More SEO Case Histories

by John Eberhard

In my last article I discussed Google and how their Panda update in February 2011 supposedly discounted or even penalized the use of article directories for link building.

I have been submitting articles to article directories as a way of building high quantity links to my own and client web sites for over 6 years. So of course when news began to come out that the Panda update would be penalizing the use of article directories, I was concerned.

But I decided to let the statistics decide. As I mentioned in my last article, with link building you are trying to build up links to your web site, so that it will rank well in the search engine results for the keywords related to your business, so that you will get increased search engine traffic. The statistics I use that measure the success of link building are:

1. The number of links to the site
2. How high the site ranks for a group of keywords related to the business
3. The amount of traffic coming to the site
4. The amount of traffic coming to the site specifically from search engines

I recently wrote an article containing a case history of one of my link building clients. Here are two more:

Case History: Company A
Home Improvement Company

	Jan 2011	July 2011	Jan 2012	March 2012
Links to Website	7,800	12,800	24,100	21,900
Keywords with #1 position	6	4	10	11
Top ten keywords including #1s	22	18	22	39
Top 20 keywords including #1s and top tens	34	35	36	55
Top 100 keywords including #1s and top tens and top 20	68	68	69	106
Total Web Visits	972	1,208	1,307	1,338
Web Visits from search engines	382	319	292	378

We have been engaged upon link building with Company A for over two years, submitting articles to directories, submitting press releases to online PR sites, and blogging.

Note that links to the site will fluctuate up and down over time, even with constant link building activity. Note also that keyword positions are steadily gaining, as are total web visits.

Case History: Company B
Tree Nursery

	June 2011	Jan 2012	March 2012
Links to Website	5,610	27,100	12,600
Keywords with #1 position	3	4	4
Top ten keywords including #1s	15	23	29
Top 20 keywords including #1s and top tens	38	46	64
Top 100 keywords including #1s and top tens and top 20	117	103	158
Total Web Visits	2,077	3,631	5,866
Web Visits from search engines	715	1,628	3,818

We have been engaged in link building for Company B since May of last year. Note that their links hit a peak of 27,100 in January and have fallen off a bit since then, but experience tells me that continued link building will drive it back up again, as that has happened over and over with other clients.

Keyword rankings are steadily building, but the most dramatic change for Company B is a major increase in total web visits, nearly tripling from June 2011 to March 2012, from 2,077 to 5,866. And web visits from search engines have been the biggest part of that, going from 715 to 3,818.

Conclusions

Since they have by far the largest search engine market share, Google’s actions affect everyone doing business on the Internet, whether we like it or not. But if the Panda update supposedly was penalizing the use of article directories for link building, where does that penalty manifest itself with the two case histories above? I don’t see it.

I have seen it suggested by another author that Panda did not really penalize or discount the benefits from using article directories, but that they simply hit certain individual article directories and lowered their status. Who knows? Google plays with all its cards close to the chest.

But I think we are on fairly solid ground in judging matters with statistics, and the statistics show that this link building strategy is still working.

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The 800 Pound Gorilla

By John Eberhard

Upon Google’s ascendancy a number of years ago to the number one spot in the search engine wars, they brought with them a new idea in how to measure and rank web sites: your site would be ranked according to how many other web sites linked to yours.

This was a new idea at the time, but has become the dominant factor in how search engines now measure and rank web sites.

Google then cautioned people that they should not try to build up links proactively to their web sites, but should allow a “natural link building pattern” to develop. And they advised people just to put up great content on their sites, and people would naturally link to them.

There’s only one problem with this advice to just put up great content and people will link to you – it doesn’t work! Maybe it works if you are Coca Cola or Fedex. But for small and medium sized businesses, I have seen it too many times that the company put up tons of great content on their sites, articles, advice, etc., and not one thing happened.

I have made analogy in the past that this is like advising a pretty girl to dress up really nice, put on makeup, and then sit in her living room and wait for the phone to ring. Don’t go outside or anything. You can open your front drapes, but that’s it. And for god’s sake don’t make any outgoing calls on that phone.

So the problem with the advice to just put up great content and wait for the links, for a small to medium business, is the same as for the girl waiting in her living room – nothing is going to happen. After 6-12 months of putting up great content you might find you have 100-200 links to your site. And you will find that you do not rank in the top 50 for any keyword except maybe your company name and your site traffic will be poor to non-existent.

But I see in many cases that because Google is the 800 lb. gorilla in the room, that many people just accept what they say as gospel truth and decide to follow their advice unquestioningly. It’s like this propitiating thing, sort of “yes sir, yes sir, great content, whatever you say sir.” I even see this with search engine optimization people, whose job it is to make their clients rank on search engines and should know better.

You may guess by now that I have chosen a different road. I chose to proactively build links to my own and my clients’ sites. I have developed several methods of doing this, including submitting articles to article directory sites, posting press releases on online PR sites, and posting articles and releases on blogs. Using these methods I have built up client links to the tens of thousands.

But Google hates this. They consider that anyone who builds up links to their web site using any method other than people naturally linking because of “great content,” is “gaming” their system.

And they have regularly set out to eliminate any advantage that people might be getting from link building. Several years ago people used to write to web site owners and ask to trade links. This is called reciprocal link building and was the primary link building method used by many people, until Google introduced elements in their algorithm which downgraded the advantage of reciprocal links about 3 years ago.

Then in February of last year Google introduced a new update to their algorithm called Panda. There has been a great deal of talk on the online marketing community since then about Panda, and one of its supposed purposes which was to eliminate the benefits of link building via article directories.

I was concerned of course. But I decided not to abandon my link building program, but to carefully monitor its results.

And how do you monitor the results of a link building campaign? Well let’s backtrack and ask what the purpose is of a link building campaign. You are trying to build up links to your web site, so that it will rank well in the search engine results for the keywords related to your business, so that you will get increased search engine traffic. Sort of indirect, but there you go.

So then the best way to measure a link building program would be to regularly check on:

1. The number of links to the site
2. How high the site ranks for a group of keywords related to the business
3. The amount of traffic coming to the site
4. The amount of traffic coming to the site specifically from search engines

I have kept close tabs on the above statistics for all my clients where I am doing a link building program. Here we are, a year and two months since Panda was released, and I am finding uniformly that all my link building clients are doing very well in terms of the above statistics. I wrote a case history article on one client recently and will be following up with several more in the near future.

Will I need to change my link building program eventually? No doubt. But has this Panda update impacted my clients? Not yet. Are they still benefiting from the link building program? No question.

The moral of this little fable is that young ladies should not just sit in their living room. Or, as we extend that analogy out to small to medium businesses, you have to promote your business, on whatever channels are available.

And when it comes to search engines, it is necessary to build links proactively and not sit passively in your living room. No matter how many grunts come from the gorilla in the corner.

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Three Different Types of Listings on Google

By John Eberhard

Google is always changing things so it is a challenge to keep up with what they are doing. Currently they show three distinctly different types of listings on a search results page.

Google AdWords

The first type of results that we see on a Google search results page is Google AdWords pay per click search results. The first three listings at the top of the left column, highlighted in yellow, are paid search results. These then continue down the thin right hand column.

You can start a Google AdWords account and get your ads to appear there, in response to any set of keywords that you select. So you pick your keywords, and then your ads will appear there whenever someone types in those keywords on Google.

The advantage of having a Google AdWords account is that you can get your ads up there quickly and they will start appearing right away. Exactly where your ad will appear depends on how many other companies there are competing for those keywords. If there are a lot your ad may appear well down the right hand column or even on page two. There are a number of factors that control how far down your ad will appear, but one of the primary factors is how high you are willing to bid. This is the amount you pay every time someone clicks on one of your ads.

But the basic advantage is that to a large degree you are in control of where your ad will appear and how fast it will appear there. The disadvantage is that it is a significant continuing expense. I have written extensively on pay per click advertising so you can refer to those articles if desired.

Organic Results

The next type of results you see on Google are organic listings. These are regular listings that appear lower down in the left column, and are not paid.

It can be a challenging and time consuming process to get your organic listings onto page one of Google for a high competition keyword. In order to do this, it is vital to have search engine optimization done for your web site, then do link building.

Search engine optimization consists of doing keyword research, selecting the best keywords, then writing titles and descriptions that utilize those keywords as much as possible, and inputting that data into the pages of your site. The best keywords are ones that are:

1. Appropriate for the specific page on your web site
2. Have as low competition as possible. This refers to the number of sites that are competing for that keyword. Most keyword research software will give this information.
3. Have as high daily searches as possible.

In doing research for keywords I have seen good keywords with as little as 1 competing site and as many as several million. This is an important factor because with a keyword that has millions of competing sites, you just aren’t going to be able to rank for that keyword.

Once you have your overall list of keywords selected, then you select several for each individual page for your site, then write the title and description for each page, then put those onto the pages. The title is what shows up in blue on a search engine when your listing comes up. The description is the short blurb that appears underneath.

Next you have to build up links to your site coming from other sites. Depending on what industry you are in and how competitive it is, in most cases you will need to build up thousands of links.

Google Maps / Places

Within the last two years Google has introduced a new feature that has completely changed the nature of search for local businesses. When Google is able to determine that your search is local in nature, such as a search for a restaurant, a dentist, or a Starbucks, it will bring up Google Maps (also called Google Places) listings.

Google will display a small map in the right hand column, and 3-8 listings in the left hand column that correspond to the map. These listings will have a gray sort of balloon, that will turn orange when you mouse over it.

If you put up a Google Maps listing, the amount of competition in your industry will determine how high your listing will show up. In some really competitive industries, like dentists for instance, there can be 100 or more listings. You can see just the Google Places listings for a search by, in the far left column, clicking on “more” and then “Places.”

So how do you get your Google Maps listing to move up to page one, especially in a competitive industry? Well first of all you may have to claim your listing on Google, then log in and make the listing as complete as possible, listing your hours, services, and uploading any pictures and videos that you have. Then there are two primary factors in determining where your listing will appear. These are 1) the number of listings you have on other local listings type sites (these are called “citations” in Google-speak, the only time it is good to have lots of citations), and 2) the number of online reviews on your business. There are a number of sites that allow people to post reviews, and Google used to show links to a number of these. But recently they changed to just showing the number of reviews on Google.

So it is important once you set up your Google Places listing, to start creating listings on other sites, and to get lots of positive reviews online. So it’s good to get a program ongoing to increase these.

Good luck in your search engine marketing efforts.

 

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Your Street Address on Your Web Site

By John Eberhard

I came across a really interesting issue this week in regards to how you present the street address of your company on a web site.

A prospect, located in a large suburban city of Los Angeles, was concerned that when searching for their category of business, along with “Los Angeles” in the search field, that their business did not come up at all. In other words, and I’ll change the category to keep things discreet, if you searched for “copper containers Los Angeles” a company whose business is located in Glendale, CA would not come up.

Now Glendale is a major suburb of L.A. and is definitely part of the L.A. metro area and is actually not far from downtown L.A.

In this case we were looking into how to specifically improve the position of this company’s Google Maps/Places listing, which as I mentioned did not come up at all when searching for this category with “Los Angeles” included. Their listing came up first when you searched for their category with the word “Glendale” included. But the thing is that hardly anyone would search for this category of thing with the word “Glendale” included. This particular business is not a neighborhood thing like a dentist. If someone was going to search for them with a city name attached, it would be the name of the metro area, in this case Los Angeles.

In searching myself for this category with the words “Los Angeles” in the search field, I reviewed all the other Google Maps listings of other companies in this category. And I noticed a very interesting thing. Every one of them listed their city as “Los Angeles.” And in going to several of their web sites, they listed their city name on the web site as “Los Angeles,” regardless of whether they were in a suburb of L.A.

This may seem like a stupid minor detail. But consider that handling this one minor point right could mean the difference between your listing coming up and not coming up at all.

So here’s how you decide how to handle this. If your company is a local business that handles customers only from a small part of town, such as in a cluster of 4-5 suburbs (like a health care practice or a retail store), then you should leave your address as the exact suburb that you are in.

But if your business handles customers for an entire metro area, or if your business is regional or national, you should list your company address on your web site, wherever it appears on the site, as the metro city, i.e. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Boston, etc. And your Google Maps listing and all other local listings on other sites should list the metro city too.

Doing this one simple action will significantly improve your online visibility and website marketing.

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