Category: SEO

Google has been keeping marketers on the edge of their seats this year. Last month they had to assure users they did not need an active AdWords account to use Keyword Planner. This came after users started receiving a pop-up message back in June. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like they have plans of stopping. Search Engine Land recently confirmed that Google limits Keyword Planner data results for low-spending Adwords accounts. What does this mean? Basically if you have an AdWords account but do not spend a lot of money on your campaigns, Google limits the data provided by Keyword Planner. But how?

Google Limits Keyword Planner Data for Low Spending Adwords

Ranged Data

Last week marketers noticed data in Google’s Keyword Planner was displayed in a numerical range. This was assumed to be a glitch until the company confirmed low-spending AdWords accounts would see less precise data in Keyword Planner. Now instead of exact search volume metrics, users will see a more approximate range. For example, some users saw data displayed in a range of 100K-1M. Despite what Google stated previously, it now appears you do need to have an active campaign in order to get any real use out of Keyword Planner.

Lower Monthly Spend

Google has stated that “most” advertisers’ Keyword Planner results will not be changed at all. Those with a “lower monthly spend”, however, will be seriously affected. Advertisers that are considered ‘small’ or ‘no-spend’ will see ranges like the one previously referenced. The official list of ranges is as follows:

• 0
  1-100
  100-1K
  1K-10K
  10K-100K
  100K-1M
  1M+

These metrics are not only wide, but vague. Users with low-spending accounts will therefore find the tool completely useless. Conducting too many searches is also a way to see data displayed as a range instead of a precise number.

Google testing new longer look for text ads has online marketers taking another look at their mobile ad campaigns. Right-sided text ads are no longer being used. The new format for these tests has been dubbed Expanded Text Ads, and displays longer headlines. Presently, when a line of description copy ends with a punctuation mark, the headlines can still expand to include the first line of description copy. Up until now, this format has only been available mainline ads. Now that right-sided ads are out, however, the convention text ad formatting can now be changed, or adjusted by Google across the system.

Google Testing New Longer Look for Text Ads

Description Copy

With this new formatting, text ads will now feature an extended headline that displays all 80-characters of the description copy, which means even better results for advertisers. The previous formatting allowed only a 70-count for description copy, but these new tests have been formatted for 80-characters, which gives more of an advantage to advertisers.

URL Format

Google has changed the URL format for these tests. Unlike before, advertisers can now append up two paths, or directories to the domain name. For example, a search utilizing two paths like “/Chicago” and “/Food” may end up with a search result that reads, “Chicago Food – Best Local Dining Spots in the City.” A new field where you can enter a second headline is now available in the AdWords user interface. Here the user can enter a second headline, a single field for description copy, or new fields for the Display URL paths.

Closed Beta

According to a spokesperson from Google, “We regularly test different ad formats with the goal of providing useful information to users and driving even better results for advertisers. Beyond that, we don’t have anything to announce at this time.” There has not been an official announcement regarding the launch of this test.

Consider Long-Tail Keywords

This can be considered good news for those trying to hone down on longtail keywords. With more characters for headlines, advertisers will be able to drive home specifics. Long-tail keywords are of course, more specific than short-tail, but aren’t considered as valuable. When it comes to searches, the more concentrated results means better results for the user.

Take some risks with your keywords to see if longer headlines pay off.

Server log analysis has become one of the most crucial components of technical SEO audits. By analyzing your server logs, you can gain a valuable insight on your SEO. You can obtain a better understanding of how search engine crawlers interact with your company website. If you are proficient and skilled using Microsoft Excel, you can follow the BuiltVisible guide to conduct your analysis. This route may be the most ideal method because you have to upload your collected data to Excel later on in order to output the data to a format that is simple to compare to other data sources like Google Analytics.

Open source tools – such as ELK-stack from Elastic – are useful if you do not have a big budget for analysis tools but you do have the technical resources to configure the data. If you do not have support, paid tools like Splunk and Loggly are probably your best choice. When you begin your analysis, make sure that you focus on actionable SEO items. Check off the seven tasks below to ensure that you analysis is complete thorough.

7 Elements to Check in a Server Log Analysis

Check for spambots or scrapers to block

You should check out the activity of search bots and potential spam-bots when conducting a first-time analysis. These can cause performance issues, pollute your analytics erase your content. Observe suspicious bots’ behaviors watch their activity time, the number of events they have in the selected time period if their appearance coincides with performance spam issues. You should block any that are can or are presently causing these issues with .htaccess.

Check that your targeted search engine bots are accessing your pages.

Once you identify bots arriving at your site, you can apply a filter to focus on those you want to analyze. Your goal here is to make sure they are accessing your pages and resources successfully. Once you have applied the filter, select a graph option to visualize the activity over time. This will help you ensure they are crawling the right pages that they coincide with searches you aim to rank with.

Check for pages with 3xx, 4xx 5xx HTTP status.

You can select the HTTP values of the pages you wish to analyze by searching for your desired search bot and then applying the ‘status’ filter to narrow your options. Look for those with 3xx, 4xx 5xx status codes to see pages that have been redirected or shown as ‘error’ to the crawlers. After that you can identify top pages generating most of the redirects of errors, export data prioritize these pages for your SEO recommendations.

Check that the top crawled pages from each search bot coincide with your site’s most important bots.

You can select the ‘requestURl’ filter to get a list of the top web pages or resources that bots are requesting from your search results. The interface will allow you review these directly, or export them to Excel for you to check that they coincide with your high-priority pages. If these are not among the top crawled pages, take appropriate actions to improve your ranking with internal links and a new sitemap.

Check that search bots are not crawling pages they should not be.

You should check for pages that are not supposed to be indexed or crawled. Use the same filter to see your top requested pages then check that these pages and the directories you have blocked withy robots.txt are actually being crawled for pages that are not blocked but should not be prioritized for crawling.

Check your Google crawl rate over time track how it correlates with response times and serving errors.

The data obtained through Google’s ‘Crawl Stats’ is very generic, therefore analyzing your own logs to identify Googlebot crawl rate, you can validate the information and make it actionable. Knowing when what type of HTTP requests occurred will show if errors or redirects were triggered that could generate non-effective crawling behavior on Googlebot’s part.

Check the IPs Googlebot is using to crawl your site that they are correctly assessing the relevant pages and resources in each case.

The last thing you want to do is ensure that your content is being crawled on foreign IP addresses. Often times, websites will block access to these sites or dictating which version they can use. Filter your content by IP so that you can verify the site is serving the right version of each page to the crawlers from other countries.

First announced last May, Google is finally releasing its specialized mobile search ads for automotive manufacturers and dealerships. That means that eligible advertisers in the United States now have access to Model Automotive ads and Dealer Automotive ads. Searches for automotive makes and models will now feature Model Automotive ads provided by OEM (original equipment manufacturer) automotive advertisers. These ads feature performance details regarding the vehicles, links to the manufacturer’s website,  large-format images of the vehicles and other nearby dealers, plus other information.

Google Launches Giant Mobile Search Ads for Automakers in the US

Proof in Numbers

According to Google, engagement rates on Model Automotive ads are, on average, 30 percent higher when compared with standard text ads. That said, major automotive hubs like Ford and Toyota, who are currently running the new ad formats, have seen even better results. Dionne Colvin-Lovely, director of traditional and new media for Toyota Motor Sales, reported to Google that across their core line of car models, the company has seen a 45 percent increase in conversion events and a 30 percent decrease in CPA over standard text ads.

Dealer Automotive Ad Features

The new Dealer Automotive ads by Google are available to franchise. They include the dealership location, directions to the dealership and a click-to-call button for nearby dealerships. They appear at the very top of the search results and may also integrate with the Model Automotive ads that can be accessed from the ‘Dealers’ tab in the ads.

This will be a great enhancement to businesses looking to utilize Pay Per Click advertising, as it will be able to give a greater focus to the attention of the buyers, and further entice them through potential re-targeting ads.

Going Mobile

According to Google, half of automotive searches that are conducted on Google are now happening on smart phones. Automotive searches on mobile devices are already up 51 percent from last year. More specifically, image searches for car and truck brands and searches for ‘car dealerships near me’ have gone up by 37 percent and 50 percent from last year. 80 percent of those search spikes occurred on mobile devices.

Web users are now relying on their smart phones and mobile devices for much more than simply navigating their way to the coffee shop and looking for deals on Groupon. As users continue to rely on mobile-based searches, SEO and online marketers will come to depend upon these ads to acquire new leads and customers.

If your company is affected by these changes, it may be time to get your team together to see how your online business can grow organically. You can do this by posting original content. A blog is never a bad idea.

However, if you can afford to amplify your spending, you should. It goes back to the old adage, you have to spend money to make money. As long as you have an adequate strategy, you’ll yield the results your looking for.

RankBrain – a new algorithm released by Google – is a much more complex update than previous updates like Panda and Penguin. According to Google, RankBrain is now the third most important factor when determining what results are provided for specific search requisites. Google RankBrain algorithm can impact your business in a number of ways. That is why it is critical that business owners figure out how it works and how to utilize it to improve SEO.

Google RankBrain Algorithm

RankBrain works by processing large amounts of search queries through a new element in order to gain a better understanding of user queries. It then provides more appropriate results at a much faster rate. In other words, RankBrain has allowed Google to incorporate artificial intelligence into their most recent update.

The goal here, of course, is to gain a better understanding of user interests, needs and habits, and what users are looking for when conducting search queries. Acquiring such information allows Google to provide users with the most relevant content related to their specific search queries, so that they can spend less time browsing through unhelpful information and more time getting the results they want.

How RankBrain May Impact Your Business

RankBrain can impact your business in a number of ways. The first and primary way in which the new update will influence business traffic is by eliminating the focus on keywords. RankBrain provides search query results based on context and not simply on keyword matches. This means that companies will have to start thinking more about what are people searching for to land on a website site and less about what keywords should be used to optimize search results? Business owners will need to gain a more comprehensive understanding of their target audience, as well as the triggers that prompt them to visit their websites in order to make the most of this new technology, which is revolutionizing the SEO and digital marketing industry.

Evaluate your SEO

With every new algorithm that comes out, you should take a good hard look at your SEO to see if your site’s pages are optimized, and that you’re conducting your optimization in a way that Google won’t penalize. As time goes on, Google is only going to get better at crawling your site, so you can’t afford to try to game the system. Remember that SEO is a process, and it takes a lot of effort to get where you want to be.

How easily search engine users find the information contained on your specific website depends largely on your internal link structure. Although necessary, URLs can be confusing and read more like gibberish than viable information. A confusing URL structure can also result in a lot of useful information or content going unnoticed, leaving you with only a few web page results that are either vague or completely off topic. Duplication, in which several URLs all point to the same page, may also cause your search optimization to be lacking, causing you to lose out on potential customers.

While all if this may sound complicated, making a website more SEO-friendly is not difficult. SEO-friendly sites, or links, are more easily accessible by search engines when they are properly indexed during development. Here are some tips on how to create an effective URL for SEO purposes you should consider using for your website.

How To Create an Effective URL for SEO Purposes

There are several key elements web designers use to make your site’s URL optimal for web-based SEO searches. These include:

Simple/Straightforward.

Your site’s URL should be written in a way that is simple and straightforward so that it is easy to read and comprehend. Using keywords related to the site helps to optimize your search results.

Using the Right URL.

Tour website must be indexed so that it is easily accessible and not hidden from popular search engines.

Consolidate your ‘www’ and ‘non-www’ domains.

Tour website’s domain link structures must also be consolidated, so as to avoid backlinks going to one domain over another, and vice-versa.

Avoid dynamic and relative URLs.

Relative URLs can create infinite loops that can trap search engines and negatively affect your URL search optimization; relative URLs are also dependent on context, which can change overtime, so using an absolute URL is definitely the way to go.

Create an XML sitemap.

Unlike HTML sitemaps, XML assist search engines in finding your site with relative ease; that said, you should only include the web pages that show up in your results for SEO reasons/optimization.

Conceal irrelevant context.

Pages that do not contain any of your target keywords should be concealed in order to optimize your search; session IDs also pose the risk of duplicating existing URLs, which can confuse your site visitors and make web searches all the more difficult. Instructions must, therefore, be sent to the search engines in order to avoid pages that you don’t want indexed or crawled showing up in the search results.

Use tags to specify canonical URLs.

A canonical URL is the URL that you want visitors to see; canonical tags can, therefore, be applied to assist search engines in more easily locating your site.

Let’s say you are a wedding photographer in Minnesota. When search engine users search for “wedding photographers in Minnesota”, what steps must be taken to ensure that your photography website shows up on page one?One element of SEO that is often overlooked is the proper optimization of images. Using images and setting them up properly can significantly enhance your SEO efforts. If you have already mastered keyword optimization and want to take your SEO to the next level, learning to optimize images should be your next step. The list below outlines comprehensive yet detailed image optimization tips that yield stronger search engine rankings.

Image Optimization Tips

ALT Tags.

An alt tag is a snippet of text that search engines read to understand the images on your site. An ALT tag tells Google, for example, what the image portrays. Keep ALT tags short, using one sentence or less.

File Size.

We live in an impatient world. That is why the images used on your site should always be high in quality yet small in file size.

File Title.

If you search for an image, the results you get from the search engine will always feature the keywords you typed in their file names. Therefore, to improve your image SEO efforts, always pick a descriptive name title for your images before uploading them. SEO experts suggest very exact file names such as Minnesota-photographer.jpg.

Context.

The contents of the images on your site should always be relevant to the context of your webpage content. Not only does this increase your credibility as an authority in your niche; it also increases your chances of getting better search engine rankings.

Captions.

Although there is no direct correlation between captions and SEO, captions provide a convenient way of grabbing the attention of a search engine crawler when it visits through your site.

While many people think of website images as simple eye candy, photos can be used to generate massive traffic. Why should you spend endless hours crafting the perfect onsite content only to miss out on a major SEO opportunity due to poor image optimization? Not only will image optimization benefit your online visibility; it only takes a few a minutes to set up properly.

Search engine optimization (SEO) may seem daunting. That is why the temptation to take short cuts can be great. However, as Google’s analytic capabilities increase, it can spot short cuts much more easily. This will result in a loss of trust between the search engine and your site. In the same way that regaining trust between people takes much longer than losing it, building your trust with Google can take time. Google algorithms are becoming more and more adept at reading sites. This means that they can quickly determine whether the content on your site is legitimate or if it has been designed specifically to manipulate the search engine.

Google recently acquired an artificial intelligence company which will only enhance its ability to fully understand your website. This means that proper SEO techniques will be more important then ever. With that in mind, you should avoid doing these time saving SEO tactics that DO NOT work to ensure that your website stays on the right side of Google. We elaborate on these tactics below.

5 Time Saving SEO Tactics That DO NOT Work

Avoid Duplicate Content

Because so much emphasis is placed on content when it comes to SEO, there is additional pressure on site owners to produce as much content as possible. What happens is that someone decides to copy and paste large portions of text from one page of their site onto multiple other pagesin an effort to increase their size and web presence. Some webmasters attempt to rearrange the order of their paragraphs or sentences in order to make it appear less obvious that content has been copied. At this point, Google’s algorithms are intelligent enough to spot this tactic. When content is duplicated, it creates what Google regards as low quality or “thin” content, which may have size, but little useful information. Google avoids promoting sites like this.

Meta tags are another area where duplication can be tempting but ultimately harmful. These tags are found in the backend of a website and allow Google to view a brief description of the site’s content. Repeating the same description across multiple tags will appear suspicious to the algorithm and result in lowered search engine results.

Occasionally sites have a need for duplicate content. For example, if you have an online shoe store, there is no need to write a new product description for each size of the same shoe. However, it is important to understand how Google may view these duplicated descriptions.

Footer Links

Because footer links appear on each page of your website, it can be tempting to change the names of these links to the keywords associated with your industry. However, Google is well aware of this tactic and will rescind your trusted status if it is discovered.

Buying Links or Using Link Farms

One way to increase traffic to your site is by securing backlinks on other websites. This will increase your site’s importance in the “eyes” of Google. The fastest way to increase the amount of links to your site is by purchasing them. This tactic actually used to work well, but after a high profile case of link-fraud with JC Penny, Google has enhanced the ability of its performance metrics to spot this kind of link traffic. The same goes for link farms. If Google finds that you are participating in a link farm site, the penalties can be severe.

Now that you know the common time-saving SEO tactics to avoid, you can focus on delivering quality content. It may take longer, but the results will be well worth your effort and you will not have to worry about trying to bounce back from a negative marking.