Firstly, the good news: SEO North Sydney is OPERATING AS NORMAL during the time of COVID-19 because Google is the cloud. And quite honestly, the cloud is the safest place to be right about now!
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The only difference for an SEO company like us during this pandemic, is that our team are now working remotely rather than coming to the office. Which is something they do from time to time anyway and we’re obviously already set up for this, as staff have access to our secure cloud, and only need internet access and a computer to do their jobs. So, rest assured the SEO work is still being done each month and that your Google rankings are safe!

We’re living in crazy times. There are no two ways about it. And amidst all the chaos there are a few questions that keep popping up from current and prospective clients that I thought warranted a post to answer them.

Existing clients ask:

1: How will my SEO rankings be impacted by what’s happening with COVID-19?

While new SEO clients ask:

2: Should I start a new SEO campaign now or wait for COVID-19 to pass?

And new web build clients ask:

​3: Should I launch my new website now or wait until the COVID-19 pandemic is over? Let me answer these in order, as they’re all very valid questions given what’s happening in Australia and the world at large.

The short answer is: THEY WON’T.

There’s not much to smile about in the midst of this pandemic, but the good news is that so far as Google and your digital marketing is concerned, it’s business as usual, as all of Google’s algorithms exist in the cloud. And all the SEO magic we have to do on a week by week basis for your website, also happens in the cloud. And when people search for what you do and where you do it, they’re doing it in the cloud. And the cloud is the one place COVID-19 can’t get to!
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Now, more than ever, it’s IMPERATIVE to maintain your Google rankings. Because while all small businesses are suffering in the short-term during this pandemic (to a greater or lesser degree) it’s now more important than ever that we keep working on your Google rankings, because if we don’t, your rankings will plummet, and it’ll take six months to a year to get them back up to where they need to be to make the phone ring. And in three to six months, when we all come out the other end of this craziness, you’ll be needing the phone ringing more than you ever have before. And if you’re not doing SEO on your site during this time, your rankings will drop as surely as the sun sets in the west. And you only need to see the chart below to see how dropping even a few positions in Google can impact how much traffic your website gets. And by extension, how many phone calls or enquiries you get. 

Everyone knows that it takes Google a minimum of three months to start caring about whatever SEO we do on or for a website, today. It’s the very reason that a standard SEO contract is 12-months long, because it takes a MINIMUM of 3 months for Google to start trusting whatever we do on or for your website, today. And it takes on average 6-12 months (or longer) to properly convince Google to trust and rank your website. The rule of thumb being: the more competitive your industry vertical is, the longer it’ll take Google to trust (and rank) it.

The first three months of an SEO campaign is always ‘Getting your house in order’ (or ‘fixing whatever someone else has done wrong!’). While the second three months is all about ‘Getting Google to understand that your website is legit and that they should start to trust your website – and by extension, rank it’. With months six to twelve (and onward) being all about continually reminding Google that ‘Your website is THE most important website in your industry vertical’.
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Anyone who’s ever done SEO knows and appreciates these facts. They know how long and hard it was to get those Google first page rankings in the first place. They also know how competitive it is online to maintain their hard-fought rankings. And they know how easy it is for those rankings to fall away if regular week by week, month by month SEO isn’t being performed.

If you’ve read the above section, you’ll already know the answer to that question is: YES – YOU SHOULD START YOUR NEW SEO CAMPAIGN NOW because it’ll take the better part of 6 months for you to start getting some serious rankings for your site. And if you want the phone to ring when this pandemic is over, you need to START IT NOW. Because if you only start it when things have returned to normal, the phone won’t ring for another six months. And as stated above, when you come out the other end of all this COVID-19 craziness, you’re going to need the phone ringing IMMEDIATELY, not six months later. Because by that stage you might not have a business to market.
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As the old saying goes: ‘You don’t wait for the well to run dry before you start looking for water’.

This question is a little trickier to answer, and depends on how you plan to market your new business website once it’s online.

If you’re not planning on doing any SEO for your new website, and are basically just wanting a website built as a kind-of ‘on-line brochure’ that you can direct clients to for information, then maybe you can think of holding off launching your new website until COVID-19 is in the rear view mirror, and business is getting back to normal.

However, if you’re launching a new website in order to GET LEADS, then you’ll naturally need to do SEO on and for your website in order to make that happen. And as stated above, SEO TAKES TIME MANY MONTHS TO WORK. So, if you want the phone ringing in 3-6 months, then absolutely you need your website built now. And if you don’t, then by all means hold off until your cash flow is back to normal.
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Though as SEO North Sydney now offer the ability to get your website built today, BUT PAY FOR IT IN A YEAR, INTEREST FREE, there’s never been a better time to get your new site live. And with websites starting at just $68.20 p/m and all of them coming with 12-months free hosting (and many with also including free content), maybe you might want to reconsider waiting, and build your new website today. 

​The other thing to consider during this time of COVID-19  (and we’ve got many clients doing just this) – is that if your business is quieter than usual, now is the PERFECT time to do whatever you can to it to help with the SEO and to help with conversions. That can be either involve adding LOTS OF NEW CONTENT to the website (because Google loves well SEO’d new content added on a regular basis) or else it could mean GETTING A WHOLE NEW WEBSITE BUILT. Because with things being quieter than normal, now is the perfect time to do what you’ve been talking about doing on or for your website for year, but never seem to have the time to do.

Call me direct, business owner to business owner, on 0425 204 887 today and let us help your small business during the COVID-19 pandemic.  As the old saying goes:

‘A Year from Now You’ll be Glad You Started Today’. 

A strategic SERP plan can have huge implications for website traffic. Read on to find out what you need to get a featured snippet on Google so you can sit back and watch the traffic roll in.

What is a SERP Plan and Why do I Need it?

When you Google something, the SERPs are what appears. SERP is an industry acronym that traditionally stands for ‘Search Engine Ranking Page’. As in, if you’re on the first page of Google, you’re ‘SERP 1’. But in recent years the acronym has morphed in colloquial usage to also stand for ‘Search Engine Ranking Position’. As in, if you’re first on the first page of Google, you’re at SERP 1. If you’re third on the first page, you’re SERP 3, etc. So when you read an SEO article and someone mentions SERP or SERPs, they could be referring to either or both.

Google – the Overlords of Search

Google, in their infinite wisdom as the overlords of search, determine which sites will appear at the top of a search query in order (theoretically) to provide the best value for searchers, by giving them the sites that best meet their search criteria or best answer their question. So naturally you'll increase your site traffic if you can create a SERP plan to master your Google rankings.

But what does a strategic SERP plan look like? Good question. Let me break it down for you to help you create a great SERP plan that drives traffic to your site by providing Google with exactly what it's looking for. 

Understanding SERPs

Before devising an effective SERP plan, it helps to know more about SERPs themselves. SERPs are always unique. If two users type two queries into the same search engine using the same keywords, they will get different results. This happens because Google customises SERPs for users in order to provide them the most useful results. Each SERP is unique because of factors like a searcher's location, browsing history, and more. Even if the two pages look the same at first glance, there will likely be small differences according to the different user metrics. 

In order to provide the best value to users, Google is always changing the way SERPs appear. It's important to stay up to date on the latest algorithms and experiments Google is conducting, so you can modify your SERP plan accordingly. Of course that’s easier said than done, and is where having a company like SEO North Sydney on your team comes in mighty handy, because we’re 24/7 at this SEO caper; and with Google updating 500-600 algorithms a year (that’s 1.6 algorithmic updates per day if you’re trying to do the math!), to say it’s a full time job to stay ahead of the Google Bell-curve is in no way an exaggeration.

Creating a Strategic SERP Plan

Ultimately the key to a strategic SERP plan – indeed the very bedrock of a comprehensive web strategy - lies is providing searchers with valuable content that answers their search query.

If you can figure out the intent of searchers and devise a way to provide them with what they're looking for, Google will bump your site up on the SERPs. 

Due to algorithms like Penguin, sites can no longer "trick" Google by doing things like keyword-stuffing or using dodgy links out of India or Serbia or Russia or wherever. And longer, more informative content is now prioritised by Google over shorter, less informative posts.

These changes mean that your SERP plan should focus in on giving searchers content of value, instead of trying to use tricks and workarounds to fool Google. Put what the customer wants first, as the old saying goes, and the sales will follow.

Google of course don’t make any money from organic search. They make money from the ads they place on the same page as organic search. Which makes it that much harder to get the phone to ring for small businesses and SMEs operating on a tight marketing budget. Doubly so when you realise that there are now four paid ads that appear at the top of the page rather than to the right of the page (where they used to appear before) which push the first organic listing down the page.

So given all this, how do you approach SERPs in a way that will both please Google and beat the competition?
One of the best ways is by getting what is know as a ‘Featured Snippet’.

Featured Snippets – What You Need to Know

You've probably already seen featured snippets on your own Google searches. These appear in a box at the top of the search results page. Featured snippets take a summary of the answer to the searcher's query directly from the webpage. 

Users will also see a link to the page, the page's title and the URL along with the snippet. According to Google, "The summary is a snippet extracted programmatically from what a visitor sees on your web page."

A user is much more likely to pay more attention to content with a featured snippet than to content without one. Results with featured snippets are at the top of the page, and they also provide users with a hint that this page will definitely have the information they’re looking for.

How Do I Get a Featured Snippet?

To get your site at the top of the page with a snippet attached, use these simple steps.

• 1. Figure out a question

You'll want to start by finding a straightforward question that searchers in your market area are likely to ask. This question should be simple and clear, not complex or ambiguous. 

• 2. Provide an answer

Somewhere on your site – ideally on its own page - make sure that question is answered clearly and directly. 

• 3. Give value to users

It's not enough to just answer the question of course. Your site should also give information beyond a  simple answer, so that users will gain something semantically relevant to their initial query. Keep in mind that Google prioritises longer content than it did before. So don’t skimp when hiring an SEO Copywriter. Because great content is, and always will be, the most important piece of the Google puzzle.

• 4. Make the information easy to find

Your answer and additional information related to the answer, should be easy to find on your site, not buried somewhere behind lots of other posts. Make it easy for both bots and humans to find.

Choosing the Right Questions

Getting a featured snippet isn’t easy. But neither is it rocket science. Great organic content, tailored to searchers questions/queries, can drive a lot of traffic to your website.  And the four-step approach described above is easy to do and easy to repeat. Don't stick with answering one question. Research and find out multiple questions that might be asked about your product or service. Then work on creating content that answers each of those questions, in addition to providing helpful additional information in each post. 

In order to target the right questions, long-tail keywords must become your best friend. Post the launch of Google’s ‘Hummingbird’ algorithm, we know that over 60% of all search is long-tail. So don't just target general keywords: target the full question, including the "how to," "how does," or "what is" that many users type in the Google's search bar. 

Narrowing down user queries via comprehensive research helps you on your way to getting a featured snippet. Not sure where to start? Type in a question users might have into Google. You'll see other, related queries that people have searched for, ‘suggested’ by Google via an instant dropdown menu. Ultimately though, as my late sainted mum used to say, ‘Use the brain that God gave you’ and you’ll soon figure out what questions people are asking. After all, you know your business, your products, your services, better than anybody else. You’ve been client facing long enough to know what sort of curly questions customers ask. So write them down in a long list. Then hire a professional copywriter to write content for each page that answers the questions you’ve come up with – IN DETAIL.

Once you’ve exhausted your own ideas on what questions your customers are asking, it’s time to enlist some algorithmic help. There are many programs that can help with this part of the process, but one I like is answerthepublic.com; which is a nifty (free) tool that suggests possible questions based on a keyword, using a cool visualisation tool. 

Conclusion

Ultimately, your chances of getting a featured snippet depend on a few key factors:

• Are you asking the right questions? A bit of research, as discussed above, can help ensure that you are.
• Are you providing the best answers to those questions? The more clear, straightforward, and accurate your answer is, and the more additional information (related to the question) you provide, the more likely it will be the one that Google will choose to feature your answer as a featured snippet.
• Finally, you must make sure that you are providing content that is genuinely useful. If you write 50 blog posts of 50 words each that all provide one answer to a commonly asked question, you won't do well on the SERP.  Don’t look for cheap shortcuts. Long, well written, and informative content wins out every time.

When all is said and done, users want content that is high quality and detailed, covering everything they might want to know that's related to their question. Because it's all about value. Provide users with valuable, interesting answers to their questions, and Google will reward you. 

Contact SEO North Sydney

Looking for help getting to the top of Google? Then call SEO North Sydney today. The longer you delay, the more of your business your competitors get. And where’s the sense in that?www.seonorthsydney.com.au/

Geofencing marketing is an incredibly powerful marketing tactic with an impressive ROI. Learn how to use it properly and grow your business fast.

Are you familiar with geofencing marketing? If not, you're missing out a great way to drive traffic to your business.
Small to medium-sized businesses face stiff competition in the marketplace. So it's crucial that you use every means possible to get customers to your door. Enter: Geofencing, the latest cutting edge marketing technique that can add as much a 20% increase in conversion when adding location data to their ad data.

What is Geofencing Marketing?

In simple terms, geofencing marketing is a location-based tool that helps you target customers that are geographically near your business, or near an area you wish to target. This means they may be driving by or are shopping in the same mall where your business is located. Or that they may be located in a geographic 'fence' that you think would be a gold mine if only you could be found there.

How Can I Implement It?

There are a few different ways you can implement geo fencing technology. The method you choose will depend on a variety of different factors, including your marketing budget and size of your business. Here are a few ways to get started:

Web Ads

Web ads are an easy way to get started with geofencing. When you buy web ads through Google, or another party, these ads will display to consumers when they enter your pre-set geofencing area.

For example, when a customer Googles information on another business in your area, they'll see an ad for your current promotion. Pretty cool, huh? This could well persuade them to visit you instead, since you're nearby and offering them a deal.

Social Media Ads

Social media ads work very similarly to web ads. If a customer is browsing Facebook, Instagram, or any other social media site your business uses, they'll see an advertisement for your business.

Text Messages

If your business runs promotions via text message, take this technology a step further by incorporating geofencing into your strategy. As customers enter your geographic area, they'll get a text message alert of any sales or promotions you're currently running.

You can also simply send them an alert that says they're nearby, and that you hope to see them soon. This is one of the most direct ways to use geofencing, and you typically see huge ROI.

App Engagement

If you're a larger business with its own app, this is a great opportunity to deliver notifications once a customer enters the range of your store. So long as they've downloaded your app (and have notifications enabled) they'll receive an alert to sales or promotions you're currently running. Like a text message, this is an easy and direct way to ensure your customers will see that they're near you.

3rd Party App Engagement

Don't be concerned if you're business can't afford to develop its own app quite yet. You can also rely on third-party app engagement. There are tons of different coupon and money-saving apps out there. Do some research to find which ones are the most popular in your area, and they'll do most of the work for you. Customers using these apps can receive messages and notifications once they're near your business. However, be wary that customers will often receive multiple deals and notifications from other businesses they're close to as well, so there is more competition for you.

What Are the Benefits?

There's a long list of benefits to geofencing marketing, but here are a few highlights that might convince you:

1. It Makes Your Messaging More Timely

You might spend thousands of dollars on advertising online or in print, but is this actually getting customers off the couch and in your store? Geofencing helps you meet them halfway by sending them advertisements when they're already out the door.

Think about it, you might be offering a sale that's appealing to your customers, but after they see the initial ad it's out of sight and out of mind. If they see it when they're already out and near their store, they're much more likely to stop in and take advantage.

2. It's More Effective

Sure, it's easy to target Facebook or other paid social media ads to specific customers, but geofencing helps you target an even more specific group.

Geofencing helps you reach a small sample of the population that's most likely to take action and make a purchase at your business. They already know about you and they're geographically close. Reminding them of a sale or special at the right time will likely put more money in your pocket.

3. Better Data to Help Measure ROI

Measuring ROI with geo fencing is easy, mainly because it gives you plenty of solid data points to work from. You'll know exactly when your customers are out and about and how often each customer comes near your store.

You'll also have solid insight into exactly what deals they respond to the most. This means you can create targeted ads that offer customers what they want exactly when they want it.

Which Brands Are Setting Good Examples?

Geofencing is new. And is mainly being used in the US by large, global brands. SMEs are yet to get across this technology, so yours could be ahead of the bell curve if you run with it.

Top U.S. brands such as Whole Foods and Sephora both use the technology effectively. Sephora, for example, uses it's branded app to send notifications to shoppers when they near a store. These notifications can include sale announcements or even notifications of gift card balances.

Whole Foods uses a similar model by targeting everyone in a specific area with web ads on daily specials or sales they might be having. While these are large, billion-dollar brands, geo fencing can be implemented on a small-business budget as well. All you need is a good team to get you set up with the right tools.

Which sounds like a pretty perfect segue for you to pick up the phone and call SEO North Sydney... 

Ready to Get Started?

Have you figured out that your business needs geofencing marketing? If so, it's time to get started. The key to getting the most out of your geofencing marketing strategy is finding a good a team on your side that understands exactly how to make your geofencing technology succeed.

Our team at SEO North Sydney can do all that and more for your business. Read more about our SEO and marketing services, and don't hesitate to reach out to learn exactly how we can help your business succeed.

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:
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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.

So I'm looking into extending my SEO company's reach, using non-traditional channels, when I come across an article on the always erudite website: Forbes.com. An article from a (US) SEO company that is obviously using the platform to pimp their SEO-ride. So I get to thinking...how do I get articles on Forbes? My writing ability and SEO knowledge married with the reach of Forbes? That's got to be a union made in Heaven!

Then I see the pricing structure...

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.

Writing a great press release can be worth its weight in gold. Indeed, in a world saturated with so called 'news', a brilliantly written and well-structured press release is essential to getting your brand message across to its intended audience.

A well written press release is a valid part of any on-line marketing strategy. It informs the industry vertical you're operating in (and the journalists that work in that space) that you have a new product or service on the market. Done well it should pique their interest and make them want to know more. 

A great press release is also an excellent addition to your SEO strategy. As the more places that post your press release online, the more websites you'll have linking back to your own site (as you'll naturally have hyperlinked your brand within the body copy of your press release, to drive traffic back to your main website).

SEO North Sydney is headed up by Brian M Logan, a man with over a decade and a half experience in getting companies on the first page of Google, and over twenty years' experience as a professional writer. A Marketing Graduate, and an AWARD and Masterclass copywriting graduate (Australia's leading advertising colleges), Brian is also a professional screenwriter and novelist repped out of Hollywood by William Morris Endeavor (one of the world's 'Big 4' agencies), and managed out of Hollywood by Circle of Confusion (who rep folks like the directors of the Matrix among many others). All of which means that when it comes to authoring brilliantly written press releases for your small business or SME, then you're in very good hands indeed. 

Let's talk for a moment about gratitude. About how people sometimes do things for no reason beyond wanting to say, 'Thank you for a job well done'. As small business owners, gratitude is often the last thing on our minds. Overwhelmed as we are by our quotidian railing against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Taxes and wages and equipment costs and rent and insurance and accountants and bookkeepers and ever diminishing profit margins and, oh, did we mention taxes already? The enormity of the 'all hands to the pumps!' approach small business owners go through on a day to day basis makes thinking beyond the next task on our  'To Do List', nigh on impossible. This isn't a slight upon us as small business owners, or as human beings. It isn't that we don't care about other people. It's just that running a small business demands so much of our focus, so much of our time, that it's often hard to look beyond our own borders. Beyond what we need or what we want.

Consequently in business (and indeed in life), someone saying thank you for a job well done, is an all too rare occurrence. Just think about how many satisfied customers you've had down through the years with your small business. And then try to reconcile that with the tiny handful of positive reviews you've got on Google maps, or the minuscule amount of testimonials you've got from customers or clients on your website. Because I guarantee you the math will never come close to adding up.

In small business a customer says thank you by re-signing with you when the contract is up for renewal, or by returning to buy more products from you, etc. And maybe by recommending you to a friend, colleague or business associate. Beyond that, all bets are off.

But sometimes - just sometimes - the innate kindness of the human condition shines through when you least expect it. Today was such a day for me. It started when one of our clients, AutoActive Car Solutions, (a leading North Shore Mechanic) emailed me this wonderful testimonial out of the blue:

"Appointing Brian and Tony from SEO North Sydney to build our new website and do our SEO was one of the best business decisions we’ve ever made. Brian is creative, knowledgeable, focused and is fantastic to work with. His experience and expertise are unparalleled. We had no idea how SEO worked but Brian explained everything and made understanding the process particularly easy for us, and it has been a wonderful experience. Solid results were seen within a few short months, and now we have twice the Google first pages promised in the contract (with many at number 1). Thank you again Brian – we simply cannot thank you enough!" 

                                                                                             - Leeman and Bruce – AutoActive Car Solutions

As if receiving that wonderful and unexpected testimonial wasn't enough, we then received delivery of this amazing gift basket!

When Autoactive signed with SEO North Sydney several months ago, they needed a new website designed and built, they needed SEO for the new website, and they needed brilliantly written content to populate the new website. But more importantly they needed someone on the other end of the phone who not only understood what they go through each day as small business owners. But who actually gives a damn about whether their business grows or not. And that's where I like to think SEO North Sydney offers a real point of difference. We're a small business just like you. Our clients are small businesses and SMEs just like you. And so we understand - I mean really understand - what steps need to be taken in the digital domain to ensure your small business can compete on an equal footing with the big boys - WITHOUT BREAKING THE BANK. Because when it comes to Google, the size of your business doesn't matter a hill of beans. What matters is the concerted ongoing execution of a comprehensive, tailored WHITE HAT SEO strategy, via Google Best Practice guidelines. Do that correctly (and ethically) and any company, no matter how modest it may be, can rank on the first page of Google.

So to Leeman and Bruce at Autoactive Car Solutions, let me go on record and say that it's our turn to say Thank YOU. Because your thoughtfulness and kindness totally made our day!

Website design has evolved a lot since internet pioneer, Tim Berners-Lee, published the World's 1st Website in August 1991. Back then, the internet didn't exist in the way you and I think about it today. So it's a pretty safe bet to assume that the words 'Design' and 'User Experience' were not exactly at the forefront of Tim's thinking when he was looking to publish this gorgeous piece of HTML wonderment:

As any competent webmaster, system admin or SEO guru will bear witness, making a website load faster can yield huge dividends, in multiple ways, on multiple levels for small business owners. When implemented correctly, it can significantly impact where your small business website appears in the Google search index.

Benefits include:

• Faster loading when viewed on Desktop.
• Faster loading when viewed on laptops and tablets.
• Faster loading on mobile devices (super important in 2016).
• Much better UX (User Experience).
• Significant reduction in bounce rates.
• Increase in page views.
• Increase in time on page.
• Increase in time on site.
• Significant boost in search engine rankings.
• Increase in conversion rates.

Unfortunately for most small business owners, website loading speed is pretty much the last thing their web designers take into consideration when building a website for them. Consequently, though your small business website may look (to the untrained eye) like a Lamborghini on the net when its published. You'll be shocked to know that you're actually cruising around town with a 2 litre Ford Focus engine under the hood...

Right about now you're probably pulling your hair out and gnashing your teeth when you think about how slow your website is running. Because chances are you've finally realised that this issue may not only be the root cause of your horrible rankings in Google search, but also largely responsible for the fact that you can't convert the measly amount of organic search traffic you actually do get, into sales. However I'm sorry to break this to you, but the fact that your website is unable to get out of second gear is more than likely YOUR fault, not your web design company.

Now wait up, wait up, before you accuse me of defending other people's sub-par web-building practices, let me explain what I mean!

There are three reasons why web designers build sites the wrong way:

1. Because they don't know any better.
2. Because they don't care.
3. Because you screwed them on the budget.

To point 1: it's true that there are a large amount of website designers out there who learned to build websites in what might be termed, 'the old school of web design', and who are simply not cognisant of Google's many, many, many updates on the subject of how to build a website so it loads faster (or how important page load speed and mobile compatibility actually are).

To point 2: it's also true that there are a percentage of web designers out there who know how websites SHOULD be built so far as Google is concerned. But who really just don't care. Because - not to put too fine a point on in - you haven't paid them enough to give a damn. Which segues very nicely...

To point 3: remember when you were haggling with your web designer over price? And how you screwed him down a few thousand and felt good about it; safe in the knowledge that you were getting the exact same product, just for a much cheaper price? Well unfortunately for you, even though it may LOOK (from the front end) like you got the same product, I can assure you that is NOT the same product so far as Google is concerned.  And therein lies the problem.

I don't want to turn this blog into a sales pitch, but I can't help feeling that it would be remiss of me not to point out that the very reason SEO North Sydney rock the Casbah when it comes to website design (and building kick-a*se websites generally), is that we are a SPECIALIST SEO COMPANY WHO ALSO BUILD WEBSITES; and not a web-design company who also do a bit of SEO on the side, but who in actuality have little or no knowledge of the 10,000 sub-ranking factors that go into getting a website onto the first page of a Google search.

To give you an idea of the sort of websites we build, I've listed a few of our recent web designs below:

​Shipping Containers (#1 in Google search for 'Shipping Containers').

• Website, SEO and SEO content (over 50,000 words) by SEO North Sydney.

Private Investigator (#1 in Google search for 'Private Investigator Sydney').

• Website, SEO and content by SEO North Sydney.

North Shore Mechanic (#1 in Google search for 'Mechanic North Shore').

• Website, SEO and content by SEO North Sydney.

iLasik Surgery (#1 and #3 in Google search for 'iLasik Surgery Sydney).

• Website, SEO and content by SEO North Sydney.

Even if we think about this from a common web user's perspective, it would not be difficult to envisage why a faster loading website would be more beneficial. As a web user yourself, what would you normally do when a site is taking a long time to load? Would you hang around waiting for it to come up or would you just click-away?

In case you're not familiar with the term bounce rate – which happens to be a very important parameter related to the performance of a web site – it is commonly defined as the percentage of visitors who reach a website and then just leave (or 'bounce out'), without interacting with the site in any way.

The findings of a Kissmetrix study (citing gomez.com and akamai.com as sources) reveals that:
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• 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
• 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less.
• A 1 second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions.

And a Strangeloop study brings the point home even more strongly:

As if losing visitors and revenue via their website is not harmful enough to small business owners, slow loading sites also get fewer visitors to begin with. This is because Google utilise loading speed and mobile compatibility as major search engine ranking factors. Thus, the slower a website is to load, the lower its SERP (Search Engine Ranking Position), and the smaller amount of organic search traffic it receives.

As any web marketer or SEO professional worth his salt would tell you, web traffic derived from organic search results is the best converting traffic a website can get. But with over 200 major ranking factors, and 10,000 sub-ranking factors deciding who goes where in Google's search engine results, it's become increasingly difficult for small business owners to get their websites on the first page of Google (where all the action is). Website loading speed however, is what we might call 'low hanging fruit' so far as SEO is concerned. And once the website's code is re-written to better mirror Google Best Practice specifications, a significant (and almost instantaneous) bump in your website's rankings in Google search, is common.

Which brings us to the question of:

Click the link below to check out the Pingdom Website Speed Test:
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http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/

The second one is none other than Google itself, by way of a service called 'Google PageSpeed Insights:

Check out the Google PageSpeed Insights at the link below:
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https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ 

The third and final one is a company called, GTmetrix:

Here is the link to the GTmertix website: 

https://gtmetrix.com/ 

​As you'll notice, all three sites show how quickly (or slowly!) your website loads, while also provide various guidelines in terms of what actually needs fixing. Implementing these fixes are obviously extremely technical in nature, and very easy to get wrong, so it is always recommended to leave the changes to the experts:

As the owner or marketer of a small business website you are no doubt all too aware that slow websites lose and fast site win in the race to be #1 in Google. And with Google putting more and more relevance on how fast your website loads, and how well it works in the mobile environment, now is definitely the time to turbo-charge your website to win the race. 

Click here for a whole heap of brilliant Web Design examples. And here for Search Engine Optimisation information to guarantee your website gets on the 1st page of Google.