Whilst it’s no secret that there will be a change in 2010, these changes will hardly be noticeable by users but the wave of over reaction prompted by some SEOs will certainly cause confusion amongst companies looking to source a reputable SEO Company.

The simple fact is that no one except Google knows what the update will do and you cannot prepare for it.

The only preparation you can do is to protect yourself against SEOs offering to optimise your site for the new update – these will be the same companies who blame the caffeine update when your rankings disappear after they make these contrived changes to your site.

Google’s Matt Cutts quite clearly tells us that the users won’t be able to tell the difference and even those who tested out the public test site hardly noticed any difference in results. See for yourself in Matt Cutt’s video below.

Beware the SEO soothsayers and self proclaimed experts!

If the Florida Update is anything to go by then it’s safe to assume that Google have well and truly learned their lesson from it. However, and despite assurances from them since, some respected(?) SEOs still insist upon wreaking havoc by making wild predictions about what will happen every time Google announces an update. Take the wild predictions made by Bruce Clay in his infamous Ranking is dead in 2009 video last year.  Amongst these was the prediction that if the top 10 sites don’t have video on their pages then they could lose their rankings overnight. His predictions were wrong of course and he later went on to blame them on a “large beer” in this video, however the fact remains that countless SEOs sold his concepts to unsuspecting clients and videos started appearing on every site you could find.

Did those sites without video lose their rankings overnight? Of course not.

We read about this nonsense every day and the “experts” all predict that rankings will disappear everytime Google announces an update. Most of these predictions are based on articles that other “experts” have written which are then re spun in such a way that it causes panic/buzz and everyone has to do something about it – often with adverse results.

If it doesn’t come from Google then don’t believe everything these self proclaimed experts tell you.

There are no new ways to get on top of the search engines, there’s no secret sauce and there’s no inside information. All the soothsayers convinced us that rankings would turn upside down in 2009 but they didn’t.

Ranking in 2009 is very much alive and all those that continued ranking pages using tried and trusted methods (like ourselves) are the ones that outperformed everyone else.

The prime factor for ranking on Google before the Caffeine update was links, it still is links and probably will always be links for years to come.

Note: If you just plain hate Searchwiki and don’t want to read any futher then you can turn it off  – otherwise read on.

What does SearchWiki do?

We ran a trial in late November to explore any potential benefits in terms of marketing, SEO etc. Although the sample was small and trial length was short (6 weeks) we decided not to waste any more time and it was scrapped in January. Whilst it’s hardly scientific, the general consensus was that it was confusing and had no real benefit in terms of marketing or SEO.

What we learned was…

• Users would “nudge” their own websites to the top of search and their competitors out of the way.
• Users would comment on their own site with comments like “great site” or “great company”. The perception was that this would be seen by Google and help influence other results. (It won’t)
• Users would forget to log out of their Google accounts and mistakenly think they were #1 in the real results.

In the past 2 months we’ve had clients call us up asking why their site was number 1 on Google but a colleague in the same ofice would see a different result. We now tell all clients to log out of Google before checking their SERPS.

Whilst we’ve long been fans of Google’s innovative online products, we have our doubts about Searchwiki and whether it has any real benefit to the web user. We don’t see the benefits but we may discover otherwise in the months to come and we’re watching developments just in case.

Are there any the potential benefits?

There may well be, but presently the only beneficiaries appear to be Google. Conspiracy theorists could argue that Google is gathering our data for research and will use this for generating advertsing revenue for PPC, however, it is more likely that they will use the data obtained from “position nudging” and user comments to create a better user experience and reduce spam.

This would seem to be a good thing however, the reviews we have seen thus far are not what we would consider to be of any real quality. Most comments are of the form “great site”, “great service” etc. so clearly the quality of the review would need to have depth in order to be used effectively.

What about IP authority?

Purely hypothetical of course, but who’s to say they won’t use IP data to add authroity to a review in SearchWiki? A quality keyword rich comment or thumbs up from an authority site’s unique IP may well add authority to the site being reviewed – say a government site for example. Google could use this data and feed this into the mainstream results and provide a better search experience for the user. However this could easily be exploited. Spammers and those trying to game Google’s search results could easily hire 100 students or local government workers to give the “thumbs up” on the site review and the spammers have their day.

Whilst we doubt the business benefits of SearchWiki at present, we’re not foolish enough to smack it down just yet. It may well be that benefits for businesses will emerge as it matures and we will keep a lookout for opportunities.

The UK Stag and Hen marketplace is fairly competitive so breaking into this market was serious challenge. Add to this the economic downturn which added to the difficulty but undeterred, we set the wheels in motion and started turning things round. In just over 3 months traffic increased to over 20,000 new visitors with 90% of this coming from Google organic results.

The Brief

• Target Stag & Hen Marketplace
• Increase visitor %
• Increase Google listing for selected Key phrases

The Campaign

• Social Media Bookmarking and seeding
• Google Local
• Onpage Optimisation
• Article production and distribution

The Results

Interim results for the first 3 months showed a dramatic increase in search traffic with considerable increase in enquiries.

What’s coming up

Redesign to new funky layout. Heatmapping and A/B split testing to fine tune the new designfor maximum conversion. PPC strategy and ongoing improvment.

Want more traffic and increased sales from your website? What are you waiting for? Give us a call on 0131 331 4649 or fill in our form below.