Search Engine Optimization

Presentation given by Brad Gibbs, PlattForm Higher Education and Marcelo Parravicini, Post University at the ACHE South 2011 Spring Conference.

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Have you ever wondered how Google works?  It’s pretty amazing, really.  You can find nearly anything just by telling Google exactly what you want.  When signing up for a Google profile, you have to name something you can’t find using Google.  I ultimately decided on “my car keys,” but I’ll admit I had to think about it for a bit.  While the intricacies of Google’s algorithm are unknown, the basis on which it claims to make adjustments to its secret search formula is clear: Google aims to give searchers their most favorable results in the shortest amount of time.  Achieving this goal, at least more so than the competition, keeps customers returning and ad revenue booming.

These algorithmic adjustments are usually subtle enough to go unnoticed by the majority, rarely spreading past SEO circles, because they generally affect only a small portion of search queries.  However, the latest Google algorithm update has the e-marketing world’s full attention, and for good reason.

On Thursday, February 24, Google confirmed its latest algorithm change that several have nicknamed the “Farmer Update” (more on that later), which went live the day before.  In Google’s official blog post, Matt Cutts described their strategy:

“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.” 

Just a month before, Google released another blog article that touched on similar subjects. The article said that since their algorithm has been pretty successful at removing “pure webspam,” they are now “evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content … “content farms,” which are sites with shallow or low-quality content.”

One of the proposed algorithmic changes, specifically targeting sites with copied content, went live on January 28th, but was only supposed to affect slightly over 2% of queries in some way.  Many believe the “content farms” Google was referring to in its earlier blog post were the main target for the “Farmer Update,” which is supposed to affect nearly 12% of Google searches.

To reinforce the effectiveness of the “Farmer Update,” Google confirmed a strong correlation between sites negatively affected by it and sites blocked by searchers with the Chrome browser add-on, released just a couple weeks before.  This add-on allows searchers to block any sites from showing up in their search results.  Google went on to say these blocked sites were going to be one of the “signals” used in “exploring different algorithms to detect content farms.” Google said they did not rely on the blocked sites for this update, but compared the sites after the update was launched.  The algorithmic changes affected 84% of them, which they claim was a strong indication of user benefit.  But not everyone agrees users have benefited from this change.

Some feel that several low-quality content farms have remained untouched since the update, like ehow.com.  And others claim several websites outside of content farms and scraper sites were unfairly hurt, some of which are Google’s competitors.  Whether you agree or disagree with the changes, it may have little effect on how you evolve your web strategy.  Google is still the powerhouse of search engines, and for better or worse, your website is at the mercy of their decisions.

So, while we continue to study this new algorithmic update for more concrete do’s and don’ts, the following tips should help keep your site in the clear:

• Use unique content – Even if your content was written by you, that doesn’t mean someone else didn’t copy it. Copyscape is a good tool to check for duplicate content.


• Write useful content – Writing content for the purpose of gaining search traffic is fine, as long as you don’t leave the audience out to dry.  Write rich content that is beneficial to your audience.


• Target relevant keywords – Keywords lie at the heart of user intent.  Just because your content is useful to     some, doesn’t mean it is useful to those who found your page in the search results.  Make sure your keywords are highly relevant to your content.


• Use more content – If I’m searching for how to do my taxes online, chances are 75 words of description won’t help me much.  Be thorough and resourceful with your content.


• Don’t practice outdated SEO tricks – Keyword stuffing and automated linkbuilding methods are getting more easily detectable by search engines, especially Google.  Make sure you know who is optimizing your website, and more importantly, make sure they know what they’re doing.

So, name something you can’t find using Google…Until your answer is “I can’t find anything I’m not looking for,” you can be sure Matt Cutts and the rest of the Google team will keep trying to perfect their secret search recipe.  

According to Robert Half, you need to “ask the right questions if you’re to find the right answers.”  This is a pivotal thought process for a unique interactive marketing tactic that can be used as part of an SEO campaign.   People ask questions to serve the natural human characteristic of curiosity.  Curiosity can help people feel more attuned to what is going on around them or provide self-satisfaction by fulfilling the thirst for knowledge.  Many people may already know the answers to the questions they ask, but hearing answers from those they trust can greatly sway the belief, thoughts and actions of the person asking the question.  Naturally, as people gain insight from those around them that they trust about a brand or services, this can supersede or, in some cases, enforce the traditional brand marketing of a company. That is where SEO steps in. 

Yahoo! Answers was designed to allow users to interact with one another to ask questions and receive answers. Once answers are received, people are able to vote on how informative and “correctly” the answers are tailored to the question.   One benefit of Yahoo! Answers is the capability to accumulate points based on the success of your asking or answering of questions.  This secondary aspect of Yahoo! Answers is almost as important as the first, from an SEO perspective.  By building up this points reputation,  the asker crowd begins to understand your dedication and success to the process.  As you accumulate points, there are a number of levels you can reach.  Certain levels unlock the ability to reference your answers with links, which, naturally, are seen and evaluated by search engines.  This is one basis for utilizing Yahoo! Answers with an SEO and interactive marketing mindset. Conversions are the other facet of Yahoo! Answers that have recently been surfacing throughout these answering endeavors.  

Clients want to see return on investment, and what better way to provide that than to show them the products they sold or tuition they made from Yahoo! Answers.  Recently, there has been data coming from increased inquiry generation, increased revenue conversion and enhanced brand marketing efforts.  By utilizing Yahoo! Answers as part of a strategic SEO or internet marketing campaign, clients have been showing positive results from an ROI perspective and increased search engine performance through linkbuilding authority, highly targeted and relevant traffic increases, and increased keyword performance in the search results.  There are many other resources out there that can be used in addition to Yahoo! Answers, such as HubPages, Answers.com, LinkedIn Answers, Facebook Questions and Quora.  Each of these platforms provides different target markets, ranking variables, scoring metrics and topics of questions, but can be utilized in the same manner.  

Next time you are looking for a way to reach out to your target demographic, just think: would it not be easier to just let them come to you with questions so you can provide the answers they are looking for?