Archive for September, 2010
Posted on September 29, 2010 by Christina Keffer
It’s two weeks until our next SEO Workshop!
We took the excellent feedback from our last workshop back in June and used it to make this workshop even better.
To better serve attendees with varying levels of experience, we’ve split this SEO workshop into two half-day sessions.
From 8:30 AM till 12:15 we’ll be covering the basics:
What are search engines?
How do they interact with my site?
What can I do on page and off page to increase my rankings and traffic?
From 1:00 PM till 5:00 PM, we’ll be covering advanced SEO strategies including:
Advanced Link Building
Advanced Social Media strategies
Using Google Analytics for SEO
Each session is $129. Several attendees have signed up for both sessions for $199.
It promises to be an educational, intensive day of learning how to get your site to rank! Check our our Pittsburgh SEO training page for specifics about individual classes and logistics information. Or register here.
We hope we’ll be seeing you on the 12th of October!
View Comments (1 Response) | Categories: Announcements, Search Engine Optimization
Posted on September 22, 2010 by Robbin Steif
“So we’re designing a new site,” the question usually starts, “And, we want to make it Google Analytics friendly.” As you design (and if you design with GA in mind), here are some things to think about. Yes, there are plenty of workarounds if you don’t design for GA and then discover it later, but if it’s all the same, why not make your site easily measurable? BTW, I always say, don’t sacrifice your conversion for your measurement. If you know that something is hard to measure but you also have some data that leads you to believe that it converts well — go for it.
- Success pages. Try to have a unique “thank you” page for every goal you are going to measure. Also, think about rolling up thank you pages into one goal that you can later take apart, as needed. For example, you might want the following two thank you (success) pages: www.mysite.com/thanks/contactus and www.mysite.com/thanks/request-bid. You can now make those into two separate goals, each with their own success page, or roll them together using this head match, /thanks/ — then when you want to look at the contribution of each, check out the “Goal Verification” report.
- On-site search. It will be much easier to track your on-site search if it includes a query parameter, like this: www.mysite.com/search/?q=Robbin. Yes, there are workarounds.
- Tracking sections of your site. Companies who are interested in tracking whole sections of their site — maybe even creating a separate profile for those sections — would be wise to name the URLs so that they can be easily accessed in the Content > Content Drilldown report. That report is ultimately just a report of directories, so you will see www.mysite.com/folderA and www.mysite.com/folderB, etc. Then when you drill down on /folderA, you see /folderA/subfolder1 and /folderB/subfolder2, etc. So if you name your URLs with a strong parent/child architecture, working to keep like content in like folders, you’ll go a long way toward tracking it. Plus, you can create a profile that just includes everything in /folderA, and one that … oh, you get it.
- The domain issue. Jonathan Weber from here at Luna pointed out to me that this breaks down into two issues – a) try to use your own domain at all times (yes, there are workarounds) and b) If you can’t, determine if the third party domain(s) support cross-domain tracking.
- If you have the luxury of staying on the same domain throughout your whole site, try to. I am often surprised by companies who choose to create a second domain in an effort to have a “micro site” strategy — it is not only harder on your GA, but harder for your SEO team. If you must go from domain to domain, be prepared to do the cross domain work required of GA, or be prepared to live without data you might otherwise want (such as unique visits, or referring source for those visits that went to the other domain.)
- Above, I assumed a variety of things about that third party domain. The big question is, can you put code on it? You can’t put code on a wordpress.com site (as opposed to to your WordPress.org blog that is software you have downloaded.) You can’t put code on your PayPal checkout. Everyone who has cool workarounds for these is welcome to weigh in.
- Subdomains. People always ask if they should do blog.mysite.com or mysite.com/blog. Since this post is about Google Analytics — the former, i.e. blog.mysite.com, just requires an extra line of code in your Google Analytics tracking code (not such a big deal.) But if you are choosing — subdomains are not nearly as good for SEO as folders (mysite.com/blog) are.
- Frames and iframes. They are just hard to work with. Not impossible, but since “you asked,” you probably want to have a good reason for them if you care about GA Friendly (and easy.)
- Redirects. Server side redirects are the easiest way to go — be sure that they pass along query parameters.
- The small stuff. Well, they say that you shouldn’t sweat the small stuff. So if you have /path and /path/ (i.e. an extra trailing slash) or if you have the same page with various names, you can change it with filters. Of course, when your site becomes millions of pages, that is no longer so easy — but then, it’s no longer small stuff, is it?
Your turn — Robbin
View Comments (25 Responses) | Categories: Google Analytics
Posted on September 8, 2010 by Christina Keffer
Well. Today certainly has been a day. And it’s only 2:00 PM
Google rolled out Google Instant which modifies the SERPS as users type in their search terms.
My first impression was negative, and I admit it’s because I don’t like change. But it’s also because in a few minutes my brain went all haywire and I realized the ramifications for my industry. If this type of user interface catches on, there will have to be some serious changes in the way I think about keyword choice and optimization for my clients.
“But wait!” you say. “Google said the actual RANKINGS won’t change, just the way in which they’re presented.”
(http://www.google.com/instant/ :
Q: Does this change impact the ranking of search results?
A: No, this change does not impact the ranking of search results.)
While this may be totally true, it doesn’t really matter.
Say, for instance, that my client’s biggest money making keyphrase is “blue widgets from outer space.” It’s the key phrase that brings them the most targeted, conversion-oriented traffic. They were ranking number one for this term (thank you very much) and they were happy as a clam.
Now, with Google Instant, searchers may not be getting past the key phrase “blue widgets” before they are distracted by the shiny changing results parading around in front of them. The kicker is, they might end up clicking on a bunch of these less-focused pages and searching longer on those sites for what they want.
Am I whining because my long-tail, less competitive keyword might not matter as much? Sure. But I also feel like the user’s experience won’t be as enriched by constantly changing SERPS as the big G would like to think. Mostly, though, I feel bad for my client that spent a long time refining their product landing page to exactly fit what the user was looking for only to have it languish, unnoticed (potentially.)
Organic Results Below the Fold.
I’m using my super dorky big monitor right now, so the suggested search box, which used to simply overlay the search engine results but now actually pushes them down the page, allowed three of the organic results to remain above the fold. However, were I on my puny but awesome netbook, those organic results would be buried quite nicely under the paid search results. Sadness pile.
PPC? Impressions? Clickthrough Rates?
I wonder how long it will take before Adwords charges by impression? Hah. The user only has to pause for three seconds in order to trigger a new set of paid search results. Sheesh. Also, consider clickthrough rate as it pertains to quality score. If your impressions skyrocket because someone paused, then finished their search and your add appeared twice, but the quantity of clickthroughs stay the same, that is going to stink.
On the OTHER Hand
Maybe it’s not longtail but short tail keywords that are in for it. I just did a search for Distilled (the brand name of a SEO giant) and came up with a lot of distilled water pages where previously said company used to rank first. I had to search for “Distilled SEO” to get the site I wanted. I also just did a search for blue widgets from outer space. Just for funsies.
What I KNOW Will Change.
The way I include search terms in title tags will definitely change since the title tags (as i see it right now) will be increasingly important.
The way I research keywords and how I construct user behavior models will change. Maybe a little, maybe a lot.
The way I explain the SERPS to clients will change a lot, obviously. Also, I see a further decreased focus on rankings and a stronger focus on traffic metrics used as benchmarks for success.
View Comments (10 Responses) | Categories: Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization, Writing for the web
Posted on September 7, 2010 by Christina Keffer
Taking this break from your regularly programmed schedule to introduce the Fish, LunaMetrics’ newest employee. The Fish, who is paid in food and taps on the glass of his aquarium, is our office morale booster.
I can personally speak to his efficacy. Ever since he took his place upon my desk my morale has been boosted by at least 15%. Not that it was ever that low to begin with. Productivity on the other hand…
(tap tap…hello Fish)
Anyway! Due to my complete inability to find suitable names for things such as blog posts, children and, yes, fish, I’m relinquishing the dubious pleasure of naming our office fish to you, our loyal readers. And in true web marketing fashion, I’m having our fish-naming process take the form of a contest.
In order to win the privilege of naming this beautiful betta, you must
1. Like our Facebook page
2. Type the proposed name on the Wall
3. Sit back and fidget with the suspense of waiting to see if your name gets chosen.
Is this a shameless plug for our new awesome Facebook page? Maybe.
Will it be worthwhile to participate anyway? Definitely.
See, by liking our Facebook page, you’ll become privy to Fan-only tips and tricks and videos that will be posted on that newly-renovated icon of Facebook awesomeness designed and implemented by our own Jim Gianoglio. So even if we don’t use your fish name, you still win.
Thanks for helping me name him! He thanks you too!
View Comments (5 Responses) | Categories: Announcements
Posted on September 3, 2010 by Jim Gianoglio
Twitter recently announced a couple of updates that caught my eye. The first one deals with new authorization rules for Twitter applications. Although this one is less interesting to me, it does explain why Twitterrific stopped working on my iPhone this past Monday. (They may have fixed it by now, I don’t know. I already switched to Twitter’s own Twitter iPhone app, which I actually like better anyway.)
The second update that potentially has more impact, from an SEO and analytics perspective, is regarding their link service. Here’s the section of the e-mail they sent out that explains this update:
Update 2: t.co URL wrapping
In the coming weeks, we will be expanding the roll-out of our link wrapping service t.co, which wraps links in Tweets with a new, simplified link. Wrapped links are displayed in a way that is easier to read, with the actual domain and part of the URL showing, so that you know what you are clicking on. When you click on a wrapped link, your request will pass through the Twitter service to check if the destination site is known to contain malware, and we then will forward you on to the destination URL. All of that should happen in an instant.
You will start seeing these links on certain accounts that have opted-in to the service; we expect to roll this out to all users by the end of the year. When this happens, all links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co URL.
What does this mean for me?
This raises some questions.
They say “when you click on a wrapped link, your request will pass through the Twitter service…” Does this mean a series of redirects? How will this effect the referral data and any potential link juice or other social signals the search engines may take into account?
Also, that third bullet point at the end got me excited. So Twitter will be collecting click-through data on links (if they weren’t already). Unfortunately, they won’t be sharing that data with just anyone. You’ll have to be signed up for one of their “eventual commercial accounts service,” according to their blog post on this topic.
Where does this leave URL shortening services like Bit.ly?
Take a look at the second bullet point above, where Twitter talks about removing the obscurity of shortened links. That certainly doesn’t sound too friendly toward Bit.ly, ow.ly, tinyurl or any other link shortening services. Twitter does make mention of this in more depth on their help center page about the link service. Specifically, they state:
You can still use a URL shortener (like bit.ly) to shorten links.
If you’re wanting to shorten links to share with others, please see this help page on using URL Shorteners. You can continue to use a URL shortener to shorten links, and any tracking metrics (like those from bit.ly) will continue working as before.
The link service at http://t.co is only used on links posted on Twitter and is not available as a general shortening service.
Confused yet? I sure am. Will my bit.ly link be wrapped in a t.co link (whatever “wrapped” means)? Will the t.co link redirect to the bit.ly link which will redirect to the actual page? That doesn’t seem very efficient. Will link juice pass through the t.co service? Too many questions and not enough answers.
Not to be all negative, I have to give Twitter credit for trying to make the web a safer place. The primary purpose of this link service is to “protect users from malicious site that engage in spreading malware, phishing attacks and other harmful activity.” That’s a noble directive and one that I can support.
View Comments (1 Response) | Categories: Industry News, Miscellaneous
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