Just looking at the Google Analytics of one of my sites and found Under the Traffic Sources in the Referring Sites the site called Cuil. That made me thinking, why doesn’t Google display Cuil under the Search Engines in the Traffic Source where it belongs? Is it just that Google doesn’t really like Cuil?
Check your web log analyser and you will see the same!
The vast majority of the web sites have almost no traffic at all. How about yours?
Almost anyone who published a web site realised after the hype in the office quieted, that there is something missing. There was no visitors on the web site. You learned to be patient, and have been watching the web logs, but time is passing and there is still just a ‘flat line’ A few visitors, mostly from your own IP. When a first referral from a search engine showed up, it gave you hope, but in reality the keyword used was you domain name. Months pass by and still nothing really. No visitors, and a spider visiting a home page and a few more pages only, once in a week or a month.
Then you realise, I need to do something to bring this visitors to my site. SEO is the magic word there. Let’s invest in it, but…
How much does SEO cost?
I have been asked that question a million times so far. And still there is no definite answer, but here is the sentence that made me thinking today:
The budget for marketing a site in the first month should be equal to the budget for building the site in the first place.
To anyone who has just purchased a new web site this is most likely shocking, to say at least. You have paid through the roof for the web site, and now you need to spend as much into online marketing of it. And all that in the first month only? What happens the next month, and any other month later on?!
SEO is Expensive
Paying a few dollars per inbound link to a company in Asia is cheap. Every day you receive an offer for such services in your inbox. Just check your SPAM or Junk folders. Will that bring you any good visitors? Quite unlikely!
SEO is Time Consuming
A SEO Consultant will most likely have to rewrite the majority of the content on the site. In some cases the whole site (code) will have to be replaced by something the search engines can read and understand. The top SEO Consultants will, if at all possible look into replacing the whole web site with a completely new one. The look and feel will be the same, the content will be retained, and a lot of new one added (in most cases), but the code will be completely replaced in the end product.
Is SEO for You?
SEO is not for everyone. That is the fact. SEO is a viable investment to any web site owner who will make a return on investment from the direct on indirect sales from the traffic on the web site.
What is your SEO Budget?
There are two major approaches when optimising a web site for the search engine:
1. Low hanging fruit
When a web site is being optimised for a search phrase that almost no other web site is optimised for (at least not intentionally) it is usually fairly easy to get super high ranking super fast. Take a 3 or 4 word search phrase and you can rank almost any web site high for it in no time. The approach is called a ‘Low Hanging Fruit’ since you can really easy get the ‘juice’ (traffic) out to the search engine for a very long phrase.
2. Big Boys SEO
Optimising a web site for a highly used single word search phrase like Cars, Jobs, Travel or Insurance, is the other end of the search engine optimisation. It does differ quite a lot from optimising a web site for a multiple words phrases. Usually far more statistical analysis are utilised. A very definite and precise methodologies are required. Why? Simply because you are not the only one in the playing field here. All your competitors will be optimising for the same keyword. The time required for a decent ranking result is very long, and no stellar success is to be expected. Search engine results pages do not change that much for the single word search phrases at all. Some single words when entered in the search engine generate the same search results listed in the same order for many months!
Should you optimise a web site for a single words phrases or for a multiple words search phrases? The following statistics published by OneStat.com will help you:
The 7 most used word phrases in search engines on the web are:
1. - 2 word phrases - 32.58%
2. - 3 word phrase - 25.61%
3. - 1 word phrases - 19.02%
4. - 4 word phrases - 12.83%
5. - 5 word phrases - 5.64%
6. - 6 word phrases - 2.32%
7. - 7 word phrases - 0.98%
Two word phrases are the most used search phrases in the search engines. And now even more surprising to the most of us is the fact that the three word phrases are closely following! Only then do a single word phrases come in the picture with less than one fifth if the overall traffic. Having a insurance web site listed 1st in Google for the word ‘Insurance’ will only bring one fifth of the (possible) traffic for that single word listing. Optimising your pages forthe two and search phrases containing two and three keywords will bring the majority of the traffic to any web site.
The Canonical URL issue that is talked about a lot lately since even Google itself it has a huge impact on the search engine ranking of your web page is all about defining one page and one URL of your web site to help the search engines define what the real Home of your web site is, and pass on all the links to any other pages to this one Home page.
Matt wrote about it even back in 2006 here: SEO advice: url canonicalization
Some people got it, some did not. Some people take advantage of it and some do not. IT’s a bit like saying:
Some companies care about their ranking in Google and some not.
There is one domain (company) that actually took the canonical URL issue to the whole new level. What they have done is they have created two completely different web sites that show in the two versions of their URL. When the domain is accessed with a domain name that contains the ‘www’ part in it –one site shows up, and the same domain name without the ‘www’ part of the address shows a completely different web site.
At first it looked like a mistake made on the web server configuration, but contacting the company in question revealed that that was actually done intentionally.
An interesting and original approach to URL canonicalization. I do not remember anyone ever trying anything similar jet. Could they be on to something? It is clear that both versions of the web site will dilute the value the Google assigns. The Google Page Rank (PR) will be lower on both sites than it would be if one site would have been redirected to the other. The search engine ranking of both versions will again be lower than if the redirection was in place. Also by having the completely different content and the code on the two versions of the site, Google will have to index and therefore rank them completely independently.
There are no obvious benefits of doing splitting your web site into the two different versions. On the other implementing the two versions of the web site will definitely hurt your Google rankings.
The user / visitor of the site will also get extremely surprised with the two so different versions on the web site. Different company name, address, email, phone, fax number and everything really. It does really look like another company. It is only the call to their IT department that assured of their intentional ‘splitting’ of the domain name, and creation of the canonical URL.
The page where Google describes the Search engine optimization has a nice definition at the start:
SEO is an abbreviation for “search engine optimizer.” Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, from writing copy to giving advice on site architecture and helping to find relevant directories to which a site can be submitted.
If you look at the quoted text, you will even notice a typo in it, an unusual occurrence on Google’s pages. It is obvious that this is a very sensitive page on their site, and was not published in the usual way since the editors and proof readers would easily spot the error.
Google obviously has a problem presenting any data about SEO on its web ssite. It is understandable since SEO is in its core the reverse engineering of the search algorithm that Google is hiding vigorously.
But Google’s definition of the SEO does not stop there. It continues with:
However, a few unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to unfairly manipulate search engine results.
Further on the words like used on that page are : Beware, avoid, doubts, trust, illegal, spam, illicit practice, illusion, skeptical,… ad the list goes on an on.
The page where Google explains what SEO is actually ends up with the following text:
If you feel that you were deceived by an SEO in some way, you may want to report it.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) handles complaints about deceptive or unfair business practices. To file a complaint, visit: http://www.ftc.gov/ and click on “File a Complaint Online,” call 1-877-FTC-HELP, or write to:
Federal Trade Commission
CRC-240
Washington, D.C. 20580
If your complaint is against a company in another country, please file it at http://www.econsumer.gov/.
It really is very obvious that Google wants you to think about SEO as a blasphemy if nothing worse. Are they really so afraid of the people looking into the search engine optimization? Is scare tactics really the best approach here? My opinion is that this is the result of the lack of analysis on how will this reach the reader. It is negative. Negative is not professional (in most cultures). Pointing your visitors to the avenues of placing complaints about companies is just a bit inappropriate from the Google PR people. Search engine optimization should not be their problem unless they make it so themselves.