Author: Jack Prior

“SEO is the process involved in increasing the opportunities for content to be found by people using search engines’ organic (non-paid) listings”

As mentioned in my previous blogs, SEO is a constantly evolving practice. What works one year might be outdated an ineffective next. With search engine algorithms changing daily in some cases (Affiliate Marketer Training, n.d.), it is important for digital marketers to understand what currently is good SEO practice, and keep up to date with what changes. The primary goal of SEO is the increase your webpages ranking, which in turn brings in more visitors, and also helps increase the number of conversions whether that be comments on a blog or purchases made on the site. This post will hopefully provide tips and tricks on approaching SEO in its current form.

Martin (2013) believes that in todays SEO there are 3 pillars, content, inbound links, and social media. The most common phrase used around SEO is “content is king” (Techknowsys, n.d.). Even in the early days of SEO, content has been the primary factor in a pages ranking. This means regularly creating new content, and making sure what you have is of high quality. Experts believe even among the rapidly changing iterations of search algorithms this will always be the case, and therefore should be the primary focus of any SEO strategy. Simple metrics like time visitors spend on page, page views, crawl rates should all be monitored and analysed. If people are not staying on your site long, or coming back again, it is probably because your core content is not good enough.

Link building has long been an important aspect of SEO, however as algorithms have changed, they have become smarter. Previously it was easy to pay to gain the level of links needs, with search engines doing very little to evaluate and verify the quality of the link to the site (Alperin, 2016). However, google started to penalise sites with bad backlinks, therefor making it very difficult to artificially manufacture a link network to you page. The punishment now for poor backlinks is believed to be very severe, making any attempt to “trick” the algorithm seem unworthy the risk.

The source of the link and uniqueness is now very important, with links from the likes of The Financial Times rewarding sites with huge ranking boosts. There is also the idea of expressed and implied links. Expressed are the aforementioned physical and clickable links back to your website. Implied involves mentions of your website from other sites, which google considers a sign of popularity and trustworthiness (Smart Insights, 2015). If people are regularly talking about you, it will dramatically improve your page rank.

The difficulty of link building does not end there. Companies must also protect themselves against negative SEO. Malicious SEO attempts are not uncommon, creating bad unnatural links from poor sources which google identifies as trying to cheat the system, and penalises accordingly. While stopping this is impossible, you can contain the attacks by constantly monitoring links and statistics, and using webmaster tools to report suspicious activity, can help reduce penalties you occur (Sullivan, 2017). Indicators like sudden spikes in the number of backlinks, or monitoring keyword density from those links can help identify malicious activity.

Social media is the final pillar, and seems to be to many what google is currently prioritising. A good social media following with active engagement with followers with links to and from the website is highly valued. The key is to constantly promote content through your social media outlets, and encourage visitors to share content through their profiles (DeMers, 2015). Websites are also rewarded if they actively engage and reply to comments left by users.

A risk in engaging in these SEO practices is that you forget the core performance and quality of your site. While content is king, a poorly designed website, with slow loading speeds, poor mobile integration will result in your site being heavily penalised as well as providing a negative experience for the visitor. While loading your site with plugins, links and images may seem like upgrading your site, if it slows the performance down it will be negative both for your page rank and user satisfaction. Another part to this is technical issues. Website downtime, or plugins not working result in your site being penalised long term, which can be hard to reverse. Site reliability and the ability to fix issues quickly helps mitigate some of this risk.

Another risk with SEO is that it can become an expensive practice which requires constant investment of resources and time. Too often companies indulge in an expensive SEO fix, only to leave it for months or a year and lose all their progress. Constant investment and redesign of strategy is key, as algorithms can change daily, and what is valued once can be obsolete a year later.

Finally, the biggest risk is that you do it wrong. There are many self acclaimed “SEO experts” but the reality is the search algorithms are not public knowledge, and therefor marketers can only guess what effects rankings the most. What is clear is that Google and other search engines are trying to penalise any attempt of trickery harshly (McClean,2015), in order to ensure searchers get the most relevant content. These penalties can be expensive and time consuming to get rid of. Therefor it is equally important for marketers to know “google rules”, what they see as black hat SEO.

Gudivada, Rao, and Paris’ (2015) piece on understanding SEO outlined many of the more technical aspects to SEO, both white hat and black hat. They identified that while many SEO companies do help customers improve using white hat SEO strategies, many agencies try to take shortcuts using black hat techniques like spamdexing. Therefor any marketer or company looking for external help needs to still research what SEO is and how the agency intends to help the companies SEO.

While these risks might scare some of performing SEO, the reality is it is a necessity when developing a website. In an era where searches can bring back millions of results in milliseconds, ensuring your page remains one of the first couple of results to visitors you want to attract is vital in digital marketing.

References

Affiliate Marketer Training. (n.d.). How Often Does Google Change?. [online] Available at: https://www.affiliatemarketertraining.com/often-google-change-algorithm/ [Accessed 4 Apr. 2018].

Alperin, M. (2016). Risks of Doing SEO Link Building for Your Own Website. [online] Lead to Conversion. Available at: https://leadtoconversion.com/blog/risks-of-seo-link-building/ [Accessed 4 Apr. 2018].

DeMers, J. (2015). 6 Social Media Practices That Boost SEO. [online] Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2015/01/27/6-social-media-practices-that-boost-seo/#4fee18693d17 [Accessed 4 Apr. 2018].

Gudivada, V., Rao, D. and Paris, J. (2015). Understanding Search-Engine Optimization. Computer, 48(10), pp.43-52.

Martin, J. (2013). 8 Things You Need to Know About SEO Now. [online] CIO. Available at: https://www.cio.com/article/2383232/web-analytics/8-things-you-need-to-know-about-seo-now.html [Accessed 4 Apr. 2018].

McClean, R. (2015). 7 Things You Need to Know About SEO. [online] Custom fit online. Available at: https://www.customfitonline.com/news/2015/3/26/7-things-you-need-to-know-about-seo/ [Accessed 4 Apr. 2018].

Smart Insights. (2015). What you need to know about SEO into 2016. [online] Available at: https://www.smartinsights.com/search-engine-optimisation-seo/seo-strategy/what-you-need-to-know-about-seo-in-2015/ [Accessed 4 Apr. 2018].

Sullivan, R. (2017). Negative SEO: Destroying Businesses One Backlink at a Time. [online] WP Site Care. Available at: https://www.wpsitecare.com/negative-seo/ [Accessed 4 Apr. 2018].

Techknowsys. (n.d.). Why Content is King in SEO. [online] Available at: http://www.techknowsys.com/search-engine-strategies/content-is-king [Accessed 4 Apr. 2018].

As companies look to increase traffic to their website in ever competitive search engines, many companies have conducted in SEO in order to drive large numbers of relevant traffic to their site. Many modern digital marketers have their own opinions on what help increase a sites rank within the secrete search engine algorithms. Through research of many of these opinions, a range of good and bad SEO practices emerge, some of which I will try to convey to you.

“Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of improving the visibility of a website or particular web page in a search engine’s results.” (Crowley, 2014)

As mentioned SEO is a process and is constantly evolving, therefore it requires a site owner to constantly change and develop a sites optimisation. As mentioned before, search algorithms are estimated to take 1000s of ranking factors, and often change factor weightings daily (Dean, 2017). While more of the heavily weighted factors now are to do with customer engagement through social media or blogs, the weighting may well change back over the next few years. It is therefore vital for a site to approach SEO as a long term strategy, not just a quick boost to web traffic.

A very popular tool used for measuring your sites current SEO is to perform a crawl analysis. Many businesses offer web crawl services, some paid for some free, with most generally identifying broken links, duplicate content, indexation issues etc. From there site owners can identify the strengths and weaknesses and make changes accordingly. There are many SEO improvement techniques, some of which I will mention, but a crawl analysis or some equivalent should initially be used to identify what things actually need to be improved on the site.

While traditional aspects like keywords are becoming increasingly less valued in search algorithms, ignoring the basics of SEO can still dramatically reduce the ranking of a site, especially for new sites or new pages within a site (Tiemann, 2013). Ensuring each webpage has one primary topic or message it is looking to convey to incoming users, then using this as the “keyword”, ensure you place it within the URL, site title, page description, page titles and more all where possible will help search engines find users the site wants to visit them, and pages the user wants to visit. Other traditional techniques include ensuring that your main page contains links to all important aspects to your site, which then in itself link to each other.

Sites should also be increasingly concerned about the page loading times, now more than ever. Multiple pieces of research (Butkiewicz, Madhyastha and Sekar, 2014; Nah, 2004; Kiss Metrics, n.d.) show how slower websites, even by one second can dramatically increase the number of users who abandon the site, and will often never come back. Monitoring page loading time is relatively easy (2) with tools like google analytics. As well as this page loading times are now predicted to be analysed in search algorithms (3), including mobile loading speeds. Companies must therefore consider which plugins to use and techniques like Gzip compression and image optimisation. Sites should change the website design to consider speed not just design and functionality.

It is important to remember the amount of traffic which you can attract from organic searches as apposed to sponsored links will vary depending on the industry the site operates in. Retail for example has far more organic searches than paid-for (Baye, De los Santos, Wildenbeest, 2015). Therefore, before fully committing to a strong SEO approach, it would be wise to consider whether paid search would be an easier, less risky, and possibly cheaper approach depending which industry the website is about.

Having good user engagement can also help ensure your site does not have static content. Websites like Wikipedia and blogs are often rated so highly, as users create new content for the site without them having to do anything (Labrador, n.d.). Many retail companies like Tesco have added blog infrastructure for this reason, hoping to create an active community who will in turn help improve the sites SEO. While much of this stratergy will depend on the sites purpose, but simple comment sections, blog areas, or links to social media comments can improve page rankings.

While previously sites could “trick” algorithms using black hat SEO, with techniques like keyword stuffing and cloaking, most search engines have chosen to permanently penalise websites caught doing so (Perzyńska, 2016). This can effect a sites ranking even if they remove the black hat techniques, creating lasting damage. There have also been examples of SEO companies using these techniques, meaning outsourcing is generally considered very risky. Many in the field suggest hiring in house to maintain more control and avoid being contracted into a dodgy agreement with an SEO agency (Dod, 2018).

The risk to conducting SEO is that you lose site of the design, functionality and purpose of your website (Gabe, 2012). While conduting SEO is vital to bring traffic to your site, especially for new businesses, if you lose focus of what your website is meant to do, the sites page rank will improve to a lesser extent and users will stay for less time and not return. The change to your site must also be gradual, as quick change to the website often hinders a sites ranking rather than helping it.

While it may seem a lot to digest, SEO is a multi-faceted aspect to digital marketing, and conducting any of the techniques mentioned or found from professionals can help boost traffic going to a site significantly. In a time where competition is even more global, with the internet putting thousands more businesses competing against each other, any ability to increase potential customers to see what you can offer is vital.

References

Baye, M., De los Santos, B. and Wildenbeest, M. (2015). Search Engine Optimization: What Drives Organic Traffic to Retail Sites?. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 25(1), pp.6-31.

Butkiewicz, M., Madhyastha, H. and Sekar, V. (2014). Characterizing Web Page Complexity and Its Impact. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 22(3), pp.943-956.

Crowley, M. (2014). Take the Guesswork Out of Your Marketing Strategy. Journal of Financial Planning, 27(1), pp.16-17.

Dean, B. (2017). Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List. [online] Backlinko. Available at: https://backlinko.com/google-ranking-factors [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].

Dod, R. (2018). 5 SEO Risks Worth Taking (Plus 3 You Must Avoid). [online] Search Engine Journal. Available at: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-risks/229909/ [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].

Gabe, G. (2012). How To Avoid SEO Disaster During a Website Redesign – Top Marketer Concerns. [online] Search Engine Journal. Available at: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-avoid-seo-disaster-during-a-website-redesign/42824/ [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].

Kiss Metrics. (n.d.). How Loading Time Affects Your Bottom Line. [online] Available at: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/ [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].

Labrador, E. (n.d.). How User Generated Content can impact your SEO?. [online] OnCrawl. Available at: https://www.oncrawl.com/oncrawl-seo-thoughts/user-generated-content-impact-seo/ [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].

Nah, F. (2004). A study on tolerable waiting time: how long are Web users willing to wait?. Behaviour & Information Technology, 23(3), pp.153-163.

Perzyńska, K. (2016). 8 Risky Black Hat SEO Techniques Used Today. [online] Unamo. Available at: https://unamo.com/blog/seo/8-risky-black-hat-seo-techniques-used-today [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].

Tiemann, K. (2013). The Importance of Keywords in SEO Marketing. [online] Volume seo. Available at: http://volumeseo.com/the-importance-of-keywords-in-seo-marketing/ [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].

Online sales are accounting for more and more of the UK’s retail industry sales. Companies are now expected to have a strong online presence, not only for existing customers to use but for customer catching too. The office for national statistics found 12.4% of all Uk retail sales were online in 2015, a rise of 11.4% from the previous year (Office for National Statistics, 2015). For retail companies, websites are quickly becoming their primary form of income, and driving traffic to their website is their primary concern.

Companies look to increase the amount of traffic coming through their website as it not only provides more opportunities for online sales, but also contributes to increasing revenue the site creates through digital advertising. A study  found 70% of website visitors came through a search engine, and 91% of them came from organic search links as opposed to paid search links. 32.5 % of users click the first search result and just over 75% click one of the first 5 (Chitika, 2013). Therefor companies have looked to increase their page rank on various search engines, primarily through the use of SEO.

Since the early 2010’s Google and other search engines have had an increased focus on social media activity in order to determine a page’s rank. Likes, shares and other signs of engagement are seen as difficult to artificially manufacture, however ensuring your websites contains social media links which encourage engagement from users is good example of how to use SEO in the modern day. Most large online retailers like Amazon contain share options across multiple media platforms and have looked to push their customer engagement.

Natural inbound links still remain the key factor to Google’s and many others algorithm, however keyword rich titles, URL wording and clear titles are examples of factors easily optimised to make a site higher ranked.  As Jerath, Ma and Park (2014) found keywords and the positioning of keywords in text, titles and the URL are still vitally important. For a retail company, they must consider all possible search term a potential customer would use when looking for a product they offer.

Many have argued SEO will eventually die out , search engines like Google and Bing are constantly evolving their algorithms to reduce the ability to artificially increase a page’s ranking and try to deliver the result most appropriate to the search. They argue increasing the quality of your website will naturally increase the page rank of your site, and there is no need for SEO and trying to trick the algorithm. As mentioned before social media is now a large part search engines algorithms, suggesting aspects like good PR are more effective for driving traffic to websites.

The danger is no-one outside of the search engines themselves know all the factors which influence page ranking with there often being thousands of factors influencing the algorithms. Add this to the ever growing amount of mobile visitors which brings with it new factors, and SEO can become a very complicated process which distracts from the functionality and design of the website itself. Brian Dean compiled a list of 200 ranking factors, but as the algorithms are normally private much of it is speculation. Google’s algorithm alone is predicted to change more than once a day so the weight of the factors can constantly change, albeit not normally by large amounts. For retail companies, attracting visitors is only part of the process, they must also have a website infrastructure to ensure customers stay and purchase as well as become repeat visitors.

SEO is a constantly evolving process however, and looks to evolve with the algorithms. In the 90s keyword stuffing and meta tags were the tactic, the 2000s saw link bombing and inter-linking was seen as the most important aspect to SEO, in 2011 social media marketing and vertical search inclusion was key. While some argue SEO is dying, I would argue it is an evolving process which holds just as much importance as before, but needs to be constantly worked at to continue to drive traffic to a website. “Good content is still the most important success factor with or without SEO”. While companies need to understand a high quality website should be the base to help increase traffic to the website, search engines will always run on algorithms. SEO is about understanding what the algorithms value most and marketers will always be able to leverage that, therefore a company not performing SEO is always liable to be left behind by competitors as the algorithms change.

References

Chitika. (2013). The Value of Google Result Positioning. [online] Available at: https://chitika.com/2013/06/07/the-value-of-google-result-positioning-2/ [Accessed 2 Jan. 2018].

Jerath, K., Ma, L. and Park, Y. (2014). Consumer Click Behavior at a Search Engine: The Role of Keyword Popularity. Journal of Marketing Research, 51(4), pp.480-486.

Office for National Statistics. (2015). Retail sales, Great Britain: June 2015. [online] Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/retailindustry/bulletins/retailsales/2015-07-23 [Accessed 2 Jan. 2018].

What was it?

DBB created a unique approach to digital marketing and attempting to bring new viewers in to watching GOT, by creating a conversation online with existing viewers. They identified King Joffrey as a universally hated charecter, and one which many viewers had the most passionate opinions about using brandwatches analytical tools. Their twitter campaign involved creating a real life statue of Joffrey being prepared to be hung, and invited twitter users to influence the outcome by turning the winch for every mention of the bringdowntheking hashtag. The campaign created large buzz, intially using tradtional media and relying on the sharing of that through online platforms like reddit. Throughout this Brandwatch was able to catch more analytics about the engagement of users, including where they were from and the level of their discussion. They were able to record 875,000 individual interactions, reaching 43 million people in 168 countries.

Why I think the objective may not have been met

While the reach of the campaign cannot be faulted, I would agrue the initial goal of DBB’s project was to attract new viewers rather than just start conversation between existing ones. While I understand creating a buzz may attract new viewers, it could also make viewers who have not seen the show to stay away as the feel excluded from the conversation and feel it is too late to join. Rather than hearing the conversation and wanting to start watching they feel even more excluded.

What did the case study show

The case did however show the power of social platforms like reddit and twitter and the amount of conversation and engagement that can be achieved when a company can find a common topic with people. Add an interactive element like the statue and it encourages people to join the conversation and gives incentive to. They also utilised the power of traditional media and created a campaign that reached many millions of viewers on a budget that would normally only meet a fraction of the amount, and was hailed as one of the best social media marketing attempts that year.

References

#bringdowntheking. (2014). [Blog] Reddit. Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/gameofthrones/comments/227nm7/no_spoilers_bringdowntheking/ [Accessed 11 Oct. 2017].

Don’t watch ‘Game of Thrones’? Mondays at the office can get pretty annoying. (2017). [Blog] The Washington Post. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/dont-watch-game-of-thrones-mondays-at-the-office-can-get-pretty-annoying/2017/08/05/09cadc9a-7880-11e7-8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html?utm_term=.090e7ce0101d [Accessed 11 Oct. 2017].

Top 5 Best Examples of Social Media Marketing. (2014). [Blog] Superfly. Available at: http://superflymarketing.co.uk/blog/top-5-best-examples-social-media-in-2014/ [Accessed 11 Oct. 2017].

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