Google AdWords on the right side of the screen are gone.

Right hand AdWords have come to an end; the roll-out started on 19th Feb 2016. At present, ads will only show towards the top and base of the SEARCH ENGINE RESULTS PAGES. It also looks very possible that Google has increased the quantity of ads from 3 – 4 and in some cases even 6 Ads – 3 at the top and 3 at the bottom.

Just what, exactly, does this suggest for on-line marketers and consumers alike?

The continuous ‘pushing down’ of organic and natural listings will surely be a concern for many individuals.

For businesses loans-cash.net this will likely mean that the organic room or space is a lot more precious and may therefore cause an even greater focus on SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

For Paid Search, the transformation will certainly increase average CPCs as the levels of competition for the leading spots increase. Hold on to your credit cards, people, it’s likely to get unpleasant.

So why reduce the amount of space or room for organic results on the Search Engine Results Pages?

The reason for this could be as simple as Google having established the average click-through-rate for right side AdWords is poor. This, of course, means less money in the Google coffers. The expected COST-PER-CLICK inflation out of this major change is probably forecast to be a lot more profitable in the end.

However, as a result of the change, ranking 10th for a particular keyword may no longer get you on the front page, banishing you to the top of the second page.

Will all organic results eventually start on the second page??

We think this change could have a huge impact on many of our clients, and could affect many of their rankings but at this point, it doesn’t look like Google will go that far.

The roll out should have been completed on Monday 22^nd February 2016.

What are your thoughts?

Is this good or bad?

The post Google’s Paid Ads on the Right Hand Side Are Gone! first appeared on Agile SEO - Search Engine Optimisation.

You wouldn’t think that poker and SEO had a lot in common, but you’d be wrong. As enthusiastic poker players, the specialists at Agile SEO Brisbane put together our top 5 poker lessons that you should apply to your SEO efforts.

1. Don’t Play Every Hand

It’s supposed to be one of the biggest mistakes that rookie players make in poker, but it’s pretty common in AdWords, too. When setting up your AdWords account, don’t just click on every keyword option that Google gives you. Do your research, select 10 – 25 keywords per ad group and then weed out peripheral keywords to focus on action keywords so you don’t lose money.

2. Don’t Stay In A Hand Just Because You’re Already In It

To paraphrase the great man, you gotta know when to hold ‘em, when to fold ‘em, when to walk away and when to run.  Competitive keywords can take 6 months of consistent SEO efforts to start showing results, but by 6 months, you should be seeing something for your money. If your site still doesn’t have robots.txt or a site map, or you still can’t find your site on the first 5 pages for common search terms for your business or industry, it might just be time to walk away from your current SEO provider. If, on the other hand, your SEO company has gotten you 1000 back links from Uzbekistan, it’s definitely time to run.

3. Do Pay Attention To Other Players

When you play poker, one of the single best things you can do is watch your competition, the same applies in business and SEO. Your SEO company should be able to provide you with data on what your competition is up to online, from where their links are originating to what keywords they’re ranking for. Rather than spend hours doing your own research to arrive at the same conclusion, check they’re on the right path then piggyback off their efforts and gain the benefits.

4. Work Out Your Odds

When deciding how much you’re prepared to pay for a click in AdWords, calculate your odds – what are the chances of that click becoming a sale? And if it does become a sale, how much is that sale worth to you? If you’re selling a product that retails for $20 and it costs you $10, you’re not going to want to pay $10 for a click. But if a sale is worth $500 to you and you know it’s going to cost you $20 for a click, odds are, that’s worth it.

5. Don’t Expect To Win Every Hand You Play

Unless you’re holding a royal flush, there is always the chance that someone else at the table has a better hand. In SEO and AdWords, there’s always someone with a bigger budget, a better quality score or who is further along the path of onsite optimisation. That’s reality. So work smarter, not harder. Target action keywords and use negative keywords to make sure that your AdWords campaign is being shown to people most likely to click and convert to sale.  Use Google Analytics to get to know your audience then write thoughtful, relevant articles that can be shared with 1 click through plugins like AddThis.

Want to know more about peripheral keywords, action keywords, onsite optimisation, competitor analysis and more? Contact us today to find out how Agile SEO Brisbane can help you play it right.

The post Agile SEO Brisbane: Lessons From Poker first appeared on Agile SEO - Search Engine Optimisation.

For local business owners, getting online is an essential yet sometimes overwhelming part of running your own business. Agile SEO Brisbane recently discovered a client who had a terrible breakup experience with his previous SEO Company which included them hacking his email and deleting emails, changing every password for every online login they could find in his inbox and deleting both his Google Analytics & AdWords accounts, to name but a few.

Most SEO companies will draw the line at breaking the law to get back at you (something I never thought I’d have to type), but why make it possible in the first place?  Here are our tips and tricks for getting online in a way that helps to protect your business from the possibility of being taken over by a malicious individual or organisation.

Part 1 – Strong Foundations

A) If you’ve not already chosen something, think about your business name and try to create a name that includes a popular search term that describes your business and is easy to remember. If you have multiple search terms that you could include in your business name, try to use the most popular.

If you already have an established business name, think very carefully before making the decision to change it – as a general rule of thumb, the only time you would change your business name is if you’re starting a new company.

B) Once you’ve chosen your business name, set up a gmail account (and subsequent recovery account) as ‘yourbusinessname@gmail.com’. Make sure you have a VERY secure password for each email account.

This email will be used for ALL of the following steps. Do not, under any circumstances use your youremail@yourdomainname.com.au email address to set up your web hosting, business listings, social media accounts etc. By directing these to the gmail account instead you’re protecting yourself against a bad breakup or a malicious hacker. If someone manages to hack your site they will gain access to your youremail@yourdomainname.com.au email, but at least they won’t also gain control of all of your online services.

Use the youremail@yourdomainname.com.au as the display email address in customer communications and listing pages, but not for logins.

C) Beware of dodgy companies. Sounds simple, I know, but what are things you can look out for?

1. Ask what happens to your business listings and site if you stop working with them and who owns the site and listings.
2. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – if a company says they have a ‘special relationship’ with Google, NEVER do business with them, they’re liars!
3. If an SEO Company manages Adwords, ask what commission they charge – they’re going to charge you either a flat fee (payable up front each month) or a percentage of your monthly AdWords spend. If they’re not prepared to give you firm numbers, don’t trust them.
4. Ask if they offer Google Analytics integration and what type of reports they’ll be sending you.
5. Find out if you’ll have weekly or monthly meetings to go over the reports to ensure that you understand what they’re sending you and what they’re doing for their money.
6. Every SEO company should have standard tasks that they do each month like optimising meta tags for all pages, auditing your local listings, adding new listings if required, adding you to quality local directories, add content regularly (if this is a part of your package; and it should be). Make sure they provide you with information on what they will do each month and that they report back on it as promised.
7. Check their portfolio and make contact with their existing clients via the ‘contact us’ page on the client’s website to check references.
8. NEVER sign a long term contract, 3 months may sometimes be a little short to really start seeing results but 6 months will allow you to see if things improve. After 6 months, if you’re happy, then consider a longer term. Either way, avoid lock in contracts until you’re sure that you’re happy with their service. Agile SEO Brisbane offers a 6 month Service Agreement that can be terminated with 30 days’ notice for this exact reason.
9. If you don’t follow up with an agency after signing with them, anything that happens (or doesn’t, as the case may be) is at least partly your fault – you need to track their progress and ensure you are across what’s happening with your site and SEO.

D) Buy your domain name. Try to include the main search term for your business but make it short and easy to remember. A really good test is to read it to your friends over the phone, if they enter it correctly the first time, it’s a winner!

E) OWN your domain name – don’t ever let your designer, developer or anyone else buy the domain for you; don’t allow anything that may call into question your ownership of the domain! (And remember that you’re going to use your yourbusinessname@gmail.com account to set this up!)

You will need to provide details to your host, developers etc so make sure that you change the sign in details once they’re done. Ditto with your SEO company. As soon as you part ways, change your passwords to something secure, it needs to be unrelated to your previous password and not your name, your business name or anything similar. I can’t even begin to list how many horror stories I have heard about designers, developers or SEO companies hijacking a company’s site and either destroying it or holding it to ransom when they stop working together.

F) Create a simple site using WordPress. You can buy good, clean designs for as little as $100, just make sure it’s responsive, mobile friendly and professional. Above all, it must be fast – Google loves fast.

Agile SEO Brisbane is a fan, why? WordPress is one of the most common CMSs around, making it easy for you to find someone else to manage your website / SEO if you decide to move on from your original providers. In addition, search engine robots can crawl the whole site easily, which isn’t possible if you build the site in FLASH or AJAX. If search engine robots can’t crawl your site, it will have a negative impact on your rankings.

Agile SEO Brisbane works with businesses of all sizes and we know that starting a new business or website can be tough, but with a clear roadmap, it’s a lot easier. Tune in for Part II, which will cover site content & architecture, while subsequent posts will deal with how to get business listings, tracking your results, marketing, reviews and social media. Alternatively, if you’d like to speak to us directly about how we can help your business, contact us for more info.

The post Agile SEO Brisbane – Tips for Small Business (Part I) first appeared on Agile SEO - Search Engine Optimisation.

In a lot of ways, the Search Engine Optimisation industry is like the wild west – there are a lot of cowboys. In an industry that really has very little oversight and about which there is little ‘general knowledge’, rip-off merchants flourish and it can be difficult to find an ethical SEO company. Sure, everyone’s website claims that they’re legit and above board, but they’re hardly going to brand themselves ‘Dodgy Bros Inc’, are they? In this article, we wanted to share some of the things we’ve seen ourselves and been told by our clients, so that you know what to look out for.

Client 1

This client was paying $1200 / month for his SEO from a very well ranked SEO firm. He decided to leave them as he just didn’t feel that he was getting the results he wanted. Every time he called them to cancel, they used scare tactics and told him that without the Search Engine Optimisation they were doing, his site would quickly drop in the rankings and he’d end up dropping off Google altogether.

When we spoke to the client, he was unwilling to commit to the same monthly spend, so we came up with an SEO strategy that started at around half of what he had been paying for the first couple of months, then increased each month thereafter, giving him time to see the value in our service.

But wait, it gets better. When we took over his account, we logged into his website and couldn’t find ANY SEO tools – no Google Analytics, nothing. When we called his web hosting & development company they were only too happy to turn on the SEO tools section of his site. This allowed us to create his Site Map and add his new Google Analytics account, among other things.

This begs the question – what, exactly, was his last Search Engine Optimisation company doing? They didn’t build any links back to his site, they didn’t even create, let alone install a Google Analytics account, there was no site map and there were certainly no articles created or any content added… The mind boggles.

Client 2

This gentleman was using an SEO group that typically appears on the first page of Google search results. He was paying $900 / month for his Search Engine Optimisation and while the company had gotten him to rank #1 for a particular keyword, he didn’t feel like he was getting the results he wanted. He contacted us for a quote and when we analysed his site, we discovered that the key word that he was ranked #1 for only attracted about 10 searches per month.

It turns out that when he signed on with them, this SEO company guaranteed him that he didn’t have to pay a thing until they got him a number 1 ranking, which they achieved; they just failed to mention that the keyword they were going to get him to #1 for, was a keyword that wasn’t actually going to drive any business to his site!

He decided to move his business across to us because with no lock in contracts, it wasn’t a risk for him to sign on with us, knowing that he could walk away this time if he wasn’t happy. Since he joined us, we’ve been working on a mix of high and medium value keywords, targeting words that we can get quickly in order to start driving business his way while we go after the high value words that, while more commonly used in searches, will take longer to rank for.

Client 3

This client came to us more to confirm that his current SEO provider was doing a good job than because he really wanted to change. While he hadn’t seen an increase in traffic or business, he could see that his SEO company was building a lot of links and optimising his website for certain key words.

These links, when analysed by our software, were identified as being potentially toxic. We discovered that his SEO company was using free directory submission pages to build his links, which is a big no-no in the new world of Search Engine Optimisation. Search Engines often regard these types of links as spam, meaning that it was likely Google would penalise the client for these links, impacting his search engine ranking and, worst case scenario, getting his site black listed with the search engines altogether!

In addition, we discovered that the SEO firm wasn’t just using a low value keyword, they had made up a whole new one (which also happened to be grammatically incorrect – a personal pet hate!) and ranked him #1 for it so that he had to start paying them their monthly fee. Even though it’s highly likely that they were the only ones entering it into Google!

Unfortunately, this client was locked in to a contract that didn’t end for another couple of months – it was a very long wait for him (and, I should imagine, a very frustrating one – having to pay a company that he knew wasn’t giving him what he was paying for) but now he’s come on board and loves our transparent reporting.

These aren’t the only horror stories we’ve heard, but they’re 3 of our ‘favourites’ and they demonstrate a few things to look out for when you’re choosing an SEO company.

1. Look for a company that is transparent and collaborative.
2. Make sure that if your SEO guru is choosing your keywords, they can tell you why you want to target that keyword – make sure it’s worth it! They need to be able to show you how many people are searching for that term, on average, a month, especially if gaining page 1 for that term means that you have to start paying.
3. Not all links are created equal, some can actually damage your site ranking, so make sure your SEO provider is creating quality Australian based (depending on your business – some of you may wish to target overseas markets) links.
4. Beware of any company that
   1. Guarantees you #1 ranking or
   2. Doesn’t charge you until you reach page 1 – there’s a very good chance that they’re going to rank you for keywords that don’t really exist.
5. If your SEO company doesn’t
   1. Create and add Google analytics to your website
   2. Create a site map for your website,
   3. Add robots.txt to your website,
   4. Add you to Google Business,
   5. If your site is new, submit it to Google, Bing & Yahoo or
   6. Ask you for your website log in details then run – don’t walk – away as they clearly have no intention of actually doing any SEO work on your site.
6. Beware of lock in contracts, companies will hold you to them if it is financially beneficial to them to do so.

If you’re looking for a transparent SEO company that believes in client education, why not contact us to discover how Agile SEO can help you grow your business.

The post SEO Company Rip Offs first appeared on Agile SEO - Search Engine Optimisation.