Why does Google continually change the face of SEO? This makes the SEO field very difficult to master, so why should SEO experts be grateful?

Why would Google want to continually change the face of SEO? Surely it is in Googles interest to be transparent and to let people know what to do to get to the top.

Google have an interest in providing high quality search results (i.e. good relevant search results). However, Google don't do this because they are nice people (though I am sure that they are). Google is a company, a business, an enterprise and their primary interest like any other business is to make money for shareholders.

Google's main revenue stream is paid for advertising and they make an enormous amout of money out of this advertising!  Therefore, Google continually strives to increase the revenue from advertising and Google search is the primary vehicle with which to achieve this.

As long as there is a secret element to the Google algorithm and as long as this Google algorithm changes, Google have the control they need to be able to sell more adverts. This will always be the case.

This approach also keeps good SEO experts in business because the only way to keep up with changes is to do this as a full time, dedicated occupation and there is a huge amount of work just keeping up and rolling out the changes. Site owners therefore have little option other than to pay for adverts or employ a competent SEO person if they want to be found on the web.

The roll out of the Panda update was a clear example of Google flexing its muscles and changing the SEO space. Also, the strong suggestion that agility to change is key and that site owners need to keep up with the continual changes Google is making proves that change is here to stay and there will never be a 'perfect algorithm' (even if it was possible).

Clinton Dickerson

Co-Founder of CreatorSEO and myinfo.ie

The question is whether having more traffic to your site leads to an improved search engine ranking (SERP) on the major search engines (Google and Bing in particular).

My initial impression is that higher traffic to a website suggests:

• that there is more interest in the site;
• that the site is considered to be relevant;
• that there are more incoming links to the site.

However, to complete the picture, the bounce rate also should be considered. Higher bounce rate implies that visitors are less interested in the site or perhaps that the site is not all that it is made out to be. Therefore if higher traffic is a positive indication, then this needs to be offset by bounce rate (or something similar).

Then of course, more traffic may be due to the successful efforts of the SEO team to optimise the site. If this is the case and traffic leads to improved SERP, then we have a 'chicken and egg' situation where the number of visits is related to the ranking which is related to the optimisation which is related to the ranking and so on...

If traffic is important then we also need to consider how the search engines would measure this traffic and this bounce rate. If the web site does not have Google Analytics installed, then can even Google get these measures?

Taking all of this into account, I can only conclude that web traffic has little or no impact on search engine ranking.

DMOZ or the open directory was intended to organise the web. This directory is owned by Netscape, maintained by a community of volunteer editors and was reported to be 'supported' by Google.

The submission rules for getting listed on DMOZ are strict and while it may be considered to be good for SEO to be listed on the Open Directory, it can be very difficult to be get listed in the appropriate category on DMOZ. In recent years, there has even been the suggestion that DMOZ has become insignificant and is of little value to SEO.

So what happened?

Initially Google 'supported' DMOZ by using information and links on DMOZ to supplement the Google search database. There even was the belief that listing on DMOZ is a factor in the Google ranking algorithm. Consequently, website owners considered getting listed on DMOZ to be essential for search engine ranking position (SERP). In 2000 Google created its own directory and used DMOZ as the main source for the Google directory however, a decade later (late 2010), the Google directory was shut down and Google stopped supporting directory search. The impact of being listed on DMOZ for SERP diminished and as Google is by far the primary player in the search sphere, DMOZ became less relevant.

Aside from SERP, have you ever tried to be listed? It can take years to be listed on a more popular category even if this is the most appropriate category for your site. This is especially the case if the editor doesn't take the volunteering task seriously or is overwhelmed by the number of listing requests received. Therefore, the 'volunteer' nature of the editors of DMOZ is most likely to be the biggest contributor to the loss of popularity of DMOZ and may ultimately lead to its demise.

The ratio of websites to volunteers has increased over the years and inclusion requests can easily become burried in the editors inbox. Web site owners are likely to give up on submitting their sites if these are never listed and if DMOZ is unable to keep up with the new sites and newer more relevant sites are not listed quickly, then DMOZ itself becomes nothing more than a huge list of sites that is difficult to search and is not entirely relevant.

Is this a real effect?

Visitors to a site are always a good indicator of the popularity of the site and it is fair to say that a reduction in the number of visits is a good indication of a loss of popularity. Alexa provides a number of metrics that you can access for any site including DMOZ (http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/dmoz.org). Below is a chart from Alexa showing the estimated percentage of visits to DMOZ from a search engine. If you don't like this metric, try the other options on DMOZ. Either way, you are likely to come to the same conclusion, namely that DMOZ is becoming less popular.

The bottom line...

The bottom line for me is that, whether or not DMOZ is important for ranking, the effort in chasing a ranking is not worth the return for SEO and therefore, I therefore consign DMOZ to the waste of time SEO bin after the first submission.

What can be done?

DMOZ needs to re-discover itself.  It needs to find better more efficient ways of getting sites listed. If the human volunteer part of getting listed on DMOZ is to remain, then there needs to be more humans, better vetting tools, and improved checks on the volunteer editors. There needs to be visible metrics for each submission category. How about a measure of how many days on average for a site to be listed and/or the number of outstanding submissions.

In the new web world where engaging with people is central to any web experience, DMOZ needs to find some way of interacting / engaging with users and giving more than just some obscure listing somewhere in a mammoth database.

Based on comments from a number of website owners and people who were unfortunate enough to have had bad experiences with SEO consultants, I believe that many potential clients are doubtful of the value of SEO to their businesses.

No doubt this stigma attached to SEO has arisen from consultants who:

1. Sell themselves as SEO experts but have little knowledge or understanding or
2. Use 'black hat' or dubious techniques to increase their clients ranking or
3. Promise more than they can deliver or
4. Hide behind SEO being a 'black art' rather than a process or
5. Claim for more hours than they spend.

This bad perception of SEO does little to help the SEO professionals who do not fit into any of the categories above.

How then can we change this perception?  Is there some way of exposing the fraudulent SEO practitioners? Do we need to create a new name for SEO? or is it all about educating the client base?

Everyone who has an insight into SEO has an opinion as to what are the best 5 things you can do to improve your Search Engine ranking.  I believe that any top 5 must not be absolute and should be defined in relation to the family of sites that are under consideration. For example, the top 5 SEO techniques for newly launched private web sites will be very different from the top 5 for well established sites in a very competitive business market.

Why the top 5 and not top 10, 20 or more? I believe that optimisation should be done in bite sized chunks and 5 is my 'bite size'. So, these are my top 5 techniques for newly launched sites (Part 1). In subsequent articles, I will provide part 2 for new sites and will deal with other families of web site.

Before you start...

Before you can optimise any page on a site, you need to spend some time deciding which words or phrases you want the to achieve a high ranking on. Don't only think about single words, think about search phrases because people search on phrases and it is easier to rank on phrases than individual words. Try to find 3 or 4 phrases for each page.

Top 5 techniques (New Web Sites - Part 1)

Use the title tag

While tags are not directly visible and there is a lot of debate over the use of keyword tags, the title tag is one of the most important components on the web page. The title tag is visible as the heading on the browser tag and the title tag is used by search engines to determine the topic of the page. Make sure that the title tag is distinct for each page on the site and ensure that the title tag is pertinent to the content on the page. Also, make sure that your most important keyword is included in the title tag.

Optimise your page content

The content on the page contains the words that search engines will use to index the site and to determine a ranking for the page in terms of these words. Consequently the relevance of the words, the word frequency, the proximity of different words to each other and msot important the position of the words on the page are factors that need to be considered when developing content for the page.  While it is important to develop your content with these factors in mind, you should not optimise your pages for search engines, they must be optimised for your target audience.

Don't put too much information on the page

If your page gets too long, split it. Think of the page as a container. If you keep the contents of each container clearly defined, it will be much easier to find what you want in all your containers. The same applies for search engines.  If you find that it is difficult to restrict yourselt to only 4 key phrases, and you feel that you need more key terms or phrases then it is likely that you have too much on the page.  Too much information is likely to dilute your key messages which then may lead to a lower ranking for all your key terms.

Include links to and from your site

Include links to authorative sites from your page where this is pertinent. Also try to get yous site referenced from other sites.  However be careful not to use link farms of dubious sites that are prepared to link to you. You could even be penalised if you have too many 'bad sites' that link to your page. The value of the incoming link is only as good as the site that the link is coming from, so try to get authorative links. One approach to getting good links is to write articles or blogs on other unrelated sites and to reference (link back) your page from these articles or blogs. Bear in mind, when you link out from your page, you sould set the target to a new page so that you do not take your reader away from your page.

Avoid any black-hat techniques

Developing page content primarily for search engines is likely to lead to black hat techniques. Black hat techniques include repeating words too often (keyword stuffing or keyword spamming); invisible text on the page containing keywords; fake pages that transfer the user to some unintended location. Don't be tempted by black hat techniques because these can penalise of disqualify a site from the major search engines.

Every company, society, club or even individual now wants to have a web presence. Setting up a basic site can be quick, easy and cheap (if you want a static site). All this is fine until you want to be found on the web. This is where Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) comes into the frame.
 

There are some basics of SEO that can be achived as a DIY job and there are various tools on the web that can help to achieve this. This initial SEO can be cheap costing the webmaster only his time and effort and the initial rewards can be quite good.

...but herein lies the problem... If everyone is trying to improve their ranking and if this is cheap and easy then most site owners will put in the time and the effort to do the initial optimisation. Basic SEO then becomes the norm and you have to at least meet the these basics before you can improve your ranking.

So, if you want to improve further, you have to use more advanced tools and techniques to climb the search engine ranking ladder but other people will also be competing for these rankings and will be doing the same thing and as soon as they see their ranking dropping, they will do something to further optimise their site. I think you can see where I am going...

Search Engine Optimisation is a competition, you have to understand your competitors, you have the best tools available to you at the time, you have to spend the time to improve, you need to monitor your performance and most important you have to see this as a competition and you have to have the will to win!

This is what the group "More than SEO" on LinkedIn is all about. The group doesn't preclude basic SEO, but it builds on the basics to advise those that WANT TO SURVIVE ON THE WEB.

All too often businesses choose a static web site because it is easy to find a designer to create the site; static sites are generally quite cheap; and turn around time for creating a static site is usually quite short. Often the new start-up company doesn't even need to pay much for a tailored design because the standard designs offered by the static site developers are usually quite good. So you add a logo, choose some colours and away you go.

So why are static sites cheap and why are there so many vendors out there? On of the primary factors is the software available to people for creating static sites. Most of the available software packages are extremely powerful and are easy to use. The user can quickly learn to create a site with little or now knowledge of programming or of the web building blocks like HTML and CSS not to mention programming languages like PHP or JavaScript etc. So to become a static site designer, the person only has to purchase the software or find some free software (like Netobjects Fusion 10) and go on a short 1-2 day course. Then a bit of trial and error and yet another static site developer can offer their services at a very good rate.

As a customer, this has to sound great, cheap, quick off the mark and a site looks good. So everyone is happy, what could be the problem?

To answer this, first you need to consider what the purpose of a web site is. There are many answers to this, but some of the main reasons must be: to advertise your business on the internet; to be found on search engines; and to communicate product information, company news etc. to customers or prospective customers. So far so good, the static site looks great on day 1 and meets all these criteria. However, 'static' means you can't change the content on the site without going back to the developer. So every time you want to make a change you need to pay the developer. Usually this is the same developer who created the site because the developer wants to hold onto your business and ties you in by keeping the code, so you can't get someone else to update the site for you. The developer effectively owns your site, you are stuck with your developer and you have to pay for any changes.

Next you discover that you aren't featuring very well in searches (i.e. your site does not appear on the first page of the main search engines). When you explore this further you discover the art of SEO (search engine optimisation) and the importance of relevant content, good keywords and appropriate meta data. You discover that content needs to be up to date and that you need to continually make small changes the information on your pages. You will no doubt come across software like CreatorSEO (http://www.creatorseo.com) that point you in the right SEO direction and identify changes to the meta data and to the keywords. Also, this software analyse your competitors to find out why they rank better on the search engines and the changes you need to make to your content to compete better. So you have to go to the developer again. You then find that the changes will be delayed because the developer has to maintain hundreds of these cheap sites to break even. So your changes are in a queue and you are at the mercy of the developer. Of course you may be able to pay to get a quicker turn-around on any changes or to jump the queue.

I think that you may be getting the picture now... the cheap static site is not so cheap anymore and more importantly, it does not serve your needs as well as it should unless of course you want a site that is no more than a static advertising board for your business.

A solution presents itself in the form of a dynamic site, also known as a content management systems (or CMS). In it's simplest form, a content management system allows you easily and quickly to manage the content of your web pages. The developer is needed only in the initial implementation of the site to create the overall structure, layout and style. Thereafter you are in control. You can make changes directly by logging in to the site mad making changes that will be immediately visible to anyone visiting the site. There are a large number of content management systems available like Joomla, Drupel and CreatorWWW (http://www.creatorwww.com) that can be configured to meet any site design.

The creation and implementation of the site will be relatively more expensive than a static site because the developer has to do more work. There are database tables to set up on the host computer and the developer needs to have a good understanding of the building block of the web, like HTML, style Sheets (CSS). The developer also needs to have a knowledge of the programming language used to drive the content management system if he or she is to be able to configure the site to meet your needs. However, the good news is that once the site is in place, you can take ownership of the site and the content and can influence the effectiveness of your web for reaching your customers.

In short, my advice to you is that think twice before paying for a static site. It is always better to pay a little more initially for a dynamic site and then take control of your site.

Cost of ownership is not always what it seems at first sight - is it?

Does submitting to Google effect your rankings negatively?

If it does why is it not used to gain a competitive advantage: submit your  competitors?


JR