Google has today announced that it is rolling out the Panda 4.0 update. While other SEO companies, who try to 'game' the system to get their clients better search results will be negatively impacted by this, SEO North Sydney clients, who are all run on a white hat content mapping strategy, will greatly benefit.

Bring it on I say, bring it on! This has the potential to be HUGE!

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Want to master SEO? Then book in yourself or your staff for some SEO Training Sydney today! Sydney's #1 SEO Trainer Brian M Logan shows you everything you need to get your company website on the first page of Google. SEO Training can be in-house (we come to you) or classroom based (you come to us).

Or you can always call us on 0425 204 887 if you want to leave your SEO Sydney requirements to the experts. Your website's 1st Page of Google results are guaranteed in writing in the contract.

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Happy birthday internet, old buddy, old chum! We don't know what we'd do without you!

Yes, today (March 12, 2014) is officially the internet's 25th birthday. In honour of the occasion, Google's home page includes a cake with a “25″ candle on top to remind everyone.

The world wide web, as modern users may know, was founded on March 12, 1989 by (Sir) Tim Burners-Lee. But, though Burner-Lee is credited with 'founding the web', the internet itself can be traced back decades earlier. Right back to 1957 in fact with the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA - later DARPA). Historians love to credit the genesis of this auspicious organisation to President Dwight Eisenhower (who pushed for the creation of ARPA), with the inference being that the 5 star General launched ARPA because he had a burning desire to push the boundaries of scientific knowledge. When in fact the truth is far more mundane - and some might even say, devious. Because while (what came to be known as ARPA) had been bubbling on US university campuses for several years, it had not received any significant funding from Washington. Then, in October 1957, the unthinkable happened. Russia launched Sputnik, the world's first satellite. And suddenly, Bible bashing middle-America was confronted with the unsettling knowledge that those damn Ruskies could see EVERYTHING they were doing...from space!

Needless to say, a US President was never going to take this slap in the face, lying down. So Eisenhower pushed through ARPA (which of course was actually a part of the Department of Defense), and so the war for technological supremacy was cranked up a couple more notches.

The creation of ARPA led to a gentleman by the name of Ted Nelson creating Project Xanadu in 1960. And it was Nelson who coined the term ‘Hypertext’ in 1963. Hypertext is contained in hyperlinks (which are known today simply as ‘links’) and is the core component of HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) which is the language of the web as we know it.

Berners-Lee comes into the picture (historically speaking) around 1980 when he came up with the concept of the World Wide Web (as it would become) while working at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. During his research Berners-Lee wrote a rudimentary program for storing information using random associations. The program - named 'Enquire' - was only ever intended for his own personal use however, and was never actually published.

Fast forward to March 12, 1989 and Berners-Lee submitted a proposal to CERN seeking to build 'A web of notes with links between them'. And so...the web was born. And now, 25 years later, we all get to wish the Internet a very happy birthday indeed!

In Tim Berners-Lee's own words :

On the 25th birthday of the web, I ask you to join in - to help us imagine and build the future standards for the web, and to press for every country to develop a digital bill of rights to advance a free and open web for everyone. Learn more and speak up for the sort of web we really want with #web25.

Although most people (myself included) utilise the words 'Internet' and “World Wide Web” to mean the exact same thing, they're actually different. Not that it matters too much in the normal line of conversation you understand, but for those anal-retentive or finicky enough to care (and just so I don't get inundated by emails from nerdy undergrads with too much time on their hands and a 24/7 hard on for InternetFactsAreUs), The 'Internet' is a pan Galactic gargle blasting way of connecting a gazillion computers together via the standard Internet protocol TCP/IP suite, while the ‘World Wide Web’ is a system of Hyperlinked documents accessible via the internet. 

All the nerds happy now? Good. Then we can move on...

Let's sign off on this auspicious birthday by reminding ourselves of two very important points. One, without people like Sir Tim Burners-Lee, folks like me would have to get a real job! And as much as I like to think that I'd be a shoe-in for the role of Brad Pitt's on-set body double if I needed to find an alternate career path, I suspect that in reality I might have to look slightly further afield...

And two, let's take a moment to appreciate how RADICALLY DIFFERENT all our lives today would be without the internet as we know it. So different in fact as to be unrecognisable. With a quite staggering 6 billion web searches performed every day, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that for all of us, the internet and the world wide web have become as much a part of our daily lives, as breathing in an out.

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Or you can always call us on 0425 204 887 if you want to leave your SEO Sydney requirements to the experts. Your website's 1st Page of Google results are guaranteed in writing in the contract.

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There are literally thousands of algorithmic factors that Google weighs when working out who goes where in a particular search. Trying to get your head around what algorithm affects what outcome is a little like chasing the rainbow looking for a pot of gold. Because by the time you’ve got to where the end of the rainbow was…it has already moved on. Or - in SEO speak - by the time you work out what Google algorithm affects what short or long tail searches you’re trying to rank for in the SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Positions), Google up and changes the algorithms* and you’re back to square one.

*Google on average rolls out between 500 to 600 algorithmic updates every year. Or just over one and a half algorithm updates every single day…

However, notwithstanding the continuously changing slings and arrows of outrageous Google fortune, there are some factors that are pretty much constant. How important they are can change (and have changed) over time, but they are still with us so are worth mentioning here. There are many, many others factors of course. And if you want to know the Top 50 Google Ranking Factors (IN ORDER) that Google uses to rank websites, you might wish to book yourself or your staff into our one day SYDNEY SEO TRAINING COURSE (where this, and every other piece of ‘Must Know’ information about Google is revealed IN DETAIL).

1.      Age of the Domain as a Factor in Search Engine Trust.

Age of the domain is important because the older a domain is, the more times the Google spider has crawled it and thus the more it is inherently ‘trusted’ by Google.

Newer websites are at a distinct disadvantage when compared to older websites for just this reason. There are ways to get around this problem (which will be discussed in a different blog entry at a later date), but make no mistake, if your website is still wet behind the ears, Google will know it, and it’s much harder for your site to rank in the SERPs.

Note: despite what you may have read, every page on the web is its own ‘website’, and has its own ‘Trust Value’ in Google’s eyes. So if your site has 1,000 pages, that equates in a very real sense, to 1,000 websites in Google’s eyes. Of course Google knows that all the pages belong to the main TLD (Top Level Domain), but every page is viewed as a separate entity with its own ranking signals as well as a part of the entire domain. Which means that, on rare occasions, a page in a website can actually have a higher PR (Page Rank) than the home page it belongs to (though this is highly unusual, as most links go to a site’s home page).

2.      Page Rank / PR.

Every page on the web has a Page Rank (PR). Page Rank goes from 0 to 10. The higher the Page Rank the more innate trust value that page has in Google’s eyes. Page Rank is an algorithm created by Larry Page, who with Sergey Brin was one of the two co-founders of Google in 1997 / 1998. Page Rank is not only a clever play on Larry’s surname, but is an algorithm that exists to rank websites based on the trust value given to that site’s content, by other websites.

In times past Page Rank was the huge elephant in the room in Search Engine Optimisation and played a major factor in where you ranked in the SERPs. How could it not as it was the very algorithm that changed the landscape of search as we know it (for everyone – including Yahoo and what we now know as Bing). As such the Page Rank algorithm would update every 3 months or so because of it. But in the last few years Google has been downplaying Page Rank, at least publicly. They don’t offer a Page Rank toolbar for Chrome and they stopped supporting the Page Rank Toolbar for Firefox back in 2011, which many in the SEO community took to mean the death of Page Rank.

Indeed, as far back as 2009, Google’s Amit Singal said in a Bloomberg Interview:

“No one should feel, if I dismantle the current search system, someone will get upset. That’s the wrong environment. When I came, I dismantled [Google cofounders] Larry and Sergey’s whole ranking system. That was the whole idea. I just said, That’s how I think it should be done, and Sergey said, Great!”

However reports of the demise of Page Rank have been vastly overstated. Page Rank is still important (for indexing and search reasons) today, and is still the cornerstone of how Google prioritises their search results. It’s just that Google now has (post the Panda and Penguin updates particularly) many hundreds of ranking factors that they use in concert with Page Rank, to work out where a website should appear in the SERPs, and so are much less reliant on the time honoured ‘how many links you have pointing at your website’ metric than they were back in the day.

3.      On-Page SEO Factors.

On page factors are vitally important in ranking a website, with the quality of the written content, post Panda, being the single most important factor in search today.

Other on-page factors such as how fast a page loads, meta tags and description, et al, combine to give Google an idea of the quality and relevancy of your website’s content. But now, in 2014, it all starts with HOW WELL THE CONTENT IS WRITTEN.

Which, let’s face it, is exactly how it should be. Because Google search is ultimately only interested in two things: 1) relevancy of the content to the search, and 2) the quality of the content itself. Everything else is window dressing to put those two factors together.

4.      Off-Page SEO Factors.

Off page factors such as the type of links, number of links, anchor text, etc are less important now than they were before Google released the Penguin and Panda algorithms. But make no mistake they’re still very important. Though if the current trend toward content being king, continues (as I assure you it will), Google will, over time I believe, phase out their reliance on links all together*.

*And it’s only at THIS point that Page Rank will be retired.

In 2014 however a targeted (rather than an aggressive) off-page strategy is still vital to a website getting on the first page of Google.

Think of it this way, if you put up a new website Google says, ‘The only people who think the content on this website is any good, are the people who put it there’, so Google is more or less ‘Content Neutral’ at the time the website is launched. But when other websites (that Google trusts) link to a page on your website, then you receive a tacit endorsement of the quality of your content (on that page) by a third party. And the more third party websites that give your content the ‘thumbs up’ via a link, and the more relevant that third party is to what you do and where you are, the higher up the search rankings that particular page goes.

Note: whatever you do though, do NOT hire an SEO company in India (or similar) or an SEO company in Australia who outsources link building to India (ASK THIS QUESTION!). Because one in three calls SEO North Sydney gets each day, is from a business whose website is suffering from a Penguin penalty (either algorithmic or manual) due to toxic links. And ‘recovering’ a site from toxic links is an expensive and time consuming process, with no guaranteed end result.* Many clients in fact choose to dump their old domain completely when they get a penguin penalty because it will cost too much and take too long to fix, and thus are forced to start again from scratch. And as I’ve mentioned above, new sites have no innate trust value in Google’s eyes, so a company doing this finds themselves back to square one due to being forced to pick the lesser of two evils.

*it can take anywhere between 3 and 9 months for a site to recover from a Penguin penalty on average.

5.      Number of Pages in Relation to Search Engine Optimization.

Post the Panda algorithm, this is more important than ever. It's what I dubbed, 'The Wikipedia Principle'. Because the more pages you have, and the greater the depth of knowledge you express on a given topic, the more likely Google will think you're an 'authority' on the subject you're discussing.  But don’t think that having hundreds of pages by and of itself will rank your site. Because, due to Google’s Panda algorithm now being able to use a sub-section of Machine Learning known as Support Vector Networks to gauge the quality of a site’s content and practically read the page like a human being (it can now literally tell great content from good content and good content from bad content), if you’ve just got dozens or hundreds of pages of poorly written or duplicate or ‘thin’ content on your website, having more pages will actually harm your site’s performance in the SERPs not help it. But if you want to rank for something, having more ‘supporting pages’ on a given topic and then using those supporting pages cleverly in your IA (Information Architecture) allows you to push page rank around your site to the places that need it most. This is known as page rank sculpting, which of late has got a bad rep (due to affiliate marketers and dodgy SEO companies abusing the practice for many years) but when used judiciously, this – plus the additional pages of original, brilliantly written ‘supporting’ content - can help you enormously. But again, done incorrectly, or by the untrained, this too can damage your site more than help it. But in the hands of trained (and ethical) SEO professionals like SEO North Sydney, this technique can produce exceptional results and a great deal of ‘quick wins’ in the SERPs.

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Want to master SEO? Then book in yourself or your staff for some SEO Training Sydney today! Sydney's #1 SEO Trainer Brian M Logan shows you everything you need to get your company website on the first page of Google. SEO Training can be in-house (we come to you) or classroom based (you come to us).

Or you can always call us on 0425 204 887 if you want to leave your SEO Sydney requirements to the experts. Your website's 1st Page of Google results are guaranteed in writing in the contract.

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Every day I receive multiple phone calls from business owners throughout Australia who are searching for the Rosetta Stone that deciphers how to get on the first page of Google. Some business owners are willing to pay for this secret to search engine optimisation, and pay handsomely. While some simply want (nay, expect) me to divulge all I know over the phone as if I were a free public resource with nothing better to do with my time than download the 15+ years of study I've done in the field, without getting any remuneration in return. But be these callers genuine in-bound SEO leads for my company or be they the quintessential in-bound 'tyre kicker' (every industry gets them, even SEO!), they are all calling because they understand the innate impact a Google first page listing can have on their business.

Or do they?

If Google were Monopoly, then getting on the first page would be like landing on Mayfair or Park Lane, because it's far and away the most valuable real estate you can get and everyone wants it. You know this to be true as well as I do, because we all of us realise that only a tiny percentage of people (statistically speaking) will ever go past the first page of a Google search. But just how valuable is the first page of Google exactly? And is it really worth spending your hard earned money hiring SEO North Sydney to get your website there?

To answer that, let's agree that if you're not on page one of your relevant Google search, your website is practically invisible. Let's further agree that every day you're not on the first page of Google, your competitors (who no doubt are on page 1) get all the business that should be going to you. 

Now, given the above two points, let's close off the syllogism with the conclusion that, as the vast majority of all consumers in the 21st century search for what they want and where they want it, online (rather than in traditional media), it is very likely that the companies that are not on the first page will seriously lag behind their competitors until they learn to harness the power of the world's single largest lead generation tool (Google) to drive inbound enquiries.

Still with me? Good. Because I'm about to give you some statistics to back up the above statements and to make your eye-balls spin back in your head like slot machines. As it's not enough just to get on the first page of Google (though that's impressive - and a vital first step), it's WHERE on the first page you rank that's really important. And this is the ongoing challenge that SEO companies face when you hire them.

To explain why this is so vital, we first have to understand the well-worn axiom that all sales is a numbers game. Because when it comes to internet search, the more people who click on your website's listing in Google, the more people will end up calling you or buying whatever cool-aid you're selling. Beyond the obvious though, how many people click on your listing is important because one of the factors Google weighs when working out where your website ranks, is your click through rate. As a high organic click-through rate (CTR) is one of the best metrics for determining relevancy to the search string. And Google marries this relevancy with their ability to measure the quality of the content on the page your listing actually takes people to (via factors such as bounce rate, time on page, average session time, etc). And together with the machine learning SVM methodology employed via their Panda algorithm, Google takes all this information and gets a frighteningly accurate picture of just how good the content on your website actually is.

The beauty in all this is that the better your site's content, the higher your rankings in Google. The higher your rankings the better your click through rate. The better your click through rate the more relevant your content must be. The more relevant your content, the higher your click through rate. The better your click through rate the higher your rankings. QED. In many ways this becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, and - if you're lucky enough to be deemed by Google as worthy - a self-perpetuating one.

US based search targeted advertising and research company 'Chitika' might get zero out of ten for their unfortunate choice of business names, but they get ten out of ten for their always excellent and wonderfully detailed SEO research. 

I first came across Chitika back in May 2010 when they did an insights study into the 'Value of Google Results Positioning', an eye-opening report into how important 1st page results were when advertising online. But in the fast paced world of the internet, data from 2010 is as relevant today as that acid wash denim jacket you've got stashed in the back of your wardrobe. Consequently in 2013 Chitika decided to update their research in the subject to quantify what each spot on a Google results page is actually worth in terms of organic traffic from Google, today.

To quantify their research, Chitika performed a taxonomy of tens of millions of online ad impressions in which the user was referred to a specified landing page via an organic Google search. From the referring Google URL, Chitika were able to determine the exact SERP (Search Engine Ranking Position) the query came from, and measure what percentage of Google traffic comes from each position in the search results page. The data range for this particular research was extracted between May 21st to May 27th, 2013.

Despite what your ex-girlfriend assured you in the bedroom (no doubt before she left you for a pro-football player named Tripod), size actually is important. Consequently to ensure the results of their 2013 research gave an accurate representation of Google 1st page results as a whole, Chitika went big and extracted their 2013 SEO data from approximately 300,000,000 U.S. and Canadian impressions, as measured by page views (rather than unique visitors).

Note: while these results didn't include Australian internet users, this 2013 study is by far the most in-depth I've come across, and it's not rocket science to work out that the data as expressed in this report will also hold true for Google.com.au as well as for Google.com.

The first thing that Chitika discovered from their 2013 SEO study was that, when measured as a percentile, the traffic for each SERP was actually very similar to their 2010 results, with 32% of clicks coming from the website in the first position in the Google search, compared to 17% for websites in the second position.

Think about that for a minute. Sales is a numbers game, and the more clicks you get, the more people buy. And this data categorically proves that the difference in traffic between being number one in a Google first page search and number two is almost 100%.

Yup, you read that correctly. Getting SERP one in Google gets you approximately twice the clicks as getting SERP two. And twice the clicks means twice the calls. Twice the calls means twice the sales. Twice the sales means double the profits. So if you're reading this and wondering whether or not to sign up for an SEO package with SEO North Sydney, start thinking about how much business you'd make if the visitors to your website doubled? How much business you'd make if your phone calls doubled. Because these are the margins available to whoever has the wherewithal to go after them.

But enough with the sales pitch. Let's stick to the research and let the facts do the talking. Further to this I've posted the Chitika SEO results below for your edification. But the other salient takeaway from this survey that's worth referencing is what we as business owners intuitively know anyway, and that is if you're not on the first page of your relevant Google search at all, then your website is practically invisible, because the first page of Google generates a whopping 92% of all traffic. And heaven forbid you're even further back than page 2, because traffic drops a further 78% between page 2 and 3, and another 58% between pages 3 and 4. Though by that stage there's probably only one person still searching anyway, so...

SEO RESEARCH - RESULTS OVERVIEW:

• #1 in a Google search gets 32% of all the clicks.
• #2 in a Google search gets 17% of all the clicks.
• #3 in a Google search gets 11% of all the clicks.
• 92 out of every 100 people who search on the internet do not go past the first page of their Google search.

CONTACT SEO NORTH SYDNEY TODAY!

Every day you delay is allowing your competitors to get all the business that should rightfully go to you...

Want to master SEO? Then book in yourself or your staff for some SEO Training Sydney today! Sydney's #1 SEO Trainer Brian M Logan shows you everything you need to get your company website on the first page of Google. SEO Training can be in-house (we come to you) or classroom based (you come to us).

Or you can always call us on 0425 204 887 if you want to leave your SEO Sydney requirements to the experts. Your website's 1st Page of Google results are guaranteed in writing in the contract.

Enjoy this free article? Great! Don't forget to Like it, Tweet it and LINK to it from your blog or website. Your sharing of the page with your friends is greatly appreciated! :)

If you were running a business in the 1980s and wanted to sell or maket a service or product, the vast majority of your (below the line) budget was spent on print. From overpriced double page spreads in your local newspaper to outragously expensive Yellow Pages ads, print was the advertising medium of choice.

I say ‘medium of choice’, when of course what I really mean is: ‘medium of NO choice’. Because back then print was the only option available for anyone looking to do a concerted below the line advertising campaign. Oh, sure, you could do letterbox drops, and send out brochures, and give away fridge magnets, and a dozen other low-key scattergun approaches to market your product or service. But they all pailed into insignificance next to the enormous reach and power of the printed word.

Fast forward thirty years and we discover that the ways a company connects with their customers (and would-be customers) has radically changed. Because, in the post internet / post Google world, print is about as relevant to a business as a woolly coat was to a mammoth after the last ice age came to an end. Sure the coats were tactile and made their eyes glaze over with memories of a simpler time. But deep down you’d have to figure that even the thickest skinned Mammuthus Primigenius knew that the world had changed forever, and that the coats were now only weighing them down and hampering their chances of survival.

That said, I am not going to tell you (as many of my SEO colleagues will) that ‘Print is Dead!’. Given I’m the Doyen of All Things Digital, you’d probably excuse me if I did jump on that particular bandwagon. But I won’t. Because - separate to my 10 years of SEO / web experience - I’ve also worked in print as a National Advertising Manager (Government News) and National Classified Manager (BT Weekly). So I know full well that if it’s done correctly (and used judiciously), print can – and should - still form a (small) part of a company’s overall marketing strategy.

However I’m also smart enough to appreciate that in an age where 98% of all people SEARCH FOR PRODUCTS OR SERVICES ONLINE (rather than in newspapers or magazines), working out where a company’s marketing budget needs to go if they’re looking to connect with the masses, isn’t rocket science. Because, unlike print, there are no tyre-kickers where a well optimised web strategy is concerned, as everybody that finds you online has searched for WHAT YOU DO and WHERE YOU DO IT…and they’ve SEARCHED NOW.

And leads / customers don’t come much hotter or more relevant than that.

Want to master SEO? Then call us on 0425 204 887 if you want to leave your SEO Sydney requirements to the experts. Your website's 1st Page of Google results are guaranteed in writing in the contract.

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While still a ‘Job Description’ in its infancy, the requirement for a ‘On-Line Community Manager’ (who handles a company’s ‘On-Line Community Engagement’) no longer causes businesses to ask “What does an On-Line Community Manager do, and should I get one?” but rather “What makes a great On-Line Community Manager, and where can I find one?”.

However, as the role of ‘On-Line Community Manager’ has only existed in its present form in the last couple of years, the job description varies greatly from one organization to another. Below is a rough list of things you'll need to keep in mind to help ensure you hire the right person to successfully manage your on-line community engagement needs.

1. Your community must have a purpose, and this purpose can’t just be ‘so we make more money’. Rather it must exist to fill a need in the community you’re attempting to reach.
2. Use whichever tool or platform your members are most familiar with and most likely to use daily. In other words, don’t use something archaic like MySpace, just because you have fond memories of it. And by the same token, don’t use the latest shinny new web 2.0 platform, just because you want to feel ‘relevant’. As always, GO WHERE THE PEOPLE ARE.
3. Communities are about the people who populate them. So create lots and lots and LOTS of NEW, ORIGINAL CONTENT for them (and encourage them to comment on it, discuss it and share it with their friends). There is no other way to do it.
4. Build personal relationships with your community, and especially with your top web 2.0 contributors. Getting lots of ‘likes’ (etc) is driven by the quality and relevance of your content, and impacts greatly on their ability (and interest) in interacting with that content.
5. Encourage debate and do not be afraid to push the envelope with the content you post. Challenging / edgy topics get the most comments and likes and re-tweets, etc. So don’t become a prisoner to the PC brigade. Have an opinion.
6. Building an on-line community is a never ending process. So build it slowly and steadily and don’t expect to be the most popular kid on the block in only a few months. Anything on the web takes 6-12 months at least to gauge and chart growth. And community engagement (like trust) takes years.
7. Stop selling! There's nothing that'll stop people reading your blog or Twitter feed or Facebook page quicker than trying to sell them things EVERY TIME YOU POST. If you must push a product or service, try to keep it to 30% sales and 70% giving away or linking to information that is relevant to your audience. Keeping in mind that the information you post doesn't always have to be yours (though it's better if it is) because some of the best blog posts are ones that reference something somebody else has written elsewhere on the web, with you adding your 2 cents into the debate (based on your experience and expertise). But remember internet etiquette 101: if you use or reference someone else's content: always, always, ALWAYS link back to the source (thus sharing the Google love with those who deserve it). 
8. Give away free (relevant) information and content to your community at every opportunity to give them a reason to keep coming back. In the Small Business and SME space, People 'Like' /  'Share'  / Link To individual pieces of content, far more than they 'Like' / 'Share' or Link To a company or a brand. The more you give to your community (without asking for anything in return) the more inclined your community will be to come back or share what you've posted with their friends. 
9. Encourage members to recruit friends. The best way to grow an on-line community is by referrals. So create a referral strategy which rewards members who invite their friends and link to your content.
10. The web is a visual medium. And if, ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’. Then rest assured that, 'A video is worth a thousand pictures'. So populate your website and web 2.0 platforms with lots of video content as well as relevant, SEO optimized written content. Ideally every page should have a video, as this helps engage your audience. These videos should be short (1-3 minutes tops) and stick to a single subject or topic. The people in your community are busy, so spoon-feed them bite sized chunks of content.

To quote Spiderman, ‘With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility’. So never use your admin powers unless absolutely necessary.  Nothing is guaranteed to make people check out  quicker than an overpowering web 2.0 Administrator who deletes content that he doesn’t agree with.

Want to master SEO? Then book in yourself or your staff for some SEO Training Sydney today! Sydney's #1 SEO Trainer Brian M Logan shows you everything you need to get your company website on the first page of Google. SEO Training can be in-house (we come to you) or classroom based (you come to us).


Or you can always call us on 0425 204 887 if you want to leave your SEO Sydney requirements to the experts. Your website's 1st Page of Google results are guaranteed in writing in the contract.

Enjoy this free article? Great! Don't forget to Like it, Tweet it and LINK to it from your blog or website. Your sharing of the page with your friends is greatly appreciated! :)

SEO, as defined by the industry, refers to the search results that appear on the left of your computer screen when you perform a Google search. These searches are ‘organic’ and are separate from paid or sponsored adverts.

There are two main facets to SEO: one is known as ON PAGE SEO and the other is known as OFF PAGE SEO. Both are complicated endeavours (though for different reasons). But as you can see in the SEO ICEBERG diagram I’ve put together above, the amount of effort that goes into getting your website optimized in a way Google will value, is only 25% of the total iceberg. With the vast majority of the SEO that matters happening AFTER the site itself is optimized. And, like on-page SEO, the off-page optimization is never ending, with its matrix by necessity getting bigger and more complicated over time.

Search Engine Marketing is an umbrella term that originally encompassed SEO, but is now associated and identified exclusively with PAID SEARCH. This can take the form of Google Pay Per Click advertising, Facebook advertising, Google adwords and adsense, banner ads, button ads or any other form of paid on-line advertising used to promote a product, service or website.

It’s important to note however that PAID LINKS (as opposed to PAID SEARCH) does not fall under SEM. Paid links are classified by Google as a Black Hat SEO technique and will result in a ‘Google Slap’ that will cause the website to be de-indexed from Google’s search results altogether. So never, ever do this. And if a so called ‘SEO Expert’ tells you otherwise (and there are many that still do) - hang up on them. Because the key, as always, to getting people to link to you (especially in the post Panda and Penguin Google world) is to AUTHOR GREAT ORIGINAL CONTENT that engages with your community and prompts them to ‘Like’ and ‘Share’ the content with their friends. But great content that exists in a vacuum won't get read. Which is where SMO comes in...

Utilizing an on-going social media strategy that connects with your audience via web 2.0 platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, Google + etc) helps generate traffic to your website. But it does not traditionally help with your SEO, because - post web 2.0 - links from social media sites such as those mentioned above do not carry any ‘Google Juice’, so Google largely ignores them. 

Links from web 2.0 sites (which became classified by the industry as 'rel=”nofollow' links) take the user from site A to site B, but are not followed by the Google spider (and thus are not factored into your site’s organic page rankings). However, post Panda and Penguin (Google algorithmic updates that radically altered how search works) this landscape is changing. Links from these web 2.0 sites still do not carry any Google juice, but Google have now admitted that 'Social Markers' such as the amount of likes, re-tweets, etc, are being factored into their organic search results. Google is doing this because it now believes that people don’t just search any more, they search, socialize and share. And that a 'Social Marker' is another indicator of 'Quality Content'. In other words, thinks Google, why would someone 'like' or 'share' something if the content was rubbish? They wouldn't. Ergo the content they 'liked' or shared must be of value.

This factoring in of 'Social Markers' by Google is set to radically change search as we know it. Sure, the organic search landscape hasn’t changed all that dramatically yet for the end user, but trust me when I tell you that it is changing and that if you want to future-proof your business against the winds of change, you'd better get aggressive with an SMO strategy...and fast.

Allow me explain what I mean: in years gone by, Google followed a link from point A to point B, and classified it as ‘a link from website A to website B’. In other words, from one ‘entity’ (site) to another. But now, with the launch of Google + and their Authorship algorithm, Google are looking to follow a link from one PERSON to another. This is a very important and seismic shift in the way Google are looking to handle search. Done well, it will make your search results different to my search results because we each ‘trust’ authors (of web content), differently. Which means that, even if we’re sitting next to each other and type in the exact same Google search on identical computers, we will get slightly different first page search results.

That said, Google + can hardly be viewed as a success, so far. Sure, millions of people have signed up for Google +, but – unlike Facebook – only a small percentage of people actually use the site regularly. Whereas people spend more time on Facebook than they do on search, youtube and Google + put together. But given Google has spent untold millions on R&D to make these changes work, expect them to iron out the bugs sooner rather than later.

Want to master SEO? Then book in yourself or your staff for some SEO Training Sydney today! Sydney's #1 SEO Trainer Brian M Logan shows you everything you need to get your company website on the first page of Google. SEO Training can be in-house (we come to you) or classroom based (you come to us).

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Australia’s combined online advertising spend soared to $2.45 billion in the 2011 / 2012 financial year, growing by $412 million, a comprehensive March 2012 ‘Online Advertising Expenditure Report’ compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the Advertising Bureau of Australia (IAB) revealed.

Online search and online directories, when combined with online classifieds, achieved a 23 per cent growth to record a total spend of $1.26 billion and $579 million respectively. Online display advertising in Australia also recorded a 12 per cent growth to reach $612 million.

"Growth in search has outstripped the growth in directories, and what I would say is that the majority of that growth comes from the migration of businesses into (online) search'', said IAB Chief Executive, Paul Fisher.

Online video advertising also posted particularly impressive growth in 2011 / 2012, with the market growing 53 per cent to reach almost $40 million a year.

In the US, video represents 14 per cent of online display advertising (remember what I said about using LOTS OF VIDEO CONTENT on your website and web 2.0 sites), but in Australia the number is considerably less. However Mr. Fisher estimates the Australian video advertising market is still on track to reach $200 million by 2014 based on “Continuing strong demand” by advertisers.

"There is real potential in video,” said Mr. Fisher. “With today's targeting capabilities such as geographic, demographic, time of day and of course online behavioural targeting, there are great opportunities for video advertising to grow exponentially'', he said.

PricewaterhouseCoopers's report projects that Australia's overall online advertising market will grow to $3 billion per annum by 2013.

Want to master SEO yourself? Then book in for some SEO Training Sydney today! Sydney's #1 SEO Trainer Brian M Logan shows you everything you need to get your company website on the first page of Google.

Enjoy this free article? Great! Don't forget to Like it, Tweet it and LINK to it..Your sharing of the page with your friends is greatly appreciated! :)

OTHER ARTICLES YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN:

• Top 20 Ways to Get Google’s Panda to Love Your Content – The Definitive Panda Proof SEO Guide.
• SEO Explained. SEM Defined. SMO Uncovered.
• Online Advertising v Print Advertising. 
  
• Top 10 Reasons Why Small Businesses Need a Community Engagement Manager.