Does Search Engine Optimisation Work? SEO Case Studies
There is a lot of talk about Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, and its importance in the overall viability – even survival – of a web-based business. In my view it is absolutely crucial to any internet enterprise, because a well-executed SEO campaign addresses numerous potentially fatal issues.
SEO Case Study – BabyStuff
In a SEO recent project, we reviewed a PHP-based E-Commerce store called http://www.babystuff.co.nz/ which, oddly enough, sells a range of baby accessories etc. I say “oddly” because of the bizarre propensity for web site owners to choose Domain Names which offer no clues to the site’s purpose. That could of course be likened to cutting off one leg immediately prior to participating in a butt-kicking competition!
The site has a nice visual appeal, soft colours, good graphics – all in all, it was nicely designed and in keeping with its contents.
However, it does not matter how good it looks – its how it performs that counts! The old adage that “Form Follows Function” is particularly true of web sites. First, construct it to generate traffic! Then, and only then, think about making it pretty!
Site Shortcomings Assessed
However, on the downside, the site had;
- Deeply-nested Product Categories which placed actual product content very deep – 4, 5 or 6 levels down from the Home page!
- The site exhibited a serious lack of text content on all pages – Home, category, subcategory and product pages!
- Worse, it had generic Titles, Description and Keywords meta-tags!
- Worst of all, it had ZERO incoming links!
All of this conspires to render the pages to a level where they appear – at best – as poorly constructed doorway pages, and at worse as duplicated pages. Certainly, going to Google and searching for site:www.BabyStuff.co.nz delivered a string of identical results.
With no “identifiers” in key on-page and off page areas, any page that appeared in the search engine results would offer few clues to its actual content – meaning no “qualified traffic” from people who come to the site because it clearly offers exactly what they wanted.
Links Are Crucial
Lack of quality links is now the major issue in addressing search engine indexing and ranking shortcomings. Basically, if no one links to you, then the search engines – quite rightly – assess your site as not being worthy of inclusion in their index. Each “good” link is like a vote of confidence. In contrast, a “bad” link is virtually worthless.
Worse, the SE’s examine link titles and take note of the keywords – or lack thereof – and the keywords found there are what the search engines will “associate” your site with. In that respect, a title that consists of a business name devoid of specific keywords is of minimal value!
The best links are those from “trusted” sites. A common denominator of a trusted site is that it will be mature, classed as either a hub or an authority within its theme, and will have an above average page rank. Examples include The Open Directory, Yahoo Directory, government and educational sites, regional and local directories, and sites which are related to your theme such as your competitors or suppliers.
BabyStuff Links
To address the shortcomings here;
- We first examined the categories and products, and divided them into 5 main groups.
- This was followed by some keyword research to determine the exact keyword phrases searchers are using to find those products.
- Using that information, we wrote 5 sets of Titles and Descriptions containing a broad spread of high-use search phrases.
- We then selected a group of 500 web directories which had relevant categories, and submitted the site for inclusion in their indexes.
Because these directories are “human edited” they have higher trust value, and the links that are achieved contain specific keyword phrases in the link Titles. By submitting to precisely the right category, we achieve very high acceptance rates, usually above 70%. In the case of BabyStuff, we commenced 500+ submissions approx 10th November 2006, spread over a 4 week period. On Yahoo, the 1-Way Back Links have grown from 0 to 386 over a 4 month period. Google Page Rank has gone from PR0 to PR3. (See further details on Advanced Page Rank / Link Building)
Site Optimisation
As part of the implementation of our Intermediate SEO Package, we wrote up a list of recommended changes for 10 main pages, including Home page and primary categories. This included modifications to both on-page and off-page elements, writing new meta-tags, headings and 1st paragraphs. In addition we provided a range of recommendation for the site owner to continue on with, the goal being a progressive process of content expansion, particularly on pages devoid of relevant body text! (See further details on Intermediate SEO)
Like many small business operations, the site owner does a lot of the maintenance, and product additions etc. Small businesses have modest budgets, and we like to provide the necessary guidance and support to facilitate self-sufficiency where possible.
Search Engine Ranking Results
Google rankings are the key indicator of success! From zero, we’ve grown to 49 Top 30 listings on Google.co.nz! Across all the search engines surveyed, the site now has;
This has been achieved in a 4 month period, and is a strong testimony to the value of investing in Search Engine Optimisation. Those benefits will be sustained over the long term, and will deliver a demonstrable return on investment. Further SEO Case Studies
Yet Another Insightful SEO Article by;
Ben Kemp, aka The SEO Guy (Co. Ltd)
Web: http://www.comauth.co.nz/ – http://www.theseoguy.co.uk/ – http://www.theseoguy.us/
Email: SEO
Contact us for a Free SEO Site Review….
Can’t Find Your Site on Google?
If you wonder why your site does not appear in a search on Google, you can quickly check if its actually being indexed… try the following search;
“site:www.yoursite.co.nz” and of course, replace “yoursite” with the URL or YOUR site!
This should produce a list of all the pages in your site that Google has found, and decided were worthy of indexing. If no pages were found then you need to call The SEO Guy! 
Google offers several similar little tools, and each of these provides useful information about your site, and an insight into the way Google “sees” it. In a Google search box, just type the operator and your domain name (less the http://www/ portion as per the previous example.)
| Operator | Description | Search Format |
| site: | Indexed pages in your site | site:www.yoursite.com |
| allinurl: | Pages that refer to your site’s URL | allinurl:www.yoursite.com |
| link: | Pages that link to your site | link:www.yoursite.com |
| cache: | The current cache of your site | cache:www.yoursite.com |
| info: | Information we have about your site | info:www.yoursite.com |
| related: | Pages that are similar to your site | related:www.yoursite.com |
Google Sitemaps
Signing up for a Google SiteMaps account is also a good move as a great deal of extra information about your site – as Googles sees it – is available. This includes Crawl and Index errors, and also a range of Crawl & Index statistics. It is possible to gain an insight into what keywords Google associates with your site – both from the site itself, and from the sites that link to it! The errors (if any) are very important, as they may reveal sound reasons for google not indexing your site fully.
Whilst submitting a sitemap is in itself no guarantee of inclusion, or of rankings, it can help get all pages indexed and at the same time ensure that appropriate emphasis is placed on the most important pages. E.g. that the Product/Services pages are treated as more important than the About Us, Privacy Statement etc pages.
If your site does not show up in the site:yoursite.com search, you certainly have a problem that you need to get to the bottom of! There can be avariety of reasons for exclusion from Search Engine idexes, including;
- Insufficient incoming links – some Search Engines think that if no one links to you, then you are not indexing…
- You have duplicate content – multiple domain names pointing to the same pages
- Other transgressions such as hidden text, excessive use of doorway pages, cloaking etc
If you cannot figure it out, feel free to contact us for assistance because we get to deal with these kinds of issues every day!
Multiple Domain Names Penalty
If you own a web site AND you have multiple domain names registered, you might want to read this with your full attention. There are a great many web sites out there which, by inappropriate use of multiple domain names, effectively cripple their search engine rankings by blatantly breaching search engine guidelines! Site owners often register more than one domain, and there are sound reasons for doing this, including;
- The main URL includes a keyword phrase but is too long to type quickly, so a shorter, cryptic one is utilised and maybe is also used on business cards and letter heads.
- You take various versions of domains to prevent competitors from grabbing them – dot.com, dot.co.nz, dot.biz, dot.info etc, and point them all to the “main” site.
- You take various country versions – dot.co.nz, dot.com.au, dot.co.uk because you are going to expand into those markets – but in the interim you point them all to the “main” site.
There are also misguided reasons for doing this, including;
- Having multiple domains pointing to the same location in the hope that the search engines will be duped into indexing ALL of them as different content, giving you lots of top rankings under different domains.
Search engines hate duplicated content with a passion… but their automated spiders and bots cannot determine which category YOU fall into – uninformed and innocent of intent, or deliberately and knowingly manipulative. So all sites who transgress can expect to be treated equally. And yes, you can be banned from the SE indexes for getting it wrong!
The search engines do not give out many guidelines – in fact they are all very coy about giving too information much away. However, when they do make a statement by way of guidelines, regardless of how politely it is worded, you had best sit up and take notice because they are really, really serious about it!
Google Guidelines on Multiple Domains
In the case of Google, their Webmaster Guidelines are unambiguous! E.g. on this page; http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769 Google are quite clear on this;
Quality Guidelines – Specific Guidelines
- Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
- Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content
What This Means to You
There is a clear and present danger in having multiple sites pointing to the same location if they load exactly the SAME content - this is a SERIOUS breach of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and is expressly FORBIDDEN because the search engines can only interpret this as a blatant attempt to generate duplicate content under different URL’s. Regardless of your actual intentions in this, its likely to result in a BAN from search engine indexes. Not a good start to an online presence, right?
Ignorance of The Law is No Excuse
Ignorance of search engine guidelines is not a valid excuse either! Unfortunately, many web designers and hosting companies are blissfully unaware of the correct way to implement multiple domain names. The result is that many web site owners unknowingly jeopardise their site’s inclusion in the search engine rankings.
My advice is that if you have more than one domain name, you check how its been set up. If your have two domains; http://www.2nddomain.com and http://www.2nddomain.com and BOTH load the same pages but with the different domains showing, then you have a problem. If you can also load the sites as http://www.2nddomain.com and http://www.2nddomain.com then totals 4 different ways of indexing the SAME content!
The Right Way to Do It
That said, it IS permitted to have multiple domains pointing to the same content BUT it may only be done via the use of a Permanent 301 Redirect being applied to the secondary domains, e.g. typing in the URL for any of the secondary domains will redirect you to the main site. This change can easily be implemented, at no cost other than a few of minutes of time.
In this example, http://www.2nddomain.com is redirected to http://www.2nddomain.com and and neither visitors nor SE spiders ever “see” content under the secondary domain name. The same logic should also be applied to the non-www versions of both domain names to complete the process and to prevent potential conflicts with the search engines.
Avoid Disaster – 12 Points on Picking an SEO Professional
There has been a flurry of entrants into the Search Engine Optimisation market in the past year or so. Judging by the horrendous rates some are charging, money rather than service seems to be the main motivation. Judging by the horror stories from clients who have arrived on my doorstep after being ripped off by sharp operators, in some instances there is evidence of a serious deficiency in both ethics and skills in some cases. I have a new client who spent almost $30,000 last year, with no work having been done on the actual site, no evidence of link increases, and according to traffic statistics, site visitors have gone DOWN by 60% – so read the following sections carefully.
So, how do you choose an SEO firm to entrust your business to? I believe that there are some simple checks to put in place before committing yourself to any SEO proposal, no matter how attractive it might seem.
The following sections lists a dozen few ways you can identify some potentially good SEO firms, and how to eliminate the dodgy ones, and thus reduce your chances of being disappointed.
1.) How Well Does Their Own SEO Site Rank?
Do a search for search engine optimisation, seo rates and/or seo firm on the country-specific version of each of the big 3 major search engines – e.g. Google.co.nz, Yahoo.co.nz or XtraMSN.co.nz. Alternatively, go to the main Google.com etc site, and search for nz seo, seo rates, or new zealand search engine optimisation (or your own country-specific version of those). The SEO market has become very competitive out there, but you should expect the SEO business you are contemplating doing business with to be on Page One on each search engine! If not, drop them from the list of possibles, because how much help could they possibly be to you? A list of 5-10 potential firms should quickly emerge from this process.
2.) Request For Proposal
From your initial research, you should have a list of contenders you are considering entrusting your business to. Contact each, and request a site review. This usually a free service, and will invariably result in a detailed analysis of your site, and a proposal which sets out what remedial action is required and should include an indicative costing to achieve this. Having now received a series of these, apply the following criteria against each one.
3.) Guaranteed Inclusion in Google/Yahoo/MSN
If an SEO firm offers a guarantee of inclusion into any major search engine, or assures you that they have a special relationship with a major search engine, immediately drop them from the list of possibles. Frankly, search engines simply do not enter into such relationships. That would be as likely as a close friendship between a poacher and a gamekeeper!
4.) What Are They Proposing?
There are two key ingredients to web site optimisation, and if both are not assessed and addressed, drop the SEO firm’s proposal from the list of possibilities!
- The first element is on-site optimisation of individual pages to improve organic or natural search engine rankings. This involves keyword research with associated analysis of the business products and services. This is the most important aspect because it delivers ongoing traffic which is essentially free after the initial work is carried out.
- The second key element is link analysis and recommended remedial action. Basically, the more links to your site from trusted sites carrying high Page Rank, the better. Insufficient links can mean your site appears not worth indexing. Proposals to increase your 1-way back-links from web directories and other trusted sites are good. Use of blogs, and article marketing is also current best practice. However, should there be any suggestions for participation in link propagation schemes, or placing main emphasis on reciprocal link strategies etc, drop the SEO firm from your list because they are not up to date with current best practice.
5.) Google Adwords & Yahoo Search Marketing
Some SEO firms boast that they are certified Adwords practitioners etc. That’s all well and good, but what they mean is that with YOUR money, they are real confident of getting you top placing in the keyword bidding warfare! There can be some short term benefits in that, but guarantees along those lines are not overly helpful to your business. If a proposal places primary emphasis on Pay-Per-Click, slip it down to the bottom of the pile!
6.) References
Can your SEO firm provide you with some reference sites they’ve worked on successfully, case studies, and/or some clients or web developers you can contact for comment? Bear in mind that there are likely to be some commercial sensitivities that apply constraints.
7.) Is There Value in 1 Year Contracts?
Frankly, not to you! The hallmark of a professional, ethical operator will be a fixed price contract to carry out the initial remedial action on the site. As a reassurance, they will usually let you know that ongoing support is available if required, because the rules of the SEO game do keep changing. The best SEO practitioners do not attempt to lock you into 1 year contract because they know the initial work will often take 8-12 weeks to deliver full benefits, and the project cost will usually include a built-in monitoring component over that initial period. It is, in my view, a little unethical to double-dip on the project costs!
Not only that, but what if you are not happy with the results of the SEO firm or their level of service? A 1 year contract might just guarantee you receive a full 12 months of unsatisfactory services! My advice – do not lock yourself into a long-term contract until you have grown comfortable with the SEO team you are dealing with.
8.) Fixed Price Contracts
Insist on one! A professional SEO firm will set out exactly what is wrong with your site, and explain the precise remedial action in a coherent and logical fashion. The actual work will be specified and a total cost provided. It is customary to require payment in advance. This is usually 100% for smaller jobs, which I would define as less than $1500. For larger projects, expect to pay a 50% deposit with balance on completion and/or when Top 30 rankings on agreed keyword terms show a demonstrable improvement.
9.) How Much Should It Cost?
Well, each proposal should come down to a judgement by each SEO firm on how many hours of work are going to be involved in the project. However, some seem more inclined to make an assessment of your ability to pay in big chunks! There can be obvious, huge discrepancies – its common to see variations of 1000% e.g. you will see that some firms initial cost proposal can be 10 times that of competing SEO firms! From your point of view, you want to know;
- How many pages are going to be amended
- What will be done by way of increasing incoming links
- Are articles being published, and if so, how many?
Reduce it to a known quantity, compare apples with apples! When you are systematic about it, the choices become more obvious, and a decision becomes easier!
10.) You Need to Know What Will Be Done
An SEO professional will involve you at each step of the process, providing you with a preview of all site changes before implementation. You will be able to measure progress of the work on a page by page basis, and see the results in your site traffic statistics as well as SE ranking reports. As in all aspects of life, failing to plan is planning to fail! If there is no plan, no road map, don’t expect a happy ending or any rights of redress.
11.) Black Hat vs. White Hat SEO
There are other danger signs to be aware of. If your SEO proposal suggests cloaking, redirections, doorway pages, hallway pages, invisible text, multiple domain names for duplicated content etc, immediately drop the company from the list of possibles!
There are many Black Hat SEO operators who prefer to attempt to subvert the Search Engine guidelines, essentially looking for rapid, short-term ranking gains by ANY means, instead of taking a responsible, professional approach. If your site is caught up in any scheme like this, banishment from search engine indexes is assured! Essentially, good White Hat SEO involves thoughtful restructuring of site content, within the SE guidelines and parameters, and taking no risks of any kind.
12.) Who Are You Dealing With?
Does their site have some personal profile information? Are you dealing with a seasoned IT industry professional, a kid fresh out of high school, someone moonlighting from their primary job, or maybe somebody who has English as a second (or third) language? SEO is very much about words, semantics, languages skills and this, plus broad SEO project experience over several years, should be a key indicator to consider!
Your web site is an integral part of your business. The people you work with should have an intuitive understanding of your business, products and services, and should by now have demonstrated that they have given your particular circumstances some personal attention. Some, on the other hand, may have merely used automated site assessment tools. From the initial proposal, and exchange of emails with questions and answers to clarify any issues that have arisen, do you feel a sense of rapport with anyone? The best people to work with are those you are comfortable with.
I hope that this has proven a useful and thought-provoking summary of how to weed out the space cadets, cowboys and make-a-quick-buck operators. I really hope you do find yourself a competent, professional SEO practitioner, because they are out there, toiling away. doing a great job for great people like you!
Good luck!
URL Decisions – Whats in a Name
A rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet… but in the World of the Wide Web, picking the the wrong name stinks!
I’m often asked if the Domain Name is important, and I have to say yes, the selected domain name is a very important element in the overall scheme of things, for a variety of reasons. Some of these are outlined in this article.
Keywords in Domain Name
The search engines assign some relevance/importance to the words used within the domain name. You can see some evidence of this in Google’s search results, where any words in your search term that exist in the URL are highlighted.
When starting a new site, it is important to maximise whatever advantage the name might give you! I can’t say for certain just how important it is, but as sure as God made little apples, every little element that you have working in your favour can only be regarded as “a good thing” 
There are limits… not only to the total length of the URL, but in terms of what might be acceptable, and the only thing the SEO experts are consistent on is all having a different opinion!
However, here are a few thoughts;
- From a total length perspective, there is a limit to what people are prepared to type in…
- keyword spamming would not be a smart idea here as in any other area…
- Some suggest separating all words with hyphens, others say use only one hyphen at maximum…
- I’d say two to three primary keywords is enough – any more and it becomes difficult to enter accurately.
Dot.Com or Country-specific
The choice of domain type does have an effect on the way the search engines categorise the site. If you are a New Zealand or Australian business selling to a lot of USA or UK clients i.e. if its a global deal, then a Dot.Com URL is arguably a better option. Not least of this is that its easier to get it listed in some international directories.
However, if you are marketing a specific NZ/AU product/service in the domestic markets of New Zealand/Australia, then a .CO.NZ or .COM.AU is the best choice.
With the increasing trend of search engines towards “Local” content, explicit in the Google.Co.NZ, Google.Com.AU and Google.Co.UK, it will become more and more difficult for a non-country-specific site to dominate within a specific country. To put that in context, a Dot.Com site will struggle to out-rank a .Co.NZ site in Google.Co.NZ…
Google, Yahoo, MSN, Alta Vista, Lycos etc are all expanding their country-specific indexes. These do (kind of) get incorporated into the main index in the parent Dot.Com site, but you would need to be more specific in your search for a country-specific product.
E.g. if you were on Google.com, and search for “mats” the results would be different to carrying out the same search on Google.Co.NZ (having specified NZ sites only).
However, if you searched on Google.Com for “mats new zealand” the result might well include sites which ranked highly on the Google.Co.NZ search.
Multiple Domain Names
You CAN have the two or more URL’s pointed at the same site… but I would not advise any attempt to actively promote more than one! There is a danger that the SE’s could could punish you for attempting to get duplicate content indexed, which is a forbidden practice.
However, it is completely legitimate and common practice to point multiple URLS at the same IP address;
- To prevent competitors pinching your domain name/s on .com, .biz, .info etc etc.
- To prevent confusion e.g. the client types the “wrong” URL, but still finds you – e.g. a miss-spelled version.
- Having a longer keyword-rich URL to maximise Search Engine ranking gains, and a shorter (easier) one for people to type in to get to the site.
You could easily a Dot.Com URL for advertising purposes, letterhead, business cards etc, and even use it as Google Adwords “display URL” but be careful to only use the primary (.Co.NZ) URL for all search engine promotions, link building, search engine and directory submissions.
