In an ideal world, the understanding set by us, as experts, would be easily transferred across to demanding clients demanding to know what? Why? And when (…will I make my millions?)… Added to that would be the freedom to develop and grow advertising campaigns in the way we want, to promote growth, return and marketplace stability. That would be an ideal world.

In truth, managing paid search campaigns is about making the right decisions as opposed to doing what you want to do. Sometimes they go hand in hand but the majority of the time the right decision stifles creativity and reduces freedom.

It has to. The right decision is always reached through analysis and projections on how best we can meet the demands of our clients. Without defined targets in place for us to smash, how possibly can we show what benefits we are bringing to a client’s business and how their paid search campaign is an absolute necessity to the continued growth of their company?

These targets are the shackles on the wrists of a PPC Manager, the cautioning, calming effect preventing us from temporary madness or kamikaze tendencies.

Throughout my short 3 years as a PPC Campaign Manager, it has often come to pass that the following rough generalisation is the best way of ensuring that the client’s targets are being met.

Long Tail Keyword Campaigns are more profitable than Generic Keyword Campaigns – which are more profitable than Remarketing Campaigns – which are more profitable than Managed Placement Campaigns – which are more profitable than Interest & Topic Based Campaigns – which are more profitable than Keyword Display Campaigns and anything on YouTube….…..annnnnddddd breath.

Throw into the mix a PLA Campaign where possible, perhaps the odd competitor campaigns and of course the compulsory Brand Campaign and that is generally the blue print for success (from most to least profitable) for most PPC accounts. Only when we are getting the absolute most out of our long tail keywords will we move onto more generic keywords in the knowledge that the performance of the long tails will bail us out if necessary. Only when we are getting the most out of our managed placement campaign will we think about expanding the reach slightly through interests and topics.

But is there a better way?

Going back to the ideal world, with complete freedom to grow a paid search campaign how I think best, surely it would have the best long term benefit to develop a surefooted, far reaching blend of search, display, rich media and retargeting that will have an efficient concoction of direct response, branding, rebranding and overall growth of the business in the relevant marketplace.

To do so would take a lot of effort, not just in the work itself, but also in the justification of doing this. Businesses need answers to where their money is going and we as the people in charge of their money need to justify our answers.

But it is possible.

Creative advertising combined with effective attribution and interaction analysis can kick back the results the client is demanding. We can have the fun of running YouTube and Display campaigns whilst watching attributed Brand searches grow, we can increase our spend on more generic keywords in search campaigns whilst analysing and interpreting the data they spit out to expand and develop our more specifically targeted search campaigns, and we can use complex rules to create expansive remarketing lists to precisely rebrand to users we think will be interested in specific offers or new products. We just need to justify it, attributing value back to the spend on these campaigns is vital, understanding the interactions between all mediums and giving each a key role in the amalgamation of all that is online marketing can give us the freedom to use our imagination.

All in all, it is possible, even with tough targets, to be creative and do what you want to do, it just takes effort.

Keep following for case studies on how we managed to do what we want to do and justify it.

The post Untapped PPC Potential appeared first on Inside Online.

Inside Online are looking for an experienced web designer in Chester.

Skills

An eye for modern clean design and knowledge of HTML and CSS

Proficient with:

PhotoShop / Illustrator / Adobe Creative Suite

Job Outline

Exceptional online marketing agency seeks a highly creative Web Designer to join its vibrant and growing team in Chester.

This is an excellent opportunity for a talented Web Designer to work across a broad spectrum of projects, requiring a high level of proficiency in digital design using HTML and CSS; demonstrated through a good portfolio that displays your ability to turn ideas into creative design solutions.

The Web Designer will have at least one years professional experience, although a high calibre graduate would be considered.

A good knowledge of information architecture and UX/UI principles is required with a good track record of creating user friendly websites.

Required Design Knowledge

• Modern design styles
• Conversion focused design
• Responsive design
• Typography
• Wire framing
  
  

Required Technical Knowledge

• HTML/CSS
• Experience of WordPress
  
  

Nice To Have

• Jquery
• Version control
• Rapid prototyping
  
  

Package

This is a brilliant opportunity to join a highly successful and respected digital agency that never stands still, remaining at the forefront of the industry. In reward for your creative contribution you will be rewarded with a salary of up to £24,000 and an excellent benefits package including 25 days holiday, a bonus, private healthcare and vast opportunity to develop your skills and career.

Contact

Please send your C.V, portfolio and cover letter to inspired@insideonline.co.uk

(Recruitment agencies need not apply, any C.V’s sent will be seen as gifts)

Keywords: Web Design, UX, UI, CSS, HTML, Adobe CS5 (Photoshop, Illustrator), responsive design, user experience, HTML5, CSS3, Web Designer

The post WEB DESIGNER JOB appeared first on Inside Online.

It is, after all, plainly obvious that the new update leads to restrictions on overall control over a campaign in terms of spend and appearance, and a restricted advertiser is a worse off advertiser, and a worse off advertiser is a better off Google.

The obvious restrictions now in place relate to appearance on different devices. An advanced account previous would have campaigns split out by device where one campaign would appear 3 times in the account, with campaigns targeting Computers, Mobiles and Tablets respectively.

Personally I have also managed accounts where there was a need to split out even further into IOS Devices and Android.

The main benefit of such a structure is the bespoke management of keyword/adgroup bids in relation to their performance on each device. It has long been understood that the behaviour of users changes dependent on what sort of device they are using, therefore how campaigns are optimised should be different for each device also.

Enhanced campaigns have put a stop to this efficient way of PPC management. The suggestion from Google is that Tablets are now considered the same as Computers and as such performance should not differ (something I have to disagree with) and as such you will no longer be able to manage them in separate campaigns or indeed with separate bids at all. Everything I have seen when comparing performance of Computers against Tablets suggests that they differ, particularly in terms of CPC (competition), Conversion Rate and definitely in terms of Average Order Value.

It seems to me that the collective genius that is Google has decided that Tablets are the same as Computers on looks alone; failing to take into consideration anything else that might determine the collective performance trends on each device.

One factor of such would be Demographics. Though it is likely to change in the future with the projected migration from computers to tablets becoming more obvious, there is currently still discrepancies between the nature and demographics of people who use tablets over people who use computers.

So why have they decided this is the right way to go? Well it is true to say that computers are becoming more similar to tablets, it’s just not correct to imply they are the same, the cynical explanation is that from a Google point of view this change will ensure that appearance is as consistent on Tablets as it is on Computers, with little to zero control to the advertiser. In effect it ensures that Google get their pay cheque irrelevant of performance on Tablets alone. Should you worry about it? There’s no point, as it is now impossible to put any restrictions against appearance on Tablets, there is nothing we can do… However, all in all this doesn’t necessarily affect the day to day management of a campaign, the data has simply been accumulated and the process and targets are still in place, any PPC manager worth his bacon will still be able to pull the data apart to find areas of strength and weakness and exploit and restrict. So, overall, no need to worry, just an inconvenience for your poor pay per click manager.

Mobiles are also no longer allowed to be targeted in individual campaigns; however, different to tablets you still have a level of control over performance. Replacing the opportunity to separate computers and mobiles by campaign you will now need to keep them in the same campaign but set a campaign level percentage bid (percentage increase/decrease) for mobile traffic. The assumption taken here by the “experts” at Google is that one individual keyword (A) in a campaign should perform consistently in terms of performance variance across devices as the another keyword (B). Yet again something that they have shot themselves in the foot with. The understanding with keyword performance on Mobile has always been that the shorter (more generic) keywords receive more traffic on Mobiles than on computers, an obvious statement based on the likelihood that someone using Google on their mobile is less likely to want to type in longer tail keyword variations. Advice from Google was always that Mobile specific campaigns should be more weighted towards generic keywords compared to campaigns targeting computers. The ability to optimise at keyword level always came in good here, with reductions in CPC for generics balanced against increased CPCs for the less searched but better performing specifics balancing out to give an overall positive effect. Well, no longer can we do this.

Like I said for tablets though this does not necessarily effect the day to day management of a campaign, for best results on Mobile when changing to enhanced campaigns, the PPC Campaign manager should look not only at top level performance across devices but also how adgroup performance differs. The result of which will give a percentage increase/decrease at campaign level for Mobiles and optimisation at keyword/adgroup level to ensure the percentage is correctly balanced across all campaigns.

Why this change is a positive one for Google is that users can no longer opt out of advertising on Mobiles and we have less control over appearance, hence spend on Mobiles will increase. Again it is difficult to understanding the reasoning behind the sudden change. However, anyone who has heard from Google in the last few years will know that they once visited a Woods Witch who drank their blood to tell them the future, and the future was Mobile. It was first predicted to be “The Year of The Mobile” in 2011, searches and spend on Mobile were projected to increase at such a rate that people will be throwing their laptops and desktops into the bin on mass…for some reason some selfish person cancelled the year of the mobile without telling anyone. It was postponed until 2012 but luckily Google kept hold of all the presentations and documents sent out to followers in 2011 and with a subtle paint job were able to tell or the future again, “2012 is the year of the mobile!!” alas it seems it wasn’t, but never fear there’s always next year. And here we are, the new year of the mobile, 2013! This time however, Google have prepared well. If anything that can be interpreted from the change to enhanced campaigns, the most obvious effect will be an increase in spend on Mobiles, so I will leave that with the definition of a self-fulfilled prophecy, well done Google.

“a false definition of the situation evoking a new behaviour which makes the originally false conception come true” (Merton 1968: 477)

Despite the negativity there are a few additions to campaigns in this update that are enough to make a potential disastrous change for some into a fantastic update for many.

Ad group level sitelinks have been included in the new update. Used effectively this could massively improve Click Through Rate, in turn having a significant effect on Quality Score and campaign stability.

Likewise, the new feature of percentage bid increase/decrease by location can help improve cost efficiency no end. With a thorough review of the difference in performance at town/city level, bids can be increased/decrease based on core metrics. Something that we have tested so far and seen very positive results.

The overall opinion from our analysis of enhanced campaigns therefore is that for experienced PPC Campaign Managers it will represent no issues, in fact with correct and efficient management of the campaigns there are a lot of opportunities that can be had.

The post Enhanced Campaigns and the year of the Mobile 201(x) (swap x with 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9) appeared first on Inside Online.

Panda Refresh Coming in Next Few Days

Webmasters can expect another Google Panda update to roll out as soon as this Friday (15^th) or on 18^thMonday.  Aimed at pushing high-quality sites higher in search results, the Panda Algo was first released in February 2011.  The previous update was 22nd January and affected just 1.2 per cent of UK search queries.

The average Panda update comes around every four weeks and it has been almost seven so an algorithm update has been a long time coming.

Reports following previous Panda updates suggest a surge in traffic before the algorithm struck.  Webmasters are warned to keep an eye on analytics over the next few days, an unexplainable surge in traffic could indicate that Panda will soon hit.

The Next Generation of Penguin Update in Works

During the SMX West Panel this week, Cutts also announced that Google is working on the next generation of the Penguin update.  Whilst a date has not been set for when the update will arrive, he warns that it will be one of the most talked about algorithm refreshes of 2013.

Claiming the next Penguin update will be very significant, we can expect ripples through the SEO industry this year.

Link Networks Beware

Matt Cutts further warned that Google will be targeting link networks in its battle to clean up search results.  Google’s Distinguished Engineer confirmed that the search engine will be taking down one or two very large link networks in the coming weeks, having tracked and studied them over the last few months.

It is hard to know what will occur following the impending updates but what is clear is that some webmasters may be in for a bumpy ride.

The post Matt Cutts Warns Webmasters of Ominous Penguin and Panda 25 Algorithm Updates appeared first on Inside Online.

The day after HMV went into administration, on the 16^th January, the HMV.com website was suspended. From an SEO perspective this website suspension was enacted as follows. Visiting any URL on the HMV.com website (not just the homepage – try this one for example – http://www.hmv.com/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=737420 ) yields a 302 temporary redirect to the following image – http://hmv.com/hmv/site_down_1a.jpg – which returns a 200 status.

The net effect of this as Googlebot tries to crawl the various URLs’ it has stored against the domain over the last decade or so is a multitude of temporary redirects to an image. So how will Google treat this over the coming weeks?  Well initially, chances are that the numerous pages from HMV.com in the index (approximately 1.9 million at the time of writing) will hold their rankings for a time. But increasingly, as Google continues to crawl through these redirects, not to mention the assumed dramatic drop in other metrics that Google no doubt monitor such as CTR (yes, even on organic listings) and bounce back to results, then Google will quickly start to put the pieces of the puzzle together and begin to drop many of HMV’s pages from its index. We can already see the effect on rankings – let’s take a look at the current impact of organic visibility for the site over the previous couple of weeks as measured by SearchMetrics:

Unsurprisingly the result over the last couple of weeks has been a dramatic drop in visibility (~70% down week on week!).  Some examples of high volume keywords where the site has seen ranking drops are shown below:

Interestingly, in the first couple of weeks of December as can be seen on the visibility graph above, the domain saw a 31% increase in visibility to its highest level in nearly 2 years. What caused this increase? Could it be that the vultures were already circling for HMV and this increased coverage and links from high authority newspaper sites and the like ironically caused positive movements in rankings and therefore visibility?

Certainly it seems that interest in HMV piqued around that time – below is a snapshot from the news search interest function in Google Trends.

Looking more closely at this it’s easy to find plenty of news stories from big publishers around that time about the companies financial difficulties after HMV announced on December 13^th that they would be likely to breach loan agreements and shares dropped around 40%:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/hmvs-nightmare-before-christmas-8413719.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/news/article-2247764/HMVs-hopes-encore-fading-fast-likely-breach-loan-agreements.html

It could even be that this abnormally sharp increase in branded queries provided Google with a signal that this site is one that people are currently looking for and therefore should be rewarded with more prominent listings? This is just conjecture at this stage and probably best saved for another post on another day…

So we’ve seen that this method of 302 redirecting to a holding page doesn’t do a whole lot of good in terms of preserving rankings. How about a different approach?

Jessops.com went into administration slightly earlier than HMV, announcing the closure of all their stores on 11^th January 2013. In terms of how their website technically shut their doors and delivered the administrators message, Jessops have taken a slightly different approach. Visiting any page on the Jessops site (again, here’s an example if you would like to test this yourself – http://www.jessops.com/instoreprintingservices) currently doesn’t redirect anywhere but instead presents an HTML page containing a message from the administrators at the URL requested with a 200 status code. So that is ~84,000 URL’s which now all return the exact same content, same title tag, same meta description etc. So what impact did this have on visibility and rankings?

Yikes. That’s a ~65% drop in organic visibility over the previous 2 weeks.

Now I guess the overall point I’m trying to get to here is this: Just think of the value of all this lost traffic. If you were to put a site like HMV up for sale with its rankings of three or four weeks ago, imagine what that’d be worth. Certainly in the millions of pounds range, probably even into tens of millions. The website and its associated traffic has a value. Do administration companies such as Deloitte understand SEO or the web? Probably not (although I have to confess that my knowledge of being an administrator is a little rusty also). As the weeks go on and these redirects remain in place, the chances of recovering these rankings grow slimmer and the value of the site in question decreases. When you consider that Jessops have an estimated debt of around £60m and are not able to honour customers gift cards or pre-paid deposits, allowing this asset to just wither and die seems insane.

There surely MUST be value to be extracted here, but of course maintaining rankings is key.

Were I advising the administrators on what to do with the website, one option I personally may have proposed would have been something like this:

1. Turn off the checkout and/or add to basket functionality.
2. Keep all content as it is at existing URL’s.
3. Place a banner at the top of each page with a shortened summary of the Administrators message that links through to the full message. The summary could read:

“The website HMV.com has been suspended following the appointment of the joint administrators. No purchases can be made online until further notice. Click here to read the full statement.”

By doing this, the only way rankings may be harmed would be as a result of deterioration in metrics such as bounce back to search results and/or CTR from search results. Maybe there’s a more complex legality issue here that I don’t fully understand, but to me this seems like it would satisfy the requirements of the administrators?

Failing that, returning the administrators notice page with a 503 sitedown response code would surely preserve rankings for longer than the 302 redirects or 200 responses on duplicate pages?

Of course, wherever there are losers in organic visibility there are also winners. This can be clearly demonstrated by viewing the organic visibility of currys.co.uk at the same time as the collapse of Comet last year:

So who are the winners from the latest high street casualties?

This is a lot easier to examine with Jessops than HMV as Jessops covered a much more specific niche (namely photography and photography equipment) whereas HMV had a much broader offering (games, movies, dvds, electronics etc)

Googling around a few high volume keywords that Jessops used to rank prominently for and discarding the likes of Amazon in favour of niche photography equipment sites, we are left with the likes of:

www.wexphotographic.com www.parkcameras.com www.whatdigitalcamera.com www.bristolcameras.co.uk

To what extent have these sites benefited from Jessops demise?

Wexphotographic.com – 54% increase in visibility over the past two weeks.

Parkcameras.com – 16% Increase in visibility over the past two weeks.

Whatdigitalcamera.com – 25% increase in visibility over the past two weeks.

Bristolcameras.co.uk – 31% increase in visibility over the past two weeks.

So all seem to have experienced jumps in visibility, likely as a result of moving up a number of rankings to fill the positions vacated by Jessops.

How have other companies who have gone into administration in the past fared? We’ve already seen an example in Comet.co.uk – who went into administration in November 2012. Another example is Ethel Austin a former high street fashion retailer. Their visibility over the past couple of years looks like this:

The sites short lived visibility has since whittled away to zero and visiting the site today at www.ethelaustin.co.uk yields a browser error message:

So although this site has never had huge visibility and rankings, it would have had some value and could have been sold on to another fashion retailer for page-by-page 301 redirects. Today the website is essentially worthless. It’d be a real shame to see the HMV and Jessops sites go the same way, hanging about until all their value has gone.

Do you agree with this post? Do these sites have value to other online retailers and could be sold on? Do you believe that administrators could seek SEO advice and assistance to better maintain the value of these sites? Let us know in the comments below.

The post What Happens When a Site Goes into Administration – An SEO Case Study appeared first on Inside Online.

But as far as I can see, no-one seems to have come up with a definitive explanation of what happened on this day and Google seem to be denying anything happened at all and that it was all a figment of our collective imaginations. After undertaking some of my own analysis I have my own hunch about what happened and who was affected, so this post aims to dig a little deeper into these fluxes and unravel the mystery a little more.

Everyone agrees but Google: So Mozcast is pretty confident a lot changed in the SERPs on that day and it seems that other similar SERP volatility tools agree. SerpMetrics flux monitor and SERPs.com both show peaks on this day, although perhaps not as pronounced as the MOZcast peak. So regardless of what Google say, I and many others in the industry are certain that something happened and that something had a pretty big impact.

SERPMetrics Flux Chart

SERPs.com flux chart

Google Helping out the Little Guy? I spent my Christmas break visiting family. While I live and work in Chester in the North West of the UK, I grew up in a small market town in Wiltshire nearly 200 miles to the South and it is here that my family still live. So when I sat down over the Christmas break to look into this a little deeper, I was in a completely different location to the one I usually perform most of my searches from. After Googling a few things, I started to notice that the results looked ‘not how I expected them to look’. I know it seems quite a vague this to say, but there seemed to be a number of big websites missing from the results and there seemed to be lots of smaller local business websites ranking very prominently. And when I say these sites were ranking prominently, I don’t mean in the 7 pack of map results, I mean in the genuine-and-glorious-coveted-10-per-page-organic results. After years of complaints from many in the SEO world that Google favours big brands, was this a shift to redress the balance somewhat and help out the little guy?

Let’s Dig Deeper So thinking about this prominence of local small businesses, I started to look at the sort of queries that might imply local intent. We already know that Google has the ability to work out if a search has local intent because they filed this patent back in 2010 that was granted in June 2012.

Take the query ‘Wedding Photographer’. There are no doubt thousands upon thousands of wedding photographers distributed across the country, most of whom will have put together a small 2 or 3 page website containing their contact details and examples of their work. This is the sort of site that would never rank anywhere in the organic results for a query like “Wedding Photographer” were it not for Google applying local bias to searches (something that they have been doing by default for a long time incidentally). By fiddling about with the location settings in Google we can see approximately how the top 10 differs for this query in different parts of the country:

Note – all searches were performed on Jan 4th 2013 in Google Chrome’s Incognito mode, in a fresh browser each time.

Wedding Photographer – Location Set as Bristol

1. www.kevinmullinsphotography.co.uk/ 2. www.stevenbrooksphotographer.co.uk/ 3. www.yourperfectweddingphotographer.co.uk/

Seven Pack: bristolweddingphotographer.org.uk/ martinskikulis.com/ albertpalmerphotography.com/ www.smcphotography.net/ www.howardweddingphotography.co.uk/ www.nickwilliamsphotography.co.uk/ www.taphousephotography.com/

4. www.memorieslikethis.co.uk/ 5. www.samgibsonweddings.co.uk/ 6. www.dcphotographic.co.uk/ 7. www.p9weddings.co.uk/

Wedding Photographer – Location Set as Leeds

1. www.kevinmullinsphotography.co.uk/ 2. www.stevenbrooksphotographer.co.uk/ 3. www.yourperfectweddingphotographer.co.uk/

Seven pack: www.leedsweddingphotographer.net/ www.richardwilsonphotography.co.uk/ www.photography-backdrops.co.uk/ www.justinzhangphotography.com/ www.jezphotos.co.uk/ www.weddingphotographerleeds.co.uk/ www.lottywiltshaw.co.uk/

4. www.joelskinglephotography.co.uk/ 5. www.markdolby.co.uk/ 6. www.dcphotographic.co.uk/ 7. www.michaelstringer.co.uk/ 8. www.barnabyaldrick.com/

Wedding Photographer – Location Set as Glasgow

1. www.kevinmullinsphotography.co.uk/ 2. www.stevenbrooksphotographer.co.uk/ 3. www.yourperfectweddingphotographer.co.uk/ 4. www.trinityphotographer.co.uk/ 5. www.europhotographic.com/ 6. www.dcphotographic.co.uk/ 7. www.christophercurrie.co.uk/ 8. www.ndkweddingphotography.com/ 9. www.candysnaps.co.uk/ 10. www.greatscotphotography.com/

Note: no seven pack was present on these results

So from these results, there are 4 ever presents, maintaining the same ranking in each set of results:

1. www.kevinmullinsphotography.co.uk/ 2. www.stevenbrooksphotographer.co.uk/ 3. www.yourperfectweddingphotographer.co.uk/ 6. www.dcphotographic.co.uk/

The rest seem to be small one-man-band type Websites. As an unmarried man this is probably the first time I’ve Googled “Wedding photographer” and as I’m not a polygamist it’s certainly the first time I’ve searched for this query from multiple locations across the country. Have these sites always been here and I’ve just not looked for them or is this a more recent development? Let’s look at some of the smaller sites that are ranking page one in each local set of results and examine their visibility over time using SearchMetrics.

For anyone unfamiliar with SearchMetrics, it’s a great tool that monitors the rankings for millions of keywords each week across a variety of different niches. Wherever it finds a certain domain ranking for a certain keyword, SearchMetrics assign that domain a visibility score, based on the search volume for that keyword and the ranking of that domain. It does this for every domain it finds across the millions of keywords it checks – therefore you can quickly and easily see how a domains visibility has been impacted by an algorithm update or penalty, or of course as a result of changes in the various SEO elements such as site architecture, accessibility, backlink profile etc.

Memorieslikethis.co.uk – ranking 4th in a localised search from Bristol

Joelskinglephotography.co.uk – ranking 4th in localised results in Leeds:

Europhotographic.com – ranking 5th in localised results in Glasgow:

So all seem to have seen a dramatic increase in visibility in the last month of 2012. But thinking about how SearchMetrics works, it doesn’t check the rankings for each keyword multiple times from a variety of locations. It checks the rankings for each keyword once per week  from a non-personalised static location. So how are these changes in local visibility showing up in SearchMetrics graphs?

The answer is a two part answer. The first part is that SearchMetrics doesn’t stop at the first 10 results. It checks all the way down the 50th result. It also stores the results each week so we can go back in time and see how each site has moved around. So let’s look at Memorieslikethis.co.uk and see where they were ranking at the beginning of November when there visibility was 0.

1st November 2012 – Query “Wedding Photographer” – ranking – not in top 50

Compare this with the results from 20th December:

20th December 2012 – Query “Wedding Photographer” – ranking – 29th

Due to the search volume of the keyword, this modest ranking would be enough to register on SearchMetrics visibility chart. But notice the movement of the other sites around them for this query:

The arrow on the right depicts how the ranking has changed from the previous weeks data (up or down) and the number indicates how far it has moved. Those are some big ranking changes! And the snippet of the title tag below each listing shows small photographers from a variety of locations. (click to enlarge image).

The second part of the answer is that SearchMetrics also monitors rankings for a variety of location specific queries, provided they have a sufficient search volume. So for example “Wedding photographer Bristol”. Let’s see how Memorieslikethis.co.uk have fared in the rankings for this keyword.

Again, looking first at the 1st November when their visibility was 0:

1st November 2012 – Query “Wedding Photographer Bristol” – ranking – not in top 50 and comparing to the 20th:

20th December 2012 – Query “Wedding Photographer Bristol” – ranking – 5th Quite a dramatic increase.

A similar impact can be seen in other industries with local intent too. Without pulling the full analysis above, take a look at the visibility change for these sites that rank for plumbing related queries:

sandysplumbing.co.uk

eddieplumbingservices.com

a1limited.co.uk:

What Next?

Clearly something happened in Mid December and it seemed to have a big impact. I personally believe that the change impacted searches with local intent and levelled the playing field for the little guy somewhat by increasing the chance that smaller localised sites may rank for these queries – although I currently don’t have enough evidence of this to say for certain. While this post doesn’t fully answer the question of what the change was and what it impacted, hopefully it will stimulate further thoughts from the SEO community – so please let’s start the discussion in the comments below – does this spark any thoughts? does this correlate with what you’re seeing? Have you seen similar results in other niches?

The post Digging Deeper into the December 13th Update appeared first on Inside Online.

The update impacted 0.6% of English-US queries and has been designed to go after “low quality exact match domains (EMD) to ensure they do not rank well in the Google search results”.

Cutts’ two tweets on the matter read as follows (both posted on 28^th September):

“Minor weather report: small upcoming Google algo change will reduce low-quality “exact-match” domains in search results.”

“New exact-match domain (EMD) algo affects 0.6% of English-US queries to a noticeable degree. Unrelated to Panda/Penguin.”

The important thing to note here is that the algorithmic update is totally unrelated to Penguin or Panda. Many webmasters will have seen their rankings plummet or totally disappear and feared for an update or refresh of these now infamous algorithms, but the EMD update was a separate move altogether.

Whilst owners of sites such as www.teethwhitening.com will be licking their wounds, they can hardly be surprised as Matt Cutts and the Google Webspam team have been discussing looking into exact match domains for a few years now.

And the bad news for low quality sites doesn’t end there…

As if this wasn’t enough, Matt Cutts then went on to announce this week that whilst the EMD update was being rolled out, so was the latest Panda update.

This was Panda 20 and is the largest update (not refresh) for some time, affecting 2.4% of search queries. This explains why many webmasters that didn’t run exact match domains were also seeing drops in the SERPs and meant that any low quality exact match domains now do not stand a chance.

The official line from Matt Cutts regarding Panda 20 is:

“Google began rolling out a new update of Panda on Thursday, 9/27. This is actually a Panda algorithm update, not just a data update. A lot of the most-visible differences went live Thursday 9/27, but the full rollout is baking into our index and that process will continue for another 3-4 days or so. This update affects about 2.4% of English queries to a degree that a regular user might notice, with a smaller impact in other languages (0.5% in French and Spanish, for example).”

So, anyone working with exact match domains and/or low quality sites will be experiencing severe difficulties and the next 3-4 days could herald yet more SERP fluctuations, the challenge may well be working out which update you have been effected by.

The post Hectic Week In the SERPs Sees EMD and Panda 20 Algorithmic Updates Rolled Out appeared first on Inside Online.

These moves by Google have been made possible by their purchase of Beat That Quote back in spring 2011 for £38 million. They developed these comparison services and have enable Google to invent their own adverts and reap the dividends. Similarly to the credit card comparison service, Google implemented a car insurance search engine to the top of the results pages directly below the leading PPC on 10^th September.

Many in the SEO industry may well be pointing out that this sort of conduct contradicts the search engine’s ethos of site’s not dominating a fixed position in the sponsored search. When searching for ‘car insurance’, this is what a searcher will currently be presented with. Whilst their own advert admittedly comes after the two best paid results, it totally usurps the organic results begging the question as to whether this is fair on other sites in the market. Indeed, Google themselves decided that this sort of practice is unfair so why have they implemented such a tactic? This said, the Google comparison search functionality does come with benefits for users that can’t be matched by profit conscious companies.

For example, Google promises to combat excess figures, no frills services that could exclude benefits such as courtesy cars and will under no circumstances sell on any customer details. With Google’s visibility in the car insurance industry is already 75% indicating that they will soon be getting the lion’s share of this market very soon and this may well be far from the end of their endeavours in such sectors.

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The interesting thing here for SEO’s is how Google is able to provide this functionality. First suspicions leant towards an in depth crawl of IMDB and a subsequent analysis of the data. But according to Google’s Roya Soleimani this isn’t the case. Soleimani has stated that the Bacon Number feature utilised the Google knowledge graph, which is Google’s map of real world things and their connections, picked up from various places around the web. This ability to tie together connections from huge pools of data really showcases Google’s increasing sophistication and it will be really interesting to see how else they may apply this understanding of real world people, places and things to search in the future. For most people the aim of the game is to find the highest bacon number possible. The largest I’ve found to date myself is 4 with Harry Houdini:

But I have a couple of other personal favourite bacon numbers. First up, the piggy connection between Kevin Bacon + Victoria Beckham:

And secondly, the classic sandwich combo of Bacon and Brie:

Does anyone have any other personal favourite bacon numbers?

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The new “Search Queries Alerts” will alert webmasters when major changes occur with regard to search queries to a given site the usual way and may highlight both expected and non-expected changes. Spikes and lulls in impressions and clicks may be flagged as well as potential technical issues with the site.

What is important to bear in mind with this new notification is that it is not the same as the “Big Traffic Change for Top URL” alert that was implemented earlier in the summer. Although similar, this newer message simply refers to search queries and not all traffic coming into a website. The official line from the powers that be at Google goes as follows:

The Search Queries feature in Webmaster Tools shows, among other things, impressions and clicks for your top pages over time. For most sites, these numbers follow regular patterns, so when sudden spikes or drops occur, it can make sense to look into what caused them. Some changes are due to differing demand for your content, other times they may be due to technical issues that need to be resolved, such as broken redirects. For example, a steady stream of clicks which suddenly drops to zero is probably worth investigating.

This notification is still being worked on by Google as they develop the sensitivity threshold of the messages and they urge anyone with any feedback on this alert to post some feedback to their help forum.

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