How Referrer Spam Is Ruining Your Google Analytics Reporting

(This is the transcript from our new video so it may not read as well as a normal blog post would)

Hi. Today I wanted to go over referrer spam. It seems to be a pretty big problem these days. You’ve probably seen it in your Analytics accounts.

If you check referral data, you’ll see things like ‘floating-share-buttons’ and ‘seo-success.com’. Things like these, basically, that is not real traffic, and it’s fake data being injected into your Analytics account via the Google Analytics server. So it’s not a real visit. This is done by the spammers randomly generate UA codes. So they don’t actually visit your site or know the hostname of your site, which is an important thing to remember when using the filter, but we’ll come to that later.

Why do they do this? Basically, it’s an easy way to get traffic. It’s pretty clever because people are curious. They’re going to click on the referrals, see what they are, and then, obviously, that logs as a visit for them. They may also get money through affiliate marketing. I’ve seen some of these sites go to ecommerce sites and some dodgy stuff. So they may get a kick-back from sending traffic their way.

Why is this a problem? Basically, it’s going to artificially inflate your traffic. So if you’re going to send reports to your boss or review it yourself, it’s going to be inaccurate, and it can affect other metrics like your conversion rate or even revenue.

So how to stop this? Basically, the best way I found to combat this is something called a valid hostname filter, which will be implemented in your Analytics account. Basically, the way this works, because the UA codes are randomly generated, the referrals, the spammers do not know the hostname of your site, so it works by only including valid ones. So it will be, for example, Koozai.com, or there’s a few other things which you want to include, like Google Translate, or maybe your dev site will be in there. But basically, the process is a bit complicated, and we’ll be covering it further on our blog. So if you need more information on that, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

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Why Your PPC Bidding Needs to Evolve

As SEM continues to evolve, so too should your strategies. Here’s how you can align PPC bidding strategy with current keyword performance to effectively optimize campaigns.

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Focusing on Consumer Attitude to Understand Behavior

For a thorough analysis of customer behavior, marketers should exercise consumer surveys and execute usability testing on websites. Here is why these tactics are beneficial to strategy.

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6 Mobile Website Wins

Let’s be honest, 2015 has been massive for mobile online. Google rolled out ‘Mobilegeddon’, mobile surpassed desktop searches on Google and it is now the preferred device to access the internet (in the U.S.).

Although most of this has been expected – with every recent year being hailed as ‘the year of the mobile’ – businesses were still rushed into getting a mobile website in place. In this rush, it is likely website owners have overlooked some easy wins on their mobile website.

Don’t worry; I’ve got this covered for you with 6 mobile website wins that will help to not only improve a user’s experience on your website but may also get you ahead of your competition.

Tap Targets

If we had to highlight one issue that’s seen across most mobile sites, it would be on-page links being too close together. We’ve all been there, trying to tap one link on our mobile and accidently tapping another. As a user it can be very frustrating.

Insufficient spacing around links on your website can not only hinder a user’s ability to navigate your site, it can also result in your website not being considered mobile-friendly which affects your website’s search visibility.

Although it may be seen more as ‘essential’ as opposed to a ‘win’, by ensuring links and buttons are sufficiently spaced across your website, what may be a competitor’s downfall can easily be your strength.

Google recommend that each tap target be at least 48 CSS pixels tall/wide with sufficient room between each target without overlays. View Google’s resource on correctly sizing tap targets for more information.

To identify whether your website uses correctly sized tap targets, use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool, which will show results on a page-by-page basis.

Click to Call

The number on a website is usually the first point of contact for a user when they want to get in touch with a business, regardless of the device they’re using. On a mobile device this becomes even more important.

You should ensure that when the number on your website appears on a mobile device, it can be interacted with, rather than it being static. By allowing mobile users to click to call, you’re making it a lot easier for them to interact with your business and convert.

Enabling this action involves adding the simple ‘tel:’ scheme around your contact number, marking the number as a link:

For information on implementing this code, have a look at this resource by Google.

Click to Email

Along with click to call, you also need to ensure a click to email feature is in place on your website. Although this is now common practice across most websites, from time to time it can be missed.

As mentioned above, you want to make it as easy as possible for your user to interact with your business and convert should they wish to. This action allows users to click an email link to be taken directly to an email window where they can compose a message, as is done on the Koozai website:

Enabling the click to email action involves adding the ‘mailto:’ scheme around the relevant email address:

Clear Menus

Ensure you understand your user when designing your website. This is especially important when formulating the menu of your mobile website. A typical way in which web designers adapt the navigation bar is to put it behind a hamburger icon, as is used on the Koozai website:

You need to identify which is the best approach for you; one solution doesn’t work for all sites. A/B test your menu and see what works best for you and your user. Are users interacting with your menu more when navigation items are visible, or is there no difference when menu items are hidden behind the hamburger item?

By conducting split tests, the data you gather will allow you to effectively channel your audience through your mobile website.

Desktop to Mobile Consistency

Design and structure consistency can often be overlooked when creating a mobile-optimised website. This shouldn’t be the case. When you serve a mobile version of a website, ensuring consistency with the design and structure of the desktop equivalent is important.

If a regular desktop user visits your mobile website, they should be able to interact with it in a similar fashion to the way they would on your desktop version.

Forms

When using forms on your mobile website, make sure you’re using the correct mobile input type per field.

A number of mobile input types are available, and each input type results in a different keyboard being shown when users click in the relevant field. Below is a selection of the most commonly used input types used in contact forms:

You should provide your user with the right keyboard. By using the correct input type, you’re making it a lot easier for your user to convert and improving their experience of your mobile website. For more information on mobile input types and how to implement them, click here.

That’s That!

Do you have any mobile wins not mentioned in this post that you’ve implemented on your website? I’d love to hear about them. Feel free to share them in the comments below or reach me directly via Twitter – @koozai_luke.

Alternatively, contact us today for advice and support in building a strong mobile website.

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3 Reasons to Stop Bidding on 90 Percent of Your Keywords

To bid or not to bid? That is the question. Use this guide to determine an effective strategy for bidding on the right keywords and ultimately turn substantial profits.

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Why Feed Optimization Is Critical for a Successful Ad Campaign

Here are some helpful instructions for using keywords to effectively execute feed optimization for ad campaigns, a key PPC practice.

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Halloween Tricks and Treats for Digital Marketers

The holiday shopping season is the most significant time of year for digital marketers, starting with Halloween. Consider these insights and optimize your ad campaign strategy.

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Grow Your Audience, Business Intelligence Database with Google AdWords

Optimize your PPC ad campaign by effectively leveraging the functionality of Google AdWords. Here’s an easy way to collect customer persona data that is actionable and targetable.

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An Introduction To Keyword Match Types In Google AdWords

(This is the transcript from our new video so it may not read as well as a normal blog post would)

Hello, I’m Sophie, and today I’ll be talking to you about keyword match types in AdWords. Keyword match types are something that you really need to consider before actually setting up your PPC campaigns. So today I’ll be running you through each match type and their uses.

First of all we have exact match type. This is where people can only see your ad when they type in the exact keyword targeted into Google. For example, take the keyword “wedding dress.” This would appear in the query as it is in that specific order. It can also appear for close variants too, so bear that in mind. This is actually a great match type to use for targeting specific keywords, and it can be relatively cheap too. But, on the flip side, it can limit the amount of traffic that’s actually coming in.

Moving on to phrase match, this is where people can only see your ad when they type the targeted key phrase into Google before and after your actual key phrase, and it has to be in that specific order. For example, again if you’re using the example keyword of “wedding dress,” the example searches that would come from it would be white wedding dress or white wedding dress 2015. Your ad would then appear for this. This is also a great match type to use as it is more relevant than broad match and it does give you actually more control over what’s appearing.

Moving on to broad match type, this is where the searcher’s query can actually be related to any word in your key phrase. This can include synonyms or close variants, and it can also be in any order. Again, targeting the keyword “wedding dress,” example searches would be wedding gown. This is actually the default match type in AdWords when you do set up your campaigns. It does reach out to the largest amount of people. So you can bring in quite a lot of traffic through using this match type. However, on the flip side, it can become very costly to use. I personally try to avoid using this match type.

Moving on to modified broad, this is where you use the plus sign in front of each of your keywords in your targeted key phrase. This is actually used within a broad match keyword. By adding that modifier to the actual keywords can actually appear in between and before and after your key phrase that’s targeted. This can also be in any order as well. Again, taking the example “wedding dress,” your example search could be dress for wedding. Modified broad is actually a more targeted version of the broad match. It won’t show for synonyms or related searches like the broad match type does. I would say this is probably the best match type to use because you can get a good return on investment whilst actually bringing in more clicks at the same time.

Moving on to negative keywords, they work by preventing ads from showing when certain terms are actually searched for in Google. They can be used as exact phrase and broad. However, do bear in mind they can’t be used for modified broad.

So there we have it, the use of all keyword match types. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments at the end of the video. Thanks so much.

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Why It's Time to Rethink Your PPC Ad Extensions

Now that Google has announced the debut of its Structured Snippets ad extension for AdWords, how will this new addition impact your overall PPC campaign strategy?

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The Time to Transition to Bing Shopping Campaigns Is Now

If you presently use Product Ads, consider these insights about the benefits of upgrading to Bing Shopping Campaigns. Here’s a step-by-step tutorial to help you make a fluid transition.

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Ad Blockers – Is PPC Dead?

There is a war happening right now. A war for your eyeballs. Giant technology companies are fighting for your eyeballs – or, rather, for your visual attention. On one side, we have Google: the king of all online advertising. On the other, Facebook: the king of misplaced attention spans. Now, Apple enters with ad blocking in its latest mobile browser.

PPC Isn’t Dead and I’m Sorry for Asking

I’d like to address this first, because it’s probably the obnoxious thing that got you to click through and leave some gnarly, rage-induced comments. And I’m sorry about that. But no, PPC isn’t dead. It may be under threat from ad blocking, though, because once users start blocking ads, they rarely want to go back. It’s really liberating and completely legal.

Google SERPs before & after installing ad blocker app for iOS. Apple’s biz model vs Google’s: (via @danlucraft) http://pic.twitter.com/hRWbERlre3

— Ian Hogarth (@soundboy) September 17, 2015

But search ads aren’t at fault here; they’ve become an innocent bystander in a fight they were never really involved in. I actually commend Google highly for its search ads (which make up only a small chunk of its ad network). In recent times, search ads and PLAs have become useful – genuinely useful. They’re worth clicking on and worth paying for as an AdWords customer. What has gone wrong here is that poorly targeted and intrusive ads appear around the web, with little consideration for users, and users are sick to death of it.

Why Do People Block Ads?

There are some obvious and some not-so-obvious reasons for blocking ads, and they get a little easier to explain with mobile devices. The obvious reason is that ads are sometimes intrusive. They get in the way of what you’re trying to do.

Full-screen ads on mobiles are irritating to the extent that they sometimes make you want to leave a site altogether. Some ads load up in the middle of content, taking you out of your tab when you accidentally click on them. Some are just plain distracting, ugly and annoying, but they can have a sinister side.

Ads embedded into websites can hide malware and let all sorts of bad stuff into your computer or mobile. They also eat heavily into system resources. Did you know that they can double the load time of a website, and sometimes more? That doesn’t just mean that stuff takes longer to load. I have (what’s now considered) a very old iPhone 4, bought in 2010. It does everything perfectly most of the time, so I never felt the need to upgrade. But some ad-heavy news websites and blogs won’t even open. They crash out the browser while trying to load the myriad ads up. How do I know it’s the ads? Because the content loads fine, but the second an ad appears, or a full-screen pop up pops up, it kicks me out. It sucks. But all that extra load has more impact than mere annoyance. It eats into your data allowance.

So a site that could have been a few kilobytes off your data ends up becoming bloated with ad gifs and JavaScript, trackers and images. It swells into megabytes upon megabytes of data you never asked for and more than likely (due to poor targeting) would never use. That’s why people block ads. Fair enough, you may say. So why do sites use them?

The Advertising Business Model

Advertising is big money. Advertisers pay these sites good money to be prominent on them. Some websites have all their eggs in the advertising basket (I don’t need to tell you why this is a bad idea). Most blogs, news sites and entertainment sites you know of have been monetised with ads. Even monetised sites have been monetised further with ads.

People have abused the trust of users and allowed poorly targeted and nigh-on useless ads to be displayed to them. It’s like a big old middle finger to your fans in some cases. But it brings in the dollar, so that’s why they use them. That dollar is nothing compared to what Google stands to lose, though. It’s one thing to lose the DoubleClick platform, but to lose search ads too? Could 2015 be the year where Google’s advertising revenue peaks?

What’s New with Ad Blockers?

This is topical right now because Apple has opened the floor to ad-blocking plugins for its mobile Safari browser. iOS9 isn’t offering anything new by doing this, but it does offer it to a new (and gigantic) audience. It seems that some of these ad blockers, like Crystal, bundle in some deeper content-blocking features – including JavaScript. Google Analytics blockers on iPhones are now live:

Holy cow. Just tested a content blocker in iOS9 w/Google Analytics scripts. Yep, blocked. Get ready for a drop in traffic (stats-wise). #wa

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 17, 2015

So this is going to have a significant impact on your traffic stats and measurement if it proliferates. And it looks as though it just might:

New Ad Blocker “Peace” Tops iTunes Paid Apps Chart Within Hours http://t.co/CtdRivM05C via @Marketingland http://pic.twitter.com/XnUGjTYXuF

— AJ Ghergich (@SEO) September 17, 2015

Peace, another content blocker, is a paid app in the App Store. At the time of writing, it’s the number-one app. So we might be seeing the start of something big here.

It should be noted that apps will continue to show ads: these content blockers are solely applicable to the Safari browser, and not to iOS as a whole. So Facebook is probably feeling pretty good right now, as any headway Apple makes here won’t affect its crazy-popular little nest of apps. Plus any hit at Google is a good day for Facebook, the third player in this great eyeball war.

Facebook is a slow burner, quiet and watching from the shadows. What’s its take? I guess one of indifference for the time being. But with its advertising model under threat from desktop ad blockers, this development is definitely going to prick up some ears at Facebook HQ.

THE END IS NIGH!

So, is it time to start running around in circles, screaming at the sky and cursing our impending doom? No. This is evolution, and anyone who relied solely on advertising to make their money was doing it wrong anyway. Maybe they deserve to die out.

The internet never stops. It never sleeps. And it seldom goes backwards. This is progress, scary though it may be. This could usher in the next golden age of SEO and content marketing. It could see tyrants fall and grassroots take hold. It could mean an overhaul of an advertising system that has manipulated its users and run amok for too long.

I, for one, embrace the change and welcome our new content blocking overlords.

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How to Compete on Google Shopping #BrightonSEO

Earlier this year, we did a survey to 1,000 UK retailers to find out how effective Google Shopping campaigns have been for them. The results highlighted that businesses still have a way to go to make their campaigns fully worthwhile. All the results can be found here.

My talk at BrightonSEO in September 2015 focused heavily on what eCommerce businesses need to do in order to compete on Google Shopping. Throughout the session I gave away lots of tips and advice that I hope businesses can take away and implement in their shopping campaigns to help increase the ROI from this channel.

The Slides

A short write up of the talk has been done but if you would prefer to just flick through the slides, you can do so below.

How to Compete on Google Shopping (PLAs) from Koozai

Google Shopping Tips

As promised, I have put together a list of tips to help boost ROI from Google Shopping. Hopefully you find some of them useful and if you do have any more to add, please do so in the comments below.

1. Make sure you have access to a developer who can make changes the actual data feed; this is where you will gain the biggest advantage over your competitors
2. The feed needs to contain as many completed fields as possible
3. Product titles should be formatted in the language your audience will use. For example, if you are a well known clothing brand, I would recommend including your brand name in the title as this will draw attention to the ads
4. Look at what your competitors are doing with their images and try to make yours stand out in the crowd
5. In order to help you analyse performance more easily, if you make the MPU your item number in the feed you won’t have to export and cross refer data in a spreadsheet
6. The more frequently you update the feed, the higher Google seem to rank it
7. Always keep a close eye on the Merchant Center and fix any errors that appear in the Diagnostics tab
8. The top three reasons for ad disapprovals are price availability, policy violations and broken image URLs
9. Implement schema markup on product pages to avoid disapprovals due to differences in the feed vs. the landing page
10. Make full use of the five custom labels that are available to you so you can segment your product list and bid more strategically
11. Look at the updated suite of automated bidding solutions; Google have recently launched Target ROAS which is current in Beta
12. The trend for ‘near me’ searches are dramatically increasing and advertisers should be looking at increasing bids for people searching in nearby locations
13. It has been made a lot easier to become a Google Certified Shop; look into this and see about implementing it for your business
14. Encourage customers to leave reviews on third party review sites as Google will automatically pull the star ratings into your ads
15. From the end of September Promotional Text is becoming redundant and is being replaced with Automated Extensions that pull in information from your Merchant Center
16. The more products you upload, the more chance you have of securing a sale as Google will show an advertiser multiple times if the products are relevant to the search
17. Use a mixture of ad types to secure a higher percentage of the results (ie. use text ads, shopping ads, local inventory ads etc etc)
18. Merchant Promotions can give you an edge over the competition as they are not being fully utilised yet
19. Local Inventory ads show customers stock availability from within the search results. A study by Google showed that 83% of online shoppers were more likely to visit a store if they knew the product they want was in stock
20. The Quality Score for Shopping is largely based on Click through Rate (CTR); the more relevant the ads, the higher the CTR will be which in turn will lower your overall costs
21. 26% of consumers start their Christmas shopping in October. Advertisers need to be all over this and should be thinking about their Christmas campaigns as early as July/August
22. in 2014, Black Friday was the biggest day ever in the UK for online sales
23. Don’t forget to download our guide to Getting Started with Product Listing Ads.

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10 Proven Ranking Factors – How to Get Them Right

Okay, I’ll come right out with it – this is a borrowed post. Borrowed from the insanely awesome piece of insane awesomeness that is Northcutt’s list of Google ranking factors. In this post, I’ll take 10 of the most potent positive ranking factors and explore what you need to do with them to get some ranking wins.

1 – Keywords in URLs

This is a logical enough expectation. It adds to user-friendliness and shareability (provided the rest of the URL isn’t a car crash) and helps make semantic sense of the content without even viewing it. So when I see URLs like “http://ift.tt/1Ks3NhR;, I get a serious eye twitch.

Web2dasite should have given themselves a break when they put their site together, with URLs something a little more like this:

The site ranks pretty well for “Nike Air Max”. I’m not saying the URL is the only reason for it, but it definitely isn’t hurting and Google patents confirm that this is a sure thing.

If your URLs are sloppy, number-filled and make you think “what the hell” when you look at them, it’s high time you sorted them out. Say what you see and add the name of the thing or things on that page. Get smart with additional keyword research and split things out onto new, more targeted pages – just like Schuh did.

2 – Keywords in the Title Tag

Wow, this is brand new information! Okay we all know the score here, so I won’t try to teach you how to introduce eggs to an area of low pressure in your mouth.

Simply put, name the thing on the page in the title and experience a better chance at ranking for that term – done. Let’s move on!

Seriously though, has anyone ever sucked an egg? Methinks there’s a niche tuition course in order there…

3 – ALT Text Keywords

This is so often overlooked when a site is being built. The number of times I see ALT text left as “image1.jpg”, “image01.jpg” or just left blank, it’s a miracle anyone knew what image they were putting on the page in the first place.

Imagine this – you’re reading a list of ALT text names. You have few other clues to what’s in the image other than these ALT attributes, but this is your first port of call, your go-to guy for image info.

And you get “image1.jpg”. That’s not going to help.

And that’s what Google gets. Google isn’t smart enough to see the picture yet, so it has to use words to get the information. ALT text is a huge point in the right direction.

If you’re guilty of doing this wrong, it’s not too late to do it right – again, on every image, say what you see and put it in as ALT text.

4 – Keyword Stemming

You remember copy like this, right?

“Do you need to Buy Used Cars Southampton? Many people are confused about how they might Buy Used Cars Southampton. But we at Motoring Place Shoppe know everything there is to know about Buy Used Cars Southampton. Buy Used Cars Southampton today and receive money off vouchers for some eggs, which can be used for sucking.”

I do. It was hilarious. And depressing at the same time.

The above fake excerpt is an example of both keyword stuffing and a lack of stemming. Think of stemming as variants or “stems” of a word. Different tenses, placements and the like – so buy, buy-ING, BOUGHT etcetera. Google understands the links between words, so writing copy conversationally and with suitable variation will result in text that reads well and feeds Google keyword information. True story – Matt Cutts said so.

5 – Internal Anchor Text Links

There’s fear surrounding links. Penguin saw to that. But internal linking is naturally keyword anchor text rich. Don’t worry about it, but don’t take the mick either – we’ll have no “Buy Used Cars Southampton” on every single page a million times, okay?

Good navigation should take care of internal linking – and again (this would be my catchphrase if they didn’t already use it on Catchphrase), say what you see. If you’re linking to blue Nikes, make your anchor text “Blue Nikes”. No fear, no added BS.

6 – HTTPS

Okay, it’s time to call in the dispute police. I’ve spoken with some big guns in the SEO world who categorically tell me this doesn’t affect rankings enough to warrant the effort. It’s expensive, it’s extremely time consuming and should only be done if you’re rebuilding the site anyway.

Some say Google played us. I guess I agree. Most of those who switched saw minimal gains – I saw some of my own clients get little boosts out of it, but little more. If you’re a small blog owner or have a one-page site with no login or transactional information on it, then I’d say… leave it.

#controversial

But if you can do it, then do it. Remember that Google rarely tells us what to do to win. Realise that secure eCommerce sites make sense. Focus on the trust that the word “secure” can instil. If you have the resources, then by all means do it.

7 – Fresh Content

So that blog you never update – time to get going with that. Fresh content gets you so much more than just Google brownie points. It’s your voice, your outlet. It’s your control over who sees what. Boring content? Not a problem – check this post out.

8 – Old Content

Um… It’s a little counter-intuitive after the last point, right? But it makes sense – date marking and archived content makes for easier research and linking opportunities. It’s user-friendly and helps your back catalogue grow.

Google helps people find information and context – including content age – and helps make that search easier. All those old posts are adding to your repertoire in a big way, so keep ‘em coming.

9 – Outbound Link Quality

This is a double-edged sword. Google announced penalties for outbound links that are unnatural and rightly so – it’s a bit dodgy. Check the video out:

But that isn’t licence to stop linking out. Linking to high-quality sites was, and still is, a solid reference point for users and for Google. So without manipulating your stance, make a strong case for what you have to say with verifiable evidence in link form.

10 – Mobile Friendliness

Eesh – this one’s a biggie. Of all the discussions of late, Mobilegeddon was the most memorable. In fact, Koozai undertook a study where we surveyed SMBs about their Mobilegeddon experiences.

And the result? It was inconsistent, inconclusive and massively hyped.

But we’ve done more research. And we found a strong case for mobile optimisation done right.

I’ve even been to Google HQ, where they went on about mobile almost non-stop. It’s a big deal for Google and the future is mobile, this much we can tell you for sure. And because we’re super nice, we made you all a free white paper on mobile SEO – download it today!

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5 AdWords Filters to Make Your Job Easier

Improve the execution of PPC marketing campaigns by taking advantage of the many filtering features in Google AdWords. Here are five fundamental filters that are easy to operate.

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How To Use Snapchat For Business

(This is the transcript from our new video so it may not read as well as a normal blog post would)

Hi and welcome to my video on Snapchat for business. Today I’m going to share with you six top tips on how you can use Snapchat to boost your brand.

Tip number one is timing. Now Snapchat allows you to adjust the timing of your images on how long they last from 1 to 10 seconds. With that being said, you don’t have to use all 10 seconds. Experiment with the timing and see which one works best for you on how you can get across your message.

Number two is text. Snapchat also allows you to write text on any image you create. So be sure to mess around with text, adjust it via the three different text settings, which is one with the grey bar, one which is left big bold writing and which is centred with big bold writing. You can also adjust this text further, the big bold writing version, by dragging your thumbs across the screen or moving them up and down to adjust where the text is and the size of how it’s placed. You can then adjust the colour and take that even further and obviously customise it to suit your brand.

Step number three is pencils, emojis, and filters. Now, these three customisable tools are great for helping you customise each photo you take. For a start, the pencils means you can colour on all your photos in any colour you want. You can also write extra messages, highlight certain areas, or simply draw people’s attention to pieces that you want to draw attention to.

Emojis are also a great way to experiment and portray different themes and messages with your content. There’s loads on Snapchat, and I know they’ve just been added to Android, but they’ve been iOS for a while. So get experimenting and see which works best for your brand.

Finally, filters are also your friend. You can swipe across for a number of different filters, including temperature, the speed you’re travelling at, and obviously the usual black and white and sepia tone filters as well.

Number four is adding snaps to your story. Now unless you opt for the paid, branded content on Snapchat, your best next bet is adding every snap you take to a story. This allows your users to view your snaps for up to 24 hours and gives your brand bigger staying power.

Number five is download your snaps. Downloading snaps, including videos and images, allows you to take that content and adjust it to use later on in other pieces. For example, here you can see a snap I created and downloaded earlier. It’s a great idea of what you can do with Snapchat. Check it out. So that gives you a great idea of how you can use content you create on Snapchat later on.

Sixth and last but not least is profile picture. Snapchat now allows you to adjust the profile picture on your Snapchat profile. Simply drag down, when you’re taking a photo, to see your profile picture. You can then take a photo of yourself or your brand logo and use that to showcase to other users. This obviously gives users a better chance of finding you and helps your brand get further exposure.

Now we’ve had a look through the six top tips. But how about the brands that are actually carrying these out and really bossing Snapchat? First of all there’s Crypt TV, which are short filmmakers who get really creative with their snaps and decide to use the pencils and colour stuff in, create great profiles on people, all through using their pencils and photos.

Secondly there’s sites like BuzzFeed. Obviously, you know they’re going to be bossing platforms like Snapchat. They use the paid discovery service to deliver short, digestible versions of their content to their users, perfectly suited to the BuzzFeed style.

Finally there’s YouTube stars, like Hannah Hart and Grace Helbig. These stars use Snapchat to give users a behind the scenes view of what’s going on.

You can check out these and many others by visiting Snapchat and downloading it and trying it out for yourself, or follow me on Twitter for more advice @koozai_Harry.

The post How To Use Snapchat For Business appeared first on Koozai.com

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8 Facebook Engagement Stats Every Marketer Needs To Know

Does publishing Facebook posts through a third party tool affect your reach and engagement? What types of Facebook posts get the most interactions? What is the best time of day to publish Facebook business posts? Which day of the week is best for publishing posts? These are all questions I hear regularly from businesses using Facebook.

Good news! Our friends at content discovery tool, BuzzSumo, analyzed 500 million Facebook posts to discover what types of posts create the most likes, comments and shares. The results may surprise you!

8 Eye-Opening Facebook Engagement Stats

1. Posts published from 10 – 11 PM EST get 88% more interactions than the average Facebook post. *
2. Image posts get 179% more interactions than the average Facebook post.
3. Posts ending with a question get 162% more interactions than the average post.
4. Videos are the most shared post type, with 89.5 average Facebook shares. **
5. Posts published on Sunday get 52.9% more interactions than the average Facebook post.
6. Excluding images, posts with 150-200 characters performed the best, averaging 238.75 shares.
7. Posting with a 3rd party tool results in 89.5% less engagement than directly posting to Facebook.
8. Posts that link to long form content (2000+ words) receive 40% more interactions than linking to short form content.

FOONOTE:
* Interactions = likes + shares + comments
** BuzzSumo counted only shares, not likes + comments.

Use these facts and stats to adjust your Facebook content publishing strategy and you may start to see an increase in engagement. Remember, each Page and audience is different – experiment to find your own sweet spot.

Share this Image On Your Site

<p><strong>Please include attribution to MariSmith.com with this graphic.</strong></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><a href=’http://ift.tt/1OtPzyF src=’http://ift.tt/1QfFvaR; alt=’8 Facebook Engagement Stats Every Marketer Needs To Know – Mari Smith and BuzzSumo’ width=’540px’ border=’0′ /></a></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p>

Content discovery tool, includes trends

Find the most engaging content on the web at BuzzSumo. (I recently started using this tool and totally LOVE it! Stay tuned for even more awesome Facebook-related features coming from BuzzSumo!). 

NEW Free Facebook Tool!

BuzzSumo just released a brand new tool today, called Sumo Rank! You can check the engagement of any Facebook page for free! Go to: www.sumorank.com

Let’s hear from you…

Did you find value in this post and the infographic? Any questions or comments, let us know below – we’d love to hear from you.

Please do share this post on your social profiles, too. Feel free to embed the infographic on your website/blog as well — use the code above!

NEWSFLASH! Mari’s next Facebook marketing webinar, September 22nd

Save the date! Due to popular demand, on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2015 at 12pm PT / 3pm ET, I will be leading another of my epic Facebook webinars for my peeps. This time, we’re doing things a little different. It’s all under wraps just now, but let me know if you’d like to know more and get on the special notification list! Just click the button below:

Get On Mari’s Webinar List!

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Search & Online Advertising In The Future – New Opportunities

$59,624,000,000. That’s the revenue generated by Google through advertising alone in 2014 and it’s that figure that makes the world’s biggest online companies work hard to find a way to tap into the search and online advertising market. Take a look at the biggest threats to Google’s dominance.

Often in search marketing, Google is the primary focus for any optimisation campaign for websites and paid advertising campaigns. Google developed a world-class platform and dominated most major international search markets so this made sense. However, the web is always changing and search is likely to become a much more open playing field that requires a refined optimisation strategy based on industry and goals.

Google

Approximate Reach: 1,170,000,000 users

Google is currently the undisputed king of almost every type of search online and owns some of the web’s largest websites, including YouTube. The Display Network reaches out to over 90% of web users and there is an estimated 4,000,000 searches on Google every minute. In terms of quantity of users, Google cannot be beaten. There are, however, growing concerns over user privacy and interest in new services that can provide certain answers to users in more accurate, faster or easier ways.

Some advertisers are also looking for other forms of online advertising to target more relevant audiences or to avoid high costs – some terms cost over £30 per click on Google and that could mean the cost per acquisition is too high to turn a profit in certain industries.

Yahoo, Bing, Baidu & DuckDuckGo

Approximate Reach: 293 million Baidu users, 292 million Yahoo users, 267 Bing users, DuckDuckGo: 4 million search queries a day

The power of competing search engines should not be underestimated and growing contenders such as DuckDuckGo provide a solution for issues relating to privacy on Google. All these companies have access to strong ad platforms similar to AdWords that bring in revenue and provide external investors with a good reason for greater investment. Baidu has a huge user base in China and has the potential to be a leading force across Asia if it masters local languages and user behaviour with its unique insights.

The inclusion of these services as options or defaults on some leading technologies, including Windows 10 and iOS, represents a huge threat to Google and has already led to DuckDuckGo growing from 1 million to 4 million searches per day when comparing the month of January in 2013 and 2014.

With the recent uproar about Spotify privacy changes, it appears web users are focusing on privacy a lot more than they used to, and this presents smaller search engines with a great opportunity to differentiate from Google but still offer a similar service and advertising set-ups.

Apple

Approximate Reach (2014): 800,000,000 iOS devices / 80,000,000 Macs, 300 million App Store visits per week

There are rumours that Apple is building its own search platform using the Spotlight feature on Macs and iOS devices as the interface. This would make sense since Spotlight has become more of a feature on iPhones and iPads – with additions such as being able to search the App Store – in recent years. Also, Apple and Google aren’t exactly on best terms and Apple isn’t known for relying on other companies to run its core software services.

This isn’t the first time Apple has attempted to dislodge Google. The creation of Apple Maps in 2012, which is installed by default on every iOS, was seen as an attempt to reduce user’s reliance on Google Maps. Although it received a lot of negative publicity at launch, Apple has continually invested to improve the app and is closing in on 35 million users that would have otherwise probably have used Google.

This search platform could pose a real threat if  Apple provides the service as a default option for new iOS devices and combines it with Siri, Apple’s voice search (currently set to use Bing but this could easily be changed to Apple’s own search engine).

 Facebook

Approximate Reach (2014): 1,490,000,000 active users

Facebook is huge – there is no doubt about it – and people using the service are spending a lot of time on the apps and websites. Recently the company claimed to have 1,000,000,000 users access the site on one day, which presents a huge threat to Google – especially with the rollout of a new machine learning platform called Facebook M which is designed to answer questions instantly or even before you’ve asked, similar to Google Now, Siri and Cortana.

The Facebook Ads network has also seen some major changes to help it compete with other offerings in online advertising. The platform can now offer targeting options that no other advertising platform can provide by showing ads to users based on life events, friends, interests and pretty much anything else that appears on Facebook. As many marketing strategies are based around socio-demographics, this is a huge opportunity to advertise to the right audience.

Amazon

Estimated Reach (2014): 244,000,000

When you think about Amazon, you might see it as an online store rather than a search engine. The overall size of the user base is much smaller than Google’s, but the major difference is the intent of the searcher. Whilst on Google many users are looking for a range of answers – including products, information, images etc. – the majority of Amazon searches are by people looking to buy a product so advertisers are willing to pay good money to advertise.

Amazon recently acquired a video streaming platform similar to YouTube called Twitch for $1.1 billion and has created its own ad platform network called “Amazon Sponsored Links”. These changes have seen Google’s Eric Schmidt suggest that Amazon is a leading competitor and led to changes such as a direct “Buy” button being added to Google Shopping to have an all-inclusive offering within the Google search results without the need to visit another website.

The Future of Online Advertising

Whilst Google will almost certainly remain the leader of search for at least another decade, there are clear threats for the company in the years ahead, especially in high revenue generating searches such as e-commerce based queries, which help to provide 90% of the search giant’s revenue.

The emergence of other search platforms such as Facebook and Apple, who already have access to huge user bases and potential offerings in development, mean that there is a large chance the search market will become much more fragmented. Users may end up spreading their use based on the intent of their search and who can provide the quickest answer. In which case, Amazon is well positioned to take advantage of the revenue generating queries and could be a good place to focus paid campaign optimisation in the future.

What do you envisage for the future of search and paid advertising? See what other people think by sharing the post & following me (@koozai_james) on twitter.

Sources

• http://ift.tt/1DuWa7v
• http://ift.tt/1uS13AG
• http://ift.tt/1txpL8J
• http://ift.tt/1vnSyAl
• http://ift.tt/KyEU8M
• http://ift.tt/y7N45C
• http://ift.tt/1Qk2ZKV

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How To Find Historical Google Search Query Data in 8 Clicks

Optimize SEO strategy with this eight-click solution for integrating Google Analytics with GSC Search Query Data. Also this can help to elude the 90-day historical limitation on the GSC Search Analytics Report.

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Google AdWords Adds a New Feature: The Drag-And-Drop Report Editor

This analysis of the new Drag-And-Drop Report Editor on Google AdWords explains the benefits of its functionality, while also noting the elements that were not included in the update.

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AdWords: Now Catering to Multi-Channel Advertisers

Recent upgrades to Google AdWords allows the platform to generate multi-channel advertising campaigns with ease. This discusses how these optimizations can benefit digital marketers.

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Bing Ads Releases New Ad Extensions

This explains the functionality of the upcoming ad extensions for Bing Ads. How will the launch of these features influence your cross-device PPC marketing campaign strategy?

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How To Stop Referrer Spam in Google Analytics

The fight against referrer spam has long been a losing battle. It seems like every time a ‘solution’ is found, the spammers are already a step ahead, like a never-ending game of Whack-A-Mole.

A lot of people make the mistakeof trying to block spam by using server solutions like the .htaccess or plugins. These will not work as this type of referral never visits your site and is merely fake data.

The spammers generate UA codes at random and send the fake data directly to the Google Analytics server via the back-end ‘Measurement Protocol’.

It’s a pretty ingenious way to annoy people and get affiliate traffic en masse, but there is one inherent flaw – as the UA codes are random there is no way of knowing what your particular hostname is.

You can exploit this flaw by implementing a ‘Valid Hostname Filter’. It is the simplest and most effective solution out there.

I’ve been giving these instructions to clients for the last few months and it seems to work very well. Let’s hope it lasts.

Here’s how to do it:

To find out your valid hostnames:

• Go to the Reporting tab on GA and select the biggest timeframe possible on the date range.
• In the lateral bar, select Audience
• Expand Technology and select Network
• At the top of the report, make sure you select Hostname because Service Provider is selected by default.
• Find and copy all the valid hostnames.
• Your valid hostnames will include all the places where you put your tracking code (UA-XXXXXX-1), such as yourdomain.com, yourdomain.com, blog.yourdomain.com.

You can see from the example above that you may also have services in which you add your tracking ID, like an ecommerce provider, or in this case, a translation service for an international audience.

You may find official-looking hostnames like amazon.com, or even google.com, but these are planted there by spammers to deter you from removing them so your account can continue to be spammed.

Once you have this list, you will need to build a REGEX – don’t be put off by the scary name, it’s really easy. Just use the ‘|’ character to separate your domains.

This is the REGEX for the above example:

hampshirewoodprojects.com|hampshirewoodprojects.co.uk|translate.googleusercontent.com

To create the filter:

• Go to the Admin tab and create a new view in the property.
• Select New Filter.
• Select Create New Filter and enter Valid Hostname Filter as a name.
• In Filter Type select Custom.
• Make sure you choose Include and select Hostname from the dropdown.
• Finally, paste the REGEX that you built with your valid hostnames in Filter Pattern.

Verify the filter and you’re done!

Always remember to create this filter in a new ‘view’ so you have something to compare the data to. Unfortunately this won’t work retroactively unless you know how to use custom segments, but with the new view there will only be the new data anyway.

If you’ve got any thoughts, please feel free to write a comment, or if you need some help you can reach me directly via @koozai_jack on Twitter.

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Six Key Trust Factors You Should Have On Your Website

(This is the transcript from our new video so it may not read as well as a normal blog post would)

Hi, I’m Sally, and I’ll be talking to you today about trust signals. So I brought with me a quote from Seth Godin that says, “Trust is built when no one is looking.” I have very much found this to be the case in my work in SEO. Trust signals are just subliminal keys really that your site sends out to users when they visit your website.

So today I’ll just run through six of the most important trust signals from my perspective, and we’ll just start with social profiles. So having your social profiles visible on your website, within your footer and on your contact page, is really beneficial for local SEO. It’s also great for PR purposes and for user engagement as they can obviously share your content to all of these different social platforms.

So we move on to site navigation now. So your site structure is quite important here as obviously it should be designed with the user in mind really. This helps drive conversions like lead generation, and it also helps alleviate your crawl budget when search engines crawl your sites.

So now we move on to contact information. So by having your contact information on your contact page in the footer of your website, so having your phone number, email address and full street address, this helps for local SEO, and it helps for users to get in touch and really find what they’re looking for, which will obviously help drive leads and that kind of thing.

Now we move on to reviews. So this is great for domain authority, and it’s also good for brand trust in terms of the user and also the search engines that are crawling your sites. This also can help highlight potential weaknesses with your company and any brand or any product or service offerings that you offer.

So blogs. Blogs are really great for driving traffic to your site and converting these into leads and conversions, and it’s also great for brand identity as you can help build your identity in that field and appear as an expert in it for the users that view your content.

Now we move on to Google trusted stores. This is great for credibility as you will be able to receive a badge from Google that you can store on your website or wherever you want it to be viewed. This helps differentiate your brand from your competitors within the same market. Google also allows you to unlock certain data that you wouldn’t already be able to find if you weren’t a trusted store by Google. So you can find out more about this in Google’s guidelines.

If you’d like to find out more about trust signals, you can view my previous blog post on the Koozai blog. And if you have any questions, please look at the links below or view our social profiles. Thank you for listening.

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A 14 Point Checklist for Designing a PPC Landing Page

For a successful PPC strategy that regularly transforms clicks into conversions, consider this 13 point checklist to help improve the layout and design of your landing pages.

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Google AdWords Rolls Out Structured Snippets

Here’s how Google AdWord’s new ad extension, structured snippets, can optimize your advertising campaign by driving traffic, boosting CTR, and increasing conversion rates.

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Conquesting: An Arrow in Your Brand Search Quiver, Not a Cornerstone

This explains the concept of conquesting and how it can benefit digital marketing strategy. Beat the competition to the punch by purchasing all keywords that pertain to their brand.

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7 Common SEO Myths Debunked

The SEO industry has always been largely open to opinion, with effective techniques regularly debated and disputed. Google and other search engines hide behind a complex ranking algorithm using over 200 factors, with no-one knowing all of the elements that Google takes into account when ranking a site or how much weight it gives to different factors.

The result of this dynamic is that swarms of strange myths come and go; what’s more, in the wrong hands, a little bit of inaccurate information can be dangerous. In this post, I’ve highlighted some myths I commonly encounter and explained why they are just that.

1. The Client is Always Right

No, they are not.

Of course, this doesn’t relate to the customer service motto that stipulates that the customer is always right; in fact, it has nothing to do with customer service at all. But when it comes to SEO, just because a client wants something to happen it doesn’t make it right. It’s important that you at least try to explain to clients why they are barking up the wrong tree and what they should be focusing on instead.

Clients often have some idea of what SEO is all about and what works, but a little bit of information can be dangerous. Just because a client is leading you to do something, this doesn’t mean you automatically should. If there is something more pressing that is a better use of their time, or you as the expert simply don’t think that what they’re suggesting is a good idea, then make sure you say so.

They may also have goals that have been handed down by superiors but don’t actually mean anything or are unachievable. A common example is when a client is concerned only about keyword rankings or ranking first for a certain keyword. If you spend too much of your time focusing on that just because the client is, you can find yourself wasting valuable time on insignificant tasks.

Part of managing campaigns and client expectations is to educate and sometimes re-educate them, so that your goals and focuses are aligned. Try to explain that measuring a keyword position isn’t as valuable a KPI as, say, increasing revenue. Ultimately, you both want the project to be a success, but it’s important to clarify what success looks like and make sure you’re both focusing on true and valuable metrics.

It’s much better to have these conversations face to face, or at least over the phone. Avoid having disputes like this via email as you may not come across in the right way.

2. Doing AdWords PPC Helps Boost Organic Rankings

No, it does not.

This myth has been floating around for many years and is no truer now than it ever was. Google AdWords and the paid ads in search results are completely separate from organic search results. Google categorically does not use any data from AdWords listings in its main organic algorithm.

Of course, AdWords can be extremely beneficial in conjunction with good SEO and can increase your overall exposure and real estate in the SERPs by giving you an ad and an organic result if you rank well.

However, there is no correlation between these two channels.

3. Keywords Don’t Matter Anymore

Yes, they really do.

Particularly after the Hummingbird update, rumours started emerging that keywords were no longer important as all that mattered was contextual content. This is simply not true. While elements like context and keyword themes are more important than ever, keywords are still very much a fundamental element of SEO.

Carrying out keyword research and optimising pages for the best target keywords is vital and is still one of the most important parts of on-page SEO. Don’t neglect keyword variations, themes and surrounding content for context, but don’t assume that’s all you need.

You should still aim to include your target keyword naturally in the following places on each page:

• Page title
• Meta description
• H1 header
• Page content
• H2 headers (if possible, natural and appropriate)
• Image alt text (if natural)

NB: I am not referring to Meta keyword tags; they don’t matter (unless you are optimising for some international search engines). This relates to on-page keyword research and targeting.

4. Google Won’t Know if we Create Fake Reviews and Ratings

Well yes, actually, it probably will.

It is dangerous to underestimate Google’s ability to detect spam or unnatural behaviour and writing and arranging fake reviews and ratings is a risky business indeed. No one knows the extent of Google’s ability to identify web spam or all of the signals it uses, but it is certainly good at spotting and penalising unnatural links and spammy reviews. Of course, as well as the algorithm, there is a dedicated webspam team at Google whose job is to spot unnatural activity like this.

Of course, some fake reviews are easier to spot than others:

Source: Mashable

Encourage your customers to leave natural, positive reviews. Build it into your workflow process by following up via email promptly to check customers are happy and give them a link to leave a review.

Do not offer incentives as this can also lead to unnatural behaviour and leave you at risk of being flagged for spam. If you value your rankings, particularly locally, then don’t take the risk.

5. Guest Blogging is Dead

No, it isn’t.

Matt Cutts was probably responsible for the initiation of this rumour after he wrote a blog post about avoiding low-quality guest posts, claiming that we should ‘stick a fork’ in spammy guest posting. People quickly jumped on this and were quick to declare guest blogging dead. But that wasn’t the full message.

A good guest post is content posted to a reputable external site in your industry with a decent following and a relevant target audience who are likely to engage or click through to your site.

Guest posts that should be avoided are those on low-quality, irrelevant or spammy sites or blogs that don’t show any signs of reader engagement. If it looks like a bad neighbourhood or simply appears that no-one is reading the blog, steer clear. If, on the other hand, you think your target audience is likely to be on the site, a guest post can be a really valuable asset for brand exposure and qualified referral traffic.

Of course, spammy guest blog requests like these are definitely ones to avoid!

6. Link Building is Dead

No, that isn’t dead either.

There is no denying that link building has changed dramatically, and that building quality links today is much more difficult than it once was. It’s also true that building the wrong sort of links, such as low-quality, spammy or paid links, can cause much more harm than good and result in manual or algorithmic penalties. However, to say link building is dead and ignore it completely would be a fatal mistake.

Links are still a big part of SEO and remain one of the biggest signals that search engines use to understand trust and authority. The key thing to remember is that, just like guest posts, it’s all about quality rather than quantity.

Source: Search Engine Land

Links are still very important, but must not breach any of Google’s guidelines on link schemes. For inspiration, you can get some good link-building ideas that still work here.

7. SEO is Dead

It absolutely isn’t, and it never will be.

The fact is that for as long as search engines exist, websites will gain great value from ranking highly in search results for their target queries. This means that, whatever new guidelines come in, whatever algorithm updates are implemented, SEO will never die.

There are new channels that are great for delivering traffic and driving business, such as social media and remarketing, but organic search still delivers the majority of traffic and business for many websites.

For more information on our SEO services or more advice on Digital Marketing techniques that deliver results, please get in touch with us or leave a comment below.

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Is It Time to Add Click-to-Call Campaigns to Your AdWords Arsenal?

Learn how to set up a click-to-call campaign in Google AdWords, and also understand the pros and cons of using a call-only focused strategy.

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The Top 100 Brands According To The Koozai Score

Although Brand Authority is of paramount importance in creating the necessary SEO signals to improve your site’s natural search performance, Domain Authority mustn’t be overlooked either.

Koozai recently analysed the sites of the brands in the Forbes Top 100 to find out how they were performing. We devised a scoring system to identify the top 100 brands for Domain Authority and backlinks.

The Koozai Score

We created the Koozai Score by multiplying the Domain Authority by the number of links and then dividing this by 100 (what the domain authority is measured out of). This gives us an accurate reflection of the brands with the best number of links and Domain Authority.

The results revealed something that we had suspected for a while, namely that Domain Authority is being severely underestimated, and in some instances not taken into consideration at all when defining a brand’s strength.

Domain Authority is essential if you want your brand to succeed. If you can achieve high Domain Authority, you stand a better chance of boosting the strength of your traffic and increasing your ranking. But it isn’t a simple fix: like any digital marketing method, it takes time and dedication to realise your goal.

We discovered that brand authority doesn’t guarantee you domain authority.

Discover how the top 100 brands fared against the Koozai Score. Here they are ranked in order from highest to lowest.

1

Facebook

Site: http://ift.tt/g8FRpY

Forbes Ranking: 10

The social network isn’t to be underestimated. It’s transformed the way that way that we communicate with each other and is constantly evolving. So it’s quite surprising that Forbes ranked Facebook only 10 out of 100. We’ve given it the top spot. The site is ticking all the right boxes: Domain Authority, high-quality external backlinks and reputable referring domains. It just goes to show how these elements can make all the difference to your site, and how, when taken into consideration, they give a true reflection of your site’s performance.

Domain Authority: 100

External Backlinks: 40,482,966,375

Referring Domains: 18,419,136

Koozai Score: 40482966375

2

Google

Site: https://www.google.com

Forbes Ranking: 3

It’s no surprise to us here at Koozai that Google made it to second place in our top 100. When it comes to technological innovation, developments and digital marketing, it’s hard to beat. Google is constantly developing life-changing consumer technology and updating its algorithms to provide the best user experience around. The site is the go-to destination for search queries. Think about it: when was the last time you used Yahoo, Ask or AOL? We all know the answer to that.

Forbes gave the search engine giant a ranking of 3, which isn’t too far away from ours. However, with a Koozai Score of 22399089281, it just missed out on achieving number-one position in our top 100 brands list.

Domain Authority: 100

External Backlinks: 22,399,089,281

Referring Domains: 15,187,079

Koozai Score: 22399089281

3

Amazon.com

Site: http://www.amazon.com/

Forbes Ranking: 13

With its futuristic approach to business, Amazon has transformed the shopping experience. From testing deliveries by drone and selling groceries to the introduction of the Amazon Dash Button, the American electronic commerce and cloud computing company is always pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. With these updates come changes to the site, which seems to evolve almost daily, hence why it achieved number 3 in our ranking of the top 10 brands.

Domain Authority: 97

External Backlinks: 3,133,344,951

Referring Domains: 1,863,659

Koozai Score: 309344602

4

Apple

Site: http://www.apple.com/

Forbes Ranking: 1

Forbes gave the tech giant the top spot in its lists of influential brands, and it’s pretty easy to see why: Apple continues to dominate countless markets – consumer electronics, computer software, online services and personal computers to name but a few.

The site has a stellar user interface and, as you would expect, is fully responsive. It made it into our top 3, but failed to achieve pole position this time. It just goes to show that no matter how big a brand you are, there’s always another one there vying to outdo you.

Domain Authority: 100

External Backlinks: 1,580,353,509

Referring Domains: 2,465,725

Koozai Score: 1580353509

5

Microsoft

Site: http://ift.tt/hSyg9Q

Forbes Ranking: 2

The American computer manufacturer has changed substantially since it launched in 1975. Microsoft has had to evolve to stay one step ahead of its competitors, but it’s paid off tenfold. Now it’s one of the world’s most renowned brands. Its site typifies the Microsoft experience. What’s great is that it’s the same one that you would get when using one of Microsoft’s phones, tablets, laptops or PCs. it’s this consistency that has made the brand what it is today. The site is user-friendly and easy to navigate. Its referring domains are strong are high-quality and its backlinks are the same.

Domain Authority: 100

External Backlinks: 800,874,070

Referring Domains: 1,979,489

Koozai Score: 800874070

6

Intel

Site: http://www.intel.com/

Forbes Ranking: 19

The American multinational technology company continues to thrive and adapt to our needs. Intel provides a service like no other, essentially laying the foundations for the world’s computer devices. The renowned brand has created a site that at first glance seems simplistic, but once you delve a little deeper, it’s anything but. It’s smart and intuitive, just like the company’s software.

Domain Authority: 95

External Backlinks: 116,153,229

Referring Domains: 167,147

Koozai Score: 110345568

7

UPS

Site: http://www.ups.com/

Forbes Ranking: 40

In at number 7 is the world’s largest package delivery company and provider of supply-chain management solutions, UPS. With a strong business model and a renowned brand, it’s hard to understand why it ranked only 40 on Forbes’ list. When analysing the site and its performance to calculate the Koozai Score, we found it to be very effective.

Domain Authority: 92

External Backlinks: 62,157,237

Referring Domains:  95,928

Koozai Score: 57184658

8

Oracle

Site: http://www.oracle.com/

Forbes Ranking: 17

The renowned American computer hardware company barely made it onto Forbes’ list of the top 100 brands this year. But the Koozai scoring system just goes to show how Domain Authority and backlinks shouldn’t be overlooked: they are an incredibly powerful way to boost a site’s performance.

Domain Authority: 98

External Backlinks: 56,122,070

Referring Domains: 181,103

Koozai Score: 54999629

9

MasterCard

Site: http://ift.tt/Kjxcun

Forbes Ranking: 53

The financial services corporation didn’t fare well in Forbes’ most recent list of authoritative brands, which placed it merely at 53. However, when we analysed the brand’s Domain Authority, external backlinks and referring domains, it became clear that the site is performing considerably better than the Forbes ranking suggests. The brand has a very strong social following, no doubt boosted by the on-site blog, which adds further value to the already sturdy site.

Domain Authority: 92

External Backlinks: 58,653,283

Referring Domains: 57,347

Koozai Score: 53961020

10

American Express

Site: http://ift.tt/HuvxAb

Forbes Ranking: 22

The multifunctional financial institution has a reputation for its card being accessible to all and there for the all-important moments. Which is why it’s surprising that Forbes only ranked American Express at Number 22. It’s one of the industry leaders, with a wealth of high-quality backlinks and referring domains. It gained a Koozai score of 49738872, placing it at number 10.

Domain Authority: 88

External Backlinks: 56,521,445

Referring Domains: 73,722

Koozai Score: 49738872

11

Hewlett-Packard

Site: http://www.hp.com/

Forbes Ranking: 35

Koozai Score: 44385720

12

IBM

Site: http://www.ibm.com/

Forbes Ranking: 5

Koozai Score: 338181565

 13

Visa

Site: http://usa.visa.com/

Forbes Ranking: 30

Koozai Score: 30211366

 14

Samsung

Site: http://www.samsung.com/

Forbes Ranking: 7

Koozai Score: 26983591

15

Gillette

Site:  http://ift.tt/XJzCuL

Forbes Ranking: 26

Koozai Score: 26815889

 16

FedEx

Site: http://www.fedex.com/

Forbes Ranking: 80

Koozai Score: 25703571

17

Cisco

Site: http://www.cisco.com/

Forbes Ranking: 15

Koozai Score: 21814170

18

Phillips

Site: http://www.philips.com/

Forbes Ranking: 77

Koozai Score: 20049710

19

Toyota

Site: http://www.toyota.com

Forbes Ranking: 8

Koozai Score: 19462542

20

Mercedes-Benz

Site: http://ift.tt/1BW1oVU

Forbes Ranking: 24

Koozai Score: 18046768

21

SAP

Site: http://www.sap.com/

Forbes Ranking: 28

Koozai Score: 17552652

22

Thomson Reuters

Site: http://ift.tt/xImqqp

Forbes Ranking: 68

Koozai Score: 16687638

23

Porsche

Site: http://www.porsche.com/

Forbes Ranking: 78

Koozai Score: 15635253

24

Verizon

Site: http://www.verizon.com/

Forbes Ranking: 21

Koozai Score: 14972197

25

Siemens

Site: http://www.siemens.com/

Forbes Ranking: 46

Koozai Score: 14704864

26

Audi

Site: http://www.audi.com/

Forbes Ranking: 39

Koozai Score: 13711340

27

MTV

Site: http://www.mtv.com/

Forbes Ranking: 99

Koozai Score: 12767294

28

Nike

Site: http://www.nikeinc.com

Forbes Ranking: 18

Koozai Score: 12706774

29

IKEA

Site: http://www.ikea.com/

Forbes Ranking: 45

Koozai Score: 11496120

30

Ebay

Site: http://www.ebayinc.com/

Forbes Ranking: 50

Koozai Score: 10873600

31

Ford

Site: http://www.ford.com/

Forbes Ranking: 41

Koozai Score: 9932692

32

HSBC

Site: http://www.hsbc.com/

Forbes Ranking: 36

Koozai Score: 9459180

33

Fox

Site: http://www.fox.com/

Forbes Ranking: 48

Koozai Score: 8509243

34

AT&T

Site: http://www.att.com/

Forbes Ranking: 12

Koozai Score: 8199322

 35

Accenture

Site: http://ift.tt/ydC6Sc

Forbes Ranking: 44

Koozai Score: 8060424

 36

Ralph Lauren

Site: http://ift.tt/IX4lg1

Forbes Ranking: 89

Koozai Score: 7556380

37

Red Bull

Site: http://www.redbull.com/

Forbes Ranking: 76

Koozai Score: 7209448

38

John Deere

Site: http://www.deere.com/

Forbes Ranking: 70

Koozai Score: 6482064

39

Wells Fargo

Site: http://ift.tt/nqliwM

Forbes Ranking: 47

Koozai Score: 5956855

40

Lego

Site:  http://www.lego.com/

Forbes Ranking: 95

Koozai Score: 5099452

41

Sony

Site: http://www.sony.net/

Forbes Ranking: 79

Koozai Score: 4780816

42

H&M

Site: http://www.hm.com/

Forbes Ranking: 33

Koozai Score: 4719737

 43

General Electric

Site: http://www.ge.com/

Forbes Ranking: 9

Koozai Score: 4561533

44

Starbucks

Site: http://ift.tt/enxzyh

Forbes Ranking: 52

Koozai Score: 4107902

45

Target

Site: http://ift.tt/1hBZrZW

Forbes Ranking: 92

Koozai Score: 4025156

46

Home Depot

Site: http://ift.tt/IuEWoS

Forbes Ranking: 37

Koozai Score: 3820443

47

ESPN

Site: http://www.espn.com/

Forbes Ranking: 32

Koozai Score: 3795550

48

McDonald’s

Site: http://ift.tt/uyedHs

Forbes Ranking: 6

Koozai Score: 3729926

49

Honda

Site: http://www.honda.co.jp/

Forbes Ranking: 23

Koozai Score: 3615320

50

Exxon Mobil

Site: http://ift.tt/14yr2Rt

Forbes Ranking: 91

Koozai Score: 3527741

51

Chevrolet

Site: http://ift.tt/xOieTQ

Forbes Ranking: 62

Koozai Score: 3351005

52

Bank of America

Site: http://ift.tt/p6pPKn

Forbes Ranking: 72

Koozai Score: 3259541

53

Zara

Site: http://www.zara.com/

Forbes Ranking: 58

Koozai Score: 3107685

54

Lexus

Site: http://www.lexus.com/

Forbes Ranking: 66

Koozai Score: 3056323

55

Chanel

Site: http://www.chanel.com/

Forbes Ranking: 85

Koozai Score: 2940375

56

Pepsi

Site: http://www.pepsi.com/

Forbes Ranking: 29

Koozai Score: 2915332

57

L’Oréal

Site: http://www.loreal.com/

Forbes Ranking: 34

Koozai Score: 2911486

58

RBC

Site: http://www.rbc.com/

Forbes Ranking: 86

Koozai Score: 2899445

59

Adidas

Site: http://ift.tt/GMyP6C

Forbes Ranking: 83

Koozai Score: 2834207

60

Rolex

Site: http://www.rolex.com/

Forbes Ranking: 65

Koozai Score: 2541990

61

Louis Vuitton

Site: http://ift.tt/tDGuQZ

Forbes Ranking: 14

Koozai Score: 2466154

62

Frito-Lay

Site: http://ift.tt/I7kxXM

Forbes Ranking: 38

Koozai Score: 2251076

63

Gucci

Site: http://www.gucci.com/

Forbes Ranking: 42

Koozai Score: 2248463

64

Boeing

Site: http://www.boeing.com

Forbes Ranking: 82

Koozai Score: 2160601

65

Chase

Site: http://www.chase.com/

Forbes Ranking: 71

Koozai Score: 1984078

66

Hyundai

Site: http://ift.tt/1kCO43T

Forbes Ranking: 64

Koozai Score: 1953991

67

Hermès

Site: http://www.hermes.com/

Forbes Ranking: 51

Koozai Score: 1432774

68

Canon

Site: http://www.canon.jp/

Forbes Ranking: 73

Koozai Score: 1415270

69

Coach

Site: http://www.coach.com

Forbes Ranking: 63

Koozai Score: 1383120

70

Coca-Cola

Site: http://ift.tt/Wbo91I

Forbes Ranking: 4

Koozai Score: 1380873

71

Subway

Site: http://www.subway.com/

Forbes Ranking: 84

Koozai Score: 1312125

72

Cartier

Site: http://www.cartier.com/  

Forbes Ranking: 55

Koozai Score: 1267671

73

Panasonic

Site: http://ift.tt/1fqzk3s

Forbes Ranking: 93

Koozai Score: 1242633

74

Santander

Site: http://ift.tt/OKiD2N

Forbes Ranking: 69

Koozai Score: 1169926

75

Citi

Site:  http://ift.tt/KTIqJu

Forbes Ranking: 81

Koozai Score: 1006120

76

J.P. Morgan

Site: http://ift.tt/1AjZYpQ

Forbes Ranking: 56

Koozai Score: 958419

77

Nestlé

Site: http://www.nestle.com/

Forbes Ranking: 43

Koozai Score: 892750

78

BMW

Site: http://ift.tt/KEbJtw

Forbes Ranking: 16

Koozai Score: 864669

79

Volkswagen

Site: http://ift.tt/KVP3e8

Forbes Ranking: 67

Koozai Score: 767868

80

Nissan

Site: http://ift.tt/zfIEio

Forbes Ranking: 75

Koozai Score: 672165

81

Goldman Sachs

Site: http://ift.tt/itisrH

Forbes Ranking: 88

Koozai Score: 638661

82

Wal-Mart

Site: http://ift.tt/1wnDgZA

Forbes Ranking: 20

Koozai Score: 605450

83

Allianz

Site: http://ift.tt/A1UN9F

Forbes Ranking: 87

Koozai Score: 512794

84

Pampers

Site: http://www.pampers.com/

Forbes Ranking: 49

Koozai Score: 466117

85

Colgate

Site: http://www.colgate.com/

Forbes Ranking: 61

Koozai Score: 429312

86

Caterpillar

Site: http://ift.tt/yc3wYt

Forbes Ranking: 57

Koozai Score: 424489

87

Budweiser

Site: http://ift.tt/W8ccuY

Forbes Ranking: 25

Koozai Score: 422875

88

Hershey

Site: http://ift.tt/1oktrGs

Forbes Ranking: 94

Koozai Score: 380723

89

Danone

Site: http://www.danone.com/

Forbes Ranking: 54

Koozai Score: 244931

90

KIA Motors

Site: http://www.kia.co.kr/

Forbes Ranking: 97

Koozai Score: 222270

91

Lancôme

Site: http://www.lancome.com/

Forbes Ranking: 96

Koozai Score: 222270

92

Disney

Site: http://ift.tt/Ki39QT

Forbes Ranking: 11

Koozai Score: 174316

93

Nescafé

Site: http://www.nescafe.com/

Forbes Ranking: 31

Koozai Score: 153827

94

Kraft

Site: http://ift.tt/UGXKbj

Forbes Ranking: 60

Koozai Score: 104752

95

Kellog’s

Site: http://ift.tt/wEIlsp

Forbes Ranking: 59

Koozai Score: 90725

96

Prada

Site: http://ift.tt/19aP4F4

Forbes Ranking: 74

Koozai Score: 79071

97

Estée Lauder

Site: http://ift.tt/1lYBme2

Forbes Ranking: 100

Koozai Score: 27368

98

Sprite

Site: http://www.sprite.com/

Forbes Ranking: 98

Koozai Score: 17311

99

Heineken

Site: http://ift.tt/1jAB4dE

Forbes Ranking: 90

Koozai Score: 11749

100

Marlboro

Site: http://ift.tt/O1xeLI

Forbes Ranking: 27

Koozai Score: 605450

Conclusion

Brand authority will remain the main focus for many companies, but those who also keep Domain Authority at the forefront of their minds for their site will reap the rewards.

As our analysis shows, being an authoritive brand doesn’t necessarily guarantee fantastic site performance. To safeguard your brand’s success, you also need to monitor the quality of your backlinks and referring domains.

Let me know your thoughts on the importance of Domain Authority. Do you have any good examples to share? If so, leave a comment below or tweet me @Koozai_Ruth.

If you need backlinks analysis and help improving your Domain Authority, get in touch today.

[All figures correct as of June 2015. Forbes figures taken from: http://ift.tt/1d0dEbG]

The post The Top 100 Brands According To The Koozai Score appeared first on Koozai.com

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