SEOptimise » google

What Could Google’s New Privacy Policy Mean for PPC?

Tamsin Mehew — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:33:59 +0000

Earlier in the week Google announced changes to its privacy policies. The main changes are that:

Now nearly all Google products are covered by one privacy policy.
Information you give Google’s various different services can be combined.

Google still promises not to sell personal data, but to only share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information. It hasn’t announced that it’s collecting information it wasn’t before, just that it’s combining what it has differently. You can preview the new policy here.

According to Forbes, combining information between Google services has been allowed by the privacy policies since 2005. But this didn’t stop the FTC complaining of privacy policy violations when Google used data from Gmail accounts when launching Google Buzz in 2010 – Google’s policy at the time also said “If we use this [personal] information in a manner different than the purpose for which it was collected, then we will ask for your consent prior to such use.” The new policy instead says “We will ask for your consent before using information for a purpose other than those that are set out in this Privacy Policy.” Still, the FTC complaint may be a factor in why Google is trying to be very clear to its users about what it’s doing with their data, as it starts to treat all of its products as parts of a single unified service.

And now, some speculation on what this may or may not mean for PPC and SEO:

Interest-based targeting may improve. Currently Google uses DoubleClick cookies to place users into interest categories based on the sites they visit – you can see what Google thinks you like here. The changes mean Google could infer interests from searches or Google+ activity as well, which should improve accuracy.
Demographics targeting might be available more widely. Currently targeting by age-group and gender is only an option on sites where users supply that information. But Google’s demographic information (from YouTube or Google+ accounts) could be used for targeting on other sites as well.
New ways of targeting Display Network advertising may appear. For example it could be possible to target people based on what Google Products they use – advertise Analytics training to Analytics users, say, or push Google+ users to circle your Google+ page.
New ways of targeting Google Search advertising may appear. AdCenter already allows targeting based on age-group and gender when advertising on Search: Google could do the same.
There will be even more changes to the SERPs – Google’s announcement says the change will let them “better understand which version of Pink or Jaguar you’re searching for”. But perhaps it will also add more than help with disambiguation, adding to the personalisation of the SERPs we’re already seeing with Search Plus Your World.

Have you any idea what Google is (or could be) planning? Share your thoughts in the comments.

What Brands Need To Know About Google+ Pages

Gillian Cook — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:25:03 +0000

The recent integration of social and search at Google marks a huge change in how information on the internet will be presented to us. When a logged in user now performs a search, they will be given two types of search results: the anonymous search results that we are all used to and personal search results, which are generated from information shared within that user’s network of Google+ circles. This new platform presents a major marketing opportunity for brands and it requires a developed strategy just like other social media platforms. It would be daft for brands to consider Google+ as just another fad, and, in the same breadth that brands define strategies for Facebook and Twitter, the same now needs to be done for Google+.

While it is apparent that Google+ is not yet fully developed, it would appear a good time for brands to set up their Google+ page, start uploading regular content and playing about with the different features on Google+. What should you as a brand be doing now?

1. Grow Your Circles

As we have seen, Google are placing more emphasis on people. People are going to share your content; they are your audience, so make sure they are interested in your market offering and develop trust with them. What can be done to grow circles? First and most importantly, the Google+1 button must be displayed on your site. This not only helps build contacts, it helps verify your site to your page. Ask employees and partners of the organisation to share the page within their circles. In the same way a brand would develop Twitter and Facebook campaigns, the same should be done on Google+. This could include giveaways, deals, offers – anything that is exclusive to Google+ will help you gain more followers. People’s pages at the moment have a higher weighting than brand pages. People need to add a page before the page can add them, so if a celebrity like Lady Gaga was to pick up your page, it could essentially drive a lot of people to your page. There is also a What’s Hot feature on Google+, so featuring on this would also increase the visibility of your page.

2. Segment Their Audience

Like in Google+ for personal pages, you can divide up your contacts into ‘friends’, ‘family’, ‘colleagues’ etc, the same can be done with your Google+ Page contacts. At the moment, a Google+ page’s circles are defined as ‘following’, ‘customers’, ‘VIPs’, and ‘team members’. This is a good place to start, and more circles can be added to further segment your audience. This provides brands with a wonderful marketing opportunity where they can target each segment with unique and specific messages. This is important, as it allows brands to develop trust with their audience… a key factor which will encourage users to share their content.

3.Develop A Content Strategy

Content creation will become more important for brands than ever before. A content strategy should take into consideration the latest Google algorithm updates, including Panda, which favours unique content that is relevant and fresh. A regular flow of high quality content will raise your brand awareness and potentially drive traffic to your site through your Google+ page. However, the value of that content will drop if it is not ‘shareable’. Making content easy to share and to +1 will widen its reach across the internet, essentially helping that content appear in more personalised results. Having said that, creating shareable content is not always an easy task and brands will need to analyse their content and adapt it. ‘Ripples’ is a feature that will allow them to do so. It provides visual information on how content has rippled through the web. This insight could be invaluable to brands, as they are able to see who is sharing their content.

Now that Google+ allows multiple managers to log into a brand’s Google+ page, there is even more incentive for a brand to use this platform. Excluding the owner, a page can have up to 50 managers who can act on behalf of the organisation. While taking on another social platform may seem a lot of work, I believe that brands that implement and integrate their Google+ page well could really reap big rewards, not just in terms of brand awareness but also SEO. However, until the platform further develops, it will be hard to say exactly how SEO and Google+ pages will be intertwined. Google+ is about ‘connections, interactions and activity’ …people, essentially. Surely Google will reward in some way, brands that can prove they have quality, shareable content that has been publically approved (+1ed) by numerous people in their circles?

Did Google Just Roll-Out Panda 3.2 (2012 Edition)?

Kevin Gibbons — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:26:43 +0000

Yesterday Google announced a new page layout algorithm update – this is a landing page quality update, which looks at “the layout of a webpage and the amount of content you see on the page once you click on a result”. As opposed to having the need for scrolling beneath ads to get to this. Doesn’t this sound very similar to Panda though?

At Pubcon in November last year, Matt Cutts mentioned that:

“If you have ads obscuring your content, you might want to think about it,” asking publishers to consider, “Do they see content or something else that’s distracting or annoying?”

With Danny Sullivan following up to say:

“Many already assume that Google’s Panda algorithm is already penalizing ad heavy pages. This suggests that this either is not part of the Panda algorithm or that it might be made a separate and more specific algorithm in the works.”

So reading into this, I would suggest that if this wasn’t rolled out last year - it just has been!

Google has stated that this isn’t a change which will affect every site that has ads above the fold, just those that have an excessive number of ads which obstruct users from getting to the content that they were searching for:

“This algorithmic change noticeably affects less than 1% of searches globally. That means that in less than one in 100 searches, a typical user might notice a reordering of results on the search page. If you believe that your website has been affected by the page layout algorithm change, consider how your web pages use the area above-the-fold and whether the content on the page is obscured or otherwise hard for users to discern quickly. You can use our Browser Size tool, among many others, to see how your website would look under different screen resolutions.”

So that means that if you’ve been penalised, it should be easy enough to get out of. It’s an algorithmic penalty, not a manual one – so if you fix the layout of your page, Google’s filters will pick this up the next time it’s re-crawled and whatever penalty you had previously will be lifted. We’ve seen this many times with other algorithm penalties – and once you figured out what’s caused the drop in rankings, it’s not too difficult to get out of. It’s the manual penalties you want to avoid, Google take note!

And overall it’s not likely to affect a huge number of sites (1% predicted by Google), but it looks like affiliates and ad monetised sites are those most open to suffering. So is this the latest, unofficial panda update? Maybe Google has just got bored of keeping track of the numbers now that it’s 2012 – what do you think?

Image credit: David Allen

A Collection of 47 Helpful Google Search Operator Queries

Pak Hou Cheung — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:19:14 +0000

To be honest, from my school days of using Google right up to today, the search engine giant has not once stopped impressing me. From its algorithmic updates for a better user experience to its cloud based computing services, Google has captured my life and sadly, probably my soul.

Today I will be sharing with you a collection of my favourite Google search operator queries, not only to help open your mind to the powers of Google being much more than a search engine, but also to show you that knowing some of these queries will help you become better in the art of SEO.

6 Starter Operator Search Operator Queries

These queries are particularly helpful because they’re generally quick and easy short cuts in narrowing your search results:

Query	What does it mean?
“best practice seo”	Searches for this exact phrase within “”
mobile -phone	Inclusion of – means searches for the word mobile but nothing following after phone
seo ~glossary	Brings up a glossary of information regarding that word
define:seo	Definition of that word or phrase
OR / \|	Returns search queries with one of the given terms
related:	Helps list web pages related to the URL

5 Basic Mathematics Search Operator Queries

Google search provides users with the ability to calculate simple maths without the need for your calculator:

Query	What does it mean?
+ / – / * //	Simple mathematics rules
% of	Percentage of a number
^ / **	Raise to the power of a number
square root of number	Find the square root of a number
reciprocal of (number)	Find the reciprocal value of a number

4 Advanced Mathematics Search Operator Queries

Surprisingly, Google does not stop at the most simple of mathematics and is there for the more complicated algorithmic-based equations:

Query	What does it mean?
sin, cos, tan	You’re able to use the trigonometric functions within a search
ln(number)	Utilises the natural logarithm of the number
log(number)	Utilises the base 10 logarithm
number!	Returns a factorial number

7 Converting Tool Search Operator Queries

Google offers users the ability in search to convert various units:

Query	An example, search in Google:
Currency converter	36 yuan to dollars
Data converter	Convert 81 Mb to Gb
Distance converter	68m to cm
Speed converter	38mph in kph
Temperature converter	18 Celsius in Fahrenheit
Time converter	89 days in minutes
Weight converter	8 stones in kg

7 Everyday Helpful Search Operator Queries

I find these operator queries particularly useful everyday, and maybe you will too:

Query	What does it mean?	An example, search in Google:
file:	Results show various file type extensions	file:linkbuilding.pdf
movie:	Results show movies in your local area	movie:oxford
weather:	Current weather forecast of that area	weather:oxford
time:	Local time in that country	time:china
sunrise:	Sunrise in that area	sunrise:oxford
map:	Map of that area	map:oxford
safesearch:	Search without any adult content	safesearch: sex education

2 Google News Search Operator Queries

These search operator queries are restricted to only Google News – very useful when you want to find news from a particular country or source-specific articles:

Query	What does it mean?	An example, search in Google news:
location:	Discover news posts from a location	Location:china
source:	Discover news posts from a source	Source:search engine land

4 Blog Search Operator Queries

When searching for particular blog-related links, these operator queries can help you search by author, post type and blog title:

Query	What does it mean?	An example, search in Google:
inpostauthor:	Search for this specific author	inpostauthor:”kevin gibbons”
inblogtitle:	Search for this specific blog title	inblogtitle:seoptimise
inpostitle:	Search for posts with these titles	inpostitle: on page optimisation
blogurl:	Search for blogs under a specific URL	blogurl:seoptimise.com

12 SEO Operator Queries

As an SEO practitioner, one of my most powerful search tools has to be Google itself. Just knowing these search operator queries exist is only quarter of the battle. But understanding how they work and best practices is where you can excel:

Query	What does it mean?
site:URL	Search only one site or domain
site:URL (image search)	Shows results for images on that website
allintitle:	All search results must appear in the title of the page
intitle:	The following keywords must appear in the title of the page
allintext:	The following must appear within the text page
intext:	The search term has to appear in the title of the page
allinurl:	The search term appears in the URL
allinanchor:	The following search terms must all appear in anchor text links with the page
inanchor:	All the following search terms all must appear in anchor text links with the page
cache:	Displays Google’s cached version of a webpage
info:	Provides information on that specific page
link:	Finds the pages that link to that URL

Top Tip to Remember: In Google search you are not restricted to just one query per search. For example, you could have multiple queries in one search – e.g. site:seoptimise.com “web trends” -ppc

Thanks for reading this and please do share some of your favourite search operator queries!

*Image credit: niknack on Flickr.

What Signals Are Google Sending About Image Search?

Gillian Cook — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:21:03 +0000

In recent months, Google has made a distinct effort to publicly communicate the small changes they have been making to their algorithms. In a bid to appear more transparent, Google has published monthly updates on its blog with regard to these changes. With special attention on these updates, and taking into consideration yesterday’s big social search announcement, this post ponders the signals being sent to us around Google Image Search.

The first mention of these subtle changes came in November, when Google cited one change as:

“Retiring a signal in Image search: As the web evolves, we often revisit signals that we launched in the past that no longer appear to have a significant impact. In this case, we decided to retire a signal in Image Search related to images that had references from multiple documents on the web.” It would appear that by Google is trying to reduce issues of duplicate content by making sure the same image doesn’t appear twice.

It was during this month that Google also rolled out the +1 button to Image search. Its social media offering opens up to integrate photos, allowing +1 users to highlight favourite images. This marks the start of a personalised web experience and reinforces the growing sentiment that social and search are becoming increasingly intertwined.

In December’s post, Google mentioned:

“Image result freshness: We made a change to how we determine image freshness for news queries. This will help us find the freshest images more often.”

A month earlier, Google announced its freshness update to search, which prioritises recent, relevant and timely results. Joe Crowther, of Metro news site explains, “The quicker you get the image up the better. Google tends to assume that the first to break a story or image is the source. As the story develops, it will re-adjust, dependent of other signals”. As image search succumbs to the freshness update, we can deduce that Google is continuing to include image search within all its major algorithm updates.

Last week, Google announced 30 subtle algorithm changes. This ‘monthly series’ instalment was different to any previous one due to Google publishing the codenames attached to each change. In its newfound approach to communication, Google mentioned three updates specific to image search.

“Image Search landing page quality signals. [launch codename “simple”] This is an improvement that analyzes various landing page signals for Image Search. We want to make sure that not only are we showing you the most relevant images, but we are also linking to the highest quality source pages.”

This update is rather reflective of the Panda update, which favours high site quality.

“Better spam detection in Image Search. [launch codename “leaf”] This change improves our spam detection in Image Search by extending algorithms we already use for our main search results.”

SEOptimise’s Matt Taylor explains the possible implications of this for an SEO campaign: “When Google rolls out something from the main search to image search that wasn’t there previously, it may be possible to spot patterns on what Google deems as spammy by noting which sites disappear from the search results. If you notice images from your site disappear from the image search, this gives you an indication that Google thinks you are spammy”.

“Improvements to image size signal. [launch codename “matter”] This is an improvement to how we use the size of images as a ranking signal in Image Search. With this change, you’ll tend to see images with larger full-size versions.”

The improvements to image size present opportunities for ecommerce sites. Bigger images will rank better, and if these sites have good size images of their products, they may be able to pull traffic from image search for products that may be difficult to rank for normally.

These changes not only signal that image size is now important, but also that the quality of a landing page (or the page on which the image sits) determines how an image is ranked. Along with added spam detection, all these updates point to a “cleaning up of image search”.

Yesterday Google announced its “+1 Your World” project, which confirms and further enhances Google personalised search for users based on their social circles. Search queries will now deliver results from the anonymous web and results from the user’s own personal networks (providing that the information has been shared with that user). Image search will be no different. However, the personal image results will only be truly useful depending on the information that is attached to the images. Images posted with the original JPEG filename will not rank well in personal search, just as you would expect in a public search.

This update strengthens Google’s previous attempts to clean up web images by rewarding well classified image information. It is apparent that Google Image Search is being targeted with algorithms that reflect the ideas behind the major Google algorithm update, which would suggest that this area of Google’s business is becoming more important.

Agent Rank: Google’s Internal Klout Score

Tad Chef — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 12:18:13 +0000

Recently I’ve written about Klout score optimisation. Since then I and others who outed themselves as actively using Klout have been attacked by self proclaimed SEO stars and other people who seemingly “hate Klout”. Can you hate a metric? Obviously people get very emotional when it comes to Klout.

Klout measures the social media influence of people. While it fails at determining your real life influence, it’s quite accurate for measuring how active and influential you are on social media, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+.

That’s why some people hate Klout: they are only influential within a small closed group, while they have never shared enough with the general public on social media to get appreciation from the masses.

What did I say when people ridiculed me for using Klout to determine people’s influence? I said that I am quite sure that Google internally has a similar system of finding out who exerts influence on the social web and who does not. It wasn’t a very daring prediction, it was just an extrapolation based on the steps Google has undertaken in the past. Google has already been focusing on authorship, real names and the social graph for a while.

Now Bill Slawski has written an article on the reputation systems Google uses, might use or will use in the future. There are three mentioned in the post. The most interesting one is the Agent Rank. Not only does the name sound familiar and self-explanatory to some extent, but it’s also a patent Google has filed. It most probably gets or will be used for Google +1 votes.

The Agent Rank patent does not describe in detail how such Agent Rank might rank people, but the other papers mentioned above suggest a few ways to determine trust on a collaborative social site. At Wikipedia for example:

“Users gain reputation when they make edits that are preserved by subsequent authors, and lose reputation when their work is partially or wholly undone.”

What does this mean? Opportunism and mainstream opinions pay off.

This is similar to early Web 2.0 sites such as Digg or Hacker News, where a few dominant users gained reputation by submitting content from sites everybody likes and agrees on. Back then it was TechCrunch, for example. I have seen this phenomenon on my first generation social sites.

The more “one size fits all” and “smallest common denominator” a page was, the more likely it succeed.

With it the submitter succeeded as well. Thus people were always in a race to submit TechCrunch articles. The ones who submitted the most TechCrunch articles were the most reputable.

I’ve seen a similar phenomenon on the newer social sites you couldn’t game as easily, people submitting all stories by the

NYT
Mashable
Search Engine Land
SEOmoz

or whatever the main authority in your field is. Most automated accounts do it. They gain authority by simply feeding RSS feeds of popular sites to Twitter, even though nobody clicks the links.

I can see because I see the stats from my blogs that get retweeted by these bots, the bit.ly stats for the URLs and the reputation metrics of these bot accounts. Many of them were able to game Topsy algorithm. Topsy is not as exact as Klout: they just have three different kinds of user not influential ones, influential ones and highly influential ones.

Google will measure trust with more complexity than Klout

I guess but elements from all the measurement system above will be among the likely factors. We’re still in a very early phase of this, but it’s already clear that Google does not want to trust websites anymore but authors instead.

The insistence on real names and the many incentives to verify your identity on Google services all point in the same direction: Google will focus more on people than on websites in the future. Thus an author publishing a completely new website will be able to push it quickly to the top or at least the article they transfer their reputation to.

Also, the more reputable documents and pieces of content you support, the more reputable you get. As on Klout, it will be most likely the sheer activity that will make you more trustworthy. Google’s Agent Rank won’t be able to compute your reputation just based on one or two articles and a few votes.

The more you participate and the more content you create, the more you will become an authority. In the long run, Google will have to focus more and more on real authority that is not the sheer number of votes. In the beginning the search giant has no choice. It has to reward sheer activity as it doesn’t have enough users, votes and other social signals yet.

You may have noticed that I use terms such as

reputation
trust
authority
influence

quite interchangeably in this article. As of yet, there is no clear standard on the web for measuring the worth or value of one’s contributions. We already know that neither model is perfect yet but that the importance of measuring people and not websites is growing.

You don’t have to be a prophet to extrapolate the most likely ranking signals for people Google will have to use. Consider these:

Activity – as noted above, you can’t measure something where there is nothing – without activity there is not enough to measure. On the other hand there will be some limits to that. We know that having a million followers on Twitter does not necessarily mean that you are more important. Also, sending 50 automated messages a day may be too much.

Altruism – nobody, either on social media or in real life, likes constant self-promotion. Many marketers still get that wrong. You get what you give. Science has proven that only through altruism can the whole species survive. Algorithms can’t rely on egoists to offer the best advice, as there would be no popularity at all: everybody would just promote their own works. So it has to count the other people who share content, with whom they have no direct connection.

Authority – one of the reasons why Google succeeded in becoming the biggest search engine in the world is its reliance on authority. The more experts consider something to be a good resource, the better. It worked for a while with websites, as the original PageRank formula reflected the reputation model of the traditional scientific community. The more a document got cited, the better. We know that it’s no longer enough, ever since Google has been the leading search engine. PageRank could be gamed quite easily with paid links. You can’t bribe thousands of people as easily as you can pay for a few links though.

Expertise – authority can’t be measured without measuring expertise as well. You can get very popular despite being dead wrong. So an Agent Rank will have to measure whether a given author gets supported by thousands or even millions of people who have no clue or whether they get supported by a few experts who are really knowledgeable in a given area of expertise.

Impartiality – just consider a Google +1 user who constantly votes up Fox News. Can Google count on this person to be an expert on news? Well, most probably the algorithm will consider such a user just an expert on US conservative views. In contrast, consider a user who gives +1 to all kinds of resources, including CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera etc. Will this user be more of an impartial expert?

Popularity – you may be right, but as long as you don’t tell the world or convince more than a bunch of bookworms who do nothing else than deal with the issue all day, it won’t be sign of influence. You have to be able to appeal to the masses. Google already favours Wikipedia in its results not because it’s always the best results, but because most people can get that. Whether you search for SEO, film or God, Wikipedia will show up on top. You will surely agree that there are bigger authorities or better results for all three examples.

Quality – the aforementioned factor; mass appeal can be easily gamed though. We have seen content farms embrace the shallow but popular approach over the years until Google has to curb it. Quality will have to be measured as well. How can quality be determined? This is very difficult, I could write a huge post about this. The on-going Google high quality update, aka Panda, has been about it in 2011. The quality of published and voted for texts by authors will have to be determined by a complex mix of signals itself.

Reputation – someone can have mass appeal, be considered an expert by other experts, even be considered an authority. The reputation of this person can still be a nightmare. Just think about people like Jason Calacanis, Derek Powazek or Steve Rubel who declared SEO dead or rubbish. They are not even famous – they are infamous. People know them because they shout louder than others. So their reputation is awful no matter how much they can game other simpler social media metrics.

Topicality – as you see above these “experts” who indeed have enormous mass appeal, gained great success from their anti-SEO rants when measured by sheer reach and attention. Most of their other contributions haven’t been about SEO at all. So an Agent Rank will have to measure whether you are an expert on SEO, gardening or homeopathy. For example, Klout assumes I’m an expert on homeopathy because I’ve been involved in many online arguments with people who never tried it but attempt to convince me that it cannot work.

Trust – trust is not influence and not reputation either. Trust is about telling the truth, being reliable and not tricking people in order to gain something. How on earth do you measure that? You can be trustworthy without being influential or without having a reputation. You don’t need to be an expert or have mass appeal to be trustworthy either. It’s a very important but easy to grasp concept. Nonetheless you need it to survive, and Google will have to measure it as well. Can a person be trusted not to favour their own clients, colleagues or advertisers? Most people will have a bias. The less bias the better to determine a good resource or author. So Google will have to measure the trust other people ascribe to you.

Velocity – news that spreads fast is in many cases more important than news that spreads slowly. Of course this signal is not enough in most cases. Is the royal wedding or Osama Bin Laden’s death really the most important news? It depends on many other factors. The speed with which articles by a particular author or social media user spread is one metric that has to included among the above as well. Some ideas need a decade or a century to spread; they aren’t less important, they just need more time, but in many cases there’s a reason viral ideas spread like wildfire. Google will have to measure velocity, as it already does with breaking news.

It’s a huge task to measure these abstract concepts, but at the end of the day they determine how important a person, a source or a document is.

Some old school SEOs who are envious of the social media influence of more active users frantically try to outpace the competition by making their employees vote them up on social sites or by bragging that they work for big brands and only accept the highest quality.

Telling people is not enough these days; you have to show or rather offer this quality while sharing your know-how free of charge, otherwise others will do it. Most people will look at the measurable social proof and not the clandestine contracts you have with a large corporation. Google will likewise care more for what other people say about you than what you say yourself or make your employees tell the world.

Already there are tendencies such as selling employee attention to the highest bidder as Walmart does with its more than one million underpaid workers. Google will have to determine quickly whether there are voting patterns between a particular group of people.

Still I’m quite optimistic, overall; authors will be judged by what they give to the world, not what they sell to a chosen few. That’s a great way to find out what’s important. I believe that 99% of the people know better than just the top 1%.

Let’s just hope that Google doesn’t mistake mob mentality for democracy.

What’s Been the Most Significant Change in Search During 2011?

Kevin Gibbons — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:16:08 +0000

Last week I setup a Facebook poll to ask people what they considered to be the most significant change in search during 2011. This has received a great response, so here are the results so far (you can still take part on the SEOptimise fan page):

To recap on what these changes were:

Google Panda (37 votes) – if you haven’t heard of Google Panda, I’m not sure where you’ve been. Myself and Daniel Bianchini presented at A4UExpo earlier in the year which may help to explain about the impact of Google Panda.
SSL Search (17 Votes) – as mentioned in the comments, if there was a poll for the most annoying change this would have won hands down – with Google deciding to take away a portion of keyword data from logged-in search for privacy reasons.
Social signals and integration (9 votes) – still debatable over social media’s current impact to search this year, but with the recent Google freshness algorithm update and the launch/continued push of Google+ it’s clearly something which should be high on the agenda for 2012.
Google+ (2 votes) – Google’s most successful attempt at social media to date, Google+.
Siri (1 vote) – thanks Nichola! If anyone else saw the keynote at Pubcon, they’d realise that Google is dead and the future is Siri. I certainly won’t be making any predictions like that myself any time soon!
Removal of Yahoo! Site Explorer (1 vote) – this is big news for SEOs, as many of us have relied on Yahoo! in the past to provide accurate link analysis. Now none of the search engines provide full link data, leaving us to decide which link analysis tool to use?
Roll out of Bing/Yahoo search alliance (0 votes) - of course, the increase in market share by combining Bing/Yahoo was announced last year, but the roll out of this has been in motion (or slow motion?) this year.

So which change do you think will have the biggest impact to search? The poll is still open too, so please take part…

Introducing the new Verbatim search tool from Google

Rachel McCombie — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 12:45:15 +0000

Google announced a new tool this week – Verbatim, which is essentially a fast way to find results which exactly match your search queries.

This tool replaces the use of the + key in searches when you want to force it to include certain words in the results it brings up. According to Google, this is because:

users typed the “+” operator in less than half a percent of all searches, and two thirds of the time, it was used incorrectly.

In addition to this, one surmises that the move is not entirely unrelated to the domination of the + character by Google+ and +1.

What the tool does highlight is that it’s very easy to forget just how much work the Google algorithm puts in without you even realising it. As Google points out on the official Inside Search blog, when you search for something on Google without Verbatim, the algorithm approaches your query in an amazingly intelligent way to make sense of what you’ve typed. For example, it:

Corrects spelling (and sometimes even grammar)
Personalises your results using data on what other sites you’ve visited recently
Looks for synonyms of terms you’ve written and similar terms/phrases
Looks for words with the same root (e.g. optimise, optimising)
Drops some words, e.g. “circa”

The Verbatim tool drops all these features and just gives you the raw results containing all the words you’ve typed.

So does it look very different?

For most searches, the results are essentially the same with or without Verbatim. That’s because the algorithm is already good enough to understand what you meant most of the time, so you don’t actually need to specify greater precision. Furthermore, Verbatim will still ask you if you meant to search for the correct spelling, such as:

The situations in which Verbatim will be a useful tool are likely to be occasions where:

A slight difference in terminology makes a big difference to the meaning
You’ve visited a lot of websites recently which might skew the results for a different but vaguely related query in personalised search

Obviously, this tool is unlikely to have any impact on the SEO industry. It’s buried in the “more search tools” section to the left of the search results and, given that fewer than 0.5% of searches ever actually used the + button to make them more exact, the tool isn’t likely to be utilised by a significant number of searchers.

However, Verbatim is interesting as a response to searcher behaviour (it was apparently requested by many a user) and as a reminder that it’s a good idea to target variations of keywords in order to be picked up in as wide a range of searches as possible. For example, a book seller might target the whole range of “buy” and “sell” words: books for sale, buy books, second hand books bought and sold, buy a book, book seller and so on. You never know when someone might be looking for an exact phrase – and if you’re in e-commerce, these super-precise searchers are likely to be nearer the end of the buying cycle, and therefore more likely to convert.

Google Freshness Update – what it means for your brand

Daniel Bianchini — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:20:38 +0000

Last week Google released yet another algorithm update, and although it wasn’t Panda 2.6 or Panda 2.5.2, it has affected up to 35% of searches. The newly-named ‘freshness update’ is built on the Caffeine update that was launched last year, allowing Google to provide the very latest content.

Google’s Amit Singhal states that

“Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today’s world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day or even minute, and depending on the search terms, the algorithm needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old.”

This seems to be a very timely release, especially in the UK, with lots of hot topics currently trending on the web and on social media, including Frankie Cocozza being kicked off the X Factor, the England poppy fiasco and Carlos Tevez leaving Manchester. With all these topics trending across the web, the freshness update has provided us with the very latest information on the subject from the last day, hour or even minute. There has been a lot of information around about the freshness update and here is Google’s official announcement.

So we know that the algorithm will do the following:

Shows the lasted information on hot topics, trending stories and breaking news.
Provides the latest information on regular and upcoming events including concerts, Olympics, General Elections, etc.
Identify the very latest information on product releases, product reviews and information.

So what does this all mean for large brands?

Brands

For the majority of brands I don’t see this having a significant effect on their current rankings, especially those that are targeting very generic terms such as “car insurance” or “tents”. These terms are not generally in the news or terms that would be considered hot topics, but more research queries.

The issue will be where brands target key phrases that are constantly having new content produced, such as product reviews and releases. As a user you will want to see the very latest information on new products and the most up to date reviews. This would mean that the brand needs to devise a content strategy around specific product keywords to ensure that the very latest information is available to the user.

In theory, brands could use the algorithm to their advantage. Staying with the topic of Carlos Tevez leaving Manchester without consent, a sports brand could potentially write some great content about the story and rank well for a short period of time, generating a spike in traffic but also increasing brand exposure to a different audience. The traffic generated might also provide links to help the page sustain some rankings in the future, whilst also creating an increase in revenue from new visitors. All this at the moment is theory, but could it be potentially used as a short term tactic?

What are your thoughts on the latest freshness update? How do you think it will affect large brands? Could brands use this to their advantage by creating content around a hot topic or event to generate a short-term traffic boost? I look forward to hearing your comments below and of course on Twitter @danielbianchini.

Where is Google Going with Google+ Pages?

Marcus Taylor — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 12:51:00 +0000

Launching a social network is to some extent a bit of a chicken and egg scenario these days, as you need people to encourage the businesses to get involved, but businesses can also attract more people.

This morning Google launched the metaphorical egg in their social network chicken and egg scenario – they launched ‘Google+ Pages’ as a means for businesses to join Google+. The question now is: if businesses join Google+, will it encourage more people to join and utilise the network?

Does Google Have the Power to Make Google+ Successful? Of Course!

If Google ranks Google+ pages highly for branded searches, people will be directed to Google+ from Google’s search engines. If Google integrates Google Places/Local Deals into Google+, then Google may prioritise Google+ Pages for local searches.

Google receive over 400 million search queries a day – that’s a big opportunity that Google are only just beginning to tap into as a means for driving traffic to Google+.

For Google+ to take off, people need to rely on or even need a Google+ account to get the most out of the web. As Google already own a large proportion of the web’s staple services, it makes a lot of sense for Google to integrate those services into Google+ and make them better for people using the network, as an incentive to join Google+. They also need a significant amount of regular traffic, which again is unlikely to be a major problem for Google.

Why Google+ Pages may become beneficial for brands

Currently, Google+ Pages are incredibly similar to Facebook Pages, with very few improvements other than the ability to easily segment who sees your updates (which I think is a pretty cool feature). However, the bigger picture is that beyond all the little features, Google has the ability to make businesses need a page.

If Google integrated other Google Services into Google+ then…
• Google+ could be a localised social network with the integration of Google Places and Local Deals.
• Google+ could integrate Google Analytics into Pages, which is infinitely more powerful and insightful than Facebook Insights.
• Your Google+ page will rank higher than your Facebook Page in Google for your brand name.

So where is Google+ and will it be the next Facebook / Twitter?
There’s no doubting that Google+ have messed up on a lot of the details (no setting for multiple administrators? No branded URLs?), but the bigger picture is that if Google really want to make this work, they can.

Google+ has not taken off yet because there is not enough stickiness. They need to integrate services that offer continued value for the user when they log in. When a social network gets its users to reach a ‘no return point’, the social network has won.

Ask yourself, could you delete your Twitter or Facebook profile today? For the majority of us probably not, because they provide value in one form or another. Google+ just needs to start serving up the value, which will inevitably be in the form of improving the web for people.

Is Reading Level a Google Panda Algorithm Factor?

Kevin Gibbons — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 17:07:39 +0000

I had a thought earlier today, funnily enough whist interviewing copywriters, which led me to think: how important is the quality of writing as a ranking factor following the Panda update?

Obviously the Panda update has had a negative impact to websites which have low-quality content – but, from the other way around, how has this impacted high-quality content? Forgetting completely about links for now and assuming all things are equal, does higher quality written content now have more of a positive impact to search rankings?

Well I thought I’d do a few tests with Google’s reading level search filter to compare the differences between how content ranks which is either basic, intermediate or advanced.

How is the reading-level split between Google SERPs?

I wanted to get an idea about how the reading levels of content is spread between content which ranks on the first page of Google. Does content have to be well-written, or is the fact that it’s unique sufficient enough? Here’s an example query, with the reading levels highlighted in red – please note, not all listings are classified with reading levels.

So what can we read into this (no pun intended!)? Well, looking at these results, it’s interesting to see that no advanced content ranks at all for this query, despite the split between indexed content being very evenly spread across the three categories. In fact I didn’t find a single “advanced” piece of content listed in Google’s top 100 results at all!

But what about individual sites?

Ralph Fiennes said earlier in the week that Twitter is to blame for dumbing down the English language and making people use shorter words:

Ironically this was written in the Daily Mail, whose overall website reading level has an advanced score of less than 1%!

So is reading level a factor?

Based on the results I’ve seen so far, I would have to say no. And if it is, it’s not rewarding advanced content – in actual fact the opposite effect is taking place if anything. These results aren’t very fitting with what the Panda update was intended to achieve – and I’m actually quite surprised by this. It does make a large assumption that all things are equal with link profiles (which of course is never true), but even so I’d expect to see Google varying the results between different reading levels to a wider extent.

Perhaps it’s something they are (or will be) looking at though – we haven’t even got to Panda 3.0 yet!

So what factors is the Panda update looking at?

Daniel Bianchini and I presented at a4uexpo a couple of weeks ago on this subject – and there’s a wide range of factors we believe to have affected this. Dan goes into more detail in his Panda algorithm update post, but to summarise a couple of key points – here are what I think are the main things which need to be addressed.

Unique content
The biggest success stories so far have been from sites who have really cleaned up their act and removed low-quality content. Those who had thousands of pages and have now trimmed this right back to ensure that it’s only the top quality content that is indexed and visible to Google. Or splitting content across several domains or subdomains.

User intent and bounce rate
Do Google monitor bounce rate? In my opinion, yes of course they do. Maybe not from Google Analytics directly, but if you’ve clicked a search listing in Google and bounced straight back out to visit the next site, it’s not a good sign of quality.

They’re likely to test things like this all the time, for example what’s the user intent behind the query “Apple”? Are you looking for the fruit or an iPod? Only bounce rate can really tell Google the user intent behind this – and it’s probably the main reason why the fruit industry is in ruins after the success of Apple, Blackberry and Orange!

But what is high-quality content?

Based on the results of this, I’m not sure it is writing standard. Or at least it’s not a huge factor. I’m sure Google will be aware of sites with spelling mistakes and perhaps poorly written content or grammar, but whether they are being penalised in any way, I’m not so sure.

I’ve recently heard stories of how some SEOs have tried buying old newspapers from the 1960s off eBay, scanning them and uploading each article as a unique webpage. The theory being that it’s a professionally written level of content, and because it was published well before the internet era, it’s also likely to be unique content once indexed. I have to admit, I was very impressed by that idea – with the theory being that you should be able to rank highly for these terms – and even if you’re just doing it to collect affiliate ad revenue via Google AdSense, it sounds like it should be a very effective strategy. But it is forgetting about one key thing…

Links!

Personally, I think the biggest losers from the Panda update are those which have low volumes of links to internal content. If you’ve been hit by Panda, try asking these questions:
- How much long-tail traffic do you get vs head of tail? How has that changed?
- How many links do your internal pages have vs your homepage?
- How many pages do you have indexed vs pages which are generating search traffic?

If can analyse the detail of these, then you can get a clearer idea about what content you need to either tidy up, remove or build links to. And from most experiences I’ve seen so far, it’s not a quick process – it will take gradual steps towards building the recovery back up. But if you have content that can naturally attract direct, deep links, then you’ve got much more chance of coming out of this the other side with a large spike in traffic – just in the right direction this time!

Would be great to hear anyone else’s experiences in this? Especially if they’ve seen a change in rankings across different quality of writing standards.

Post Panda: Affiliates Guide to Surviving Google – a4uexpo London 2011

Kevin Gibbons — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:57:28 +0000

Today myself and Daniel Bianchini gave a presentation at a4uexpo London 2011 on how to survive Google’s panda algorithm update.

In case you missed it, we’ve posted both sets of slides online here:

The 4 Hour Affiliate Week – Kevin Gibbons, A4UExpo London 2011

View more presentations from Kevin Gibbons.

A4 u panda-slap-db

View more presentations from Daniel Bianchini.

If you have any questions on this please let us know in the comments.

30 Ways to Act Like Google to Beat the Monopolist at SEO and Beyond

Tad Chef — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:23:55 +0000

Google is now not the only monopolist on many search markets including the UK, but the mega-corporation is overtaking new markets, crushing the competition with more or less ruthless tactics.

Some SEO industry pundits such as Aaron Wall already advise you to prepare for a time after SEO when Google will finally keep most clicks for itself.

The tendency is already there, as some search engine result pages (SERPs) are already dominated by ads and Google-owned paid services.

I like the way a Google Panda victim has put it:

“Google Panda is the result of many years of struggle, with Google trying to eliminate go-between services like news aggregators and specialised search engines,” explains Chappaz. “Why? Because Google’s revenues for the broad search platform are slowing down. Google needs to eat in its own ecosystem to keep its revenues flowing.

What can you do about Google entering your market and making everybody go out of business quickly?

It’s not just content farms. It’s everybody. Just consider a few of them:

News organisations
Book publishers
Shopping search engines
Review sites
Specialised portals (such as finance or travel)
Map services

They all fight for their lives. Many of them are doomed. They try to survive by going to court but they soon won’t be able to pay their lawyers anymore. Google is getting more and more aggressive in its attempts to grab market share in profitable industries. So what can you do about it? Just give up? Join Google and work for them as wage slave?

I want to show you some of the tactics Google uses to overwhelm their competitors.

Look out for successful business models by start-ups. Buy them or copy them. Google tried it with Groupon to later launch Google Offers.
Give your services away free until your paid competitors’ market share dwindles, and once you dominate, launch your paid version – as Google did with Google Analytics.
Give away your services in exchange for customer data. I get mails from Google advertising Adwords all the time.
Buy your competitors and dismantle them, as Google did with many start-ups. In case you can’t afford to buy the company lure away the people behind it.
Offer products for your services and services for your products, as Google does with Google search and Google Chrome. By bundling, you create demand.
Make your employees your spokespeople in their private blogs and on their social profiles, as Google does with Matt Cutts and many others. Nobody can sue them for their personal opinions.
Grant access to new products to your cheerleaders first, so that you get only good press immediately after the launch. Google succeeded with Google+ that way.
Declare your products Open Source or your content Creative Commons so that other people spread them for you and do your work free. Android is the best example here.
Pay your taxes where they’re the lowest not where you make most of your money. Google Europe is registered in Ireland, while most of the money is made in larger countries such as Germany, France or Italy.
Corporations don’t have to obey the law as long as they earn more money than they have to spend on the penalties. Just consider Google’s earnings by ads for medications illegal in the US and the broken privacy laws in around 50 countries with Google Streetview.
Pretend that you’re not a profit-oriented business but instead you just want to contribute to the public good, as Google did with Google book search.
Abandon non-profitable products and services as quickly as you can. Google does all the time.
Go after the critical mass of users for free products and services. Once you have it, they will become profitable eventually.
Always explain that your services are beta so that when they are broken nobody can complain.
Hide the ugly truth in small type in the TOS. For example, Google Docs and other services own the copyright for your documents.
Use your own products to provide actual use cases for them, as Google does on Google+, Blogger or others.
Make people work for you to correct your mistakes. Google lets the whole SEO industry fix the search results for them because they can’t rank websites correctly by themselves.
Convince people to create the raw materials for your products and services for free. Google insists on everybody creating lots of great content so that they can put ads around it.
Share your revenue with others to have a broad base of supporters, as Google does with its ads.
Cooperate with your biggest competitors to set industry standards everybody has to abide by, as Google did with other search engines on nofollow or Schema.org
Catch up your smaller and faster competitors by stealing their ideas and presenting them as your own, as Google did with the content farms issue Blekko acted upon first.
Explore new markets geographically and vertically, as Google did by establishing localised search engines in most countries and also specialised search verticals such as video, image or news search.
Let your users copy other people’s content and spread it using your tools and services, as Google does with Google Reader or Buzz. This way it’s the user’s fault not yours.
Always aim for market domination. The smaller fish can compete against each other for the leftovers. Just think Google search and Microsoft vs Yahoo plus YouTube market share.
Do not react when facing criticism, unless the source is akin to the New York Times. Google only listens when the bad publicity is really big.
You do not have to abide by your own rules as long as you make them. When people complain, let them – they are powerless. When Google.de paid for links nobody cared.
Automate wherever you can. Paying people to do work is the most expensive part of business. You can also hire ”permanent temps” that can get fired any time.
Ensure that your users disclose their real names for your services so that you can use their data for other services, as they do with Google+. This way they can use these social signals for improving search results.
Work together with authorities when it comes to censorship or private data. This way you’ll get protected in the future. Google works together with US intelligence agencies even when it comes out that they break laws from other countries.
Make your workplace a colourful playground for grown-up kids so they don’t feel like they really work, and everybody will wish to work with you. Google is known as the best workplace in the world and images of its facilities are spread widely to support this impression.

Some of these business practices are quite common, but nonetheless they are ethically questionable. Others make Google stand out in a positive manner. You have to choose the ones that fit your business model best, but when you compete with Google you have to be as ruthless as they are. Otherwise your market, and I don’t solely talk about SEO, might get dominated by Google in the near future. Whatever market Google enters, it ultimately forms a monopoly there. So it’s about the survival of your business.

* CC image by walknboston.

30 Google SERP Changes That Impact Your SEO Strategy

Tad Chef — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 13:42:44 +0000

Just a few years ago SEO was really simple. You had to be in the top 10 or rather in the top 3 for relevant keywords. Then the traffic came and with it the leads, sales or whatever you wished. Today there is no real top 10 anymore. Even if you are at #1 in the organic search results, you might be below the “fold” so that users have to scroll to see your site on the Google search results page aka SERP.

Google has introduced so many changes to most SERPS that you can’t ignore them and go on as if it’s still 2005. You have to change your SEO strategy accordingly.

While many people already have noticed that Universal search is all over the place, and images, video or news results get displayed frequently, many still behave as if SEO was about checking rankings and aiming for #1 in organic search. These 30 Google SERP changes impact your SEO strategy in a way you can’t ignore.

Ads and universal search push organic results below the fold
There is opportunity in local search results
Paid shopping results show above organic results
There are sometimes more or fewer than 10 results
Infinite scroll allows users to peruse longer lists of results
Author avatars get displayed on the left of search snippet
Bulleted snippets made of list items stand out
Local results show up even without adding a location
For location-based SERPs, organic results almost disappear
Local SERPs may vary significantly
Huge full-page site links for brands monopolise branded queries
Brands tend to dominate their own SERPs
Sidebar menu attracts clicks and competes with the actual results
Social search annotations show up with favicon sized avatars
Google+ bar with red notification distracts while searching
+1 button clicks reorganise your search results significantly
Google +1 counts appear in search results for everybody
Public Google+ profile messages show up prominently in SERPs
Google remembers and adds recent search queries you performed
Your last visited pages get highlighted by Google
Google adds your address from Google Profiles to public search results
Mobile SERPs differ significantly from desktop SERPs
“Searches related to” draw away attention from first query
Google instant search results send people away to partial queries
Google instant previews can lower your CTR and affect conversion rate
Personalisation is taking over the average SERPs
Keyword matching domains can now barely be seen
Google may shorten your URL displayed, hiding “irrelevant parts”
5 years from now SERPs could be completely different
Google can highlight on-site videos in SERPs

So how do we actually deal with these SERP changes? How exactly do they impact your SEO strategy? There are a few common traits you can focus on:

Relying on ranking reports is less and less useful; other metrics and KPIs have to be taken into account, such as traffic, conversions and ROI.
Websites have to be more usable and social in nature to stay competitive in SERPs.
You have to embrace universal search and add other media types than text.
Local SEO is the only SEO many businesses can go after, while for others it’s a new way of getting additional exposure.
Like it or not, you have to pay Google “to get your organic ranking back”, whether by ads or shopping search results.
You need to offer many ways to reach you, both via Google and social media. Organic results are not enough anymore.
You have to step up your SEO efforts or increase your SEO budget. SEO isn’t simple anymore, if it ever was. Now there are so many things to consider that only full time specialists can deal with it correctly.

Any other recent or significant SERP changes I haven’t mentioned? Any other ideas on how to tackle these massive changes? Please add the in the comment section!

* CC image by SomeDriftwood.

How to Pass the Google Analytics Exam

Mike Browne — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 15:02:59 +0000

If you want to become qualified in Google Analytics, Google offer an online exam called the Google Analytics Individual Qualification. It’s a useful qualification to have when working with Google Analytics on your clients’ sites (and you should be using some analytics software!).

I passed the test last week and thought I’d put together a few tips for anyone else who may be thinking of taking the exam.

General Information

The exam is all done online in a multiple choice format, usually with four different options for each question. There are 70 questions in total and you have 90 minutes to complete these questions. If you think that doesn’t sound like enough time don’t worry, you’ll be able to answer most of the questions quickly and I found I had a lot of spare time when I finished.

Unlike the Google AdWords exam, the exam is “open book”, so you can look up resources during the test if you need to.

Once you’ve gained your qualification it will last for 18 months, so don’t forget that you will need to take it again in a year and a half if you want to stay qualified!

Resources for Preparing for the Exam

Easily the most useful thing to do is watch the video lessons at Conversion University. Watch as many of these as you can if you have the time, as they are all very useful, but the most important ones will be the videos on cookies, filters and regex.

Have a read through the help center on any topics you feel you aren’t confident on after watching the videos.

Also, experiment! Take what you’ve learnt and try it out in Google Analytics. Familiarise yourself with all parts of the interface, try applying filters, add users etc. Set up a new profile so you don’t affect any important profiles in your account, and once you’re confident with everything you’ve learnt, it’s time to take the exam!

Resources for When You’re Taking the Exam

That’s right, as I said earlier the exam is “open book”, so prepare yourself and have these links open on your browser before you start in case you need to refer to them:

Your Analytics account
While this might seem a bit obvious, it’s important to have in case you forget where something is located in the interface. You don’t want to be worrying about logging in while the timer is counting down, so log in and have a profile open before you start.

Analytics Help Center
This is useful for when you forget something. A quick search for the relevant topic should refresh your memory, so keep this open in the background.

IP Range Tool
You may get a question asking for a regular expression to cover a range of IP addresses. Luckily Google provides a tool to do just that. Just type in the two ranges and it gives you the regular expression to use.

Regex Tester
I found this tool quite useful for testing any regex rules. Type the rule in the top and enter the URL in the bottom and it will highlight it if it meets the rule.

URL Builder
Another useful tool from Google. This will add tracking parameters to a URL.

Google Analytics API
You may get asked about some of the functions in the Analytics API, so you can find descriptions of what each of them do here.

Of course this list isn’t exhaustive, so if there was anything else useful you came across when preparing be sure to have that open too.

After the exam

Hopefully if you follow these tips you too can pass the Analytics exam. Then it’s just a matter of showing off your new certificate!

* CC Image by Alberto G.

9 Ways to Sharpen Up Your Paid Search

Tamsin Mehew — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 13:16:56 +0000

If you’re already using paid search marketing, how can you improve your results? Here are nine tips for sharpening up your campaigns.

Use conversion tracking & Google Analytics
Which keywords produce what results? Which cause people to make purchases, which result in newsletter sign-ups, which drive traffic to your forum or blog? You need tracking to answer these questions. AdWords (or AdCenter) will tell you what ads searchers click, but it won’t say what they do when they get to your site.

If you don’t have any conversion tracking installed yet, then install it. AdWords and AdCenter have their own conversion tracking, which records a conversion when someone who clicked on an ad subsequently visits a page on your site with conversion tracking code. This is usually a ‘thank you’ page for a sign up, or a receipt page after a purchase – it depends on your website’s goals.

Having Google Analytics is in some ways better than just conversion tracking, as it can tell you about the behaviour of visitors who didn’t convert. Analytics tells you which keywords result in bounces, which pages searchers visit and how long they stay on site. If you’ve got an e-commerce site, you want Analytics for its e-commerce tracking – then you can link keywords to the revenue they generate (and so calculate their ROI).

If you’re not using Google AdWords, you can still use Google Analytics: use URL tagging to pass along information on keywords and ads.

It doesn’t matter what quality score, CPC or CTR a keyword has if nothing happens when the searchers reach your website. With conversion tracking you can tell if keywords give results – and then all the other metrics matter, as they help you maximise the results and minimise the cost.

Use a trail of keywords
Your mission is to make it easy for the searcher to click, land and convert. The searcher’s intent is shown in their search term, so you want to use that same term both in your ad copy and on the landing page. That makes it simple for the searcher to see how relevant your website is, and avoids getting them frustrated and clicking away. Also the call-to-action in your ad should reflect the language on the landing page, to reinforce the message of what the searcher should do.

Highlight your best deal
You only have a small space in your ad in which to get searchers’ notice, so make sure you really hook their attention. Lead with your unique selling point or a special offer. If you have a great price for the product they’ve searched for then include it (and make sure this product and price is prominent in the ad’s landing page). This will encourage them to spend time looking around your website.

Test your copy
It’s not just the success of your keywords you should be continuously assessing. The ad copy dictates whether or not someone will click on it, and also sets the tone for the visit to your website. Test different ad copy for your keywords and make sure your words are working for you. You can also try to save costs by prequalifying traffic with your ad text: mention price information or the intended audience (e.g. “for small business”) to avoid clicks from people who will not convert.

Improve your quality score and relevance
If you’re using Google AdWords, then a higher quality score will give you a higher ad rank, which means that you’ll get better ad position or cheaper clicks. Of course, improving quality score isn’t straightforward. Google does not say precisely how they calculate it, nor how they measure ‘relevance’. The column labelled ‘Quality Score’ in AdWords isn’t true quality score – that depends on the combination of keyword, ad and search term and is recalculated at every search – but it does give an indication of which keywords need attention. The main factor of Google’s quality score is click through rate.

(If you’re using Microsoft AdCenter, quality score doesn’t affect ad position, but if it’s too low it will limit the eligibility of your ads to be served. Again, CTR is one of the main factors.)

Improve CTR by making sure your keywords are as relevant as possible to your website. Check search query reports and use negative keywords to get rid of irrelevant searches. Try splitting bigger ad groups into smaller, more tightly targeted ad groups with highly tailored ad text.

Use niche keywords
The obvious keywords may have large search volumes, but they also have high competition and high CPC. By advertising around more niche keywords and phrases, you can drive far more relevant traffic to your pages and often pay less. There are several tools to help if you’re stuck for words to start testing: WordStream’s Keyword Niche Finder is designed especially for the task, but you can also use the Google Keyword Tool or Übersuggest for free if you don’t mind the results being less well organised. You can also find ideas from search query reports, if you have keywords on broad or phrase match – this has the advantage that you have a more accurate idea of the search term’s CPC.

Of course, you have to use your judgement and knowledge of your site to make sure the niche is suitable! If a keyword isn’t relevant but get lots of impressions, then use it as a negative keyword to keep the unwanted searches away.

Go local
This may not be relevant for all business, but for some it is an opportunity to get clicks from very targeted potential customers.

You can geotarget with geographical search terms – for example, advertising around ‘Oxford SEO’ instead of ‘SEO’. This is a sort of niche keyword, as above: these keywords are likely to be both better targeted and cheaper, maximising your returns.

An alternative is to set up a geotargeted campaign to only display in your locale, where you can afford to bid higher as the searchers are more likely to convert.

Even if you don’t think your website would benefit from targeting local searches, you can still check to see if there are areas with high impressions and good conversion rates – use the Geographic view in the Dimensions.

Expand
If you’ve got a campaign in your account which is doing well but is losing impression share from a restrictive daily budget, then give it a more money. If you’ve got keywords which get high conversion rates but low CTR because of bad positions, raise the bids to improve their positions and see if they continue to convert.

If your paid search is working well and delivering a good return, then it’s time to consider upping your game by increasing your spend. If your business has the capacity to increase turnover then you should consider growing an existing successful pay-per-click campaign.

Analyse and test, test and analyse
Small businesses with no dedicated search marketer often set up advertising around a set of keywords and then ignore it. But a good paid search campaign is constantly monitored, tweaked and sharpened in order to maximise the returns. Even just a few hours every week or two can really make a difference.

44 Google Webmaster Tools Resources

Tad Chef — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 13:04:49 +0000

When recently asked “what is your favorite SEO tool?” I could think of none other than Google Webmaster Tools. While many SEO experts will probably disagree and suggest to use some paid SEO tools suite, I’d like to explain my choice and present you with 44 Google Webmaster Tools resources.

Over the years Google has greatly improved the free Webmaster Tools. They’ve added lots of very useful new features and it’s now a must-use for regularly checking out your site.

Of course GWT is not perfect; there some shortcomings, such as the very short data retention or the rounding of views and click numbers. Nonetheless, you can gain lots of very up-to-date stats about your site, be it load speed, click through rates or backlinks.

You can improve and check indexation and GWT also offers valuable clues for your keyword research. You can use Google Webmaster Tools every day and still gain new insights each time.

How to use Google Webmaster Tools for SEO

GWB features

Internal and third party tools

Issues

Google Webmaster Tools for beginners

Advanced analytics with Google Webmaster Tools

Metrics and definitions

Did I overlook some major Google Webmaster Tools resources? Add them in the comment section please! I may update the list.

* CC image by Astrid Westvang.

SEOs – time to brush up on your grammar?

Rachel McCombie — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 12:27:35 +0000

As a self-confessed grammar geek, I’m frequently dismayed by the sloppy standard of writing I am continually confronted with throughout the course of the seven days a week I spend exploring the weird and wonderful world wide web. Whether it’s a blog post, a tweet or even a company website, it seems that a lax approach to grammar has become the norm – even, most shockingly of all, among professional copywriters I’ve hired. The most frequent offender in the huge array of rudimentary English errors is the misplaced or missing apostrophe, a grammar violation which winds me up so much that Stuart Tofts and Kevin Gibbons make a point of including one in every email they send me, just so that they can see my reaction.

Before you ask, no – “Trampoline” is not the name of the shop!

Not long ago, in a moment of above average exasperation, I sent out a tweet which said:

So imagine my satisfaction when the following correction from Google was brought to my attention not long after:

We’re all used to Google correcting misspellings, but this was the first time I had seen it suggest correct punctuation. Interestingly, it has not automatically displayed results for “women’s clothing” with a different option for “search instead for womens clothing”, as it usually does with misspellings. Furthermore, doing the same search but for “mens” and “childrens” did not produce a “Did you mean” suggestion.

A quick glance down the search results for the search seen above showed sites with title tags using both correct and incorrect punctuation ranking for both terms (though title tags are obviously not the only consideration!). However, changing the search from “womens” to “women’s” did change which websites appeared on the first page – so it does seem to have some bearing on rankings. The top ranking websites were the same, but lower on the first page the results were different – meaning that some sites (Debenhams, for example) lost out on a first page ranking. The humble apostrophe makes a difference!

The Google Keyword Tool does recognise a small difference in search volumes for the two versions, but the number of searches for each is roughly equal. So why is Google making this correction in the search results?

This interesting video from Google shows the process used by Google engineers when they make algorithm changes – which they apparently do on a daily basis:

The video explains the rationale behind the “did you mean” suggestions: sites with misspellings are typically of a poorer quality. So as far as I can see, it’s a logical assumption that sites with a poor standard of grammar should be treated with the same approach.

In the light of the Panda update, we’re all getting used to the idea that Google is cracking down on low-quality sites, placing increasing emphasis on high-quality content that provides value for its users (the majority of whom are also Google’s users). Of course, many people are lazy when it comes to typing terms into Google, and will omit punctuation such as apostrophes because it takes marginally less time to type, and because they feel it makes little difference. But I would argue that the presence of poor grammar on a website could end up being a negative quality indicator because it diminishes a user’s trust in that website.

Google does use comments from real users in addressing problems of identifying what counts as a low-quality website. See this excerpt from a Wired.com interview with Google:

Wired.com: How do you recognize a shallow-content site? Do you have to wind up defining low quality content?

Singhal: That’s a very, very hard problem that we haven’t solved, and it’s an ongoing evolution how to solve that problem. We wanted to keep it strictly scientific, so we used our standard evaluation system that we’ve developed, where we basically sent out documents to outside testers. Then we asked the raters questions like: “Would you be comfortable giving this site your credit card? Would you be comfortable giving medicine prescribed by this site to your kids?”

Cutts: There was an engineer who came up with a rigorous set of questions, everything from. “Do you consider this site to be authoritative? Would it be okay if this was in a magazine? Does this site have excessive ads?” Questions along those lines.

Singhal: And based on that, we basically formed some definition of what could be considered low quality. In addition, we launched the Chrome Site Blocker [allowing users to specify sites they wanted blocked from their search results] earlier , and we didn’t use that data in this change. However, we compared and it was 84 percent overlap [between sites downloaded by the Chrome blocker and downgraded by the update]. So that said that we were in the right direction.

The incorporation of user feedback into algorithms was also confirmed on the official Google Webmaster Central Blog. Personally, if I visit a company website and the first thing I notice is that it’s riddled with poor grammar, it puts me right off that company. My most likely course of action would be to go back to the search results and find a competitor with a well-written website – and I know I’m not alone in this.

I lament falling standards of English and argue that proper use of grammar DOES matter. Poor grammar is unprofessional and makes a company look sloppy, as though they just don’t care. If they have that kind of attitude towards their professional image – if they can’t even be bothered to get their English right – what might their attitude be to customer service? How can I trust them with my business? Google wants the best results for its users, websites they can place trust and confidence in – and part of that means companies who know how to present themselves in a professional way. It’s only one step from correcting misspellings to correcting grammar abuse.

So it’s certainly not impossible that Google may pay more careful attention to grammar in the future. If that happens, using an apostrophe or not could mean the difference between ranking competitively for a term and not; it could also mean that a PPC ad, with apostrophes dropped to keep within the character limit, might not appear on the searches you want it to appear on. If there are any algorithm updates involving grammar in the offing, they are still only in their infancy; but if you ask me, this would be a good time for online marketers to sharpen up their grammar skills and recommend that their clients do the same.

Image credit
Zawtowers on Flickr

More Than 30 Google+ Tools, Extensions, Tutorials and Other Resources

Tad Chef — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:32:42 +0000

The Google+ honeymoon might be over but many people are still active on the site. As Google+ has some shortcomings, lacking features and usability flaws, there are now numerous tools to deal with these issues. I’ve compiled a list of the most promising ones.

I haven’t tested all the tools, just a few, so please report issues in the comments. I have chosen only those that seemed to make sense and have been recommended by other publishers or social media friends of mine.

Web Tools and Resources

Google+ Statistics – Google+ statistics shows not only who the most popular users and posts on Google+ are; it also discloses the percentage of women on Google+. It’s only 12%, according to the service.
Google+ Lists / Google+ Counter - on gpc.fm people are creating Twitter-like lists of people. The members are displayed according to the number of circles they have been put into. This is not perfect yet, as the search for SEO and the best “top SEO/SEM Professionals” shows, but it’s a good start when you search people in a specific category.
Google+ Directory – this is a Google+ user directory you can submit to. Thus looking for an SEO you’d find unknown people who depend on such directory submissions rather than the really important industry figures. It’s helpful to find SEO specialists in your area though, I guess, as you can combine both search parameters.
Google+ Suggested Users – this is an unofficial list of recommended users. There are no SEO specialists listed, but the list of recommended bloggers, for example, is quite decent.
Google+ Search – this is a Google Custom Search engine that searches Google+ profiles and public updates.
PlusFeed – Unofficial Google+ User Feeds – this simple tool creates an RSS feed for your public Google+ updates. It can’t see the ones you share with circles only.

Firefox and Chrome Extensions

There are lots of Chrome and Firefox extensions for Google+ now. Many of them just work on the Chrome browser, but some work on Firefox by way of being a script for the Greasemonkey extension. Most of the Firefox extensions require one of the latest Firefox versions, and one needs even Firefox 9. I don’t update my FF that often for backwards compatibility reasons, thus I couldn’t test most of them.

G++ for Google Plus (Firefox/Chrome) – this extension adds Facebook and Twitter to your Google+ interface. It’s very useful for a quick overview. You can switch it off easily too by checking the “off” box.
Google+ Manager for Firefox
Google plus reply+ for Greasemonkey (Firefox)
Google+ Tweaks for Greasemonkey (Firefox)
Google+ Tweaks for Chrome
Publish sync for google+ & facebook for Chrome
G+me: collapse the Google+ stream into a real-time dashboard on Chrome
GTools+ for Chrome
Extended Share for Google Plus for Chrome
Surplus for Chrome
Quick Hangouts for Google+™ for Chrome

Tutorials and Solutions

How to Update Facebook Status From Google Plus | Enbeeone3 – this is a simple workaround for cross posting your Google+ updates to Facebook automatically.
Merge Google+, Facebook & Twitter With The Help Of G++ [Chrome & Firefox] – this post introduces the G++ extension for Firefox and highlights its features. I use this myself and it’s very helpful to show Twitter, Facebook and Google+ in one stream.
Sharing Google+ to Evernote – this articles explains the several steps required to be able to cross post your Google+ messages to the popular online notebook Evernote.
How to Share on Google+ from any website – State of Search – Alex Moss of Pleer has developed a workaround solution for a Google+ sharing button. You can add it to your site for your visitors to share directly on Google+, in contrast to +1 votes that show up in an extra tab.

Tools Lists

Google+ resources roundup: profile page URL shorteners | Cloud High Club – while the old Google Profile URLs were clean and readable (mine was profiles.google.com/onreact), the new ones are long and contain huge numbers nobody can remember. My Google+ profile can be found under https://plus.google.com/113621097289093997513 – So there appeared numerous short URL services specifically for the Google+ profile URL. For example, I use gplus.name/onreact now. This list contains 8 such redirect services.
Top 5 Tools To Shorten Your Google Plus Profile URLs – this is another list of short Google+ profile URLs which adds screenshots as well.
12 Fresh Google+ Apps, Tools and API Hacks – as there is no official Google API for developers to be able to create third party tools, some people have come up with interim solutions mimicking an official API. Here’s a list. In case you are not a programmer or software developer, you don’t have to know what an API is.
3 Tools To Cross Promote Google+ Shares On Twitter & Facebook (Chrome) – a small list of Chrome tools for cross posting on Facebook.
13 Firefox Add-Ons To Enhance Your Google+ Experience – seemingly most Google+ enhancements are Google Chrome extensions. That’s not true – there are quite a few add-ons for Firefox as well.
5 Free Tools for Recording Google+ Hangouts – hangouts are basically group video chats you may want to record for later. There are already a few tools that allow that. Here’s an overview.

Misc. Google+ Tools

Share From Anywhere Google+ Bookmarklet – this unofficial bookmarklet uses a mobile shortcut to submit any page to Google+.
Google+ for Mac – this is allegedly the only available Google+ for Mac solution.
Move Your Photos – An easy way to move your Facebook Albums to Picasa – to show images in your Google Profile on Google+, you might want to move them from Facebook first. Facebook tends to block such apps, so be quick.
Google Plus Nick – this is one of the first and most popular short URLs for the clumsy and cryptic Google Profile number.
Google+ Apps & Icons – these are free icons for programmers and webmasters to use.

Do you already use these or other Google+ tools? Do you like them? Do they work? Do you know better ones than those I have mentioned? Please add your comments and suggestions below in the comment section!

* CC image by Toby Bochan.

The Google+ Honeymoon is Over: How to Deal With It

Tad Chef — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 12:00:49 +0000

Initially Google+ was the darling of most media pundits. It was shiny, new and it grew like no other social network before. It was a typical infatuation with a new hype. Now that most Internet power users have already joined and been trying Google+ for a while the honeymoon seems to be over.

Several issues have marred the rise of the new Google social network.

Most of the issues are home grown. The dynamics of a top down social media launch, where the tech celebrities and social media mavens get the invitations first, can scare off the average user. However, these people are the backbone of Facebook’s success.

Real name fiasco

Probably the most covered Google+ problem is the massive number of deletions of user accounts by Google. Seemingly everybody suspected of not using her or his real name got banned. Prominent business accounts such as Mashable have been removed as well, in preparation for the launch of regular business accounts. Even well known users who actually were using their own names were banned. Last time I checked there were still many “keyword accounts” on Google+, so the crack down on fake names isn’t as successful as it might seem.

Traffic down

After the initial frenzy and explosive growth of the Google+ user base, the actual usage of the site tanked. There were conflicting reports, but at least two independent analytics providers confirmed that downward trend.

Endless and obnoxious discussions

Two things I haven’t yet encountered on Facebook and Twitter are endless and partly obnoxious discussions. I’ve already argued that Google+ is basically like a huge forum and that it encourages discussion with strangers but also some rather obnoxious ways of arguing. I have been disrespected almost like on old school ”social” sites, such as Digg, Reddit or StumbleUpon. These might not be downright flame wars that were common in the early days of the Web but encountering complete strangers in heated discussions can contribute to such behavior, despite users arguing using their real names.

Tech celebs flooding the stream

When Google started sending out Google+ invitations, it was mostly their social media cheerleaders who got them at first. The usual suspects, such as Robert Scoble, tried to convince their following to join Google+ as well. Google+ also suggested some of the tech pundits by default for you to add to your circles. I did add just a few of them and they almost immediately flooded my Google+ stream, making my regular peers almost disappear.

How Google+ deals with Google +1 votes

The way Google+ deals with the +1 votes on third party websites and search results is not self-explanatory. On Facebook you send the likes from other sites directly to your stream. On Google+ you don’t see the +1 votes from elsewhere. They get displayed in a separate tab on your Google Profile, which nobody really checks. Also, the website buttons do not count +1 votes from Google+ itself. Both types of +1 votes seem to be disconnected completely.

Adware infested tools for G+

While we are used to having lots of third party tools for Twitter and Facebook and most of them being trustworthy, the first tool I installed for Google+ was a rogue attempt to hijack my browser search and other preferences without my prior consent. Why? They replaced my default search engine with a Google Custom search that they make affiliate money on. Most other tools are limited to Google’s own Chrome browser. So apparently they want to bundle Chrome and Google+ in a way like Microsoft did with Windows and Internet Explorer back in the days. Do you really have to use Chrome for advanced functionality on Google+?

So how do we deal with all these issues? Are there enough annoyances to leave Google+ already? I don’t think so. I’m not an early adopter for the sake of early adopting anymore. I use tools when and how it makes sense.

For now, Google+ is a worthwhile addition for some use cases.

For example, it can be a good substitute for blog comments that are dominated these days by people who want to sneak in a link. Here you can get real feedback from people who are actually interested in what you write.

As I had a Google Profile with my real name long before Google+ I didn’t have to use a fake identity or a pseudonym. If you don’t want to use your real name you should stick with Twitter, or even better Tumblr, where people mostly use nicknames. Otherwise wait for the official business profiles.

Whether the traffic is really down or not, the growth in users does not equal the same level of growth in engagement. Well, this was to be expected as people do barely have the time to socialise on the several sites they are already members of. Some people will be less active on Twitter and Facebook to make time for Google+. Other people may return to the networks they are used to.

I was less active on both Twitter and Facebook during the initial testing phase of Google+. Now I use it only when I really want to. I seldom do, because the use cases for Google+ are not useful enough yet. It’s too small for sharing yet, and I don’t have the time to discuss much, so I will only show up once or twice daily, mostly to check my notifications. Is this a sign of a premature death of the network? Not really, it’s just the routine arriving.

Discussing on Google+ sometimes reminds me of the days of so-called Newsgroups, aka Usenet. Back then you had to use your real name as well, and despite this people lashed out at you. Many “experts” were keen to show off their skills by making you feel inferior. IMHO that’s one of the reasons why the Usenet is now almost forgotten. I simply contribute less to discussions or do not return once I notice that the discussion starts getting personal and over the top. You will always find people who disagree for the sake of disagreeing, but you can get away from such futile discussion without much fuss despite the notifications.

Ignoring technology celebrities who talk all day long is not that easy when they flood your stream. You have to remove them from your circles and then the flood stops. Google+ suggests you add them again afterwards, but you can simply click the “x” then. You also have to look out for which discussions you take part in. Tech celebs get dozens or hundreds of comments, so you keep getting notification for days with stuff not related to your own reply. Just engage with your peers and everything will be OK.

When the Google +1 button appeared on Google search results I wasn’t impressed. Later the website button was released as well and I found out that for me it was much better to be able to approve of great content and sites without having to share each one of them. The number of sites I plussed quickly grew but I didn’t annoy anybody. Entering Google+, I assumed that I would at least be able to +1 an article from the Google+ stream so that it would show up on the site as well. It doesn’t work though. So I have to click +1 twice. It seems the buttons are connected to entirely different databases.

I click +1 on Google+ to express gratitude and approval to someone who has shared a good piece of content, while I do it on websites and search results to say “thank you good post” to the webmasters themselves. This way I can or have to click +1 on the same item several times, as many people can share it and I can +1 it each and every time. Sometimes I do. It’s like on Twitter: you can retweet the same post more than once.

On Twitter I’m also used to lots of third party tools I could improve Twitter with. The first thing I wanted to install on Google+ was a Twitter client for it, but it not only did not work, it was also a scam. As I mentioned earlier, the rogue software changed my browser preferences without asking me to make money off my search usage. It took me a while to fix the problem even after uninstalling that rogue script. I haven’t installed any Google+ enhancements ever since. I only occasionally use Google Chrome in its Google spyware free version called Iron. I do not intend to install lots of Chrome extensions to enhance my Google+ experience. Indeed I don’t feel the need to.

The Google+ notifications are distracting enough. I’d prefer not to use G+ more than once daily. I use Twitter throughout the day and I don’t need Google+ to add more work to my schedule. Ideally I can check it once daily along with my emails. I have disabled most notifications though, as I got flooded with them via email. So I only check them when logged into my account.

So all in all, these Google+ annoyances are manageable. Google+ is not perfect but it’s not yet bad enough to abandon it. Like Facebook it probably never will. We will swallow everything once we depend on it, but that’s another story.

* CC image by Christine.