Google MyBusiness replaces Google Places for local businesses and provides a new Google+ admin page service for all businesses
Value/Importance: [rating=2]
Recommended link:
Announced on 12th June 2014, this has been touted as a major change, with an in-depth review by Search Engine Land for example. But we have rated it as relatively low in value and importance for marketers since it should’t be overhyped - it doesn’t involve new options for marketing, rather it is a new labelling to be aware of. It’s an attempt by Google at providing a more unified business offering from Google. It’s a good move since it aims to reduce the confusion between Google+ for Business and Google Places which it replaces.
What you need to know / do
1. If you or your clients are looking to register a local business within Google, e.g. to be visible in Google Maps, you now need to go to…
SEO techniques and tools that support effective SEO for 2014 and beyond
Earlier in the month I attended the SMX search marketing event in London, and as with last year, SMX 2014 offered a huge amount of knowledge and insights from a wide variety of speakers from agencies, search engines, bloggers and brands.
There was a lot a take in over the two days so for this post I’ve decided to highlight five topics that really stood out:
1. Focus on user experience and engagement as well as links
Whilst links are most certainly not dead as influencing ranking, it’s clear that search engines like Google have been attempting to look beyond links for some time.
So, to show the relevance and quality of a website or piece of content and therefore webmasters and marketers alike need to consider not only their thinking around link-building but other emerging ranking factors, too.
In a session on Long-Term SEO: How To…
The growth in Semantic markup for SEO
It’s been almost a year since Google started to encrypt searches and keyword data began to disappear from website analytics reports. During that time, site owners and marketing managers have gone through the various stages of grief.
Initially, businesses were in denial and attempted to grab their keyword data from any available source including using Google Webmaster Tools keyword data, internal site search and other search engines, in an attempt to build up a picture of their referring keyword traffic.
This proved to be less useful than expected and search marketers increasingly became angry at Google, accusing the company of being hypocritical and attributing the decision to a cynical attempt to get more people using Adwords.
However, marketers may have unknowingly benefited from the lack of keyword data in their reports as it allowed them to focus on creating valuable content which would be beneficial…
A review of 9 new features in Google's consumer search behaviour insight tool
When the Google Keyword Tool was removed and replaced with the Keyword Planner, approximately a year ago, the ability for marketers to filter traffic estimates by device was lost. It was no longer possible to see the volume of searches by consumers made on mobile devices including smartphone and tablet.
However, with the introduction of nine new features to the Google Keyword Planner Tool last month, users will now have greater insight into mobile device volumes, mobile trends, enhanced location breakdowns and how this data trends over time.
In this post, I’m going to focus on the mobile and location enhancements, which offer some really useful data and allows us to consider how we can optimise our sites more effectively for mobile and tablet searchers.
Contribution of search volume for keywords by device
From the nine new features…
Tools and techniques to review the impact of the latest Panda algorithm update on organic search traffic
Value/Importance: [rating=5]
Recommended link: Search Engine Land Analysis by Barry Schwartz
It’s a statement to strike fear into the heart of anyone who relies on organic visits from Google for their business or their clients’ business. Google’s head of web spam Matt Cutts announced today that a major new algorithm update is now rolling out:
Google is rolling out our Panda 4.0 update starting today.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) May 20, 2014
Marketers are bound to be alarmed given the impact of the first Panda update on some sites like this one, highlighted in an article by James Gurd on how to review SEO visits and changes through time.
How to review the Impact of Panda 4.0?
Given the impact on sites throughout the history of Panda outlined below, it’s…
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May 6, 2014
8 key issues to review in your post-launch website checklist for Google Webmaster Tools
During the process of creation of a website, lots of individuals (account managers, designers, developers and SEOs) will have spent many hours to create the best experience possible. But this can be wasted if certain checks aren't made after launch to ensure that everything is running smoothly from SEO.
Apart from the essential Google Analytics customisations I described previously and review of routine onsite SEO checks (e.g. proper implementation of meta titles, meta descriptions, text links, heading tags, 301 redirections etc.), it is also essential not to check Google Webmaster tools as part of the post-launch process. In this post I will take you through the checks I regularly make as a guide.
1. Verification of the Site on Google Webmaster Tools
Why do we need to verify the ownership of our website? According to Google Webmaster Tools: ‘we need to…
A briefing on the options to improve your visibility with International SEO
For any company that trades overseas, or hopes to expand into foreign markets in the future, International SEO is a big factor in gaining awareness of their brand, products and services.
When you need to market your website in multiple locations, there are a number of different options. However, the SEO implications of each approach are often overlooked by many organisations, leading to underwhelming organic search performance in each locality.
It is therefore essential that marketers are aware of the pros and cons that accompany each method of structuring international sites, before making a decision relating to the expansion of their website to target additional locations. In this article I will explain the different options for marketers to gain visibility in different countries and the pros and cons of each.
Targeting audiences in other countries
Often,…
An in-depth tutorial to optimizing your business for localized search
Google’s campaign to deliver more relevant search results to users has led them down the path to personalization and localization. We’re not just talking about their country-specific search engines, we’re talking local cities and municipalities.
With the growing number of users on mobile and other portable devices, localized search results are in high demand.
There is a group that’s affected by this move towards localization. Brands with multiple locations, that generally rank on Google.com but are not necessarily targeting specific local areas in their campaigns, are at a disadvantage. This has particularly been the case since mid 2012 when Google's Venice update gave prominence to local business in the search results through maps and Google Places listings.
So, why is it better for you to target individual local areas even if you’re a brand with multiple locations?
Local Branding – At the end of…
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March 18, 2014
A step-by-step Guide to producing Sitemap.xml to help Google crawl your content
An XML (Extensible Mark-up Language) sitemap is a form of markup language and is consisted of tags that define pages that should be indexed by search engines.
XML Sitemaps are designed for search engines and not for users. If you're new to the idea, and want to know how a sitemap looks like, they're typically available to see as a file sitemap.xml on the site, for example http://www.dell.com/sitemap.xml and these may link to other sitemaps for different countries and content categories, for example, http://www.dell.com/content-uk-sitemap.xml.
In this simple way we can easily identify if companies have a sitemap.xml and if the values in the tags, for each page, are properly implemented. These are some important tips that you need to consider when deciding whether to use XML Sitemaps.
The XML optimisation will help us boost the indexation process of the site amongst search…
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February 11, 2014
Taking the example of using rich snippets for hotels
In my experience, many local businesses miss out on the opportunity of SEO since they don't focus their efforts in the use and implementation of structured data.
Rich snippets on SERPs attract the attention of users and this means that the CTR is improved than the ones of your competitors.
In this guide I will take the example of Hotels to show how structured data can be used. Let's take an example. Here are 2 cases, decide which one would grab your attention.
Case 1
Case 2
We should note, that at least for now, the appearance of rich snippets on SERPs…
