The Maine SEO Blog

You may have noticed this tiny green bar on your Google toolbar that changes with every site you visit.  In its simplest terms, PageRank is one of Google’s ways to assign weight and rank to websites.

Google bases this particular algorithm off of millions of variables; the major factor being the number of (quality) incoming links.  While no one knows their true PR, the toolbar will at least give you an idea of where you’re at: with a number from 1-10, 1 being low PR and 10 high PR.  (Similarly, you will never know exactly how many incoming links your site has, but Yahoo’s Site Explorer will give you a fairly close number).  Google updates toolbar PageRank approximately every 3 months.

Being somewhat inquisitive, I decided to investigate a little further.  I took a look at 10 sites – with toolbar PR of 1-10.

I also included age because I’ve seen PageRank increase over time, simply from gaining trust from traffic rather than backlinks.  I wanted to test whether or not it had much impact on PR.  However, from this small sample, it seems too difficult to infer that age has anything to do with PR.  Perhaps with a larger sample, I could decide differently.

However, it is easy to see the direct relation between PR and backlinks.  Due to the drastic change in the number of backlinks, I had to split the charts: PR 10-6, then PR 5-1 following in order to see the similarities.

What I learned and confirmed

1. Don’t rely on your toolbar PR; use it instead as a relative guide.
2. Get as many quality, incoming links as you can.
3. Since blogs generally acquire more backlinks than regular sites, a young blog can have a better PageRank than an older site.
4. The only other website with a PR 10 (as far as anyone can tell) than Google, USA.gov, has just over 11 million backlinks – millions less than any examples I provided above a PR 7  – proving the power of a .gov (.edu’s are powerful too!).

Nicki Hicks
Watch your back(links)

Conversions are more important than rankings – they are the goal.  Sure, good rankings should lead to higher conversions; but being #1 should not be your first priority.  Using Google Analytics, you have the opportunity to set up a total of four goals for each website (should you have multiple sites) to track your conversions.

Click the edit button on the Dashboard page in your Analytics.  There, you’ll find all of the settings for your account.  What we’re interested in are the Conversion Goals and Funnels.

Again, you see you have four goals to choose from.  Pick “edit” for one of the goals.

1. Turn the goal “on”.
2. Choose Match Type. Exact Match requires the URL you enter to be exactly the one your users will land on – good for things like a Thank You page for email subscriptions.  Head Match is best for URLs with unique values – checkout pages, for example, where the content is dynamically generated.  Regular Expression Match is best for pages where the stem and/or URL is dynamic.  Google uses this example: “page=1 will match http://sports.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&id=002 as well as http://fishing.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&language=fr&id=119.”
3. Goal URL/Goal Name/Case Sensitivity.  All fairly self explanatory.  Insert the URL – or landing page – where your customer will complete the goal.  A thank you page for an email sign up or filling out a contact form.  For E-commerce sites, a checkout page for continuing to checkout or a receipt of payment for the actual sale.  The goal name should be specific – something other than “Goal 1″.  Case sensitivity is explained above.
4. Goal value is the dollar amount of what a single completed goal will mean to you.  For example, if you know that for every 10 people who fill out a contact form, 1 will do business with you; and the average person will spend $10,000 with you, then your goal is worth $1,000.  (NOTE: Be sure to leave the amount without $ sign; as in 1000, NOT $1000.)
5. If you would like to track your conversions through the steps your customers take to get there, use funnels.

Once GA starts collecting data, you can view it in the Goals section of your account.

Nicki Hicks
Happy Converting!

One of the best compliments a business can get is a referral.  Word of mouth marketing has been an effective tool for ages, and why wouldn’t it be?  Could even the most brilliant ad hope to compete with the sincerity of a referral from a friend?

Referrals are still as persuasive as ever, but now there is a more modern equivalent.  Online customer reviews were the first big step.  You see them everywhere – Amazon is especially famous for it – their “people who had your taste in books had this to say about this novel” reviews, plus the list of “oh by the way, they also liked these” books.  Upselling?  Maybe.  But effective?  Absolutely.  Perfect strangers can affect the books you buy more than Amazon can themselves!

Now, Google is using reviews, and might even be taking them into account for rankings.  Local Search results (Google Maps, in this case) include five-star ratings and reviews.  My question is: what affect do reviews (whether good or bad) have on local rankings?

I think we can all agree that local rankings seem to be based on location, first and foremost.  In other words, the closer to the address or city in the query a business is, the higher that business will rank.  What if we factor in the small matter that a business (perhaps further away) has both more reviews and stars than the competition?

Case in point, a search for “lobster portland me”.  Here are the first five search results.  Notice only The Lobster Shack (#4) has reviews and stars, and is the only one on the first SERP with them.

It may not seem to prove anything at first.  But take a look at the accompanying map.

Whether you’re from Portland (or Maine, for that matter) or not, you can see that Cape Elizabeth is not Portland.  The entire first page, plus most of the second and third pages, are filled with Portland results; except for spot #4, which is also coincidentally the only company with customer reviews.

Maybe it is a coincidence.  Then again maybe not.  I’ve been noticing this trend for a while now, and while it is not a perfect science (sometimes un-reviewed sites rank much better than reviewed ones), it might be something.

The takeaway?  Optimizing your site is important – it will help with rankings initially.  But reviews (especially if you’re local) are critical.  We often suggest our clients use a sort of new-age comment card system: by asking their customers to review their product or service on these local sites.  Reviews might just be the icing on the cake, enough to give your company the edge!

Nicki Hicks
Local SEO

A few years ago a book came out called Moneyball. It was about how Billy Beane, GM of a small market team, the Oakland A’s, competed and beat teams with a much bigger payroll, like the evil Yankees and the beloved Red Sox.

The idea was that baseball teams had been measuring the wrong things when looking at players: batting average and pitching speed for example. Instead, he looked deeper into the data and found that on-base percentage (which would include walks, hit-by-pitches, etc.) and pitchers who got ground outs were much more valuable, and completely ignored by other teams. In this manner he built a successful team at a fraction of the cost of the Yanks or Sox.

Did it work? Well, some of those big market teams took his advice (why did he share that info anyway?) and the Sox have won two world series since. Now on-base percentage is viewed as an essential metric for hitters, and shown on NESN for every at-bat.

It feels like the same sort of transition is going on now in the SEO world. The leaders in the industry seem to feel that we’ve been measuring the wrong things.

• Last week I read an article by Stephan Spencer called The Latest SEO Trends and Metrics which argues we’re measuring the wrong metrics.
• Just now I read 5 Reasons Why Rankings Are a Poor Measure of Success by Jill Whalen, who claims she hasn’t checked clients’ rankings in years. This is an excellent article that clearly explains why rankings are more subjective than you’d like to believe.
• A few weeks back Google blocked Web Position Gold, a tool used by SEO professionals (including flyte) to measure if and where their clients appear in the first three pages of Google.
• When Nicki in our office manually attempted to check a client’s visibility last week Google banned her after a dozen checks! In fact, the ban affected other computers in our office as well. (Not her fault; I think I asked her to do it. Shame on me.)

For years I’ve argued that search engine rankings don’t matter, Web sites don’t matter, and even conversions don’t matter. The only thing that matters is you sell enough widgets, book enough rooms, or mobilize enough people to your cause. Of course, conversions, attractive Web sites and good search engine rankings all lead to those successes.

So, do search engine rankings matter? Yes, I believe they do. Good search engine visibility will continue to help businesses and organization bring in new traffic. However, measuring is getting tougher as personalized search and localized search continue to evolve and affect search engine results on a person-by-person level.

Perhaps we should be less worried about our search engine rankings, and more about whether those results are driving qualified leads to our sites.