Latest from Our Online Marketing Blog

New Google Ranking Signals

By: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) posted on 01/03/2012

Back in August Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz posted an interesting article called “A Theory About Google: Authenticity and Passion as Ranking Signals”. The article reviews a certain occurrence that many of us in the SEO field have been noticing.

“Over the past 6-9 months, I've been getting the sense that there's something new in Google's algorithm - a metric or set of metrics that looks for some form of authenticity in a site and passion in the content created on a page.”

Rand speaks about passion factors playing a role in this change but doesn't theorize how Google may using the information in rankings.

The overall concept makes complete sense. Sometimes powerhouse websites produce low quality content just as low powered personal blogs can sometimes produce extraordinarily useful information. Google has to account for this in order to ensure the best results are shown when someone searches.

Here are two ways Google may be accomplishing this goal. 

The Starbucks Effect

Standard Deviation of Article Quality

As for what this all means: well, I think Rand said it best "if writing passionate, authentic content on more personal, unique sites can earn more mojo in search, I'd say that's a win for everyone." Cheers to Google for finding new ways to unearth these great pieces of content hidding throughout the internet. 

Google’s Search Ads Pause Study

By: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) posted on 11/15/2011

“Why should I pay for Google ads if I already rank in the organic results?  Won’t the user just click on my organic link instead?”

We get this question all the time from clients.  In PPC, it can be really difficult to separate personal search habits from how everyone else searches, which can often be wildly different.  Our performance data has always shown that more leads can be picked up by utilizing both paid advertisements as well as organic rankings on Google, but this was difficult to translate to clients, as our data set was never quite large enough to prove significant.  Lucky for us, Google is very good at crunching large datasets, and they did just that to answer this exact question.

Recently, Google conducted a study titled "Search Ads Pause Study," in which it looked at over 400 accounts across four countries in which it looked to use statistical models to answer the simple question: Are ads necessary when organic presence is high?   Because of our previous experience we already knew the answer yes, but we had no idea it was to the extent that Google found.

Here is a fun video Google put together explaining the study and its results.

On average, 89% of paid traffic to an advertiser’s site is lost and not recovered by organic clicks.

Wait a minute… 89%?  That’s HUGE!

The issue is we all suffer from a personal bias in which we believe everyone searches the way we do.  We may have never clicked a Google ad in our lives, but the $92+ Billion Google made last year would argue that plenty of people click on those ads.  This is just another reminder of the importance of data and the need to base decisions not on our own personal beliefs, but on the hard data.

Silverback Strategies speaks at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business

By: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) posted on 11/09/2011

Silverback Strategies was recently invited to speak to students of Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. We sat down with one particular class to take a look at trends in search marketing, its history and current best practices in organic and paid search.

Course students included diverse marketing and business majors, many of whom are already working in the field. Some were new to SEM, others were very technically sophisticated.

“Any time we speak, the most important message we can convey is how dynamic SEM is. You can’t set-it-and-forget-it,” said Nelson. “Major shifts like Google’s Panda update and continual algorithm changes are continually shaking things up in this business. Anyone who is going into SEM needs to understand that environment to be successful.”

Panda is the name of Google’s latest major algorithm update that radically changed how Google ranks websites. The new algorithm puts far more emphasis on content quality and other characteristics that align with actual user priorities.

“Google changes their algorithm nearly 500 times each year, so we must continually adjust our clients’ search strategies to maintain their rankings,” adds Nelson. “There are literally hundreds of content, linking, and architectural factors that go into the ranking formula – and I think that came as a surprise to some of these students.”

Not surprisingly, the Georgetown students were particularly intrigued at how social sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and emerging social media such as Google+ are becoming increasingly influential to search results.

“Our goal was to leave these students with a basic understanding of today’s search landscape and to start a smart conversation that could hopefully bring some real value to their careers as future marketers,” says Welsh. 

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