How to Set Up a Successful B2B SEO Strategy
Like most things, SEO is always evolving. As search engine algorithms are updated, requirements and boundaries shift to generate helpful results for internet users. In 2024, B2B SEO strategies rely less on content volume and more on user experience, structured data and unique, expert content. We’re updating this blog to reflect the B2B search marketing strategies that work in 2024.
What is B2B SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation is a digital marketing strategy that aims to increase a website’s organic search engine rankings for target keywords. B2B SEO specifically looks for target keywords for which key decision-makers within businesses are searching.
For example, where a B2C (Business to Customer) business selling coffee would seek to rank for terms like ‘best coffee’, ‘ground coffee’, or ‘organic coffee’, a B2B selling to cafes would target keywords such as ‘wholesale coffee beans’, ‘coffee bean supplier’, and so on.
B2B SEO is one of the most sustainable ways of generating leads for B2B companies. At least 70% of decision-makers start their research and buying process with a general search online. Your target customer is finding their new supplier from search engines.
The Difference between B2B & B2C SEO
There is a lot of commonality between B2C & B2B SEO. In both, focus on on-page optimisation, carry out keyword research, build backlinks, improve technical SEO and write SEO-friendly content. Google doesn’t differentiate between B2B and B2C searches, so the ranking factors are the same.
However, B2B has a very different target audience from B2C SEO. A B2B audience is much smaller, has a much higher knowledge of the topic, and have a much narrower demographic.
All this means that the target keywords for B2B SEO have a much lower monthly search volume.
B2B keywords also have high CPC value, because many B2B companies will have more budget to invest in paid search advertising.
-
Understand Your Target Audience
With B2B SEO, figuring out who your target demographics can be a bit more difficult than B2C. It is always easier to plan SEO when you have a good idea of the kind of individual you are targeting. Create a customer persona or profile by answering the following questions about your ideal buyer.
- What industry are they in?
- How big is the business?
- What is their job title?
- How is their job performance measured?
- Who do they report to?
- What level of knowledge will they have on their specific industry?
From this profile, map out some initial ideas for keywords they would search to find your business’s products or services. This can vary a lot from business to business, so it’s difficult to generalise. Keep in mind why this individual needs your businesses to accomplish their goals.
-
Pick the Right Keywords
Build upon your customer profile by going into more depth in your keyword research.
You should aim to meet the following criteria with your target keywords:
- Relevant: The keyword should be relevant to your brand and product/service. Get in the mind frame of a decision maker – what exactly will they be searching to find you?
- Enough Volume: They have enough monthly search volume to make it worth targeting. For B2B, this could be 300, 100 or even 50. Your rates and prices will show how many leads you’ll need to bring value from SEO.
- Reasonable Keyword Difficulty: if the KD is 90, it will take a lot of work to rank for that term. If your budget is low, the KD should be too.
- Manageable Competition: If many companies are bidding for the top paid spaces in search, but you get the top organic spot, you’ve saved money.
Use these points as a guiding principle, rather than hard and fast rules. Collect keywords in a spreadsheet, together with volume, difficulty, CPC and the URL on your website to which the term relates. This will help you classify and review priorities later on.
Tools for Keyword Research
There are many various tools you can use to research keywords, some of which are right there on the results pages. Tools include:
- Google AutoComplete
- Google’s Related Searches
- Google Keyword Planner
- Google Trends
- SEMRush Keyword Tools (Paid)
- AnswerThePublic
- AlsoAsked (Paid)
- Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator
3. Map Keywords to the Buyer’s Journey
Once you have your list of keywords, you can now map them to the different stages of the buyer’s journey.
This is the marketing funnel that we all know so well, but here’s a quick review of the 4 key stages and how they correspond to SEO.
Each search term has a specific intent behind it, and keywords are organised into Informational, Navigational, Commercial & Transactional search intents. We can pair these loosely with the four funnel stages.
Awareness Stage (Search Intent: Informational)
Awareness is the information-gathering stage, where customers are looking to gain general knowledge about a topic in response to a need within their business. This will most likely apply to your broadest keywords.
Landing pages will typically be Blogs, How to Guides, and FAQs. Successful content will focus on how your product/service fits into their business needs at the broadest level.
Interest Stage (Search Intent: Navigational)
The searcher has carried out initial research and now has an idea in mind as to what product/service they need. Their searches will now be more focused, looking for specific product or service keywords.
Landing pages for this stage will be service pages and product pages. Content will need to include specific product/service keywords with as many variations as possible.
Consideration Stage(Search Intent: Commercial)
The searcher has now found the product and service they want and is carrying out further research if there are any better alternatives. They compare price, service, lead times, reviews etc.
To capture interest at this stage, make sure your website displays unique selling points, including an idea of price, third-party reviews and as much information as possible to ensure that a customer will choose you over a competitor. Comparison posts showing directly the differences between products on the market can be a key type of content to target consumers in the consideration stage.
Conversion Stage (Search Intent: Transactional)
The searcher is aware of your product or service, has considered the options and they are ready to make a purchase.
It’s crucial to make product pages and contact forms easy to find so that users can place an order.
For successful B2B SEO, make sure that you have content and landing pages on your website that target keywords at every stage of the buyer’s journey.
If you find that you are lacking keywords for a certain stage, carry out more keyword research to fill in the gaps.
4. Optimise your Product and Service Pages
Once you have your keywords mapped to important pages, you can begin to optimise them. Your main service and product pages are where compelling copy, effective user experience and technical function come together. Use these pages to showcase your product or service to potential customers, and use the keywords that you have mapped to them.
On-Page Optimisation for B2B
For the majority of on-page optimisation, this will be similar to the steps involved in optimising a B2C website. Follow the below checklist to ensure your pages are optimised fully.
- Optimise Meta Data
- Check Keyword Density
- Optimise H1 & H2 tags
- No broken or redirecting internal links
- Pages should have a crawl depth of no more than 3 pages
- Check pages reach adequate Page Speed Scores
- Include internal linking to relevant pages within the body text
- Fix any technical issues.
- Make sure pages are secure with valid SSL certificates.
- Check canonical tags are present and correct.
- Ensure all pages use SEO-friendly URL structure
- Fix any orphaned pages
- All pages should have relevant structured data
- Images are optimised for SEO
- Make sure all pages are mobile-friendly
The main difference between on-page optimisation for B2C and B2B will be the level of specific information in your content.
B2B search users often have a greater level of experience and knowledge about their search than an average B2C customer. Because of this, you will need to finely tailor your content to your audience by including detail and technical information.
5. Tailor your Content to your Audience
In B2B SEO, search users are likely to be very familiar with your industry, even at the information-gathering stage. They will immediately be able to spot a lack of knowledge on your page.
This is why it’s important to regularly check and add to your content, even if the body and structure are written by an agency. Show your expertise.
Every page should clearly state why you stand out within your industry. Demonstrate why someone should choose to work with your business.
A few ways to do this could be:
- Use social proof such as third-party reviews, industry awards and accreditations to provide assurance and build trust with users.
- Have clear CTAs across your landing pages so users know where to go next.
- Be clear about prices. If you can only show a range or starting price, be as accurate as possible.
- Explain exactly how you can help solve their problems.
As well as improving content across your main website pages, you should be looking to build additional helpful content. SEO is no longer about having hundreds of blog posts in the same format. In 2024, your supporting content should be helpful to users, such as FAQs, user manuals, product comparisons and video content.
Supporting content should also include internal links to your key landing pages.
Don’t Forget the Basics of B2B SEO
Following these steps should put you on the right track towards a winning B2B SEO strategy. However, this isn’t something you do once. After this campaign, you need to build upon its success with backlink building, regular site audits, content plans and monthly performance reviews. Maintaining your gains is a key marketing operation, and requires regular upkeep.
If you want to start improving your B2B SEO but don’t have the resources in-house, eSterling can help. We have built hundreds of successful B2B SEO campaigns from the ground up, generating positive returns for a variety of businesses.
Get in touch today to discuss whether we can help you.
My BrightonSEO Experience
So off I popped on the train to Brighton SEO this April, it was my first time attending and I really loved it. It is always nice to mingle with like-minded individuals that work in similar environments and actually share ideas, tips and of course brush up on my networking skills.
So one of the first talks I went to was “8 Ways to Increase your Ecommerce Conversion Rate” I have a long list of clients who our team constantly talk to about ways to improve their conversion rates & thought this would be a useful session.
At the end of the day it doesn’t matter how amazing our SEO team is or how much traffic our clients website gets… if that traffic doesn’t convert into sales then we and our clients are wasting time and money.
Our team could go through so many ways that you could increase your ecommerce conversion rate, but I wanted to focus on a few from the session that I feel are fundamental to even having a shot at increasing conversions.
Personalise your homepage BUT not too personalised
For example, display products related to a user’s previous purchase history or/and displaying the users “Current Cart Contents”
Promote alternative and compatible products on the product pages = Cross Selling
So for example if a user is looking for a pink dress it is best practice that it is visible on the page alternative pink dresses or dresses of a similar style. If I am being honest the amount of times I shop online and end up buying something from the “You May Also Like” options is countless…
My credit card statements are proof!
Using good quality and multiple product images
If I could sing this from the rooftops I would! It goes without saying a good visual is one of the biggest selling factors.
“56% of users interact with product images before any other element on the page”
Ecommerce sites ideally need an image that shows the product in scale so that users can gauge how big the product is without having to search for its sizing and potentially leaving your site and purchasing off a competitors.
Also an image that showcases the products’ features to help sell, if possible a “lifestyle” image and one of any accessories included.
Display user reviews
“95% of users rely on reviews to evaluate a product, so reviews are clearly an extremely important aspect of the buyer journey.”
The problem here is consumers love reading reviews but if it’s too much hassle to leave a review they won’t even if the service/product is the best thing since sliced bread.
Which means you need to make it as easy as possible for a user to leave a review.
- Don’t make users set up an account in order to leave a review. Use emails to authenticate purchases.
- Don’t make users provide unnecessary personal info, again you only need their email and they should be able to leave a review anonymously.
- Finally, don’t forget to remind users to leave a review, send a follow up email and incentives to encourage users, BUT don’t spam it.
Display shipping costs on product and cart pages
“Users hate paying for delivery and 55% of users will abandon checkout due to high delivery costs.”
If you can’t offer free delivery, then you should be as transparent as possible and display the delivery cost at every stage. There is nothing worse than shopping online, adding everything to the cart…going through adding all your personal information, delivery/billing addresses and then right at the final hurdle…getting a postage fee…your put off and then abandon the checkout.
Always offer a guest checkout & simplify your checkout process as much as possible
Things like, minimise forms & automatically applying the shopping address as the billing address…these quick wins all push the user to hit the “PAY NOW” button that little bit faster.
Promote trust using icons, badges and text
“17% of users will abandon their cart because they don’t trust the website with their credit card details.”
So we all should know now…and our SEO team constantly reminds clients the need for an SSL on websites, number 1 rule!
Some other ideas to promote trust would be adding security icons to your checkout pages, such as a padlock icon and using reassuring copy, such as ‘secure card payment’ or ‘checkout securely’.
Get in touch if you’d like to know more about our services and how we can increase your conversion rates and drive more sales for your business.
BrightonSEO 2019 Overview
eSterling recently joined some of the best Digital Marketers at the the UK’s largest search marketing conference, BrightonSEO.
During the huge one-day event, we managed to attend a number of interesting talks encompassing everything from eCommerce SEO, Client Success and even a Q&A with John Mueller from Google. With a host of guest speakers from every corner of the industry, it was impossible to fit everything in but we have recapped our day below.
For the first session we went to a session that covered site speed, something that anyone reading this has probably heard a lot about of the past 18 months. Here we saw some great talks, the first from Rachel Costello from Deepcrawl who spoke about “how we can meet user’s high expectations”.
Secondly we heard from Polly Pospelova on “how to get a 100% lighthouse performance score” again this is something that people will be familiar with. As we have done numerous times I’m sure you’ve all been to Google’s Page speed insights tool and wondered how to get that wonderful score of 100. Here Polly shared the steps and processes used to get the magical 100 out of 100, we’ll definitely be using some of these tips on our sites in the near future.
Finally Chris Simmance talked about “how to trim js, css & external stuff to slim down & speed up your site”. He talked about how we can identify and trim down assets on individual pages that can help us reduce code bloat and improve site speed and performance on a page by page basis. You can view his slides here.
One of our SEO executives attended Search Presence Intelligence – Where Search Meets Business Intelligence by Stephan Bajaio – this was on how SEO can help other departments reach their goals. Stephan gave interesting examples with HR and Product Development.
For Product Development the example was about naming products. Through experience out SEO team will know how to create engaging and keyword rich product titles for more successful SEO campaigns.
This session also included, Why UX (User Experience) is SEO’s best friend by Luke Hay and Michelle Wilding-Baker this talk focused on how beneficial UX is that matches a user’s intent and how that can be determined by looking at search results.
The benefits of pulling together information that can then be used to decide on what elements a page should have, such as having an uncluttered, fast and mobile friendly website, something that we incorporate within all our projects.
The afternoon sessions were about link building and clever ways to get other websites to link back to your website and increase your site authority. The SEO Manager from Screaming Frog talked about ‘linkbait’ and how to create engaging and funny content to attract attention and hyperlinks to your site.
What you need is a good idea, something our SEO team works together with our clients to produce.
The second speaker gave some tips on how to build links for our clients by applying automated and personalised methods. He mentioned some seo analysis and link building tools and provide us with advice on how to utilise them in our link building strategies.
The last one focused on integrating the gamification technique to the SEO strategy. An effective way to build links at a rapid pace by creating and launching a game that everyone would talk about and would love to share.
We then attended a session on Paid Search.
First speaker focused on how algorithms and automation systems can help us get a better idea of the overall ads performance and how to use data to get insights and knowledge that could determine business decisions and strategy.
The second one was about Local PPC. Here we picked up useful tips on how to build your local ppc strategy for location-based companies and make the most of your budget, such as location settings- radius, locations extensions, bidding, and keywords with geo- location.
The last session focused on other advertising platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, or display, they discussed the strengths and weaknesses of each platform and the importance of retargeting.
This is something that is extremely relevant considering the continued increase in users on social media platforms.
For our final session, the focus was on SUCCESS. This talk was about how we can use data to keep our customers happy by Eli Zheleva. The discussion was about how we can better understand our client’s demographics, goals and provide reports that show a true representation of targets.
The core points in relation to our customers’ needs that we picked up from this talk were:
- Revenue is great. Profit is greater!
- Listen to our customers
- Know what our customers think about our service & how we can improve
- Get reviews but not to be scared of negative reviews!
- Keep an eye on competitors
- Focus on ROR
Over the next few weeks we will be putting together more in depth posts covering all of the talks we attended and what tips you can do to improve your website and SEO results.
In the meantime, if you need and help/information about our Digital Marketing services – SEO, PPC and Social Media, get in touch with us!
Google’s Smartphone SERPs – Ranking On The Move
Anyone who pays any attention whatsoever to the world of web design will by now be very familiar with mobile sites and the concept of responsive design (and if you aren’t, you can read more here).
Well, now there’s another reason to perfect your mobile presence – Google have now decided to take the smartphone-friendliness of a website into consideration when determining where a site ranks in its SERPS – meaning if your site can’t strut it’s stuff on the small screen, you could be losing even more traffic than before.
Google have announced in a recent blog post that they are planning to roll out algorithm updates that will penalise websites that are incorrectly configured for mobile browsing.
Here are a few of the most common errors made in mobile sites, and our advice for avoiding them:
Correct Your Redirect
A common strategy for providing a mobile site alongside your desktop website is to use different URLs to serve different pages. This tactic can work very well, as it allows you to lay out the content on your pages in a different format that is better suited for smaller screens and touch-based interaction. However, these redirects must be handled correctly in order to provide a consistent experience for the user with minimal frustration.
A mistake that often crops up with this sort of configuration is directing smartphone users to a set page (most often the home page), no matter which desktop page they are trying to access – requiring extra work from the user in order to navigate back to the page they originally attempted to visit in the first place! Naturally, this can be a source of annoyance for the user, and can result in them leaving your site in search of something less tedious to find their way around.
The solution for this issue is simple – make sure each page redirects to its own respective mobile-friendly page. If the content is not available in mobile form, then directing the user to the home page or other related page is preferable to serving a 404 page – but still not really ideal.
Video Woes
The difficulty that mobile platforms have with video content is well documented, and a topic for lengthy discussion in its own right. However, if you’re serving unplayable video content to your mobile users, pretty soon you can expect to see a drop in your search rankings.
The solution for this problem is (perhaps unsurprisingly) to avoid Flash content on mobile sites in general, as it is unsupported in iOS and Android version 4.1 and higher. To include video content, it is possible to use the new HTML5 markup <video> tag, which should work without a hitch on all mobile platforms.
App-Unhappy
If you also provide a mobile app, it would seem only logical to promote this app to users browsing on a mobile device – and this can seem like a perfectly user-friendly move too, as your app may provide a better interface for your users to interact with similar content. However, advertising your app through interstitials or other methods which disrupt the conventional user experience of your site will soon start to have a negative impact on your site’s rankings, as well as annoying your users.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t try to entice mobile users with your shiny new app – as long as it is done tastefully. Google recommends using a “simple banner” displayed inline, alongside the rest of your website’s content. This can mean either a standard HTML image banner or utilising the support offered by the device’s native browser and operating system – for example Smart App Banners for Safari on iOS6.
More Speed, Less Haste
On top of these new rules concerning content, Google’s head of search spam Matt Cutts has alluded to a site speed penalty for mobile sites, similar to the penalty imposed on slow loading desktop sites. Whilst not much information has been disclosed at the minute, it’s fairly safe to assume that as mobile users are often connected to the internet via low-speed cellular connections, the load time that must be achieved will probably be significantly faster than in the desktop speed test.
As is usually the case with Google’s algorithm updates, these new guidelines will help to make the web a better place – both for webmasters and users themselves. Here at eSterling, we welcome them with open arms, and look forward to the mobile web becoming more user-centric and streamlined.
If you’d like to read more on the issues which may cause your mobile site to lose rankings, Google has helpfully compiled a list of common mistakes in smartphone sites to help you out.
As always, if there’s anything in this post which you wish to discuss or would like some more information on, please leave us a message in the comments or email us here.
The Penguin Returns: More Google Penguin Updates for 2013
Little more than a year ago, Google introduced what was then one of the biggest updates to its search algorithm. Originally dubbed the “Webspam Update”, it rocked the SERPs, knocking a considerable amount of websites reeling, causing their rankings to drop faster than you can say “p-p-pick up a Penguin”. This was obviously serious news for us here at eSterling, as we pride ourselves in our ability to consistently achieve and maintain good results in Google for our clients using strictly white-hat techniques. However, despite our dedication to good practice in our optimisation work, we still saw the websites of a few clients suffer.
Fast forward 12 months to where we are now, and the Big G is at it again. Matt Cutts (Google’s guru on all things search) announced last Friday that “Penguin 2.0” is on the way. We know a few things about this update – the most important being that it’s coming soon, and it’s going to be big. Big enough to disrupt the SERPs again, probably on a much larger scale than last time. Whilst the guys over at Google like to portray the penguin updates as cute, wide-eyed little penguin characters, here at eSterling we like to think of them as being more similar to Danny Devito as “the Penguin” from Batman Returns:
The Penguin Returns!
But never fear! As always, our SEO team of caped crusaders are here to bring justice to the search engine results pages with our words of wisdom and cutting edge strategies. Here’s our rundown of the information we have gathered so far concerning the new update:
1. It’s Just Around The Corner
In typical Google fashion, we don’t have a date for the implementation of the new update, but head of all things search at Google HQ, Matt Cutts, has helpfully informed us that it will be “sometime in the next few weeks.” Thanks Matt!
2. Advertorials
“Advertorial” creation (or native advertising) is an advertising method which disguises paid adverts and links as part of a site’s content, and passes link juice (and PageRank) on to the site being advertised. Google is clamping down on this, as it is a violation of their “quality guidelines” – attempting to hide the adverts and also passing on link juice to the advertised site. As we already know, Google doesn’t take kindly to paid links of any kind, but Matt Cutts is keen to mention that there is no harm in advertorials or native advertising, provided that the advertorial carries a clear disclaimer and there is no link juice being passed on (i.e. the link has a “nofollow” attribute).
3. Spammy Search Queries
For as long as people have been using SEO techniques to maximise their rankings, there have been certain niches which have been plagued by webspam from SEO practitioners using unscrupulous tactics such as keyword stuffing, doorway sites and hidden links. Some of these niches include “payday loans” and various adult-orientated areas, such as pornography and adult dating sites. Whilst this doesn’t apply to any of our clients, it’s nice to see that the Big G is starting to clamp down on these webspammers, as the advancements that are made in this area are sure to trickle down into the more above-board SERPs, helping to combat webspam across the whole internet.
4. Link Spam
Furthering their efforts to clamp down on webspammers, the new update will see Google once again penalising sites who have built unnatural links portfolios that comprise of paid links, links from sites with the sole intent of manipulating rankings (such as doorway sites) and any other dodgy link building or traffic boosting tactics. Think of this as the real “2.0” part of Penguin – this is basically what the last Penguin update did, but on a larger scale.
5. Rolling Out A System For More Advanced Link Analysis
Penguin 2.0 will introduce a more comprehensive link analysis procedure. Matt mentions this is still in early days, but this could potentially turn the SEO industry on its head if Google makes large changes to their link analysis algorithm.
6. Looking To Improve Communication With Webmasters
This is an almost out of character (albeit very welcome) move from Google: we are told that they will be increasing their efforts to provide useful support and information to webmasters, especially concerning hacked sites. If all goes according to plan, Google will be providing us with a “one-stop shop” to diagnosing hacked sites, providing useful information to webmasters straight from Webmaster Tools.
7. Looking To Reward Authority Sites In Niche Directories
Authority sites (sites which are deemed to be the best source of information in their specific niche) have become an important part of Google’s search algorithm. The new update will introduce new systems to identify these authority sites in a more appropriate way, and make it slightly easier to become an authoritative site if your site is exhibiting the requisite characteristics by “blurring the edges” of what makes a site authoritative.
8. Looking To Minimise “Domain Clusters” In SERPs
“Domain clusters” are a phenomenon of search in which a group of results from the same domain will be “clumped” together on the search results pages. This obviously occupies a considerable chunk of SERP real estate, pushing other domains further down the page. As the domains that tend to create this kind of “cluster” tend to be the big boys of the internet (Amazon, eBay etc), Google’s action to minimize these groups of results is good news for small to medium businesses, as it gives them more of a chance of squeezing into the first few results pages.
Obviously, as we exclusively employ white hat tactics here at eSterling, the majority of our client’s sites should see no negative repercussions from these updates – in fact, you may notice a positive outcome as competitors who have used less legitimate SEO agencies get stung by the update and their rankings drop. However, the inevitable truth is that some sites will be undeservedly penalised, as has happened with previous algorithm updates, but rest assured we will be keeping a close watch on all client’s rankings over the coming months and striving to continue to provide all of our clients with our usual first-rate SEO services.
Click here to see Matt Cutts himself discussing the new Penguin update.
Well, that was a pretty gloomy blog post! In the interest of brightening things up a bit, here’s a little something you can try in Google image search:
1. Go to Google image search
2. Type in “Atari Breakout”
3. Hit search
4. Play the Atari classic “Breakout” with your image search results!
Our Breakout High Score!
See if you can beat our office high score!
New Dynamic Infographic from Google – How Search Works
If you’ve ever been curious exactly how Google works, you might have found it a bit difficult to get your head around – which is completely understandable, as it’s not exactly simple being the most powerful search engine in the world!
However, the generous guys at the Big G have taken time out of their hectic schedule to let us know exactly how they do it – in simple terms, of course.
Search Meets Social – Google Authorship
The introduction of Google Authorship into Google’s ranking algorithms could seriously shake up the SERPs – We take a look at why, and how you can start to prepare!
In-bound marketing techniques have made quite a large shift in the last few years, as I’m sure regular readers are aware by now – the importance of inbound link building has subsided to make way for a content and usability-based ranking system known as TrustRank.
This shift has, however, brought with it a new breed of unscrupulous strategies – poorly generated content with no real substance, article spinning (the chopping-and-reforming of articles in order to make them appear unique – often with less than perfect grammatical results) and article directory sites full of worthless content that is read by no one, created solely for the purpose of manipulating positioning on search engine results pages.
The Authorship concept was conceived a lot longer ago than you may first think; the relevant patent was approved way back in 2007. Originally dubbed Agent Rank, the patent has now undergone two continuations (the first in 2009), but the most recent continuation is the most significant.
This is the first claim in the most recent update:
“1. A computer-implemented method comprising: evaluating a document that is hosted on a site, the document including a content item to which a maker of the content item has applied a digital signature; determining whether the digital signature is portable; if the digital signature is portable, using a reputation score associated with the maker in calculating a quality score for the document; and if the digital signature is not portable, using the reputation score associated with the maker in calculating the quality score for the document only if the digital signature is fixed to the site.”
(I know, it made my head hurt too!)
The most important bit is the mention of a “portable” digital signature. This allows the author to create content for various blogs, websites and article directories, whilst carrying through their reputation from their other online content. The name of this portable digital signature? The big G’s very own social network, Google Plus.
This allows you to associate all the content you personally produce with your own Google account. Google can then use this to determine how useful your content is, by judging how well received your previous content has been. If you continue to write good, useful articles with meaningful content, then you can expect to see your Author Rank increase, and as a result, your articles will reach higher positioning in search results. If you write rubbish articles with spammy content that are of no use to anyone, then you can probably expect the opposite to happen.
Authorship works by utilizing a new tag introduced in HTML5: the rel=author tag. This tag can be added to any <a> tag to denote that the link refers to the author of the content. Using this tag in conjunction with your Google+ URL allows you to link your content to your Google+ account, et voilà! You’ve claimed your first piece of content.
Of course, it isn’t quite that simple. In order to verify your authorship of the article, you must first add the URL of your blog to the “Contributor to” section of your Google+ profile, in order to prevent people from claiming their content was written by any Google+ user that takes their fancy.
Being able to verify your content with your Google+ account will help your content rise above the sea of poorly written junk-content of the black-hat SEO practitioners and article spinners.
It’s important to remember that at present, authorship doesn’t offer any actual boost to your search engine rankings (although studies have found that the “rich snippets” that authorship can generate can increase your CTR by 30-150%, and there’s another hidden benefit of authorship too!); it is simply just a way of claiming credit for your work. However, Google have frequently voiced their intentions for a method of distinguishing and validating content in search results, so it is extremely likely to become a deciding factor in search engine rankings in the near future. Whilst the introduction of Authorship as a factor in deciding rankings isn’t likely to penalise sites, and it probably won’t have anywhere near the SERP-smashing effects we’ve seen from our furry friends Panda and Penguin, it’s going to carry some sort of weight, and it makes sense to begin preparing for it to come into swing now, as those that don’t are putting themselves at a disadvantage already. If you fail to prepare, prepare to fail!
Make your first impression count – how to decide what to put on your homepage
We all know that making a good first impression is crucial when it comes to converting a potential customer into a buyer. This is even more important when it comes to online marketing, as a visitor to your website has so much choice. If your home page does not meet a visitors needs immediately, they will go elsewhere in a matter of clicks.
Your homepage will be the point of entry for many visitors to your website. As such it must be a positive reflection of what your company is about and, most importantly, how you can help your visitor. Think of your homepage as your online shop window – it must be tidy, eye catching and show off your company to its very best. Getting your homepage right will encourage your visitors to stay on your website and take the next step to becoming a paying customer.
Exactly what is needed for your homepage will depend on the type of business you have. For example, an e-commerce website will be very different to an online portfolio. However, there are some general guidelines that you can follow in order to achieve a well-organised home page that sends the right message to your visitors. A successful home page will have the correct balance of the following:
- Colour
The use of colour on a home page can be a powerful tool to catch the eye. It doesn’t have to be bright – subtle use of contrasting or complimentary colours can be a great way to reflect the personality of your brand, whilst directing visitors to the correct place by using brighter tones for buttons. Your company logo will be a great starting point for your colour scheme.
- Images
Photographs and illustrations are easier for visitors to interpret than lots of text, as images can instantly convey what your business is about. Pixelated and blurry images will create a bad impression, so make sure your homepage images are professionally shot or buy images from a stock website. A popular website layout is to have images above ‘the fold’ and text underneath, as once visitors have digested the images they can read more about what you do.
- Text
Having text content somewhere on your homepage is essential for SEO purposes, but as lots of text can overwhelm a visitor, you must get the balance right. Make a bullet point list of your unique selling points and expand these into a punchy introduction for your new visitors. Keep things simple and short – you can expand your points further on other pages.
- Calls to action
These prompts can be used on your homepage to direct your visitors to the right place to make an enquiry or purchase. Your call to action could be a button directing visitors to ‘contact us now’, or ‘get in touch’ that will take them to your contact form. You should also place your telephone number and email address on your home page to make it simple and easy for visitors to contact you.
New Year’s Re-SEO-lutions
Expanding your SEO strategy for 2013 and beyond.
2012 was a turbulent year for SEO and eMarketing professionals – amongst a slew of algorithm updates and tweaks from Google, we have seen several other game-changing factors that have really tested the adaptability of our dedicated SEO team here at eSterling.
Google have been working hard to negate any unscrupulous SEO activity, as well as reducing the effectiveness of scalable link building strategies such as mass directory submission or article spinning, giving many grey-hat SEO practitioners a major headache.
Google’s Penguin update, which was released in April 2012, focused on eliminating websites using webspam tactics such as spamdexing (squeezing a keyword into a site as many times as possible, often using nefarious tactics such as black-on-black text) and linkbombing (posting a link to the site using a keyword as anchor text in as many locations across the internet as possible) to artificially boost their search rankings, at the expense of website usability. The update penalised these sites by placing them lower in search engine results pages than they featured originally – or, in extreme cases, removing them from Google’s indexing entirely.
Exact match domains (URLs which directly match one of the site’s keywords, for example www.teethwhitening.com) have also felt the pressure, as Google introduced the imaginatively titled Low Quality Exact Match Domain Update. This update, whilst not sounding as cute or cuddly as either of the major updates Panda and Penguin, was no less important. It was an attempt to rid the SERPs of sites which are of low quality, but have used their exact match domain name to push their way to the top of the results pages.
Moving Forward
So, if this is what Google has done in the last year to make our lives more difficult, where do we go next?
The good news for us is that this means it is now harder than ever to increase a website’s search visibility with these dubious tactics, leaving much more room for honest, user-friendly SEO strategies, and has shifted the emphasis from building as many links as possible to your site to being much more about the end user – the importance now lies with ease of navigation, increasing usability and offering informative, relevant and up-to-date content.
Google’s actions over the last 12 months could easily be misconstrued as disdain for the SEO profession – this is not the case. Rather, The Big G is trying to encourage webmasters and SEO professionals to remember that the content of their site, not where it appears in search engine results pages, are what is most important to the user – and, by extension of this, to the website owner.
This is not to say that search engine optimisation as a profession is on the way out – far from it, in fact. 6 out of 10 organizations expect to increase SEO headcount in the coming year. The industry is also becoming more widely understood – the same report details that 63% of executive teams are more familiar with SEO metrics than 12 months ago.
The shift has been moved away from SEO as an independent discipline, and it is now becoming a more integral part of constructing an internet presence. For an SEO campaign to be truly effective it must be integrated with other aspects of the business – marketing, sales, design, and social media – must all become one holistic package in order to establish a brand online, as opposed to trying to “pull a fast one” on Google.
To quote Trond Lynbø on Edgyseo.com:
“Many site owners want to do the minimum possible, yet expect awesome results. But the days of ‘quick fix SEO’ are numbered, if not already over. It’s time to see SEO from a different angle, with broader, wider focus. To step back, rather than blindly rush to implement new tactics. To decide where you want to go, and act on a strategy-driven plan.”
Having a strategy for your SEO is becoming more and more important, as simply building up link equity is no longer enough to get by. Social media is becoming increasingly important to every business – more than 1 million websites have now introduced Facebook integration in various manners, and social media now accounts for 18% of all time spent online.
If 2012 has taught us one thing about what lies in store for 2013, it’s that we as SEO professionals need to stay on our toes – major algorithm updates are pretty much inevitable, and they could pop up at any time with little or no warning – but rest assured, the team here at eSterling are ready to rise to this challenge and continue to provide you with a solid internet marketing strategy to see you through the year and beyond.
For more information on our eMarketing and SEO services, click here.
Paying for Search Engine Rankings: Part Two
Last month, I shared my thoughts about paying for search engine results with you. We established that the answer to the question ‘Is everyone paying for search engine rankings?’ was yes, yes and thrice YES.
So how on earth is Google currently using its great algorithmic capability to work out search engine results?
I am not going to list every factor for three reasons:
1) I want to concentrate on a big factor here, rather than fill 135 pages and bore you readers rigid!
2) I probably would run out of breath (and brain power!!) to list them all.
3) I don’t every single factor of the algorithm and it’s weighting – nobody does, not even the team at Google!
One thing is for sure, I don’t always agree with the way that the Google algorithm works when it comes to one particular element – links. Google’s official guidelines mention that links should not be bought, or sourced from spammy sites.
However, in practice the opposite often applies…
- The website with the greatest number of links is ranked highest – IMO this is WRONG
- The links do not have to be from a relevant site – IMO this is EVEN MORE WRONG!
This shows that links can be bought easily and utilized to help rankings, despite Google saying that they should not be bought. So does Google have any real way of finding out? – I DON’T THINK SO