Month: January 2010

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Google Says Website Page Load Speed is Key

This past month Google has been talking about website page load speed. They have been chatting up the topic in forums and have even recommended a Firefox browser plugin that runs a website speed clocker that provides recommendations for improvement.

The chatter in the forums and blogs is that Google is going to be considering page load speed as one part of their organic algorithm. Remember however that there are about 100 factors that Google considers for organic placement so although this may be an important one, it is not the one that will make or break your website’s organic placement.

My recommendation is that if you are redesigning your website this year a snappy page load should be a design consideration. If you have an existing website, do what you can to improve page load time, but don’t get so spun up that it becomes your only concern.

For existing websites, there are many important factors that you can still very easily control now such as content freshness, authority of your content, readability, search friendly navigation, good site architecture and cross linking between pages that will help you right now even without tweaking your page load speed.

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Improving Your Google Local Business Placement – Don’t Be Fleeced

I have just this week had a prospect tell me that she had paid a firm $1,200 to move up organically in the Google Local Business listings. Wow, that’s a lot of money to spend on moving up in results when there is really very little information available on the Web on how to garner better placement in Google Local Business Listings.

Let me back track a bit. First, what I am speaking about are the listings that appear on Google Maps as the push pin locations on the maps and then the listings of businesses that appear next to a map for some searches at the top of the organic results on Google.com. It used to be that these listings were called simply Google Maps Listings, but now Google calls them Google Local Businesses.

There is very little information on the Web about how to improve your placement on this Google service. In fact my own article that is nearly two years old is about the only real information that pops up on how to improve placement. That being said, it is important to know that Google Local Business is undergoing a major overhaul. Google has purchased a new system by buying out a company and has been introducing new aspects of the Local Business Center in the past several months. One of the newest introductions was Local Business Favorites Places. For this service Google selects you based on reviews and reader feedback.

Of additional interest is that Google tried to buy Yelp! and was rebuffed. Yelp! reviews have fueled some of the reviews listed on Google Local Business/Google Maps. I would imagine that as part of the overhaul that Google will roll out its own business review service now that the deal with Yelp! has fallen through.

I had two clients just this last week ask me to be a paid consultant for improvement in Google Local Business. Both I told they should not spend money until it is clear what is needed to garner placement. Too many changes are being enacted on Google Local and there is literally no information available on what to do to improve your listing placement. In fact much has been said that it is not about the quality of your listing but rather your proximity to the center of the city that is being searched. Others swear that it is the number of reviews on Yelp!

I would recommend that if a firm states they can improve your Local Business Center placement that you nail them down to the details before you get separated from your cash. I would make sure to ask for recent client results from the last two months as Google appears to still be tweaking results based on some unknown formula. Make sure you get value based on the current changes that impact placement not based on what used to work.

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What to Do When Your Reputation is Targeted Maliciously

When you have been in business as long as we have sometimes you become a target. Here is our story and what we have done about it.

A month ago or so, I was contacted by an owner of an e-commerce appliance store. This person wanted to hire us for blog writing services. As a routine part of qualifying our clients I reviewed the prospect’s website after an initial chat with him by phone. I then did a search for his business name and reviews. I was very surprised when I saw the volume of complaints about the prospect’s business. To be fair his business had positive reviews as well, but there were numerous negative reviews. Some complaints were documented with strong details, names, dates and situations as well as conversations with the management of the e-store.

At that time I decided that we were simply not a good match for this blog writing project. We are not the right resource for every business and not every prospect is the right match for us. I sent a decline note to the person and mentioned the reason was the number of negative review on epinions.com. The prospect then sent me a harassing email a week later that was over 500 words long and targeted me personally.

I routinely check my online reputation and came across a review posted by what appears to be the same person on an online site. The writing style and references to the situation were too similar to his situation to be of coincidence. However this time, the prospect made it sound like they had been a client and slammed our business and expertise.  Here is the complaint in its entirety.

Company knows little about E-Commerce. Total waste of time. Don’t spend your hard earned money with a company that knows little about the industry.

As writers, they should be experts. Company does not have the basic knowledge of the industry. I spoke with the owner who astounded me with her inability to do basic research and unreasonable attitude and policies to their customers.

Additionally, this person posted the complaint anonymously.

So, how does a legitimate business respond to a situation when they are targeted in this manner? You can chose to do nothing and hope it will go away, or chose to be upfront and address the situation head-on. I personally prefer the head-on approach.

I posted the following comment under the prospect’s complaint:

 I am Nancy McCord of McCord Web Services LLC.

Based on the information noted above and the writing style of the person making the complaint about our services, I believe that the person writing this “complaint” is a prospect that we decided would not be a good match for our services. We decided to not perform blogging services for them due to the large number of online complaints at epinions.com.

I believe that we have never provided services for this person in question or their business.

We work hard to keep our many blog writing customers satisfied and offer personal and responsive services.

You can view our many positive service reviews and samples of our blog writing work on our website at http://www.mccordweb.com/blog-writing/index.php.

Additionally, I am taking the time to further address this online complaint by posting a blog about the situation which will also appear on Twitter and the home page of my website today. We pride ourselves on responsive, friendly, professional blog writing services. If we have a complaint (and we have had very, very few in the years for which we have been blogging), we work hard to immediately rectify the problem. Our business has been built on writing quality, trust, and value. We don’t compromise when it comes to customer satisfaction!

It happens sometimes that a person may want to damage your reputation unfairly, but it is important to meet the difficulty head-on with a sense of urgency. I think that I have done so in this case.

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Top Google AdWords Questions

There are questions that we get asked by clients about Google AdWords frequently. Here are several and our answers to each.

I am looking for my ad at 8:00 PM on Google and can’t see it why?

When you cannot see your ad in the evening it is typically because your daily budget has already been spent for the day and Google has stopped showing your ads. The frequency of your ad being shown is all tied to your daily budget which is found by taking your 30 day click budget and dividing it by 30 days. Google may spend over 20% of your daily budget on any one day, but will never spend over your 30 day budget in a 30 day period.

My budget is $500 and Google spent $516 in December, why?

December is a 31 day month so Google could spend an extra day spend in December. Remember the budget you set is for clicks for a 30 day period. Some months will have 31 days.

I have reviewed my credit card and it appears that I was billed by Google several times why?

Google does not bill according to your credit card billing cycle or for that matter even on a set monthly basis. Google bills when you have spent your pre-assigned Google spending limit. Here are the limits from the Google help center:

The initial credit limit of $100 is incrementally raised each time an account hits its credit limit before 30 days have ended. The credit limit is first raised to $100, then to $250, then to $500 and then to $1000. The amount billed may be slightly in excess of the credit limit if an account accrues clicks very quickly.

So you may actually have several transactions to your credit card in the same month or straddled over two months appearing that Google is constantly billing you, but in essence they are following their credit guidelines noted above.

I thought it used to be $5 to set up an AdWords account, but I got billed $10

 Google has recently changed its set up fee. You are right it has always been $5 and just in the very recent past has Google started to bill $10 for set up.

As pricing and billing are some of the most asked questions about AdWords, here is a link to the AdWords help center to specifically additionally address some other topics you may find of interest.