For Chrome users: the advice in this post should take you two minutes to implement, and could save you loads of time.
How often have you wanted to search Google and see as ’standard’ a set of results as possible, with no personalization, based on your location or search history?
It becomes even more necessary to do this when you’re trying to diagnose an issue, and want to see the kind of results that people in another location or country are seeing.
On Firefox, I’ve always been a fan of RedFly’s Google Global plugin, allowing you to quickly see search results from any country, with no personalized search results. But what about on Google Chrome?
A lot of what needs to be done can be achieved by adding new ’search engines’ to the Chrome settings. This is a really powerful feature, and I want to show you how to use it to make your SEO life a little easier.
Adding New Search Engines
( You can click these images to zoom in)
Step 1: Click the ‘wrench’ icon, and then ‘Options’
Step 2: Next to your default search engine, click ‘Manage’ to see a list of the search engines available to Chrome
Step 3: Click ‘Add’ to create a new search engine, fill in the details (all the information about this is below) and then click ‘OK’. Optionally, you can make this your default search engine – it will then be used if you type search terms in the ‘omnibox’ or when you highlight words on a page, and right click to search for them.
The three attributes required are simply:
Name: the name for this new search engine
Keyword: allows you to access it direct from the omnibox; if I have Yandex set up with a keyword ‘yx’ then typing ‘yx hotels’ will perform that search on Yandex, rather than my default search engine
URL: it should be clear that all ‘adding a new search engine’ really does is give you quick access to a particular type of URL. Add the URL of a search result page here, and use the placeholder %s to show where the query should be. (Chrome will do the job of converting spaces to + signs for you.)
Remove Personalized Search
OK, that’s how to add a new search engine; hopefully it’s already becoming clear how I use this.
To search Google without search personalizations, I simply use the following settings:
Name: Google NP
Keyword: gnp
URL: http://www.google.com/search?pws=0&q=%s
The ‘pws=0′ parameter removes the search personalizations. I set this as my default, so all searches then return non-personalized results – or at least they’re not personalized based on my search history, though my location and other factors could still affect the results.
Quick Access to International Search
When we’re working with websites which have a presence in a number of countries, it’s convenient to be able to access localized SERPs quickly. The three key things to use here are:
the tld of the Google site you’d like to search
gl: to set the location you’d like to target with your search
lr: if you’d like to restrict searches to a particular language (certain non-English versions of Google offer this option) – you can select from the list of supported languages
Here are examples of the setting used to get results from other countries:
As this is a somewhat political post- the usual disclaimer applies. This post reflects the views of the author only and they do not necessarily reflect the views of Distilled.
The first rule of blogging (and dinner conversation) is to avoid talking about politics or religion. However, sometimes politics can have a massive impact on our industry and as such, today we’ll be taking a look at a few scenarios in the upcoming US Congressional elections and how this may impact SEO and the internet more broadly.
“Net Neutraility” is a term bandied about by lots of folks and it means different things to different people. Whilst it is probably not the most important issue for the average American heading into these elections it certainly warrants understanding- and it certainly will be one of the most important for SEOs, e-commerce managers, and online businesses.
What is Net Neutrality?
“Network neutrality” (AKA Net Neutrality or Internet Neutrality) is basically what it sounds like: the internet is meant to be neutral. This suggests that content, sites, platforms, etc. are not to be controlled by internet service providers or the Government. This does NOT – as so many of us have found – necessarily exclude any of these entities from gathering and sharing “private” information.
Further, Net Neutraility suggests that information, connections, users and so forth should all be treated equally. The principle is intended to guarantee a level playing field for all users. That is to say, it is to ensure that there is not preferential treatment in the order in, or speed with which, information is transferred.
Remember how much it sucked to do just about anything on the internet as recently as 10-15 years ago? Remember when your 56k modem seemed blazing? Remember when you had to wait overnight just to load a short video clip?
Thank goodness we don’t have to do that anymore… though without net neutrality this may soon become the standard again. Nothing like progress, eh?!
What Are The Threats to Neutrality?
The biggest threat to neutrality is discrimination. Absent the “free and open” part of the internet, service providers could charge a premium to allow you to view certain types of content. For example- without Neutrality, the major providers could charge you a “premium” to allow you to stream video, an additional “premium” to play video games online and an additional premium to connect to secure sites.
Lobbyists. It should come as no surprise that there is a lot of money at stake here and the best and brightest of the lobby groups have been raising and spending funds to try to make sure that the Government does not pass any laws (or permissions to the FCC) that might block service providers from charging extra and/or showing preference towards one type of content or user and another.
Why Net Neutrality Matters to You
Net Neutrality has become a tacit constitutional right on par with the 5th amendment for many avid internet users. The freedom of speech (as well as, erm- expression) has been extended to the internet in ways previously unseen and documents/publications are being created in this crowded public space at an alarming rate.
The extension of a non-neutral net could lead to censorship of certain pages or websites all together. Just think how terrible it would be if the only “non-premium” source for news was Fox News.
Censorship to one side, the non neutral web also means that internet and telecommunications companies cannot control the flow of information which allows for more open and “fair” competition and we need not look any further than the global marketplace that is Google to see how this could impact businesses.
Despite this, it is hard to deny the fact that search engines, on the other hand, are already able to control the results they return and our increasing reliance on one or two main search engines for our information does raise some questions about how much people really do care about filtering of information.
The internet, viewed as a global marketplace (for information, products, etc.) is not unlike the “real life” global marketplace in its openess- however there are already obstacles to accessing certain types of information in place and already exist control points for information: Apple won’t allow you to use their products to create and promulgate “inappropriate materials” and equally Google acts as a form of Federal Regulator on advertising standards (thou shalt not buy links!).
Though, at least they do not have the control to forbid me entirely from sites. They may not “support” it, but I can still transfer and view information from sources not up to the Google/Apple rating.
How Would this Impact SEO?
Well, think of it this way- given that recent reports have suggested that the current Google algorithim prefers faster sites, the extreme end of the spectrum would have hosts and service providers charging you considerably extra to have “faster” service and could even artificially filter/limit the information passed to/from your site, unless you were willing to pay for premium service.
It is hard enough to find good hosting now- and if this sort of behaviour is allowed is there really anything to prevent people using this to scam others?
The requirements in the terms of service from Google maintain that you cannot “cloak” any information or show different information to Google than you do to everyone else. It could become awfully difficult to ensure all users receive the same information with limitations on plug-ins, types of content and different media types.
Additionally, say goodbye to all those wonderful Firefox plugins you use for SEO. You can also bid farewell to the leaps and bounds being taken with HTML 5 and by Google’s team to index more types of user-friendly and attractive sites requiring scripts.
A non-neutral net may not sound outrageous to some of you out there- some may even think this is the status quo- but it is not and could have a serious impact on usability, SEO, and competition. If a small business cannot afford to pay for the faster service it seems extraordinarily unlikely that they will ever make it big. If the average customer cannot view online checkouts and make transactions via PayPal without paying a small fortune say farewell to the e-commerce boom.
It is tough enough to break into any market and compete with the big guys, the last thing a small business would want is to pay a premium in order to do so.
Pay-per-view and TV on Demand may be great and may be worth paying a premium for on your television as they are relatively new technology. However- optimising a site for usability and for search could become an exorbitantly expensive task and all of the “pretty” things that make websites so wonderful would be much more difficult on designers, developers and users alike with this “pay-per-view” mentality.
So, Who Should I Vote For?
Right, so I’m not going to tell you who to vote for. There a number of issues to consider and although Net Neutrality is essential for day-to-day employment and the entertainment of some, I can appreciate that it is not for all. If you are not bothered by any of the above, don’t worry about my suggestions. If, however, you are troubled by the movements afoot in Congress you may want to pay attention.
The general trend (based upon my research) is for Republican party members to be opposed to net neutrality whilst Democratic candidates seem more likely to be in favour. This is not universally the case so we shall provide as much additional information on the individual candiates as available.
There are obviously other issues that may have a more immediate impact on the economy, on the safety of troops overseas, and the future of medicine. However, putting all these other issues aside for a moment, here are the stances of the candidates in the Senate races that matter (and are still seen as “close” races).
Senate
“Oh, If only we had a different process we’d vote ‘yes’, you vote ‘yes’ if you believe ‘yes’! You vote in favour of something if you believe it’s the right thing” – Anthony Weiner
There are 19 seats up for grabs in the Senate. Of these seats only 9 are considered to be “up for grabs” so pay attention if you’re from any of the following states.
If you see your state and a candidate is listed as not having a public stance, I urge you to call their office and find out where they stand (provided below). I have carefully placed those who have spoken publicly in favour in bold and have provided a link to the homepage of all those who have not provided a public stance.
New Hampshire: Likely Democratic Candidate: Paul W. Hodes View on Neutrality: No public stance.
*The Republican party has yet to settle on a candidate in this race.
Pennsylvania Likely Democratic Candidate: Joe Sestak View on Neutrality: For
Likely Republican Candidate: Pat Toomey View on Neutrality: No Public Stance
Ohio Likely Democratic Candidate: Lee Fisher View on Neutrality: For
Likely Republican Candidate: Rob Portman View on Neutrality: No Public Stance.
Wisconsin Likely Democratic Candidate: Russ Feingold View on Neutrality: No Public Stance
Likely Republican Candidate: Ron Johnson* View on Neutrality: No Public Stance
*Primary to be held Sept. 14
Illinois Likely Democratic Candidate: Alexi Giannoulias View on Neutrality: No Public Stance (contact info at bottom of page)
Likely Republican Candidate: Mark Steven Kirk View on Neutrality: No public stance (contact info at bottom of page)
Missiouri Likely Democratic Candidate: Robin Carnahan View on Neutrality: No Public Stance
Likely Republican Candidate: Roy Blunt View on Neutrality: No public stance
Colorado Likely Democratic Candidate: Michael Bennet View on Neutrality: For
Likely Republican Candidate: Ken Buck View on Neutrality: No Public Stance
Nevada Likely Democratic Candidate: Harry Reid View on Neutrality: For
Likely Republican Candidate: Sharron Angle View on Neutrality: No Public Stance
House of Representatives
Senators may get all the credit but the House will be equally important in passing legislation on Net Neutrality.
There are 99 seats in play this cycle, of which 33 are considered to be a toss-up.
Despite the importance, given the volume and the number of primaries that still need to be decided, I will save the analysis of the House candidates for another day. Please let us know what you think!
The latest Think Visibility conference was held over the weekend and yet again, it was a great conference. I made my speaking debut at the last Think Visibility but this time I wasn’t speaking which meant I was a lot more relaxed this time round!
Here are my key takeaways from the conference. Big thanks to Steven for the photos, you can view the full set here.
Mel Carson – Learning and Earning Through Social Media
Mel is the Community Manager at Microsoft Advertising and talked about how they approached social media and gave some examples of how social media fits into the main objectives of what they do.
Social media isn’t just about Facebook and Twitter
Social media is about making your content discoverable and shareable
Use third party sites to interact with the community
Its all about reaching out to people and empowering them to help themselves
Capture buzz and sentiment about your brand and report it back to employees
Rob Kerry – International SEO
Rob is Head of Search at Ayima and made the trip over from the states to speak about the best techniques for international SEO.
Use subfolders for hosting country specific content eg www.example.com/fr for French content
Use Google Webmaster Tools to tell Google which country your subfolders are targeting
Subfolders can have a lower click through rate from SERPs
Hosting location is becoming less important and the ccTLD will always override it
Hire a native speaker of the language you want to target instead of using translation tools
Putting an American flag on a US targeted page can reduce bounce rates
Lisa Myers – Using Social Media for SEO
Lisa is the founder and CEO of Verve Search, she is also very close to having a baby and warned us in advance that her last baby was two weeks early so the chances of a conference baby were likely!
Don’t rely on just Facebook and Twitter for social media campaigns
The text that surrounds a link is very important
Make sure you define the objective of your social media campaign before you start
Identify your target audience and put yourself in their shoes
Jaamit Durrani – Link Building in Real Life
Jaamit is SEO Director at OMD and gave what was my favourite presentation of the day. No, not because he mentioned me:
The real reason is that link building is a tough subject to speak about given that many techniques have either already been blogged about or are kept secret – with good reason sometimes I should add. However Jaamit covered some good techniques and put different twists on old techniques.
Make sure you have a large and diverse set of backlinks pointing at your site
Use lower level link building techniques to get domain diversity and anchor text
Use advanced Google search queries to narrow down search results, eg using keyword inurl:ac.uk to find trusted University sites
Use traditional blog comment spamming tools to find dofollow blogs – then go and constructively comment instead or spamming them
Paul Madden – What a Spammer would do
Paul is often referred to as SEOidiot and is well known for dabbling in the darker side or SEO techniques.
Be careful when using free Wordpress themes – some have encrypted hidden links embedded
If you’re doing online dating – be careful to avoid the robots who reply to you
If someone asks to exchange links with you – be careful they’re not hiding the link back to you from Google
Dave Naylor – Gaining Ranking Dominance in any Sector
Last presentation of the day came from Dave of Bronco. As always, Dave was an entertaining speaker and I believe there was a bit of a panic when Dom couldn’t find him a few minutes before he was due on stage! Dave also did some interesting Q&A at the end which I’m not going to blog about I’m afraid.
Tailgate existing brands and get clicks by writing a better META title
If you have the budget – buy a domain that already ranks
Build relationships with your suppliers for links and other benefits
Google loves brands – build one
Big thumbs up to Dom Hodgson for organising a great conference yet again. Think Vis is one of my favourite SEO conferences and doesn’t follow the regular format used by some of the larger conferences. One example was Dom using his closing speech to tell us to p#ss off*.
On the subject of conferences, don’t forget about the London Pro SEO Seminar we’re running at the end of October. I’ve had a sneaky preview of some of the stuff that will be talked about and it is really going to be a good one.
*He did follow this up with “and come back in an hour for a free bar”
Some of the Distilled team was lucky enough to be present for the awesome SEOmoz Pro Training Seminars here in Seattle. Feedback from the event is overwhelmingly positive amongst all attendees, and the Distilled folks are no exception.
In chatting with some of the attendees I noticed that many people made strong connections with various particular seminars for all sorts of reasons. So to get some insight into what the present Distilled members thought, I asked them all:
What seminar they liked the most, and why?
How might they change their processes to take advantage of what was said?
Will Critchlow
I loved Seth Besmertnik’s presentation on scaling your SEO team. In particular, the idea of pushing your clients towards P&L across organic traffic – and away from the concept of today’s organic traffic being free tomorrow. I’m definitely going to be thinking more about that angle.
It was also the first time I met Wil Reynolds face to face and saw him speak. I loved his enthusiasm and took away a bunch of tips about things we need to start tracking in order to be able to analyse issues across clients and predict upcoming changes.
Tom Critchlow
I’m loving the conference – lots of very entertaining speakers and some good actionable tips and insights. For me, the most useful takeaway is from Seth which is that the best way to get buy-in for large scale SEO is to start small and hustle to shift the needle and once you have some small successes you’re in a much better position to get buy-in from management and other departments.
It’s only half way through day 2 when I’m writing this but I’m really looking forward to Will’s sexy reporting – there’s been a lot of talk from lots of different angles on creating reports, from seo audits to analytics reports and insights so I think this should be a key takeaway from the conference too.
Rob Ousbey
There was definitely some excitement around the description for Ben Hendrickson’s session, which promized that he would “pull back the curtain on a new way to rank higher.” So – what did he deliver? Ben showed off his research on a ‘topic relevancy function’ called LDA – it’s essentially gives an estimate of how relevant a page of content is to a particular term. Is this useful? The initial data collected showed that for any search term, the LDA score of the top twenty pages was correlated to their ranking position – and that this correlation was potentially even stronger than many of the link-metrics which SEOmoz has already shown to be indicative of how well a site will rank.
To help us get our heads around this, there’s a new topic relevancy tool in SEOmoz’s Labs, which allows you to assess the relevancy of a particular page (or block of text) to a particular topic / keyphrase. You can add or remove text from a a page’s contents, and see how this affects the topic relevancy score. (Higher scores mean better relevancy, and correlate with a better ranking for that term.)
Is this important? Is this really a hidden technique that we can use? Well, this is by no means saying this is a be-all-and-end-all of SEO; links are still terribly important and clearly a big factor in the ranking algorithms. However, time will tell – we’ll see more information on ranking correlation soon, but it will be interesting to see if anyone thinks they’ve benefited from optimizing their page content to improve LDA score. You’ll be hearing a lot more about this topic, I’m sure…
Kate Morris
I am going to be up front and say that I haven’t gotten to attend as much as I would have liked. Clients need tending to after all. I have attended some awesome sessions though. One was Dan Zarella’s coverage of Twitter success and a few points like staying positive. I also enjoyed the update about a space that few understand fully, Local. David Mihm is still the King of Local and gave us a great update on the space from a holistic perspective.
The best presenters so far have been our very own Rob Ousbey and Joanna Lord. They are always a joy to listen to, and I get to hear their wonderful senses of humor everyday. That is what makes work that much better.
The most thought provoking content bit was Marshall Simmonds comment about the rel=canonical passing less juice than traditional 301 redirects. While I believe him that it could be possible, I still hold that each has a different purpose and therefore businesses should choose what to use in terms of usability rather than link passing ability. In the end, direct links are best no matter what.
I am sorry to miss Will’s presentation later today (it’s mid-day Tuesday) but I can’t wait for the festivities tonight. The party that SEOmoz throws can be the best source of information at any conference. Have I mentioned I met the guys at Distilled 2 years ago at such a party? Good things come from the oddest places, like bowling alleys.
Stephanie Coles
As I sat down at my first conference on Monday morning, I sipped my coffee and felt very impressed by the talent and knowledge surrounding me, not to mention slightly in awe of the number of Tweets and emails being furiously typed in the few moments before Rand kicked things off.
Lindsay Wassell’s talk on SEO audits was fantastic. I am in sales at Distilled and we have been seeing a growing interest in audits lately, so it was great to see a typical schedule for an audit broken down. I appreciated her thoughtful ideas on letting things marinate over lunch or a coffee break to think about and examine your approach to ensure you are on the best track. I think everyone can use this tip.
“You pitch when you educate” from the Presentation Off between Will and Rand hit home with me. I am not an SEO, but I sell SEO and this point only amplified my interest in learning all I can. No one wants to hear a sales pitch, they want you to listen to and understand their issues. For the remainder of the conference, I soaked up as many insights and tips as I could to educate myself from the best in the business.
Mike Pantoliano
I loved Marshall Simmonds‘ presentation on big site architecture, mainly because I’ve never (and may never) experience that set of issues. So much of SEO ability comes from experience, and having him share the trials and tribulations of a gigantic site like the New York Times provides awesome insight. Marshall spoke about the difficulty the NYtimes.com has in keeping articles fresh and properly indexed, as well as the duplicate content issues that the site faces (I believe he said that each article may have up to 500 different versions). He recognized that while the rel=canonical tag isn’t the best solution, it provides the most value when considering the effort it would take to correct these duplicate problems at the source.
You can view the power point presentations for all of the seminars over at SEOmoz.
London Pro Seminar
In case you’ve missed it, Distilled is hosting our very own pro SEO seminar in London on the 25th and 26th of October and we’d be delighted if you came! Last year’s event was a huge success and this year promises to be even better. We’ve assembled some of the top SEO minds to share some of their best strategies and ideas with you, so sign up now!
I am out in Seattle for the SEOmoz PRO seminar (don’t forget to come to the London seminar!) where the second day has kicked off with two of the best presentations I’ve seen in a long time from Seth Besmertnik from Conductor and Wil Reynolds from Seer Interactive. Feeling the pressure a little bit for my session on Sexy Reporting this afternoon, I thought I’d share one extra tip.
I often need to build a quick n’ dirty bit of analysis of link data. Since the exports from Open Site Explorer only pull 10,000 links at a time, I look to pull data out of the SEOmoz API and dump it into Excel.
This little bash script (which needs the domain and credentials inputting) lets you quickly pull backlink data:
( for i in {1..250}; do curl "http://lsapi1.seomoz.com/linkscape/links/XXXXXXXXXXX?Filter=external&SourceCols=133982846973&TargetCols=133982846973&Sort=page_authority&AccessID=XXXXXXXXXXX&Expires=XXXXXXXXXXX&Signature=XXXXXXXXXXX&Scope=page_to_domain&Limit=5&Offset=$((i*100))&"; done ) | tr "}" "\n" | perl -pe "s/[\]\[]//g" | perl -pe "s/,{//g" | perl -pe "s/\"[^\"]*\"://g" | perl -pe "s/^{//g" >> output.csv
I’ll be talking a little bit about doing stuff with this in my presentation later today, including decoding bitflags in Excel.
If you like the presentations from the Distilled crew, you might like to sign up to our free conference calls:
Free Directory Submission: What to Avoid, Tips & Tricks
Looking for quick easy links? Be careful what you wish for…
Despite rumours, directory listings are still useful! These listings help diversify your link portfolio and will help boost rankings when used with other link building methods such as:
Articles
Link bait
Blogging
What to Avoid
Signs of dodgy directories:
The directory has more ads than content
The directory loses its main focus, which is to act as an index of links. The site loses value for the user and Google will deem it either irrelevant or not worth caching. Listing your link here is about as useful as Paddy Moogan without Twitter.
“Your site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity. However, some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results.”
The PageRank has been faked
It is still possible to fake Pagerank, and there are methods to check this. If a site needs to fake its PageRank, chances are there is something wrong…stay clear.
There are thousands of links in each category
Not much PageRank to be passed on to your website here. If Google even decides to index the directory in the first place.
The directory wants to exchange links
This isn’t entirely a bad practice, the directory wants you to link back to them in order to increase their PageRank. I don’t do this simply because there is no value for me…selfish I know.
The website doesn’t function properly (broken links, misplaced graphics, “INSERT AD HERE”)
Broken links, blank advertisements and general malfunction of the site suggests the directory has been abandoned. Don’t bother.
The words “SEO Friendly” always ring alarm bells
Directories in essence are supposed to be SEO friendly, you don’t need to tell me that. You’ll notice with these types of directories that there will always be an option to submit to multiple directories for a fee, either directly on the page or in an email confirmation after you’ve submitted your link. Paying for links to manipulate search engine rankings are against Google’s webmaster guidelines and you run the risk of being penalized or banned. Better safe than sorry mate.
The directory has been penalized or banned by Google
How can you tell? Search Google for the directory URL, if it doesn’t show up its either brand new, or banned. These links stand a chance of lowering your website rankings, so steer clear.
The directory contains adult material
My apologies to anyone in the Adult industry, but they typically aren’t the best places to associate 90% of products or services offered throughout the internet.
Tips & Tricks
Figure out what keywords you want to rank for
Write 5 different titles & descriptions for your listing (including the keywords)
Once you get to the directory site, browse to the category you think is most relevant to your listing. Then find the “submit URL” link. If you don’t do this, you may end up searching forever in a list boxwith hundreds of different categories.
Enable Auto-Complete! Use a browser like Firefox or Chrome that will save the information you entered in the title, description and email fields, so you can quickly submit to the directories
Alternate your titles, and descriptions. You don’t want to come off looking like spam, and it gives you a chance to rank for long tail searches
Using an email address with the same domain as your listing adds credibility
Some directories require an email confirmation, and need to be confirmed within a set time or your listing is automatically deleted. Check your email!
Here are some of the directories that meet the criteria to be considered valuable:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, PPC and SEO need to get along. Why? There are such awesome tools on each side that can benefit the other. Not to mention the wealth of information from one that can feed results in the other. Case and point today is a tool that has not been written about much in the SEO world, but is a substantial part of the new AdWords training.
If it may please the court, I present:
Wonder Wheel
Looks like a mind map doesn’t it? I was introduced to mind maps in my Introduction to Creative Advertising class as a part of my advertising minor at UT Austin. Basically it’s getting every association you have with an idea, thought, or concept out on paper with it’s close associations. This is a tool that just about every level of marketing can benefit from, not just the creative people. There are whole computer programs developed just to aid with mind maps.
Wonder Wheel is a part of Google results. Just go Google something, and look in the left side bar. Under the “Standard View” section (you might need to expand the menu over there), there is an option for “Wonder wheel.” Click it and watch the magic.
The awesome part of Wonder Wheel is that this is a mind map using Google’s “mind.” You want a peek into the big brain that is Google? This is your opportunity. Wonder Wheel returns everything from word ideas to organic and integrated results. You get pictures, shopping, paid ads, and competitors in one fell swoop.
Wonderwheel is great for many things, not just keyword research. So hold onto your pants, here we go.
Image via Wikipedia
Brainstorming
The first, and most apparent use is for brainstorming. With any idea, product, or keyword, you can easily see what Google thinks is related. Using the start of one key phrase, this tool can lead to product ideas, marketing angles, and more. Multiple clicks on every spoke will open your eyes to new ideas and possible search intentions.
For example, looking up “cake pans” lead me to square cake pans (not what you normally think about), 3D cake pans, and even “how to make a wedding cake.” Those are all just key phrases during brain storming, but it really is what you do with this information that makes it valuable. In brainstorming, you are just identifying everything possible, the organization comes later.
Competitive Research
The first piece of information to glean from Wonder Wheel is competitive information. Through the tool you can see popular brands of products that users are searching for. It doesn’t stop there though. As you click through Wonder Wheel, the search results change with the phrase you select. This allows you to see and investigate new competitors. The long or mid tail might have completely different competitors, and may include some new up-and-comers (maybe you!) that you need to be aware of for the future.
Site Structure
In PPC, this tool is touted to be best for campaign and ad group organization, specifically getting keywords into themes for the display network. For SEOs, the same concept can be applied site structure and design. If you are having issues wondering how best to set up your site’s architecture that will be easy for Google and the other search engines to understand, this is perfect.
For example, if you have a site about stuffed animals, a quick search using the Wonder Wheel shows that searchers are looking for stuffed cats and dogs, and some competitors include Toys R Us and Build a Bear. From this information, you might structure the site by animal, size, and also by brand.
Keyword Research
Oddly like Brainstorming, yes? Sorta. But keyword research is more focused than brainstorming. Brainstorming is writing down any and everything related to a topic. Keyword research is more focused to specific content. So let’s say that you need to research a new 3D duck cake pan. Just a quick search and click on “Wilton Duck Cake Pan” reveals the many ways that someone might search for a duck cake pan.
Rubber Duck Cake Pan
Duck Cake Ideas
Duck Birthday Cake
Wilton Duck Baking (don’t use general ‘duck baking’, different intent)
Site Content Development
Writing good content for your site is key to ranking for long tail terms, and Wonder Wheel can help spark ideas. For example, remember in brainstorming when we came across the idea “how to bake a wedding cake” and seeing square wedding pans? How about a “how to bake a square tiered wedding cake.” There are posts on unusual cakes and how to assemble one, but not a start to finish post including pictures. See the draw here?
Affiliate Idea Development
If you are looking to develop a site around your favorite hobby (baking cakes perhaps? going along with my examples), using Wonder Wheel can reveal possible companies to approach for affiliate relationships. In this instance, reselling cake pans through Amazon, Wilton, or Birthday in a Box. This is revealed in the results of keywords but also in the organic results and in the shopping results.
Today we have a face-off between Sam and Paddy. After many heated discussions in the office it seemed like it would make an interesting post to put both sides of the argument side by side on the blog. First, for those of you who are not familiar with what behavioral re-targeting is, here is a good graphic to illustrate it.
In a bit more detail, behavioral re-targeting is a system that serves adverts to a user based on their browsing history. It is usually based on them not completing a desired action, for example not buying a product from a retailer. The user will then be shown adverts from the retailer on various other websites in an effort to get them to return.
Paddy:
So my side of the argument is the opposite to Sam’s. I think this post may have stemmed from one line in our discussion when I said –
“I think its a genius idea”
From there we had a debate about the privacy issues and scenarios where this type of marketing is a bad thing. However my feelings were still the same, I think re-targeting is a good marketing method for both users and merchants. Here is why.
Why Re-targeting is good for Merchants
Lower overall number of impressions and more targeted ads mean a better click through rate. This leads to lower costs and therefore a high ROI for businesses.
Businesses can target a customer throughout the buying cycle but in particular when they are at the research stage. It is very esy to detect if a customer looked at certain products but decided not to buy them. In which case, re-targeting can be used to try and bring that customer back to the site whilst they are doing research on other websites.
This can work especially well for businesses who sell high value, highly durable products which a customer will probably spend quite a bit of time researching before pressing the buy button.
Another added advantage for merchants is the brand building that this type of activity can provide. If your brand appears to be everywhere online, then you’ll appear to be really pushing yourselves online and give the perception you’re massive.
Even if you lose the odd customer who gets fed up of your adverts or disables cookies as a result, you are going to make up for this many times over by the increased conversion rate of other customers. Many businesses have reported massively improved ROIs for re-targeting campaigns in comparison to other channels.
Why Re-Targeting is good for Users
This is much more important in my opinion, the benefits to a business are pretty clear and easy to measure. The discussion between Sam and myself stemmed from privacy issues for users so I wanted to address these.
No Personal Data is Collected
First thing I should mention is that re-targeting works by dropping cookies on a users machine. No personal data such as name, address, phone number etc is collected by re-targeting. There are tons of websites that use cookies in this manner and don’t collect personal data, this is not a new tactic.
Personalised Advertising
No matter where we go online, we see banners, adverts and pop-ups. I don’t tend to come across many websites that do not include some form of advertising, even at a bare minimum they’ll include Google AdSense. So if the web is jam packed full of adverts anyway, surely its better to have those adverts as targeted as possible to the user. Therefore a user will see adverts for stuff they are interested in rather than this kind of stuff -
Or even worse these type of ones…
Or is it just me that sees the second one?! D’oh!
Anyway the point is that we get annoyed seeing adverts which we’re not interested in and eventually we develop banner blindness. If however the adverts are by a website we are familiar with, even better – adverts for products we may want to buy, then thats surely better?
This type of advert is much more relevant to me after I’d been looking for a festival tent on the Go Outdoors website -
Where it can be abused…
Whilst I strongly believe that re-targeting is good. Like most marketing methods online, some businesses can push the limits and go over the top with this model. Here are some things that businesses should avoid when doing re-targeting.
Don’t consistently show the same products that were viewed
It can be a bit weird for a user if they see the exact same product they just saw on your website in an advert somewhere else. So try to include an advert that includes a range of related products. The Go Outdoors example above is a good example of this. There is nothing wrong with including the product a user has looked at, but mix it in with other closely related product.
Use Frequency Caps
To avoid users getting banner blindness, place a frequency cap on your adverts so that they aren’t consistently being shown your advert all across the web. This can get annoying and maybe cause them to opt out of seeing them.
Use Time Limit Caps
You have the ability to define how long you want a user to be shown your advert after they have visited your website. The decision on how long this lasts will depend on your product. But I’d still advise setting a limit so that a user isn’t consistently bombarded with your ads and can’t get away from you!
Variation
Try to vary the adverts both in size, design and products. Using the same advert over and over is a sure fire way to annoy a user and have them develop banner blindness. Design different banners based upon what they did on your site and use variations to keep things fresh.
Allow Customers to Opt-out
Most advertisers will include a link for users to opt-out of seeing these type of adverts if they wish. Make sure you allow users this option and that you are as transparent as possible. You don’t always legally have to update your privacy policy but it may be worth an amend.
In Summary… (and why I’m right!)
Re-targeting is like many other online marketing techniques – go over the top and you’re going to annoy your customers and lower your ROI. However, if used properly, you can achieve a good ROI whilst keeping customers happy and not triggering alarms over privacy concerns.
It comes down to this – we all see ads across the internet every day. It makes for a better experience if these ads are targeted and relevant to us. No personal identity data is collected about you as a user – this isn’t Facebook!
Right, so I have not yet read Paddy’s version of this because I didn’t think it was really fair for the sake of argument to just rebut all of his points without him having the same opportunity. Perhaps we’ll carry that over into the comments if people really want to watch us fight it out more.
Sam:
—————-ROUND 2 – FIGHT!——————
Issues with (overly) targeted advertising*
*Skip to the end for the TL:DR version
I feel violated and cheated… and I really want a Big Mac!
I think I first realised my true opposition to the targeting of my subconscious (read: subliminal advertising) after watching “Super Size Me” and then craving McDonald’s food for months afterwards. It was a truly inexplicable and irrational thought after watching such a horrible depiction of the fast food chain.
It takes a “genius” campaign to embed your product idea within someone’s mind (especially if it happens when you should be hating the product) but it is really disturbing when you find yourself buying something or supporting someone based on false facts. I want to be able to identify “how I got hooked” and know how trustworthy a site, channel, show, advertiser, or individual is before spending my time or money.
This sort of marketing is invasive and borders on morally deplorable
This, for me, highlights the reason I don’t click on PPC advertisements unless the meta-description ropes me in. I know that these sites or products (if they aren’t ranking naturally) have not recieved the sorts of links or “votes of approval” necessary to be deemed reliable products. There are exceptions to this rule and ever site is “new” at some point, but I’ll let people who don’t understand PPC be the guinea pigs on these products.
I don’t have issue with the conscious decision to support a company and buy their products because I like what they do. I like companies with good Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) campaigns. I would gladly buy Old Spice deodorant (at least to try) because I thought there campaign was hilarious- and it didn’t try to sell me too hard on the thousands of scantily clad women I’d be fending off (unlike some of their competitors). Whilst I think “bad SEO” is not worth doing and obnxious from a user’s perspective, I think the same applies for “bad advertising.”
Supply and demand exists so that we may weigh up any number of factors for a product and decide for ourselves what it is we want to buy. We have become too lazy and too impatient to do things the right way and I believe we are less happy for it.
So, What’s my Point?
If I don’t like a product, I want the ability to say “no” (without having to spend 30 minutes trying to find the source of the campaign and get it off my browser/cleared from my cookies).
If I’m watching TV I can change the channel or press mute if I don’t like the idea.
If I have a pop-up window I can click out of it (or get a better spam-protection software).
If I don’t like a print advertisement I can turn the page, or rip out the advert.
Hell, even email spam (usually) lets me remove myself from a list, unsubscribe, delete the message without reading it, etc.
The bottom line is, I can control these things. I choose (to a certain degree anyways) whether or not I let these things in. All of these other mediums usually must past some sort of Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) or some other equivalent. However, these rules don’t seem to apply and business ethics seem to go out the window to a certain extent when we’re talking about advertising on the web. And things have gotten worse, not better.
Yeah, it’s slightly less annoying not having to foce-quit my browser because of too many pop-ups (NSFW- Language & verbal references to internet filth) but at least when I got those sorts of ads I knew I was on spammy sites (only by accident of course) and I knew not to return. Now if I accidentally stumble upon an NSFW site I risk the possibility of similar adverts targeting me when I’m in a meeting with my boss, pitching to a potential client, or trying to show my Mom a cute video about puppies.
The “Ayes” Have it!
So, after debating this a bit with Tom and Paddy I was a bit concerned that I had completely lost my mind. Both argued that they would rather “targeted” advertisements than random ones and I agree to a certain level. However, where’s the off switch? At a certain point I would like the ability to tell an advertiser “you’ve spent enough money on me, but I bought the tent from someone else, I don’t want a $£@*!$% tent anymore.”
Variety is the spice of life and just because ONE time, while doing a search for a client, or by accidentally clicking on an advert, I don’t want to have pop-ups and banner ads pointing to inappropriate sites. I don’t want to be followed around and harassed. And, according to a recent poll conducted as part of an article written by the Wall Street Journal I am not alone in this.
It’s quite obvious that the VAST and overwhelming majority of those that have participated in this poll are on board with me. Of course it is not a statistically significant poll, but the article was obviously quite convincing.
Where to Draw the Line? Global/Browser Privacy Settings, Please!
I don’t personally have a problem with being targeted on Facebook based upon my age, location, or any other information I have provided to this particular software. I have made a choice to visit this page, I am logged in to this site, and I have freely provided this information to THIS particular web application.
I do, however, take serious issue with having a single query string that can identify me as a 26-year-old male from London, my favourite films, my favourite type of food, what time I typically scour the underworld of the internet and use this information to “target” (i.e. AGAINST) me as I try to carry out my job- which is to be on the internet. I try to avoid advertisements where possible.
If you want me to buy your product, do something good, make a better product, hell make a better advertisement. Convince me your shoes can make me walk on water, make me laugh, draw pretty pictures, find someone that I trust to endorse your product. But, please, don’t trick me and stop following me around for Pete’s sake.
I’m no longer looking for free singles in my area so let it rest. Duh, haven’t you checked my Facebook status lately?
Here are the things I’m comfortable sharing when “logged in” to a site or application: Any information included in my PUBLIC profile and any information I have shared voluntarily with THIS site (e.g. I am quite happy for Amazon to try and suggest books based upon books I’ve purchased).
Here’s the information I’m comfortable sharing with advertisers for general targeting purposes: I’m between 18-35 years old. I currently live in London. I am male.
And here is information advertisers use that I do NOT want used in targeted advertising: My ability to spell, where I am at any given time, every single site I’ve visited, my favorite films, my income, my sexual preference, my medical history/concerns. For everything else I’m afraid you’re going to have to get me to try/buy your product the old fashioned way.
If people like these targeted advertisements it’s not for me to say they can’t have them, I’d just like the opportunity to say “no thank you” like I do when the telemarketers ring to sell me something I don’t want anymore and to be able to say “please take me off your targeted list, thanks!”
TL:DR Cold Hard Facts and Summary (Why I Am Right)
According to the Wall Street Jounral article I mentioned:
the top 50 websites (in the US) install (on average) 64 pieces of tracking technology onto the computer of each visitor (without warning in most cases)
targeting is no longer limited to cookies
many of these “tools surreptitiously re-spawn themselves even after users delete them
the profiles these tools create are traded as commodities (think: oil, gold, “personal information index”)
there are already over 100 middlemen/tracking companies competing to sell your details
“innocuous” sites such as Dictionary.com will generate a download of 223 files per visit to track web use
the most offensive of this type of advertising installs third party tracking files that will follow you around to “build a robust profile” (particularly heinous is monitoring searches of health related illness and targeting ads- perfect for when you need a hemmarhoid cream in the middle of a boardroom presentation)
Tracking technology has already spiraled out of control and is only going further. I’m all for freedoms on the internet but I believe the control over what is actually viewed (rather than available to be viewed) should be controlled by the user. If you don’t want to see a site or a products advertisements you should be able to say so. People shouldn’t be “tricked” into buying a product and it should be fairly straightforward to ask for the harassment to stop (e.g. a small box reading “do not display ads for this site/product/agency”).
Getting your product in front of the right people is absolutely key, but if you get your product in front of someone influential and do so by harassment, prepare for a serious reputation issue.
It’s not that I’m opposed to targeting advertisements in principle, it just seems as though there should be a bit more control given to the user. It seems unfair and immoral that someone else sell my personal information that I never granted them the right to view, let alone “own” (tacitly or otherwise) and make it almost impossible to opt-out.
Targeted advertising is not inherently wrong, and some people love it, but some people don’t and there needs to be an easy way to change the settings or opt-out.
I was back from my annual leave just in time to attend the 3rd Brighton SEO event which was held on 23rd July 2010. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, Brighton SEO is a half day mini conference and is organised by Kelvin Newman of Site Visibility. Not only does it feature a line up of quality speakers, it is actually a free conference and is followed by drinks where, in my experience, most of the value of an SEO conference is found!
Our very own Sam Crocker spoke at the event and posted his presentation on Sunday. I wanted to add in my own thoughts and review of the highlights of the conference. I haven’t included every presentation but Peter Handley posted a full review of all the speakers over on Holistic Search.
Kevin Gibbons – 20 Wordpress Plugins to Supercharge your Blog
The afternoon kicked off with Kevin Gibbons of SEOptimise who talked about the top 20 Wordpress Plugins for your blog. I feel I am quite experienced with Wordpress but Kevin came up with a few plugins that I hadn’t tried which looked very useful. Here are my picks from his presentation.
Backtype – Pulls in related conversations from other social media sources and displays them next to your blog post
Flickr RSS - Allows you to display a feed of photos from your Flickr account really easily on your blog
RSS Footer – Adds a link to the bottom of articles in your RSS feed, Kevin pointed out this is useful for when your feeds are scraped
SEO Smart Links – You can automatically handle internal linking using keywords with this plugin, however be careful not to go over the top!
A/B Theme Testing – Allows you to split test two different themes and see which one performs better, personally I’d code the same theme twice and make minor changes as opposed to using two totally different themes.
Takeaway Tip – Start using the plugins above!
Cedric Wooding – Managing a Facebook Advertising Campaign
Although I don’t run PPC campaigns for our clients, I found this Cedric’s talk very interesting and it got me thinking about using the Facebook system for other purposes – more on that another time! I was pretty amazed at the level of detail you can go into when targeting your customers, it is even possible to narrow down your adverts to show to a single user – very useful for PPC related pranks
Another interesting point to come out of Cedric’s presentation was that the most popular time for advertising on Facebook was Sunday evenings and Monday mornings. This makes total sense when you think about it but I hadn’t really thought about it before.
A good tip was to target connections between various products and likes to keep costs down. For example someone who is interested in the Top Gear fan page, may also be interested in an advert for a company selling experience days in a Ferrari.
Cedric told us that the more you spend, the more chance you have of getting Facebook’s attention and getting an account manager which can be very useful.
Takeaway Tip – Target connections between products and people for lower costs
Annabel Hodges – When is an SEO Campaign not an SEO Campaign
I really enjoyed Annabel’s talk mainly because she shared a lot of the feelings I have when it comes to SEO and online marketing in general. Namely that sometimes, SEO isn’t always the most cost effective solution for a client, as well as her belief that all online marketing campaigns need to be integrated for them to be successful.
I’ve seen many examples of clients getting good results by concentrating on an area which isn’t strictly SEO. A few examples being conversion rate optimisation and social media marketing. Despite SEO being a solid long term strategy, sometimes there are other short term strategies which should be executed first.
Annabel gave some case studies for Channel 4 and New Look. The New Look one really impressed me as it was executed totally on YouTube as opposed to the main New Look site – something you wouldn’t see many SEOs recommend! By doing this, they were able to compete on keywords which they wouldn’t normally be able to target. Their videos started showing up in Universal results mixed in with powerful ecommerce sites, therefore exposing their brand to different markets whilst doing no traditional SEO to their site.
Takeaway Tip – Ensure your online marketing plan fits with your clients business targets
Mark Cook – Making Accurate Traffic Predictions
One thing came out loud and clear from Mark’s presentation – he doesn’t like the Google Adwords Traffic Estimator
Instead of using this, Mark recommended using Google Insights for Search which provides (on the whole) more accurate data. Mark went on to show some very impressive ideas of how he can predict traffic using a system his team have developed. I’m not going to go into loads of detail but suffice to say, it was a very impressive system. Mark basically looks at the various different types of search result pages we see, then attempts to calculate the CTR of various results on this pages. For example a number 1 position on a regular organic listing will probably get a high CTR than a number 1 listing with Google Maps blended in above.
This type of data is invaluable in my opinion, being able to predict levels of traffic can save you a lot of time and money and makes sure you are chasing the right keywords right from the start.
Takeaway Tip – Use Google Insights for Search for more reliable traffic data
Nikki Rae – Custom Variables and Google Analytics
I saw Nikki present at the last Brighton SEO and even became a participant at one point! This time she was talking about custom variables and how they can be used to provide you with even more useful insights about your visitors. I’ve worked with custom variables a fair bit but its obvious that the possibilities are just about endless.
Nikki again got the crowd involved with a demo of how a user is tagged with various data as they move through a site and how this data is then recorded into Google Analytics.
Takeaway Tip – If you aren’t already, start using custom variables!
Simon Dance – Link Building and CRM
Simon talked about the importance of relationships in the link building process and I could relate to a lot of what he was saying. I think that many people forget about the importance of building good business relationships when doing link building. Simon talked about a number of tools he uses to manage these relationships and link building in general.
The key point that Simon made was that if you can build these relationships, then you can build links which are very hard for competitors to copy due to your existing relationship.
One tools which Simon mentioned which I’ve used in the past is Buzzstream which I’d recommend. It is not a link building tool but it is excellent for organising the outreach you do as part of a link building campaign. It can keep track of all the people you contact and help you form those relationships which get you the valuable links.
Takeaway Tip – Build long term relationships to get the links that your competitors can’t
Nichola Stott – Challenging the Conventional Wisdom of Anchor Text
I found Nichola’s talk very interesting, in particular because it focused on a keyword that I’ve done work in the past for several clients – “outdoor clothing”. Therefore I found some of the stats and conclusions very interesting!
The main point to come out of her talk was that one particular website was ranking lower than others despite a very high number of anchor text links pointing to it for the term “outdoor clothing”. The sites above it were much more brand focused in their link building which appeared to be making the difference. Perhaps this shows the shift towards branded links driving search results for keywords rather than pure anchor text links being the main factor.
What I loved most about this presentation was the fact that the time was taken to actually test a theory as opposed to just assuming what may happen. So a big thumbs up to Nichola for that.
Takeaway Tip – Don’t undervalue the power of brand driven anchor text links
Rishi Lakhani – Actually Making SEO Happen
I think this was my favourite presentation of the day. I’ll admit I didn’t learn very much that I wasn’t aware of before, but having Rishi present in his unique style was very entertaining and made me think a little more about the things that are truly important to an SEO.
I just need to give a quick mention to Rishi’s opening statement which included the following -
“I don’t like giving presentations and I don’t think I’m very good at SEO”
I really wish I’d used that at the start of my first ever SEO presentation
Rishi has worked with some very big brands in the UK and knows the various problems this can present. Getting SEO done when working with big brands can be very difficult given the masses of people to consult, contracts to agree and changes to sign off. Just being a good SEO isn’t enough, you need to be able to communicate with your client in such a way that they understand you and don’t get bogged down stuff which can stop the job from being done.
Something that really hit home with me was the point that the owners of a company only care about the bottom line – revenue. They don’t care how many links you secured this month or what their META titles are – they don’t need to know this. All they need to know is how much money they are making – if they don’t know this then they won’t pay you.
Takeaway Tip – Talk to your client in a language they understand – not technical jargon
Sam talked about how to run competitions and benefit from the links that can be generated as a result. He gave some real examples of how we have run these for Distilled clients as well as the mistakes we’ve made along the way!
One of the key points that Sam wanted to get across was to be creative. He gave one example of a client we worked on that would usually be seen as fairly boring and not very link worthy. However we created a competition that appealed to a number of people and built some good quality links in the process.
Takeaway Tip – There are always ways to be creative even if you think your industry is boring
Overall it was an excellent conference and the feedback was great. Big well done to Kelvin for organising it and thanks to all the speakers and attendees for making it a great event.
First of all, I just wanted to give a big thank you to Kelvin Newman for putting together a really enjoyable #BrightonSEO conference on Friday. The event was well attended, well covered and offered a lot of new offerings for the folks in attendance… and best of all, it was free!
There were a number of excellent presentations on analytics, SEO, and general marketing. Please find below my contributions: effectively it offers a step-by-step guide to running competitions for links. It also offers a number of case studies, and things we have learned the hard way at Distilled.
Please enjoy and don’t hesitate to share your own experiences in the comments below!
