The main difference between SEO and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook is the type of traffic they drive to your site. While SEO drives organic and profitable traffic to relevant pages on your site, social media sites drive inorganic traffic which is more likely to attract people who are most likely simply browsing the web, as opposed to specifically looking for the services you offer.

In a large analysis of sales on retail websites it was found that only 2% of profitable visits come from social media, whereas 34% comes from search engines. Put simply, people use social media to socialise whereas people use search engines when they want to find something specific.

A key advantage of SEO is security. If you invest time in creating a social media presence only to find that platform has fallen out of favour (think of the shift from MySpace to Facebook) you can risk losing it all. Whereas if you experience problems with your web host you can move your site elsewhere without losing SEO benefits.

Another advantage of SEO is that you can drive each searcher to the most relevant page on your site based on the search engine query. It’s much easier to show a searcher that you can give them exactly what they’re looking for if you’re guiding them to a relevant page on your website, rather than driving them to your Twitter site.

If you’re interested in an SEO consultation contact SEO Clock for more details on: 0800 292 2410.

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Experts in All Aspects of SEO

The most obvious benefit of working with an agency is that is has its own set of specialists. SEO experts who specialise in certain areas are hired accordingly to meet the needs of the team. This ensures that there’s always an expert on hand to deal with the specific needs of each client.

A Trained In-House Team

By working solely within its own team, an SEO agency has the peace of mind of knowing that all work is being done according to its own rigorous standards. It can provide all the training necessary to its employees in order to ensure the work is being done to a recognised set of standards.

No Sub-Contracted Unproven Freelancers

Although some SEO agencies may outsource work to freelance professionals, there are many who prefer to have all their work done in-house, in order to ensure their strict standards are met. If freelancers are brought in to work on a project, they will often have a track record of producing good work for the agency.

If a business needs help from an SEO consultant, it’s highly likely it has other requirements that need meeting too. SEO companies are often part of a bigger organisation which specialises in web marketing as a whole. This includes everything from designing a website, to building it, to creating the content to for it. Therefore graphic designers, web designers and copywriters will also be part of the team.

These are luxuries that freelance SEO consultants do not have – unless they choose to work on just one project at a time, it’s very unlikely they’ll be able to complete all the work themselves, and they almost certainly won’t be an expert in every single aspect of SEO. As a result, freelance consultants have to rely on other freelancers to do some of their work for them. This could result in projects being completed late or to a poor standard, especially if the consultant is working with someone he or she hasn’t worked with before.

Here at SEO Clock, all our work is completed in-house by our team of specialists. Call us today on 0800 292 2410 or check out our services page to find out how our SEO agency can help you rank higher in Google searches.

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Google Panda Update

The Google Panda update was first released on February 2011, and many low-quality sites quickly noticed the impact it had. This update to the Google search engine algorithm was developed in order to combat the large amounts of spam-content which seemed to unfairly rank at the top of searches.

This content was often copied form other sites, used unethical SEO practices like “keyword stuffing,” or simply plastered adverts all over a webpage for purposes of ad revenue.

By introducing Google Panda updates many sites had to change up their content strategy, and also consider redesigning their page to include more quality and less spam. Content farms soon slipped down the ranking list, as the articles they provided were mainly filler, copies or spammed with keywords. Sites which made extensive use of advertising, without thinking of quality content first, were also penalised.

The Google Panda update roughly affected 12% of search engine queries and its main aims seem to have been met. Prior to the update, there wasn’t a distinction between what ranked as information of real value or useless filler text primarily designed to be indexed highly.

Panda ensures that the information provided is of high quality, doing away with content only built to target specific search queries. For instance, when searching for medical information, alleged content provided by “content experts” turned up in the top search ranks. This text often lacked necessary information and included a large number of keywords to target those searches.

Those looking for specific medical articles didn’t find the content at all helpful, but rather had to sift through large amounts of search results in order to find something of real value. Panda somewhat puts a stop to this type of content being ranked highly, though some content-farm owners still desperately try to find ways to work around it.

Articles from About.com and Ehow still turn up in the first or second page of searches, despite the simple style of writing even for complex topics. Google are still working towards other updates of their search engine, and future algorithms will ensure that content is ranked appropriately.

Google Penguin Update

Due to the large amounts of content-farms and spam-sites present on the internet, Google periodically updates its search engine algorithms in order to filter out low quality content. This is particularly target at sites which provide a large number of low quality content, for purposes of fast indexing and revenue.

Many sites, like Demand Studios, E-How or About.com, have been negatively affected by these updates and have had to redraw their strategy in terms of the content produced and the design aspects of their site.

Many changes to Google’s search engine also actively target sites which are high on advertising without providing any quality content. These adverts are usually in the form of banners, or other call-to-action methods placed between the content itself.

The latest update to Google search is called Penguin, and it serves essentially the same purpose as the previous Panda update. The code is optimised to further stop users spamming search results, or other unfair practices which result in better search engine indexing. Google predict the update to affect at least 3% of the sites on the internet today. The emphasis on this update is, as mentioned, targeting spam and shady practices like cloaking and keyword stuffing.

Cloaking is considered a “black hat” SEO (search engine optimisation)practice, which means it is unethical to current Google and web standards. “Black Hat” is usually a term associated with malicious hacking, and the practice of re-directing a search engine crawler to another page (cloaking) is largely unfair. Keyword stuffing means inserting more SEO keywords than necessary in a text, essentially making it unreadable.

For instance, a portion of text may constantly repeat the keyword “business” in order to be indexed at the top of search-engine results. While this worked in previous instances it is no longer the case, as more and more updates will be released to completely prevent these kinds of practices from taking place.

The main concern, and an area of controversy for most content sites, is that Google will favour sites like Youtube (acquired by Google) despite not exclusively providing the quality content which the new algorithm is optimised for.

Some speculate that it is more a matter of ranking than SEO. In fairness, the update has been invaluable particularly for researchers, as the amounts of useless and “spammy” information, which often cropped up at the top of searches, has been eliminated altogether.

Brief History of Google

Google first started in 1996, then a small project undertaken by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Both were studying at Stanford University at the time, and decided to make a search engine which ranked results according to popularity. Eventually this was streamlined into the current Google system we are all familiar with, and it went further than being merely a search engine.

The official date for the company is 1997, since the domain was originally registered in September of that year. The company then started expanding in scope in the year 2000, introducing the pay-per-click idea of advertising on the net. This was the beginning of Adwords and Adsense, two systems of revenue which are still widely used today A year later after the introduction of powerful advertising-revenue systems, Google’s PageRank system was patented by its inventor Larry Page.

This is a system which has been refined to include indexing by content, keyword and popularity. The system is originally named after Larry Page, and the name isn’t intended to be indicative of its function as people may think. The service known as Google Earth was launched in the year of 2004, and initially people were stunned at this novel idea. This service allowed web browsers to view photographs of any place on earth, photos which were taken by satellite and regularly updated.

Viewers could zoom in and look at any street or area, no matter where in the world. GE has evolved into a paid service, with constant updates and high-resolution photographs. Gmail services were also launched the same year, in order to rival yahoo mail, hotmail and similar competitors. Subsequent years saw the company grow to gargantuan status, with the introduction of services like Google Video, social media networks like Google + and much much more.

The company now owns approximately 54% of the internet search market, and has acquired important companies like Youtube. Yahoo! still remains Google’s biggest rival, controlling about 23% of searches on the internet. Google continues to grow, as the company has plans to expand into more avenues of the technology business.

Recently these have included a partnership between Google and Samsung to create the “Galaxy” phone, and applications like “Google Goggles”. For more information regarding business website protection via ethical Google SEO, contact SEO Clock today.

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