Thursday, 28 April 2016

About Google AdWords

Google AdWords is one of the top advertising systems in the world and its inception changed the way self-serve advertising works forever. When businesses use AdWords, they make about $2 for every $1 they spend. Currently, more than 1.2 million businesses use the service. Despite the popularity of AdWords, however, many marketers still have questions about how the platform works. Here are answers to the five most common questions marketers ask:
According to Google, landing page experience is evaluated according to the following things:
• Relevance and usefulness of page content
• Trustworthiness of page content
• Ease of navigation

When a landing page is irrelevant or slow to load, viewers will leave at higher rates. This tells Google that the landing page is poorly constructed, which results in a negative Ad Rank. When pages boast quick load times and high levels of relevance, though, they’re likely to earn a higher Quality Score. This, in turn, creates a higher Ad Rank over time.


Modified broad match was introduced by Google in 2010 and is one of three types of matches: broad match, phrase match and exact match. Essentially, broad match displays ads for synonyms and word stems of synonyms. For example, if you’ve targeted the keywords “running + shoes,” a broad match keyword might appear for “best running shoes, running sneakers, running tips,” and “shoes for running.”

While broad match has been met with mixed reviews over the past five years (many marketers accuse the service of stealing advertising budgets and driving irrelevant traffic to an ad), the foundational intention of this software is to bring in the broadest possible audience for your ads. Unfortunately, when you get ad impressions that don’t align with the original purpose of the search query, your click through rate (CTR) can suffer.

From Google’s perspective, “negative keywords” are keywords that let the search engine know where you don’t want your ads to appear. This prevents you from wasting money on unwanted clicks and ensures that the traffic you’re getting is relevant and purposeful.

First of all, let’s define Quality Score. The Quality Score is generally considered to be a number that represents your account’s health. Therefore, high Quality Scores produce better advertising results. The formula for determining CPC is as follows:

The ad rank of the advertiser who ranks immediately below you/Quality Score + 1 cent = CPC
Because of this formula, it’s possible for advertisers who don’t pay as much as their competition to produce a higher ad rank. That being said, CPC bids don’t directly affect quality score and because expected CTRs are based predominantly on ads in similar positions, higher CPC bids will not improve your Quality Score.

Quality Scores are based on the ratio of clicks to impressions rather than the total number of clicks. Because of this, keywords that have low search volume won’t necessarily harm your Quality Score. To bring low-volume keywords up to speed, ensure that the keyword fits seamlessly into your landing page and ad. Alternately, try incorporating the keyword into different versions of ad text.

Benefits of Google AdWords

There’s no denial about the benefits AdWords can achieve for your business, such as: wider, instant exposure, targeted advertising, in-depth reporting and more. However, before you get started, you need to ask yourself 3 questions: are people looking for your product? Do you have the budget for it (Google’s Keyword Planner tool can help predict what it will take) and thirdly – do you have the time to learn and invest in it? Even if you consider hiring a professional, AdWords campaigns are time-consuming.

Bottom line is, you need to be willing to experiment and analyze on a daily basis to achieve optimal results.

What does your company do? What product or service does it provide? Put down everything that’s directly related to your product/company, and then expand on it to create a broader scope where searchers can reach you. Also, a good place to start building your keyword list will be your website, which should include the main terms that describe your business and products. In addition, use Google’s Keyword Tool to find additional keywords your potential customers may use.

Think like a customer. If you were looking for a product like yours, what keywords would you use?
Account: You only have one AdWords account. You can several ad groups, but only one account. Every aspect of the AdWords interface takes place within the account. The account level is where you select your billing, and payment options.

Campaign: You can have multiple campaigns within an account, but don’t confuse it with multiple ad groups. The campaign is where you select geographic, language, network, and device targeting options. This is also where you set your daily budget. If this is your first time campaign, you might want to start with one.

Ad Group: There can be multiple ad groups per campaign. The ad group is where you can set your default bids. Ad groups can include keywords for the search network, and placements (and/or keywords, topics, interest categories, audiences) for the display network. The ad group also includes ads that will be shown when your targeting options match a user’s search query, or placement view.

Keywords: Keywords are what users input in the search engine to search for what they’re looking for. Google uses keywords to determine whether or not to display your ad to a user. A user sees your ad when the keyword, bid, and targeting options all combine to determine whether or not your ad ranks high enough in the auction for that ad to be shown. You can set individual bids for keywords and placements within the ad group. You can also change keyword match types, add or delete keywords, and add or delete negative keywords.

Ads: Ads are what the user sees, and (hopefully) clicks on. It’s a snowball effect: The higher the CTR (Click-through Rate) of the ad, the higher the CTR of the keyword which triggered that ad to show, the higher the CTR of the ad group the ad and keyword are in, the higher the CTR of the campaign that ad group is in, the higher the CTR of the account that campaign is in. If there is a problem at any level of the account, ads diagnosis should help provide some insight as to what that problem is.

Know More about Google Adwords

Why do I have more sessions than clicks?
This is normal behavior and indicates positive engagement with your website. When a user clicks one of your AdWords ads and auto-tagging is turned on, we assign a unique click id (gclid value) to that user.
If a user later returns to the website directly (e.g., the user enters your website URL or has the website bookmarked), in lieu of any other referral information, these additional sessions have their campaign source reported as the last-known campaign source. In this case, the last-known campaign is an AdWords campaign.
Each direct return session after the initial AdWords click shows as another session for the AdWords campaign. Basically, this is a scenario where a single AdWords click leads to multiple sessions in Analytics.
Tip: You can use advanced segments to view new vs. returning sessions for a campaign and confirm that the larger number of sessions is partially due to returning users.

Why do I see sessions coming from an old (paused or deleted) AdWords campaign?

This is similar to the previous scenario where return users cause more sessions than clicks to appear for a given campaign. When an AdWords campaign is paused, users who originally accessed the site via this campaign and later return via direct will have these repeat direct sessions reported as coming from the AdWords campaign.
In some cases this can lead to scenarios where you see sessions showing for a campaign six or more months after the campaign has been paused or deleted.
Tip: As above, you can segment these sessions by new and returning users to confirm this is returning-user behavior.

I use manual tagging. Is there anything I should know?

Yes. First of all, we have seen many clicks-sessions reporting issues resolved simply by adopting auto-tagging.
Next, make sure you are aware of the benefits of auto-tagging. Also, be aware that some features in AdWords are only available when you use auto-tagging, and that future improvements to AdWords reporting in Analytics will be available only to users who employ auto-tagging.
We expect session numbers to be lower due to manual tagging. This is because auto-tagging generates a unique gclid value for each click. Each unique value opens a new session in Analytics.
Manual tagging does not generate a unique campaign URL (click id) for each click. Therefore, it’s possible to have situations where a user clicks a creative several times in the same 30 mins window but only registers one session in Analytics.

Why do I see landing pages for paid traffic in Analytics that are not specified as destination URLs in my AdWords account?

First, there are two dimensions in Analytics that you should understand:
1. Destination URL: This dimension is limited to AdWords-reporting sections of Analytics. It represents the destination URL in your ad that was recorded at the time of the AdWords click.

2. Landing Page: This is the first recorded page view in an Analytics session.

Wednesday, 20 April 2016

SEO Meta Tags Best Practices

What Are Meta Tags?

Meta tags are a great way for Webmasters to provide search engines with information about their sites. (They) can be used to provide information to all sorts of clients, and each system processes only the Meta tags they understand and ignores the rest. (They) are added to the <head> section of your HTML page.

Do Meta Tags Help SEO?

Ranking high in Google in 2016 has far more to do with relevance and reputation of high-quality content, user satisfaction and popularity than Meta tag optimization.

In my experience, Meta tags do not noticeably influence where a page ranks in Google, in a positive way.

Does Google Use What Is In Meta Tags For Ranking Pages?

Some search engines once looked to hidden HTML tags like these to help order pages in search engine results pages, but most search engines (in 2016) have evolved past this, and Google certainly has.

Google is on record as saying it does not use some data in Meta when ranking a page (in a positive way) and tests throughout the years have certainly seemed to confirm this.


What Do Meta Tags Do in SEO?

Meta Data can help describe any page in a more convenient machine readable format, more suited to search engines, but they are very likely to get spammed, and so ultimately limited on their own, when it comes to ranking documents on the web.

Google may use metadata, amongst many other signals, to CLASSIFY pages, or DISPLAY information about a page in SERPs, although, in natural results in the UK, I see its impact, where it can be detected, when used at all, being used mainly for DISPLAY purposes.

Do Meta Tags control my search snippet listing in Google?

Sometimes, yes, at least in the case of the Meta Description, but not always, and this is dependent on many factors. Google will pick its own preferred search snippet for SERPs for display purposes, based on elements that can still be influenced by whoever made the page (and site) – and what Google knows about the page.

Can I force My Meta Description to Be Used by Google?

It is possible, but to get, for instance, the Meta description to display for a keyword, you generally need the keyword phrase in the Meta description. If the reason the keyword is in the Meta description is because it is a duplicate of the title, then, according to Google’s recommendations – that’s not ideal – perhaps even unnecessary duplication.

How to Write Meta Tags

You can still be creative when thinking about some tags like the Meta Description, but Meta tags are best used when EXACTLY describing the page in question, and helping Google to short cut to information about your page. If you are helping Google serve, especially informational queries, and helping short-cut to data, Google is your friend, and most can still benefit from that relationship.

What Are the Important Meta tags?

For the purposes of this ‘beginners guide to meta tags’, I focus on the three meta I am asked about the most:
• Description
• Keywords
• Robots

Meta Description SEO Best Practices

The Meta description tag is still important from both from a human and search engine perspective, if used intelligently and properly.

Can Pages Still Rank High Without a Meta Description?

Yes. Google is usually able to extract a relevant snippet from the page which you can then go back and optimize for click-through rates if you think of a better message you want to display in SERPs for that page.

What Does Google Say about Meta Descriptions?

Google’s says you can programmatically auto-generate unique Meta descriptions based on the content of the page.

Can You Control What Message Appears in The Google Search Snippet?

While search engines have much better ways of classifying spam in 2016, it’s still worth remembering search engines are always on the lookout for manipulation that goes too far. Bing has publicly stated they look to Meta data for signs of manipulation, so you should realize there is probably a degree of risk attached to optimizing Meta data.

Does Every Page Need a Meta Description?

A good Meta description may be another sign of a quality page, and that can only be a good thing in 2016.

Does Google Use The Meta Description When Ranking A Page?

This is a typical question I was often asked, and as I always liked to back up my recommendations with at least some individual observations to back it up, I often tested to see if I could get a definitive answer to this.
A lot of people use gibberish words in tests so I didn’t. I always used unique numbers which only appear in hidden elements – and I have a lot of pages all over the place. I am only interested in what I can see and what actually helps a page rank in SERPs.

Problems with Unique Meta Descriptions

Google has said for years “create unique meta descriptions”. If you follow that advice to the letter – you also conveniently give somebody else free text for their spam site. A good unique Meta description only increases click through rate if the page actually appears at all for the query.

HOWEVER. You never get the benefit from a unique Meta description that ONLY appears in your Meta description and is not duplicated somewhere else on your page.


On is making sure your competition is not aware of your SEO plan. The downside to Meta keyword tags is that, in theory, your competition can easily see exactly which terms you are targeting and in turn can pursue the same terms to rank for. If you choose other methods to attempt to rank for your terms you can do so without giving away the secret sauce to your keyword term list.

Meta Keyword Tags in SEO Ranking Factors

One of the most asked questions I receive from clients and webmasters is does Google still utilize Meta keyword tags in SEO ranking factors. Many SEO professionals debate over this controversial issue. The debates are based on an article published by Matt Cutts of Google released in September of 2009. The article, which was also accompanied by a video, informed us that Google no longer uses Meta keyword tags as a SEO ranking factor.

Google’s Standpoint: Not Used

As the article above stated, Google has mentioned they no longer utilize Meta keyword tags in their algorithm for search rankings. Google did say that they will not guarantee any permanence in this decision in that there is no promise that it will never be used again, however, they did say it was highly unlikely they will use meta tags as a deciding factor in the future. There are still individuals who believe Meta keyword tags can have negative ranking effects by using them on Google, however, I have been unable to substantiate this in my findings or find anything official that backs up this theory.


Yahoo’s Standpoint: Rarely Used

It was around the same time in 2009 that Google announced they were no longer using Meta keyword tags that Yahoo announced, at their SMX East Conference, that Yahoo’s search engine would also no longer use keyword Meta tags in their ranking algorithm. It was this announcement that was followed up with an article from Search Engine Land specifying they conducted an experiment and found the Yahoo statement to be false. Yahoo responded rather quickly to Search Engine Land with this statement:

What changed with Yahoo’s ranking algorithms is that while we still index the Meta keyword tag, the ranking importance given to Meta keyword tags receives the lowest ranking signal in our system.

Bing’s Standpoint: Not Much Weight

Bing has affirmed that they do not support the Meta keyword tag and have stood by it for a very long time

Should You Use Meta Keyword Tags for SEO?

Meta keyword tags should be used with extreme caution. I have provided information on how Google really does not use this as a ranking tool at all anymore and, how the other two major search engines do indeed take a peek at this tag. You should treat carefully as improper or spammy use most likely will hurt you with Bing, or even have your site marked as spam. If you so choose to use Meta keyword tags, be sure to avoid overstuffing the keywords and do not include keywords that are not related to the specific page you place them on.


The other side of the equation is making sure your competition is not aware of your SEO plan. The downside to Meta keyword tags is that, in theory, your competition can easily see exactly which terms you are targeting and in turn can pursue the same terms to rank for. If you choose other methods to attempt to rank for your terms you can do so without giving away the secret sauce to your keyword term list.

Meta Keyword tags

Even though the META Keyword tags have been useless for a while now, some tags still play a big part in SEO. The good news is that now, with a CMS like WordPress, you can update these tags yourself.

In older browsers, this was the text you would see along the top bar. Newer browsers usually do not show the title tag (because they now offer tabs), but it does still matters.

Each page should have a unique title tag that specifically describes the content within that page. You want to use keywords in your tag but make sure it makes sense to the reader. These tags signal to the engines what the page is about.

These tags are also important. The engines will look at these as indicators of context:
• What is this page about? H1
• What is this section about? H2, H3, H4


META Description Tag

This tag has no direct effect on your page ranking. However, it is still important. More often than not, this is the information that shows up in the SERPs as the page’s description.

This is your SERP sales pitch. Use this tag to describe the page in such a way that the user will want to click.

Context

We’ve written extensively about the importance of context when it comes to SEO. It’s not just the content on the page that matters. It’s the relationship between that content and…
1. Audience needs
2. Related pages
3. Links to and from the page
4. Social and other shares

Long Tail Keywords

Keyword strategies have changed quite a bit in the past few years. Google, Bing and Yahoo are now rank sites based on context rather than just a list of words and phrases.

Just think about the types of searches you perform on Google. How often do you search using just one or two words? And when you do, do you find you need to add additional words to the search to narrow down the results?

Link Building

Link exchanges used to be the currency of SEO. People would talk about the “link juice.” Some folks even paid for link exchanges from services promising top ranking. They learned the hard way that there is no easy link building formula and their site was summarily penalized.

That said, links still matter. A quality link creates another channel through which users and engines can discover your content. But, what is a quality link?

You need to think about the source. If the source is a crappy website with thin and useless content, then the quality of the link back to your website is diminished. In many cases it can actually harm your ranking.
These links and social signals are gold! They tell the engines as well as potential clients that you are a trusted authority. Here are some of the types of links you want:

1. Social shares – encourage your fans and followers to share your posts (try posting 20% your content, 80% other useful content)
2. Email newsletters that link back to your blog or website
3. Listings in popular blogs with authority in your industry (these are no bought, they are earned!)
4. Internal linking – link to services pages, promotions, and other posts as it make sense for the user.

Code and Context Rule!

Taking these steps means your website and content are effective and evergreen. You’re building quality traffic over time that lasts.

The social shares and email marketing will help to prime the pump. The search engines will take a little longer to catch up and index your content. But stick with it.



Sunday, 10 April 2016

Online Reputation Management Tips

Here are few free online reputation management tips available to help build, boost or repair a web presence for professionals such as lawyers, financial advisors, or those in the art world.


The tips range from content creation, social media, search engine optimization (SEO), monitoring, and off-site suggestions.

• While hardly as useful as it once was, it is still useful to create a Google+ account and post and comment daily.  Follow influencers in your field and engage with them.  Since it’s a Google platform, it will be indexed very quickly making it a great online reputation management tip.

• Adding visual information to Pinterest can also be very powerful. Comment on others, “like” and “Pin” compelling images.  The best times to post images are after 8pm or the weekends. Look to gain Followers too and develop Boards that are clear, colorful and have a specific niche.

• YouTube and videos are extremely powerful ways to repair an online reputation.  Create one that focuses on you and the positive things you do.  Keep it brief and as professional as possible, and offer useful information.

• Reddit is an extremely popular site that aggregates news and comments on various topics.  It can sometimes be hard to add a comment or link because it is geared to block spam or frequent additions.

• Yelp is a very popular review site, and having a presence there is a way to boost your online reputation.  
Create some legitimate reviews for places you genuinely like, and avoid the temptation to write a glowing review for yourself posing as someone else—it’s illegal and if you get caught, this could damage things further.

• This could be one of the more difficult online reputation management tip to manage on your own, but based on your readers or clients, come up with a handful of good search terms.  An art in itself, the main focus is to find a specific phrase that is attainable based on site traffic. These terms will then become the basis for ongoing content strategy and will be used in social media profiles as well as used occasionally in blog titles or headings.

• Be sure your web site is optimized, ideally for the negative term.  This could be complicated and might involve an SEO or ORM expert, but make sure your name or your company is included in the title metatags of some of your pages.  The page’s Title is the link that Google displays when searching for you, and without it set up properly, the good information about you won’t be found.

• Links pointing to your web site help drive traffic and shows search engines such as Google that you are a noteworthy, good site, thus helping your ranking. Developing a good linking strategy can be extremely time consuming but is worthwhile.  Never buy links: as Google continues to weed out bad links, you’ll quickly get blacklisted and ruin your reputation further.

• As mentioned above, images are more important than ever to Google, and having a properly named image file is crucial.  Be sure when adding images to blogs to make sure all additional fields are completed.

• Monitor your online reputation by signing up for free Google Alerts. Note that you need a Google account, but you should have one already—if you don’t, get one immediately.  Here you simply enter the word or phrase you want to monitor, and when that shows up online, you’ll get an email notification.  Usually, use your name or your business name. 

• Being visible in public is a way to generate positive news about you and build an excellent reputation, so pick some topics that you are an expert in and contact a local library, club or business organization and offer to give a talk.  It is noteworthy, it could be picked up by a news site or blog.

• A Meetup is a great online and “offline” reputation management tool.  It is free to participate in a Meetup group, so join several in your area and post comments after attending a meeting.  If you’d like to create a Meetup, it costs about $79 to start a group for six months. Managing a group can be time consuming to create frequent group meetings but focus them around your expertise.  Remember to announce the Meetups on your social media platforms.


Reputation Management Tips

Here are few free online reputation management tips available to help build, boost or repair a web presence for professionals such as lawyers, financial advisors, or those in the art world.


The tips range from content creation, social media, search engine optimization (SEO), monitoring, and off-site suggestions.

• The first online reputation management tip is to try to remove the negative post, link, image or blog post. Frankly, however, it’s usually extremely difficult or impossible to remove content once something has been published but it’s still worth a try.  Politely contact the author or webmaster and professionally state your case and request the item to be removed.

• Create a website; if you already have one, consider making another specifically for the negative term, i.e., your name or your business.  This could be a huge undertaking, requiring excellent content, good navigation and images.  But if done right, is one of the best ways to repair a damaged web presence.

• Writing a blog is probably one of the best solutions. Posting instructive and engaging articles weekly or very frequently is crucial.  It is best to use a catchy title, have good images (don’t swipe them: purchase photos or use a Creative Commons image), use headings to break the piece down into easy-to-read sections, and insert one or two links back to your site.

• Don’t comment on negative content such as reviews on RipoffReports.com because it will only rank it higher. Tempting as it might be to tell your side of the story, this will only make things worse, so avoid it.

• A Wikipedia article is extremely useful and since it is highly valued by search engines, it will usually rank on the top of the first page of Google and thus is a powerful online reputation management tip.  Creating one can be problematic, however. The entry must be truly noteworthy backed-up with verifiable outside sources.  One approach is to focus on major recognizable accomplishments that can be documented, such as lectures, awards and published articles.

• Create a detailed whitepaper or thoroughly written informative document on a topic of your choosing, and then post it to a well-regarded site.

• An Infographic is a clear, graphic representation of an idea, and is a very popular way to share information.  Generate an infographic based on a blog post

• Follow good, interesting and useful blogs, online sites, forums and communities specific for your industry.  Check them frequently and commit to making one comment daily to show that you are a “thought leader.”  Also be engaging.  Don’t just say, “Good article,” which sounds “spamy,” but put some thought into the comment.

• Writing an article or blog post as a guest can be a very helpful but not as much as in the past—be sure to work only with blogs focused on your industry.  Start by following topics that are appealing or relate to your business and eventually pitch them an idea for an article. This is a great way to get links back to your site as well.

• For business connections, nothing beats LinkedIn.  As with any social media site, completely fill out the profile and make sure you include web site links in your contact information.  An additional online reputation management tip: customize your URL with your name or business.

• Be very active on social media sites such as Facebook by posting good content.  These should not be purely promotional but should be geared to engage with your friends.  Add images, ask questions, and comment on other’s post at least once a day.

• Google is using cues from social media engagement more and more so after Facebook, Twitter is an excellent online reputation management tip.  Gain good followers, put out helpful information, and link back to your site.  Tweet consistently several times a day.

• One of the hottest platforms is Instagram.  Creating an account and adding images weekly or daily can help with the suppression of negative links from showing up in searches.  Curate images by focusing on a theme, if possible.