If anyone can tell you the secret to finding success on AdWords, it would be Frederick Vallaeys. Vallaeys was one of the first 500 employees at Google, and he spent over 10 years establishing AdWords as the hugely powerful platform it is today. Now, that he has left Google, Vallaeys is finally free to share his in-depth knowledge, which he recently did in an article for Search Engine Land.
Get the inside scoop on how Vallaeys manages his AdWords campaigns here.
Google has been aggressive about encouraging webmasters to make their sites more mobile-friendly, and it appears they will only become more strict in 2015. Google has started sending mass notifications to webmasters whose websites are not appropriately optimized for mobile.
The notifications, titled “fix mobile usability issues found on…” informs webmasters that their sites have mobile usability errors on all pages and thus will be “displayed and ranked appropriately for smartphone users.”
The notifications are popping up in Google Webmaster Tools and via email. Perhaps more interesting, Google is also sending the notifications to sites that are blatantly not mobile friendly. Typically these sites already know they are not mobile-friendly, but Google is sending alerts warning these webmasters nonetheless.
This is the latest sign that Google is almost certainly going to be amping up the role mobile optimization plays in search, and many believe there may be an outright “mobile ranking algorithm” in the close future.
The increased importance of mobile to Google is little surprise as mobile gradually overtakes desktop traffic. Google wants to ensure they are directing users to sites that will fit their needs wherever they are, and sites who aren’t mobile-friendly simply don’t deliver.
Here is a copy of the notification being sent out:
Online marketers love tracking and evaluating their campaigns and business owners love knowing their marketing is successful. Unfortunately, tracking is only able to capture so much information. For example, until recently it has been nearly impossible to properly track the impact of your ads on the amount of traffic you see coming into your store.
Thankfully, Google has released a new “Store Visits” metric in AdWords that should make it considerably easier to measure the effect your ads have on real-world store traffic.
Store Visits is an enhancement for AdWords Estimated Total Conversions, which estimates traffic based on anonymized data collected from a sample set of users who have enabled Location History on their device. Using this relatively small sample, Google predicts the number for the general population.
The tool is still in the early stages, and it is important to remember the prediction is exactly that. We are still a ways away from complete ability to understand the effect your ads are having, but the additional data can still be useful in trying to ensure your ads are driving the highest conversion rates possible.
According to new data from web traffic analytics provider StatCounter, Yahoo has reached its highest share of the U.S. search market in more than five years thanks to a recent agreement with Mozilla.
In December, Yahoo’s search share jumped to 10.4 percent, up from 8.6 percent in November. The new share of the search market came at the expense of Google, who was previously the default search engine for Mozilla’s web browser Firefox.
In late November, Mozilla agreed to a five-year partnership with Yahoo, breaking a 10 year partnership with Google. December marked the first full month during which Yahoo was the primary search engine on Firefox.
The drop brought Google to its lowest share ever recorded by the analytics firm, falling from 77.3 percent to 75.2 percent.
“The move by Mozilla has had a definite impact on U.S. search,” says Aodhan Cullen, chief executive at StatCounter. “The question now is whether Firefox users switch back to Google.”
Bing also saw an increase in their share of the search market last month, though not nearly as significant of an increase as Yahoo. From November to December, Bing’s share rose from 12.1 percent to 12.5 percent. The “other” category stayed practically the same, fluctuating from 2 percent to 1.9 percent.
Much like Bing, Twitter, and Facebook, Google releases a yearly list of the topics we’ve been searching for over the past 12 months. Compiled by analyzing the trillions of searches performed on Google in 2014, the list shows a more serious side to the internet compared to their competitors’ lists which tended to highlight the cute, funny, and scandalous.
Google shared lists for both the U.S. and globally, and the top search of the entire year is not devoted to either of the popular sporting events in 2014 or the social events happening around the world. Instead, the top search highlights the impact Robin William’s comedy brought the world. The deceased actor took the top spot for trending searches in the U.S. and globally.
The global and U.S. lists are largely the same in most categories. For example, eight of the top ten U.S. trending search terms also made the global list. The two search terms exclusive to the U.S. – Ferguson and Ukraine – show America’s continued interest in important news both at home and abroad.
If the typical list is not your thing, Google also compiled the following video to summarize the year in search. For the full collection, visit Google’s Year in Search for 2014.
The holiday season is a busy time for local businesses, but many local companies have noticed a steady drop in customers as the internet has made home shopping increasingly more convenient. The good news is that you don’t have to keep bleeding business so long as you have a reasonable internet presence and you are willing to invest the time to optimize your online business presence.
Jade Wang from the Google Business Help team just offered a list of tips local businesses who have already established themselves online can do to improve their conversion rates and draw in more foot traffic. If you want to score a bigger piece of your market, now is the time to do it by following these simple tips:
Let your customers know that you’re open for business extra late and update your hours as needed. You’ll want to update hours about two days before they should go into effect. If you’re open 24 hours a day, enter 12:00am – 12:00am.
If you’ve got a holiday promotion or special information that you’re sharing on Google+, you may want to make it a pinned post. That way, you can keep that content front and center.
Our data shows that consumers will be even more restless, with one third of all shopping-related searches now happening between the hours of 10pm and 4am. Take a look at our blog post for tips on how AdWords can help you cover your bases.
Remember to log back into Google My Business (Locations) regularly to make edits as needed and let us know that you’re actively managing. You can also check up on any updates to your business information from other users and ensure that it’s accurate and updated.
Wang shared the advice via the Google Business Help forums, which can be viewed here.
If you are still running SEO the same way you were at the start of the year you are already behind the curve. SEO is constantly changing and proper SEO strategies need to be well-planned enough to stay on target over long periods of time while also flexible enough to adapt to the constant guideline changes, algorithm roll-outs, and new ideas about usability.
In the past year alone, Google has pushed out 13 updates to algorithms that the public knows about. That number is just the big algorithms that people might know by name such as Penguin and Panda, while there has also been a multitude of more incremental changes that have gone undocumented in the public.
You don’t have to rebuild your SEO plans from the ground up every time there are significant changes over at Google, but you need to keep the biggest changing trends in mind as you progress and refine efforts. As we head into 2015, consider the most important shifts in SEO thinking that have happened over the past year.
This may not be the newest shift in SEO, but it is more important than ever and all indications suggest mobile isn’t slowing down any time soon. Google has also shown their commitment to improving the mobile web with the introduction of mobile analytics tools and new warnings for users who are about to click on non-mobile friendly websites.
You can see if your site passes Google’s mobile-friendly test here, but don’t stop with that. Ensure your mobile site lives up the standards set by your desktop page and your company to keep mobile customers coming.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that 2015 may be the year when Google’s iron grasp on search market share could start to crumble. Google has lost some major clout as Firefox replaced the search giant with Yahoo as the default search engine for the browser. Google’s agreement with Safari is also ending this year, and Apple seems keen to replace their competitor’s search engine with a more neutral option such as Bing, Yahoo, or even DuckDuckGo.
Even if Google maintains a strong majority of the market share (which they likely will) you should still make it your mission to be visible across all platforms, not just the most popular one.
Rankings are so last year. Since all the major search engines have put a heavy emphasis on personalized search results that cater to users’ interests and location data, there is no guarantee your site will show as the top result for someone else even if it is the top result for you. Instead, turn your attention to return on investment. It offers a more accurate depiction of how your online marketing efforts are working, and gives a more direct understanding of the value of your SEO.
In the past, emphasizing social media basically meant blasting the same updates across every platform you can find. But, social media has matured and users won’t respond to your efforts if you treat every platform as the same. You should learn the unique demographics and behaviors of any social media platform you are considering sharing on, and ensure your ideas, voice, and medium match the crowd.
More importantly, social media users expect brands to more than just yell at them. Users expect ways to engage your brand and establish a more personal connection. The best solution is to isolate two or three social media platforms that best suit your brand and build on your efforts there. If you can really succeed there, you won’t need to be on the other social sites.
You have most likely heard the routine proclamations that “links are dead!” more than once since Google began cracking down on weak or suspicious link portfolios. However, this is no truer now than when the internet first gained a foothold in our society. Links are still the most influential signal of trust and authority to search engines and that is going to stay the case for quite some time. However, the game has changed in a couple important ways.
Back in 2011, you could purchase countless low-quality links to masquerade as a reputable site. Now, Google has means of seeing through the mask. Google can analyze link quality and they don’t take kindly to poor quality, irrelevant links meant to boost visibility without effort. In 2015, earning a single high-quality link the right way is worth more than any number of links you could buy or collude to gain. Put your effort into proper SEO and you’ll find success. Rely on shady tactics and Google will be hunting for you.
Last night, Google Maps released massively revamped quality guidelines for local pages which could have a heavy impact on businesses who don’t ensure their pages conform. Jade Wang from Google shared the news in the Google Forums stating:
We’ve updated and clarified our quality guidelines for local pages. Please read the new version here, and, as always, feel free to contact our support team with any specific questions about your account.
You can see a screenshot of the old guidelines here courtesy of Barry Schwartz, but the most important revisions to the guidelines are highlighted below:
Many aren’t taking the update seriously as Google Maps local pages are far too often neglected, but the updated rules may be a sign that Google intends to clean up the mess in the near future. It is always better to be proactive than to find yourself smacked with a penalty.
According to Parse.ly’s quarterly Authority Report, Facebook is still the best social platform for publishers looking for exposure. The site saw a 10 percent increase in referral traffic to publisher sites this August, compared to the data from a year earlier.
Parse.ly analyzed data from over 10 billion page views and more than 100,000 posts across its network to track online reading trends in an effort to determine peak reading times and referral traffic patterns. The report found that reading times peaked at 12:18 p.m., at which point desktop page views outperform mobile.
While Google was still the lead referral traffic, Facebook continues to hold the second spot making it the top social network to send traffic to publisher websites.
Surprisingly, the report shows very little change in traffic patterns over the past year, with Facebook being the only site in the top 10 to experience a significant increase in the amount of traffic sent to publisher sites.
Parse.ly’s report also noted that traffic from social sites had risen seven percent over the past year, while traffic from search sites fell by four percent. You can get more insights from the downloadable report here.
Google has been emphasizing the importance of mobile design and usability over the past year and now the search giant has added mobile usability reports to Webmaster Tools. Many believe this could be a sign that Google may be making mobile usability a ranking factor sooner rather than later.
The tool is intended to show whether your mobile site has any of the common usability issues that degrade a user’s mobile browsing experience.
Currently, the tool included specific errors for showing flash content on mobile (which can also result in a warning on mobile search results for your site), missing viewport meta-tag for mobile pages, improperly small fonts which are hard to read on mobile, fixed-width viewports, content not sized to viewport, and clickable links and buttons spaced too closely together.
John Mueller from Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst team based in Zurich said they “strongly recommend you take a look at these issues in Webmaster Tools.”
Of course, Mueller could simply be encouraging this because it improves user experience, but there is strong evidence to suggest Google will eventually make mobile user experience a ranking signal within search engine algorithms.
You can see an example of the reports below:
