Get Stuffed Google!
I’ve died and gone to single malt Heaven this week over here in Scotland. I’m offering the chance to grab an advance copy of my new book which is hopefully out later this year. In it I show how a strong brand can negate many of the problems that Google finds in a site and the simple exercises that can strengthen your position. If you’d like a copy, simply email us at [email protected]
What I learned
- Backlinking is still popular amongst some SEOs – but not us!
- How to strengthen your brand so Google ignores your faults
- Why speed and good technical SEO will help you dominate
- How to build your brand in the social media age
Transcript
Hey. Welcome back, Rankers. I’m coming to you this week from Islay. It’s a little island in the New Hebrides on the west coast of Scotland, and there’s a lot of single malts here. That’s not the only reason I’m here. Well, actually, it’s one of the main reasons I’m here, let’s be honest. But we’ve just finished our jaunt with the SEMrush Summer Jam, and we had a great time there.
I met a lot of SEOs that are still doing backlinking. And look, a lot of these guys are doing it for their own sites and I don’t have a problem with that, it’s working for them. And I always find it interesting some of the black hat techniques that I was talking to a few of the people there and what they’re doing. But they’re doing it on their own brands, their own sites, so they’re not jeopardizing someone else’s business. And I don’t have a problem with that. It’s only when I come across people doing backlinks or I come across sites, new clients, and those sorts of things where you have to repair a lot of the damage that some of these techniques can do.
Want an Advance Copy?
Which brings me to my next topic of the book. I’ve been writing a book, as many of you know, and it’s called Get Stuffed Google. It’s coming out later this year. If you want to be on the advance list for a copy of that book, and we will be giving a whole bunch of them away for free as well. Then just email [email protected] and I’ll make sure you’re one of the first people to get an advance copy. What we’re looking at in the book is ways that brands are building themselves and how a strong brand will negate a lot of the problems that you see normally with a site that Google will actually just ignore.
Things like speed, right? Speed’s big, and we know speed’s great for … You know, the faster your site, the higher the conversion rates are going to be, the lower the bounce rates are going to be, and also the higher the rankings are going to be. But what we’ve learned over the last few years is that a strong brand, Google doesn’t tend to worry about those things as much, in that a stronger brand is going to trump some of those things. Because, let’s face it, if you are the number one brand for a particular generic key word, and I’ll give you an example, shoes.
So we ranked a site last year in Australia, number one nationally for just the single word: shoes. Now their site had a 32-second homepage load time, it only had 10% of its actual site indexed, so only 10% of their products were actually getting indexed because of problems associated with the way that their sites were handling the Googlebot. Google didn’t care. And the upside of it is that, if you have a strong brand, yes Google will ignore a lot of those things, but if you have a strong brand and you get these technical SEO things right, boom. And that’s really, really important.
A Strong Brand Will Rule Them All
So the biggest thing that I’ve learned I guess over the last 12 months when it comes to brand … oops. Here comes a truck of single malt. Bye! Off to the distillery. If you have a strong brand, and you are working to build that brand, and you get these other technical SEO things right, you’ve got the game, game over. You don’t have to worry about anything else, and at that point you can tell Google to get stuffed, hence the name of the book, Get Stuffed Google. Because Google’s going to have to chase you. If you don’t appear in the search results for those phrases that your brand is strongest with, that’s Google’s problem, it’s not yours.
So that’s what this book is all about, we’re gonna go through a number of case studies, sharing a lot of data in this book, and proof that simple exercises that you would normally do to build your business like PR, like outreach … So I know a lot of people will build links these days through blogger outreach, influence on market, all these sorts of things.
What I would say to you, if you are doing that, have a think about the traffic that you are getting from those links, because that’s what’s the important thing, right? You want the traffic. You don’t necessarily want the backlink, and our studies have shown over the last 12 months that you can do a lot of PR and get minimal backlinks, but your rankings go like that, and our ranking is continuing to grow ourselves because of the PR and the things that we are involved with for our own brand in the media.
But once again, it doesn’t have to be mass media. It doesn’t have to be television. It can be. It doesn’t have to be radio. It can be, but it could just be exposing your brand in a way to your buyer personas. And we’ve seen bloggers do that with great success. With all of them, just have a small niche, but they are the number one in their niche, they are the number one brand in their niche for their buyer personas, and that’s what you have to do. And that’s what the book’s about, teaching you how to do those things.
So if you do want an advance copy of that book coming out later this year, [email protected], and we will see you next week. Thank you very much everybody for the comments from last week and the SEMrush Summer Jam, and … I don’t know where we’re coming from next week. Might even be Australia, I don’t know. But I’ll see you next week. Thanks very much everyone, bye.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
