Yahoo Microsoft Search Alliance FINALLY here

16/04/2012 By

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:

  • Yahoo! and Bing search audiences are 53.7% more likely to buy online than Google searchers worldwide (comScore, Dec 2011)
  • 36.6% more likely to convert than the average UK searcher (NNP, Dec 2011)

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:

  • Work through the migration process asap!
    This will mean your ads continue to show, and that any outstanding funds in your account get transferred back to you.

If you already have a Microsoft Adcenter account:

  • Be ready for more traffic – up your budgets and keep a close eye on performance.

If you don’t have an account with either of them:

  • Now would be a great time to test how well they could work for you. Find our more about how we can run your PPC marketing for you.

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:

Filed Under: PPC Marketing, Search Marketing, SEO Marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,

SEO 2012 – the death of linkbuilding?

11/01/2012 By

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.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Editorials, News, Search Marketing, SEO Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

Google’s Encrypting SEO Keyword Results ‘Secure Search’

24/11/2011 By

not provided

This is increasingly what we’re all going to get used to seeing in our Analytics Keyword Reports.

A set of data attributed to “(not provided)”.

Why are keyword sources going to be ‘(not provided)’?

On 18th October 2011 Google announced that they are rolling encrypted search out to all signed-in users.

This is part of Google’s activity to protect users privacy as they increasingly drive users to be signed in to their service. If you travel around Google signed in then you’ll be starting to see customised search results, including (if you’re on Google+) pictures of your ‘friends’.

Essentially they’re putting the search engine interface behind an SSL certificate – in layman’s terms ‘https’ not ‘http’.

From a personal privacy point of view it makes sense and is a good thing, but it’s going to make the lives of us marketers more difficult.

What does this mean?

It means that you won’t be able to see full data on what keywords people are using to search and find your website.

On our site, so far, we’re seeing 8.6% of keyword visits being (not provided). But there are sites seeing up to 33% of keyword traffic (not provided). (Great article at econsultancy, and another at Search Engine Watch). And there are several analyses of the impact that show that the %age of (not provided) is rising – not surprising as Google is rolling this out worldwide and it will take some time to get to everyone (my signed-in searching is as yet unencrypted).

So the big impact is going to be on your SEO decision-making, especially around keywords.

  • You won’t be able to be as sure what your top keywords are, or how they’re performing
  • The results may be skewed as the profile of people who do live signed-in to Google may be different from those that aren’t
  • And, keep it mind when comparing performance over time

What about PPC Keyword performance data?

Won’t be affected – Google is not changing anything about PPC reporting in this area.

How can I get around it?

First of all, you’re still going to get some data on keywords – so you can assume it’s representative of all your keyword driven visits.

Secondly, Google is still showing “true” results for your top keywords in Webmaster Tools (although you won’t get all the details about their performance that you would in Analytics). So you can cross-check what you see in Analytics with your Webmaster Tools data.

You’ll also still get your full PPC keyword data, data from other search engines too.

Finally, if your website is totally SSL encrypted then you should get full keyword referral data. (so that would be the WHOLE of your site SSL’d)…

 

If you’d like to understand more about Google Analytics or SEO why not come along to one of our Workshops?

Filed Under: News, Search Marketing, SEO Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

Google’s “Fresh” Update

21/11/2011 By

Yep, they’ve been at it again.

At the start of the month Google announced another big(?) change to their natural search results algorythm. This one’s been nick-named “Fresh” because it’s all about making sure the freshest content is at the top of the search results.

So if you search for “olympics” you get information about 2012 not 1900 (to borrow Google’s own example).

A sensible update I think we’d all agree, but if you’re not already regularly producing fresh content (including engaging in social media) then you’re at risk of getting left behind.

How can I take advantage of Fresh AKA How can I avoid being penalised by Fresh?

The simple and short answer is  – produce fresh content, but here’s some hints and tips for you:

  • update your blog (if you haven’t got one, get one) with posts of relevant news.
    If one of your products was mentioned on This Morning this morning – blog about it.
    If the snow’s here, and you sell anti-snow products – blog about them.
  • add your press releases to your website, and distribute them
  • use social media (not just re: fresh, but Google is increasingly interested in what’s happening on social media)
  • crowdsource it (or get your customers involved) – get them to comment on your blogs, or review your products
  • get included on great blogs / newspapers

The good news is, all of those ideas will a positive impact in areas other than pure seo.

Filed Under: News, Search Marketing, SEO Marketing, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: ,

Why is DMOZ important for SEO?

10/11/2011 By

What is DMOZ?

DMOZ (aka the Open Directory Project) is probably the single most important directory on the internet. Put simply, it’s the largest human-edited directory of websites (and therefore links) that’s ever existed. It’s size and human-input mean it’s highly regarded by search engines.

Plus it’s quite well-linked with Google. They use the data within dmoz to help power their search engine, and release their Spiders out into the internet from DMOZ.

Why is DMOZ important for SEO?

  • DMOZ is a well thought of website, and you want links from good websites.
  • Google uses DMOZ within its indexing processes (the way it finds out what exists online) so if you want to be indexed well (and if you’re in the index you won’t be in the search results) then being on DMOZ is a good idea.

There are of course many other websites out there which can you the above – and it’s a link from DMOZ is not going to be the be-all, end-all of your SEO strategy. But it’s free, it doesn’t take much time, and it’s a good idea – I’d count that as a no-brainer.

Getting a Link on DMOZ

Registering for a link from DMOZ is simple, just go the directory, find the category you want to be in a click “Submit a site”. But as DMOZ is a human-edited directory that everyone wants to be on, it can take quite some time for your site to be reviewed and added. The time-lag varies between categories, but a delay of 6-12 months is not unusual.

If you want your link reviewed faster – why not help out with the backlog by becoming an editor for DMOZ?

But I’ve read articles that say it’s not worth doing anymore

There has been talk recently of whether a link from DMOZ is still important, hopefully the above has convinced you it is – but if not why not click the link and see what Google themselves have to say about it… Matt Cutts (Mr Google Search) on DMOZ. (if you don’t want to click the link he basically said that a link from DMOZ is pretty much the same as getting a link from any other high authority site and Google still uses DMOZ a lot).

Filed Under: Search Marketing, SEO Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Spring 2012 Training Workshop Calendar Confirmed

01/11/2011 By

We are pleased to announce the first set of 2012 dates for our increasingly popular half day workshops. We run a number of different workshops:

Each hands-on workshop is limited to just 7 attendees, ensuring you get all the help you need. As an extra incentive we are also offering 10% off any bookings made before 31st December 2012.

You can find out more about the courses or make a booking here.

Filed Under: General Marketing, indium News, SEO Marketing, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Top 5 SEO Metrics

05/10/2011 By

With any marketing channel, you can’t improve what you don’t measure and the same goes for SEO. So what are the top 5 SEO metrics that you should be paying most attention to?

1. Natural Search Traffic Volumes
An obvious metric. SEO is primarily involved with increasing traffic from natural search results. This traffic alone is not a measurement of SEO success but it is still key to providing a broad overview of your SEO progress.

You are not optimising for branded traffic, so remember to not look at the volumes that branded terms are driving as this will skew your results.

2. Keyword positions
The purpose of SEO is to make webpages appear higher in the search engines thus driving more traffic to the website. Using a tool such as WebCEO, you are able to produce a report to see which position in the SERP’s you come for all the keywords you want to appear for. I would recommend running a report like this every month so you can see what effect your SEO activity has had on actual rankings.

3. Conversions

Measuring conversions is a way of making sure you are targeting the correct keywords. We all know from experience with both PPC and SEO that sometimes keywords you expect to perform just don’t, so measuring conversions is a necessity. Whilst visits is a good metric, if keywords are producing great amounts of traffic but not converting then you want to start to think about targeting different keywords.

4. Bounce Rate
If the SEO goal is to drive qualified traffic, which it undoubtedly is, bounce rate is a key metric. Bounce rate is the percentage of single page visits, or visits in which the person left your site from the landing page. So if keywords have high bounce rates, then that indicates that the keywords might not be the right keywords to be targeting. There’s no point driving traffic to your website if they choose to leave straight away.

5. Inbound Links
One of the key SEO tactics is to seek and obtain quality links from other sites back to your site. You can view the number and type of links that are coming into your site by using a tool such as yahoo site explorer. Keeping an eye on the number and quality of links coming into your site is crucial to knowing whether your SEO activity is working.

There are a lot more metrics that should be used for measuring SEO success, but these 5 are some of the most important. Remember to report on all of them regularly and analyse the results you have, and then improve on them.

Filed Under: SEO Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

What should I consider when selecting keywords for my homepage?

31/08/2011 By

It’s one of the most common questions within the online world, what keywords should I use for my homepage? Unfortunately the answer isn’t black and white and you will need to do some serious work to find the answers. Hopefully the following will help you along your way!

What is the key to success?

Choosing the best keywords is a game of balancing the number of people searching for a particular keyword against the competition for that keyword. You are looking to find keywords where there are a good amount of searches and the competition is low.

Where to start?

I always say the best way to start your keyword research is to use your own brain. Think about what people that would use your website and buy your products are most likely to search in Google for and write these all down.

The next stage would be to expand your keywords using a tool such as Google Keyword Tool. Simply plug in the keywords you have just written down, hit go and it will show some more suggestions. It will also help you discover how people are actually searching the Internet as the tool shows you monthly search volumes for each keyword. If you couple the search volume for each keyword against how many websites are showing for that keyword when you search on it in Google, you’ll begin to understand what keywords you should focus on and which to leave alone.

From this research you’ll really be able to narrow down your keywords and be in a position where you can begin to choose the right ones.

What else is there to consider?

  • It still pays to think “long tail”. Everyone would love to show 1st on search results for the big keywords that have huge amounts of searches, but its highly likely you won’t achieve that. If you aim for more specific, longer tailed keywords, perhaps in small phrases, then as well as the actual words being more specific and so the searcher will have a bigger chance of buying from you, you are also more likely to appear on the first page!
  • Sometimes through doing extensive keyword research you find a keyword that has a high amount of searches and low competition and you think great! But, make sure that keyword is actually going to bring you the traffic you want, if it won’t, then don’t it.
  • Keywords are just the start of SEO. If you want to appear top of searches for your keyword, you are going to have to produce great content and get links coming into your site (this is just the start of SEO!)
  • Employ your keywords in your meta tags, search engines love them.
  • Review your keyword choices. Use an analytics package such as Google Analytics to see how the keywords you have chosen are faring. Are they driving traffic? Is that traffic converting? If not, then it may be worth considering revising the keywords you originally chose.

Hopefully this will all help you in making the correct decisions with the keywords for your homepage. Fingers crossed you can get to first position for the keywords you want!

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: SEO Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

Yahoo-Microsoft Transition – SEO DONE!

04/08/2011 By

Yes, that’s right – they snuck up on us all with it, but as of yesterday (August 3rd 2011) Yahoo!’s organic results are now being powered by Microsoft/Bing.

{PPC is NOT affected yet – and they have reiterated that we’ll all be given plenty of notice before that one happens.}

Here’s the detail: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Search Marketing, SEO Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

2640 Short .uk Domains now available…

24/05/2011 By 1 Comment

If you’ve ever dreamed of owning a terrible short domain name ending .uk – now’s the time to act.

As of now the Nominet Short Domains Landrush Phase is open.

What is the Landrush Phase?

The Landrush Phase is the oppotunity to stake a claim for any of the 2640 short .uk domains that are still available.

Those are domains that are 1-4 characters long, and end in one of the following 4 ways:

  • .co.uk
  • .org.uk
  • .net.uk   (restricted to networks – complicated so I’d advise reading the rules)
  • .me.uk   (to register one of these you must be an individual)

You can find a full list of the domains here.

The Landrush Phase lasts from 23/05/2011 at 12.00 BST to 15/06/2011 at 12.00 BST.

During the Landrush Phase you can say that you want a specific domain. No domains will be allocated during this phase, and there’s no benefit to registering your interest today vs tomorrow – so long as you do it before the phase ends!

To register your interest you need apply for the domain of your choice via one of the participating registrars. It’ll cost you £10+VAT that’s non-refundable.

What Happens After the Landrush Phase?

At the end of the Landrush Phase Nominet will look at each of the 2640 domains, and do one of the following with each:

  • if only 1 person says they want it – they’ll get that domain on the 23/06/2011
  • if more than 1 person says they want it – it goes to an auction starting on 20/07/2011
  • if no-one wants a domain it will become available on a first come first served basis as of 27/06/2011
Filed Under: Editorials, News, SEO Marketing Tagged With: , , ,
« Older Posts