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Point of View: Panda & Penguin Updates

Friday, May 17th, 2013

_Background

At SXSW in March, Matt Cutts alluded to a Google algorithm update within the next couple months. Google will not comment on a timeline or the details of the update, but we can expect it will be rolled out within the next few weeks. The purpose of the original Penguin update was to weed out spammers that attempted to find a loop-hole around Google’s algorithm. The 2.0 update is expected to go deeper and have more of an impact than the original version, becoming more strict and penalizing sites that appear spammy.

_{What can we expect?}

A video released by Matt Cutts on May 13^th outlines some of the possible changes. Cutts explained that while many of these changes are in the works, he couldn’t confirm that all will be included at this time. All in all, he reminded us that the goal of a Panda or Penguin update is to set uniform expectations that align with Google’s vision to provide search results that have high quality content for users.

Here’s a synopsis of what could be included in the Penguin 2.0 update, according to a YouTube video released by Cutts on May 13, 2013:

Further and stricter penalization of spammy sites. Cutts notes that black-hat spamming packages or trading will be punished.
Stricter rules for Advertorials. Cutts notes that there is nothing wrong with advertorials or native advertising with clear disclosure. You need to be careful of advertorials that violate quality guidelines.
Cleaner queries.
Google is going upstream to deny value to link spammers.
Changes to Webmaster Tools. Better hack site detection and communication to webmasters. More diagnostic functions, specifically around linking.
Detecting authority in a specific space. Google is working toward identifying authority and rewarding those sites. This especially refers to authorship and incoming links and social mentions.
Refined host clustering and host crowding.

_{What do we think is most important?}

Since we do not know the exact algorithm changes, we can’t tell you exactly how it will impact your website. That being said, we pride ourselves in staying current. In doing so, we provide our clients with best practices to provide searchable, high quality content for users, and Google likes that.

Last year, Google created a disavow links tool that allowed webmasters to tell the Google search algorithm that a set of URLs linking to their site might be spam and to ignore them. The disavow links tool was created primarily for sites that were hit by Penguin and gave a webmaster one last avenue to attempt to clean up bad inbound links.

With the disavow tool, Google has essentially asked webmasters to “tattle tail” on suspect websites. This allowed Google to collect information to help them see trends or schemes and allow them to programmatically identify linking practices that break their guidelines. Google also has data from Webmaster tool emails on suspect links. If a webmaster removed the link or disavowed it, they merely solidified Google’s suspicion. If a webmaster responded and justified the link, that also provides useful insight. Couple that with all the complaining, reporting, and feedback from the first release, and Google should have some pretty strong data to “turn up the heat” on spam and paid linking.

Based on the information at this time, here’s our two cents:

Google rewarding authority websites in a specific space by ranking them a little more highly. Many of our clients would be considered authorities, or are working toward it, this change could potentially provide a very positive impact to conversions.

Better hacked site detection (over the next couple months) and Google Webmaster Tools being the one-stop shop for additional information. Unfortunately even great websites sometimes get hacked. Luckily, Google’s increased detection will only help in preventing loss of revenue or lead generation.

For websites that were affected by Panda, this may be good news. If your website is in the border zone or grey area, where they were impacted but haven’t knowingly engaged in black-hat methods, Google has identified additional quality signals that may be of benefit to those sites.

We’re happy to see Google continuing to enhance Webmaster Tools by providing more information to the webmaster. Everyone with a website should also have a Google Webmaster account! Currently, this is the only way Google notifies a webmaster if they detect an issue.

As of now, this is all the information we can provide. Our team will continue to monitor our client’s websites closely to identify any issues. We look forward to seeing what Google delivers within the next few weeks and will continue to provide updates.

Tags: panda, penguin 2.0
Posted in Google | No Comments »

5 Google Analytics Audiences You Should Be Remarketing To

Wednesday, May 15th, 2013

Now that Google Analytics Remarketing has been out for nearly a year – we thought we’d share with you five of our favorite audiences to remarket to.

1. Visitors Who Abandoned Your Conversion Funnel

Whether you’re a lead-gen or an e-commerce site, if you have a conversion funnel, you should be remarketing to visitors who started your conversion funnel but did not complete your final conversion. To reach these visitors, you can use Google Analytics Remarketing List’s Visitor Segments. With Visitor Segments, you can set up a sequence filter to segment visitors that have completed specific sequential behaviors on your site. You can set these segments up for each step of your conversion funnel by including visitors who visited the pages of your conversion steps leading up to your conversion while excluding visitors who visited pages that appear later in the conversion funnel (see example below). This will allow you to send messages specific to each audience as they move through the conversion funnel.

Real world example: You sell custom screen printed t-shirts online. Your site uses a quoting engine to generate quotes on screen printing tee-shirts prior to the final sale. Below are example audiences you could remarket to with unique messaging.

- Site visitors who created a custom shirt design but did not receive a price quote. Remarket to these visitors with messaging to bring them back into the conversion funnel where they left off. Example: “Get a quote on your custom tee shirt design now!”

- Site visitors who received a quote but did not order the tee-shirts. Remarket them with messaging to drive them to order. Giving these visitors a unique offer in the ad to save XX% could help drive to higher clickthrough and conversion rates. Example: “Order your tee shirts now and save 15% off your purchase!”

2. Past Purchasers

When you sell a product that has low involvement in the purchase decision, remarketing to previous customers can be a great way to drive sales. One way to do this is by creating a Remarketing List in Google Analytics that targets visitors who have completed a purchase goal on your site.

For most products, you are going to want to wait to start remarketing to your customer as they may not be immediately ready to make another purchase from you. The length of how long you wait to start remarketing depends on your sales cycle. For a product whose sale cycle begins again after 30 days of purchase; you could create a custom combination list in AdWords that targets site visitors who have completed a purchase in the last 90 days and that excludes site visitors who have completed in the last 30 days. See examples below.

3. Visitors Interested In Specific Products/Services

For some products/services with longer sales cycles, you can target to visitors who have not yet converted on your site but have indicated that they are interested in one of your specific products/services through Google Analytics Visitor Segments. There are two ways I generally like to do this, but there are many other ways it can be done.

The first way I segment my visitors is by time on page. If a visitor stays on one of my pages about a specific product/service for longer than that page’s average time on page, I want to remarket to that visitor using an ad specific to the product/service they were viewing. This is set up by using Google Analytics Remarketing List’s Visitor Segment’s sequence filter to include page and time on page. See example below.

The second way I like to segment my audience is by, again, using Google Analytics Remarketing List’s Visitor Segment’s sequence filter to create an audience of visitors who have visited 2+ pages on my site related to a particular product or service. This is done by adding to steps of page visits in the sequence. See example below.

4. Soft-Lead Converters

Another way you can remarket to visitors who are making a high involvement purchase decision is by remarketing to visitors who have completed soft leads on your site without completing your ultimate conversion goal.

Real world example: Using the screen printing tee shirt company as our example again; you can remarket to visitors who have signed up to receive offer emails, but have not made a purchase on your site. For these visitors, showing them an offer ad might produce better results as they have indicated that they are interested in your brand but are waiting for a deal to make a purchase.

5. Visitors Within Highest Conversion Rate Range Metrics

Using your data in Analytics, you can determine when visitors are converting on your site at the highest rates. This can be based on number of visits, time on site, page views, and basically any other metric.

One example of this could be using Google Analytics to determine the number of visits that visitors convert at the highest rate. You might find that your visitors convert at the highest rate between five to six visits to your site. It may be that these visitors needed to visit the site more than once to gather more information to make a conversion. You might also see conversion rates drop after six visits because these visitors may have converted through another channel and are now visiting the site for very specific information and not to convert again. Using this information, you can create a remarketing list that target visitors to your site who have visited two to five times. To set this up, you can use the Google Analytics Remarketing List’s Visitor Segment’s dimension & metrics filter and include visitors based on their count of visit metrics. See example below.

Happy remarketing, friends!

Posted in Google | No Comments »

Attribution Across the Path to Purchase

Friday, May 10th, 2013

The Consumer Journey is a hot topic in our cross-platform, digital marketing world. Understanding how consumers move throughout the path to purchase is a necessity for the digital marketer. Between awareness, consideration, intent to buy, and actual purchase, we sure don’t have an easy task in learning how our media channels work with one another! Beyond that, we also need to know what gets consumers to re-engage and become brand loyalists. As we learned at a recent Nina Hale educational event, tracking and attributing conversions across the path to purchase is something many companies struggle with.

Google’s Think Insights recently released a new tool that uses anonymized data from its Google Analytics accounts to set benchmarks for assisting and last interaction conversions across industries. It examines the roles that media channels play in encouraging a consumer to buy. “Assisting Interaction” channels are more helpful as awareness vehicles, while “Last Interaction” channels more directly influence a purchase. Using the ratio of “Assist/Last Interactions,” we can plot tactics along our journey to determine whether they drive awareness or conversion.

We played around with the data a bit and plotted our own clients’ data along Google’s benchmarked journey. You can do this yourself by pulling the “Assist/Last Interaction” ratio from your Google Analytics Assisted Conversions report (under Conversions -> Multi-Channel Funnels -> Assisted Conversions) and comparing it to the journey mapped in the Think Insights tool. It gave us a lot of insight into how our marketing activities currently work toward driving acquisitions and purchases. We also learned a lot about how we might change our media strategy in order to target consumers at specific points throughout his or her journey.

How does your attribution model relate to the consumer journey? Have you been surprised by your data versus Google’s benchmarks? Let us know.

Posted in Analytics, Google | No Comments »

Earth Day 2013 Terra Searches

Friday, April 19th, 2013

Earth Day is upon us and coming up quick, April 22, 2013 to be exact, so what better time to share some searches about our beloved planet? Earth Day is an occasion to be particularly aware of how we care for our planet, and is a time to show and practice appreciation for this ball of rock, gas, and minerals that we, and other living organisms, call home. Our terra (or earth) searches deal with all varieties of questions, events, and ways to help our earth from pollution and other contributors to climate change. So save energy, pick up some trash, plant a garden, and try celebrating a day for our earth. Enjoy the most eco-friendly searches we have to offer:

earth day tee shirts

- A must to show off some Earth Day pride and why not make it fun!?

what is earth day

- Of course many may not know; but earth day is an annual day on which events are held worldwide to demonstrate support for environmental protection.

what day is earth day on

- Earth day is always on April, 22. April 22nd is significant because it did not fall during exams or spring breaks. More so, it did not conflict with religious holidays.

earth day projects for kids

- Love it! Start respecting the earth at a young age.

free earth day activities

- Also a great search because best of all, most events are free and local! Most events include 5k fun runs, park clean-ups, events at science museums and local government offices, as well as music concerts.

earth day pledges

- This is always great because there really is not ONE pledge you can find. An Earth Day pledge is almost like a New Year’s resolution…so you can make it up and just stick to it!

earth day word searches

- This I always question, because I don’t agree with doing word searches for kids in a classroom during Earth Day, rather, GET OUTSIDE and contribute to the cause!

earth day ecards

- Most eco-friendly way to spread the word without the use of paper!

why was earth day created

- Credited to Gaylord Nelson, a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin. Observing the effects of the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, and encouraged by the student anti-war movement, he called for an environmental teach-in, later called “Earth Day.” More than one billion people and many national governments in almost 200 countries participate.

how can I prevent global warming

- Love the ambition, but I would have searched “how can WE prevent global warming.” It will need to be a collective effort.

Thanks for joining us for 2013′s Earth Day searches from Nina Hale, Inc. Have a fun, safe, and eco-friendly Earth Day!

Tags: earth day, google natural search results, search
Posted in Google, Random Search Fun | No Comments »

The Power of Social Media When Tragedy Strikes

Wednesday, April 17th, 2013

When fear struck Boston on Monday, April 15^th, word spread like wild fire across social media. The Boston Globe was quick to react to the explosions via Twitter, receiving almost 10,000 re-tweets in a matter of minutes. The news spread quickly to news outlets and other active social users, and soon enough, the news was known nation-wide. Many took to social media to not only offer condolences and receive timely updates, but also to locate friends and family that were in or around the marathon that afternoon.

The Google person finder, which was initially built for the 2010 Haiti earthquake, was one of the most helpful tools for tracking runners and bystanders and for also posting any information that was had about someone who was missing. Facebook was also a big help for locating people. According to The New York Times, Jeff Bauman was able to track down his son by an image that was posted to Facebook of his son being wheeled to an ambulance. Jeff was able to track him down after calling multiple Boston area hospitals. It’s times like this where we praise social media for being our guide to updates and answers.

According to Topsy, a Twitter analytics company, at about 4:30 p.m., there were more than 700,000 mentions on Twitter of the words “Boston Marathon” while Twitter mentions of “Boston” increased by 20,000%. A recently launched app, Vine, was also one of the first to display a quick six-second loop of the explosion. The Boston police are also using their Twitter account for updates. CNN just announced a suspect being arrested, while the Boston police were quick to respond that there has not been any arrest. With quick reactions like this, it’s imperative to note the importance of social media and how it’s typically first on the scene and the quickest place to release timely news and details.

For big brands and social voices, this is just another reason to make sure that a “crisis strategy” is implemented in your social media plan. When tragedy strikes, it’s important to be aware of timely tweets and posts in order to not stand out like a sore thumb. This is typically a problem when brands schedule posts too far in advance. By releasing untimely information during a time like this, a brand will look “un-human” and “robot-like” to the audience, resulting in extreme negative backlash.

As a result of advanced scheduling, an accidental slip could happen. Runner’s World was on the scene and had accidentally sent out a scheduled tweet, but it was pulled immediately followed by this response.

The best etiquette guidelines to follow in a situation such as this are: be sensitive, delay posting any promotional or irrelevant tweets, and join the conversation if you can provide any helpful details (especially if you’re local).

With all this being said, it’s apparent that social media has created its own form of reporting, and is continuously on the rise. People are always looking to social media for answers, which is why it’s important to understand the many roles that social media plays.

If you’re looking for ways to volunteer and help, near or far, follow the hashtag #BostonHelp on Twitter or check out this list of ways to get involved. Our deepest sympathies go out to those affected by the events at the Boston Marathon.

Posted in Facebook, Google, Social Media, Twitter | No Comments »

Google Places Closer to Full Google+ Integration

Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013

Back in June, we announced Google Places as Dead, and transitioning to Google+ Local. While still true, the transition has been very slow. Yesterday, Google started rolling out Google Places’ new look and feel, the next step in the full transition to Google+. Here’s what it looks like & what you need to know.

More Images of the New Look & Feel for Google Places

What Changed?

New Interface
Removal of custom categories
Ability to add up to 10 categories (up from 5)
Faster updates from the interface
Feedback on the status of updates
Locations can only be claimed by one account
Hide Addresses in G+ for service area businesses

When Will My Account Be Updated?

As with many Google updates, this will be done on a rolling basis. It’s starting with new businesses claiming their locations for the first time. If accessing your Google Places account today, the account will likely look the same. You will receive an email from Google stating that your Google Places account has been upgraded.

Is There Anything I Should Do Immediately?

If you already have your account claimed & verified in either Google+ Local or Google Places, no immediate action should be taken. When your account is upgraded, take a moment to learn the interface and add additional categories if applicable.

Bottom Line

The main implications of the transition are the same. Google’s local listings are transitioning to a social platform, Google+. This is key and important to not get caught up in the minuscule changes. These webpages continue to poise themselves to be Google’s intersection of social, local and mobile for business listings.

Additional Information

Categories

But the small changes still carry weight. Notably, the loss of custom categories will be an important aspect. Pre-determined categories have always carried more weight, but occasionally for certain terms it gave one listing an advantage over another. If your account utilizes custom categories, consider looking for a replacement.

Previously, through the user interface, a business owner could only add up to five categories. Now you can add up to ten. This doesn’t mean go into your account and add any category that roughly has an applicable audience (don’t be a spammer!). But it DOES mean you should verify that the categories you’ve chosen are covering the keywords your business is targeting.

Updates

Local has always been somewhat of a black hole. Business representatives would make changes to their Google Listings, the edit would appear to go through, but alas, when seen in search or maps, the edit was not shown. If you feel like this story relates to you, know that edits will now have a “pending” status attached to the edit.

This actually goes two ways as well. If Google is looking outward at the data across the web, and decides to update your information, you will be notified of the edit directly in the interface. Previously this was done via email or not at all.

Another important aspect of updates is the exclusivity of claims. Now each location can only be claimed with one account. In the all too common problem that a Google Places account login information had been lost or forgotten, it would leave a feed of outdated data that appeared to be from the business owner. This resulted in listings reverting back to old data occasionally. Now, since each account can only be claimed once, a new claim would trump the old claim, resulting in a more accurate listing.

Service Area Businesses

Previously, using a merged Google+ Local listing as a social page (Google+ for Business page), was unavailable to business owners with service area oriented businesses. The reason being that you could not hide your businesses address, which is required by the quality guidelines. Now with this new functionality, you can hide your address within Google+! This is a great update for businesses who were excited to become social on a local level, but were previously unable to do so.

I hope this answers some of your questions regarding the new change, if you have a specific question, feel free to leave a comment or engage with me on twitter!

Posted in Google | No Comments »

Google Analytics Expands Universal Analytics into Public Beta

Friday, March 22nd, 2013

Last fall, Google Analytics launched Universal Analytics in response to the evolving cross-device consumer journey. Today, it expanded its offering into a public beta, making the features of Universal Analytics available to everyone.

As the accessibility of data grows, analytics is becoming about a lot more than just site-side measurement. It’s being incorporated into a suite of tools whose ultimate purpose is to generate insights and determine whether or not our initiatives are satisfying business objectives. In short, analytics is growing beyond its foundations as a tactic and serving us more in constructing and evaluating strategy. From this, the demand for Universal Analytics was born.

Universal Analytics integrates Google Analytics across devices and enables more efficient, cross-tactical analysis. First, it introduces a new analytics.js tracking code and allows for more customization of data. The snippet officially waves goodbye to cookies and instead relies on universal tracking IDs. Ideally, this allows us to track consumers throughout his/her journey. This pairs well with another new feature – we can now collect and send incoming data from any digital device to the Analytics account, allowing us to track data from multiple devices – phones, tablets, laptops, etc.

Additionally, Universal Analytics allows for easier customization of configuration settings. We now have the opportunity to import other data sources into our Google Analytics accounts. The possibilities here are endless; we could include offline sales, call center data, third-party data, store visits. Another feature that Universal Analytics enables is the creation of custom dimensions and custom metrics to track data that Google Analytics doesn’t track automatically. The opportunities here are exciting; we’ll either be able to create new metrics and dimensions to better understand the data we import into Google Analytics or we’ll be able to create new dimensions and metrics based on the data that Analytics already tracks.

Google’s shift to Universal Analytics indicates that analytics departments should continue to be challenged to move beyond reporting and analysis. To learn how you can implement Universal Analytics, visit Google’s Developer Guide.

Posted in Analytics, Google | No Comments »

Adwords Landscape 2013

Monday, March 11th, 2013

Overview

With Google constantly updating their Advertising services, it is important to keep up with the latest changes. Dr. Pete over at SEOmoz collected some data to get a good view of what the Adwords landscape looks like in 2013.This data gives us a quick look at the evolving picture. They crawled 10,000 page-one Google SERPs on a weekday during normal business hours. We should take note that since they pulled keywords from Adwords’ research tools, the SERPs might have more commercial intent than “average” keywords.

Results

Out of the 10k queries that they crawled, 85.2% appeared with ads and 86% appeared with either ads or shopping results. Paid shopping results have only been around since May and are already on about 20% of the queries crawled. Paid shopping results can appear in multiple forms and sizes on the SERP. The most popular combination is with ads appearing at the top and side at 39%. The top three categories with ads are apparel, real estate, and home & garden.

Conclusion

I think the big take away from 2013 is the rise of paid shopping results. If you are a retailer, I would be looking closely at the shopping results that pop up next to your ads. Since shopping shows the price of the product, you might want to test some prices in ad copy as well. Also, if the prices are way different from yours, make sure to keep an eye on your cost per conversion. If you see a big spike there, I would look into some ad group and keyword optimization. The changing landscape of Google is something that PPC and SEO specialists need to be constantly monitoring in order to make the best decisions on their accounts.

The Google AdWords Landscape

(Credit: SEOmoz – http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-google-adwords-landscape-infographic)

Posted in Google, PPC | No Comments »

Yahoo Google Display Partnership

Monday, February 18th, 2013

Earlier this month, Yahoo! and Google announced their non-exclusive display partnership. And while this isn’t breaking news today, I thought we should take some time to reflect a bit more about what this actually means.

When reflecting on the announcement, my first thought naturally went straight to what the best celebrity couple name would be for this partnership – I settled on Yahoogle . My second, and some might argue deeper thought, was what this actually means for not only for the Yahoo!/Google relationship but also for the Yahoo!/Bing relationship.

For Yahoo! and Google we see a win/win for both players. Yahoo, who has had a 10% year-over-year decline in display ad revenue, wins because they will now be able to sell un-used ad space to Google with a simple split of the revenue. And because Google has such a substantial wealth of advertisers, Yahoo! will also benefit by having more targeted, relevant ads for their users which will drive their display ads to have higher clickthrough rates.

In this partnership, Google also wins more than just the split of the profit. They win the opportunity to display their ads across Yahoo!’s network of loyal users who are known to be actively engaged to with their content. The Yahoo! users trust this property’s content, which will ultimately lead them to drive more clicks, more conversions, and more advertisers wanting to spend their money on Yahoo!’s network through the Google’s Display Network (I’m certainly watching my placements, hoping to see higher conversion rates come in from Yahoo!’s network so I can bid up).

It seems pretty obvious that there’s something to gain for both partners. So obvious that upon the announcement of the partnership, Google saw a stock increase of 26.84%, while Yahoo! saw an increase of 27.29%. Yet another plus for both accounts.

So what does this mean for the Yahoo! Bing Network, otherwise known as Bing Ads? I’m going to go ahead and say that I don’t think it’s good. It wasn’t too long ago that the two launched a display network with Media.net. And what has that brought this partnership? A fairly large amount of un-used inventory that could be making them money. While this doesn’t mean that Yahoo! and Bing will be parting ways tomorrow, it does add another item to the list of Yahoo! Bing fails.

Tags: yahoo
Posted in Google, PPC | No Comments »

Google PLA – Product Listing Ads

Friday, February 15th, 2013

For years Google’s shopping solutions had been free. This October, Google changed that with a pay to play solution. Google Product Listing Ads allow you to include product information in ads and show in their own area on Google’s SERP as well as within Google Shopping. From what we are seeing, this has been a successful change.

For many of our clients that take part in Google PLA, it has been a positive experience. Results have been profitable and we are seeing relatively good scale. In addition, Google has made an effort to simplify the process by including many features within AdWords related to PLA. Google also looks to be supporting this channel now and into the future. The offering has rolled out to a number of countries and is expanding to more. They are also making an investment in other technology that may help improve the product overall by acquiring Channel Intelligence.

If your business has not tested Google PLA, create a testing budget and try it out. It is relatively easy to implement once you have a product feed created and Google gives you step by step instructions on getting your products live and incorporating them into your other marketing efforts.

Google PLAs met with some initial resistance, but have made a number of advertisers very happy. This may change in the future, but based on Google’s efforts, it looks like mostly for the best. With its ease of use, control and typically good results, it should be something you evaluate for yourself.

Posted in Google, PPC, SEM | No Comments »