SEM Hong Kong

In my opinion SEO is not our profession.

Search Engine Optimisation - what does it mean and where does the service end? Search Engine Optimisation is clearly the act of optimising one’s website to appear higher in the search engines. However SEO also involves website usability, user interaction, conversions, A/B testing etc etc. These tasks are not SEO.

If anything, SEO is more along the lines of Business Development and it is simply a form of marketing opportunity. Just as Business Development, as stipulated by Wikipedia, is:

Business development involves evaluating a business and then realizing its full potential, using such tools as marketing, sales, information management and customer service.

As SEO is:

SEO involves evaluating a website and then realizing its full potential, using such tools as marketing, sales, information management and customer service.

SEO belongs in the toolkit of Business Development. It is simply a new tool which has emerged over time, to evolve with new technology and ideas.

Perhaps Search Engine Optimisation should rather be referred to as Website Development, but since that term is already established, perhaps Business Website Development (BWD) would be more suited?

So maybe SEO is big enough that it could be categorised seperately, but still the fact remains that it involves many aspects, not just SEO. I say that if Jason Gambert wants to trademark SEO, then let him do so. Before he knows it he would have created history by trademarking a term that has had so much branding applied to it, and then before his eyes, SEO will die and BWD will be born, or something like it. SEO is not the be all and end all.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Ok so Wikipedia ranks for everything under the sun on Google - well almost. Why? What makes Wikipedia’s content so valuable that it should be placed in first position? Now I’m not disputing that there is a lot of great quality content on Wikipedia - but how do we know what content is real and what is not?

Until Wikipedia can verify their contributors as certified ‘experts’, as far as I can see, Wikipedia should not be ranking number one.

As stated by Wikipedia:

 ”Visitors do not need specialised qualifications to contribute, since their primary role is to write articles that cover existing knowledge; this means that people of all ages and cultural and social backgrounds can write Wikipedia articles.”

Wikipedia are destined to drop rankings soon, as no doubt Google will change it’s algorithm to value quality content from a quality source over quality content from an unknown source. How exactly this can be done? Maybe it can’t. Unless Wikipedia is targeted specifically by Google, or perhaps if all information from open source content is targeted, then not much can be done. Other than to provide a better source of information.

So with the introduction of sources such as Google Health and Google Knol, are Google setting the stage to wipe Wikipedia off the top listing? This may indeed be the first step, before a change is seen in the algorithm.

Google Knol’s statement:

“The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content.”

However, reading on in this blog post on the Google Official Blog, one tends to wonder how much confidence Google actually have both to knock Wikipedia from the top and to actually claim that top position in their own search engine:

“Once testing is completed, participation in knols will be completely open, and we cannot expect that all of them will be of high quality. Our job in Search Quality will be to rank the knols appropriately when they appear in Google search results. We are quite experienced with ranking web pages, and we feel confident that we will be up to the challenge. We are very excited by the potential to substantially increase the dissemination of knowledge.”

So, it is clear that Google Knol is aimed at taking Wikipedia’s spot at number one and to of course produce a better source of ‘quality’ content. The statement, “We are quite experienced with ranking web pages”, gets me here… quite experienced? That’s not quite an optimistic outlook now is it? Following this statement is the contradiction, “we feel confident that we will be up to the challenge”. So which is it? Are Google quite experienced or are they number one? Perhaps they should feel ‘quite’ confident that they are up to the challenge.

Perhaps they should also re-word the last sentance to read: We are very excited by the potential to take the number one position away from Wikipedia in the World’s number one search engine, for the majority of keyword phrases typed into search engines. Oh, no wait… hang on, they can’t say that can they?

The tenth thing google has found to be true is that “great just isn’t good enough“.

“Always deliver more than expected. Google does not accept being the best as an endpoint, but a starting point. Through innovation and iteration, Google takes something that works well and improves upon it in unexpected ways.”

In other words, Google will ‘quite’ rightly do their best to take Wikipedia, which works well, and improve upon it in unexpected ways.

Enter Google Knol.

Popularity: 15% [?]

I, unlike many bloggers, am reluctant to blog about everything that I see on the net. Unless I have something important and unique to say, then I do not see why I should add to all the clutter that is already visible in the multitudes of blogs available on the net.

Of course, this may indeed reduce the frequency to which search engines visit my site, but in all honesty, who are we really trying to impress here. Search engines are not the be all and end all - visitors are really what we are after, and targeted visitors at that. And, of course, this is what search engines are aiming towards. They want to rank the blogs that release new and important information at the top. Not those that simply duplicate content or add comments about existing blogs.

Sure, if you have something important to add in regards to Rand’s latest blog post, well then go ahead and blog about it. But if you are just letting your subscribers know about its existence - forget about it. You can be sure that Rand’s post is already listed there at number 1, or at least that some other industry leaders have already added some valuable feedback regarding it.

All this comes to show that there is way too much garbage to sort through in any field, let alone SEO, and honestly we do not need this extra waste of time. Blog posts that are valuable and unique should only be posted, those that rank the highest in search engines, thus boosting your own ranking significantly more than if you just post about anything, with few valuable articles scattered in between.

Popularity: 18% [?]

This article continues from my previous article on AdWords Unexpected Match Types.

I have recently discovered a very simple way to determine just how broad Google’s Extended Broad Match Type is in Google AdWords.

Using Google Search you can easily determine which keywords Google considers synonyms which is a feature of the Extended Broad Match Type. By using the “~” character before a word enables you to see synonyms of that particular keyword. By also including the “-” operator we can eliminate the visibility of the original keyword, therefore displaying only the related synonyms.

Let me give an example. In my previous post I gave the example of the keyword ‘hong kong night life’, showing ads when someone searched for ‘hong kong sex’. This was a most unwanted result and was resolved by way of a refund from Google for the costs incurred from people clicking on my clients ad which had nothing to do with ‘hong kong sex’.

Now, if we go to Google.com and type in ‘~nightlife’, we get 1.6 billion results, mainly displaying the term ‘nightlife’, ‘club’ and ‘clubbing’ highlighted in bold.

The next step is to remove those terms that we can see in bold, in order to narrow down all the synonyms until we reach those that we most likely, do not expect to see. All those keywords that we add as negative keywords are keywords that Google deduces to be synonyms of the original term. When we are left with no remaining search results we will have a list of all synonyms of the original search term.

Lets remove those that we can currently see. We will add ‘-club’, ‘-clubbing’ and ’-nightlife’ from the original search term ‘~nightlife’.

This leaves us with 920 million results, the most popular being ‘guide’. Removing ‘guide’ leaves us with 105 million results and removal of the term ‘bars’. 2 million results and ‘nightclubs’ to be removed.

This is where it becomes interesting. After having removed ‘nightclubs’, we are left with results for ‘escorts’. This clearly shows that Google associates ‘nightlife’ with ‘escorts’.

By adding ‘-escorts’ we can see that there are no remaining synonyms of ‘nightlife’.  Therefore, as ‘escorts’ are similar to ’sex’, the advert triggered by the keyword phrase ‘hong kong nightlife’ was subsequently displayed.

The conclusion therefore is very simple. Extreme caution should be carried out when only using the broad match term in Google AdWords. Any terms that you suspect may result in unwanted ad visibility must be investigated thoroughly to ensure that they do not trigger ads to be displayed on terms that are entirely irrelevant to a users original search query.

Popularity: 23% [?]

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) often focuses too much on aspects of designing a website purely based on what a search engine wants. As I read through hoards of information pertaining to placement of keywords and html design and whatnot, I am led to believe that we are designing a website for the search engines.

We must remember however, what search engines are looking for. They are focusing their efforts on finding user friendly websites with content that is important to a visitor depending on the keyword phrases they have typed into it. But there it is again, we are being pulled away from the main reason of a website - to advertise or sell a service or product to a client.

Of course websites are not placed online purely for existing clients. They are there to also attract new clients - well in most cases anyway. I believe that if a website has what it takes to be a good case for search engine optimisation, well then of course everything should be done to maximise that visibility.

However, if the site has limited content, is more visual than contextual, splashes flash around or uses a complex Content Management System (CMS), well then maybe it is not viable to carry out a SEO campaign and would be better off suited towards Pay Per Click (PPC) or the like. Of course a Flash website can be redesigned into HTML, and can often be more user-friendly in such a format, and can then therefore make for a great SEO campaign.

At the end of the day all pros and cons must be considered and we must compromise with web designers, graphic designers, clients and whoever else comes in our way of making the perfect search engine friendly site. We must remember that search engines are already looking for and perhaps favouring those sites that already have great potential for a strong SEO campaign. Those websites that do not, well they have to look elsewhere or wait for better search engines to come around.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Google AdWords will be removing their section under Tools titled “Modify Your Campaigns”. The section will be removed on the 20th of August. Users will have to resort to the AdWords Editor available here.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Google AdWords have announced that they will be adjusting their top placement ad formula. These are the ads that appear above the organic search results.

The main components of the top ad placement formula will remain price and quality, however in an attempt to make these ads more relevant to search results, price and CPC formulas will be adjusted.

For further information, check out Google’s help centre on How is the formula for top ad placement changing?

Popularity: 17% [?]

Google introduced promotional credits to Hong Kong yesterday, as well as several other countries. The credits can be applied to accounts less than two weeks old in US$100 or HK$780 per account.

Credits will only be available to Google AdWords Qualified Individuals or Companies. Credits are given in groups of 5 with a maximum of 60 credits per year. Credits will be refreshed as long as half of the credits supplied reach twice the face value of the credit amount. 

Popularity: 19% [?]

I’ve never really had the hots for Yahoo. Firstly their indexing is slow, often taking up to 3 months (sometimes 6) before updating their search results. Also they don’t take away search listings that have not been available for anywhere up to 6 months. This is just slack.

Another common thing that I’ve seen is that they copy Google wherever they can. Mostly in the PPC arena, the latest being their version of ‘quality score’. One thing they are certainly not copying from Google is this:

That’s right, Yahoo is selling the number one position and have omitted the ’sponsored results’ text that is usually displayed along with any non-organic results. This is… ridiculous.  Not only is it unethical, it is clearly visible that they have intentionally cheated the system as the organic number one result is listed below the first result on the page. I am appalled.

Popularity: 10% [?]

With Google AdWords releasing the Content Placement Report function in Hong Kong, I have been run off my feet sifting through thousands of domains to be sure my ads are visible where I want them to be. The site exclusion tool has been utilised extensively and also the keyword tool to engage negative keywords that I had not thought of previously.

After many adjustments it becomes evident that in about half of my campaigns I need to turn off content placement due to the overwhelmingly poor placement offered by Google. This is most likely due to similar words that exist in my extended broad match keyword selections. They are working for search results - just not content match. Disable content match on these Campaigns.

Previous efforts of content match heralded very poor results and hence were disabled due to the difficulties of sifting through data logs. So in this respect the Content Placement Report is great as I can see exactly which campaigns get the most relevant results.

The reports show however many listings with Impressions:1 Clicks:1 over my 7 day report. My questions are:

• Who are these people clicking on these ads?
• How many people visit this site?
• How does the owner of the site generate clicks when there are so few visitors?
• If I had my own site employing AdSense would I click on my own ads?
• Is this click fraud?

These questions worry me as if they are click fraud by the owners of the sites in question, then click fraud must surely be higher than we are led to believe. From my report, I have about 45 results that show this scenario and 45 results that look believable. The believable results show anywhere between 4-100 impressions and 1-5 clicks respectively.

I have my own site, hiking-hong-kong.semtek.net where I run AdSense to get an idea for how the system works. Not much traffic comes to this site and so no-one clicked on any of my ads for a while. I decided to test it out for myself just to check that it was setup correctly. Sure enough I created 1 impression and 1 click for an unsuspecting advertiser, though I did find some very informative information in the process about global warming.

Of course there are other possible scenarios that may result in similar statistics. If articles are updated frequently, they get shifted off the home page quickly and thus so too does the ad if it is only related to that shifted information, resulting in very few impressions and clicks. I’m sure there are other possibilities also.

There are also further possibilities to how we get Impressions:1 Clicks:1

• Programs that used IP proxies to click on content matched ads.
• Networks of clickers who are paid to click on content matched ads.
• Software that invades unsuspecting computers and then turns the computer into click-robots that click on content matched ads.
• Enewsletter campaigns and other claims stating that a portion of money earned from clicks on sponsored links will go to charity.

The fact is that AdSense is there to make sites money. People like money. People will go to some lengths to earn money. Therefore I tend to lean towards the fraudulent explanations - especially since there are more of them.

But in retrospect it is not generally a good idea to exclude all of these sites. Perhaps a better solution would be to analyse each site in question. Determine their traffic rankings and allow for at least one month of data to come in on content placement. Are they ranked well? Does the site look legit?

Popularity: 11% [?]