Abstract
This
generation have got so fond of the internet that they trust and depend on it
for almost anything and almost everything; from shopping, sourcing for news or
sourcing for jobs, entertainment to social networking; and with about 2.5
billion of them on the internet and digital media, digital marketing becomes
the most effective avenue to communicate with them. By this, marketers promote
their products and services using digital distribution channels via computers,
mobile phones, smart phones, or other digital devices
Google
on the other hand Google has changed the way
these marketers think about their operation, such that whatever digital channel
they choose to operate through, Google bridges the gap. It has changed the way
financiers think about financial models. There is no thinking about product
development and awareness without considering google. Thinking of growing your
market share? Simply google it. If you are not at the top, you are not growing
Google
never fully discloses to advertisers how their rates are calculated. In fact,
rumor has it that no single person knows all the criteria of the Google search
algorithm. Supposedly, that knowledge is spread across multiple employees like
keys and codes at a Swiss bank (Goldman, 2011);
yet Sharma stated that there is a “marketing war” (Sharma, 2001) as marketers compete (make efforts) to be on top of
the Google organic list or pay to be presented to consumers. These efforts, as
also confirmed by chaffey and smith 2008, is for the purpose of achieving the
highest position or ranking practical in the natural listing on the search
engine results after a specific combination of keywords or key phrases has been
typed in
This
study therefore aims to explore how these algorithms and updates from Google
shape the activities and strategies of search marketers toward search engine
optimization; and how marketers like the London School of Business and
Finance of this world play the ‘Google
game’ right, and how/why, for instance, chert computers and especially
marketers in the developing nations still do not get the rules; we will then
put forward our research questions and means of data collection; we will there
after present the results and discuss them after which we will make our
conclusion and then close with suggestions for further improvements.
The Introduction
1.1 Journey to the Internet.
Commerce
and indeed marketing has gone beyond the ordinary and the traditional old
module of dictating messages to the mass market. Changes in time and the advent
of information and communication technology, coupled with consumer requirements
and expectations and of course the internet has changed and continue to change
commerce and the concepts of marketing. It is worthy of note that marketing
dynamics has shifted from the ‘production minded’ orientation to ‘consumer
minded’ perspectives, and thanks to digital technology, especially the internet
that has enabled a global market place, distinguished by even availability of
product information, prices and distribution. Consumer however, with the quest
to overcome distance, location and time constraints as well as sourcing for
social networking, convenience, variety, better prices and sometimes discreet
purchases, make the internet their choice market place. Source says there is
about 35 percent of the world population available on the internet (internetworldstats.com, 2012); and this huge
population attracts every deliberate marketer to come online and thus, makes
digital marketing inherently an effective means to reach this generation.
1.2. Industry Background.
Playing SEO game the Google way.
As
marketers however compete for (online) space and attention, they make as
relevant as possible information available to consumers through web sites and
content management; and there is only one means through which consumers can
search or find these information- the search engines.
Although
there are about 6 web sites (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask, Seekport and Exalead, in
that order) that attract 99.03 per cent of the worldwide traffic toward search
engines, research states that Google attracts 90.59 per cent of these searches.
Its popularity and influence hence makes Google the benchmark for SEO (Quinton, S. and Khan, M., 2009). With its
mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible
and useful” (google.com, 2013), Google
seems to know and understand what really you want during a search and gives it
back to you as you have hoped or expected
(google.com, 2013). It is assumed a “perfect search engine” to the
extent that “when people don’t find what they are looking for on Google, they
blame themselves and their query choice, not the search engine” (Goldman, 2011), because it is believed that
Google has answers to every question and results to every search; and indeed
Google has become an habit and a part of everyday enterprise for every internet
user. Google on the other hand changes
its search algorithm five hundred to six hundred times every year since 2000 (moz.com, 2013) to uphold the users’ trust in it
results by ascertaining that the very best and most relevant results come up
for any kind of search. “A logical,
arithmetical or computational procedure that if correctly applied ensures the
solution” (World English Dictionary) to optimization issues. Some of these
changes are minor though, but in every few months Google come up with major
algorithm updates that significantly affect search results (moz.com, 2013). These updates thereby make
search marketers ‘play SEO games the Google way and obey its regulations’.
Richard
Hall confirms that about 60 percent of marketers are looking to increase their
natural and paid-for-search budgets in the next 12 months more than any other
aspects of digital marketing (Hall, 2009)
According
to goldman, Google is not so transparent in its business operation and system
that no one knows for certain what it’s really up to. He states in his study
that Google never fully discloses to advertisers how their rates are
calculated. In fact, rumor has it that no single person knows all the criteria
of the Google search algorithm. Supposedly, that knowledge is spread across
multiple employees like keys and codes at a Swiss bank (Goldman, 2011); yet Sharma stated that there is a “marketing war” (Sharma, 2001) as marketers compete (make
efforts) to be on top of the Google organic list or pay to be presented to
consumers. These efforts, as also confirmed by chaffey and smith 2008, is for
the purpose of achieving the highest position or ranking practical in the
natural listing on the search engine results after a specific combination of
keywords or key phrases has been typed in (Chaffey and Smith, 2008). They also
concluded that only marketers who understand the ranking processes or in this
case, the marketers who follow and play by the ‘Google rules’ can boost their
position higher than their competitors and so achieve higher levels of traffic.
1.3. Objectives
This
study therefore aims to explore how these algorithms and updates from Google
shape the activities and strategies of search marketers toward search engine
optimization; and how marketers like the Amazons and eBays of this world play
the ‘Google game’ right, and how/why, for instance, chert computers and
especially marketers in the developing nation still do not get the rules; this
study will then put forward its research questions and means of data
collection; it will there after present the results and discuss them after
which it will make our conclusion and then close with suggestions for further
improvements.
Furthermore,
it is the objective of this research to:
1. know what sets the marketer on top of google search lists
apart from those that are not really recognised- to know for instance why
‘xe.com’ comes first in a google search for ‘currency converter’
2.To know how often these marketers change their online
marketing strategies- if google makes up
to 500- 600 updates in a year
3.To know if these marketers control their SEO in-house by
themselves on pay agents to do it for them and leave the result wholly to the
efforts of the agents
4.To learn from marketers that are doing well in their SEO
strategies and make recommendations for
marketers that are still strugling with their SEO, based on the knowledge
obtained from the former.
1.4 Research methodology
This study will be partly exploratory and partly descriptive;
it will adopt the exploratory (qualitative) research to allow the reseacher a
better understanding into the concepts involved in the subject so as to clarify
the nature of the broblems to be solved. It will help us know what is the trend
of events and why it is happening, through which we can ascertain how variables
in the situations (and what is going on) are related. For instance, the
explorative research will help us look in detail some of the very major
algorithms and changes Google have made over time, what it (Google) intended
that it (the changes) meant to marketers and how it (Google) wanted the updates
change online maketing strategies- or how Google wanted the marketers to obey
these changes. On the other hand, it will also analyze how marketers adopted
this changes, how it altered their approach to online marketing and the results
that came thereafter.
The descriptive aspect of this research is where the
reseacher intends to describe the characteristics of those that follow google
algorithm closely and make their search engine optimisation strategies in
reference to the algorithms in comparison
with the characteristics of firm that are ill informed about these
algorithms or do not set their SEO strategies in line the criteria from google.
Buttressing the points in emphasizing
the relationship that exist between individual criteria or algorithm and
specific SEO strategies.
CHAPTER 2
Literature review
This
chapter discusses the concept and strategies of digital marketing with focus on
SEO among others, how Google dominates and coordinates search criteria and
algorithms, as well as an overview of some of the individual algorithms and
their effects on marketers’ search results.
2.1 Digital Marketing: The Concept
Shuliang
Li stated in her study that as the dynamics and complexity of markets and the
business context increase, the need for pertinent, accurate and immediate
information continues to grow (Li, 2004).
More so, shim et al. (2002) confirms that the internet has emerged as an
essentially important platform that has reduced technological barriers and made
it easier for consumer irrespective of their geographical locations to access
decision support models and tools; and the marketplace is migrating into the
electronic marketplace as considered by Chaffey and Smith (2008). The internet
continues to grow “rapidly and seamlessly across borders and into an online
world already inhabited by over two billion customers” (Chaffey and Smith,
2008). Considering its scale, potential
and its benefits to our world and businesses today, it is not just “a big part”
of our future, it is a factor to reckon in charting the pattern of our
developments as well as businesses and commerce. Source says there are already
in China more phone subscribers than the entire US population, and survey by
Comscore shows that the usage of mobile in Japan is almost the same as that of
PC. The digital world continues to expand in terms of the numbers of websites
online, and essentially, from a marketing perspective and the population of
people that has access to the internet (Ryan and
Jones, 2012). In 2000, at the ‘bubble burst’ of the dot.com, there were about
304 million of the world population that had internet access. The figure had
doubled by 2003 to 608 million, and the end of 2005 the population of the
online community had passed a billion. As of June 2012, about a third of the
world population had been on the internet amounting to over 2.4 billion people (internetworldstats.com, 2012).
This generation of consumer do not only rely on the adoption
digital technology for the quest to overcome distance, location and
time constraints, news and entertainment, sourcing for social networking,
convenience, variety, better prices and sometimes discreet purchases; it also
to a great extent influence their behavior in several ways (as explained by
Ryan and Jones 2012): with over 1 billion people around the world regularly
using the web to find products, entertainment and soulmates, consumer behavior
and the way companies market to both consumers and business have changed
dramatically (Chaffey et al. , 2009).
2.2 The need for Internet
Social networking:
The interconnectivity of the internet and the digital technology enables
consumers to connect with themselves at any instant, be it through mobile
messaging, instant messaging (IM), e-mail, or web-based social networking
platforms like LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook- or possibly on all of these
platforms. Consumers all around the world are interacting with like minds,
regardless of distance, time zones or location; these interactions reinforce
social networks to further expand the virtual communities (Ryan and Jones, 2012).
News and information/ increasing
relevant filtering: with such a huge amount of information
available on the internet, online consumers, by importance and need, have come
to learn to filter items that are of relevance to them and ignoring the ones
that are perceived irrelevant (Ryan and Jones,
2012).
Growing niche aggregation:
the volume and diversity of online contents let consumers take part and satisfy
their interests and hobbies. “Aggregations of like-minds congregate online; the
homogeneous mass consumer population is fragmenting into ever-smaller niche
groups, with increasingly individual requirements” (Ryan and Jones, 2012).
Blossoming micropublishing of personal
contents: the interactive and interconnected nature of digital
media gives consumers the chance to express themselves online. Whether through
personal blog or photo gallery, feedback forms, message boards, voting
platforms or discussion forums; it cost only a bit more than time and
imaginations to publish your own contents. Ryan and Jones further confirm that
“users are posting their opinions online for all to see, and consulting the
opinion of their online peers before making purchase decisions”. For instance,
I would rather consider the opinions and reviews of my peers before booking a
table at an unknown restaurant, a weekend break in a hotel or buying a car; as
in the stead of visiting the websites first.
Rise of the ‘prosumer’:
Ryan and Jones also explain that consumers online are found of being involved
in creating the products and services they pay for, which shifts the power and
control of the market from producers to consumers. They simply put- : “they are
letting producers know what they want in no uncertain terms: the level of
interaction between producers and consumers is unprecedented”. Consumers these
days get involved in customizing, specifying and creating goods and services to
suit their actual need, more so, the old concepts of mass production and mass
marketing are fading out as consumers now (directly or indirectly) “shape and
mould” the messages and experiences they
receive from producers (Ryan and Jones, 2012).
Availability: as
the internet becomes more important in people’s life, the subsequent speed of
business process means that “consumers can satisfy their needs more quickly,
more easily and with fewer barriers”. In today’s digital world and economy,
time and geography has ceased to be barriers; so are physical store space and
location irrelevant. Ryan and Jones further concluded “it is a world of instant
gratification- and the more consumers get of it, the more they want it now,
now, now” (Ryan and Jones, 2012).
For
marketers, this new development in the market and the shift in consumer mindset
indicate a whole new challenges and a call for new strategies. As consumers
continue to fashion and embrace new ways of communicating, ”take greater ownership
of the information and entertainment they consume, and aggregate in
increasingly specialized niche online communities” (Ryan and Jones, 2012), there is also need for marketers to shift
approach and strategies if they want to connect with them.
2.3 Sales situations
Meanwhile Chaffey and Smith (2008) identified online ‘sales
situations’ being possible ways online transactions take place as; B2C, B2B,
C2B and C2C.
B2B andB2C being where the bulk of online business take place. Unlike
in the time past when FMCG manufactureres like coca-cola, Guinness and Heinz
were in the lead of marketing and industrial or B2B (business to business)
marketing was considered to less exciting, it was estimated that the B2B
companies make as much as 10 times more revenue than the B2C (business to
consumer) companies today. They (Chaffey and Smith) also sited instances where
General Electric made a decision (about ten years ago) to “ procure $1 billion
worth of purchases online in one year, followed by $3 billion in the second
year and followed by total procument online”. Cisco systems also announced
years back to no longer do business with suppliers that would not take orders
over the web. There are also examples of major organisations, including
government councils that are moving online. In 2005 the British Government’s
Local District Councils procured their goods and services only online. Chaffey
and Smith further sited that “Several years ago Ford and General
Motors combined forces through the B2B
marketplace Covisint (www.covisint.com) and moved their then $300
and $500 billion dollar supply chains online. This (they pointed) created great
hype about the potential of online B2B auctions which didn’t really realize
expectations. Today, Covisint is no longer an open marketplace used by a
handful of motor manufacturers, instead it is a software provider which helps
over 30 000 companies in automotive and other sectors, such as Healthcare,
manage communications with their suppliers and in 2003, Covisint sold its
auctions business to Ariba which now has 120 000 suppliers in its network – a
surprisingly small number for the largest online network. In this new market
evolution, the advantages of the online B2B exchange are more about identifying
products in electronic catalogues from a range of suppliers, selecting the best
option and then managing the paperwork and workflow electronically. (Chaffey and Smith, 2008)
C2C and C2B
The
advent of the widespread and acceptance of C2C (consumer to consumer), as
narrated in their study, was the “growth of online consumer auctions at eBay
and niche communities focusing on interests such as sport, films or pastimes”.
In recent time, the boom in the C2C interaction has been credited to the growth
of social networks like MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn among several others.
They pointed that social interactions are these day so important that they are
beginning to reduce the consumption of other forms of digital and traditional
media and organizations are beginning to develop strategies to engage these
consumers (Chaffey and Smith, 2008).
2.4 The strategies and Tools
Though
Chaffey and Smith 2012 explained that once any organisation identifies the need
to pursue digital marketing, the next step of action is to map out its
strategies, they also pointed out that every business basically needs to make
its own unique strategies according to its own circumstance; as it apparent
that for different products there are different markets, different needs and
undoubtedly different solutions; Chaffey et al.
( 2009) also confirms that it is not necessarilly technology that drives
digital marketing, but the returns from gaining new customers and maintaining
relationships with existing customers, laying emphasys on the fact that digital
marketing does not exist in isolation, but is more effective when it is
integrated with other channels. More so, they analyzed the range of access
platforms and communication tools for online channels that e-marketers use in
building and developing relationships with consumers; acertaining the fact that
there are different access platforms that deliver contents and enable
interaction through a range of different online communication tools or media
channels. Some of which are well established techniques and are familier to
consumers like competitive pricing, comprehensive product information, websites
features that grab attention as well as a convenient and brief online purchase
and payment process; some of the common tools marketers use also include
affiliate marketing, blogging, pay per click and of course search engine
optimisation as highlited below (Chaffey et al., 2009).
Website features that grab attention: a
report by smith (2012) shows that researches have proven that one of the
website features that consistently grabs the attention of a good number of this
generation is graphics. She explained that marketers have learnt therefore that
any website meant to target this generation of consumer for revisits and
loyalty would not underestimate the use of graphics among other features, as
graphics is seen as an appealing interest to catch their minds. Other features
that could make a website their favorite are personalization (by way of
modifying the site, showing that it obviously originated from or belonged to
the user), professional layout, simple and interactive site as well as
(sometimes) bright colours (Smith, 2012)
Competitive Pricing: At
whatever level of transaction and category of business (visible or visual),
pricing is one of the factors considered most important. Competitive pricing is
a pungent and appealing incentive for this generation of consumer to stay loyal
to a product and effectively prompt repeat visits (Smith, 2012).
Product Information: According
to Webster, products are bundles of benefits that an organizations offer to
consumers to meet their needs and wants (Webster,
2004). Consumers are looking for these problem-solving properties in
goods and services, and searching every medium (books, movies, magazines, audio
tapes, on computer screens) for information about these products and the
benefits they offer and how they meet their needs. It is therefore essential
that marketers make this information available by every means possible.
Convenient/Brief purchase and payment
process: Shopping convenience has been one of the prime
motivations for online shoppers, it is believed that these consumers often
allocate less time to shopping and thereby seeking to save time and minimize
every effort. Researches also show that the greater the time costs related with
a service, the lower the degree of consumers’ perceived service convenience. It
is therefore appropriate that marketers adopt systems that allow shoppers make
their purchases and payments with ease and within a good time frame (Smith,
2012).
2.5
Online Marketing Strategies
Affiliate marketing:
Affiliate marketing is a major and important strategy for companies involved in
online trading. The idea acts as the ultimate in genuine pay for performance
marketing and, thus, remains one of the most promising long-term marketing
concepts for online trading (Duffy, 2005).
The affiliates construct e-commerce websites with data feed from the
manufacturers. The data feed are information made available by the
manufacturers which would contain product descriptions, name, photographs and
prices. The affiliates will then converse for customer to visit its website for
these products and then redirect its visitor and customer to the manufacturers’
site for the actual shopping, transaction and shipment.
An affiliate is a potential marketing partner
that helps grow businesses by generating more sales outside the traditional
marketing efforts of the organization. The affiliate is also independent in its
activities and as such, responsible (financially or otherwise) for whatever its
doing (e.g marketing) to generate sales for the producing partner, i.e it bears
all the risks involved in its marketing activities but gets paid (on commission
based) for every sale it makes, (Duffy, 2005)
therefore puts no extra cost on the producing partner.
Blogging: Blogs are websites
created by individuals/organizations (likened to diaries or journals) to
display historical as well as up-to-date content disseminating knowledge
internally among staff and externally among customers and suppliers through
series of text and links that redirect visitor to pre purposed websites.
Company
that blog have far better marketing result as argued by John McTigue in his
report, referencing a study by HubSpot. He stated that there is a contiguous
relationship between blogging and inbound marketing. He also stated that record
have it that blogging regularly yield 55 percent more website visitors, 97
percent more inbound links and 434 percent more indexed pages, that would further boost SEO results (McTigue, 2009).
Research also shows that blogging has an interdependent relationship with
social media as popular social media could be a means of promoting blogs, more
so, helpful and informative blogs are
more appealing to the social media community, and they pay back with comments,
leads, and of course more importantly
higher traffic.
Pay per Click (PPC): PPC
would be considered an important and productive option especially for new/small
businesses as organizations compete for online presence and consumers’
attention. It can be expensive though,
but sometimes it is the only thing a company has to do stay in this competition
and be seen by consumers as it could be hard for smaller firms to match head to
head with the stronger and bigger organizations in the organic ranking, as it
is prevalent for bigger names and brands to come on top first in the organic
stream. To be on the organic ranking of a search engine is at no cost to any
organisation. Search engines present a list of websites according to their
relevance to the keywords queried by the customer. The sites that come first on
this list are those considered most relevant by search engines as related the
contents on the sites, links and updates. Every search engine has got its own
criteria for ranking websites though and these criteria can oftentimes change.
PPC Ads are often shaded in different colours from the organic list on the very
top of the screen or at the side, to let the customers know that the links were
paid for by the websites; and prices paid for these sets of list is determined
on an auction basis (Kennedy, 2008).
Therefore,
companies will have to regularly determine their budget for PPC, and what
position on the list they want to go for, but most importantly, they need to
often review their site designs and content management to ensure that they are
well ranked on the organic lists, that they would naturally come on top of the
list when customers go in search of their keywords. These two paths to online
marketing must be carefully explored (Kennedy,
2008).
Search Engine
Optimisation (SEO): Aure´lie
Gandour and Amanda Regolini (2011) in their report explained SEO as a ‘set
techniques’ that websites use in order to be better ranked by search engine (Gandour and Regolini, 2011). It is a
technique to improve a website’s content, for the purpose of making it more
interactive to its visitors (users) and search engines, by some deliberate
changes within the pages of the website while making some specifically choice
themes and keywords the centre of attention, for the site to be of relevance
and ultimately, get better ranking by targeted search engines and therefore
appearing higher in the result list for requests that are made as related to
the chosen themes.
Although
only about six web sites are recognized to be responsible for attracting about
99.03 percent of the world traffic toward search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing,
Ask, Jeeves and Baidu) (StatCounter, 1999-2010, for July 2010), several other
search engines creep over websites in quest of the site relevance; and we might
then need to ask which of them must we take into consideration in our own
site’s SEO. I suppose there are few questions every digital marketer needs to
ask, as suggested by Aure´lie Gandour and Amanda Regolini (2011), which are:
where do our visitors come from? What search engine do our target markets use? (Gandour and Regolini, 2011) how many
connections were made to the web site by just typing an URL directly to the web
browser, using bookmarks or clicking a link in an email? How many connections came
through external pages and/or search engines? Getting answers to these
questions would determine the approach towards a SEO campaign. Research states
though, that Google attracts 90.59% of world traffic towards search engines (Gandour and Regolini, 2011); its popularity
hence makes google a good benchmark for SEO. Quinton and Khan more (2009) so
suggested that strategically distributing directories and press releases would
be a good strategy to improve sites’ ranking (Quinton
and Khan, 2009). These techniques would in no doubt increase links to a
site; improve its PageRank (Gandour and
Regolini, 2011) and altimately, its final ranking.
Although
Evans (2007) did clearly demonstrate that a high PageRank is a key to make a
web site rank high, a site can as well rank high on its themes and precise
keywords in its contents other than focusing on the overall page. This act and
practice of SEO reflects the popular saying that, on the web, “Content is
King”. If we follow a couple of rules and give our web site some rich and
interesting contents, a good search engine’s ranking will be inevitable
(Andrieu, 2009). A fundamental way to get the best out of optimization is to
have keywords for which search engines will recognize the site, and thereby
optimize the site on those words. After choosing these keywords, we then should
duplicate them all over the optimized pages, and in utmost they should reflect
in key parts like the “title” tag and in the headings (SEOmoz.org, 2009).
2.6 What is Google’s business?
As
soon as the World Wide Web went beyond a few hundreds, thousands, and millions
of pages, it became impossible to navigate directly. It is worthy of note that
the internet is not a TV set but a field strewn with pages of potentially
useful information for anyone and everyone who wants it; which literarily means
that “search- really clever search- would become essential” (Arthur, 2012).
The race to be world favourite seach engine looked as though
would go to the swift and the large as the first as the early seach engines
took the lead, some of which were set up to show off the power of the 64-bit
Alpha chip. This chips are able to chomp through huge indexes; all the search
engines had to do then was to crawl the site and index it, they simply
dominated and by selling advertisements on their opening pages they made money.
However, as the web grew, the services and the results they produced became
polluted. Arthur comfirmed that “spam, and porn sites began using invisible
text- white on a white background, or sized so small that humans may not
see it”. The user’s problem of having to
encounter spams got increasingly frustrating, but search engines continued to
grow in their revenues as more people came online. It wasn’t because it had
significantly improved the users’ experience or its search results ( as pointed
out by Arthur), but because marketers kept buying more advertising slots. As a
matter of fact, these advertisements made the experience of the users even
worse, because they made the pages load quite slow on those dial-up connections
used by the majority of people. But those search engines were the available
options at that moment as their indexes all treated the internet like “it were
a flat field covered with pages filled with information” while in actual fact
they are made up of information about each other, encoded by how they link each
other. This in no doubt takes a hugely complex mathematical calculation,
requiring a huge amount of computing power to figure out what information those
links are intended to pass across for each page and each phrase; which
according to Arthur, “not even Microsoft, with its overweening ambition, seemed
to have grasped this”. In this kind of complex task, Arthur concluded all the
search engines needed to do was to calculate how every page on the web ranked
relative to the others- “ which would be shifting, especially for the smaller
ones, based on their links”; and based on that ranking, search engines would
then have to decide which pages on the internet points to the text the users
want. Ranking would then vary based on these texts; and would have to be done
each time a query for search is entered. Source says that Page and Brin
(founders of Google) did this for the first time with a system on one PC in
1996 at Stanford, which they called the ‘the algorithm for ranking web pages’
–PageRank. They further developed it into “a massive parrallel computing system
and software that could harness the power of hundreds of thousands of
stripped-dowm PCs running a version of free linux operating system to do this
over and over againg, millions of times a day”
(Arthur, 2012)
Google runs an enterprise that is worth over $250 billion
organising the world’s information; and undoubtedly the largest information
provider in the world (Seeking Alpha,
2012); and of course Google knew the web was big. on its official blog, google
had stated that its first index in 1998 had about 26 million pages, and by 2000
it’s index had reached a billion mark. Between then and now, google has seen
even huge number about how much content is really out there. In 2008, even
Google’s search engineers were amazed about how big the internet had become
when its systems that process links on the web to find new content hit a
milestone- 1trillion unique URLs on the web at once (Google Official Blog, 2008).
However, as these links and pages grow and increase in number
as well as in contents, Google seek to make the very relevant ones available
for search results; making sure that only the marketer that have taken their
time and worked hard to make unique website are presented to the user, as well
as ascertaining that consumers’ search expectations are met and their
experiences are such pleasant ones. For these purposes Google has over the
years change its algorithm and critaria for search results. Source says each
year Google introduces over 500 algorithms, the decisions to make these
improvements are made weekly to affect seach results. Wired.com states: “one
might think that after more than a decade of search-market dominance, Google
could relax. After all, it holds a commanding over 80 percent market share and
is still the only company whose name is synonymous with the verb search. But just as Google isn’t ready to rest on its
laurels, its competitors aren’t ready to concede defeat. For years, the Silicon
Valley monolith has used its mysterious, seemingly omniscient algorithm to (as
its mission statement puts it) organizes the world’s information.” Some the algorithms are as discussed below:
Cassandra – 2003 April:
this update according to google was meant to crack down on “some of the basic
link-quality issues, such as massive linking from co-owned domains” (moz.com, 2013). It was also meant to raise
the bar against hidden texts and hidden links. This update in other words could
be interpreted to mean that multiple links from the same site would no longer
be recognised and ‘crosslinking’ spam will be filtered out of search result;
more so, econsultancy.com (2003) confirms this to mean cleaner results.
Florida- 2003 November: florida is an algorithm update meant to hit low level SEO
techniques. It was simply meant to eliminate pages that have repetitive inbound
anchor text with little diversity from search results as well as heavy
repetitions of key word phrase in the page title and on the page. More so, it
got rid of page that have got words or phrases exhibiting close proximity with
few occurrences of the keywords spread apart; and pages that lack related or
supporting vocabulary in the page copy. It was believed that the “Florida
update was the first update that made SEO seemingly complicated enough to where
people could not figure out how to do it” (seobook.com, 2009)
Austin-2004 January: this is a smarter and better algorithm that was meant for a
further clean up for invisible texts and spam. It was an algorithm update that
introduced penalties or ban on sites
that have got “things such as FFA’s (Free for All) link farms, invisible text
and stuffed meta tags that are 20 screens long, or filled with useless
spam (searchenginejournal.com, 2004).
seobook.com objected though that “The algorithms have got so
complex on some fronts that Google engineers do not even know about some of the
filters/penalties/bugs (the difference between the 3 labels often being an
issue of semantics). In December 2007, a lot of pages that ranked #1 suddenly
ended up ranking no better than position #6 for their core target keyword (and
many related keywords)” (seobook.com, 2009).
Big Daddy- 2005
December: this an ‘infrastructure update’ that
changed how duplicate contents and non-canonical( non-www) URLs were
treated (moz.com, 2013); disregarding
sites that have got 302 redirects, duplicates and “excessive
reciprocal links, linking to spammy neighborhoods on the web, or link
buying/selling” (mattcutts.com, 2006).
Negative Reviews 2010 December: this is an algorithm update that
seperates ‘catcalls from huzzahs’ (nytimes.com, 2010). It was meant to hit on
marketers that believe in treating customers badly to generate complaints and
negative comments would translate to more links to their sites; and in turn,
make them more prominent in search engines. This, Google simply puts “being bad
is, and will always be, bad for business in Google search results (googleblog,
2010).
The Panda 2011 February: also known as the ‘farmer’, the Panda is the algorithm
update that changed the search results forever and made marketer, and SEO
professionals stand on their toes to work the rank they desire. Affecting about
12% of all search results, and the web still buzzing about its implications
according to wired.com, the Panda “addressed the growing complaint that low-quality
content sites (derisively referred to as content farms) were ranked higher than
higher-quality sites that seemed to be more important to users. Moz.com also
confirms that:
“It seemed that sites whose pages had fewer and/or less
intrusive blocks of advertisements on
them tended to be in the winner bucket, while those with more and more
intrusive advertising tended to be in the loser group.
Likewise, sites whose UI/design would likely be described as
more modern, high quality, thoughtful and "attractive" were winners
vs. the "ugly" sites that tended to be in the loser bucket.
When it came to user-generated-content (UGC) sites, those
that tended to attract "thin" contributions (think
EzineArticles, Hubpages or Buzzle) lost, while those with richer, often
more authentic, non-paid, and not-intended to build SEO value or links (think
Etsy, DailyMotion, LinkedIn, Facebook) won.
In the "rich content" sector, pages with less
usable/readable/easily-consumable content (think AllBusiness, FindArticles)
tended to lose out to similarly content-rich sites that had made their work
more usable (think LOC.gov, HuffingtonPost)”
The effect of this algorithm on web
marketer and SEO strategies meant that when marketers are creating content,
they now think about the idea of ‘sameness’ (www.searchenginewatch.com, 2013). To
avoid Google’s penalties, they now think about how they are adding value by
asking if what is being written on a topic is something unique from what is in
the result for a query. If not, it perceived bad for Google’s search product
and this is the primary reason panda exists. At
the mention of the algorithm ‘Panda’, cloaking and sneaky redirects as well as
hidden text and keyword stuffing cease. Marketer would also have to stop thin
contents like auto-generated contents, scraped contents as well as user
generated spam like un-moderated comments.
Penguin
2012 April: this update
was also made for a better clean-up for SEO, eliminating sites with webspams,
as well as adjusting keyword stuffing and link schemes.
Another of such update released May 22nd 2013 is a comprehensive
update with more impact on search- the Penguin 2.0; a web spam change dedicated
to finding ‘black hat’ web spam. The purpose of this algorithm for instance
according to Matt Cutts, (Mountain View), is to make sure that search marketers
make a great website that users love and want to tell a friend about, bookmark
and visit over and over again- all the things that make a site compelling.
Google wants to see if that is the marketers’ goal, it also aligns itself with
that goal, making sure that as long as the marketers are working hard for
users, it will work hard to show the marketers’ high quality contents to users
as well (smartinsights.com, 2013).
It
has once been ascertained by Google that “search engine optimization, or SEO,
can be positive and constructive” (insisesearch,
2012). This implies that effective search engine optimization can make a
site more crawlable and make individual pages more accessible and easier to
find. This is an effort that includes things as simple as keyword research to
ensure that the right words are on the page, not just industry jargon that an
average person will never type.
Inherently, by this algorithm, any link intended to manipulate pagerank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google Webmaster guidelines. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to a site or outgoing links from a site. More so, Eric Enge ( president of Stone Temple Consulting) confirmed that this algorithm also affected infographics which have been vastly abused, the key now is to make sure they offer value, be of high value and factual if marketers are going to use them as part of their digital marketing strategy (www.searchenginewatch.com, 2013).
Inherently, by this algorithm, any link intended to manipulate pagerank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google Webmaster guidelines. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to a site or outgoing links from a site. More so, Eric Enge ( president of Stone Temple Consulting) confirmed that this algorithm also affected infographics which have been vastly abused, the key now is to make sure they offer value, be of high value and factual if marketers are going to use them as part of their digital marketing strategy (www.searchenginewatch.com, 2013).
CHAPTER 3
3.1. Methodological
Framework
This
chapter will highlight several research methods adopted in business and
management, highlighting their limitations and give valid justification for the
methods adopted in this study. This chapter would present the methods of data
collection and analysis, and discuss techniques deployed in the study.
Before a methodology is decided on any reseach work, it is
important to have an appropriate and in-depth understanding of what a reseach
is, as well as the concept and idea of a research.
Nicholas Williman (2011) stated in his study that it
is important that a student or practitioner embarking on a programme of
academic or practical research has a clear idea of what the word ‘research’
really means, and clears away any misconceptions that might exist owing to the
word’s common use in other fields as “research
has been a term loosely used in everyday speech to describe a multitude of
activities, such as collecting masses of information, delving into esoteric
theories, and producing wonderful new products” (Williman,
2011)
He also ascertained as highlighted below that the term
‘research’ is not limited to these ways in which it is wrongly used:
Ø As just a gathering of facts or information: it is often
heard of how people say they would do a bit of reseach into a subject or
situation, which usually means a quick reading through a few lines in books or
magazines to get more information about something. Information that could also
be collected through other means such as, by asking questions from people in
the street, or for instance, taking records of number of stores on a major or
popular streets of a city. This kind of activity williman says “may
more accurately be called ‘collection of information’, and can be carried out
in a systematic and thorough way. It certainly can be seen as an important part of research” (Williman, 2011).
Ø Moving
facts from one situation to another: It is often common in report writing how
people had over times say they have done their researches, and come up with
some forms of information which they present in papers. It is easy to collect
information and reassemble it in papers or reports, duly annotated and
referenced, and think of it as reseach. However, even if the work is
meticulously carried out, and brings enlightenment about the subject to the
author and the reader, one vital ingredient of the research process is missing
– the interpretation of the information, one might call this form of activity
‘assembly of information’. This is, as with the collection of information, an
important component of research, but not its entirety.
Ø An
esoteric activity, far removed from practical life: williman concluded to this
point that “While many research projects deal with abstract and theoretical
subjects, it is often forgotten that the activity of research has greatly
influenced all aspects of our daily lives and created our understanding of the
world. It is an activity that is prompted by our need to satisfy our natural
curiosity and our wish to make sense of the world around us” (Williman, 2011).
Ø A
word to get a product noticed: it is common to often hear marketers say ‘years
of painstaking research have produced this revolutionary, labour-saving
product’. According to williman, they habitually use the term ‘research’ in an
“emotive fashion way to impress and build confidence”. One is most likely to be
faced with an incomprehensive, muddled thinking when one asks for evidence of
such research process and methodology; and possibly, it could even be worse
that such product is an outcome of just a guesswork.
However, Saunders et al (2012) defined research as
“something that people undertake in order to find out things in a systematic
way, thereby increasing their knowledge” (Saunders et al, 2012; p 5). It is
also said by Collis and Hussey (2003) to be a process of enquiry and
investigation which is systematic and methodical, which relates to the process
of collecting data in a systematic manner, interpreting data collected,
developing ideas from and with it for the purpose of the study.
There
could be variety of definitions of research which could differ in emphasis and
scope; williman (2011) agreed in his study that one certain thing is that there
are many different opinions about and approaches to research. He added however,
“as a means of achieving a greater comprehension of our world, research
distinguishes itself from the two other basic and more ancient means, those of
experience and reasoning”.
Experience
From
a dictionary meaning experience is the “practical contact with and observation
of facts or events” it could also mean “an event or occurrence which leaves an
impression on someone”. Williman simply puts:
Experience
results
in knowledge and understanding gained either individually or as a group or
society, or shared by experts or leaders, through day-to-day living. The most
immediate form of experience is personal experience, the body of knowledge
gained individually through encountering situations and events in life. When
solutions to problems are not to be found within the personal experience of an
individual, then he or she may turn to those who have wider or more specialist
experience for advice, for example a solicitor in legal matters. Beyond this
are the ‘experts’ who have written books on particular subjects, e.g. health
care or the finer points of playing golf. Knowledge gained from experience
forms an essential aid to our understanding and activities in everyday life.
However, it does have severe limitations as a means of methodically and
reliably extending knowledge and understanding of the world. This is because
learning from experience tends to be rather haphazard and uncontrolled.
Conclusions are often quickly drawn and not exhaustively tested, ‘common sense’
is invoked as self-evident, and the advice of experts is frequently misplaced
or seen as irrelevant. Despite these shortcomings, experience can be a valuable
starting point for systematic research, and may provide a wealth of questions
to be investigated and ideas to be tested.
Reasoning
Williman
(2011) defined reasoning as the method of using logical argument to make
conclusions, where he pointed to three forms of arguments being: deductive,
inductive and the combination of the two which is inductive/deductive argument.
Deductive
argument as refined by Aristotle through his deductive syllogism begins with
general statements, after which it comes to a specific conclusion through
logical argument. He argued however that the “deductive reasoning was found to
be limiting because it could only handle certain types of statement, and could
become increasingly divorced from observation and experience” (Williman, 2011).
“Inductive
argument works the other way round. It starts from specific observations and
derives general conclusions therefrom” (Williman,
2011). “Purely inductive reasoning proved to be unwieldy and haphazard
though, and in practice was rarely applied to the letter” (Williman, 2011).
3.2 Methodology
Saunders
et al (2012) clearly illustrated the process of carrying out a research
methodology with the research onion process.
The
Research Onion
Figure 1.
Source:
Saunders et al (2009)
The
research onion comprises of philosophies, approaches, strategies, choices, time
horizons, techniques and procedures that make up the research design. The
research onion process serves as a guide, and allows for explicit description
of the methods used, and the process of data collection and analysis in this
study.
Saunders
et al (2012) referred to methods as procedures and techniques used in analyzing
and obtaining data which includes observation and interviews, questionnaires as
well as qualitative (non- statistical) and quantitative (statistical) analysis
techniques. Methodology on the other
hand refers to how research should be undertaken; it is in other words a
framework associated with a particular set of paradigmatic assumption which
helps researchers in conducting research (O'Leary,
2004).
According
to Williman (2011), an essential early step in the research process is to find research problems. It is the nature of
these problems that will in its turn, influence the form of research to take.
It is in the effort to find a possible solution or solve these problems that
forms the task in the final sections of the research (Williman, 2011). Furthermore, Saunders et al (2007) discussed it
comprehensively in their study where they cited Robson (2002) that research
questions are an important factor influencing a research project. They further
illustrated that the way one chooses to answer these research questions will be
influenced by the research philosophy and approach. The research questions will
subsequently inform the choice of research strategy, the choice of collection
techniques and analysis procedures, and the time horizon over which the
researcher undertakes the research project (Saunders et al, 2007). They also
explained that the research design will be the general plan of how the
researcher will go about answering the research questions, knowing that the
importance of clearly defining the research questions cannot be overemphasized.
This will contain clear objectives derived from the research questions, specify
the resources from which the researcher intends to collect data, and consider
the constraints that the researcher will inevitably have ( for example, access
to data, time, location and money) as
well as discussing ethical issues.
At
this point there are two interdependent processes toward a comprehensive
methodology which are the design and tactics and it is important to make a
clear distinction between these two; as the former is concerned with the
overall plan of the research, and the later, a finer detail of data collection
and analysis. Decisions about tactics as explained by Saunders et al (2007)
will involve the researcher being clear about the different quantitative and
qualitative data collection techniques (for example, questionnaires, interviews,
focus group, published data).
3.3. Research purpose
Having
ascertained the fact that researchers should think about research project in
terms of the questions they wish to answer and the research purpose, Saunders
et al (2007) further explained that the way a researcher asks research
questions would result in descriptive, descriptive and explanatory, or
explanatory answers. They simply put: in thinking about the research question,
the researcher have inevitably begun to think about the purpose of the
research. The classification of research purpose most often used in the
research methods’ literature is the threefold one of exploratory, descriptive
and exploratory. However, in the same way as the research questions can be both
descriptive and explanatory, so the research project may have more than one
purpose.
Exploratory studies: the
business dictionary calls this form of research an “investigation into a problem
or situation which provides insights to the researcher which may use a variety of methods
such as trial
studies,
interviews, group
discussions, experiments, or other tactics
for the purpose of gaining information” (BusinessDictionary.com,
2013). It seeks to find out happenings, finds new
insights, asking questions and assessing phenomena and trends in a new light.
The major advantage of this type of research is its flexibility and
adaptability to change and it is particularly useful if a researcher wishes to
clarify his understanding of a problem (Saunders et al, 2007)
Descriptive studies:
This study attempts to examine situations in order to establish what is the
norm, i.e. what can be predicted to happen again under the same circumstances (Williman, 2011). Saunders et al (2007)
analyzed that is necessary to have a clear picture of the phenomena on which
the researcher wishes to collect data prior the collection of the data; this
thereby makes the descriptive study an extension of, or a forerunner to the
exploratory or explanatory research as it portrays an accurate profile of
persons, scenario, events or situations (Saunders et al, 2007).
Explanatory studies:
The term explanatory research implies that the research in question is intended
to explain, rather than simply to describe, the phenomena studied (sagepub.com, 2013). The emphasis here is on
studying a situation or a problem in order to explain the relationship between
variables (Saunders et al, 2007).
3.4. Research philosophy
Saunders
et al (2007) defined research philosophy as the comprehensive term that relates
to the development of knowledge and the nature of that knowledge. They concluded that the research philosophy a
researcher adopts is as important as the indication of such researcher’s
assumptions about the way in which he views the world. These assumptions which
they elucidated will underpin the research strategy and methods the researcher
chooses as part of that strategy. More so, research philosophy is mainly
influenced by researcher’s particular view of the relationship between
knowledge and the process by which it is developed.
Four
fundamental research philosophies have been highlighted, which includes;
positivism, constructivism, interpretivism and functionalism (Quinlan, 2011) .Positivism adopts
“philosophical stance of natural scientist” (Saunders et al, 2012; p 134), and
research questions are responded to with quantitative data (Quinlan 2011)
The
interpretivist and constructivist posit that reality is unique to each
individual based on personal experience, circumstances; hence a researcher
would explore beliefs, thoughts and feelings about the phenomenon under
investigation in an individual way (Quinlan 2011).
3.5 Applicable to this research
This
research has adopted the interpretivist philosophy, as the study seeks to
investigate issues within case studies, with an attempt to deduce meaning and
understand reality from the data provided by participants of the research as
opposed to quantitative data collection.
More so, as stated in the reseach proposal, this study will
be partly exploratory and partly descriptive; it will adopt the exploratory
(qualitative) research to allow us a better understanding into the concepts
involved in the subject so as to clarify the nature of the broblems to be
solved. As part of the purpose of this reseach is to know how marketers follow
the Google algorithms, an exploratory
research will help us know what is the trend of events and why it is happening,
through which we can ascertain how variables in the situations (and what is
going on) are related. This part may not necessarily provide the final and conclusive answers to
the SEO problem (as it gives room to other future researcher to further explore
and give more recommendation), but will provide rich and meaningful information
and where necessary will provide definitive explanations of concepts. For
instance, the exploratory research will help us look in detail some of the very
major algorithms and changes Google have made over time, what it (Google)
intended that it (the changes) meant to marketers and how it (Google) wanted
the updates change online maketing strategies- or how Google wanted the
marketers to obey these changes. On the other hand, it will also analyze how
marketers adopted this changes, how it altered their approach to online
marketing and the results that came thereafter.
The exploratory research will be structured to start with
literature search, in which we will rely on books from libraries, online
sources for academic literatures, and
where deemed necessary and relevant we could refer to popular press like
newspapers and magazines. I do believe that at this point, the literature
search would establish enough credible facts; after which there will be dept
interviews to tap knowledge and experience of those that have the information
relevant to this research. Anyone that could have relevant information that
would contribute to achieving the aim and objective of this research will be a
potential candidate for the interview. These may include CEOs, managers of
client organisations, marketing
managers, members of online marketing departments, members of target audience
and so on. Recorded data garthered from these interviews would be transcribed
and analyzed.
I do hope to have credible encounters with as many as
possible organisations in the course of this research, but as at the time this
proposal is being put together, there about specific and strategic organisation
I have proposed to use as case studies, with which I propose to carry out the
interviews.
Chert system solutions owns www.chertcomputers.com. It is a
Nigeria based -pure play- information technology firm, whose business is “distribution
of IT products and implementation of IT solutions in Nigeria and the rest of
Africa, working with resellers, corporate businesses and end-users” (www.chertcomputers.com, 2010). I have chosen to explore the online marketing strategy
and activities of this organisation for couple of reasons. First, because it an
oline retail store in a developing country, second, because of its poor SEO
performance. Being an online store, I thought it should be one of the top and
best rated websites in Nigeria; but in the stead of this, chertcomputers was
ranked as 7,121st website in Nigeria three months ago, and by August it has no
rank or record to be reckorned with (alexa.com, 2013), meaning it has no much
relevance in the region where it operates.
Another organisation I have proposed to meet during the dept
interview is a Nigeria based oil and gas servicing firm that does oil
exploration and production training as well as recruitment and manpower supply-
Danvic Concepts International Nigeria Limited. This research intends to find
out how informed the management of this organisation is about SEO and what form
its online marketing strategies take.
I also intend to
encounter firms in the developed countries in my interviews, and suppose the UK
and USA would be a good bench mark, in which I have proposed to chat with the
online marketing executive(s)/ personnel at the London School of Business and
Finance, and Officelist LLC respectively.
I do believe that comparing these organisations and exploring
their online marketing strategies as well as their SEO trategies will give
insight as to the right and appropriate recommendations to make based on facts,
information and knowledge obtained from my encounter with them.
The descriptive aspect of this research is where I intend to
describe the characteristics of those that follow google algorithm closely and
make their search engine optimisation strategies in reference to the algorithms
in comparison with the characteristics
of firm that are ill informed about these algorithms or do not set their SEO
strategies in line the criteria from Google; and buttressing the points in emphasizing the relationship
that exist between individual criteria or algorithm and specific SEO trategies.
CHAPTER 4
Interviews and findings
This
chapter will discuss the findings of the research from interviews based on the
research questions and objectives. From the research proposal, it has been
established that this study aims to know what
sets the marketer on top of google search lists apart from those that are not
really recognised- to know for instance why ‘www.lsbf.org.uk’ comes first in a
google search for ‘ACCA + MBA in UK’, to know how often these marketers change
their online marketing strategies- if Google
makes up to 500- 600 updates in a year; to know if these marketers
control their SEO in-house by themselves on pay agents to do it for them and
leave the results wholly to the efforts of the agents; in order to learn from
marketers that are doing well in their SEO strategies and to be able to make
recommendations for marketers that are
still strugling with their SEO, based on the knowledge obtained from the
former. In the bid to catch a vast knowledge about the happenings in the
industry, the research study has chosen to examine the acvities of different
companies from different parts of the world through the same set of questions
which are listed below:
1. What
is your organization’s online marketing strategy?
2. Do
you do your digital marketing in-house? Or have you contracted it out to an
agent?
3. Do
you follow Google algorithms in your online marketing strategies and do these
algorithms influence your online marketing strategies?
4. How
informed is your organization about Google algorithms? Please rate yourself
5. Talking
about some of the most significant algorithms like the PANDA, PENGUIN and the
HUMMINGBIRD, how has these algorithms and updates influenced/ shaped your
online marketing activities?
b)
How did you react to these algorithms and updates?
6. Do you
think the cost of internet, civilization and social developments has influenced the results of your SEO
strategies in your target markets? And how?
7. Has your
organization been at any time sanctioned by Google for any misconduct in your
digital marketing activities?
b)
If yes, what did you do wrong? What was the penalty? And how did you correct
the mistakes?
However,
as it was pointed out in the research methodological framework, anyone that could have relevant information that would
contribute to achieving the aim and objective of this research will be a
potential candidate for the interview, which may include CEOs, managers of
client organisations, marketing managers, members of online marketing
departments, members of target audience and so on; and in an effort to go by
the explications in the methodological framework, major interviews were made with the CEO of chert compters; CEO of Danvic
Concepts International Nigeria Limited; head
of SEO and International Search
Development, as well as the regional marketing manager at the London
School of Business and Finance; head of digital marketing department at
Officelist Limited Liability Company and so on, all for the purpose of knowing
how these organizations follow the Google algorithm.
4.1. The organizations
Chert system solutions owns www.chertcomputers.com. It is a
Nigeria based -pure play- information technology firm, whose business is “distribution
of IT products and implementation of IT solutions in Nigeria and the rest of
Africa, working with resellers, corporate businesses and end-users” (www.chertcomputers.com, 2010).
Danvic Concepts International Nigeria Limited’s mission is to be
a leader in Geological and Petroleum Engineering consultancy (www.danvicconcepts.com, 2013). It is a Nigeria based oil and gas servicing firm that
does oil exploration and production training as well as recruitment and
manpower supply.
OfficeList
has placed well over 10,000 companies and professionals at nearly 2,500
locations throughout the US and Canada since its birth in May 2004. It is
majored in servicing offices, also known as office business centers and
executive office suites; and providing furnished, ready-to-move-in office space (www.officelist.com, 2013).
London
School of Business & Finance is an institution that offers industry-focused
programmes designed to reflect global market trends. It attracts students and
candidates from over one hundred and fifty countries worldwide (www.lsbf.org.uk, 2013).
4.2. Reponses and Findings
Online marketing strategies
First
we do plenty of research to always understand what our competitors are doing
and how Google or search engines evolve each day. In terms of advertisement,
our strategy is to invest in pay per click & ads for immediate results, at
the same time and to keep our costs low we do SEO (search engine optimization),
as this is more of a long term investment. To keep our community engaged we
also do social media – Officelist Llc, USA
The overarching Online Marketing
Strategy for LSBF is to increase Brand presence online, in the United Kingdom
and across the Countries that we have identified as geographical areas of
interest from an educational and potential students standpoint.
Looking further into the content
strategy, our main aim is to deliver correct, factual and accurate information
to our new and returning visitors of the LSBF Group collective- LSBF, UK
For the purpose our business, we keep
our website to have an online presence, whereby we can make available the
necessary information about our business and organization as well as updates
about past and upcoming events; not necessarily for sales, but to create
awareness. We also believe that it is an avenue or platform where people can
reach us- Danvic Concepts International Nigeria
Limited.
These responses show
that some of the organisations operate on strong and firm online marketing
strategies while others are frail in their strategies as represented in the
chat below.
Figure
2.
Doing digital marketing in-house or through an SEO agent
It’s a mix of both, most of our
marketing is done in-house but our pay per click campaign is outsourced to an
agency- Officelist Llc, USA
Our Strategies are conceptualized
in-house, as well as some work being completed by our internal teams. We also
do have strategic partners that we enlist the services of in order to bolster
the strategies we have in place across the Brands- LSBF, UK
We
have an in-house team that is in charge of our SEO and from time to time get
the Google analytical reports, and look at the key words analyses, they look at
how we are ranking. Similarly, the pay per click campaign is very much focusing
on the key words and how they are performing for us because obviously those are
what people are searching for and where we need to make sure we are ranking
quite highly- Sarah Challender, LSBF, UK
We
do some of our SEO in-house and we contracted some out; the reason we use the
this strategy is cost of investment and return on investment, in order to get
someone in house with the right expertise and the right training, is going to
take us longer to achieve both the training and understanding what we want to
achieve and the supervision of that person. That time we don’t have; hence, the
reason for contracting out- chert system solutions
We only make updates of information on
our website, which include the news and events for instance. We cannot possibly
contract that out to anyone; that can always be done in-house. If we need to
change the out-look or the graphical user interface of our website, then we can
call on our web designers (which we do not have in-house) and inform them of
what we need to get done, otherwise, we do not have to contract anything that
has to do with updates on our website out to anyone- Danvic Concepts International Nigeria Limited.
Most of the sample companies have mixed
strategies, in which they contract parts their digital marketing and SEO
activities to agents. The pie chart below shows that about 76% of the sample
companies have direct or indirect contributions from outside sources in their
online activities.
Figure 3.
Following
the Google algorithm in online marketing strategies.
Yes, whoever uses Google will be
influenced by its algorithm. We follow its behavior day by day and the
different strategies that we use in SEO are guided by what Google favors-
Officelist Llc, USA
Yes, we do follow the changes that are
from Google in the UK and abroad. We also look at the factors for Bing, Yahoo,
Badoo and Yandex. Due to the changes and
updates across these search engines, we do “tweak” our online marketing
strategies accordingly, however as the Head of SEO and International Search
Development, we still look at content for the users as priority over content
for search engines- LSBF, UK
The
algorithms as you know keep changing, but rather than using algorithms, what we
choose to work with is standard industry practice or best industry practice and
best standard practice in relation to making sure that pages are properly
tagged; like the meta tag and the basic of meta tagging, making sure that the
URL itself correlate with the content of the page. All those are minor works
and those can be done in-house and that is what we do in order to set a
foundation for indexing by Google, just to be sure everything is right
according to what Google wants- chert system solutions
To be honest we do not follow
algorithms, we keep our website as simple as possible with the focus on the
exact purpose and objective for which it was created, and believing it will
provide as much information to the public as we have wanted it to do- Danvic Concepts International Nigeria Limited
As much as it may sound strange to know
that some of the sample companies do not comply by any search engine algorithm
or absolutely indifferent about them, the responses as well as the chart bellow
shows that 50% do their SEO in line with Google algorithms, while 50% do not
either comply or indifferent by Google’s rules.
Figure 4
How
informed are marketers about Google algorithms
I am well informed about developments in
the Search Arena, via friends and influencers in the Digital world as well as
via thought leader friends such as Rand Fishkin and Martin MacDonald. These
changes and developments are pass down to the content producers and curators of
the websites and built into the process at LSBF- LSBF, UK
On a scale of 1 to 10, we’re a 10. It’s
an absolute requirement to be informed; otherwise the company may suffer
penalties or even being excluded from Google, which could mean the loss of
thousands or millions of dollars- Officelist Llc, USA
If I
need to grade our organization, I will say 2 or 3 over 10; Why I said so is
because I know there is a lot of work to be done and from January we are going
to do quite a lot of work and it’s not what we want to do one-off and let go,
it something we have to do constantly. We hope by this time next year we might
in 5 or 6- chert system solutions
The effects of some of the most
significant updates and algorithms like the PANDA, PENGUIN and the HUMMINGBIRD
PANDA 2011 – This affected sites that
were low quality or seeded sites that scraped content from other more
authoritative sites. The domains owned by LSBF and collective Brands were not
negatively affected by these updates and actually some of our domains showed an
improvement in rank due to the “clutter” being removed from the listings,
reaction to the update was pragmatic and responsive where there was a major
change in the traffic or rank.
PEGUIN 2012 – This was directly toward
sites that employ techniques that are not seen as White hat or ethically
acceptable, in short black hat sites were penalized. Link Directories and
schemes were negatively hit. LSBF’s link policy is quality relationships and
partnerships as priority and as such our marketing campaigns were actually
stronger due to the ethical tactics we employ in our activities. We monitored
our link profile for the domains and where there were fluctuations, analyzed
the change and were able to make changes accordingly.
HUMMINGBIRD 2013 – This is a new
algorithm from Google that in short “Answers your long questions better”.
Semantic Search is an area that I have always been working toward with micro
schema and correct markup language and attributes. As with all schema, we
continue to improve our semantic search related content and markup in order to
improve our search engine presence. Hummingbird has made us reassess our
content strategy and amend “how people” and “what people” are searching on
Google and our site. The insights gained from site search and keyword data has
allowed us to improve our visibility for direct questions and long tail search.
For example undergraduate vs. bachelor’s degree and how as part of
internationalization we use these terms accordingly- LSBF, UK
Google
has just recently launched a new algorithm called Hummingbird, and that has
again changed the way we are looking at content, and it is now very much
focusing on the kind of questions consumers ask when they are coming to do a
search. So obviously, we amend the contents all across our different programs.
This is very much about trying to put ourselves in the customers’ shoe really;
so if for instance they are looking for ACCA courses in Manchester, what are
the key things and the key point of information they want to find quickly and
how we can make our content relevant and maybe different to other providers
around us. When we look at the ranking, we come up quite high Sarah Challender,
LSBF, UK
Each algorithm update is meant to
improve the quality of results and combat spam. Sometimes what used to be right
is now wrong and “good” companies have also been hit by those updates, not only
spammers. Penguin focused on those who had links from bad neighborhoods and
those that were involved in bad practices. As for Panda, it was aimed at bad
design or low quality sites. Hummingbird
didn’t hit many sites, but in means a big revolution in terms of search as it
gives less relevance to specific keywords and aims more in the semantic meaning
of the search. Every time an algorithm update is launched we update our
strategy to make sure we comply with Google’s regulations and we were more
focused on quality rather than quantity, so we shifted in that sense. We also
gave priority to content and to social media which has won importance-
Officelist Llc, USA
I as
a person or our in-house team we may not know much specifically about these
updates and algorithm, but like I said, what we choose to work with is standard
industry practice or best industry practice and best standard practice as far
as links, contents and site quality are concerned. As for links, depends on who
you speak to and how upstate the information available is, the general
consensus with back links is that they no longer work the way they use to. Back
links is now almost irrelevant, because it is now very easy for you to cheat,
and if you can cheat the system, then the system is not really serving well. So
with back links, its not our priority and we generally do not focus on them;
but when it comes to key words, I know we have to work more on key words, but
we did work actively on key words for four months, hence we noticed some
changes positively and there some key words we have worked on for almost a year
and we always get good results on those key words; but there are other key
words we worked on them for a short time, we got good results but we stopped
working on them. Why we do that is
because of the nature of our business and because we have lots of products, we
are constantly re-defining what we focus on at every point in time. We might
focus on a product for one quarter and we change to another product for another
quarter; and we focus on some key words for a year. We are ensuring the site
URL sinks with our meta tags, data descriptions, making sure it links with the
content within the page and making sure everything tallies; and when it comes
to the usability and the site itself, we have improved the site in the last
five months; in as far as we can go, we have done fairly better on that, I know
there is more to do though.
For
contents, Our contents are dynamic contents in the sense that they relate to a
particular product. so, the name of a product is the content of the product,
you can’t really manipulate or play around with it, all you have to do is to
make sure that the contents correlate with the meta tag, the title, the link
and be sure everything sinks together; and for site quality, our site quality
is good. It can be improved I know, but again, everything goes down to ‘what is
the return on the investment’. Every site can always be improved if it is worth
it- chert system solutions
The effects of cost of internet, civilization and social developments on results of SEO strategies
YES,
100% in agreement that the internet, globalization, social media along with
digital collectively is directly related to how our SEO and digital strategies
are implemented. In the age of free
information and the information overload, we know and need to understand that
our content is global, some marketed to specific demographics and geographic
areas and as such we make sure we are on the pulse in social media, across
multiple platforms in multiple countries and tailored to specific demographics.
It
is very difficult to detail specific “hows” however I can say that more
holistic, conjoined, robust and targeted strategies are in place at LSBF in
order to be “in the game” with the rapid developments within www, social,
mobile. We cannot and do not look at channel, brand and keyword in silo, but
collectively across the brands, the Halo effect and as well as attribution
modeling due to the Universal landscape users are exposed to within Search
Media- LSBF, UK
It
is really a big factor, because we work in an environment where the internet is
used, however, but not very well understood. More so, the internet is still
very expensive in Nigeria. Although there is a lot and big usage, but its
expensive and even those that use it don’t understand the main concept of
searching, so, they don’t understand how to search effectively, in short there
is a lot of stuff about the internet they don’t understand. For instance if you
do you SEO well and you get on a bottom of the first page or even the second
page on the organic search result, you are still good. However, because this
market do not really understand the significant of the first page, to them if
you are not at the very top screaming them, you don’t get their attention. I
suppose if you are looking for something in a search, you will take your time
to look through the first page in the search result, and possibly the second
page; but in our market, you need to be right in their face before they notice
you. More so, the level of sophistication of the Nigerian sites is still
under-developed and because most of the sites in Nigeria are not hosted in
Nigeria; they are either hosted in the UK or USA which also has an impact on
the result Nigerians get in their online search, so, if you use Google Nigeria
and you try to search for an item, the tendency of you getting results from the
UK and USA is higher than getting a local content. Putting all these together,
you need to constantly think of how to be at the very top of the search result
pages where you can be easily seen through tools like the Google ads; Google ad
words and it likes become very important in order to be able to reach your
target market.
If
you for instance are searching for something, you need to know what you are
searching for. Some people in this market search for stuffs and they don’t
understand what they are searching for, and so if you don’t present yourself in
a place where they can easily see you, they might not even bother looking for
you- chert system solutions
Facing sanctions from Google
Non
that I am aware of, because we are regulated by the quality assurance
authority; and we just had a review and the part is that we have to adhere to
public information policy and so everything we publish on the website is
checked internally by the marketing team, checked by academics to make sure
that the content we are giving to people is right, so as far as I am aware we
have never had any issues with sanction- Sarah Challender, LSBF, UK
No,
we have not been sanctioned by Google for Misconduct, not in my tenure here at
least and not that I am aware of. We have previously been penalized for
duplication of content, which we on a regular basis perform our due diligence
in order to negate and reduce the possibility of being penalized. We are also
regulated by Educational Bodies where we abide by a strict code and best
practice- LSBF, UK
Being
sanctioned or receiving a penalty is very different to being hit by an update.
If Google penalizes a site, it will disappear from the search engine, it will
not rank and it will take several months, even years to recover. Being hit
means your site is less relevant to Google, thus is will lose rankings but it
will not disappear. Yes, we were hit by penguin and as mentioned above, we
focused on content and gave more relevance to social media- officelist, USA
Chapter 5
Analyses and Conclusion
This
chapter presents the analyses and discussion of findings from the interviews
and responses from the previous chapters. These analyses are framed around the
themes as they emerged from the interviews and responses. More so, this chapter
presents suggestions and conclusion to the findings of the research work.
Some
of the themes in the findings (if not most of them) are such as triggered by
the research and interviews questions; thus, discussions in this chapter are
still going to be reflections (to a great extent) of the interview questions
and frame work; such as, companies’ online marketing strategies that compel
them to (or not to) follow Google algorithms; the position and contribution of
SEO agents/companies; how much information marketers have about Google
algorithms and how they (marketers) follow them; Panda, Penguin, Humming bird
and their influences on online marketing activities; the effect of the cost of
internet, civilization and social development on marketers’ SEO strategies; and
how online marketers make corrections on their misconducts; as these in no
doubt are the factors most responsible for page ranking and the differences
between the good and the bad as far as organizations’ SEO strategies and
successes are concerned.
5.1. Online marketing strategies.
As
strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a goal (either long-term or
short-term) or overall aim, it is the factor responsible for the decision of
steps to be taken to achieve the planned goals. In the encounters and
interviews made in the course of this research, it is apparent that companies’
online marketing strategy is one significant determinant of how much marketers
would follow Google algorithms. As much as it is the desire of most marketers
to be ranked high in search result, as much as they (marketers) mostly make
efforts to be relevant in search results, some really do not care as they tend
to tie their carefree attitude about these algorithms to the excuses of ‘nature
of business’, which (according to the interview with Danvic Concepts
International Nigeria Limited) does not necessarily require them obey Google.
Comparing her (Danvic Concepts International Nigeria Limited) statement with
LSBF’s online marketing strategy;
‘For the purpose our business, we keep our
website to have an online presence, whereby we can make available the necessary
information about our business and organization as well as updates about past
and upcoming events; not necessarily for sales, but to create awareness. We
also believe that it is an avenue or platform where people can reach us’- Danvic Concepts International Nigeria Limited
‘The
overarching Online Marketing Strategy for LSBF is to increase Brand presence
online, in the United Kingdom and across the Countries that we have identified
as geographical areas of interest from an educational and potential students
standpoint.
Looking
further into the content strategy, our main aim is to deliver correct, factual
and accurate information to our new and returning visitors of the LSBF Group
collective’- LSBF, UK
From
the statements above, it clear that the strategies state the difference. While
the likes of Officelist Llc, USA make researches to always understand what her
competitors are doing and how Google or other search engines evolve each day,
Danvic Concepts International Nigeria Ltd. sees her website as a mere online
presence and a platform for business and organization updates; and thus, the
results are apparently worlds apart.
Figure 5
Google search engine result
page for ‘acca+ mba in UK’
5.2. The contribution of SEO companies
For
financial reasons and the logistics of doing SEO in- house as well as the
purpose of cost of investment and return on investment, companies contract
their SEO activities out to SEO agents. As chert system solutions rightly made
clear, to get someone in-house with the right expertise and the right training,
it may take longer time to achieve both the training and understanding of what
the organization wants to achieve; and the supervision of that person,
organizations may not readily have that time.
More
so, Search Engine Optimization companies support Cherts System Solutions’
assertion as ‘SEOTONIC’ confirms in its
statement that “ today with the fast galloping of the technology developments
many organizations opt for in-house SEO, which is okay, as long as you are
fully equipped for it, and are willing to put people who will remain solely
responsible for this task 24x7. Unlike common belief, SEO is not a task that
can be done in bits and pieces. Neither it is something that can be done once
and forgotten. SEO, in simple language, is a way of life. The department/
personnel in charge of SEO will be the DJ at the discotheque. You have to keep
your hand on the pulse every second. The time involved, the expertise required,
the intense follow-up in terms of continuous analysis of results and
fine-tuning the web-design and contents involves a great deal of effort and
focus. This usually, is not possible from an internal platform” (www.seotonic.com, 2013), Hence, the reason for
contracting out.
Chert
System Solutions had at one time tried to experiment the relevance and
importance of SEO companies when it decided to bring it SEO in-house, and it
testimony was: “we noticed a good increase in traffic when we used the SEO
companies and ever since we stopped, we have noticed a decrease in traffic. SEO
agents, in most cases are experts as they are well experienced and seem to be
dedicated to their clients. In choosing the right SEO agent however,
organizations may have to examine two more different ones to ascertain that
whoever understands its methodology, whoever understands its approach and its
strategy to the market, is the kind they want to out-source their SEO to.
5.3. How much Google do
marketers know?
According
to SEOmoz, Google changes its search algorithm around 500–600 times each and
“for search marketers, knowing the dates of these Google updates can help
explain changes in rankings and organic website traffic and ultimately improve
search engine optimization” (www.moz.com, 2013).
More so, there are many components (as analyzed by Google) to the search
process and the results page, and Google constantly updates its technologies
and systems to deliver better results (www.google.com,
2013).
Marketers
with intensions to be relevant and be ranked high already know these and play
by the rules; Officelist Llc, USA made it clear that it is an absolute
requirement to be informed, otherwise the company may suffer penalties or even
being excluded from Google, which could mean the loss of thousands or millions
of dollars; and ultimately, whoever uses Google will be influenced by its
algorithm. It (Officelist Llc, USA) therefore follows Google’s behavior day by
day and the different strategies that it uses in SEO are guided by what Google
favors. It is shocking however to have
found out that the CEO of a pure play organization (Chert system Solutions)
knows nothing about Google updates or any other updates from other search
engines. The company had rated itself 2 out of 10 and it became also apparent
during the course of the interview that the organization does not really have a
well defined and sustained online marketing strategy. It may have sounded
ridiculous or cheeky to conclude that the organization operates without clear
plans or to say it operates without clues; but a proper assertion is evident in
its ranking and how ‘alexa’ had rated the organization (as pointed out earlier
in this research work).
On
the other hand, for LSBF to have had 88%
increase ( as rated by alexa.com) in search visits (the percentage of
visits to a site that comes from a search engine) in the last three months is
in no doubt as a result of capable hands in its SEO that are not only well
informed about developments in the Search Arena through friends and influencers
in the Digital world but also make efforts to follow thought leader such as
Rand Fishkin ( the wizard of MOZ) and Martin MacDonald (a well known digital
marketer and popular writer about SEO, PPC and social medial marketing), whose
influences are passed down to the content management department, curators of
the website and are built into the process of following the changes from Google
in the UK and abroad. It also looks at the factors for Bing, Yahoo, Badoo and
Yandex; and as a result of the frequent changes and updates across these search
engines, LSBF does “tweak” its online marketing strategies accordingly.
However, according to the Head of SEO and International Search Development,
LSBF still looks at content for the users as priority over content for search
engines.
5.4. Google updates and
their influences on online marketing activities
From
‘Boston’ the first named update in February 2003, Google has dominated the
online search, making combinations of algorithm changes and index refreshes to
always make improvement to search that answers the users’ information need as
fast as possible, so that there is almost a seamless connection between
searchers’ thought, the information they need and the search result that they
find (www.google.com, 2013). To achieve
its goal, Google will only present information from marketers that it considers
most relevant to searchers’ need; and relevance to Google is a function of how
much these marketers follow it algorithms.
For
the purpose of this research work, timing, contemporary and the popularity of
the algorithms, the Panda, Penguin and the Humming bird are considered three of
the most significant algorithms, as these three updates have had great impact
on SEO as much as site quality, contents/keywords and links are concerned.
According to the diagram below, these three components are responsible for over
57% of the factors Google considers in how it ranks websites.
Figure 6
Source:
www.businessmarketingblog.org
These are update that changed the search results forever and
made marketers and SEO professionals stand on their toes to work the rank they
desire. Each
algorithm update is meant to improve the quality of results and combat spam.
Sometimes what used to be right is now wrong and “good” companies have also
been hit by those updates, not only spammers.
As
for examples of how they affect “good” companies and how they respond to these
updates, the testimonies from the interviews show how some companies keep up
with the updates and why their results are proportionate to the efforts their
they put in.
While Officelist Llc. updates its strategy
every time an algorithm update is launched to make sure it complies with
Google’s regulations, LSBF has policies guiding its practices as related to
each of these updates. Although as far as the PANDA is concerned, the domains
owned by LSBF and collective Brands were not negatively affected by these
updates and actually some of its domains showed an improvement in rank due to
the “clutter” being removed from the listings, it’s policy on links and ‘PENGUIN’
is quality relationships and partnerships as priority and as such its marketing
campaigns were actually stronger due to the ethical tactics it employs in its
activities. LSBF monitored its link profile for the domains and where there
were fluctuations, analyzed the change and were able to make changes
accordingly. It also continues to improve its semantic search related content
and markup in order to improve its search engine presence and the ‘HUMMINGBIRD’
has made it reassess its content strategy and amend “how people” and “what
people” are searching on Google and its site. The insights gained from site
search and keyword data (according to head of SEO and International Search
Development) has allowed LSBF to improve its visibility for direct questions
and long tail search. For example undergraduate vs. bachelor’s degree and how
as part of internationalization it uses these terms accordingly.
5.5. The effects of cost of internet,
civilization and social developments on results of SEO strategies
It
is no news that the world in its entirety has gone digital and as such
marketing has followed the trend, as marketing has thus advanced into
organization or brand using one or more of the various digital channels or
distribution means e.g. computers, smart phones/ mobile phones, and/or other
digital devices (Smith, 2012), all driven by the
internet. However, the the interview with the CEO of Chert System Solution
shows that organisations in developing counrties still lack behind in the
technological trend as internet is still expensive in these parts of the world
and thereby slowing down the rate and speed at which informationtion is made available
to the market via the internet. As much as Chert System Solutions agrees that
it is really a big factor, LSBF confirms that the internet,
globalization, social media along with digital collectively is directly related
to how its SEO and digital strategies are implemented. The LSBF approach to this issue is different though, as stated in the
interview with the head of SEO and International Search Development, “In
this age of free information and the information overload, we know and need to
understand that our content is global, some marketed to specific demographics
and geographic areas and as such we make sure we are on the pulse in social
media, across multiple platforms in multiple countries and tailored to specific
demographics”. However, according to chert system solutions, marketer in
developing countries work in an environment where the internet is used, but not
very well understood; this it tries to make clear as it explains: Although
there is a lot and big usage, but it’s expensive and even those that use it do
not understand the main concept of searching, so, they don’t understand how to
search effectively, in short there is a lot of stuff about the internet they
don’t understand. For instance, if you do your SEO well and you get on a bottom
of the first page or even the second page on the organic search result, you are
still good. However, because this market does not really understand the
significant of the first page, to them if you are not at the very top screaming
at them, you don’t get their attention. He further explains: I suppose if you
are looking for something in a search, you will take your time to look through
the first page in the search result, and possibly the second page; but in our
market, you need to be right in their face before they notice you. More so, the
level of sophistication of the Nigerian sites (and especially in developing
countries) is still under-developed and because most of the sites in these
countries are not hosted locally; they are either hosted in the UK or USA which
also has an impact on the result the local market get in their online search,
so, if you use Google Nigeria (for example) and you try to search for an item,
the tendency of you getting results from the UK and USA is higher than getting
a local content. Putting all these together, you need to constantly think of
how to be at the very top of the search result pages where you can be easily
seen through tools like the Google ads; Google ad words and it likes become
very important in order to be able to reach the target market.
5.6. My assertions
Online presence or visibility in its maximum for businesses
today is more than ever not just the marketing concern and nesessary support to
the primary activities or operation of an organisation. To remain relevant and competitive in
business of this age, organisations must be easy to find on the internet. If
not, you then can bet that such business is gradually heading to becoming
unknown, and thus, obsolete. One of the very important ways to keep a good
online presence and be found easily on the internet is to be ranked high in the
organic search results of search engines and Google especially. Vinny La
Barbera stated in a journal that “Over 85% of all transactions start online and
the organic results receive 65% more clicks than the sponsored results, thus
making search engine optimization a crucial
part of your marketing plan” (www.businessmarketingblog.org, 2013).
We may need to hold on and think for
ourselves, where do we go first whenever there is need for any information? I
would most likely go to the search engines and particularly Google. We may then
need to ask ourselves how many times or how often do we click on any other
thing asides the organic list; or how often do we go click on search results
past the first page? If you would think like I would, or like most of the
search engines users, you are not like to click more than the first page and in
most cases, the top 5 in the organic result. Thus, the reason businesses need a
strong SEO campaigns to help their sites get good ranking organically.
5.7. Conclusion
What does Google want?
With
about 35 percent of the world population available on the internet (internetworldstats.com, 2012), and millions of
marketer competing for (online) space and attention, Google and other search
engines have had to set guidelines and criteria to determine how these marketers
work their own space and rank for specific phrases and keywords. The primary purpose of all of its algorithm
is to be certain that the best and the most relevant information made are
available to consumers during every search and as such made the criteria listed
below, amongst others, determinant of how websites are ranked in the top
organic results. In other words, the more marketers and website owner are able
play by these criteria, the better ranking they get.
Content: Andrieu
(2009) did conclude that the act and practice of SEO is all in the reflection
of the popular saying that on the web, Content is King, and that whoever is in
the pursuit of good ranking by any of the search engines will not underestimate
the need to follow couple of rules and give their websites some rich and
interesting contents. More so, business marketing blog (2013) puts it that the
search results and especially the organic list are all about trust; Google
wants consumers to get only most trusted results to meet their queries and
information needs. “Anything less may lead to a bad experience and one less
user. For this reason, the search engines put a lot of emphasis and weight on
how good and how much content a website has. Contents (the actual text, images,
links and videos) need to be extremely relevant, high quality, authoritative
and unique to a website. Anything less will make it very difficult for the
website to ever compete with well ranked websites” (www.businessmarketingblog.org, 2013). This is not farfetched from
the interview response of the regional marketing manager at the London School
of Business and Finance where she says the organization is very much focused on
the kind of questions consumers ask when they search, thereby trying to put
itself in the customers’ shoe and as such amending its contents to be relevant
to the services it offers and to the need of the customers.
Links: “Just as, if not
more important than content in some cases, is link popularity. This is
basically a gauge of how authoritative and relevant a website is as seen by
other websites” (www.businessmarketingblog.org,
2013). www.amazon.com has about
993,980 sites liking in (according to alexa.com) and ranks 8 in the world,
little wonders why it is an authority in international electronic commerce
industry. Vinny La Barbera further explained in her study that “The more links
to a website from other relevant, quality and authoritative websites, the
higher the link popularity becomes and thus, the higher the organic rankings
will climb. As the first pages of the search engines’ results continue to get
more competitive, websites absolutely must have solid link building plan to
continuously build its link popularity” (www.businessmarketingblog.org,
2013).
Good website
Architecture: “Website
architecture, as popularly defined is an approach to the design and planning of
websites which, like architecture itself, involves technical, aesthetic and
functional criteria. Site architecture is one of those things that traditionally
never happen more than simply writing a few words about having a homepage,
categories, products, job done e.t.c” (www.spottedpanda.com,
2012), more so, there are certain elements that must be in place for a
website to be considered as a candidate for top natural placement. Some of
these elements include optimized title tags, meta tags, image tags, and much
more (www.businessmarketingblog.org, 2013)
Basically,
getting it right at the start is
crucial to the long term strategy of a website. A good website structure that
is user friendly, easy to navigate and designed with passing link juice in mind
will all aid in increasing rankings and driving conversions later down the line
(www.spottedpanda.com, 2012).
Domain Authority: According to MOZ domain authority is the “prediction for how a website will
perform in search engine rankings” (www.moz.com,
2013), Brick Marketing also puts that it is the “measure of the power of
a domain name and is one of many search engine ranking factors” and it is based
on factors like the age, size and popularity. It also explained that “domain
age is an indicator of trust because it proves to the search engines that the
website has longevity. If the website owner has maintained registration of a
website consistently and has generated an increase in traffic to that domain
over time, the search engines conclude that it must serve a purpose and be a
trusted source”. Domain popularity is measured in part by the number of inbound
links from quality sites that a domain has. Inbound links to a domain are a
signal that that website has useful information that is worth sharing. This is
why a white hat SEO link building campaign is so important. Tactics such as
blogging and blog commenting, press release distribution, directory and profile
submission, article marketing, and social media help to build inbound links to
a domain and generate traffic over time.
The
size of a website on a domain contributes towards its authority because the
number of pages that exists on a domain correlate with the amount of content
that can generate inbound links. A larger website with quality content on each
page will have more inbound links than a smaller website.
Website
Accessibility:
To some, website accessibility means having equal access to
web-based information and services regardless of physical or developmental
abilities or impairments (John Hopkins University,
2008). As much as this is true, it is also about how much search engines
are able to find and read contents on the website and making sure that there
are no hidden contents, incorrect use of robots.txt files or “noindex” tags or
implementing any other barriers that may prevent search engines’ free crawl on
websites.
Usability:
This
refers to how much a user can interact with a website which is one of the things to consider in
the process of building a new website; furthermore, websites need to be
attractive enough to it users to want to keep looking at it.
According
Thomas Churm (2012), “usability is comprised of learnability, memorability,
efficiency, satisfaction and errors. Learnability is how easy it is for a new
user to accomplish tasks the first time they visit a website. Memorability is
how easy it is for someone to come back to using your website after they
haven’t used it for a period of time. Efficiency is how quickly users can
complete tasks on your site after they are familiar with its use. Satisfaction
is whether users enjoy the design of the site and errors refers to the number
of errors users make when they use your site, the severity of the errors and
how easy they are to recover from it” (Churm,
2012).
On-Page Optimization – “As smart as the search engines
continue to get, they still rely on proper on-page optimization of websites to
determine how relevant certain web pages are to specific key terms and phrases.
Using keywords correctly in the proper places (title tags, urls and anchor text
links) continue to help web pages to perform well” (www.businessmarketingblog.org, 2013).
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Appendix
Dear
Sir/Madam,
Re: Research Participation
Let me take this
opportunity to introduce myself, my name is Yomi Fajemidagba and I am currently
studying for MSc – Strategic Marketing from London Metropolitan University at LSBF-Manchester
Campus. As part of my degree program I am required to undertake a Thesis, which
is research based study.
I would really
appreciate your valuable participation in my research study on SEO strategies
from Google. The purpose of this
research is pure academic and the results will be kept highly confidential and
will never be shared with any one. The aim of my research study is to
understand how professional marketers follow Google algorithms and how they
affect their organisations online marketing strategies.
The letter is to secure
your consent by signing at the bottom to indicate that you have understood the
purpose of the interview and that you will voluntarily take part in the series
of interviews for the mentioned purposes.
Thank you very much for
participating, it really will help me in my research study!
Student’s Signature
& Date YOMI FAJ 4/11/2013
Interviewee’s Signature