The days when optimising websites for Google was a matter of making some text adjustments, adding  meta data and building backlinks are long gone. These traditional methods are not redundant however,  they still have a role to play, but the internet’s constant evolution means that ever more factors need to be taken into account for companies that want to be found on the web.

The increasing rapidity with which Google changes its search algorithm is an indication of how fast things are moving in the world of internet marketing and SEO.

In the past year, Panda, Caffeine, Freshness and Search Plus Your World are all Google updates that have fundamentally altered the way search works. There is no longer a unified search return; different users will get different results dependent on their location and social networks.

The results of these changes are that online ranking is now dependent on many more factors. Today, SEO techniques require a fully diversified approach that takes into account on page optimisation, backlinks, a content strategy, social media and additional factors. The combined use of these practices is necessary to keep ahead of your competitors and maintain a highly visible presence over the whole of the internet.

The internet is evolving at such a rapid pace that staying ahead of the game is no simple matter. Large companies often have the resources for their marketing departments to keep abreast of the changes, however small enterprises do not have this luxury. Therefore, outsourcing to professional companies represents a sensible solution to the increasing complexity of internet marketing.

The new Yahoo!/Bing search collaboration seems to be working.

The latest stats from the USA show that the Microsoft’s search engine is finallly beginning to catch up with Google.

The new combined search site has won a four per cent market share within Stateside search, mostly at the expense of its rival.

Although the change has happened very slowly, it could point towards long-term challenges for Google as it finds itself with a more equal competitor.

According to figures from Experian Hitwise, Bing searches accounted for around 28.99% of all US search enquiries last month – an increase from 28.05% during the previous month.

Hitwise also says that Google’s market share currently stands at around 65%. Just over a year ago in August 2010, just before Yahoo! and Bing merged, Google had a 71.59% market share.

Microsoft have previously commented that they would keep “working and working”  to win their battle with Bing, rather than having expectations of a quick win over the search engine giant.

The news has ramifications for SEO specialists, as they will now need to factor Bing/Yahoo! increasingly into their strategies, rather than solely focusing on optimising search within Google.

Experts are now watching to see whether the trend will be replicated in the UK.

Bing has come to the aid of web specialists by publishing a list of 18 things that you need to know about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

On its Webmaster Centre blog, the search engine takes a look at some of the bigger ticket issues that people should focus on when optimising their websites. Presented in a rough order of importance, the list “represents the ideal for a freshly planned website, prior to being built out”.

Although many web professionals inherit sites to work on, rather than having the advantage of building them from scratch, Bing says that the list can still be of help. They suggest focusing on one or two of the main points rather than worrying about what they are not able to achieve.

The top five points on the list are crawlability, site structure, content hierarchy, on-page factors and content production.

Writing about crawlability, Bing says: “If a crawler can’t access your content, the content won’t be indexed by search engines, nor will it be ranked. Enable and use XML sitemaps with a low error rate to build trust with search engines.

“Make sure your website navigation is clean and strive for a simple, search-friendly URL structure.”

To see the list in full, visit http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2011/08/19/18-things-you-need-to-know-about-seo.aspx

The importance of SEO for small businesses has been highlighted yet again by some new research.

According to a YouGov poll, UK organisations with less than 50 employees generated just 2.4% of their annual sales from online activities last year.

That’s in contrast with companies with more than 250 employees whose online revenue totalled 18.7% of their total income.
In monetary terms, that equals total online revenues for small businesses of around £36bn last year compared with larger businesses’ online revenues of £349bn.

A worrying 38% of respondents said that they were not investing in any online tools such as social media, email marketing or SEO.

A correlation between the low amount of investment in online marketing and low online sales is clear.

Phil Kingsland, from the not-for-profit resource knowthenet.org.uk, told the Daily Telegraph: “While small businesses are beginning to make considerable amounts of money online, many don’t yet see its full potential. There are limitless possibilities for small businesses to profit here – either by selling goods and services directly, or by marketing themselves to customers.”

For small businesses wanting to up their online game, an SEO strategy is a must – and it needn’t cost that much. In fact, small businesses can experience a great return on investment when working with a reliable SEO agency.

Facebook may soon overtake Google as the leading referrer to news websites if the trend pointed out by a new study continues.

Researchers at the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism examined the ways in which online news consumers in the USA reached their favourite sites in the first nine months of 2010.

They monitored the 25 most popular news websites in the States and looked at behavioural traits including how users reached the sites, what amount of time they spent on the sites, the depth to which they investigated each site and where they went on to when they left.

According to the stats, it seems as if social networking sites will have an increasingly important role to play in traffic to news websites over the coming years.

Researchers found that Facebook was either the second or third most important driver of traffic to five of these top 25 news sites.

These click-throughs formed part of 40% of the overall traffic came from outside referrals, with Google Search and Google News being the biggest traffic drivers.

The authors of the study said: “If searching for news was the most important development of the last decade, sharing news may be among the most important of the next.”

The Huffington Post, the leftfield news and aggregated content website, was the most popular site in terms of Facebook referrals. Eight per cent of its visitors arrived through the social networking website.

Google’s Panda update has sent shockwaves through the online industry and it seems that few are safe from its rampage – not even Microsoft.
Ciao, the price comparison and reviews site run by Microsoft, has been pushed down the search rankings as a result of the new algorithm. It lost a massive 94% of its SEO visibility after the Panda update, which seeks to improve the quality of content that’s displayed in the search listings, went live last week.

Ciao is one of many comparison, review and voucher code websites to suffer at the hands of the Panda.

Industry insiders are suggesting that Google’s attack on Ciao will only serve to fuel the fierce rivalry between Google and Microsoft.
Other sites to suffer a setback in the search rankings include Qype, which lost nearly 96% of its SEO visibility, and other notable sites such as Play.com, ehow.co.uk, hotfrog.co.uk and shoppingvouchers.co.uk.

Google as also reduced the visibility of sites that feature a large amount of advertising. There were some success stories in this week’s search rankings, however, with several sites celebrating a big rise in visibility. EBay.co.uk’s visibility increased by 42.1% whilst national-lottery.co.uk enjoyed a 39.5% rise. Other winners included econsultancy.com, this is money.co.uk and metro.co.uk.

Google designed its now infamous Panda update in order to push what it calls high-quality sites further up the search rankings whilst penalising those sites with unoriginal or repetitive content.

Google has revealed how it treats URL shorteners in terms of SEO in a new video released this week.

In the latest video in his YouTube series, Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team, took time to answer the following question, which was sent in by one of the many web professionals confused about Google’s new algorithm and how it impacts on URL shorteners: “Since Google is now using Twitter and Facebook links as ranking symbols, will custom URL shorteners be looked at as providing anchor texts for links?”

Cutts explained that custom URLs work in same way that most redirects do. This means that using custom URL shorteners or keyword-rich custom URL shorteners shouldn’t have a negative effect on SEO.

He said: “Custom URL shorteners are essentially just like any other redirects. ”If we try to crawl a page, and we see a 301 or permanent redirect, which pretty much all well-behaved URL shorteners (like bit.ly or goo.gl) will do, if we see that 301, then that will pass PageRank to the final destination.

“So, in general, there really shouldn’t be any harm to using custom URL shorteners in your SEO. The PageRank will flow through. The anchor text will flow through, and so I wouldn’t necessarily worry about that at all.”

The explanation will be of use to anyone who uses the likes of bit.ly and tiny url to direct surfers to their website on bookmarking and social networking sites.

As if Google hadn’t done enough recently to revamp the way SEO works with its search engines, it seems that more changes are on the way.

Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team, has released a YouTube video in which he suggests that the search engine giant may now turn its focus towards keywords in domain names.

The video, entitled ‘How important is it to have keywords in a domain name?’ sees Cutts explore the practice of using keywords in domain names and how a new algorithm might stamp it out for good.

Cutts says in the video: “We have looked at the rankings and the weights that we give to keyword domains, and some people have complained that we’re giving a little too much weight for keywords in domains.”

“We have been thinking about adjusting that mix a little bit and sort of turning the knob down within the algorithm, so that given two different domains it wouldn’t necessarily help you as much to have a domain with a bunch of keywords in it.”

So if your SEO strategy relies too heavily on keywords on your domain names, you need to start thinking of your plan B – and fast …

Watch the video at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAWFv43qubI&feature=player_embedded

If you’re considering an investment in good quality web design, there’s one factor you can’t afford to overlook: search engine optimisation (SEO)!

SEO is often an after-thought to web design, and many business owners tend to think in terms of building the site first, and then thinking about how to optimise it. This is not a successful strategy and could lead to you being ranked lower down the all-important Google search rankings than you otherwise could be.

SEO and web design should go hand in hand. Effective SEO can drive traffic to your site. What’s the point of having a smashing website with no visitors to experience it?

With your joint SEO and web design hats on, you can consider a range of structural and usability issues that can make all the difference between a successful website and a flop – both from an end user and an employee/organisational point of view.

One of these issues is a really basic one: which content management system (CMS) to use. Your choice of CMS is paramount and can make the difference between smooth processes and happy employees and customers – or not! We’ve seen a range of CMS’s in use during our time and the ones that factor in SEO are usually the best. Get advice from an SEO specialist before you choose your CMS.

SEO can also help you to arrange how to link pages together in the best way, making navigation work effectively for both Google and your end users. Site structure is one of the most important things to get right and one of the most difficult things to change once it as been put in place, so it’s fundamental to get this right from the start.

Google has cracked down on major online retailer Overstock.com after perceived underhand search engine optimisation (SEO) tactics, according to the Wall Street Journal.

While Google’s policy dictates that it does not comment on individual cases, the problem is rumoured to lie with Overstock offering a discount to students and educational institutions in exchange for embedding keyword links on their sites. According to experts, the .edu domain names of these academic institutions websites have enjoy greater prominence in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs), since they are deemed more likely to display ‘authoritative’ content.

In addition, sites fare well in Google’s rankings if a significant number of other sites contain links to them – a manifestation of the crucial principle behind PageRank, Google’s original ‘scoring system’ for websites.

After recent criticism about the falling standard of Google’s search and its slow response in dealing with content farms, is this move as much a statement of intent as a decision to penalise a company that contravened Google’s guidelines?

Also, given the extensive publicity of the case, is the consequent media attention numbing the effects of Google’s penalties? Overstock has been relegated in Google’s SERPs, but the media attention may be driving more traffic than their search results ever did. Then again, it’s probably not the kind of publicity most companies want …