Keep only the lessons of regret and lose the rest.  So how are split testing and regret similar?  Before we can answer that, let’s go through a typical split test scenario in order to set the scene.

The Purpose of A/B Split Testing

Search Engine Optimization is all about sending the right type of visitors to your website.  Customers and clients that take optimization to the next level want to make sure the pages displayed are going to convert the qualified traffic.  How do they know this?  They test and learn, and then test again.  The purpose of testing is to determine what pages convert the traffic the best.

A simple A/B split test in an e-commerce example, would be to setup one product page with a video description and one without.  You can setup simple A/B split tests for free within Google Website Optimizer, and it will automatically display Page “A” the page with video and Page “B” the page without video at random intervals.  Google Website Optimizer will then track the page and see how many visitors converted to the call to action, bounced back, or exited the site.  With this simple information you can CONSTANTLY improve your website, and increase your conversion rate, and ultimately grow your business. read more

Mobile devices expected to account for 25% of paid search in 2012.  We have all seen and read the reports of the expansion of mobile devices, but a good validation of the growth of any industry is to follow where advertising dollars go.  According to several different reports, advertising spends on mobile devices more than doubled in 2011, and the trend is expected to continue.  Here are a couple of factors to keep in mind when beginning to look at mobile devices, mobile search and advertising spends.

Do You Use Mobile Search?

Think about the last time you used an iPad or Smart Phone to do a search.  Did you find what you were looking for?  Was it fast enough?  Were the results similar to that of you desktop?  Probably not, but that may be the maturity of the market and the infrastructure.  You can’t escape the speed with which we are moving from PC to device.  Infrastructure, speed, and process will all improve at the same rate over the next few years.

One reason mobile search and mobile search advertising budgets could be lagging behind the growth of devices and applications, may have more to do with the systems setup to advertise and monitor advertising results.  Can you say “opportunity?”  It’s worth looking now.

Are You Setup For Mobile Search?

Do you have a mobile version of your website?  How about a conversion funnel for mobile users?  Don’t worry, most companies don’t have a good conversion funnel for non-mobile users!  Now is a great time to get started setting up a new mobile strategy, and doing it the right way.  Setup separate pages on your website for mobile users, track using analytics, and determine a base conversion rate.  In the beginning setting this up for a smaller segment of your visitors will be easier than starting with your primary visitors.  Take what you learn and what works and do it on your main site. read more

SearchRankings.Net just returned from the Austin based South By Southwest (www.sxsw.com).  More will be written about the show, but this month I just wanted to focus on one session in particular.  In a session entitled “Dear Google and Bing: Help Me Rank Better!”   This session brought Danny Sullivan, the Editor –In-Chief of SearchEngineLand.Com, Duane Forrester from Bing, and Matt Cutts from Google.  The session was a lot of fun, lots of humor, but as one of a team of people that attend a lot of shows, there was no new information.

Here are a couple of the highlights:

New Search Signals Trending Up

Social Media signals and interaction:  All three panelists stressed a social media presence, and how the search results are going to be impacted by social signals and how a user interacts with a social network.

SearchRankings.Net Response:  This has been talked about for years, and the panel actually discussed the frequency of Google’s Panda updates.  At SearchRankings.Net we have not seen a significant impact related to social media in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).  We do think this will change as more businesses increase the social media presence, and the content on the social media websites ultimately gives the user what they want.

Improved User Experience:  Matt Cutts from Google stressed how good website layout and improved user experience are now being factored into the current algorithm.  He suggested you look at Google Webmaster Tools for more information about how to improve your website’s user experience.

SearchRankings.Net Response:  We agree, but not necessarily from a Rankings standpoint, but from a conversion standpoint.  Improve your User Experience and it will improve all areas of your business.

Don’t Buy Links:  Duane Forrester from Bing suggested site owners develop a long term social media strategy versus buying links.

SearchRankings.Net Response:  Links are still an incredibly important part of the current algorithm.  Don’t Buy BAD Links, it’s a better strategy.

Constant Improvement Never Hurts

A good question and answer session followed the session, and the panel discussed the Panda Updates, Link Spam, and Websites with too many ads.  All of the information was info we have heard before.  Search Engine Optimization is more important now than it was before.  Great Search Engine Optimization along with improved user experience and a good social media strategy should keep you on top for the long haul.

SearchRankings.Net recently received a copy of an email Google sent to one of our clients. In the email Google explained to our client that they had detected unnatural links pointing to our client’s website. Here is the actual email message. Our client’s URL has been removed to in order to maintain privacy.

Google’s Warning Shot

[Message start]
Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to www.abc-123-xyz.com (fake URL)

Dear site owner or webmaster of www.abc-123-xyz.com,

We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.

We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results.

If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.

If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.

Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team
[Message End]

This was of great concern to both our client, and to SearchRankings.Net. Was Google getting more aggressive? Did something else change? Why are they now sending out warnings? So many questions, so little time.

Google Slap

In the old days, if Google thought you were up to something, they just slapped you. A slap usually meant you lost most of your important rankings, and you could drop 50 spots in the search engine. 50 spots in Google is Antarctica of the search engines. In really egregious cases, Google could ban your domain name entirely. We are proud to say we have never worked with any client that has ever dealt with a complete Google ban. As a matter of fact over the last 5 years, less than 5% of the search terms we have worked with ever lost rank. Are we magicians? Maybe in with Google? No, you just have to know what you are doing, and make sure you understand the difference between a good link building campaign and a bad one.

So has Google decided to advance from “Silent Ban”, to more of a “Warning Shot” company? We were about to find out. In our client’s situation, we went through all the backlinks we could see on the website. We ran them through our relevancy and quality score analyzer (fancy way of saying SEO specialist manually reviewed every link and every website), and we removed any link that could be seen as questionable. Then we ran into something even more interesting. We found several websites that linked to our client’s website, that were not placed. These were natural links, but they came from websites, that thought they could build up their own PageRank, by linking to our client. Unfortunately these natural links hurt our client’s website. We ended up working for about a month contacting webmasters and in some cases ISP’s to get webmasters to remove links from their website. Most webmasters took our link down when we requested it, although a few delayed the process, and a few more we had to tell Google we tried to remove, but we were unable to contact the webmaster.

Google Amnesty or The Pelican Brief?

Google has used links as the primary measure of determining a websites value, rank and relevance since the search engine first made the Internet. It has constantly refined its algorithm and its processes in order to deliver the best information to the users of its search engine. The problem is, as soon as someone figures out what it takes to rank, someone else will figure out how to get it, and how to sell it. Google still did a good job of eliminating a lot of the garbage and spam from the Internet, but the service was still available. It’s important to note, there is a big difference between a qualified SEO Consulting Company, who will audit your website, make recommendations and find high quality, relevant links, and a link broker who just sells links. read more

SearchEngineLand.Com recently published an info-graphic of The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors.  It’s one of the best graphical descriptions of both the results and consequences of website optimization I’ve seen.  It focuses on all the things I talk about every month, SEO Fundamentals (HTML & Architecture), Content, Links, Social Signals and Authority (Trust).  The graphic speaks for itself, and is leading my team to create a few similar info-graphics to further explain how SEO really works.  For example, we get questions every day, about what a backlink really is.  After publishing a ton of content on backlinks and videos about how they work, we still get questions about backlinks.  We will post the info-graphic as soon as it is ready.

The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors

Another frequently asked question I, “do backlinks really work, or do they work like they use to?”  The answer is yes, Google was born on links, and unless they decide to turn into an all out social signals and recommendation engine, it will always use links to define website popularity.  The difference between links in 2012 and links in 2005 is website quality and relevance.  7 years ago it was very difficult to judge website quality, and relevance, and even harder to index the enormity of the web.  This is why changes to the Google Algorithm were annual.  These days changes can be weekly, and Google has the ability to index new pages within days.  Just type in “The Google Freshness Update” into Google and read about how Google is ranking new unique content above sites without fresh content.

Evergreen Your Content

Speaking of adding fresh content to your website, SearchRankings.Net has been working hard this month to build out a newsletter, update its social profiles and build out a new knowledgebase of SEO Answers to help visitors to our site.  We plan on rolling this out during the first quarter.  We will be testing all this new content and we are excited to see how it affects our overall PR, and our organic SearchRankings.  Stay tuned for new information being published more frequently at SearchRankings.Net