Web Search & Marketing Newsletter – August 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 Google AdWords location targeting options and how the limitations in this may impact the ways that you can market your business through search advertising. Next, we look at what the recent changes to Facebook Reach mean and how this signifies the end of brand marketing through business pages and community groups with organic reach. In the final article this month we review the SEO impact of Panda 4.0 and how this affects approximately 7.5% of English-language queries.

You can read more below, or you can also browse through previous editions of the newsletter here. 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 AdWords Location Targeting Options

Location targeting of ads through Google AdWords has been one of the best features for many years, allowing advertisers to target a specific country, state, city or even suburb. Targeting by geographic location is an essential tool for advertisers to help improve relevancy and control spend, however, whilst the location targeting settings in AdWords are predominantly accurate, several limitations exist.

Advertisers using Google AdWords can set location targeting options at the campaign level, either with a single location setting or with multiple locations being targeted within the campaign. Within these settings there are also some advanced options whereby advertisers can choose to include or exclude people based on where they’re likely to be physically located or the places that they’re interested in (i.e. using the location term in their search query). Targeting by search query location is usually good for relevancy, but many searchers will not use a location term in their query and so that’s where the advertiser is reliant on Google’s ability to identify the current location of that searcher.

The AdWords system uses several factors to determine the physical location of the searcher, using either the identified location of the person’s computer or from a mobile device location. An IP (Internet Protocol) address is therefore the most common way that Google uses to identify location – this IP is a unique number assigned by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to each computer connected to the Internet. With mobile devices using Wi-Fi, Google may detect the mobile device’s IP address to determine physical location or, if it’s connected to a mobile carrier’s proxy server, then the carrier IP is used to determine the device’s location. This is generally the best option for Google to include users within the defined geo-targeted area, but it’s not 100% accurate.

IP address targeting has certainly improved over the past 10 years but can still be limited by accuracy if, for example, the IP address is associated with the wrong location or if the address is associated with a very broad geographic location. In large corporates with offices across multiple locations may also provide incorrect information to Google as the main server or Intranet connection will incorrectly identify the city location for some searchers. One quick way of testing your own location identified by Google is to click on the ‘Search Tools’ menu when searching and then in the sub-menu below that, the final option shows the location Google has identified for you as a searcher. If this is wrong, then it is possible to change this setting on your device.

If searchers are using a mobile device – which is increasingly common – then the geo-targeting can be more accurate as long as users have enabled precise location sharing on their mobile device. Google looks for a number of signals in this instance, such as GPS location, Wi-Fi location, or Google’s cell ID (cell tower) location database (in the US). In many cases the GPS location can be used and provides good targeting accuracy which is ideal for local search marketers.

In general, location targeting in Google AdWords works best down to city level, and although there is sometimes the option to select pre-defined regions within a city, or to use more specific location or radius targeting, the smaller the area becomes the less effective it will tend to be, particularly if the main city centre / location is not included. In these cases the advertiser should supplement their activity with a campaign targeting a wider geographic area, but limiting the search terms to only include ones with location words included in the query. Once the geo-targeting has been set up, Google then provides a number of different reports to help advertisers review activity by user locations.

If you would like more information about how location targeting can help your AdWords campaign, please contact us now.

What Changes To Facebook Reach Mean

At the end of 2013, Facebook quietly changed its rules for ‘organic reach’ which has effectively ended the option for ‘free advertising’ used by many companies. It’s a move driven by revenue targets which will force more advertisers to now rethink their brand strategies on social media and put more money behind advertising, especially with ‘promoted posts’.

One of the main techniques used by companies on Facebook has been to promote “likes” of their business pages to build a large and tailored audience, which can then be marketed to, either directly or subtly through news feed posts. However, the recent changes to Facebook’s algorithm means that this content being posted by companies is now much less likely to appear in their followers news feeds – it’s estimated that only 5% of followers will see this content compared to around 15% last year.

Therefore the end of this ‘organic reach’ – which allows a post from a company to be seen, without them having to spend money on it – means that the value of these posts will be reduced in terms of visibility and impact, unless the content generates good engagement from the followers (likes, shares, comments etc). The alternative is that companies will now need to spend money on promoting these posts to ensure wider coverage of their target audience.

Facebook has said that the reduction in organic reach was due to the huge increase in published content on the network and so was designed to promote relevant content rather than push companies into paid advertisements. However, it’s also a convenient way to increase revenue whilst also putting a higher value on the role of Facebook as a business marketing tool. Companies must now decide whether to spend more in this sector or to pull back and do less if it’s not as effective as other channels.

Depending on your product or service, Facebook can still be an attractive marketing tool with a good range of targeting options and advertising tools. It also has a huge reach and is regularly used, particularly on mobile devices, but it certainly won’t work for every business, or the positive impact will slowly build over time, which is hard to measure if advertising spend increases.

If you’d like more details about how the changes to Facebook reach may impact your business, contact us now.

The SEO Impact of Panda 4.0

In Google’s continuous effort to clean up the quality of their search results, they introduced a significant algorithm change in 2011 which became known as the ‘Panda’ update. At the end of May this year, another notable change to the settings was announced, called Panda 4.0, which is thought to affect around 7.5% of English-language search queries. The aim of this new update is to remove or reduce the rankings of sites that contain poor, duplicated or irrelevant content, but there should have been no impact on well written and optimised sites.

Panda 4.0 was the first update to the Panda algorithm in over a year and seems to focus on penalising duplicate content sites, ensuring authoritative sites with original content continue to rank well. Websites that have been the victim of copyright theft and have had valuable original content stolen are now seeing a return in traffic. Websites that have blatantly plagiarised original content from other websites are now receiving penalties and reduced ranking positions. These latest Panda updates – the details of which are always kept confidential by Google – are once again increasing search result quality, ensuring that users are directed to websites with the best quality content.

It appears that certain search queries and niches have been hit hard by the latest update, with terms such as ‘pay day loans’ seeing major changes in search results due to harsh penalties handed out to poor content websites that were previously ranking well. In contrast, the initial findings across leading digital communities has been an increase in traffic for authoritative websites, which are well recognised for producing valuable original content. Some large sites with substantial link building strengths and resources but offering little value in content have also been hit hard – it’s been reported that Ebay has seen substantial drops in rankings for major queries, which may or may not be the correct way that Google intends the ranking to work, but there is likely to be an ‘adjustment’ period with further revisions after this main update.

Hopefully your website has not been affected by these latest changes, but if you’d like to know more about the Panda 4.0 algorithm change and it’s impact on the search results, please contact us for details.

We hope you’ve found this month’s newsletter useful. Please contact us if you need any more information on the items covered, or our advice on any aspect of your website’s performance. Also, if there are any issues you would like to see in future editions of this newsletter, please submit your suggestions to us.

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. This issue marks 10 years of this newsletter, with over 350 articles published in this time and much has changed! Take a look back at the original edition published on our UK website from June 2004 (although the original design for this edition has changed).

Back to the present day and for the first article this month we take a look at Google AdWords’ enforced campaign migration from the Product Listing Ads (PLA) format to the new Shopping campaigns (by late August) and the impact this will have upon existing campaigns. Next, we examine the recent introduction of call forwarding numbers for AdWords advertisers and the benefits of using this option.

Finally this month, we investigate the increasing trend in SEO sales tactics to use scaremongering to convince some website owners to sign up through a potentially misplaced fear.

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’s New AdWords Shopping Campaign Format

Ecommerce advertisers using Google AdWords should be using Product Listing Ads (PLAs), as this links to Google’s Shopping search engine and enables small product images and prices to appear at the top of the search results. However, Google is updating the PLAs campaign format to the new Shopping campaigns, so that any AdWords campaign managers who currently use PLA campaigns need to be aware of these significant changes.

At the end of 2013, Google tested a new campaign format for how retailers manage product ads on Google Shopping via AdWords. In February 2014, it made Shopping campaigns available to all Product Listing Ad (PLA) advertisers and in March it released AdWords API support to help manage the campaigns at scale. This was shortly followed that month by the official announcement of a forced campaign migration to happen by late August this year. More details about that can be found here.

As a result, businesses and AdWords managers should be prepared for the imminent changes to the new Shopping campaign format. Google has continued to release more information about this enforced upgrade, including details about the new upgrade options here. This information culminated in the very useful article on how to monitor and optimise Shopping campaigns here.

One of the key benefits of this migration to the Shopping campaigns is that it’s no longer necessary to create separate ad groups, or product targets to track impressions, clicks and cost. This should make it easier to integrate the Google merchant centre listings into the AdWords Shopping campaigns and it’s now also possible to analyse and report on the PLA performance by product attribute or by individual items in the Dimensions tab, regardless of the campaign structure.

If you want to know more about the benefits of the migration, the Web Marketing Workshop UK are Google Shopping specialists and are at the forefront of these developments. So, if you’re interested in having a new Shopping campaign set-up, or an existing PLA one migrated and optimised to its maximum potential, contact us now for more details.

Using Call Forwarding Numbers in Google AdWords

Google has recently introduced call forwarding numbers for AdWords advertisers, which enables an alternative method of phone call tracking and advanced call reporting for all advertisers who use call extensions. Although this system is not as sophisticated as some call tracking services, it does help to provide advertisers with more insights into phone leads coming from their advertising spend.

When a Google forwarding number is used with an advertiser’s call extension, a unique Google phone number is registered to the ad. This tracking number doesn’t cost anything extra with the number either being toll-free or charged at local call rates. The two main benefits of these new advanced call reporting features are advertisers can now see where the call is originating from with local area codes recorded and the duration of the call is also saved. These new advanced features provide useful information to advertisers who can then assist in creating a profitable mobile advertising campaign.

The Google forwarding number is a simple redirect with the visitor being directed to the correct business number from the ad. Google forwarding numbers are only available in the search network and are currently incompatible with the display network. These new features allow advertisers to identify and target calls of high value which can lead to conversions and overall mobile advertising success.

Linked to the call forwarding numbers are new reporting features that include phone impressions, total phone calls and phone through rates. Phone calls by specific type of mobile device can be accessed. The dimensions tab allows advertisers to see a detailed analysis of each call with useful information such as duration of call, call status and area code from which the call originated. The goal of the Google advertiser should be to identify what types of calls are most valuable and likely to lead to conversions. Once this call type is identified, advanced bidding strategies should be implemented to ensure mobile ads have the best chance of reaching this caller.

Previously the lack of advanced data in relation to call tracking has led to poor quality calls being counted as conversions. These new features allow advertisers to specify the characteristics of a call that should be counted as a conversion. Conversion tracking will vary across different advertisers so that, for example, plumbers may potentially count a conversion as a call that has duration of longer than 40 seconds – this may be due to plumbers only needing a name and address for which a quote is provided. In contrast, a florist may count a call as a conversion only if it lasts longer than two minutes, which is necessary due to payment information often needing to be provided over the phone.

If you want to learn more about call forwarding numbers in Google AdWords, or try these for your campaigns, please contact us for more information.

SEO Trends and Scaremongering Sales Tactics

Over the past few years, Google has introduced some high profile updates to their search ranking criteria, in an attempt to improve the quality of their search results and to combat some of the less desirable search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques that have tried to ‘game’ the system. As a result, some SEO agencies have been using scare tactics to overplay the impact and to convince some website owners to sign up through a potentially misplaced fear.

Google’s primary concern is to provide their users with a positive search experience, to get to the desired results – and quality of results – as quickly as possible, and so to return again for future searches. They have always done this well, which is why they became so successful, but they are always competing against the SEO industry, whose aim is to get websites into the relevant search results to drive visitor traffic to websites. This can be a fine balancing act and although Google provides best-practice guidelines to webmasters, many companies try to manipulate the results to their own advantage using techniques that are not acceptable to Google.

Over the past few years there have been several significant changes by Google to improve the quality of search results. These updates have been introduced and refined over time and the main ones have been named as Panda (from Feb 2011, targeting low quality content sites) and Penguin (from April 2012, which was mostly targeting poor quality link networks). More recently, the Hummingbird update in August 2013 was a different update which changed the way the search algorithms read and interpreted online content to try to understand the relevant meaning and context.

These developments have been used as a core sales approach by some search marketing agencies and not just from those anonymous Gmail addresses that send out templated emails – usually from India – but also from some mainstream agencies who are touting for business. The claims of widespread ‘changes to the rules’ and massive impacts across most websites are often overstated to scare companies into signing up and serve to continue the myths and confusion behind effective SEO techniques.

However, the basic principles of SEO remain much the same today as they always have. Yes, there have been changes in emphasis and focus, but the core elements such as title tags and on-page content focused around the search phrases that people use remain just as important, as do clean and fast loading websites, fresh and unique content, plus external links from other high quality and relevant websites. Most sites that had their rankings impacted over the last few years were usually the result of poor quality link building, often outsourced and generated from low quality sites that Google can identify and penalise.

Some say that SEO is now ‘dead’ or that it’s changed significantly, but this isn’t the case. Google and other search engines still need to use signals from websites to determine relevancy, as well as the hyperlinks between sites and social media signals to identify popular or good quality websites that will provide unique and useful content to users.

If your website has been following these key principles and complies with Google’s guidelines, then little has changed and you may have even seen ranking improvements as competitors drop back. SEO remains a core online marketing strategy, which needs to be an ongoing and long term process for every website. It also needs to be focused around words and content that takes advantage of the many ways that people search online, and the content also needs to be focused on the searcher’s needs and expectations when they find your website.

If you’d like to discuss your current and future SEO performance or strategy, please contact us for more details.

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 – the last for 2013 – which covers news, tips and advice on effective website marketing and search marketing techniques and trends.

In the first article this month, we take a look at Google’s updated Opportunities Tab within AdWords and how, if used correctly, it may improve the performance of a campaign.

Next, we take a look at the importance of Google Webmaster’s search query data and how this can be very useful in helping to provide more information about the keywords that are used from the search engine to visit your website, and which are the main landing pages that are visited from the search results.

In the final article this month, we examine the different types of Facebook advertising and the different reasons and benefits of using these as part of a social media marketing campaign.

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…

Google updates the AdWords Opportunities Tab

Google recently announced some changes to the Opportunities tab within the AdWords system, which can potentially help advertisers find ways of improving the performance of their campaigns. This section in the main navigation tabs suggests different ways to increase the performance of the campaign (or spend with Google) so it can provide good insights but also needs to be managed with caution.

The new Opportunities tab is designed to be more user-friendly and presents the advertiser with suggestions based on the previous 7 days of activity (or longer for some elements). These are some of the options within the Opportunities section that can be considered to improve a campaign’s performance:

Convert more customers in your best locations
If your conversion rate differs across locations, you might see opportunities to increase your location bid adjustment where your conversion rate is high, or decrease your location bid adjustments where your conversion rate is low.

Get more out of your existing budget
If you’re maxing out your budget, you might see opportunities to lower your bids to capture more clicks – or, of course, Google might suggest that you increase your daily budget level!

Be there more often than competitors
If your ads are being seen less frequently than other advertisers competing for the same traffic, you might see opportunities to be seen more frequently with (higher) bids to show your ads more often than advertisers like you.

Show ads that are more relevant
If Google spots an adgroup with keywords related to lots of different themes, it’s harder for you to show a highly relevant ad, so you might see opportunities to create new adgroups from existing keywords. This can be a particularly useful suggestion that can help to improve your targeting and your keyword Quality Scores.

Reach more customers on closely related searches
If you’re missing clicks on searches that are very similar to your existing keywords, you might see opportunities to broaden your keyword match types – which will, of course, increase your spend.

Be seen on the first page
If your ads are showing below the first page when users search on high-quality keywords, you might see opportunities to raise your bids to show ads on the first page.

The opportunities you’ll see are tailored to your account and should be selected based on their possible impact to your performance. The new look design and presentation in this section now makes it easier to decide which opportunities are being suggested and which should be implemented.

Of course, as noted above, these opportunities or suggestions by Google do need to be handled carefully and with caution, as the simultaneous implementation of too many opportunities could result in a dramatic difference to the way in which the allocated budget is spent. The recommendations are being generated automatically based on past trends and many of them will also benefit Google from increased spend for the advertiser and income for Google, so ideally these opportunities need to be consider carefully in the context of the campaign objectives.

Best practice would be to introduce one opportunity at a time, then monitor how that impacts the campaign before introducing more, through on-going optimisation and review. The most appealing initial opportunities are those to get more out of your existing budget and show ads that are more relevant, both of which could lead to a lower average cost per click.

If you’d like more information about the new Opportunities for better campaign performance in AdWords, please contact us now.

Using Google Webmaster’s Search Query Data

Anybody who regularly runs Google Analytics reports would be familiar with the increasing percentage of keywords bundled into the rather unhelpful “(not provided)” data category. So the Google Webmaster’s search query data, which includes a “top pages” tab, is starting to gain more importance for insights into Google’s SEO ranking activity for a website. This data is provided through the on-going changes to improve the compatibility between Webmaster Tools and Analytics and shows search queries that drive traffic to your site, as well as which pages benefit the most from them.

The “top pages” tab is in the search queries section of Webmaster Tools and is where you’ll find data for the pages that perform the best in Google’s search results. It shows impressions, click counts, average position, and an increasing amount of data for individual website pages. Clicking on any page URL will show a list of what search terms are sending traffic to it and users can also click on any of the search terms to see how it performs across your site – i.e. which pages get traffic from this term.

This is a very useful function within Webmaster Tools, which helps to fill the gap created by the unavailable “(not provided)” keyword data in Analytics. Data can be compared for the last 30 days compared to the previous 30, so broad trends can be reviewed to see how often a website has appeared in the search results, which search terms clicks have been acquired from, and what ranking positions have changed.

There are some discrepancies between data that is shown from both of those accounts as the information is being collected from different sources, and the Webmaster Tools data is quite generalised, but it’s a good step in the right direction. You can view more information about the reasons for that discrepancy and the best ways to use the search query data here.

So website marketers who use Webmasters and Analytics should be aware that this data is available to provide valuable information about the website and how it is driving visits from Google’s search results. The Webmaster Tools data can now supplement the reports that are withholding information from Analytics and so trends can be seen to show if SEO activity is improving website visits, and from which search terms.

If you’d like more details about the most effective ways to use this data to improve the performance of your website, contact us now.

What are the different types of Facebook Advertising?

If you are using Facebook business pages as part of your social media marketing activity, there are a number of ways to run advertising on the Facebook platform. Over the past year Facebook has tried to make the process of setting up ads more useful for advertisers, as well as adding more options to give advertisers more flexibility, but also to create more revenue options for Facebook! So, what are the main options and how can they be used?

Advertisers on Facebook can either use ads to direct users to their Facebook content, or to take them directly to their website content. Internal ads – that keep users within Facebook – tend to work better in most cases and these are called ‘engagement ads’. Anyone clicking on the advert can take an action without leaving Facebook, which is where they probably want to stay and interact within this social networking site.

There are several different types of Facebook advertising which can be used by advertisers – these are the traditional Facebook ads down the right hand column, as well as the newer options of Sponsored Stories and Promoted Posts. Each can be used in different ways, such as to build up the number of Likes, or to encourage more engagement with your content, such as commenting or sharing posts.

The traditional Engagement Ads on Facebook are the ones used to promote your business page and these usually appear down the right hand column, against the news feed of a target user. Advertisers can use a range of targeting options to try to reach the most relevant target audience, based on location, age range, interests and other factors. The ads include a link to the Facebook page (or external website) and also include a Like button, so that a strong compelling ad can attract more Likes without necessarily getting users onto the business page first.

Another ad option is Sponsored Stories – this can be used to show an advert based on a post on your business page, or a new Like by a user, and it will be displayed to your followers and their network of friends, so this is good to use once you start building up a strong network of Likes. It’s a way of getting more visibility for a post or an action (see last month’s issue about EdgeRank) and these stories can capitalise off a friend’s interaction with a Facebook page to reach more people on a personal level.

It’s important to remember that with these ads, the advertiser is less able to control all the content that is being promoted, because Sponsored Stories promote the actions of Facebook friends with a specific business page or entity with the goal of enticing Facebook members to like the same page as their friend, or friends, have. If a member or visitor interacts with a Facebook business page, this action will be promoted to a larger audience, regardless of the post’s contents. Sponsored Stories therefore promote a friend’s relationship and interaction with a page, to target and encourage a Facebook member to interact with that business and so Sponsored Stories can be effective in improving a company’s image and through emphasising customer satisfaction.

Promoted Posts are a newer advertising option on Facebook and give advertisers many different options through promoting links, photos, texts and videos. Page Post ads contain different formats that are classified as sponsored or promoted to increase the advertisers reach. Page Post ads can be used in a link form to promote a website or in a photo form to promote something like an upcoming sale.

A Promoted Post text ad gives businesses the opportunity to go into more detail about a service or product being offered. Offers in a form of an electric coupon can be included in an ad, which is redeemable for a member who clicks upon the advertisement. This form of Facebook advertising is popular amongst larger companies, as the content of the advertisement is totally controlled by the advertiser, unlike Sponsored Stories.

Facebook has also introduced Sponsored Results, which gives advertisers the chance to appear in the Facebook search results for relevant search terms. This is a very similar concept to the Google AdWords model to target searchers, and is also linked in to Facebook’s Graph Search which was introduced over a year ago to improve the search functionality within the site. At this stage, these type of ads can only be set up using the Facebook Power Editor – a tool we will be covering in a future issue of this newsletter.

If you would like to know more about how Facebook advertising can benefit your business, contact us now for more details.

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 – August 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 how it’s crucial for the content of a website to meet Google’s criteria for the four key trust factors, in order for it to benefit in the search rankings.

Next we examine the IAB’s recent figures that show sales for global mobile ads are nearly double in 2012 and the reasons for that significant increase, as well as the growing need for updated mobile metrics.

In the final article this month, we mark the 2nd birthday of Google+ by following up our recent story in June on “The Benefits of Using Google+ For SEO”, by examining how to make the most of this social networking platform through the use of an entirely different marketing strategy to that used on Facebook.

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…

Trust Factors that can Enhance a Website’s Rankings

Over recent months Google has been further tightening its Panda and Penguin algorithms, to target poor content websites and in turn, help to improve the rankings of sites that contain unique, valuable content. This focus on targeting low quality content and ‘web-spam’ in the search rankings means that Google is trying to identify common ‘trust’ factors on a website or web page. This means that it’s more important than ever to ensure that your website is seen as ‘trustworthy’ by Google.

Google has previously outlined some of the potential factors that Google looks at to determine the trustworthiness of any website. These may sometimes be difficult to identify through an automated programme, but it is accepted that there are four key factors they are looking at:

1. Duplicate or Redundant Content
It’s important to ensure that your site doesn’t have a number of similar content pages or articles, with just a few keyword changes. Google needs to ensure that the content pages that they will rank are driven by genuine interests of readers of a website, rather than just contain repeated content that attempts to rank individual pages well for specific terms.

2. Accurate, Quality Content
Google wants to reward websites with ‘good quality’ content, so it doesn’t favour sites that have sloppily produced content. This might include ones that have not been accurately proof-read, have been directly plagiarised, or ones which have been “keyword stuffed”. A website therefore needs to contain legible, original content that makes sense to the reader rather than just the search engine.

3. Complete Content
The completeness of the provided information is another key factor in the trustworthiness of a website in Google’s view. It favours comprehensive content about a topic, rather that one that might omit vital information. This could be difficult for Google to assess but it’s much better to focus on providing complete content to the reader, rather than simply relevant key-worded anchor text. Google would ideally like to find content that is seen as a valuable source of information which visitors would like to share and bookmark (including through Google+ – see below).

4. Expert Content
The factual correctness and expertise of the author in the relevant subject matter on the website is an important factor for Google, as this helps to determine if the site is a well-respected authority on the subject. Also, having a name, face, and bio associated with the content gives it authenticity and demonstrates the willingness to stand by the facts presented. This can be done through the use of the rel=”author” tag, linked to a Google+ profile and it therefore makes sense for Google to use this as part of their algorithm.

Therefore Google is looking for identifiable factors on a website that may indicate ‘trust’ – or lack of it – when determining the ranking potential of a site. This is just one of the factors being used in the ranking criteria, but an important one that website owners have control over and have to think creatively about developing.

If you’d like more information about how we can help your website benefit in the rankings from these trust factors, please contact us now.

Sales for Global Mobile Ads Nearly Double in 2012

Figures recently provided by the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, IAB Europe and global consulting firm IHS, found that mobile ad revenue worldwide increased sharply last year, rising by 82.8% to $8.9 billion from $5.3 billion in 2011. This is not entirely surprising and reflects the rapidly increasing use of mobile devices and the opportunities advertisers have to target these users.

The IAB reported that US mobile ad revenue more than doubled in 2012 to $3.4 billion. Growth was highest in North America, at 111%, followed by Western Europe (91%), Latin America (71%), Central Europe (69%), the Middle East and Africa (68%), and Asia-Pacific (60%). Among the regions, North America is now almost level with Asia-Pacific in the share of mobile ad sales, at 39.8% ($3.52 billion) to 40.2% ($3.55 billion). Western Europe represents 16.9% ($1.5 billion), with another steep drop-off to Central Europe at 1.3% ($112 million).

Broken down by ad formats, search continued to claim the lion’s share of spending, with 52.8% of the total, followed by display at 38.7%, and messaging (third-party ads in SMS or MMS messages), with 8.5%. Search and display ad revenue grew at roughly the same rate last year (at 88.8% and 87.3% respectively), while messaging trailed at 40.2%. Its share also fell from 11.1% in 2011.

Looking at formats by region, Asia-Pacific still leads the way in display, but North America for the first time overtook Asia-Pacific to become top in mobile search, with 130% growth to nearly $2 billion in 2012. This is mostly attributed to Google’s increased efforts to ramp up monetisation of mobile search as more and more of that activity takes place on devices.

Among broader forces driving mobile ad growth, the IAB study pointed to rising smart-phone adoption, the spread of 3G and 4G networks, more time spent on mobile devices and the growing focus by companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft on mobile media and advertising as well as devices.

You can read more about the IAB figures here.

Although these IAB figures are impressive, they come as no great surprise, especially as advertisers realise that mobile apps, in particular, provide a compelling canvas for engagement and brand building. Therefore marketers now need a more accurate metric to determine how much of their advertising budget should go on mobile app advertising, as the traditional metrics are falling behind in their capacity to precisely evaluate this. As a result, there are now suggestions in the industry that a new cost per mobile engagement (CPEm) metric is emerging to capture the real engagement value/ROI of mobile app advertising.

If you’d like more information about this data and how we can help to grow your sales through mobile ads, contact us now.

Google+ Becomes Two Years Old

Google’s own version of a social networking service, Google+, has just turned two and the benefits of it are still to be realised by many social media advocates, brands and online marketers. So what are they, and how can Google+ be better used by businesses?

Google has been extolling the virtues of Google+ since its launch and have indicated that social-media marketers should ignore it at their peril, as well as search engine marketers who should consider how content on this service can combine with SEO efforts. Using a marketing strategy that includes Google+ as a key resource is becoming increasingly important and that strategy needs to differ entirely from a Facebook one.

Google+ was developed by engineers and as a result was originally seen as too complex for the end-user, plus there wasn’t a strong reason to divert attention away from the market leader, Facebook. However, Google+ is now the second largest social network behind Facebook (693 million users) and gaining, with 500 million members – 359 million of whom are active monthly, which is a 27% increase in the past three months.

There are 3 main points of difference with Google+ that sets it apart from Facebook and need to be considered as a core marketing and general business communication tool:

Hangouts on Air
This is a powerful, free video chat function that allows an unlimited number of people to join and supercedes older conferencing platforms like GoToMeeting. Google+ is more visual and interactive, because Hangouts lets you video chat in real time with as many, or as few, people as you choose. There is the opportunity to integrate the hangout videos with YouTube, if required, and this part of Google+’s service is something that Facebook doesn’t currently have.

Circles
Another key difference is in the way users can share content. Circles enable fast, easy and precise content sharing. According to Searchmetrics, sharing on Google+ is poised to surpass sharing on Facebook by 2016. When you add contacts to circles, you can assign them to a particular group such as family, co-workers, friends, etc. Then you can easily select which of your followers will see your Google+ updates. Circles lets you decide exactly who can see which content and therefore you need to create more specific content for your circles – Facebook content is more broad brush.

Communities
Google+ has two types of communities: public and private. These communities allow groups to form around particular interests. You can even join communities as a brand, which isn’t possible to do on Facebook, so you can interact with influencers, experts, current and potential customers.

One other key point-of-difference is currently, at least, that there’s no advertising on Google+. If you’re not currently doing so, now is probably the time to create a content strategy that is unique to Google+ and then implement it with your profile. This can help your SEO strategy as well, and give you early advantages in your market if other companies are not yet using this tool.

Contact us now if you’d like more information about how we can help you improve your Google+ marketing strategy.

Web Search & Marketing Newsletter – June 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 how the use of Google+ can lead to SEO benefits. Next, we assess Google’s recently released Display Benchmarks tool and how that can be used to improve the success of display campaigns. Finally, we report on Yahoo!’s acquisition of the social networking tool, Tumblr, and the implications of this move.

On to this month’s edition…

The Benefits of Using Google+ For SEO

Although Google+ is still struggling to establish itself as a viable social media alternative to Facebook, the number of users is increasing as Google integrates the tool with other services and starts to create a community around the range of features being offered. There are also some SEO advantages to having a well set up Google+ profile with both personal and business pages.

With any link-building strategy, it’s very important to network and build genuine connections and relationships that will help spread your content. Google+ facilitates this by allowing the linking of all of your social media profiles, sites and blogs in an organised manner. It’s also possible to link to sites to which you regularly contribute and, importantly, all of these links are “followed”, rather than “no follow” links and you’re able to select the anchor text (in your bio).

Google will follow the links in your posts and the more people share them, +1 your posts or link to your profile, the more valuable these links become to you. If your post goes viral or is shared by a high authority profile, the value of the links increases more. Content on Google+ is indexed rapidly – some say almost instantly – so it’s a great way to get posts by you into Google’s index quickly when there is a hot topic.

With many social media sites, you have little to no ability to edit your content once it has been posted. However, Google+ allows you to go back and make edits to posts as you see fit. Furthermore, Google provides the option for you to take ownership of that content and so it’s important to set up an author tag (for an individual claiming content on a page) or a publisher tag (for a business to claim ownership of a site).

Both the author and publisher tag can’t be used on the same page and if the publisher tag is used, it’s only for the homepage, not internal pages. You can use the author tag for internal pages with content. It’s still a good idea to use Google’s “rel=publisher” tag, but you won’t get the image in your SERP listing like you do by using the authorship tag.

It’s important to remember that a Google+ profile needs to be set up in order to implement the Authorship Markup and take advantages of its benefits. To set up a personal profile, you can go here. Business profiles can be set up here.

The benefits of doing this are:

• It makes your listing more robust, because it includes a photo, your name and links to more content by you. There are also indicators that your authorship markup may give you a boost in rankings. While some say it doesn’t directly help, others have reported an increase in rankings after implementing it.
• Your authorship markup also helps you build trust as it establishes you as a real person in the often-anonymous online world.
• It also allows you to claim your name (you don’t want someone trying to steal your name!) and your content (you’ll be seen as the original and rightful owner of the content and won’t have to worry about a “copy scraper” outranking you).
• You can improve your click-through rate by playing with your profile image that’s shown in the SERPs. Images that perform best seem to be close-ups where the eyes are looking to the right towards the listing in the SERPs.

Once you’ve completed the profile and you start posting, keep in mind that the first sentence of your Google+ post becomes part of the title tag, which impacts rankings and influences click-through rates. A word of warning is that Google doesn’t tolerate “spammy” practices, so it’s vital not to turn your profile into a link farm!

There are a lot of different ways to connect with influencers in your industry and networking on Google+ with those is one of the core focuses of Google+ users. It’s fairly easy to do because there are so many ways to do it, but be sure you don’t abuse the privilege, as if you become seen as a spammer, it will be very difficult to grow your presence.

While Google+ numbers aren’t as large as Facebook, they are growing and as with most things, it’s the early adopters that do well in the long run. So it’s worth beginning now to establish your position. Google+ is probably here to stay and also likely to get more important to your rankings and traffic.

If you’d like more information about Google+, or help with setting up a profile, please contact us now.

Google Introduces a Display Benchmarks Tool

During May, Google announced the launch of a new tool called “Display Benchmarks” that provides useful comparisons or reference points aggregated from ad campaigns across the industry. If you are using display ads as part of a marketing campaign, this new tool facilitates an understanding of how your display campaigns compare to the rest of your industry, which helps to better plan and measure the success of those campaigns.

The comparisons can show average expansion rates for automotive creatives, expected Rich Media interaction rates for retail creatives from France, or just the average clickthrough rate for Entertainment ads from the US. So if you’re looking for comparisons by country, industry vertical, or how different ad formats and sizes perform compared to each other, the tool offers up-to-date benchmarks across 10 key display metrics, such as interaction rate and time, expansion rate and video completions.

For example, through its own use of the tool, Google has shown that people are increasingly choosing to interact with video ads. They state that video completion rates are the highest ever seen, increasing by approximately 24% since Summer 2012, to a 60% completion rate. This improved interaction rate correlates to larger ad sizes: the bigger the ad, the more frequently people will interact with it. It also found that rich-media-expanding formats are better for getting people to interact frequently, while in-page formats are better for encouraging longer interactions.

So, if this tool is used to its full potential, it can certainly shed some valuable light on the best way to improve display campaigns by reaping the benefits of the industry-wide information it provides. You can learn more about it here.

Contact us now if you’d like more information about how we can help you improve your display advertising with this tool.

Yahoo! Buys Tumblr for US$1.1 Billion

During May, Yahoo! acquired one of the leading blogging services – Tumblr – for US$1.1bn. This is a notable deal, made by Yahoo’s chief executive Marissa Mayer who was appointed in July last year, and she has called the move a “unique opportunity”. However, it could also be a huge risk for Yahoo!, which now has to generate revenue from the deal without alienating the Tumblr user base.

The plans for the acquisition are for Tumblr to continue operating under its own brand and independently of the new owner, with co-founder David Karp continuing as Chief Executive. Tumblr combines elements of blogging with social networking, and its simple design has attracted millions of users since its launch. According to the site, it now hosts 108 million blogs, with over 50 billion posts. Crucially, it also has a significant presence on mobile devices.

Observers says that the move is partly an attempt by Yahoo! to regain favour with the younger ‘hip’ market, where Tumblr has proved a great success. Yahoo! has lost favour in recent years, both in terms of search and also as a social site, although the initial reaction from Tumblr users to the takeover has been mostly negative – which would be expected.

However, Yahoo! is hoping that its purchase of Tumblr will boost traffic to its other properties, such as the photo sharing site Flickr, which is being relaunched with new features to compete against Instagram. But the question is really whether the US$1.1bn fee will also help to boost revenue?

Analysts suggest that Yahoo! has significantly overpaid for the deal – Tumblr’s 2012 revenue was just $13m, according to a recent report by Forbes magazine, and despite its fast-growing user base, it has struggled to make money and has traditionally resisted advertising. Yahoo! says they will be working with Tumblr to create ads that “are seamless and enhance the user experience”. However, there is a danger of alienating users with more advertising – a challenge that faces most social media sites, including Facebook and Twitter.

Yahoo! has struggled in recent years, with a lack of direction and innovation, which is the reason why Marissa Mayer was brought in from Google. Despite this, Yahoo! remains a major online property, with around 700 million visitors to its website every month and the majority of its revenues comes from advertising. However, it has limited mobile reach and lags behind Google in the search engine rankings. It also shed more than 1,000 jobs during 2012 and has long been divided over whether it should focus on media content or on tools and technologies.

If you’d like to know more about this deal and the role of Yahoo!, please contact us for details.

Web Search & Marketing Newsletter – May 2013

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 Google’s changes to its search engine filters and algorithms since 2011, including how this may have had an impact on your website’s rankings, plus what can be done to avoid any penalties. Next, we assess the importance of specifying to Google and Bing through the use of canonical links, which webpage takes precedence when there are duplicates and how to avoid the common mistakes when doing so.

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’s Panda and Penguin Updates – Two Years On

Each year, Google changes its search engine’s algorithm up to 500-600 times. While most of these changes are minor, every few months Google rolls out a “major” algorithmic update that affects search results in significant ways. In this article we evaluate how Google has continued to evolve the significant releases of their “Penguin” and “Panda” updates, how these changes caused some website’s rankings to decline, and what can be done to prevent this from happening to yours.

On February 24th 2011, Google announced its first ever “Panda/Farmer Update”, which was a ranking penalty that targeted poor website content (what it termed as “thin” or “not good enough”), or websites that used dubious content farms and ones with high ad-to-content ratio. Panda is a site-wide penalty, so that if enough pages are tagged as poor quality, the entire site is subject to it, (even though some good quality pages would continue to rank well). The only way to lose the penalty is to remove or improve the poor quality content. This major algorithm update hit some sites hard, affecting up to 12% of search results according to Google.

The Panda update had a series of subsequent changes over the following year and the “Penguin Update” (aka “Webspam Update”) was released on April 24th 2012. That evaluated the incoming links to a site to determine if they involved link schemes that were solely intended to improve rankings. This was done by automatically raising flags by examining the ratio of links compared with those for competitors’ sites, which then led to a manual investigation by Google. This impacted an estimated 3.1% of English-language search queries.

Subsequent updates were made to Penguin on May 25th and October 5th 2012 and the final release of Panda (#25) was on 14/4/2013. That filter is now going to become part of the core algorithm (Panda Everflux). This means that businesses of all sizes need to consider creating websites/pages with quality, relevant content that enhances the user’s experience. Also, any links that are created to point to it need to be genuine ones, rather than just being developed in an attempt to improve rankings.

So the main outcome post-Penguin, is that businesses need to take care with link building techniques and, ideally, to start earning links through real relationships and useful content. This is not easy for many websites, but Google will reward those websites that follow the process of combining good quality webpage content together with genuine links to support its ranking performance, as these are the kind of sites that it deems will benefit its users’ experience.

If you would like details about how we can help your website improve, rather than get penalised in the rankings, contact us now for more information.

Using Canonical Links and avoiding common mistakes

The use of ‘canonical links’ is a helpful tool for webmasters in cases where a website may have duplicated pages of content. The role of ‘canonicalisation’ allows website owners to tell Google and Bing which webpage is the one to give precedence when there are duplicates of that page on the site. However, there are some common mistakes that need to be avoided when doing this.

It’s often a common occurrence for a site to have several pages listing the same information, or set of products if it’s an ecommerce site. For example, one page might display products sorted in alphabetical order, while other pages display the same products listed by price or by rating. If Google knows that these pages have the same content, it may index only one version in the search results, or it may penalise the site for creating duplicate content pages.

Therefore website owners can specify a canonical page (the preferred version of a set of pages with highly similar content) to search engines by adding a ‘link’ element with the attribute rel=”canonical” to the ‘head’ section of the non-canonical version of the page. Adding this link and attribute lets site owners identify sets of identical content and suggest to Google that of all these pages with identical content, this page is the most useful – therefore please prioritise it in search results.

The use of canonicalisation has to be done carefully however, as there are some common mistakes that can be made and it’s important that it should only be used for pages that are duplicates.

These are the most important points to consider:

• Verify that most of the main text content of a duplicate page also appears in the canonical page.
• Check that rel=canonical is only specified once (if at all) and in the ‘head’ of the page.
• Check that rel=canonical points to an existent URL with good content (i.e., not a 404, or worse, a soft 404).
• Avoid specifying rel=canonical from landing or category pages to featured articles (as that will make the featured article the preferred URL in search results.)

If you would like to know more about how the use of canonical links can improve your website’s indexing of duplicate pages with Google & Bing, contact us now.

Web Search & Marketing Newsletter – February 2013

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 look at Google’s Search Suggestions feature and how this can be used by search marketers to improve their SEO or PPC / AdWords campaigns. We also review the important distinction between Display and Destination URLs used in the adverts of a Google AdWords campaign and how these can be used most effectively.

Finally for this month, we take a look at Facebook’s recent introduction of its new “Graph Search” tool and what implications this will have for users, as well as concerns over privacy issues.

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 for updates.

On to this month’s edition…

Making use of Google’s Search Suggestions

Since 2008, Google has provided searchers with the ‘Search Suggest’ option, which aims to predict the search terms that users are typing into the search query box. In 2010, this was combined with Google’s Instant Search service, which continuously changes the results list as the users types in their query. The suggested search term function is therefore a valuable tool for users, but also for search marketers.

The drop-down list of search suggestions that appear as users enter a search query on Google will sometimes display up to 10 options, although in most cases, there are 4 suggestions shown, which are continually refined as the query is typed. The aim of Google is to help the user complete their search query faster, by anticipating the search term they might use. These suggestions come from historical data on how people have searched, as well as the content of web pages indexed by Google.

The search popularity is the primary factor in what Google shows as a suggestion, yet the suggestions may also be influenced by a user’s previous search history, or by relevancy factors that are calculated by Google’s complex algorithms. There is also a “freshness layer”, so that if there are terms that suddenly spike in popularity, these can appear as suggestions, even if they haven’t gained long-term popularity.

What’s important from a search marketing point of view is how these suggestions may influence the results shown on the page, and how this information can be used for a business advantage. Although there are no figures on usage of these suggestions, many people say that they will look at the suggestions being shown and are likely to choose the relevant query to save typing in the full query. As a result, this tool can help to influence the way that people are searching and could increase the times that websites will appear in the rankings for selected search queries.

This is important for search engine optimisation (SEO) and for PPC advertising (Google AdWords). From an SEO perspective, marketers should see what queries are being suggested for the main search terms they are targeting through their optimisation, and then ensure that the relevant suggestions are also being targeted in their site content.

This is also true for Google AdWords, so that by targeting the relevant suggestions for the market – either as a phrase or exact match term – marketers can see how often those terms are being used as a search query, and whether they perform well in their campaign. Targeting these suggestions can also help bid pricing on specific queries, and in addition to this, any suggestions that are shown, but are not relevant, provide good information on negative terms that should be added to the campaign.

If you would like more information about Google’s search suggestions and how these can be used for your search marketing activity, contact us now.

Defining Display and Destination URLs in Google AdWords

A common question that often arises amongst AdWords advertisers is “what is the difference between Display and Destination URLs in the adverts?” This is a valid question and it’s important to understand how these work and how they should be used to maximise the performance of a paid search campaign.

The difference between the two types of URL shown in the Google AdWords ads are as follows:

• the Display URL is the URL (coloured green) that appears below your ad text when your ad is shown in the search results. This URL is purely a visual identifier on the advert and doesn’t function as the link for the website.
• the Destination URL on the other hand, is the specific location within your site where you’d like to take a user that has clicked on your ad (the landing page). This may be a long URL and the Destination URL isn’t visible in the ad, so you can use it to direct people to a specific page within your site without cluttering your ad.

Google has guidelines and restrictions on how the Display and Destination URLs are used. The most important consideration is that the Display URL must show the same domain name as the website that the advert links to. The www. part of the domain doesn’t need to be included here, although Google will show this in the advert if space allows.

It’s important to use the Display URL as part of the marketing content of the advert, to indicate to searchers what they will find on the website and, where possible, to re-emphasise key terms in the advert text, which will appear bold and can help to increase clickthroughs from an advert (such as yourdomain.com.au/Search_Term).

Remember, the text used in the Display URL is not the actual URL link to the website and has no influence on the Destination URL used in the advert. This destination is set up as a link from the ad but hidden from the searcher until they click on the ad and see the website and the landing page URL in their browser. Therefore, in the above example, the Destination URL would be something like: http://www.yourdomain.com.au/category/product/item15.html.

For more information about the use of Display and Destination URLs, including best practice and Google policies, read this. Alternatively, please contact us now for more information.

Facebook Introduces “Graph Search”

In January, Facebook announced their new “Graph Search” tool, which is gradually being rolled out to users of the social networking service. As with many product developments by Facebook, there have been concerns raised about privacy, as the tool now allows greater in-depth searching of the user database.

The launch of the Graph Search function provides a new type of social search that can’t be completed through Google or any other existing search tool. It therefore fills a gap in search because, if used regularly, Facebook has a massive amount of social data on users which can now be mined and used for different purposes – giving Facebook an advantage over Google’s range of search options.

The search function will now enable users to search for ‘people, places or things’ with results shown based on your network of friends and the things they have posted, liked or commented on. For example, if you typed “movies my friends like” into Google, it would have no idea what you wanted, whereas Facebook would potentially provide this information, as the new feature allows members to search for this and find results, as long as your friends have posted this type of information in the first place. (If search results are not widely available from your friends network, then Bing will provide results and this search engine is becoming more integrated with Facebook.)

While this data – called the “social graph” by Facebook – has always been on the site, it’s not previously been easily accessible. Only advertisers could use this type of data previously, through the targeting options provided, such as showing an ad to only “18-24-year-old males who like video games and live in Australia” for example. This has now changed with the wider access to this “social graph” for all users.

The new Graph Search has been getting a lot of media attention, but not all is good. Facebook often faces privacy concerns when they launch new features and this one is no exception. There was an immediate impact on the company’s already battered share price as concerns were raised over how this tool could be used, but Facebook hopes that it will place them in a stronger position for increased usage and, of course, better revenue opportunities.

The privacy concerns revolve around the changing usage and access terms for information posted on Facebook, and from the potential for personal information to be collected by criminals to build profiles of individuals that could then be used to target victims for identity theft. However, users of Facebook also need to be aware of what information they post online and who has access to this through their individual security settings.

For more information about the new Graph Search feature, and the implications for Facebook users (and advertisers), please contact us for details.