This week I got a chance to try out a paid service thanks to SEMRush. They track organic search engine ranking and Pay Per Click ads. http://www.semrush.com
Type in a keyword phrase to find the popularity of a term, the cost per click to bid on that term in Google ads, the competition for that terms and related terms. You can also find the top 20 search results for that term. I particularly like the related terms feature. They include variation of term (for example tracking multi-term phrases that include your original term) but also include terms that relate but do not include your keyword terms.
Or type in an address/URL to find how it ranks in Google for its top terms (also popularity of terms, competition and traffic drive by terms), how much spent on Google ads, competitors and links to details about competitors, such as how much they spend on Google ads. It’s helpful to see the competition and learn about how much they are spending (and with what success) on the Google ads.
Also Thursday (Dec 15) at noon, I’m doing a free webinar on Starting a Facebook Page for Business. Everyone is welcome it’s sponsored by MNREM and MIRC – you can get more details here: http://www.mnrem.com/blog/?p=426
I’m trying to take time to do more research and I thought I’d write up a quick synopsis of the research when it’s interesting enough to share. Today I read the following: Eye Tracking and Click Mapping Google Places. http://tinyurl.com/3ssqzcc Published by Meditative Research, they tracked click-through rates on Google Places.
Google Places (http://www.google.com/places/) is like Google’s version of the local Yellow Pages – although listings are free. (You can buy ads here too.) Google Places feeds into Google searches – especially when your search term includes geographic term in the search such as [st paul pizza].
The research indicates that searchers have a strong preference for the top ranking result (shocker) – but they also show preference for listings that have images and reviews. Getting to be the top site can be very difficult – but adding images to your listing is very easy. Getting reviews can be easy too.
If you have the time it’s fun to look at the results – they use eye tracking to see what draws attention and it’s fun to see the patterns. In short, there is an F-pattern or triangle where searchers read across the top line, maybe read half of the next line, reading less and less of each line as they go done the page. However the pattern changes when there are reviews, ads or other anomalies in the page. They also show how searchers track the map – but from what I could tell mostly people start in the middle and then glance at the flags.
If you have a business, it’s worth the effort to complete your Google Places profile and encourage reviews from happy customers. If you have some local businesses you like, you can help them out with a review.
I’m getting a little geeky today – for folks who don’t lean as geeky, I’m going to just remind you of my favorite handcrafted online store: http://www.etsy.com/. You might want that leading up to the holidays. Now for the geeky set…
Last week Google announced some big changes in how they are going to share info with other web site. If you’re a searcher, I think this is good news. If you are a website owner who checks stats, it’s not such good news.
Google will no longer be sharing keyword data with web sites for folks who perform searches on www.google.com and are logged in on a secure connection. Until today, webmasters could generally see where a visitor originated and if they came from Google, the webmaster could see what search they performed that results in the click to the owner’s site. So if you do a search on [diet dog food] and then click to Tommy’s Dog Food House – Tommy used to be able to see that someone came from Google and searched for [diet dog food]. Now Tommy can only see that a visitor came from Google.
This makes life tough for website owners for a couple of reasons – first you don’t know what terms people are successfully using to find you. Second – website owners often track traffic a step beyond and really like to know if someone who clicks on [diet dog food] goes through to purchase. Now that the keyword is gone – so is a lot of conversion tracking (tracking to see who converted from shopper to buyer). Third – some websites alter their content based on those search keywords. It doesn’t matter if you are using Google Analytics or another traffic tracking software – you won’t be able to get this info for organic listings. (Organic here just means non-paid placement.)
This is only true for organic listings. If you buy an ad on Google and someone clicks on your ad, then you can track the keyword and the conversion.
I will remind you of the caveat that this is only true for folks who use the Google web site, are logged into Google and use a secure connection. They claim that this is true for less than 10 percent of searchers but that seems kind of low to me.
You can get the full story here: http://tinyurl.com/3k3hxlf
I’ve always said that search engines look at three things:
- Keywords in content – do you use the search terms your potential clients use on your pages?
- Popularity as defined by links – do other, quality sites link to your site?
- Freshness of content – are you updating your site regularly
I just read a statistic that increased my interest in fresh content. Google’s VP of Engineering recently reported that 20 to 25% of the queries they see are brand new. He was talking about how Google uses context to understand searches. (You can see more here: http://tinyurl.com/2xsaoa.)
I think it also feeds into a popular idea of the long tail search engine optimization. The long tail search focuses on multiple-word phrases [st paul dry cleaning open Sunday] as opposed to single phrases, such as [drycleaners]. (Here’s more info on the long tail search http://strategizer.wordtracker.com/.)
If you are a drycleaner in my town that’s open on Sunday, you could see where showing up for the first search is even more important that showing up for the second if you are focused on making a sale.
In some ways the goal is easier when you just pick the most popular terms and focus on using them, although the competition is getting increasingly fierce. I think the best way to reach those or long tail searches is to provide as much information as possible.
On traditional web sites this can be somewhat difficult as there is realistically only so much space for info. That’s why I’ve been becoming a bigger and bigger fan of blogs. Blogs are easy to maintain. Each blog acts as its own page in terms of SEO – so that if you write all about your adventures in dry cleaning on Sundays, you can do well for the search above. And writing about your industry and what interests you and your clients, I think you increase the odds of using other long tail search terms.
Also each blog post feeds into providing fresh content for the whole site.
Writing blog posts takes time – and sometimes it makes sense to hire that out – but I think in terms of SEO it can be money well spent.
Kind of long this week – I hope that’s helpful.
Sorry to folks outside Minnesota. This is pretty area specific this week.
Google joined the Minnesota High Tech Association earlier this month. My hope was that it meant they might start doing training and sponsoring speakers here. Well, apparently it does. They just announced Google Training offered Sep 9 and 10. They are offering a range of classes on how to build a free web site, get listed on Google Places, buy ads and use some of their other free tools. There are three workshops, each lasting an hour. So I’ve signed up for two just to see how it goes. I’ll report in after to tell you how it goes.
I know these sessions have filled up quickly in Dublin – but they are open now if you’re interested: http://www.minnesotagetonline.com
I know today’s byte is pretty specific to anyone who is interested in Google ads. For others my tip of the day is to sing up for local Groupon http://www.groupon.com/ when planning your vacation – it can help you save bucks while you have great time.
Recently I had someone ask about how to buy Google ads for placement above the search results, rather than the ad sidebar on the right. Over the years they’ve actually changed this process. It used to be that you paid the very big bucks to get placed in the prime above the search results. Now you still pay the pretty big bucks (depending on the keyword phrase) but your ad must also merit top ranking. They use an algorithm based on bid per click and quality of ad to determine which ads go to the top places. Here’s the explanation from the Google Adwords (aka Pay per Click ads) help section…
Google believes strongly in providing high-quality and relevant advertising to our users. On Google search result pages, only the highest ranking AdWords ads are eligible to appear in the top positions above the search results.
Our system does not rank ads solely on cost, so there is no way to guarantee top placement on a search result page. However, by adjusting your keywords’ Quality Scores and CPC bids, you can better control the position of your ad and help improve your ad’s chance to appear higher within search results. Remember: The higher the quality, the lower the CPC, and vice versa.
The above is quoted from http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6546
Someone asked me about DMOZ recently. It was like hearing about an old classmate. DMOZ or Open Directory Project is a volunteer-maintained directory of web sites. http://www.dmoz.org In its day, DMOZ was a great search engine and it gained relevance by letting other directories and search engines gain access to their database of links. So getting listed on DMOZ was very beneficial to your overall search engine rankings. A long time ago I was a volunteer editor for DMOZ.
The trouble with DMOZ is and always has been the wait to get listed. You can submit your site for free – but you are reliant on a volunteer getting and processing your submission. I don’t think a link from DMOZ has the same impact now as it did 5 or 10 years ago – but it’s still nice to try. Here are my quick tips to submitting your site:
- Search the database to make sure you aren’t already listed.
- Find a category that fits your site
- Make sure that category has an Editor (if there’s a note at the bottom saying “ Volunteer to Edit this Category”, there’s no Editor)
- If your first choice category doesn’t have an editor, find another category
- Follow their instructions: http://www.dmoz.org/docs/en/add.html They are pretty specific and straightforward
- Submit, wait, and don’t lose any sleep over it
- If you really want to get listed – wait six months and try again – maybe with a different category
I hope that’s helpful. Again a link from them is nice – but not worth more than 30 minutes of your time anymore.
I’ve talked before about how search engines rank web sites. They look at the keywords you use on your web site, they look at how many other (quality) sites link to you and they look at how often you update your site. Getting links to your site is always the trickiest part because it’s one thing you can’t control.
One way to increase the links to your site is to write articles and get them published in various places online. Here are a few places that specialize in publishing articles. The first four are article clearinghouses. The last is a place where you can create a web page for your article. The first is probably the most stringent with their submission qualifications.
I think the key is to write articles that people will find interesting. Provide information that is valuable and keep the sales pitch to a minimum.
This tip might also be helpful if you’re just looking to become an expert in some subject. For example if you are looking for a job in a specific industry, you might write articles on that industry and publish in the above places. It’s a nice perk to your résumé.
I am doing two webinars on search engine optimization on March 15. It’s geared towards businesses in the renewable energy sector – but I think it might be interesting for a wider audience, especially for B2B folks. And it’s free. Here are the details…
Tuesday, March 15th, 2011 : First They’ve got to Find You!
Getting Found Online/Search Engine Optimization
How easy is to find your web site online? Your web site is in competition with thousands of other web sites for search engine ranking. In this one hour webinar we’ll go over four simple strategies that will help you rise to the top. We’ll include some free tools that will help you assess and improve your standing.
The webinar will be held twice. Please pre- register by following the meeting link:
10:00 a.m. http://connectpro31594469.adobeconnect.com/r26184697/
2:00 p.m. http://connectpro31594469.adobeconnect.com/r34778891/
Every six months or so Google changes some aspect of how they rank sites. Last summer it was called Google Caffeine – because the goal (or so we assume) was to pick up stories more quickly. In other words, they wanted to be able to rank news and events in real time. (Possibly to keep up with Twitter.) So after last summer, I really emphasized regular changes on the homepage and faster download speeds. http://byteoftheweek.com/2010/08/12/google-caffeine-dinner-for-tcdp/
They made some more changes recently. (I’ve heard this change called Google Panda.) The goal this time (we assume) was to downgrade junky sites – or sites that just seem to rerun syndicated information and ads. I want to be clear and say that Google doesn’t have a problem with people who buy ads – but with people who run too many of them on their sites. Google sells ads – or it seems strange to penalize folks who run the ads, but Google was always clear that only so many ads per page are acceptable. So how are they tracking this? It seems as if Google has added people to the equation. They have been having human indexers out there making some judgments. I suspect most people won’t notice much of a change in their ranking but it’s good to be aware of the fact that they are looking at syndicated article and ads.
I often think these changes are like fashion. Good to be aware of what’s happening – but few of us will be slaves to the changes. The folks who are slaves to the changes run the greatest risk of falling out of fashion – while the rest of us can forge ahead on a steadier course of just looking good
