General Motors has announced that they will be pulling their $10M advertising campaign from Facebook, due to “ineffective ads.” Of course, this is not good for GM or Facebook, but would it really be newsworthy if Facebook was not gearing up for an IPO? Another headline this week is that 50% of Americans believe that Facebook is a passing fad. Again, everyone is entitled to an opinion, but is Facebook really anything more than a shortcut to communication? Are people going to really stop communicating using thoughts, pictures, video in a central clearing house where you have the power to choose your friends?
It may sound like I am emotionally involved here, but from an online marketing perspective, here are the facts:
- Not every medium applies to the branding and message of every advertiser. Metrics of success are different for every advertiser. In short, the fact that GM thinks that their Facebook marketing did not bring results is not a condemnation of the ad platform as a whole. Facebook advertising is targeted and inexpensive, and have brought returns for many clients I have worked with.
- Facebook has 800 million users worldwide. That is a ton of momentum. In the fast-changing world of technology, this is still a significant head start. Facebook faces quite a few challenges, including making the platform more accessible and easier to use for mobile and tablet users, but these changes are being implemented and are designed to avoid the sort of declines suffered by AOL, Yahoo and MySpace, to name a few fallen internet stalwarts.
- Facebook Ad Revenues are declining. Facebook’s S-1 filing on May 10th cited declining ad revenues from the previous quarter, and many analysts question how impressive a 37 Billion Dollar annual revenue stream is based on an 800 million user base. Facebook has never been primarily focused on ad revenues, and for many years, completely resisted any significant ads at all. The fear has always been that a focus on the commercial aspect of things will be a negative to the user experience. With new stockholders in place looking for a return on their sizable investment, new ad platforms will be released.
Bottom Line: Will the IPO change the future of Facebook? There is no doubt that the World’s Most Popular Social Network will face challenges, and will have to be creative, fast-moving, and responsive to the needs of a generation that is focused on hand-held technology and considers an extra click to get the information they need to be a major inconvenience. More consistent returns on ad dollars spent and continuing to focus on a positive user experience are the keys.
Eric Van Cleave is a Partner in Zenergy Works, a Santa Rosa, California based Online Marketing and Social Media Optimization Firm.
It is a busy week already, and things are changing faster than the nameplate on the CEO’s office at Yahoo. The most popular topic is the continuing saga of Google Penguin, which (thank goodness) has not been an issue for 99% of our clients, but is causing those sites that have paid, cloaked, link wheel or other questionable linking strategies to have their organic traffic drop as much as 50%. To be clear, Zenergy Works has never employed these techniques, and our customers are now reaping the benefits of that policy by not having their organic traffic decrease.
Current Topics:
- Google Ranking Changes May 12th-14th. Many suspect that Google Penguin 1.1 has been launched but Google has publicly denied that claim. I believe that Google may have waited to implement the full force of Penguin to give webmasters time to clean up offending links. Now we are all feeling the full effects of the full algorithm change.
- Google Maps is dropping some videos on Google Maps/Places landing pages for businesses. Google has confirmed the bug on their Google Map/Places help blog…no solution as of now.
- Facebook has reacted to the rapid growth in mobile by creating an iOS and Android App to view photos 3x as large as they previously did, meaning that mobile viewers can see the thumbnail and make a decision on whether or not to open the full sized photo. Another improvement in user experience by a social networking site. Amazing how impending riches can stimulate creativity, isn’t it? The Facebook IPO is reported to be going well, and many Facebook Employees stand to become multi-millionaires this week.
- Hitwise and comScore released search statistics, both say that Google has slipped a little and that Yahoo and Bing control about 30% of the search market. No radical shifts here, but are the “quality” measures that Google is undertaking inspiring growth in use of Google as a search engine? Too early to tell.
- Numerous Google AdSense publishers that the Ad Review Center has experienced some problems, and that the ability to review new ads has been disabled. Frustrating for those trying to launch campaigns.
Bottom Line: Facebook is improving, and Google has shown a few chinks in the armor in delivery systems and even a small slip in search traffic. Many have accused Google of attempting to wipe out the SEO industry by eliminating the “tricks of the trade” in their search criteria. We will keep urging our clients to create quality content and user experiences and build quality links for their sites.
Eric Van Cleave is a Partner in Zenergy Works, a Santa Rosa, California based SEO, Social Media Optimization and Website Development Firm.
On Friday, May 4th, Google announced another round of search algorithm updates. This has become a monthly occurrence, meaning that those of us in the SEO world continue to struggle to keep up with the latest developments. I did not attempt to guess which changes relate to Google’s Penguin or Panda Initiatives. This list will make you yawn, but gives some excellent insight into what Google is changing about its search criteria.
The following changes can affect results from Local Searches:
- Improvements to local navigational searches. [launch codename "onebar-l"] For searches that include location terms, e.g. [dunston mint seattle] or [Vaso Azzurro Restaurant 94043], we are more likely to rank the local navigational homepages in the top position, even in cases where the navigational page does not mention the location.
- More comprehensive predictions for local queries. [project codename "Autocomplete"] This change improves the comprehensiveness of autocomplete predictions by expanding coverage for long-tail U.S. local search queries such as addresses or small businesses.
Here is a summary of the most important changes that influence Ranking:
- Improvement in a freshness signal. [launch codename "citron", project codename "Freshness"] This change is a minor improvement that helps to better identify fresh documents, or new content additions to websites.
- No freshness boost for low-quality content. [launch codename "NoRot", project codename "Freshness"] We have modified a classifier we use to promote fresh content to exclude fresh content identified as particularly low-quality.
- Smoother ranking changes for fresh results. [launch codename "sep", project codename "Freshness"] We want to help you find the freshest results, particularly for searches with important new web content, such as breaking news topics. We try to promote content that appears to be fresh. This change applies a more granular classifier, leading to more nuanced changes in ranking based on freshness.
- Improvements to how search terms are scored in ranking. [launch codename "Bi02sw41"] One of the most fundamental signals used in search is whether and how your search terms appear on the pages you’re searching.
- Keyword stuffing classifier improvement. [project codename "Spam"] We have classifiers designed to detect when a website is keyword stuffing. This change made the keyword stuffing classifier better.
- More authoritative results. We’ve tweaked a signal we use to surface more authoritative content.
Changes that influence Search Listings:
- Categorize paginated documents. [launch codename "Xirtam3", project codename "CategorizePaginatedDocuments"] Sometimes, search results can be dominated by documents from a paginated series. This change helps surface more diverse results in such cases.
- Disable salience in snippets. [launch codename "DSS", project codename "Snippets"] This change updates our system for generating snippets to keep it consistent with other infrastructure improvements. It also simplifies and increases consistency in the snippet generation process.
- More text from the beginning of the page in snippets. [launch codename "solar", project codename "Snippets"] This change makes it more likely we’ll show text from the beginning of a page in snippets when that text is particularly relevant.
- Less snippet duplication in expanded sitelinks. [project codename "Megasitelinks"] We’ve adopted a new technique to reduce duplication in the snippets of expanded sitelinks.
- Better query interpretation. This launch helps us better interpret the likely intention of your search query as suggested by your last few searches.
- News universal results serving improvements. [launch codename "inhale"] This change streamlines the serving of news results on Google by shifting to a more unified system architecture.
- More efficient generation of alternative titles. [launch codename "HalfMarathon"] We use a variety of signals to generate titles in search results. This change makes the process more efficient, saving tremendous CPU resources without degrading quality.
- More concise and/or informative titles. [launch codename "kebmo"] We look at a number of factors when deciding what to show for the title of a search result. This change means you’ll find more informative titles and/or more concise titles with the same information.
- “Sub-sitelinks” in expanded sitelinks. [launch codename "thanksgiving"] This improvement digs deeper into megasitelinks by showing sub-sitelinks instead of the normal snippet.
- Better ranking of expanded sitelinks. [project codename "Megasitelinks"] This change improves the ranking of megasitelinks by providing a minimum score for the sitelink based on a score for the same URL used in general ranking.
- Sitelinks data refresh. [launch codename "Saralee-76"] Sitelinks (the links that appear beneath some search results and link deeper into the site) are generated in part by an offline process that analyzes site structure and other data to determine the most relevant links to show users.
Bottom Line: Google continues to tighten its criteria for what constitutes good content and good link structure. The result will be that sites that work hard to build quality content and follow the organic linking rules will continue to be rewarded with positive placement. Zenergy Works has been fortunate in that very few of our clients have lost rankings in the Panda and Penguin updates. We have been able to fix those quickly and efficiently. We will keep watching search updates and keeping our tactics well on the side of White Hat. Nothing else makes strategic or economic sense at this point.
Eric Van Cleave is a Partner in Zenergy Works, a Santa Rosa, California based SEO (Search Engine Optimization) firm.
We already posted on Part 1 of the Local Reviews Survey.
 This online survey was completed in the first quarter of this year. The results are based on over 2,800 responses in the US, UK and Canada. A summary of the results is below:
The most searched for business type was Restaurants – 57% (vs. 37% in 2010)
These categories also enjoyed gains since the last study in 2010:
- Hotels/Inns – 35% (vs. 29%)
- General Shops – 35% (vs. 30%)
- Clothes Shops – 34% (vs. 31%)
- Dentists/Doctors – 27% (vs. 21%)
A number of categories saw a decrease from the 2010 figures:
- Taxi/Limousine – 5% (vs. 10%)
- Specialty Retailers (ie. Luggage, electronics) 11% (vs. 21% in 2010)
- Hair/Beauty Salon – 9% (vs. 13%)
The most influential business reviews on decision making for consumers are for the following verticals:
- Restaurants / Cafes – 32% (vs. 26% 2010)
- Doctors / Dentists – 27% selected (vs. 33%)
- Construction and Other Tradesmen – 23% (vs. 27% in 2010)
The most important aspect of services described in the online reviews is as follows:
- 64% of consumers stated that ‘Reliability’ is most important trait (vs. 47% in 2010)
- 44% stated that ‘Good Value’ was important (vs. 35% in 2010)
- Less consumers are concerned with ‘softer’ traits such as courtesy, friendly service & ‘localness’ and prefer specifics/examples of good service and fair pricing.
How many reviews do potential customers typically read?:
- 65% of consumers read 2-10 reviews (vs. 58% in 2010)
- 7% of consumers read more than 20 reviews (vs. 12% in 2010)
Bottom Line: Google’s increasing inclusion of map results into main search results with Google Places is dramatically increasing the importance of online reviews. Having a Positive Reputation which is publicly-expressed in online customer reviews is essential for all types of local business. Consumers are getting the information faster, and more often, with the influx of mobile devices, tablets and other more portable internet access tools. Local businesses need to make the creation of positive online reviews and management and monitoring of those reviews a priority. Positive reviews MUST outweigh the negative, and no amount of spending on online ads will decisively overcome that problem.
Eric Van Cleave is a Partner in Zenergy Works, a Santa Rosa California based Online Marketing and Website Development Firm.
Many clients ask us if they need to be concerned that their mobile website creates duplicate content, because much of the mobile content mirrors the desktop content and appears under a different URL. The fear is that having the same content on two URLs will do the same thing it does in traditional SEO and split site Page Rank, making it more difficult for either page to rank.
The answer is in Google’s Old Possum/Skip Redirect update issued in December of 2011. User agent redirection is all that’s necessary for mobile sites to rank ahead of desktop sites (not to mention offer faster loading time) in smartphone search, even if it’s the same content formatted differently.
With canonical tags (defined as: (Canonical Tag) Code used by search engine crawlers/spiders to tell search engines what URL is the original version of your webpage. ) back to the desktop site for duplicate mobile pages, both mobile and desktop pages will be able to rank for competitive terms. Google has stated that mobile search is a different environment and uses different criteria, and mobile sites are not duplicate content.
Responsive Design was described in a previous Zenergy Works blog post, and has become a more direct way to avoid any possible duplicate content issues by providing a design under a single URL that automatically adjusts to the environment that it is being displayed in. In other words, you can avoid negative impacts entirely by simply optimizing your Responsive Design Web Site.
Bottom Line: It may be more expensive and time consuming to move ahead with a Responsive Design Website as opposed to a mobile website, but the time saved in making sure that all SEO concerns are adequately addressed is a mitigating factor, and at least with the current search criteria, the Responsive Design Site appears to be a superior long term investment.
Eric Van Cleave is a Partner in Zenergy Works, A Santa Rosa, California based Website Design and Development Firm. Zenergy Works also specializes in SEO, SEM and Online Display Advertising.
Google considers links to be “votes”, or endorsements for your website. The more endorsements you get, the higher that the search algorithms rank your website. According to Google’s guidelines, these links should be created naturally by other web users wanting to link to the compelling content on your site. Many SEO firms have found ways to help this process along, and have created what Google considers to be “web spam”. The current update to the search algorithms, released on or about April 24th, targets the following types of links, according to Glenn Gabe of G-Squared Interactive:
- Paid text links using exact match anchor text: For companies that want to rank for a certain term (such as “red widgets”) one way to accomplish this is by buying links from other websites with that exact matching anchor text. This is against Google’s guidelines, as Google would consider this a paid link that exists solely to manipulate PageRank, rather than to provide any value to visitors.
- Comment spam: Two things proved problematic for websites trying to unnaturally rank for specific keywords: signatures in comments that contained exact match anchor text; and people who used a spammy user name (e.g., Best India SEO Company) as exact match text.
- Guest posts on questionable sites: Although guest posts are a legitimate way to earn links to your site, sites dinged by the Penguin had links pointing to their website from sites filled with low-quality articles where the focus was on the anchor text rather than the content.
- Article marketing sites: Thin content featuring links with exact match anchor text were another common factor among affected sites.
- Links from dangerous sites: Do you have inbound links from sites that have been flagged for malware, numerous pop-ups, or other spammy issues? This was another factor that caused websites to lose their Google rankings, so links to and from web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” are potentially harmful.
The Penguin update did not really change any Google guidelines, it just armed the search algorithm with the ability to penalize sites that were not adhering to the guidelines by negatively impacting rankings. If you feel that you have been unfairly impacted by Google Penguin, you may submit a report to Google and they will consider your request. Please do not send multiple reports on the same site, as it will slow down the process for all. Google will request documentation that you have fixed the link issues or your linking strategy was misinterpreted by Google Penguin with your request. I probably do not need to emphasize that attempting to continue to cloak your link strategy with Google and submitting a report could have negative and lasting consequences on your search rankings.
Bottom Line. With any Search Engine Algorithm change, online marketing firms learn to adapt and change to fit the guidelines. Rushing too quickly to the solution can lead to making further errors. Most SEO firms/websites do not have a major problem as a result of Penguin, but online marketers will be continuing to emphasize quality content to comply with guidelines. Google is responsible for over 70% of search volume, and if these changes lessen the quality of search results, competitors like Bing, GoDuckGo and others will reap the benefits. Only time will tell.
Eric Van Cleave is a Partner in Zenergy Works, A Santa Rosa, California, based SEO and Online Marketing Firm.
With all of the new and exciting advances in online marketing, many of the businesses that I work with have forgotten about one of the first, and still most popular, mediums of online promotion: Email. Email is perfect for keeping existing and prospective (who have given you permission to keep in contact with them) customers informed about new developments in your business. In my opinion, the three greatest threats to the continued use of email marketing are:
- Inexpensive and Easy. This means that some users will overuse the medium (Overstock and Amazon, please take note.) Customers will opt out if they receive too many emails that are not relevant. For instance, how often do you really believe that I buy a new watch, or sheets for my bed? Businesses need to be smart about what they market and how often. Spend some time and money to design the email to be visually appealing, and show that you care about the quality of what you send and the products that you sell. Remember to include easy to read and brief content that shows the reader why it is to their advantage to act on this email.
- Email Box Clutter. Get permission from the customer to use their email address. If a user wishes to opt out, make it easy for them to do so. Use tracking that shows you who has sent your email marketing to the junk folder without opening it, and put these users on a separate, “cold” list reserved for annual markdown sales or big events. Focus on the email users who are interested in your more frequent communications.
- Lack of Imagination. Social Media Marketing should have taught us all that staying in touch is a privilege, and to use it wisely. Spend the time to track user’s buying habits, and send them the information you know is relevant to them. Also, don’t send just specials, once in a while mix in something just for fun, like Happy Holidays. When you send a special, make it count and make it something that you would like to receive. I get numerous offers for 10% off of merchandise I have no interest in or free oil changes from Car Repair Shops I do not know. Have different people within your organization write your emails, or hire a clever content writer to help with at least some of the email content.
- Texting. SMS Marketing has become a huge boost to those marketing to the under 25 crowd or certain focused demos, and has intriguing ties to location based mobile marketing, but most of the buying targets 35-54 still use email for meaningful communication. Texting is used to communicate short messages with close friends and family, email is for business. Who knows how this will play out as the 25 and unders become the 35 and overs. Stay tuned.
Bottom Line: Email is still a basic part of any well-conceived online marketing campaign. If you have not been successful, consider a revamp of your look and feel, tracking, message and target list. The experimenting is affordable, personal and it will reap rewards.
Eric Van Cleave is a Partner in Zenergy Works, a California Online Marketing, Website Design, SEM and SEO Company.
Beginning in mid-May of this year, Google will begin to implement a more intuitive approach to misspellings, singular/plural forms and even stemming. Many users are already using the beta of this technology, but the program will not start until mid-May to give some users a chance to opt out of the program to avoid paying for some keywords that are not exact matches for their desired searches.
AdWords advertisers have always targeted misspellings, abbreviations, and other variations on their keywords or phrases. Now, Google will account for these variations much like organic results.
Google states that approximately 7% of queries include misspellings, and in testing the new functionality with a few advertisers and says it has seen an average increase of 3% in search clicks. So far, the studies have noted little or no difference in CPCs (cost per click).
The new policy will address the following:
- Misspellings (ie. auto repare v. auto repair)
- Singular/plural forms (ie. Monitors v. monitor)
- Stemming (ie. auto restoration v. auto restoring)
- Abbreviations (ie. Dr. v. Doctor)
- Acronyms (ie. SEO v. Search Engine Optimization)
- Accents
The new option (in the campaign settings tab, under Advanced settings select Keyword matching options) will be made available via the web interface to all advertisers by mid-May, and will appear in the new version of the API to be released later this month. Again, advertisers can opt out if they’d like finer control of their keywords.
Bottom Line: On the face, this new option appears to be an advantage for advertisers, who no longer will have to attempt to anticipate all of the misspelled and plural keywords, let alone the variations of the stemming of phrases. What remains to be seen is if this will result in paying for keywords that do not apply or result in conversions for clients.
Eric Van Cleave is a Partner in Zenergy Works, a Santa Rosa, California based SEM, SEO and Website Design and Development firm.
According to Reuters, Internet advertising revenue jumped 22% in 2011 to over $31 Billion with display and search revenue making up the majority of the revenue. Mobile advertising increased 149%, to $1.6 billion.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) in partnership with Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), just concluded a separate study which studied online search spending in 2011 increased to $14.8 billion from $11.7 Billion in 2010.
In the fourth quarter of 2011, search was 46% of online ad spending, up from 43% in the same period of 2010.
Bottom Line: This data is in line with what we all are seeing out there – online advertising spending is going up, and search is the primary way that potential customers interact with the internet and all of its information. Mobile Search is growing quickly, and online advertisers are scrambling to create mobile sites and responsive web design sites to interact effectively with that market. More and more companies are centering their advertising efforts on Organic SEO, PPC and online display, and moving away from print, yellow pages, direct mail and other traditional media advertising mediums. Find your online market, create a website that converts and use your analytics to constantly revise and improve your online approach.
Eric Van Cleave is a Partner in Zenergy Works, a Santa Rosa, California based SEO, SEM and online marketing firm. Zenergy Works also has an accomplished Web Design Department, and an in house programming team.
I was taken aback when I read a study by BIA/Kelsey and vSplash that stated results of a survey that found that 60% of small business websites do not have their phone number on the home page of their website, and that less than 20% of these businesses have links to their social media pages on their sites. Once I recovered from those findings, I began to consider that these failings are joined by other shortcomings commonly found in small business websites. I have included a simple checklist to help Small Business Owners to correct not only the lack of a phone number and links to social media, but also other common shortcomings in their website designs:
- Over design. It is not an accident that companies like Amazon, Overstock. Facebook and Google have very simple website designs. They are utilitarian and give the website visitor value. No small business can match the web traffic of these giants, but consider the user experience first, and things like animation, flashy colors, and other design tricks, a distant second.
- Pay attention to your analytics. If you have a high bounce rate, change the content on the home page and create a mobile version of your website to reduce the bounce rate for those visiting via mobile devices.
- Give value to the customer and make service easy. Create website content that will educate the consumer and offer to respond to telephone and email questions and inquiries. Most small businesses survive on superior customer service. This should translate to your website.
- Have an easy method to allow potential customers to contact you. Make sure that your “contact us” form functions, and that addresses and phone numbers are prominently displayed and up to date. Incorrect phone numbers and addresses will also have a negative effect on your Google Places listings, so be sure that they are current.
- Social Media. This is not going to go away. So many small business owners tell me that “I never go on any of that stuff”. I can virtually guarantee that your customers and potential customers do utilize social media and are making buying decisions based on information that they receive on social media. You cannot beat them, so join them. Look at it this way; the more folks you reach online the less you will be dependent on expensive and lesser utilized forms of advertising, like the yellow pages.
Bottom Line: Websites are living documents. If you launched your small business website and then promptly got busy and forgot about it-give it some attention! You will be surprised at the positive impact on your bottom line.
Eric Van Cleave is a Partner in Zenergy Works, a Web Design firm located in Santa Rosa, California. Zenergy Works also specializes in SEO, SEM and all forms of online marketing.
|
Best SEO Company Zenergy Works - Search Engine Optimization, Website Design, Social Media Optimization, Email Marketing, Pay Per Click, eCommerce, Video Host, Video Optimization, Virtual Receptionist, Live Chat.
|
