The secret of Google

It is Friday the 13th today. A day not traditionally associated with luck. Today though I had some amazing luck, I found out the secret of how Google works.

Today a client sent me through an email this morning letting me know that they had been approached by another SEO company who had taken a look at the work we had done and had found in there view some major deficiencies in that work. My initial thoughts were what I have not done or what areas of my work could be improved. Was there anything that I should have done and have not done? Have I always communicated with the client clearly about what I was doing and why I was doing it?

The client’s website has been live for six months. It is in a competitive online market, it is not a gambling site or in a marketplace as competitive as that but it is a marketplace that I realise will take effort to achieve results in.

One of the first things that I did was take a look at the analytics for the site. In six months the traffic has increased. It has increased by several 1000%. I won’t lie, I am happy about that. I had a look at conversion data. When this client advertises in newspapers the cost of conversion is between £40 and £135. The cost of a conversion from the SEO campaign is less than a £1. It is not just the cost of the conversions that looks good, the number of conversions is to use the standard measurement – ‘going through the roof’.

I look at the search terms that delivering traffic. It is the terms that they would want to deliver traffic. I am not hiding between results that come from the brand term, I am using the keywords for which we optimised the campaign.

All of that makes me think that I am doing a good job. I look at the SERPs for some of the major traffic driving terms as well as some of the long tail terms. The site is on the front page for many of these terms on all the major engines, if the site is not on the front page the site is on the second page.

Maybe I am being arrogant. I cannot see what I am doing wrong. I spoke to the client about this. They agreed to send me through the document that had been sent through to them. Sometimes I realise that I cannot see the trees for the wood, or the wood for the trees. This time though I thought what I would do differently, what would I change? Every time I asked this question I came back with the same answer, I would not change a thing.

In the afternoon my client sent me through a copy of the report. This report was done by a company that is doing well for itself. They are a reasonable size and they have a good reputation. I honestly could not believe what I read. In the first paragraph, I quote, “they know the secrets about Google that other people don’t know”. I knew when I read this that I might be in trouble. Then I realised that I had nothing to fear, the secret was spelt out in this report.

According to this company all you had to do to achieve front page listings in Google was to stuff the keywords tag with every keyword that you want to be found on the front page for. In order to hook the client further in they even showed how this would work with four of the main pages in the site. There use of keywords can best be described as very long tail. Very, very long tail. Exceedingly long tail.

I honestly cannot believe at the current moment in time that there are companies that still use this technique. Maybe, just because it is a competitive marketplace that if they are going to do this they should combine this strategy with a seriously heavy link buying strategy.

Does anybody think that I should name this company?