SEOptimise » search engine marketing

The Challenge of Selling SEO & Forgetting the ‘Human Ranking Factor’

Shaad Hamid — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:31:23 +0000

As with selling any service, selling SEO services is an extremely challenging task. Here are my observations of two opposite ends of the spectrum of what SEO consultants often experience with selling SEO services.

Give me a two day optimisation strategy

We’ll often get contacted with the following, “We want a two day web optimisation strategy implemented.” Many neophyte consultants lick their lips and pounce on the ‘opportunity’ with alacrity. They start shooting off proposals, buffing up their hallowed methodology, and more.

A more sane, measured and customer-serving response to the request for a two day optimisation precess is, “Why?”

That always stops people in their tracks. “Why do you want a two day strategy implementation for your website and how do you know that’s the right thing for you?”

In the act of asking that question, you start actually consulting. And if you engage in a real dialogue on the basis of those questions you will gain bracing insight into the real issues, challenges and aspirations of the potential client. You may also get a bracing introduction to the assumptions they’re making — many of which are potentially untested.

It may well be that a two day implementation process is like a relatively empty vessel, into which (after suitable diagnostics and appropriate design) you can pour content that will actually serve their needs and best interests. But it may also be that a half day audit would suffice, and the real action needs to take place at their organisational levels, or with a different group of people, or may require preliminary contact with customers or other stakeholders. It could be that a six month process is needed.

My recommendation to companies who put out a request like the one above, and get a proposal back in response, is to disqualify the person or agency from further consideration, as the request has no meaning without further exploration.

And if you are an agency or a freelance consultant and receive a request like the above, differentiate yourself meaningfully by helping to get to the core of what’s driving the request, rather than getting infatuated by the format proposed.

Avoiding the panacea of empty process

Here’s another common challenge. An organisation decides they need to create a SEO strategy or a digital marketing strategy and manage its roll-out. They get an agency with a strategy implementation process, anchored in the balanced scorecard or some other framework. As they proceed, courtesy of this framework, they are deluged with meetings, with process charts, with communiques, and eventually they arrive at what they perceive to be ‘The Holy Grail’. Namely, they have a clear map. All inconsistencies are removed (at least on the charts anyway), and the path forward glitters like a mythical ‘Yellow Brick Road’.

The problem in the map is not the territory, and it never has been. The problem is that underlying the process clarity are dysfunctional relationships, misguided leadership behaviours, poorly aligned teams, social networks that don’t operate well, departmental practices that may be out of kilter with strategic aspirations, information hoarded rather than shared, a culture that is ossified with past practices rather than vitalised by future aspirations. And eventually the ‘knowing/doing gap’ will become that much more profound.

My humble advice is that once you have process clarity, you have to convert that into a more human map: of behaviours-in-action, team composition and alignment, presence of vibrant or nullifying relationships, communication and network effectiveness, leadership role-modeling and relevant efforts at culture-shifting in order to make the processes actually manifest. Until these adaptive elements are infused into the process steps, to humanise and actualise the processes, we run the risk of trying to run the world from an operating manual.

It doesn’t work. In fact, most of us don’t even run our computers from a manual. We get some hands-on experience while drawing on some guidance, then tinkering and adapting based on results. Alas, in an organisation there are many more moving parts, and my ‘tinkering’ can have expensive consequences if not synergised with the learnings and efforts of others.

Process clarity and human engagement must march together. You can see an organisation as a collection of processes and plans. Fair enough. But you can even more meaningfully see it pulsating with human performance. In other words, the subtotal of all the actions, interactions, behaviours, collaboration and communication between all the people who make a difference to the success or failure of the organisation. You can see the organisation as a patchwork quilt of teams, conversations and acted upon commitments. These are human dimensions, or as I’d like to call it, the ‘human ranking factor’ and if not addressed, all the gewgaws and trinkets of process clarity will be fallow and leave your strategic marketing vision unfulfilled.

Image credit: mootown

15% Discount Code for SMX Advanced London 2012

Kevin Gibbons — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 01:00:50 +0000

Once again, we are proud to be a blog partner for the SMX Advanced London 2012 conference. The event takes place on 15-16th May 2012 at Chelsea Football Club – Stamford Bridge.

In order to receive a 15% discount, just enter the code SEOPTIMISE012 when signing up online. There are different packages available and the prices go up after 30th March so it’s best to book early!

For coverage of previous events, please check out the presentations we have delivered and posts we have written:

UK Search Conference Calendar – 2012

Kevin Gibbons — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:11:52 +0000

It’s that time of year again, where everyone is starting to think about which UK search conferences and events to attend.

So for 2012, I’ve put together a conference calendar of search events – let me know if there’s any I’ve missed!

February:

SES London – London, 21-23 February 2012

March:

Think Visibility – Leeds, 3rd March 2012
UK Search Awards Conference – London, 9th March 2012
Distilled – Link Love – London, 30th March 2012

April:

BrightonSEO – Brighton, tbc

May:

International Search Summit – London, 14 May 2012
SMX London - London, 15-16 May 2012
SAScon - Manchester, 17-18 May 2012

June:

a4uexpo Europe – Barcelona, 19-20 June 2012

Oct:

a4uexpo London – London, tbc
Distilled – Search Love – London, tbc

Nov:

Conversion Conference – London, 27-28 November 2012

I’ll be speaking at a couple of these events, more on that once I can confirm them. So which events will you be attending this year?

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…

28 Top Takeaway Tweets From SAScon Mini 2011

Kevin Gibbons — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:46:56 +0000

Last week I spoke on the SSL search panel at the SAScon mini conference in Manchester.

This is a great conference, with the main SAScon event taking place in May – and to cover main tips and takeaways from this I’ve listed the top 28 tweets:

Testing products not enough - spend time talking to your customers #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:10 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@kevgibbo

Kevin Gibbons

"@karate_barbie: #sascon social: like link building - look for authority not quantity"

November 24, 2011 3:47 pm via Mobile Web ReplyRetweetFavorite

@seobelle

Sadie Sherran

Split test analysis recommendation: http://t.co/Xm9nEq5o #sascon

November 24, 2011 2:55 pm via Mobile Web ReplyRetweetFavorite

@ChelseaBlacker

Chelsea Blacker

#sascon biggest mistake people make when split testing is not making bold changes

November 24, 2011 2:56 pm via Seesmic ReplyRetweetFavorite

@rhyswynne

Rhys Wynne

Only way to test conversion process = signup/order products! eg @karlblanks testing dating site & weightwatchers #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:07 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@kevgibbo

Kevin Gibbons

There was a quote "50% of ecommerce users are logged into Facebook" made at #SAScon by, I think, @badams. Where did this number come from?

November 28, 2011 12:40 pm via webReply RetweetFavorite

@PG_Martin

Paul Martin

"Everybody clicks on the shopping results so get a feed." Too right! @badams #Sascon

November 24, 2011 5:09 pm via Twitter for Android ReplyRetweetFavorite

@Justhipper

Justhipper

You can't convert if you don't know why users aren't buying - find reasons & reassure them #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:16 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@kevgibbo

Kevin Gibbons

"Your site's internal search is a big, big source of keywords." #sascon

November 24, 2011 5:05 pm via HootSuite ReplyRetweetFavorite

@pushonltd

PushON

#sascon if your site structure sucks, so will your SEO via @badams

November 24, 2011 5:05 pm via HootSuite ReplyRetweetFavorite

@karate_barbie

Tracey Drain

Do NOT leave customers with a thank u page. Push them further. #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:03 pm via Mobile Web ReplyRetweetFavorite

@ChelseaBlacker

Chelsea Blacker

Microdata works on reviews waste of time for anything else via @badams #sascon

November 24, 2011 5:12 pm via Mobile Web ReplyRetweetFavorite

@seobelle

Sadie Sherran

Address objections like xplaining "we hav no phone number to keep costs low and deliver u mega cheap prices" #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:25 pm via Mobile Web ReplyRetweetFavorite

@ChelseaBlacker

Chelsea Blacker

Kampyle, Kiss Insights, Survey Monkey, Google Alerts all recommended for conversion optimisation #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:22 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@kevgibbo

Kevin Gibbons

#sascon get your hands on clients tv & radio advert schedule. Time it with your SEO for optimum results.

November 24, 2011 4:01 pm via HootSuite ReplyRetweetFavorite

@karate_barbie

Tracey Drain

"if your product is out of stock, do.not show a 404. - i will find you and kill you" @badams. #sascon

November 24, 2011 5:09 pm via Seesmic ReplyRetweetFavorite

@danbellj

Dan Bell

After sale think of how you can get users to purchase again or leave feedback. Could be fresh content ;) #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:05 pm via Tweetbot for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@pinje

Dan Alderson

How did you find us? Open-text results far more insightful/specific than drop-down web field #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:29 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@kevgibbo

Kevin Gibbons

At #SAScon we were told by @majesticseo's @dixon_jones to only use the fresh index when collecting backlink data since it's up2date&accurate

November 28, 2011 3:37 pm via webReply RetweetFavorite

@ChelseaBlacker

Chelsea Blacker

90% of all media consumed starts with search - it is the key to everything says @citizenrobert PR people you need to come to #sascon #prcanc

November 25, 2011 11:00 am via webReply RetweetFavorite

@nickywake

Nicky Wake

@danbarker's @econsultancy article: How to steal some 'not provided' data back from Google http://t.co/BRTCCvZU #SAScon

November 24, 2011 2:49 pm via HootSuite ReplyRetweetFavorite

@joannahalton

Joanna Halton

Why has mobile been left out by this ssl... Mobile is more personal than a PC now ... #sascon

November 24, 2011 2:41 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@TamarUK

Tamar UK

#sascon google have gone a step forward with transparency and gone three steps backwards with the whole SSL stuff.

November 24, 2011 2:26 pm via Echofon ReplyRetweetFavorite

@APSG

Amrit Gill

SSL panel: "There are so many metrics to measure SEO success, not just keywords," says Chelsea Blacker #sascon

November 24, 2011 2:46 pm via HootSuite ReplyRetweetFavorite

@pushonltd

PushON

Panel on SSL search #SAScon: @SamuelCrocker nails it - data accuracy matters.

November 24, 2011 2:25 pm via Twitter for iPad ReplyRetweetFavorite

@badams

Barry Adams

The room believe: SSL search is here to stay and the (not provided) percentage is expected to grow. #SASCON

November 24, 2011 2:45 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@latitudexpress

Latitude Express

Contracts based on the growth of organic non-branded traffic - massive changes in the way we get paid. But not in the way we do work #SAScon

November 24, 2011 2:46 pm via HootSuite ReplyRetweetFavorite

@joannahalton

Joanna Halton

. @kevgibbo says although (not provided) is big in tech industry, in other industries it is a lot smaller #sascon

November 24, 2011 2:23 pm via Seesmic ReplyRetweetFavorite

@rhyswynne

Rhys Wynne

For those who were at the event, what were your favourite bits?

SearchLove 2011: Top Trends

Rachel McCombie — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 10:46:07 +0000

Ok so the “Top 20,001 takeaways” type posts have already been done, so I wanted to make this more of a general view of the themes emerging from this year’s SearchLove conference. I suspect that summarising general trends in what was discussed might be a pretty good reflection of where the SEO industry is now and where it’s heading.

I’ll start off by saying that I enjoyed SearchLove a whole lot more than the other SEO conferences I’ve been to, and not just because of the great food and excellent Monday night party! I felt there was a great deal of enthusiasm among those present, and I came away from the conference feeling inspired and eager to try out the new ideas I heard.

The word "awesome" is being used a lot at this conference. Just saying. #searchlove

October 24, 2011 9:09 am via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@RachelsWritings

Rachel McCombie

So, in no particular order, here are some of the main themes emerging from SearchLove this year…

Good content is more important now than ever before
In the light of several iterations of the Panda update, it came as little surprise to hear the importance of great content emphasised by a number of speakers, with Tom Critchlow even advocating the role of ‘Chief Content Officer’ to manage content strategy effectively. Having a strong content strategy in place, he argued, turbo charges your SEO efforts. Low-quality content harms the whole site – whether it’s bad writing (couldn’t agree more with this one!), too many ads or duplicate content.

Giving your users a great experience
The first session of the conference was Rand Fishkin speaking about developing online communities. For a community to be successful, he argued, it has to benefit the users way more than it benefits you. So why is it worth your while? Because users can build your content and do your SEO for you (forums are particularly good for long-tail optimisation). The importance of giving your users a great experience applies to your website as a whole, of course (not just the community element), a point also covered by Richard Baxter’s talk on ‘gamification’ (below).

‘Gamification’ – or the art of getting people to do what you want
I wondered at the time whether I was the only one who hadn’t ever heard this term before, but by the end of the conference it seemed felt normal, as it was referred to a lot. Richard Baxter gave a very interesting talk on it, looking at how you can reward your users for learning more about your brand by using elements such as leaderboards, points systems and other competitive elements usually found in games. You can apply this to a wide range of things to help you achieve your business goals, whether it’s completing a profile or generating reviews. The upshot is that people are motivated by status, and you can use this to encourage people to take the actions you want them to.

Building online and real-life relationships is good for link building
Blogger outreach should be all about building relationships. Don’t contact people out of the blue asking if they want to feature a blog post – engage with them by following them on Twitter and mentioning/retweeting them, and commenting on their blog; only then should you try approaching them about guest blogging. Though more time consuming, your success will be greater because you’ll be a familiar and friendly name, and you’ll have the added advantage of approaching them with a deeper understanding of what they’re trying to achieve with their blog.

LinkedIn is a surprisingly useful (stalking) asset
SEOMoz’s Joanna Lord pointed out that LinkedIn can be great for sussing out the strategies being taken by your competitors (or those of your clients). Checking out who’s been hired and who’s left can show what competitors are doing and strategies they’re taking in terms of what areas of the business they’re putting their budget in. LinkedIn can also be a good medium for approaching people regarding linking opportunities.

The Dislike button won’t happen
It’s Facebook’s most frequently requested feature apparently, but Mat Clayton argued that it won’t ever be implemented because negativity kills sharing. And whether you’re in SEO or social media, we want people to share! If people think that others will react negatively to something they share (i.e. by ‘disliking’ it), they’ll be less likely to share.

Infographics can still work
The phrase “infographics are so 2009” was bandied about a bit, but ultimately the conclusion seemed to be that they can work if you approach it in the right way. The infectiously enthusiastic Wil Reynolds advised having a marketing plan in place and finding relevant audiences by finding out who’s commented on popular long posts along similar lines. If you use HTML 5 they’re more likely to get shared, as it’s new and there aren’t many examples of it – meaning it’ll appeal to HTML 5 geeks as well as your target audience. And don’t forget to use Google Image search to find naughty people who’ve used your infographic without crediting you – they’ll usually be willing to link back if you ask nicely.

Have I missed out any important themes? Leave a comment below and let me know!

Top 10 Retail SEO Mistakes UK Brands Are Still Making

Kevin Gibbons — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 11:39:11 +0000

Last week I asked on Twitter to see what common SEO mistakes were still being made by retail websites. This received a great response, so I thought I’d share the top replies with our readers.

I’ve picked some UK high street retail examples to help display the issues raised, but please note that we have no connection with any of these websites – so this is an outside perspective. There may be logical reasons for the examples which we are unaware of, but these have been used in order to highlight where SEO mistakes are commonly made.

Non-descriptive URL structure

Ideally you want to keep your URLs concise and keyword descriptive. So automatically generated, ID-based URLs aren’t going to help your SEO, unless you’re aiming to rank for g474502s2 - in which case Next.co.uk have dominated market share!

Long and messy URLs generated by CMS

Some content management systems really make a mess of URLs. From an SEO perspective you want to have full control over re-writing category-level URLs such as this one on Argos:

Linking to multiple homepage URLs

This is a common mistake – which is getting better across many sites, but if you click the logo or homepage link on some sites, you’ll find that rather than getting sent back to the root domain, you’re taken to a duplicate copy of the page on a new URL. See this example on House of Fraser:

Poor title tags/meta descriptions

I’ve worked with a CMS before that didn’t allow you to edit title tags at all – that was a bit of a problem! Hopefully your site won’t be quite that bad, but too often people just think about SEO for generating rankings – what about click through rates and conversions though?

Crafting an enticing title tag and meta description should be as important as writing a high CTR, converting AdWords ad – notice the difference between these two listings for Marks and Spencer – surely M&S would prefer you click on the natural free listing given the choice!

No user-generated content/reviews

For conversion rates alone, having reviews and user-generated content is an excellent way to boost your site’s performance. See this case study on how onlineshoes.com increased sales by 119% due to user reviews. But it’s also a great way of adding extra content to your products – giving the search engines that extra 200-300 words of unique and what should be well-optimised copy (because it’s about the product) could well be enough to make a significant increase in search rankings.

It could certainly be worth testing at the very least for a lot of brands, for example Ted Baker:

Forgetting about branded product search

One of the first things I check with our e-commerce and retail clients is branded search results. It’s often just taken for granted that you will be ranking for your branded keywords, so it’s assumed that non-branded search and first-time visitors is the main target. However, this isn’t always the case and it definitely shouldn’t just be assumed – these are almost certainly going to be your top converting keywords, so a small amount of effort here can easily pay off to ensure that you’re generating the majority of traffic – which let’s face it you deserve, it’s your product after all!

It’s amazing how many brands don’t rank for their own products though – check out these results for Sony W510 12MP which are dominated by Argos and Amazon:

Lack of static on-page content

Many websites struggle when it comes to having good, optimised content deeper in the site. For example, product pages which have very little descriptive text written about them could be much better optimised for search. See this example from Monsoon, which showcases the product reasonably well, but does little towards telling users and the search engines about it:

Pulling search results in as category pages

As above, sometimes category pages are very weak on content and often these are just search results which are being pulled into a page. Yes it may do a job for the user – but surely a bit more text here would help to give the search engines a bit more to go on. It doesn’t even have to be too detailed – a quick description underneath “Mens Hats, Gloves & Scarves” on the Debenhams site here would be a big improvement to optimise for the phrase “Mens Hats”, which they currently bid on using PPC, yet fail to rank in the top 50 positions in Google organically for:

Webpages & content too image-based

From the websites I’ve reviewed today, I’ve actually been quite impressed that most of these have now moved away from having content which is too image or flash-based. This is a clear SEO issue to avoid, as you want your site’s content to be as well optimised as possible – which means it should be text-rich. Topman is an example of a site which hasn’t quite got there yet – the only text currently on their homepage is navigational:

Duplicate content – same product, multiple categories

I’ve seen several retail sites in the past where they have caused duplicate content issues by having category-level subfolders within the product URL. Here’s one example from Blacks, where they have a product which is listed under two different categories, so they’ve ended up with two URLs for what is exactly the same product:

Because they sit under both categories, the URLs are duplicated – so ideally it’s normally best to avoid using category-level subfolders in product pages – see Amazon for an example of this. Also, canonical tags are there to help get around this issue if it exists – but ideally you’ll want to have each product page in a single location. Hope that makes sense, but Dan’s written a much more detailed post on product URLs causing duplicate content issues – so you should read that one if it doesn’t!

So those are the top SEO mistakes we’ve found retail websites are still making – a big thanks to Malcolm Slade, Rishi Lakhani, Paul Rogers, Stuart Turner, Ashley Hayward, Daniel Bianchini, Ian Galpin and Edwin Hayward who contributed via Twitter. And if you have any questions or comments on what you’ve found to be the biggest challenges, it would be great to hear about this in the comments.

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.

Think Visibility Voted #1 UK Search Conference by SEOs

Kevin Gibbons — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 09:51:59 +0000

Last week I ran a Facebook poll to ask what people considered to be their favourite search conference in the UK.

This received a great response (197 votes in total) – and we can now announce that the winners of the competition were Think Visibility, who collected 63 votes!

SAScon Manchester and BrightonSEO made it a great result for the smaller events as they finished second and third respectively, with 56 and 29 votes – ranking ahead of some of the much bigger organised London events. Thanks to everyone who took part!

5 Reasons You Think You Don’t Need SEO (and why you’re wrong)

Shaad Hamid — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 13:10:10 +0000

When speaking to small business owners, I often find myself being told that SEO isn’t right for them. Unsurprisingly, I rarely agree. So I thought I’d write about the five most common reasons people give for not adopting an SEO strategy and outline why I think they’re wrong.

Reason one: I’m just a small, local business

There’s a common misconception that SEO will only benefit companies that are already operating on a national or even international scale. Many small businesses only want to attract customers in their local area. Casting a wider net would be a wasted investment as the firm can’t cater for a non-local customer base.

Why you’re wrong

From an SEO perspective, it’s actually much more effective to target geo-specific keyword phrases. Geo-targeting will help attract visitors in your own local area when you optimise your website for search queries with a geographic preference, such as ‘Cheshire chimney sweep’.

Not only does this mean that you benefit from highly relevant, localised traffic, it can also be much easier to rank higher since competition is relatively low. After all, climbing the search engine results for a widely-used term like ‘SEO agency’ is much more competitive than optimising it for ‘Oxfordshire SEO agency’.

Google is passionate about providing users with relevant search results. By linking your business with platforms such as Google Places, you therefore benefit from high quality traffic. Furthermore, the likelihood of localised searches converting into actual buyers is far greater than users searching for generic terms. Hence, in reality as a local business, it would work in your favour.

Reason two: I don’t have the budget

SEO does require some initial investment and many firms are put off – especially if they think they can’t see how they will measure the returns. Many small businesses prefer to rely on more direct marketing, such as email promotions or postal drops, simply because these are tried and tested methods.

Why you’re wrong

Firstly, there are many tools that help measure return on investment for SEO projects and secondly, in a survey conducted by Econsultancy early this year found that search engine optimisation provided the highest ROI for marketers above email marketing.
Furthermore, SEO is a bargain when compared to banner ads and PPC campaigns. The benefits of SEO are long term and residual; hence, you reap high quality traffic even after SEO campaigns are complete.

Reason three: I don’t sell online

A large number of small businesses have only set up basic websites and don’t accept sales or commissions online. Because of that, they often assume that there’s little point working to promote those websites – they don’t really anticipate receiving many enquiries via the web.

Why you’re wrong

Even if your website is nothing more than an in-depth listing, you should make sure it can be found easily – otherwise you’re wasting the investment you made building the site. Therefore make sure that the title and meta tags should all include the city and country where your business is based. If you offer a service, it is very important to include the areas or regions you serve.

Remember to add neighbourhood names, smaller towns in the surrounding areas and any popular landmarks people often use in searches. Place your physical address and phone number on every page of your site, in addition to the contact us page.

Reason four: My key phrases would be too hard to rank for

Some small companies are already competing with larger organisations and so believe that the most relevant search terms are simply too hard to rank for. When larger businesses with far bigger SEO budgets are already ranking for the best keywords and phrases, it can seem like a wasted investment trying to beat them to the top.

Why you’re wrong

There’s no point throwing a massive chunk of your search budget into ranking for those terms when other businesses can easily spend far more. That’s true for SEO and often true for search engine marketing too.

But there are alternatives. Aim to rank for long-tail keywords covering more specific products. These will be less competitive, as well as driving even more relevant business to your site. An example for this is trying to rank for ‘life insurance for over-50s’ rather than the more generic and competitive ‘life insurance’.

Reason five: It’s too complicated without specialist staff

Very small businesses with just a few employees often assume that SEO requires a team of computer programmers with marketing qualifications and a hefty price tag.

Many won’t have bothered investigating how much investment is needed because they simply assume it’s beyond your means.

Why you’re wrong

SEO can be an expensive business but that doesn’t mean that a smaller budget can’t achieve some easy wins.

If you don’t have the funding to bring an agency on board or take on a specialist member of staff, you could still spend time learning the basics of SEO yourself. There are a lot of great blogs and web sites where SEO knowledge is shared freely, not to mention several books on SEO that cost less than £20 and offer terrific information.

According to Mintel there are a lot more people purchasing products online than ever before and a lot more now shifting toward mobile search for product information. Therefore, making sure your business is visible to these prospects will undoubtedly benefit your business in many ways, not to mention your bottom line.

Salespeople: the free SEO tool every agency has

Matthew Taylor — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 11:30:50 +0000

I have been working as a full time SEO Exec for just about a year now and a few things have become apparent in that time, most notably that SEOs love tools and are always on the lookout for that elusive competitive advantage to give them a ranking edge. So it strikes me as odd that every agency already has access to a free tool that will (amongst other things) get them high quality links, improve their keyword research, increase their PPC CTRs and conversion rates and keep their clients happy and informed. But they very rarely use it to its full potential.

So what is this free SEO tool? It’s your sales people. OK, so ‘free’ and ‘tool’ may have been used somewhat loosely, but bear with me.

How salespeople can help your SEO

The vast majority of SEOs are pretty awesome at what they do, and there are plenty of link building tactics where quite frankly it helps to be a computer geek, but one of the best ways to get great quality links is simply by asking, and this is where a lot of SEOs can come unstuck. I’m pretty sure you will see where I’m going with this already… but rather than sitting there trying to craft the perfect email, or spending hours talking on the phone uncomfortably, get your salesperson to do it and free up your time to do what you’re best at. I can pretty much guarantee that they will have a much better success rate and will do it a hell of a lot faster. And as an added bonus, they may just pick up a new client from it: after all, these sites need SEO too.

So once they are done with a few link requests, how about some keyword research? If you’ve exhausted all the obvious keywords and are prospecting for some longer tail gold, why not ask the people who sell all day to help you? Your salespeople will spend hours every day either consciously or unconsciously perfecting the language they use and studying the language clients use as well – put this to good use. This applies doubly if you have access to your clients’ sales teams. Get them to sell to you; listen to the language and terms they use, and ask them what terms the customers use. You never know they may provide a term that you’d never even think is related but that will send conversions through the roof for little or no SEO effort.

Tip – Most larger companies will have sales scripts that their team work from and will record calls for “training and quality purposes”, so why not ask if you can have a look/listen.

How salespeople can help your PPC
Q1. How often do you sit and look at your CTR and conversion rates and wish they could be higher? Most days?

Q2. How often have you asked the professional salesperson in the office for their input? Never?

This is the most obvious area where even a little sales experience can go a long way. Your salespeople will have spent their working life approaching people, having to summarise your services in a few words to spark someone’s interest enough to get them the opportunity to explain more. Is it me or does that not sound similar to what a PPC ad is trying to achieve? Use their experience and expertise and get them to write some of your PPC ad text, or at the very least get them to brainstorm some call to action phrases for you.

Tip – Every salesperson in the world at some point will have done an elevator pitch. Get them to do one for the client’s site and then chop it down to hit the character limit.

How salespeople can help your account management

I think it’s fair to say that if you work in SEO long enough, you will invariably come across a client you explain an SEO concept to and you know full well that they have no idea what you’ve just told them. The problem is that if a client doesn’t understand a concept, they are pretty unlikely to be fully supportive of it. The next time it happens, make a note of it, go and explain it how you would normally to one of your salespeople and then get them to explain it to you as if you were the client. Salespeople make a living from taking advanced concepts they probably won’t know the technicalities of and selling them to people who may never have heard of them.

Tip – If you’re having a real problem getting past your contact to speak to the member of the development team you really need to do some work for you, ask your salesperson to have a go – getting past “gatekeepers” should be second nature.

So What Makes a Real SEO ‘Expert’?

Kevin Gibbons — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 16:51:15 +0000

There are often too many people in the search marketing and social media industry who proclaim themselves ‘experts’, but can any of us really justify the title?

Image credit: Flickr

Mashable noticed that there were 15,740 social media experts on Twitter and this was back in 2009. In fact, with the prevalence of blogs and Twitter, it can be hard to distinguish between the writers with something useful to say and those simply filling space.

The people I am most wary of are those who call themselves ‘experts’ but who have, all too often stopped learning. This is a fast-paced, changing industry and there’s no time for resting on your laurels or for laziness when it comes to keeping on top of new developments.

Of course, it doesn’t matter much to me if a company’s SEO manager stops staying abreast of the sector; it’s only going to affect their own business and, eventually, their professional reputation. However, I do have a problem with ‘experts’ who continue to flaunt their expert status, and who offer advice and pose as authorities, but have stopped learning.

There’s no time to stand still and admire the view

In the SEO industry, I have to learn everyday. I never know how my knowledge is going to be used and so I have to stay on my toes. Perhaps none of us should call ourselves experts because we’re all still learning, by reading blogs and books, by attending conferences and by taking on new marketing challenges.

Should I still be in this line of business when I am 74, I will still be learning because the industry will still be changing. If I ever stop learning then it’s time to leave SEO because I will have fallen into the trap of thinking I know it all. And no one person does.

Of course, you could probably study the works of George Elliot until you know absolutely everything there is to know about the author – that’s a finite pool of information; you just have to soak it up and regurgitate it when you want to bore people at dinner parties.

But it’s a very different skill to react to a changing online environment, consider a huge number of variables, interpret them and come up with a solution that works for an individual client.

Running an SEO agency means applying my skills to different clients with different problems, websites, budgets and ambitions every day. If I stopped learning in 2010 then I can’t be confident I am doing what’s best for them in 2011.

Context is king

No matter what your experience and knowledge base, your online marketing solution has to be ready to change depending on your client. Every business is different and, if you can’t adjust your technique, your chances of success are pretty hit and miss.

Even if you’ve previously achieved outstanding success at an agency or with a former client, if you can’t learn, adapt and evolve then you risk catastrophic failure next time. After all, those great tactics from 2003 may not hold much weight when applied today.

At best, your career will start to wither as your successes start to drop.

‘Expert’ opinions

What frustrates me the most are the so-called experts who have stopped studying but kept talking. It can cause real problems when they expound their ‘expert opinions’ online.

Unfortunately, lazy and ill-informed pseudo-experts can keep SEO myths circulating long after they’ve been busted, simply by repeating them endlessly via blogs. They are all-too-often the inspiration for the bad practice I encounter in smaller businesses, which have relied on a small amount of online research.

If you consider yourself an expert in any industry, but especially a fast-paced one like online marketing, then ask yourself when you last learned something new or really challenged yourself professionally. Anyone struggling to remember should ask themselves if they can justify calling themselves an expert in their field, or if their complacency has shackled their future success.

Perhaps there are no real experts, just a bunch of students fighting to outrank each other in knowledge – and the search results.

Christmas Crackers: Top Comments from 2010

Kevin Gibbons — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 11:42:35 +0000

As we all wind down for the Christmas week, I thought I’d revisit some of the best comments left on my guest blog posts over the year…

Image credit: Flickr

Regular readers of my Twitter feed will know that I am a regular guest blogger, often appearing on websites such as Search Engine Watch, Econsultancy and Search Engine Land, as well as writing here on the SEOptimise blog.

Some of the responses to posts I write are extremely knowledgeable and often provoke informed debate.

A blogger like me values these insights from readers, because a blog is not just a one-way street and the comments can often really enhance the usefulness of a post.

So, as the year draws to a close, I wanted to shine a light on some of the best comments left on my blog posts. Here are my top comments from 2010:

Digital marketing careers advice

Where? My Econsultancy post ‘So you want to work in SEO?’
Who? Vivien Underwood, training and operations manager at Econsultancy
Why it’s top: Vivien responded to other comments suggesting that there is insufficient digital marketing training in schools.

She offered an opinion – that most teachers and careers advisers will not be sufficiently “clued up”, gave some examples of university courses that cater to the industry and even briefly reviewed them.

Then Vivien offered some excellent advice to school leavers on standing out from the crowd.

“I’d advise school leavers to consider digital specific work experience during their undergrad studies and then look to do a postgrad or professional digital marketing qualification which includes lots of sessions with practitioners and project based work to hone their skills.”

Social is not commercial

Where? My Econsultancy post ‘How not to use Twitter, by Rentokil’
Who? Deborah Lewis, PR adviser at agency The Hero Machine
Why it’s top: In one short example, Deborah highlights the major issue with how so many companies operate on Twitter and other social platforms.

In fact, I have since used this example when illustrating the limitations of social marketing, and the importance of using it correctly to gain long-term benefits rather than short-term wins.

She said: “Just because really good friends will help you paint a spare room or clear out a basement doesn’t mean you should go out there, pretend to make friends in order to get a house cleared or decorated. And that’s why I think corporates get it wrong on social media – they’re not being social, they’re being commercial.”

There is no ‘magic formula’ for SEO

Where? My Search Engine Watch article ‘Why Google is Never the \’Only Customer\’’
Who? Heather Lloyd-Martin, head of copywriting agency SuccessWorks
Why it’s top: Because Heather and I share a passionate dislike for those who believe that there’s a magic formula to writing SEO-friendly copy. There’s no ‘trick’ to online copywriting, it’s down to creating useful, informative and shareable articles that will be popular online.

Heather admitted she felt my pain.

“Like you, I’ve chatted with clients who believe they have the magical formula for SEO content – normally something stupid like an 1,000 word article with a specific keyword density. When I talk about writing for customers, persuasive copywriting – heck, even writing something that folks would want to read – a typical response is, ‘Well, we just care about Google.’

“Hunh? I mean, we all love those happy Google rankings. But if a page doesn’t convert – and worse, the writing is so bad that it hurts the brand – the company doesn’t ‘win’. In fact, they’ve spent a lot of time and a lot of money for nothing.”

How staff can stonewall an SEO campaign

Where? My Econsultancy article ‘Five things to consider before starting an SEO campaign’
Who? Russell Hogg, of web design and print agency Superheroes of Search
Why it’s top: Russ elaborates on a problem so many SEO agencies encounter – a lack of staff buy-in among their clients. A lack of co-operation from a company’s full-time staff can actively harm an online marketing campaign and this comment highlights the real issue. A successful relationship between agency and client requires work both ways, as Russ explains.

“At the end of the day, the client needs to understand the needs of any agency they employ, and vice versa…it’s a 2 way street, but all clients should expect, as a minimum, detailed benchmark reports on a regular basis so the client can at least keep tabs of progress…or not!”

Linking online and offline marketing

Where? My #JUMPchallenge post on SEOptimise ‘ How to achieve excellence in joined-up marketing’
Who? Matt Owen, social media producer at Econsultancy
Why it’s top: My post explored the benefits of linking online and offline marketing efforts, and how that could be achieved. It was written from the position that many companies already have splintered efforts – techies on one side and PR experts on the other.

What Matt highlighted was where this splintering often begins.

“Especially good to see emphasis on team integration. Too often companies find their departments at odds as the organisation scales up, so it’s incredibly important to keep people in the loop and invest them with a set of core values rather than overly segregating them.”

This advice will help some readers prevent the problems and join up their marketing from the start.

The importance of communication
Where? My Econsultancy post ‘Five reasons your client hate you’
Who? A corporate identity from ambergreen Internet Marketing
Why it’s top: My post highlighted five different reasons an online marketing agency might have alienated its clients and this comment makes the list because it highlighted the issue that underlined most of the points I made.

“Of course Clients do not like to be patronised by agencies using jargon or treating each client in the same way with the same formula. No business is the same, and until other agencies realise this they will not give clients the bespoke, tailored service that is needed.”

The comment also reiterated the importance of communication across the whole of the company, as SEO is not an isolated effort.

“The larger the client, the more departments and people who will need to be involved and on board with any marketing or PR plan and the more important it is that an account manager exists to understand the layers of the business, after all, search does not work in a vacuum.”

Guest blogging in action

Where? My Econsultancy post ‘Link building for SEO beginners’
Who? Ashley Friedlein, CEO at Econsultancy
Why it’s top: My post advised creating interesting articles to encourage blogs to accept your guest posts without sponsorship. It also recommended making as many industry friends and acquaintances as possible so that more people are willing to publish your articles.

What I liked about Ashley’s comment was that it highlighted to readers the value of guest blogging – by drawing attention to the benefits of my own guest blog post.

“Very sensible advice. And, of course, this very post, on this very site, is actually an example of what you say in action! Valuable/interesting content + you’ve made friends with us (we like you back ;)) + link to your blogger profile which in turn links to your member profile which has SEOptimise – Search Engine Marketing which is nice link with nice anchor text. And now look… I’ve gone and linked to you again ;)”

How to Use Yahoo Pipes To Track Potential Questions on Yahoo Answers

Kelvin Newman — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 11:13:31 +0000

This is a guest post from Kelvin Newman at Site Visibility.

I’m starting to feel a bit sorry for Yahoo, not only are they seen by most people as a bit of a joke, largely the stick is unwarranted. They’ve got some great little products and services, two of which I use to this great little way of keeping tracking of easy social media interaction opportunities.

The main service is Yahoo Answers, its a hugely popular social site where users ask and answer questions. If you’ve not checked Yahoo Answers recently, go over now and have a look, there will be dozens of people asking questions related to your industry – no matter how obscure or niche it is.

The nightmare though is having to revisit the site everyday to see whether there’s anything new or relevant. Fortunately the main categories have RSS feeds so you could set up the feed in your RSS reader to keep track of the mentions in your chosen category, but your a busy digital marketer, you don’t have time to check through every question asked on the site. That’s where Yahoo Pipes comes in.

If you’ve never heard of Yahoo Pipes don’t worry, nobody has. It’s simple tool which allows you to do some very simple filtering and sorting of web data like RSS feeds. It can do some pretty clever tricks but what we want it to do is really simple. Take a feed from Answers, search for any questions that contain your keywords, discard those without and deliver those that do into a new RSS stream.

Start by dragging and dropping the a fetch feed icon from the side bar into the main screen. This will then create a box with a text field. Cut and paste the feed url from your most relevant category in Yahoo Answers. If more than one category is applicable click the addition/plus symbol and it’ll add a new text field for another category.

Next click the Operators expanding button in the side bar, find the filter button and drag and drop it between the Fetch Feed Box and Feed Output. It’ll have a text field you can type the word or phrases you want to monitor for. The drop down fields give you flexibility whether you want to look just in the Question Title and/or description Etc.

You can add more than one keyword by clicking the plus symbol, it gets quite clever now as well, you could filter questions that include SEO and PPC or you could set it up for questions that include SEO or PPC. It’s pretty self explanatory when it’s in front of you.

Now you need to connect the feed to the filter and from the filter to the out put. Click the circle and the bottom of the feed fetcher and drag it to the start of the filter, then do the same from the filter to the output. It should look something like the picture below.

Nearly there now, just save the pipe and hit the ‘Run this Pipe’ button. This will take you to a page where you can subscribe to this new feed. But I’m too lazy/busy to check my feedreader daily, so I take it a step further and use FeedMyInbox to take the feed address and email me whenever there is a suitable question.

Clever time saving trick which with a little tweaking you can use on dozens of social sites with RSS feeds. Do you monitor any social sites like this? Any tips to save time checking back for opportunities?

Top 10 Reasons Why Every SEM Needs an iPad

Kevin Gibbons — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:29:04 +0000

Last weekend I finally convinced myself to buy an iPad, after a few weeks of trying to figure out if I actually needed one.

I know I’m not the only one – and there’s probably a lot of people in the search industry who are currently contemplating the same decision, so I’m sure you’ll appreciate a few extra reasons you convince yourself that an iPad is essential!

1) How do you advertise on an iPad?

This is a question I was asked last week. The right answer may be that they don’t need an iPad app and they don’t need to think about marketing any differently just yet. But as a search marketer you should be aware and able to respond to your client, letting them know how the iPad may potentially change the game.

2) Why doesn’t your clients great flash-based site not convert as well on an iPad?!

The popularity of the iPad so far is incredible, you need to make sure users can browse clients (and your own) website in the same way they would normally.

3) Tweetdeck

Twitter is now essential for most SEM’s. Tweetdeck on the iPad is so much better than using a phone, so when you’re at home or on the train it’s far easier to use – and it saves booting up your laptop. It’s also makes it much easier when tweeting from conferences, instead of carrying around a laptop or slowly typing away on a phone.

4) Google Analytics app

Without Flash, Google Analytics isn’t quite as good on the web. So the Analytics app really helps here – very surprisingly AdWords doesn’t work very well at all on the iPad yet. I’m sure that’s something Google will be planning to fix quickly.

5) Email

I find the iPhone great for reading emails on the move, but it’s a bit too small to send long responses or to organise emails into folders. The iPad makes this much easier.

6) Amazon Kindle/iBooks

I’ve recently written a post on the top 12 books every SEM needs to read, it’s not always easy to have these available when you have a spare 20 minutes to read though. Using iBooks or the Amazon Kindle makes this far easier, removing the need to carry around a book. The Winnie the Pooh book was preloaded on the iPad – honest!

7) Reeder

I’ve found that I subscribe to and read blogs far less frequently these days. But by being able to star/share articles in Google Reader which I’m interesting in and coming back to read them later is really useful. There’s also the read it later app too, which I haven’t used yet but it does look to be very good.

8) Keynote

Don’t worry about taking your laptop to that client meeting for a presentation. Keynote on the iPad is far better!

9) Things

I’ve written before about the importance of organisation and GTD for a search marketer. Things is great for organising tasks and key projects, plus you can sync this across your Mac, iPhone and iPad – making it easier to stay up-to-date on the move.

10) Blogging

The WordPress app is a great way of writing blog posts when you’re not at your PC or laptop. Again, for us search engine marketers (SEM’s) it’s a great tool to use at conferences – making it easier to live-blog or type up notes.

11) A bonus reason – it’s pretty cool!

Watching HD YouTube videos, the BBC iPlayer and IMDB app film trailers is much better on the iPad – plus it’s a great way to read the newspaper on a Sunday morning!

So there you have it, no excuses now – you’re not just being an Apple addict and it’s a completely necessary part of your SEM toolkit!

Use Google Analytics custom segments to audit and improve search marketing

Dave Chaffey — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 09:20:06 +0000

Use Google Analytics custom segments to audit and improve search marketing

Anyone who has ever reviewed the keywords attracting visitors to a site will have seen that brand search terms usually dominate, often accounting for more than 50% of search related visits for well-known brands.

Every site has associated brands, but to paraphrase Morrisey, some brands are biggger than others. For these, isolating brand search is essential if you’re serious about using search to create incremental business i.e. create awareness and sales from new customers.

It follows that it’s futile to try to review and improve search engine marketing without taking brand phrases into account, but that’s the default for the less than savvy. For marketers, reviewing their analytics it’s easy to understand since the analytics tool doesn’t readily isolate brand and non-brand phrases.

For the search agency, well maybe they’re being less than transparent with their clients since it’s even easy for the incompetent to attract branded site visitors to a site. Of course this won’t apply to most readers of this esteemed blog!

This short tutorial will show you how to use Google Analytics to quickly set up Advanced Segments to help you review your search performance.
Setting up custom segments for search keywords in Google Analytics
Custom Advanced Segments are what you need to set these up. If you haven’t come across these because they’re hidden in Google Analytics, then you’re missing out – see my Smart Insights post on “10 different types of advanced segments”: http://www.smartinsights.com/blog/web-analytics/google-analytics-web-analytics/segmenting-google-analytics/.

For search marketers, there are standard segments for paid and natural segments which I’m sure you’re all using already – if not that post gives and example.

To understand the interaction of paid and natural brand phrases, I recommend setting up 4 advanced segments. I advise setting them up and labelling them as follows:

1. Natural search visits including brand.

2. Natural search visits NOT including brand.

3. Paid search visits including brand name(s).

4. Paid search visits NOT including brand name(s).

It just takes a few seconds to set each one up. I’ll show you how for an advanced segment for natural search visits containing the brand name. I’ll use my “brand name” from my site since I can’t use client data to illustrate this…

Step 1. Select “Create a new advanced segment” from the Advanced segments box top right or click on the Advanced Segment menu option in the left sidebar and chose “Create a new custom segment”

Step 2. First, select Keyword as the dimension to segment on from the “Traffic sources” dimension group on the left of the screen. Drag across. Easy.

Next filter by entering the brand name by choosing “contains” . Also, easy.

Tip: In many cases, you will want to include some variants of the brand. You do this using the pipe symbol and selecting “regular expression” rather than “contains”. For example, Starbucks|Star Bucks, although contains “bucks” would be easier…

Step 3 Next segment by natural search choosing a segment dimension as “and” as shown in the screengrab above. This will match “organic”. Paid is “cpc”

Step 4 Choose a name for your segment and press the “test” option to make sure you have it right.

Step 5 Finally you can apply your advanced segments to the report by selecting the segments you want from the Advanced Segments box on the top right as shown in the first screengrab.

This example shows a high level view of the breakdown of search traffic.

You can also use these segments within keyword reports to easily separate out brand and non brand keywords. For high volume phrases it can be worth setting up a contains “high volume keyword” so that you can analyse that in depth.

I hope that works for you. How do you use advanced segments for search analysis – I’d be interested to hear about the segments you use.

In the meantime, I’d be interested to hear how you use segments in Google Analytics.

10 Travel Search Marketing Strategies

Tad Chef — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 17:14:24 +0000

When it comes to travel SEO, competition is often fierce. Huge authority travel sites, luxury hotels and millions of apartments all fight for attention. Both SEOptimise in the UK and myself in Germany have been working with many SEO clients from the travel sector. Kevin Gibbons has already provided a must read resource on travel SEO back in 2008.

I’d like to list here 10 travel SEO strategies for those who have to compete in this tough niche.

Due to the high competitiveness of this market, travel SEO should be approached in manifold ways.

You can’t always compete with the big guys and age-old leaders in the good old organic results of Google. Thanks to universal search we have plenty of ways to get found. Also travel is about car rentals and flights. You have specialized “vertical” search engines for those.

1) Local SEO + map SEO
This is obvious, travel SEO is location based like no other. Even people from across the pond look for local results in your area on Google and beyond. Google local search results show up in most cases in searches like hotel london or apartment oxford. To appear there you need a lot of reviews on travel oriented sites like Tripadvisor. This is a strategy all travel related businesses should consider but especially those with new domains (1 year old or below).
You may consider map SEO part of local SEO but I’m talking here also about map providers other than Google. We had maps on the web long before Google. Many of them survived and still draw large traffic. I look in most cases for maps made in the country or place I go to. These are more accurate. Being on such maps is a major advantage for hotels, restaurants and other tourism related sites.

2) Multilingual SEO
This might seem obvious as well but how many hotels have websites in Russian, Chinese or Arabic? There are hundreds of languages and while you may assume that everybody speaks English most people search the Web in their native tongue. So while it may be near impossible to outmatch your competition in English you may be able to do so in other languages and local Google versions. Some nations also have important other search engines. China and Russia for instance have.

3) Image SEO
When searching for a destination to go to or a place to stay what do you look for? A keyword rich description? hardly. Rather you’re after beautiful images of nature, buildings and interiors. So image SEO should be a key component of a travel SEO campaign. Also it’s often far easier to get ranked in Google Image Search. Last but not least images show up in the regular Google search via Google Universal search results. In most cases image results are displaced on top of the page or above the fold.

4) Video SEO
Recently a study has shown that video’s are far more likely to rank on top of search results these days. In other words it’s much easier to optimize your YouTube videos to get on top of Google search with blended in video search results, as opposed to hoping to get there via regular text and link based ranking. YouTube is of course your friend here but SEO is much more than just optimization for YouTube.

5) Social media marketing
People don’t rely solely on Google these days. That’s not really news. Social Media is the elephant in the room. You can’t ignore social media marketing. Image and video is just part of it. The real social media is Facebook and Twitter but also first wave sites like Delicious or StumbleUpon. Of course travel oriented social sites abound. Sites like Foursquare and Gowalla are booming at the intersection of local SEO and social networking.

6) News SEO
When it comes to travel plans we often decide in the last minute. We may view a television program, find out about an event abroad or simply search for the random inspiration. A news event or a even a piece on the news which is not really a news item can provide such inspiration. For instance you can publish something on a group blog in the wake of a major event and draw visitors to your site. Our blog at SEOptimise can be found in Google News search results and I’ve used that technique more than once.

7) Branding
Competing for generic phrases or keywords can be murderous. So making people search for a brand is a good alternative. Also in case you can compete for the generic terms you should do more for your branding, not only in order to get branded searches via Google. Search results are volatile, Google might even change the algorithm in a way that you get downranked. With a strong brand you can survive even when your rankings don’t supply enough traffic anymore.

8) Content creation
Travel sites still tend be largely descriptive. Look at our apartments here, see how luxurious our hotel is, our flights are the cheapest etc. This is not really content in the sense I refer to here. I mean content that can appeal to web users who do not necessarily plan to visit you or your city. People who don’t even think of travelling but love the images, videos or blog posts. You see, I mentioned some of these above but it’s important to offer content for so called long tail searches. People searching for “london design hotel near airport” won’t find you unless your site mentions these words somewhere in an article. Here you can compete with the big guys from day one. You might start a blog for your business but that’s just one option. User Generated Contect (UGC) is another.

9) Authority sites
Some sites are still too young to rank for competitive travel relates searches. They can indirectly though when they place advertorials on already esatblsihed sites. This is a widely used technique by main stream media. Newspaper sites for instance offer such spots on their sites where they actually borrow you their rankings. When you can’t beat them, join them!

10) Travel search engines
Don’t forget travel search engines like Kayak, Sidestep or Travelocity to name just a few. What shopping search engines are for e-commerce sites, travel search engines mean for travel SEO; good additional traffic sources. Most of them have been around for years and have many users. Both Yahoo and Bing have also a say in the travel search market where otherwise you would ignore them in many cases.

So you see all roads lead to Rome, or in our case rather London or Oxford. You can’t solely focus on good old conventional SEO tactics when it comes to optimisation for the travel industry. Unless you can afford it either by being there for 10 years already or having a domain as strong as Wikipedia. You should employ at least a few strategies at the same time.

Do you want to know whether your site can already compete with the big guys?
Do you want to know how you could improve your visibility beyond organic Google results?

Contact SEOptimise to get a hand crafted travel SEO audit. Not sure yet? Then download our travel SEO case study in PDF format.

Hear SEOptimise Speak at SMX Advanced London 2010

Kevin Gibbons — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 18:53:47 +0000

The full agenda for SMX London is now almost complete, this was a great conference last year and is expected to be a must-attend event again this year – especially as this is now an advanced conference.

There’s lots of great tracks, but if you’re attending make sure you come and see us on the following panels:
Day 1) Search Ad Quality, Under The Microscope – Richard Fergie
Day 2) Social Media, Search & Reputation Management – Kevin Gibbons

And if you haven’t signed up yet, make sure you use our 15% discount code: KEVING010.

To our American readers not making the journey across the pond, we are also attending SMX Advanced in Seattle this June so we should get to see you there instead! ;)

20 SEO New Year’s Resolutions for 2010

Tad Chef — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 11:24:57 +0000

Creative Commons image by ahisgett

No matter if you like it or not when the old year fades away and the new year arrives most of us think about the past and the future.

Was it a successful year?
Where did we succeed, where did we fail?
Which of the mistakes do we want to overcome next year?

Most people tend to plan for the upcoming year. Plenty like to be very specific about these plans so they come up with new year’s resolutions they want to fulfill. We’re in the SEO industry are not exempt from it.

What goals do make sense for 2010? I’ve selected 20 of them you might want to use as your resolutions as well, the 20 SEO new year’s resolutions for 2010

I will build less links and get more links organically instead
I will care less about PageRank, traffic and rankings and focus more on conversions, profits and ROI instead.
I will stop “doing SEO” and will make my websites succeed on the Web instead, whatever it takes and no matter how you call it
I will try to get more organic visitors and less paid ones
I will try to get more returning visitors and instead of just casual social media and search visitors
I will reduce my bounce rate by 20, 30 or 40%
I will invest more in branding to get more branded searches and less via fickle generic keywords
I will stop using social media and start contributing in a meaningful way
I will care less about short term results and implement long term strategies instead
I will make my current projects succeed and my current clients happy instead of starting more projects and seeking new clients
I will get less dependent on Google and diversify my income sources
I will make my sites more usable for those users than reach them already to make them stay
I will set up more conversion goals to get results beyond sales. Think subscriptions, mentions, social media votes
I will combine my SEO, social media and CRM strategies to form a new holistic approach
I will stop competing by the price and will start competing by the quality of products and services. Indians will always be cheaper anyways
I will stop hiding what I do and rather proudly brag about my clients, employees and partners
I will undertake steps to gain foothold in the mobile and local markets by optimizing for mobile devices and local search
I will take part in some real life industry events or conferences to get more social for real
I will write more tutorials and how to articles to educate my peers and readers
I will use more different media formats like images, videos, micro blogging, ebooks and infographics to succeed in universal search

All these resolutions start with “I” in order for you to be able to better identify with them. It’s not solely the “I” of the author. It’s not only me. You can do it too.

You can get better in 2010 as well. Of course I have implemented some of them in the past already but still all of these resolutions make sense in 2010.

SEO not Important in 2010? Robert Scoble’s Ironic Video Advertorial Confuses the Masses

Tad Chef — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:15:40 +0000

Robert Scoble by Alex de Carvalho

In the attention economy the attention rich win over those who get less attention. As controversy and ignorance creates more attention than common sense and boring expertise we have to deal with the phenomenon of SEO bashing every now and then. People pointing fingers saying “look at that, how stupid they are bashing SEO again” create even more buzz.

Web 2.0 celebrities can use this attention gap in order to push their own interests. Failed entrepreneurs like Jason Calacanis have done that in the past repeatedly to ride the wave of negative hype. So this time I was a little bit astounded to hear it from Robert Scoble the web pundit everybody seems to listen to.

I seldom listen to Mr. Scoble as I’m too busy to listen to my trustworthy friends and my own echoes on the Web: I’ve just been nominated as one of the 100 most influential online marketers of 2009. Not sure I am but if others say so, I maybe am. So let’s use a little of my perceived influence.

The real search and SEO experts already have explained once again, like they always do, that SEO is still alive and kicking so what the hell is this post about?

It’s about how Robert Scoble’s ironic video advertorial confused the masses and the search marketing industry. Yes, you heard right. It’s ironic and it’s an advertorial.

It’s ironic and an advertorial because these guys Scoble talks to are from an SEO company themselves.

In fact they even compete with us, SEOptimise, in the search engines. So I just did a little checking with some tools everybody can use to take a look at any website to find out why they deserve such attention. The guys in the video advertorial represent a company called roiworks.com

Keep in mind that the guys from roiworks.com present their site as a “Search Engine Marketing Firm”. Search engine marketing of course entails SEO, PPC and other online marketing tactics SEOptimise offers as well. Indeed we even have similar keywords in our HTML title: UK Search Engine Marketing Agency.

So let’s compare our rankings for search engine marketing firm:

roiworks.com is nowhere to be found. Neither in the US/Canada nor the UK.
We’re at 13 for search engine marketing firm in the Google UK results in spite of not having the actual word “firm” in the title at all.

OK, OK, we know search engine rankings don’t mean much, I’ve said it myself more than once. Let’s take a look at the backlink numbers via Yahoo Site Explorer then:

Yahoo backlink numbers don’t show much as well some people will argue. So let’s take a look at web analytics. roiworks.com exists at least since 2001 according to Archive.org but Google Trends or Google Ad Planner can’t find any data on them. So let’s try Compete.com! roiworks.com is an US company and Compete measures US traffic quite well so let’s take a look at the numbers for visits in November:

In case you wonder why we lost so many visitors over the recent months: I’ve been quite lazy lately. Aside of this there must be something wrong with these numbers, after all, they get featured by Robert Scoble and we don’t. Did they actually sleep with him? Or maybe they’re just friends.

The video setup by itself is also quite funny. You have those two awkward guys talking like for ages. The one, more the Woody Allen type is keen on stressing that black hat SEO is very, very bad while the other dressed in black and wearing a black hat like in a mafia movie might be his bodyguard.
They talk about SEO, search and search marketing all the time telling us how important it really is. For instance they argue that local search is crucial etc.

Update: Make sure to read the statement by George, CEO of roiworks.com

So Robert Scoble’s post asking whether SEO will not be important anymore in 2010 is just a rhetorical question. It’s as if you’d ask: will the sky still be blue in 2010? Will the sky be blue in 2010? Yes, it will. I recommend a post by SEOMoz which, among other predictions, shows a statistic according to which 78% of questioned marketers assign more importance to SEO in 2010.

Btw. Robert Scoble admitted the baiting of the SEO industry later on. Mr. Scoble is not stupid, but the reaction of the SEO industry is too predictable by now. Thus I don’t link to such SEO bashing posts and advise you to refrain from doing it as well. The company Mr. Scoble is featuring really needs attention and all those links. They barely got any. Unlike more “traditional agencies”.

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