This month our newsletter will focus on Google Adwords help, and our September special offer, which is a Google Adwords Healthcheck for just £40.

One of the things that we find a lot of when doing these healthchecks is that people are often getting thousnds of clicks on their ads per month, but no sales from their site. Obviously this could be for a number of reasons, but one of the reasons we come across a lot is that thy simply haven’t thought their keyphrases through properly, and haven’t made sure that they’re not getting clicks that were meant for some other product or service.

To illustrate this, Mike came up with 2 cartoons – and we love them. The first one is below, as although it makes me (Nikki) giggle every time I look at it, I have the feeling that some of our more staid readers may not like to see it in their inbox

We’ll probably go with the other cartoon (sign up to the newsletter if you want to see it!) but I think the above one does a great job of showing just one of the mistakes you could be making with Adwords – it might be worth having a Google Adwords healthcheck to find out if you’re making more!

But every so often someone sends me something that makes my blood boil. Well yesterday I had 2 emails from 2 separate people, who I’d given some advice to on public forums.

I won’t name them here, but I will cover the downright lies they’ve been told, and the bad service they’ve received from their SEO consultants.

To clarify: SEO Consultant 1 is a web designer specialising in SEO & Social media, SEO Consultant 2 is a company using dubious telesales tactics and mentioned in several places elsewhere for ripping customers off.

SEO Consultant 1 told his client that:

• Google no longer uses title tags
• The META description isn’t important
• Link exchange is the way to good listings
• No-one searches for your search phrase anyway

This was blatantly to cover up the fact that he’d done no work on the site and achieved nothing.

Well, let’s put those lies to bed:

• Google DOES use the title tag – in fact it’s one of the most important parts of onsite SEO. Granted, it’s not the be all and end all of SEO, but it is a major part, and without it, you may as well not bother. If every page of your website simply has your company name as it’s title tag, then you’re not going to be found for anything else. And don’t get me started on the dreaded “Home Page” title tag. The simple fact was, the SEO had done no title tag work and was claiming that they’re not used any more by Google in order to dupe his client. That’s wrong.
• The META description IS important – it’s the description that Google shows when your site shows up in the results, and can be the difference between someone clicking on your listing or not. Of course, if you don’t have any listings anyway because your SEO hasn’t done the work they’re supposed to, then I guess the description tag doesn’t really matter after all…
• Link exchange CAN be a good way to help your listings if everything else is in place, but the link exchange page that this client was given was a FFA (Free For All) links page where anyone could sign up and no checks were made. This meant that the site could be linking to unrelated sites, and there was no check in place to ensure that reciprocal links were given. I’m not a big fan of reciprocal links, and it’s been proven that one way links from well respected sites work far better to enhance your SEO, so although this cold be said to help, I think the client was misled.
• “No-one searches for your search phrase anyway” – well, I’m sorry, but this makes me REALLY angry! In the first instance, why wasn’t proper keyword research done to find out whether the phrase chosen was a) suitable, b) achievable and c) worth optimising for in the first place. If hardly anyone is searching for it (which, as it happens, was a blatant lie – it’s one o the most competitive searches on the web), why on earth bother optimising for it in the first place?

The client involved had paid for a year’s SEO up front and from what I could tell, received very little. The site had 9 backlinks showing in Google, of which 6 were internal links from the site itself, there was no Webmaster Tools account, and in 5 months there had been no reporting, no help and advice, no status checks – nothing.

SEO Consultant 2 promised his client:

• Full website optimisation
• In 6 languages
• Keyword research
• Ongoing reporting

For just £295 up front and then £50 a month.

As the £50 was due to come out of his bank acount, the client asked what had been done so far. He was presented with a 3 page word document telling him what to change the title and META tags on 3 pages of his site to read. As he said to me:

It can’t have taken them more than 30 minutes to produce, and I could have done it myself!

So, far from the ‘full website optimisation’ of his 100+ pages, he got given (bad) advice on how to change 3 of his pages. No content advice. No Webmaster Tools account. No offsite optimisation advice. No page structure advice. Nothing. Just 3 badly formatted pages of a Word document that to be honest my 9 year old stepdaughter couldprobably have written better, and her first language is French!

No mention of the 6 languages optimisation he was promised (which is impossible anyway as the site was only in English), or keyword research.

When he queried this, he was told that he can’t have been promised what he was, and all calls are recorded. He asked to hear his recording and this was rapidly altered to ’some calls are recorded’.

Now, I’m going to put the ‘you get what you pay for’ argument to one side – the guy involved feels a bit stupid, but he was promised a lot, and most of it was blatant lies.

Is it any wonder that this industry has such a bad rep?

I will hold my hands up and say i’m not perfect. I’m not the best SEO in the world (there’s always something to learn from someone). And do you know what, I’m scatty as hell! But because of that I’ve put systems in place that mean that every site we optimise goes through a number of checks, and a whole process from start to finish. Once a site is ‘finished’ it goes into another process line that makes sure that ongoing recommendations and reports are sent. I like to think we keep in touch with our clients, and that goes some way towards the many people who come to us because they’re been recommended to by current clients.

Everyone makes mistakes sometimes. Everyone forgets, misplaces something, or has software / hardware issues that mean things don’t go quite to plan. But to blatantly lie to your clients, tell them things that are clearly untrue and provide them with substandard work? That’s scumbaggery of the highest standard.

When I speak with people like the two companies being ripped off above (and no, I didn’t pitch them for work) I feel ashamed to be in the industry I’m in.

Before we talk about whether it matters, for those of you not so sure, here’s the Wikipedia definition of PageRank:

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page, used by the Google Internet search engine that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is also called the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E).

Put in a simple way, PageRank is a number assigned to your web page by Google – it goes from 0-10 (officially), and in the past it had some weighting towards your search engine positions.

Opinions differ on whether or not it matters – I’m of the opinion that it’s not worth obsessing over. To my mind, i you have a PR of 8, but your website languishes on page 55 for the phrases you want to be found for, life isn’t good. If you have a PageRank of 3, yet you’re on the front page of Google for the phrases that matter, then all is well with the world

I was challenged on my “Oh dear, not the PR debate again” stance with the comment “But PageRank matters when I’m buying or selling links. Links in from higher PageRanked sites matter more”. And the chap in question kind of has a point – if you have links from higher PR sites, then it can help your search engine listings, and is a GOOD THING. That said, to my mind it’s still not worth obsessing over.

Worry about your positions in the search engine results (SERPS), not some random number on a Google Toolbar.

As an aside to this, and just in case you were all rushing off to buy links from PR9 sites – here’s Google’s official stance on buying links that pass PageRank in order to help search engine positions:

Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.

(From http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66736

If you read the rest of that page, high PR sites CAN sell links, but are forced to use the ‘nofollow’ tag, which stops any ‘Google juice’ being given and so makes them practically useless when used in that way.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – rather than worrying about PageRank when approaching sites for links, worry about whether or not they get the types of visitors that would be interested in your site.

My quote?

Twitter is what business people 12 months in the future will wish they knew about 12 months in the past

I fully believe that if you’re not making the most of Twitter right now, you’re missing out – and by the time you do recognise the potential, it may already be too late.

Higher Google Listings

What is it?

* The aim is to get a client onto the front page of Google for their selected search phrases

Why do people need it?

* Over 80% of web ‘journeys’ begin at a search engine, and over 60% of those begin at Google

* Most people research companies and suppliers on the web rather than using Yellow Pages, Thomson Local etc.

Pros

* Front page listings mean much higher visibility
* Ability to choose appropriate phrases
* Managed service no real input / time needed after initial setup
* Ability to choose level of service

Cons

* Not guaranteed
* Not immediate
* If phrases are very competitive then results unpredictable
* Ongoing process rather than one-off fix
* Larger sites need higher service

Other services that enhance it / it enhances

* Article Marketing is a natural fit as part of SEO is getting good links back to the site
* Works well alongside Google Adwords for short term fix with long term solution
* Works well with Social Media Marketing due to back-links

Interested in our Higher Google Listings service? See our prices page for more info, then contact us for more info!

- Download the pdf file here

- Follow Leigh on Twitter here

- Follow Nikki on Twitter here

- Click here to Retweet this offer

Obviously, the more details you give us, the more likely we are to publish your interview first, but we’re not turning anyone away.

Simply copy and paste the questions here into an email and send to nikki@nikkipilkington.com, then follow Nikki on Twitter to be alerted when your interview is published!

You can find more information here.

2. How to add my site to Google
http://www.jaxey.com .. You can now how to add your site to google for more info visit us

3. Creating a Google Sitemap
Quick basic lesson in how to create a sitemap using online tools, and upload it straight into Google Sitemaps.

4. How to use Google Search like a professional user
Google Secrets

5. How to get high rankings on Google (SEO)
Detailed information on how to get high rankings in google. How to get high Page ranked sites to point back to your site.

6. How to set up Google Analytics
http://www.thirtydaychallen… Learn how to use the Google Analytics we analyzer for web tracking: http://www.thirtydaychallen…

7. How to improve your Google Ranking
Ever searched your name on Google? Did you come up on page 1 or 17? What about your web site or blog? Are you showing up for the ideal keywords? Watch this Daily Idea and learn how to improve your Google ranking in a few easy steps.

8. How to get a first page ranking on Google
Download the software that I used to get a first page Google ranking

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