SEO by Chameleon

What is SEO and how it works

What is SEO and how it works

If you find yourself asking this question then you have probably had your head in sand for the last five years. As a business owner it is vital to understand what the competition are using to grow their business which means asking what is SEO and how it works at this point in time means you have missed a large amount of business already.

With the digital age’s rapid growth over the last five years and SEO being in the news with all the Google changes named after animals affecting SEO such as Panda, Penguin, Pigeon, etc it has been hard not to notice things. If you have missed it then finding this article today is vital to move your business forward. How do you think you found this article in the first place? – as a result of SEO.

Understanding what is SEO and how it works is something that is going to change your business and lets start by looking why the Internet is important to a business. In 2008 we spend 0.3 hours a day on a mobile device using the Internet digital media in someway and this has grown in 2015 to be 2.8 hours a day. In 2016 this growth continued and this year (2017) will see an even larger growth.

mobile usage statistics 2008 to 2015

The information above from KPCB shows an 11% growth and this is going to continue growing in popularity as we see the use of Smart TV’s and Smart Watches providing us with even more ways to connect to customers.

Our world is changing to be a constantly connected digital world with consumers using the Internet for decisions and becoming reliant on smartphones more than ever for shopping or looking for products and services.

We trust Google and over the last five years Google has grown even further providing more products and services used in daily life. Google carried out a study with Nielsen in 2013 to understand consumers’ mobile habits in the shopping process. This research over three years ago now showed how consumers use mobiles to research a product to the actual purchase of the product.

google mobile usage study 2013

Download the survey here.

This survey uncovered five key important findings, consumers are spending time researching on their smartphones which showed a usage of 15+ hours a week and remember this was report was in 2013.

The research showed that consumers start the buying process for products or services with a search engine over an app. With the most used search engine being Google this means if you are not using the power of the Internet via SEO for your business your business is not going to be included in the consumer decision path for products or services.

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO plays a vital part of this process, getting everything right on your website in-order to make Google able to find the content and understand it, then to trust it as an authority to add value to the user experience of Google search results.

An SEO company also has the tools to help to understand what keywords to target for organic search listing within Google search results that people are using and identify keywords that convert highly.

The survey also showed that the proximity is important with 69% of people expecting businesses to be within a five mile radius of their physical location. It is clear that immediacy is key and more than half want to purchase a product or service within the hour. In 2016 more and more changes took place in the way that delivery takes place with companies offering same day delivery and a huge growth of click and collect services. It was stated that 95% of online shoppers will now use a click and collect service for their Christmas shopping and the likes of Argos rated as the retailer offering the best click and collect user experience has stated that in 2014, 31% of it total online sales used click and collect. This has since grown further and also the huge growth of the popularity of Black Friday and Cyber Monday means that retailers had to change processes with some retailers like NEXT having issues and even large corporate business’s website’s going down due to too many visitors.

Argos click and collect

Argos has been one of the companies to follow when it comes to the Click and Collect service and they have seen a continued growth over 2015 and when the Internet Retailing Report created “Winning the Retail Battle in 2015” it was stated that around 60% of the retailers canvassed offered the service with many others planning to launch a click and collect service in 2016.

To add to this new change in shopping you will have seen over the last few years drive-through pick-up sites appearing and locker sites in carefully selected locations, all developed due to the inconvenience of home delivery and the growth of the Internet meaning we are not physically there when making a large amount of the purchases in our life.

Offices and workplaces have also become popular delivery locations with this change in consumer behaviour and all this change is due to the Internet success. Going back to the Google study, Mobile influences purchase decisions with around 93% going on to buy.

google mobile usage study

It is clear that in 2017 the Internet is vital for every business and this means that SEO is now even more important than ever before.

SEO Google

If you want to appear in Google search results then SEO plays a vital part of this process. To fully understand this you need to understand “How does Google Search work?“.

How does Google Search work?

Matt Cutts from Google explains the process Google follows and this shows the complex task that Google use. Another video from Matt explains “How Search Works” and this is vital to understand:-

If you watched the videos and understand how Google gets your website data and what to do with it you will start to better understand the role of SEO. An SEO consultant we look at what SEO Google needs to find and this changes as Google improves the algorithm.

An SEO Consultant will ensure that whatever the product or service is that your business is involved with, Google will find the exact information you need them to find so that they can index this data to be part of the search engine results pages. The more relevant and the more trusted the higher the position in the search results which means that to achieve number one you have to do a lot things perfect and do it better than your competition.

SEO Company

Chameleon Web Services is an SEO company with consultants that have been working with Internet marketing since 2001 and we have seen so many changes. We have grown with these changes and developed with them improving and becoming stronger year on year.

Take our own Industry sector which should be the toughest really being as we are trying to beat SEO professionals for a handle full of keywords, an SEO company should be able to appear on page one if they are any good. And importantly you need to take notice of the paid Google adverts. If an SEO company is paying on average £15 to £30 per click to Google for Adwords to be on page one of search results you would think that they should be trying to achieve an organic listing to be listed for FREE. If they cannot do this how are they going to achieve success for your business!…

birmingham seo services

This was a screen shot taken today (14/01/2017. Google it for yourself to check the results and you will see we have two listings in search results for “Birmingham SEO Services” which means we have over achieved here in one of the most difficult sectors.

how to get your business in google search results

West Midlands Police Website SEO Inspection

With our SEO research to understand more about what Google is doing with algorithm changes we follow specific websites and monitor the changes of websites to understand the effects things are having.

Understanding what Google is doing and what Google needs is vital to Search Engine Optimisation and as one of leading providers of SEO in the UK we monitor and track many high profile websites in varied sectors.

West Midlands Police Website

West Midlands Police Website SEO Inspection

The website URL for the West Midlands Police is www.west-midlands.police.uk and this has a backlinking profile that attracts links on a regular basis hitting peaks of 3000 per day at times and this profile has been growing since March 2011.

West Midlands Police SEO Backlinks

The overall result of the backlink profile is giving a trust flow of 50 and a citation flow of 42. The trust flow is a score based on quality, on a scale between 0 and 100. Sites closely linked to a trusted seed website achieve higher scores and websites that may have some questionable links have a lower score.

The Citation Flow is a also a score between 0 and 100 and this is a measure of link equity or “power” the website or link carries. Citation flow is used in conjunction with “Trust Flow” to understand the cleanliness, quality and power of a websites profile.

This score for the West Midlands Police Website is generated from 54,359 backlinks in the last 90 days and in the last 5 years the website has attracted 202,270 backlinks.

West Midlands Police SEO

It is important to look at what domains are linking to the website and these are referenced as referring domains, which in Google’s view are passing votes to the content on the website. The higher the profile of websites linking to content the better the content must be and also it must be important so Google take this content vary seriously. A website with no backlink’s has no authority on the subject matter.

West Midlands Police SEO Top 10 Referring Domains

The Police are always attracting links from websites and as an example the company Handlestore Ltd with the domain URL http://www.handlestore.com/ links to the police on their Google Plus page when they discuss security improvements. This is used in an attempt to show they are helping visitors by linking to authority websites. This is not so important to Google due to the fact it will actually tell Google to check out other websites for better content.

Handle Store SEO

This Google plus profile is the same as blog post and the company is promoting their website products and then linking to their own website and also trusted URL’s such as the West Midlands Police in order to grow the SEO backlink profile. Google will not really care much about this however and unless this is adding value to visitors the Google plus page itself adds no real value at all to the ranking of the main website URL.

To take a look at the Handle Store website it is clear that this company spends money / time creating backlinks that are not adding value:-

handlstore www.handlestore.com

handle store SEO power

To show an example of a backlink that adds no value, if anything a negative impact on the SEO profile:-

handle store SEO backlink

handle store seo

Google’s guidelines explain that they do not want to find paid for links and link farms. The reason for this is that it adds zero value to Internet users and makes Google’s job much larger. Websites that provide links in this manner are adding pollution to the Internet and add no value to a business owner or visitor.

This website has a TRUST problem and anyone with links on this website is more likely to have a decreased overall ranking position due to this for any keywords used.

The problem for this website is that the website itself has lots of poor quality linking to it.

This information here which has led us from the West Midlands Police Website to a furniture linking website shows how random the Internet is and what Google finds is often completely odd and random. It is for this reason that we have added this information in this article.

Looking back at the West Midlands Police backlinking profile there are 202 BBC backlinks:-

bbc SEO links

bbc seo links

bbc seo linking

The West Midlands Police website also has links from Government websites and as an example:-

Government seo links

All these links are picked up by Google and used to create a power profile which in return will provide an idea of trust. Due to the BBC and Government websites not selling links and being quality content with high profile websites linking to them also, these are some of the best links available on the Internet and this adds huge value to the West Midlands Police Website.

All these links are collated in Google’s database and the text used to link known as anchor text is then compiled to create a keyword profile:-

West Midlands Police Website Anchor Text

West Midlands Police Website Anchor Text

Looking at the profile there is a strange number link – 430539. west-midlands.police.uk so this stands out to be odd and on investigation we found:-

west-midlands-police-website-bad-links

west-midlands-police-website-bad-link

This is an un-trusted site and this is an example of a negative link pointing at the West Midlands Police website.

It is also important for Google to look at where the links are coming from in relation to location. The country the links are generated from pay an important part of SEO.

seo-links

The website content is inspected by the Google robots and all the data from the website is retrieved and then added to the Google database for the domain URL

http://seo-website-checker.chameleonwebservices.co.uk/web/west-midlands.police.uk

title tag

meta description

http://www.chameleonwebservices.co.uk/seo-tools/keyword-density-analysis/

  • There are 618 words on this page
  • Of those 618 words 511 words are linked ones
  • Of 618 words 110 are not linked
  • Of 110 non linked words 43 words are either stop words or have less than 3 characters
WordCount
police14
december10
crime10
latest7
advice7
information7
appeal7
abuse6
midlands5
contact5
2 Word phrasesCount
december 201610
back home6
west midlands5
midlands police5
full story5
read full5
police appeal4
latest news4
here for3
click here3
3 Word phrasesCount
read full story5
west midlands police5

css and javascript

headings

KeywordBody TextDensityTitleMeta keywordsMeta descriptionImage altLinks
police172.8%141421
crime101.6%02119
december101.6%000010
information71.1%00018
appeal71.1%01048
advice71.1%01007
latest71.1%00016
abuse61%00017
story61%00006
midlands61%11129
collision61%00037
contact50.8%00006
football40.6%00027
friday40.6%00004
involved40.6%00025
saturday40.6%00004
click40.6%00004
fatal40.6%00024
search40.6%00002
birmingham30.5%00003

Google’s Robots grabs:-

West Midlands Police Top of Page Skip to main content Police appeal following fatal collision Read full story Appeal launched after discovering a shotgun was fired into a bus Read full story Police appeal after fatal road collision Read full story CCTV released of men suspected of being involved in football disorder Read full story Trio convicted of terrorism offences Read full story Accessibility options West Midlands Police Preventing crime protecting the public and helping those in need Menu Contact us Menu Home Your local police Back Home Birmingham East Birmingham West Coventry Dudley Sandwell Solihull Walsall Wolverhampton Latest news Back Home View news Our videos Birmingham No Deal Wanted Caught on Camera Media queries Keeping you safe Back About us Back Home Executive team Our structure Diamond awards Getting involved History of the force Police and Crime Commissioner Police auctions Funeral items Behind the badge Back Behind The Crime blog Buses Cannabis disposal team Dogs Firearms licensing Football policing Forensic Investigators Guns Helicopter Motorways Offender management Operational Support Unit Organised Crime Preparing for emergencies Property seizures Summer album Tackling terrorism Traffic blog Vehicles WMPeople Misconduct outcomes Misconduct hearings WMP2020 Advice centre Back Accessing information Back Home Accessing Your Personal Information Civil Disclosure Unit Data Protection Freedom of information Chief Officer entitlements Campaigns Back Home Pickpockets Sentinel Forced marriage Domestic abuse Crime reduction Back Alcohol and violence Business crime Gun crime Home security Knife crime Pickpockets Robbery Scams Shop Theft Students Vehicle security Help and advice Back Academic research Advice for victims Anti social behaviour ANPR Bikesafe course Child sexual abuse Children and young people Domestic abuse Fines and fixed penalty notices Hate crime Honour abuse Mental Health Modern slavery Organising an Event Overseas visitor registration Radicalisation Rape and sexual violence Reporting road traffic collisions Stalking and harassment Stop and search Vehicle recovery scheme Advice leaflets Website Information Join the force Back Home Current vacancies PC recruitment Transferees WMP Associates Contact us Search Latest news Police appeal following fatal collision Monday 26 December 2016 Appeal launched after discovering a shotgun was fired into a bus Saturday 24 December 2016 Police appeal after fatal road collision Saturday 24 December 2016 CCTV released of men suspected of being involved in football disorder Saturday 24 December 2016 Trio convicted of terrorism offences Friday 23 December 2016 Elderly woman robbed in her home after hour long ordeal Saturday 24 December 2016 Life savings stolen in distraction burglary Friday 23 December 2016 No festive joy for football louts after WMP secures banning orders Friday 23 December 2016 Family of murdered man Surjit Takhar re appeal for information eight years after his death Friday 23 December 2016 Family pay tribute to man killed in Coventry collision Thursday 22 December 2016 View all our latest news stories Don t mask the abuse control isn t love Click for more on our Christmas domestic abuse campaign Ask Arita Click here for our latest campaign Darker Nights Click here for our latest campaign Community Project Funding now available Click here for more information Got a ticket Get advice on fines payment and speed awareness courses here Been involved in a crash Get help and advice here Ask The Police Answers to questions we are often asked If it s not an emergency call us 101 If life is in danger or a crime is in progress 999 More ways to contact us Contact your local team by entering your postcode Caught on Camera Recognise anyone in these CCTV images Most Wanted Spot anyone you know View the latest tweets across all our twitter accounts Tweets from WMPolice west midlands police all accounts Follow WMPolice westmidlandspolice Go to our YouTube channel to see our videos West Midlands Police Home Your local police Keeping you safe Advice Centre Latest news Contact us RSS feeds Information FAQs Search Copyright West Midlands Police 2016

The Overall SEO Result

The result of the content and the backlinking profile Google finds will then allow content to be shown in the search results.

west midlands police website traffic

west midlands police website traffic keywords

http://www.west-midlands.police.uk/ keyword ranking data spreadsheet.

The West Midlands Police Website ranks for keywords that Google decide are relevant and this is as an example:-

google search police jobs

In this example Google ranks the West Midlands Police Website number one in the search results. The content on the website is the most relevant to this search terms but due to the content structure the WM Jobs website is actually providing Google extra information in snippets and this is shown in today’s algorithm above the number one search result which is known as Google’s Quick Answer box.

wm jobs

This example shows how important SEO services are to a website. Even thou the West Midlands Police website is most relevant due to the content not being fully optimised and setup for the latest Google algorithm they actually loose traffic to the WM Jobs site.

To understand more about these pages we need to look at the data Google needs to find such as the title and meta description so that Google understands what the pages are about.

It is important to look at how How does Google Search works to understand more about what we need to provide Google in-order to rank well.

How does Google Search work?

SEO Titles, Meta Description and Meta Keywords

How much time should I spend on meta tags, and which ones matter?

West Midlands Police title = <title>Join the force &#8211; Latest jobs</title>
WM Jobs title = <title>Jobs with West Midlands Police</title>

Google uses however:-
West Midlands Police = Join the force – Latest jobs – West Midlands Police
WM Jobs = Jobs with West Midlands Police – WMJobs

You can see that Google is adding the site name to the title automatically.

How does Google choose titles for search results?

Also in the top 3 of the Google search results is Indeed.

Coded = <title>Police Jobs, vacancies in West Midlands Indeed.co.uk</title>
Google uses = Police Jobs, vacancies in West Midlands | Indeed.co.uk

It is clear that Google uses data and is manipulating the data it finds.

Looking at the Descriptions & Keywords:-

West Midlands Police does not have any description or keywords. Instead the website includes data known as Open Graph Tags which are used by Facebook. OG data promotes integration between Facebook and websites by creating objects with the same functionality as other Facebook objects.

<!– Jetpack Open Graph Tags –>
<meta property=”og:type” content=”website” />
<meta property=”og:title” content=”Join the force” />
<meta property=”og:description” content=”Latest jobs” />
<meta property=”og:url” content=”https://jobs.west-midlands.police.uk/” />
<meta property=”og:site_name” content=”Join the force” />
<meta property=”og:image” content=”https://s0.wp.com/i/blank.jpg” />
<meta property=”og:locale” content=”en_US” />
<meta name=”twitter:card” content=”summary” />

WM Jobs:-

<meta name=”description” content=”8 jobs with West Midlands Police to view and apply for now with WM Jobs”>

WM Jobs does not use meta keywords.

Indeed:-

<meta name=”description” content=”396 Police Job vacancies available in West Midlands on Indeed.co.uk. one search. all jobs.”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”Police Jobs, vacancies in West Midlands, West Midlands careers, West Midlands employment, West Midlands job listings, West Midlands job search, West Midlands search engine, work in West Midlands”>

It is important to note that Google doesn’t use Meta Keywords since around 2009 but these are still used by other search engines such as Bing.

Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking

USe of H1, H2 and H3 Headings

West Midlands Police:-

No H1 Headings

<h2>Current vacancies</h2>

<h3>Leave a Reply </h3>

<h3>Rewards &#038; Benefits</h3>

<h3>Latest Tweets</h3>

WM Jobs:-

<h1>West Midlands Police</h1>

<h2>About West Midlands Police</h2>

<h2>8 jobs with West Midlands Police</h2>

<h3>Business Analyst</h3>

Indeed:-

<h1>Police jobs in West Midlands</h1>

<h2></h2> – Various used for Job titles

No H3 Headings

Using H1, H2 and H3 headings are so important for on page SEO as this tells Google what the content is about on the pages. The ordering of H1 should follow a natural path. The H1 heading is at the top of the page and then H2 to break up content and then H3 inside the H2 content where needed.

Google uses this data and the algorithm is clever enough to work out the content on the page with the use of H1, H2, H3, etc heading tags. The algorithm has also worked out that some websites mess up the ordering or try to manipulate the content and this should be avoided.

More than one H1 on a page: good or bad?

On page content

The content on the page is then grabbed and this should be reflected in the above Titles, Meta data and headings. If Google finds unique content it doesn’t really care how pretty the page looks it will now want to use this content within search results and the ranking positions within search results is now down to the quality of the content and the information that has been provided + whether or not Google trusts the content.

A highly skilled SEO consultant can look at differences between websites and understand what is required to be competitive on page one of Google search results looking at the current websites already there.

SEO Is Vital To Online Success?

free seo advice

SuperDry Rankings

As part of the research we carry out for SEO and online marketing we track specific brands and SuperDry has been monitored for the last few years. This happens when we are asked to look into the online profile of high profile companies and then have to setup monitoring and tracking which is then really helpful to see what others are doing in the industry.

Our work providing Google Penalty Advice provides us with a huge amount of data we simply could not get. As a company providing recovery plans following other SEO companies carrying out work that is not to Googles guidelines, we have a huge insight into what not to do:-

Google Penalty Advice

Our monitoring has tracked that SuperDry is dropping online rankings:-

SuperDry rankings

Taking a look over the online domain profile of www.superdry.com:-

SuperDry Trust

SuperDry Backlinks

The backlinking profile of SuperDry has had some spikes which need further investigation, one of the backlinks is from another SuperDry site which was used in the past as the online store. This domain is now redirected to the main site and this has trust issues:-

SuperDry Store

Looking at the backlinks in details we can see the there are 1413 links from online-bauhaus.com which got indexed in November 2016 and this site has zero trust.

There are a large number of other links to this domain which are not trusted:-

There are also various directory links that are not trusted, for example (http://www.bedfordpages.co.uk/company/438139817107456):-

This is a small sample of things we have found researching a leading brand name that has dropped in Google rankings…

If you need us to look into anything get in touch with us today or call 0121 663 0456.

English Google Webmaster Hangout on Air

Playlist: English Google SEO Office Hours

Kep up-to-date with the English Google Webmaster Hangout on Air

English Google Webmaster Central office-hours hangout Dec 2, 9am CET

English Google Webmaster Central office-hours hangout

English Google Webmaster Central office-hours hangout Dec 2, 9am CET

Join us for a Google Webmaster Central office hours hangout on Dec 2, 9am CET
https://www.timeanddate.com/worldcloc…

Add your questions at https://plus.google.com/collection/89… . This session is open to anything webmaster related like crawling, indexing, mobile sites, internationalization, duplicate content, Sitemaps, Search Console, pagination, duplicate content, multi-lingual/multi-regional sites, etc.

This is a Hangout on YouTube Live. To join live, watch out for the link once the event starts, and use a webcam + headset. You can find out more about Hangouts and how to participate at https://sites.google.com/site/webmast…

Feel free to drop by – we welcome webmasters of all levels! If you would like to join this hangout live & in person, and haven’t been able to get in recently, please leave a note here and we’ll try to invite you a few minutes before we start.