In the spirit of autumn, Halloween and this weekend’s Thanksgiving holiday, the team at Pure Visibility took some time out to visit our local pumpkin patch at Wasem Farm. Donuts, cider and a few dozen pumpkins later, we had a great fall afternoon. Be sure to check out all of the photos on our Facebook page! From the PV Team to yours, have a wonderful holiday weekend!
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.
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.
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.
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!
The knee-jerk answer to this is, “Yes, people are looking for everything online.” To an extent this is a pretty fair answer; active consumers are connected to the internet with phones, tablets, computers… and have internet access just about all the time – from their phone, at McDonalds, with portable devices, etc.
Marketing has changed, and is continuing to do so, as more devices gain access to the Internet and more locations become practical places from which to connect. These days, people have a vast amount of information at their fingertips, a number of convenient ways to access it, and search engines act as gateways for finding what they need.
This move has caused a shift in advertising as companies scramble to get to where the people are – the yellow pages has moved online (and to a large extent is integrated into search engines); television shows, music, social activity has moved online.
All of this alters the format of display advertising and creates a struggle for companies to monetize from advertising because traditional methods are not suitable; magazines and newspapers have moved online (to the consternation of publishers because of the general “free-ness” of content on the internet).
Google continues to benefit from all of this, as it fuels the transition and answers people’s queries. If you check Google’s stock, you’ll probably see that a lot of the transition has already happened, as almost all of their revenue comes from advertisements that people click on (online).
The easiest way to check whether people are searching for your particular business services or products is to use the Google Keyword Tool. From this tool you can see “Local Monthly Searches” which is how many times people search for a business like yours from the location you have selected (probably the United States if you left the default setting).
If you are logged into a Google account you can even change the columns to see the average cost per click advertisers pay when they bid on the term. Unless your product is very new, or if your product is not particularly well-defined in the market, you will probably see search volume for terms that are specifically for your product.
Search advertising is good at answering existing demand. Even if you have a particular niche that can be covered by a group of salespeople, you might supplement those efforts with search advertising. Answering inquiries for your products when they occur is probably going to work better than an unsolicited contact. Search advertising might also reveal unexpected or peripheral markets where you wouldn’t have a sales team assigned.
Probably a better question than “Are people searching for my business” would be “is it cost effective and practical for me to target search engine users?”
If you are just now asking whether people are searching for your business online, you might already be late to the game. But asking whether it makes sense to get involved with paid search/search advertising/AdWords/SEO/social media, is different than asking if people actually search online for your products.
I think I established that they most likely do, and it takes about five minutes to find out. But whether it is cost effective and practical to make an online marketing effort is a completely different topic. Obviously the answer varies by the type of business you have.
Are you a local business that wouldn’t typically advertise? Are you a franchise? Are you thinking of starting an e-commerce site? Is your business international? Is your business a branded household name? Is your business so large that it is more concerned with reputation management than acquiring customers through marketing?
For any business, here are a couple of easier questions to start with:
Hopefully you’ve gained a little insight here on how to start thinking about your online marketing efforts.
On Tuesday November 8, 2011, Pure Visibility’s Linda Girard & Jeremy Lopatin were featured as the moderator and a panelist for Ann Arbor Spark’s Marketing Round Table. Check out the video below for all the action.
Marketing Roundtable – November 8, 2011 from AnnArborUSA on Vimeo.
Approaching web analytics as a new user can be daunting because of the complexity of the tools. There’s no one right way to do it, but a good way is to have problems to solve or a question that needs to be answered.
Integrating analytics into our user experience practice started with the need to get clear answers to specific questions. We had questions like “How many users will we alienate if we optimize this site for a 1024 by 768 screen resolution?” which is the less open-ended version of “What screen resolution should we use to optimize our site?” (The answer, it turns out, is “all of them”).
There’s a clear answer in the Google Analytics’ Visitors > Technology > Browser & OS report. Or, at least, as clear as anything gets when you deal with anything as messy as user behavior.
Another good initial analytics/UX question is “How many of our site visitors are using a mobile device?” This is a better way of asking “Should we invest in a mobile site right now?” (The answer is “yes” and you may want to focus on designing the mobile version first, before the desktop version). Google Analytics makes this easy, through the Visitors > Mobile > Overview report.
Neither of these questions lead to terribly deep insights, but that’s the point of your first few forays into web analytics. Take a little time to get accustomed to the interface of your analytics tool and to ask the sorts of questions that analytics can actually answer. That’s why it’s good to start small and get some early wins. Have fun!
Entrepreneurs, business owners, marketing directors, and SEO enthusiasts:
Join Pure Visibility’s visionary, Linda Girard as she moderates her annual SPARK Marketing Roundtable event – Search, Social, Mobile Marketing Trends. Linda and her panel will discuss industry trends and how they will impact your business and budgets. Here’s your opportunity to engage with experts who will share stories that directly influence your 2012 marketing planning.
You’ll get the insiders’ perspective of B2B corporations, as the panelists take you through the upcoming trends and where you should focus your planning.
Free to attend
I Heart Job Offers Resume T-shirt by BlackBirdTees
Yesterday we covered the first two steps of what a single location business can do to make their business stand out against a franchise operation with multiple outlets.
So now you have claimed all your local search listings, and optimized them to take full advantage of how their fields influence the local search results pages in search engines. Great! It’s time to do some high-level optimization to your own web page to appear clear and concise in the organic search results.
Write the homepage <title> and <meta> description so they both appear as complete thoughts instead of being cut off in mid-sentence. If the user is searching with the intent of going to your website, they will skip the local listings completely. In the search results page, your website needs to clear, concise, and grab the attention of the user. Most search engines allow a maximum of 60 characters for the title, and 160 characters for the description.
Other companies are allowed to bid on your brand name, however, they are not allowed to falsely represent themselves as your company.
Advertisers often use DKI (dynamic keyword insertion) in the titles of their ads as a way to increase the perceived relevance of an ad to the search query. This gets tricky when the search query is a branded term that fits in the ad title parameters.
In the ProFlowers.com AdWords account, a search for “University Flower Shop” would trigger a broad match hit of the keyphrase “Flower Shower”. Using DKI though, University Flower shop would appear as the ad title (because it fits in the 25 character parameter), meaning that people could click the ad wrongly thinking it would direct them to University Flower Shop.
DKI Ad Example: {KeyWord: Flower Shop}
| Search Query Example | University Flower Shop | Flowers in Ann Arbor Michigan |
| Num. of Characters in Query | < 25 | > 25 |
| Displayed Ad Title | University Flower Shop | Flower Shop |
When it comes to branded terms, competitors are not allowed to use your brand name in their ad title. Because of this, using DKI on competitor terms often gets advertisers into trouble. If you own a business and someone is using your business name in the title of their ad, you can contact the advertiser directly or send a trademark grievance to Google.
But there is more! If your brand name is too vague (as the business name “University Flower Shop” is above), it is okay for a competitor to use your brand name in an ad title. Because there are dozens of stores across the US named University Flower Shop, ProFlowers is not overstepping their bounds.
Especially if your business is in a very competitive market, and everyone has optimized their local pages, it can be difficult to stand out. A new feature in both Google Places and Yelp is the ability to promote offers for (i.e. “Three free balloons with purchase of bouquet!”).
These are free to post, and give your listing more precious real estate on the search results page. And in Google Places & Google Maps, it puts a green star next to your listing which immediately attracts the searcher’s attention and makes you stand out from the others. An example of what the green star looks like next to Paid and Places ads can be seen in the image below.
This makes you more noticeable, attracts attention, and increases your chance of a click (since people love saving money). A definite Win-Win situation.
Running a small business is tough stuff, and complicated even more when large national brands begin throwing their weight around and engage in questionable practices. Small business owners are left wondering what is and is not legal when it comes to aspects of online marketing. If you’re a small business owner, here’s what you can do to protect and promote your brand, and to help you recognize when another business has overstepped their bounds online.
Here’s the kind of thing that could happen. Last week I spoke with University Flower Shop of Ann Arbor, who were vexed that a national competitor of theirs, ProFlowers.com, had done some very questionable and shady marketing tactics to attain new business, at their expense.
ProFlowers.com claimed the Google Places page of UFSAA, and changed the phone number to their own. Because of this, anyone who tried to call UFSAA ended up talking to the customer service department at ProFlowers. This was shady indeed.
ProFlowers was also showing up in the AdWords listings for University Flower Shop terms. Again, UFSAA worried that they were losing business because of unfair advertising methods.
So as a small business, what can you do to protect and promote your brand, and what is unauthorized when it comes to aggressively competing on the search results page?
The easiest way to prevent others from wrongly claiming your local listings is to beat them to it. Google Places makes it difficult to claim a listing that is not yours, however there are loopholes that shady-savvy marketers have discovered, as UFSAA found out.
Below I’ve segmented the local search sites into three levels of decreasing importance. When claiming your local listings, I suggest fully optimizing each tier (see Tip 2, below) before moving on to the next level, as they will have the greatest impact in creating better visibility for your brand on the search results page.
Tier 1: Google Places & Yelp.
Tier 2: Facebook, Yahoo Local, Bing Local
Tier 3: Yellow Pages, Localeze, Superpages, CitySearch, Yellowbook, and MapQuest.
Each interface has different fields to populate. As an example, I am focusing here on the options Google Places provides, and the significance of each.
Very simply, the more complete your Places page is, the more prominently it appears on the search results page, and the more likely the user is to find the information they were seeking. Including all this additional information and claiming your local listings bolsters your local SEO strategy, allowing you to dominate the organic search listings for highly relevant traffic.
Company, Address, Phone: These fields are the essence of local; alerting the search algorithm that you are indeed relevant and within the local radius of the search.
Note: Phone number is especially important in this instance, because local searches are much more likely to be done from a mobile device, and these users have a high propensity to call you.
Email & Website: Not essential, but including these fields allows the user to learn more information about your brand, and gives them an alternate means of contacting you.
Description: 200 characters are given to sum up your business. Depending on how well known your brand is, you may wish to write your slogan, give important details of your company (locally owned since 1985!), or attract users with short marketing copy (Lowest prices on flowers, guaranteed).
Categories: Five categories are given, and I recommend using them all. This helps both the search algorithm and the user understand your expertise better.
Photos & Videos: Boom! One of the biggest things you can do to increase your real estate on the search results page, and attract a users attention is to add photos (up to 10) and videos (up to 5) to the local listings page. Often times businesses do not include any good multimedia with their listings, making those that do stand out amongst the pack.
Hours of Operations: One of the main reasons people use local search is to find out if/when businesses are open. This is an optional field, but a very important one.
Payment Options: Letting the user know ahead of time what is accepted as payment is a good business practice. You’re a restaurant that doesn’t accept American Express? Please let me know so I’m not out of luck after ordering dinner.
Additional Details: This section is reserved for other details customers should know about your business. Do you validate parking? Include that. You have student discounts every Thursday? Include that. Accept competitors’ coupons or interesting trades? Include it!
Stay tuned for the other three tips… coming tomorrow!
At the end of the day, the goal of SEO is to establish your website as an authoritative “subject matter expert” on the topics and keyphrases you want to target; at least in the eyes of the search engines. To this end, I wanted to share an excellent analogy I heard to help crystalize this notion.
In the early days of the Internet, webpages were conceived of much like academic publications (such as dissertations or journal articles), with descriptive titles and abstracts, deeply informative body content, and references to other authoritative work on the subject. Translated to a webpage, these correspond quite nicely to the <title>, meta description, <body>, and links to related content. At a very fundamental level, sites and pages continue to be thought of in this fashion by search engines.
Using this analogy is helpful to understand how a website might be viewed by a search engine as an “expert” on the topic(s) it covers (and thus be rewarded with higher rankings). Expressed in academic terms, subject matter “expertness” is derived from two basic elements: the size of the body of work on the topic (i.e. the number of pages your website contains dedicated to that topic), and the degree to which that body of work is cited by other relevant, authoritative sources (i.e. links from other high-quality webpages on the subject – both internal and external).
Pretty cool, huh? Now get out there and act like an expert! Start fueling your SEO campaign with some high-quality, link-worthy content!
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