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PPC Presentation – Lancaster SEO Meetup Group

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Links

As a newcomer not only to Web Talent, but also to the SEO world, I have been delving into the many facets of link building and search marketing. With all of its publicity, it was very hard not to be sucked into the social media world and how it is incorporated into the marketing realm. Social media proves to be the most persuasive of strategies when looking at how to reach your target audience. However, keeping up with the social media “flavor of the week” is never-ending.

One social media site in particular has been stealing headlines and traffic. Pinterest is a new form of social bookmarking modernizing how websites are bookmarked using pictures. Users can “pin” their favorite products, pictures, pets, etc. to different categories or thematic “boards” for others to follow. Photos can be “pinned” and “repined” and shared with all of your followers.

With all the hype surrounding Pinterest, it was only a matter of time before this social media platform was integrated into SEO strategies. As reported in a February article on Search Engine Watch, in January 2012, Pinterest accounted for more traffic than LinkedIn, Google+, Reddit and YouTube combined! So it is only natural that businesses should be looking into ways to utilize this site.

Pinterest has several advantages for businesses and their online presence. Since users only “repin” pictures of things that interest them, your target market finds you! Businesses can “pin” all of their favorite company infographics and pictures to this site with a link in the picture back to their site. The best part…these links are followable! Branch out and follow people and they are likely to follow you and look at the content you have pinned to your board.

Be forewarned, this new craze is highly addictive. I can testify first hand because I too, along with 11 million other users, have joined Pinterest and cannot seem to stop pinning my favorite things! As a social media marketing company, it is only natural that Web Talent recently jumped on the bandwagon and joined Pinterest and we are quickly exploring all it has to offer.

Search Quality Has Improved: Google Makes 40 Updates in February 2012

Google is always tweaking their processes to bring forth better search results for users and they recently announced in a blog post that 40 search updates were implemented for the month of February. That’s right, 40 in one month! This marks a new record for Google for their monthly series on search quality.

Google claims to be continuously trying to make small improvements to every aspect of their systems including related searches, autocomplete, sitelinks, indexing, synonyms, UI elements, and much more. “Each individual change is subtle and important, and over time they add up to a radically improved search engine,” says Google. You can see the complete list of Google’s updates on their blog, but here are some that caught my attention.

Link Evaluation

Google claims to have changed the way in which they evaluate links by turning off a method of link analysis they’ve been using for several years. Sad, but true, and I believe they just broke the hearts of every search marketing firm in the world. Just when we got close, they switch things around! Google claims it was necessary to re-architect certain parts of their scoring in order to maintain a clean and understandable system. Google won’t give specifics on any new link evaluation signals or any more information on the one they turned off, but that’s okay Google, we’ll recover!

Local Search Rankings

Along with the link evaluation signal, Google’s post says local results are being improved because of a “new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably.” Google has improved the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of their main search results as a signal. They’re now more capable of detecting when both queries and documents are local to the user.

More Local Relevant Predictions in YouTube

When it comes to the ranking for predictions in YouTube, Google wants to provide more locally relevant queries. In Google’s blog post, they use Lady Gaga as an example. The query “Lady Gaga in” would typically generate a variety of different predictions. Now, if that query is entered on the US version of YouTube, Google may predict “Lady Gaga in Times Square,” but if the query is performed on the Indian version of YouTube, you may see “Lady Gaga in India.” Don’t worry little monsters, Google will still bring you Gaga videos, only they’ll be from a town near you!

Now I know you don’t have all day, so here are some other updates you may want to know about…
“Site:” Query Update: Google improves the ranking for queries that use the “site:” operator by increasing the diversity of results.

Expanding the Size of Image Index in Universal Search: Google expanded the collection of image results that are shown in Universal Search.

International Launch of Shopping Rich Snippets: These snippets help users identify shopping sites that have the most relevant products according to the user’s needs. They typically display product prices, availability, reviews and ratings, etc. and for a while were only available in the United States, Germany and Japan. Google has changed that and shopping rich snippets have gone global!

In addition to these 40 updates, Google has also confirmed the Panda 3.3 update. Google isn’t saying much about the update, other than it refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web.

As you can see, Google has been very busy this past month and with all of these updates at once, I’m sure some discussion will occur. Share your thoughts with Web Talent Marketing on Facebook or Tweet us @socialmediafirm.

Web Talent Does LA

The Beverly Web-billies. Web-deo Drive. Webbywood.

There is no doubt that Web Talent Marketing is a team full of high-flying, low-brow, rankings butt-kickers, and dang proud too. On a recent excursion to the city of angels Mike, Oliver & Miki uncovered many treasures, great and small, but none more valuable than a gold-mine known as Sire’s Crown Eyewear.

Take what you think you know about sunglasses and toss it out the window (or, if you are Mike, you drop it off the side of a boat). Sire’s cant really even be considered sunglasses. They are much better than such a commonly used title. They are better known as Eco Wood Eyewear. Hand-carved wooden frames made from a wide assortment of exotic woods from across the globe, including Koa from Hawaii, makes for one light-weight, durable, and flexible pair of peepers.

*drool*

The gents who run this crafty enterprise are a rag-tag team of 20-something entrepreneurs doing their best to kick down the doors of LA’s creative industry and get their foot in the door of some pretty amazing brick-and-mortar businesses across the world, such as Harrod’s in London.

The coolest part of the buying experience was getting to walk through their Downtown Los Angeles studio space overlooking the entire city and the historic KRKD radio towers, which ran over the airwaves from 1932-1975.

And, while the price point is well beyond what you would find at the carts in your local shopping mall, according to co-owner/optician Chris Erven, they come with a “getting laid satisfaction guarantee”. These babies, therefore, are worth their weight in gold.

"Oh, hey ladies..."

So, if you are from the Golden State or get a day to spend out there, take a walk on the wild side and head downtown to the Sire’s Crown showroom. Luckily, they have concrete floors making it all the easier to clean up after this eyewear blows your mind.

While we had an amazingly good time in LA, its really great to be back home again. First day back at work, this is what we are greeted with:

hi mom.

Followerwonk – The Social Analytics Tool for Twitter

I came across a really cool social tool the other day that I can’t believe more people are not using. It’s called Followerwonk and is a miracle tool for cultivating influential bloggers, guest blogging opportunities, and socially authoritative websites. The tool has both a free and paid version based on usage and can be accessed by using your twitter account. The tool has four main purposes and allows you to export your findings to a CSV file and saves your recent searches.

One of my very favorite parts of this tool is the ability to search for twitter users by keyword and compare them based on different metrics (influence, followers, following, age, etc). In practice, if you were looking to connect with authoritative social media bloggers to  promote your content, this tool will let your search, sort, and download them based on the keywords you selected. You can also follow them on Twitter right from the application. Followerwonk also shows you if your account is following the selected twitter profiles or if they are following you.

Once you have selected a short-list of highly authoritative and relevant bloggers, or websites, you can dive deeper into their twitter statistics and then start to analyze their followers (or whom they are following) to help narrow down cream of the crop. There are a ton of metrics to take into account such as the average age, language of their followers, and how active and authoritative they are.

Lastly, Followerwonk offers user twitter analytics to help monitor the progress (or struggles) of your growing, authoritative followers. Using this feature within the tool can provide a closer look at your twitter account’s followers. It can also identify your most influential followers which is a vital aspect to any social media campaign since they are your lowest hanging fruit. You can also identify followers that are recent additions or recent loses. My suggestion would be to periodically pull up your followers that have chosen to unfollow you, identify authoritative users, and then attempt to retain.

For a social media consultant like me, Followerwonk is a great addition to the social media tools we are currently usiong at Web Talent Marketing. Of course no tool has ever created a winning social media campaign. A custom stratagy and solid reporting metrics often work hand in hand to help acheive long term success within social media – but tools like this help out a whole lot!

Google Says, “Search is Simply Better with Your World in it”

As the world’s leading search engine, Google’s first priority has always been your experience as a user. Each day, several hundred million queries are performed and Google strives to bring forth the best results from the pubic web. However, Google is about to get to know you on a much more personal level.

Check out this video from Google

On Tuesday, Google announced an update called Search plus Your World, which will forever change the way the search engine functions. “We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships,” says Google in a blog post early Tuesday morning. “Rich personal content is currently missing from your search experience.” Search plus Your World allows you to find your own personal content, people you know, and others whom you may want to connect with (or hide from) in your search results. In order for this to happen, Google’s bots are now going to incorporate data from social networks as well as the public Internet when delivering search results. Google’s new system has three new features: Personal Results, Profiles in Search, and People & Pages.

Personal Results
Personal Results allows you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts. Your search results will consist of both your own content or photos as well as those shared specifically with you. This information in your search results will only be visible to you. Therefore, you will not get the same search results as I do, even though we may search for the same query. For example, say you want to plan a trip and are looking for a good vacation spot. You can still search the web for plenty of travel ideas or you may want to learn from the experiences your friends have had on their vacations. Everyone knows that your friend’s suggestions are going to mean more to you than what any impersonal web site recommends, just as they would in real life. When you perform your search, you’ll be presented with oodles of relevant content. You can check out Google+ posts from your friends talking about an awesome trip they just took while taking a look at their photos in their Picasa album. You can read their comments, captions and share links with each other.

Profiles in Search
Go to Google.com and type in the name of your best friend. You’ll quickly find out that there are thousands of “Ben Smiths” in this world, which can make it hard to find the person you know, let alone get in contact with them. This is Google’s solution. Now when you begin to type in the first few letters of your friend’s name, Google will bring up a personalized profile prediction in autocomplete and in the results pages. If you click on the profile, you’ll find information on their Google+ profile along with search results that may be relevant to them. Now you can add them to your Google+ circles and see what they’ve been up to lately!

People & Pages
Here’s another way to reach out to people you may know or want to follow. If you search for a topic of interest, say baseball for example, you may see prominent people who frequently discuss baseball on Google+ along side your search results. You can then choose to connect with them on Google+ by striking up a conversation- how about those Phillies? It’s a cool way to discover entire communities related to the topics that interest you.

Of course with any new system, there are concerns. Many people are questioning the security of Search plus Your World as well as expressing privacy issues. However, Google has claimed to have taken all necessary precautions. Search via SSL will be turned on by default for Google+ signed in users and for those of you who don’t like this new system, no worries. Google is providing a toggle switch that essentially allows you to “unpersonalize” your search results. This means Google won’t display any results from your friends or your private information as well as no personalization of results from your Web History. If that’s not enough for you, Google is giving you three privacy settings to choose from for displaying your content- Public, Limited, or Only You.

Since the release on Tuesday, there has been some talk about how Google is trying to give lots of exposure to its social network Google+ in order to beat out Facebook and push content from other sites down in rankings. “The change will expose Google+ profiles, as well as posts and photographs uploaded to the network to hundreds of millions of search users whether or not they have Google+ accounts,” says Miguel Helft, a senior writer at Fortune.com. As a result, competitors are already assuming that Google is going to give preferential treatment to content from its own creations such as Google+, YouTube, etc. As for social media marketing agencies, this new system may bring about significant change in the way Google evaluates SEO and social media efforts.

One thing is for sure, Google has gained a better understanding of how to incorporate socially relevant data. As mentioned before, we are Google’s first priority and if something is going to enhance our search experience, you bet they’re going to give it a whirl. Google is currently only offering Search plus Your World to Google+ users who are signed in and are searching on www.google.com in English. As a Google user, it’s up to you whether or not to jump on the bandwagon, but according to Google, “Search is simply better with your world in it.”

Web Talent is Animal-Friendly!

One of the greatest benefits of being a privately-owned and owner-operated business is that we get to make up our own rules. We eat when we want, we wear what we want, and we get to bring our closest friends to work with us every day!

"freeze-dried tubifex worms... nommmmm"

Recently we have been growing our in-office relationship with nature by adding some slippery somethings that we float in water and feed compressed freeze-dried organic matter – and they love it!

That's a shark's butt. A very tiny shark's butt.

Now, of course we still love and adore the animals we already had. Who could forget such classics as Simon & Garfunkel? Well, it turns out Simon is a girl. Not Paul Simon, although I’m not saying he ISN’T a girl, I am just legally obligated to be vague on that topic so as to avoid a lawsuit after which I will lose my job. I am saying that Simon the half-moon betta fish, previously thought to be of the male gender, is of the feminine persuasion. This has caused mass hysteria in the office, resulting in an overall lack of faith in humanity (Brent) and a strong case of stress-induced hives (Ray). Simon will from this day forward be known as Simone.

I'm not a dude!

Garfunkel, though the clearly under-appreciated artist in the group, has no comment.

Control your emotions.

Never to be outdone (by anyone), the office dogs tend to step up their A-game when a client or potential interview is in the office.

I can haz sitelinks?

Becker, like all good ninjas (and bad flatulence) is silent, but deadly! His weapon of choice?

SNUGGLES!

We support our friendly local animals and hope you all get to enjoy the unique marketing perspective that pets bring to our business!

The Changing Faces of Google Analytics

By Lorianna Sprague, SEO Specialist

Some of you may have noticed, beginning in May of this year, that Google Analytics began changing the look and feel of their user interface. They ran a series of webinars to introduce both website owners and agencies to the new layout. Check them out for a seriously detailed tutorial (seriously means 6 videos at an hour a piece).

So, what’s changed? Here’s a quick list of the most obvious differences in the analytics interface:

• Visitor and Goal Flow Visualization – using Sankey diagrams
• Multi-Channel Funnels – to see what channels your customers interacted with in the 30 days prior to converting
• Real Time Reporting – updates your site’s activity continuously so you can see the results of your campaigns unfold in real time
• Mobile Reporting – gives you a more detailed look at how mobile users are interacting with your site so you can optimize for those users and improve conversions over time
• Integration with Webmaster Tools – which gives website owners and agencies access to the top 1000 keywords that landed people on a website over a 30 day period; this is the work around for the lack of access to keyword data through the Traffic Sources section of Analytics (see below)
• Limited Display of Keyword Traffic Sources – (based Google users who are logged in while searching) the good news is that what you lost in “keyword’ Traffic Sources, you have gained back in Webmaster Tools; if you have not integrated your Webmaster Tools account with your Analytics, now’s the time
• Advanced Segmentation – and the ability to define your own segments based on what matters, such as removing brand terms, or creating a segment to view traffic for only visitors who know about your company or brand
• Site Speed
• Social Interactions
• Better reports, and so much more.

Web Talent’s Lancaster, PA SEO Meet Up will be discussing the New Google Analytics in 2012. Join the Meet Up and comment here to let us know what parts of the new Google Analytics you would like us to explore.

Start Converting Your “Misbehaving” Landing Pages.

Conversion optimization is a lot like getting a 2 year old to go where you want them to. You have to eliminate all distractions and point them down one path they can follow. Even then they can surprise you. I have 3 kids under 3 and they all need directions to follow. Chances are, your landing pages could use some direction as well. Consider these tips below to get your landing page at its peak optimization level.

If you’re still trying to imagine what it’s like to have 3 kids under three, the word “chaos” sums it up. So how do you control all that chaos? One step at a time:

Step 1: Diagnose your landing page.

Just take a look at where your page stands from a user perspective and in your analytics. Neither one lies! Is your landing page easy to use? Have you tested it with your target demographic? What is your current conversion rate? Do you know your current conversion rate? Uncover the facts first then start thinking about where you need to be. When I see my kids misbehaving, I can’t just let it continue to happen – I do something about it. Do something about your misbehaving landing pages!

Step 2 : Make a hypothesis

Ok, so after you diagnose your landing pages and uncover areas for improvement, it’s time to make a hypothesis on what changes could potentially increase conversions. Before you immediately say “Just redesign it!”, consider the following. I can’t very well approach my wife and say, “can we just start over with these kids?” I could, but she would laugh and say, ” just start small” – so that’s what we do. Start small by making the easiest corrections first. Those small changes could make a huge difference in conversion rate. This could be as simple as creating a stronger call to action or reducing the number of form fields. Here’s a quick fact for you: Did you know – in a past study of course – each form field you add to a form could potentially cost you about 3-4% in conversion rates?! Now, deciding what to actually change on your landing pages requires a clear goal and call to action. For example, if your goal is ecommerce sales, you may consider removing friction from your checkout system. If your goal is qualified leads you may choose to focus on conveying impeccable trustworthiness and credibility. After you develop your hypothesis, it’s time to test.

Step 3: Plan your strategy

So what’s it gonna be – negative or positive reinforcement? The answer always depends on your demographic and no, that’s not the only question you should be asking yourself. Let’s just say there is greater fear in the possibility of losing something than the possibility of gaining something. My little 3-year-old doesn’t always understand that if she does something right she will be rewarded in return. However, if you show her what she might lose, she immediately pays close attention. Now by all means, I would rather use positive reinforcement, but it doesn’t work at this time in her life! Every landing page is different and it all comes down to knowing the needs of your target demographic. So how will you get your customer’s attention? Consider a clear message that both resonates with your target and leads them confidently down the conversion path. In order to do this, you need to get to know them!

I know everything about my kids. I watch what they do and play with them every chance I get. When I’m not around, my wife fills me in with new stories and I learn even more. You can do the same with your target market. Ask your sales team about your current customers. Have conversations with your customers. Dive in and learn as much as you can. This information is literally priceless and is exactly what you need to know in order to provide tailored solutions. After you put together a great plan and develop concepts to test, what’s next? Let’s test it! If you have two completely different ideas, do an A/B test. Likewise, if you have many small changes to test, do a multivariate test. This is where your testing plan takes shape. Notice we haven’t touched a design program yet?

Step 4: Hand-off to the development team… it’s time to test

Ok, now you can hand it off to the designer & programmer. As a designer myself, it pains me to say that it takes more than design alone. With that said, landing page design that improves the user experience is hands-down the most important element when it comes to conversion optimization. Now, when optimized landing page design meets clear messaging, wedding bells ring, fireworks explode, and champagne falls from the sky. Well done team.

Never stop testing! Whether you receive negative or positive results, never stop testing. There is always room for improvement and the investment is well worth the return. Just because I’m successful at teaching my daughter how to walk, doesn’t mean I’ll stop there. No way! I will continue teaching her and improving her life. Do the same with your landing pages by continually pursuing increased conversion rates. You’ll be impressed how a few course corrections can make huge improvements.

Google Split Testing – NOT!

Recently, while perusing the performance of a client, who shall for my own job security remain nameless, I noticed that all of a sudden quite a few of my text ads were disapproved in Google Search. What the sweet Jolly Green Giant is going on here, I thought. I hovered my cursor over the thought bubble next to my Disapproved status and it very helpfully told me that all the display URLs within the ad group must be the same.

Identical, like creepy little PPC minions.

Fair enough, I thought, and I went to look through my active ads. To my not-at-all-surprise, all my active ads had identical display URLs. I figured it probably was an older disapproval and maybe I just needed to make a small edit and resubmit it. I can always go back later and put the display URL back the way I want it, all properly capitalized and looking adorable and useful. Then I clicked on the ads tab at the campaign level, and lo and behold, ALL the ad groups had disapproved ads. Mother of Pearl! I went through and edited every single one of those suckers until after about ten minutes I realized that I have edited myself into a circle, and have started re-editing ads that within the last few minutes have been disapproved AGAIN.

This looks like a job for Annoying Girl! Annoying Girl calls Adwords Support hotline (which is 866-2-GOOGLE, for any of you that do not have the secret weapon) and complains about the hypocrisy inherent within the system at length to the (I’m sure very lovely) girl on the other end of the phone. Despite my gratitude that she spoke perfectly clear and easily understandable English, the fact remains that there are built-in flaws within the Adwords system, and if I cared half as much about politics as I do about getting Google to improve this program, I would have mastered the art of making protest signs and have an arrest record the length of my leg.

Give me split testing or give me DEATH!

Here is what I was told by said lovely girl, and here is why I still don’t want to make friends with her: The display URL of all the ads that are paused and DELETED within an ad group will affect the approval of the active ads. Therefore, if you decided that you didn’t like the display URL you used last year, and wanted to revamp your company image, you would have to create an entirely new ad group to change it. Even so much as a change from mygreatcompany.com/rock-on to something more like MyGreatCompany.com will get your ads disapproved.

The whole rule about identical display URLs, to me, goes against the entire point of having multiple ads. Why can I split test everything under the sun, but not my display URLs? I know some of you are thinking that this really shouldn’t be a big deal, but it is. No, seriously it is! How can I explain the statistical reasoning behind a “best practices” of building adwords ads to a client when I cant even show them the difference in performance between their www.reallylongandobnoxiousurl.com/subdomain and my super sweet ShortURL.com/Yea. Maybe this is the lament of just one species of marketer. But I say if I deleted something, that means I no longer own it, and like wiping a misdemeanor off a minor’s record, you should not be able to hold past performance against me.

In order to remedy this situation, I had to go through all paused ads and edit them, thus losing my historical data. To find the data that once was, I have to go through deleted ads and guess which one it was. Google, if you could possibly, I would really love it if you could make my job a little harder. Kthnx. So, I’m sorry Very Lovely Adwords girl, whose name I cannot remember, I don’t think I will be adding you as a friend on Facebook, and please tell your employer I think they smell.