SEO Updates

Experts in the search marketing world have been watching the last major manual Panda Refresh the past three days.  This was the 25^th and final announced and published update to Panda, Google’s anti-web spam algorithm.  Google has stated that “Panda is becoming more of a ‘rolling’ update.”  Google Distinguished Engineer, Matt Cutts, is quoted at SMX saying:

Rather than having some huge change that happens on a given day. You are more likely in the future to see Panda deployed gradually as we rebuild the index. So you are less likely to see these large scale sorts of changes.

This is encouraging to us at Globe Runner, we are monitoring all of our clients’ sites and have not been hit by the major Panda updates and with only small tweaks coming in the future, we are confident that we can keep doing what we are doing to rank well.  Google is recognizing our clients’ quality sites.

Social News

Pinterest

Pinterest has finally announced an analytics tool!  The analytics will show verified website owners the information they have been waiting for since Pinterest began: the number of people who have pinned items from the site, the items/images that are the most popular to pinners, how many people have visited your site from Pinterest, and even the most popular repins.  For businesses looking to quantify the value or traffic coming from Pinterest to their site, the process just became much easier.  At Globe Runner, we are encouraging our clients to contact us if they have questions about their Pinterest strategy or would like to begin using Pinterest.

Google+

There were also a few updates to Google+ this month.  The three main updates are a new local reviews tab, an easier interface to update your information, and a new aspect ratio for cover images.  The new aspect ratio is enormous.  Photos can now be 2120 x 1192 pixels, this means your cover photo can now cover the entire screen “above the fold” of the Google+ page.

Globe Runner Internal Update

Our CEO Eric McGehearty was featured February 28 in the Upstart Business Journal for an article he authored on why young entrepreneurs are “too dumb to fail.”  The article tells Eric’s story from artist to entrepreneur two times over before the age of 30.  Read the full article.

Just for Fun

If you have ever wondered how Google Search works and did not want to engage in a long and involved technical conversation with an algorithm engineer, Google has released a website entitled How Search Works.  The site is interactive and allows you to follow a search query through the process to the results.  Google’s Inside Search blog describes the content as including:

• An interactive, graphical explanation of Google Search
• A view into major search algorithms and features
• A 43-page document explaining how we evaluate our results
• A live slideshow of spam as we remove it
• Graphs illustrating the spam problem and how we fight it
• A list of policies that explain when we’ll remove content

Resources

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-update-rolling-16495.html

http://www.webpronews.com/google-panda-update-is-rolling-out-report-2013-03

http://blog.autorevo.com/2013/03/google-plus-cover-image/

http://blog.pinterest.com/post/45179268152/introducing-pinterest-web-analytics

http://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/thestory/

Globe Runner SEO Updates

Meet the newest member of the Globe Runner team, Claire Elizabeth McGehearty!  She joined the team in Lewisville, Texas on February 15, 2013.  She is by far the smallest member at only 7lbs 9oz and 21 inches long.  She and her three big brothers keep founders Eric and Heather very busy!

Claire Elizabeth McGehearty

PPC Update

This month Google announced Enhanced PPC Campaigns.  These campaigns will be “smarter” and multi-device friendly.  A single campaign will now support different locations and devices, thus replacing the old system of creating duplicate campaigns for each location and device for which you want your ad to run. Within an Enhanced PPC campaign, you will be able to customize your ads and bids based on the time, device, and location of the customer.  Enhanced campaigns will also offer advanced reporting that will allow comparisons between different types of conversions; for example, app downloads vs. phone calls lasting longer than 60secs.  All of these changes are geared towards reducing the number of campaigns and the complexity of your Adwords account.

Google plans to roll out the Enhanced campaigns slowly by first giving advertisers the option to switch some of the campaigns to the Enhanced version to test out the new system.   At Globe Runner, we are excited for this change and have already switched a couple of accounts to play with the new system and prepare for every account to be Enhanced. By the middle of this year, Google plans to upgrade every account.  

Social News

The most famous adverting day of the year, the Super Bowl was this month.   This year’s Super Bowl ads sold for $3.8 million per 30 sec spot.  However, the now infamous 34 minute blackout opened up a unique opportunity for real time marketing.  The brands that were able to react quickly to the black out with relevant and creative content have been praised by the social media industry.  Social media is the ideal real-time marketing platform.

By far, the most praised real time marketing and social media “win” during the Super Bowl blackout was Oreo’s tweet, “You can still dunk in the dark.”  This tweet was a win because it highlighted a current event in a non-disparaging way and tied it into the brand’s message in a creative way.

A great social media strategy incorporates current events that can be easily tied to a brand’s message in a way that makes sense and provides a positive feeling about the brand.  The brand’s message should not be lost in the “noise” of the surrounding issue.  Only a few brands have done this well, and Oreo is the most recent example.

Just for Fun

The high price tag of a Super Bowl ad spot had those of us in the digital space talking about how much further that $4 million would go if used on internet marketing.  A few examples of this are an 8 day homepage ad on YouTube (which is one of the top five most visited pages on the web), 200 pieces of Buzzfeed-sponsored content (which is a personal favorite and highly shared site for those of us Globe Runner), and a spot on Twitter’s Promoted Trending Topic every day for a month!  For more on what $4 million can buy online, see http://www.digiday.com/brands/what-a-4-mil-superbowl-ad-could-buy-in-digital/.

Resources

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/02/04/how-oreo-culture-jacked-the-super-bowl/

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-in-2013-7-surprisingly-simple-factors-that-will-take-the-lead/57092/

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2013/02/introducing-enhanced-campaigns.html

Globe Runner SEO Updates

November has been a busy month with some internal changes including the format of our monthly and weekly reports.  Do not be surprised if the reports you see in January are formatted differently than what we have previously sent out.

Continuing our season of networking events, our SEO Team Lead, Cody, went to the Dallas Digital Summit. The speakers at the Summit had a central theme around the wealth of data that is provided with digital marketing and how using this data appropriately leads to better decision making and an increased ROI.  Our philosophy at Globe Runner this year has been “data driven decision making” we have seen this confirmed by our peers as a winning strategy and many of our clients have benefited from these decisions.

2013 SEO Predictions

Our CEO, Eric McGehearty, recently put together some predictions for the coming year in the online marketing space.  The talk was originally given for the members of TIE.  In the talk, Eric discussed likely changes in the Google algorithm, possible tech mergers and acquisitions, continued growth of mobile and upsets in the social media space.  The talk also focused on opportunities for entrepreneurs to leverage online marketing to their business advantages. Here is a preview of the talk.

Social News

If you are one of the millions of Twitter and Instagram users then you have probably noticed that Instagram photos no longer show up in your Twitter feed and you will now have to click on the Instagram photo link to see the photos.  This is just one of the ways the social sphere is becoming more and more cutthroat as each social media platform vies for dominance.  It is becoming even more important now to have a social media strategy that customizes your messaging specifically for each platform.

Resources

http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/09/instagram-kills-twitter-photo-integration/

Globe Runner SEO Updates

October was a month full of conferences and networking events at Globe Runner.  At these events we have picked up at least four new books each.  We have been reading and learning constantly over here. This is going to be a different kind of monthly summary.  Rather than highlight several of the articles we are reading about search, we are going to provide some of the key insights we took from the events we have attended.

On Monday, we attended the State of Search conference hosted by DFWSEM, the oldest association of internet marketing professionals in the country.  The State of Search Conference confirmed that the changes we are most closely following are the same changes and trends our peers are following.  The conference had an impressive line up of speakers including: Brett Tabke, Duane Forrester of Bing, and Chris Brogan.

The two most talked about topics at the conference were Google+ and Content Marketing.  This was no surprise as these are two of the hottest topics in search right now.  Google + and Google + Local are slowly becoming two of the most important social signals that Google search pays attention to in ordering its results.  This is because search is becoming personalized to the user.  Below are a few takeaways from the Content Marketing session:

Keys to Content Marketing

-          Constant content with authority

• Provide interesting, authoritative content about your area of expertise.

-          Headlines matter

• People read headlines before they read the content, if your headline doesn’t catch their attention they won’t read anything else.

-          Listen with empathy

• Listen and respond to your customers with empathy, understand where they are coming from and meet them there.  Content marketing is not just about creating new content, it is about the conversation that is started by your new content and the community reading your content.

-          Discipline for the long-term

• With a content marketing strategy, you must be dedicated to continually publishing new content.  This strategy is effective only when it is consistent.

-          Call to action

• Don’t forget to give your customers/readers the opportunity to take action based on what they read.  Immediately after reading is when your readers are ready to buy, make your Call to Action clear and easy to find.

-          Write stories that make the buyer the hero

• Your community is interested in stories that are about them and their successes, not just stories about your products.

-          Understand the interests of your customers

• Write to them about their interests, not every post needs to be a sales pitch: educate, inform, entertain, and sell

-          Think like a journalist

• Approach your market with fresh content that looks at old information from new angles and/or perspectives.

Another topic that dominated the conference was Google+. The fledgling social network has been dismissed by many as superfluous or a “ghost town”, but Google has big plans for it. The biggest role for Google+ is an updated way of serving up search results according to authorship.

As content continues to grow exponentially online, Google is looking for ways to separate the good and the bad. One of their new methods is Google Authorship, which attributes authorship to a blog post or online article so you can see who wrote it. According to Google, this will help add authority to the content and ensure relevance to your search results. And, since authorship is tied to a Google+ profile, this means the social network will play a big role in Search moving forward and shouldn’t be ignored. For more information on how to set up Google Authorship, read this blog post: https://plus.google.com/authorship

Google+ Authorship will play a role in Content Marketing in the future by tagging yourself as an author to the content that you create.  Your authorship will lend credibility to you as an author and to your content.  Tagging your content will also help it show first in the search results to the people you are connected to through social networks.

Resources

http://searchengineland.com/flavors-of-google-personalized-search-139286

Customers are more tech-savvy than ever and the number of consumers who grew up interacting online is growing. Businesses have been flocking to the online world to spread their message and look for new buyers, but all too often the message is fake, forced, or just not relevant to modern customers.

Perhaps the most important orthodoxy underlying a brand’s online presence should be authenticity. Being online isn’t enough; you have to be real. It’s what people expect today, and they know the difference when it’s forced.

“I just met you, and this is crazy, but here’s my business card, so pay me maybe?”

The Internet IS the public sphere, especially in the area of social media. It’s where people gather, exchange comments and ideas, and network. But just because this is taking place online instead of face to face doesn’t mean common rules of personal etiquette don’t apply, even for a business

If you go to a dinner party or industry networking event, do you walk around introducing yourself to people, hand them your business card, and brow-beat them with information about your services and company? No. You try to have a real conversation with equal parts speaking and listening. You begin to build real relationships. And so should any authentic business looking to create a positive presence online.

Luckily, there are more tools for businesses to do this than ever. Don’t worry about being everywhere; no one belongs to every social club in town. Pick the ones that work best for your business and be real.

Authentic People Are Aware

Another key to online authenticity is awareness. Authentic people are aware of what’s going on around them. They follow up with friends and ask how their recent vacations are or how that big meeting went at work last week. Unaware people are sloppy. An unaware person forgets names. An authentic business has the same awareness about their community of online followers and the general world around them.

Unfortunately, there have been quite a few examples of brands online who haven’t made awareness, and therefore authenticity, a priority in their online presence. Take the National Rifle Association, for example.  The morning after the tragic shootings in Aurora, CO, earlier this year, the NRA tweeted, “Good Morning, Happy Friday! Weekend plans?” While the NRA commented that the tweeter wasn’t aware of the shooting, the tweet stayed on their page for hours. A more aware online presence would have addressed the issue, or at least deleted the tweet, much more quickly.

Compare this with episode with Kitchen-Aid. During the first Presidential debate of 2012, the Kitchen-Aid twitter account posted: “‘Obamas gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! ‘She died 3 days b4 he became president’.” The tweet instantly went viral, and was almost immediately deleted and  followed with a swift succession of tweets explaining that a staffer posted to the wrong account, apologizing for the comment, and reaching out to press outlets offering official comments. That is an aware brand.

Now, this brings up the situation of allowing others to tweet on your company’s behalf or scheduling posts ahead of time. There’s a lot of conjecture about both of these practices, but long story short, if the underlying principal of authenticity is maintained, neither are “wrong”.

Penguin And Panda Will Get You

Thanks to Google, we’ll never look at cute penguins or cuddly pandas the same way ever again. Penguin and panda are code-names for recent updates Google made to their algorithms that return search results, with Panda targeting online content and Penguin focusing on links. Google is always working to show the most relevant and legitimate search results, so it wants to weed out spam and bad content as much as possible. That means Google is looking to reward authentic content and punish bad or unauthentic content.

Websites with weak content, content that doesn’t relate to the purpose of the website, or was copy and pasted from another source, will face the wrath of penguin and panda. However, websites that have original, thoughtful, and engaging content are rewarded.

There’s more online content being generated by businesses than ever. It’s a lot to sift through. And while most businesses won’t ever have the great viral video that the whole world sees, having an authentic presence online will help ensure that when you’re brand is found online, potential customers will want to spend time with/on what you have to say.

September Monthly Summary

 Google Updates

On September 27, Google released a Panda algorithm update and an Exact Match Domain (EMD) Update.  The EMD update targets domains that exactly match the search terms they hope to be found with and devalues those domains.  For example, domains such a playscrabble.net and purses.com which previously ranked #3 for their respective exact match phrases (“play scrabble” and “purses”) have now been dropped out of the top 10 search results.  The following graph illustrates the effect of this update.

According to a tweet from Matt Cutts, “New exact-match domain (EMD) algo affects 0.6% of English-US queries to a noticeable degree.”  This update is extremely important because exact match domains used to be a very common SEO tactic and after this update it is clear that this tactic/shortcut to rankings is no longer effective.  As an agency, we are following this update closely and are continuing to use proven effective strategies like great quality content and link building for our clients. 

On October 4, Google announced 65 changes to their search algorithm.  As usual, we have highlighted the updates we are most interested in.

• #82862. [project “Page Quality”] This launch helped you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
• #84394. [project “Page Quality”] This launch helped you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
• #84010. [project “Page Quality”] We refreshed data for the “Panda” high-quality sites algorithm.

These updates are all concerned with making sure the highest quality pages are listed first in Google’s search results.

• #83761. [project “Freshness”] This change helped you find the latest content from a given site when two or more documents from the same domain are relevant for a given search query.
• Imadex. [project “Freshness”] This change updated handling of stale content and applies a more granular function based on document age.

Fresh high quality content is continuing to be extremely important to Google search results.  The more relevant and interesting the content on your site is, the higher the algorithm will rank your pages.  These updates should also begin to move down those old, entrenched pdfs that sometimes rank third or fourth for a keyword, even though they were written years ago.

• #82279. [project “Other Ranking Components”] We changed to fewer results for some queries to show the most relevant results as quickly as possible.
• LTS. [project “Other Ranking Components”] We improved our web ranking to determine what pages are relevant for queries containing locations.
• #84586. [project “Other Ranking Components”] This change improved how we rank documents for queries with location terms.
• #83406. [project “Query Understanding”] We improved our ability to show relevant Universal Search results by better understanding when a search has strong image intent, local intent, video intent, etc.

Last month’s summary mentioned that Google is now sometimes only displaying only 7 results for certain search queries as opposed to the usual 10.  Google’s latest updates confirm that this will continue and that we can expect to see fewer results but an increased relevancy of those results.

 Just For Fun

The holidays are right around the corner and if you are going to be flying to visit family this year, you might want to check out Google Flight Search.  As of Sept. 28, you can now search for flights from your tablet.  What is unique about using Google to search for flights instead of Expedia, Hotwire, or Priceline is you can search all airports near a city at once.  For example, a search from Dallas, TX to New York, NY shows you a comparison of flights from both DAL and DFW to JFK, LGA, and EWR.

Resources

http://searchengineland.com/the-emd-update-like-panda-penguin-expect-further-refreshes-to-come-135446

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-emd-algo-update-early-data

http://mozcast.com/metrics

http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/

State of the Search Industry Update

August was another month without a published Google update list so this month’s update is more of a “state of the industry” update.  According to the State of Search Marketing Report 2012, search has grown 19% since 2011 and is predicted to reach an estimated $23 billion dollars by the end of the year.  This growth is expected to continue at a 13% rate through 2013.

7 is the New 10

Google did make one very important algorithm change this month.  Now some search queries are only pulling seven results on the first page.  These first seven results may also be less diverse and much more branded.  For example a search for “pc tools” returns only seven organic results.  The middle of August showed this change dramatically and SEOMOZ reported that almost one-fifth of the SERPs they tracked were showing only 7 results.

Google’s 86 June-July Updates included three updates specifically mentioning site clustering.  Site clustering is showing multiple links from the same domain in the search results.

• #82541. [project codename "Other Ranking Components"] This is one of multiple projects that we’re working on to make our system for clustering web results better and simpler.
• NoPathsForClustering. [project codename "Other Ranking Components"] We’ve made our algorithm for clustering web results from the same site or same path (same URL up until the last slash) more consistent. This is one of multiple projects that we’re working on to make our clustering system better and simpler.
• bergen. [project codename "Other Ranking Components"] This is one of multiple projects that we’re working on to make our system for clustering web results better and simpler.

Google’s response to this 7 result change was:

We’re continuing to work out the best ways to show multiple results from a single site when it’s clear users are interested in that site. Separately, we’re also experimenting with varying the number of results per page, as we do periodically. Overall our goal is to provide the most relevant results for a given query as quickly as possible, whether it’s a wide variety of sources or navigation deep into a particular source. There’s always room for improvement, so we’re going to keep working on getting the mix right.

At GlobeRunnerSEO, we are watching these changes very closely and working very hard to make sure our clients continue to rank on the first page, whether there are 7 or 10 results on that first page.

Link Building—it’s about Quality and Quantity

This week we went to DFWSEM, the largest and most important search marketing professional group in the area.  We discussed links and how even with the updates to Penguin being termed “jolting” in the near future, both the quality and quantity of links will remain important to rankings.

Social Rankings Devalued?

Google has devalued social signals recently because Facebook and Twitter have blocked Google from crawling their data at different times and as Matt Cutts put it, “We can’t use what we can’t see.”  This does not mean that you should give up your social campaigns.  Social media is extremely important in branding, reputation, and customer service.  A strong brand presence on the web drives traffic and conversions.  We and several of our peers at DFWSEM predict that social media will be the fourth pillar of SEO in the very near future, joining the well-established pillars: site architecture, links, and content.

Google+ and Google Authorship of articles and blog posts have not been devalued because Google can see this data.  Google Authorship (linking your Google+ profile) to a blog article you have written automatically pushes your article’s rankings higher.

Bing, on the other hand, is incorporating more social results into their search results.  Bing announced in September that Quora data will now be included in their search results.

  Just For Fun

We don’t typically talk much about Bing and a client’s rankings on Bing; since Bing makes up only 25.3% of all organic searches (Google processes 68.8% of all organic searches).  However, Microsoft is running a blind taste test to see if users prefer Google or Bing search results.  Here’s the link to the taste test, let us know which search engine you prefer and we will tell you which engine’s results the GlobeRunner team preferred.

Resources

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2205140/SEMPO-North-American-SEM-Industry-to-Reach-23-Billion-in-2012

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2205145/Rise-of-Mobile-Local-Google-Updates-Top-Concerns-for-Search-Marketers

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/serp-crowding-shrinkage-its-not-your-imagination

http://searchengineland.com/googles-june-july-updates-130392

http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/2012/08/matt-cutts-and-the-search-dream-team-pop-up-qa/

http://www.stonetemple.com/blog/

http://searchengineland.com/google-further-penguin-update-jolts-to-come-panda-is-smoother-monthly-130804

http://searchengineland.com/7-new-10-google-showing-fewer-results-131006

Google Updates

After a silent June, Google announced 86 changes/updates to their search algorithm this past Friday.  As usual, we are going to highlight the changes that we are most interested in because they result directly to how we optimize and grow our clients’ web presence.   No matter the changes, we are keeping up with what effects your rankings.  There are several updates reinforcing that fresh, unique, and useful content is of the utmost importance to continuing to rank well.  These updates include:

• Bamse. [project codename "Page Quality"] This launch helps you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
• Bamse-17L. [project codename "Page Quality"] This launch helps you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
• GreenLandII. [project codename "Page Quality"] We’ve incorporated new data into the Panda algorithm to better detect high-quality sites and pages.
• #82353. [project codename "Page Quality"] This change refreshes data for the Panda high-quality sites algorithm.
• #82666. [project codename "Page Quality"] This launch helps you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
• Hamel. [project codename "Page Quality"] This change updates a model we use to help you find high-quality pages with unique content.
• Lime. [project codename “Freshness”] This change improves the interaction between various search components to improve search results for searches looking for fresh content.

Google also announced a few changes to the way they are ordering search results with this update:

• ng2. [project codename "Other Ranking Components"] Better ordering of top results using a new and improved ranking function for combining several key ranking features.

There has not been a lot of information related to this change released yet, but we will be continuing to monitor how these changes will effect rankings in the coming months.

Press Releases and Penguin and Panda

Press releases are one of the strategies that we use at Globe Runner to build links to your website.  We try to write these press releases about current events in your industry and relevant to your business.  Our primary goal with these press releases is to gain high quality links.  In the aftermath of the Penguin and Panda algorithm updates, this is still a valid strategy, however, it is even more important now that press releases for SEO be written as normal, media focused press releases and not just stuffed with links or as promotional pieces.

Mobile Update

Mobile searches are increasingly popular and have extremely high conversion rates.  A study featuring 6000 mobile users stated that 85% of users who searched for a restaurant on their smartphone purchased within 24hrs of the search.  Results like these are why we at Globe Runner stress the importance of optimizing our client’s local pages like Google+Local, Yelp, Foursquare, Yahoo, and Bing local pages.

Social Media Update

Social Media is often confusing and many of our customers wonder about the effectiveness of their actions. The following graph, published by MarketingSherpa in their 2012 Social Media Benchmark Report, shows the effectiveness of each tactic to achieve objectives vs. the degree of difficulty to accomplish the task.  The size of the circles represents the percentage of companies taking these actions.

At Globe Runner SEO, we specialize in social media integration with search engine optimization.  Current with the industry trends our social media strategy focuses on first optimizing your business’ social sites managing your social campaigns, and encouraging blogger relationships.  These strategies ultimately build your brand credibility which builds authority which in turn boosts your rankings.

One final Social update, Google+ is finally rolling out vanity urls for their Google+ and Google+Local pages.  At last, Google+ pages will show the name of the place in the url.  For example, our vanity url will be google.com/+globerunnerseo.  Unfortunately, this is a slow rollout by Google and right now only the biggest players like Toyota, Delta, and Britney Spears have received their vanity urls.  Look for this optimization in the coming weeks or months.  We are monitoring this update to make sure our clients’ profiles receive their vanity urls as soon as they are available.

Just for fun

At Globe Runner we are tech junkies and love our smart phones and as you can tell, we are very much Google-groupies, following all of Google’s updates very closely.  One of the more fun recent updates we were excited about was the update that lets you handwrite your search queries on your smart phone or tablet.

During the Olympics the Google Doodles have been interactive games based on the Olympic sports and these games have been a fun source of office competition before our morning meetings.  However, our favorite Doodle was this one featuring our office’s favorite team building activity.

Resources

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2194404/Can-the-SEO-PR-Love-Affair-Survive-After-Panda-Penguin
http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/
http://www.seroundtable.com/london-open-ceremony-google-logo-15489.html
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-page-local-verification-15526.html
http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/08/search-quality-highlights-86-changes.html
http://marketingland.com/study-50-percent-of-mobile-queries-in-travel-restaurants-autos-result-in-a-purchase-18404 http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33487/Google-Finally-Rolling-Out-Custom-URLs-for-Pages-and-Profiles.aspx/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

Dialing it in a little tighter with new reporting in AdWords.

Ask and ye shall receive.  In this case, it’s in the form of a new development in the land of PPC and AdWords that has our team buzzed on a cold and wet Wednesday:  more reporting!

For any paid search manager, their idle dreams consist of more reporting, more data, more statistics to analyze, interpret, regurgitate and otherwise rule our days by.  In their never ending quest to make my job a little easier, Google has recently announced that in just 5 short days, we will have access to Impression Share data at the Ad Group level.  While we’ve had access at the campaign level for quite some time, the granularity of diving deeper is what drives paid search managers and tickles their collective fancies.   No longer will I drive the car from the back seat.  By allowing us to dial our impression share metrics in at the ad level, it allows our team to be even more efficient in our use of time, budget and new strategies, by focusing only on those ad groups where our share of available impressions remains low.  What it means for most of our clients, is the ability to maximize spend and allow us to be more targeted and creative with our use of available budget.  Anytime I can become more efficient in my use of time and resources, my clients benefit.  Google is even willing to back fill data all the way back to May 1^st, 2011, providing an immediate wealth of knowledge we don’t normally see with a new feature rollout.  This is a huge development for paid search managers and ultimately for every one of their clients as well.

In the Ad Groups tab, advertisers will now be able to see:

• Impression share: the percentage of impressions received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to get
• Lost impression share (Rank): the percentage of impressions lost due to Ad Rank. If you were budget constrained — if your budget, rather than your bid price or quality score was keeping you from getting more impressions — this won’t be shown.
• Exact match impression share: the share of impressions you received for searches that were an exact match for your keyword divided by the estimated number you were eligible to receive.

End result, the machine gets more efficient, maximizing a campaigns potential and ultimately keeping my clients happy.

At DFWSEM I had a chance to interview James Moore Chief Revenue Officer of Simpli.fi about the potential of using display ads that are triggered by the users search history.

Transcription
Eric McGehearty: My name is Eric McGehearty, here again and I’m really excited. James from Simpli.fi had a really exciting speech about re-marketing and display. Display has been one of those areas that we’ve used before, we’ve had some success with, we’ve had some failures, but after tonight’s talk I really feel like we’re going to have some big home-runs for some of our clients.

James, can you give me some insight about what you were talking about the keyword level targeting in display? How does that work?

James Moore: The reality is the display space, frankly, is starting to look more and more like search. The integration display and search is really at a fever pace rapidly coming together. Part of that has to do with the fact that publishers are releasing their inventory with real time bidding which is a role that the search people know all too well, bidding on keywords, the highest bidder to get a conversion.

Really what’s happening now is that they’re starting to release keyword data and search re-targeting in the simplest form simply means that when a company does a search on say Google and your text ad comes up. When they don’t click on that, you lost that opportunity for that customer, but not anymore because with search re-targeting, what’s happening is we’re able to build a profile of that user’s search behavior so that you can to me with your keyword list and have a second chance at targeting these individuals with display ads.

Eric: One of the things that you mentioned to me that was really powerful is the cost of difference and the potential to optimize that cost. On Google there’s a lot of different keywords at a very high cost. We have customers that spent an easy $15 on click. You’re telling me that in some senses there’s potential for me to get a customer who searched for that word, I can get a display ad to him for maybe a dollar a click. How does that work?

James: The example I gave in my speech tonight was mesothelioma. That’s a word that’s synonymous with very high CPC, cost per click. The reality is that when you’re bidding on that in a search engine you’re bidding on that keyword. Whenever I’m buying display ad space that may be one of hundreds of keywords I have attached to that user so I’m literally bidding for the price it costs to put that display ad on that publishers side at the time their eyeballs are there.

We’ve got data that basically says terms that could cost $20, $30, $40 a search are 90 cent, $1 terms in display and you’re able to take what was a costly segment and target them very specifically with these display ads at a very low cost.

Eric: In real world, these are a lot of things that big companies deal with but from a small business point of view just think about that roofer during a hailstorm. Roofers will pay a huge amount of money during a hailstorm to get those clicks. We can re-target those people at home improvement websites, or any website for that matter. They have been looking for a new roof suddenly we show them an ad that’s a very cheap cost for that roofing.

James: Actually it gets more exciting, right, because you’re able to take keywords that are important to that roofer that he can bid on at a low cost but at the same time because of the integration of display technology you can even layer that in with contextual. It diminishes the pool but basically you could say I want to bid on roof repair in Dallas, Texas during this time period but only when they have searched for that term and on a page reading about roofing which is amazing. The pool narrows but the click-through rates of conversion go relatively high.

Eric: James, I really appreciate it. We’re going to be bringing this technology to Globe Runner and to our clients so we really look forward to talking to you more about it. It’s very nice to meet you, James.

James: It’s nice to meet you, too.

Google continues to push businesses to use Google+ by promoting profiles in search. Now thought leaders are highlighted in some searches if you are logged in to google+.

A common problem we have here at Globe Runner SEO is optimizing one page landing pages. Our team did some research and decided to compile some information on how to achieve the best converting landing page. Here are some of our findings:

Anatomy of a Landing Page

We discovered this gem recently. If you haven’t seen this you must review this image. These guys at formstack break down the perfect landing page.

Must Read List for Landing Page Conversion:

We also found some great resources for information about converting landing pages. We compiled a short list (more to be added) of some great blog articles related to this subject.

• Landing Page Best Practices
• Search Engine Land: How To Create High-Converting Landing Pages
• Landing Page examples
• Search Engine Watch: The Art of the Landing Page: 7 Tips For Increasing Conversions
• Search Engine Watch: 5 popular tips could hurt your conversions

Using Belcher Button:

One idea that we’ve discovered, recently among our team, is the idea of the Belcher button. The belcher button is a marketer’s dream design of a button. It producing insane conversion rates. We found an excellent video that breaks it down:

• Vidler video on Belcher Button

Examples of great one page landing pages

• PageMako
• Dropbox