Web Search & Marketing Newsletter – March 2014

Welcome to the latest issue of our monthly newsletter which covers news, tips and advice on effective website marketing, with a particular focus on search marketing techniques and trends.

In the first article this month, we take a look at the ongoing development of the Google Analytics Solutions Gallery and how this is becoming a valuable resource for users to access and develop key website performance reports within their Analytics account. Next, we take a look at the rich, interactive formats of the cross-device engagement adverts that Google AdWords recently introduced, and discuss for which types of businesses those are most suited.

In the final article this month we examine Google’s targeting of link networks and how this has led to the removal from the search results of several link networks from around the world, plus the recent targeting of unethical guest blogging techniques.

You can read more below, or you can also browse through previous editions of the newsletter by month. You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest developments during the month, or Like our Facebook page or Google+ page for updates.

On to this month’s edition…

The Google Analytics Solutions Gallery

There have been some on-going developments to Google Analytics over the past year which have facilitated its user-friendliness with easier ways to see how your website is performing on key metrics. This should be of interest to any business using this tool, or Analytics user who wants quick and easy access to different report formats and to the key metrics that really matter to their website marketing.

Google originally announced the launch of its Google Analytics Solutions Gallery in January 2013. This was aimed to help new users, for whom it can be overwhelming to figure out where to look first for the data and insights that enable better decision making. It was also directed towards more advanced users, for whom it can be time consuming to create different custom reports or dashboards to get the clearest snapshot of a website’s performance.

The Google Analytics Solutions Gallery has been developing over the past year and is now a valuable resource that hosts a wide variety of Dashboards, Advanced Segments and Custom Reports which can be quickly and easily imported into your own Analytics account to see how well a website is performing on different key metrics. Google initially introduced a range of solutions that it deemed to be useful for most businesses, but as more users create and share new report formats, the gallery now holds over 3,000 different templates, such as:

• Social sharing report – Content is king, but only if you know what it’s up to. Learn what content from your website visitors are sharing and how they’re sharing it.
• Mobile activity reports – choose from a range of dashboards or custom reports to get deeper insights into mobile or tablet behaviour.
• Publisher dashboard – Bloggers can use this dashboard to see where readers come from and what they do on your site.
• Technical dashboard – get insights into load speed, browser usage and screen resolutions to monitor how well your site performs.
• Engaged traffic advanced segment – Measure traffic from high-value visitors who view at least three pages AND spend more than three minutes on your site. Why do these people love your site?

Once you are logged into your Analytics account, you can access the Gallery from different points when setting up new reports, or you can go directly to the Solutions Gallery site. The most popular reports being downloaded recently are:

• New Google Analytics User Starter Bundle
• Social Media Dashboard
• Site Performance Dashboard
• SEO Dashboard – Finding Top Content and Keywords
• Segmentation Greatest Hits: From Ad Analysis to SEO to Sitelinks
• SEO Insights for Google Organic (not provided)
• The Remarketing starter pack (A recent inclusion that improves Remarketing with Google Analytics, by enabling the full power of enhanced segmentation for this data set).

Google’s efforts to ease the use of Analytics for both novice and advanced users have been well received and the development of the Solutions Gallery will continue. If you would like to know more about this resource and how it can help to filter the most important metrics for your website, contact us now for more information.

Google Launches Engagement Ads

A recent development in Google AdWords has been the introduction of Engagement Ads as part of the Display Network. These ads use a new format that can be relevant to businesses that want to strengthen brand-to-audience relationships by making a rich creative canvas come alive as consumers stream videos, play games, and more.

Since the initial beta launch on Engagement Ads, they have become multi-screen compatible and offer a number of different formats. Advertisers have found it preferable to enable consumers to have the same experience with their brand, irrespective of which device they’re using to connect. Google has therefore included self-service ad formats, including Cross Device ads, a YouTube Masthead Lightbox to aid in consistent branding across ad formats, and a Shopping Catalog Lightbox, which allows users to display multiple products from a merchant center account. The latter lets marketers showcase a number of items that shoppers can click and purchase, right from within the ad unit.

Engagement ads are available in a number of standard banner sizes and create interaction with the user. When customers interact with these ads, they load rich media either within the ad, or in an expanded canvas to present more information in video or graphic format. This type of interaction reduces ‘accidental’ engagements and therefore provides users with a better experience and should also give advertisers better value and recognition from the advert engagement. For instance, on laptops and desktop computers, people can hover their mouse over the ad for two seconds in order to engage with the content, whilst on mobile phones and tablets, consumers can tap on the ad to prompt the engaged state.

The Display Network engagement branding campaigns are directed more towards large corporations rather than SMBs, but the Shopping functionality may be more suited to SMBs with a wide range of products. You can watch an informative video about Google Engagement Ads here.

If you want more information about how these kind of ads to help your business and how they can be used as part of your Google AdWords campaign, contact us now.

Google Targets Bad Link Networks

Google has implemented strict approaches over the past year through penalising and removing link building networks and spam guest bloggers from search engine rankings. Guest bloggers defined as spam have had their sites and network of sites penalised and in some cases removed from Google search results. During the same period a number of large link building networks, predominantly from Europe, have been completely removed from the Google search results.

The head of Google’s webspam team, Matt Cutts, recently announced that webmasters should avoid guest blogging requests as the practice is currently polluted with spam, which has led to a substantial amount of sites receiving penalties. The recent trend for spam content and links being generated through poor guest blogging techniques has been cracked down on by Google and more action is indicated for 2014, so doing this purely for link building is now being targeted (you can read more about this here).

Automated emails to blog owners and automated requests for guest blog posts and reciprocal link exchanges has rendered the technique ineffective, with Google now ignoring or penalising the practice. The changes in guest blogging highlights the importance of natural link building and this can also be seen through Google recently targeting and removing several link networks.

Over the past month Google has removed two major link networks in Poland from search results and this follows take-downs from Germany and other European countries. These link networks have been de-indexed from Google search results and sites associated with these networks have received substantial ranking penalties.

These strict approaches by Google over the past year emphasise the importance of natural link building to achieve SEO success. If you’d like to know more about how to avoid getting penalised by Google and the best practice for natural link-building, contact us now.

Welcome to the latest issue of our monthly newsletter – the first for 2014 – which covers news, tips and advice on effective website marketing and search marketing techniques and trends.

To start the New Year, we’ve put together a list of the top events that took place in the search engine marketing / online marketing world in 2013, which have had an impact on websites already, but will also have an ongoing impact throughout 2014. These events include developments in the Pay-Per-Click field with Google AdWords, within the SEO sector, and also with Google Analytics.

We’ve covered these events in some detail in previous issues of this newsletter, but here we summarise the main changes and the implications for any website marketer, as they will all have a bearing on developments in 2014 and may be used to an advantage where applicable. In this fast changing and developing marketplace, we can expect further changes in the next 12 months, but for now, these recent ones from the past year need to be considered as part of your marketing plans for this year.

You can read more below, or you can also browse through previous editions of the newsletter by month. You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest developments during the month, or Like our Facebook page or Google+ page for updates.

On to this month’s edition…

Developments in Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Google AdWords launches Enhanced Campaigns

In February 2013, Google announced major new changes to AdWords, called Enhanced Campaigns, and these were fully implemented across all accounts by the end of July. Enhanced Campaigns met some criticism from advertisers as some of the previous flexibility across devices was removed, but the benefits included some more flexible bidding strategies and targeting of some ad extensions. Most advertisers have not seen significant changes since the introduction of Enhanced Campaigns, although the main issue remains the management and cost of mobile ads and some associated factors. However, since the new system is now fully operational, advertisers should be looking at the new opportunities for their campaigns and how some of the new settings can be used to their advantage.
(You can read our original article on this issue here).

Google Shopping integrates with AdWords

In September there was a significant change to Google Shopping (previously called Google Product Search) which meant that it became more closely integrated with the paid AdWords advertising system. Although any ecommerce business can still upload their listings to Google Shopping, the visibility of these in the search results and in the Shopping search is now dependent on running a Google AdWords Product Listing campaign. This change proved controversial as many small businesses showed concern that they would not be able to compete with those companies that can afford a larger advertising budget. However, since the change, most advertisers have found that the paid Product Listing Adverts are a very effective search marketing technique for price competitive products, at a lower cost per click than the standard text ads. This is likely to become more competitive in 2014 but it’s an essential advertising tool for online retailers to be using.
(You can read our original article on this issue here).

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Trends

Google introduces the new ‘Hummingbird’ Search Algorithm

Google announced a major change in 2013 through implementing the ‘Hummingbird’ update, which is a new search algorithm that attempts to improve results for conversation based search queries. The Hummingbird update allows Google to understand more detailed search queries and to also identify the correct meaning or context of the search request to produce more relevant results. Some website marketers have seen notable ranking changes following the introduction of this change, but the impact for most companies was minimal and underlined the importance of unique and quality content on web pages. However, it is one of the ongoing and ever-changing factors that website marketers need to consider as part of their SEO strategy and content development to ensure that ‘long tail search terms’ are being incorporated effectively and that search referrals continue to increase in 2014.
(You can read our original article on this issue here).

The importance of search query data in Google’s Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools is starting to gain more importance for website owners when reviewing search query data and traffic coming from organic (SEO) search rankings. This is due to the more limited data now available in Google Analytics (see below) which means that the reports in Google Webmaster Tools provide at least some level of insight and trend information. The Google Webmaster Tools reports can be integrated with Google Analytics, but also provide some depth of analysis in the original reports, including the ability to click on a specific page URL and see what search terms are sending traffic to that URL. Although there are also limitations with these reports, all website marketers should be using this information at least monthly to track their SEO activity.
(You can read our original article on this issue here).

Guest blogging gains popularity

Following Google’s previous actions to crack down on poor quality links, 2013 saw an increasingly popular trend for ‘guest blogging’ for website marketers to develop valuable backlinks on popular and prominent blogs. However, it has also become a new platform for spam emails and for bloggers to be inundated with requests to post content, so that what used to be a valuable technique has now become popularised and questionable. While the technique can still be used effectively, Google’s Matt Cutts has emphasised that spammy or paid content can lead to harsh penalties for specific websites or networks of websites. It is therefore more important than ever to implement effective and valuable strategies for guest blogging, including developing relationships and contributing valuable content, and it remains one area to consider for link and content development in 2014.
(You can read our original article on this issue here).

Changes with Google Analytics

Google Analytics showing “(not provided)” search data

Perhaps the biggest frustration for search marketers in 2013 has been the increasing impact of ‘not provided’ data in Google Analytics, which has meant that organic search term data is no longer being reported and so is unavailable to companies to see which search terms have been used to find their website through a Google search. This is the result of Google using a secure search function, initially just for Google account users but then, by the second half of 2013 for most searches globally, due to privacy concerns. For search marketers, this loss of data is significant and places more reliance on Google’s Webmaster Tools reports (see above) or data from paid search activity. By February 2014 it’s expected that all Google search data will be ‘not provided’ and there is little that can be done about this other than look at the overall search traffic volumes and some alternate but less insightfull reports.
(You can read our original article on this issue here).

Google’s Universal Analytics

Google had been testing their ‘Universal Analytics’ tracking code for some time and made it available to all Analytics accounts in March 2013. The roll-out of this significant new version is likely to continue more actively in 2014 as Google wants to move all websites to this upgraded version of the new tracking code – it’s a simpler but more flexible tracking method, enabling new functionality and potentially tracking of users across different devices. There are still some limitations – such as being able to use remarketing – but this should be fixed soon and the new UA code will need to be upgraded by website owners to keep up with the ongoing development of Analytics tracking and reporting.
(You can read our original article on this issue here).

Google Analytics introduces Demographics & Interests Reports

Regular users of Google Analytics will have seen some notable changes to the report layouts and naming during 2013 as Google continues to improve the product and make it more accessible to the average user. Two notable reports that have been added are the Demographics and Interests reports, which use Google’s user data to provide a sample insight into the visitor profiles of a website – you can see gender, age range, interest categories, which in turn can provide new insights as well as advertising targeting opportunities. To enable these reports, website marketers may need to amend their Analytics tracking code (and the new Universal code doesn’t yet support these reports) but it’s a recommended enhancement that should be implemented and reviewed in 2014.
(You can read our original article on this issue here).

Welcome to the latest issue of our monthly newsletter, which covers news, tips and advice on effective website marketing techniques and trends.

In the first article this month, we take a look at the introduction by Google of the significant new ‘Hummingbird’ search algorithm. This is the largest change that has been made to its search algorithm for a number of years and one in which all businesses with websites should be interested. So, we discuss what this is, how it may have impacted your rankings and what the best SEO policy is to get the optimum results for your website from it.

Next, we take a look at the recent introduction of demographics and interests reports into Google Analytics, how to enable these reports and what useful data is available from them. In the final article this month, we examine Facebook’s Edgerank for Business Pages because it will influence how often followers see your posts. So, we provide details about what it is and how can it be used.

You can read more below, or you can also browse through previous editions of the newsletter, either by month or by subject. You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest developments during the month, or follow our Facebook page or Google+ page for updates.

On to this month’s edition…

Google Introduces The New ‘Hummingbird’ Search Algorithm

At the end of September Google announced that it had been using its new search algorithm since the end of August. This is important for any business owner who is at all interested in their site’s Search Engine optimisation, as it is a very significant change in Google’s search engine.

As a result, there are a number of questions that curious business owners may like answered in relation to this change and this article serves to address those:

1. What’s a “search algorithm?”
That’s a technical term for what you can think of as a recipe that Google uses to sort through the billions of web pages and other information it has, in order to return what it believes are the best answers.

2. What’s “Hummingbird?”
It’s the name of the new search algorithm that Google is using, one that Google says should return better results.

3. What type of “new” search activity does Hummingbird help?
“Conversational search” is one of the biggest examples Google gave. People, when speaking searches, may find it more useful to have a conversation. For example, “What’s the closest place to buy the iPhone 5s to my home?” A traditional search engine might focus on finding matches for words — finding a page that says “buy” and “iPhone 5s,” for example.

Before Hummingbird, your results might have been generally related to your topic or question, and Google may have pulled pages that only had one or two words from your search question. But with the Hummingbird update, Google should be able to understand the entire meaning behind your searches; it will be paying attention to each word in the search, so the full extent of the conversation is considered when displaying your results.

4. What does it mean that Hummingbird is now being used?
When Google switched to Hummingbird (which it did so quickly that no one really noticed) it’s as if it dropped the old engine out of a car and put in a new one. Google says — it’s built on both existing and new parts, organised in a way to especially serve the search demands of today. So although it’s a new engine, it continues to use some of the same parts of the old one, like the Penguin and Panda updates to it.

5. When’s the last time Google replaced its algorithm this way?
In 2010, the “Caffeine Update” was a huge change. But that was also a change mostly meant to help Google better gather information (indexing) rather than sorting through the information. Google search chief Amit Singhal told me that perhaps 2001, when he first joined the company, was the last time the algorithm was so dramatically rewritten.

6. Does this mean I’m going to lose traffic from Google?
The very subtle introduction of Hummingbird hasn’t sparked any wave of consumers or website publishers complaining that Google’s results suddenly got bad. If you didn’t have problems with your rankings since the end of August, then you came through Hummingbird unscathed.

Google’s saying this is very much a query-by-query effect, one that may improve specific searches (particularly complex ones), rather than something that hits “head” terms that can, in turn, cause major traffic shifts.

7. What’s Google’s response if I lost traffic?
Perhaps it was due to Hummingbird, but Google stressed that it could also be due to some of the other parts of its algorithm, which are always being changed, tweaked or improved. There’s no way to know for sure, unfortunately.

8. What’s the best on-going SEO strategy for Hummingbird?
Google says there’s nothing new or different SEOs or website publishers need to worry about and the main thing is still to have original, high-quality content on the site. Hummingbird just allows Google to process it in new and hopefully better ways, which mainly involves understanding the full meaning of a search query.

Since Hummingbird is focused on getting rid of irrelevant and unimportant results, this change should actually allow you to rise above your competition. If you’ve already been busy creating content and building links from trustworthy websites, the Hummingbird update will allow you to continue ranking high since Google is looking for those types of sites i.e ones that provide valuable answers to their searchers’ queries.

9. In what ways can I improve my site’s content and back-links?
Focus upon creating articles that contain a “How to” approach and that present definite answers to user queries that will help them, especially ones that aren’t widely known.

(A tip for webmasters is to use the revolutionary Schema mark vocabulary with rich snippets like ratings and reviews, recipe preparation time etc. This is the best way to allow Google to clearly understand the content displayed on your site).

Hummingbird has especially adapted itself to serve the needs of mobile users. Catering to a mobile audience by creating a mobile version of your site with a faster loading time, fewer images, easy navigation, etc. Users hate sites that are slow and Google always panders to its users.

The best way to let Google identify you and move from the anonymous web to the named web is by using Google authorship. People tend to click more often on search results displaying an author image as opposed to anonymous search results.

Following an ethical natural linking strategy through building relationships is preferable to acquiring links using the old methods of article syndication and cheap content marketing. Earn links by serving your customers well and increasing your brand value is the strategy to follow for the long term.

You can read more about these five recommended ways to improve your rankings with Hummingbird here.

10. So what’s the summary of all this and what does it mean for my business website?
Google has simply replaced its engine and made searches more on target with what users want and need in today’s world by improving its understanding of more complex, conversational search queries. So when it comes to Hummingbird, your SEO priorities should remain mostly the same, although creating valuable content for users has never been more important.

For more information about how we can ensure your SEO policy is optimised for Hummingbird, please contact us now.

Google Analytics Introduces Demographics & Interests Reports

In a recent development that will be interesting to many Google Analytics users, it now includes data on your users’ demographics (age, gender) and interests (affinity categories, other categories). These useful new reports provide details on who those users are that visit your site, and how their behaviour varies by attribute (e.g., male vs. female).

In order to make data available in these reports, it’s firstly necessary to make a simple, one-line change to your tracking code, more details about which can be found here.

Then simply set the enabling options in Analytics from within these categories of reports in the Audience section:

Demographics

• Overview (overview of traffic by age and gender)
• Age (traffic by age ranges)
• Gender (traffic by gender)

Interests

• Overview (overview of traffic by affinity and other categories)
• Affinity Categories (behavior by affinity categories)
• Other Categories (behavior by other interest categories)

This data is also available in custom reports, and they can be used as the basis for segmentation, which lets you evaluate how your users’ behaviour varies by demographics and interests; for example, do males interested in automobiles convert more frequently or read specific types of content more than females who are interested in athletic apparel?

Since these are the same demographics and interest categories that are used to target ads on the Google Display Network, it’s possible to build segments using these attributes, apply them to any of your Analytics reports, and use that analysis to refine campaign strategies.

Information for these new reports is derived from the DoubleClick third-party cookie. When that cookie is not associated with a user, Analytics cannot conclude demographics and interest categories, and so these reports may represent only a subset of your users and not the overall composition of your site traffic. In addition, some data in reports may be removed when thresholds are applied to prevent inferring the identity of an individual user. You can find out more about these thresholds here.

If you’d like more details about how we can help you set up and interpret your Analytics data to provide you with useful feedback on your site’s performance and visitors, contact us now.

Understanding Facebook Edgerank for Business Pages

If you’re using Facebook Business Pages as part of your marketing activity, you need to be aware of the ‘Edgerank’ system used by the site, as this will have a bearing on how often your posts will be seen by your followers, and how the interaction with your business page will be affected. So, what is it, and how can it be used?

Facebook’s Edgerank system is an advanced algorithm developed by Facebook, which ensures relevant and important content related to the user’s interests are displayed throughout the news feed. Edgerank analyses user behaviour through likes and other forms of interactions between the user and company pages or other pages in general. The algorithm focuses on time decay, showing greater importance for recent interactions between a user and company page, in comparison to older interactions.

Edgerank is based on two other components known as Affinity and the Weight System. Affinity deems repeat interactions between a user and a company page as more important than a single interaction between a user and a company page. This respects long term customer and business relationships and ensures when competing with each other, long term affinity will out rank short term affinity, provided there are even interactions between the user and both company pages. The weight system is another important component, which judges what interactions are the most important. The weight system views a comment as being more important than a like.

When you have a business page on Facebook, you can see analytics for this page and the posts that have been added. The main figure of note here is ‘reach’, which refers to the number of interactions per single post based on likes, comments and shares. Maximizing reach and interaction levels are important for effective Facebook Business Marketing campaigns as these will influence the Edgerank score and show your posts to more people.

Ideally Facebook Business pages want popular users to like and interact with posts. Through having ten popular fans with over five hundred friends each interacting with the page, the reach could potentially be as high as five thousand. By having one hundred unpopular fans that have ten friends each interacting with the company posts, the potential reach is only one thousand. So while all likes are beneficial it is important to target popular customers or fans to help content become more visible to a much larger audience.

Therefore the role of Edgerank can be governed by the type of posts being made to your Facebook Business Page, so that you develop followers who are relevant and interested in your content, and also posts should be designed to encourage interaction, whether it’s clicking a link, Liking the post, or sharing and adding comments. The more this can be achieved, the more often your followers will see your posts and hopefully interact with your Page.

If you’d like to know more about the Edgerank system, and how to use Facebook Business Pages as part of your online marketing, please contact us for more details.

Web Search & Marketing Newsletter – September 2013

Welcome to the latest edition of our regular newsletter, which covers news, tips and advice on effective website marketing techniques and the latest trends.

In the first article this month we take a look at how Google’s recent changes to Analytics access controls and user permissions provides enhanced flexibility over what level of data can be viewed. Then, we follow-up our previous article on Google Shopping with an update on how its evolved into a Paid Listing service, that allows businesses to showcase their products online, as well as the importance of keeping up-to-date with recent developments.

You can read more below, or you can also browse through previous editions of the newsletter, either by month or by subject. You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest developments during the month, or follow our Facebook page or Google+ page for updates.

On to this month’s edition…

Google Changes Analytics User Permissions

Google recently announced two primary changes that offer more specific controls over how different users can interact with Google Analytics accounts. These changes are to its access controls/user permissions and are going to make a big difference to those that manage Google Analytics accounts. However, companies still need to own their Analytics account and the data, so should have ultimate control over these settings.

Of course, ultimately, Google owns your Analytics data and since the data resides on their servers you could never gain full control over it. However, the original creator of the Analytic account will have administrative control over the data that’s collected and the access provided to other users, and so this should be the business itself and a centralised login so that no one person in the company controls this.

It can often be the case that if Google Analytics has been set up by a web designer, the admin access to the account is controlled by them, and previously, if set up as part of their overall account, the designers couldn’t then add admin access for a business as this would give users access to all their other design clients. This has caused issues with a lack of control by the business, and the potential to lose data if the relationship with the web designers sours.

The recent changes to the access permissions and roles provide more control over which sections of the data can be viewed (but not claimed) by certain individuals. Firstly, access permissions will be able to be set at the property level, not just at the account and profile levels. Secondly, access roles are expanding beyond the current administrator and viewer options to allow any user a combination of view, edit and manage users access. So this provides more powerful control, but also means it can be more complicated to know who has access to what parts of an account.

Google explains how permissions will be inherited in the new system: “Properties inherit permissions set on their parent account, and profiles inherit permissions set on their parent properties. For example, a user with view access to an account, also has view access to all of that account’s properties and profiles”. Existing account admins still get full access in the new system (edit, view and manage users) and existing account viewers will continue to have view-only access.

Matching the new permission types with different levels of the hierarchy should give every type of organisation the flexibility they need in controlling access to data and configuration settings. It’s important that organisations audit the people that have access to the data once a year (or once a quarter depending on the data governance), as many forget to do this. They should exclude people that no longer need access, or adjust their permissions as necessary.

If you’re a Google Analytics manager, User Permissions is a critical tool as it helps to push more data into the hands of more people in a safe way. You can read more about the new Google Analytics User Permissions here.

If you’d like to know how we can help your business to make the most of these changes, contact us now for more information.

Recent Developments with Google Shopping

In a follow-up to our original article in September 2011, entitled “Google Shopping becomes an important online shopping tool” – where we described the original shopping comparison service – this month we look at how this has evolved into a tool that allows business to showcase their products online through the Google Merchant Center, plus it has become an integral part of Google AdWords.

Google Shopping – formerly Google Product Search, Google Products and Froogle – originally allowed users to search for products on online shopping websites and compare prices between different vendors. The service listed prices submitted by merchants, and was monetised through AdWords advertising like other Google services.

Alongside the immediate re-branding from Google Product Search to Google Shopping on May 31, 2012, Google also announced that in late 2012, it would change the service to use a “pay-to-play” model, where merchants would have to pay Google to list their products on the service, with results influenced by both relevance and the bid amounts they pay. Google justified the move by stating that it would allow the service to “deliver the best answers for people searching for products and help connect merchants with the right customers.”

The change proved controversial as some small businesses showed concern that they would not be able to compete with larger companies that can afford a larger advertising budget. Microsoft’s Bing also attacked the move in an advertising campaign known as “Scroogled”, which called Google out for using “deceptive advertising practices” and suggested that users use its competing Bing Shopping service instead.

Although the paid listing version of this tool remains controversial, it remains a very effective way for businesses to display their products online with images, for those larger sized ones that have sufficient budget resources to do this. So for those that are aware of this technology, it’s important to keep up-to-date with recent developments. One of these is the recent announcement by Google about the enforcement of a specific requirement, which is aimed to continue improving data quality on Google Shopping.

The compulsory use of the “unique product identifier” and “identifier exists” attributes will come into force from September 16th in Australia. By November, all violating listings will be rejected and will not be served through Product Listing Ads, so it’s vital that this requirement is put in place by then. (These new feed specifications are already being enforced for all accounts in the United States and non-exempt accounts in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom).

Please review the latest product feed specification to learn more. Or if you’d like more information about how to use product listings with images online through Google Shopping contact us now.

Web Search & Marketing Newsletter – July 2013

Welcome to the latest issue of our regular newsletter, which covers news, tips and advice on effective website marketing techniques and trends, to help you keep up to date on the latest developments.

In the first article this month we take a look at the use of phone call tracking to identify conversions by source coming via this route. Next, we examine guest blogging and how it’s critical to focus on the relationship building process, rather than just as a link-building technique. Finally, we take a look at the release of Google’s Universal Analytics into public beta and the features and benefits of this.

You can read more below, or you can also browse through previous editions of the newsletter, either by month or by subject. You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest developments during the month, or follow our Facebook page or Google+ page for updates.

On to this month’s edition…

Using Phone Call Tracking

Whether your business is using conversion tracking as part of Google AdWords, or goal tracking in Google Analytics, this type of data is essential to understand where sales or enquiries are coming from, down to the keyword and advert level. However, for any business where most leads may come via a phone call, this is harder to track as the link between the source of the website visitor and the phone call being made is broken. This is where phone call tracking techniques can add more insight and value to an advertiser.

Phone call tracking has been around for many years in different forms, and as the need to track and optimise conversions grows, this technique is becoming another important tool for the advertiser. There are a number of good phone call tracking companies operating in the UK market and they can provide a reasonably low cost way of tracking the source of conversions, whether they come from Google AdWords or any search engine visit, or from any other third party website. Google AdWords also provides a call tracking system in the US and UK.

Call tracking usually works through the addition of some javascript on a website or web page, which identifies the source of a visitor and displays a unique phone number on the website. If the visitor calls the business, that number will track the lead by source, potentially down to individual search term level. Whether the website has their standard phone number displayed in the text or as an image, an alternate number can be displayed depending on where the site visitor come from, although images will need to be changed or adapted to cater for this.

The advertiser will buy a range of phone numbers – usually 1300 or 1800 – to be used for the various advertising sources and displayed on the website. The call tracking company will generate these numbers and track the calls made, including the option of recording the phone conversations, and provide analytics to show which sources have generated the calls. This data can sometimes be imported into a Google Analytics account as well, as a goal source.

One potential issue for advertisers is if they use a memorable number, such as 1300 FLOWER, as call tracking won’t be able to replicate this number and make it so memorable to the user – which can be an issue if the number might be used in a radio advert or on a billboard. The other main question is how many numbers might be needed, as these can be generated as ‘absolute’ (one number for each source) or session based (where a pool of numbers are used and displayed in time segments to identify source). The former method can be very expensive, particularly if there are lot of search terms being used in an AdWords campaign, but is more accurate. However, the latter method should be sufficient for most advertisers.

Although the cost of call tracking isn’t that high, it is an additional cost to include as part of the marketing activity. However, the insights that call tracking can provide is extremely valuable and enables advertisers to see the real cost per lead being generated by source, which will provide a more accurate figure for a Return on Investment calculation. Otherwise, call enquiries will remain a general ‘pool’ of new business leads which can’t be attributed to a source or the advertising spend.

If you’d like to know more about phone call tracking for your marketing campaigns, please get in touch for a discussion.

Best Practice for Guest Blogging

The regular changes that Google’s been making to its search algorithms recently to clamp down on poor quality links or content has started to change the focus of many website’s link building strategies. Outsourcing link building to agencies that use bulk link techniques on dubious sites has never worked that well, but now more than ever, an effective link building program should be focused on ‘relationship building’ rather than simple link building.

One of the popular ways to go about relationship building is by being a guest blogger on a reputable blog. This has always been an incredibly effective means of generating high quality links from popular and relevant web pages, but more recently the over-use and poor implementation of this technique has resulted in many bloggers cringing at inboxes full of poorly written, self-serving pitch requests, and ultimately ignoring the vast majority of would be ‘guest posts’. In the same way that numerous linking request emails started to flood into mailboxes several years ago, the same is now true for guest blog requests, so that a number of blogs are now closing their doors to guest post submissions.

Furthermore, according to Matt Cutts – the head of Google’s webspam team – “Google is willing to take action if they see spammy, or low quality guest blogging…which is basically putting low quality articles with embedded links on that site”. He goes on to say that “article-spinning, or low quality syndication are the areas in which Google are going to take an interest”. You can hear more about his comments in a video here.

Guest blogging still works however, and works well, but it has to be done effectively as genuine relationship building, rather than blatant link building. The links will come by building real relationships with the people running the sites so that a level of trust and respect is developed and the guest blog posts add to the quality and tone of the original blog.

Here are some useful tips on the best practice for guest blogging:

• #1 Research potential link sources well: Research sources through social media channels, especially Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Seek out high quality blogs and get to know the blog first, before making contact.
• #2 Don’t be too direct: The first time you contact a blogger, don’t pitch to them – instead, get to know them. If you are targeting a larger blog with multiple writers, then you might want to go by the way of an introduction. Most bloggers are happy to help out people they like with a link, but the only way to get that is to focus on the relationship before the link.
• #3 Approach through social media: Better yet, skip email altogether for the first contact. Instead, make contact through social channels, where you are much more likely to get a response. Twitter is one of the best social networks for finding and connecting with bloggers and should be the first point of contact. Start by following, then tweet directly to them, but don’t ask for a link on the first tweet.
• #4 Personalise the pitch: What if you don’t know enough about the blogger to make it personal? Then it’s probably too soon to be pitching for a link! Nothing will get your guest post denied quicker than sending a generic pitch.
• #5 Offer value: The best way to get what you want is to give something back. The primary value you should be offering is excellent content to the blog, so create valuable, unique content to submit to the blogger. Also, offer to promote and share their content on your social networks, bring technical issues to their attention, such as dead links or broken forms, and leave good quality comments and participate in discussions.
• #6 Maintain the relationship: Often when guest bloggers manage to get a link placement, they don’t continue the relationship with the blog’s owner. So follow up with the blog owner / editor to see if they have any feedback, positive or otherwise. If your content is good, the blogger will be eager to publish more of your submissions in the future. This is particularly useful for agencies that can leverage these relationships with multiple clients.

As outlined above, the process of guest blogging can be time consuming but should reflect the natural process of relationship building rather than a quick link request. If you would like more information about how guest blogging can improve your relationship building (and links), please contact us now for more details.

Google’s Universal Analytics in Public Beta

In March this year Google announced to all Google Analytics users the option to use Universal Analytics. This offers a new way for businesses to understand the changing, multi-device customer journey through the conversion path, as a typical consumer today uses multiple devices to access the web and interact in many ways with a business. This is likely to become the default system for Google Analytics, so websites have the option to try this for themselves now.

Universal Analytics introduces a set of features that change the way data is collected and organised in a Google Analytics account, so you can get a better understanding of how visitors interact with your organisation. In addition to the standard Google Analytics features, Universal Analytics provides:

• New data collection methods
• Simplified feature configuration
• Custom dimensions & custom metrics
• Multi-platform tracking.

Therefore some of the benefits of using Universal Analytics to businesses are:

• Understanding how customers interact with the businesses across many devices and touch-points
• Gaining insights into the performance of mobile apps
• Improving lead generation and ROI by incorporating offline and online interactions to help understand which channels drive the best results
• Improving the speed of a website by reducing client-side demands.

The aim is to change the way that data is collected and organised in the rapidly evolving online world of multiple platforms. Multiple platforms are not just limited to desktop, tablet, phone, but also game consoles, the point of purchase (POP), the shopping trolley, ski lift, billboard and so on.

Many of the benefits promised by Google’s UA hinge on two updates to the platform. Firstly, the ability to get data into UA from any source, and secondly, the shift from tracking visits to tracking visitors. The future of data does indeed seem to be blurring the lines between online and offline, and with these new tools, the hope is to make more sense of it all and to paint a better picture for the brand, the client, or any user’s understanding of the data and trends. Through an understanding of this data, business and individuals can better understand how visitors interact with their business online.

UA is an exciting development that holds significant promise for solving some difficult issues such as multi-device measurement and online/offline integration. Currently, the technology is still new, so more experimentation is needed in order to test UA’s promises in real-world environments. However, new Analytics accounts have the option to use this code, or existing accounts are gradually getting the option to upgrade as UA is being rolled out by Google.

If you would like more details about how the use of Google’s Universal Analytics can help your business, contact us now.

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Web Search & Marketing Newsletter – April 2013

Welcome to the April issue of our monthly newsletter, which covers news, tips and advice on effective website marketing techniques and trends.

In the first article this month we take a look at ‘cookies’ – what they are, how they work and the escalation in privacy concerns and regulations over them, which are becoming an increasing concern for online marketers.

In the final article this month, we follow up on last month’s focus on Google’s introduction of Enhanced AdWords campaigns for the Search Network, with more details about those for Display Network campaigns, which have just been introduced.

You can read more below, or you can also browse through previous editions of the newsletter, either by month or by subject. You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest developments during the month, or follow our Facebook page or Google+ page for updates.

On to this month’s edition…

HTTP Cookies and Privacy Concerns

The issue of ‘cookies’ is becoming increasingly important for websites, online marketers and privacy advocates. Cookies have traditionally been used by websites to track visitor activity and repeat interactions, as well as what those visitors do on a website through tools such as Google Analytics. The use of these tracking cookies has become increasingly sophisticated, but online users are also more concerned about their role, leading to privacy concerns and recent changes to legislation in Europe.

A cookie (aka HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie) is usually a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user’s computer or device, or in the web browser while a user is browsing a website. When the user browses the same website in the future, the data stored in the cookie can be retrieved by the website to notify it of the user’s previous activity so that repeat behaviour can be tracked (such as by Google Analytics), or advertisers can use cookies to display relevant adverts to web users based on their tracked behaviour.

Although cookies were originally designed as basic tracking mechanisms, they have now progressed beyond this and have become a crucial component for marketers to target advertising and to implement direct marketing techniques to relevant prospects. This tracking activity has raised privacy concerns to an extent that prompted European authorities to take action in 2011. The European Union’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive began to dictate that “explicit consent” must be gathered from web users who are being tracked via cookies. As a result, all websites in the UK, for example, that use tracking cookies, need to make this clear and give visitors the option to block these when they use the website.

This area is increasingly becoming a issue between privacy advocates and web users on the one hand, who don’t want their online activity to be tracked, and online businesses on the other, who want to target and improve their marketing activity. This includes user tracking which many websites now do through tools such as Google Analytics, and targeted advertising which companies can use, from behavioural marketing to remarketing activity – which should increase relevancy and reduce advertising costs.

In the past month, Mozilla announced their intention to include a default setting that disables third-party cookies by default in upcoming releases of their Firefox browser. This prompted the US Interactive Advertising Bureau to state that it will fight the move, which it describes as being “a nuclear first strike against the ad industry”, as without the third party data companies will simply not be able to track users across sessions. Firefox may be hoping that this move will attract more web users to start using their browser and if that proves to be the case, then the other main browsers such as Google’s Chrome and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, are more likely to follow suit.

This could be a backward step for online businesses, who will lose valuable information and the option to improve the targeting of their advertising. For web users, it can also mean less relevant advertising and a reduced user experience. If you’d like to know more about cookies and how they can affect your online business or privacy, contact us now.

Google’s Enhanced AdWords Campaigns for the Display Network

Following Google’s recent introduction of the new Enhanced Campaign settings for AdWords search campaigns (which we featured last month), the company has just announced the availability of these settings for the Display Network as well. The Display Network covers those 3rd party websites that carry Google AdWords ads, either in text, image or video format, and allows advertisers to extend the reach of their advertising beyond the main search area. So, what are the implications of this further development?

Some commentators were surprised that the initial launch of the Enhanced Campaign settings didn’t apply to the Display Network as well as Search, although there are significant differences between the two. The reason behind the enhanced campaigns for the Display network is to simplify the process of reaching the right person with the right advert, in the right location, at the right time, on the right device. This will now be possible from within a single campaign, whereas previously it was recommended to separate campaign by the type of device they were targeting (i.e. mobiles/tablets/desktops).

The fact that Google has different Enhanced Campaign settings for Display and Search means that this, at first glance, is good news for Display advertisers. Google kept some features for Display advertisers that they took away from Search advertisers: namely, device targeting. In fact, Enhanced Campaigns for display ads have even more device targeting options than ‘legacy’ campaigns and allow for display ads to target specific mobile devices.

This prospect may not be as rosy as it first seems however, as it’s harder to converge devices around Display, because of the differences in capabilities. Rich media and flash ads are pretty prevalent (and successful) on Display, but will struggle to get any traction on mobile platforms. So for the time-being at least, advertisers aren’t being forced to combine the devices on Display campaigns. It’s safe to bet though that this will happen once Google works out the technical implications around image ad formats.

So the long-term advantages are that when you upgrade a Display campaign you get bid adjustments, just like the multipliers on search. Instead of adjusting per device you get to adjust per target. At ad group (or campaign) level you can now specify the multiplier for a target. These multipliers will work together so that users who match multiple targets get even higher bids.

The disadvantage is that a user matching multiple targets isn’t necessarily more likely to convert than a user who matches one, if that one target is well defined. So if a person matches many targets your bid might reach unprofitable levels. This approach is also likely to encourage broader targeting at the basic level, so it’ll be important to use low bids on broad targets in conjunction with high multipliers to appropriately target the high value users.

So the initial benefits in the settings for the Enhanced Display Campaigns are not as straightforward as they may first appear, but on the whole, the industry opinion is that the extra control that they provide is going to be positive.

For more information about Google’s Enhanced AdWords campaigns for the Display Network, please contact us for details.