Taking your analytics practice to the next level

As both a Googler and ClickZ team member, I recently attended and participated in the always-inspirational ClickZ Live New York event.

Along with Katie Morse, Vice President, Social and Search at Nielsen and Pierce Crosby, business development and experienced data analyst at StockTwits, we had a panel discussion on how brands can take their analytics practice to the next level.

First, a quick description of the panel:

Data has become everyone’s domain, in all aspects of your marketing and business. Most companies do a good job at collecting and reporting data and have a basic process in place. But many are stuck as to what to do next to elevate value of data in their company.

As our conversation, and those questions the audience asked, were so good, I wanted to pull out some of the best questions and summary of answers we shared with attendees.

Pierce, Katie, and Adam presenting at ClickZ Live NYC. Photo by Search Engine Watch columnist Thom Craver (used w/permission).

1. Most companies have varying groups that need access to analytics insights. How do you efficiently get them all what they need and how do you ensure it’s most useful for them?

The answer is process. Ensure that you have the right metrics delivered to the right people at an anticipated frequency. Also ensure that you have conducted proper resource allocation in order to allow time not just to share dashboards, but flesh out insights for your teams to take action on.

If you are just delivering dashboards without context, you’re not doing your job. Actually, you’re performing the job a script can do – which isn’t a good place to be.

The more formalized you can be with your processes, the better, as this will make you incredibly efficient and free up time for the creative, valuable (and fun!) analyst projects.

2. How do you see a breakdown of time spent on analytics between data capture, reporting, and analysis? What are the best ways to help get organizations to move up the value chain?

The more time you can spend on analysis, the better. But if you’re not capturing the right data and reporting it in an articulate way, your analysis won’t be accurate or defensible. That’s why it’s important to spend time up front on ensuring your data quality is excellent and you’re effortlessly generating beautiful reports.

Need some hard numbers to serve as a guideline? Aim for 10% of time spent on data capture, 20% on reporting, and 70% on analysis and delivering insights to your team (my previous ClickZ column goes over the reporting part in more detail).

The way to get an organization to move up the value chain is easy: trend down the time you spend on capture and reporting. It’ll happen organically.

3. Can you talk about how you are using data across tactics — such as how does search inform social, email or other areas of marketing?

Data should not exist in a silo. You should be using it to inform everything you do, and you should be using it to understand your users, not simply to fill in dashboards.

For example: if you notice visitors to your ecommerce site are frequently querying a product name or type you don’t have in site search, you should share this data with your product team and persuade them to offer it. Marketing isn’t just about promoting products anymore.

Marketing now needs to be involved in the actual strategic decisions companies make, and data is how we get a seat here. Our user data should be informing what we do next, not just showing successes of our sites and apps. This all starts with breaking down silos and using insights cross functionally – beyond marketing.

4. Let’s talk about goal setting: how you can quantify success outside of just ROI? What are some other metrics that we might want to take a look at?

ROI in dollar terms is great. Everyone can understand this, especially your CFO. But generating revenue is just one outcome from your marketing and content, and just one thing to optimize.

For example, if your call center or social CRM team notices a recurring question about your company’s product they have to answer repeatedly, that’s a huge opportunity. What you need to do in this type of situation is measure what your user’s problems are and use this information to power answers in an automated / self-service fashion such as an FAQ page on your site or chatbot.

Creating this type of content in a data-driven manner can help trend down easily answered questions, freeing up your customer service team to focus on tougher problems which require a human touch and making your customers happier by simply getting the information they need immediately. That’s a win-win: and very measurable!

5. What are some actionable ways or things we could all do to become better at analyzing the “what happened” and “why” at our metrics?

This is an area of practice makes perfect. The answer is to hire skilled leaders for your team that can inspire and grow your team’s analyst skills. But personal growth helps too: so attending events like ClickZ Live, trainings and courses (such as our Analytics Academy) and reading blogs and books (like Avinash’s definitive book, Web Analytics 2.0).

Although, there is simply no substitute for hands on experience at making data-drive decisions and becoming fluent in the world of digital measurement.

Working at an agency and on hundreds of clients across industries helped me get to where I am, so that’s a path I can personally recommend. Although there’s no reason you can’t build your skills in-house too.

To learn more about the changing face of digital marketing, come to our two-day Shift London event in May.

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Do 50% of adults really not recognise ads in search results?

Around half of adults are unable to recognise ads in Google’s search results, according to a survey. 

This surprising statistic comes from Ofcom’s Adults’ media use and attitudes report, released this month.

While I’ve seen studies suggesting that many people don’t know the difference between paid and organic ads, that 50% could look at a set of results like those below and still not spot them seems bizarre.

The stats

For Ofcom’s study, ‘adults who use search engines’ were shown a picture of the SERPs for ‘walking boots’.

This is what the SERP looks like now, but the study was carried out in 2015, so the shopping results were not there at that time. As the study says:

“Their attention was drawn to the first three results at the top of the list, which were distinguished by an orange box with the word ‘Ad’ written in it. They were then prompted with three options and asked whether any of these applied to these first three results.”

The 1,328 survey respondents were allowed to select more than one answer so, for example, some may have said that the ads were both paid links and the best results.

Understanding of paid-for results returned by Google searches, among adults who use search engine websites or apps:

To clarify the results, 60% identified them as paid links, while 49% identified them only as paid ads, i.e. they selected only the correct answer.

Ofcom also split the results out between newer and more established internet users. Newer users in this case are defined as those who first went online less than five years ago. There were 160 newer users surveyed, and 1,113 older users.

These are the response to the same question as before, just split by old and new:

In a nutshell: newer users were less likely to identify that the results with the yellow ad label were indeed paid results. 34% of newer and 51% of established users gave only the correct answer.

I asked Andrew Girdwood, Head of Media Technology at Cello Signal about the findings. He was pretty surprised: 

“I’ve closely followed the evolution of disclosure in search engine ads over the years. At one point the lines were blurred – Yahoo’s paid inclusion, for example, traded your money with for some sort of organic search position. Those days, in Europe and America, are long gone. Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic watch closely.

The ad badge updates to Google’s paid search should have made it crystal clear the listing has been paid for. We’re talking about a bright yellow “Ad” label beside the result. How can you miss it? Searching for competitive keyword? Google returns a whole column of Ad, Ad, Ad and Ad mentions. It leaps off the badge to me.

It is just short of mind boggling that 50% of searchers in the UK can’t see the Ad disclosure. When Steve Krug published “Don’t Make Me Think” in 2000 to offer advice on web usability I wonder if he had imaged an audience that was both digitally savvy and web-blind as this.”

Other studies into PPC ads

I’ve looked at this issues before. In 2014, I reported on stats from UX firm Bunnyfoot, which found that 36% didn’t know that PPC ads were indeed ads (a previous study from the same firm produced a figure of 41%).

This was a relatively small sample – 103 people took UX tests with eye-tracking technology and were asked afterwards if they saw any ads.

With the help of Dan Barker, I carried out further tests on this using two separate polls of more than 2,000 UK internet users in total. We asked:

1. Are people aware of the existence of ads on Google Search?
2. Do they believe they click Google ads? And, if so, how frequently?

The results were very different to Ofcom’s, with just around 10% not seeing ads in Google results.

However, the very presence of the word ‘ad’ in the question perhaps implied to respondents that there are ads on Google, and gave them a clue about the answer.

There was another study by Varn earlier this year which produced a similar answer to that from Ofcom.

This time, 1,010 Uk internet users were asked the following question. 50.6% couldn’t identify ads:

It is tricky to devise the perfect test for this issue. If you ask users questions, there is the obvious temptation for them to second-guess the answer and say what they think is the right answer, rather than just answering honestly.

The Ofcom test, showing users the results and asking the question seems sound enough to me. Also, that several different studies have found a reasonably high percentage of people not recognising ads, so I can only conclude that there’s something in this.

Why can’t people see the ads?

This is the big question. As someone who has worked in digital for more than 10 years, it’s hard to imagine.

After all, there’s a pretty clear yellow ad label next to the results. You can hardly accuse Google of not disclosing the nature of the link.

However, Google has taken steps which some would interpret as reducing the visibility of ads. Remember, Google has an interest in increasing the number of clicks on its ads.

For example, PPC ads used to be shaded until a couple of years ago, though there were no ad labels.

Recently, Google has experimented with green ad labels. The reason is unclear, but it could be a way to help the ad label blend in with the URL text. Or it could simply be one of a series of experiments to find the best performing format.

I suspect this is a similar thing to banner blindness, in which people have just become immune to, or have learned to ignore the elements on the page that don’t interest them.

Indeed, plenty of eye-tracking studies have shown that users will simply not look at certain elements on a page. Could it be that users are looking at the top results and simply not seeing (or processing) the ‘ad’ label?

Whatever the reason, and whatever the exact proportion of search users who don’t recognise ads in Google, it seems clear that there is an issue here.

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99 SEO Nuggets from Today’s BrightonSEO Conference

BrightonSEO is a one-day search marketing conference that brings together some of the world’s leading digital marketers. Receptional’s Managing Director, Justin Deaville, was there and he picked up 99 scorching hot tips and suggestions for improving your SEO. Future-Proof SEO SEO SUX: How and Why UX Must Be Front and Centre to […]

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7 Tips to Promote Your Content and Brand on Social Media

Social media, by now everyone knows how important it is, right? Simply by doing a quick Google search you can find hundreds of pages about how you can use social media correctly, or find suggestions on the best way to use your social media accounts. Personally, I love social media. […]

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Twitter introduces better targeting with its new Ad Groups tool

Twitter Ads have introduced a new Ad Groups feature in an attempt to improve advertising for big brands using customisation and segmentation.

Following Facebook’s path in trying to present a competitive advertising platform, Twitter is hoping to attract advertisers aiming for large-scale campaigns.

According to Twitter:

“Ad groups introduce a new level in our campaign hierarchy: one campaign can have many ad groups, and an ad group can have many targeting criteria and creatives. This level of granular control helps advertisers improve how they measure results, set promotion schedules, test different audiences, and identify which Tweets work best.”

This way it’s hoping to encourage more brands to join Twitter’s advertising options, as a way to reach a wider audience, increase leads, website traffic, or app downloads, while building, testing, optimising, and measuring all their different campaigns.

Image source: Twitter

This seems important for Twitter’s business future, as despite the slightly depressing facts we examined recently, it still tries to survive in the competitive world of social media, especially in its business aspect.

Different targeting criteria

Twitter offers many different criteria for targeting a specific audience and this may help advertisers measure (and improve) the effectiveness of their ads.

The segmentation of the audience may be performed in various ways, and the most popular options of targeting are:

Geo-location targeting

Big international brands may create many different campaigns worldwide and geo-location targeting – either by country, state, or code – allows them to focus on each sub-group of people with the right message.

Image source: Twitter

Gender Targeting

Not every campaign is suitable both for men and women and that’s why gender targeting ensures that advertisers receive the desired engagement from every campaign.

Image source: Twitter Flight School

Device targeting

A new app wanting to reach an extended audience cannot create an ad focusing both on iOS and Android users by providing the same link, which means that device targeting can significantly increase the effectiveness of the campaign.

Language Targeting

Geo-location targeting is not the same with language targeting, but both of them can become very useful when narrowing down the audience for an international campaign. Would you like to see an ad in a language that you don’t understand?

Image source: Twitter Flight School

Follower targeting

This targeting option is very useful for brands that try to focus on specific people and follow the ones that are similar to their target audience. As who we follow may indicate our preferences, this may be considered a fast way to spot the people that are more relevant for each campaign.

Interest category targeting

The users’ segmentation depending on their interests is very popular, as it provides brands a good understanding of what people like in order to deliver the most relevant campaigns to them.

For example, Domino’s targeted people interested in soccer, pop and comedy, proving that sometimes you need a broader perspective to spot your most relevant audience.

Image source: Twitter Flight School

Keyword targeting

A brand trying to increase engagement or jump in a trending conversation can significantly benefit from targeting by keywords, as this is a great opportunity to increase its reach.

This may be very useful in big real-time events, especially when combined with television targeting.

Television Targeting

Twitter users love using the platform when watching their favourite shows and this can turn out into a very effective segmentation when creating a campaign that is relevant to a popular TV show or even a TV network.

For example, Ireland found the best way to promote its tourism with the help of Game of Thrones.

Image source: Twitter Flight School

Tailored Audiences

Tailored audiences allow Twitter advertisers to follow the users that have already shown interest to the brand, or in a specific category, outside Twitter, trying to enhance the brand’s impression to them and turn them into loyal customers.

Behaviors and partner audience targeting

Twitter may be useful even when blending offline and online audiences, as even the in-store shopping behaviors can be analysed and help advertisers find the right audience for their campaigns.

Better targeting, improved measurement

The improvement in targeting with the numerous cases of segmentation can increase the effectiveness of many Twitter ads and we’re curious to see the results for the social network in the future.

Image: Twitter ads

Will the enhanced features of Twitter ads refresh its business perspective? Will brands trust Twitter more now to experiment with its advertising options?

Yes, ad groups may not be enough on their own, but at least they are more than welcome for anyone considering advertising on Twitter.

Image source: Twitter Flight School

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Paid search rules for ROI on mobile: report

Lead generation and direct online sales represent the two most important objectives for mobile marketers and paid search is the key mobile channel for achieving these objectives.

This is according to our new ClickZ Intelligence report on the State of Mobile Advertising 2016, produced in partnership with Search Optics and based on a global survey of more than 400 marketers and digital professionals.

At least half of the respondents cited lead generation and direct online sales as their main aims when running mobile paid search (70%), social (50%) and display advertising (54%) campaigns.

Paid search came out as the top mobile channel which marketers relied on to meet lead gen and sales objectives partly because paid search is easier to measure compared with other mobile ad formats.

Paid social can be similarly easy to measure effectively. However consumers often have a lower purchase intent when using social media than when searching, so the objectives for this channel lean more towards branding and traffic.

Some marketers believe that ROI in mobile advertising is lukewarm or unclear, especially when compared with more tried and trusted desktop media approaches.

Overall, mobile advertising was described by fewer than a quarter (23%) of respondents as delivering ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ ROI, while a similar proportion deemed it poor (20%).

Questions around both ROI and ROI visibility are raised markedly around display and social advertising channels for mobile.

Only 15% of marketers deemed mobile display advertising as providing ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ ROI, and only 23% said the same for social. Compared to search, which 32% viewed as positive.

The greater confidence in mobile paid search ROI is also evident when looking at both client and agency side marketers. Marketers on both sides consider search a safer bet when it comes to ROI, with 31% and 35% of respondents respectively rating this channel either ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ in terms of ROI.

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Five of the most interesting SEM news stories of the week

In this week’s round up we have penalties for bloggers, Google indexing image alt tags and the most expensive AdWords keywords. 

Google begins testing green ‘ad’ labels

A few people starting spotting green ‘ad’ labels on Google paid ads from yesterday.

It initially seemed to be a UK test, but I’ve since seen examples from around Europe, the US and Australia so it seems Google is testing this widely.

The question is why, and it’s not hard to guess that making them seem more like organic results is a possible explanation.

Testing whether Google will rank keywords in image alt tags

An interesting test conducted by Dawn Anderson, which she writes about on SEM Post.

Dawn explains the test in detail, but it shows that Googlebot will read and index keywords in the image alt tag.

The most expensive PPC keywords in the UK

With help from SEMRush, Chris Lake looked into the most expensive PPC keywords on Google UK.

The most expensive was £148…

Mobile advertising stats

This week we released our State of Mobile Advertising 2016 report, produced in association with Search Optics.

It contains plenty of useful insights on mobile advertising from clients and agencies.

For example, Paid search is found to be the leading mobile channel for ROI, though measurement and attribution issues are holding advertisers back.

Google punishes bloggers for linking to reviewed products

After last month’s advice to bloggers reviewing products they’ve received free of charge to nofollow any links to product pages, we’ve had a spate of manual actions.

Bloggers reviewing products have reported receiving notices like the one above when logging into Search Console, and Google’s John Mueller has confirmed that these are linked to Google’s earlier advice.

Whether the action are justified or not is another matter, as we have no idea how Google can tell if links are due to freebies or not. However, bloggers now need to be careful when reviewing and linking.

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Is Google testing out green labels for PPC ads?

Google looks to be testing out a new colour of ‘ad’ label for its PPC ads in Europe today.

I noticed this tweet in my timeline earlier today, from a user who’d noticed these green ad labels in the UK.

Looks like Google is testing green Ads. Anyone else seeing this? #Adwords #ppc http://pic.twitter.com/bX5YquqGJF

— James Whitelock (@jaywhitelock) April 14, 2016

It appears to be a European thing, as this user in Sweden is seeing similar results:

I’m seeing all green ads in Google today. http://pic.twitter.com/eTQ0OIEjQy

— Per Pettersson (@per_p) April 14, 2016

Update: thanks to Sarah below. It seems US users are seeing the green labels too. 

At a moment, it appears to be just a chosen few users who are seeing this. Here’s a quick reminder of what the labels usually look like: 

So why is Google (maybe) going green?

First of all, these may just be tests, and we may never see these green labels in common use.

Normally, in UX testing, different colours will be tried out to determine which are most effective as calls to action. 

In this case though, the motives are likely to be different. Google’s aim is to deliver clicks for its advertisers and thus more revenue for itself. 

It’s hard to see a reason for the green colour, other than that it blends in more easily with the green text showing the URL, thus making it look less like an ad. 

If users think results are organic, will they be more likely to click on them? Perhaps that’s Google’s thinking. That’s the reason for removing right hand side ads, according to some opinion. 

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The top 100 most expensive keywords in the UK: new research

Back in the day, around 2003, somebody asked me a question regarding paid search: “Do you know what the most expensive keyword is on Google Adwords, and how much it costs?”

I made a bunch of guesses, gradually increasing the amount I thought it might be acceptable to pay every time somebody clicks on an ad. £20? No? £30? Surely not!

The grand reveal was that I was horribly wrong, and that some advertisers were paying “about £70 a click” for the term ‘mesothelioma’, which is a type of cancer associated with exposure to asbestos. It was immediately apparent that legal firms would spend that kind of money because they were hunting for big ticket compensation lawsuits.

Roll forward to the present day and I wondered how things had changed, as Google’s revenues have grown to more than $67bn globally and keyword inflation is a big deal in a lot of sectors.

The good folks at SEMrush provided me with a huge list of the most expensive keywords in five countries, and for my first piece of research I’ve focused on the UK.

I had 2,000 keywords to analyse (from its database of 12m in the UK) and here are the top results…

Highlights

Gambling dominates
Betting-related terms account for 77 out of the 100 most expensive keywords, and 22 out of the top 25. How Google must wish that online gambling becomes legal in the US!

Price range
The most expensive keyword term cost £148.51, for ‘play live blackjack’. The least expensive in the top 500 cost £54.92.

Typos
Three of the top 25 target people who can’t spell ‘roulette’. Typos are regularly spotted in the top 500 results, and beyond.

Search volume
The top 500 keywords represent 217,530 searches a month. That’s more than 2.6m searches a year. Remember that the long tail is very long…

Maximum spend opportunity
As well as looking at keyword prices I calculated the maximum possible spend, by multiplying CPC prices with search volume.

There are more than 3.6m annual searches for the word ‘casino’, and with an average cost per click of £70.40 gaming firms could spend more than £27m on that term alone (assuming the impossible – a 100% click rate).

Six sectors pay the big money
As well as gambling, there are four other sectors that appear in the top 100. Companies in these categories need deep pockets to buy ads on Google. They are as follows:

• Technology [10/100]
• Finance [8/100]
• Legal [3/100]
• B2B [2/100]

In the top 500 most expensive keywords we also see a couple of Health-related terms, though no mention of ‘mesothelioma’ in the UK (it remains one of the most costly keywords in the US).

Let’s look at the top keywords across these sectors…

Caveats

The SEMrush data is derived from a variety of publicly available and internal sources which makes it unique, but still very similar to authoritative sources such as Keyword Planner. The prices shown are averages. Prices paid may differ, as advertisers pay different prices at different times of the data.

Nevertheless, these prices are certainly indicative of the sums advertisers are willing to pay to attract new customers via Google.

You can download large versions of these images via EmpiricalProof.

What do you think? Any surprises? Do leave a comment below…

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Google chooses Receptional as one of the UK’s Top 30 digital marketing agencies

Receptional has been pinpointed by Google as one of the 30 best-performing agencies in the country. As a result, Receptional’s managing director, Justin Deaville, will be joining an exclusive Google-funded Business Coaching Programme in 2016. From 30,000 Google Partners across the UK, Receptional has been handpicked by Google as one of the […]

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How will online advertisers and retailers benefit from Google AdWords redesign?

In this mobile-first world, Google is continuously monitoring the growth of usage on mobile devices and looking for ways to improve advertiser’s ability to adapt to this new multichannel behaviour.

That is why the search engine giant, shortly after revealing a new layout for its SERPs, has redesigned the AdWords interface which is where online marketers and merchants display copy on its search engine and manage their campaigns in one place.

When the interface was first created in 2001, it was exclusively for text-based ads but now it includes a variety of features including the management of Google Shopping ads and display-based campaigns.

Google also worked closely with advertisers and listened to their feedback so they could tailor these changes specifically to their needs.

Here are some of the key areas Google has focused on in the redesign of AdWords:

• Focused approach on business objectives: AdWords, instead of focusing on features, is now more in tune to manage marketer’s campaigns according to their business goals. For retailers, this could be for example increasing traffic to their e-commerce website or increasing sales.
• Easy to access, relevant data: Google AdWords, now offers easy access to insight and data which are relevant to the company’s business goals. With this new version advertisers will now be able to find out the percentage of traffic coming from mobile for example or even find out the campaign which results in the most profit for the business.
• Do more in less time: Updates to Google AdWords support will help online advertisers to be more efficient with their time by helping them manage the most important settings more easily. This includes building reports and even managing ad extensions all from the same dashboard location.
• Graphical view of clicks and conversions: Advertisers will be able to see the evolution of their clicks and conversions over one month. This new version will be easier to read than the current one.

• Overview of top ad groups: just under the graph from the overview screen, the new design shows the top five ad groups, with their cost, number of conversions and impressions.AdWords users will see at a glance which of their ad groups perform best. For retailers, this could be a good way to quickly know their most popular product categories on AdWords.
• Performance by device: the overview will also show the performance for each device (desktop, tablet, smartphone) according to three KPIs: clicks, impressions and cost. This data was accessible in the older version of AdWords through much more clicks. With this new view, Google recognises the importance of advertising on multiple channels.

• Key settings are more visible: Access to data via mobile, tablet and desktop is much faster and more easily accessible. These were hidden in the earlier versions of the tool but these can now be accessed from the left sidebar: Location, Ad Schedule, Devices.
• Personalisation: From the first preview of the interface, we can expect that, like in Google Analytics, there will be enhanced personalisation options including a custom dashboard with the most relevant metrics for advertisers.

So what are the key benefits these changes provide to advertisers?

The thinking behind the Google AdWords redesign was to allow advertisers to manage the complexity of online advertising.

It aims to answer online advertiser’s needs, whilst also adapting according to the sheer complexity of managing a variety of different advertising campaigns and several formats including video, display, Shopping and AdWords.

With more Google searches now taking place on smartphones than on computers, the redesign also allows advertisers to refine their advertising strategy for each device.

Retailers will be able to improve their performance to reach consumers in their “micro-moments”, which happen whenever they need information.

In terms of the visual look and feel, it is the same design which is used in other native Google products. As such, retailers who are already using Gmail or Google Maps will be familiar with the platform (unlike the current version, which looks quite complicated for a beginner), thus they will feel much more at ease to start using AdWords if they don’t already.

The new interface also simplifies access to the most relevant tools in order to reach specific aims. For beginners the interface becomes more accessible and “user-friendly”, and there is no need for a wider practical knowledge of AdWords tools.

It will also be useful for the more experienced users as it will help them save time in their daily workflow management. More information and settings in less clicks.

The KPIs are also easily accessible with the new interface and allow advertisers to keep an eye on performance and make the necessary adjustments quickly. With this new interface, advertisers will have a better understanding of the key performance indicators, and have more powerful tools at their fingertips to manage their campaigns of any device.

As a result, we can expect this redesign to help optimise advertiser campaigns at a base level and improve the ROI of their advertising spend in the long term.

Below is a snapshot of what the new interface will look like:

It’s worth keeping in mind that this redesign will not happen overnight. The change will be a long process, so don’t be surprised if you continue to see the original AdWords interface for a few more months.

Initially, Google will provide access to certain areas of the redesign to a select group of advertisers so that they are given the opportunity to test out these new features and provide immediate feedback to the development team.

However, the redesign and updated look and feel will be made available to all advertisers by the end of 2017 and shouldn’t affect the overall structure of your performance campaigns.

The new design is already available in the AdWords mobile app (Android version released last year, iOS launched in January 2016), allowing advertisers to access their data on smartphone and tablet.

It will be interesting to see if Google continues to roll out more feature sets and changes, as it continues to enhance the AdWords experience to its advertiser user base throughout 2016 and into 2017.

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30 quick and easy SEO tips for small businesses

For the uninitiated, SEO can seem to be a complex and foreign landscape, but it doesn’t have to be too complicated.

Indeed, there’s a lot that small businesses (and anyone) can do without any great SEO knowledge, and without spending too much money.

With the help of some search experts, I’ve compiled a list of tips (in no particular order)…

1. Set up a Google My Business account

Set this up and get all of your business details uploaded. It’s totally free and will enable you to appear in local search results for queries specific to your area of operation.

Even broad queries with large volumes are now showing local results which is something small business owners can capitalise upon.

2. Build a fast, mobile-friendly website

Developing mobile sites can now be done easily with simple plugins for your CMS, such as WordPress, meaning that making all of your content mobile-friendly can be done quickly and cheaply.

Optimising it for fast load-speed (again through plugins where available) will help you stand out from the competition in terms of performance.

3. Conduct extensive keyword research to identify gaps in the market

Targeting the same keywords as your bigger competitors won’t see you make much ground as they are more established and have more coverage online.

Using keyword research tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner to spot gaps in the market will enable you to capitalise upon these – they may even convert at a better rate too.

Tips 1-3 by Jamie White, Head of Technical SEO at Search Laboratory.

4. Start using Google Search Console

It’s a free tool that gives a wealth of information about your website’s performance in Google search, as well as any errors on your site and issues you should address.

Improving your website without Search Console is like running a marathon without any shoes on. With Search Console you can find out what keywords Google thinks your website is relevant for, whether there are problems crawling your website, if your site is mobile friendly, and much more. It’s the starting point for most of your improvement efforts.

5. You need to understand your online audience through and through

Who is your typical online customer? What are they looking for? How do they spend their time online? What kind of content do they like to consume?

When you completely understand your audience, you will understand what you need to do online to grab their attention.

If your audience spends a lot of time on Facebook, you should focus effort there. If your audience reads online tutorials about topics relevant to your niche, maybe you need to produce your own tutorial content.

Without a thorough understanding of your audience’s needs and requirements, you won’t be able to make effective use of the online channels at your disposal – you’ll just be trying out different things at random, and that’s a terrible waste of your precious resources.

6. Look at how search engines are displaying results in your niche

Too often, small businesses have no idea who or what they are actually competing with in search.

For example, if you want to focus on a keyword that has a lot of huge international companies ranking on the first page, you should realise that perhaps your expectations need to be tempered.

Another example: if search engines show a lot of images or videos in their results for keywords you want to be visible for, you should consider producing that sort of content rather than just focus purely on text.

Also, often search engines will show local business results – if that’s the case, your efforts need to be adjusted to focus on achieving visibility in those types of results.

Tips 4-6 by Barry Adams, Polemic Digital

7. Get ScreamingFrog and check your site for possible onsite issues

Watch for security issues too – Sucuri site check is free and while it won’t be able to see all possible issues it can catch some of the most widespread ones.

This may seem unrelated to the topic of this article but compromised sites do lose their traffic and visibility.

8. Claim your physical address on Google Maps

If it’s a local business which a physical location and offline customers, make sure you claim your physical address on Google Maps.

9. Whatever you do, be genuine

Hiring somebody on the cheap to run  your Twitter account or build links for you may seem like a tempting  idea but it can – and probably will – backfire.

If you haven’t got  much of a marketing budget, take one step at a time but do it yourself as nobody knows your business and your customers better than you. Connect with them personally, do not count on somebody else spamming them on your behalf resulting in any positive outcome.

Tips 7-9 by Julia Logan, Irish Wonder

10. Beware of agencies that promise the earth

Unless you’re prepared to buy PPC ads, then there is no way to guarantee a page one listing (even then it can be tricky on competitive terms).

If an agency or salesperson promises you this, ignore them. They’re lying and will likely do a lot of damage to your long-term search visibility.

Also, if you’re just getting started, you don’t necessarily need an agency to improve your SEO efforts. See what you can do yourself first.

11. If you do hire an agency, keep an eye on them

Agencies using the wrong methods can do a lot of damage.

Often by dodgy link-building which may achieve some short-term results but will expose your site to the risk of penalties long-term.

12. Keep up with industry news

Things can change fairy quickly in SEO, so things that work for a while can become against Google’s rules over time.

As with the recent penalties for bloggers reviewing products, Google will rarely spell things out. It will give advice and hints, but it won’t contact you. You’ll often only know you’ve done something ‘wrong’ when you login to Google Search Console and receive a notice like this:

13. Try not to rely too much on Google

Yes, it’s well worth working to improve your rankings, and search traffic is valuable, but don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.

Google can change the way it ranks sites, the way it display results at any time, in ways which could adversely affect your search traffic.

Look to build email lists, use social media etc so that you’re attracting customers from a range of sources.

14. Launch a blog / create content

Content is what will help you rank for your target terms. This means content on product pages, homepages and everywhere around the site, but a blog can also help.

It shouldn’t be done just for SEO reasons, as blogs present an opportunity for you to talk about your product and services and the issues around them.

It means you can create the kind of content that people interested in your product or service would appreciate, and begin to build an audience.

15. If you blog, do it regularly

You don’t have to write five articles a day, but regular updates mean your visitors have something to read, and you’ll also be creating fresh content for the search engines.

16. But don’t go keyword-crazy

Yes, you want to target the terms that your customers are likely to search for, but you have to write for humans first of all, or your content will be weak.

17. Aim for evergreen content

Look to create quality content that addresses customers issues and has a longer shelf-life. This ‘evergeen content’ is more likely to achieve search rankings over a longer period of time.

18. Use a clear URL structure

People should be able to guess the topic of a page just by looking at the URL.

19. Use internal linking to optimise your site

Effective internal linking is about linking topics and themes together in a more sensible way, for readers and for search engines.

For example, if you are providing cake-decorating services, you’ll have lots of articles using that phrase. They’re not all going to rank for that, so choose the page you’d most like to rank for that term and point the links at that.

It can be very effective, as this internal linking example from the Daily Mail website shows.

20. Use your site search data to find terms to target

You can view the terms your visitors search for on site by looking into your analytics data.

You can learn a lot from this site search data, which can help in many ways.

For search, the keywords that people use on your site could be terms that you aren’t currently targeting via SEO or PPC.

If so, analysing site search data is a great way to find more relevant terms to target. They also tell the the kind of language that customers use.

21. Encourage reviews

Reviews will help to drive conversions but, from an SEO perspective, they help to drive your local SEO visibility.

22. Optimize images

In this article, SEW Editor Christopher Ratcliff explains how to optimize images for SEO, with the help of his cat.

23. Set up Google Analytics

It’s free and it’s essential for you to understand customer behaviour, traffic sources and more.

Here’s a beginner’s guide to Google Analytics.

 

24. Think about UX

For one thing, after mobilegeddon, your mobile ranking depends on factor related to UX.

Site speed is just one. Use tools like Google’s pagespeed insights to learn about your site and how to improve it.

25. Optimize your Google My Business profile

The basics should be there – if you have a physical store, provide opening times, directions and other useful information.

Don’t leave it at that though. Add images, regular updates and more.

26. See who is linking to you and learn from it

You can view the links you receive through tools like Majestic and others. Are you attracting links from relevant sites? If so, which kinds of content / pages are attracting these links?

27. Write a unique title for every page

On Google, you have around 55 characters to make the topic of a page clear to searchers and search engines.

28. Don’t expect results too quickly

The tips here will produce results, but don’t expect overnight success. Good SEO can take time, so be patient and stick with the process.

29. Use a little PPC

If you have the budget, PPC can deliver traffic more quickly.

It can also inform your SEO efforts – you can see which keywords work best for conversions and can help you to improve your landing pages.

30. Write your own product page copy

If you’re selling products that other sites will also have, unique product descriptions can help your site to stand out.

They’re also better for conversions, as the manufacturer descriptions will not have been tested for effectiveness, whereas you can try variations and see what works best for your site

What have I missed? Add your tips below…

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5 Steps to Create Content That’s Better than Your Competitors’

Everyone and every business is publishing content. But the sheer volume being produced is stopping brands from standing out. Guess what though? It’s not your competitor’s daily content blast that’s hindering your success: in actual fact you could be sabotaging your growth yourself by creating content lacking any focus or […]

The post 5 Steps to Create Content That’s Better than Your Competitors’ appeared first on Receptional.com.

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Google Analytics: a guide to confusing terms

Google Analytics is a hugely useful and in-depth tool for measuring and monitoring your website’s performance, as long as you can learn its language.

After setting up Google Analytics on your site for the first time, it can be hard work to navigate your way through all the different terms referring to parts of your site or the activities users carry out on it – especially when so many of them sound similar.

What’s the difference between a ‘session’ and a ‘pageview’? Are ‘users’ and ‘visitors’ the same thing? How does your site’s ‘bounce rate’ differ from its ‘exit rate’? Does ‘time on page’ really reflect what it says it does?

If you’ve wondered something like this at any point while staring down a mass of analytics for your site, worry not.

We’ve put together a handy guide to break down the meanings and uses of some key but confusing terms on Google Analytics, and how they differ from each other.

Quick Links

• Bounce Rate
  • Sticky content
• Clicks
  • Clickthrough Rate (CTR)
• Entrances
• Events
• Exit Page
• Exit Rate (% Exit)
• Hits
• Impressions
• Landing or Entrance Page
• Page Views
  • Unique Page Views
  • Pages/Session or Average Page Depth
• Sessions
  • Average Session Duration
• Time on Page
• Users, Visitors or Traffic?
  • New Visitor
  • Returning Visitor
  • Traffic Source
• Types of Traffic
  • Direct Traffic
  • Organic Search Traffic
    • Organic Search Keywords
  • Paid Search Traffic
  • Referral Traffic

Bounce Rate

The bounce rate of your site is the percentage of visitors who leave the site after only interacting with one page. This could be because they lost interest, were confused, or had already found the information they were looking for.

Individual pages have bounce rates as well as the site as a whole. A bounce rate for a page is based on all sessions that begin with that page and end without the user navigating to any other pages on the site.

A high bounce rate can be an indicator of problems, or it can indicate that for whatever reason, visitors aren’t finding anything on the site that entices them to stay longer, read more, or search for more content. A site that people spend a long time visiting and interacting with is often referred to as ‘sticky’.

For more, listen to Avinash Kaushik on the power of bounce rate, or “I came, I puked, I left”:

Not to be confused with: Exit Rate

Clicks

Clicks is a metric that appears on Google’s SEO Reports, which you can set up for your site to monitor your visibility in search results and how that translates into visitors to your site. As it says on the tin, the number of clicks on your SEO report records the number of times that people have clicked on a URL to your website in search results. This does not count clicks on paid AdWords search results, which are recorded separately in AdWords reports.

Clickthrough Rate, or CTR, is a number calculated by dividing the number of clicks to your site by the number of impressions (which records how many times it was seen) and multiplying by 100. This will tell you what proportion of users who see your site in search results actually click through to it.

Not to be confused with: Impressions or Hits

Entrances

Google Analytics records an entrance for each page that a user begins a new session on. So the number of entrances given for a specific page shows how many users began their session with that page.

Not to be confused with: Landing or Entrance Page

Events

An event on Google Analytics is a type of hit which tracks user interactions with content like downloads, mobile ad clicks, Flash elements and video plays.

Events on Google Analytics give insight into a range of user activities that are taking place across your site, and with a little bit of technical know-how, you can set up custom events to track all kinds of user behaviours that aren’t normally visible in Analytics.

Not to be confused with: Hits

Exit Page

The opposite of a landing page, an exit page on Google Analytics refers to the last page a user accesses before their session ends or they leave the site. The Exit Pages section of Google Analytics therefore allows you to see which pages people most frequently end their sessions on or leave the site after viewing.

Google Analytics has difficulty calculating the amount of time users spend on an exit page because there is no next page to help it judge when the user left that page. This issue impacts the accuracy of average time on page and average session duration figures.

Not to be confused with: Landing or Entrance Page or Exit Rate

Exit Rate (shown on Google Analytics as % Exit)

This figure shows how often users end their session or leave the site after viewing that particular page. The exit rate is calculated by dividing the number of ‘exits’ made from the page by the number of pageviews it has, to determine what proportion of visitors to that page leave it after visiting.

A page with a high exit rate may not necessarily have a high bounce rate, since users might be coming to that page from elsewhere in the site before exiting. However, a page with a low exit rate is likely to also have a low bounce rate, since users must be going on to other pages on the site before they leave.

Not to be confused with: Bounce Rate or Exit Page

Hits

In web terms, a hit is a request to a web server for a file like a webpage, image or JavaScript. In Google Analytics, hits are an overarching term for a variety of website interactions. Page views and events, for example, are both types of hit. A session is simply a collection of hits from one user, grouped together.

Google Analytics uses hits to determine when and how a user is interacting with a webpage. So if no hits are sent, the user is assumed to be inactive. The countdown to the end of a user’s session begins from their last hit. After thirty minutes with no new hits, the session automatically ends.

Not to be confused with: Clicks, Page Views or Events

Impressions

In Google’s SEO Reports, impressions records how many times a URL to your site was viewed by a user in search results. This does not count impressions by paid AdWords search results, which are recorded separately in AdWords reports.

By calculating clicks on those URLs as a percentage of impressions, Google Analytics can tell you the Click-Through Rate of your URLs that appear in search results. This appears in your SEO Report under CTR.

Not to be confused with: Page Views

Landing or Entrance Page

‘Landing Page’ and ‘Entrance Page’ are both used by Google to refer to the first page a user accesses (or ‘lands’ on) at the beginning of a session. The Landing Pages section of Google Analytics therefore allows you to view the pages through which users most often arrive on the site, and their statistics.

Not to be confused with: Exit Page or Entrances

Page Views

Page Views (also called screen views for mobile) are the total count of how many times any user lands on an individual page on your website. This includes repeatedly landing on the same page during one session, so if a user refreshes the page, this counts as an additional page view on your site.

‘Unique page views’ is a number that will tell you how many times a page was accessed at least once during a session. In other words, it doesn’t count multiple views of a page by the same user in the same session, instead treating them as a single view.

Pages per session, also called Average Page Depth, is the average number of pages viewed by each user during one session. On Google Analytics, this metric includes repeated views of a single page by the same user.

Not to be confused with: Hits or Impressions

Session(s)

A session is a measure of the amount of time a user spends actively engaging with your website. Session length is calculated from the moment a user arrives on your site until 30 minutes of inactivity have elapsed. Every new action that a user performs will reset the clock on when that session will ‘expire’.

The only exception to this is at midnight, at which point all sessions for that day are considered to have ended and a fresh session will begin, even if that user has been active throughout.

Average Session Duration calculates the average length of a user’s session by dividing the session duration by the number of sessions. However, there is a problem with this calculation: Google cannot calculate the time spent on an exit page because there is no next page for it to use as a marker. This can drastically throw off the accuracy of the average session duration, especially in the case of bounces where the session consists of a single page, and no session duration can be calculated at all.

Not to be confused with: Time on Page

Time on Page

If you look at the Google Analytics for individual pages on your site, you can see the average amount of time that a user spent on that page, as well as the amount of time that users spend, on average, on any one page of your site. This figure can be deceptive, however.

Google has no way of measuring the time a user spent on the last page of your website that they viewed, because it uses the next page they access to calculate how long they spent on the previous one. On the last page of a session, there is no next page and so the time on that page is recorded as 0.

Google does correct for this issue somewhat, calculating average time on page by dividing the time on page by the number of page views minus the number of exits from the site. The problem is, this still means the time on the exit page isn’t accounted for, so bear that in mind when looking at these figures.

Not to be confused with: Session Duration

Users, Visitors or Traffic?

These three terms are all ways of referring to the people who access your site. Google uses the words user and visitor interchangeably in different places, both to refer to an individual person who comes to your site. A new visitor is someone who comes to your site without having been there before, while a returning visitor is someone who has been to your site previously.

Traffic is an overall term to refer to the volume of users accessing your website. A traffic source is any place from which people are directed to your site, such as a search engine, social network or other website.

Types of traffic:

Direct traffic

Visitors to your site are classed as direct traffic when they access your site via a bookmark, or by entering its URL straight into their browser’s address bar. When viewing Traffic Sources on Google Analytics, the source for direct traffic is shown as ‘(direct)’.

Organic Search Traffic

Organic traffic is the name given to the amount of users who find your website ‘organically’ through search results, as opposed to via a paid ad, clicking a link on another site, or from a bookmark they already have saved. Organic search keywords can allow you to see which search terms are helping users to find your site, as well as the kind of things they are looking for when they access it.

Paid Search Traffic

Paid traffic is the amount of visitors to your site who came there via Google Adwords ads, paid search keywords and other online ad campaigns. With Paid Traffic on Google Analytics, you can track all traffic from paid sources in one place, analyse user behaviour and gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Referral Traffic

A referral is a visitor to your site who is sent there, or referred, from a direct link on another site. Referral traffic is therefore the general term for the amount of people who are referred to your site from elsewhere on the web.

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Five tips for low-risk Google Display Network testing

So you’re a small or medium-sized business (SMB) and you’ve already hit a cap on how far you can go with search engine marketing and remarketing.

You want to continue to scale and are considering doing it via Google Display Network (GDN), but you’re aware of the possible drawback: a lot of wasted spend on poor quality, low-intent traffic.

As an SMB, you don’t have enough budget to throw spaghetti on the wall and see what works, so you need to test new waters in a smart manner.

Below are five tips on how to begin testing within the GDN to determine if this is a viable channel for you.

Use Display Select Keywords

One initiative I typically recommend people run when they first venture out into GDN is Display Select Keywords, which can almost be considered a good middle ground between search and display.

So what is Display Select Keyword (DSK) targeting? Basically, you choose keywords that are highly relevant to your product/service, and Google will use its technology to match your ad based on a customer’s purchase intent – using that keyword selection, predictive conversion models, and ‘other’ criteria (the black-box stuff that Google won’t tell us about).

My recommendation is to launch DSK starting with your top 15 keywords; as you see success you can continue to expand that list.

Try Similar Users

Given you are running remarketing, you should have generated some good remarketing lists of audiences you deem to be valuable (most obvious would be those who have converted on your site).

We can take these audiences and use Google’s lookalike technology to find users who have characteristics, traits, and behavior similar to those audiences. This is a great way to get your ad in front of your target audience.

Take advantage of In-Market Segments

In-Market segments are groups of audiences who Google has determined to be most interested in what you have to offer based on their behavior and activity.

These customers are actively browsing, researching, or comparing the types of products/services you sell. So this is an opportunity to get your ad in front of a highly relevant audience that has demonstrated in-market behavior and purchase intent.

Test and optimize your creative and copy

The quality of your ad itself is one of the most important aspects of GDN. In order to ensure that you maintain efficiency and reduce wasted spend, it is crucial to be as clear as possible about the value proposition of your product/service.

Of course you also want to follow many of the accepted best practices when it comes to ad creative, but know that the importance of being extremely clear about your product/its purpose is that you’ll be able to qualify your audience up front.

If an audience has a good understanding of what you do, then they’ll know if this is relevant to them or not. If they don’t care for your service/product, they won’t click on your ad. Avoid being too broad or vague; this tends to bring more users to your site – and result in a much higher bounce rate.

Cut bad spend liberally with the help of placement reports

One of the most important reports Google provides is placement reports, which help you see the sites where your ads are serving and how the ads are performing on each site.

Make sure you set up criteria to define ‘poor performance’; based off of that, you can single out placements that are not performing well and add them to your negative placement list.

Be sure to pull this report/analysis more frequently in the beginning so you can start catching any bleeding placements that arise from your initial launch.

Setting this up as a recurring task will allow you to reduce any wasted spend from these poor-performing sites.

There are many more great strategies that you can implement and test to continue to scale efficiently within the GDN. The above are just a few options to get your foot in the water and do it in the least risky manner. Good luck!

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