Search engine optimization is kind of an interesting field sometimes. Although it started out with some pretty simple principles — like the right way is to title your pages, the importance of gathering some inbound links, and even working with those pesky meta- tags everyone got to be so familiar with — a large SEO project today resembles something like a space shuttle launch, complete with spreadsheets, timetables, and endless reports and graphs.

But for all the so-called science behind searches, there’s still a lot of room for hard work and common sense. In fact, if there’s one mistake we see over and over, it isn’t a lack of knowledge or technical ability… it’s starting with the wrong assumptions.

Let me explain: most of us would agree that getting to one of the top spots on Google would be a great thing. It might take more than a year and a (hefty financial investment) to accomplish, but who wouldn’t love to have hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of potential customers swinging by your homepage every day?

For any of that to be profitable, though, you have to begin with the right keywords and phrases in mind — not necessarily the ones that are going to bring you the most traffic, but the ones that will lead to the greatest number of sales.

A surprising number of businesses and marketers never make that strategic leap. They always assume that more traffic is going to equal higher revenue, when a better, less competitive keyword sits unnoticed. That’s a pretty big tactical mistake, based on a poor assumption, and one that is surprisingly easy to make. So, as you begin refine your next SEO campaign, stop and ask yourself: are we doing a lot of work to achieve the wrong thing?

If your Calgary search engine optimization campaign could benefit from some stronger focus, or execution, contact us at eKzact Solutions, of Calgary, Alberta today. We’ve got the skills and experience to help you reach the top spots on all the major search engines.

Regards - David A. West

Her resume was posted on a website and was indexed by Google …exposing it all.

Have you ever submitted a resume’ or other personal information to a company only to have it show up on the Internet, in it’s entirety, on Google search results?

That’s what happened recently to a job seeker in Calgary. She passed her resume onto a large professional association in hopes that it may be used to place a “job seeker” ad at the website. Little did she know that they were going to upload the resume’ to their website and make it public. The association may not have even meant to expose the document. May website owners don’t realize that even documents uploaded into a “client only” area can in some cases be indexed by search engines.

Here is what the client had to say,

“Thanks for your assistance earlier.  As I mentioned, xxxxxx provides a wonderful service involving allowing job seekers to submit their resumes for posting to the xxxxxx website.  A few months ago, I submitted my resume to xxxxxxx.  Recently I decided to use the Google search engine to do a search on myself.  I was curious about what the public will be able to retrieve when they enter
“xxx_my_name_xxx Calgary” into a search engine.  Unfortunately, as a result of submitting my resume to the xxxxxx website anyone who enters “xxxxxxx” into a search engine can now retrieve my entire resume.

In the past I have submitted my resume to job search sites (for example, like Monster and Workopolis) and it doesn’t make my resume available for the the entire world to see if they enter my name into a search engine. “

The job seeker spoke to the professional association to remove the resume from their website and received a response back that it is removed. When I investigated, the document is still online and still shows up in Google search engine results. While the website owner may very well have removed links referencing the document, the physical PDF file still remains on the server. This roots itself in “out of site, out of mind”, but on a webserver, once a document is indexed by a search engine the spiders will come back and check on it. As long as the document resides on the public server, it will not drop out of the index.

While many people fight to have their website and documents surface on first page of Google, this is one case where the call to eKzact was to help get it off of Google. The calls for ‘reverse SEO‘ or reputation management are increasing. Unheard of three years ago, reputation management is a phrase that we are all sadly going to have to learn.

To the credit of the professional association, it is clear that they are offering to make submitted resume’s available on the website for public viewing. It was not clear to this particular website visitor though and she did not realize that the PDF file she submitted would win her a first page placement on Google.

eKzact Solutions Inc. is a Calgary Internet Consultancy where our team of expert internet consultants deal with this type of issue daily. Do you need and internet consultant on your team?

Regards - David A. West

Maile Ohye, of Google’s Webmaster Central team, delivered the keynote discussion this morning at the Search Engine Strategies conference in Toronto. She gave a room full of webmasters, search engine practitioners and website owners the scoop… “right from the horses mouth”, as the moderator mentioned. Although horse is not a term that describes this vibrant Googler that has 5 years in the Googleplex. Ohye is based out of Maintain View California with the webmaster central team.

Ohye gave some insights into the recent algorithm changes at Google as well as some discussions about the new infrastructure that Google rolled out nicknamed caffeine. The update has repositioned many sites on the serp’s, some higher and some lower. If there was any one message to take away from this discussion it is that content is still key.

Google continues it efforts to deliver nothing but the most relevant documents to searchers. Ohye continuously referred to web sites pages as documents. She never once said great looking websites, she didn’t say the best designed websites – it is clear that the written word on the web is what is king. Using the term document, in my mind, really helps to separate the written word from the design. This again validates the eKzact emphasis on a balanced approach to design, writing and conversion objectives.

Inbound links to your website are still an important part of Googles several hundred triggers. Links should become a by-product of doing good business online. Build a unique and relevant website with excellent information and links will then come naturally. The role of mechanized link building was clearly frowned upon by this Googler. The point was that a few quality links are better than a high number of poor quality links.

Ohye clearly had a view on the use of landing pages to focus keyword attention to your niche product. Signs of exacerbation followed a question from the floor around landing pages followed by Ohye and the moderator reminiscing about similar discussions at earlier sessions. Google’s commitment to returning the most accurate search results and to improve user experience really does make, sometimes spammy over optimized, landing pages a contradiction to their goals. Ohye and the moderator had clearly anticipated this question.

There were a number of other excellent points made during this mornings SES keynote, most deserving their own future post.

Best regards,

David West
Calgary based SEO