National Positions South Africa SEO Blog

Why Google Has a Role in Your Website’s Success

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Nomangaliso

Google is always a hot topic in the online world with the majority of internet users bowing down to its’ rules and regulations. In the past few years Google algorithm updates such as Penguin and Panda have drastically affected the way people can use the internet to promote their online businesses. The latest update was the Panda #24 which took place on 22 January 2013 and affected 1.2% of English queries globally.

To maintain its footprint in the online world, Google is always reinventing itself and adding to its business offering. To date, in addition to search, it has spread its wings into PPC advertising, e-mail, software, social media, and more. Just yesterday Google acquired Channel Intelligence which is a data service that specialises in helping major ecommerce businesses push more product sales online. Channel Intelligence was one of the original launch partners for Google Shopping and this $125 million acquisition is aimed at improving the Google Shopping experience by helping both merchants and consumers save time and money online.

How relevant is Google in South Africa

Although Google is not the only search engine out there, research shows that competitors like Bing and Yahoo are in actual fact not much competition in South Africa. As a result, unless your niche market happens to use Bing and Yahoo to search on the web, optimising your website for those search engines could be considered a waste of time.

According to Statcounter.com, an online statistics tool, between January 2012 and January 2013 Google has held the number one spot in South Africa and Africa as a whole:
Search Engine Usage in Africa

Google: 95.03%
Bing: 2.21%
Yahoo!: 1.63%

Search Engine Usage in South Africa

Google: 93.55%
Bing: 4%
Yahoo!: 1.13%

This simply means that most South African use Google as a first point of reference when looking for information. As a result investing your marketing budget on having your website rank well in this search engine will do your online business a whole lot of good.

How to optimise your website for Google in 2013

The first step is to let go of all those sneaky SEO tricks used before Penguin and Panda arrived, they will do your website more harm than good. Remember quality information is what Google wants for searchers so that is what you need to provide. 2013 is all about rich and informative content. With a base of quality content other important SEO factors such as link authority and social media will all be easier to put into effect for the overall benefit of your website.

Posted in Google News, SEO News / Internet Marketing News | Tagged Channel Intelligence, Search engine optimisation, SEO South Africa | Comments Off

How difficult is it to change the search habits of users?

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Delia Woker

Search engine marketers and SEO companies alike have been abuzz with the recent launch of Facebook Graph Search and what this latest development could mean for the future of search engine marketing and SEO.

One side of this debate considers the impact of how Facebook Graph levers off more than a billion Facebook users and how it opens up different optimisation possibilities.

The other side delves into whether Facebook Graph will present serious competition to Google and how it relates to user behaviour.

For Facebook Graph to present a serious challenge to Google, it will have to test already strongly established user behaviour and how the average person searches for information online.

Using Google for search has become an established norm in the mind of both Technorati and Techophobes. For Facebook Search to succeed it will have to reset deeply ingrained search behaviour patterns and brand loyalty. Essentially Facebook Graph will have to disrupt established user behaviour which has partly been responsible for Google’s staying power.

The strength of a habit, as anyone who has tried to stop smoking or lose weight can attest too lies in the effect of two interrelated variables: utility and frequency. Separately, these variables carry value independently, but when combined they reinforce each other.

Google has maximised on this and has reinforced user behaviour by being valuable to users and by being perceived as consistently adding value. Thus it has become a deeply ingrained habit and has become synonymous with search.

This said, for Facebook Graph to gain traction it will have to compete for consumer mind share by leveraging off its usability and encourage greater frequency of use. Not an easy task by any means.

Whatever the outcome, SEO companies will be well advised to pay careful attention to Facebook Graph and its potential impact on SEO and search engine marketing.

Is Facebook Graph the future of SEO and search?

Facebook Graph Search vs Google Search

Posted in SEO News / Internet Marketing News | Tagged Facebook Graph Search, search engine marketing, SEO, SEO Company, User behavior | Comments Off

What Facebook Graph Search means for SEO

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Delia Woker

Facebook announced the launch of Facebook Graph Search Beta on 15 January 2013. As one of the most popular social media platforms boasting over a billion members, it’s easy to see how Facebook has dominated online conversation since its inception in February 2004.

So what exactly is Graph Search?

Graph Search will allow Facebook users to search for on four main areas of search:

people,
photos,
places
and interests.

It means that Facebook members who want to know their friends’ preferences before making decisions on restaurants; careers, books and so on can search for example “great fish restaurants,” and be rewarded with meaningful results.

Search engine companies and internet marketing communities have expected that eventually, Facebook would expand into search. However, this is the first tangible efforts Facebook has made to compete for Google’s share of the search market.

What will Graph Search mean for Google search?

It is still uncertain whether or not Graph Search has the potential to evolve into something that will ‘kill Google’. Having said this however, Graph Search doesn’t have to take on the megalith of search engines and win.

The reality is if Facebook Graph Search can establish itself as an invaluable tool to users, it translates to more time spent using Facebook for search rather than Google. And with Facebook’s over 1 billion users, the maths is simple…

What does this mean for SEO?

One of the first things Mark Zuckerberg was quick to point out about Search Graph was that it is not web search. And this move away from traditional web search opens up exciting avenues for businesses and SEO companies. With Graph Search there will be a whole new area of search optimisation.

Whereas SEO companies will optimise a site relatively similarly for various search engines, Graph Search is not about optimising a website.

Search Graph is based on results returned which are based on factors that include information which has been shared by your business and the connections of the person searching.

The challenge ahead for search engine optimisation companies is for them to be flexible enough to adapt to this new type of search. Time will tell if Graph Search heralds a new era for search optimisation.

Posted in SEO Company Johannesburg, SEO News / Internet Marketing News | Tagged Facebook Graph, Google, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEO | Comments Off

Panda Update from Google – 24th Tweak

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Richard

Google first announced the Panda algorithm addition nearly 2 years ago and on Jan 24th they finally, after much pushing and queries, announced that the 24th tweak to Panda was released last week.

Unrelated to the strong signs of an update many sites seemed to experience around January 17^th, this Panda refresh was officially announced on Twitter yesterday, though there’s hardly been as much buzz on the forums surrounding this update as there was about the changes earlier this month that Google still claims to have been nothing.

Much like the last Panda update, which was pushed out right in the middle of the holiday season and affected 1.3% of English queries, this data refresh is said to affect a similar number of searches—about 1.2% of English queries.

To learn more about these Panda updates or for guidance on building high-quality sites, Google’s Webmasters have some good advice that might help.

Posted in Google News, SEO News / Internet Marketing News | Comments Off

National Positions USA Named the 50th Fastest Growing company in Los Angeles

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Nomangaliso

For the third year in a row National Positions has been named the 50th fastest growing company in LA by the Business Journal. Having recently been named by Inc. Magazine, one of the fastest growing private companies in the USA, we are truly humbled and honoured by the recognition.

Bernard May, President of National Positions USA said “I’d like to thank the Los Angeles Business Journal for honouring us once again with this award. Our continued rapid growth can be attributed to many things but the most important is our innovative team’s passion for our clients’ success,”

This year National Positions has not only increased in size but our product offering has also improved to give our clients comprehensive online marketing strategies that improve online presence and branding.

Clients always come first! – Special thanks go out to all our clients who have trusted us with the growth of their businesses on the internet through increased visibility and lead generation. It has always been our goal to help online businesses reach their full potential and to date National Positions has increased website traffic and online business for over 1,000 companies around the world.

Thank you also to the dedicated team of website developers and designers, PPC marketers, copywriters and SEO professionals behind National Positions who go out of their way to provide innovative solutions for individual clients.

The internet has and continues to make an impact on how traditional business takes place and we are excited to be part of this online revolution. From social media marketing, to PPC campaigns and Organic SEO we are constantly pursuing value based online marketing solutions for each client in order to deliver measurable results that work together for the growth and prosperity of your business.

Article Source:
National Positions USA
Pr Web

Posted in SEO Company Johannesburg | Comments Off

National Positions USA Named One of Fastest Growing Private Companies in US!

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Richard

Exciting news here at National Positions! We’ve been named by Inc. Magazine one of the fastest growing private companies in the country. This marks the fourth straight year we’ve made the Inc. list. In this year’s ranking, we are listed 1,360 out of the top 5,000 companies.

This is a great honor for all of us at National Positions. Making the list once is quite an accomplishment, but to make it four straight years is truly overwhelming!

Thank you so much to our clients. We owe our success to you. You’ve trusted us and worked with us as your partners, and we take that responsibility very seriously. We promise that we’re going to work hard than ever to keep improving your campaigns so that you reach new levels of success. While we’re happy about our own growth, we’re most proud of our track record: helping over 1,000 companies use the Internet to grow their business.

And a very special thank you to our National Positions team! It may sound corny to say it, but we truly believe that we have the best staff in the country! Internet marketing is constantly changing, and online success requires a commitment to innovation, creativity and hard work. We’re lucky to have such a terrific group of web developers, designers, writers, social media marketers and SEO experts.

We’re fortunate to be in the middle of an exciting industry that is growing rapidly. We’re especially excited about the new developments happening everywhere we look: the Panda and Penguin Updates, the rise of new social networks such as Pinterest and Foursquare, the explosion of mobile and local search, and the opportunities found in comparison shopping engines. Internet marketing is maturing and becoming a vital component of every company’s marketing plan. We’re happy to help so many businesses create new opportunities in this amazing new landscape.

National Positions has always been focused on traffic, leads, sales and measurable results that create profit for our clients. We strive to understand the big picture of our clients’ businesses—their products and services, their goals, and what they want to communicate. Then we build a marketing strategy to meet their specific needs.
As Internet marketing continues to evolve, it is this commitment to Value Based Marketing that will guide us and our clients.

Originally posted : http://nationalpositions.com/blog/national-positions-named-one-of-fastest-growing-private-companies-in-us

Posted in SEO Company Johannesburg | Comments Off

Is SEO Helping Your Website? Learn How to Measure SEO Performance

Posted on August 14, 2012 by Nomangaliso

As a website owner, if you do not understand the benefits of search engine optimisation it’s hard to tell whether you are being scammed by your SEO service provider or not. The more you know about how to measure the success of an SEO campaign the better equipped you are to monitor your investment and understand your return.

Different tools and applications are used to monitor the success of online campaigns and many online marketing companies create their own in-house tools for reporting purposes. Google analytics is an example of a popular tool used by online analysts to track the progress of websites. These tools use performance indicators or metrics to gauge the performance of different components of the website and determine its overall success rate.

Here are the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you need to be aware of and monitor to measure your websites progress:

Website Traffic
Time on site
Indexed Pages
Search Engine Rankings
Targeted keywords
Conversion rates

If you are not doing your own search engine optimisation, don’t hesitate to ask your SEO practitioner about these indicators. Let’s take a look at the importance of each of these metrics.

SEO metrics

Amount of Traffic to the Site
The number of visitors visiting your website is a big indication of whether or not your website is being found; the more traffic entering your website the better. When monitoring this KPI, please note that PPC campaigns generate traffic faster than organic search engine optimisation.

Visitors’ Time on Site
The amount of time visitors spend on your website indicates whether or not they find value in your website and if you are attracting the right traffic. If there is a trend of visitors leaving your website immediately after entering it, this will increase your bounce rate and you can get penalised by search engines.

Number of Indexed Pages
If your website pages are not indexed by Google or other search engines, people will not be able to find them in searches. The best way to get your pages indexed is to add them to your sitemap and then submit it to Google webmasters. Your SEO practitioner should set this up for you to ensure that all of your websites pages are indexed.

Search Engine Rankings for Targeted Keywords

The goal has always been and will always be to get your website ranking at the top of targeted search engines; in South Africa the main one would be Google. If your webpages are moving up in rankings this indicates that they have been effectively optimised on both the front end (Content, layout, design) and the technical side (Meta data, robots file, URLs).

Number of Targeted Keywords Bringing in Traffic
Because the internet is so vast, your SEO company or practitioner will research a set of keywords to target in order to reach your online market. The more of these keywords your website pages rank for, the better. This means your webpages have been effectively optimised for their targeted words.

High or Low Conversion Rates
If your website has high conversion rates it means that more visitors are turning into clients on your website. They are not only visiting the website but they are interacting with it in the way you want them to by signing up, registering or ordering online. This is the ultimate goal of many websites.

Posted in SEO News / Internet Marketing News, SEO Techniques | Comments Off

How User Experience and SEO can Increase your Website’s Conversion Rate

Posted on August 2, 2012 by Nomangaliso

If you own a website then you already know how important your conversion rate is. As much as traffic to your website is always great, the ultimate goal is for the visitor to take action – subscribe to the newsletter, order the product or sign-up. The visitor has to convert to a client.

In the past Search Engine Optimisation and User Experience have been kept apart. One was necessary to optimise a website for search engines and the other was to optimise a user’s experience on a website. Because different and sometimes clashing techniques are used to achieve these results, many internet marketers either did one or the other. However we now realize that the combination of the two has a powerful effect on the number one goal of any website – increased conversion rates.

In fact creating an online user experience without considering the important aspects of SEO can be more detrimental to your website than beneficial. For example, one common mistake made by website designers is the excessive use of flash animation and frames. Although they can help you create an amazing looking website for visitors, they have no SEO benefits (because search engines cannot read them) and can negatively affect your rankings on search engines.

There are many ways in which UX and SEO can work together to increase conversions but the main one would have to be through content layout, visibility and optimisation. Keeping in mind that search engines bring in the visitors that can be converted into clients through persuasive content, let’s look at each of them:

Content layout: Content with an easy to read layout with headings, bullets, bolding and the likes is beneficial for both search engines and visitors.

Content Visibility: Search engines must be able to read content in order for a website to rank – Don’t lose important content on flash animation and frames.

Content Optimisation: Optimising content with researched keywords helps increase website rankings. Inserting keywords into meta content such as H1 headings, title tags and descriptions is also important for optimisation.

On their own UX and SEO are great, but together they are powerful. If you are involved in internet marketing or you have outsourced the services, make sure you do the optimal thing and combine your UX design with your SEO strategy.

Posted in SEO Techniques | Tagged Search engine optimisation, SEO, user experience, UX | Comments Off

The Authority of Backlinks versus Social Media after the Penguin Update

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Nomangaliso

Since Google dubbed backlinks “votes of confidence” for individual websites, numerous link building strategies were created to take advantage of it.

Getting registered on numerous directories, buying links and creating link building networks became a norm for many Black Hat and Grey Hat SEOs in an effort to go up in rankings quickly. For some time this method was effective and websites that implemented these links were thriving but Penguin brought it all to an end. The launch of the penguin update changed the game for many SEO practitioners and companies around the globe.

Now website owners have been severely penalised for their link spamming and are on a mission to cut down fast. As a result of the emergency damage control breakout, some have reported that website owners are demanding payment for the removal of negative backlinks. Fortunately if you are a victim of such you also have the option to report the issue to Google and (when they finally get to it) they will discredit the link to your website.

Because of Penguin SEOs are beginning to speculate that social media authority has taken over link authority. The speculations are backed up by the fact that social media signals on platforms such as Google+, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest now affect the rankings of websites.

As much as this may be true for social media the fact still remains that quality links to your websites will increase your search engine ranking. The only difference is that Google is now penalising websites with low quality or irrelevant back links in excessive amounts instead of crediting them for the number of backlinks to the website as before.

Linking to other websites is the essence of the internet, without it even social media would lose its worth. So instead of comparing the two we should rather think of how we can combine them to achieve the ultimate results.

The aim of Google is to provide quality search results to users and every algorithm adjustment made is to achieve this very goal. To avoid getting penalized by any future updates the best thing to do is create your online strategies around creating quality websites with quality content which can be easily shared on social platforms and is interesting enough to be backlinked to by other relevant websites.

Posted in SEO Techniques, Social Media Marketing | Tagged backlinks, link building, Search engine optimisation, Social Media | Comments Off

Dominate your Online Competition with Internet Marketing

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Nomangaliso

Internet marketing has revolutionised business and the way brand awareness and sales occur. Marketing on the web is not only a cheaper option to traditional marketing, but it allows you to connect with your target market in more ways than one.

Because of how vast and functional the internet is, a need arose for more advanced methods of getting your website noticed and that is when SEO became a big part of internet marketing.

Since online marketing involves the act of marketing a web site via search engines and other media platforms, without some form of an online strategy, dominating your online competition will be next to impossible. Internet marketing can be broken up into several sections each of which have a pivotal role to play, but today we will just concentrate on the four main sections:

Conversion optimisation
Organic SEO
Inorganic SEO/Paid advertising
Social Media

Conversion optimisation is the underdog of internet marketing. It is all about creating the right user experience on a website in order to drive visitors to convert into a customer. A visitor is converted into a customer when the goal of a webpage is achieved in the form of a sign-up, online order, online application etc. A landing page that is not optimised for conversion is just as bad as a website with no SEO.

Search Engine Optimisation involves several processes which work together to improve the visibility of a web site and its pages on search engines. It can be broken up into Organic and Inorganic SEO. In Short, organic SEO involves optimising a website for higher rankings in the free section of search engines. On the other hand, Inorganic SEO includes paid advertising such as PPC adverts, banner adverts, Facebook adverts and more. Although Inorganic SEO breeds faster results, Organic SEO is the cheaper option and often with longer lasting effects.

Social Media began as social platforms for the public and has evolved into a powerful online marketing strategy for businesses. Social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest allow businesses to connect with clients at their level in order to build trust, loyalty and brand awareness. Its viral ability has given word-of-mouth a new meaning and opened doors to amazing online campaigns that have brought many companies success.

Together these four sections of internet marketing can help you stand out from the rest when managed correctly. There are several SEO companies in South Africa that can manage your online marketing for you while you concentrate on your core business, find the right one for your business and you will be well on your way to online success.

Posted in SEO News / Internet Marketing News, SEO Techniques | Tagged Internet Marketing, seo services, Social Media Marketing | Comments Off