Cookie

• It is likely that over the past few weeks, you’ve heard a lot about the new EU Cookie Legislation that is due to come into force on 26^th May. A cookie, sometimes referred to as a HTML cookie, or browser cookie, is a small piece of code downloaded by your web browser containing information about your site visit. Depending on the exact function of the cookie, websites use these cookies to tailor your experience to you. For example, when you log into your ebay or amazon account, cookies are used to remember which items you viewed on your last visit. Cookies are also used by Google Analytics to track user activity on site. As of the 26^th May, users must be made aware of any cookie that isn’t 100% necessary for site usability.

Bounce Rate

• The Google definition of ‘Bounce Rate’ is “the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page”. Often bounce rate is an indication of how relative the content on a page is to the keyword or ad that drove the user there. If a user clicked on an organic listing with the title “Buy Fish For £1 in London”, but the landing page contained content about ‘Buying Cars’ it is likely that the user will ‘bounce’, and leave the site, to continue searching.

CTR

• CTR stands for click-through-rate and is the number of clicks that your ad receives divided by the number of times that your ad is shown (impressions). Your ads and keywords each have their own CTRs, unique to your ad group’s performance.

Press Release

• A press release (within the SEO world) is a piece of written content, aimed at online news distributors. The content must be deemed to be ‘newsworthy’, regarding a company update or change. Overly sales focussed ‘press releases’ are deemed as advertorial, and will not be accepted by news distributors

Negative Keywords

• A negative keyword is a keyword added to a Paid Search campaign, which can be added at Account, Campaign or Ad Group level, which, if present in a search query will prevent your ad from being shown. This allows for improved search query targeting for your ads. For example, if you are running a campaign for a car sales site, you might include the negative keyword “wash” so that your ads aren’t shown for people searching ‘car wash’. This improves ad relevancy, which in turn helps to improve quality score, CTR and ultimately conversions.

Quality Score

• Quality Score is a dynamic metric that measures how relevant your ad, keyword and webpage are to the search term. Quality Scores help ensure that only the most relevant ads appear to users on Google and the Google Network. The higher a keyword’s Quality Score, the lower its cost-per-clicks (CPCs) and the better its ad position.

Internal Linking

• Internal linking is the process of adding links within your own site to improve user navigation and also aid search engines in deciphering page relevancy for specific keywords. Other than links within the ‘navigation’ of the site, usually located in a bar placed horizontally under the header, or vertically in the left hand sidebar, internal links within content add even more weight when it comes to search engine crawlers deciphering page relevancy. For example, if you keep a blog within a domain.com/blog subdirectory, internal links can be added within blog posts, linking back to key pages on the site.

Match Type

• You can specify your keywords’ match type as either broad, broad match modifier, phrase, exact or negative. Broad shows for all searches including your keyword, Broad Match Modifier is a method of further targeting broad keywords, Phrase shows for all searches that specifically contain that phrase, Exact is self- explanatory and Negatives enable you to ensure your ad does not appear against certain irrelevant searches.

If you struggle to tell the difference between a 404 error and a 503 service unavailable error is then this is the post for you! It likens the process to trying to find something in a shop and it’s in pictures which makes it even easier to understand!

• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/response-codes-explained-with-pictures

Google Introduces the Knowledge Graph

Not rolled out fully yet, the Knowledge Graph is expected to help make searching easier and provide people discover new information quickly and easily.

• http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/introducing-knowledge-graph-things-not.html

SEO Lessons Recently Learnt

There have been an overwhelming number of changes in the world of SEO, this blog post does a nice job of summarising some of the important things that have been learnt throughout the changes.

• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/9-lessons-from-1000-seo-questions

The keyword tool in Adwords is the go-to tool when planning and building out your PPC campaigns. Previously There was quite a frustrating process of finding keywords grouping them manually into themes, copy and pasting them into the traffic estimator and forecasting potential behaviour. This has all changed and the process is now a lot more fluid. The keyword tool will now group potential keywords into themes for you, you can select the themes or keywords of interest and then view them in the traffic estimator which now gives a visual of how your daily budget and maximum cpc bid will affect your projected performance. What’s more is when you are happy you can add them straight into your account. Lovely. Please bear in mind however, as good as the keyword tool and traffic estimator are at predicting volumes and cpc’s, they are still very much estimates, take them with a pinch of salt.

• http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/making-campaign-planning-and-build-out.html

Facebook to make money out of ordinary users

Reported in Stuff Magazine NZ last week, some users were seeing a new feature which gives users the ability to highlight posts or status updates. Facebook claim that it is for individual users to ensure that their “important” posts make it to the top of the pile. In time we expect this to be rolled out further and for brands and celebrities alike to promote products to anyone who likes them. It is at the moment still in a Beta phase and costs for each update are being tested. Whether this is eventually folded in to the current ad offering system will depend on the success of the pilot program and to a larger extent how much money Facebook thinks they can gain from it.

• http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/6904136/Facebook-running-pay-test-for-highlighted-posts

Ad rotation settings have been changed ever so slightly

In the past you could select from a number of different delivery options for your ads. Rotate, optimise for clicks, optimise for conversions  (if you have conversion tracking enabled). These options are still available to you, however the rotate setting has been tweaked. If you set your ads to rotate, they will do so for a period of 30 days only, after which Adwords will use the data gathered to then optimise the ads for clicks. Showing ads that will provide more clicks to your site in preference over others. The key point to note here is that this process occurs every time an ad is edited or a new ad created within the ad group. Even if the ad group is optimising for clicks, when the new creative is enabled or edited the ads will rotate again, until Adwords has enough data to optimise for clicks again.  A sneaky new update that you should bear in mind if you are in the planning phase of A|B tests, will it take more than 30 days to get statistically significant data? Some clever work arounds may need to be applied.

• http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/new-changes-to-ad-rotation.html

What will the impact of the new EU cookie law be on mobile marketing?

The EU cookie law and its implications have been widely discussed, but less is known about the impact this will have on the mobile web. The main challenge for mobile marketers is to abide by the new regulations whilst ensuring that the user experience is not compromised with pop ups and required registrations. The Econsultancy post below goes in to detail on how this will affect mobile sites and offers some solutions on tackling the cookie problem!

• http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/9773-how-will-the-eu-cookie-law-affect-mobile-marketing

In the following example you can see a standard Paid Search ad for the term “family lawyer London”, with the location extension appended in the result.

Google also handily alerts you to the “Directions” option – which will show you how to get there via Google Maps.

So, how do you get these set up on your own ads? If you have a Google Places account with your business address registered there, you can link it to your Google AdWords account.

Once the Places and AdWords accounts are linked you can then apply the address from Google Places as your location extension for each AdWords campaign.

If you do not have a Google Places account, then there is an option to manually enter an address. Both of these options sit within the Ad Extensions tab in AdWords, under the “Location Extensions” drop down.

If you want to go a bit more in depth, there is an option to run location extensions at an ad level. (The AdWords default is set to campaign level.) This option means that the ad in question will only ever run with a location extension appended. One scenario where this might be used is for a local restaurant chain that has specific offers at different outlets. As an example, the ad-level location extension would allow the ad text to highlight a happy hour or pre-theatre deal.

When you start running your location extensions and data starts accruing, within the Ad Extensions tab you will then be able to see reports on clicks, impressions, cost and conversion metrics. This will be useful to see which searches lead to in-store sales.

As ever with any changes to a Google AdWords account, be sure to test, test and test again. That way you can learn from what works and what doesn’t and apply changes to test accordingly. If you have found this post interesting and you’d like to find out more about Paid Search and how it could add value to your business, feel free to drop us a line.

The below are just some examples of how brands have been tackling the change. Inevitably there will be significant discrepancy and over time we expect to see some more imaginative variations to the approach.

John Lewis are using a more prominent link to the privacy policy and improved information within the policy itself

BT are allowing users to selectively opt in/out of cookies using a ‘slider’

Reuters are using this frame/overlay provided by Evidon on the site

However, as a starting point and to ensure you’re fully compliant with the law, we’d recommend the following these steps:

• Audit your cookies or tags so you know exactly what your site drops and how this impacts functionality (be sure to remove redundant tags as these will slow page load speeds)
• Categorise cookies and tags depending on their intrusion and usefulness
• Update your privacy policy and site terms and conditions, explaining this categorisation, some more information on how/why they’re being used, and also an option to opt-out
• Finally, consider the options for communicating this to users. Whether this be a pop-up box, text in header/footer, header accordion…

If you’re an existing client, please get in touch with your account manager with questions or to discuss further.

Google Place Offers

A new feature is being introduced for Google Places that enables you to add offers to your listings.

• http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/05/09/google-places-rolls-out-new-offers-program-and-interface/

See Inside Buildings on Google Maps

Google encourages businesses to have the inside of their buildings photographed which will appear on Google Maps and in the Google Places pages.

• http://www.chrisd.ca/blog/54691/google-maps-winnipeg-businesses-photographers-interior-street-view/

SEO

Get Your Site Indexed Before It’s Live!

Many people believe that SEO is required once their new site is live but we’re always keen to start working on optimising the site before it is launched. This blog post outlines some of the actions that we would take to ensure your site is indexed as quickly as possible.

• http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-get-your-site-indexed-before-it-is-even-launched/43417/

Natural Link Building Profiles

A subject that’s always on our minds after all the latest updates, what does a natural link profile look like? Forget your exact match anchor text and keep encouraging those all-important brand and URL links.

• http://www.searchenginejournal.com/anchor-text-optimization-case-study-whats-natural/43404/

Creative Ways to Build Links for an Ecommerce Site

Some great insights here such as creating pages as link bait, having beautiful images, leveraging social media profiles and running competitions.

• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/creative-link-building-for-ecommerce-sites

Social Reporting in Google Analytics

Google adds functionality to Analytics within the new Social reports to show links back to content on your site, enabling users to see which content gets the most social traction in order to understand content and marketing strategy moving forward.

• http://analytics.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/expanding-google-analytics-social.html

Site Speed

A good post on the value of increasing page load speed, a known ranking factor, using HTTP compression as a server configuration. A good takeaway action for anyone looking to increase their site performance and user retention. Rick includes a list of some other factors that affect load speed too, broken down into items that you can or cannot affect.

• http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/search-engine-optimization/is-your-http-compressed/

Correct GA tracking code implementation

Do this at build phase of your site and do it properly. Set yourself up an a Google Analytics account, GA will automatically generate the standard tracking code for you, however you will need to make some alterations to the settings, depending on the nature of your site that may change this slightly. Ask yourself these key questions:

Q.     1.    Is your site an E-commerce site?

• Yes – Check the box on the settings within GA and follow these instructions on implementing the new arguments _addTrans _addItem and finally _trackTrans code to your shopping cart and receipt pages.
• No – Skip to Q. 3.

Q.     2.    Do you use a 3^rd party payment provider?

• No – Great then implement the code provided as per Google’s guidelines.
• Yes – Things get a bit more complicated. You will need to implement cross-domain tracking in order for the final transaction to be correctly attributed to the traffic source. It requires the addition of the _setAllowLinker argument and _link or _linkByPost methods between domains. For Google’s guidelines go here for 3^rd party payment providers and here for cross-domain tracking.

Q.     3.    Do you want to track all your domains and sub-domains on the same profile? I.e. www.mysite.com, www.mysite-blog.com and www.blog.mysite.com

• No – You have a normal site that you want to use GA for monitoring visits, site usage, events and defined goals onsite (we will go through setting up these next time). Implement the standard GA code generated for you.
• Yes – Then you will also need to set up cross-domain, sub-domain tracking. Please follow these guidelines.

Best practice on implementation of all of the standard and more specific GA code is to firstly, use the latest asynchronous ga.js code and secondly insert it in the header of the page, ensuring it is fired as soon as the page starts to load.

You should start to see data coming into your GA account within 24-hours of implementation, so don’t expect it straight away! Then you can start using your data, building reports, segmenting traffic and hitting all your online targets.

Next time we will look at linking Adwords and Adsense accounts, setting up goals and events, using standard reports and building custom reports. All in the name of fun!

By Graeme Carlisle

Verifying Your Google Places Account Is About to get Harder!

Getting your business verified on Google Places can be a headache waiting for that postcard to come through or trying to guess who will answer the phone and whether or not they’ll take down the verification pin… well now it might be even tougher. Google Places might start insisting that businesses provide licenses before they can be verified!

• http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/05/02/google-places-now-requesting-business-licenses/

Google Maps Flaunts New & Advanced Features in an Interactive Game

Google have launched a game called Cube which is a ball and maze style game that is played on Google Maps where you tilt the map to move the ball to various locations across major cities.

It is basically just a way of promoting all of the features that Google Maps has but it’s a fun way of doing it and becomes strangely addictive. Each level presents a challenge for you to overcome using one of the features. For example, you can learn how to use cycle routes, how to find the best route via the underground and how to use traffic information to choose the fastest route.

• http://www.playmapscube.com/

Mobile Search

Mobile SEO: Potential Duplicate Content Issues

This is a really interesting article that I came across about where duplicate content could be an issue for SEO when it comes to mobile content. While it is possible to apply canonical tags to mobile pages as you would with desktop pages, further issues can arise if you have a mobile app….

• http://searchengineland.com/7-real-mobile-duplicate-content-seo-issues-119338

SEO

Google’s Site Rating Subject to Human Error

It wasn’t long ago that Google’s manual intended for ‘Human’ quality raters surfaced, and spread throughout the SEO world like wildfire. The 100+ page document exposed something that previously wasn’t a 100% certainty. Google uses some sort of human input when evaluating and ‘rating’ sites.

This revelation poses some important questions when it comes to SEO, how can any two human quality evaluators be the same. By definition, the human input encourages difference, which in online marketing can be the difference between happy clients, and soon to be ex clients.

• http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2172154/How-Google-Uses-Human-Raters-in-Organic-Search

Not all SEO Agencies are Trustworthy!

The Search Marketing industry is full of con men and scammers. Due to the very nature of computers, and the Internet in general, the doctoring of results and KPI’s is easy, and unfortunately is becoming more and more commonplace. This article highlights the top 5 ways SEO agencies will look to con you, (none of which the team at Minute Steak had ever even thought if before reading this).

• http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2171818/Top-5-Dead-Giveaways-of-SEO-Con-Artists-How-to-Protect-Yourself

Two Common Issues with Site Structure

There are many reasons why duplicate content can appear on your site and there are several ways to deal with it. In addition, using hash tags incorrectly can have an impact on whether or not your site is indexed. This article runs through an example of each and outlines the solutions.

• http://www.searchenginejournal.com/playing-hide-and-seek-with-anchors-duplicate-content-site-structure-problems/43200/

All You Need to Know about Sitemaps

Know the difference between a Sitemap and a sitemap? Find out here!

• http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/search-engine-optimization/the-ultimate-guide-to-xml-sitemaps/

How To Use HTML Meta Tags

During this period, where search engines are pushing web masters to focus on on-site content, in the pursuit of the perfect user experience, back end HTML markup is often neglected.
This article reinforces the importance of optimised Meta Tags, and warns of the dangers when they are implemented incorrectly.

• http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2067564/How-To-Use-HTML-Meta-Tags

•  Transparent Quality Score

A keyword’s Quality Score indicates the relevancy of the ads it triggers and the landing pages it directs traffic to; it will help drive down your CPCs and improve your ad positions, hence improving overall campaign performances. It is, therefore, welcomed with open arms by account managers and advertisers, that Google are providing more insight into the Quality Score. By hovering over individual keywords in the Keyword Tab we’re now able to understand how expected click-through-rates, ad relevancies and landing page experiences rate – average, above average or below average, compared to other advertisers.

This arguably overdue information should allow advertisers to more easily identify where improvements for relevancy can be made, and by increasing Quality Scores, should see overall campaign performances improve.

•  Adwords Labels

This month has seen the launch of account labels in your account. What this allows, is the quick segmentation of keywords, ads, ad groups and campaigns into custom groupings. These groups can then be easily filtered and reported on across various appropriate segments. For many of Minute Steak’s retail clients, these labels become of use for separating apparel categories, for example, into Women’s Shoes, Men’s Shorts, Girl’s Accessories.

With testing and analysis being at the forefront of our approach to PPC, these labels are only improving our ability to segment our test groups appropriately – and I’d urge you to do the same for your account.

•  Changes to Exact and Phrase Match

This update is due to go live in mid-May, when the use of exact and phrase match types will be expanded to capture misspellings, plurals and stemmings for searches. Ultimately this means your keywords will be triggering ads for more searches and potentially resulting in higher click volumes. This means we’ll spend less time building out extensive keyword lists to include every search query variation and keyword misspelling we can think of – with the reassurance Google will automatically do this for us.

Of course, there is some danger of ads triggering unwanted impressions hence affecting our click-through-rates. The answer here is negatives, quite thoroughly and meticulously. Or, turn this Adwords feature off!

If you’d like more information into these, or other Adwords features, or how they can be applied to your PPC campaigns – then get in touch for a chat on 0203 326 0583.

Google Map Introduces 3D Photo Tours

Google takes the Google Maps experience one step further by introducing 3d photo map tours of key global landmarks, including The Statue Of Liberty and even the Colloseum. By taking publicly uploaded photos from Panaramio and Picasa, Google are able to recreate 3D tours to immerse the user into their landmark of choice.

• http://google-latlong.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/visit-global-landmarks-with-photo-tours.html

Common Site Redesign Issues

We often have clients that are looking to launch a new site or make significant changes to part of their site and these two blog posts nicely summarise the actions that we advise them to take.  The point I always like to stress is the importance of redirecting old pages to the new ones.  We spend a lot of time link building to the old pages and aside from it being nice to know that our work isn’t being wasted, it’s essential that the correct page is served as opposed to a 404 error as this helps both search engines and users.

• http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-avoid-seo-disaster-during-a-website-redesign/42824/
• http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/how-to-move-your-content-to-new.html?

Ensuring Your Images Get Indexed

Google rarely give much insight into their algorithm but this blog post is refreshing as it gives clear instructions about important steps you should take to ensure that your images are indexed.

• http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/1000-words-about-images.html?

What’s With All These Algorithm Updates

As Google attempts to really clean up the search results pages, many website owners are really noticing big changes in their keyword rankings, which has a knock-on effect in search revenues and business profitability. So without giving too much away in terms of what these algorithm updates entail, Matt Cutt’s offers his insight into the reason’s behind all these algorithm updates, in an attempt to ensure that the highest quality sites rank higher than those deemed to be ‘spamming’ the internet.

• http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html