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Tag Archive for ‘Google’ rss

Keyword Exercises for SEO

by on Sep 25, 2008 (0) Comments

Don’t be fooled by people trying to tell you that tracking SEO metrics based on keywords and keyword performance is obsolete. Keywords and the traffic they produce are alive and well and depending on the position (above the fold or below the fold) and the percentage of traffic they receive is tangible to assess conversion and performance benchmarks.

Over 80% of consumers hot on the trail of a product or service have a higher propensity of clicking the top 3 search results when presented with the top 10 websites for their query. If a user has to scroll below the fold the click through numbers taper down to the remaining percentages.

However, depending on factors such as:

1) the competition for the phrase

2) the relevance to the searchers intent and

3) the emotional click-triggers from the snippet/description in the search result (and how sticky it is) impact who gets the click.

Obviously, the more keywords that encroach on a topic, the higher percentage for conversion you have from those topics, when each of the pages becomes buoyant after gaining some authority in search engines (typically 2-4 months).

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The SEO Failings of Major UK Highstreet Retailers

by on Sep 23, 2008 (0) Comments

Posted by Tom_C

I recently read a couple of posts on e-consultancy about the state of play with major UK retail brands and how they perform online. First was 10 things Asda could do better online, which while I enjoyed didn’t touch on any of the SEO failings of these companies. Kevin’s Supermarkets ignoring SEO for major keywords post touched more on SEO which was nice but I wanted to go into a few more meaty things so here’s my review of the state of play with SEO for major UK highstreet retailers.

While the point of this post is to highlight common mistakes and not to call out individual brands, inevitably I’ve mentioned specific names as examples. This isn’t an attempt to cause offence and I appreciate that even if you know what the right answer is it can be difficult to implement using legacy systems.

Keyphrase Targeting

Who said keyphrases were important? Sometimes you’re just too cool for school. Don’t listen to all those other guys telling you how important keyphrases are – surely it can’t be that important can it?

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Blog Marketing & Pay Per Post: They’re Not The Same

by on Sep 23, 2008 (0) Comments

The vitamin supplement company Berocca has been engaged in a vaguely interesting piece of blog marketing over here in the UK recently. Taking their cue from the recent NY Times article suggesting that blogging can be highly stressful, they have put together a blogger relief pack which consists of a number of ‘stress-busting’ desk toys and, of course, a pack of Berocca. In a nice nod to the community-lead nature of blogging, the mini-site always has a link to one of the blogs that is taking part in the campaign.

This campaign, which is hardly revolutionary in its nature, probably wouldn’t deserve a mention on these hallowed pages were it not for a post written by Michael Gray recently. In this post, Michael asked whether Guy Kawasaki, who frequently reviews products he is sent and links to the manufacturers’ sites, should be the subject of a penalty in the same way that sites which operated ‘pay per post’ systems were*.

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SEO, Is It All About Links? Not Anymore

by on Sep 23, 2008 (0) Comments

With so many new algorithms being adjusted, modified or replaced altogether, between the cached version of the SERPs (search engine result pages) and the actual index there are obvious discrepancies
leaving their mark on the web.

The New Search Engine Moderator – Indexing and De-indexing
Before you can rank competitively, achieving the proper balance between your on page [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “SEO, Is It All About Links? Not Anymore”, url: “http://www.seodesignsolutions.com/blog/seo/seo-is-it-all-about-links-not-anymore/” });

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Google’s new Quality Score Improvements Analysed

by on Sep 19, 2008 (0) Comments

In case you haven’t read it yet, Google is now unleashing some new improvements to its Quality Score. News from Google about changes to their algorithms or the way they rank and charge PPC ads usually creates a tidal wave of blog posts, comments and outbursts from the community that uses AdWords on a daily basis. I therefore thought I’d analyse this new development and share thoughts & case studies with our readers.

Google announced:

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Are Your B2B Paid Search Campaigns Trying To Serve Two Masters?

by on Sep 17, 2008 (0) Comments

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got from a seasoned Google AdWords mentor was to “not try and serve two masters within a single campaign.” If your campaigns are like most, they have a fixed budget and are ROI driven. In this situation, we are constantly trying to ratchet down the cost per lead while still using up the budget to get as many leads as possible. But beware! At some point you can almost be guaranteed that you’ll be requested to “fill up the pipe” by ramping up volume (and spend) for the short term. Unfortunately, trying to jockey between the two is a recipe for long-term frustration and compromised results.

This may seem trivial to many, especially at the outset of a campaign when everything is new, shiny, and exciting. But as I and my clients have learned, as a campaign matures — and you are looking to improve upon current and past results — that lingering question once again rears its head. ROI or volume? It’s very hard to run disciplined, scientific campaign tests and optimizations if that question isn’t clearly answered and adhered to.

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Search Advertising with the new Microsoft adCenter

by on Sep 15, 2008 (1) Comments

With the launch of the popular web service AdWords from Google Inc, it seemed that Google had monopolized the online advertisement management scenario on the internet. However, arch rival Microsoft was not the one to be left behind. Microsoft has recently launched the adCenter service, with similar features to those of Google AdWords and have [...]

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