Google is still focusing on the freshness of results, this month improving how they determine the date of pages giving us results that are most relevant, more timely and fresher, particularly for pages that are discussing recurring events.  The algorithm has been updated to decide which queries should show news making the results more responsive to real-time trends which ties in the freshness quality Google is aiming for. The aim is also to provide predicted queries faster with a small change to autocomplete.

Sometimes you will see “searches related to” at the bottom of the search results page with queries Google thinks you may want to try. They have this month updated the way they generate these, resulting in more useful query refinements. But as well as improving “searches related to” Google is also attempting to refine cross language queries. They will aim to detect the language of the original query to generate related search query refinements in that language. So a user might be typing a search query in Spanish and Google will hopefully then suggest refinements in Spanish even if the user has their language set to English for example. A change a lot of overseas users will welcome I imagine.

Spellings should improve this month too with 3 improvements in this area. They have changed spelling corrections in autocomplete so they are more consistent with the spelling corrections we see in search, improved the model used to suggest spelling corrections so they are more accurate not just for trivial mistakes but also for rare queries and will start showing results for corrected spellings when they are confident this is what you meant instead. Good for those who aren’t too hot on the spelling front.

Image search seems to be under improvement recently as well with a change to the image search ranking algorithm, helping images with high quality landing pages rank higher in the image results. Makes sense really that images that come from high quality pages will also be of better quality so what users want to see. The scroll in image search has also seen an update to be more consistent with main search results. Previously the side menus were pinned and only images would scroll down, but now the entire page moves when scrolling. This is something I don’t like because you now have to scroll all the way back up to the top to refine your search. Maybe it will get changed back in time if Google realises users aren’t over keen on the change?

Last but not least and probably the update we will all be keeping an eye on – another minor update to Panda – so over the next month we will have to see how this affects search results.

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Google’s own definition of Rich Snippets can be seen below:

“Google tries to present users with the most useful and informative search results. The more information a search result snippet can provide, the easier it is for users to decide whether that page is relevant to their search. With rich snippets, webmasters with sites containing structured content—such as review sites or business listings—can label their content to make it clear that each labelled piece of text represents a certain type of data: for example, a restaurant name, an address, or a rating.”

Read more about Rich Snippets by going to: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=99170

Here at Click Consult we have been doing some digging around and found that a large number of different types of Rich Snippets are now being used by a wide range of sites.

Below is a list of the Rich Snippets we have found that are currently live in the SERPs:

At this stage Rich Snippets have no effect on SEO or rankings. They can however help to improve the Click Through Rate (CTR) of a site significantly by giving the searcher more information at the decision stage. Basically a searcher is more likely to click on a site that shows 10 Reviews than a site that shows none.

Judging by the growth of Rich Snippets we predict that some of the following things could soon be appearing within the search results too:
-    Primary Image on Webpage (primaryImageOfPage)
-    Movie, Music and Event durations (duration)
-    The base salary on Job Postings (baseSalary)
-    Menu Snippets or Link to Menu for Food Establishments (menu)
-    Nutritional Information, including calories, fat content, carbohydrates and more (calories, fatContent, carbohydrateContent)

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Those arguing that you can’t separate the two focus mainly on a comparison with on-page SEO, as opposed to off-page. When you think about constructing an SEO campaign, there are always defined targets and objectives that an online business sets themselves. How successful a company is in reaching these objectives is determined by the various online analytics reports that are available for measuring things like ROI, bounce rate and traffic volume. In the earlier days of SEO, this was an exclusive feature of search engine marketing, because they were the main provider of these analytical reports. As time has passed, search marketing agencies have become able to develop these reports internally, and produce them with a great deal more clarity than the search engines provide in a raw form.

More importantly, however, as the social networks have developed over the years they have developed their own analytic reports based on social-specific measurements and metrics. I have written about how Facebook Insights improves social media marketing, but the important thing to remember is that the social networks, and various third parties are able to produce robust and reliable analytics reports regarding a businesses social media activity. This is no longer a feature exclusive to the search engines, and it means that potentially, a business could conduct all their online marketing on a social network (although, this really isn’t advisable!).

Another feature intrinsically linking social media marketing and search engine optimisation is that they are both long-term commitments. SEO requires lots of moderation and constant improvement and tweaking to succeed, and social media marketing needs the same. Both require fresh, unique and valuable content to be shared regularly if returning customers are going to be engaged enough to value your business.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the subject. Do you think Social Media Marketing and SEO are separate subjects?

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Bing currently has a partnership with Facebook that allows them to use data that is publically shared through Facebook to personalise the results they show to signed-in users. This is similar to how Google are now leveraging Google+ data into their SERPs, and because of the aforementioned partnership between Bing and Facebook, they could theoretically recreate this. This is something Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land briefly mentioned in a blog post covering the launch of ‘Search Plus You World’, but I’d like to go into a bit more detail.

How would Facebook and Bing integration work on this scale?

Facebook is arguably one of the largest depositories of private information on the web, but as I briefly mentioned, only information that is publically shared can be used to personalise the Bing SERPs. This allows a lot of scope for expansion, or at least deeper mining of Facebook’s data by Bing, who are in a position to tap into one of the richest sources of information that could be used to personalise search results in the world today. However, Google’s ‘Search Plus Your World’ update has left them under the scrutiny of the FTC after they had been reported for anti-competitive behaviour, and this could potentially happen to Bing or Facebook if they choose to go down a similar path.

The move could potentially increase Bing’s search engine market share, because of the popularity of Facebook. Conversely, if this was integrated into Facebook, it would help to cement their position as King of social media. While this observation is just based on speculation, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter, and whether you think this could be a potential move for Bing and Facebook? What do you think the results would be for internet marketing on a broader scale? Please feel free to comment with your thoughts.

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In my opinion 2012 should be the year that business’ start using social media as a strategic marketing tool. New technologies have seen snail mail left behind, it no longer takes over a week to respond to a dissatisfied customer, nor does it take almost half a year to launch a new marketing campaign. Embracing the velocity of social media and the opportunities that it presents will help to build a first-class social strategy.

As social media starts to drive more business, it will be vital not to forget your content. Your strategy to-date may have been successful but remember not to get too complacent, as social media evolves and your following develops, your content will need to do the same. Could your 2012 resolution be to create unique content? There are more brands out there than I would care to mention constantly recreating their content, ensuring its uniqueness in the market, its vital to do the same if you are to get the exposure that you deserve. Or maybe your resolution could be not to lose your customers attention in 2012? Either or my point remains the same, if you are not creating unique content in order to capture your audience, somebody else will.

If you haven’t already done so, a resolution could be to join the expected force of 2012 that is Google+. It seems that many social enthusiasts think that the best is yet to come from Google+ and I agree with them. I don’t feel that we have yet seen its full potential, how many capabilities will ‘hangouts’ alone open up? This next resolution may require you to reach for your crystal ball, ‘Stay ahead of the game in 2012’. A testing resolution, yet surely worth a shot?

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It is quite often that keyword research and content creation are approached separately. There are countless websites out there where a person implementing SEO has not been involved in the content strategy and has no say as to what goes on the website.

This is because business owners are sometimes hesitant to allow changes to what already exists on their website as they are happy with the way it looks and what the site has to offer. Their sole request is to rank for a phrase with making as little changes as possible. Let’s take for example the phrase ‘kitchen knives’; the easiest solution is to simply choose a suitable page that the phrase should be placed on and make that rank better.

Further along the in the SEO journey the business owner may decide that they now want to rank for ‘professional kitchen knives’ so the same pattern occurs where the SEO person modifies the page again to target that particular phrase.

It’s easy to get trapped into this viscous circle of spiralling keywords make no mistake. Keep going and the business owner will end up getting caught in this broken process of modifying pages targeting absurd phrases such as ‘professional chef kitchen knives sets for commercial kitchens’.

Clever Content Creation – 3 Easy Steps

Don’t fear about getting caught up in a keyword and content fluster because another Whiteboard Friday by SEO MOZ has taught us a few tips how to obtain maximum impact in just a few easy steps! http://www.seomoz.org/blog/mapping-keywords-to-content-for-maximum-impact-whiteboard-friday

The idyllic process of mapping keywords to content for maximum impact is as follows:

Step 1 –

Establish a full list of keywords to target realising how valuable and important each one is rather selecting them one by one over time. Separate them into groups by which ones convert the most, which generate the most traffic and which have the lowest difficulty etc.

Step 2 (Part 1) –

Now is the time to map your keywords to your content. This should be based upon three factors. It is firstly important to map your keywords by relevance, in other words does the content reflect the keyword phrase you are targeting? The second factor is based on user intent; are these the sorts of keywords a user wants to read when they get to this sub-page? The content must offer the correct information about the product/service, the brands available and how to purchase it etc. Lastly it is important to map keywords your keywords in accordance with your conversion goals, which are the keywords that will push potential clients to add goods to their basket or sign up for e-mails etc?

Step 2 (Part 2) –

Carefully selecting single or multiple keywords for what each page focuses upon.

Page 1 Example

It is wise that when placing the broad phrase ‘kitchen knives’ onto a page to use it as a singular keyword page focus because you don’t know what the user intent is at this point, so keep keywords broad and to a minimum.

Page 2 Example

This page should target multiple keywords for example ‘chef’s knives’, ‘professional kitchen knives’ ‘knives for chefs’ etc. The most important keywords can be placed in the Meta title and secondary just in the body content

Page 3 Example

This page should also target multiple keywords as we know the user intent and the relevance of placing them on this specific page. Variations will include phrases such as ‘knife sets’, ‘knife block sets’, ‘knife blocks’ and ‘carving knife sets’ etc.

Step 3 –

After completing this process for the pages you want to optimise you can now take the map you have produced to actually go develop the content to make searchers happy.

The process of mapping keywords to content in this way is applicable when creating SEO content right from the beginning and also adapting what content already exists on the site. It is the most beneficial and targeted approach to not only rank for those all important keywords but to also better convert your visitors because of assessing the relevance and user intent of which pages you are placing your keywords on.

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SEMRush

(Sourced from: http://www.semrush.com)

As you know the core of any SEO campaign is keyword research. You simply type your URL or your competitor’s URL into the search box and a generated SEMRush report will provide:

• The current and previous positions of the search query.
• The average amount of queries the keyword receives a month in correspondence to the Google Keywords Tool’s local monthly searches.
• The average cost per click.
• The ranking URL of the page that is displayed in the search results for the query.
• The ratio of the number of visitors coming through to the site after searching for the keyword.
• The ratio of the estimated cost of buying the same number of visitors for this search query to the estimated cost of purchasing the same number of targeted visitors coming to this site from search results.
• The competition of advertisers for the particular term.
• How many pages does the search engine know for the query.
• Estimated dynamics of change in the number of search queries in the past 12 months.

When selecting those all important keywords SEMRush is highly beneficial to use as a basis of assessing what organic keywords a website already ranks for, it offers other profitable keywords that the Google Adwords keyword tool would not necessarily pick up.

Having all this information on one page is extremely convenient, and makes keyword research so much easier. Using a database like SEMRush as well as the Google Adwords keyword tool for carrying out your keyword research is without doubt a recipe for SEO success, generating profitable campaigns more quickly and efficiently!

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giffgaff are a mobile operator like no other. Launching in September 2009 playing from a different set of rules of that of their subsidiser o2. giffgaff operate solely online, with no bricks-and-mortar stores or call centers. Each and every customer interaction happens online.

giffgaff has previously been described as a small fish swimming strongly in the social-media abyss, and I agree. Establishing a central hub on their Facebook page, giffgaff invited people to submit questions and get replies not only from giffgaff, but also from other users. From the word go, giffgaff have encouraged customers to get involved with the business. Members who signed up to join before the official launch were given the title ‘founders’ – thus cementing a deep and ongoing relationship with the brand. It is these founders that have gone on to shape much of giffgaff’s customer service offering today. From answering customer queries, to spreading the word amongst friends and even developing new products. In return for their interaction, the community members earn points which can then be exchanged for money, calls, texts, mobile internet or they can donate it to the community’s charity of choice.

At present the community answers questions typically within 60 seconds, and provides 24 hour a day response and every week the suggestions made by the community are reviewed by the CEO, CFO and exec team, as a result the best ideas are implemented. giffgaff is community based, it is not a company that exists with a community, instead it is a company that couldn’t exist without its community.

I understand that not every business will want to adapt such an intense approach to social engagement, however I believe that the fundamentals of this approach can be carried over into many social campaigns. Helping to create a community that is continuous, not here one minute and gone the next, sharing a common goal or concept. It is vital to understand that a community is not just one conversation, nor its it an image that has proved popular and accrued a number of comments. A social community (social or not), consists of various conversations and activities that involve numerous amounts of people over a period of time. It is this interaction that will lead people to form relationships and interact on a more regular basis.

As giffgaff have rewarded their community, ask yourself how you could reward your community? How can you encourage and reward them for taking the time to almost become your brands social advocates?  This basic concept could be the key to utilising your fans.

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A high bounce rate is caused by a person visiting a specific webpage, then leaving straight away back where they came from without navigating any further into the site.  So, how can this be a good thing?  Well, it all depends on the content or the purpose of that specific page, as I’ll soon discuss.  A hugely positive side effect of Google’s Panda update is that webmasters are keen to either delete or re-work any ‘low quality’ pages on their website.  Nevertheless, just because a webpage is generating a high bounce rate does not always mean that a page is low quality and there is no need to either delete or rewrite all pages that do have a high bounce rate.  Let me explain why.

I mentioned above briefly that understanding the on-page content could be a better way of determining the overall quality of a webpage.  It is necessary to holistically consider the overall role of a page within a website before using bounce rate as finite metric for judging quality.  For example, a user might be directed to a blog post on your site from the search engines, read the blog, then return straight to the search engines.  The fact could be that the visitor has ascertained the information the information they needed, so they would have no need to progress any further into the site.  The same principle can be applied to almost all pages that are loaded with informational content.  If a webpage provides information or could answer a potential user search query, then the bounce rate might not necessarily be directly related to quality.

With that being said, the opposite might rule might apply to the homepage of a website, for example.  The homepage is often the gateway to the other information on a website, so naturally a webmaster would want visitors to delve further into a site from the homepage.  If a page with navigational qualities commands a high bounce rate, then that webpage might need some reworking.  The structure of the page maybe clumsy, links may not work or the page design might not be user-friendly; there are many reasons why a webpage might cause users to leave straight away – and particularly for navigational pages, this does need to be addressed.

So, to conclude I would say that there are other factors to be considered as well as bounce rate in judging the quality of a webpage.  Primarily the function of the page – is it written or designed to answer a user query, or should it be helping users locate other parts of the website.  There are also other lesser-known metrics that might explain a high bounce rate on a webpage; if the user chooses to print the page or bookmark it, for example, might explain why they leave without visiting other pages.

If you have any other questions related to internet marketing or SEO, please feel free to contact us via our website.

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Reputation management, as a concept, is quite hard to define. In layman’s terms, it’s making sure that the public’s interpretation of remains positive and it can be achieved through several different methods. Social media reputation management is like a form of digital PR, and whereas most big corporations have a PR representative, they now also have a team of social media marketers. This social media presence means they can be searching for reviews or feedback given directly by their customers and respond accordingly. This will help build trust within the client-base and in-turn, build brand strength – these are all features of reputation management.

Here are a few simple strategies and tactics so for your social media marketing campaigns:

Listen

To have a fully optimised social media campaign, you need to understand what your customers are saying about your business (positive or negative), why they are they saying those things, where they are saying them and how you can respond.

Twitter, for example, has a built in search bar located at the top of every profile page:

Using this you can search for key words or phrases you feel relate to your industry as well as your own specific brand name. This way you might find an opportunity to provide advice to someone or contribute to an industry relevant debate. By utilising this tool you are able to manage your reputation by showing you’re a trustworthy, knowledgeable source of information and are likely to impress any potential clients.

Bigger businesses with a social media outreach that extends further than Twitter will obviously have to use a broader tool to locate further social media opportunities. One such free tool is called Social Mention:

This tool is great because it quickly scours the internet finding mentions of your brand allowing you to monitor the strength and online presence as well allowing you the opportunity to respond to those mentions if necessary. Topsy is another tool that does this effectively:

Topsy is perhaps a bit more detailed that Social Mention because it allows you to view statistics such as quantity of Tweets and it also lets you know if your brand has been mentioned by influential Tweeters. Although it is perhaps a bit Twitter-centric, it’s great for helping you keep your ear firmly planted to the ground in case anything crops up that might damage your company’s reputation.

Communicate

After you have located talk of your brand using the aforementioned tools, it’s time to start interacting with them. Find out if they are saying something positive or constructive, thank them for their opinion, and acknowledge that you will be taking it on board. If they are posing a question that you think your business has the expertise has the answer, then try and help out – but importantly, don’t try and use this interaction to sell something. Displaying knowledge will sell itself.

Another important tip is not to be disheartened when you find someone who has taken issue with one of your services or is reporting a negative experience of some kind. Use it as a platform to build a dialogue and show that you care about each and every one of your customers. It might turn out that they have a valid point and there is a great opportunity for your organisation to benefit from it.

Content

This is another point that is similar to ‘communication’. However, the communication point focused you communicating with you clients, but content offers you the opportunity to have your clients interact with you. By producing excellent and engaging content that gets the online community talking, you will win links that have great SEO value and you will also build online brand visibility.

Hopefully these tips will benefit your businesses social media presence, but if you have any further questions about any of our internet marketing or social media optimisation services, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

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