At Melbourne SEO Services, we don’t believe in hard and fast rules when it comes to SEO. Truth is, we’ll never know the exact Algorithm that powers the search engines. For this reason we set out to create a method that replicates what happens to popular sites naturally. In essence, Google aims to find the most relevant websites based on popularity (especially with the new Google Caffeine upgrade recently!).

So how do we do it? Well, over the course of the past 7 years we have developed a method we like to call The SEO Method. This is the very method that we use for our own sites, and our clients, and it has proven time and time again to be effective in not only ranking, but dominating in Google.

So what’s the secret? At its center, you’ll find gradual link building key…

Perhaps the easiest way to understand our thinking is to get into character… let’s imagine you were Google for a moment. What would happen if you had to choose between two sites to rank number one for a particular keyword? Imagine that you have one website that has twenty thousand backlinks that have been earned over the course of 1 month. The second site was one that was three years old, had twenty thousand backlinks, all from a variety of sources and built gradually over time. Which website would you consider to be less likely trying to ‘game’ the system?

By employing a gradual link building strategy, you are simply emulating nature rather than building thousands of backlinks all at once for the sake of a quick gain in the search engines. Furthermore, in creating a strong backlink structure, you will need to create one that is diverse, and contains a variety of links from different sources. That’s the secret to link buliding and it’s the difference between a flash in the pan, and evergreen businesses.

It was back in late 2009 when we first received word of the new indexing system by Google, aptly named “Google Caffeine”, which had massive promises of being faster, and much more responsive. Apart from the obvious benefits, it was never really made all that clear as to exactly how this new indexing system would benefit the webmaster.

Upon closer inspection, this update offers a little more than a few polishes and code tweaks. It is a complete revamp of the search engine that we both love and hate, that will both benefit the webmaster, and make their job that little bit more difficult. Ready to learn more? Read on…

First things first, Caffeine (as the name suggests) is much faster than the previous version of Google. With speed improvements recorded of under half the time from the previous version, this fits very much in line with Google’s promise to take page load speeds into consideration when ranking sites. As I understand it, the way that they have done this is by reverting from their old system where the index was arranged in stacks or layers, with some layers being more responsive than others, to a new system which analyzes the entire web one small portion at the time, resulting in faster refresh rate of their index.

What this means for the end user is that the information contained within Google’s new index is much more up to date, with new information added to their index “as it happens”. For the webmaster, this is fantastic news, with some (including myself) reporting pages being added to the index in less than five minutes!

Old Google Index Results

Google Caffeine Index Results

Let’s not forget to talk about the overall size of the index. In some tests, the index seems to show increases in size of, anywhere up to 600% for some keywords (see above images). This is most definitely testament to the fact that Google is now capable of indexing several hundreds of thousands of sites in parallel.

So, keeping all of this in mind, what exactly does this update mean for the common webmaster?

Well apart from the fact that the new updated search engine will deliver your results much faster, this means that your job when it comes to SEO is going to be made just that little harder. As Google Caffeine literally will focus on exactly where the activity is in real time, your ability to dominate is going to rely on your ability to be where the action is, and how much care you take when selecting your keywords and effective titles.

Not to say that backlinks building is going out of fashion, what this means is that in order to build up your brand in the search engines, you are going to need to bring your action to where the action is. So, are the traditional backlink sources that we are used to losing their momentum? In all honesty, Google Caffeine is still young to discover whether or not this is a valid claim, however, you can be sure that we will do some back testing to report on this soon.

An SEO Case Study For Integrated Consulting Solutions

Here’s another case study of some quick SEO results for our client Integrated Consulting Solutions (ICS). In less than a month, they have scored the number one position in both the Google local business listing and the organic search list for the keyword “ISO Consultants Melbourne”.  This is a huge win considering their website didn’t even rank three weeks ago!

Here’s a screenshot of their Google local business listing:

Needless to say, they are very happy with the result and excited about the next level of their SEO campaign.

Watch this video for the full story…

Let’s face it, SEO is a huge undertaking: it’s complex, fast-paced and time consuming, especially when you’re developing a business. It’s hard to keep up to date with exactly what makes a website rank. It’s a lot of work and requires a dedicated presence. It’s what we do, so we can tell you first hand, being an SEO strategist is not just about keeping up to date, it’s about multi-tasking as well. So let’s get down to the raw, burning question here…

How Can An SEO Strategist Help You Develop Your Business?

Let’s divide this up into two separate tasks. The first involves you developing your business, and we’re sure there is no one better suited to develop a concept than you. You know the direction that your business is going, you have your goals to achieve and an ideal income you’d like as well. This task is in itself massively time consuming; one wrong decision can divert you from your path for a very long time.

When it comes to our business, we like to plan ahead. We develop ideas for content, base these around what is winnable in the search engines, then power through the creation of that content, whilst applying our SEO principals. In essence, SEO is part of our business, regardless of whether the concept is virtual or physical. However, we’re sure you would prefer spending more time actually developing your business than learning the complexity of SEO.

Develop An SEO Strategy For Offline Business

It’s a home truth that the internet is quickly becoming the new sales front. Offline businesses now understand the power of being online, and how this can really put them in the limelight. With this in mind, they want in, however a lot don’t quite understand that the “if you build it, they will come” philosophy doesn’t exist online. This is where hiring an SEO strategist can be an integral part of your business.

In fact, we will refer to a recent experiment that occurred here in Melbourne. The company that owns the Yellow Pages (Sensis) recently opened a Pizza restaurant called “The Hidden Pizza Restaurant”. They launched a website, created a Facebook page, created some viral videos on YouTube, and told people “If you want to find us, just look us up where you normally would look up a business”. As such, their contact number was in the Yellow Pages, and this is how people found them. Once this project was completed, they had a large number of sales, and generated a lot of interest. Their claim was that the Yellow Pages still attracts customers.

Our response to this is that without the Social Media element to find the customers where they hang out, and without the SEO video marketing that spread like wildfire, no one would have known that the “Hidden Pizza Restaurant” ever even existed. The proof is in the pudding. We even hit the streets to compare Google Vs Yellow Pages. We can almost guarantee that behind this whole viral marketing campaign was an SEO strategist who knew exactly what he or she was doing, and although their claim is that a combination of offline and online marketing was what made this venture a success, we can guarantee that if they had the contact details for the restaurant available via a Google search, their profit would have doubled. Even tripled. In fact, we didn’t even receive a new copy of the Yellow Pages this year, strangely enough.. but that’s OK because we rely on Google 99% of the time, and the rest of the time, we refer to a local business directory, which isn’t owned by or affiliated with Sensis.

Did we get a pizza in the end? No… but we did hire a gardener a few weeks ago, (found on Google) which resulted in a sale of $1000+. We also used Google to find cheap air fares, ($200$+), interstate car hire ($300+), hardware for the Macbook ($500+) and even a graphic designer to create animated images of the team ($90+). That’s just to name a few. And this was without the power of any viral marketing, or even so much as a Yellow Pages listing.

Start Applying This Theory To Your Business Or Brand

Now imagine if you could have this power of online marketing behind your business or brand, whilst you are given the space to focus on important business development. This is why people hire experts to develop and implement strategies for them. You then have more time to give your customers what they want. A background SEO campaign will complement what you’re doing by helping your customers find you.

Potential customers don’t carry a Yellow Pages in their back pocket, but a lot of them carry devices with internet browsers that allow them to search for you in Google. Remember this the next time you consider exactly what it is that an SEO strategist can do for your business. Ready to learn more? Don’t be afraid to contact us for an SEO quote.

The dust is starting to settle and the feedback is in. Our recent seo training workshop was a massive success – but don’t take my word for it watch the reviews below…

“He just opens the kimono and tells you everything…” – Roger Baartz

“It was almost like a matrix” – Ian Howard

“More than just SEO” – Daniel Billingham

“Absolute wealth of knowledge” – Nick Edwards

“I wish I had built my website after I went to this course…” – John McClusky

“Clearly knows his stuff and is really good at teaching it” – Steve Ovens

“The guy’s a freak” – Mark Hayward

“The standout session was the one on outsourcing” – Paul Hutchison

“He shard very freely, no question went unanswered…” – Paul Hanson

“The Initial SEO Method was my turning point…” – Ryan T Malone

“He’s very honest, very transparent…” – Alan Kirke

If you’d like to grab your copy of these SEO training DVDs once they’re done click here to join the waiting list.

Learn how we got this auction #1 most active on Flippa.com

Fairly recently, I posted on this blog a guide to selling websites on Flippa.com. For those who haven’t been following the recent boom in this area, selling websites is back, and it is back in a big way. I’m currently acting on behalf of David Jenyns on Flippa, selling his back catalog of websites, and I wanted to share a few things I’ve learned.

Take the recent auction for www.balletdancer.org for example. Having spent two days wearing the crown on top of Flippa’s list of most active auctions, what exactly made this auction so popular? Most importantly, how can you copy our techniques? Here’s the break down…

Creating an auction on Flippa is only part of the work, what goes on behind the scenes of every auction is also a large part of what will make an auction popular. Every single site that is listed on Flippa.com gains enough interest to spawn a few inquiries, either by comments on the auction, or by messages sent through their PM system. How you handle these inquires play a bigger part than most realise. Remember those inquiries will ultimately turn into bids (if you provide the right answers) and, the more bids, the higher you move up Flippa’s most active auction list.

Now back to www.balletdancers.org – in the initial stages of this auction, bidding rose very slowly, I simply checked bidder’s feedback, then approved accordingly. We start our auctions at a low price to encourage people to make a bid and once they’ve made a bid, they get emotionally invested (one of our secrets).

A few days in people started contacting us wanting to know if the site had a Buy It Now (BIN) price, some even wanting to make an offer. For a good handful of these, I took them into Google Talk, or corresponded via my personal e-mail, and for those who made BIN offers, I simply gave them a friendly nudge in the right direction.

As I built rapport with potential buyers, then the competition started to rise, and without flattering myself, it was one of the most exciting auctions that I have seen on Flippa. 3 minutes left in the auction, and three fresh bids showed up to extend the auction. This happened on a number of occasions. In fact, I think the auction went for some 5 days longer than it was supposed to… what was interesting was that the higher up the most active board we moved, the more attention we drew.

Why did this happen? Because I translated real world sales into an online sales environment – I didn’t just set and forget. This is what makes the Flippa community so great… they encourage communication and this makes for a safe environment to buy/sell websites.

So what’s the take away here?

It’s quite simple. Make sure that you are ready to talk. By this, I mean make sure that you have an account with Skype, AIM, Google Talk, and Gmail. Make yourself available to talk directly to your potential customer. Even go so far as to have a template ready for those BIN offers so that you can give them the right information as quickly as possible.

Don’t be afraid to actually talk to your customer one on one with Skype or Google Talk. Get to know them a little. Ask how they are. Ask what it is that they do. Ask them what it is that they like about the website and what their intentions are with the site, and most importantly, don’t sell too hard. When it comes to talking about the website or domain that you are selling, talk like a person, not a robot. Tell them what it is that you do. Tell them about the 500 odd other domains that you have for sale (repeat customers are the best kind of customer).

Just be honest and real

If you would like any more information about selling websites on Flippa, or even have an inquiry about any of Davids current sales on Flippa, my name is Ryan T Malone, and I am currently selling David Jenyns’ backcatalog of websites for him on Flippa.com – click here to watch our auctions

Please note: you have to be logged in to your flippa.com account to see the complete list of auctions we have going.

Any SEO person worth their salt will tell you that one of the best ways to get your content quickly indexed in Google is to submit an XML sitemap through Google’s Webmaster tools… but apart from serving that purpose, what else does Webmaster Tools actually do? Well, as of today, we can say that it does much more than it used to. Google has just announced a new features.

Lets start with the new site dashboard. Graduating from simply giving you information on your keywords standings in Google, they have gone a little further and now offer a side by side comparison of your main keywords, where they rank, and even a click through rate for those keywords.

Since we talk about organic results in Google as being a “free” traffic, this is a new way to look at your keywords performance much in a similar light as what you would treat your AdWords campaigns. Finally, for the savvy SEOer, this should get you asking the right questions. Questions like: How can you craft your titles and descriptions to increase click through?

So what’s else’s new? Next there’s the new “Top Search Queries” function which I think is probably the biggest improvement of them all. In short, it offers an entirely new page that tallies all of your highest performing keywords, where they rank, and gives an analytics style view of the traffic that each keyword is receiving.

You might be wondering “How’s this any different to most of the information Google Analytics provides this already?”. Good question… Although some of the information is similar, we see that the details in Google Webmaster tools to be more focused on treating your rankings like other forms of advertising. Google now gives you conversion information rather than the raw traffic stats. It’s now the best way to track what keywords are converting best in the SERPs… you can even take it a step further and locate those pages that aren’t converting as well, make the appropriate changes and bring in more traffic with no extra offpage link building.

Like anything new that Google provides, there is a level of criticism. People are asking, “Why not include this in Google Analytics?” I am not in a position to answer this but I for one welcome this change as I am used to monitoring my keywords and their performance in Webmaster tools. At the end of the day, I see only the positives from treating keyword performance in the SERPs like any other paid form of online marketing… it’s well overdue that SEOers start placing more emphasis on how we can convert those searches on the SERPs into visitors to our website.

A Google Local Listing in One Second Flat

It is increasingly becoming common knowledge in the world of SEO that web localization is one of the biggest trends online right now. Google Universal Search is one of the driving factors behind this recent trend. With videos, books, maps and more and more services showing up in the search results, marketers can now take advantage increasing avenues for content to be found and distributed. And what is arguably the biggest one of these avenues?

Location, Location, Location

Here’s 2 reasons why…

1. When the SERPs return a “Google Local Business Listings” box complete with a map, it instantly draws the browsers eye.  Put simply, it is prominent and striking.
2. Gaining visibility for local businesses in the listings can be extremely quick and easy.

Take this example from a client who verified their Google Local Listing about two minutes ago:

We submitted the optimized Google local listing complete with title, categories, images and more (please click the link for a best practice guide). The client verified the listing. We signed out of our Google account and checked the rankings for one of our major keywords. And Hey Presto! Our client features on the front page in position number one of the listings for “iso consultant“. We are not located a million miles away from our client which might account for the listing but even so the result is incredible.

Instantaneous results like that are music to online marketers ears. It really is a no-brainer.

This easy win is an absolute must for any small or medium sized business out there. And come to think of it, it begs the question ‘why would you still spend the money for a yellow pages ad’? After all, Google appears to be winning in the Google vs Yellow Pages battle illustrated in this video.

Today, I was filming a video for my own blog when I came across an interesting quote that literally just rolled off the tip of my tongue, “by accident” so to speak. That quote was “leverage in the form of expectation”. So, what exactly does this mean, and why is it so detrimental to building a business online? Let me cover a few basics of where this quote came from.

In many of the interviews that David Jenyns conducts, one of the key phrases that comes up very frequently is how to gain leverage online. By this, I am talking about how to be one up on your competition. The very thing that continues to make you more valuable to your niche than your competition. This can come in various shapes and forms, in particular it can be a specific method that you use, it could be what propels you to the top of the internet marketing chain, in a nutshell, it is that very edge that you have that your competition doesn’t have.

So, if I were to teach you how to gain leverage in the form of expectation, I would have to go back to the very start of my story, and that was when me and David Jenyns first spent an afternoon just talking about internet marketing and online business on the balcony at Melbourne SEO Services HQ. When I told David my (at the time) confused current state, and he corrected me by basically telling me that I need to focus on one thing, set a target, and work towards that, the thing that really capped that conversation off was when he told me, “Now, I know that you are going to go and do this, because you have my expectation to live up to”.

Now, for those who are accomplished internet marketers, this form of expectation comes in the form of customers who you are constantly needing to please and convert into return customers. However, for those who haven’t quite made it yet, this form of expectation is only ever really acquired in the form of your own expectations, which as we see from the various internet marketing forums on the internet, these kind of expectations are generally over inflated, and contain more a monetary value rather than the value of knowledge.

So, having said that, I will quote someone very close to me who travels the world selling multi-million dollar tractors and equipment. “It is not what you know, but who you know”. This is the very foundation of what I mean when I say that to gain true leverage is to gain it in the form of expectation. Still confused? That’s OK, I am about to get to the crux of this right now…

For the vast majority of Internet Marketers and SEO wannabes, our e-mail inbox contents reflect nothing more than confirmation e-mails for blog directory submissions, and PayPal receipts which act as nothing more but a reflection of us spending but not receiving, but truth be told, the only thing that we need to spend to gain this kind of leverage that I speak of is our time. Send an e-mail to someone who fits the image of what it is that you want to achieve, talk to them about what it is that you want to do, and ask their advice. Maybe even offer them something nice. More than anything, try to make a friend, get to know them, learn from them, and allow them to learn from you. Once you have made those initial steps, then you have what I call “Leverage in the form of expectation”, as you are not just living up to your own over inflated expectations of what you want to achieve online, but you have those expectations as set by someone who has been there, and done that.

Now, I can tell you, it may not be easy to make friends in the right places sometimes, I count myself quite lucky to be in this position, and I am sure that the Ed Dale’s and the Frank Kern’s are probably going to hate me for telling you to simply go out there and contact those who have had some kind of success, so this is where I will say it straight up as it is, and give you some of the best advice you will ever get. Don’t contact those super affiliates who everyone wants to be like. Contact someone who fits the description of the path that you want to take. This person doesn’t have to be super famous (C’mon, I got lucky with Dave!), they simply have to be someone that you can learn from, who could potentially learn from you. Remember that for most internet marketers, a newbie to the IM scene may very well pose a unique opportunity to research their own market, and may even be a potential Joint Venture opportunity around the corner. Start small, then work your way up.

Start by finding out one thing that you want to succeed at doing. Set a goal, for example, you want to earn a thousand dollars in your first month. Split that thousand dollars into segments, and find out how you can earn a hundred dollars here, and three hundred dollars there. Keep in mind that there are various methods of monetization out there, think of a hundred dollars as being two products on Clickbank, and that other 300 dollars as being that website you created and sold on Flippa. Then talk to your mentor, or associated partner about where you can go from here, then live by that expectation, and keep it in the back of your head that when it comes to the end of the month, even if you didn’t quite get there, you can still come back and say “Hey, this is what I did. I didn’t quite get there, but this is what worked and what didn’t.”. And from there, success is guaranteed in any form. Remember, whether or not you succeed initially, or fall flat, you have two ways in which you will succeed. The first is that you would have mastered the internet marketing game, and the second being that you learned what doesn’t work, and know what path to take from there.

To put it simply, those who we can learn from, who are successful or on the right path, aren’t just a pretty face. They are people who want to work with us, want to help us learn, and want to learn from us. This, in its entirety is “Leverage In The Form Of Expectation“.