Simply start by logging into Google Analytics and click on: Traffic Sources >> Sources >> Search >> Organic

Then follow the steps as per the screenshot below:

Depending on how much “(not provided)” traffic your website is receiving you may have to exclude this traffic set as well, which will improve your filtered results further.

Once you have completed the above-mentioned you need to set a secondary dimension filter for “landing page” so you can view what pages received the organic traffic. See below a 3 step process to implement it:

The filtered results will give you a good understanding of what non-branded keywords you are already receiving, from this data you will begin to understand how your website is working for you in terms of organic traffic and what web pages are generating the most traffic.

To delve deeper and ensuring that you don’t miss any other keyword potentials. We use GWT (Google Webmaster Tools) for this process. To begin, log into your GWT account and click on the following within the sidebar: Traffic >> Search Queries

The above-mentioned area within GWT will give you average rankings and click through data in table format. Identifying the keywords and their related landing pages that have a low click through rate score are the articles that will need further optimisation.

Before you begin optimisation, extract these keywords (GWT & Google Analytics) that you want to target and track them in a keyword ranking tool. 2 ranking factors (of roughly 200) that are becoming more prevalent is the amount of UGC (User Generated Content) that is created and how many social shares a post has. Social shares as a ranking factor may be debatable as it could possibly be correlation and not causation. I err on the side of causation but will be releasing data soon to either prove / disprove this theory. However, I have little doubt that comments within a post affects rankings positively.

So the 1st step would be to do further on-site optimisation on the articles, focusing on the identified keywords i.e. title tag optimisation, inserting the targeted keyword into the first paragraph of the article and/or inserting a few more internal links from other articles back to the article that you are wanting to rank higher for. You may also want to write more content around the keywords that you have identified and link back to those articles that are already ranking. With regards to the GWT keyword data, focus on those keywords that have high impressions and have an average ranking of higher than 5. These keywords carry the most potential for your website.

Once you feel that your on-site optimisation is correctly setup then the 2nd step is to drive further engagement on the respective articles that you have chosen to have the most potential.

If you want to drive more traffic and create a longer lasting, more sustainable organic traffic model – then try coupling an Adwords campaign to those articles you want to rank higher for (obviously on-site optimisation has to be already implemented correctly otherwise you could be throwing your money down the ‘drain’). By doing this it will improve engagement on the article (only if the article is worth reading though – engagement won’t improve if the article is poorly written), which will drive social sharing and commenting.

Repeat this 2 step process every 2 weeks over a 4 month period. As you increase your understanding of what people are searching for and how your website is being found, your content decision making will improve. Remember that the ultimate goal is to get your blog posts ranking in Google for a longer period of time. Ensuring that you are always testing is one way to perfect your content strategy over time.

If you have any questions or comments, please add them below. I’d like to hear your thoughts and/or similar experiences that you may have had around this strategy.

The post Finding keyword potentials for your SEO campaign appeared first on WebGrowth.

I took them through the basics of SEO, explaining the differences between paid advertising, SEO and social media. We looked at how SEO cannot be boxed into just SEO anymore but how “Inbound Marketing” has become a more holistic approach to successful SEO.

The focus of the talk was around the importance of Google+ in 2013, especially if you want to be known as a thought leader in your respective industry. Here are two quick steps that will help you to setup Google+ authorship for your blog.

1. Setup your Google+ profile
2. Install the Authorsure plugin for WordPress

Once you have installed and activated the Authorsure plugin check if your setup is correct using Google’s rich snippet testing tool. If you still have any problems setting up the plugin ask them in our forum.

The post Our 9 step process for successful SEO appeared first on WebGrowth.

I don’t think so, or not yet anyway!

Competing Pages

Lets have a look at the search term “SEO” in Google.co.za. It has 887 million competing pages (see below).

If Google were getting their SERP quality right after the Panda and Penguin updates you would expect that top SERP results from such a competitive term would be relevant and supply you with SEO companies that can help you with the “SEO” service you are looking for!

SERP Results

From what I can see, the only reason for these type of results is that Google still places a huge emphasis on TLD (Top Level Domains) that contain the exact anchor text for the service. Below are the Organic SERP results (excluding Google Places and Google News).

1 – Wikipedia
2 – SEO Mania
3 – ROI Media
4 – Synergise Online
5 – SEO Cape Town Club
6 – Google Support
7 – SEO Consultantz
8 – Web SEO
9 – Ever
10 – SEO PPC

Personally, I feel that for any company needs to be transparent to offer a good service. They need to have a contact number on their website. Unfortunately #5 – SEO Cape Town Club and #7 - SEO Consultantz don’t do this, and I feel that they offer no real value to Google’s SERP.

Domain Strength Profile

Obviously there is some loop-hole in Google’s Algorithm that the Webmasters of these 2 website (#5 and #7) have found as the quick analysis other their site reveals that they don’t really have a presence at all other than the 1st page rankings

Both sites have NO Backlinks, NO Page Authority and the domains were registered on 22-November-2012 by the same person. They are basically a 1 page website that does not offer advice/help to the public who are looking for a service.

In closing, I hope that Google gets the SERP right in the near future so that these type of websites are removed and do not appear at all.

The post Is Google getting things right in SERP? appeared first on WebGrowth.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is still a relatively unknown practice in South Africa. Most business owners still rely on conventional methods of marketing and think of the internet as “the Great Unknown”, where only people who want to steal your identity live. Like it or not, the internet is becoming a bigger part of everyday life and conventional means of marketing is slowly shifting online. Ensuring your business has a strong online presence is a must to survive in the new digital era.

Does SEO help to improve your online presence?

At Web SEO we constantly see clients who are desperate to get their website to rank in Google but are hesitant when it comes to using SEO. SEO, if done correctly, is an ongoing process that can take months to show results. Clients tend to be scared off when you tell them it’s not a quick fix. So, is this waiting worth it and can SEO strengthen your online presence?

Let’s take a look at a few examples of the types of SEO clients we at Web SEO come into contact with.

1 – “No thank you, I don’t want SEO.”

Here we have a site that is not doing any SEO. At the beginning of January, it had an average of about 450 visits per month. At the end of October, we can see the average is still about 450 visits a month and there is no growth at all.

2. “Thanks for the increase in traffic; my website will be fine now.”

Every now and then you encounter clients that see an increase in traffic to their site and think the work is done. As soon as they start seeing results, they forget that SEO is an ongoing process.

Here we see a website that stopped doing SEO, after seeing good results for the first 3 months. When the SEO was stopped, the traffic dropped from about 1500 visits a month to less than 500 a month. Soon after the drop in traffic, SEO was resumed and the results speak for themselves. At the end of October the website had close to 4000 visits for the month.

3. “I love my SEO company.”

Lastly, we will look at a website that started doing SEO and was patient enough to stick with it.

At the beginning of January 2012, this website saw about 1500 visits a month. With a strong SEO campaign, the site showed continual growth over a period of ten months. At the end of October, the website had more than 2500 visits a month and continues to grow.

South Africa is quickly catching up to the rest of the world on the digital front. Can you afford for your business to be left behind?

The post Is SEO Dead and Buried? appeared first on WebGrowth.

Welcome to the world of Microsoft Socl, the mysterious and yet, intriguing new social network to compete with Pinterest. The project, originally launched in December 2011, has changed considerably from the original introduction and the new Beta version has already shown some promise.

With an almost complete redesign, Socl, the project from Microsoft’s FUSE research group, still has limited users, but anyone that has Facebook or a Microsoft account can access it and benefit from full usage.

Originally a network project mostly for students, Socl has developed into full blown visual based network where communication, images, and videos can be shared and promoted. The final version is expected to be released in 2013 with some glitches still to be ironed out in the Beta version.

Pinterest is exceptionally popular and Microsoft Socl thus still has a far way to go if it hopes to beat Pinterest in popularity. It features collage style image/video sharing, but with its .cl domain name, it may still lose out on a lot of visits because people still need to get used to the strange domain name. Microsoft doesn’t seem to be concerned about it though and must already have a solution in mind such as the possible integration with their other services.

Privacy

If you have been concerned about privacy issues with Google and the social network Facebook, you will have even more with Socl and if something is private then simply don’t share it on Socl. Other than that, it is still pretty much a time waster, but has tremendous potential. The network project is not competition for Facebook, but with its new design and functionality can soon become a thorn in the side of Pinterest.

Functionality

Socl features the typical two-column lay-out of Pinterest and thus has a type of familiarity that Pinterest users will appreciate. Once signed up and logged into the social network, you can click new post and get a topic text search field that allows for searching using Bing. You will get a list of relevant links, images and videos that can be pasted onto a grid lay-out system. In addition, you can also create a new post, based on the search you have just completed and will then have a list of links related to it that you can post.

All the posts show at the front page of Socl and although there are currently two columns, you also have the three column lay-out option. You don’t have to be signed in to see the posts and this is where one needs to use common sense when posting images to Socl. If the picture will be embarrassing for you, a family member, colleague or close friend or can land you in trouble, then don’t post it since it will not be private.

To operate on Socl is rather easy. For the creation of a new post, you can just paste links or even make use of the Bing search as explained earlier to find thumbnails and drag them into the collage grid. Add a sentence to describe what the image or video collection is about and why you have put the collection together. Press the post option and the collection is shared with the rest of the Socl community.

Recommendations are done by means of pressing the “this makes me smile” option to then share the collection via Twitter or Facebook. To overcome language barriers, Microsoft’s Socl offers Bing translation and thereby connects people from various countries.

The network furthermore features the follower feature of Twitter and most popular users are shown at the People page. Most of the people on the network are still employees of Microsoft, but the company expects it to change in future. To share videos you can use Parties, where videos can be looped and others can join in on the fun, although not many are using the function yet. With no controls such as forward and pause, you will have to go through the whole loop.

Personal Information

For personal information and to give your background such as interests and friends, Socl features the “me” section. Apart from searches and posts, you can also create a playlist for watching videos. You will be able to watch the videos with others in Socl and can even interrupt through chats while watching.

Issues of Concern

The main issues experienced so far are about private engagement and group followings. The tag system isn’t the best method for information finding and even with the Bing text search available it still needs some work to make it the ultimate image-collage social network. The network does include a few of the Google+ features, a few Pinterest similarities and also a bit of Facebook. Windows 8 features can also be seen and one can thus come to the conclusion that it is a casual social collage.

One can for instance, control some issues such as notifications or erase content, but privacy is not an option. For some, this doesn’t seem to be a problem as a few rather private collections have already surfaced and Microsoft may need to deal with such quickly before Socl turns into a porn network.

If you are wondering whether a visit to Microsoft Socl will be worth your time, the answer is yes and as with Facebook you can expect it to improve over the long term.

The post Microsoft Socl Makes its Beta Debut appeared first on WebGrowth.

So what now if you are looking for an alternative to Raven Tools? Migrating to Project SEO is an option if you are thinking of moving. Raven Tools has given their client base a deadline to export historical data.

Call us on 021 685 6083 or email support@webgrowth.co.za if you have any questions on migrating from Raven Tools to Project SEO.

Bulk site upload tools

You can upload all your sites easily in one go using a simple Excel template.

Keyword Ranking History

If you export your data from Raven tools before their deadline then you can import it into Project SEO. You just need to create an account and raise a support ticket. We’ll then email you a template.

Import Links

You can use our bulk import feature to import links you have already worked. Our automated system will check these backlinks for you against Majestic SEO.

Our Guarantee

If you create an account before 17th December then we’ll guarantee to get you setup before Christmas. This way you’ll be all ready for the New Year knowing that all your sites are monitored, just in case Google does a big algorithm update over Christmas!

The post Migrating from Raven Tools appeared first on WebGrowth.

What is Google Places?

If you have a business that has a physical location then Google offers you a listing on their Google Places Directory. Your company name and location appears on Google Maps as well as in the Places section of a Google search. Google has recently also included Local within Google+ (Their version of Facebook). Within your places listing there is more info about your business and services.

Why do you need a Google Places Listing?
When a user searches for a company in a geographic location then Google Places allows your business to be found quickly. In South Africa people are still ignorant about Google Places and the importance of it, thus by getting in now it will put you at a huge advantage.

Businesses listed in Google Places can take up to 70% of the results space on the first page of a Google search, so it’s worth getting your company listed for the impact it can have.

According to Wikipedia there are over 42 million mobile handsets in South Africa. When you search Google on your mobile phone guess what searches normally appears first – GOOGLE LOCAL/PLACES. This is because Google believes that if you are searching for a plumber and you are in Cape Town then you do not need a plumber in Gauteng.

Google Places is still in its infancy in South Africa, if you ask most people if they have claimed their Google Places or Local listing they will look at you with a blank face and try to sound intelligent by answering yes of course. Then when they get home they will quickly Google “Claim my Google Places” as follow the procedure then.

How much traffic can Google Places really bring me?

It is important to note that the local search volume is for exact searches and not broad.

A company that gets #1 ranking for the terms can expect approx. 190 visits per month from the search term Plumbers Cape Town. (This number is based on a 40% click through rate for 1st place ranking terms.
This is very high for one search term considering that these are people nearby to you that are looking for your service.

1st Page Ranking Proof

Take a look at the search below for plumbing (It is important to note that I am logged out of Google and my location is set to Cape Town).

PHD Plumbing does not have a website (they have simply registered domain) and they have first page rankings for their key service. This term alone should get them approx. 70 unique visitors per month (Based on a 15% click through rate for position 3 ranking).

Tips to get 1st page Google Rankings?

Claim Your Listing
Go to Google Places and claim your listing. This will include a phone call or SMS verification and then normally within 1-2 weeks your listing will be live within Google Maps

Consistent UNAP (URL, Name, Address and Phone Number)
Google pulls information from various sources to provide robust data about each business. It is important to keep a consistent business URL, name, address, and phone number (UNAP) to avoid search engine confusion. The information you list on the website should be consistent with the ones on your Citations.
Go to as many Citation websites as possible and list your business there. Google uses these as one of the ranking factors. Ensure that your Company Name, Physical Address and Telephone number is exactly the same on all Citation Websites. (Please see the end of the article for a list of Citation Websites)

Ask for Reviews
Ask your clients to go to your Google Places listing one you have been approved by Google and place a review there. Do not place false reviews, Google picks up if there are too many reviews placed too quickly and will penalise those companies.

Add a local phone number
Ensure that you have a local phone number with your local area extension on both your website and the Google Places listing. This is critical for Google to show your Google places listing to the most relevant searches.

Have a physical address on your website
It is also very important that you have the physical address you use in Citations on your website (preferably in the footer of each page). This helps to keep consistency and should get you higher rankings on Google Places.

DO’s and DON’Ts for Google Places
Do’s for Google Places

• Ensure that you use the 200 character description wisely as this is very important
• Utilise all the Category Listings
• Create custom categories in addition to the ones provided
• Add Videos
• Add Images
• Include your opening hours
• Add coupons on a weekly/monthly basis
• Fill in every detail you can

Don’t’s for Google Places

• Place services and descriptions in your Title (Place your company name there)
• Create multiple listings for the same company if you only have 1 location
• Add multiple accounts under different business names at the same location
• Use PO Box for address
• Add dishonest reviews
• Spam the categories with geographic modifiers

Citation Directories

Citation directories are key to getting high Google Places listing on Google. But just how do I find citations where I can list my business to stand a better chance of higher rankings?

A citation is basically any website that offers you the service of listing your business in a directory type listing that includes your business name, URL and Telephone number.

To find citation directories you can go to Google and search for “SA directory websites” and start by listing your websites on those sites that appear

5 of the major citation directories are listed below:

1. Ananzi – www.ananzi.co.za
2. Tuugo – www.tuugo.co.za
3. Cylex – www.cylex.co.za
4. Easy Info – www.easyinfo.co.za
5. Fyple – www.fyple.co.za

The post Get 1st Page Google Rankings without a website appeared first on WebGrowth.

Image Credit (Axinar)

Hey guys first of all I want to start off by saying that all my points in this Article are my own personal opinions and prediction of what the future holds concerning Links that count most, the only confirmation I have is from an Anonymous Google employee that said “you are right, you are so right”.

As you all know, the Google Penguin is out targeting Over Optimised SEO as Matt Cutts calls it. There have been a few negative reports about this already and many SEOs are complaining, running around with their heads between their legs, not knowing what to do.

This got me thinking on what we, as Inbound Marketers, should be focussing on when it comes to SEO and the future of link building and Google Rankings, as we know it. I then remembered my past year’s intensive research, experiments and hard work trying to uncover the secrets of beating Google Panda, Freshness Update, Layout Update and now the nasty Penguin.

What Is Over-Optimization According To Google

Matt Cutts took part in a Q&A last month where he announced that Google is working on a new search-ranking penalty for websites that have too much SEO applied.

The main point that stood out for me was:

And so that’s the sort of thing where we try to make the web site, uh Google Bot smarter, we try to make our relevance more adaptive so that people don’t do SEO, we handle that, and then we also start to look at the people who sort of abuse it, whether they throw too many keywords on the page, or whether they exchange way too many links, or whatever they are doing to sort of go beyond what a normal person would expect in a particular area. So that is something where we continue to pay attention and we continue to work on it, and it is an active area where we’ve got several engineers on my team working on that right now.

Ok so Google has a dedicated team of several engineers working on over-optimize SEO tactics like too many links being exchanged, keyword here exchanged? So my question is what does Matt mean “too many links that are being exchanged”? According to me reciprocal links are long time dead, or exchange meaning people in control of links, hmmm pay and get links.

Overdoing anything is the other statement he makes, so that means obviously too many links only from footer placements, sidebar placements, contextual links or plain just any linking profile that tends to tip mostly to one side. So having a varied link profile is best.

What Did Google Do To Ensure Backlinks are More Relevant and Trustworthy

They have created what we all know as Agent Rank, Author Rank or  Rel=Author. This process is more difficult to manipulate or spam seeing the one factor before you can verify or get listed in the SERPs is having a high resolution picture of you. Yes, Google checks and make sure it is not fake or some one else’s. How? Easy, have you heard of Google Image search technology? Exactly.

So let us take it a little further by adding the author behind the authorship of any article, his circles, his web browsing history, his Google reader subscriptions and his searches etc. Get the picture? So then if I am an astronaut with scientists adding me in their circles, I write an article about rocket fuel and there is a link to NASA out of my article setup with rel= author and Google has verified me, guess what folks. Oh yes, that link counts as much as the Apollo 13 launch did.

I have seen posts of mine outranking News sites with PR 6 and higher for very competitive key-phrases without any link building at all or even social sharing. The only difference between me and the News sites is my articles have authorship enabled and my Agent Rank passes through to these articles.

Agent Rank is just one of the current factors surpassing Page Rank if you ask me, and by looking at how many of my own articles are outranking sites with PR 6 and higher, and my site only has PR 2. Yes freshness of the posts also count, but this is my point the News sites articles are indexed and posted before mine.

I have tested this theory as follows:

1. First I look at what is trending in South Africa.
2. I then scan Google for the latest news articles on the topic.
3. I write a new article covering this topic and linking to one or two of the main news sources where applicable with long partial match anchor text.
4. Obviously Authorship is installed and verified on my blog and articles.

Not even 2 days later and I am outranking these top Authoritative News sites without any social links or even any link building at all.

I have even seen these results with international News topics.

So It Is All About Reputation = Better Rankings

Agent Rank is only the one factor, recently Google also took out a patent for a new innovation Google Knol to compete against Facebook’s commenting system.

This will be to verify a commenter is who they say the are with reputation scoring for Authors on their comments they leave all over the net. As long as these places on the net are tied up to their Google Plus profiles.

So to sum it all up together clearly these steps will prevent spam to a much greater extent as before and if you really are an expert in your Niche it would be easier to have articles outranking other big brand websites.

I say this, because if you are an expert, people will automatically add you to their circles and engage with your articles to such an extent that your Agent Rank gets boosted above the rest. So this boils down to being popular, social and making sure people like you more.

The post Rel=Author Links: The New Future Of Google Rankings appeared first on WebGrowth.

In the affordable fashion sector Blackberry was the most popular, as it is (in most cases) the cheapest smart phone on the market and it offers free browsing. These are traits that are sought after by those who shop in the affordable fashion sector. Blackberry is almost uncontested in this sector, it’s an obvious favorite. [click here to enlarge image]

In the Tech sector Blackberry is the most commonly used smartphone, however, iPad and iPhone are a very close second. [click here to enlarge image]

In the financial sector iPhone and iPad are dominating, this is likely due to them being far more secure than their competitors when it comes to processing transactions. There are also apps that are only compatible with tablets – this is probably why the iPad is so widely used. [click here to enlarge image]

Ecommerce, like the financial sector, is being dominated by the iPhone and iPad, even the Samsung Galaxy range has a wider use than blackberry. [click here to enlarge image]

Once again, Blackberry takes the lead in this field, with more users than all of the others combined. Samsung Galaxy has a larger piece of the than it usually does, having more users than the iPhone. [click here to enlarge image]

The reason we are showing an interest in the mobile devices that are most popular at the moment is because of the insane increases in mobile browsing that is taking place, especially in South Africa. Data bundles and browsing packages are becoming more affordable and easily accessible in the country, which would obviously lead to more mobile traffic around the country.

By knowing which type of smartphone each of our clients customers or potential customers are using, it enables them to customise their sites so that they can make browsing from the most popular phone easier and faster. There are often problems with websites fitting and adjusting to the screens of certain phones, by knowing which phones are being used the most, this problem can be avoided.

The post Mobile browsing data, research revealed appeared first on WebGrowth.

What I found most interesting from the spreadsheet above was the Google+ links!! Google seems to be doing a better job at indexing Google+ updates than Facebook..

The post Google adds “download latest links” appeared first on WebGrowth.