BRUTAL as they are NONSENSICAL.

At least it looks like they rolled out a huge algorithmic update. Either that or what's happened is some amazingly destructive bug! Only time will tell which one it is, but at time of writing we have to assume it's an algorithmic update and deal with the consequences. Because the disruption to the SERP results are so dramatic, so wide reaching, that we can only HOPE that it's a bug, and not a permanent update.

It's too early to say what exactly is happening as results are volatile. But suffice it to say that an enormous earthquake struck, way out in the middle of the Google ocean. And now every small business is desperately trying to keep afloat while the tsunami hits.

Since yesterday forums are ranking well for no apparent reason. Amazon listings are ranking well, directories are ranking well, sites that are out of area are outranking local businesses, and even random job listings are ranking well. All these sites offer little user satisfaction to the person doing a search in Google, and yet they are now, at time of writing, outranking legitimate industry client sites who operate well SEO'd websites.

But it's not just that directories, forums et al are now out-ranking normal sites, and all the 'normal' sites are pushed down below them. Because this has impacted individual websites within niches too, seemingly at random. It reminds me of the Macabee algorithmic update of Dec 2018. Only this could be WORSE. Much worse (and that's saying something, believe me).

And unlike algorithms like Macabee or Penguin this algo isn't targeting sites with dodgy links; because I've got several clients who have been negatively impacted (in different niches) by this since yesterday. All of whom have sites with robust, white-hat link profiles helping them kick their SEO goals. And I also know of one company (not a client) who dumped 80,000 dodgy links in one week a couple of months back via black-hat link building bots, who are now suddenly ranking SERP #1, #2 and #3 in the country for their major industry keyword after this update!

So much for Google's algorithmic updates being about making search better, huh?

It's things like this that are really soul-destroying to SEO companies who do the right thing, and only run white hat 'Google Best Practice' SEO strategies. Because you want people doing dodgy, black-hat SEO to be caught with hand in the cookie jar when Google does a big algorithmic update. You don't want to see them rewarded. And you sure as hell don't want to see honest, by the book, small businesses websites get penalised in Google search for no reason whatsoever.

​Bottom-line for all small business is that until we know WHAT this algorithm is targeting and WHY, we have to just sit tight and keep on doing all the regular white hat SEO strategies that we normally do for our clients, week-in- week-out. Because it's these strategies that have stood the test of time and outlasted a hundred thousand Google tsunamis.

Google's John Mueller has just reported that yesterday's CHAOS was in fact a bug and that everything is now 'back to normal'. So YAY FOR THAT!

Now, the cynic in me, while being over the moon that everything in Google-land has gone back to normal, can't help but wonder if it was in fact a 'bug' as Google are claiming. Or was it rather Google accidentally showing their hand and releasing something into the wild before it'd gone through more rigorous testing? Because it seems to me (and this is personal research done over a bunch of different client verticals), that the websites who benefited from the August 10 'update' / 'bug', were in fact sites that had a truck load of links pointing at them. And I don't mean the GOOD type of links. And if the 'bug' was in fact Google showing their hand too early, then they appear to be tweaking the core algorithm to give more weight to links. A LOT MORE WEIGHT.

Only time will tell how much...

Let those spreading 'Fake News' and disseminating poor content, beware: Google's new Search Quality Raters Guidelines have you in their sights!

Google's Search Quality Raters Guidelines are going to impact millions of Internet users (and more importantly, abusers) in the months and years to come. So if you're not across these new guidelines, or else make a living out of corrupting the system for your own ends, be afraid. Be very afraid.

To find out what these Search Quality Raters Guidelines mean to your business, read on. Because the changes to online content will be, *insert dodgy Trump impression here*: "Huuuuuuuuuuuuge!".

Let's start with the obvious question: 'What are Quality Raters, exactly?'. Quality Raters are a Google Army of over 10,000 (and growing) independent contractors whose job it is to check that the facts they read on websites are accurate, and that the content and the website that content is on, is reputable. They check the credibility of websites, report images that are illegal or offensive, and help push the best pages to the top of Google's search results.

They are also tasked with getting rid of false, offensive, or generally hateful information that has been showing up all too frequently in Google searches of late, by using humans to supplement super-smart machine-learning algorithms like Panda, in order to stem the tide of dross that is forever pouring into the internet.

Good luck with putting that particular genie back in the bottle I hear you cry!

But what exactly are Google's Search Quality Raters targeting? To find out the answer to this, I invite you to read Google's 157 page Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines document. A document that covers everything from understanding YMYL pages ('Your Money or Your Life'), to learning how to spot EAT pages ('High Level of Expertise / Authoritativeness / Trustworthiness'), and everything in-between.

But if reading 157 pages of techno-babble sounds a little too much like hard work, then allow me to give you the crib notes, so you can get a handle on the topic without devoting three days of your life to the task!

'Fake News!' can be viewed as the dissemination of misleading and falsified information presented as fact. Whether this involves using a website to exaggerate the truth, or else completely make things up, this is a tactic that simply isn't going to fly in Google anymore. The irony of course in all the 'Fake News!' brouhaha, is that Trump, the king of 'Fake News!', was the very person to coin the phrase. Thus to a very real degree, allowing him to own it.

Do you remember the end of the Curtis Hanson, '8 Mile' film, when Eminem is in a rap-battle against that guy who hates him? And how Eminem - going first - uses all the negative stuff that he knows his opponent will say about him. But says it first? Thus getting ahead of the 'information' and self-deprecating to a point where he OWNS his faults, his flaws, and by so doing takes the power away from his opponent who can no longer use the self same 'facts' as weapons. Well that's exactly what Trump's done. By coining the phrase, 'Fake News!' and using it against real news outlets like CNN, BBC NEWS, et al, he has been able to blatantly lie about just about everything, while instantly shielding himself from the inevitable criticisms from those very organisations who actually care about pesky little things like facts, because he has a ready-made response that says that anyone who disagrees with him, or questions what he says, is simply spreading 'Fake News!'. 

The tactic is breathtakingly Machiavellian. And if it weren't so insidious, so downright evil, then one might actually admire the audacity and scope of it. But given it's coming out of Trump's warped and twisted psyche, 'admiration' is not a word that'll spring to mind in anyone with an IQ in triple digits... 

With its newly hired army of fact-checkers, Google is now going to be working to combat the spread of 'Fake News!' (because Trump is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to lies being disseminated as facts on the internet). So when 'Fake News!' sites are spotted by the Quality Raters, they will now be pushed down in the search results, thus preventing them from organically being found. And (hopefully) preventing them from 'going viral'.

Google Search Raters Guidelines state that any websites that mimic other, more prominent sites, specially news sites, are going to be hit big by these new guidelines. For example, any sites that are designed to look and function like news sites but actually contain false or misleading information will be going down hard. These kinds of sites typically exist to misinform readers and spread false information / propaganda etc, for the gain or benefit of some other person or organisation.

We now live in a post Trump world. And like it or not, while he still has his finger on the launch codes and the Twitter Feeds (God help me, I don't know which is more dangerous), then we are all of us at the mercy of 'Fake News'. So hats-off to Google for trying to eradicate the disease at its source.

Of course Google are not the only boffins trying to eradicate the 'Fake News' epidemic. Two professors (technology professor Dongwon Lee and communications professor S. Shyam Sundar) from Penn State university recently received a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop technology that will enable digital devices to weed out fake news. So expect other left-leaning, politically savy tech minded people to join in the battle over the coming months.

Of course if you're weeding out Fake News, you need to know whether you're dealing with a bot (a computer program pretending to be a person), or a troll (a low-life nut-job-cum-online-bully pretending to be a person).

Any overtly racist or hateful content will now, thanks to Google's Quality Raters, be given a lower spot in the search results, and in many cases, will be removed from the search results completely. Pages that promote hate speech or actions against specific groups of people are now able to be tagged with an "Upsetting-Offensive" flag.

Of course this has the potential to get into very murky waters, as the internet was founded on freedom of speech and the spreading of ideas. And when one organisation (no matter how noble their intent) starts being the judge, jury and executioner of what should, and should not be shared on the internet, then we're suddenly a lot closer to 1984 than 2017. Censorship being one of the most insidious of all the evils. 

That said, if a website is promoting hate speech against the gay and lesbian community, or a particular religion or ethnic minority, or engaging in internet bullying, or attempting to re-write history by saying that the Holocaust never happened because 'Hitler was right', etc...then is the internet really losing anything when said content is buried on page 968 of a particular Google search? I suspect not.

But again, censorship is as censorship does. And it's a slippery slope when an all-powerful organisation starts to make judgement calls on content, just because said organisation deems it to be against guidelines it internally came up with, and which may or may not (depending on the individual reader's moral compass or beliefs) be 'offensive'.  And just because you and I, and most of the people we know, disagree with what is being written, we should never disagree with the author's unalienable right to write it.

One of the biggest problems plaguing the web right now is clickbait. To understand why clickbait is so bad, you must first understand what it is:

Clickbait articles usually feature shocking or catchy headlines designed to make people click on the article so they will be redirected to an external website which exists purely to make revenue off paid advertisements. The problem with this method is that the actual pages the reader goes to when they click on the click bait stories, contain nothing of substance. In many cases they may not even answer the question posed by the catchy headline at all. They exist purely to drive the reader to an external website and make the reader click through dozens of pages in order to see so called 'facts', one 'fact' at a time. The model being that each page a 'fact' or 'story' appears on, is surrounded by paid adverts. And the website owner receives revenue every time a sucker clicks on an advert. And sometimes they even get paid per 'impression' rather than 'per click'. So the website owner makes money even if the readers ignore the ads because the advert has been 'served' and therefore seen by the reader. Ker-ching, Ker-ching.

Google wants the web to be full of brilliantly written, well researched, knowledgeable information that answers a reader's search query. However, because so many people click on those misleading titles, those posts are rapidly moving up the search results and gaining traction because of an increased Click Through Rate. So they get to rank well, even though they do not deserve to. Googles Quality Raters are aiming to help combat this.

E-A-T stands for “Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness” and it’s the yardstick Google’s Quality Raters use to help Google rank pages. 

According to their guidelines (Section 4, Part 1), this is what constitutes 'High-Quality' pages:

1. Enough Main Content (MC): content should be ample enough to satisfy the needs of a user for a page’s unique topic and purpose (broad topics require more information than narrow topics, for example).
2. The page and its associated content is expert, authoritative, and trustworthy for the topic they discuss.
3. The website has a positive reputation for its page topics.
4. The website features enough auxiliary information, for example, “About us,” “Contact,” or “Customer Service” information.
5. The website features supplementary content (SC) that enhances the user’s enjoyment and experience of a web page.
6. The page is designed in a functional fashion that allows users to easily locate the information they want.
7. The website is maintained and edited regularly and frequently.

Attempting to get your head around what EAT actually means is tricky, as ultimately what Google is talking about brings to mind the old 'chicken and egg' question (ie: which comes first?). To be trusted by Google on a particular topic, you need to be an expert on the topic (what you say), and brilliantly express that knowledge (how you say it) both vertically and horizontally on your website. This then leads to a 'Positive Reputation' for the new content as the pages then get trusted by Google, because Panda loves it and because human beings respond to the pages by staying on them a long time, by interacting with them, and by going to other similar / related (Supplementary Content) pages on the website. 

But you can't get that 'Positive Reputation' if nobody finds the articles you've authored because they're buried on page 129 of Google, now can you? And therein lies the conundrum for Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs everywhere. Because you can't have an egg without a chicken. But you can't have a chicken without an egg...

You also can't fake the 'Expert' part. Because you either know what you're talking about or you don't. Plus the level of craft involved in how that knowledge is expressed on the page (the quality of the actual writing) is now of paramount importance. And with Panda being the most important algorithm out there, the days of you outsourcing your content writing to India to somebody named 'Frank' (real name 'Gupta') are gone. Because when it comes to content (like everything else in life): YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.
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The takeaway in all this is that when it comes to EAT:

1. You need to be an expert in what you're writing about.
   
2. You need to be (or hire) a professional writer to express that knowledge on the page (because Panda can tell how well written the content is, and knows the difference between 'University Level Writing', 'High School Level Writing', 'Primary School Level Writing' and 'Donald Trump Level Writing').
3. You need to garner a 'Positive Reputation' on the web, via quality on-page analytic data and via links from reputable, industry related websites that Google already trusts.

There are websites and there are websites. Some sell widgets. They may be good widgets, they may be bad widgets. But one thing is for sure, 'believing' the information expressed on a particular web page about the widgets will not effect your health or your state of mind. Nor will it impact your happiness or income (unless you're stupid enough to spend your life-savings on buying a gazillion widgets I mean!). In other words, visiting a widgets' website is unlikely to impact Your Money or Your Life.

However if you read a site that tells you that taking X cures Y (when it doesn't). Or you read a 'Fake News' site that tells you that X happened and Y was responsible (when it didn't, and they weren't), then those things can impact Your Money and Your Life.

Google offers the following categories as examples of YMYL pages:

1. Any page with the potential to be dangerous or detrimental if it possessed low levels of EAT.
2. Shopping or financial transaction pages.
3. Pages that offer medical information about specific diseases or conditions or mental health.
4. Pages that offer financial information, for example, investment or tax information.
5. Pages that offer legal information about topics like child support, divorce, creating a will, becoming a citizen, etc.
6. News articles or public/official information pages.
7. Disaster response services.
8. Web pages which are important for maintaining an informed citizenry, including information about local/state/national government processes, people, and laws.
9. News about important topics such as international events, business, politics, science, and technology. 
10. Government programs and social services.

The YMYL bottom line being that if your website is making bold claims, make them quantifiable and accurate claims. And if you website is stating facts, let those facts be, you know...factual.

With the release of these new Quality Rater guidelines, it's obvious that Google is pushing more and more for websites to have well written, high quality, accurate content. But how do you as a Small Business Owner or Entrepreneur know if your website content is good enough? What exactly qualifies as low quality content anyway?

Good question! For a more in-depth answer to this, read the definitive Panda article. But so far as Google's human Quality Raters are concerned, think of it like this:

• Your website content needs to be ORIGINAL. Not unique - nothing's unique on the world wide web - but ORIGINAL all the same. Have something to say that isn't just, 'We're great, buy our stuff!', because that's exactly what your competitors are saying on their site about themselves.
• Your website content needs to be FACTUALLY CORRECT. Because if what you're saying is incorrect, or -worse - deliberately misleading...then your website will get nuked by Google big time.
• Your website needs to be well designed. Because, while the Quality Raters aren't too fussed about how your website looks (functional wins over pretty in their eyes) functional and pretty wins over everything. So if your website is poorly presented, has a messy or cluttered design, or is hard to navigate, etc, your Google rankings will take a hit.
• Your website content needs to be PROFESSIONALLY WRITTEN, because the Panda algorithm can tell great copy from good copy, and good copy from bad. And just because you can string a few words together in an email yourself, or just because you wrote a few papers whilst at uni, DOES NOT MAKE YOU A PROFESSIONAL COPYWRITER. Any more than having a driver's licence makes you a formula one driver. So if you care about ranking your website: CARE ABOUT THE COPY YOU PUT ON IT.

At the end of the day, if people do not have a good experience using Google, they will stop using Google's services altogether. So search quality is everything to Google, which is why they have to continue to release new algorithmic updates to combat the surge of low-quality content. And why now, for the first time ever, they've hired an army of HUMAN BEINGS to supplement the algorithms.

Essentially, when you click through to a website, Google wants whatever you find on that website to match your search expectations. This isn't rocket science, people!

So what's the takeaway here? That's easy: make sure you are REGULARLY publishing authentic, well written content and that any facts expressed in your content are well researched and accurate. What you put on your website must match or exceed the high search quality Google is now demanding for websites.

Let's recap how you can prepare for these guidelines and keep your search rankings intact:
​

1. If you are creating content and headlines that could be considered clickbait, reconsider NOW.
2. You want visitors to find exactly what they're looking for, so prioritise the User eXperience by delivering high-quality content and a well thought-out and well designed website.
3. Never, under any circumstances, publish low-quality content on your website. It's not about the word or page count (though more is better if the writing is great), it's about the QUALITY of the writing.
4. Do not release any factually inaccurate information.
5. Spread fake news at your peril!
6. Indulge in hate-speak at your peril! 
7. Share your quality content so you can get links from trusted sites, so your website has a 'positive reputation' in Google.

Ready to conquer the first page in the SERPS? Then call SEO North Sydney. We are here to assist with your all your small business's online marketing needs, including SEO, Web Design, Pay Per Click Advertising and Content Marketing.

Four out of every five calls SEO North Sydney receive are from small business owners who dwell on the subject of keywords because they’ve been ‘shaped’ by previous SEO companies to ask questions that the SEO companies know how to answer. But much like Pavlov’s dog continues to salivate, even though no food is on offer, so too SEO companies continue to sound the ‘Keywords’ bell, while offering little in the way of demonstrable returns on investment for the privilege. ​

Marketing a small business is a matter of common sense, it really is. But to paraphrase that famous Voltaire quote, ‘The trouble with common sense is that not many people have it’. This is perhaps never better demonstrated than when applied to how small business owners approach the Herculean task of promoting their business.

There are lots of ways to spend your hard earned money when it comes to marketing and advertising.  And the traditional ones are discussed here in this article on Print Advertising versus Online Advertising. But ultimately the best place to spend your money, is wherever you can get the maximum return for the minimum spend. And in 2016, the vast majority of people search online via the Google search engine.

I mentioned at the start of this article that marketing a small business is a matter of common sense. Because if 99% of all people looking for what you do and where you do it, search on the internet (and they do). And the vast majority of those search using Google. Then it isn’t rocket science to work out where the bulk of your marketing dollars should go. Or why. But just having a website and being online doesn’t cut it. You can spend a fortune getting your small business website designed and online. But that doesn’t mean you’ll be found in Google search. Far from it in fact. The competition in every industry vertical (that’s worth being in), is fierce. And given that 92% of people don’t go past the first page of their Google search, how to get your small business website on page one of Google becomes the single most important marketing question you’ll ever have to answer.

Of course even if you are fortunate enough to be trained in marketing (and thus understand the fundamentals of how marketing works across multiple channels), that doesn’t mean you are equipped to run your own SEO campaign. With over 200 ranking signals and over 10,000 sub-ranking signals powering Google search, and 500-600 algorithmic updates every year; understanding how Google search functions is a full time job (and then some!).

Having a marketing background is a real leg-up when it comes to growing a successful small business because you’ll innately ‘get’ what needs doing and why. But having a working knowledge of how (for an analogy) your BMW’s engine works is one thing. But would you really expect to be the one to service the engine before you drive you family across the Nullarbor in the dead of winter? Or do you think you’d be better served leaving your car in the hands of a trained mechanic?

Hiring a trained SEO professional is much the same thing. 

If getting on the first page of Google is a necessity for growing your small business in 2016 (and it is), then the only question small business owners need to ask themselves is: ‘Who can I trust to get my website on the first page?’.
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And that’s where a company like SEO North Sydney comes in. With a SEO Consultant with 16 years’ experience at it's helm, SEO North Sydney have an unparalleled understanding of the constantly evolving search landscape, we are the perfect online partner to grow your small business or SME. At SEO North Sydney we don’t sweat the small stuff. We sweat the outcomes. And given we guarantee those outcomes in the contract, you can rest assured that your business growth is in good hands.

Everyone who drives a car thinks they could successfully race a car around a track if required. Everyone with a blackbelt thinks they can win a fight if push came to shove. And everyone who knows how to string a few words together, thinks they know how to write. But just being able to drive without crashing into things, throw a few kicks if cornered, or write an email while at work, does not mean you are an expert at it. It just means you have a functional level of ability. Which is great to have, don't get me wrong. One might even say, essential. But if you want to really drive fast, you hire a formula 1 driver. If you want to protect yourself from a bully, you stand behind a UFC fighter. And if you want content for your business website that Google not only loves, but that human beings respond to...you hire an experienced SEO Copywriter. 

Because time was pretty words were all it took to rank in Google. But with Google's Panda algorithm ruling the roost since 2012, an understanding of tone, voice, syntax, grammar et al, is now just the beginning. Write badly and you'll get penalised by Google. Write well and you'll get prioritised by Google. 

'A picture is worth a thousand words' is an idiom we all know. But when it comes to ranking your website in Google search, give me a thousand words every time.

Okay, you’ve typed ‘SEO Newcastle’ (or similar) into the inter-webs, and you’ve found us. So far so good. Because getting your Newcastle small business on the coveted first page of Google is tough. And to get there you need to partner with a company who knows how to walk the talk, as well as talk the talk.

Fortunately for small businesses in Newcastle, getting on the first page of Google is not a privilege only reserved for large companies with deep pockets. All small businesses and small to medium enterprises (SMEs) can achieve page one rankings in their industry vertical, if their SEO strategy is robust, and run to Google’s Best Practice specifications. 

If you’re reading this page, chances are you run a small business in Newcastle and found the page via an internet search. SEO Newcastle is a very common search term for small business in and around Newcastle and the Central Coast areas, so it’s a natural set of keywords for online marketing gurus (such as us) to optimise for. It’s not rocket-science to join those dots.

So why, given you’re in Newcastle or on the Central Coast, did you end up on a Sydney SEO company’s website?

It’s a good question. And the answer is as simple as it is profound.

You’re here because SEO exists in the cloud, not on your local street corner. SEO North Sydney have numerous clients around Australia (and indeed around the world), and several in Newcastle. We can rank this page in Google, for the very same reason that we can rank any page, anywhere, for anything, in Google. Because where WE ARE matters not a jot. What matters is WHERE YOU ARE. So when searching for a ‘local’  Newcastle SEO company, you are basically betting your money on a minor league team. Which is all well and good. By why would you do that when it costs the same to put your money on a major league team?

Put your emotions to one side for a moment, and think about the problem logically. If your ‘local’  SEO company is so good, so knowledgeable, so amazing. Why aren’t they on the first page of Google for ‘SEO Sydney’ or other major Sydney based search terms? After all, that’s where all the money is. It’s by far the largest population in the country, has the greatest amount of companies, and the most potential clients anywhere in Australia. So if your local Newcastle SEO company is so good, why don’t they up their game and come play against the big-boys and mint some serious coin? Unlike a local kitchen company, or a local car dealership, or a local plumber, SEO companies can have clients ANYWHERE. And given that Newcastle is only a couple of hours drive from Sydney anyway, why on earth wouldn’t a local Newcastle SEO company target that area too?

Simple. Because the best SEO companies operate in Sydney, and competing against them needs some serious SEO knowledge and a shed-load of scalable resources. And local SEO companies out of Newcastle or the Central coast tend to lack either one, or both of those factors.  

Now none of the above is in any way meant to be disingenuous to SEO companies in Newcastle. Quite the opposite in fact. We only belabour the point as a way of explaining that, just because YOUR COMPANY IS IN NEWCASTLE, doesn’t mean that your SEO Company has to be.

Sure, if the Newcastle SEO company you’re looking at is offering the same guarantees and the same SEO package for half the cost, you’d be a fool not to sign with them (so long as they have a track record of first page results). But that’s just it: they’re not, and they don’t. They charge Sydney rates, and yet demonstrably aren’t able to rank themselves in the Sydney SEO market.

SEO North Sydney has helped numerous small businesses and SMEs from all over Australia rank on Google’s first page. So while your first instinct may have been to search for an SEO company in Newcastle (and that’s totally understandable). Always remember that Google operates in the cloud and not in a physical location.

SEO North Sydney rank on the first page for every Sydney SEO related search term worth having (with many in positions 1, 2 or 3), so wouldn’t you rather have a company that can successfully compete against every major SEO company and agency in the country, rather than giving your hard earned money to a company whose only claim to fame is that they’ve got an office in Newcastle?

With numerous SEO clients in Newcastle, we’re frequently in the area, and are more than happy to visit local Newcastle businesses to meet face-to-face if requested. Heck, SEO North Sydney founder, Brian M Logan, was even hired by Newcastle University to train their entire IT division, SEO. So it’s fair to say that we have a vested interest in the area on multiple levels!

So why not click here to REQUEST AN SEO QUOTE from an SEO company that can actually deliver you the local Newcastle Google first page results you require? With Google first page results guaranteed in the actual contract, the decision on which SEO company to use, has never been easier. ​

Google is omnipresent in the online and mobile worlds (think organic search, Gmail, YouTube, Android, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Street view, et al) and enjoys by far the biggest share of the user audience. So getting on Google’s good side is never a bad idea if you’re looking to get your business found by potential customers online.

Registering a Google My Business account helps your company get found in organic Google searches and across the many and varied matrix of Google product offerings. Something that is guaranteed to bring measurable, quantifiable and significant benefits to Australian small business owners and SMEs everywhere.

Google My Business is a free, quick, easy and convenient way for businesses, products, brands and area-specific service providers to manage, promote and ultimately grow their online presence via Google. 

The Google My Business dashboard (that you can access once your account has been setup) allows you to perform various tasks including (but not limited to):

• Inputting and maintain your business / service information on Google.
• Acquiring customers / clients with your own Google+ page.
• People who follow your Google+ business page can provide feedback and show appreciation for your business / products / services by writing reviews and posts.
• They can also use the +1 button in order to endorse your products / services on various Google platforms including Google+, Google Search, Google Maps and even on ads.
• Measuring and tracking follower engagement using Insights for Google+ pages and posts.
• Viewing information on any Google Analytics account and YouTube channels associated with your Business account.
• Directly creating and tracking performance of AdWords Express (Pay Per Click - PPC) advertising campaigns.

The two categories of local pages available while signing up for a Google My Business account are:

1. Storefront businesses: This category should be selected if customers are served at your business location and you want your customers to be able to locate your business on Google Maps.

• Examples: retail stores, restaurants, hotels, auto repair shops.
  

1. Service area businesses: This category should be selected if you serve your customers at their location, within a particular service area and you want your customers to be able to see your service area on Google Maps.

• Examples: taxi services, plumbers, roofing contractors, pizza delivery services.
  

Setting up a basic Google My Business account is a straightforward process. What follows is a step-by-step guide to help you get started:

1. Go to https://www.google.com/business/ and sign in with your Gmail account (create one if you don’t have it already).
   
2. In the prompted area, search for your business by name and address.
   
3. If your correct business information shows up in the search results, click on it and proceed to step 6 below.
   
4. If your correct business information does not show up in the search results, click the option “None of these matches, add your business”.
   
5. Fill in the required information (Name, Address etc.) in order to add your business.
   
6. Google should create your Google+ page at this stage. Click the “I am authorised to manage this business” option and click Continue.
   
7. Click “Mail me my code” so that Google can mail a verification code to the address / location of your business.
   
8. Click “Add profile photo” to upload and add a photo to the account profile.
   
9. Add the remaining profile information fields like Business Hours, Contact Information, your Website URL. You can also add / upload more photos if desired.
   
10. Add an introduction to your page and click “Done editing”.
    

This should complete the setup of a standard Google My Business account.

It is important to remember to verify your business with Google once you receive the verification code from them (see point 7 above), because your business won’t show up across any of the Google platforms (organic SEO aside) until they are 100% sure you are the legitimate owner or representative of the business you’re listing, and that your company is physically located where you say it is (hence sending a postcard with a verification code on it to the address you’ve listed).

There are several ways to verify your business on Google My Business, but for the vast majority of Australian companies, verification will be done by Google sending you a postcard via Australia Post. This can take anything up to 2-3 weeks. During which time your business will NOT show up on Google Maps, etc.

The benefits of verifying your business with Google should be self-evident, but the long and the short if is that a verified Google My Business account will allow you to:

• Increase the chances of your business getting found across the various Google platforms including Google.com.au organic search and YouTube.
• Read customer reviews and respond.
• Get insights on where your customers are coming from and how they search for your business (keywords, etc), which feeds into your organic SEO and PPC strategies.

Shortly after you complete the verification, your business should start showing up on Google’s regular and local search results, on Google Maps and on Google plus.

It is important to remember that while the Google My Business profile page is more or less a static page (though it can be edited if required), your Google+ page (that got automatically created during the My Business account creation process) is a full-blown social networking presence for your business, and therefore, updating it regularly with routine actions like making posts, responding to comments, creating and adding people to Circles (groups), following others etc, will significantly help drive engagement and yield maximum benefits to your business.

Click here to get your company on Google My Business.

As a novelist, screenwriter and SEO copywriter, it's not too much of a stretch to say that words are my life. In my younger years, when I was a professional film actor, it was the spoken word that held my focus. But since then it's all been about the written word.

Like most writers I am obsessive about what words to use, in what order, and why. On the top end of that obsession you deal with issues of thematics, tone and voice. Of narrative and of structure. And at the bottom end you deal with spelling, punctuation and grammar.

This perfectionism (because that is surely what all writers suffer from) means that even something as mundane as an email or an sms / text, must be written well and correctly spelled. Language after all is a symphony made up of an endless amount of notes. And it only takes one 'bum' note to spoil your enjoyment of the music. As my late sainted mum used to say, "If you say it correctly, you'll spell it correctly". And in the digital age, we can perhaps flip that to read: "If you spell it correctly, you'll say it correctly".

Imagine my surprise then, when I read how Laszlo Bock (such a great name - must pinch that for my next novel!) Google's head of HR, revealed that Google instantly delete any CVs that contain spelling mistakes.

Apparently the Human Resources department at Google receives over 50,000 resumes per week. And, so Laszlo told Business Insider, if you have so much as a single spelling mistake on your resume, it ends up in the trash.

Laszlo, who has himself reputedly reviewed over 20,000 resumes, said that upward of 58 percent of resumes Google receives have "Spelling mistakes, punctuation mistakes, or noun-verb agreement errors".

When quizzed as to why he is so obsessive about spelling mistakes, et al, Laszlo said: "Typos are deadly because employers interpret them as a lack of detail-orientation, as a failure to care about quality".

Which is pretty much what we writers have been saying all along!

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Looking for SEO Sydney for your website? Then you've come to right place. Simply call 0425 204 887, today. The first page of Google is only one click away!

Google have just announced that they have this week started rolling out the new and improved Panda algorithm. The roll out is expected to take a week to two weeks to totally proliferate the internet.  

This Google Panda update is influenced by webmaster and user feedback, which has allowed Google to eek out a few more signals to help Panda identify low-quality content. This will result in a higher percentage and greater diversity in search results, and will enable high-quality small and medium-sized sites to rank higher against larger and traditionally more powerful sites.

This is a nice touch from Google, as the quality of the content should be the ultimate deciding factor in a page's worth, not the overarching power of the TLD it comes from. Sure, great content doesn't exist in a vacuum, but just like each individual page has its own page rank, so does each individual page have its own on-page ranking factors, with how great the content is being by far the most important.

It is expected that approximately 3-5% of all queries will be impacted.

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Looking for SEO Sydney for your website? Then you've come to right place. Simply call 0425 204 887, today. The first page of Google is only one click away!

Hi Brian

SEO results have been fantastic over the past few months. First page rankings have also been kick ass. You have done a fabulous job getting the traffic numbers up and I certainly appreciate the effort and service.

Kind regards

Kai
cushycushions.com.au

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Looking for SEO Sydney for your website? Then you've come to right place. Simply call 0425 204 887, today. The first page of Google is only one click away!