SEO Report Card - Google Grades itself
Google recently revealed an internal SEO Report Card, wherenby it grades its own product pages (whereby Analytics, AdaWords, Product Search, Profile, etc each count as a single product). While it doesn’t reveal anything new, it does reinforce the importance of several on-page factors (ie. Images ALT text and filenames, H1 tags) that some argue are not worth taking the time to implement. 301 Redirects and the Canonical Link Rel element also make appearances. Some of the scores are amazingly low and sometimes hilarious (ie. the ALT tags). I guess that’s what happens when your brand is strong enough to get away with a lot of bad SEO.
SEO/Marketing Blogs/Articles for 2010-03-08
SEO/Marketing Blogs/Articles for 2010-03-08
- Kill Useless Web Metrics: Apply The “Three Layers Of So What” Test (Wonkish) - Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik
- Google Wrap Up: Above the Fold; Gesture Search - Marketing Vox
- Don’t Be Afraid of Negative Reviews - Marketing Vox
- Social Networking SEO Tips and Techniques - SEO Chat
- Keyword Difficulty vs. Size of Domain - SEO Chat
Spring Cleaning for those Analytics Profiles!
The ability to have multiple profiles in Analytics is extremely convenient. You can flip back and forth without having to switch accounts. And the ability to create duplicate profiles for the same domain name, gives you the option of viewing a site profile with a specific filter (for example; seeing only traffic that resulted from social media networks, seeing a profile that returns keyword information with actual search engine rankings, or treating email sign ups as keyword searches so as to track email addresses that are entered).
The problem of course is that the more profiles you add, the more sifting you may have to do in your drop downs. This can be especially annoying for fellow account users who also have admin access, but have no need to see the umpteen duplicate profiles you created. Perhaps the easiest way to make this work for everyone (keeping your duplicate profiles AND not bogging down other admin access users) is to make sure the main profile comes up first. Since Analytics automatically lists them alphabetically, this means making sure your main profile is alphabetically the first. In the sample below, we have some legacy profiles that are kept for archiving purposes in case we ever need historical information.
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6 SEO/Web Spy Tools to Research your Competitors
In a previous post, SEO Keyword Research - Choosing Keywords for SEO, I mentioned the ability to spy on your competitors for SEO ideas. I’d like to expand on that in this post. Below is a list of free tools that will give you insight into a competitor’s SEO status. Seeing which keywords your competitors are ranking or bidding on may give you a few ideas for your own campaign. These tools should help you make more informed decisions regarding your search engine marketing campaigns. Not being first in the game isn’t always a bad thing. You can skip the growing pains and trial and error of the first comers and put all your time and resources into proven methods. Seeing which other sites are being visited by visitors to your website (as well as your competitor’s) can provide expanded knowledge on who your competitors are.
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Website Alerts with Google Analytics Intelligence
Anyone who logs into Google Analytics frequently knows that Google’s been adding one new beta feature after another. One of these recent additions has really made life easier for keeping track of website metrics and catching potential problems right away.
Setting up Alerts with Intelligence
Intelligence allows you to set up custom daily, weekly, or monthly alerts which can be emailed to you. This saves you from having to log in to see these metrics (the more profiles you manage, the more grateful you’ll be for this). In the example below, I am creating an alert so that will send me an email if a day’s worth revenue falls below a certain point (Intelligence allows you to choose exact numbers of percentages).
SEO Keyword Research - Choosing Keywords for SEO
SEO Keyword Research
One of the most important aspects of SEO is the initial research. Many webmasters and marketers spend their time optimizing for keywords that are either virtually unattainable, or return little/no value for the effort put forth. It’s important to know where to invest your time and resources to get the most return from your investment. Like the old adage says; work smarter, not harder. So here are 5 Steps for choosing the right keywords. They will apply slightly differently based on your situation (ie. whether it’s your own website, a client’s, or an employer’s), so use the portions that work for your situation.
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Difference between Revenue & Product Revenue - Avoid Confusion
When working in a fast-paced environment where different reports are needed, one of the common ‘discrepancies’ occur when Total Revenue and Product Revenue are used interchangeably. The differences is simple (tax and shipping is included in Total Revenue, but not in Product Revenue). As trivial as this seems, this can cause a lot of confusion when dealing with multiple reports for multiple departments.
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Blogs/Articles for 2009-10-12
Blogs/Articles for 2009-10-12
- Search in the New Economy - ClickZ Experts
- Why SEO Training Should Be An Organizational Imperative - Search Engine Land
- Learn more about robots.txt - Matt Cutts
- Reunifying duplicate content on your website - Google Webmaster Central Blog
- A proposal for making AJAX crawlable - Google Webmaster Central Blog
- The 6/90 Rule Part 2: Best Uses For The AdWords Keyword Report - Search Engine Land
- Google Custom Maps: A Goldmine For Local Businesses - Search Engine Land
- Web Analytics Success Measurement For Government Websites - Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik
- Car Makers Get Restless About Ad Campaigns - WSJ
Blogs/Articles for 2009-10-06
Blogs/Articles for 2009-10-06
- Can Google Stay on Top of the Web? – Business Week
- Canonical Tag 2.0: Google To Add Cross Domain Support - Search Engine Land
- Google Sandbox Effect – SEO Chat
- Appraising Your Investment in Enterprise Web Analytics – Google Analytics Blog
- New parameter handling tool helps with duplicate content issues – Google Webmaster Central
- Page Rank Optimization – SEO Chat
- Page Rank Sculpting – SEO Chat
Google Ad Groups Data Gathering Made Tolerable with Custom Reporting
For the most part, Google Analytics tracks Google AdWords data (big surprise!). However, there is one odd quirk about the manner Analytics reports AdWords data—you can only view metrics for an Ad Groups within their respective campaign. In other words, when Lumberg wants metrics like revenue and bounce rates for every AdWords AdGroup, you have to dive into every AdWords Campaign and grab the data for the AdGroups within that Campaign.
This is fine if all of your Ad Groups fall into the same Campaign. But if you’re running a large e-commerce site, chances are you’ve got numerous Campaigns, and numerous Ad Groups within those campaigns
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