Google have today announced a new link spam detection algorithm, alongside a new form to report competitors with.  While both link spam detection and reporting of link spam have both been possible for many years, today’s announcement could cause the practise of reporting competitors to become more popular.

Whether this proves to be significant will depend largely on whether Google takes the reports submitted seriously. If there is a strong indication that submitting such a report leads to your competitors rankings suffering, it’ll become too tempting for many SEO’s to ignore.

As it becomes increasingly easier to analyse your competitor’s backlinks, it also gets increasingly harder to hide what you are doing.

Such a scenario create a tricky dilemma – are the benefits of reporting your competitors more significant than the drawbacks? While the benefits might seem obvious (your competitor could drop in the SERPS, possibly below you), the drawbacks are probably more complex than you might first think.

Firstly , the new form isn’t anonymous, meaning that you need to submit from an actual Google account , and whilst I’ve no doubt that most would-be-reporters will use a fake/spare Google account for this purpose, it doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t be traced back to your website. If there is any way of Google knowing who’s behind the report, then you better be sure your website would stand up to similar scrutiny.

Then there’s the problem of shared links – even if you have used a disconnected account to report your competitors from, you might still lose out if you have shared links with your competitor. Should the algorithm be used to apply penalties to sellers (and it likely will be), you might find that Google discounts all links from websites linking to both of you. Imagine you gained a natural editorial link from a website – it wouldn’t be unforeseeable in competitive industries for your competitors to have approached the publisher and ended up paying for a link; in this scenario it’s quite possible that both the editorial and paid links were invalidated.

The ultimate question in both of the above cases would be your view of the playing field – given most websites will likely have some questionable backlinks (even if you haven’t bought links or spammed blogs, there’s previous SEO agencies to think about, ex-employees, competitors, or just being unlucky enough to have attracted links from websites that are usually spammy), your strategic call would depend on where you see your websites links compared with those of your competitors. If you are low in the SERPS but have a much cleaner link profile than your competitors, then you are probably well placed to submit reports.

Even if you do judge yourself of having more to gain though – it doesn’t mean you will actually want to do this. I’ve never personally reported a competitor, and I know many others who would say the same – it just feels wrong. Even if you do feel it’s the right thing to do, do you really have time? It’s kind of like playing a game of Darts – you can try and put off your opponent, but may just prefer to focus on your own game.

All things considered, savvier SEO’s may come to another conclusion altogether – whether or not you choose to report your competitors, future proofing your own links has to be the way forward.

Image credit Drew_

Welcome to part two of our introduction to PPC – not read part one yet? Read them in order – y’know it makes sense y’all

So last time we gave a brief overview of what PPC is. Today we’ll be looking at the planning stages you should go through prior to setting up your PPC Campaign.

Before you rush straight in there creating your account, picking keywords, creating ads and so on, it’s a really good idea to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Now’s the best time to get your house in order.

So what do you need to do first?

Decide what you are trying to achieve…

Now this might sound obvious, but it’s a really important step. Depending on what sort of business you run you might be looking to achieve one or more of the following:

1. Sales / Purchasers
2. Leads
3. Email sign ups
4. Whitepaper downloads
5. User registrations

This is by no means an exhaustive list, your own objective(s) might be different – but now’s the time to decide.

Check your website & internal processes are up to the job

All too often we see clients whose PPC campaigns have been ill-fated from the start, simply because their websites and/or their internal processes weren’t set up to fulfill their objectives.

You need to get this sorted out now. As soon as your campaign’s up and running you’ll be spending money, and that money will be wasted if your website or your internal processes aren’t up to scratch.

For example if you’re running your campaign because you want to generate sales leads – here are some key things to double-check:

1. How can visitors register their interest in your product or service? If they need to complete an online form, does the form work? Is it easy to complete, or does it throw back endless errors? Does it ask for more information than you really need?
2. Where do the completed forms go to – make sure they don’t get ‘lost’?
3. What happens with the completed lead forms? How are they dealt with internally? Does just one person deal with the leads? What happens if they’re not in the office?
4. Are there other routes to conversion? E.G. can visitors call you to register their interest? How are you going to track that? How will those leads be dealt with?
5. How are you going to monitor how many of the leads turn into sales?

We really could go on (and on and on) about this – but I’m sure you get the general idea.

Think about what you can afford to pay per click

Again – this really is fundamental. So much so we devoted a blog post to the subject. You don’t need to set this in stone right away, but it is worth thinking about this now.

Agree Budgets

When you first start a PPC campaign it will be a steep learning curve.

It is unlikely that from the get go you’ll have a profitable campaign. You’ll need to test and learn as you go. You’ll also need to get commitment from others to do likewise.

As such it’s a really good idea to agree a budget from the outset. Ideally you should also gain agreement as to how long you’re going to give the trial. When we take on a new client we ask that they sign up for a minimum period of three months. This allows us to iron out kinks in the campaign, test, get rid of the bits that don’t work, maximise the bits that do and so on.

Above all, make sure that everyone’s comfortable with the budgets which have been agreed.

So, plenty to be getting on with

Next time, we’ll be looking at setting up your PPC campaign – same bat time, same bat channel (or something).

Image credits Cliff 1066 & goat_girl_photos.

Puzzled by PPC?

Don’t feel bad, whilst the overriding concept is simple, in practise PPC Campaigns can quickly become complicated.

But don’t worry, we’re here to help. Over the next few weeks we will be running a series of posts designed to give an overview of what PPC is all about, and give some handy hints and tips to improve your campaign along the way.

So, first things first. Are you sitting comfortably? Got your tea / coffee / water / G&T? Then I’ll begin.

What Is PPC?

PPC stands for pay per click. You might also see PPC referred to as Paid Search – it’s all the same thing.

So, you know what it stands for, but what does PPC mean? Well it’s advertising. Now where PPC differs from traditional advertising is that you are only charged when someone clicks on your ad (hence pay per click) rather than being charged for your ad to appear.

The PPC Model was created by Bill Gross, founder of GoTo.com (which later became Overture, and is now part of Yahoo) in 1998; and Google began offering PPC in 2002. PPC really changed the landscape of advertising on the internet – as prior to it’s inception most online advertising was based on ‘impressions’ – i.e. how many times the advert was viewed.

Why is there so much hype around PPC?

On the face of it PPC looks really good. PPC ads appear on search engine results pages, so effectively you are putting your message directly in the path of those looking for your products or services. As such – it’s a very powerful model in terms of targeted advertising. However, a poorly managed PPC campaign can burn through money and offer little in the way of return.

Which Search Engines Offer PPC?

All of the major search engines offer PPC advertising. however each search engine’s PPC programme has it’s own little nuances. We run campaigns for our clients on Google, MSN and Yahoo – however not all clients elect to run campaigns on all of the search engines.

Which Search Engines Do People Use?

In the UK, Google is strongly favoured – for the four weeks ending 9/5/09 Hitwise rank the top five search engines (measured by volume of searches conducted) as follows:

Google (.co.uk)   77.37%

Google (.com)   13.26%

Yahoo   2.86%

Ask   1.65%

Live (MSN)   1.49% 

As such, you can see that by advertising on Google alone you can capture over 90% of the searches completed in the UK. Therefore many clients elect only to run their campaigns on Google.

The UK PPC Market

According to the Internet Advertising Bureau:

So, PPC continues to grow – but how do you take advantage of this potentially powerful media without getting burned? Be sure to check out the following posts in the series – we’ll be talking you through the processes we implement for our clients, so you too can create a PPC Campaign that really works for you.

Image credits jhritz