1. Rich snippets reviews

You may of noticed in the organic searches results reviews and ratings showing up like this…

… until recently you had to be on a white list with Google to have these but not any more. The thing that amazes me is Google have now put the control over this in the hands of website owners with no verification system in place, that’s right, you can set how many out of 10 your score is, how many stars you show and how many reviews there are (you can imagine the abuse this is going to get as currently it’s totally un-policed by Google and looks set to remain that way for some time at least).

The benefits of using rich snippet reviews are in increased click through rates and user confidence, currently data shows they have no negative or positive impact on SEO rankings.

The only real negative is that once people catch onto this, there is a risk that most sites will have them (some real some fake) and if they don’t and all those around them have 5 stars, will they feel forced to join in or look inferior to their competitors? My concern is that in the near future virtually all listings will have 5 stars and users will start to ignore them and take no notice, maybe then Google will police it, maybe by enforcing the reviews through a system they control, or remove it – but for now this is the landscape we are now presented with.

The code to add your reviews is below, simply edit the yoursitehere.com to your own site, and edit the score and review count…

… then simply wait for Google to update your search result listings for them to appear, which could be a few hours or weeks depending on how often Google crawls your site and your trust factor with Google.

2. Rich snippets author image

This is where you put an imagine about the author of the page into your search listings, like this…

… this is a little more involved than the review code, here’s the steps…

1. Ensure you have a Google + account and your image / logo is in your profile

2. On your web page, add the link code below that points to your Google profile, ensuring you change the long number to yours, this is easily found by logging into your Google + account and click on your logo / name top left and checking the number in the url in your browser

<a href=”https://plus.google.com/u/2/107444317629298597956/posts” rel=”author me”>google+</a>

3. Log back into your Google + and click on your profile, then click “about”, then on the right where it says “Contributor to” put a title for your site and then your site address eg www.site.com and you’re all done

Testing

To test both the reviews and author image there is a rich snippets testing tool in webmaster tools you can use via…

1. Add at least 2 pieces of new content to your site per month – the easiest way to do this is to use a wordpress blog like this page and write about 200-300 words. You can write more than 2 pieces of content a week if you want, but you soon hit the point of diminishing returns. I find that 2 per week is the optimum for effort vs reward. New content can be new pages or blog posts, in the eyes of the search engines it’s all the same.

Benefit 1: Shows the search engines you have fresh content and avoid any “stale” penalties.

Benefit 2: Your site is growing in bulk, bigger sites how more punch than little sites (but don’t just add 1,000′s of pages over night, you need to grow slow and steady for maximum effect)

TIP: If you use wordpress you can schedule when new posts are released to the site so to save having to come back time and time again, you could write 6 months worth of blog posts (or outsource to a article writer, I have a great UK contact if you need one please just shout) and time them to be dripped out to the site.

2. On around 50% of the new content, put an internal link to one of the pages you are targeting for SEO with one of the keywords targeted for that page in the anchor text. The other 50% you can either put no links in (like this post) or put a link to a page you’re not targeting for SEO with a keyword you’re also not targeting, or even another sites link.

Benefit 3: You are growing your internal link structure to give additional trust but it’s only half of the new content so it’s nice and natural looking.

3. Every time you make a new post, go to the big 4 social sites and post a comment and a link to the new content. The 4 big social sites are..

a. facebook
b. google+
c. twitter
d. linkedin (with linkedin, simply add your twitter account as a feed so your twitter comments are pulled in, now you can forget about posting to linkedin)

… also ensure you post 2 or more times per week with comments that do not contain a link to your site, again to make everything look nice and natural.

Benefit 4: You are now having regular social signals with the posts and links to the your new content which the search engines use to a small degree in their algorithm and it is predicted that social elements will play a bigger and bigger role in SEO in the future so this could also be a very critical investment.

Benefit 5: If people “like” your comment or retweet it this also adds more power to your social signal

Benefit 6: You’re also putting your message in front of real humans that can help your business, not SEO I know, but a nice little side benefit.

So by simply following the above you can really turbo charge the effect of adding new content to your site.

Lets take Google, by far the biggest search engine in terms of weight and also traffic potential for a site. Google will decide what country is your primary “main country” from your domain name extension ie .com .co.uk .it .es etc and the location of your server. For example, if you have a .co.uk this is a firm stamp that you’re UK focused, if you have a .com then Google falls back to where you’re hosted, eg if you’re hosted in the USA then Google will consider your main target the US. Google also take other aspects into account however these are the main two.

Now this doesn’t mean you can’t do well in other countries however, in other countries your power will be dampened. I’ll explain…

For ease of explanation, let’s say that for keyword X in the UK and the same keyword X in the USA the sites at the top of both these result pages have the same 10,000 “points” (as a measure of SEO power). If Google has the UK as your main focus then to beat the top site you simply need 10,001 “points”, however this is not the same for the site in the USA. Because your site does not have the USA as the main country your “points” are dampened, ie they could be reduced to 25% (different niches / keywords behave differently to the dampening effect). So now your 10,001 is only worth 2500.25 so you can’t beat the top site in the USA, you’ll need to get the equivalent of 40,004 in the UK to beat them, which is doable but it must be taken into account is this the best route. For example, the extra time, energy and cost to gain those extra “points” in your non primary country(s)- a) could we have gained  more results in the main target country that would yield more profits  ? and b) if the other country(s) are important is it more effective to make new sites that are focused on that specific country ?

To me, when this situation arises we need to look at all the options and look at a multi country strategy to lay out the best platform(s) so we gain the clients goal(s) as soon as possible whilst also looking more long term.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/perfecting-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization

… for my SEO clients I have systems that will report on all the on the page aspects removing the need for manual checking.

When you look at the results this moment in Google, Yahoo, Bing etc, it is like taking a photograph of the marathon. You can see, at this precise moment, who’s in the lead of the race, who is 2nd, 10th, last etc. However, this doesn’t show you how fast the runners are running so you can make the mistake of thinking…

“The site / runner at the front of the race must be amazing”

“Look at that web page / runner, number 7 not bad”

“Look at this poor runner, number 72”

.. but the photo doesn’t show you how fast they are running, so using the above example, the runner in first place maybe running at a lazy 5mph but they are first only because they started running in 1997, where as the “poor runner” at position 72, only started 2 months ago and is running at 220mph. So as you can see, appearances can be deceptive. What I like to think I bring to the table as an SEO consultant is a very fast runner for my clients. Of course if those at the front also have a fast runner and / or started off many years before us, it will take more time to catch them up and over take them.

To make this analogy simple, let’s reduce all SEO / SEM activity down to a points system, and the web page / runner with the highest points does the best in the race. Now let’s say the 10 sites below are all on the 1st page of Google for keyword X and have X “power” or “points”…

Site 1 = 80,000
Site 2 = 76,000
Site 3 = 75,000
Site 4 = 68,000
Site 5 = 67,898
Site 6 = 67,498
Site 7 = 19,872
Site 8 = 18,000 = your current webpage
Site 9 = 17,000
Site 10 = 15,000

… with the above your page for the keyword sits at position 8. Google finds more backlinks, you’ve improved your “on the page” factors, added more high quality content to your site, etc  and Google now increases your power from 18,000 to 20,000. Now you beat site 7 and jump to position 7.

Next month you’re site has really grown in power and is now 30,000 points.

The next month you’ve also had a great month and grown to 40,000 points.

The next month you’ve enjoyed another great month and are now 65,000 points. At this point, without taking how this works into account, you could be forgiven in thinking “I’ve been stuck at position 7 for 3 months now grrr”. But you’re not stuck, you have far more power, but you’re just not powerful enough to beat that site / runner ahead of you yet.

The next month you have a slow month in gaining more power so only increase from 65,000 points to 70,000 however you now beat the site / runner in position 4 so it appears like you jumped from position 7 to 4 over night. Again you could be forgiven in thinking “what did we do this week to cause that, we need to do that every week”.

This is how you build up your SEO results and move up, but to make this a little more complex, the sites above you, most if not all will also be increasing their points, all the runners running as fast as they can, with our runner gaining speed all the time and looking to overtake them, whether they are just a few meters away, or 100 miles.

I wrote this little analogy as sometimes with SEO, results on some keywords can happen quickly, others slowly, sometimes keywords move forward most of the time, sometimes others will move back before moving forward, etc.

Throw into the mix the inertia effect of Google not finding and indexing all backlinks instantly, your competitors also gaining points at different speeds, the “bounce” effect that is very common then this makes for a very complex increase / decrease situation in real life, but hopefully this explains the basics of how it works.

Most of the security tips here you’ll probably know, but I wanted to post them just in case you had missed any off because when things are hectic running our businesses sometimes it’s easy to miss the odd thing so please check out these tips so I don’t have to worry about you

Tip #1.

Install antivirus and firewall software on every computer you have, even if it’s not connected to the internet because it can still get infected from CD-ROM, USB sticks etc. There are many to choose from with some of the best being:

AVG.com – paid solutions and free solution – the free link is: http://free.avg.com
Norton.com – paid solution
McAfee.com – paid solution
PandaSecurity.com – paid solution

For more choice you can always Google “antivirus and firewall software”

Tip #2

Always have a password on your computer start up and ideally set your screensaver to ask for the password after you get back from being away from your computer.

Tip #3

Keep your software up to date, not just Windows but other software you may have both on your local computers and also on your online systems, eg your server operating system, any 3rd party application such as WordPress etc. Set an update check schedule of monthly, or even better weekly to ensure you have the latest versions so any bugs or security holes are closed off.

Tip #4

Be very careful when receiving emails that contain an attachment, if in doubt do not open. Also be aware of any emails from banks or known websites as they could be faked trying to gain your details. This is called phishing and spammers often send out millions of emails, for example, it could be an email from Facebook asking you to click on the link to confirm something or your account will be deleted. Although the link looks like Facebook and when you visit the site looks like Facebook, it is in fact another site sit up by criminals copying the look and feel of Facebook that has been designed specifically to steal your username and password. If you are ever in doubt, the best thing to do is to go to your web browser and type in the site address manually so you know you are heading to the real website and not a criminal copy.

Tip #5

When using passwords always us a strong password and have different passwords for everything you use. Yes this can be a pain but better safe than sorry. Personally I have a small USB memory stick on my car keys which is password protected with a strong password that contains a database of all my other strong passwords. This way I only have to remember one password and this reduces the pain factor. By strong password I mean something like this:  7hg%%6snd{{]12 . It’s also worth changing your passwords regularly for maximum security.

www.strongpasswordgenerator.com – this has a great strong password generator script.

Tip #6

When inputting sensitive data on a web site always ensure that the page is encrypted. To check this the site should start with https and not http, if it does start with https check the lock icon on your browser and double click it that to see if it’s valid. If it’s not, do not enter anything you don’t wish the world to potentially see as the page is not secure.

Tip #7

Not a security tip but just in case something nasty gets through your security protection, always remember to back up regularly. Ask yourself, if every computer was infected and had to be formatted what would I need to be able to recover everything and do it fast. Then sit down and write out your strategy and do it. It’s all too easy to put it off when you’re busy running your business but please take the time to protect yourself, leaving yourself open is not worth the risk.

For example, when a customer types in a certain keyword search in their favourite search engine, not only can we see what they are looking for, but the words they use give us an indication to what’s going on in their mind.

Lets say you sell mobile phones via your website (cell phones to my US friends), and let’s look at two keywords that on the face of it, seem good relevant keywords for this niche.

Keyword 1 = “latest mobile phones”

Keyword 2 = “best deal for Nokia n71”.

If we step back for a moment and think “what is the person asking in their mind” we can see that the people that type in “latest mobile phones” are looking to see what latest mobile phones are available. Whilst this traffic type undoubtedly will have a conversion rate, the people that type in “best deal for Nokia n71” are looking to buy a certain product and therefore the conversion rate on the second keyword will be much higher.

I call these two different types of traffic “research” and “action” traffic. With the first keyword example the person is researching and as such conversion rates will be lower compared to the second keyword which is an action keyword, ie, they are looking to buy. An even better action keyword would be “buy Nokia n71 on the O2 300 tariff”. There will be a lot less traffic for this keyword but the quality and conversion rates will be fantastic so the key to success here would be to perform professional keyword research (which I offer all my SEO clients within my SEO packages, yes this is a shameless plug, but I’m only human lol ), and find as many of these action keyword as possible as the starting strategy for any SEO or PPC campaign.

I also mentioned in the opening to this blog post about seeing in the customers mind when they are roaming around your web pages and this can be done with a decent visitor stat system. Personally I would highly recommend the free Google Analytics software. With a decent stat system you’ll be able to see the behaviour of your visitors to further understand what they want so you can match your offerings to what THEY want. I see so many businesses working hard to make beautiful websites and only at the end of the development stage look at traffic trending and try and make the traffic work with their website. Whilst this can successful, in every online business I’ve set up for myself and others (and I’ve set up 100s), it’s been far more successful every time to firstly check out what the traffic wants and build your business to meet their needs. With the vast array of traffic data now available, it makes sense to use it, find out what the traffic wants, build your product and marketing around meeting those needs and then building your marketing messages and strategy.

If you would like to receive more information on this and other similar topics then why not join my free mailing list where I share some of my best marketing tips and secrets.

Wishing you all the success in the world,

Scott.