Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category
Friday, November 18th, 2011
March 30th, 2011: Google announces they’ve added the +1 button to SERPs, both for AdWords and organic. Nobody really knows what the +1 button thingy is, but we panic anyway.
June 28th: Google+ launches, tries to get everyone excited by making it invite only – Gmail style. It works, and everybody wants an invite so they can Hang Out with their early adopter pals. The +1 buttons kind of make sense now.
July 1st: Aaron joins Google+. Yay!
July 14th: Google+ has its 10 millionth member. Its largest markets are US and India (…).
September 20th: Google+ made available to everyone. Commence MySpace-style band spam.
September 21st : Everyone hangs out with will.I.am – told you there would be band spam! But it looks like Google spent a lot of money here…
November 7th: Just as everyone in the world expected, Google+ launches Business pages.
November 9th: Google not-so-subtly suggests that you connect your AdWords account with your company’s Google+ pages. Hoooooo boy.
April 12th, 2012 (estimated): Google announces that # of +1’s, +1-through-rate (PLOTR?) and bid-per-+1 become features of ad rank. Entire world explodes.
So here’s the thing. I’m just about as anti-Google+ as they come. I don’t get it. I don’t want to give a little plus sign because I found the hockey stick I wanted in a search. I’m sure there’s a valuable way to use it; I haven’t found it yet, but I know many others have.
With that said, I’ve come to one undeniable conclusion; Google+ is not going anywhere. Google redesigned every single one of their major products to accommodate a little +1 button or a notification bar somewhere. There are +1 buttons next to every single display URL on the SERP’s. There were more +1 buttons on top websites than there were Twitter buttons, just a month after launch. There’s the option to show +1 buttons on Google’s monstrous display network. Google+ has a lot of eyes already, and a lot of money behind it.
The SEER PPC team sat down for our weekly strategy meeting last week and starting hashing out what we thought about Google+ for Business. Does it mean anything for our clients? Should we link a client’s Plus page to their AdWords account? Is Google+ even going to matter for AdWords?
Yes, Yes, and Yes.
Typically when Google releases huge things like this (with significant investment), they tend to matter. The SEER PPC team discussed the roll out of Call Metrics as an example. Call metrics were launched November 2nd, 2010 as a free Beta. In late April 2011 Google says no more free lunch; all calls are going to cost $1. Right around Halloween this year, Google announced that you can bid on calls, and that Phone-Through Rate will factor in ad rank assuming you have data already. If you don’t have substantial PTR data, you start on the ground floor, with calls not helping (or hurting) you.
Our theory? We expect Google+ and other social factors to follow the same pattern and become a factor of Ad Rank or Quality Score. So, I’ll address a few questions that we expect many of you may have with these new fancy +1 features…
Should I create a Google Plus page for my business so I can link it to AdWords?
The impact from an AdWords perspective isn’t really known yet, so we highly doubt you’ll be hurt by not having a page. Don’t get going on a page unless you have a solid social strategy in place already.
If I have a Google Plus page for my business, should I link it to AdWords?
Absolutely. While we don’t know how much good it will do, it certainly can’t hurt! It’s always better in the AdWords world to establish a baseline sooner rather than later to give you a leg up before it hits the mainstream.
Should I write ads to get more +1’s?
Do you make money from +1’s? I didn’t think so. Focus on conversions!
Should I change my AdWords strategy?
No. No no no no no! Despite the theory that Google+ may matter soon, our strategy at SEER remains focused on driving conversions and sales in the most cost effective way possible. We’re certainly going to closely monitor the affect that +1′s have on AdWords, as it’s always better to be ahead of the game!
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So kids, what do you think? Is Google+ going to change the game for AdWords? SEO? The world?!?! Share your thoughts, strategies or doomsday theories below.
Posted in SEO | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011
Encrypted search is great for security but has made huge impacts to getting query data. We’ve created a (Not Provided) Report to help us visualize its impact over several clients.
Many are seeing the impact of secure search
Secure search prevents anyone from snooping on your searches. It also removes the referrer information and the keyword that the lead used. We’re seeing single and sometimes double digit percentage losses in keyword data. @RachaelGerson wrote a blog post about the real impact (not provided) has had on our clients. We’re not the only ones! Rand Fishkin, Frank Watson and Daniel Waisberg are also reporting the same issues.
Danny Sullivan reports that Google thinks it should affect single digit percentage of all search users. Note, that’s not the same as saying “It’s going to affect single digit percentages of my traffic.” I interpret those words as meaning “Secure search will affect single digit percentage of all people using Google to search.”
Um, news flash: at Google’s scale single digits is still a big number!
Google has over 60% of the search traffic worldwide. Something like that, right? Well single digit percentage of the entire world’s search traffic is still a huge number no matter how you look at it. In fact, I think it’s in the high single digits.
Think about it: secure search only happens when you’re logged into Google, right? How many people use Gmail these days? Hotmail is was sooo 20th century. I bet most people don’t logout after they check their email in the morning so if you checked your GMail account this morning you’re probably using secure search. That means, I won’t see your keywords today.
Measure the impact for yourself in Google Docs
With @rachaelgerson and I, @djchrisle, created a Google Spreadsheet so we can compare more than one profile in a single graph. You can use it too:
Here’s how to generate your report:
1. Open up the (Not Provided) Google Doc and make a copy (File > Make a copy)
2. Login to Google Analtyics and open up the profile you want to generate a report for.
3. Get your profile’s ID number.
In the new interface, it’s the numbers after the letter “P” in the URL.
4. Open the report spreadsheet and edit your username and password on the Settings sheet.
5. On the report sheet, put your profile ID in the yellow box to generate your report.
There are two yellow boxes so you can compare two at a time. The data will automatically populate.
If you have any questions follow me on Twitter: @djchrisle.
Posted in SEO | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, November 15th, 2011
Keyword rankings are, in many ways, the lifeblood of an SEO campaign. While these rankings are not the end-all-be-all of success in this industry (clients can’t pay their bills with rankings alone!) they are an important metric to monitor to determine whether your ongoing strategies are successful.
There are a ton of great tools you can use to monitor keyword rankings; I’m partial to Raven Tools and Authority Labs myself as well as the tried-and-true method of manually checking on a daily basis. However, I’m also a huge fan of idiot-proofing my reporting whenever possible to ensure that my own human error doesn’t cause me to miss out on important rankings movement. The best way I’ve found to do this is through Email Alerts!
TrackEngine
I started investigating TrackEngine a few months back as a tool for competitive intelligence. In a nutshell, TrackEngine allows you to receive alerts regarding changes on any given webpage. At first it reminded me of the Update Scanner plugin for Firefox or the Page Monitor extension for Chrome. However, what set TrackEngine apart is that it allows you set specific events to monitor on that webpage.
Monitoring Changes to SERPs for your Keyword
Let’s say I decided to start a business selling frisbees. I go out and buy http://www.brettsultimatefrisbees.com/, create content, build links, the whole nine yards. My big keyword I’m targeting is “buy frisbees online” and I want to know right away when I’ve cracked Page 1 for that term.
Simply put, with the ability to monitor specific events within a webpage TrackEngine allows me to quickly and easily set up an email alert for whenever Page 1 of the SERPs for “buy frisbees online” includes “brettsultimatefrisbees.com.” First thing I need to do is create a new bookmark:
Next, I set it up so that the page being tracked is the SERPs for “buy frisbees online” and I only want to be notified when this page updates to include “brettsultimatefrisbees.com.” For organizational purposes, I’ll name this bookmark “Buy Frisbees Online to Pg1″
Email Alerts
From here, TrackEngine will monitor this page at whatever interval you select (I typically select “Daily” so that there’s as little delay in receiving these alerts as possible). When your selected keyword (in our example, “brettsultimatefrisbees.com”) appears on the SERPs page you indicated, you will receive an email from TrackEngine that screenshots the SERPs at the time your keyword appeared (saves you that extra step if you choose to alert the client of the movement) and highlights wherever your keyword appears in those SERPs.
Have another tool to alert you of short term keyword movement or another application of TrackEngine? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter, I’d love your feedback!
Posted in SEO | 4 Comments »
Thursday, November 10th, 2011
Training a newbie for what I like to call the “SEO outreach game” can be quite the daunting task. (Hey, hate the game, not the playa!) Can you trust that the trainee will actually deliver quality results? Will the newbie understand the overall mission of the campaign? What type of writing style does your trainee have and can you train him/her to fit the persona you need for your outreach? Keep in mind that as the trainer, you need to be able to foresee any mistakes or inconsistencies that might occur that could potentially deter you and your client from getting the actual response rate you need.
So newbies, this blog post is dedicated to you and all of your hard work, countless hours and mind-numbing emailing you’ll spend on blogger outreach. I’ve been in your position, I still am in your position, and I’ve noticed some key mistakes that can easily be fixed. Keep in mind the following tips and tricks below, and you’ll get those positive responses in your inbox in no time!
1) Addressing your blogger: Most bloggers have their name and email address loud and clear on their blog. For those more, anonymous bloggers, make sure to first check their social media accounts (especially Twitter and Facebook) for their names and emails. You’d be surprised by the number of times I found the info I needed in their Twitter bio or Facebook info section, rather than on their blog. Another location to check for a name is in the actual post! Lots of bloggers sign their posts with their names or have it automatically set up to post the author name (aka their name!).
Oh hello there Cecily Kellogg!
2) Hi…: The search for a blogger’s name and/or email should only last about a minute- any longer and you’re wasting your time because they’re probably anonymous for a reason. What you can do in these rare cases is to address the email with a simple “Good afternoon!” Adding in their blog name such as, “Good Afternoon SEER Blog!” is much more inviting and cheery than a generic “Hello” or “Hi.”
3) Be outrageously enthusiastic: I’m talking about adding those pesky, little exclamation points every 2-3 sentences and including adjectives and adverbs like “great, adorable, extremely, absolutely.” If it helps to think of yourself as Cher from 1995’s cult classic, Clueless, then so be it! Be genuine, but also be eager, cheerful, bouncy, chirpy, perky, etc.! This may take a little out-of-the box thinking when it comes to scanning their site and complimenting a blogger, but it is definitely worth it on the blogger side. Everyone loves a little ego boost, so as an SEO, be confident and sincere and learn the art of schmoozing.
Here’s an example:
– “Hello blogger, we were inspired by your blog on your life.” = NO
– “Hello Melissa, we were really inspired by your awesome blog posts on your adorable kids and great DIY projects!” = YES
(Remember, a good compliment is always nice, but a great compliment will be your guiding light to a higher success rate!)
"I like, totally, love her blog, but like, I can't figure out how to, like, compliment her without sounding so, like fake."
4) Attachments: If you’re using Gmail for your outreach and plan on attaching documents or images with your email, make sure that you don’t forget to attach your file! I’ve seen so many instances where I’ve forgotten to attach an image, only to waste time replying, apologizing and re-attaching the original image. For newbies, it might be best to start out by creating drafts of all your emails before you send them out. By going to your Settings – Labs – and enabling the “Move Icon Column” lab, you will easily see the paper clip icon to the left of the subject line of your emails before sending them out. This is a quick, easy fix to any potential annoying follow-up emails.
In Summary: Remember that the bloggers you address are still human (well I hope so, at least) and get pitched by advertisers and marketers multiple times a day. Set yourself apart by being honest, straight to the fact and quick to respond to all future lines of communication. Writing an effective outreach message isn’t always easy, but hopefully these few tips above will make your life easier and less prone to mistake! I hope to build more quick little tips as I continue in this “SEO outreach game,” so stay tuned for a Part 2 of this blog post!
Tell me all about your own outreach successes and fails via my Twitter at @jogamel88! :)
Tags: blogger outreach, mistakes, outreach emails, tips, training advice, tricks
Posted in SEO, social media | 4 Comments »
Thursday, November 10th, 2011
In addition to some awesome carved pumpkins, Google gave users and advertisers another Halloween treat this year- Why These Ads. Why These Ads, is Google’s latest attempt (and perhaps a dig at Facebook) to give users a more personalized search experience. These links, which appear above top and side results, give users the option to control their search experience by opting out and blocking advertisements.
Upon clicking Why These Ads, users are given a few options. Below I’ve given a quick explanation of the available options:
1. Block- If a user chooses to block an advertiser, they are not shown any ads from that advertiser or any other ads which link to that website. As of now, users are eligible to block up to 500 advertisers total.
2. Opt Out- If a user chooses to Opt Out of advertisements, Google no longer uses additional information (demographics, location, past searches, etc.) to personalize that user’s search. (These options can be set at a campaign and browser level) Users can still be shown ads, however, the targeting might not be as precise. Additionally, if a user chooses this option they lose the ability to block specific advertisers.
Now, that we have an understanding of what these options are, I want to discuss what effects these Opt Outs & Blocks could have.
Now, that we have an understanding of what these options are, I want to discuss what effects these Opt Outs & Blocks could have.
Blocks
I think it is a given that no one likes to be blocked. While advertisers won’t know who blocked them, it doesn’t seem fair that if blocked, there is nothing advertisers can do outside of creating a whole new account on a whole new website, if they hope to reach that user again. In addition to this, there is something else that bothers me about user blocking, and it relates back to my good old friend, Session Based Matches.
As you may have noticed in my rant on Session based matches, I don’t think Google is always the best at personalizing. I mean if you’re showing me a sales training ad, when I searched for eye exercises, I’m going to be annoyed as both a user and an advertiser. Maybe even to the point, where I’d contemplate blocking the sales training ad. However, what happens if later on down the road, I am looking for sales training, and because I blocked that advertiser, I might be missing out on something great. Sure I could unblock that advertiser, but will I remember how to do that?
Additionally, as noted in Google’s explanation of Blocked advertisers- the particular ad blocked and any additional ad that blocks to that site will no longer appear in Gmail or Google Search. So if I block the-art-institutes.info because I found their cooking class to be irrelevant, am I also blocking their media arts, fashion classes ads which are mentioned on the same landing page domain? What if this would have been a relevant site for a “fashion class” search?
I’m sure these aren’t the only possible issues with User Blocking, but these two stood out to me. Thankfully though, there is one positive, Google confirmed that the number of blocks will not affect Ad Rank or Quality Score which let’s face it, is pretty necessary. Otherwise, advertisers would just attack their competitors with blocks.
Opt Out
When it comes to opting out, I’m torn. Sometimes, I wish Google wouldn’t try to personalize my searches. However, sometimes I love that it does. My ideal wish would be that instead of implementing this and that, Google would just work on improving it. Maybe if Google showed me eye exercise ads instead of sales training ads when my query was eye exercises, I wouldn’t be so anti Google’s personal touch.
Initial Findings
Well now that I’ve gone on another rant, I also wanted to share some initial findings. In Wired’s blog, they mention-”Out of every 15 users who get to the ad preference manager, 10 do nothing, 4 edit specific preferences, and only 1 opts out of behavioral targeting entirely”. So while it hasn’t had a huge impact in its 4 live days, I definitely think this is something to keep on your radar.
Why These Ads & SEO?
To conclude this post, I wanted to touch on how this change relates to SEO. So if a user blocks a PPC domain it is not blocked from organic search engine result pages (SERPs), but there are certain similar things that Google has rolled to improve the user experience when navigating the organic results. In order to shed some light on these things I’ve called upon my co-worker, and SEER SEO team member, Abbott Shea.
Hello! For my SEO cameo I’m going to go over some of the things that Google has rolled out in the past year that affect us SEOs.
Block All
Firstly, a feature that Google introduced along with their Panda Update, which was rolled out earlier this year, is the ability for a user to block a domain entirely from the organic search results. When someone clicks on a result for a certain search query and then clicks back to the SERPs they have the ability to block the domain that they just clicked through to. To show this in action I did a search for “car rentals”.
You see? So I clicked through on the National Car result and clicked back, and now I have the ability to block all results from nationalcar.com in my future searches – insert evil laugh here.
Now I wouldn’t do that, because National Car seems like a legitimate resource and I’m sure they have all the answers for all my “car rentals” questions. But there are sites out there that have manipulated Google and fooled them into listing their site at the top of the results for a certain keyword without actually offering any helpful content for the user searching that particular phrase. Like this result that showed up in the second spot for “loans for seniors”, and wouldn’t answer any of the tough questions a senior citizen looking for loans would need answered.
Google Plus
One other thing that Google has done is serve up content that has been shared by people in my Google + circles or written by people in lots of Google + circles, something like 600 or more, higher up in the SERPs and with a nice photo of that person. For instance, it seems that my friends Adam and Wil have shared some articles about “link building”…
… and “wil Reynolds”. I did have to cheat a bit with my query in order to show you exactly what I was talking about, but that’s because I have only very modest sized circles (cue the violins, maestro!). The point is the same – Google is serving up relevant content that your friends/connections have showed interest in assuming that you will be interested in it too.
Really it’s not a bad assumption. This is a very brief overview of the feature, but you can find out more in Wil’s article on Google + and Rankings.
(Not Provided)
Lastly, Google has recently rolled out a feature that doesn’t change what the user sees, but does affect SEOs. They have started protecting a user’s information by grouping users that are logged into their Google accounts under the “(not provided)” umbrella in Google Analytics. This means that for a user that is logged into their Google account (Gmail, Google +, etc.) and visits our site through the organic search results, it makes it nearly impossible for us to see what KW that visitor came in on.
This drive us SEOs nuts… and then Rachael Gerson comes along and puts at ease. To see how Rachael turns impossible into nearly impossible check out her article on Not Provided in Analytics.
What are your thoughts on Google’s latest “treats”? We would love to hear your thoughts, please share below and follow Abbott and me on Twitter!
Tags: blocking ppc ads, opting out ppc ads, personalized search, why these ads
Posted in google, PPC, SEO, social media | No Comments »
Thursday, November 3rd, 2011
Why are you looking for links from strangers, when your fans are already on your blog?
Here is the Commenter Export WordPress Plugin, for those of you who hate to read.
For a LONG time, I have been preaching about looking at the links right under your nose before trying to come up with a BIG idea that requires a ton of outreach. Whether it is the use of a broken link wordpress plugin that alerts you when pages you have linked out to are 404′s. Or how Ethan has been talking about using Twitter to build links.
So today, we got another easy concept, in the form of a wordpress plugin that will hopefully help you get links, do great outreach, and succeed in SEO.
Assuming you have a blog, and you get comments on it, from someone other than a family member, you are sitting on a gold mine. Outreach is hard, getting people who don’t know you to be interested is difficult and so often when you are thinking of outreach, you’ll look at lists of bloggers, using tools like followerwonk, Klout influencer lists, topsy expert search, etc.
I am asking you to think differently – think how about looking at your existing fans who are commenting on your site as the first place to consider outreach. You have people in your CHURCH, why are you running past them to go try to convert people on the street?
So one day I was thinking, damn wouldn’t it be awesome that when we pick up a client if we could index all of their commenters and go find them and see the influencers? So right off the bat before we get started using the tactics above, how about we look for the influencers leaving comments ON their actual blogs already, versus going out and trying to find new people to convince to link to us, as a start?
I looked for a solution to let me export commenters on a wordpress blog, so I could run backlink analysis on their commenter URLs to see the influencers. There was none I could find, so Chris Le at SEER built it and added a serious goodie, the ability to pull Domain Authority and Page Authority, thank you to our friends at SEOmoz who release this info for free. So with our new plugin, we are offering to you for FREE, you will be able to get the Mozrank of every commenter on your site to start the “spark” for your outreach.
There’s only one downside to the tool, if we pull all this data at once we were worried about slamming their servers, if they give us the green light, we will update it to pull everything.
Here is the Commenter Export WordPress Plugin, we plan on adding even more data points, what else would you like to see?
[Update (Chris Le) Nov 11, 2011 @12:15 EST: Unauthorized error message w/ new API keys]
If you just signed up for an brand new API key from SEOmoz, you might get “Unauthorized” errors. It takes some time before it becomes usable. If you’re using an existing key then you should be OK. SEOmoz’s API page says it’s 5 minutes but it might be longer if they’re getting hit with a bunch of new signups. :)
Posted in SEO | 17 Comments »
Tuesday, November 1st, 2011
Did Google just take the next big step in rolling out secure search? It certainly looks that way.
Note: Skip to the bottom of the post for the 11/2 update.
Since our team went through the process last week to exclude all ”(not provided)” traffic from SEER’s Search profiles, the change was obvious this morning. Looking at individual sites, we quickly saw the trend of ”(not provided)” traffic increasing. Upon further analysis, “(not provided)” traffic increased for every site, but by varying degrees.
How big was this increase? The graphs below look at the impact of the change on 37 sites. Comparing yesterday (10/31) to the previous Monday, 27 of the sites had over 100% increase in ”(not provided)” traffic. We looked at the data in a second way, as well. Looking at yesterday’s visits compared to the average daily traffic driven by “(not provided)” last week, 30 of the sites had an increase over 100%.
The full breakdown across 37 sites is as follows:
The biggest percent increase observed was actually our own site. seerinteractive.com had a 625% increase in ”(not provided)” traffic, comparing 10/31 to last Monday. We also saw one site that received 2300 “(not provided)” visits in all of last week, but 1100 yesterday alone.
Key Takeaway – Google is rolling out the new secure search to more users, and we all need to be prepared for the outcome.
For anyone who wants to run through the same process for your sites, here’s the methodology that was used across over 75 initial sites:
- Gathered total “(not provided)” traffic from Monday through Friday last week
- Used Monday through Friday so lower weekend traffic wouldn’t affect the data
- Pulled the ”(not provided)” traffic from last Monday and yesterday
- Calculated average daily ”(not provided)” traffic
- Any sites that did not exceed an average of five ”(not provided)” visits per day in this time period were omitted from the remainder of the analysis.
- Although there were very interesting observations to be found in this data, the initial numbers were too low to provide a significant enough value, and we already had strong enough data from the remaining sites to complete the analysis.
- The remaining 37 sites span a wide variety of industries.
- Compared yesterday’s (10/31) traffic to last Monday (10/24) and compared yesterday’s traffic to the average daily ”(not provided)” visits last week
- Calculated and graphed percent change for each
11/2 Update
This update was partially sparked by AJ Kohn and from wanting to share additional metrics to add context, especially with what we saw this morning.
Yesterday’s post jumped the gun. The big spike we observed was either the result of Google rolling out the changes midday Monday or releasing more users to secure search yesterday. Looking at yesterday’s data, saying the “(not provided)” numbers jumped is an understatement. Since we’ve already seen evidence that this is rolling out, let’s evaluate the actual impact rather than looking at data the same way we did yesterday.
The following chart breaks down the same 37 sites listed above, looking at the percent of yesterday’s Google organic traffic that came in with “(not provided)” in lieu of the actual keywords:
Out of the 37 sites, 16 had over 10% of the Google organic traffic come from “(not provided)” and one of the sites was at 21.05%. Far more than the single digit impact that was estimated early on.
Did you see a big increase in ”(not provided)” traffic yesterday, as well? Share your thoughts in the comments below or via Twitter – @rachaelgerson.
Many thanks to @BrettASnyder for his help both pulling the data and going through ideas for this post, and for convincing me this should be a short blog post, not a quick Tweet.
Posted in analytics, SEO | 22 Comments »
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