5 SEO predictions for 2014

We’re always trying to predict what the search engines and social networks are going to do next in order for our 3,000+ clients to stay ahead of the game. Here are our tips for 2014.

1. More emphasis on social signals. The curve started in 2013 and we feel that social signals are going to become progressively important during 2014. At the moment, the more likes / follows you have the better. What we’re starting to see are the quality of your likes / follows making a difference. A little bit like the evolution of back link quality we are now seeing this with like and follow quality.

2. Facebook’s slide? There are some early signs that Facebook maybe on the slide. Their user base under the age of 18 is declining. Maybe 2014 will be a year for a new social network to shine.

3. On-site content. Quality not quantity. Our feeling is that press releases are a waste of time unless you are press releasing for the right reason. If you really do have some news then a press release is great but the days of press releasing in order to build relevant backlinks are over. These are not being taken in to account as much by the search engines.

4. Conversational backlinks. The search engines what to rank sites higher that people are talking about. Therefore, links that are embedded in to forum / blog conversation are being treated as high quality and we’re seeing really good results when links are built in this way. It’s also very organic as long as the link is relevant to the conversation. This is now our rapid backlinks are built.

5. Discount based search engines. It may sound like a plug for connect but we do feel that discount based search engines, where the ranking is based on the level of discount and loyalty that a user shows to the community, will start to take off more in 2014. Why wouldn’t you search where you get the best deal first?

So, there our tips for 2014! Let’s see if we’re right.

From all the team at Click Submit, have a fantastic new year's eve and a profitable 2014!

A time for giving!

Instead of sending Christmas cards, this year we decided to donate the money to Macclesfield Childrens Hospital. Yesterday a donation of £1,000 was made to the hospital. It was greatly received and we couldn't have done it without all of our fantastic clients!

Here's to a relaxing Christmas and productive 2014!

317,174 likes and follows exchanged!

You may already be aware that we publish all of our system stats. We believe in transparency and therefore publish and refresh our site wide stats on a 24 hour basis.

Over the coming months we have decided to use the blog to go a little more in-depth on each of these stats, starting with the number of likes and follows exchanged via our like to follow system.

This statistic shows how many times our users (that are opted in to like to follow) have liked and followed each other via Twitter and Facebook. When we first started reporting these stats we were blown away. We knew that it was a popular system but had no idea how popular it had become.

Since launch our cients have exchanged over 317,000 likes and follows with over 1,000 now being exchanged everyday!

The key to its popularity is the way it's offered. You don't have to like and follow everyone. You choose to like and follow, or remove a site from the list. This means the system does not breach any of the rules set by Facebook / Twitter in the way you gain likes and follows. That means the likes and follows are highly regarded because they are from other vibrant socially active businesses and individuals, and the best bit...

Like to follow is included for free as part of our core SEO product.

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!!!