JUNE 2012 SEO UPDATE
June updates included two Panda updates, version 3.7 and 3.8, a first Penguin refresh, but there hasn’t been much chatter about those updates meaning they were probably pretty minor. Google did confirm that links still carry more weight and are more important to your core rankings than social media. Also, there are no “No Follow Penalties” from Google for including several no follow links on a site.
Other updates in the search engine blog-o-sphere included talk about how to manage multiple listings or locations on your website without having too much duplicate content. For example, many of our clients own businesses with multiple locations throughout the Metroplex. A question we are often asked is, “Can we use the same information on each of our unique location pages?” Matt Cutts, Distinguished Engineer at Google, leading the webspam team, says that rather than repeat the whole history of the company or a long pitch, it is best to just list the address and contact information for the location and 2-3 sentences about what is unique to that location. This will prevent Google from flagging your site for too much duplicate content.
Google Product Search has now become Google Shopping. Google is for the first time discontinuing their free product shopping search in exchange for a “paid inclusion model.” A paid inclusion model is “a model where companies pay to be listed, but payment does not guarantee that they rank well for any particular terms.” Product listings will now need to be created through Google AdWords in campaigns for Google Shopping. If you are already running Product Listing Ads, then you will be familiar with the process because Google Shopping campaigns will be very similar, so similar in fact, that once Google Shopping is fully released, Product Listing Ads will be phased out. Google Shopping will offer benefits of allowing merchants to advertise their special deals and offers as well as present potential customers with better quality pricing information.
One change to the shopping experience you may notice right away is Google has shifted shopping results to the top right of the page as opposed to the top of the listings. This will help keep organic results at the top of the page. See the below for an example of a search I did for “laptop computers.”
PPC Update
Online Marketing continues to be a growing and evolving space. It’s been reported that in the 1st Quarter of 2012 online advertising spend increased 12%, a healthy growth rate. This should come as no surprise, if you’re reading this summary then you’ve already made online marketing a priority in your efforts and chances are your competition has as well.
Globe Runner Update
Monthly reports will now be sent out on the 15th of the month rather than the beginning of each month.
Resources
Interview with Matt Cutts about what makes a quality site
Google Product Search to become Google Shopping
5 MYTHS OF B2C MARKETING
Business and sales are influenced by customer opinions, trust, awareness and perceptions which makes implementing B2C strategies into your marketing plan an important component. This is why we have outlined 5 common myths of B2C marketing so you can build a strong plan of action to get customers on your side and build brand ambassadors to do the dirty work for you.
Myth 1: Branding Works Better for B2B than B2C
Strategic branding is as important for B2C marketing as it is for B2B marketing. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling rainbows or mufflers, branding influences the decisions of customers and what they know about your brand. Yes, branding is good for B2B because it sets you apart from your competitors and allows you to put a stake in your claim, but customers want to do the same. What your branding tells them is your values and if it fits their values and beliefs.
Myth 2: LinkedIn Isn’t For B2C
B2C marketers aren’t confined to Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. The Content Marketing Institute reported that 71% of B2C companies use LinkedIn as a marketing platform. There are a few ways to use LinkedIn strategically:
- Consider if it works for your business. Is your audience made up of young professionals or C-level executives? If your product is best for those in the workforce who can be found on LinkedIn, leverage this access to them because your products will most likely be of natural interest to them!
- Market wisely. You should market your product as helping individuals be successful in their personal and professional lives.
- Form strategic partnerships. It’s not just people on LinkedIn who signed up to connect. Companies also have pages and even if you are marketing directly to consumers your business may still need to work in partnership with other businesses to grow. You can build and cultivate relationships with key influencers.
- Find Suppliers and Staff. Since companies are on LinkedIn it’s natural that they would offer jobs there as well. You can use LinkedIn to find new staff and find suppliers for your own business.
Myth 3: Content Marketing for B2B is the same as for B2C
No way! Consumers prefer shorter content and content with pictures, content that evokes emotion and personality from the business and trendy information. Businesses want How-to type of articles and informative pieces that are also actionable. They want to be able to read an article, apply its advice to their businesses, and see some sort of change.
Myth 4: You Need a Big Budget to be a Big B2C Brand
Content marketing is affordable and can take your company far. Many small sized companies are finding content marketing to be a really successful tool, at a lower cost than more traditional forms of outbound marketing. In fact, 60% of B2C small business marketers are planning on increasing their content marketing budget over the next 12 months. Why? Content marketing is an effective strategy for building brand awareness and lead generation, so get on the content train! In addition to improving your SEO (when done right), content marketing is far less costly than many other traditional marketing practices but can provide the same if not better outreach.
Myth 5: They Love Us, Why Change?
People love your product but that shouldn’t stop you from evolving with technology. The information you put on your site and your social media needs to make sense to your readers and hold their attention. If you keep marketing your product or service the way you did a year ago, or at the pace we’re moving, a few months ago, you may be falling behind. Stay ahead of trends to stay on top of the industry as a thought leader.
What myths have you busted? What are you best marketing practices with consumers? How has content helped you engage your audience?
SHOP TALK: WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SOURCE TO GATHER INSPIRATION?
We wanted to start a new series of blog posts that involves everyone in our office. Because we all have different sets of skills and knowledge, the information we share may be beneficial or entertaining to others. So, keep an eye out for more of our ‘Shop Talk’ series.
What Is Your Favorite Source to Gather Inspiration?
Cody, SEO Specialist:
My most creative moments are born from discussions with other individuals. Websites developed for creative inspiration are great and all, but I truly enjoy a person-to-person discussion to find the inspiration I’m looking for. An intellectual conversation allows me to understand multiple perceptions about a certain topic.
Sean, Project Manager:
My most creative moments are in the bathtub… Well I’m a big guy so I’m never really in the bathtub, but anyway. I’m bombarded with information all day long whether it be thing I read or knowledge I learn from all of my very talented coworkers. It those quiet moments away from work and children that all that information solidifies and come together like a giant puzzle.
Chris, Lead Web Developer:
Often reading books on my kindle, stackexchange, instructional youtube videos, watching business oriented reality shows (e.g. shark tank) and reading code projects outside my domain can be the provenance of new found creativity for me.
Jonathan, Application Developer:
Music is one of my top inspirations. It isn’t so much that any specific music or artist makes ideas pop into my head; rather it puts me into a creative state of mind. I generally don’t like to work in silence, finding my work (whatever it may be) isn’t as strong as it would be otherwise. Another place I find inspiration is artwork, usually digital and concept art, cinematography, and graphic design. Something about striking visuals gets the gears in my head turning.
Kate, SEO Content Creator:
I find inspiration in documentaries. There is nothing like the realm of unscripted reality in the sense of exploration and narration. I feel passionate when I watch documentaries that invite in a motivation to see how others live and work outside my world.
Damon, Online Traffic Strategist:
Ultimately, while many forms of media and people feed my subconscious and provide the fodder for my imagination, my favorite and most tapped source to gather inspiration is my children. My 3 yr old sees the world in a way I once did, unfiltered and pure. Whether it’s the drive to meet a deadline, the seed that blossoms into my next great idea or the ever present reminder of my duty as role model, my children both inspire me in ways I never thought possible and serve as my inspiration in nearly all things I do.
2017 SEO PROJECTION
All right. 2017 is just right around the corner, and it’s time to do some projections. What do we see is coming in 2017? There’s going to be a lot of surprises, but here’s a couple things that I can tell you with a pretty good certainty you’ll see in 2017.
The first one I did in a previous video, artificial intelligence. It’s here. It’s here to stay. It’s going to be a big part of what consumers experience, particularly on the customer service side, and it’s something that you need to be looking into for your own business.
The next one is schema. Schema is not new in and of itself, but an emphasis on schema and a wider schema vocabulary is going to be an emphasis in 2017.
Just to take a step back, schema is a microformat, where I can markup my page with additional data and allow Google to learn more about it. So, you’ll see it in rich snippet searches, like recipe searches for instance. You’ll see an image and a rating and some of the top ingredients. You’ll see that in more and more categories. We’re already seeing it in some e‑commerce categories, restaurants and physical location categories. More categories you’re going to have schemas. That will be a 2017 addition.
Another one that people are seeing, and there’s some controversy, is native Google content. This is Google actually pulling content off of your website and not sending the user to you but rather giving user the answer on Google. So it’s native Google content, basically answering the question. If it’s a clear question, Google feels like they should be able to just answer the question. Now, this is good and bad. If you can figure out a way to game the system ‑‑ which, by the way, we’ve figured out some ways to game that system ‑‑ and get content to rank as native, you still are the top spot and you’ll get a good click‑through rate. Even though it’s controversial, we see it as a big boon.
The last one that I’ll talk about is site speed, particularly mobile. Mobile speed is huge and Google rolled out AMP earlier this year. This is a very big deal which stands for “Accelerated Mobile Pages”. I’ve talked about it in another video. Very, very important to be taking advantage of technologies like that so you have a very, very fast experience on your website.
That’s just a few things that are going to be critical in 2017, that need to be part of your strategy. If your marketing team isn’t talking about it already, you’re behind the times. Get in touch with us if you need help staying up with the times. That’s what we do. We would be glad to help you. Go to GlobeRunner.com, and I look forward hearing from you.
CNAME / MX RECORDS FOR GOOGLE APPS SETUP
Often times we’re asked to provide Google Apps setup for some of our clients here in the Dallas area. After much googling, i’ve found it difficult frustrating to find what these values are quickly via google search.
I thought i’d just post them here for people so that they’re short an terse without having to dig through google forums support (arg):
cname records
mail.example.com ghs.google.com
docs.example.com ghs.google.com
calendar.example.com ghs.google.com
sites.example.comm ghs.google.com
mx records
priority value
1 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
5 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
5 ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
10 ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
10 ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
If all this mumbo jumbo about DNS and MX records confuse you google actually has a great basic guide here about DNS: https://support.google.com/a/answer/48090?hl=en
INTEGRATING DISPLAY ADS WITH KEYWORD TARGETING FOR LOWER CPA
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.
ERIC MCGEHEARTY NEW VP SPONSORSHIP FOR DFWSEM
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEOffice: 972-472-8528
Dallas, TX December 6, 2011 – The Dallas/Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association (DFWSEM) held its annual board election meeting this evening in downtown Dallas and elected Eric McGehearty, Founder and CEO of Globe Runner SEO, as its new VP of Sponsorship. DFWSEM is the leading organization in the Dallas area focused on education and networking opportunities specifically for internet marketing professionals.
As new VP of Sponsorship, McGehearty will be responsible for attaining sponsorship for each monthly meeting by local and national businesses as well as further enhancing the organization’s reputation as a thought leader. Voting was only open to current and active board members and, for the VP of Sponsorship position, three volunteers including McGehearty were up for election. When asked for his reaction, McGehearty said, “I’m very excited to be a part of such a prestigious organization. DFWSEM demonstrates thought leadership in the online marketing community and has an impressive track record of bringing in some of the best speakers in the country. I’m very much looking forward to helping the organization reach its fundraising goals.”
DFWSEM meetings are held once a month on Wednesdays at 7pm, usually in the middle of the month, and host speakers on topics such as affiliate marketing with Rae Hoffman-Dolan, CEO of Sugarrae SEO Consulting, and new trends in the search industry with Duane Forrester, Sr. Product Manager at Bing. Those interested in gaining an audience with DFWSEM members—who cumulatively represent millions of dollars in search engine and related advertising spend annually—are encouraged to contact DFWSEM at info@dfwsem.org.
Globe Runner SEO is a Dallas-based internet marketing agency specializing in search engine optimization, search marketing, link building, website design and development, and social media campaign management. To contact Eric McGehearty, call 972-472-8528 or email info@globerunnerseo.com.
THE ALPHABET GAME ACCORDING TO GOOGLE
A is for Apple right? Well not according to Google, “A” is now for Amazon. Now using Google Instant search we can see the 26 most important search terms from A to Z. Today, we intend to revisit the subject of Google Instant Search since our first post when Instant was first announced by Google. In this article, we are going to discuss how Google Instant has affected the searcher and what that means for businesses working to improve their website’s search engine rankings. Through our research, we found that unlike a child’s random participation in the alphabet game, Google strives to purposefully deliver Instant Hints when a user begins typing the first letter. Businesses need to pay attention to this improvement in search, because Google Instant means potentially more impressions for your website especially if you are already ranking in the top three positions in the search results.
A = Amazon
B = Bank of America
C = Craigslist
D = Dictionary
E = Espn
F = Facebook
G = Google
H = Hotmail
I = iPhone 5
J = JC Penney
K = Kohls
L = Lowes
M = MapQuest
N = Netflix
O = Old Navy
P = Pandora
Q = Quotes
R = Redbox
S = Southwest Airlines
T = Target
U = USPS
V = Verizon Wireless
W = Walmart
X = X Factor
Y = YouTube
Z = Zillow
When Google introduced Instant Search, their goal was to deliver more relevant searches faster. This came in the form of autocomplete and instant hints which use both personal browsing data (what you’ve previously searched) and the browser’s physical location (IP address) to deliver search results. Autocomplete, as you may be already familiar, automatically completes your search phrase by delivering educated guesses in the search bar. Instant Hints appear in a short drop down list of phrases that relate (in theory) to your query. With this technology, Google has enabled the searcher to browse and click through results without having to finish typing a query or even clicking on the search button. Below is a list that I generated simply by typing in the following letters A-Z… this was more of a fun exercise rather than something we took seriously. However, as marketers who live, eat, breathe, sleep SEO, we couldn’t help but discover a few things…
It never hurts to be an established brand. If you already are attracting thousands of new visitors to your site every month, such as Amazon or Craigslist, Google may just include you as an Instant Hint automatically. This is perhaps the least actionable of my points, since Instant Hints are based primarily on the searcher’s history and recent trends, which brings me to my next point…
Online follows offline. For all you students of psychology, herd theory—the desire to be one with the crowd—does play out in the search engines. Google says that every Instant Hint is a term or phrase that someone (in your geographic area) has already typed in. Thus, Google assumes that what other people are searching is probably what you will likewise want to search. Ergo, herd theory, or the influence of “the crowd” on human decisions, is powerful for getting ranked well in search engines (especially Bing which has begun to exclusively use social media to deliver more relevant search results).
Trends are friends. Adding to my last point about Google displaying Instant Hints based on previous search behavior, trends or events that happen at a certain time of year can generate addition impressions (or better yet, traffic) for your business. Holidays and current events all can help to bolster your website or blog if you pick corresponding keywords and write great content. The higher quality content you have, the more likely you will be to actually generate traffic from these trending keywords and convert your site’s visitors.
It’s good to be Google or any of Google’s content networks: Wikipedia, YouTube, Plus, etc. This point is really more of a pun, since Google displayed itself under the letter “G” (actually displayed Google and Google News as the first two Hints). Nothing wrong with a little self-promotion.
We plan to discuss more about Google Instant in the days to come so keep in touch.
ULTIMATE GUIDE TO HIGH CONVERTING LANDING PAGES
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
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
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