Quite why these names have been chosen no-one is totally sure, but it could be that both animals are black and white, and that Google are trying to tackle “black hat” seo while rewarding “white hat” seo.

Anyway, this latest update seems to have created a mixed bag of results, some of which appear to have been successful, and others perhaps less so.

On the Google blog that discusses this latest update here Google are calling it “Another step to reward high quality sites,” with the statement that they are aiming to push sites with high quality, unique content higher in the results, while punishing lower quality sites that have poor quality content, or that have used “black hat” methods of obtaining links, or to put it another way, have participated in “webspam” techniques.

On that page Google give screenshots with 2 examples of what they are aiming to tackle.

The first is an example of keyword stuffing, taken from a web page that has a long string of text containing dozens of keywords.

This would of course be totally useless to a visitor and is a blatant attempt to manipulate the Google rankings.

The second example screenshot is of a webspam article that has been created and left purely to obtain links (which are also cloaked).

The links in that example are for payday loans sites, yet the article is supposedly about health, although it has little meaning because it has been spun-to-death by some form of automated software that has replaced various words with synonyms.

Link spammers do this so that the content containing the links is different every time that Google finds it, but alas it becomes meaningless to human visitors because of the spinning.

This clearly then is a situation where the article really has no purpose, since it is meaningless, and exists only for the purpose of obtaining the links.

Initial results seem to show that Google has been successful to some large degree in tackling this issue.

For example, if you go to Google and type in the words:

“Pearl Jewellery – the Mineral with no Cleavage that Fantasizes Womenfolk”

You will see dozens of examples of a spun article that has zero meaning or use, and that has been created solely to obtain links for a website selling pearl jewellery, and you can totally understand why Google would want to penalise links like this, and the sites that create them.

The recipient jewellery site in question has dropped in the rankings significantly, so it appears that Google has hit the nail right on the head with this part of the algorithm.

However, when it comes to quality sites being rewarded I think it’s fair to say that Google seem to be a bit off the mark on this front.

There are numerous examples of empty blogs (i.e. they have absolutely no content) appearing in 1st place ahead of great quality sites, and of great quality sites vanishing from the rankings altogether.

Of course it is impossible to say whether those great quality sites have been engaged in webspam link building programs, but even if they have, should they drop in the results if the content is genuinely useful for the visitors?

In the past many webmasters have found it necessary to build links to their sites to get them ranking well in Google, it has been impossible to rank without links, and so the problem would seem to be that both good sites AND bad sites may share some of the same link footprints.

Of course it is important for Google to maintain high quality results, but the approach that they have taken here, while appearing to be successful at detecting and penalising a certain type of link, appears to be unsuccessful at detecting high quality content – hence the empty blogs, scraped sites, and old out of date and unloved sites that haven’t been updated for years rising to the top.

So far Google have remained tight lipped even on their own blogspot linked to above, despite Hundreds of angry and confused website owners asking for answers.

I hope that this is an indication that the algorithm change is not yet complete, and that it is perhaps being rolled out in stages, with the link penalty part being first, and then once the results of this are known the quality content and/or other parts.

It would make sense to take an approach like this for a major update (and this is perhaps one of the most significant updates ever at Google), and so we have our fingers crossed that the best is yet to come.

If the entire update has already been rolled out and we are seeing these spurious results, then it suggests that the algorithm change hasn’t achieved exactly what Google wanted, and we are certain that they will be tweaking and amending it over the coming weeks to correct it.

In any case, if your website has been affected by this update we believe that it is still too early to panick. Google are no fools and they realise that the quality of their results is everything – without that they have no business – so rest assured that these wrinkles will be ironed out.

If however you have been engaged in link spam practices like the one highlighted by Google or the one above, then you should probably start by finding and deleting all of those dodgy links and then filing a re-inclusion request.

If you have removed all of the offending links AND sorted out any problems on your own website then you might be lucky and get your website back in the results again, but unfortunately there is no guarantee that Google will lift the penalty – but it’s just about the only course of action you have left to take.

Google are regularly changing the algorithm, and it’s always for the same thing – to try and improve the quality of the results. This one has been to tackle dubious links, keyword stuffing, and sites that are too focused on ads.

And really all of the problems that Google tackle are always symptoms of the same problem. That problem is that the internet is awash with people trying to make money online, and trying to make money by offering poor quality content on sites to get people there, and then to try and sell them something once they’re on the site.

This idea that the internet is a magical place where you can make money without having to do anything, or give anything of value in exchange for the visitors money is the core problem.

Can you imagine pening a shop, tricking people into the store with promises of amazing products, best prices, products that you don’t actually stock, etc, and then once they’re through the door trying to get money out of them without giving them anything in return?

It just wouldn’t work. And even if you did manage to con some people, it wouldn’t be long before they were back beating down your doors demanding their money back.

I think the problem is two-fold.

Firstly the internet is still really in it’s infancy. It’s a bit like the early wild west where there was a gold rush somewhere every week for years.

And those people who are creating those crappy sites are the prospectors, delerious with the idea that they can strike it rich, really more through luck than putting in any level of hard work.

Secondly, people don’t really understand how the internet or computers work. It kind of is magic. They push some buttons on their keyboard and things appear on their screen or on the internet somewhere.

They don’t understnd or want to know about the clicking and whirring going on in the background, they just want to push that button.

And so when they come across a flashy looking website telling them that this new product or software is the answer to all of their financial problems, or will propel their website to no.1, or make them younger, or healthier, or fitter (usually all from the comfort of their arm chair) they tend to believe it and get sucked into the vicious cycle that Google are continuously fighting against.

It is a major problem, and if only people would realise that making a business online is no different to making a business offline, and concentrate on delivering quality to their customers, then it would be a much better place.

This is why we have set up a nw website that we’ll be building and adding to over time.

It is going to be all about starting a business (online or offline), covering even things like how to work out gross margins, should you have a limited company or be a sole trader, right through to marketing, sales, building a good website, and all of the rest.

It will also have a section on how to make money online, and will advise people to avoid the crud like affiliate marketing, filling in forms or surveys, and the other nonsense that people get sucked into.

And although it’s annoying for internet users, and fills the web with spam, you really do have to feel sorry for some of them.

They aren’t there out of malice, or doing things to annoy or decieve, they need to make money and are doing what they have been told works – they are oblivious to the fact that what they have been shown is pure rubbish.

We’ve started the new site off by talking about scams and get rich quick scams, since this is where these people will end up finding themselves, and rather than learning how to make money, they’ll end up even worse off than they were when they started.

Anyway, we hope in some small way that this helps!

Google made a major update to their algorithm yesterday (the 24th April 2012), and the results have been… interesting to say the least. Undoubtedly some of the weird results will be sorted out over the coming weeks.

This update was aimed at dealing with bad or black hat practices involving dodgy link building practices (and we’re proud to say that we alerted Google to one of these that they have targeted in yesterdays update – this is a great, positive step), to keyword stuffing, and to sites that make it hard to find the content (where there are predominantly ads above the fold rather than content).

If your website has been hit, or even if it hasn’t, then you should start to take action now!

Do not spam links. You might perhaps want to bookmark your website, or add it to a major business directory, but that’s all you should do. You shouldn’t be out there (or employing companies to do it for you) creating as many links as possible from as many sites as possible.

You should NEVER EVER under ANY circumstances us software designed to spam links, like scrapebox or xrumer programs.

You should also make sure that your website does not cram as many instances of the keywords you want to rank for into each page, and you should make sure that your website is easy to navigate for people and search engines.

It appears that you should avoid redirecting other URLs or pages to your site.

And make sure that your site is aimed at the visitor having a good experience, than focusing on just you and how much money you can make.

We’ve said it time and again, but you really should be building your site for your visitors, not for yourself.

Anyway, if your site has been hit it is not the end of the world, just fix the issues Google has been targeting and make sure your website is aimed at visitors and you should be okay.

If you need any help let us know.

(Learn more about the update in Google’s own words here)

It is intended to give genuine business owners an advantage over those who are doing better simply because they have aggressively SEO’d their websites.

Two of the parameters that Google will be looking at are pages with too many keywords on them (I’m sure you’ll have seen the kind of thing, sites which repeat the same keywords over and over again at every conceivable opportunity because they believe it will help their ranking), and also sites that have engaged in too much link swapping or link exchanging.

If your website suffers from either of these problems then you might probably want to go and amend it NOW! before the changes take effect (they’re expected to go live within the next few weeks).

This is really great news and should help Google to make their results even more relevant and useful, and really should be a wake up call for many.

In fact, if you think that your site might suffer from the issues mentioned above, and/or you have been thinking of getting your website professionally optimised, then now is a great time to do it.

Contact us today for a free, no obligation discussion of your requirements, and remember that we offer a 100% money back guarantee.

At the end of the day most people and companies have a website in order to connect with their customers, and the website has one purpose – to generate sales.

So it makes absolute sense to choose a domain name that will help you to connect with the most people, and to generate the most sales.

Here’s how to do it:

First of all you need to think about whether you want a domain name that matches your company name, or a domain name that matches the keywords that people will use when they search in Google for your products or services.

The advantage of having a domain name that matches a product search (e.g. if you sell plastic rivets and that’s what people search for, then you’d want to be looking for PlasticRivets.co.uk or PlasticRivets.org.uk etc) is that it makes it far easier to get that site ranking for that search term.

All search engines rank domain names higher in the results when they match the keywords someone searches for. This makes it far easier to get your website to page 1, which in turn means you get far more visitors.

And since people searching for plastic rivets (or whatever you sell) are likely to be looking to buy them, then the higher your website is in Google for plastic rivets, the more sales you’re going to make.

Choosing a domain name that matches the searches that people use when they’re ready to buy is a very powerful thing.

In addition to this it makes it easier for people to remember your website name, since when they’re thinking about plastic rivets, etc, they can remember that they went to plasticrivets.co.uk or whatever the domain name was.

Similarly if you’re say a nail technician, then you can imagine how much easier people will be able to find you if your site is on NailTechician.org.uk or NailTechnicians.org.uk, etc

Compare this with trying to remember an obscure domain name or a company name – when you’re thinking of a product or service it’s much easier to remember a website name that matches that product or service, than one that matches a company name.

Of course there is no rule that says you must do one or the other, it’s perfectly fine to have more than 1 website, you could have one that matches your company name and another that matches a product search, which can increase the number of visitors and customers you’ll reach.

So how do you know what you’re customers are searching for, and the keywords they use?

Fortunately there’s a very easy way to find out, and it’s free courtesy of Google.

All that you need to do is to go to the Google keyword tool and type in the main keywords that match the product you’re selling, or service you’re offering.

The keyword tool looks like the image below. Note that you need to select “exact” in the left hand menu, and you want to be looking at local searches (indicated with arrows).

The local searches show you how many times last month each of the keywords was searched for, so you can then determine which of them are good phrases for you to base your domain name on.

From here you get an idea of the kinds of keywords that people use, and you can try different keywords and phrases to see which get the most searches.

Once you have a list of possibilities you can see whether they’re available at domain registrars like daily.co.uk or 123reg, etc – but there is something important to note here!

You will see lots of extentions available (e.g. .oc.uk, .com, .co, .so, .info, etc) – the vast majority of them are not worth registering as they will not show up easily in Google.

In our opinion there are only 5 domain extensions that are worth registering, these are:

.co.uk

.org.uk

.com

.net

.org

The .com, .net, and .org have no geographical boundaries, so will show up in Google UK, Google Germany, USa, etc.

If you are trying to reach customers in different countries, then these are the ones you want to be thinking about, preferably the .com

If you are interested in the UK only then you are better off in most cases with the .co.uk or the .org.uk

However, what you are likely to find is that in many cases the .com and .co.uk will already be taken, sometimes they are being used by companies, and sometimes they are “owned” by “domainers” – domainers are people who buy up domain names in order to sell them to people at inflated prices.

Often you’ll find they want several thousand pounds for a domain name when it’s only cost them £7 to reigster it!

For this reason we recommend that you consider using .org.uk domain names, since they currently rank in Google just as well as their .co.uk equivalents (this site for example is a .org.uk and ranks no.1 for SEO Experts, the keywords in the domain).

Many domainers will try and tell you that .org.uk domains are not a good idea to use for your business, since people won’t be able to remember them, and your customers may accidentally go to the .co.uk equivalent.

This is of course nonsense!

First of all if another company is already using the .co.uk and has an established website on it, then your new site can’t possibly leak customers, since your site is brand new – the only leakage likely to occur is from the existing .co.uk to your .org.uk site.

Over time when your site becomes established then maybe you will have some people who search for your domain name and end up at the .co.uk instead, but it works both ways and will probably balance out over time.

Secondly, if existing customers of yours end up at the wrong site they’ll know it instantly – they’ll be expecting to see your logo and website. If they end up somewhere else they’ll just leave and keep going until they find you.

When someone is looking for something specific they won’t just accept something else instead. If they’re looking for your website then that’s what they want to find, if they land on the wrong site they won’t just automatically buy from there instead.

Thirdly many .org.uk domains are still available, and even if they’re not and are owned by a domainer then they are significantly cheaper than their .co.uk equivalent (about 90% cheaper on average).

We have a number of .org.uk domain names for sale at very sensible and afordable prices.

If you are wanting the .co.uk domain name for your business then I recommend that you try Memorable Domains. It is run by Edwin Hayward who is probably the leading & certainly one of the most knowledgable domain name sellers in the UK, and their prices are very good compared to many other domain name sellers too.

If you’d like any help or advice on choosing a domain name for your website then please feel free to contact us, we’re happy to help.

We expect to see a similar wave of disbelief as the update is rolled out across the UK and rest of the world, and so we thought we’d preempt that by discussing it here.

The result of the Panda update has seen a wide range of websites, from the small business owner through to enormous “houshold name” sites losing huge swathes of traffic as their rankings have plummeted.

One particular case to note is suite101.com which has seen it’s traffic drop by an awe inspiring 94%.

According to sources the aim of the Panda or Farmer update is to target low quality “content farms.”

These sites typically will contain maybe 30 pages all telling you how to do the same thing (like make a cheese sandwich for example), but with the content re-written around every conceivable variation of the keywords or phrases that someone looking for advice on a topic might search for.

The sole aim and reason for these sites to exist seems to be to get people onto a page so that advertisements can be displayed to them.

They typically offer low quality content that is “disguised” as advice, just for this purpose.

We’ve talked before about the importance of good quality content in our “Ask not what Google can do for you, ask what you can do for your customers” introduction to SEO, and really nothing has changed at all on this front.

When you consider that Google’s own business model is to deliver the highest possible quality results, then in order to make your site fit into that you must always have your visitors best interests at heart first.

The minute that you start to write content for the seach engines, or to try and “trick” people into landing on your site so that you can show adverts or sell thngs to them, then you’re on a slippery slope.

One interesting thing that we observed about Googles Panda or Farmer update is that they have used Human reviewers to construct part of the algorithm.

They have asked these reviewers questions like: “would you feel comfortable giving your credit card details to this website,” & “would you be happy to give your children medicine that you bought from this site?”

It seems to us that this is designed to incorporate values like trust, authority, and reputation into the algorithm.

If you listen to Google (which is always a sensible thing to do), then you’ll know that these are words that they use a lot when talking about search results.

If you think about their business model, and that they want people to continue to use Google, then you have to come to the conclusion that search results will in the end not just come down to relevance or content, but also to the user experience once that a person has arrived at a particular site.

Really the aim is to give the searcher the best experience possible, which comes down to presenting them with the information that they are looking for, and on a site that is easy to use and trustworthy.

Perhaps this is why in the Panda update there have been cases of old and well established websites with unique content in small niches that have seen their traffic drop off too.

One of these sites in particular had a very old style layout and was probably still using the same site designed 10 years ago, despite the fact that HTML, web applications, and user expectations have moved on significantly since then.

Perhaps this algortithmic update is also adding user experience (trust, reputation, and authority) into the mix in a far more meaningful way than it has been previously, and perhaps a part of this will come down not so much to the aesthetics of the website per se, but more to whether the website presents itself in a way that inspires trustworthiness in visitors to the site.

In any case, there will undoubtedly be a lot of unhappy webmasters in the UK once the algorithm hits our shores.

We’ll keep track of the changes to the rankings of the websites that we’re involved with, and report back here with the findings.

Really I don’t expect to see any adverse changes to our clients sites, since we instill in them the necessity to not only follow Googles own guidelines, but to always have their customers best interests at heart, whether it’s in the content that they present to them, or anything else.

If you do experience problems after the update hits, then feel free to contact us to discuss what we can do to help you.

While it’s very easy to get bogged down in SEO and getting visitors to your website, that’s only half the battle, you need them to buy something when they get to your website!

The whole point of having a website is to sell stuff, right?

Anyway, selling from a website is something that people find to be problematic, so here are a few excellent tips that will help you to sell more.

First of all remember that however big or small your business, and however big or small your customer, at the end of the day all business is person to person.

Even if you’re a huge corporation selling to another huge corporation, what you really have is a person dealing with another person. Although they are operating under the banner of a business, the decision to buy or not to buy will be made a real, live Human being.

So, when you add your content or sales pitch to your website make sure that you make it personal.

There seems to be a very common theme with many websites where they talk about themselves, and their customers in the 3rd person, i.e. the website says things like:

“John Smith Limited specialises in the manufacture of industrial crushing machines. Design and production excellence is the core foundation of the John Smiths philosophy.”

“Our profession team liase with customers blah, blah”

I mean really, can you imagine sitting down with someone and talking to them like that?

The way that we naturally talk to each other is to use “I, we, us, you, your, he, she,” etc.

We use personal pronouns when we’re talking to other people, and you should do the same when you talk to people on your website, or indeed in any form of marketing material.

Presenting yourself and your marketing in this way creates a form of rapport, it feels natural and normal, and doesn’t have the cold, disconnected corporate feel of speaking in the 3rd person.

For some bizarre reason talking about yourself and your customers in the 3rd person seems to have become the norm for websites, when really it shouldn’t be.

Make it personal, writing normally so that the person reading it can relate to it and will keep on reading. One way to do this is to imagine that your customer is sitting in front of you and you’re having a conversation with them when you write.

Secondly, and following on from this, make sure that you talk a lot more about your customer than you do about yourself or your business.

How many times do you land on a website and read about the company, what certifications they have, their history, etc, etc all delivered in the same monotonical 3rd party format.

It’s all me, me, me.

The truth is that no one cares about that stuff – all that the visitor to your website want’s to know is:

“What’s in it for me?”

They want to know that you can deliver the product or service that they need, and that’s it, at least at the beginning.

Once they’ve decided to use you then they might want to know that you’re ISO 9001 accredited, but you have to get them to that point first. Stick all of that stuff on a page somewhere, don’t litter your website content with it.

Thirdly, sell the benefits, not the features.

If you’ve ever worked in sales then you’ll have heard this a million times, and the reason for that is that it’s absolutely right.

People don’t want to know what the product does, what speed the fan motors on the cooling system run at, they want to know what the product will do for them.

What you need to do is to work out what the customer actually wants from the product – for example they don’t need a sports car, they want it because they think it’s going to do something for them, that it will change their life for the better in some way.

Work out what this is, and explain how your product or service will achieve that for them, and you’re 90% of the way to selling to them.

Don’t tell them what the product, service, or your business does, explain what it’s going to do and mean to them, and how it’s going to benefit them.

Remember that “Telling isn’t Selling.”

Fourth, you need to remove any objections that your customer may have to buying from you.

Online this can often come down to trust, it can be that the customer doesn’t believe that you’ll deliver what you promise, they don’t fully understand what you’re offering, or that they have questions that you haven’t answered.

You need to stop thinking from the perspective of the expert in your field who knows all of the answers, and put yourself in the shoes of a complete novice.

Imagine that the person visiting your website knows nothing about the product or service, imagine the questions that they’ll have, and answer them in your copy.

Explaining what you do in great detail is also useful (from an SEO and internet marketing perspective), for example, don’t just mention your “full machine service,” since people then need to interpret or guess what that means.

Explain what you do in your service in great details, each and every step. Your visitor will probably find that you offer far more than they’d imagined, and might even cover things that they’d not even contemplated.

Offering guarantees and testimonials (genuine ones) can help with trust and the belief that you really can do what you say.

All of this will greatly improve your sales from your website, and there’s much more too – this is just the very basics.

Writing in the correct style and presenting yourself in the right way can be very difficult. Writing effective copy is a skill that takes time to perfect (professional copywriters are VERY expensive for a reason), and your copy needs to be perfect.

As you’ll hopefully have gathered we aren’t just another SEO company.

We don’t just offer SEO services, we also advise on internet marketing, writing good sales copy, and basically in maximising your online sales – whatever your online business requires we can help you with it.

So, if you are struggling to sell online, if you need help to turn visitors into customers, or you’d just like to get some ideas about what will work best for your business, then give us a call for a Free, informal, no obligation chat.

We’re always happy to help you!

Of course it’s pretty clear that if an SEO company needs to use Pay Per Click advertising like Google adwords, then you shouldn’t even contemplate giving your hard earned money to them – if they can’t do anything for their own website, then how can they do anything for yours?

But there’s another kind of SEO company that really winds me up, because I think that the way that they promote themselves is deceitful and designed solely to take money off people on the back of false promises.

The thing that these companies do that irritates me, is to give examples of their “successes” that go along the lines of:

“Here are some examples of our previous work. BlackHighHeeledFetishBoots.com now ranks on page 1 for “black high heeled fetish boots”, and another customer, StainedOakFloorsinBirmingham.com now ranks on page 1 for “stained oak floors in Birmingham” – aren’t we great!”

Well the answer is no, they aren’t great at all.

The truth is that any SEO company that advertises it’s services on the back of an obscure domain name ranking on page 1 for that obscure term shouldn’t be touched with a barge pole.

Any website with half sensible relevant content on it will rank for the keywords in it’s domain name, particularly when there is little, if any competition for that long or obscure term.

I don’t know how people could fall for this kind of blatant nonsense, it makes you wonder about the Human condition, but please make sure that you aren’t one of the people who does.

These kinds of companies cannot deliver any real benefit to your website.

Unfortunately the internet is awash with charlatans and crooks who would rather line their pockets with other peoples money than go and do a hard days work, or actually learn how to deliver a useful service, and even more unfortunate is that a lot of them seem to put themselves up as SEO companies.

I guess it’s the nature of the beast really. If you’re a web designer you can show people websites that you’ve designed. If you’re a photographer you can show people your portfolio.

But SEO is to a large part unquantifiable – there is no tangible product or “thing” to look at, and measuring the success of a service like this is not easy.

I guess one of the best measures is to ask yourself “how did I find this company?”

If you searched for SEO Experts, or SEO, etc and they were in the results, then this is all of the proof that you should need that they can do what they say.

If they make offers like “pay only 50% this month and the other 50% next month when you’re satisfied” then run in the opposite direction.

Any good SEO company doesn’t need to do a “half now half later” deal, their services are in constant demand.

Although a deal like this might make you feel more secure, what will actually happen is that you’ll pay half now and nothing next month because they won’t have delivered any results to you.

And while it seemed a good deal at the beginning, they still have your 50%.

They’ve still ended up with your money and you’re unhappy.

The word to the wise, and the point of this rambling post, is to search for an SEO company in a search engine, and when you find one in the natural results make sure that you use them - they appear high in the results for a very good reason…

Because they are good at what they do.

However, most webmasters and online business owners fall short in the link building department, since finding good quality links is very difficult, and it’s also very time consuming as well.

That’s why we’ve launched a new website dedicated solely to offer our link building service to our customers at very competitive rates.

We only use top quality links for our clients, and have helped Hundreds of websites to the very top of Google and other search engines.

We absolutely guarantee that we’ll get your website motoring, and will help you to get more customers, and most importantly, more business to your site.

So when you’re next wondering “who can get my website to no.1″, you need look no further than SEO Experts and our link building service.

SEO Experts are pleased to announce that we are sponsoring Championship Football Club Nottingham Forest for the second season running.

Forest enjoyed a great season last year under the leadership of Billy Davies, finishing 3rd and just missing out on promotion via the palyoffs.

Hopefully (with a few signings!) Forest can go one better this time and gain automatic promotion back to the Premier league for the first time since 1999.

SEO Experts are sponsoring Polish International Raddy Majewski for the second time, and would like to wish both Raddy and Forest the best of luck this season.

We look forward to seeing Raddy score more goals like the one below against West Bromwich Albion: