Encrypted search results – Changes in Google
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
Prezi
Last week I had an opportunity to try out a new presentation tool – Prezi http://prezi.com – it’s akin to PowerPoint, but different. I created a Prezi on improving your search engine ranking:
http://prezi.com/fl4ydtu2etnt/top-10-tips-for-seo/
Prezi is free. You use it online. You can post your presentation online and/or download it to access later. Here are some of the things I liked about it:
- It’s different from PowerPoint (not that there’s anything wrong with PowerPoint, it’s just a nice change)
- It’s easy to set up
- You can access it online (no more flash drives)
I did find it a little tricky to use once on front of a group – but that’s because the computer was about 10 feet away from where I was talking so there was a lot of walking back and forth. That probably would have been as true with PPT, but because I was new to the tool I was sensitive to any hiccups.
Prezi does a very nice job of walking you through the tool when you first sign up so I won’t try to replicate that here – but I will say it’s worth a shot. My presentation was brief (25 minutes); it took me 90 minutes to create the presentation – half of that was probably learning to use the tool. So the learning curve – at least for a quick presentation – was quick to overcome.
Definitely worth a test if you’re going to be creating a presentation soon.
QR Codes
Today I gave a presentation on QR Codes. It was supposed to last an hour, it only lasted 30 minutes. That’s how easy it is!
QR Codes are those geometric squares that are popping up in magazine and even billboards. You can scan them with a smartphone – they will store over 4000 characters. So the creators could include a web site address or link to directions from Google Maps.
You can access the presentation here: http://www.mnrem.com/blog/?p=364 It walks through a demonstration of scanning a QR Code as a consumer and creating one. Or you can cut to the quick and check out this free QR Code Generator, which I think does a good job of laying out the options:
New Content Matters for SEO
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.
Free webinar on QR Codes
In September I am giving a free webinar on QR Codes for Minnesota Renewable Energy Marketplace. You’re all welcome:
QR Code: What, How Why?
Have you noticed barcode matrix graphics in magazines, ads, even billboards? Have you wondered how they work and how you can use them to reach your audience? We’ll talk about what they are, how to use them and how to create them.
| Title: | QR Code: What, How Why? |
| Date: | Thursday, September 22, 2011 |
| Time: | 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM CDT |
| After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar. |
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/197549182
Also for Minnesota folks, I wanted to share my annual State Fair scavenger hunt: http://wp.me/p48Vv-18X
Training for Google in MN
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
Prime Google Ad Placement
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
Ann Treacy
Twin Cities Daily Planet
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