This post is about amusing to us discussion with one of the guys who wrote an email to our client scaring them into getting a mobile version of the website. Typically we don’t pay attention to SEO related spam to our clients – they know better.  This guy was persistent though with emails oozing with statistics and pretty much scaring people into into “leasing” website that most likely they don’t need or it costs way lower to implement. That is why I spend a bit of time communicating with a fella.  Being an SEO myself I and the whole team really hate people who give SEO’s bad name practically by scamming clients. I highlighted things that just made us go WHAT???

Letter 1

I FOUND A PROBLEM WITH YOUR WEBSITE

Hello, I am his name, president of bogus company name, a company devoted to local internet business support.

Recently, I was searching for Toronto plumbers on my I-phone and noticed that your website was very difficult to navigate for any mobile smart phone user.

If you don’t know, smart phone internet usage is exploding with as many as one out of three people today, surfing the internet for local businesses on their smart phones.

Within the next 2 years over 50% of all internet searches for local businesses will be done so on a hand held mobile device surpassing desk top computers.

Additionally, did you know that Google penalizes all websites that are not mobile phone friendly? This means flat out you are losing business opportunities.

You are severely losing potential customers due to your mobile phone unfriendly website. A majority of mobile phone users will exit a website immediately if it is not mobile phone friendly. All they want is a button to push instantly to get your phone number and information.

My company can solve this problem for you by creating a mobile friendly website on your behalf.

My Reponse

So, you advertise your products and services through Google. Have you heard about Google Google Panda Update 2.3? Of course you did! And somewhere deep in your mind you are a little nervous about new Google Panda Updates. You are thinking – how it will affect my campaign, what will happen with my conversion rate? Let’s find out!

Google Search Network is always improving, changing the frequency of the PageRank, and we can see the result of all of these changes in the search results. What happened after the last Google Panda Update?

All the websites that did not meet the Panda algorithm’s criteria have lost about 50% of their traffic. We do not want to repeat their fate!

What happened now? Let go to the official Google Webmaster Central Blog:

“For many months, we’ve been focused on trying to return high-quality sites to users. Earlier this year, we rolled out our “Panda” change for searches in English around the world. Today we’re continuing that effort by rolling out our algorithmic search improvements in different languages.”

So, high-quality sites algorithm was launched in additional languages! This change will impact 6-9% of all search querie and is active for all languages except Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. And of course, Panda continued to downgrade article directories, aggregators, content farms, people-finding search engines and scarpers.

You can see the changes caused by Panda Update 2.3 in the Google Analytics system. Go to traffic sources search engines non paid visits Google non-paid visits. Look at the graph – hope you will not see the crucial change.

What should you do to survive „Panda“?

1. Move your valuable content in a more prominent place where all visitors will see it.
2. Delete or improve articles that do not contain enough useful information. Include unique information into your articles.
3. Remove useless pages from the website.
4. Remove all duplicate pages.
5. Delete all the categories with a small amount of content.
6. Delete inappropriate links, excessive advertising and colorful pop-ups, which can distract your customers from important information.
7. Check all the articles on your website to remove errors, grammatical, spelling and stylistic mistakes, fact errors.
8. Make sure the content on your website is relevant and useful to users (do not create irrelevant content only to receive better ranking).
9. Google Panda will ignore too short articles – use at least 2000 characters per page.
10. Google Panda dislikes too many keywords on the webpage and will perceive it as spam.

Google is running panda update every 4 to 7 weeks. Let’s be prepared for the next one!

When you work with SEO, PPC numbers are your best friends. You can spend weeks devising new ad creative, pitching it to a client and finally launching. All of that work means nothing without brutal honest numbers though. Numbers help us to tweak our campaigns, ads and even keywords. The beauty of online marketing is that we get pretty much all of the the numbers instantly. Something that would take weeks of 3rd party research when running a newspaper ad – would take less than a day in online marketing.

De facto analytics system for small to medium size businesses is Google Analytics, it’s free and easy to use. This month they decided to publish some  of their benchmark numbers that they gather through annonymous sharing of websites that run Google Analytics.

While these numbers are very broad and not industry specific, we still think it is interesting to look at them. So here we go:

Overall Site Metrics

Breakdown by Traffic Sources

Traffic Sources

Goal Conversion (Conversion Rate)

Goal conversion is an ultimate number of them all. As mentioned in the beggning the bottom line is always the cold harsh numbers and most cold of them is the conversion rate. We create ads and campaigns not to win awards for our artistic merit, but rather to enable our clients to sell more of whatever they sell. If we don’t succed in that whatever we did is pointless regardless how well it looks like.

The interesting point about this graph coming directly from Google is that average conversion rate is usually bellow 3%. which seem just about right. A lot of times prospects would have an unreasonable expectation of 10% conversion rate. We always suggest assuming that conversion rate won’t be more than 1%.

Be aware! Google is making even more changes to its search algorithm. Google’s Matt Cutts announcedthe launch of Google Panda version 2.2 at the SMX Advanced Search Marketing Expo held in Seattle on June 7thand 8th, 2011.

Google Panda update 2.1 was launched this April with the goal of improving search results by culling results from contentfarms. These sites produce massive amounts of low quality articles to achieve higher rankings using Search Engine Optimization keywords.

Google Panda version 2.2 will target sites that republish content. In the past, some republished articles had placedhigher in the Google rankings than the original published material.

The launch date for Google Panda version 2.2 has not been announced. Targeted at web contentscraping, which is also known as content republishing, the goal is toin the rankings. As in Google Panda 2.1, this sounds like a great idea, but there was fallout from the firstupdate. Article directories were affected by the Panda update, and some quality websites composed oforiginal material also felt the impact of the algorithm changes.

Matt Cutts advised that Google will continue to improve its algorithms as needed. He also statedthat Google understands that some legitimate websites were affected by Panda. If you feel that your website was affected, contact Google. Their intention was to lower the rankings of the content farmsand improve the rankings of quality websites, but they understand that the Panda changes have hadsome negative reactions.

It may take some time to push your website back up into the rankings, if you have been affected by the first Google Panda update. The second update is due soon, duringthe results from the first update.

Removing scraper sites or sites that produce duplicate content is aimed at improving search results. Publish original content on your website, and you will increase your traffic.

If your site was affected by the first Panda update, Google has not made any manual changes to therankings. They are recompiling their data and attempting to resolve some issues. Google looks for spampages and pages with hidden text using Black Hat Techniques. Making changes to your site will notresult in immediate improvement in the rankings. These changes will not register until Google performstheir next Panda assessment.

In a survey conducted by Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable,
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-recovery-poll-13456.html,
over 500 responses werereceived. 85 percent of the webmasters who were affected by the first Panda Update reported thatthey have not recovered, 5 percent had a total recovery, and 9 percent had a partial recovery.

To create a Google friendly website, check out the tips from Google Webmasters:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=40349
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=70925
Google Panda 2.2 is not the end of the Google algorithm updates. They are constantly working toimprove search results. They know that they don’t always get it right, butfeedback, you will not be able to keep up with the changes.

If you are going to be at the mercy of the Google Panda updates, it helps to become familiar with Google and their webmaster tools. Google will address most of your issues through their Webmaster site. Although Google can not guarantee your placement in the rankings, following the advice Webmaster Guidelines will help you to increase traffic to your website and increase revenue.

According to Google Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, Google has a new search strategy to provide answers and not just links.

“We can literally compute the right answer,”

Schmidt said, speaking about technology advances, in an interview conducted by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at the D9 All Things Digital Conference on June 1, 2011.

Answers can now be computed algorithmically in response to search requests, instead of supplying a list of indexed links. Using information provided by your IP address, and location, Google has the capabilities to provide answers based on your identity, even if you have no browsing history or social data online.

“Identity is incredibly useful because in the online world you need to know who you are dealing with.” Schmidt said.  “We could compute a better answer, because we’ll know more about you.”

Schmidt was questioned about strategy shift and improving search results, using technology that has not been made public at this time. Schmidt stated that they come up with 100’s of improvements every quarter that the public don’t see.

Google is currently attempting to include more social data in search results. Schmidt  made mention of recent changes, such as the Google Panda Update, that improved search results by removing low quality content from the rankings. The changes affected 12 percent of search results.

Schmidt only touched on the subject of the new search technology and did not provide details. He went on to speak about Google’s Android mobile operating system which has become the best selling Smartphone platform in the world.

Schmidt also talked about Google Wallet, a Near Field Communications (NFC) based payment system, to be launched in the near future.  People who own an Android phone can utilize Google’s mobile wallet and deals strategy to purchase products and services online. Google Wallet has been compared to Groupon, and similar to Groupon, Google Wallet will offer discounts and loyalty rewards.

A demonstration of Google Wallet was presented at the conference. Using a single tap on an online store tag offering a 20 percent discount, a pair of jeans was purchased, the discount was applied, and the purchase was charged to the credit card stored in the Google Wallet. Google will not charge retailers, or consumers for this service, instead making their money from offers similar to the Groupon system.

Schmidt focused on the launch of Google’s +1, which became active this week. Compared to Facebook’s “Like”, Google +1, allows users to share their favourite websites with their friends. In order to use the +1 feature, people must create a Google profile, similar to a Facebook profile. These +1s have the potential to increase traffic and revenue to websites. Online merchants will be able to track their +1’s to determine what is popular. It is believed that Google will also factor +1’s into their organic ranking system. Paid ads, such as Adsense will also be affected by the +1s.

Because most Google users do not set up a profile as they do on Facebook, it is difficult to predict the success of the +1 button for online merchants and publishers. Marketers are hopeful that this will be a new revenue stream.

Watch videos of the interview with Eric Schmidt at: http://allthingsd.com/20110531/googles-executive-chairman-eric-schmidt-live-at-d9/?refcat=conferences. Yes, the Internet giant Google also owns YouTube.

On February 24, 2011, Google introduced the Panda Algorithm update to provide higher quality search results. The update has affected 12% of search results and significantly impacted visitor numbers for many websites. Read further to learn how you can optimize your website to avoid being affected by the Google changes.

At least 70% of searches on the Internet are conducted through Google. The search engine uses algorithms to determine whether your website will be listed at the top of the Google search results. Metrics such as search query relevance, website traffic, quality of the site and links, and fresh content, are analyzed, and websites that have these qualities will be listed higher in the rankings.

Google is constantly evolving, and keeping on top of the changes is the only way to insure that your page ranking is high. The Panda update was designed to weed out content farms and websites composed of poor quality filler and links.

Article Directories been seriously affected by the Google Panda Update. Article directories are websites where website owners submit articles to provide backlinks to their site and obtain a higher Google ranking.  Article submissions were an excellent way to build links to drive traffic to your site.

With the Panda update, it doesn’t matter how many article directories you submit an article to, only one article will be indexed, and Google will remove duplicate articles from indexing. If an article is submitted to a number of article directories, which used to provide numerous backlinks, there will now only be a single backlink. SEO companies are aware of these changes and have the resources to come up with new approaches.

The biggest losers in this new algorithm and the target of Google’s Panda update are “Content Farms”. These are article directories that hire freelance writers to produce thousands of short articles on every conceivable subject aimed at making money through page views. Content farms use algorithms to determine the most effective search engine optimization keywords and build their articles around those words, focusing more on search results than content.

While it is true that article marketing has taken a huge hit, if you own your own content, publish it on your own website or blog. Further promote your articles on social media and other legitimate forms of promotion, and you will increase traffic to your site. The Google Panda update can be a positive change for small businesses and websites, because the poorly written, keyword driven farm content has been removed, and your site can rank higher in the ratings.

If you have noticed a decrease in organic traffic to your site, you need to up your game. Organic traffic simply means web traffic that comes from search engines as a result of keyword searches, without using paid listings.

Google has provided a set of guidelines to help you improve your site. Check out Google’s Webmaster tools for tips on how to maximize your results.

Here are some suggestions to help you survive the Panda update:

• Your website should contain quality content and be well written, clear and concise, free of spelling and grammatical errors.
• Update your website a few times a week with fresh content. Rewriting articles using the same themes, keywords and rearranged content will flag your site and decrease your rankings.
• Make sure your content is unique to your site and not duplicate content from another site, and do not create sub-domains with duplicate content.
• Plan your keywords carefully and do not keyword load pages.
• Use text instead of images for most content or links, because the Google crawler does not recognize text implanted in images.
• Backlinks should come from quality websites.
• Make sure that your website loads quickly and is a safe environment for your customers, free of viruses and Trojans. Google specifically asks “Do your customers feel comfortable providing their credit card information on your site?”
• Do not use tricks to generate traffic to your site, such as Black Hat SEO. This refers to stuffing your page with Search Engine Optimization keywords that are irrelevant and provide no valuable content.
• Never use techniques such as “cloaking”, which is presenting different content in search engines than what is included on your site.
• Too many ads on your site will lower your Google ranking. Google wants to send people to sites where they will have a good experience. Ads, even Google Adsense ads, overwhelming a website, will have the opposite effect and turn people away.
• Even if you have a high quality website, one lower quality page can affect your rankings on Google.
• Anything that causes a high bounce rate, where people click on your site and immediately click out, will lower your rankings. You want to keep readers interested and have them stay on your page as long as possible.

Google is constantly working to reduce spam, sites that redirect to Trojan sites, and inferior content farmed sites. The Panda update has caused some controversy, as some legitimate sites have been affected by the algorithm. If your website traffic has decreased recently, or your site has been blocked by Google, contact Google Webmasters. Providing a pleasurable experience for your web visitors will increase your traffic, keep your rankings high and help you maintain and attract new customers.

SEO-friendly content tips can increase traffic to your website and places you higher in page rankings. Creating Search Engine Optimization or SEO content requires planning.  Write compelling articles that will grab the reader and bring them back to your site. Repeat traffic is essential. People who land on your site through SEO keywords will leave if your website or blog is poorly written or contains too many keywords.

Effective SEO Techniques

Target your market audience. You want your website to be easy to locate for people who are interested in your product or service. Your goal is to get your website or blog higher in page rankings on Google and other search engines, and have a low bounce rate. A bounce is when someone immediately clicks off of your site.

Using Keywords

Select the appropriate keywords and phrases and use them sparingly but effectively.  Do not repeat the same phrases over and over. This is called keyword stuffing. Not only will this defeat the purpose and damage your search optimization, but it will irritate your readers.  SEO-friendly content should be friendly for the reader.

Use your key phrase in the title and first sentence, and use variations throughout the article. Search engine spiders will read your site as a person does and ignore an overabundance of SEO words. Keyword phrases should be around 3 to 5 words. Long tail keywords are phrases with over three words. These can be more effective than using a single keyword. For instance, a search of the word “keyword” on Google provides 757,000,000 results. Your website will be lost in this jungle. A search for “long tail keyword” provides 1,160,000 results.

Use a free keyword density tool such as Key Word Density, to determine if you are using the appropriate percentage of keywords. Many experts believe 3 to 8 percent is acceptable. Too many keywords are considered spam.

When using keyword phrases avoid

Writing and Web Design

Keep your writing concise. Use proper grammar and spelling. There are a number of programs online which will check grammar, spelling and plagiarism. Use short paragraphs, bullet points or sections. Make your website easy to navigate with a landing page and links to legitimate sites.

Google

Google is the most popular search engine in the world. Take advantage of the information on Google to build your page ranking with SEO keywords. Google has free webmaster tools to help you choose keywords and learn how Google indexes websites.

Google ranks web pages by the page rank and number of other pages and matches them with websites and pages that link to yours. These results include organic SEO results and paid SEO. Google keyword tools help you determine the most effective keywords or phrases.  Google analytics allows you to track your website traffic and analyze data, including keyword searches.

Organic SEO and paid search engine optimization

Organic search results are natural search results, also known as unpaid results. Search engines index the web to determine the best match for your keyword search.

Paid SEO are sponsored ads or pay per click rankings, using affiliates such as Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing or Amazon.

Linking with other legitimate sites, using the right combination and quantity of keywords and providing a website or blog that is captivating, well written, with pleasing graphics, will generate traffic to your site and bring return visitors.

RomanZ Media Group Inc. is an online marketing agency based out of Toronto, Canada with offices in Israel and Russia. Our roaster includes companies such as thekosherexpress.com and goennounce.com. We are group of young souls that are passionate about the world of online marketing and really love what we do. Our internal culture is highly informal yet is strict and professional when dealing with our clients.

Role SEO/ Social Media Interns:

We are looking for administrative help with a variety of Tasks that pertain to online marketing. The long term goal is to groom such an intern to understand a “big picture” and become SEO manager.

Responsibilities:

• Coordination of content creation: title creation, ordering, checking
• Content Management: posting new articles, recording posts
• Social Media Management: bookmarking, responding to inquiries, monitoring set-up
• E-mail management: creation of Email lists, dealing with bouncebacks and responses
• Filling: we don’t have physical files, so making sure that Project Management System is updated, spreadsheets are in place and updated, backups performed on time.

Skills:

• Experience with computer, Internet and Social Media
• Experience with online research
• Excel proficiency
• Preferably people with their own blogs
• Ability to manage multiple projects
• Ability to work under tight deadlines
• Ability to communicate in a professional and courteous manner both via oral and written communication
• Preferably speaking Hebrew and/or Russian

Qualifications:

• Non jaded attitude with an open mind

Compensation

The job is part time basis we can guarantee a minimum of 20 hours per week. Payment depends on your credentials $10 – $15 per hour.

To apply send your resume that includes any of your internet experiences (twitter profile, personal blog etc.) to Roman r@romanz.ca

About Us:

RomanZ Media Group Inc. is an online marketing agency based out of Toronto, Canada with offices in Israel and Russia. Our roaster includes companies such as thekosherexpress.com and goennounce.com. We are group of young souls that are passionate about the world of online marketing and really love what we do. Our internal culture is highly informal yet is strict and professional when dealing with our clients.

Role:

We are looking for SEO project manager (PM). There are no sales required in this position. However you will need to communicate with the client during the course of managing the project.

Responsibilities:

• Providing estimates on time and resources needed for potential projects
• Full planning of SEO projects: milestones, resources needed, KPI’s
• Full execution of SEO projects: working with our PM system, working and hiring link builders, ordering content creation, analysis, reporting and communication with a client.

Skills:

• Through understanding of organic SEO process, both on and off page
• Ability to hire, manage and lead staff
• Ability to manage multiple projects
• Ability to work under tight deadlines
• Ability to communicate with client in a professional and courteous manner both via oral and written communication

Qualifications:

• Non jaded attitude with an open mind
• At least 2 years of experience in SEO either in-house or agency side
• Proven track record of SEO success
• Customer Service experience

Compensation:

We are looking to hire manager full time, depending on your credentials we can either offer to you a trial part time basis first or full time right away.

How to apply:

Please send your resume that includes your SEO projects history of success to Roman r@romanz.ca

Last week I visited an event called Ignite Toronto. The idea behind Ignite Toronto is that a person makes a 5 minute presentation about their idea – that Ignites a thought in us. I found it very refreshing as most of the presenters didn’t try to promote themselves, but actually wanted to share their view on different subjects . These presentations took me away from all the Marketing/Social Media thoughts and made me think of things I didn’t even have an idea of.

I had a camera with me, so I recorded as many presentations as my battery and Iphone allowed. Here there are:

Vinnie Mirchandani:Leveraging AND not OR – The Innovator’s Expanding Palette of Technologies

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asCm62ET52E[/youtube]

Kat Cizek:The Suburbs: it’s not what I thought

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqiNZgkBpNo[/youtube]

Gregory Betts: Poets against Authorship

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2KlaK4FmyA[/youtube]

Crystal Preston-Watson: F**king Magnets, How Do They Work?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H0rSeIqB2U[/youtube]

Brydon Gilliss: 5 ways to run your company like an unconference

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4U1v9tnclw[/youtube]

Shaharris Beh:Flipping the Recommendation Model

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpP4JlmwZ-4[/youtube]

Satish Kanwar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6y-itgOS1w

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6y-itgOS1w[/youtube]

Sorry to all other presenters who I couldn’t record, need to talk to Steve Jobs about making Iphone battery better.  BTW organizers if you read this post, would love to present on next Ignite Toronto. My presentation would be about how women from different cultures and continents share the same traits.