Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

Get ready. Google is going to change the way that it ranks sites.

Try it

• open a tab, go to Google and search for "raleigh pr agencies".
• open a new tab and go  http://www2.sandbox.google.com and search for the same thing
• now compare.

 

Using the current Google search , Capstrat is 9th. In the new one , we are 5th. While this may not seem like a big deal at first, consider the fact that slipping 11 places can put you on the third page instead of the first. A huge deal for online marketers.

Read more on Google's Webmaster blog.

We've all become accustomed to using the Web as the resource we turn to first for just about anything – including information about medicines. As an advertising medium, the Web is outpacing television. So drug marketers are racing for the highest position in Google search results. But the landscape is changing fast.

A recent article published in DTC Perspectives breaks down the dilemma. The text ads attached to search results act as qualifying statements that help search engines sort through information. But regulators fear that people will read those descriptions as ads and interpret the text as real information. So the FDA is cracking down on search engine optimization for pharmaceuticals. Now, the string of words that appear under Web site listings in the rankings must include full disclosure of risk information.

This new rule will make it harder for many pharmaceutical companies to reach the top of the search engine ranks. If they have to include the risks and adverse events in the text ads, their key consumer messages will get buried. Many drugs, especially those in the same therapeutic categories treating the same ailments, share the same commonly reported adverse events. The competition to buy and use those descriptors will be large, and consumers will have a harder time finding what they're looking for.

There are ways around this. Pharmaceutical companies can buy text ads that don't include the drug name, then replace the URLs with copy that relates to a specific medical problem. This tactic allows them to get more creative with their messaging, and it might help lower the bidding on certain key words. But it also means fewer people will find their Web sites. Because of this confusion, the FDA is likely to loosen its reins once it learns more about the Web and how people use it. Give it a few more years and the FDA may back off completely.

Until then, pharmaceutical companies have an opportunity to be more clever and have fun with their online ads. And this period of chaos, however temporary, will give some players a chance to grab newfound prominence.

"Content is King," according to our >Cord Silverstein,  our Engagement Marketing VP here at Capstrat. “Content and links are the two main players in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). That’s it. There’s not even a close third. Sure, a few minor things can be done to help out, but it’s a lost cause if the main players aren’t in the game.”

Content
Search engines want to deliver the best results to their users. So how does Google decide what your site is about? They evaluate pages much like Web users do: by looking at the words in the page title, in the headers, in bold, and mentioned repeatedly throughout the text.  Google calculates "keyword density" to see what your site is about.

Links
Search engines count the number of links pointing to your site to evaluate how credible and popular it is. Only one-way links count -- you can’t swap links with someone else and get credit for it. Best way to get links? Write good content. Once that’s done, you can participate in online forums, blogs, and social media to get the ball rolling. If you’ve done your job well, people will naturally want to link to your site. They will want to share it with their friends. They will bookmark it on StumbleUpon and recommend it on Digg.

So as you're creating your site, don't focus on SEO, but rather focus on creating great content. Keep in mind how Google reads your site, but remember that if your site has something to offer, the rest pretty much follows suit.


Tools:
See what search engines think your site is about:
http://www.seomoz.org/term-extractor

See what links Google gives you credit for:
www.google.com   (search for “link:www.YourSite.com”)

This is the first of three articles about Search Engine Optimization. Specifically, I'm hoping to help you talk about SEO with clients. A big thanks to Cord Silverstein, our Senior VP of Engagement Marketing here at Capstrat, for teaching me what I know!

So let’s get started. Here’s a step-by-step guide for creating a site that Google’s search bots will love.

1. Lay out a clear site structure.
Decide what each page is about. As a general rule, search engines give the home page the most weight in search results. Each hierarchical level into the site is given a lesser PageRank, the value by which Google sorts search results.

2. Write down the keywords and key phrases for each page.
Develop a list of three to five keywords or phrases that summarize each page. Look up the top search terms that people use to find your topic (see keyword tools below). Of course, let basic business sense guide you, and remember that your top-level page needs to have broad keywords. For each level into the site, keywords need to get more specific just like the content.

3. Write content for your pages.
Invest in creative, well-written text! Use a keyword density of 7 -11 %. Seven to eleven out of every 100 words of your text should be the keywords you came up with in Step 2. This is how Google determines the main focus of the text. However, overdoing this density will hurt you – it’s considered spamming ("keyword stuffing").

4. Get people to link to your site.
If your content is good, linking generally takes cares of itself. Visitors will automatically want to share it with their friends. However, you can do a few things to help out:
a) Invite visitors to link to you by putting an embed tag on your site.
b) Participate in online forums and blogs and include a link to your site in your posts and comments.
c) Use keywords as your link text. “Visit our Capstrat blog” is better than “Visit our Capstrat blog here”
d) Check the links Google gives you credit for by googling your URL like this: link:www.yourURL.com

5. Be consistent!
When the search engine bot comes to scan your site, it always looks for the pages that it previously indexed. So don't change your site structure unless you absolutely have to! If you have to move pages, put up a "301 Redirect" page pointing to the content's new location. If it's deleted, put up a custom  (404) error page. If Google search results lead users to a non-existent page, your site’s PageRank ratings will drop big time. Plus, you’ll loose credibility with your users.


Keyword Tools:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

SEO Tools:
http://www.seomoz.org/tools

Question: Does posting some in-site duplicate content help, hurt, or have no impact on SEO?

Example:
This post by Todd Coats titled “Trippin’ on Acid Park”:
http://blog.capstrat.com/articles/trippin-on-acid-park/
Also appears on all these URLS:
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/acid/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/creative/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/legend/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/park/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/raleigh/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/reflector/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/simpson/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/vollis/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/whirligig/
http://blog.capstrat.com/authors/todd-coats/

All but 4 of those pages are exactly the same as the original page. Some pages are different from the original page in that they contain the other posts that share the same tag.

My questions are:

1. Does it hurt us to have duplicate in-site content?
2. Are we diluting our link value for any given post by posting the same content to multiple URLs?
3. Or, are we getting a good bump because we have 3 to 4 times as many “pages” that are loaded with key words (albeit on pages with identical copy)?
   

Interesting Note:
A Google search for “acid park” reveals that Google only indexed 3 of the above links with a reference to those key words:

Another interesting note:
This page:
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/raleigh/
Was indexed by Google, but a search for acid park does not return this page. Why?

Numbers
Our 1300+ page Web site has only a fraction of that number of actual posts. Posts often  appear at 5 or 6 different URLs.

A little looking around revealed a couple of opinions:

Search Engine Guide says “Such duplication also leaves you open to splitting link value between multiple URLs. If someone links to a (page), they may link to any of the multiple versions, instead of a single primary version/URL. This can cause the search engines to give weight to the "wrong" URLs.”

SEO Book says  “Interesting tactic by Google. If too many pages on the same site trip a duplicate content filter Google does not just filter through to find the best result, sometimes they filter out ALL the pages from that site.”

Thoughts from the experts?