Internet Marketing Newsletter

Edition 16 , April 2012

Relevance, Google Changes and The Panda Update In this newsletter, we’re addressing all the recent changes that have been going on in the SEO world. The article on relevance explains what you can do to increase your rankings, simply by making your website more relevant to your users. We also share which factors indicate relevance in the eyes of the search engines. The VERY long info graphic explains Google’s Panda update. It was first released over 12 months ago and it has made a big impact – now this info graphic is a simple way to understand the changes and how they have impacted the world wide web.

As always, if you have any questions about our products or services, or any feedback for our newsletter, we would love to hear from you. All the best,

Janna Jungclaus And the Eminent Online Marketing Team Mob: 0423 369 070

Interesting Facts: In 2010, the Internet contributed 3,6% or $50 billion to the Australian economy. (Source: Deloitte Access Economics) There was a 29 % growth in online spending in 2011, with an estimated value of online sales in Australia of $10.5 billion for the year. (Source: NAB Online Retail Sales Index) At 37%, Australians have the highest adaption of mobile phone use in the world, based on the percentage of people who own a mobile phone. The most popular mobile phone behaviours include: calling a business, visiting a business, looking a business up on maps. (Source: Our Mobile Planet (Google, ISOS, Mobile Marketing Association))

The Core Principle of SEO: Relevance There is one core principle for SEO, or any search really, that tops any technical mumbo jumbo. This principle is RELEVANCE. The aim for Google, and most other search engines, is to display the results that are most relevant to the key terms that users typed in. In fact, Google has recently made an announcement that overly SEO’d websites would be dropped in the rankings, in favour of more relevant websites. Now, how does a search engine determine whether a website is relevant for a searcher? Here are some indicators.

Content Search engine bots can ‘read’ the content of your website and they can determine whether or not it is relevant to the search term. For example it will look for the search term, or a similar term, to be mentioned in your content. However, it will also look at whether you mention these keywords too often – in that case it would be determined to be overly SEOd. Keywords are considered in “themes”, so using your main keyword together with related keywords mixes up the content. Time spent on site The search engines can monitor how long someone spends on your website – especially if you use tools such as Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools that feed the information straight back to the big Google engine. The longer someone spends on your site, and the more pages they look at, the more relevant your website is deemed for the user. Social Signs Social signs are becoming increasingly more important in search engine algorithms because they determine how relevant the content is to people. If the content is important to people and

their networks, than today’s active internet users are likely to share it on social sites such as Twitter, Facbeook, Google Plus and social bookmarking sites. Most social sites also have the ability to give content the thumbs up or thumbs down site, which gives a direct indication of whether the content is useful for others or not. Links Links have always been at the core of SEO, determining whether a website is important to other websites. Every link to your website indicates that someone else thinks it’s worth linking to. While links remain important and indicate some relevance of your website, other signs (especially social signs) are also being considered. Be careful: Too many links to your website, and especially links that have been bought or come from a source this is untrustworthy in the search engine’s eyes indicate an overly SEO’d site and may be dropped from search engine rankings. What You Can Do Here is a summary of our tips to increase your relevancy for users and also encourage higher rankings. § Make sure you have fresh and relevant content on your website. Remember that relevance to

your readers should be your most important priority. § You should add Google +1 buttons to your website. § Social profiles are more important than ever. Encourage your readers and website visitors to

Like you, +1 you, Tweet you, etc. § Mix up your content media. Use written content like blog posts mixed with videos and images.

Issue online press releases if you have news coming out.

The Google Panda Update It’s been over a year since Google released it’s now infamous Panda update. The update, which was essentially an update to Google’s search algorithm or the way they deliver results, was aimed at lowering the rank of "low-quality sites" and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results. As a result there was an increase in the rankings of news and social networking sites, and a drop in rankings for sites containing large amounts of advertising. As a result of the update Google gathered feedback and gave tips through its blog and its Google Webmaster Tools interface so that webmasters could ensure their websites would still rank well. Here is an info graphic summary of the Google Panda update and its effects on website, re-published with the permission of searchengineland.com

Until Next Month

Hopefully, after reading this newsletter you’ve got a clearer picture of exactly what is relevant in SEO. The main lesson is to always prioritise your users. On that note, please send us any feedback questions or suggestions for next month’s newsletter! Kind regards, Janna & the Eminent Online Marketing Team