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Posts Tagged ‘Google’
Thursday, October 13th, 2011
We just don’t hear about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as much as we used to. Most people know that they need SEO for their website in order to be found by search engines, but they have no clue what that entails. People like that trust people like us, and other folks that work with SEO on a daily basis, to guide their site in the right direction. So why talk about SEO right now?  Because Google released “Panda,” a major algorithm update that is changing how us web publishers focus our efforts.
SocialMediaToday.com explains:
Google’s release of “Panda”, its latest major algorithm update, changes the way we need to approach optimizing our websites for search engines. In the past, getting your website to rank well in Google search results meant focusing on keyword placement, descriptive “title tags”, unique content and backlinking. Today, after the Panda update, these techniques are no longer enough.
Panda introduces some totally new elements to Google’s ranking methodology to help people find higher quality sites in their searches. For us web publishers, our focus must shift from keywords and links to the user experience, trustworthiness and likeliness your web pages will be shared. I know. I know. It seems a bit abstract. Doesn’t it? So let’s take a closer look at Google’s new SEO guidelines.
Design and User Experience
Google now places a higher value on websites that are well designed and organized. There’s a group of people who literally rate web pages for quality. If your site has too many ads, requires a lot of clicks to navigate or if it just isn’t very attractive your rating will suffer. These factors relate to the likelihood that people will (or will not) share your site with others. It’s like a popularity contest!
Authority and Authenticity
The days of producing lots of content for content’s sake are over. Now content quality matters. Content must be thoughtful, well-researched and unique. Ranking is also affected by whether the writer is judged as an authority on a topic or not. Consequently, you do best by creating truly original content that is not scraped or paraphrased from other sites. And having an opinion on a topic that differs from the mainstream is a plus.
Usage Metrics
More importance has been given to web user metrics. Your site’s metrics will be compared with other sites within your niche. Here is something quantifiable that we can grab on to as we work to optimize our sites. In particular, the metrics that show if your site is liked best, include average time on site, bounce rate, page views per visit and click thru rate (CTR) from search result pages. Google will also be judging the diversity and quantity of traffic to your site, and how often pages are shared.
For more guidance on how Google Panda works, check out the 23 questions on Google’s Webmaster Central Blog. And to keep on top of SEO best practices tune in to SEO Moz’s Whiteboard Fridays.
Tags: algorithm, Google, Panda, SEO
Posted in Chelsea Clements, Search Engine Rankings, Websites | No Comments »
Friday, September 16th, 2011
Google users may soon see celebrity endorsements included as annotations under paid search results as part of new advertising program that the company has just started testing.
Only a handful of advertisers are in the program right now, with no other details being revealed. The screenshot below is from a Google search for ‘kardashian collection sears” which includes an annotation that Khloe Kardashians had endorsed an ad about the Kardashian clothing line at Sears.
It will be interesting to see how this feature will be integrated and how it will affect both the ad prices and the click-through-rates. Only time will tell!
Tags: Celebrities, Click Through Rates, Endorsement, Google, PPC, SEO
Posted in Advertising, Chelsea Clements, Marketing, Search Engine Rankings | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011
See pictures of cheese. Alert me about cheese. Measure the popularity of cheese on the web. Explore cheese in 3D. Find cheese nearby. Email someone about cheese. Search cheese on the move.
Whether it’s catching up on the latest news in cheese or scouring the earth for it — you love it, Google’s got it! (And, yes, my love for cheese just reached a whole new degree of obscene, thanks Google.)
In one of their most recent (successful) attempts to ‘wow’ the world, Google rolled out its, “What Do You Love?” tool late last month — taking refined searches to an entirely different level. Similar to that of iGoogle, WDYL combines a number of tools/ services into one single portal where users can access a variety of search results on the spot, in the same spot. Rather than entering a desired term or phrase in the search bar given and then clicking to individual categories to sift through the results, users can cruise from category to category as information appears in the form of miniature widgets on the giant interface. From Translate and Trends to YouTube, Maps, Groups, and Google News, this instant-viewing feature cuts your search time in half.
Within each widget that houses specific information, one has to option to view results as they initially appear OR expand the area to enlarge for closer viewing. However, they also have the ability, of course, to click on a particular search result in order to view it via that specific category’s link (i.e. Translate, Trends, YouTube, etc.). Searching made easy and advanced! Results in one central location.
Google’s WDYL may even take you to places you don’t expect: Would you like to organize an online debate about American cheese or learn about bizarre cheese-inspired cocktail recipes? Because you can! Perhaps a search more industry-appropriate would be to track the progress of your brand/ company, in which case meet WDYL— your new best friend.
Check out this video post by the Google giants themselves, and explore the features for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu-YsZNpkZs
While it comes as no surprise that Google has no shortage of services around the web, they’ve found a way to bridge the gap between simply searching blindly and providing useful tools to discover relevant information. Seemingly simple search engine by day, efficient tool for exploration and discovery by night!
…This is the part where my former college-self wonders, “Where in the world was this when I struggled to crank out papers 24 hours before they were due?!”
Tags: "What Do You Love?", Google, iGoogle, Social Media, WDYL, YouTube
Posted in Brittany Wagner, Just kinda cool, Media, Social Media | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 27th, 2011
 A week or two ago, I was reading the newspaper and came across an article on a ‘facial recognition app‘ being developed by Google. Reading this article made me think about what this would and could really mean. Could this be a bad idea or a really good one? Should I be excited about something like this or a little nervous? What kind of privacy laws will protect us from the weirdo’s using this app?
Hartmut Neven, the Google engineering director for image-recognition development said, “In particular, women say, ‘Oh my God. Imagine this guy takes a picture of me in a bar, and then he knows my address just because somewhere on the Web there is an association of my address with my photo.’ That’s is a scary thought. So I think there is merit in finding a good route that makes the power of this technology available in a good way.”
Google has said that people will have to “opt-in” to the service for others to have access to them through this app, and Google thinks there will be plenty of people who want to opt-in. “If you’re an actor in L.A., you want to have everyone recognizing you,” Neven said.
Another example of how this app could be used is for people looking to connect online. They could use their phones to snap each other’s pictures and instantly navigate to that person’s profile, rather than having to exchange business cards or remember a user name. Hmmm…maybe that would even save a tree or two from being cut down for printing.
Want to learn more? Check out “Google making app that would identify people’s faces” and also “How Google is teaching computer’s to see“.
What are your thoughts about this? Would you ‘opt in’? Do you think this is something people will truly use?
Tags: applications, Facial Recognition, Google, Hartmut Neven, privacy
Posted in Renee Burkhart, Social Media, The Future | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 13th, 2011
With all of the websites that we design and develop at Tarte Advertising, we automatically install the Google Analytics tracking code so that our clients can learn which online marketing initiatives are cost effective and see how visitors actually interact with their site. It also allows them to make informed site design improvements, drive targeted traffic, and increase their conversions and profits. Sounds nice, huh? Well, yes – if you can navigate through the analytics and understand what exactly they mean. Over the next few months, we are going to do our best to help educate you on what all the different statistics, analyics, reports, percentages and terms means.*
Bounce rate is one of the reports that you can review in Google Analytics. Google defines “bounce rate” as your percentage of single-page visits. So, what exactly does that mean? And how do I know if my percentage is good or bad?
Here is a nice, simple definition that I found:
A bounce is when a visitor lands on one page of your site, and doesn’t visit another page in your site.
They could, potentially, look at that one page for a very long time, and still be considered a bounce.
Bounce rates basically measure how interesting other pages of your site are to your visitors. Depending on what your site is, you may or may not be worried about bounce rates.
A site that has product reviews, for example, might have a high bounce rate if the single page that someone lands on answers all their questions about the product so they don’t need to go anywhere else on the site.
Below is a very general chart that helps to explain the percentages a bit. By no means does this chart mean the same thing and work the same way for everyone. As noted in the definition above, some sites aren’t looking for their visitors to go deeper than one page on their site. For the other businesses, ones are wanting their visitors to look all around the site and learn more about them than what is on the landing page (the page they entered the site though), then the chart can be helpful.
What does it mean if my bounce rate is high and it shouldn’t be?
Let’s take an example: Let’s say you have a website that sells women’s handbags and the main purpose of the site is to sell the handbags – not necessarily educate women about handbags, but to sell them. Let’s say the page of your site that most people land on first is your homepage. I would imagine that your homepage might have some pictures of the handbags you sell and maybe gives a brief description of what kinds of handbags a visitor can find once they move past the homepage.
If you have a site like this, where you definitely want and need people to move further in to your site than the homepage, because that is where they will find the handbags to purchase, and your bounce rate is over 59% (according to the chart above), then you definitely have a problem that you need to work on. Essentially what that percentage means is that more than 59% of the people that are coming to your site are realizing right off the bat, that your site isn’t what they were really looking for. Why? Well, there could be a number of reasons. Here are just a few (there are plenty more, but this will at least give you some ideas and get you thinking):
1. Your visitors were under the impression that your site was something other than it actually is. If they saw an ad for your site somewhere and linked through to your site, but they didn’t immediately see what the ad said they would see – then they are gone.
2. They landed on your homepage and a video automatically started playing or music started playing and they can’t find a way to turn it off. This is one of the biggest annoyances to people – including me. Any site that I go to that has music automatically playing, I immediately close the window. A lot of times I have my own music playing and when a website starts up their own music that plays on top of mine, it is very frustrating.
3. If your your site is cluttered with all kinds of images and text and animations, and your visitors can’t find your navigation menu, you can kiss them goodbye. Simplicity and ease of use is so important. There is so much competition for nearly every industry online at this point. If a visitor can’t “figure out” your site within a split second – you lose and your competition wins.
When I checked our bounce rate from the beginning of the year until today, it was 4.75%. What is your bounce rate? Do you monitor it?
*Disclaimer – By no means are we claiming to be “experts” in the field of Google Analytics. Our goal is to simply help shed a little light on what everything within your Analytics account means – enough so that you can know whether your web site is working for or against you.
Tags: analytics, bounce rate, Google, reports, statistics, website
Posted in A Closer Look, Audrey Keyes, Stats, Websites | No Comments »
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