• They spanked users of content spamming services
• They might have de-valued the practice of embedded links
• They de-indexed a bunch of websites, wiping out their search ranking
• As of this writing, Yahoo has made no such changes

The websites that remain indexed and highly ranked on a Google results page are the ones who appear to have dedicated themselves to writing good solid content.

There are many other techniques out there for cheating your way to the top of the Google search result page. Eventually, they too will be discovered and summarily spanked. But those who aren’t also writing great content and dedicating themselves to particular key phrases will not be spanked.

Do links pointing at your website still matter?

No one really knows precisely how the Google algorithm assesses websites. You can bet that some outside links are still given very high value by Google; probably too much value. But the links that point in to your website will have to be honest friends of your company, and it will help more than ever if they’re in the same business; writing about the same things.

What else is Google using to assess websites?

From what we’re seeing, the only thing that trumps your content is your website’s age and URL. You can see it on the video above that shows our ranking for the phrase “Search Marketing Solutions.” We’re #2, right behind a website called SearchMarketingSolutions (dot) com

But the main thing Google is using to assess websites is good, old-fashioned content writing. If you’ve got it, and you’re dedicated to a keyphrase, and others like your ideas enough to point links at you, then you’ll get ranked.

Learn more about how ion Leap creates lasting brands with valued content. Click here to contact us.

Respect where you’re working and the limits of your readers.

Stop floundering

Having a clear content strategy keeps you from wasting time. There are four simple steps to getting a content strategy, and then executing it consistently:

1. Create a simple outline of your product / service offerings – Don’t base this just on the way you think it should be structured. Base it on the way your prospective customers search for what they need.

2. Let that guide your search for key phrases – Google provides free tools for choosing phrases based on search demand per month. Use the tools, but don’t use them blindly. Apply marketing thinking to the selection. Also, make sure you can commit to working with those phrases again and again, turning them into interesting blog postings that will be of value to your prospects. Google must see that you’re committed to particular phrases based on the number of times it’s on your website.

3. Work with key phrases your prospects are using to find companies like yours – This seems to be particularly difficult for many companies. When I look around various business websites, I can immediately tell that people still look at writing as a purely creative exercise. While blog writing for SEO purposes should be creative and fun to read, it must follow a business goal, or don’t bother. Your creative writing days were back in college. Time to get very focused.

4. Use the phrases in the way that works – If you write a blog post in a particular way, it will rank on Google and Bing. If you don’t…it won’t. Our technique of writing blog postings using key phrases is proprietary and I’ll be happy to discuss it with serious companies. Try me at the contact link above.

Getting to page 1 on SERPS doesn’t necessarily result in sales

In certain categories, getting to page 1 on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) definitely means increased sales. But in some higher-cost categories it’s far more difficult to tie a page-1 ranking to a sale.

At ion Leap, we go much further than just getting you ranked on page 1. We examine the pages that are ranking and make the necessary changes to it to ensure a lower bounce rate and cross sell other products and services. We make the offering compelling. Then, if they’re still not ready to buy, we offer the opportunity to at least let us bring them “thought leadership” content like a monthly e-newsletter.

Get ruthless

Look, getting someone to click your page 1 ranking
is no guarantee they’ll be back. You must be compelling.
What they find when they click that page 1 link
must have a sense of urgency to it. We can get
you to page 1. Let us go further.

The next step is to assess what’s happening on your landing pages – the pages they arrive at when they click that page one ranking we’ll get you to. Is there anything that compels them to buy your product or service? Are there relevant, short videos on those landing pages? Is there a way for them to sign up for an e-newsletter?

Why ion Leap

We bring over 25 years of marketing expertise to our integrated approach. Sometimes we recommend that our clients NOT write a blog…not use content marketing. How’s that for a statement in a blog post about blog writing??

If you’re ready to take a more marketing-driven approach to your content – to be ruthless about it – then it’s time to contact ion Leap. We’ll get you focused fast.

Blog Writer Summary:

Hire a blog writer who understands strategy

Make sure each blog is written with those phrases

You must go beyond blog writing to on-page sales

Contact ion Leap for blog writing that works

Herewith, search marketing solutions that work

It’s not difficult really:

1. Choose key phrases that your prospects are entering into search engines to solve their problems, answer their questions, and find solace.
2. Use these key phrases on your website frequently.
3. Write really good content that your prospects want to read. Write it so well that a few other websites will point links at it.
4. Work with other websites who cover a similar topic and ask them to point links at your website content, deep into your website, at the actual interior pages.
5. Do this about 4 or 5 times a week with blog postings, article submissions, tweets, Facebook postings and lots more.

Search marketing success requires a marketing mindset

Aggressive marketing people find more successful solutions for search marketing. It takes a head-on approach to get your website ranked higher on Google and Bing. You have to be both patient and relentless. At ion Leap, we’re both. Our clients are amazed by how much high-value content we produce again and again, week after week. We never tire of it and we never get boring or irrelevant.

And every quarter when we present the search ranking numbers to our clients, they’re just amazed at how well they’re doing in the rankings.

Search success is only part of your marketing mix

ion Leap is a boutique marketing firm that offers an incredible array of marketing solutions; search is only part of our integrated approach to making all your marketing budget work for you.

Contact ion Leap to find out more about our traditional, digital and inventive guerilla tactics, not to mention search marketing solutions, that make your marketing have real ROI.

Then there are the SEO scum who cheat the system

The system has been bilked for a very long time. I’ve written about this before. Read more about SEO scams here and more here if you’re really bored. My theory is that Google was simply recognizing that thousands of people are employed by these sleezy SEO companies and no one wanted to see folks lose their jobs. But, enough is enough.

Now it’s time for an honest assessment of companies based on what they offer consumers; and nothing else. The ranking algorithms of search engines are complex, yet mostly honest. They look at how long a website has been around – you have to earn it.  Then they look at what you say on your website – you have to be an authority. Then they (sort of) look at how many people think you’re an authority by linking to you – that part got mucked us just a weeeeeeeeee bit. This is the part that one search engine is clearly going to clean up. Maybe the others will as well.

Justice, thy name is Google

This is the fourth such article I’ve seen about SEO scams over the past few months. (Article here) I’m so delighted to read this that it warms my heart. The poor consumer doesn’t really know what determines which search results show up on the left side of Google or Yahoo. I’ll tell you why they are there – OFTEN, THE COMPANY SHOWING UP PAID A TON OF MONEY TO DRIVE THOUSANDS OF LINKS TO THEIR WEBSITE.
Period.
End of story.

The number one criteria for ranking companies high on the left-hand side of Google for faaaaaaaar too long has been how many links were pointed at your website. An entire industry sprang up to meet that need. 90% of them are SEO scum but, hey, it’s a job.

Now, it appears that it’s time for search engines to get honest about how “gamed” they’ve been over the past 10…er….20 years by this practice. But, once again, it’s Google who takes the lead. Bless them! Yahoo was looking so creepy in what showed up that I saw no logic logic to it at all (unless it was the logic of the almighty dollar).

Still I worry about honest SEO

The article above seems to want to reassure us that only “12% of search queries” will be affected by this. Well, which 12% ? I hope it’s not just the huge companies. What about the smaller companies who can’t afford to have an army of SEO scum pointing millions of links at them?

This article pretty much condemns Google. The most damning part is the Hitwise statistics which point out the 82% of searches on Bing are considered successful by users while only 66% of searches on Google are useful. “Useful” being measured in terms of bounce rate (or how long the user stayed on the website suggested by the search engine).

I believe it’s time that all search engines get real about what consumers want. Give up on the scam of link scumming and get serious about content. You might say we’re biased because we’re a content writing company. I’d counter that we’re also a group of folks who use search to find the best results, and we’re tired of the crap showing up in our queries. Give us content that answers our questions and solves our problems.

If you run a company who depends on your website to drive new customers in the door, then stop looking for the quick way to scam the system and build something real on the Internet. Stop going to the SEO scum and call Ion Leap instead.

Ion Leap builds lasting brands with valued content.

The only way to win is to “lay siege” to specific phrases.

A quick note
Remember that there are 3 parts to search success -

• Content writing
• Link building
• Other factors – age of your site, code structure, etc.

How did claiming phrases get so brutal?

The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains 171,476 words. You would think that, with 2-word phrases, you’d be able to own some really good ones in your industry; but this is becoming increasingly difficult. In fact, key phrase work in some business categories is so competitive you’ll have an extremely difficult time owning the precise phrase you want.

Usually, competition of this level means you’re in a mature industry with entrenched competition. I’m not convinced that’s the case among web content writing services. But that’s because I define the industry more broadly. Getting companies to the upper pages of search results involves more than content writing, so I’ll assess them individually —

Search engine optimization (highly competitive) - These guys are the reason it all got so brutal. SEO is a catch-all phrase to define companies who do anything they can in that list of 3 categories for search success, above. While there are some good ones in North America, many of the others employ bottom basement labor in India to do what they’ve termed ‘link farming.’ While these “factories” excel at such menial tasks, this practice is quickly getting a low value from search engines like Google. These same companies are absolutely abysmal at content writing, which is why they often call Ion Leap asking for help. Recently, one of the largest called us to ask for assistance cleaning up a mess they created by paying bottom basement dollars to writers who, subsequently, cut and pasted content from a competitor. Google detected the plagiarism and moved the client’s ranking down to page 45 instead of page 2.

Web content writing – (low competition) - As you’ll read on other pages of our blog, content is a large part of what helps companies climb higher on the search results pages. Google needs to see a match between what your prospects are typing in for a search and what’s on your website. SEO companies attempt to do this, but North American clients quickly get tired of the poor grammar and weak key phrase usage. This area is not terribly mature. There are writers out there who are unemployed and available, but few companies like Ion Leap who have figured out a way to make the best use of them. The high-value nature of what we do is what differentiates Ion Leap from a very weak collection of competitors. While they can choose the obvious phrases, SEO companies don’t know how to bring marketing strategy into the battle.

Link building – (highly competitive) - Being unable to perform the other major area (content) which Google values, the SEO factories have focused on linking, making it highly competitive. However, they don’t have the patience to help clients form relationships through links. Google wants your site to be an authority, and you can’t do that without patience and marketing smarts. Now search engines place a higher value on links which come from websites in similar categories. Ion Leap differentiates ourselves from this fray by focusing only on links the way Google prefers them -
high value.

What can your company own?

The key to finding key phrases which you can own and can still add value to your company is to use marketing strategy in the selection process. This isn’t something which a SEO company can help you with. Ion Leap is run by 25-year veterans in marketing, specializing in strategy-led advertising. We’ve always looked for ways to help companies get on top, and search is no different. It can still be done.

Ion Leap follows a process which will help your company find relevant strategic and tactical phrases to match up with what your prospects are seeking. While we won’t reveal it here, we’re happy to speak with you at the contact link above. If you find your company in a highly competitive category, don’t despair. There are flanking maneuvers, direct attacks and there’s always siege warfare. We’ll explain more about these when we speak.

Web content writing services alone are not enough.

In these days of fragmented media and distracted target audiences, using your content as the only method of reaching your prospective customers is obviously not enough. But many companies we speak with are lost as to how they should proceed. Ion Leap brings a full arsenal of options (continuing the war analogy) to help your company compete in general marketing as well.

We often end up suggesting that our clients consider direct marketing, radio, and other traditional media as a way to more precisely reach their target audience. We’ve achieved tremendous results using paid Facebook campaigns, Linkedin ads, and many other tactics.

Ion Leap is, first and foremost, a marketing company. Web content writing services and link building are the most accessible ways we can begin to help companies achieve success in this economy; but they’re only one part of a wide mix of solutions we employ. Please contact us to discuss strategies and tactics for your company.

Thus was born Ion Leap. We craft strategic, high-value content writing for websites in most categories. It’s an ongoing battle and we don’t fight fair.

If your website is showing up anywhere below page 2 on search terms you think are valuable in your category, contact Ion Leap for content writing that will make a huge difference in your organic ranking.

It’s easy to see why websites are left with content that is more like a brochure than a marketing tool. After all, the only purpose of your website is to have something that your can send prospects to read, right?

Your website content writing should help you get found.

Ion leap blog writer teams will re-draft your content writing to get your website to rank higher. Contact us at the link above and we’ll give you the quick overview of how it works.