Google speaks out on "excessive" reciprocal linking

I don't think it’s any exaggeration to say that many in the seo community will be left reeling by the latest announcement from Matt Cutts (a Google employee) on reciprocal link exchanges. Matt Cutts is a Google engineer who comments on search engine optimisation (seo) issues in his blog. His seo blog entries are thought to be very carefully vetted by Google and it's generally accepted that if Matt Cutts speaks out on an issue, then it's official Google policy. Hidden away in the text of a recent blog entry discussing reported problems with site indexing after the Bigdaddy update, Cutts suggests that webmasters who have problems have had their pages dropped because they show:

"....excessive reciprocal links, linking to spammy neighborhoods on the web, or link buying/selling."

The Bigdaddy update started in December 2005 and was fully deployed at the end of March 2006. Many webmasters have since complained that only a fraction of their web pages have been indexed. People speculated that Google was overloaded after so many recent new services such as Google Trends, Google Desktop 4, and Google Co-op etc. Others suggested that there was a flaw in the update itself, which resulted in large numbers of pages being dropped. Now Matt Cutts has gone on the record to say that sites have had pages excluded from Google's main index because they’ve been deemed either as involved in "excessive" reciprocal linking or linking into spammy neighbourhoods. Since Google's "Hilltop" and "Jagger" updates, it's been the case that reciprocal links with non-relevant sites has't given the SERPS rankings boost that it used to and many webmasters have acted to clean up their links pages. It was always acknowledged though, that non-relevant links didn't necessarily hurt a site and that they were just ignored by Google. With the Bigdaddy udate, Google have gone one further in targeting link exchanges, apparently penalising sites by removing their pages from their index. SEO for Google has just got a little more interesting..... PS. If you’re website has suddenly lost a large number of pages in Google, you can ask for a site review in our search engine optimisation forum. We can't promise anything, but we'll take a look for you.

Internet usage surges in Africa

According to a recent survey by the online news portal All Africa, internet usage in Africa is growing faster than any other region in the world. The largest numbers of internet users include Egypt with 5 million users online, South Africa (3.6 million) and Morocco (3.5 million). The numbers don't include people using internet cafes, so may be higher than estimated in the survey. South Africa has the highest number of internet service providers or ISPs, which at nearly half a million is more than the rest of the African nations put together. It's not clear how many internet users in Africa are just surfing the web and reading emails, or buying online. It's clear though that the rapid growth of internet users will eventually be reflected in an increased demand for online purchasing and the growth of E-commerce in general. In the coming years, it will be vital for E-commerce sites to get a share of this new business by increasing their presence on the web via search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimisation (SEO). Digital Marketing are a South African company that has had clients from the USA and UK, giving us a head start on other companies offering internet marketing service in South Africa. We have experienced, skilled staff and have a track record in some of the most difficult markets in the world. To find out about our SEO and SEM services in South Africa, use our online enquiry form, or join our internet marketing discussion forum.

AOL search engine has the highest conversion rate.

I read recently that e-commerce sites get the best conversion rates from visitors using AOL's search engine. In other words, a visitor who arrives via the AOL search engine is significantly more likely to purchase something or "convert" than a visitor from, say, from Google. The study looked at companies that sell $3 billion worth of goods online anually. The percentage conversion rates during January 2006 on were shown as:

Search Engine

Conversion Rate (All Categories)

AOL

6.2%

MSN

6.0%

Yahoo!

4.1%

Google

3.83%

Unfortunately, the study did not differentiate between pay per click conversions and conversions arising from organic searches. We checked our SEO clients' sites and saw a similar pattern, even though our clients aren't yet selling $3 billion worth of goods online! AOL referals do indeed convert better than Google, but the number of AOL referals was a only a fraction of the number coming from Google, which is easily the #1 search engine in terms of number of users. In contrast to the Webside Story study though, our MSN conversion rates for our financial sites were much lower, and less than 0.5% even. The different conversion rates we see in MSN for our financial sites suggests that conversion rates also vary by market, as well as search engine. In any case, should we optimise our sites better for AOL? Well, AOL are using Google's index, so if you're ranked #1 in Google, you're #1 in AOL too. The difference in conversion rate is due to demographic factors - AOL searchers like to buy, Google searchers like to browse. The problem is that there are too few AOL users. Although the AOL percentage conversion rates were higher, there was a much larger number of conversions coming from Google traffic. However, if you were bidding for search engine traffic in a market that converted better in Yahoo than in Google, for example, then the situation could be different. Clearly, anyone doing internet marketing should know their demographic base and track their visitors. This will allow them to manage their search engine optimisation efforts, and especially their pay per click campaigns, effectively.