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Using webmaster tools to work smarter, not harder

17 February 2012

As all business people know, there are only so many hours in a day. Each time Google or other online tool adds a new variable or application, there is the potential for webmasters to feel that they just cannot do any more. We have discovered that adding Webmaster tools to your routine may in fact save you time and make you more efficient.

What are ‘Webmaster Tools’?

These are a set of free tools created by Google to highlight the relative ‘health’ of any of the websites you manage. It’s a bit like a doctor scanning the chart at the end of a hospital bed, looking at the most important factors and focussing just on anomalies. Without having to review in detail every potential web measure, you can spend time on those that have issues. The end result is improved visibility of your site to Google’s search engines, this will make your site easier to find by your visitors.

To initially set up your site with Webmaster Tools, you need to go to the Google Webmaster Tool to register your account. There are several ways to verify your account, these are all presented to you in this registration section. Once you have added the details, it may take a few hours to actually become available.

On registration, your site will be visible in the Webmaster Tools page. Click on your site and you will be taken to the Dashboard. The Dashboard includes a summary of:

  • Search Queries which have brought traffic to your site
  • Crawl Errors – check at a glance if there are any roadblocks for the Google search bots on your site which may stop them finding your content
  • Keywords- the most common words on your site. These are useful to identify if you are using enough of the keywords you believe your potential users would look for.
  • Sitemaps- you can check there is a valid sitemap for your site as well as the ability to create and test one. Sitemaps are a critical entry point for the Google bots to begin searching your site.
  • Links to your site- who and how they link to your site

From the Dashboard you can click on each item to investigate further. The critical factor to enjoy with Webmaster Tools is that it presents you with this summary. Become the master of exceptions, which means you no longer have to review every single piece of data available for your web site, merely the items that stand out as issues or opportunities.

Therefore the outcome of working smarter using Webmaster Tools and not harder is to free up your time for more creative, proactive or business building experiences.

Filed Under: Tools Tagged With: , , ,

Google’s New “Page Layout” Algorithm Seeks to Penalise Sites Which are Top-Heavy with Ads

6 February 2012

If you are tired of swimming through all those ads on top of the screen when landing upon a certain page, then you have a reason to be happy as Google announced on January 19, 2012 that it will be identifying sites which are doing this practice and will be penalising them accordingly. Sites identified as violating this page layout algorithm will be tagged by Google and shall not be ranked as highly as they used to or should be in succeeding searches.

Google refused to set a firm guideline however as to how much ads on top of a page is really “too much” so to speak, instead they are letting the individual publishers decide for themselves and encouraged them to use their Google Browser Size Tool and other similar tools to make a decision as to how much of their page’s content should be left unobscured by ads at first glance.

Google further stressed that this new algorithm will only be affecting those pages which have an abnormally high number of ad placements above-the-fold such that it eventually makes it difficult for users to find the actual content. Sites which are placing ads above-the-fold in a normal manner don’t have to worry, as they will not be affected, especially since Google also recognises that these are prime real estate for advertising spots which make up a major part of the monetisation program of most sites.

By Google’s own estimate, there are not that many websites that would be affected by this change however. They reckon that it will only affect less than 1% of all searches globally. Website publishers will know if they have been tagged for violating this algorithm if they suddenly see a drop in traffic to their site and they know that they have been top-heavy with ads all along then chances are they have been tagged because of this new algorithm. Their site’s ranking will be decreased once they are tagged which explains the sudden drop in traffic to their site.

If a site is already tagged, publishers can actually implement the necessary changes in order to gain Google’s good graces once again but the penalty may not be immediately lifted as fast as they would want it to be. Google explains that even though the page layout algorithm automatically detects any changes that may be adopted, it will still take as much as several weeks for their system to assess the overall changes of an entire site depending on the number of pages in the site and how efficiently Google bot can crawl the contents.

While this news is a welcome development for most users, some would still contend that much is still to be desired as far as regulating these advertisements are concerned as there are still way too much advertisements in some sites which cannot be categorised as above-the-fold per se but are very annoying still the same.

Google closed their announcement by saying that this change is just one in about 500 improvements that they expect to implement within the year in their continuing effort to deliver the best possible user experience.

George Peterson currently works for one of the leading search marketing agencies in Denmark – Outrider. He currently works as a SEO manager.

Filed Under: Search Engines Tagged With: , , , ,

How Mobile Internet Will Change SEO

1 February 2012

It has been predicted that in the future, there will be more mobile internet users in comparison to PC users. This shift will drastically alter how people use the web – and how potential customers will find you on the internet. The worst thing any business or SEO expert could do is to lie dormant as the technology increases around them.  In order to perform skilled SEO strategies, you must educate yourself on growing technology trends while adapting to the technology. The survival of your business seriously depends on it.

Mobile searches will be different

No matter how flexible your thumbs are, people on average, type faster on regular-standard keyboards. People tend to automatically adjust to using a form of shorthand when using their mobile devices.  They are more likely to depend on autocomplete for finishing their sentences. If the above statement stands true with more mobile users than computer users, keyword strategists could feel the impact of their strategies becoming less effective when performing SEO. Shorter keywords and various phrasing will soon occur with longer keywords proving less-effective.

Voice searches will be different

When performing voice searches, the program Siri has proved to be less than successful.  This program along with other voice applications will improve. Voice-generated searches will become relaxed instead of performed with “search” languages. Voice searches, not unlike mobile searches will revolutionise how businesses target and identify keywords.

Mobile users are impatient

Mobile searches perform fast-simple searches for the immediate needs of mobile users. If you want to book travel tickets, locate products, place an order or find a location, you are less-likely to perform in-depth searches.  If your current SEO strategy is to provide in-depth content that leads visitors toward purchasing your services or products, this method will not work in the future for an increasing number of mobile searchers. Mobile users prove impatient with immediate needs in comparison to computer users, so you will need to address the needs of mobile users in the future for the survival of your business.

Various businesses provide how-to information geared to help their customers and potential customers but also to improve SEO results. Mobile users will not scan a page with various resources, videos and web links. What is described as “rich” on a standard computer can prove overwhelming and frustrating on a device. Displaying how-to information will always be useful but the way you provide the information will need to be addressed.

What can businesses do in the short-term?

Begin your experimentations now.  Create new pages that feature different keywords that are different from what you currently target. Create some “bite size” pages that are specifically designed for mobile users. Try enlisting combinations of videos and photos on select pages. Study your results and determine what works best for your business, as well as a growing expansion of mobile users. Most importantly, what works today, will not work tomorrow, so now is the time to start adapting, testing and preparing for the increased population of mobile device users.

The post is shared by William Taylor. William is an internet blogger who loves to write on SEO and technology. Visit his site for internet and tv.

Filed Under: Mobile Websites Tagged With: , , , ,

Make 2012 the Year Your Company Gets Into Social Media

27 January 2012

Next time you’re in a public place, take a look around you. How many mobile phones do you see? I bet the answer is “several”. Most likely, people aren’t talking into those phones. They’re probably staring at the screens – reading the latest tweets, posting to Facebook, checking in on Foursquare, or spying on their circles on Google+.

If your company doesn’t have a social media presence, you’re at a serious disadvantage. To the people who are glued to their phones, you may as well not exist. Fortunately, it’s easy to get started in the world of social media. If you make 2012 the year that you connect with your customers, it won’t take long to establish a presence, and before the year is out you’ll find yourself wondering how you ever managed without having such an easy and convenient way to reach your customers.

Social Media is About Engagement

When you first get involved in social media, it’s easy to get carried away; to post too often, or to think of social media purely as free advertising. This can be a very damaging mistake. Social media is about conversation.  Your goal should be to talk to your customers, to answer their questions, to ask them questions, and only occasionally post advertisement.

In the early stages, it’s best to pick just a couple of networks to be very active on. You should join all the networks you can think of. Or, if that’s just a very short list, ask an online marketing agency to sort out the important accounts for you. Set up those extra accounts to point to the main accounts such as Facebook and Twitter.

If you expect to have a large number of followers, then you may want to hire a social media manager to look after your accounts for you. A social media manager will be able to answer questions, find interesting topics to talk about, and pick the right times, and the right frequency, to post advertisements.

Smaller, local businesses, may be able to manage their own social media accounts, but companies that have customers in more than one time zone, or that cater to a large number of customers, are probably best off enlisting the help of an online marketing agency.

If you do try to manage your own account, the most important thing to remember is that your posts, once put up there, are instantly visible to the entire world. If you regret something, you won’t have time to delete it – it’s already out there and has probably been seen by a lot of people. Don’t post anything that you don’t want associated with your brand. That means, stick to positive messages. Avoid getting involved with flame wars, and avoid politically charged messages unless your brand wants to be associated with a specific political stance. It’s all too easy to let things get personal on the Internet, but when you’re posting as a brand, it’s wise to keep a professional distance.

Written by Amy Fowler, social media manager at online marketing agency, Boom.

Filed Under: Social Media, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

4 Tips for an Effective Facebook Campaign

24 January 2012

Facebook Ads have become an increasingly popular alternative to in-site advertising solutions such as Google Adwords; with a massive potential user base of over 800 million people and an abundance of personal and preferential information to aid you in honing in on your target audience. However, with only a small snippet of text and a little picture to convey your message, a lot of thought and effort has to be put into the planning of your campaign for maximum impact.

Find Your Target

With so much information willingly given up by its users and stored by Facebook you can choose, to an accurate degree, who views your ads. However, if you don’t know your own target markets then these options are next to useless, so the first thing you have to do is ask yourselves a few questions:

  • Are my customers male or female or both?
  • How old are my customers?
  • Where do my customers live?

Facebook helps you to find these helpful bits of information out, using its Insights feature to analyse your page and its users. Using this tool you can extract valuable answers to the above questions without having to do masses of in depth analysis. Take a look at your users and see how they relate to your business. If your business’s main client base is local then you know to target that specific location, but if customers travel to you remember to include the main areas they come from in your location targeting. Try to keep the number of locations to a minimum though, larger ranges raise your cost per click (CPC) as well making your ad less relevant to users, which in turn will make the odds of people clicking on your ad less likely.

Customisation

Now you have your target in sight it is time to make ads that cater specifically for them. This is why you don’t throw all of your eggs in one basket with one specific ad. Run multiple campaigns to further focus in on your target market; creating different ads for men and women for example.

The more different campaigns you run alongside each other the lower the CPC on each as they have smaller target audiences.

Standing Out From the Crowd

There are a lot of ads to compete with and only 135 characters to convey your message so you need to maximise its impact. When selecting your image make sure it is clear and close up; you only have a small image to make use of so it must be strong enough to grab the user’s attention.

As for the text, what are you offering to persuade the user to click?  Make sure it is short, punchy and catchy with a call to action for the user to take. People love specials and sales, so this could be the ideal bait to lure them in.

Test, Test and Test Again!

By running multiple ads at a time you can split test ads, so you can tweak the text and try out different images for maximum effect. Over time you will see what works and tailor your ads to use these features while abandoning campaigns that are less successful.

Also, by continually updating and improving your ads it is possible to keep abreast of the latest trends, fads and tastes. By keeping your ear to the ground you can use these to make sure that by being current you will attract more users to your ads.

Based in Brighton, Silicon Beach Training offers a wide range of courses to help improve your skills and knowledge, including widely popular courses which offer full Social Media Training and PRINCE2 Practitioner Training to help give your career that extra boost.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: , , , , ,