Category: Google

Posted on

The Clarity of What You Write Matters a Lot

Matt Cutts has some great words of wisdom for bloggers and website owners in this video on how technical you should get in content and blog posts. You can watch the video at YouTube.

In a nutshell, here are the takeaways on this important topic.

1. Clarity of what you write for your website or blog really matters to Google as it will determine relevancy and what queries your content will match in the Google index.

2. If you cannot make the content easy for people to understand then you do not really understand the content yourself. Matt says this not me! This does not mean that you need to “dumb down” what you write, but content should be informative and written in a manner that attracts those that may not have the depth of experience on a topic to your site to learn more.

3. There will always be a special place for higher level content on a topic but as far as Google is concerned the broader the appeal the better your placement will be.

4. When you make your content too technical or statistical heavy you lose the understandability of your content unless your audience is particularly coming to you for higher level information. Matt Cutts says err on the side of clarity and I say, write for the high school graduate in the bulk of your writing.

Posted on

AdWords Conversion Setting Guide

Google Partner Badge
McCord Web Services is a Google Partner.

In February AdWords will be making some sweeping changes in how it records conversions in your Google AdWords account. The changes will be an improvement and allow you or your account manager to have greater control over that data that Google records for your account.

Here are a few tips to help you get started with the new conversion program.

Conversion one per click. This conversion type is being renamed to Converted Clicks. This type of conversion is best used by those interested in tracking leads like professional consultants or business services firms. Here what is important to track is not the number of times a potential prospect fills out a lead or information request form but rather the number of prospects generated by AdWords.

Conversion many per click. This conversion type is being renamed to Conversions with additional descriptors of All or Unique. This type of conversion is best used by those selling products. Here it is best to record the number of actual sales generated by a click rather than the number of customers and then not recording the value of a click to the amount of sales generated by one customer.

With these new pending changes, Google will allow account managers more control over what is recorded statistically in regards to conversions further showing the real value of AdWords to clients. You can read Google’s full notice in their help section.

Posted on

Building Links Using Article Directories is a Dead Strategy

Creating articles that were informational in nature with links back to your website in a bio and placing these on news sites, article directories, and ezine sites for use by other webmasters on their blogs and in their websites in a way to build incoming links is just another previously good tactic that Google has disavowed.

Unfortunately, there are many business owners who are still using this tactic and are encouraged to embrace this tactic by SEO firms mainly based in India. It is very important to know that using this type of tactic today may actually work against you.

Make sure to watch this video on this topic from Matt Cutts the lead web spam engineer from Google and the voice to my industry. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo75Og4M34Q

It is important to understand that this approach was highly useful and beneficial to websites one and definitely two years ago. But now using this tactic may actually drop your organic placement. Guest blogging is also another high profile tactic that has also fallen under Google’s eyes and has also been disavowed as a usable tactic to improve organic search placement.

With Google focusing on high quality unique content, that is not overly keyword dense, and has high user relevancy as tested through click through rate, time on page, and personal search history it is nearly impossible to scam your way to the top of the organic results.

A much better approach for placement today is to focus on improving the user experience on your website, refining the message, and promoting your site to generate traffic on social media and Google AdWords.

There will always be sites that are placed in the top ten slots on Google but getting there now is no longer an art form but rather creating the very best user experience that is the most relevant to a unique search query.

Posted on

Can Older Websites Retain Their Organic Placement?

Matt Cutts from Google helps to demystify the issue that many older and previously well placed websites ask frequently, “how can I maintain my organic placement against new website startups in my industry?”

You can watch the full video here.


Here are my tips to assist you even further on this important topic.

1. Just because you’ve had great organic placement for years does not assure that your site will continue to be well placed now and in the future. It is important to know that your placement can be pushed down as new more relevant websites appear. Even those that are brand new.

2. If your website is over five years old, it is absolutely time to budget for a complete redo. Not only a design change but a full review of your content and how you are using technology on your website. If you don’t have YouTube videos on your website, you are really missing a strong channel that will drive traffic and keep visitors coming back to visit.

3. Have you really read your own content? Have you looked at your Google Analytics data in the last month on your website traffic? If things are falling off for you, you will want to look at your message, look at your bounce rate, and time spent on your website. If the numbers are low, it is time to really think of the things you can add or remove from your site to improve value to your readers.

It is very important to understand that just because your business and website have been around for a while does not guarantee organic placement. Google is evaluating click through rates, time spent on your site, and a user’s search history to rack and stack websites. If your numbers are low or your site is stale your placement will drop when compared to other hungrier, more relevant websites.

If you need professional eyes on your site to help understand where you are and where you should be, we offer a SEO placement review that may be of value to you as you evaluate what you should do to move up or retain your site placement. I invite you to read more and check pricing.