Search engine optimisation is critical to the success of online businesses, but how do potential clients sort the cyber wizards from the rest? Ian Halstead asks around.
The practitioners and critics of search
engine optimisation (SEO) have always
promoted the concept as a dark and
mysterious art. Unfortunately, the equally
long-held perception that the industry can be
divided into the good (white hats) and the
less so (black hats) has, whilst an entertaining
starting-point for debate, inevitably failed to
encourage transparency.
So how does SEO work, how should its success be judged, and what difference will Google Instant, which gives users results as they type in search terms, make?
A reassuringly rational place to start is with WebConstruct in Wetherby, a full-service member of the digital universe for the past 15 years, and with enough awards – and blue-chip clients – to fill several trophy cabinets. Client services director, Jo Fletcher- Lee believes the debate reflects the way that cyberspace issues have gradually migrated up the corporate chain.
“We deal with a lot of global business-tobusiness clients, as well as manufacturers looking to transact over the internet, and usually deal with people at board level. Five years ago, though, when most sites were just brochures, or ‘billboards in the desert‘, you would have been talking to IT departments,” she says. “I’ve been in digital marketing for ten years, and to me SEO is just like any other form of marketing. You must understand your customers’ habits, then decide how you position yourself in front of them.
“Companies may well not have the capability in-house to incorporate SEO work into their business strategy, but we tell them to treat their site like a virtual sales person. They must set targets, invest in that person, and ask for demonstrable results.”
Rather than companies analysing the concept down to the most minute details, Fletcher-Lee believes that once the basic work is done, everything else is about ensuring that site content is rich in keywords, relevant to the target audience.
“SEO is no miracle and I don’t think it is even a highly-skilled job. It’s time-consuming, and requires knowledge of the sector and the client, but updating content is the important part because Google will rank your site according to how fresh and contemporary it is,” she adds. “Judging which SEO work succeeds is about analysis. There’s no point having people who put goods into their basket, then dump them before purchase. Google Instant has to be good from a customer’s perspective. From a user’s perspective, such technology is useful because it encourages innovation.”
Ephiphany Solutions in Leeds has to be another stopping point. Rated by New Media Age as the UK’s fastest-growing SEO specialist, it’s also among a handful of UK organisations with Google accreditation for the quality of its work.
Andy Heaps, director of search, left rival Latitude to join the company six months ago. Since then, 20 staff have been recruited, taking the team to nearly 60. “We were established five years ago when everything was about pay-per-click (PPC), but although we’ve always focused on SEO, PPC still probably makes up 30 to 40 per cent of our revenues,” he says.
“Many organisations still focus on visitor numbers, but we have a specialist conversion rate optimisation team to squeeze out every last sale. We might find a company getting just a 1 per cent conversion rate, and can probably double their sales for the same number of visitors. Our industry is dictated by the search engines and their algorithms, and it’s a constant battle. Every time Google rolls out something new, we get our analysts to see if we can reverse engineer the changes.”
As for Google Instant’s impact, Heaps adds: “For us the biggest point is that it will push the ‘natural’ results further down your search page. I have used it on my laptop and could see only one natural result, which puts a lot more emphasis on PPC.
“You will also get far more sites called up before you finish writing. The big retail sites rely on ‘long-tail’ searches, where they expect you to use five or six words, but now you will be seeing other sites first. It will be interesting to see how the landscape changes once Instant has been around for a while. As always, if Google rolls out a whizzy feature and it doesn’t work, it will just as quickly be rolled back.”
It’s impressive to see how such activity – and all things digital – is being embraced by organisations in Yorkshire. Welcome to Yorkshire, the former Yorkshire Tourist Board, claims it recently became the first tourist agency in Europe, and the only one outside the US, to create its own branded page on the mobile social networking site Foursquare.
Marketing manager Kristal Ireland, a passionate devotee of new technology and social media in all their myriad forms, had the idea. If there’s a tourism or leisure-related event happening anywhere the White Rose can be seen, she will most likely be there with the agency’s HD digital video-cam, and the pictures will be on Facebook by the end of the day.
“One is a big part of our remit to attract more visitors to the county, which is why our site offers so much more than a traditional ’destination’ site,” she says. “We use SEO and PPC alongside the full suite of marketing products. We’re working closely with Foursquare in the US to see how we can drive even more traffic to www.yorkshire.com.
“I’m lucky because the Welcome board embraces modern technology. We all believe that Yorkshire is the greatest county in England, and we’re all passionate about spreading the message, via as many channels as possible.”
What works for some won’t always be right for others, though, and new media business models are not suitable for all organisations. “You always need to keep a level head, and to decide what will work for your brand, and for your customers,” adds Ireland. “It could be that a presence on Facebook, for example, wouldn’t work for your particular business. You always need to carry out proper due diligence before making a decision.”
Another ‘recruit’ to Welcome’s digital community is Bloom Media, a SEO agency in Leeds whose work has had an immediate impact. “The agency has upped natural search traffic to our site by 150 per cent,” says Ireland.
Bloom is another veteran of Yorkshire’s digital scene. The agency, which has been around since 1999, does have business-tobusiness clients, but most of the big work is for the business-to-consumer sector.
“We’ve only been working with Welcome for three months, but it’s a good relationship,” says SEO manager Stu Owens. “I think the organisation values our brand and ideas, and acknowledges that we are are looking to add value to its business. SEO is all about working closely with a client and getting to understand their business and customers, so you can drive quality traffic to their site, and the conversion rate can be increased.”
Owens also believes Google Instant will stimulate, rather than obliterate, the SEO sector. “It’s an exciting time for us. It’s been coming for quite a while, so it’s good to be finally able to monitor its different effects. Opinion is still divided, but we certainly don’t see it as negative,” he says.
“The next step will be for everyone to discover the impact that Instant will have on their rankings, or on traffic to their site. For me, rankings won’t change, but it will steer people towards the most popular searches, rather than towards the ‘long tail’ ones.
“It’s all about the quality of traffic and the relevance of the content, not just about numbers, as it is when you put links to your site, inside posts, or in other locations. Links have to come from trusted sources, not just from anywhere, or anyone, otherwise they simply have no value.
“The SEO scene changes quickly, but we’re a results-driven agency, and if Instant focuses more people’s minds on the need to always set targets for SEO work, and to analyse if they are met, it will be a force for good.”
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