Google was last night forced to admit to the existence of a “secret keyword” that enables websites that place it on their homepage to rocket to the top of the search results and gain huge amounts of traffic.

The elusive keyword had been subject to rumours in SEO circles for months but the announcement still sent shockwaves around the industry.

Google are refusing to divulge the actual term but it is said to be made up of 2 distinct words that are “impossible to write accidentally”. Placing the phrase in your homepage’s copy will guarantee your site the top spot in Google and 1042011 visitors each day (or 4012011 in the US).

Google originally created the term back in 1998 when the internet was only used as a hangout for science fiction fans. Now the internet has several other uses, the presence of the secret lexicon poses real issues for the search engine.

Unscrupulous SEO consultants have been quick to capitalise on the announcement. Numerous services are now available from shady SEO companies who claim to know the enigmatic edict and are prepared to place it onto websites for exorbitant fees.

Guesses as to what the term might be were being made on social media sites and webforums across the internet last night. At Mediarun, we do not claim to know what the word is but we suspect it might be “lorem ipsum”. We’d welcome any other guesses in the comments, of course.

On March 1^st the ASA extends its remit to cover online marketing communications and claims that companies make on their own websites and other online areas they control. This means that parts of SEO will arguably fall under their remit: links out to other sites, copy, meta data visible to the visitor etc.

Needless to say, as complex as SEO is there are plenty of grey areas that we suspect the ASA will struggle to do anything about – there are so many more webpages than there are adverts. That said, we’ve made a wish list of the things we’d like to see them tackle, but know that they almost certainly can’t. Still, we can but hope…

Visual pun #1872

There are plenty of examples of the below online but you’ll forgive me if I don’t help them out with a link.

1. We’ll take the “guaranteed results” bunch as read. For the googolth time (real number – look it up): no one can guarantee any search results unless they are the search engine. Also, it’s a meaningless promise. Tell you what, I’ll guarantee to get your site on page 1 for the keyphrase “large badger hats”. Think of the prestige!

2. SEM companies using Adwords positions screenshots as evidence of some kind of expertise. They are effectively saying “I have no respect for you, potential customer, you gullible fool.”

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“If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you”

Excerpt from If by Rudyard Kipling

A sudden loss or drop in rankings can be a very stressful time for people in SEO whether in-house or at an agency. For many businesses it can mean an immediate loss of revenue and most business owners will look straight to the SEO experts to rectify the situation immediately. Often, the question of blame (implied or voiced) will fall on the SEOs even though many parties are contributing to the site and the cause could lie anywhere.

Glance at this image hourly in times of stress. Mmmmm calm. (Photo by Horia Varlan)

Here are our tips on what to do should you find yourself in this situation. There are essentially 3 stages: understanding what has happened; understanding the cause; identifying the solution.

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In the early days of quantum mechanics, physicists first gazed into atoms and realized they were witnessing something for which there was no language to describe it. “Something unknown is doing we do not know what”, said Sir Arthur Eddington in his book The Nature of the Physical World. The behaviour of sub-atomic particles simply couldn’t be explained with conventional language. An erudite fellow, he suggested invoking Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky to explain them, describing electrons as “slithy toves [that] did gyre and gimble in the wabe”. These words were as good as any for describing a brand new concept to the world.

Thankfully, few things are as complicated as quantum theory. SEO can be pretty confusing at times, sure but then we can use analogies to get us out of any conceptual rabbit holes.

Analogies are useful and even fun ways of explaining new or tricky concepts to a layperson. In SEO we often come across this need whether it be selling a strategy to a client or telling someone at a party what we do for a living.

The Fighting Temeraire, by J W Turner. The reason for the gratuitous use of this image will become apparent.

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A topic that had predominately been the focus of many debates last year was click tracking specifically in natural search arena. For those who are not familiar with the jargon I am referring to web analytics tracking. Typically all free or generic tracking tools work on the basis of tracking the last click. The last click is deemed as the last search and click through to your website by a user from a natural search result converting into a sale or lead.

Normally everyone would think that it is okay except it is not! Here is why:

1. Google analytics only tracks the last click performed by a user as they arrive on a website and not the first (historically original) click. Therefore you can’t tell how a visitor originally found your site, making it difficult to prove conversions of non-brand traffic when users return via a brand keyword to finalise a purchase or make an enquiry.
2. There is no history on what the user had previously searched for or seen on the website.
3. There is no easy way of integrating a multi click solution

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A few weeks ago, one of our e-commerce clients migrated their website with the hope of boosting conversions and site usability ahead of the peak Christmas trading season.

Fortunately the conversions increased; unfortunately the (Reputed) agency that was appointed for launching the new site ignored all the key points of migration thinking them less relevant than focusing on the correct placement of images on the pages. As a result they lost all the SEO credibility that was build over the years, dropped their internal page rankings by more than 80% along with a bulk of their site traffic.  The impact this would have on their Christmas trading season is unimaginable.

For established online business, who have a steady traffic, conversion and rankings and are highly dependant on seasonality, need to take extreme precautions when they are looking re-developing their website as they might otherwise find themselves going back a few years in lost work.

Here are a few suggestions for companies that are looking at redeveloping their website to help ensure that your design & build agency doest write off your Christmas.

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