Essential Marketer

One thing we often discuss with clients is the length of time it takes to attain a certain level in Google. As many SEO companies will charge a monthly fee it’s understandable that some clients may feel the length of time is overstated for financial reasons.

Recently the Search Engine Roundtable, who monitor and track the search engine industry recently ran a poll on time to rank well. The results reiterate a long held belief that it can take months before a site will rank well.

• 3 - 6 Months said 83 respondents or 35%
• 6 - 9 Months said 46 respondents or 19%
• 2 Months said 28 respondents or 12%
• A Year Plus said 24 respondents or 10%
• Weeks said 22 respondents or 9%
• A Year said 13 respondents or 5%
• A Month said 13 respondents or 5%
• Other answer… said 10 respondents or 4%

Why Does It Take Months?

A valid question and one we will try to answer. Although no one truly knows how Google or the other search engines work we are able to extrapolate based on the years of experience on our own and clients sites.

You will often find all search engines will be quick to index your site but won’t begin to show you in the results for some weeks or even months. All the search engines have a huge array of filters, analysis algorithms and other methods of detecting the validity and quality of a site. Although they have huge resources to number crunch this data the algorithms themselves monitor sites over time. This could be seen as their way of ensuring you have ’staying power’ and aren’t just a ‘fly-by-night’ spam site (or page) that are often set up for quick and dirty money-making scams.

Why the Up And Down?

Many clients have also noticed that results won’t just go up but will also drop significant amounts before recovering at a later date. We’ve noticed this occurs for a few days to a week and is always temporary. One example was a client who had a strong position of 7 within two weeks but in the fourth week dropped to position 152. As you can imagine this caused some panic but we can now say the client is perfectly happy with their position 4 and we firmly believe it will continue to reach no.1 spot in 3-4 more weeks.

We believe Google will ‘experiment’ by artificially inflating a sites position for a short period before dropping it again and their algorithm will assess the popularity and bounce rate of that result during its inflated period. This is another part of the complex testing Google and other search engines will carry out to effectively place your site in the results. We’ve noticed this more with Google than any of the other search engines and it can occur up to 3 and 4 times before finally settling on the first page. These ‘inflated’ positions are a good indicator of where the site will eventually stabalise at.

One of the UK’s premier building firms, C&G Services, which is based in the Kidderminster area has had a Google success rarely seen. For their key term they’ve dominated the top 4 positions as of writing! That’s much better than a top position - it completely dominates the podium!

It gets better though, because if you look further down the page the company run by Ashley Brown for over 15 years has a mention in position 6 and 10 also as member of BNI Blackpear and also his client page on our site which all customers of Essential receive.

Click the thumbnail above for a full view.

C & G are Kidderminster builders.

Essential Marketer now have a Twitter profile and we post regular updates on the search engine and online marketing landscape. Be sure to follow us if you’ve got an account!

Essential Marketer have now taken over the management of the BNI Black Pear website. Black Pear is one of the biggest and most successful BNI chapters in the UK with over 40 members and a regular stream of visitors.

Visit the BNI Black Pear site.

The latest site has a number of interesting features including fully multimedia enhanced user profile pages, SMS functionality to contact members, contact forms for emailing members and even an interactive map able to give directions to potential visitors.

The first speed networking event held at the Essential Marketer offices was a fantastic success with over 20 people arriving to network and do business.

There’s a video of the event on our main site which was kindly filmed and edited by Video Production Birmingham - Freespirit Film & Tv: Speed Networking Event

We’ve got two more on the horizon:

• 2nd April 2009
• 7th May 2009

At Essential we manage a wide range of different customers from the small business to the major corporation. When we setup a site for the sale of aloe vera gel drinks and other products we went into partnership with one of the biggest MLM companies in the world.

UK Aloe Vera sells a range of aloe vera products including gels, drinks, creams and lotions.

Our final Online Marketing Seminar of 2008 was another success.

Our latest offering was held with a small and intimate group of businesses, whom Essential Marketer would like to thank for attending our last Online Marketing Seminar of 2008.

We aim to provide more seminars next year…so watch this space.

Once again, thanks to everyone who took part.

Following the popularity of our Online Marketing Seminars this year, Essential Marketer are pleased to annouce our final offering for 2008. Our latest Online Marketing Seminar will be held our office on 6th Nov 08, from 10am-12pm.

Our online marketing seminar will cover all aspects of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC) & Affiliate Marketing.

This seminar is designed with the business & website owner in mind. We will show you easy to use tools, techniques and systems to help increase your knowledge of SEO.

We give you the tools that will allow you to raise the position of your website IMMEDIATELY, plus top tips on how to market your site.

Places are limited so if you would like to attend please register your interested with Abi Cooper:

By Phone: 0845 508 5008

By Email: abi@essentialmarketer.com

Online: www.essentialmarketer.com/contact

Essential Marketer would like to thank everyone who attended our lastest Online Marketing Seminar today.

Todays seminar was a great get-together with local businesses whom we have been delighted to meet and share our knowledge with - again free of charge.

We aim to provide more seminars before the end of the this year, and many more next year.

Anybody who missed out on the event and would like information should contact John Anderson who will happily send out relevant info on the event.

Once again, thanks to everyone who took part.

Following on from Part 1 (Top 5 SEO’d Websites Part 1 - Loans Websites), posted 08/08/08. I have pleasure in providing the next installment of this multi-part blog: Top 5 SEO’d Websites: Financial Price Comparison Sites.

So in reverse order I give you my analysis of the Top 5 Financial Price Comparison websites:

5th Place ( 91 out of 100)

i. On-Page SEO

A. Meta Data:

B. Heading Summary

• Total headings found: 7.
• More than one primary heading tags ( 3 H1 tags found) have been found on the page. This is not a critical issue, but we suggest having a single primary heading per page.

C. Image Summary

• Total images found:11
• Having many images on the web page means the user has to wait longer to view your page. This web page has 11 images.
• It’s usually better to have fewer or smaller images. Sometimes simply resizing your images will make them smaller in size, and your web page will load faster.

ii. Off-Page SEO

A. Domain Info

• Permanent Redirect Found

B. Google PageRank: 5

C. Google Indexed Pages: 653

D. Last Google Crawl Date: 18/08/08

E. Traffic Rank: Top 0.06%

F. Inbound Links: 28,497

G. DMOZ Directory: Listing found

H. Yahoo! Directory: Listing found

I.Zoominfo: Listing found

iii. Blog

• No Blog found

iv. Social bookmarking

• 205 del.icio.us bookmarks found
• 0 Digg.com submissions found

v. Converting visitors

• No RRS feed found
• Conversion form found

4th Place (92 out of 100)

i. On-Page SEO

A. Meta Data:

• Meta description is too long
• The meta description should be no more than 150 characters, the current meta description is 105 characters.
• Meta Description is too long

• Your meta description should be no more than 150 characters, your current meta description is 188 characters.

B. Heading Summary

• Total headings found:16

C. Image Summary

• Total images found:31
• 14 images don’t have ALT text
• Too many images found
• Having many images on the web page means the user has to wait longer to view your page. This web page has 31 images.
• It’s usually better to have fewer or smaller images. Sometimes simply resizing your images will make them smaller in size, and your web page will load faster.

i. Off-Page SEO

A. Domain Info

• Permanent Redirect Not Found
• Search engines may think www.comparethemarket.com and comparethemarket.com are two different sites. A “301 redirect” between these sites should be set up and once this is done, the site will get full search engine credit for your work on these sites.
• www.comparethemarket.com seems to have 52,230 inbound links whereas comparethemarket.com has 52,360 inbound links. By correctly configuring a permanent 301 redirect, the search rankings might improve as all inbound links are correctly counted for the website.

B. Google PageRank: 4

C. Google Indexed Pages: 465

D. Last Google Crawl Date: 16/08/08

E. Traffic Rank: Top 0.29%

F. Inbound Links: 52,257

G. DMOZ Directory: No listing found

H. Yahoo! Directory: No listing found

I. Zoominfo: No listing found

iii. Blog

• No blog found

iv. Social bookmarking

• 34 del.icio.us bookmarks found
• 0 Digg.com submissions found

v. Converting visitors

• no RRS feed found
• Conversion form found

3rd Place (97 out of 100)

i. On-Page SEO

A. Meta Data:

B. Heading Summary

• Total headings found: 13.

C. Image Summary

• Total images found: 12.

ii. Off-Page SEO

A. Domain Info

• Permanent Redirect Found

B. Google PageRank: 6

C. Google Indexed Pages: 89,200

D. Last Google Crawl Date: 20/08/08

E. Traffic Rank: Top 0.01%

F. Inbound Links: 1,492,270

G. DMOZ Directory: Listing found

H. Yahoo! Directory: Listing found

I. Zoominfo: Listing found

iii. Blog

• No blog found

iv. Social bookmarking

• 610 del.icio.us bookmarks found
• 10 Digg.com submissions found

v. Converting visitors

• No RRS feed found
• Conversion form found

2nd Place (98 out of 100)

i. On-Page SEO

A. Meta Data:

B. Heading Summary

• Total headings found: 9
• More than one H1 tag found.
• More than one primary heading tags ( 8 H1 tags found) have been found on the page. This is not a critical issue, but it is suggested having a single primary heading per page.

C. Image Summary

• Total images found: 11

ii. Off-Page SEO

A. Domain Info

• Permanent Redirect Not Found
• Search engines may think www.loan.co.uk and loan.co.uk are two different sites. A “301 redirect” between these sites should be set up and once this is done, the site will get full search engine credit for your work on these sites.
• www.loan.co.uk seems to have 891 inbound links whereas loan.co.uk has 878 inbound links. By correctly configuring a permanent 301 redirect, the search rankings might improve as all inbound links are correctly counted for the website.

B. Google PageRank: 4

C. Google Indexed Pages: 2,440

D. Last Google Crawl Date: 19/08/08

E. Traffic Rank: Top 0.06%

F. Inbound Links: 86,978

G. DMOZ Directory: No listing found H. Yahoo! Directory: Listing found I. Zoominfo: No listing found

iii. Blog

• Blog found

iv. Social bookmarking

• 41 del.icio.us bookmarks found
• 1 Digg.com submissions found

v. Converting visitors

• RRS feed found
• Conversion form found

1st Place (99 out of 100)

i. On-Page SEO

A. Meta Data:

• Page Title is too long

• The maximum recommended length for page titles is 70 characters, your current page title is 93 characters.

• Meta Description is too long

• Your meta description should be no more than 150 characters, your current meta description is 152 characters

• No Meta Keywords Found

• There were no keywords detected in the metadata of the website.

• Though Google does not seem to place high relevance on meta keywords to determine the content of a website, other engines like Yahoo! may still look at these.

• Since it doesn’t hurt you to have metakeywords, we’d suggest going ahead and adding them to the page.

B. Heading Summary

• Total headings found:5

C. Image Summary

• Total images found: 31
• Having many images on the web page means the user has to wait longer to view your page. This web page has 31 images.
• It’s usually better to have fewer or smaller images. Sometimes simply resizing your images will make them smaller in size, and your web page will load faster.

i. Off-Page SEO

A. Domain Info

• Permanent Redirect Found

B. Google PageRank: 5

C. Google Indexed Pages: 19,400

D. Last Google Crawl Date: 20/08/08

E. Traffic Rank: Top 0.16%

F. Inbound Links: 7,814,409

G. DMOZ Directory: No listing found

H. Yahoo! Directory: No listing found

I. Zoominfo: Listing found

iii. Blog

• Blog found

iv. Social bookmarking

• 112 del.icio.us bookmarks found
• 1 Digg.com submissions found

v. Converting visitors

• RRS feed found
• Conversion form found

Conclusion

The above scores show just why these sites achieve the level of traffic they do. Having sites that are so well SEO’d means they have good positions for a range of search terms. It isn’t easy to achieve these scores but it’s always good to have benchmark for any new budding price comparison sites wanting to crack the search engines.