2 months ago Google Places became part of Google+ as Google+ Local. Now the dust has settled here is the lowdown of what that means for you, the business owner.
Do I need to recreate my Google Places page?
No, Google have automatically migrated your Google Places page and you can still use Google Places to manage your business listing. [Read more...]
The Yahoo-Bing UK Merger is finally complete. After guiding our affected clients through the process, here are 3 things we’ve learnt:
While Yahoo/Bing still suffers from limitations, our existing clients are still seeing impressive results on the platform. If you’re interested in Yahoo/Bing, find out more here and get in contact today.
Our previous blog posts on the Yahoo-Bing merger:
In the ever changing world of Google, and in case the Google Panda update wasn’t enough for you to get your head around, Google has now changed it’s Adwords Ad Rotation settings. This change happened last month and didn’t get the thumbs up from many Adwords users.
Here’s a summary of the changes, what it means and how you need to manage your adtexts going forward.
What is Ad Rotation?
In order to make sure you have the best adtext for your campaign, we have always suggested running at least 2 adtexts at a time. This allows you to gain an idea of which adtexts work best for impressions, for click throughs and for conversions.
After a period of time you can then decide which adtext is best for reaching your goals. You may then choose to run just the best performing adtext, or leave the best running and create yet another option to gauge if you can improve performance further – therefore constantly optimising your campaign.
So what did Google change?
Up until last month Google allowed you to set the way you wish to display your adtexts. The 3 options were:
You were able to select which setting best suited your campaign goals and these settings remained until a time that you decided to change them.
In May, Google announced they were changing the Ad Rotation tool so that any ad could only run evenly for 30 days. After this period, the ad which has the best click through rate will become the main adtext.
Essentially, Google are imposing the Optimise for Clicks setting.
Why are Google making this change?
According to Google’s official blog:
This change will enable us to provide users with the most relevant ad experience and should help advertisers improve the performance of their AdWords accounts.
Is this a good thing?
This is clearly a matter of opinion but the over whelming majority of Adwords users don’t think so.
Google will benefit from an increase in clicks (and therefore revenue) but for those people who are optimising their ads for conversions – i.e. ensuring their Adwords activity is actually profitable – the change means they will need to rethink their strategies.
If you have a long period from click to conversion, 30 days is a relatively short period for full adtext testing. If you have cyclical sales, again, this change restricts your testing abilities.
For anyone carrying out any kind of adtext testing and optimising – something we suggest everyone should do – this change means strategies will need rethinking.
People power
As Google is one of the big boys, you would imagine there’s little that can be done about changes which really could affect the profitability and effectiveness of your account. It appears you would imagine wrong.
This change was announced in early May and last week, due to the huge outcry from Adwords users, Google announced 2 changes to the new Ad Rotation system:
In order to opt out, Google are currently asking you to complete an online form but they have said if the response is sufficient they will ad an opt out to the Adwords interface.
The question is therefore, will we eventually have the same system we had before?
For Google’s full reaction to the outcry – including more information on why they made the change in the first place visit their blog.
So what do I do next?
With the setting now changed to 90 days, it will be easier to build this into your strategies. Look at your current adtext testing process and ensure the 90 day window is built in. If you think you would prefer to opt out, fill in the opt out form.
We’ll keep you up to date on any future changes to the Ad Rotation tool but if you’ve any specific worries about your Adwords account or want to know how this change affects your strategy, do get in touch.
With all the changes Google keeps making to it’s algorythm, it’s good to know that one thing in the complex world of search engine optimisation is staying the same. That’s the importance of putting the right keywords on your website.
Our Keyword Research Projects get the right keywords into the right places on your website. We research possible keywords (usually compiling a list of several thousand), then we identify which keywords should be focused on, after agreeing that with you we’ll write the tags and get them in place on your website.
This month (June and July 2012) we’ll upgrade anyone who signs up for our Basic package (£1,000) to the Standard package (normally £1,500, so you save £500). The benefits of the free upgrade are:
3 reasons why you should let us sort out your keywords this month:
Having the right keywords is the foundation of every SEO strategy – so take advantage of our offer and have your keywords fixed this summer.
Special Offer for June and July Only – Save £500:
June is a great time to talk to us about getting your website’s keywords right as we’ll upgrade, for free, anyone who signs up for our Basic Keyword Research Project (£1,000) to the Standard Keyword Research Project (usually £1,500). That will save you £500, and optimise your website even further.*
Contact us today to get your website search engine optimised, and save £500:
* Terms and Conditions: You must sign a contract for our Keyword Research Project, and the signed contract must be with us by Friday 27th July 2012. We reserve the right to withdraw this offer at any time.
On the 31st May Google’s Commerce team announced the end of free listings in Google Shopping.
At the moment this only affects US businesses.
Yep, that’s right – the lovely Google Base feeds that mean eCommerce businesses can promote their products in Google Product results for free is not going to be available to US businesses by the Autumn.
By the end of this month, the long awaited merger of Yahoo and Bing’s search technology should finally be complete. Microsoft Adcenter powered ads are already appearing in Yahoo search results and by the end of May all ads appearing on Yahoo will be driven by Adcenter.
Here we give 5 of the most common Yahoo/Bing PPC mistakes to avoid:
Find out more about how we can help you maximise your return from PPC Marketing.
It’s been a long time coming, but the merger of Yahoo and Bing’s search technology is finally happening. By the end of May 2012 the whole process should be complete.
On Wednesday the first ads powered by Microsoft Adcenter will appear in Yahoo search results.
What does the Yahoo! Microsoft Alliance mean?
That search results (paid and natural) appearing on Yahoo will now be powered by Microsoft technology.
The most interesting part of that right now is Paid Search - by the end of May you will only need to use Microsoft Adcenter to place ads on the Yahoo and Microsoft search engines (Bing). This means you don’t have to manage 2 accounts to tap into this traffic, making it much easier to do. Plus, the Microsoft Adcentre is much more advanced than Yahoo’s tool, so there are now many more ways to optimise your advertising.
So, this should make branching out from just using Google Adwords much more attractive for many businesses. What impact that has on competition and click costs only the next few months will show.
Yahoo and Microsoft are also promising that the merger will bring better ROI, a better search experience for the end user and allow them to innovate more quickly. All of which sounds great.
So should I now start advertising via Microsoft Adcenter?
Yes. If Google Adwords works for you then Microsoft Adcenter should too.
Adcenter traffic is more likely to convert than Google traffic:
You should get more sales for your ad spend, but the traffic is lower. 18million of the UK population use either Yahoo or Bing, and 3.8 million of them don’t ever use Google – so that’s people you can’t reach using Google alone.
What do I need to do?
On Wednesday 18th April 2012 Microsoft powered ads will start to appear on Yahoo, within 2 weeks all ads on Yahoo search will be powered by Microsoft.
If you already have an account with Yahoo:
If you already have a Microsoft Adcenter account:
If you don’t have an account with either of them:
This is the most exciting thing to happen to the UK search market in quite some time – it’s going to be fascinating to see how the results improve over the next few months.
Find out more about the changes:
Read more:
Our previous blog posts:
If you sell products online the likelihood is you are using Google Base to promote your products. If you’re not, you definitely should be for 2 very good reasons, it’s Google and it’s free (take a look at our Google Base page for more info).
However, when it comes to reporting, the tools within Google Base are very limited simply giving an idea of impressions and clicks generated from your feed. More importantly, you want to know what happened to those clicks when they hit your site – did they bounce? did they basket and abandon? did they buy?
Using Google Analytics to track your Google Base feed
Using your Google Analytics account you can easily gain a little more insight into the traffic generated from your Google Base feed.
By very slightly amending the link field of your Google Base feed you can use Google Analytics to give you much more information about the traffic Google Base is sending you. This allows you to analyse the traffic coming in to get an idea of its value and to see if there are areas within the feed you should be focusing on improving.
What do I need to do to my link field?
In order to allow Google Analytics to track your Google Base feed you simply need to append the below into the end of each of your product links within you feed:
Load the amended feed into Google and any future Google Base traffic can be easily identified.
How do I view Google Base results in Google Analytics?
Once you have added tracking into your Google Base feed it will appear as its own row in the Traffic Sources report allowing you to look at bounce rates, conversion rates, keywords and more.
Next Steps
Now you are able to track performance and revenue from your Google Base feed, analyse its performance against other channels and, if worthwhile, look at opportunities to improve the feed further – whether that be improving the feed content, adding further products, adding additional fields or improving landing pages.
In late 2011 (and continuing in 2012) Google made so many changes that affect the SERPs (search engine results page) that I believe 2012 will see the end of pure linkbuilding, in favour of social, PR and brand awareness tactics.
So, where did linkbuilding fit into SEO in 2011?
In 2011 and before, Linkbuilding (the process of getting other websites to link to your website) was central to any plan to climb the SERPs. Broadly speaking the site with the most and/or best links going to it would come top.
The end game of any SEO activity is to get more (and better quality) traffic to the website. If everyone who searches for your keyword sees the same results, then it follows that having the most links and being as position no. 1 is where you’ll get the most traffic.
So it was key to any SEO strategy to work on increasing that number of links, employing a wide range of methods to do so.
There are lots and lots of posts out there about how you can use Google+ to do x or y or z. There are even a number of ebooks available already! But I haven’t yet found a good simple guide that explains just what Google+ is, so here’s my attempt to that for you – feedback in the comments section please!
So, quickly, what is Google+
It’s a “social network” run by Google.
Essentially a way for Google to get all of us to be logged in, so they give us a better experience because they know who we are…
So increasingly existing Google stuff is migrating into it (just as some existing Google stuff is currently being culled).
Plus there’s the CORE of Google+ – your personal Google+ page, your circles of friends, and any Pages you set up.
And then there’s the +1 button – how you can signal all over the place what you like.
How does it work?
At the moment it’s a bit like Facebook, with some differentiating bits (that Facebook’s fast copying). The 2 biggest differences to Facebook:
What about Google+ Pages?
Google+ Pages are rather like Facebook Pages – in that they’re how businesses have a presence on Google+.
At the moment they don’t have the functionality of a Facebook Page – but I’m sure that will come.
Should I create a Google+ Page for my business?
Yes.
2 reasons:
The Plus 1 Button….?
OK, as well as being able to add plus 1 buttons to your website – they’re now appearing in Google search results.
So when you’re logged in and you click a plus 1 button you are recommending that page.
Google is using that information to inform what you see in your tailored search results, and your friends will see it in Google+.
So put it everywhere. It is going to have an impact on seo as well as social media.
So, be honest, how much time should you invest in Google+ right now?
The numbers of people active on it aren’t anywhere near the other social networks and Google haven’t shown their hand fully yet – there is much still to be revealed.
So it’s not yet worth (for the average business) getting heavily into it. BUT it will be influencing your search performance, and customers will start to use it – with or without you. So you need to make sure you’ve got it set up.
So you should:
Once all that’s done – just keep an eye on it all. And keep an eye open for further updates.
