A new look and less features for GWT
Importance: [rating=2]
Recommended link: Google Webmaster Blog announcing the new design
In the past 3-4 weeks Google have made various changes to the Google Webmaster Tool platform, including, more recently, updates to the design.
The new design implementation is focused on bringing the platform into line with other recent design updates for the search giant. During the update Google has also updated the navigation grouping of features:
We distinguished the following groups: Configuration, Health, Traffic and Optimization. Each group represents a related set of functionality:
Configuration: Things you configure and generally don’t change very often.
Health: Where you look to make sure things are OK.
Traffic: Where you go to understand how your site is doing in Google search, who’s linking to you; where you can explore…
Google Targets Low Quality Sites Again
Source : Google Inside Search Blog
Importance : [rating=4]
Our Commentary
Google has started the rollout of a small algorithm update targeting poor quality websites. It's been dubbed Penguin by SearchEngineLand.
The techniques Google are targeting as part of this update are not new and Google has been combating them for years already.
In their blog post announcing the change Google explain they are targeting both anchor text of links and quality of content on a page as primary focus. When looking at the examples used to explain the the type of spam they are targeting - you can see it is very keyword heavy copy or irrelevant links as part of the content as this image shows. It's from an example of a site Google calls out which it is…
7 of the best sources for learning about Google SEO algorithm updates. Sites and forums that discuss the latest updates?
I’m often contacted by site managers and marketers who have just experienced a change in their rankings in the natural listings. Often this is because Google has recently made changes to its algorithms that have affected rankings. I’ve been hearing more of these recently (especially from site owners who've received to unnatural link notices), so I thought it would be helpful to create a short reference of the best sources to learn about current updates.
These are the sites I monitor to learn about changes - I’ll start with the official Google line which I recommend subscribing to through a feed or Twitter and then look at other sources including forums which are often more useful for understanding the SEO techniques which may have been penalised.
1. Google Webmaster Tools Blog
As the…
The latest data on UK retail search volumes
Value/Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended link: BRC-Google Q1 2012 monitor - Published April 16th 2012
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) and Google produce a regular Online Retail Monitor (ORM) that measures changes and trends in the growth of retail search terms over time. The latest version has some interesting data on the growth in mobile search which also has implications for all site owners. Since it’s direct from Google, using their data on searches for retail terms, it’s a reliable source, although it only gives relative changes not the absolute % of searches that are mobile.
The headline figure is a 132% year-on-year growth in mobile search for retail broken down as follows:
Search volume variation through time
The data is also useful for top-level benchmarking…
Creating effective landing pages for SEO
If you have followed the first six steps in this series on SEO (plus added your own twist and freestyling) you should now be seeing increased coverage (pages & keywords) in search results for your target keywords. Now the real fun begins since...
Being visible and getting clicks doesn’t guarantee you success. Success depends on many factors, of which landing page quality is one. It’s almost impossible to create a landing page that caters for the needs of all natural search visitors. Your aim should be to improve your landing pages over time, using proven optimisation methods, so that the natural search traffic you get positively contributes to your website’s KPIs.
Please note that you don’t have to make immediate conversions and revenue the primary goals for all natural search traffic – there may be some research terms (head and mid tail keywords) for which your…
Key points to implement an effective global SEO strategy
Ecommerce sales are set to exceed $1trillion next year (according to Goldman Sachs) and, in the current economic climate, many businesses are considering exporting their goods and services abroad.
However, going global can be daunting. The process of localising and optimising your website for overseas territories requires careful consideration before you launch your SEO strategy.
Here are the top 10 common multilingual SEO mistakes to be avoided……….
1 Using the wrong keywords
The keyword a person in your domestic market might use to search for a specific product may not necessarily be a literal translation of the keywords or phrases used by buyers in other countries.
Despite this being the most basic of errors, it is one people continue to make.
Do not translate your keywords and don't forget to research new target markets…
A step-by-step approach to identify and attract visitors with higher intent to purchase
In part 1, Why your conversion rate is lying to you, I explained why using average conversion rate to measure the performance of search campaigns paints a misleading picture of search success (or failure). Search traffic (both organic and paid) has a mixed potential for convertibility which dictates that you can reasonably expect visitors with different likelihood to convert to exhibit different behaviour.
While that theory has legs (please leave your thoughts in the comments if you agree and especially if you disagree), Part 1 did not answer the question:
How do you actually use people-focused analytics to identify visitors by potential for conversion?
So let's explore this further.
Intent dictates the reason for visit
Visitor intent dictates reason for visit and as a byproduct, the potential for conversion. If the visitor is there for a completely different reason (like a customer seeking…
While researching for a presentation I was delivered for a client, I found these two videos from the Google Inside Search website which really made me sit back and realise how much the web, technology, marketing, and human interaction with technology has evolved, even in my relatively short career its has drastically moved forwards. We have all no-doubt seen the Social Media Revolution video from Socialnomics which is as equally as eye opening as these two videos (below) in terms of highlighting the potential of the internet as it stands in 2012 and looking forwards.
Evolution of Search
This short video from Google has highlighted to me just how much the web has changed, because we have adopted technology into our lives so heavily now it is easily forgotten that…
Google Shares 5 Common SEO Mistakes
This video was recently published on the Google Webmaster Tools blog. It's a great insight for small businesses or those new to SEO about some of the common strategic mistakes made by website owners.
The video concludes with 6 tips which I find most useful since they highlight Google's thinking behind their latest ranking approaches. The 6 tips are:
Do something cool
Include relevant keywords in copy
Be smart about site architecture
Sign up for email forwarding in webmaster tools
Attract buzz and natural links, +1s, follows
Stay fresh and relevant (social media sites, accessible on new devices)
Points 2, 3 & 4 are generally the easy part these days, they are well document across the web (including on SmartInsights) so easy to learn / follow and most popular content management systems will aid you in this area. Points 1, 5 & 6 however are not so easy…
An example of how small changes can have positive impacts
I'm no SEO expert, but I think I've developed a bit of a knack for getting some decent organic search results from blog posts. All I've done is utilised a few basic SEO practices, so I thought I'd share them in the hope that it inspires others to make similar changes.
Here's an example for a generic phrase that's important in the market for our company:
Editor's note: We checked with Marie this wasn't influenced by personal customisation in Google search. If you use Google's new Verbatim Search that strips out personalisation based on Web History (there even if you're not signed in), then this term still ranks position 2 or 3.
How did we do this?
This is for an established post, what we did was increase…
