SEO Blog - UK Search Engine Marketing

Over the last couple of weeks many people have noticed several ranking changes in Google.co.uk. Reports so far suggest that the Google algorithm is currently favouring .co.uk domains over .com and other top-level domains.

Is this a positive change?
Recently Google have appeared to be moving away from heavily relying on TLD information and trusting a wider range of factors in order to assess a website’s geographical location, so the algorthim update seems quite surprising. In my opinion the new rankings would reduce the relevancy of Google UK listings as many high-quality, non .co.uk domains may be replaced by weaker .co.uk websites.

We’ll be keeping an eye on how this progresses as the flucations in Google UK probably haven’t finished just yet. I’d expect to see this even out a bit more during July, but it does go to show you can’t always predict what Google’s going to do next!

Google loves us after all. Or, at least, it cautiously approves of us.

The search engine publishes guidance for webmasters and, until recently, the only information it carried on SEO agencies was a warning about the terrible scams many use to try and trick a site into high rankings.

Such advice cannot have helped the SEO reputation in a world where those of us using best practice are often tarred with the same brush as those using nefarious and short-term tactics.

Black-hatters may sometimes achieve high results but will ultimately damage their client’s ranking (not that they care, they will have scarpered with the cash by then), and it is these firms many people think of when discussing SEO.

Anyway, Google has now admitted that ethical SEO has benefits.

A post on its Webmaster Central blog reveals the advice has been updated to note a list of the ways in which we can help. This includes content and structure development, technical advice and keyword research.

All right, it isn’t gushing, but it is certainly a start!

One of the major issues at the social media panel I was a speaker of has been online reputation management. While I prefer the more proactive ways of reputation building instead of the emergency like reputation crisis management nonetheless most of the businesses not familiar with blogging and social media need basic advice on how to deal with bad press online.

So I decided to collect 8 very simple steps of emergency reputation management. These measures should help in cases where a forum or blog post shows up in the Google top 10 for your product or brand.

Most importantly before we start thinking about fending off a reputation issue we have to agree that we do not want to sweep things under the rug. Many people mistake reputation management for just that. Reputation management is about dealing with negative issues, facing not ignoring them.

1. Discover negative publicity early via simple tools like Google Alerts or Technorati Watchlist.
2. Reply as a representative of your company. Example: “I work at x and we have lots of clients using y with good results.” Do not make these clients up of course.
3. Show that you care. Example: “We have contacted our local dealer to deal with your problems, he should call you shortly.” Contact your local retailer to just do that.
4. Be matter of fact. Example: “This seems to be a serious issue you have. We will do everything to ensure your and other clients satisfaction. Please give us some time to deal with it internally.” Then be quick to deal with it.
5. Offer a refund if the client is too disgruntled already.
6. Offer the publisher a way to test the product or a new version of it if he hasn’t before or the last version failed.
7. Link to other clients or positive cases studies, even within your reply.
8. Contact the publisher directly to research and sort out the issue, do not rely solely on the published part.

While employing these simple measures always remember that you need to address the real underlying issue. Inherently flawed products or services will make others vent their frustration too so make sure you tackle larger issues not one by one but systematically even by discontinuing a product.

Also do not call your lawyers unless this is a evident case of slander. Silencing legitimate bloggers and consumer advocates will backfire manifold. You might end up with lots of negative publicity.

Relying on spreading a website’s address to consumers has never been a good way to market online.

Unless a firm is the lucky holder of a truly simple domain name (Hotels.com, Diet.co.uk and so on), it cannot hope to make enough consumers remember its address to keep it in work.

The majority of online business is directed through search engines. A buyer does not open a browser and try to remember the address of Inter Flora, they open Google or Yahoo! and search for “buy flowers online”.

However, ICANN’s latest decision to massively expand the number of top level domains available is going to make the battle for online audiences even harder.

As the number of variations increases and the complexity of web addresses grow, consumers will become even less likely to remember them, making the importance of decent SEO even more pronounced.

Furthermore, the ICANN move will create considerably more scope for cybersquatting and brand infringement, as unscrupulous people aim to cash in on a firm’s reputation by purchasing its name within a new top level domain.

There exist ways for brands to challenge such developments, but it is vital firms are in a strong ranking position in anticipation of such a threat. The last thing a brand needs is to be outranked in search results by the cybercrook hijacking its identity.

Secure high visibility for your domain now, use paid ads if necessary. Just make sure your corporate space is easily found before the internet expands even further.

A few months ago, I flagged up a study released by Ofcom which expressed concern that useful public resources, like online news services, were being buried through an SEO “arms race”.

Now, it is a closely held belief of mine that SEO work makes a website better for consumers as well as raising its profile. Pages become easier to navigate, information is presented more clearly and keyword-rich content – such as a blog – is added to the pages.

The newly-published European Digital Journalism Study cements my opinion. It shows that in Europe, one-third of journalists admit using only blogs to source their stories. SEO is at least partly responsible for the deluge of corporate blogs the World Wide Web is awash with and these are helping reporters write more thoroughly and across more sectors.

So blogs can help businesses gain press exposure as well as search engine visibility. Aside from sourcing news and keeping abreast of rumour, a journalist wanting sector-specific comment on an event is increasingly likely to contact the company with the most up-to-date, relevant and pertinent blog.

Most internet marketing efforts achieve more than simple visibility or brand awareness. By participating in the online community, businesses appear more well-rounded, well-informed and well-intentioned. Many SEO efforts do more for a firm than its increase traffic.

Last week Google launched Google Trends for Websites, I haven’t experimented with this too much yet but it looks like a great tool to compare website traffic.

Anyway, I’ve just done a quick search on SEOptimise and was surprised to see the Google Trends result appearing at #4:

As far as I’m aware there are no inbound links pointing to this page (other than the nofollowed one I just created above) so I’m unsure why this has even been indexed let alone ranking well.

Looking deeper and we’re not the only ones, websites such as Bruce Clay, Keyword Discovery and High Rankings have also been indexed along with 2,720 others, with Google Trends ranking well for searches such as bruceclay.com and highrankings.com.

The authority and strength of the Google.com domain means they are likely to rank well for most of the brand names indexed, just ask Rob Kerry! So it will be interesting to hear if this is a mistake by Google or if they actually intended on indexing the website URL’s, not sure if they need the extra traffic though!

Update: David Eaves also noticed the same thing happening, with a few more examples on his blog.

During the last few weeks website localisation and internationalisation seem to be a hot topic around the blogosphere.

Domain management for multinational websites is a very important SEO factor to consider, this ensures you maximise the amount of referred local search traffic whilst applying the most effective strategy overall. There are several different approaches which can be taken to manage country-specific content, I’ve taken a look at how many big brands combat this issue below.

Country Specific TLD - Amazon

Amazon are a great example of how to manage domain internationalisation issues by using a country-specific top-level domain (TLD) for the UK website. This separates content for UK (www.amazon.co.uk) and US (www.amazon.com) audiences, while still maintaining excellent rankings across Google global and UK search engines. This is carefully structured to ensure that there are no major duplicate content issues which may harm Amazon’s rankings.

Subdomain - Yahoo!

Yahoo! take a different approach by using the subdomain uk.yahoo.com which is recognised as a UK website. Using a subdomain is a method which may be more suitable for smaller websites. This is because they may not be powerful enough to use multiple TLD’s, benefiting from consolidating all inbound links into a single domain strategy. This shouldn’t be an issue if you’re the size of Yahoo though!

Subfolder - Microsoft

Microsoft used to miss out on a large percentage of Google UK traffic due to their domain strategy, this is because they use a .com hosted in the US which meant they weren’t being indexed for UK filter queries. The hosting hasn’t actually changed but other factors seem to have been triggered which means they are now indexed for a pages from the UK Google search. A possible reason could be because www.microsoft.co.uk redirects to the /en/gb/ subfolder which may have triggered a locational filter in the algorithm, Microsoft may have also set themselves a UK geographical location for the subsite URL in Google Webmaster Central. While this method has worked well, for the average website I would recommend having at least one of either a UK server location or a .co.uk domain to ensure indexing in Google UK (UK filter search).

.com TLD, Hosted in Target Country - Tesco

Tesco are slightly different to the above sites, being that they are only targeting the UK as opposed to multiple countries. However, because they use a .com TLD Tesco need to ensure Google are aware this is a UK based website and this is achieved by having their web hosting geographically located in the UK. Tesco are also in a position where they could easily add additional locational sections of the website in the future by using a subdomain, subfolder or country-specific TLD.

All of the Above! - IMDB

IMDB seem to take several of these approaches, by using imdb.com for main website in addition to www.imdb.co.uk and the subdomain’s uk.imdb.com and us.imdb.com. This is an extreme over-usage of unnecessary extra subsites and also confuses the search engines by creating a duplicate content issue. The ideal approach here would be to scrap the subdomain’s entirely, either using the .co.uk containing content with a UK focus, or host the domain in the UK and manage all content underneath the same version on imdb.com.

None of the Above - Apple

As noticed by Duncan Morris, instead of applying an SEO strategy to target Google “pages from the UK” search traffic, Apple have instead ignored this and must spend thousands of pounds bidding for it’s brand and product keywords on Google AdWords instead. They’ve also let someone else pick-up apple.co.uk instead of paying the £2.99 registration fee!

Overall
There is no “one-fits all” internationalisation strategy suitable for all websites, the selected approach will depend largely upon the main target audience. However, there are certain things you can look to avoid to ensure you’re not reducing the strength of your website with duplicate content or missing out on potential traffic in countries which are important to your business.

And they’re off… Again. More soap opera and cynicism erupts from three of the top performing search engines as Yahoo! sheds executives almost as fast as share value and Microsoft grumbles about Google being “anti-competitive”. Who needs WWE when you have giants like this wrestling each day?

Last week, Yahoo! lost even more top executives; Joshua Schachter (he of Delicious origin) and Brad Garlinghouse – this follows recent announcements from Caterina Fake and Steward Butterfield (of Flickr foundings), as well as search advertising exec Qi Lu and senior vice-president of search Vish Makhijani.

These names may mean little to anyone who does not follow the search scene but one thing which should be pretty obvious is that such a brain drain happening so quickly is unlikely to bode well for the engine. I would go so far as to say that Yahoo! is breaking apart and - without fast action soon - could lose its edge and its long-secure place as the world’s second most popular search engine.

It interests me, however, that the disintegration of Yahoo! is not being caused by any drop off in search engine figures. The number of people using search engines rises steadily; if Yahoo! ceases to be a main portal then MSN and Google will mop up their traffic. Search tools remain the best way for consumers to find their way around the web and if Yahoo! breaks, it will be as a result of self-destruction.

I’ve just noticed this morning that Yahoo! Site Explorer now allows you to filter indexed pages and inbound links by subdomain. Screenshots below.

Show Inlinks expect from this subdomain:

Show pages from: All Subdomains:

This looks like a useful report for websites which use multiple subdomains, enabling the option to remove internal subdomain links while still counting all other links from the same domain.

Having a quick look through Alexa’s top 100 UK websites, I was surprised by how many of these have forgotten to buy the .co.uk top-level domain version.

Here’s the main ones I noticed:

apple.co.uk
facebook.co.uk
myspace.co.uk
wikipedia.co.uk
blogger.co.uk
flickr.co.uk
wordpress.co.uk
digg.co.uk
reddit.co.uk
stumbleupon.co.uk
about.co.uk
download.co.uk

As they are all very popular, well-known websites the volume of brand queries are likely to be very high, many via “Pages from the UK” searches on Google.co.uk where most of these websites won’t be listed because they don’t use the .co.uk TLD and are hosted in the states. Still they could always try and buy the domains back, it might cost a little more than the original registration cost though!