RetailT
echnology
HOWCAN RETAILERS WIN WITH GOOGLE UPDATES?
Online marketing expert Frank Orman suggests creating structured chaos to improve Google rankings as a practical response to the menagerie of recent updates from the web search giant
M
uch has been written about the menagerie of updates that Google rolled out in 2013. London-
based online marketing agency LeadGenerators decided to try a few experiments to see if it could work with these updates in a constructive manner that would benefit both its clients and Google users. Frank Orman, LeadGenerators managing director,
explained that Google basically wants to find ways to stop unscrupulous marketing agencies and black hat search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques from engineering the results that it displays to the users of its search engine. “It appears that Google has deemed that the
opposite of ‘engineered’ is a ‘natural’ level of fuzz and chaos,” he said. “In reality, everything we do for our clients’ link development programmes is structured and engineered. That is, after all, the definition of SEO. So we decided to rise to the challenge and work out how to structure chaos for the benefit of our clients – and their rankings.” To embrace this challenge, Orman and his team
created a strategy with three elements, all of which are designed to work in tandem and mutually support each other to create a basket of link opportunities with a ‘natural’ profile. “Like many tried and tested traditions, the precision link is our solid foundation for an effective link development programme,” he said. “Here, you do your keyword research and liberally sprinkle your landing page with the most important high volume phrases and generate articles that use this key word as an anchor text to link back to the relevant landing page. “For example, one of our clients is a London
chocolate store and we found that a large volume of people were searching Google every month for ‘Brazilian dark chocolate’. “Following best SEO practice, we created a landing
page to showcase their Brazilian chocolate products and used the key phrase, ‘Brazilian dark chocolate,’ in an uncontrived manner a few times in the sales copy. Every month we would then base a links development programme on a formula of writing and distributing
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articles that would incorporate this key phrase and link to their Brazilian chocolate landing page.” Orman said this action in the past would result over
time in his client appearing on the first page of Google results to all those who type in ‘Brazilian dark chocolate’ into their search bars. “But,” he added, “Precision linking is a bit of a blunt
instrument that after a while begins to look contrived. So we tried the next level. Our chocolate shop has other products that we are also doing link development for. One of these is the landing page, which showcases their cherry chocolate products and we discovered a large number were searching Google for ‘traditional cherry- flavoured chocolate’.” This gave the opportunity to engineer a bit of
inconsistency and ‘fuzz’. “We wrote articles that incorporated the key phrase, ‘traditional cherry- flavoured chocolate,’ and linked it to the Brazilian dark chocolate landing page and even occasionally to the chocolate store’s homepage,” he said. “In Google’s eyes it’s perfectly ‘natural’ to link key
phrases that appear on one of the Chocolate store’s website pages in this haphazard way to a landing page for a different product. Suddenly the links pouring into the Chocolate site start to look a bit more human in their chaos and illogical application. Sweet!” But Orman added that Google seems to be
Choose key phrases that are topic- related, but that do not appear in the landing page copy content
introducing another dimension to the ‘go natural’ game. “Now, to support the Brazilian chocolate landing page, we write articles relevant to the subject and choose key phrases that are topic-related, but that do not appear in the landing page copy content,” he said. “We have found that it doesn’t matter too much
about the key phrase search volume – it’s the basket of logical chaos that matters.” Orman concluded: “Landing pages that have
resisted our efforts in the past are showing significant improvements in rankings. But, by responding with sensitivity to the Google updates and tweaking our SEO practices, it is possible to create sustainable and effective link building programmes for any business’s online presence.”
Winter 2014 15
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