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 test www.bingiton.com, let us know which search engine you prefer and we will tell you which engine’s results the GlobeRunner team preferred.

Resources

In a world where we are so often identified by what we do as who we are, being in SEO doesn’t always help people draw the most accurate picture of what I do or who I am. So in an effort to provide a frame of reference for our own clients, as well as potential clients, I wanted to take a minute and lay out the basic framework of SEO.

SEO is Search Engine Optimization, or literally the efforts made in helping your web site to appear more prominently in Search Engine results, ie Google. The reality of our world is when people have a need, of any type, they immediately use search to begin to solve their problem. Search, and more poignantly, Google, has changed the way in which the world accesses and judges information, in so much that whatever results are returned for a particular search, are generally viewed as the best or most appropriate results. The bottom line is regardless of the product you sell, the service you offer, whether you are a business-to-business industry or a consumer facing industry, people, your potential clients and customers, are searching for your product, for information about your product, for reviews, for specifications, searching for answers. SEO helps connect your business with those customers searching for you.

SEO is not a fixed concept, nor is it an agreed upon set of rules or best practices. SEO is a dynamic and evolving industry that has seen tumultuous change and redirection nearly every year. What does not change is the fundamentals of where SEO takes place and what Google looks to in order to help “rank” your site. These ranking factors may change in weight, or how google values each factor, as well as entirely new factors arising. When we talk about SEO and ranking factors we talk about 2 main things: On-Site & Off-Site.

On-Site
When we talk about On-Site we’re referring to the actual coding and elements of your website: How your content is structured and organized, the particular elemental tags used to differentiate content on your site, from the way you tag your images to the url structure and page types you employ. Quality SEO is diving into each page, having a clear goal in mind and a coordinated effort for all elements of the page towards the particular page goal.

Off-Site
The other main factor is what is happening in reference to your site, out in the web. So in addition to how you structure your content and label it, Google also wants to see some authority on the web with regard to your content. The best way of weighting the value of a site’s content is by evaluating the number of other sites that link to that particular page and/or domain. This is the essence of backlinks, or other sites that link back to your website. The type of link and value of each type vary widely, but what remains consistent is the need for quality backlinks in order to move the needle. In recent years we’ve seen the emergence of social media as a factor, with Google going as far as creating their own Social Media Network in order to try and leverage the power of search with the power of social.

Bottom line, SEO is an evolving industry, which is here to stay. There were nearly 20 billion searches in the US alone last month, and this number is rising, not decreasing. If you’re currently engaging on SEO, kudos. If you’re not, then do a couple of quick Google searches for a keyword in your industry. Take note of whom appears at the top of those results. While you’re not making the effort, your competitor is.

Look for our next article, “What to look for in an SEO firm”, due later this week and when results matter, GlobeRunner SEO.

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
https://martech.org/study-50-percent-of-mobile-queries-in-travel-restaurants-autos-result-in-a-purchase/

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 15^th 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

Search Engine Roundtable Search Buzz Video Recap

Online Ad Spend Up 12% Globally in Q1

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.

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.

Once again, Overstock.com is suspected of playing dirty.

Last February, Overstock.com was penalized by Google for manipulating the search engines. The online retailer offered students and faculty discounts in exchange for posting links from college and university websites to Overstock.com. Their motivation? Ranking in search engines are, in large part determined by assessing the number of sites that link back to the site being ranked. In order to avoid artificial influence on search engines, Google forbids sites from paying other websites to embed links on their pages, and penalized Overstock.com for this unethical (“black hat”) practice. The Wall Street Journal quotes Patrick Byrne, Overstock’s chief executive, as saying, “We understand Google’s position and have made the appropriate changes to remain within Google’s guidelines.”

But they might be at it again.

I made this discovery while working on a competitive analysis for a client who wanted to rank for the keyword “kids’ bedding”.  The top organic position was held by Overstock.com with this page: www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Kids-Bedding/5389/subcat.html. My browser tools indicated the page had a large number of backlinks, an unusually large number for even a large retailer. I looked further. Using Open Site Explorer I found they had some very suspicious backlinks, including:

• http://stevesloanmusic.com/3comp_.html
• http://essencenet.ca/mainp.html
• http://dvihome.com.au/wp-admin/includes/co_mma.html

All of the above pages follow the same basic format. They’re branded to look like part of Overstock.com and filled with anchor text links that guide users back to the Overstock site. The pages themselves, though, are hosted on sites that are unrelated to Overstock or its products, including the websites of a writer, a musical composer, and an Australian photography and printing service.

The pages listed above are not the only suspicious-looking ones. Many of Overstock.com’s top-ranking pages have similar backlink profiles. You can check them out yourself using keywords like “Egyptian cotton sheets”, “sateen sheets”, “bedspreads”, “kids’ bedding”, and “bathrobes.” You’ll find many more.

Based on my years of industry experience, this type of activity seems to be as “black hat” as it gets. I can imagine two scenarios that might explain these links:

1. These are paid links, and the sites’ webmasters allowed Overstock.com to post the pages.
2. The sites were hacked, and the pages were placed on the sites without the webmasters’ knowledge.

Either way, the Overstock pages on these sites appear very suspicious. Overstock.com, whether intentionally or not, is clearly violating Google’s webmaster guidelines again. Based on these guidelines, I am curious to see how long it will take Google to serve up another penalty.

Overstock.com may or may not be aware of these pages. The world of Internet Marketing is full of miscommunications, implementation errors, and newly developed techniques that might be considered “grey hat”. We don’t want to accuse Overstock of trying to manipulate search engines again, but only bring attention to these questionable SEM tactics.

What’s your take on this issue? I’d like to hear your viewpoint. Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

I spend most of my day signed into Twitter (I hate leaving it behind when I leave my desk) and have my Trending Topics set to Dallas-Fort Worth. Cody our Internet marketing specialist pointed out to me that #ZebraGirl was trending, and neither of us knew what that was, let alone how it ended up the third-most popular topic on Twitter for DFW.

It took awhile looking through the search results for #zebragirl to figure out why people were talking about it, but Cody and I quickly discovered people were talking about a girl on the campus of the University of North Texas in Denton who was wearing a two piece black and white outfit in a psychedelic print, and they had nicknamed her Zebra Girl. People sent in “sightings” of Zebra Girl, and there seemed to be an unwritten rule that someone SHOULD tell her, but no one was going to.

In an hour or so since it began, it has become the second highest trending topic, second only to Promoted Trend #subwayfan. It’s trending higher than “Marvin’s Room”, the name of a new single by hip-hop artist Drake which was organically trending nationally. Someone was tweeting about this girl every ten seconds, and that’s not even at the peak of the trend.

The trick to this becoming an organic trend was that it was left alone, just like any other piece of bad PR. But in this case there was also a mystery- who was this girl? Where was she going? People were out on campus trying to spot her. If this were guerrilla marketing, she’d have some sort of reward for those who found her in the form of a promotion or free product. But the authenticity here is what’s keeping the trend going and why people have been talking about a pair of leggings all afternoon. This wouldn’t continue if people were trying to find the BRAND NAME Zebra Girl Spokesperson. It wouldn’t be fun OR funny to find her around campus. The allure is in the idea that her outfit looks insane and she ostensibly doesn’t know.

Authentic intrigue is the key to establishing a social media trend. Upset the ordinary and people will talk about you. Both Alamo Drafthouse and NYC restaurant Jo’s have figured this out recently by creating the best anti-texting PSA ever and writing a scathing rebuttal to a Yelp Review respectively. They threw out “business as usual” (some people might argue it flies in the face of “the customer is always right” to tell people their business isn’t welcome if they act up) and it got them serious attention. You’d think this would be an obvious proposition, but the common approach seems to be “sneak in the marketing and see if they notice” a la Virgin Mobile’s new “Sparah” campaign. You can’t tell me Ashton Kutcher was really excited about that.

No, the hardest thing to do in social media is simply to be interesting, and too many people afraid to be different. But go against the norm, and organic trends are yours.