2010 in Google Search Review

December 10, 2010 Leave a Comment

One of my favorite things to do this time of the year, is to look back at the top stories of the past twelve months. It’s a chance to remember what’s happened this year in the news, in the entertainment world, in sports, and more. It helps give closure to the year, wiping the slate clean for the new year ahead.

Everywhere you look you’ll see a “2010 in Review.” All the news outlets will gather what they consider to be the top stories and compile them into a brief report or story. And you’ll no doubt see some of them.

Well, here’s something different.

The top search engine, Google, has collected and analyzed the most searched terms in 2010. This 3-minute video is an entertaining  look at 2010, and you could say is one that is determined by us — not a reporter at a news bureau.

It’s the people’s review of 2010, through the lens of Google search:

If you are interested to see more data about Google searches in 2010, visit the Google microsite.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

Filed Under: Everything Google Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide will get your SEO cooking

April 11, 2010 Leave a Comment
Cookbooks

Photo by mimundo

Search engine optimization is a lot like the culinary profession.  There are experts in the field, with a growing reputation and a following for their art. There are five-star SEO’s, one-star SEO’s, and everything in between.

Just as famous chefs create spectacular meals, unmatched by the average cook, SEO’s work their magic on websites, rocketing pages to the top of search results.

The fact that you haven’t been a sous-chef in Paris doesn’t stop you from cooking a nice meal. Likewise, you shouldn’t be intimidated to tackle search engine optimization. Aspiring chefs like you turn to cookbooks for recipes, advice, and tips. Luckily, SEO has its very own “Joy of Cooking.” It’s Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. A very concise, non-technical manual that walks you through 13 things you can do to optimize your web pages, including best practices for each:

  • Create unique, accurate page titles
  • Make use of the “description” meta  tag
  • Improve the structure of your URLs
  • Make your site easier to navigate
  • Offer quality content and services
  • Write better anchor text
  • Use heading tags appropriately
  • Optimize your use of images
  • Make effective use of robots.txt
  • Be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links
  • Promote your website in the right ways
  • Make use of free webmaster tools
  • Take advantage of web analytics services

The full Guide is available here on Google’s website. Download it, read it, and get cooking with these SEO techniques on your own web pages. You won’t be an instant search engine optimization expert, but you will enjoy the results.

Bon SEO!

Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

A Salute to our Veterans through the Eyes of Search Engines

November 11, 2009 Leave a Comment

Google Veterans Day SaluteYahoo! Veterans Day SaluteBing Veterans Day SaluteAsk Veterans Day Salute

Happy Veterans Day and thank you to all our Veterans, past and present, who served our country for us and generations to come! God bless you and God bless America!

Filed Under: Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, etc. Tagged With: , , , , ,

Google Announces Social Search

October 21, 2009 Leave a Comment

newsflash

Earlier today in a post about Bing’s announcement of a deal with Twitter and Facebook I wrote, “Look for Google to introduce its own social network data integration soon.” Little did I know soon would be today.

According to Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of Search, a new Google Labs app called Social Search will launch in the next few weeks. Social Search will add relevant updates and posts from your social network friends to the bottom of your search results page. How will Google know what networks you belong to and who your friends are? It’s in your Google Profile. As long as you have added your social networks to your Google Profile. Don’t have a Google Profile yet? Get one here.

Ms. Mayer also announced that like Bing, Google has signed an agreement with Twitter to display its real-time tweets in its search results.

Based on the two companies’ announcements, it sounds like there will be some differences in how Google and Bing will handle social posts. Google’s Profile integration means that it pulls only from within your network. Bing however, will pull from all public posts. Google will pull from all social networks that you add to your Google Profile. Bing on the other hand will only pull from Twitter and Facebook. To know more, we’ll have to wait until Google and Bing launch their new features.

Meanwhile, make sure you have accounts set up on all the popular social networks, develop your connections on those networks, and keep your keyword list close by as you post, tweet, blog, microblog and whatever else you do on the social net.

Filed Under: Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, etc. Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Play a game and help Google with image search

May 19, 2009 Leave a Comment

Google has a beta application called Google Image Labeler which it describes as “a feature of Google Search that allows you to label images and help improve the quality of Google’s image search results.”

Sounds kind of boring, but leave it to Google to turn image labeling into an online game.
google-image-label-linkHere’s how it works

You are matched up with another online user and both of you are shown an image. You each start adding labels to the image until you both suggest the same label. To add to the challenge, you can’t see the labels your partner is adding. So you just keep adding labels until the game tells you that you matched — or you and your partner may click a “pass” button to move to the next image.

Once a match is made, a new image is presented to both of you and the process begins again. And just to make it really exciting, there is a time clock. You and your partner are given two minutes to label as many images as possible. And of course, it wouldn’t be a game without scoring. So there are points rewarded for successful matches.

After the clock has expired, you are shown a page containing your overall score, thumbnails of the images you saw, along with identifying information:

  • image size
  • image URL
  • whether it was a pass or a match (with matched word)
  • your partner’s labels

Google Image Labeler Screen

A little warning

Some of the images presented are a bit risque. However, Google does not believe you’ll come across inappropriate images. In the Image Labeler FAQ Google states, “While there’s no guarantee, it’s unlikely that you’ll see mature content because all images are filtered under image search’s Strict Safe Search setting.” Hmm, well I saw a few that apparently snuck past the filter.

Also, since you are playing with an unknown partner, your success – or failure as the case may be – depends in part on the other person. On one occasion, I had a partner who I couldn’t match with at all, and when the game was over and I reviewed his or her image labels, they were not related to the images at all and were rather silly like “poop,” for example.

You should give Google’s Image Labeler a try, but I’ll warn you , it is a little addictive.

Filed Under: Everything Google Tagged With: , , ,

Ask May Be the Engine that Could

March 27, 2009 Leave a Comment

comScore released its February 2009 Search Engine report and to the surprise of no one, Google maintains its dominance with 63.3% market share among the top five search engines. Yahoo! comes in second with 20.6% share, followed by Microsoft with 8.2% of the search market. Ask.com is the “also ran” engine with a mere 4.1% share of the core search market.

comScore February 2009 Core Search Engine Volume

However, what I found interesting is that when comparing the search volume from January to February, Ask.com shows an unusually high jump of 21% more search queries — despite February’s three fewer days.

comScore February 2009 Full Search Volume Report

Looking back at previous months, Ask.com has not experienced an increase nearly as big as this…not even double digits. So why this increase now?

Obviously I’m not privy to everything going on at Ask.com. But, I have seen television ads for Ask.com lately. With a little digging, I found that Ask has in fact been aggressively using offline advertising to promote its online search engine.

Ask Climbs on Board with NASCAR

In January, Ask.com inked a deal to become the Official Search Engine of NASCAR. According to Ask’s CEO Jim Safka,

Our goal is to win over the millions of loyal fans by providing them with the best NASCAR search experience on the Web, and introduce them to all of Ask’s capabilities when they come.

The advertising campaign features slices of life of a “typical NASCAR-loving family” as they follow racing.

Airing approximately 4-5 times during each of the 36 NASCAR race broadcasts, the :15 and :30 Ask.com spots feature content tied to that particular race broadcast. And, Ask.com is running television spots during non-NASCAR related programming.

Ask.com Ad Crawler During Television ProgramAsk.com also has begun running a series of crawler ads on the bottom of the screen during some cable shows. The ads pose queries to viewers, who can then find the answers by using the search engine. The questions, which are tied to show content or subject matter, are appearing on 18 channels, including AMC, FX, National Geographic Channel, MLB Network and NFL Network.

Keep an Eye on the Little Engine

Of course, one month does not establish a trend. But it is a start. And with aggressive offline advertising and promotions, this may be the beginning of the long haul towards the top of the search. I’ll keep an eye on the comScore monthly search reports to see if Ask.com sustains this growth. I’m sure that Ask is saying, “I think I can, I think I can!”

Train on Railroad Tracks



Filed Under: Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, etc. Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Easy Way for Agencies to Do SEO

March 16, 2009 5 Comments

The Easy Way for Agencies to Do SEOSearch engine optimization (SEO) can be a little intimidating for the non-technical person. After all, it’s a mysterious science filled with unknown algorithms, metadata, XML sitemaps, HTML tags, linking schemes, and much, much more. And to further complicate things, it’s always changing.

Then there’s the agency that is not even responsible for the client’s website. How in the world is an advertising, public relations, or marketing communications agency supposed to get involved in SEO? Actually, it’s pretty easy these days. I’ve compiled some tips to help get you started.

Take advantage of others’ SEO technology.

SEO has matured to the point that there are countless platforms optimized for search. You just have to add the content and the search engines do the rest.

  • Social media sites like YouTube, Flickr, LinkedIn, and Merchant Circle, to name just a few, are large in size and highly optimized. Posting content on these sites will help you get listed in the search engines. Just be sure to use your keywords in the postings for the various sites. And include a keyword in the file name of any photo or video file you upload to a website too!
  • Blogging platforms like WordPress and Blogger are free, easy to set up, and highly optimized. However, the biggest obstacle with a blog is that it takes some time to grow the blog to a size large enough to be noticed by search engine
  • Press Release wire services like PR Newswire and Business Wire provide optimization of press releases and host the release on their site. In addition, the press release is distributed to media news sites that also host a version of the release on their site. This gives one press release numerous opportunities for listings on a search engine results page (SERP).
  • Lead Maverick is an SEO platform developed specifically for agencies with integrated optimization tools for content, customizable landing page designs and real-time tracking stats — all in a non-technical, user-friendly interface. Lead Maverick agency partners use the SEO platform to get their clients to the top of organic SERPs or to add additional listings so their client owns more of the SERP real estate.

Write well, rank well.

There are a number of guidelines for developing content that will enhance its findability in organic search. The goal is not to trick the search engines, but to provide quality content on a subject while following SEO best practices.

  • Length of content should be at least 300 words.
  • Each content posting should focus on one keyword, keyword phrase or keyword theme. Putting too many different keywords in one posting will dilute its effectiveness.
  • Headline should not exceed 70 characters and should include a keyword ideally placed towards the beginning.
  • Subhead should not exceed 160 characters and should include at least one keyword ideally placed closer to the beginning.
  • If there is not a subhead, treat the first paragraph of the content as the subhead by making it bold, keeping it under 120 characters, and include at least one keyword.
  • Emphasize a keyword by making it bold and emphasize other important points with bold or by using a bulleted list.
  • Rule of thumb for keywords is one keyword for every 100 words. If you repeat a keyword more than this, the search engine may think you are keyword stuffing and not add the page to the index.
  • Include at least a couple of hyperlinks to your website. Also include a link or two to a third-party website, preferably ones with good size and traffic. For example, Wikipedia is good to use for a definition.
  • Link your various content pages with hyperlinks on your keywords. Be sure the page you link to discusses the keyword that is hyperlinked.
  • Avoid posting duplicate content from another website by making some edits to your posting. Add a link to the page with the original content so the search engine will know that you are not trying to trick it.

Spread Keywords Across the Sales Decision Process.

One of the greatest benefits of search marketing is the ability to track responses and conversions. For that reason, many advertisers focus keywords on driving a purchase. But, searchers use the internet throughout every stage of the sales decision process. They search for information on categories at the beginning of their research, all the way through to searches on specific products to check pricing.

Keyword Sales Decision Process

Be sure you focus keywords and content for every stage of the sales decision process. Just set your client’s expectations for ROI. The earlier in the sales decision process, the fewer click throughs on the landing page. Early on in the process, you are trying to educate and build awareness for a purchase down the road. And you’ll have keywords and content covering those later purchase-related stages where click-through rates and conversions will be the key success metrics.

Leverage Existing Assets.

Most companies have a wealth of information already developed about the company. In developing your online posts, leverage the existing assets that already exist, incorporating targeted keywords:

  • brochures
  • white papers
  • fact sheets
  • executive bios
  • advertisements (print, broadcast, etc.)
  • trade show schedules
  • speaking engagements
  • press releases
  • product photos
  • how to videos
  • power point presentations

This list is just the beginning. Try to identify all existing assets. Each asset represents a potential posting for a search engine. Spread the posts out across the sales decision process as mentioned above. Supplement with new content developed with your keywords in mind. Just be sure to follow the content writing guidelines above.

Get in the Search

Leave the website optimization to the geeks experts. Now that others are taking care of the SEO part, it’s easier for agencies to get their clients to the top of organic search — with keyword strategy and content.

Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Google's New Ad Preferences Explained

March 12, 2009 Leave a Comment

GoogleYou’re probably familiar with Google’s AdSense Contextual ad network that displays ads on websites based on the context of the content on the page. Now we are introduced to yet another type of ad network. Google has launched in beta what they call “Ad Preferences.”

Ad Preferences displays ads to the user based on the user’s interests as edited by the user and as interpreted by the user’s search history, websites visited, etc. In Google’s words:

As you browse certain Google services and websites that have partnered with us using our AdSense program, Google stores a cookie in your browser to understand the types of pages you visit (this cookie appears as .doubleclick.net in your browser). Based on this information, Google associates your browser with relevant interest categories and uses these categories to show interest-based ads on participating websites.

Google has also published this video to explain Ad Preferences.

Before you become alarmed with concerns of online privacy, know that Google does enable you to opt-out of the tracking and it claims they do not capture any personal data. But you should probably look into it more yourself. Here is where you can read more about how Google’s Interest Ads work and also the FAQ’s. Here is where you may opt out of Google Ad Preferences on your computer or set your preferences.

Filed Under: Everything Google Tagged With: , , ,

6 Ways Organic Search Results are Like Superbowl Ads

March 6, 2009

When it comes to advertising, the Superbowl is the granddaddy of them all. During this one football game, viewership is huge. Advertisers shell out millions of dollars to run just one thirty-second spot and agencies vie to produce THE spot that will have everyone talking, blogging and tweeting long after the MVP’s trip to Disneyland.

It occurred to me as I reviewed the January search stats that organic search is the superbowl of online marketing; here are six ways:

  1. A very large number of people tune in.

    2. Nielsen Media Research reported that Super Bowl XLIII, which aired on February 1, 2009, drew an average of 98.7 million U.S. viewers. By comparison, the highest rated broadcast television show last week was Fox’s American Idol which drew 24.8 million viewers.

    According to monthly search engine tracking by comScore, Inc., there were 13.496 million searches on the five major search engines during January.

    comScore January 2009 Search Report

  2. Audience size is on the rise.

    3. Below is a chart from tvbytheNumbers.com showing Nielsen Media Research’s data for the number of viewers of the Superbowl each year, beginning with Superbowl I in 1967 through Superbowl XLIII in 2009. Although there are some years that were flat or even dipped in total viewers, the overall trend is up.

    superbowlthrough2009-550x383

    I charted comScore’s monthly search engine ranking data for the past twelve months. Like the Superbowl viewership, some months remained flat, others actually decreased, but the overall trend is up.

    ussearchvolume1

  3. Placement is everything!

    4. Superbowl XLIII began at 6:18pm eastern on Fox. Nielsen Media Research reported that the most-watched quarter hour of the game was the 9:45-10:00pm ET spot, with an average audience of more than 106 million viewers. The most-watched minute was 10:07pm ET, which amassed 111.6 million viewers. Advertisers were fortunate that this superbowl game was competitive up to the last play of the game. It’s been more common in previous years that one team dominated the game, dropping viewers as the game progressed.

    For search engine results pages, Cornell University conducted eye tracking studies for users’ behavior, including click distribution as well as the time spent looking at each result. As the following image shows, the top three positions on page one received almost 80% of the clicks, with the number one position receiving a whopping 56% of the clicks!

    click-distribution-serp

  4. The ad must stand out.

    5. For several years, Master Lock devoted its entire annual advertising budget to the Super Bowl in the form of one :30 spot. You may recall the spot from the 1970′s that even today is considered to be one of the best Superbowl ads of all time.

    Many point to this Master Lock spot as the beginning of the big Superbowl ad hype that exists today.

    When it comes to a search engine results page (SERP), there are three key components: the headline, the snippet and the URL. The more specific to the keyword and the more descriptive, the better – which is to say in the world of SERPs, the more likely the searcher is to click on your link. In the SERP example below for “supebowl XLII,” look at the headline and snippet for the second result; this result is so vague that I doubt it would get very many clicks.

    googlesuperbowlserp

  5. There are no guarantees for the effectiveness of your placement.
    • all NFL teams do not enjoy the same popularity
    • the teams competing in the superbowl are not determined until two weeks prior to the event
    • audience size varies from year to year
    • the competitive nature of the game is not predictable
    • write quality content
    • limit keywords to one “theme” per page
    • link to related content
    • include keywords in your headline (h1) and early in your first paragraph
    • use bold to emphasize keywords

    6. superbowl43logo1Although advertisers purchase an ad during a specific time period of the superbowl game, there are many uncontrollable factors that contribute to the viewership of the ad:

    In the world of organic search, you don’t buy your placement, but rather are at the mercy of the search engines’ double-top-secret algorithm to determine your SERP ranking. All you can do is follow SEO best practices and hope for the best:

  6. Anyone can do it!

    7. Every year, superbowl advertisers range from the companies who are there every year, like Budweiser, to first-time superbowl advertisers like Go Daddy. There are big budget spots like Audi and even Doritos spots produced by amateurs in a contest. It’s an example of a medium that anyone (with the $3 million+ dollars for airtime) can participate in.

    Likewise, organic search is now a medium for everyone. It’s not just for web developers and SEO consultants anymore! New online services — like the SEO platform from Lead Maverick — and optimized social media sites, like YouTube, enable advertising, public relations, and marketing consulting agencies, in addition to web developers, interactive agencies, and SEO consultants, to publish optimized content that appears at the top of organic search.

Get in the Game!

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