WINNING THE SEO LOGIC

I have a story to do with search engine optimisation and have been doing it since 1997 which is long before Google even existed. The story I am going to tell here is about my recent website and how I managed to get to the top of Google in one month and shows up today listed number 2 on Page 1 of Google.

WEB DESIGN COMPANY

We were a web design company. Two years ago, looking at Google trends, I saw that the demand for Web Design on the search engine was dropping fast. I then woke up to the fact that there is a proliferation of web design companies and in addition clients were also training their own staff to manage this role from their offices. With the introduction of fantastic technologies like WordPress and Joomla being able to create and update your own company website has become easy. Not so with search engine optimisation.

THE STORY

The question I asked was do I stay in the business of web design where every Tom, Dick and Vuzi are selling their service for a few measly bucks or get into something else. I decided to re-position my company but how and what to do? After much thinking I decided all I could do was related to the web and the technology behind it, I am too old to start again on a new career. For a while I thought that owning shopping cart websites was a way to go and bring in income over a spread of sites from Gift products to clothing stores. This is definitely something to look into as I have managed to turn over a certain amount of income but found it to be seasonal and more importantly it takes all of your time sourcing products and getting them delivered at reasonable costs, particularly since you can no longer trust the Post Office (do we still have one)? I still have an Ecommerce site but treat it more as a hobby even though it is in the top two listings on Google for its target market; it’s just that I don’t have the time to keep sourcing new products (all other sites offer the same thing).My next strategy was to then turn my Web Design company website into a SEO website offering services, some of which were unique. This is what I did but by the time I had finished re-branding and writing content after researching with a lot of friends (who were all trying to please me) I realised that the things I was saying did not have much or any resonance with them at all. I felt like I was talking to a brick wall (the site was too technical I reasoned).

THE ANSWER

Everyone has heard something about the power of video on the Web and how it is trending even on mobile. YouTube is South Africa’s second highest search engine. The future of video is bright and I predict as soon as the bandwidth issue has been resolved the Web will turn to video overnight! The cost of video has come down a lot too since the inception of really good quality HD equipment but the hosting is still very, very high. Typically in America to live stream you are talking about USD$50 per month which comes with restrictions like you cannot link the video to your own website. You actually need to pay $350 – $500 per month to get any kind of ownership as to what you can do with your video. Also what about the time lapse between America and South Africa the streaming has major bandwidth issues.Live streaming from South Africa is still in its infancy but the big guys like DSTV and SABC and others have been doing it for a while now. In fact they are gearing up for more as we see you can stream movies to your devices from these broadcasters. However I am talking about streaming out to the public from a company website not streaming in from an entertainment point of view.If you have a company and want to do brand promotion, conference, training sessions or product demonstrations you can reach thousands of people in the country and around the world using the power of LIVE video.

This is what I set out to do by re-positioning my company to a video broadcast company. I did this by aligning all our strengths, which were:

• Technology – can we leverage the technology we have or build it to offer live streaming?
• Video – can we build a mobile outside broadcast system?
• Video – do we have any experience in shooting films?

The story ends here in so far as we spent nine months developing what was required and were now ready to go live but we needed some hook to get us high on the search engines as this is the most important and cheapest medium we have to promote our new brand.

THE HOOK

After visiting Events companies to offer our services and after talking to our existing clients where we received warm receptions’ and best wishes we ended up with nothing. I decided to sift through the many uses on the web for live video and ended up with a very tight well defined market which was live wedding videos so your friends and family overseas can see you LIVE on your wedding day.  That was going to be our hook.

THE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION THAT WORKS

Last month in December I set out to totally re-position our website to Wedding Videos. So our search engine keywords which were, “web design South Africa” was changed to “wedding videos Johannesburg”.

I did all the keyword research I could and spent hours viewing competitor websites both here and overseas. It doesn’t just happen where you go after certain keywords and lambast the search engines with them. What you need to be able to do is to say something different while keeping your keywords in mind. What I have done that is different is to promote the Live Streaming aspect of weddings. There is much to say about that and all the information is different to what anyone else is saying, relevant to weddings.

That is the secret. Google has become very “intelligent” for a computer and understands so much about the content of a website and what it needs to look for when indexing and ranking you. It needs to be treated with the respect of a human being in order to have a meaningful relationship with it. Although the above sounds simple it is not. Your content must be relevant and that is the tricky part, keeping it relevant in my case to the goal of “wedding videos Johannesburg” as opposed to “live streaming videos”.

Now Google indexes your pages all the time and publishes your links on whatever page it deems fit but every so often it does a major re-shuffle (Google dance is not dead) and at the time of writing this started on Google yesterday 13 January 2015 (maybe a day or two sooner).Prior to this shuffle we had our pages on page two of Google like we had ALL of five links at the bottom of page two. Today (this may change over the days) but www.epnet.co.za is appearing number 2 on page one of Google for “wedding videos Johannesburg”.

We feature as well for many other keywords like wedding video prices, etc. So the whole job was done in one month and we now have one of the most powerful mediums promoting our brand without wasting time and money on AdWords, Social Media, links to other sites or anything else. The lesson I have learned to getting ranked high on search engines is create ONE set of keywords that you MUST get ranked for and build in the others during your journey of writing your content. Your other keywords will also feature highly as long as you are STRONG on the one approach.

You will only be strong for the one set of keywords if you are different from your competitors and the one set of keywords will strengthen all the other words you want to be strong with. You must also have a different story to tell. Simple logic does the trick. By the way we also feature very strongly on Google for live web streaming, as a spinoff and is where we also want to be positioned. 

The eCommerce Africa Confex is proving to be Africa's most influential eCommerce gathering as we bring you face to face with the key individuals in the industry. The conference agenda will cover all things eCommerce, from how to expand your business into Africa to the survival and flourishing of SME's and small businesses. 

Raphael Afaedor, Co-Founder of Jumia and CEO/Co-Founder of Supermart, together with Simdul Shagaya, CEO and Founder of Konga.com will both be sitting on a panel discussing how to sell into Africa and grow your business beyond South Africa. 

Raphael is part of the advisory panel that has been consulted to tailor the event agenda. He co-founded one of Nigeria's largest online stores, Jumia, in 2012 and has since left to start Supermart, an online platform that allows the consumer to shop from over 18 000 grocery items. Simdul is the CEO and co-founder of recently Naspers-invested, Konga.com which is known as Africa's answer to Amazon.com. He was on Forbe's list of "The 10 Most Powerful Men in Africa 2014" and also won "Entrepreneur of the Year" at the 2013 All Africa Business Leaders Awards. 

SME's and startups can gather valuable insight during a panel that will discuss what small businesses, without the big corporate budgets, can do to build a business that will not only survive but thrive and flourish in the eCommerce industry. Panellists for this discussion include:

• David Muller, Managing Director of CyberCellar

• Phaedon Gourtsoyannis, Founder of Cape Coffee Beans

• Gary Hadfield, CEO of loot.co.za

• Olivier Chas, Managing Director and Co-Founder of CitySlicker

The eCommerce Africa Confex takes places on the 3rd and 4th February 2015 at the Cape Town International Convention Centre.

Should you wish to register as a delegate or are interested in sponsor or exhibitor opportunities, please contact Greg Johnson on 021 180 4700 or email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. 

{pp}It’s 2010 – the year that South Africans have been breathlessly anticipating since 2004. We’ve had six years to prepare, and now, with a few months to go until the kick-off of the FIFA World Cup, South Africans are white-knuckled with excitement at the prospect.

{pp}In May 2009 Google reported 239-million searches per day. How can you ensure that some of that traffic reaches your website? The answer lies in search engine marketing (SEM).

{pp}Businesses in all sectors are feeling the pinch of the current recession, and very often the first thing to the get chop is the marketing budget. Many companies are wising up to the opportunities available online – and this has been reflected by a marked increase in online ad spend year on year.

{pp}PPC and SEO are the elements that comprise search marketing, and if the correct synergy is achieved, the two prove to be powerful marketing tools.