Month: August 2013

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Google Says It Hates Keyword Stuffing But Why Do Top Sites Still Use It?

Google hates keyword stuffing and clearly addressed this SEO tactic in the Panda update last year. In fact, Google actually states this in their webmaster guidelines about keyword stuffing:

 “Filling pages with keywords or numbers results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.

Examples of keyword stuffing include:

  • Lists of phone numbers without substantial added value
  • Blocks of text listing cities and states a webpage is trying to rank for
  • Repeating the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural, for example:
    We sell custom cigar humidors. Our custom cigar humidors are handmade. If you’re thinking of buying a custom cigar humidor, please contact our custom cigar humidor specialists at custom.cigar.humidors@example.com.”

Here are some sites online that are using keyword stuffing so you can take a real world look at this technique in action:

http://www.ranchland.com/
Take a look at the footer to see the stuffing in action? But although this site is clearly in violation of Google’s rules, it is still getting top placement on important industry specific keywords. Take a look at the content and you’ll see that it is in some places nearly unreadable for keywords interspersed in the content. So why has this site not been penalized? There simply may be more at play than we know that is keeping this site in the top spot.

 

Keyword Stuffing in action.
Keyword Stuffing in action.

http://www.bowcolabs.com/
Here’s another site that is using the tactic that Google has clearly disavowed at the bottom of the page just as an example. Although this site does not have top 60 result placement, it is a fine example of what to steer clear of in regards to keyword stuffing.

So back to the topic, if Google hates keyword stuffing, why are top sites still using it and why have they not dropped in placement? Although these sites may have slipped through Google’s filter, there may be other factors at play that are keeping top sites using stuffing still at the top. Or it may also be that Google simply has not caught up with sites using these tactics. Whatever the reason, for sites that are using this stuffing, I would recommend a slow revision to remove it while improving content and user engagement.

I personally don’t believe that using just these disavowed techniques will get any site top placement. What gets placement is a combination of quality content, some degree of keyword density (1% to 2%), quality inbound links, and shareable content.

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CoffeeCup Sitemap Builder a Great Little Tool

I love CoffeCup’s Sitemapper and wanted to share my personal unpaid review on this product with you. This is an easy to use and highly configurable application. I routinely use it to rebuild my own Google sitemaps and those for clients. With a low cost of only $39 and the ability to do a free trial, this is one application that every webmaster should have or at least check out.

Screen shot of the Sitemapper.
Screen shot of the Sitemapper.

With Sitemapper, you can scan your files two ways, you can scan from a web URL or you can scan your local files. Once set up, you let the application run and it will create a compliant XML site map automatically. But before you even generate the final sitemap, Sitemapper provides a visual file tree allowing you to delete files and file types.

With configurable options such as setting the update frequency for Googlebot and the page priority, I think that you’ll find this an excellent application and well worth the small price.

I particularly like the error tracking feature that allows me to know what broken links I have that will generate a 404 page from pages in my sitemap. In fact, I’ve just finished scanning a 3,500 page site and have about 50 links to review to clean up my new sitemap. It’s a great time saving assist!

Although I don’t use this feature, you can even connect the application to your Google Webmaster Control Panel for a quick upload. I prefer to review my sitemap personally and then load it to my server root via FTP.

I think that you’ll like this nifty application, I find it indispensable for my own personal needs and a real help for my customers especially those with large websites.

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GMail and the Promotion Tab

Google has made some big changes in the last several weeks in GMail. One of the biggest changes is that they are now more aggressively showing advertising in your inbox that looks like actual messages. One of the other big changes that impacts those of us that do e-newsletters is that this type of correspondence will now appear in the default “promotions” tab.

In this video from the Social Media Examiner, you can see how you can help consumers to understand how to tag your emailings so that they will go to the main inbox versus the promotion tab. It is an interesting short video and well worth the look to see if you need to do any instruction in your next newsletter on how to tag your mailings.

So far the industry is reporting about a 10% drop in openings from GMail users now that Google has instituted this design change/filter in GMail accounts.

To watch this online, please visit this page http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Elz_1KQnmA

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Using Google AdWords Experiments for Testing

The ability to test using AdWords Experiments has been around for a while, but Google is making it much easier now to do some interesting testing in your account. Here is one of my favorite test scenarios and how to set it up.

Test Different Ad Landing Pages for Conversions

1. First create a new version of your AdWords landing page. Typically we go whole hog and really work to create a completely different look. The control page is the normal page and the test page may be more video heavy, have stronger marketing language, and may even be a different layout than the normal page.

2. Using AdWords Editor, copy the ad group in entirety that you want to test. Then paste the copied ad group back into the same campaign. Go to the ad tab and change all the URLs in your test ad group to your new test landing page.

3. Then log back onto the online version of AdWords. Go to the campaign where your test resides and click settings. At the bottom of the page is a link called “experiments”. Click it to open and set up your settings. I will typically do a 50/50 test between the control and test. Set your start and end dates. I will typically do more than 30 days and I will typically set up for 60 but do a full statistical review at 30 days. Save your experiment. Now if Google will not allow it so save – as it will do sometimes, you need to check to see if in your budget setting on the same page you are using eCPC or Enhanced Cost Per Click settings. If you are, you need to move to manual bidding and remove all automation. Then try again to save your experiment.

4. You’re not done yet! Go back to the campaign tab, click to get to the campaign details page where you have all your ad groups showing. You’ll see a new icon at the left in front of the ad group name. Click the drop down and label your original ad group as the control only and your test ad group as experiment only.

If you may changes to ad text or keywords as you are running your test, make sure to use AdWords Editor to copy the changes into both programs.

Some of the interesting results we’ve seen are increases in conversions and increases in phone conversions. To learn more about using AdWords Experiments, here’s a great article written by Tom Demers at Wordstream.

If you are looking for a savvy AdWords account manager, I invite you to call me to chat about your needs.