google

New Rules for SEO After Penguin

Monday, October 29th, 2012

Google’s latest update, Penguin, implemented some new tricks for search engine optimization. Google has not been forthcoming about what the new algorithm favors, but there is speculation. Konstantin Kreouzis has a new essay where he lists five unknown factors that might have an impact. The essay does not provide any data to prove these rules matter, but Kreouzis hints that there might be some validation informing the essay.

The first unknown rule is a mixture of anchor texts. The more variety in the anchor text then the more authentic the links appear to Google. The bots that spread links everywhere tend to use the same anchor text, so Google uses that as a way to determine quality. Another rule to variety of links deals with spread across a website. If links point to low level pages and the top level page equally, then Google counts that as inauthentic. The top page should have the most links and they should become increasingly rare the deeper into a website Google goes. Links should also be coming in from more then .com domains. The more variety in the type of domains then the more credible Google scores a website.

The next rule is one that needs some evidence, but the explanation makes sense. Programs that spin content tend to have uniformity in the size of words. They tend to be very long or very short. Varying the size of words helps increase credibility rating in Google’s estimation. The average word length for an article should be 5.5 words.

Google is also now measuring the time people spend on a website. The way this is done is by measuring the time after search engine results are presented to the time when the user returns for another search. There are obviously problems with this measure, but there is some data to suggest a quick turn around tells Google the quality of the results is not as good as if the user returns to searching in a long time.

While the social media agency might like to stop dealing with search results altogether, for now it still represents the best investment to be made for driving traffic. Google’s Penguin update was a way to stop the gaming of the system and to move to quality as a determinant of ranking. Hopefully these rules help the agency know some of what Google is looking for.

Tags: google, Google Adwords, SEO, Social Media Marketing
Posted in SEO, Technology, google | No Comments »

Recovering The Data Not Provided In AdWords

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

Months ago Google announced its new secure login, which would turn much of the data social media agencies see in their AdWords campaigns into “Not Provided”. In advance of this change Google announced it would have a single digit percentage point hit on the data, however some sites are reporting as much as 40% of the data being lost. This is a significant issue because agencies spend a lot of time weighing the keywords and moving in on ideal actions. Losing any of the data about how people are coming to a website means there might be efficiencies being lost.

Carrie Hill, the dircetor of marketing at KeyRelevance, LLC, has an essay where she discovers a way to recapture some of that normally lost data. Using a series of custom filters in the AdWords dashboard, allows the social media agency to uncover the last web page the user was on before landing in a website. It is not a complete reversal of the Google change, but it does help uncover some information that would otherwise be lost.

How To Turn (Not Provided) into Useful, Actionable Data

Tags: advertising, AdWords, google, Google Adwords
Posted in Branding, advertising, google | No Comments »

Restaurant Mobile Searchers Convert That Day

Thursday, October 4th, 2012

A new study focusing on mobile users searching for restaurants shows that 64% of them convert that same day. The study also found that 95% of smartphone users do searches for restaurants and bars. The study also studied tablets and revealed some interesting needs for the digital agency.

rollcall

When users search on mobile devices then they are often looking for a specific restaurant. The social media agency with restaurants for clients needs to make sure these businesses are easy to find. This means they need to be accurately located in Google and Apple Maps. The restaurant also needs to be keyworded to what customers might be looking for. An example might be that a seafood restaurant known for its lobster should consider adding lobster as a searchable term. Because ads can now be coded to smartphones specifically, then those ads should be tailored with calls to action. The ads should have or provide easy access to maps and a call feature.

When on tablets the imperatives on the social media agency are a little different. Most tablet users are not looking for directions or the hours of a specific place. Instead they are doing research focused on the type of provider and within a certain area. Again, a correct listing on the mapping apps is important. But it is also important that the business be listed on the social networks catering to this type of research, Yelp and Foursquare for example. Web pages need to have hours and directions. There should even be a quick way for people to quickly see the name of the restaurant as well as the neighborhood location and the type of food offered. Ads need to be geared for the undecided and just merely point to calls to action.

Restaurants are always the type of business with the least margin of error. The social media agency can be especially helpful to these businesses, and the mobile explosion will help those businesses that are keyed into these advantages.

Study: 64 Percent of Mobile Restaurant Searchers Convert “Immediately or Within An Hour”

Tags: Apple Maps, Bars, google, Mobile Devices, restaurants
Posted in Mobile, google, restaurants | No Comments »

Google Maps for iOS 6 Months Away

Thursday, September 27th, 2012

Apple released iOS 6 last week and its new mapping app is receiving intense scrutiny and criticism. Apple’s Maps feature has many errors, fails to include accurate directions (a problem in cities with one way streets) and often misidentifies businesses. The issue for users of the iPhone 5 is that there is no Google Maps app for the new platform yet, so an ability to revert is not possible.

maps2

The social media agency needs to take some action for these new iPhone users that will be left out of a highly accurate mapping app. Users of earlier versions of the iPhone are not necessarily plagued with this problem, unless they adopt the new OS. This still leaves millions of people–users prone to use their smartphones to help make purchasing decisions–that the social media agency needs to address.

The first call to action needs to be making sure the people at Apple know about the errors occurring in their app. It may not be resolved quickly, but the sooner they know about the error, the sooner it can be resolved.

The social media agency also needs to be more vigilant about the placement of addresses, directions and phone call buttons. If Maps gives an inaccurate location, the user needs to be able to quickly find the business and establish contact about how to arrive there. From the brand’s perspective, one nice thing about the enormous population of errors is a grace the customer might be willing to extend to the business for frustrations. This grace, however, is not a honeymoon period and even if the error is not the business’ fault, the social media agency needs to take remedial action as soon as possible.

Google’s New Maps App for iPhone Won’t Come for Months [REPORT]

Tags: apple, Business, google, Mashable
Posted in Mobile applications, apple, google | No Comments »

Google And FTC Are Merely Delayed

Monday, September 24th, 2012

Last week the chair of the Federal Trade Commission spoke in front of Georgetown Law School about the case against Google. Some may have interpreted the lack of news as a go ahead signal to Google. That would, however, be incorrect. He was clear that the decision is merely being delayed to avoid becoming fodder for the November presidential election.

Earlier in the year the FTC hired a big named prosecutor to handle the case, but in the past months pundits claim the momentum appears to be in Google’s favor. If a case is announced the social media agency should not expect much to happen until the case is resolved, so any effect is well down the road. If Google were to lose the case, however, there would be big changes afoot for the social media agency.

If Google were to lose the case then the punishment would range from how to Android operates to how searches function. The big hit would come from future deployments of Android devices as marketers are able to learn more and more information about the users and their preferences.

FTC: We’ll Decide On Google-Antitrust Action By End Of Year

Tags: android, google, Social Media Marketing, tablets
Posted in Internet News, android, google | No Comments »

Google Search Will Now Include Gmails

Thursday, August 9th, 2012

At Google’s Search breakfast on Wednesday Google announced that searches will now show a user relevant Gmails in their account as well. Searching for barbecue grills will result in the usual returns, but if the user had a Gmail exchange with a friend about barbecue grill, then that email will also show up in the search results. For now the program is an experiment, which is limited to the first million users that sign up for it.

Gmail

Integrating this into the larger schema for Google Search is likely to raise some privacy concerns, but those may resolve favorably or possibly with an opt-in system. If this does become part of the regular search scheme then that would be good news for the internet marketing agency. Email is still an important channel that the agency can use to reach potential clients as well as keep them up to date about new products and information. Those emails, even though Gmail is only one email server it has a massive user base, being inserted into search results will increase the productivity of marketing emails. It is also possible to reach an arrangement with Google that may not fully delete the marketing emails, so they are always in the archive.

Google Tests Showing Gmail Results in Search Queries

Tags: Digital Marketing, Gmail, google, Internet Marketing
Posted in Digital Marketing, google | 1 Comment »

Google Testing Mobile Icon for Mobile Devices

Wednesday, August 8th, 2012

Google is now experimenting with an icon that will display to the right of a website in search results. The icon is of a mobile phone and will tell the user that the site is optimized for mobile devices. This will help mobile searchers as they have their results and now they know which sites will lead them to a lower bandwidth display.

Google

It has been a long established truism that websites need to be optimized for mobile devices if they want mobile users to visit the site. The frustration for the mobile user, however, has always been about knowing which sites are optimized without wasting time by loading a site and seeing. This will help solve the problem, which means the digital marketing agency that wants mobile users needs to make sure the Google webcrawlers are discovering the mobile optimized site.

For now the icon is only rarely seen as Google is only experimenting. It is a good idea and even if it only performs half as well as expected, then there seems to be little reason why the icon will not be made a permanent part of the Google mobile searching experience. When the experiment will end has not been disclosed.

Google Testing Smartphone Optimized Icons In Mobile Results

Tags: google, Mobile, mobile advertising
Posted in Digital Marketing, advertising, google | No Comments »

Facebook Testing “Save For Later”

Thursday, August 2nd, 2012

Facebook is testing a new feature on both desktop and mobile platforms. When users are given a link to a story, Facebook will allow the user to save it in a folder and then read it later. Currently, if a user is too busy to read something, then she needs to remember it and return to it later. It’s not a huge issue on desktop where browsers have numerous tabs, but mobile devices are notoriously difficult for saved reading.

Social media agencies are increasingly being turned towards content creation This is also a key change Google is trying to create with its latest updates. One of the failures of the new focus on content is that Facebook, as the leading social network to distribute the content, did not make it as easy as possible to read the content. Stories become lost in the ever moving newsfeed and people might feel overwhelmed by the chase to read what is being shared. This change should help the internet marketing company better expose people to its content and to what brands are trying to sell.

Facebook Testing “Save for Later” Feature

Tags: Facebook, google, Mobile, social media
Posted in Digital Marketing, Facebook, social media | 1 Comment »

Google Adds “Actively Discussed on Google+”

Friday, July 27th, 2012

Google search results are now showing a new link for the search results that has spawned a lot of discussion on Google+. The link appears below all the normal information for a link and says “Actively discussed on Google+”. That link will then take the user to her Google+ page, but instead of the newsfeed display the conversation about the link.

This link should help drive traffic to discussions about pages. It may not generate much additional traffic, but given the lack of this feature drawing people to Facebook discussions about content, it is a significant change. This will also bring people onto Google+ who might not otherwise go there. The big difference will be for publishers of content who want to attract more attention. Sharing new content on FaceBook and Twitter is almost de rigeur these days, but this will help publishers remember to share onto Google+ as well.

The digital marketing company can use this as a place to increase exposure to new content their brands are generating. This is also a potentially useful way to tie in search results to Google+ exposure. Google+ is considered by many to have a superior exposure for brands over the other social networks because Google+ does not drown out a brand with other trivial reveals from a user’s network of friends. For now the service is being tested, with no active declaration of availability yet announced.

“Actively Discussedon Google+” now a part of Google search results.

Tags: conversations, google, Google search, traffic
Posted in Digital Marketing, Internet News, google | No Comments »

Noise in the Click Through Rates of Display Ads

Monday, July 23rd, 2012

On a lark Ted McConnell, the executive VP at Advertising Research Foundation, created a series of blank display ads to try and measure how many clicks are mistakes and hence noise n the CTR system which dominates ad buying in the internet.

3486209_f260

Six ads were created, each with different markups and differing keywords to measure across many different types of users. The ads were also measured for different interactions besides clicks. Because the ads were blank the belief is that each click is either a mistake or a bot.

The results suggest that four of every 10,000 clicks is a mistake and of no use whatsoever to the social media agency that pays for the ad impression. Given the small margins in CTRs and cost for ad impressions this number can be quite significant for brands in low leveraged or highly competitive industries. The social media agency needs to be careful of this signal to noise ration, because it directly eats at sales and conversion rates. A mistaken click will not lead to a sale.

Black Display Ads Tot Up Some Impressive Numbers

Tags: advertising, Digital Marketing, google, Online Advertising
Posted in Digital Marketing, Internet Advertising, advertising, google | No Comments »

Archives

Categories

Posts Tagged ‘google’