Backlink update for 2014

We often get asked, what is a good backlink and how can I avoid bad links?

The answer to this is easy. A good link is one that gets indexed and a bad link is one that does not.

There are two things we know for sure:

1. A good link will improve your ranking.
2. A bad link will not harm your ranking.

We blogged about the misconception of a bad link back in April and we have certainly seen what we thought was happening happen. So let’s look at what Google say in their webmaster guidelines.

“In some circumstances, incoming links can affect Google’s opinion of a page or site. First and foremost, we recommend that you remove as many spammy or low-quality links from the web as possible."

What's interesting is how none committal Google are when it comes to the affect that bad links will have (see where we have marked the test red). Our believe is that they are creating a hysteria surrounding links in order to convince people that link building should not be done and any links you have built should be removed.

What we know is that backlinks are still the most important off-site factor when it comes to ranking. We also know that Google uses a robot to find and index these links. So, with current technology it would be so hard for Google to decipher whether a backlink is bad or not, they could make a guess but this is not something that they would be able to rank people lower on. Also, if bad links lowered ranking there would be a whole industry of bad link building to competitor’s websites and Google could not allow that.

So in the words of Ferris Beulah “we’ve said it before, but we’ll say it again” a bad link will not lower your ranking, it just won’t move it higher.

Our core SEO product fuses perfectly the important on-site work with a low frequency manual link building strategy that will give your site the maximum ranking benefit without any chance of being penalised by any search engine.

Twitter Ads. Live update!

So, Twitter has today rolled out a new advertising platform allowing advertisers to connect with potential new clients via their network.

In their e-mail to user they stated:

Watch your business take off. Twitter Ads gives you the power to:

Increase followers
Target your messaging
Reach wider audiences

Sounds great, doesn't it? It is.

...But is it?

We like to test any new advertising platform early in order to assess if it's worth adding as a managed feature to our existing product range. In the past we tested Facebook Ads. The results were pretty poor and as a result we decided to shelve any roll out of managed Facebook advertising services. We only want to offer our clients products that we feel can really have an impact. We felt that Facebook Ads were only good for generating more "likes" but then our unique like to follow product does this already, and it's free!

So, what about Twitter Ads?

We launched a campaign this morning. We created 3 campaigns targeting potential SEO resellers and also direct SEO clients. We only targeted the UK and selected to only target users on laptops or PCs. Initial results have been fairly positive. Here are the stats across all 3 campaigns:

Number of impressions: 6,325
Number of engaments (clicks or follows): 70
Total spend: £50

Do we recommend it?

It's very early days but so far the results are pretty good and it's not too expensive. The question though long term will be, does the traffic convert? We intend to test this further over the next 14 days and then make a decision on whether to offer this to our clients.

We hope that this offers you an insight in to this brand new roll out from Twitter and also the diligence we apply to any new advertising platform before we offer it across to our clients.

Home is NOT where your site lives!

Over the last few months we conducted a survey and amazingly 22.2% of our last 500 new client’s home pages had the page title of just the word “home”. Now, on the basis that there are over 650 million websites online, this means that roughly 143 million websites have the page title “home” on their index page, making the word “home” probably the most competitive keyword on Google!

Imagine if the search results on Google looked like this...




The beauty of our core SEO product is we miss nothing. Whether it’s a basic on-site error that takes you a few minutes to fix (see the SEO analyser), or complex link building that we conduct on your behalf, you know that your site has the best chance of success with us managing the process.

We use techniques developed over years with the emphasis on assisting the search engines to find your website and appreciate its relevance, which is a technique fully endorsed by Google themselves.

Funny SEO email!

Check out this hilarious e-mail that someone from Google HQ received. It's 100% authentic because the head Google’s webspam team, Matt Cutts, blogged about it!


I was on your website www.google.com and wanted to shoot you a quick note. I think I can make a few changes (aesthetically and/or SEO – wise) to make your site convert more visitors into leads and to get it placed higher in the organic search results, for a few of the select terms.

This is NOT like one of those foreign emails you probably get in your inbox every day. Just to be upfront I have 3 agents that work with me for development /SEO.

I would just need to know which (if not both) services you’re open to checking out information about, either web design or SEO. Would you be open to seeing more brief info / quote for what I would like to accomplish?

Regards,
XXXXXX XXXXX


At Click Submit we've honestly never made a cold sales call / e-mail. Our philosophy has always been to focus on innovation, support and keeping the price right, which thankfully means people come to us directly. We are however yet to get a direct call from Google needing help!!!

Breaking news. Google intensify EMD update.

This morning we're seeing a trend across our client base of over 2,500 SEO campaigns.

Any of our clients with exact match domains are seeing fairly dramatic falls in their ranking. On the flip side we are also seeing a trend of our clients with non exact match domains seeing good ranking improvements as Google further levels the playing field on descriptive domains and put more emphasis on content / high PR backlinks.

Although this is an annoying update for anyone with an exact match domain, we do welcome this change. It only seems fair when exact match domains are impossible to get hold of (unless you can afford to buy one on the resell market) that Google focuses more on what people have on their website and how relevant the general internet population feel it is with backlinks.

If you're an existing client and have any questions or concerns relating to this update then please get in touch.

Google launches its latest "Hummingbird" algorithm

Google have secretly launched its latest "Hummingbird" algorithm in a bid to keep pace with the evolution of internet usage, Amit Singhal, senior vice president, said.

Google is describing it as the most dramatic alteration to its search engine since it revised the way it indexes websites three years ago.

As search queries get more complicated, traditional keyword-based systems begin deteriorating because of the need to match concepts and meanings in addition to words.

Mr Singhal, writing in a separate blog post, said: "Remember what it was like to search in 1998? You'd sit down and boot up your bulky computer dial up on your squawky modem, type in some keywords, and get 10 blue links to websites that had those words.

"The world has changed so much since then: billions of people have come online, the web has grown exponentially, and now you can ask any question on the powerful little device in your pocket."

"Hummingbird" is the company's effort to match the meaning of queries with that of documents on the internet, said Mr Singhal from the Menlo Park garage where Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin conceived their now-ubiquitous search engine.









Once again “Hummingbird” confirms that we have been on the right track for some time. Over a year ago we released our unique search term checker where you can enter a search term in order to check its impact time frame. This works by looking at many elements of a search term but one key element it checks is the length and how specific a search term is in order to get faster more targeted results.

Our search term checker is available on the home page and sign page of the site.

Over 1,000 connections and counting!

We’re very excited to announce that since the launch of Connect just a month ago there have been over a thousand connections between our clients.

Our commitment is to add value to our core SEO product or in other words, develop new unique products at no additional cost to our clients and connect is another example of this, a zero cost product driving more business to our clients!

For more information about connect check out the video: