Matt Cutts and the rest of the Mountain View Gang have been busy lately. While Google is constantly making changes to their search algorithm, over 500 a year, the last two weeks have seen a series of updates that greatly impact search results. Businesses need to keep tabs on Google’s changes in their ranking system in order to maintain an effective online marketing strategy. Here are some of the most important updates and what they mean for your business.

Freshness Update

Last summer Google completed their Caffeine update. It allowed Big G to index the web faster, giving more recent and relevant results. In early November, a similar update was made, placing even more importance on the “freshness” of content.

Say you’re looking for information on the Michigan Brewer’s Guild Winter Festival. Google will now place more emphasis on content relating to the upcoming festival instead of info from 2010 or 2009. Sports scores, breaking news, and other searches that are time sensitive, will now show up in search results within a matter of minutes.

Relevant, Original Content

Google is continuing to emphasize original content. Several of the recent updates relate to this. Snippets are the brief piece of content that Google displays under the link in the search results page. As Google continues to improve their “understanding of web page structure,” they will place more relevant snippets of actual content within search results. Less emphasis will be placed on headers and titles. This means the content of your latest blog post needs to be relevant, not just the title.

Another update is placing less emphasis on duplicate “boilerplate” anchor text. Say your internal link structure includes a dozen pages pointing to your blog post on “pineapple recipes.” If each link text is easy pineapple recipes, they will still only be counted as one “link vote.” This is to combat sites from gaining “link juice” simply by linking to one section of the site over and over.

Continuing with original content, Google loves the original source. Including tags like “rel=author” helps the friendly Google bot to tell what is firsthand content and what is being rehashed and reshared to generate traffic.

Take this blog post for example. While I am discussing content that has previously been published and linking to it, I am also providing amazing original insight into what it means for your business. When blogging, don’t just cut and paste from an original article. Provide added value and your own opinions or experience. Make it your own complimentary piece instead of a simple summary.

WARNING!

Matty C. does provide the following disclaimer to keep you from ruining your web team’s pre-holiday work schedule:

Before you go wild tuning your anchor text or thinking about your web presence for Icelandic users, please remember that this is only a sampling of the hundreds of changes we make to our search algorithms in a given year…

The takeaway is, and always should be, to create original and appealing content. Content is still King. You can never go wrong by providing valuable and popular content. Google’s latest updates make it even more important to have a dynamic, engaging, and updated web presence. So keep uploading those YouTube videos, writing new blog posts, and sharing everything on your new Google+ Page! Happy SEMing!

Now that Google+ has reached 20 million users, in order to stay in the social media game you’ll have four services to keep track of. Facebook and Twitter are the obvious big dogs. LinkedIn, the business social network, has been increasing in popularity and importance. With a huge number of initial sign-ups and very positive press, Google+ doesn’t seem to be going away. Most speculate that once more people start using big G’s new network and business pages are integrated, even more growth can be expected.

So how do you manage having a presence on four different social networks? There is no universally correct way. Everyone should develop their own strategy. To help find how others created theirs, I surveyed a group of marketers in the Ann Arbor, Michigan area. All of them have a strong presence on multiple social networks. The survey asked which of the big four networks they use, what their strategy was, and what impact, if any, Google+ has had.

With these tips you can develop a social media strategy that works for you and effecively targets your audience of followers.

Facebook

Facebook Usage

With over a quarter-billion users, Facebook is the largest social network. One main difference from Twitter and Google+ is that, for both these networks people have to agree to follow each other in order to “become friends.” This fosters a more personal experience. Users tend to know each other before becoming friends.

The usage chart indicates how people surveyed use Facebook. Personal usage is on the far left in darker colors while Networking and Work is lighter and to the right. This same format is used to show usage for the other social networks. As you can see, most use Facebook for personal, family, and entertainment.

“…when I share things that are more personal or family oriented I sometimes go straight to Facebook.”

“Facebook is more oriented toward keeping up with friends and family relationships.”

“I use Facebook to post more about what I am doing and who I am doing it with.”

Twitter

Twitter Usage

Twitter is a mixed bag of sorts. Usage is spread fairly evenly except for family use. Twitter is the service that tends to “stay out of the way.” They provide a method for you to share 140 characters of thoughts or links with others. The rest is up to you. Even though it is a very simple, limited interface, people often find it the most confusing. Regular users often have found specific ways Twitter can deliver custom news or information to them.

“…I use it as an aggregator of news or stories from reporters/networks I enjoy, bloggers I read, music news I care about…”

“Twitter is just for fun – mostly just follow/tweet my hobbies.”

“(Twitter) has really allowed me to build my personal brand…”

“I often cross post from Twitter.”

People tend to find their own personal use for Twitter. Often times other services feed into Twitter so they may have personal and work topics in the same stream.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn Usage

LinkedIn promotes itself as the professional social network. Its more about creating a network of business associates. People you’ve done work for, companies you’ve worked at. Content can be shared but tends to be more focused to business news or the users related industry. You can see from the usage chart that there is a heavy lean towards networking and work.

“LinkedIn is only about professional networking…”

“I’m not posting entertainment stuff on LinkedIn…”

“I use (LinkedIn) for the forums and to keep a professional network. I rarely find the feed interesting but will regularly use it to see who is reading my profile and to have professional contacts…”

Besides being marketed towards professionals, LinkedIn does not allow you to share photos. One major reason it will always lean towards the work and not personal side of the usage chart.

Google+

Google+ Usage

Do a a Google Search and you will find dozens of reviews for Google+. It combines many features from each of the other big three. So how are people using it? How should you use it?

“Try not to post the same things on each network. Google+ is the only one that may cross that line…”

“Basically it is a good middle ground between Facebook and Twitter for me.”

“…with Circles I can be more precise in who I share with and really tailor content to that group.”

“I think I’ll enjoy it more when I start following the Twitter audience, bloggers, news, companies.”

“Google+ appears to be a composite of the major social media approaches.”

Finding Your Strategy

Your strategy needs to be your personal strategy. Many of those surveyed spoke on tailoring content to your audience. Keep track of who is following you and determine what would interest them.

“Create and build a personal brand through sharing content that is relevant to the audience, while still keeping one main thing in mind: BEING SOCIAL.”

This quote brings up another important point. Be yourself. You can turn off your followers if all you are posting “seven ways to…” or “top five reasons to…” links. Engage your audience. Respond to them. Let them see who you really are while still staying with in the boundaries of the specific social network.

“Be myself and always be transparent. Also, have fun with it!”

“I definitely think transparency is important, but that doesn’t mean post everything all the time. It just means to be aware of conflicting view points and to not get trapped in an echo chamber of similar content and people. This also allows for more interaction, and much more interesting discussion and connections.

So get out there, post, share, and have fun developing your personal social media strategy.

Note: Some graphs were captured from Google’s June Inside Search event video stream which can be viewed here.

Google recently held their Inside Search event in San Francisco. They introduced new technologies and applications for voice search, image search, and Google Goggles. The other main focus of the event was explaining Google’s continued development of mobile search.

So why is Google focusing on mobile search? It has the potential to be another very profitable revenue stream. It can also offset slower periods of desktop search volume.

Below are some rough search volumes for Google by day of the week. Notice that search volume on desktops is highest on Monday. It then gradually trends downward until the weekend. Saturday has the lowest volume of desktop search.

Now compare it to the volume of mobile search. It stays much more consistent from Monday to Thursday. What’s important for Google is that it peaks on Saturday. Mobile search’s busiest time is desktop’s slowest.

Let’s compare search volume throughout the day. Here we see the volume of desktop searches by two hour increments. People obviously search less late at night on desktops. Search volume then grows rapidly until lunch time. People leave their desktop computers and go out into the world. When they return, they have more things they need to search for, hence the peak around 3pm. Volume then steadily declines until a sharp drop off around 11pm when people are heading to bed.

Just as with search volume throughout the week, mobile search volume compliments desktop search over the course of the day.

Notice the peaks at lunchtime and the steady increase. It even peaks at 11pm. People search on their mobile devices until about midnight. At which point volume declines quickly.

Its not just mobile search that people are using. Business Insider’s article on mobile apps vs. web consumption shows that more minutes per day are spent in mobile applications than the web.

businessinsider.com

Why is Google so interested in these mobile search trends? Google’s revenue from AdWords declines with drops in search volumes. Obviously mobile search is not on the same scale as desktop. If Google can make searching on mobile devices easy to use, more effective, and ultimately more widely used, they can offset some of the dip in their AdWords revenue.

So what does this mean for your business? Mobile devices have much smaller screens compared to the large monitors of desktops and laptops. When viewing mobile versions of the search engine results page, there is often only room for one or two sponsored ads.

If your business can achieve the top placement your ad will take up the majority of a users screen. If your campaign is well targeted the ad may have a higher chance of getting clicked. Less competition and a larger share of the visible screen could increase click through ratios.

Mobile may provide lower volumes of traffic but depending on what type of conversion you’re seeking, it may prove to be profitable. Users often search for something on their phone during the day, then visit the site directly when they get home to their desktop. Mobile search could be another effective branding or lead generating strategy.

It is now up to Google to continue to improve mobile search. Additional features like voice search can grow the use of mobile search. Google is focused on this to improve their business, you may be able to as well.

Today is the day Facebook, Google, Yahoo! and others will be switching over to IPv6 [Internet Protocol version 6) for the next 24 hours – it’s a test drive. And if you are able to read this blog chances are the switch over actually worked.

Why is this important? Well the world is running out of IP addresses on its current network protocol, IPv4. Or in simple translation…our current Internet tubes are full and we need to open up a new tube before all the tubes become clogged. So the major search players are experimenting today to help get websites ready for the switch.

We will be actively watching for signals of issues for all our clients. Many businesses are dependent upon the Internet and hopefully today will be uneventful as the Internet gods work the kinks out of this switch. So if you experience an issue, there actually is a logical answer today.

For the real geeky details check out this article:

What is World IPv6 Day and why it matters | ZDNet.

Enjoy!

It’s been a few weeks since Google made changes to the user interface of its search results. In putting more advanced search options more firmly in front of the user, Google has broken with one of the factors that is widely credited for their success – keeping it simple. Read More

Google Caffeine is a major overhaul to Google’s search infrastructure that was announced in August of last year, which aims to deliver faster and more comprehensive crawling and indexing for the Google index.

About the Caffeine Roll-Out
After a developer preview period, Google rolled Caffeine out to just one of its data centers sometime around November 2009, giving a small percentage of users access to search results powered by Google’s fancy new infrastructure.   So when do the rest of us get to play!? In a recent Search Engine Land article, a Google spokesperson is quoted as expecting Caffeine “to roll out to all data centers over the coming months.”   This is a lot later than the estimate given by Google’s Matt Cutts, who blogged about Caffeine being rolled out after the 2009 holiday season. Bummer.

So Why’s Caffeine a Big Deal, Anyway?
Just to be clear, Caffeine is not a change to Google’s search algorithm, but a new approach to crawling and indexing web pages and content.   That said, it’ll almost certainly result in differences on search engine results pages (SERPs), because the new technology will allow Google to index more content (including more kinds of content) faster (think: realtime results).   What can we expect to see on Google SERPs powered by Caffeine?   Here’s a quick summary of speculations from around the web:

• The speed of search results will increase;
• The temporal relevance (i.e. real time) of results will increase;
• Social media will be more prominent/prevalent in search results;
• The variety of content offered on SERPs will continue to increase;
• The relevance/importance of long-tail keyphrase searches will increase (because of an even larger index).

Ann Arbor is abuzz with talk of A2 Fiber. I first heard about A2 Fiber when Facebook suggested I become a fan of the A2 Fiber Facebook page. I wondered what this was and why all my friends were “fanning” it. Google Fiber is a plan to create an ultra-high speed broadband network in a number of carefully selected communities across the United States. This broadband network promises to deliver data at 1 gigabit per second; almost 100 times faster than the average American’s current cable or DSL provider connection. While at work I am extremely connected through Pure Visibility but away from the office I rely on coffee shops, the library and other hotspots for my internet because I find the monthly rates to be too high – Google Fiber might be able to change all this . . .

Ann Arbor is extremely enthusiastic about being included in this Google Fiber experiment. The University of Michigan and the City of Ann Arbor have partnered to fill out Google’s request for information. Ann Arbor would be the perfect place for Google to run one of their Fiber networks. Google plans to “offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people” which will make a huge impact to these individuals but the greater long-term impacts are huge.

By offering “affordable” internet they’ll break up the current monopoly large providers have over certain geographic areas. It’s not a good thing if there is only one broadband provider. The network of fiber could be opened to other providers giving small local companies the option of offering their own services at affordable rates. Google’s “competitive” pricing for their Fiber network would be significantly lower than what most Ann Arborites are paying and the quality of the connection would be far faster.

Google announced yesterday that it is acquiring AdMob, the current leader in the US mobile display advertising space.

Google’s no stranger to the mobile space themselves. They have been offering advertising on their mobile search platform since fall of 2005; and the Android operating system (launched in 2008) is a clear play to stay relevant as more and more people use the internet from a handheld device. This year, they’ve doubled down on their mobile strategy, working hard to expand Android to new devices and networks, strengthening their mobile analytics offerings, and now acquiring AdMob.

In North America, mobile advertising is still in its very nascent stages. Traffic is still a small fraction of what you see with traditional search and display advertising, and there is plenty of debate about whether mobile advertising can match the value of traditional online advertising. On the one hand, there is less space on the screen and therefore fewer things competing for the browser’s attention. On the other hand, the small screen can make it difficult to create compelling and effective landing pages.

Whatever your thoughts on the value of mobile advertising, there is no doubt that mobile internet browsing is poised to grow tremendously over the next few years – and there are a lot of reasons to get excited about that.

Most notably, mobile browsing offers the opportunity to geo-target hyper-specific local areas. When users are browsing the internet on a laptop or desktop device, advertisements are geo-targeted based on IP address. IP address targeting is inherently flawed – for instance, anyone using AOL has an IP address located in Reston, Virginia, regardless of where they are physically located. Mobile devices offer the opportunity to target by GPS tracking – which allow you to accurately target not only the user’s city location, but even the specific neighborhood, or street where they’re located at the moment they load the ad. This obviously opens up tremendous opportunities for local businesses. Imagine if you could target ads to users who were literally standing right around the corner.

Also, many people make the mistake of assuming that mobile advertising means cell phone advertising, which isn’t necessarily the case. New non-phone internet-capable mobile devices are popping up all over the place, from the iPod Touch to the Amazon Kindle and Android-driven Nook.

Few question that the mobile internet is one of the “next big things” in the online world. Many businesses are putting off advertising in the space because they believe there just isn’t a mobile audience for their products or services – and they may be right, for now. But the space is growing at break-neck speed, and competition for ad real estate will only get tighter with time. Why not get in now?

It has happened to anyone who watches their organic ranking. One day you are drinking a cup of coffee and you pull up your browser to look at where your site is for your favorite keyphrase. Then you spill your coffee in horror: IT’S GONE! Your website is not there.

How is this possible? You haven’t made any major changes in months. Your website been steady as a rock at the top of the rankings for over a year. How could the site suddenly lose so much visibility?

It probably didn’t. In our experience rankings don’t change suddenly if no major SEO efforts are underway. Instead they slowly shift over time. However, there are a number of things that can create sudden shifts, or the appearance of them. Here are a list of things you can do to confirm whether or not the change in ranking is a real problem, a temporary blip, or even just a trick your browser is playing on you.

Read More

A constant source of frustration in the world of SEM is the seemingly conscious decision by Google to prevent the analyst from running reports detailing conversions and conversion rate by hour. From a campaign management perspective, it’s extremely valuable data for day parting.

Day Parting, for those who are unaware, is a technique allowing you to adjust bid rates by time of day and/or day of the week with the goal of taking advantage of times with high conversion rates or low cost-per-leads, while not wasting money during the less effective and more expensive times.

I can see the Google Ann Arbor building out the window next to me, and I’ve shaken my fist in that direction a few times before, but today I’ll avoid the conspiracy theories of why Google would not want to share this beautiful data with us, and instead refocus that anxious energy on solving the problem!

THERE IS A WAY! With a little mixing and mashing of reports from AdWords and Google Analytics, its possible to conjure up   a report that gives conversions by hour (regardless of date) and by day of week. To do this, you will need to have ‘Conversion Goals’ set up in analytics already. If you don’t, do that now and come back in a month.

Let’s map this out….

What do I want?
A report detailing Conversions and Conversion Rate by time of day (regardless of date) at the Campaign level.

1.) In AdWords reports:
Report type: Campaign Performance
Settings: Hourly (regardless of date),   choose a date range and your campaign of choice.

Run the report, and export to .CSV for Excel.

2.) Lets go to Analytics!
- Set the date range for the same time period.
- On the left-hand side, click Goals, then Total Conversions.
- Underneath the graph, it gives you the option to ‘Select Goal’.   For this example, I choose to select ‘All Goals’.
- Next, graph by time of day.   This option is located in the square with a clock in it by the top right corner of the graph.
- Now we need to filter the data to include only the campaign we’re interested in.   To do this, we’ll need to create a new Advanced Segment.

3.) Advanced Segmentation
- Click ‘Create a new advanced segment’
- Dimensions –> Traffic Sources
- Drag ‘Campaign’ to the ‘Dimension or Metric’ box,   choose your campaign from the drop down menu, and name the segment.
- Click the ‘create segment’ button.
- Un-click the ‘All Visits’ tab, and select your newly created one.
- Export the data into a .CSV for Excel

4.) Mash it up!
- Make sure your Time Zones for AdWords and Analytics are the same (and then double check, this is pretty important…)
- Select your Conversion Rate data from the analytics .CSV you just created, and line it up with the AdWords spreadsheet from step 1.
- Format the data however you please.   I’ve added Conversion Rate, Cost/Lead, and % of total Leads

5.) Visualize the data, and interpret it accordingly.

6.) Day Parting
You’ve analyzed the data, came up with a plan of action, and now your ready to optimize your Ad Scheduling.
- Back in AdWords now, click into Settings for the chosen campaign.   Under Advanced Settings, you may now edit to your heart’s content.

Voila! Together, we’ve outsmarted Google for a minute *high five*, and avoided purchasing a 3rd party software!
Now as mentioned earlier, you can view the data by day of the week also.   The only changes that you’ll have to make are adjusting the unit of time you want to view in AdWords to ‘Day of Week’, and in Analytics, view data by day (then organize and aggregate once in a spreadsheet).

Yet another small victory that makes life exciting!