Google PageRank Shuts to the Public

Google has officially shut down toolbar PageRank to the general public. Meaning, internally Google will still be using the data, but it will no longer be visible to the public.

By all accounts this change happened on Friday, cutting off access from its official toolbar, as well as any other third party tool that accesses the data.

PageRank is used to determine the overall authority of a website on a scale of 1 – 10. PageRank score is also used to weight the value of inbound links. When this information was publicly available, it led to all kinds of black hat tactics such as selling links, spamming links, and so on.

Google will still be using PageRank score when determining how to rank content in search results, but individual webmasters will not have access to their PageRank score.

Google gave warning last month that this day would come, which was confirmed to SEJ via a Google spokesperson.

How to Pick Your SEO Search Terms

One of the most key elements during the sign up process is your choice of Search Terms. It’s important to get the right balance. Too broad and the competition is fierce and results very hard to achieve (but generally not impossible). Too long and the search volumes may not be high enough for it to be worthwhile. In this article we’re going to give you the information required to make the right choice and how long you will realistically have to wait to see noticeable impact.

What is your lead search term?

One of the most important elements of your digital marketing campaign

During sign up (or editing your search terms in the control panel) you will notice that the first search term you enter is called the lead search term. Although all of your search terms are important, the first term you enter is the most important which is why we call it your lead search term. This is the term that we will gear most of the home page around so it needs to be given a great deal of thought.

What is a long tail search term?

More words equals faster results

Long tail search terms are basically longer sentences. They are generally defined by 3 or more words. So, using Click Submit as an example a long trail search term might be “What is SEO” or “Reputation Management Company”. The average time to see impact on a long tail search term is roughly 3 to 9 months but must be taken on a case by case basis depending on competition.

What is a broad search term?

You must be patient but they can be extremely rewarding 

A broad search term is generally defined as either 1 or 2 words. So, again using Click Submit as the example one might be “SEO” and another “Affordable SEO”. It’s very hard to put a time frame for impact on broad terms as the competition differs greatly but on average it ranges from between 6 and 14 months.

Keep geographical where possible

Go local for faster results and more targeted traffic

Where we see the fastest results is when you’re able to make your search terms geographical. The minute you add in a geographical location you cut down the competition dramatically while at the same time creating a much more targeted campaign. Volumes are lower but far more relevant. For example Click Submit may target a search term like “Digital Marketing Agencies in Manchester”. We are normally able to achieve results within a 3 month period on a geographical search term.

How many should you enter?

Less is more

You can have up to 10 search terms but we recommend trying to keep it to around 5 initially. The rule of thumb is that generally less is more.

Short and long term goals

Get the right blend for fast and then consistently improving results

During sign up you will be able to enter up to 10 search terms. This gives you the ability to mix it up a bit. What we suggest is going with a selection of short and long term goals. So, you may go with 5 geographical search terms and then 5 broader search terms. This means you will most likely see a consistently improving campaign.

Useful tools

Some help on making your choice

Try Google?! When you have a list of potential search terms you can then search Google for each of them. Generally the total number of results gives you a good idea of the competition. For example “Digital Marketing Agencies” (https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Digital+Marketing+Agencies) has 31,300,000 results whereas “Digital Marketing Agencies in Manchester” has 726,000 results (https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Digital+Marketing+Agencies+Mancester). So this correctly suggests that adding the word Manchester cuts down on the competition dramatically and will lead to faster results.

We also have our very useful search term checker tool which you have access too during the sign up process. This will give you an indication of the timeframe to expect on each search term across all of our digital marketing services.

Ranking Uplift Given To Sub URLs

On Thursday the 1st October we started to get some interesting reports from our clients. The reports were a combination of people suffering either a lowering or uplift in ranking. We immediately got to work on investing the situation. Then late last week we tweeted some breaking news:



After some quick analysis we saw a definite pattern where main URLs were suffering a drop and sub URLs an uplift in fortunes.

Let’s use Click Submit as an example:

At the start of the week we were on page 8 for our home page "clicksubmit.co.uk" on the search term “SEO” (remember this is the probably the most competitive search term in the world). On Thursday we noticed we had jumped to page 5 for our sub URL"clicksubmit.co.uk/seo". Since then we have made even more progress and are now page 4. We also went to position 1 for our search term “Resell SEO” on the sub page "clicksubmit.co.uk/reseller-seo" see: https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=resell+seo.

If you go to Google and type in any search term you will now find the first page pretty much loaded with sub URL results. An example would be for the search term “SEO”. Take a look at the results at: https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=seo. There is now only one listing that resolves to a home page!

To be honest we're amazed it's taken this long because it does make sense. Google want to connect their users with the most relevant content as quickly as possible and it’s more likely that a page within your site which contains more detailed information on a subject is more relevant.

We launched our Sub URL optional extra around 2 years ago with the forethought of this update and now many of our clients are getting their reward. We have also been suggesting for the last 4 years within every clients initial report that trail pages (depth of content) is crucial. Here’s a snippet from an example initial report:

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3. Trail content. We would suggest creating pages of text based information for each of your keywords with a link to each one of these pages from your home page. For example, one of your keywords/phrases is 'Search term 1', so why not create a page on your website called 'Search term 1' with some general content on it, then add a link to this page from the most relevant pages on your website. This may not be possible for all of your keywords and phrases, but where you have a keyword or phrase that you could write some content about, it can be of great benefit.
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We can say with some confidence that our users were well prepared for this update and we have seen on the whole a lot of uplift over the last few days!

We hope you found this article insightful and if you have any questions please get in touch.

Start Your Own Digital Marketing Agency

A digital marketing reseller purchases services from a larger company and then resells the services to their own customers. This is similar to the typical wholesaler-retailer business model. Until recently it was very expensive to set up as a digital marketing company but Click Submit has changed the landscape offering the first turnkey solution.

In this article we are going to look at the basics of how to get a digital marketing business started.

Research

All good business plans begin with adequate research: How much competition is there? How successful are they? What are they doing right? What do consumers want that these companies don't already provide? Research of digital marketing companies is relatively easy compared to some other businesses as they all have an online presence, and the information you need is literally at your fingertips.

Create a Business Plan

Digital marketing resellers can sign up for a Click Submit Reseller account and be "in business" in a matter of minutes. The very ease of getting started leads many of these businesses to fail. Many people start with unrealistic revenue and work expectations and no plan. Customers don't automatically flock to a new company. Plan how you will market the company.
To write a proper business plan, determine how much money you will need to get the business running and how much will be needed for the first year. There is a lot of competition, so identify a specific customer base or genre, such as local businesses. You may already have a customer base that you wish to upsell digital marketing services too, which is perfect. An example of this would be a web design agency wanting to up sell digital marketing to their new and existing clients.

Select a Digital Marketing Partner

There are a few digital marketing agencies offering a referral system but no one offers the level of automation and unitized servcies that Click Submit do. Our product offering is totally unique and the way in which we deliver the service is bullet proof. Most importantly thought the results are great which means you keep your clients happy!

Get the Word Out

The most challenging part of starting any business is marketing. Thousands of digital marketing companies are selling services on the Internet, so standing out from the crowd is difficult. Use every opportunity to get the word out about the new business. Use social networking sites, blogs, and online message forums to spread the word while at the same time adding you own site to the Click Submit service.

We hope you found this article interesting and if you have any questions then please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Are Domains Still An Important Ranking Factor?

Never has there been such a variety of domains on the market. Only a year ago you were stuck with .com, .net, .co.uk, etc. Now you can have .hotel, .photographer… the list goes on!

So, how important is a domain and what things should you be considering before you make a choice?

Should Your Domain Be Descriptive?

Back in November 2012 our guys at Click Submit blogged about Google’s first EMD update. EMD or Exact Match Domains were an absolutely crucial factor in getting a head start on your ranking across all the major search engines.

So how can you take advantage of an EMD domain? Let’s take a photography company as an example who’s most important search term is “Photographers in London”, they then look and see that the domain name photographersinlondon.co.uk is available. Although this domain isn’t the name of their company does it make more sense to purchase it? In short yes. It’s still a good idea to purchase a descriptive domain over a none descriptive domain, but it’s not as important as used to be.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that although we live in a very Google focused market there are many other search engines out there that still regard EMD’s as a very important ranking factor. Yahoo would be an example of one of these.

Does The Suffix Make Any Difference?

Yes! The higher perceived prestige a domain suffix has the easier it is to obtain a high ranking on. Although we think this will be watered down over the coming months / years similarly to exact match domains.
Geographical suffixes are important too. For example if you had a .com then you would have a better chance of obtaining a better ranking than someone with a .net but if your site is only targeting the UK then you would have a better chance of obtaining a higher ranking with a .co.uk or .uk domain.

If you’re a UK business then domains in order of ranking are:

.co.uk / .uk
.com, .net, .org, etc..
.photographer, etc…

Do Forwarders Help With Ranking?

No, but they’re still very important from an intellectual property point of view. If you have 100s of domains forwarding to your website it won’t make any difference to your ranking but it will stop any potential competition on a similar domain name. Protecting your intellectual property is particularly important when using an exact match domain.

Should I use spelling replacements?

A spelling replacement is when you use a number like 4 instead of the word four or maybe you spell a word incorrectly (eg. Catz, ur, etc) instead. People do this in order to get around the correctly spelt domain not being available. We don’t recommend using them for two reasons. Firstly, it can affect the search terms that you will be ranked on but also from a more practical point of view one of the most powerful methods of free marketing for a website is word of mouth. If your domain isn’t spelt correctly it makes letting someone know the web address verbally a bit awkward.

Conclusion

Although the search engines (in an attempt to level the playing field) are watering down the emphasis on domains as part of their algorithm they are still an important factor. So, if a descriptive domain with a good suffix is available then snap it up, but if you’re in a competitive market and domain availability is low then don’t worry, the playing field is a level as it’s ever been and is only going to level out further in the future.

We will update and release further posts on the subject of domains and how they’re affecting over the coming months and years.

We hope you found this post informative and if you have any questions then please don’t hesitate to get in touch with either Cloud Next or Click Submit.

Can You Get Away With A Negative Review?

With a variety of online platforms such as TripAdvisor, TrustPilot, Feefo and Trusted Shops at our fingertips, we now live in a culture where we are instantly able to read a comprehensive list of customer reviews about near enough any product or service.

This user feedback helps many of us to decide which products to buy, which hotels to book and which restaurants to eat in, and this is often without ever feeling the need to read a single ‘expert’ opinion or review.

But for some businesses this rising phenomenon can have just as many negative effects as positive, as a crushingly bad review can damage a brand, something that is beginning to worry many businesses.

We have conducted a survey of 100 clients asking them a simple question: 'If the first page of reviews were all positive bar one, would you read the negative review first and if so would it put you off the company?'

The results were very interesting! 78% said they would read the negative one first and just over 50% said if it was negative enough it would put them off a purchase.

There was however a silver lining. We contacted a few of those surveyed and they stated that if the company responded in a dynamic way to the review then it would most likely offset the negativity considerably. We also learnt that if the review was negative, but not that negative, then it added authenticity to the product as long as the overwhelming feeling from other reviews was positive.

So, it's more important than ever to motivate your happy clients to post reviews, while at the same time making sure that channels of communication are opened with unhappy clients before they go public, but wouldn't it be nice to have an automated solution? Yep you guessed it we have one, and it's called Positivity!

Positivity is a simple system allowing you to verify whether a client is happy or not, before you suggest that they submit a review via a public website like Trust Pilot, Review Centre, Trip Advisor etc. It’s totally unique to Click Submit and is included as part of our quarterly service.
So, how does it work? During set up you will be able to create up to 5 questions, on which your clients will give you a score of between 1 and 5, via our white labelled client feedback site: www.feedingback.co.uk. You will then be able to set a positive threshold. This threshold will dictate the message that they see after they submit their feedback. So for example, you may set a threshold of 4 stars of above. This would mean that if the result averages 4 stars or above your client would be asked to submit a public review. If the result averages 3 stars or below your client would be presented with a message that you create during set up. This could be a message to ask them to contact you with their details to discuss their dissatisfaction and try to achieve a more positive outcome.

We have set up a Positivity profile for Click Submit, to show you how it looks to the end client. We would send the following link to all of our clients: feedingback.co.uk/www.clicksubmit.co.uk.

To conclude, online reviews are an increasingly crucial part of your overall online marketing strategy. It's key to get positive momentum as soon as possible, but what surprised us about the survey was the impact that a small amount of negativity can have on your business. Now is the time to take control of your online reputation!

We hope you found this article interesting and if you have any questions then please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Capitalise On Your Following With A Good News Story!

Do you have a large following on Twitter or Facebook? Maybe you have a large database of clients that you regularly e-mail?

If so, then you know the importance of engaging your follows / clients with interesting information, but wouldn’t it be nice to engage them with an exclusive deal that can help their businesses succeed while at the same time delivering you a recurring revenue stream?

Well, we have the solution!

It’s called the Promo Code Reseller Solution is perfect for anyone looking to create an instant recurring revenue stream from an existing following.

It’s simple

We give you a promotional discount code that you pass on to your followers/clients. It’s a good news story as it entitles them to an exclusive discount (up to 100%) off their first quarterly payment when they sign up to Click Submit. Your clients are then linked to you via this code for their entire life cycle and you will earn 40% of all revenue generated. It’s totally transparent! You can monitor all of your statistics via a Control Panel. You can even download your client data in order to cross reference with your database.

For example

Our largest Promo Code reseller currently has 568 active clients and we are currently paying them on average £3,786 per month, which we forecast to double to over £7,000 per month within the next year.

What to learn more?

Check out our knowledge base article