Then Google changed the rules.  Where previously the front page of Google had contained 10 natural search results, now it might contain only seven with As many as 10 Google places listings now appearing on the First page of Google.  The positioning of these Google places listings could be anywhere from right at the top of a natural search results, below the Google AdWords sponsored links the somewhere in the middle of the page.  This was disastrous for many businesses that were operating from my the just outside the centre of their local area or even on the fringe of it, but whose business was very much a local provider of services covering the entire area.  Businesses that had held the number one position for local searches and overnight had their rankings drop to the equivalent of position 11.

Google is aware of this anomaly and how it must be affecting certain types of businesses. The problem with Google places is that it has no mechanism to classify certain types of business categories as likely having a mobile base or main place of operations (cleaners, pool servicing companies, Electrical Services, TV antenna installers, mobile mechanics et cetera) and thus in these cases widening the spread of businesses that can be shown in Google places without giving too much emphasis to those right in the city centre.  All businesses are treated as if the centre of their operations stems from their physical base.

It is not necessarily a good result for users either as well is businesses. My neighbour Mike who lives three houses over does satellite installations.  He never goes into the office which is based on the outskirts of town. He does however regularly attend their factory base which is in the industrial area of the city.  When I search for satellite installations "my cityname" I don't get any information that there is a mobile installer three doors down to do the work.  Neither does Google places tell me of the factory base that Mike goes to to stock up on equipment that is to on a half kilometres away when I do a search in Google places.  Why not? only the head office may be recorded in Google places, not the location of mobile workshops or factory bases. The head office itself only comes up in Google places in very obscure searches where the searcher lives on the perimeter of town.

This is not useful to me as not useful to the business.  The ludicrous result of all this is that the managers of Mike's business are now looking to close their city perimeter office and move into a much more expensive city office. As silly as this sounds once they are in the city their business will be up or get a highly valuable Google places listings for satellite installations "city name".  nothing will have changed in an operational sense for the business.  They will still have a workshop base in a different area to the administrative head office but how fast someone is going to attend your home to install or repair your satellite is now depend entirely on the residential addresses of their mobile team.

It would make far more sense for "satellite installations and repair" as a category to be marked as a mobile category and when searching for "satellite Installations and repair cityname"  Google places go far more weight the markers like incoming links, quality reviews, et cetera.

Of course this is all wishful thinking on my part and and the SEOguys will be resorting to traditional SEO in order to obtain rankings for a new client for the terms Electrical Services Brisbane.  The concepts of good content, well structured site with good HTML and relevant industry specific recommendations still holds true and that's what will be focusing on

This Google Adwords Certified Partner modified her site copy and ads and the ads ran fine for a long time. Then all of a sudden, Google suspends them stating the ads breach their landing page policies. My client by this stage is not being represented by the Google Adwords Certified Company(who have now gone out of business, then rebirthed under a new name). Try as she might she cannot understand or fix the problem created by this company and her account gets suspended.

This was not really a case where SEO was then be a better option than AdWords. If you look at the most important key phrase throughout client, Melbourne Hypnotherapy – no amount of SEO there was ever going to bring a great result. At the top of the page to this search term in Google there are three Google AdWords ads followed by 10 Google places listings. Though our client services the greater Melbourne area as their offices outside Melbourne city they have little or no chance of having a listing appear in Google places for searches on her services in the suburb of Melbourne. The best we could hope to achieve her was number one in Google natural search which replaced the site effectively a position 14 on page one. Hardly a place that can cause the phone to ring off the hook.

The only result that was going to work to the client here was getting that Google AdWords ban overturned. Enter the SEOGuys.

We looked over her content and ads – indeed they are exaggerated. We modified the site, moved it to a new domain modified the ads to be more acceptable and contacted Google to explain the problems that had occurred and the fixes made.

Initially, Google was reluctant to undo the ban. They wanted more changes, more proof that the site was now in compliance and would stay so. In total, we swapped 47 emails, and I made 9 phone calls to Google.

The end result?

The "Permanently Banned Adwords Account" has now been unbanned.

Of course, there is no room for error, any further problems on this site and the account will be banned again and this time permanently might just mean permanently.
But if you've been  banned, permanently from Adwords understand that there are two types of t permanent Google AdWords bans.

1. You've done something really wrong. Use Google AdWords trick people into buying something that was falsely represented. Use AdWords to send people to a page containing more ads. Use AdWords to send people to a page selling illegal products.

   A permanent ban of this kind is a permanent ban. No amount of appealing to Google is going to help.

2. Someone else did something very wrong on your site or your wrong was mistake rather than intentional. For example they may of hacking and planted malware on your site you could not find. Someone professing to be an SEO expert may have set up a campaign making unjustifiable claims about your products or services. You may have been unwittingly selling products that whilst legal, and allowed to be advertised using Google AdWords.

   In some cases this kind of permanent ban can be overturned. Google is not unreasonable and quite frankly, yes, they want your money. They now want to lose an advertiser who site has suffered problems with quality with those problems though breaching Google AdWords terms of service were relatively minor and where those problems have now been rectified.

So if you've been banned by Google AdWords, whatever the reason get in touch with the SEOGuys. We can advise what your chances are being reinstated and if you've got a shot will certainly go into bat for you.

Using these shonky means, they may not stay at the top very long but they usually have many multiple sites and just roll out the next one when one gets banned. Definitely a juicy niche for the SEOGuys to get involved in, and a good opportunity to show that good old, Google approved SEO is still the best way to go.

So as of November 2011, we are working on getting a new client;s website to the top 10 on Google.co.uk for Payday Loans. For once, we are doing everything as the client has had some issues with his developer. We are designing, programming and doing all online marketing. So far, I think the site is looking pretty damn fine considering design and programming is not our day job.

1. First of all, we are using a WordPress setup that is fine tuned for SEO.
2. Then, we are writing all content so it is user friendly as well as not offensive to search engines. We don't write specifically for search engines, that rarely works out well, google hates it.
3. We've tagged all possible issues that Panda might have with the new site. Duplicate content, short thing pages etc, and made sure our content is professionally written and sufficiently lengthy.
4. Next, we are going to gather relevant links from a variety of sources. Paid business directories, financial websites, some article sites and some link bait.(More on the link bait later)
5. We've got a year or so to hit targets, or we need to refund everything. The development cost, the SEO funding, the lot so we are well motivated.

Of course, there is a ton more stuff we are doing which we can't talk about that are also part of the SEO plan.

So as of today, 8 November 2011, the SEOGuys are on the PayDay Loans job.

So when we got an enquiry about taking on a new gift themed site – we were all ears.

So as of the 15th of October we are on the job, working for Redigifts with the aim of achieving a top 5 position for them for the keyphrase "Gifts".

Some of the issues were are working on are:-

a. Presentation of appropriate page headers – issues with use of 301,302 and 404 headers.

b. Duplicate content – duplicate within the site and with other sites.

c. Thin content – pages with not enough worth to satisfy Google they deserve to exist.

d. Lack of popularity which is to be expected – it's a new site.

Plus a lot more issues that we will be working on over the coming months.

But as of today, we are on the job.

At the SEOGuys we only do Google approved SEO. We can't see the point in doing any other kind. If a competitor catches you doing something wrong, or Google comes past to see if you are doing the right thing…. It’s so easy to spot things like

• Computer generated content.
• Syndicated articles generated solely for SEO purposes, articles that have been mangled and no longer make sense.
• Incorrect Google Places address details.
• Multiple sites owned by the one company, where many of the sites exist only to generate links to the main site.
• Paid Links

Your business may well be humming along and all of a sudden – no Google traffic. You'll be laying of staff and wondering what to do next.

I don't wish to go into intimate detail of the shortcuts that were being taken in this case by our predecessors but the bottom line was they were:-

• Highly risky and in breach of Google's TOS.
• Not working anyway. No Page 1 for our client.
• Supposed to be cheap, but because involved monthly payments that were getting them nowhere, they had turned out VERY expensive.

Initially this made out job harder, as we had to appeal to Google to forgive and forget before we could make progress. Google was very tough at first and for 3 months we made little progress. Then overnight at 90 days, Google removed all penalties and our good honest Google approved SEO took this locksmith client to page 1, at No.9. Then to 6, currently at 4. We are expecting position 3 by November and top 2 by the new year. Additionally, we have achieved top 10 rankings for a host of Locksmith + Melbourne Suburb related searches as well and these are bringing in as much traffic as the main phrase, Locksmith Melbourne.

So all in all, a very satisfying job for us. We did what our predecessors said could not be done… and at a fraction of the cost they were charging in any case.

Update: We've recently fielded two requests from other Melbourne Locksmiths to help with their SEO.  Please understand, we can only take on one business in an area, its not possible to represent competing clients fairly.

Update: we've taken on a 2nd website with TopLock, they opened a center of Melbourne Office to offer their speedy services to people locked out right in the city.

This website is here Melbourne Locksmiths with their Melbourne Locksmith Emergency Services Google Maps listing here.

The problem is they might well be on the first page of Google, but in fact have a Google Penalty. There may well be only 10 or so sites with information relevant to the search results, so holding position 10 is the same as holding down the last position. So getting a site to position 10 in Google's results may well be a success, or a failure, depending on the number of sites competing for the search term.

In this case, our new client has reasonable rankings, but they could be better, for Stradbroke real estate and accommodation based search results.  Our strategy is as follows.

(1) Work with the developers of their property management software to ensure it follows all of Google's rules and suggestions regarding SEO.(They were great by the way.)

(2) Fix the site content, to ensure it was interesting and complete for both people and search engines.

(3) Make other sites aware of it that might consider linking to it to increase the site's popularity.

With many relevant targets to achieve, i will not list them all here but one of the main phrases is Stradbroke Island Holiday Accommodation and we are aiming fort Top 5 within 3 months, No.1 within 12 months.

Update  November 2011 – top 5 rankings for this and many other terms achieved.We are not done yet, but they are moving in the right direction/

1. Ran a piece of software over the site that found all instances of duplicate content. From their 650 articles, we got 150 of the worst totally rewritten. Some were short. Some were duplicates from other sites. In time, all problem articles will be rewritten but it’s a big job.
    
2. All detail pages for businesses that had no description were set to no index no follow, with links to such pages hidden from Google so thin/duplicate Directory page were no longer in the index.
    
3. No more short articles, all at least 450 words long, some as long as 1500 words… and no 500 words policy so the articles no longer look like an article farm.

We did NOT speed up pages.

We did NOT reduce adsense on pages, there remains 2 ads above the fold, 1 below.

As of Saturday the 18th of June, the site has recovered on a great many search terms, and traffic has more than doubled since the 15th of June. Pages that have been fixed have all increased greatly in rankings, but other pages not changed have also risen in rankings by many places showing Panda to be a per page, and site wide penalty.

We are very happy with this result, which confirms what we have been saying all along.

Panda is not to be feared. It’s a quality filter. If you've been hit with it, you likely deserved it.

1. Pages with too little unique content.
2. Pages with duplicate content.
3. Pages with low quality content.

This is what Panda targets. Fix this in your site and you will see a recovery.

Need help? SEOGuys can help. We are presently booked for normal SEO jobs until 2012, but are available to help if you if you believe your site has been pandalised.

For $149, we will look over your site, provide a list of your main problems and an action plan for fixing them.

If you want us to put the plan into action, we can provide a price for doing this as well.

So..why is YOUR site not on Page One of Google?

Site is shortly to be completely redeveloped to improve the user experience, and to make shopping for Christmas decorations even easier on their site.  The SEOGuys will have the task of managing this transition, which will likely involve changing urls of many existing pages without losing rankings.

Recent changes at Google have made obtaining rankings for local searches “eg Christmas decorations Melbourne, Christmas Decorations Sydney etc” a lot harder for businesses that trade online and ship to such areas, but don’t actually have a bricks and mortar outlets in those areas.

So… many challenges, and a short time frame.  We can achieve many things at the SEOGuys, but not put back the date xmas is celebrated so we need to get busy, fast.

Looking forward to the challenge, as of 31 May 2011 we are on the case.

Update – site hit No.1 for Christmas Decorations in November 2011 and continues to gain higher rankings for many other terms.

They are already in the top 3 for

Yoga Wear
Yoga Clothing
Yoga Clothes
Yoga Mats
Yoga Pants

Why not just leave it at that?
From our experience, the difference in click throughs between the No3. And No.1 places is roughly 50%.  So you might think 2 places is not a big deal, but it is.
Also…. If a site is at No.3 for these search terms, it’s probably also lower ranked for a whole host of terms.  We might only contract to work on getting the rankings of these terms higher…. But the reality is a whole host of extra terms are likely to be effected.

What Else?
Our client has poor regional rankings, eg, no rankings for Yoga Clothing Sydney.  Many people do a local search as well as an all of Australia search, so we are tackling this challenge for our client as well.

So as of today, 12 of March 2011, we are on the case.
 

The site was using an out of the box Joomla CMS, and though from a user perspective it was OK, from a search engine perspective, it was a nightmare.  Heaps of duplication of content, poor navigation, many dead links.  Google would have not known what to think. 

Client was already considering doing a redevelopment, so we recommended instead going with a WordPress CMS and Blog.  Much more user friendly out of the box than Joomla, and much more search engine friendly too.  We tweaked it of course, and within weeks of relaunch, already had the site to No.17 on google.com.au for one of the required terms  Buyers Advocate Melbourne and as of writing this post, its up to position 11.

This is a multi word job, with many, many buyers advocate and buyers agent words to be targeted… but also its a multi media SEO job.

Not only are we trying to get the secret agent website into Google's top 10, we are trying to get some VIDEOS into the top 10 as well.  Videos in the top 10?  Yes, that's right…. google is now placing Videos into the top 10 of its results! 

So we are also working on marketing the Secret Agent Web Channel and individual videos detailing their videos of Melbourne Buyers Advocate and Melbourne Buyers Agent.

Video results in Google's first page are GREAT.  People love videos, not just funny home ones… they love business videos as well.  Who wants to read.. when you can instead view a video summary of a business's services and offers?  Getting your website into the top 10 of Google, that's important…. but no reason to not have your website AND your promotional video BOTH in the top 10, as Google leaves space for both.

Watch this space!