Why is SEO important?

December 23, 2019/in Birmingham SEO, Digital Marketing, DIY SEO, Google, Google Advertising, London SEO, SEO, SEO Birmingham, SEO PR, SEO Service /by chameleon

Working in SEO we have to answer questions like ‘why is SEO important?’ every time we get onto the topic of job roles.

We usually brush over the topic, making dramatic, over the top claims such as ‘without SEO no one would be found on Google’, but the truth is SEO is essential for all companies. From the local plumber with a five-page website to the biggest management consultancy firm with over a thousand URLs, every business, big or small, can benefit.

Google Organic Search is the most important source of traffic

When most people search for something on the internet, they tend to head straight to Google. According to Statista, as of June 2019, Google held 87.64% market share in search engines in the UK. Bing, the next most used search engine, only had 8.2% market share.

If you’re targeting new customers, growing your rankings organically is crucial. Although establishing a loyal client base is very important, SEO will bring in new clients. Your website will be easier for new customers to find if you are ranking for keywords instead of just your brand name. As potential shoppers will search for keywords rather than specific companies. SEO is vital if you’re looking to grow your business and expand your clientele.

SEO agencies have the software to boost your rankings

Whilst targeting Google might be obvious, using a professional agency might be less so. Although there are many blogs and tutorials on SEO online, the tips and tricks can only go so far and how up-to-date or accurate is the information. Not only do digital marketing experts have the training and specialised knowledge, but they also have access to specific software that will allow them to research the keywords most relevant to your business. An SEO specialist will then target the keywords most relevant to your products or services and bring in the right traffic.

The Google algorithm is always changing

One of the most frustrating things about working in SEO is the constant shift in the Google algorithm. Every day, Google changes the way it ranks websites and crawls them for relevant content. For instance, once upon a time, mentioning the keyword as many times as possible on a page, was standard practice for SEO consultants. Recently, however, Google has changed its algorithm to limit ‘keyword stuffing’ – referencing the keyword as much as you could.

Doing SEO for a website is a full-time job. If the Google algorithm changes without your knowledge, your rankings will start to drop. An SEO consultant will know the latest changes to the algorithm and edit your website accordingly, keeping your website on page one of Google.

Page one is the only place you’ll be clicked

Finally, SEO is particularly important because if you are not on page one of Google or in the top ten, you will not get the required organic traffic at all to grow your business. As most people are lazy and want instant information, they are unlikely to scroll further than page one. As there are so many companies competing for page one, if you don’t focus on maximising your SEO, your website will not receive much organic traffic.

There are many benefits of paying for SEO services, as you’ve read above. Being on page one of Google for your chosen keywords is one of the most effective ways of broadening a client base and bringing in more traffic to your site, something relevant for all businesses, big or small.

HOS – House Of Sparkles Website

April 17, 2019/in Google, Google Search, Hosting, How To, SEO, SEO Company Review, SEO PR, SEO Service /by chameleon

It is great to read about the HOS Home – House Of Sparkles success and this is what inspires others to go for it and set up their own business.

Mandy Hale’s quote is great here “There is nothing more beautiful than someone who goes out of their way to make life beautiful for others.”

The website HOS – House Of Sparkles setup by Layla Chapman back in 2016 with according to the Sun News Paper for just £40 is now a booming success with a turnover of £10.7 million. This is great to read and we really hope that people feel inspired by this but also understand that it takes a huge amount of hours and personal sacrifice with added luck to succeed. Previous failures often come before achieving success and the road to success is often difficult and we always admire success stories.

Successful people have a ridiculous level of persistence in making their dreams comes true and we see people here at Chameleon on a daily basis that want to make it online and we create a plan to achieve success for everyone from what we do, but often people never realise how much work is involved once you make it. We think it is easy to read articles like this forget this fact and it is important to have this in the back of your mind so not have false hope.

If you look at the likes of Sir Alan Sugar, he worked so hard to achieve the success he has today and he often refers back to his routes, even today in a tweet as he is attacked for being successful:-

The road to success is a journey and you will never stop learning. Successful people learn new things every day improving a little and the snowball rolling effect makes them become great. This website success has been helped along due to celebrities such as Amanda Holden and Peter Andre and this is fantastic. We are sure that with the positive publicity the business it will grow even faster now as a result.

We thought it would good to look to into this website further from an online marketing perspective because often success comes and businesses miss the basics. The growth of this company could come from hardwork, luck, organic growth, paid online advertising or something else and identify and help HOS achieve more growth from what we find.

When a business comes to us and asks us to audit a company we look into everything to understand and identify how success has been achieved.

We take a look at everything to understand what is good and what can be better, there is always something that can be better and we have been in the industry since 2001 and helped grow some of the most successful websites online today.

HOSHome.com – House Of Sparkles Website

The website HOS is currently looking lovely:-

Back in December 2018 which is not very long ago at all the website didn’t look as nice and it very important to look at how a website develops and move forwards. Often changes are made a result of research to improve conversions or simply to improve the visual look. The HOS Home website looked like this:-

The website in 2019 looks in-line with the competition and when we look behind the scenes at search engine optimisation aspects of the website it is missing vital information for Google to help it rank organically and this is something that HOS Home online development need to look at. Normally we would run and audit using our in-house software and then make positive changes after looking over the results.

The website is built using Shopify a hosted shopping website platform with multiple themes which requires very little programming experience. The website is using MailChimp for Shopify, Automatic Discounts, Searchanise, Covet Pics, Product Reviews Addon and MageWorx usage statistics as an example of plugins/extensions installed.

The website is hosted in Canada and on a server that is hosting websites we would not recommend to have in the same neighbourhood. We look at hosting as this is part of the search engines algorithm.

We found hoshome.com is hosted with over 1,000 other domains hosted on the same web server which uses IP address 23.227.38.32 and this web server is hosting web sites with explicit content. To show examples of the websites our system detected a simple ping command can be used to check the hosting to confirm this problem:-

There is a possibility that all of the web sites on this web server may be affected as far as being blocked by web filtering software. Search engine rankings for all web sites using the same IP address may be affected as well. We always recommend looking at the IP address and ensuring a website is hosted correctly with a unique IP address and SSL certificate.

HOSHome.com – House Of Sparkles Website SEO Report

We have a complete SEO PDF report you can download here:

When you carry out a Google search can see the company is paying for Google Adwords for its brand name to protect it presumably. However, this will result in people clicking on this and adding additional costs to the business when visitors are already heading to the website.

The home page www.hoshome.com meta title for example is <title>HOS Home | Luxury Furniture</title> and then the meta description is <meta name=”description” content=”Welcome to HOS Home. Affordable luxury furniture specialists. High end glamorous furniture at high street prices. A brand you can trust.“>

This could be improved but is in line with what Google is looking for in terms of the title and description.

If we then move to an internal page for example www.hoshome.com/collections/living-room we find the title is <title>Living Room Furniture | HOS Home</title> and the meta description is <meta name=”description” content=”The living room is where we spend the most time, create the best memories, and relax. For this, you need the perfect furniture for your living space. From sofas, coffee tables, media units & more. We have everything you need to design your living room interior.“>

This page could be improved to help tell search engines like Google what the content is about, but is a great starting point to achieve online success. It is clear that from only looking at a couple of internal pages they follow the same pattern. This shows that what we presume this is automatically generated meta titles and descriptions and the job is partially done right.

We scrapped the site to look to see what the Google spider would find and for example, we quickly found broken links on the website using our in-house developed scrapping software.

For example www.hoshome.com/pages/returns-policy we found a link created wrong:-

You can see the coding is has been built as follows:-

<a href=”customerservice@hoshome.com”>customerservice@hoshome.com.</a>

In the screenshot, you can see also that another link has been built correctly, so this is a simple coding error when the page was created.

To fix this they need to add the “mailto:” which would create <a href=”mailto:customerservice@hoshome.com”>customerservice@hoshome.com.</a>

As we carry on looking into the site we spotted the site has been built with an error using two rel=”canonical” tags across the site.

If you look at the homepage for example:-

A website should only have one canonical tag.

A canonical tag is the method used to inform search engines that a specific URL represents the master copy of a page. Using the canonical tag prevents problems caused by identical or “duplicate” content appearing on multiple URLs.

This is probably because it is being generated by Shopify and also by a second extension adding SEO data.

A very important factor of ranking online is the power / trust a website has and this helps search engines determine whether or not to trust the website content and also it helps to identify the business links the website may have and the subject content to help place the website in a category.

Looking below we can see out of 100 the website scores 11 in trust and 18 in citation.

To compare that against another website for a reference we have used WayFair.com and you can see below the trust is 54 out of 100 in terms of trust and 63 in terms of citation. The higher the trust the better:-

To increase the trust carefully selected backlinks need to be found and this is a subject in the SEO world that causes many issues. Here at Chameleon, we identify only the perfect links to try and find that will add value and we help clients create links organically by creating content that can be shared adding value to the users.

Looking at the link text known in the SEO industry as anchor text the links can be seen below and the geographical location of the links:-

If we take a look at the traffic the website is achieving it is attracting a large volume of visitors already, but the traffic cost is low and this is due to the keywords ranking:-

HOSHome.com – House Of Sparkles Ranking Keywords

When we look at what keywords the website is ranking for it appears to be attracting its traffic via the brand name “house of sparkles”:-

So from what we can see the website strength isn’t its online rankings for keywords, it is something else which points us to Social Media as the main growth point of this business.

In the footer of the website there are links to the following social media accounts:-

https://www.instagram.com/hoshome_/

The Instagram account has 116K followers, but when we look at the sharing of posts this is relatively low which makes us think this is a lot of bot type accounts.

https://www.facebook.com/houseofsparkles/

From what we can see with the linked Facebook page being broken / hidden we think that actual FaceBook page https://www.facebook.com/HOS-Home-1525053811125655/ is in the process of being merged.

https://www.facebook.com/HOS-Home-1525053811125655/

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/HOSparkles/

It appears that this business has grown as a result of Facebook and then recommendations from friends, family and celebrities which shows the power of social media.

So What Would Chameleon Do Next?

We would look at the website and hosting, ensure all the site is Google friendly and fix all broken links. Ensure that all touch points are working, for example the Facebook link going to a dead page is not good.

We would carry out on-page SEO across the entire website and make it fully search engine friendly and increase the trust of the website to help search engines like Google rank the content and grow the traffic to the website for keywords that are not brand related. The website could then take the power of Google and increase business turnover without spending on advertising.

We would look at the images and get these ranked in Google search results for window shoppers to find by mistake and this would result in higher conversions because if people are actively looking for the products that are being sold by image then the very fact they click on the image to view it means they more than likely like what they see.

Download a PDF report –

If you would like to understand more about this or wish us look into your website or a competitors, please get in touch.

Google RankBrain: The Complete Guide (Everything You Need to Know & More)

April 11, 2019/in Google, Google Algorithm Update, Google RankBrain, Google Search /by chameleon

Today we’re teaching you everything you need to know about Googles RankBrain algorithm.

From how RankBrain works to how it effects SEO. Find out everything you need to know and more here in our complete guide.

What is Google RankBrain?

Google RankBrain is a machine learning algorithm which uses artificial intelligence to help sort search results. After being named Googles third most important signal for search queries, RankBrain has become a core part of Googles algorithm. Its main role is to understand users search queries and deliver relevant results based off the words searched.

Machine Learning vs Artificial Intelligence

Machine learning (ML) is the capability a machine has to analyse data and in turn, teach itself. This can be as simple as learning what a user is really looking for when they spell their search query wrong or as complex as analysing a search query and working out what the user really means.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a development in computer science which creates machines that are capable of intelligent behaviour.
The difference between ML and AI is that artificial intelligence is the broader base of a smart machine, however it is the machine learning capabilities which gives the machine its intelligence.

How does RankBrain work?

RankBrain is designed to understand what a user is searching for, even if they are not using the exact words needed for that search query as well as use other aspects such as user location and context to ultimately provide relevant search results.
In other words, it helps to understand the intent of a users search and provide results based on this. To do this, Google feeds RankBrain endless quantities of data, which include users’ locations, history and device, in order for the system to teach itself what search results to provide.

RankBrain Examples:

If a user types in the search query ‘world cup location’ into Google, the system first tries to identify the true intent of the search. For this search term, it would consider factors such as the user’s location and history as well as considering if they are searching for the location of the most recent World Cup or the upcoming one.

As well as taking factors of the individual users into account, RankBrain also considers patterns it has picked up through users searches. Therefore when requesting the ‘world cup location’ RankBrain will look into its database and provide you with the result below.
This result, therefore, caters for all users as it not only provides them with the next world cup location but also previous ones. This result may vary however depending on where the user is searching from, i.e. if they are in the city of the world cup, it may provide them driving directions to the event.

Another example of the Google RankBrain algorithm is when a user searches for ‘Where should I go for dinner?’. Using its intelligence, RankBrain understands that you are looking for a restaurant to eat at and takes factors such as your location into consideration to provide you with relevant results that are local to you.

The above shows how RankBrain has used our location and in turn, provided us with results relevant to us.

How does RankBrain decide what to rank?

RankBrain decides how to rank results simply by recording how satisfied they believe Google users are by the pages they land on as well as the importance of backlinks linking to a page, the content freshness and domain authority.

For example, a Google user searches

Firstly, Google presents you with a result positioned at what is referred to as ‘Position Zero’. RankBrain will have positioned this result here as it has noted user’s behaviour towards this website. Factors the Google algorithm takes into consideration are the website chosen by the user and the time the user spends on the website.

The above shows how Google has ranked websites in accordance to the search query ‘berry smoothie’.

It ranks these websites again by looking at user behaviour. If a user chooses a website but bounces straight off it, the algorithm will take a note of this and presume the website wasn’t very useful and in turn rank it lower. When the Google RankBrain algorithm records people bouncing from site to site, they call this ‘pogo-sticking’. However, if a user spends a sufficient amount of time on the website, it will know that the content on this website was useful and therefore rank it higher in the future.

What did Google do before RankBrain?

Before RankBrain, Google was capable of finding pages beyond the exact terms a user used in a searching query. Previous to the Google RankBrain algorithm, Google developed itself so it could recognise variations of the same search queries in order to provide relevant results to their users. It also understood words had synonyms so if someone searched for ‘workout clothes’ it understood the user was looking for ‘gym wear’.
Now RankBrain is in place, it allows Google to understand more complex search terms and interpret them effectively. In 2013, Google stated that 15% of the search queries they found had never been seen before, which was a reduction from the 20-25% in 2007. RankBrain helps to link search queries together so they can provide users with the results they were looking for.

RankBrain in SEO

Dwell Time and Bounce Rate

Dwell time refers to the amount of time a user spends on a website after clicking on it from the results they were provided.
In simple terms, the longer a user spends on a website the more likely it is to be ranked higher by Google.
There are a number of techniques you can practice to boost your dwell time. These include:
Content Length – In short, longer content leads to a better dwell time. If you can create a piece of content which answers all the questions a user may ask, then it decreases the probability that the user will bounce of your website and find another to answer their questions.

For example:

It’s the start of the new year and your resolution is to get fitter, so you search for ‘how to start the gym’. The first article you may come across is a short 350-word article that starts to answer your questions but doesn’t totally fulfil what you’re looking for. So you bounce of this website and look for one with more content to further answer your questions.
Then, you find the website you’ve been looking for. An online guide with work outs for beginners, dietary advice and even tutorials showing how to perform certain exercises. So you spend a significant amount of time looking through this guide, re-reading some parts and taking in all the information it has to offer.
This increases the dwell time on this site compared to the first one you selected and in turn shows Google that the second website should be ranked higher.

Importance of Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is an important factor when increasing your click through rate (CTR). If people recognise your brand it immediately increases the probability of a user clicking onto your website. Seeing a brand they know will increase the trust in a website and make the user more comfortable when using the website.

What Factors Apply to Your Content?

An important thing to bear in mind is that RankBrain has a collection of factors it takes into account when ranking search results. It is important to identify what which of these factors best apply to your content and optimise your content accordingly. Some of the ranking factors include:

• Content depth
• Freshness of content
• Diversity of backlinks
• User engagement (dwell time and bounce rate)
• User location
• The user’s device

The best way to optimise your content in accordance to these factors is to review the topic your covering and its urgency.

For example:

If your uploading an article in relation to a recent crime in an area, the content freshness is a key factor as well as the sure engagement. However, if your writing content on the history of the Black Country, the depth of this content will be more important to the user and Rank Brain.

Thorough Content is Key

In the past, a common SEO technique was to have individual pages for each keyword. So if you was selling security cameras there would be an individual page created for ‘CCTV cameras’, ‘CCTV camera’, ‘Security cameras’ and all the other commonly searched terms surrounding the service.
SEO has since moved on from this and Google is now favouring pages with longer content containing everything the user is searching for. This means incorporating all key words and phrases in one in depth piece of content that speaks to the user in a natural tone.

Submitted URL marked ‘noindex’

February 22, 2019/in Google, Google Advice, Google Search, HELP, How To, London SEO, SEO, SEO Birmingham, SEO PR /by chameleon

If you have received the message in Google Search Console or for the well-weathered SEO guys Google Webmaster Tools then you need to read this:-

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7440203#submitted_but_noindex

Submitted URL marked ‘noindex’: You submitted this page for indexing, but the page has a ‘noindex’ directive either in a meta tag or HTTP header. If you want this page to be indexed, you must remove the tag or HTTP header.

The Message Submitted URL marked ‘noindex’ is distressing to read.

The issue in the above example is small but what if you get:-

Well we have spent a few hours looking different sites with different plugins for in WordPress when companies have asked for our help and always achieved success in fixing this problem.

The problem is that each time the issue has slightly different:-

If you see this message and need help contact us via our contact form or call +44 121 663 0456

Google reCAPTCHA Badge Always Showing – Hide It

February 19, 2019/in Google, HELP, How To, Web Design /by chameleon

When you enable the new Google reCATPTCHA V3 it will display by default “protected by reCAPTCHA” on your website at all times and this badge will be visible in the bottom right corner of the screen. When your mouse goes over the badge the larger badge will appear as a pop out.

This doesn’t look too bad on a desktop but on a mobile device this is a real pain and there are no options to hide this.

When you accept the reCAPTCHA Terms and conditions part of this is to inform visitors to the website that you are using the reCAPTCHA new system.

So what options do you have to hide Google reCAPTCHA V3 Badge?

Google released in December 2018 a new update and with this information which can be found here https://developers.google.com/recaptcha/docs/faq

Should I use reCAPTCHA v2 or v3?

reCAPTCHA v2 is not going away! We will continue to fully support and improve security and usability for v2.

reCAPTCHA v3 is intended for power users, site owners that want more data about their traffic, and for use cases in which it is not appropriate to show a challenge to the user.

For example, a registration page might still use reCAPTCHA v2 for a higher-friction challenge, whereas more common actions like sign-in, searches, comments, or voting might use reCAPTCHA v3. To see more details, see the reCAPTCHA v3 developer guide.

I’d like to hide the reCAPTCHA badge. What is allowed?

You are allowed to hide the badge as long as you include the reCAPTCHA branding visibly in the user flow. Please include the following text:

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google
Privacy Policy and
Terms of Service apply.
For example:

How To Hide The Google reCAPTCHA Badge

Reading online various people suggesting using display: none; in the CSS but this will override the system and the Google reCAPTCHA will not function.

.grecaptcha-badge {
display: none;
}

NOTE: This is not the correct method to hide the Google reCAPTCHA Badge.

The correct method from our testing to hide the Google reCAPTCHA Badge is to use:-

.grecaptcha-badge {
visibility: hidden;
}

Now it is important to add the message Google reference’s in the link shared earlier with the links to https://policies.google.com/privacy for the Privacy Policy and also the https://policies.google.com/terms for the Terms of Service.

Hide The Google reCAPTCHA Badge On All Pages Other Than Your Contact Page If Using WordPress

If you want to take the above advice and then make it still appear on the contact page you can do this. First, you need to find the page ID number.

Login to your WordPress website site and navigate to the Pages menu in your admin dashboard.
Click on the contact page.
Once in the edit screen, look at the URL in your web browser.
The Page ID is the number in the URL.

On Chameleon we have this:- https://www.chameleonwebservices.co.uk/wp-admin/post.php?post=45&action=edit

This means that page ID is 45 and now we can add the following CSS:-

/* Hides Google reCAPTCHA Badge on all pages */
.grecaptcha-badge {
visibility: hidden !important;
}

/* Enable Google reCAPTCHA Badge on the contact page */
.page-id-45 .grecaptcha-badge {
visibility: visible !important;
}

Note: You have change the page ID number to your page ID for obvious reasons.