It has been the trend in Digital Marketing for the last million years that Mobile will overtake laptop and desktop computers with everything it does with more people using mobiles to access the web than desktops. From the forecasted rise in increased use of mobile in comparison to desktops and the huge numbers of purchases being made via mobiles nowadays you can sort of see why. The IAB are particularly fond of mobile, which is where they believe the future lies. And who can blame them; in a recent study they revealed that 51% of the UK has undertaken and engaged in M-Commerce with 42% saying they use it because it is the easiest way to purchase.
The iPhone 4s came out this week and with it came Siri – your own personal assistant. With Siri you can ask it almost anything and it will pull the answers for you, from the local weather to a nice place to eat close to where you are. Its voice recognition software makes it the easiest to use so far which has now made using mobiles even easier. What impact could this have on M-Commerce? If 42% of people already using their mobile to purchase were doing it because of its ease how much further will Siri help to increase this figure?
Does this then mean that all retailers should be active within Mobile and what can this mean? Should you have a website that’s optimised for mobile or a mobile site? i.e should you have an optimised version of your pre-existing site or a site that is built solely for the purpose of use on a mobile, with unique content. Based on our previous blog posts on Content being King it is clear that we think having a mobile site could be the best avenue, particularly if you are a retailer. Crew Clothing are an example of a retailer that has identified this growth and they launched a mobile website this week to accurately target this market.
So with mobile use forecasted to increase and its use by consumers in purchasing and researching, is it something you should be considering?
Managing and maintaining a website is a demanding task in the first place, with often little time and resource left to focus on optimising a website for search engines. We deal with many clients who are so busy at work building their brand and marketing their products or services that the little resource they do have to dedicate to website optimisation needs to be spent very wisely.
Here’s a list of 4 things we recommend time poor website manager or webmaster can prioritise to kick-start website optimisation efforts:
1.) Get Webmaster Tools
Google and Bing both offer free webmaster tools, which give really good insight into website performance as well as being a place where you can address some potentially very problematic issues with your site, some of which are highlighted below. Don’t ignore Bing just because of their significantly smaller market share, they have spent a lot of time adding handy new features to give webmasters even more insight into their site performance.
Verifying a website with Google and Bing webmaster consoles can really be a less that 10 minute job. The verification process can involve some mild technical steps, so if you don’t know how to FTP a file to the root or your site, or aren’t comfortable adding a line of HTML to page headers then buy your developer a chocolate to spend 10-15 minutes with you to get your site verified.
2.) Deal with Error Pages (404)
404 error pages can be like a wound in a website; a dead-end for crawlers or a waste of valuable crawl time and a loss of very valuable site authority (or juice). The Webmaster Tools consoles mentioned above are great for finding these error pages, giving you the intelligence you need to start addressing the issue. Server logs and 3rd party crawl tools can also be good sources for finding error pages.
Even better would be to go a step further by trying to evaluate what causes pages on your site to result in 404 errors. Are these expired product pages that have never been redirected back into the site, or have URLs been changed as a result of a site restructure or product reclassification? Addressing the root of the problem will save numerous man hours spent hunting down and addressing 404 errors.
3.) Assess and Address Duplication
On-site duplication can arise for many reasons, but should be addressed as a high priority issue to prevent the dilution of search engine results, or confusing the search engines in terms of your most important pages. Again, Webmaster Tools come in handy identifying duplication, giving you intelligence into what parts of your site are resulting in duplicate content, so you can take steps to address these, which could include one of the following tactics;
permanently redirecting duplicate pages to the most important version,
telling Google to ignore duplicate pages that result from parameter filters (in Webmaster Tools),
specifying a preferred version of your domain (in Webmaster Tools),
using canonical tags to refer to your most important page,
Preventing search engines from crawling and indexing duplicate pages,
Removing the source or cause of duplicate pages.
4.) Create an XML Sitemap
An XML Sitemap, not to be confused with an HTML sitemap, is a useful tool for encouraging search engines to crawl parts of your site that might be difficult to find through typical navigation. Many CMSes come with an integrated Sitemap module, or a plugin can easily be added, otherwise 3rd party Sitemap creation tools can also provide a solution and in desperate times a Sitemap can be created manually (try to shy away from this approach, if you still want a good relationship with your dev team:).
Sitemaps can also be used as a means of assessing the indexation of you site, once again, with thanks to Webmaster Tools.
As you would expect SEO is a process that involves significantly more than the 4 items listed above but when resources are running thin we recommend spending that precious time addressing them.
At Minute Steak, something that we always encourage our SEO clients to do is to ensure that their site is full of good quality, interesting to read content. The reason for this is that it enables search engines to understand more about what the site offers and making information available to users makes the site more engaging, which again has benefit for SEO.
An example of a website using content well is the Woodlands Junior School in Tonbridge, Kent which also appears as primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk in the search results. Their site is absolutely packed with content and they rank for some really generic terms that many businesses compete to appear for at considerable expense.
If you click through to the pages that appear for these terms you’ll see that they’re incredibly targeted and are both content and image rich. The overall look and feel of the site isn’t great, in fact, it’s just very simple. There are usually over 500 words of content, often as high as 1000 words of content on the page and this is broken down into clearly titled headings to make the information more digestible.
The content is all unique, nothing has been copied from other sources, it’s interesting to read despite being aimed at a young audience and links to relevant pages throughout the text.
Recent Google updates such as the Panda updates have really taken their toll on sites which are thin on content or which farm out articles designed for link building purposes.
What’s the impact for our clients?
We can’t stress enough the importance of good, quality content and regularly updating the text on the website. This shouldn’t be done for the sake of it though. Many companies have hoards of excellent content that sits on the site but hides in inaccessible parts of the site, making this accessible to search engines can make a big difference.
If you’d like more information on how the Panda Updates affect your site or how to improve your content, please get in touch.
If you weren’t already feeling overwhelmed by the plethora of social media platforms and engagement points out there, Google has added +1 to the game.
+1 allows users to socially share and recommend pages and sites from across the internet, enabling friends and connections to see these recommendations. As recommendations are known to affect users’ decisions this is a huge play by Google to make their results socially viable. Not only will site owners be shortly able to add the +1 button (https://services.google.com/fb/forms/plusonesignup/) to their sites but users will also be able to engage with +1 within the search results – natural and paid.
+1 clicks will have prominent exposure within the search results, forcing their way into your consciousness every time you perform a search. The precursor is a Google account of one flavour or another and, in particular, a public Google profile.
This is big news for UK sites, especially considering the huge majority of market share held by Google. What better way for the World’s biggest search engine to take on the likes of social giant Facebook than with its own social data that can be seamlessly incorporated into results, enrich them and affect click-through?
I’m personally interested to see how Google qualifies +1 clicks, surely they don’t think that I would care what the car hire company I emailed via my Gmail has +1ed or not. The difference here is that people don’t use Facebook to manage their daily admin, and so those sorts of residual contacts would automatically be ‘filtered’ out. In other words +1 could result in some quite noisy data that users would likely ignore, depending on how they use their Google accounts. This might also give some folks a privacy scare, although for many social media users privacy isn’t the biggest concern.
If your site is not already on board with social engagement, especially at this point, then now is the time or else you are asking to be left behind. With social media playing an increasingly more important role in search results for all search engines +1 is destined to play an important role in Google’s ranking algorithm. In fact Google have stated that +1 could affect natural rankings so it’s an imperative integration into your search marketing plan.
Before you go, check out the great post on +1 by our sister company Steak and don’t forget to Like, Digg, Stumble, Tweet, Bookmark, Email, Buzz etc this post when you are done (you’ll have to back in a few days to +1 it).
The process of Search Engine Optimisation can be considered more of an art than a science. In order to appear within the ‘organic’ results of a search engine a combination of on-site and off-site factors must combine to appear for Google’s algorithm. For these organic results Google has a list of things it takes into account, some of which it has discussed openly but most of which it would rather keep to itself.
The off-site optimisation that is the main focus for many digital agencies is link building. This involves the creation of links from relevant sites back to your site. This link is seen as a vote of confidence from the other site in Google’s eyes and the authority of your site is increased. By increasing this number of relevant links a website can begin to improve their rankings within the natural search results. One thing that is very important in this link building process is the page rank of the website that links back to your site. This is Google’s measure of a sites quality and relevance and helps determine the value of each link highlighting the importance of using high quality links.
A different strategy to improve the ‘organic’ listings of a website is to aim for quantity over quality, massively increase the number of sites linking back to their site in any way possible. By having such a high volume of irrelevant links some sites could be able temporarily hoodwink the Google algorithm and this is what we call ‘unethical link building’.
This ‘unethical’ strategy means that many of the sites used for links are kept live for the sole purpose of being stuffed with irrelevant links. This means that a huge number of these links need to be created because of the low page rank Google attributes to the site that the link originates from.
In the US JC Penny has recently been dominating all searches for terms relating to the huge range of products they sell – from generics to long tail keywords. They even managed to keep this up during the holiday period and beat well known brands for branded top spots.
Why? How could their site have more authority and more relevance than the official branded site? This is because JC Penny had undergone a strategy of ‘unethical link building’. Although not ‘illegal’ it is against what Google advises and can be punished severely, as JC Penny found out recently. Google identified the strategy being employed by JC Penny and were quick to take action as JC Penny dropped off the Search Engine.
At 7 p.m. on Wednesday, J. C. Penney was still the No. 1 result for ‘Samsonite carry on luggage’ in the US. Two hours later, it was at No. 71. At the same time JC Penney was No. 1 in searches for ‘living room furniture’ in the US. By 9 p.m., it had sunk to No. 68. These Figures are from a story written by the New York Times which offers a close look at what happened to JC Penny
This stands as a clear warning into the price of undertaking a strategy on unethical link building.
E Commerce Expo is the industry event for the UK and increasingly, Europe. It ranks as one of the largest gatherings of E Commerce professionals in Europe and serves as host to over 140 exhibiting companies whilst also hosting relevant and interesting conference sessions.
E Commerce Expo is held in the Olympia, London and we’ll be in attendance on both days to answer any questions you may have about the direction your online marketing is taking, goals and offering you general guidance and insight. So, whether you’re looking for advice on PPC or are help with SEO, please come and say hello and we’ll be happy to help. You can find us at Stand 904, right beside Pizza Express so we’ll be hard to miss.
If you’re going to be at Ecommerce Expo, please do drop by our stand or send us an email to contact.us@minutesteak.co.uk and arrange a chat.
Last night Google officially announced the launch of their faster than ever search feature, Google Instant, which serves lightning fast live result updates to users of the UK’s most popular search engine. The speed at which Google Instant serves results is testament to their dedication to speeding up the internet (or at exponentially multiplying their Adwords revenue).
We discussed this up and coming change to searching in our blog last week and it has been strongly hinted at in Google’s twitter feed over the last couple of days.
The instantaneous results take into consideration past consumer searches, your location and past searches (personalisation) when predicting what you are searching for. Currently, only available on the most recent version of web browsers, the results are served based on a partially typed query, which then adapts as your search query word or phrase develops.
For example, “bestival” shows at the top of results for “bes” being the most likely result that I am looking for (remember personalisation is a factor) followed by “best buy”, “best western” and so on.
Users in US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia using the latest browser versions (Chrome v5/6, Firefox v3, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer v8) should automatically see Google Instant results. Based on current browser version statistics for the UK, around 56% of UK users could potentially see Google Instant results. If over the past couple of days you have seen the swirling dot and grey logos on the Google Search homepage then your browser is compatible and if you are not seeing instant results and want to jump into the river, lest you get left behind, you can activate it here. On the other hand you can also turn the feature off either by disabling the auto-complete feature in your browser settings, changing the Google Instant setting in the dropdown to the right of the search box or by changing your settings for Google search.
How Will Google Instant Impact Natural Search
Consumer Search Behaviour
On face value we could expect that the functionality of Google Instant will impact consumer search patterns. While partially dependent on browser versions the instant results might prompt consumers to change how they search. Being able to ‘preview’ the results for their selected search term, users may change their query mid-way upon seeing that the results aren’t serving the sites or pages that they are looking for or expect to find. This may be especially true of high volume, generic terms where meaning or consumer intentions are subjective.
In the same vain, the nature of searches consumers use along their purchase journey may change and long tail volume could be affected by serving users with results that they want before they have typed in the entire query phrase, thereby potentially stunting the expansion of long tail search phrases and pushing up the volumes of the suggested phrases instead.
Rankings
Google have clearly said that natural search results are still based upon Google’s main algorithm for rankings. The Instant suggestions box does eat into the most valuable area of page 1 SERPs, reducing the number of results that appear above the fold. This reiterates the importance of compelling page tiles and meta descriptions for encouraging users to click on your site result.
Analytics
Based upon information for the Google Analytics handling of Instant searches, the referring keyword shown would not be the partial phrase but the whole suggested phrase that resulted in a successful SERP click-through. To track partial query phrases as a result of Google Instant the guys over at Webdistortion have compiled a nifty, advanced filter that is ripe for the testing.
We will be monitoring how Google Instant affects both natural and paid search, including the effect on impressions, CTRs and account performance as a whole. Our very own Jonathan Dunkley will be following on from this post with an in-depth look at the effect on paid search.
“The golden age of Internet standards is ending. The Web is splintering, and interactive marketing is fragmenting along with it. Welcome to the age of the Splinternet” – Forrester.
Media consumption is forever changing, and never more so than now. The development of new devices, new interfaces, apps and formats means that there are now an ever increasing number of media through which consumers engage with brands, and more importantly – purchase goods. Minute Steak’s sister agency, Steak, has produced an essay which we’d like to share with you, which examines these trends, and how companies can take advantage of them to increase brand equity as well as direct sales.
Every now and then Google tests new features across a random selection of guinea pigs. Last week, a video was released by SEO consultant, Rob Ousbey who noticed that as he typed in every letter, the search results changed instantly to reflect what he was searching for.
The positives are that it ought to save time as you won’t have to keep clicking to load up each and every different search term. Also, it should make it easier to find exactly what you’re looking for as you’ll be able to see any relevant pages in the SERPs as you keep typing. On the other hand though, there are plenty of negatives. A computer that’s already slow could struggle while Google loads page after page of results as well as being irritating and distracting having information flashing and changing.
The impact on SEO?
This could be a SEO’s dream or our worst nightmare! Either way, it’s sure to have an effect on the way that people search. I anticipate that few people will bother to go beyond the first page or perhaps even look below the fold as they can simply type in longer, more relevant search terms. As a result, it’s vital to be on the first page of results for long tail keywords.
Other things to consider are Google Maps, Videos, Shopping, etc. When these sections appear in the standard results, they often take up a fair amount of space above the fold, so it’s imperative that companies get themselves listed in Google Places, get products in the Product Search database, tag up videos and images accordingly and so on.
I guess it’s just a matter of time before we find out whether or not this is deemed worthy enough to be rolled out to us regular searchers. In the meantime, get ready for part two – the PPC perspective, coming soon.
Minute Steak would like to invite you to a Search Marketing event we are running in conjunction with the IMRG (limited places).
Following on from our recent blog discussing the new Google Trademark Policy, this session will run through how to benefit as a reseller, and prepare for the increased competition as a brand. This change increases the importance of generic sales, and we’ll consider the metrics that really matter and discuss how to increase your chances of targeting the right areas of growth first time.
The event will be held at The Hospital Club between 9-11am on 23rd September and includes three insightful presentations:
IMRG – Overview of online retail
How to grow your search activity without compromising your ROI
How Google’s new Trademark Policy impacts brand strategy
If you would like to attend please e-mail breakfast@minutesteak.co.uk and we look forward to seeing you there.
23rd September 9-11am The Hospital Club
24 Endell Street
Covent Garden
London
WC2H 9HQ
