While there is no need to panic, things have changed a bit once again with the search giant.  First, you should never sit back and relax.  Search engine optimization is not a once-off task, as I have written so often.  Websites and SEO strategies should be a perpetual work in progress, something successful website owners already know.  So, disabuse yourself of that relax notion – - my first piece of SEO advice.

Secondly, and to answer your question about why Google keeps touching its algorithms, keep in mind that Google has something of the same problem we all have with our email – spam.  We don’t want any of that stuff in our inbox, and Google doesn’t want any of it on their results pages.  What?

Google’s efforts are invested in keeping spam in check.  You see, not all website owners wear white hats.  Specifically, websites out to make a quick buck, or website owners who’ve been misled by SEO black hat voodoo, engage in tactics frowned upon by Google.  Caring less about their customer’s experience on their websites, and thinking more about high rank positions, these website owners/SEO voodoo practitioners cross Google’s Webmaster Guidelines’ lines, employing hidden texts/links, different pages for engines and users, buying links – - all discussed in those Guidelines.

If you’ve turned to that dark side of SEO, you’re taking big chances. You are the reason the rest of us suffer – - your disregard for what is white hat puts too many SEO spammers on results pages, and Google wants your head.  Penalties for keyword spamming and other underhanded “tricks’ include banishment from Google’s data bases, meaning you will not be presented on any search results pages.

Thirdly, if your SEO strategy is clean and proper, you’re probably looking at just a little time invested in analysis and maybe a tweak or two to your plan.  Keep as the underlying premise the need to improve your website’s visitor experience, to acquire a customer base and keep it coming back for more, and generally adding quality content and visitor value.  You’ll always be on the right side of that Guideline line if you do.

So, what should your response be to Penguin?  Answer:  a little time checking your analytics to assess any potential damage.  Look at your last thirty days of traffic and see if it’s taken a hit that has cost you traffic loss.  Also, look at your keyword referrer report for that same thirty day period and determine for which, if any, of your keywords took a hit.

If you do find any fluctuation, touch your content a little bit – - add some new quality content to your site, maybe a new blog post, or a home page content refresh.  Punch up your content to recover any lost traffic, and just remember to follow the Guidelines’ simple rules:  improve your visitor experience, and add value for their visits.

SEO can be likened to life . . . . think long term, and walk toward the white light.   Respect your website’s visitors by giving them a quality reason for coming back, and you will make Google happy.  A happy Google means a meaningful and positive place on Google’s SERPs.

Cutts indicated the goal is to level the playing field between websites that put too much of an emphasis on optimization to achieve high search result rankins, on the one hand, and those sites who achieve those high rank results organically through compelling and relevant content.

While the philosophy is no different than Google’s long-stated preference for encouraging website owners to publish customer-centric copy (ie, user-friendly) that describes their products or services being sold/promoted well and thoroughly, it now will cost you if you pay too much attention to your SEO efforts at the cost of that user-friendly content.  In other words, website owners should consider their customers as the content’s audience, and not Google as the audience.

There has always been a fine line for those of us in the website copywriting and SEO business between over-doing it and getting it just right.  However, Google’s newest changes in how it will treat those who over-do it will not affect the same basic considerations.  Page titles, h-tags, and carefully considered content growth and content refreshing will still help a site’s rank positions if the keywords have been chosen carefully.

All Google is doing, frankly, is reminding those of us who write optimized copy for websites to choose as keywords those that are truly related to our client’s website business, and to write website copy that will help visitors understand clearly what the site is about, what the business is selling, and how they can buy it.  The basic concepts, the usual methodology, remain the same.

What this new set of tweaks being made to the “Googlebot” do is help those sites who’ve done their SEO the right way all along, who’ve practiced what have been the “white hat” techniques all along.  It will be good to see those who’ve done it the right way be rewarded for their efforts, so I say good for Google.

You most certainly should be, of course.  It still amazes me that so many website owners think SEO is a once-off task – - write some good copy, create some good content, launch your site, and then sit back and wait for the customers.  Those Internet entrepreneurs are not reading this column anyway, notwithstanding the fact that they should.  But,  we’ll never mind about them, and get to the meat, today’s rubric.

Search Plus Your World was one of this year’s earlier changes.  As with all Google algorithm adjustments, its stated purpose was to give each “searcher” a more appropriate set of results, taken both from what we consider the more traditional sources (sites, generally, whose content was compelling enough to be considered relevant to the search), and, from the individual searcher’s personal world – - for instance, their Google+ world.

While this approach may have its merits, it nonetheless tended to give more strength to large national brands. Couple that with the eye toward a searcher’s pesonal world, and a whole bunch of websites suddenly found themselves scrambling to test and re-test adjustments to their SEO plan.

The effect of this modified search result approach by Google was quite remarkable to many websites. Webmasters complained that traffic to their sites dropped dramatically overnight, and others expressed concern that they can’t adapt quickly enough to Google’s algorithm changes.

Those webmasters are likely to remain frustrated, and I must admit I have had to scramble a bit myself of late, because Google is about to launch even further changes.  Search results will soon be giving answers to searcher’s queries, not just links.

Yes, Google no longer will simply toss out links in response to searches; rather, searches will attempt to answer the searcher’s questions in the first instance.  What does this mean?

Simple . . . Google’s algorithms will “understand” the question behind your search; and, rather than simply refer you to websites that will be able to give you the answer, Google is going to give you the answer itself.

Google refers to this as “semantic search,” and it will try to sort out what you really mean when you’re typing keywords into the Google search window.  If it succeeds, and I’ll wager it eventually will, you’ll be getting the answers you want without having to leave the results page.  We’ll return to this thought in a moment.

Right now, searching on Google is already providing a lot more types of results than was the case even six and twelve months ago.  Sure, there will be links in the results, but searchers are also given the option to see “personal results” from others in their Google+ circles.  And at the end of a search page, we’re already being shown related searches that might us more specifically to what we are searching.

Over the next year or two, Google will be refining their “semantic search” more and more.  Today, we’re seeing instant results as we type in our search; some tomorrow very soon, we’re going to see instant answers to our questions as we type our searches almost as though Google is reading our minds.

Google is telling the truth when it speaks of its desire to provide the best answers to our questions as quickly as possible.  Already holding in excess of 70% of the search engine market, it’s always looking for more.  That 70+% accounts for most of its $37 billion in annual revenue.

Speaking of revenue, let’s return to an earlier point – - that of Google wanting to give you answers to your questions without your having to leave the search results page.  Add to that the source of Google’s billions in annual revenue, and you can understand why. The more reasons we find to remain on Google’s pages, and stay longer, the more we’re apt to see sponsored ads – - ads that bring to Google its gold coins.

Now, I don’t begrudge Google anything it earns.  It works hard, and is entitled to benefit from that hard work. In fact, I’m a Google fan.  Chrome is my browser of choice, and I’m all in with my laptop – - Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Picasso, Cloud Reader, and more. When the next version of their Chromebook is available, I will make one of them mine.

But, now you can see more clearly Google’s motive – - run your search, enter your keyword(s), get your answer quickly from “semantic search,” and have no reason to leave the results page.  If what you are searching for is the lowest price on a “widget,” and the “widget” seller has a Google Merchant Account, you can purchase your “widget” on Google.  And, you can even use your Google Wallet to pay for it.  All things Google!

Okay, now let’s get back to the first question I asked in this piece – - how has your business adapted to these new-fangled search ways?  If you haven’t yet, and you need help auditing your site in light of these ways and updating your SEO Plan, let me know.  I’d like to help.  SEO is not a once-off task, and the evolution of Google is the main reason it can’t be.  Don’t get left behind.

Page rank is a factor of incoming links from substantive websites:  the more incoming links, the higher the page rank.  By substantive website I mean a website with meaningful content, a site with real content, as distinguished from a link farm – - a site whose only purpose is to provide a repository of links.

I wrote about a friend’s website back in September, a college friend who launched a new site selling an herbed sea salt.  I wanted to give Chip a shout out on the occasion of his site launch, and, I wanted to provide Chip with an incoming rich text link to help with page rank.  Now, I know that assumes my website has meaningful content, but nonetheless, I wanted to help him that link.

In fact, when I take on a client for some SEO work, among the first steps I take is to write about the client’s website and products, and include a rich text link.  Such is the case today, and the purpose of this post.

Cape Weekend is Mari Polcari’s personal style website, an upscale boutique on Cape Cod filled with beautiful fashion and accessories from handmade designer jewelry to eco-friendly clothing, and everything in between.  The site has a blog integrated into it, and Mari has begun working Twitter and Facebook as further social network marketing.  She asked me to review her site’s performance and suggest a few tweaks to her efforts, and we are now underway with a plan.

We posted a short blog piece on a particular line of jewelry from Ann Spence – - She Bee – - a collection of lapis, rose quartz, jasper, and arenturine necklaces.  We’ll be tweeting it up, and Mari will be adding it to her Facebook page as well.  Each will provide a link to the specific She Bee page on her site, rather than simply to the home page of her website – - so as to cut down by one the number of clicks to get to the “action” page (where the purchase can be made).  We will hope to increase the traffic to that specific page with those links, a page that has been optimized for keywords potential customers use when searching for Mari’s carryings.

As you can now see, it’s pretty easy to provide a link, or several links for that matter, with a simple but obvious concept.  While it is simple obvious,  so many fail to take those steps.  A product page properly optimized; a blog post about its products with a rich text link; a “tweet” with a link; a Facebook posting with a link; and a blog post on a different site with a rich text link.

Keep these steps in mind when you’re next working your own website.  Our next step will be to review the statistics for the site’s performance, in about two weeks, to see how it worked out, and based on that analysis, we’ll plan our next steps.  I will likely write about that shortly thereafter, so check back.

A slick and sleek website, where more effort is put into its “pretty” than is put into its purpose, will not serve your best online interests, as I’ve written about so often in the past. Purpose and process are far more important than pretty, as I was once again reminded of with a new client.

Mold Care Pros (www.moldcarepros.com) are specialists in the removal and cleanup of mold for those who live on Cape Cod and the Massachusetts south shore. Athough they had had a website for several years when we first began an SEO campaign, it was not to be found in search engine results for any of the most obvious keywords. It was a cutting edge “Flash” site, and it did look good. But, it was not SEO friendly, and even a Google search for “mold removal cape cod” or “mold cleanup cape cod” didn’t present it as a result in the first 50. New content was created, optimized for those keywords most likely to be used when searching for their services, and Google Analytics gathered the first few month’s site performance data.

Dan Caouette, the owner, and Ken Hermenegildo, Dan’s general manager, wanted to improve the site’s standing in search engine results. So, we put together a plan, and began assembling a list of the keywords we thought most likely to be used when searching for their services. I researched the inventory for those keywords, refined the list a bit, and then wrote new copy optimized for those keywords.

I met with Ken yesterday to review the Google Analytics data together, and ran a rank analysis to see if there had been movement in search engine results for that first list of keywords. After a very short time with that new content, their website has moved from a rank outside the first 50 results to a rank in the top 10 results,and in some instances in the top 5 for the chosen keywords. Over that same period of time, their new client intake information showed an increase in the number of those who reported they had found Mold Care Pros in an online search.

We then made our plans for the next phase of the SEO campaign – - expanding the list of keywords for which we’d optimize the site; a link-building strategy; the use of social media, especially Twitter, to get the right keyword-rich word out; and, ongoing content growth. The due diligence for the next phase is the same as for the first phase: researching keyword inventory, refining the list of keywords, crafting new copy around that list, and finding the right places on the site to place the new content. Page titles, as well as main body text, should be a part of every phase in one’s overall SEO plan.

I’m mentioning all of this today for a couple of reasons:

1. To present, once again, the basic steps necessary for an effective SEO campaign. The methodology is always the same no matter the nature of the business, and no matter whether selling products or services. The due diligence is the same, as is the regular, periodic measuring of results.

2. To be a part of the link-building strategy by providing a rich text link or two from this blog post to the Mold Care Pros site.

Now, obviously, this is a quick gloss-over of the actual SEO Plan Ken and I have assembled for Mold Care Pros, and there’s a lot more we’ll be doing together over the next few months. But, these concepts and action steps are common, or at least should be common, to all SEO Plans. Don’t take my word for it, either. If you want to question its effectiveness, just ask Ken at Mold Care Pros.

He got through it just fine, wrote his copy, set up a couple of email addresses, successfully connected the site to his PayPal account for processing orders, and even installed a contact form. This morning, he finally turned it on and made it “live” to the public.

His product is a great story. His Mom developed a seasoned sea salt mixture that she used regularly in her kitchen while Chip was growing up. This closely guarded family secret blend of spices and herbs, she had found, worked so well with just about anything you might want to season – - poultry, meat, fish, vegetables, sauces – - and the shaker on the counter was always filled with that goodness. When friends were over for dinner, she would often send them home with some; it became a regular birthday and Christmas gift among family and friends.

Chip kept up the tradition both because he liked the blend and because he believes in tradition. After being told so often that he should offer it for sale, he finally decided he’d bring it to the Internet. Now, to say that food is a huge Internet business presence would be an understatement. It might even be second in overall Internet interest to sex.

We’re going to need to elbow a lot of long-standing web sites out of the way to get search engines to pay attention to the site. After all, visitors to web sites only come when search engines send them. So, our work is cut out for us – - yes, I’ve used the seasoned sea salt on all of those foodstuffs mentioned, and yes, I like the blend. He’s my friend, and I know a few things about search engine optimization and writing effective copy for websites that get them indexed well by search engines. We’ll see how it goes.

I’m writing about this for a couple of reasons. First, I’m his friend. Secondly, I want to provide a link to his site: this will contribute to page rank, as I’ve written about before. Thirdly, I want to recommend that you pony up the $20 and make a purchase.

The site is: www.whitefamilysalt.com. It just launched today, 22 September, 2011. We’ll tweak it often over the next couple of months to move it up in rank position, and see how effective we can be in a very competitive online food industry. I’ll write again in a few months and let you know.

Oh, and one other thing. Take a look at this post again, and notice what I used for the link to his site. Yes, the URL is linked. But, so is “seasoned sea salt,” and that’s known as a rich text link. It enhances the value of an incoming link that there is text associated with it, especially when the text link contains keywords. That’s what he sells, that’s what we expect searches to be for which we want his site ranked well. Just another aspect of basic SEO practices.

And don’t forget to buy the seasoned salt from him.

During a meeting recently with a client, I was asked about the relationship between search engine optimization (SEO) and copy placement on web pages. He wanted to know if it mattered where copy was placed on his pages as far as how his site was indexed and ranked by Google, Yahoo or Bing.

The first part of my answer to him distinguished between copy, generally, and keywords, specifically. As I have written about so many times in the past, the first step in the web copy writing and SEO process is to develop, research, refine and arrive at your list of keywords for which you want your site to be ranked well. You can read previous columns on that subject for further guidance, or take my SEO test on your own site.

Then, with that list of keywords, the copy for your website is written around it. You take into account the total word count you want to develop, and then fit those keywords into it at the right frequency to please search engines. This is the process of optimization.

The first placement consideration of the copy you’ve written is the page title. This is the name of the page that will appear across the top of your browser, and is identified in the page’s source code as the meta title. Do not confuse it with the URL of the page – - what you see in the address window of your browser. This is not the page’s title; it’s the page’s address. These are two different things.

You’ll want to fit into your page title some of your keywords. Keep your page title at a reasonable length: somewhere between 50 and 75 characters is a good measurement. Look at the top of your browser to see the title of this page. “SEO and Copy Placement on Web Pages” is the page title; and, there is a good keyword inventory for those words. By inventory I mean the number of searches already being conducted by people looking for the services I sell.

Next, please take a quick look at the home page of this site.  Specifically, look at the first line in the main body text, the one in larger font size than the rest of the copy.  It reads:  “Web Copy Writing and Search Engine Optimization Services.” 

In web page source code, headings are designated the h-tag, “h” standing for heading.  The h1 tag is the first heading.  Search engine robots look for h-tags, assuming they will find a keyword in them.  As you can now guess, headings are important in any optimization efforts.  Since the services I sell are web copy writing and search engine optimization services, it was pretty easy to come up with my home page’s h1 tag.  You’ll want to do the same for your site.

Thirdly, we come to the main body text.  You’ll see what you now be able to recognize as keywords for which I want my site to be ranked highly on the major search engines.  The main body text was written around those keywords in the hope the search engine robots would easily discern what I do and how my site should be stored in search engine data bases, available for the searches I want the site highly ranked.

So, the answer to my client’s question was yes, placement of copy, and specifically keywords, on a web page is very important.  Don’t miss an opportunity to fit your keywords in all of the places where robots will expect to find them.  It will make a serious difference in how your site is recognized, and for which searches it will be presented as a relevant result.  Placement is important. 

Regular Internet users have learned how to use search engines more effectively over time, and that is only going to continue.  The more “drilled down” a search is, or to put it another way, the more particular and detailed a search is, the more likely it is to get either the specific result sought or at least far more relevant results.  An example will help:

I travel occasionally to Dublin, Ireland, to visit with clients for whom I do a lot of SEO writing.  So, it’s natural I would look for hotel accommodations for the trip.  If I searched “hotels”, I’d get hundreds of millions of results; if I searched “dublin hotels,” I’d get fewer results, but still an awful lot; if I searched “dublin hotels leopardstown area” I’d get far fewer results, and since the Leopardstown area of Dublin is convenient to where my clients are, it’s where I’d want to be.  That more “drilled down” search, or as we call them, “long-tail keywords,” will get me precisely what I’m looking for, and i won’t have to scroll to the second, or third or fourth page of search results.

Good reason, then, to optimize your web site for “long-tail keywords”, don’t you think?  Searchers know they’ll get more meaningful results if they are more specific in their searches, so why not accommodate them?

Here’s a second good reason:  far less competition for high rank positions.  Yes, the more specific you can be in optimizing your web site’s content for “long-tail keywords” people are likely to use when searching for your product or service, the less competition you’ll encounter for that high rank position.

One of the most frequently asked questions clients have of me when discussing the selection and crafting of keyword-rich content is:  “How do I know what keywords to use?”

You can find out the answer to this question by taking a very simple and short test about your own web site.  You’ll find that SEO test HERE, and I’d suggest you check it out.  Afterwards, and as you begin to assemble your list of keywords for your own site, see how far you can stretch them, make them more particular, more specific, more “drilled down” – - – and assume that’s how the experienced Internet user is going to be searching for your product or service.

It’s a worthwhile exercise, and even one that should be repeated from time to time.  Your web site will benefit from the effort, and your business will likely increase.  That is, after all, the point of it all.

I am Michael L. McGrath, and I’ve been writing web copy and creating content for web sites since 2003. During that time, I’ve produced copy and content for a goodly number of high volume e-commerce web sites, and helped them achieve top ten organic rank positions and enjoy very good  successes with their online presence.  A portfolio sample of clients, representing millions of dollars in online commerce each year, includes:

This Cape Cod coppersmith produces period lanterns in the original Colonial and Early American style, taking the extra steps that set his copper, pewter and brass lanterns apart from the rest.

Inuit art, sculpture and carvings gallery with stunningly beautiful objects presented, and personal service offered to introduce that special Inuit and Eskimo piece to the right collector.

Specifically copper lanterns, two styles:  Onion and Heritage.  We also shot, edited and produced video for this site showing the various stages in the handcrafting of these lanterns.

The original whale watch company operating out of Provincetown, MA. The fleet is four boats strong and runs over 950 whale watch trips to Stellwagen Bank Sanctuary outside Cape Cod Bay each season. This site was particularly challenging as it contained educational, informative, children’s and commercial elements all in one web site.

Casual dining in Orleans, MA, a fishing community on lower Cape Cod, the perfect stop for freshly caught fish, generous portions, and the best cheeseburger around.  Under same continuous ownership for darn near 40 years.

The online resource for business vouchers (coupons) in Dublin, Ireland. This site is the online component to the Dublin Local  Business Directory, which also has voucher (coupon) booklets distributed on the ground to tens of thousands of households.

And, its companion site for convenient electronic delivery of coupons to your mobile device while shopping in Ireland, there is Rewardyourself.ie.

Of particular noteworthiness on this list isWhalewatch.com, which was deemed “Webby-Worthy” in 2005. The Webbys are to web sites what the Oscars are to movies. I was responsible for content creation and copy on that site, and am pleased to have been a part of the team at KISS Computing to have its work recognized by the industry.

It is the nature of web site content and copy that it is available to the world for examination. Each of the sites in this brief portfolio is very different than the others, a different voice, a different product, a different writing style, all designed to promote the particular call to action for each site. Each of these sites undergoes a regular examination of performance, and adjustments deemed necessary by that analysis are made. Web site content must be considered a perpetual work in progress, just as a web site must be considered in the same way. You are invited to visit each of these sites to see for yourself.

Those were the words used by Sean McGurk, head of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity Center when he testified before the United States Senate. The virus, generating a highly complex computer attack that may have been targeting Iran’s nuclear power plants is now posing serious security threats to critical infrastructure across the world.  By critical infrastructure, he was referring to electric power grids, water treatment and oil and gas pipelines.

There is insufficient knowledge at the moment to identify what specifically was the target of the attack.  There are an approximate 44,000 unique Stuxnet infections worldwide currently, with 1600 of them in the United States.  Who was behind the attack also remains a mystery.

Congress has been sitting on legislation critical to cybersecurity for more than a year, and it would seem that legislation will be waiting for the new Congress to convene next year before it’s discussed or considered for passage.  Neither the Obama administration nor any committees of Congress with jurisdiction over such a bill have stepped up to move things along.

It is the nature of software protection, for the most part, to be reactive rather than pro-active.  Anti virus and spam filters are programmed to block known viruses and known spammer habits, and since those filters are not adaptive on their own, they remain susceptible to new virus strains and new spam “tricks.”  Hardware protection is not invulnerable, either.

In a report released last week, we learned that two incidents earlier in the year showed China showed the ability to substantially manipulate the Internet.  In one, traffic to 15 percent of the world’s web sites was redirected through Chinese servers for about a half an hour.  The Internet security firm McAfee provided the U.S. government with a list of 53,000 websites that were hijacked for 18 minutes on April 8 – – data headed for the U.S, Senate, the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Airfore, the secretary of defense, NASA, other government offices, and such commercial entities as Dell, Yahoo, Microsoft and IBM.

In short, we remain quite open to ever-more-sophisticated types of attacks to our major infrastructure such as the Stuxnet virus.  It doesn’t matter what the Stuxnet’s primary target was anymore except as a way of finding any breadcrumb trail that target might provide to its source of the virus.  What does matter is that is now exists, and all potential targets are in jeopardy. It’s a dangerous world we live in today.

A crippling attack seems inevitable in our future, whether to power grids or potable water supplies or financial networks or defense systems.  It is a frightening notion, and it was a scary headline to read.  That neither the White House nor Congress has beefed up legislation and funding to prepare defenses is criminal.