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!
A client recently asked if there was a way to identify which pages in their site were not being indexed. Google, Bing and Yahoo all have very different systems and getting a definitive answer from any of them is next to impossible. Anyone that has done research on indexed pages in the past 10 years know that the three engines don’t agree on how many pages to index, much less which ones. So we decided to run some tests to see how to discern which pages were being indexed by any engine, without hand checking every URL.
The first idea was to use the exportable list of internal links from Google Webmaster Tools to identify pages that has been indexed. The logic being that if internal links were identified from the page, then it was most likely indexed. The accuracy of Google Webmaster Tools has been somewhat inconsistent, so we wanted to test the accuracy on some smaller sites first.
Click 'Your site on the web' -> 'Internal Links' -> 'Download this table' to find a list of pages
Our clients have any where from 100,000 to 10 million pages, making it hard to pull a list of all indexed pages using a “site:” search and that was integral to testing how many pages were “accurately indexed.” This is loosely said because the “site:” search can be flakey based on the datacenter, time of day, etc.
The Tiny Test Group
We used four sites with very few pages (<200) were used to perform this small test. This is in no way scientific, nor can the data be used for full analysis or correlation. This is rather just a quick look at how the use of the internal links report might help identify indexed pages. The sites used are a financially based consumer site, a personal blog, a health services site, and a medical surgeon’s site.
Please note that once we pulled the internal links information for the original client we came across the major caveat: Only 100,000 pages are shown in the downloaded report. So for sites with more than 100,000 indexed pages, this idea won’t ever work, no matter the accuracy.
The test started by downloading all internal links from Google Webmaster Tools into Excel and de-duplicating. Then we used the SEOBook.com SEO for Firefox plugin to pull a “site:” search for each domain, downloading all pages into CSV. The two lists were compared, and the results were dreadful. The only time that the two came close were when the site had less than 20 pages.
From this rest and the fact that we could not use this tactic for the client anyway, the idea of using listed internal links has been thrown out. And it was our best idea for the automation of such a list. But it did bring us to do more research as to the many ways a client or webmaster might look at the number of indexed pages. And with some clear oddities in the data, this test spurred a deeper look into the numbers we were pulling.
Identifying the Outliers
The main issue we wanted to explore was the fact that there were pages in the internal links list, but not the indexed list. We realized that the site reporting this has a select number of pages set to noindex. Therefore the links to these pages were identified but the page was not in the index. That led us to wonder if we pulled all the possible ways of looking at the list of indexed pages on a site, how they might differ and why. So using the same sites, we pulled numbers from all the engines from both a logged in and site colon search, and compared those numbers to the sitemap for the site and the number of visible pages.
Definitions
Known Pages – those pages that a webmaster would see as “pages” on their site. Typically product pages, informational, and others that are easily navigable from the navigation. Sitemap URLs – How many URLs are listed in the XML sitemap. (These sites only have one.) Noindex Pages - Pages on the site that have a noindex tag. Google Indexed – The number of pages for the site domain using a site colon search. Google Sitemap Indexed – The number of pages of the sitemap Google has indexed. Yahoo Indexed – The number of pages for the site domain using a site colon search. Yahoo My Sites – The number of pages the My Sites section states as indexed. Bing Indexed - The number of pages for the site domain using a site colon search. Bing WMC Indexed - The number of pages Bing’s Webmaster Center says it is has indexed.
What the ****?
The numbers don’t line up at all do they? They are all across the board for every site. The reasoning is fairly simple but can easily be missed by anyone looking for a way to locate a list of pages not in the index.
First remember that the “Known Pages” is a relative number. That was really just me looking at the number of pages that could be identified externally by looking at the blog or site. The number of noindex tagged pages is by hand as well. Those two and the sitemaps are full of human error. We have already noted that the site colon search isn’t always spot on, but the real kicker is in the data from the engines.
Google -The only way to get a “count” of indexed pages from Webmaster Tools is to have a sitemap and those can be flawed in many ways.
Bing – They are notoriously slow to crawl and index sites. So the newer and smaller site is not yet indexed.
Yahoo – There was only one major outlier here, but if you notice their numbers are so much higher than everyone else’s; that is common for Yahoo. Site Explorer is known for showing every link to a site under the sun, so if the file exists in any form, we could expect them to list it.
The Six Things to Remember
Beyond the fact that all of the engines are different, here are a few things we realized when pulling the numbers from all the engines. These are all easily fixable if you are serious about getting a clear list of indexed pages, but can be easily overlooked, causing confusion when the numbers are pulled.
Parameters For many sites, there are pages being indexed with dynamic parameters such as a session ID. If these are not ignored by the engines, there is a possibility that there are a number of pages in a site colon search and internal linking report that are in essence duplicates.
No index If you have set some pages in your site navigation to noindex, naturally they are not going to appear in a list of indexed pages. But those pages can be linking to other pages, and would therefore appear in the report of internally linked pages.
Outdated Sitemap If you are relying on a sitemap to tell you how many URLs are indexed, the sitemap needs to be constantly updated. If possible set it to be automatically generated server side. This will cut down on any confusion like on Site 2.
Other File Types (PDF, Flash, Word, PowerPoint) The engines index more than just web pages. Any document on your domain that is linked to anywhere on the Internet can be indexed if it is a supported file type and not restricted by robots.txt or an htaccess file. These include any flash files, presentations or marketing material you might have pushed at some point. Think press releases.
Pagination If you own a blog or a site with products that span a number of pages, pagination is most likely occurring. A category on a blog that the owner would think counts as just one page, could be two or three pages long. This can make the number of indexed pages larger than expected.
Subdomains Are you running a mobile site? Anything on your domain, including mobile site files, subdomains, and duplicate content from those subdomains could be throwing off your numbers of indexed files.
Just remember that in the end, pulling a number of indexed pages from anywhere without digging into the data is most likely going to be misleading. Just like if you pull rank numbers for a keyword and expect that to be your rank for everyone searching for that term. The internet is not a perfect place, it is not scientific by any means. Take every number with a grain of salt and do your homework. Things change all the time and the best way to combat that is to keep your analytical brain engaged at every moment.
I recently went through the not inconsiderable pain of installing the Microsoft IIS SEO Toolkit. It’s probably easier if you already run IIS servers. Since we are a LAMP shop, I’ve used Microsoft servers before but never installed them. I don’t quite know why this tool is a plugin to the server – it is essentially a crawler. So you don’t have to run it over sites on your own machine (or even sites hosted on MS servers). Whatever the ins and outs of that, it’s worth following this guy who is the original developer.
The web installer is a really nice touch, but it doesn’t play nicely with user permissions on Windows 7. I managed to make it work by logging in as root before using the web installer (which meant setting up a bunch of browser settings in my superuser account).
Even after doing that, I still need to run the application as administrator each time.
If you are used to the general terminology of the web and crawlers like Xenu then you’ll find it pretty easy to get started, but this is a great walkthrough of the basics.
My intention with this post is not to walk through the features (I’ll leave that as an exercise for the interested reader) but rather to point out some cool specific SEO tasks:
Digging into errors
One of the first places I check out is the status code summary.
The nice feature here is the ability to drill down by double clicking on statuses. I have found this to be one of the quickest ways of digging into structural issues across big sites. Although there would have been other ways of finding it, it quickly highlighted an issue with a recent client’s site where they had accidentally changed a large proportion of their internal links to go via 301 redirects. On large sites, it can be hard to find patterns in this kind of thing without a scalable tool.
Performance
I have recently become a big fan of webpagetest for creating management-friendly videos of sites loading side by side (see this corporate comparison for example). This is only indicative, however. It doesn’t help make widescale improvements to large sites. Your (client’s) developers are going to want to know patterns – the kinds of pages that are generally slow etc.
In the ‘performance’ tab, you can select to see slow pages by directory and sort by ‘count’ descending:
Click depth
Rather than bore you with more screenshots and detailed explanations of pivot tables, I thought I’d demonstrate with a quick screencast how to mash up the IIS crawl data to tell you how many pages you have at each ‘level’ of crawl (this post from Rand explains why you would care about this kind of thing). I don’t know of any other good ways of getting this data, so I hope this is of interest as a use for the IIS toolkit. Note that the video was recorded in the Distilled office rather than a recording studio so there is background hum, hopefully it serves its purpose:
I realised the other day that the internet is a lot like mediaeval England. The power that some of the top people online hold is really similar to the old school ruling system.
Someone like Matt Cutts has so much power over the entire lives and livelihoods of so many people, and you practically have to appeal to get an audience with him so he can decide the fate of your website – sounds pretty feudal to me!
Read on to see where everyone else fits in…
Thanks so much to Leonie for her awesome design skillz!
Hi, there! My name is Mike Pantoliano and I’m the newest SEO consultant working for Distilled in the US. I’m terribly excited to be joining the ridiculously talented team both in the UK and the US, and I’ve already learned a great deal from the bright minds with which I’ve surrounded myself. I hope to provide this blog with contributions that are in line with some of the stellar work written by my new colleagues. You can read my full bio over at the Distilled US site, and you can find me on Twitter @MikeCP.
Establishing a successful eCommerce shop in any semi-competitive niche takes time, SEO know-how, marketing ability, and more. Building links to an eCommerce site is hard enough, so it’s important to make sure your on-page SEO elements are in place so that any links that you do grab provide the most benefit possible. To help with this, I’d like to discuss the key on-page elements to arguably the most important page on an eCommerce site: the product page.
Title Tag
No shocker here. The title tag matters…a lot. For most product sets, having your CMS generate a title tag along these lines – {Manufacturer} {Product Name} {Variation or SKU} | {Web store name} – is a good start. Unless your web store has become almost synonymous with your industry, there isn’t much of a reason to have your store anywhere near the front of the title.
Just sit back and watch the traffic roll in
Consult with your favorite keyword research tool here to help in product naming. The first 3 or 4 words of your title tag are crucial, so if your seed phrase is finding its way towards the end of the tag, you may want to adjust your formula.
Bonus: If there’s room in the first 70 characters for your unique selling proposition, go for it. Your title is the clickable link from the SERPs, so if you’re the only one in town offering free shipping then you’ll want the searcher to know.
H1
Your product name should be your H1. The H1 won’t be all that different from the title, but don’t worry. Not only is the right move for the search bot, but it continues the scent for the user who has an expectation coming from the SERPs.
H1 of Whizzers or Cordless Power Scissors. I cant decide!
Breadcrumbs
Don’t forget about breadcrumbs! They are a fantastic way to reinforce your site hierarchy and keyword strength. Once again, you’re doing right by the engines and the users here. Remember that a flat site architecture ensures maximum crawlability, so your breadcrumbs should go back 2 or 3 levels at most.
Images
Every image should have an alt attribute, no exceptions. Setting the product name to automatically populate as your image alt is a nice fallback. Even better, your CMS would allow for a modifier in the case of multiple images (i.e. {Product Name} – Front, {Product Name} – Back).
Product Description
Put simply: write a completely unique description for EVERY product on your site. This is your best opportunity to tell the search engines that your site is relevant for more than just the exact product name. In other words, if you want long-tail traffic, this is where you can get it.
The thought of having to write this much content could be frightening, especially for large sites, but it’s worth it. Set a goal of getting 20 done per day, hire a writer, have your kid do it for you, whatever it takes. Just get it done.
Descriptions should be at least 150 words. They can be a product review, a fleshed out set of product specifications, a heavily modified version of the manufacturer’s description, an amusing anecdote about the product, etc.
Write naturally and the keyword density should be just fine. Your product description is a great place to make use of alternate phrasing where search volume dictates. An example: “Dog door” and “doggy door”. Use the higher search volume keyphrase (dog door) as the product name and title, and sprinkle the product description with your lower search volume terms (doggy door).
Allow me to demonstrate:
Let me tell you a little bit about electric scissors: A long time ago in a far away place…
yadda yadda yadda.
“These scissors just saved my life!” he said.
blah blah blah.
And that’s why you need electronic scissors in your life!
The URL
Do not go out of your way to include as many keywords as possible in your URL. The formula – domain.com/category/(subcategory/)brand-product-name-sku/ – works well. A long URL isn’t necessarily an SEO no-no, but it can be a turn off for the user and acts as a sharing deterrent.
User Content (Reviews)
Implement the ability for the customer to write reviews and rate products, but make sure that these contributions are rendering on-page in static HTML. If the reviews are javascript there’s a good chance the engine bots will be unable to spider them, and your site will receive no SEO benefit. If the reviews are static, they should appear when you view the page source.
Aside from the conversion rate benefit of reviews, they also help to keep your product pages fresh and updated. The search bots will visit more frequently and reindex all of the wonderful new content supplied by your customers. Reviews also provide the benefit of increased keyword usage, yet another plus.
A glowing review - And keyword dense!
Blog Tie-In
You do have a blog for your eCommerce site, right? Thought so! Include a link to any of the blog posts that have mentioned the product either in the description or a separate call-out. Much like the breadcrumbs, linking to related content on the same domain from your product page increases the perceived relevance for both the user and the search engine.
A note about “boiler plate” text:
Including shipping and sizing information on the product page is a great idea, because that is where the user is most likely to desire that information. However, it can add up to a substantial bit of identical text appearing on a shed load of pages. I think a great compromise here is to link to these assurances via a call-out, and lightbox the content in to the page. Your user gets their question answered and stays on- page, and the search engine doesn’t read the same text on 5,000 different product pages.
In Conclusion
One thing I like about developing a good SEO’d product page template is that almost everything done for the purpose of improving on-page SEO also provides conversion rate benefit.
I hope you enjoyed my first blog post here at Distilled!
