Is Keyword Reporting of Google Searches Less Accurate?

Google SSLMany of us rely on website analytics like those from HubSpot, Google Analytics and others to help us understand what keyword phrases are driving visitors to our websites. A recent change at Google is compromising that, at least by a little. If a user is logged into any Google account, Google will now use the secure version of the Google home page (the “SSL-enabled” version) to provide search results.A search done through the secure version of the Google home page protects the user’s search terms, which means your reporting tool can’t see the search term he or she used to find your website.

Google claims that this will affect less than 10% of searchers that find your website. That’s because many people are not logged into a Google account (Google AdWords, Google+, and so forth), and even for those people if they do a search outside of the Google homepage (like from a search box in their browser or on the Google toolbar) they don’t get redirected to the secure Google site for the search.

For those visitors who’ve been redirected to the secure version of Google, you can expect in your website analytics to see a new item in the list of search terms visitors have used: “unknown search” or “unknown keyword”.

So far, it looks as though Google is right: very few searches are being done through their secure website. It remains to be seen, whether that will change over time.

 


The Evolution of Search in 6 Minutes

Interesting video from Google on the evolution of search, from Larry Page & Sergey Brin’s initial graduate project at Stanford to where it’s headed in the future.

1 Comment more...

Good User Experience is Indispensable

Katie Mack wrote about the importance of the user experience in SEO. We couldn’t have said it better:

We firmly believe that the best way to optimize your site for search engines is to optimize it for people. … People will stay longer on your site if they find content engaging and easy to navigate. You also want to encourage users to share your web content, which will naturally drive more traffic to your site from other sources.

She cites a few criteria for an effective user experience. You need content that:

  • is easy to find
  • has educational value
  • is easy to read and understand
  • invites contribution and sharing

This is especially important for websites that have lost rankings due to Google’s Panda Update earlier this year. That algorithm change gave preference to sites that provide original, relevant content that’s easy to digest and easy to share.

Google wants to highlight high quality websites and the Panda update was largely focused on that goal. Consequently, Google posted (shortly after releasing the Panda update) guidelines on what they think constitutes a high-quality website. They start out by saying:

Our advice for publishers continues to be to focus on delivering the best possible user experience on your websites and not to focus too much on what they think are Google’s current ranking algorithms or signals

We recommend their article.


Why Did My Google Rankings Drop?

Oh, No!!!

A sudden drop in Google rankings is terrifying if you rely on traffic from Google to bring in a significant portion of visitors to your site. When it happens, your traffic almost always takes a proportional hit. And that affects your revenue – very negatively.

What’s most terrifying about this is that you almost never know why it happened — and Google isn’t about to tell you. So how do you know what to fix?

As it turns out, Matt Cutts (The Google Guy) has answered that question in a video. He outlines some concrete steps you can follow to figure out what went wrong so you can fix it.

We hope it never happens to you, but if it does we think Matt’s suggestions will help.

 


Is Your Bounce Rate Too High?

What’s a bounce rate?

It’s the percentage of visitors to your site that bounce. What’s a bounce? It’s a very simple but important concept. When someone arrives at your website, takes one look and leaves without visiting any other pages — that’s a bounce. At a recent symposium, one presenter summed it up like this: “They came, they puked, they left.”

If lots of visitors on your web site bounce away, you’re losing them as customers. Clearly, lots of bounces are visitors who weren’t really looking for you, but for something else. When they bounce, they don’t represent lost sales. But when a real prospective customer bounces, they’re going to do business with one of your competitors. And that’s never good.

How do I tell my bounce rate?

Many hosting companies provide site analytics that display your bounce rate. Failing that, install the free Google Analytics on your site, and you can track the progress of your bounce rate over time very easily.

If your bounce rate is too high, there are wasy to reduce it.

What’s a good bounce rate?

That may depend on your business. Retail websites typically experience about a 20-40% bounce rate. Well optimized content websites normally have a bounce rate in the 40-60% range. If your bounce rate is over 60%, you should be concerned. If it’s over 80%, you have a major problem.

How do I improve my bounce rate?

First, make sure your bounce rates aren’t because people are finding you by searching for stuff you’re not optimized for. If they find you by accident when they’re really looking for something else, those bounces are fine. But if people find you by searching important keywords, those are the bounces you want to improve.

Make sure it’s immediately obvious when someone lands on one of your pages by searching a relevant keyword phrase that the page makes it immediately clear that they’re in the right place. You have no more than 8 seconds to convince them your page is really all about what they searched for. Check your main above-the-fold headline and any other above-the-fold sub-headings.

Then make sure your web page isn’t turning them off. Check the copywriting and make sure you have appealing content. Dierdre Rienzo wrote in the MarketItWrite blog about common writing mistakes that contribute to a high bounce rate and which you need to avoid.

Make those changes and watch your bounce rate. If it doesn’t improve, look for other ways to keep people engaged on your site. Link to related content, use call to action links, and give your visitors what they’re looking for.


Citations Can Help Your Local Search Visibility

Local search listingsGoogle is not just counting links for their local search results in Google Places. Now they’re counting citations, too.

Links, as we all know, are important for organic search rankings. A citation is a mention of a company or website that’s not clickable as a link. It’s just a mention.

Many of us considered them worthless insofar as search engine visibility goes, but that’s not the case anymore. Citations in places like YellowPages.com, Yelp, Merchant Circle, Localeze and others can give your local search listing (the one associated with a map) a significant boost.

We’ve found a handy list of 20 excellent websites where you can easily get citations. Some of them allow customer reviews, too. Encourage your most delighted customers to go and write reviews once you have a listing there. Just remember not to write rave reviews yourself; you’re likely to get caught at that.


Google PageRank – Why Isn’t It Updated More Often?

Focus less on Google's displayed PageRank.Since link popularity is such a heavy influence on search rankings, especially in Google, many people rely on the “display PageRank” that Google provides in the Google Toolbar. But anyone who watches that knows that it usually goes for many, many months without being updated. Why is that?

Matt Cutts, “The Google Guy”, answered just that question in a video. Basically, the message is “Don’t perseverate so much on your PageRank.” Matt suggests that your time is better spent focusing on things like user experience, page speed, content, and so forth.

See the Google position on PageRank here.

1 Comment more...

Helpful Link Building Resources

Link popularity — the number and quality of other websites that link to yours — is an important factor in search engine rankings, especially in Google. But few of us have the patience to sit and wait for others to link to us. So we have to resort to active link building.

The KissMetrics blog posted a list of helpful link building resources. Some that struck me right off the bat were

  • A list of resources to help you beuild incoming links better and faster.Top 9 Ways to be a Link Magnet
  • How to Use Blog Commenting to Get Backlinks
  • Link Building Tips for Small Businesses
  • Linkbait Failure – Not Understanding the Need for Instant Gratification
  • 24 Advanced Link Building Strategies
  • 4 Kinds of Prospecting Phrases for Link Building Queries
  • Link Building in a Panda World
  • Fundamentals of Getting Big Links from Big Media Sites

You may find some that strike a chord with your needs. Check out the list of link building resources here.


Engage Your Prospects with Twitter

Engage your prospects; encourage them to follow you on TwitterUsing Twitter to full advantage allows you to fully engage with customers and prospects. In a recent book entitled 100 Inbound Marketing Content Ideas by the folks at HubSpot, they include what they call 34 Awesome Twitter Ideas. Here are some I thought were particularly good.

  • Twitter can allow you to respond to customer/prospect questions, and put forward a friendly personality for your company.
  • Check your @replies regularly with a Twitter client. Reply to your users’ questions.
  • Posts tweets of your blog posts.
  • Thank people who comment on your blog posts.
  • Write in the first person; that shows a real person is behind the Twitter account.
  • If your blog post is a list of tips, post one as a teaser in your tweet.
  • If you have older blog posts that are still relevant, tweet them again from time to time for those who missed them the first time around.

You can download the whole book for these and other tips for Twitter, Facebook and your blog here.


A Cool Half-Dozen Reasons You Need a Blog Now

Six reasons you need a blog.Leverage Your Blog

Once you have a blog, you can easily leverage it to spread your brand, gain you authority in your field, and greatly improve your visibility on the Internet. Here are six reasons a blog will pay you back all out of proportion to the effort it takes to maintain it.

  1. Interact with clients & prospects. Write provocative posts that generate comments and questions. You can respond and establish both authority and accessibility at the same time.
  2. Gain Directory Links. You can list your blog in perhaps two dozen blog directories. If your blog is hosted on your website domain (it should be!) then all those links  help your website’s link popularity. See Bloggapedia, BlogaramaTechnorati, and BlogHub.
  3. Syndication Possibilities – other blogs may re-post your blog posts for their readers, dramatically extending your range of influence. Plus you get backlinks that hepl your website rankings.
  4. Social Media Exposure — You can set up your blog so every post automatically gets listed on your Facebook Fan Page. The preiodic updates there keep your fans engaged. You can also easily post a link to your blog post at other social media sites: Delicious, Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, LinkedIn, Merchant Circle and so forth. That expands your reach and also generates backlinks.
  5. Real Time Exposure via Twitter. Tweet each blog post as you publish it to get the word out to your followers. Others interested in what you do will find you and follow you. You can see ours here.
  6. You can even push your blog out on Kindle and actually earn money when people subscribe to it! (Look up the Rank Magic Blog on your Kindle for a good example.)

Yes, having a blog takes a certain amount of discipline to write at least one good post a month, but it can rally pay off in your branding and your visibility on the web. We can share some time-saving and labor-saving ideas that we’ve put into practice for our own blog. Call and ask how we can help.


Sign up for our Email Newsletter

It comes out monthly and highlights the best blog posts from the previous month.

Search Rank Magic:

Archives

Copyright © 1996-2012 Rank Magic Blog. All rights reserved.
iDream theme by Templates Next | Powered by WordPress