Google is touting its new privacy policy as “one policy, one Google experience” and it makes sense for Google to use all of your information to deliver the best and most relevant search results. Google’s new privacy policy will take effect March 1st.

What Information Will Google Collect?

Device Data

Across all of its services Google will collect device information, so whether you access a Google product via a Sony Vaio, iPad, or Android phone Google will know. In fact this has just recently taken effect in AdWords.

If you notice your organic traffic has a high percentage of mobile iOS traffic you may want to target your PPC ads to only those people. Take this example: the iPhone 5 is rumoured to be out next summer and you’re sitting on a bunch of iPhone 4 cases, what better way to inform people than to specifically target people using a iPhone 4. This is now possible!

Location Data

Google will also collect location data from both your wireless carrier and Wi-Fi access points and cellphone towers. This will take local advertising to a whole new level. Take a look at this ad that recently appeared on my iPhone.

This sponsored link popped up when I searched for directions. The ad occurred between my departure and destination point. It is likely that the ads relevance is a reflection on terms I’ve recently searched for or written about in Gmail. Google can demonstrate this relevance cross-app or even cross-device now!

Search Customization

Your organic search experience just got a whole lot more relevant.

Most of us know about the how Google+ will affect search results (both paid and organic), but now your usage across all Google products will factor into search results. Let’s take the example of someone who is a rabid boxing fan, they search for and read articles on the sport, they subscribe to boxing blogs on Google Reader, etc. Come next Christmas when this person searches for ”boxing” on their iPhone, they’re not likely to be returned results for boxing day,

Final Thoughts

I can see how those who are hesitant about handing over all their information to Google. You do have options, check out their FAQ page to get answers to (hopefully) all your questions. If you’re of the mind “do what you may Google, I trust you” then the new direction Google hopes to pave for itself will lead to a better more relevant search experience, that ultimately gives you the information you want, faster.

Unfortunately, some companies become so obsessed with being number one in the search engines, that by the time they outrank their competitors, their site’s content looks terrible!

With Google’s updated algorithm, content is becoming more critical than ever before and not just any content; it has to be relevant, well-written and most of important of all, it has to keep the customer engaged.

Making a Website for the Search Engine AND Your Customers

Don’t Turn Customers Away with your Keywords

Even with the knowledge that businesses try to use commonly misspelled words and repeat keywords to rank higher, it is very off-putting to see a website with misspelled headings, words without spaces and underlined keywords:

• See your website through your customer’s eyes. Imagine that they don’t even know what SEO or SEM is and the fact of the matter is they probably don’t. Picture being this customer who has come to your website and thinks that you have spelled “equipment” as “equiptment” and then you have used this misspelled word in every heading and paragraph on your site, and have highlighted or underlined it as well. The only outcome to this scenario is a bounce.

Be a Resource but Strike the Balance

Some businesses find out that Google likes content, and websites such as Wikipedia have become so prominent in the engines because they are informative sources, and generate backlinks. It makes perfect sense that businesses want to provide information to their customers through well-written content. This is great and it’s encouraged but don’t lose focus:

• Your website should always come across as a detailed and even interactive advertisement or brochure. While there should be helpful articles and a blog, providing too much will take the attention away from what you are selling. The last thing you want is a customer that spends an hour on your site reading articles, and completely forgets that they were originally attracted to the site because they wanted to buy what you are selling.

Consider a Content Rewrite

A copywriter can look at the bigger picture and rewrite website content that will appeal to the customer and Google without upsetting the balance between the search engine and the site’s usability. For businesses that want to improve their own content the most valuable tip is to imagine that you are one of your customers:

• What do you need to see first to stay on the site?
• What information do you need before you buy?
• Have you included features, advantages and benefits?
• Are purchasing options and information easy to get to?
• Have you used your most successful keywords and search terms sparingly throughout the site?

Ranking high in Google is of utmost importance but don’t forget about your customers. Google isn’t buying what you have to offer, they’re just bringing you the leads. It’s up to your SEO content to make sure that it holds the attention of the customer, gains their trust, and makes the conversion.

Do you remember the Panda update? Panda focused on quality; driving the need for well optimized, relevant content to websites. The freshness update now brings the newest content to Google’s SERP (search engine rankings page).

What Does That Mean For Your Internet Marketing Strategy?

When performing searches, readers want the latest information on any given topic. Television shows, sporting events and news will typically appear with a date stamp. We know with certainty that if your company has a blog, the content should be updated frequently with current information, trends and products in your industry.

However, Google does give preference to news items that are:

• +1’d on Google+
• Marketed on social media sites
• On sites with updated RSS feeds and XML sitemaps
• An authority in its respective field

Become an Authority: Maximize Potential with the Google Freshness Update

Websites gain an edge when they’re recognized as an authority; doing this by updating frequently, receiving user comments, and attracting a popular following i.e. being highly trafficked. Even if a business does not yet have a blog, this shouldn’t be discouraging. Google crawls content very frequently and starting a blog, connecting it with Google+ and Feedburner, and sharing it will achieve results quicker than you might think. The more the business posts, the faster Google will know to revisit the site, to crawl for new content. It’s a self-propelling cycle that only gets easier with more updates.

Becoming an authority also involves being active in your industry’s community. To get noticed, comment on other blogs and even try guest blogging. When readers click on your user name or byline they’ll be directed back to your blog or website.

Extra Fresh Tips to Make the Most of Google Freshness

To keep it extra fresh:

• Make sure to date all of your news items and blog posts
• Have press releases written and submitted as soon as you release a new product or service or discover breaking industry news
• Have press releases and articles linked to new web pages that have been created to advertise these products and services (not the home page, it’s not nearly as fresh)

With the presence of Panda and the Freshness update, businesses should focus their efforts on creating quality content that’s posted regularly, whether it’s on the site, through articles, blogs or press releases.

What About Link Building?

With the existence of informative, authoritative content, most link building will occur organically. This doesn’t completely rule out creative backlinking techniques, but fresh content, paired with social sharing and a modern off-page strategy is now becoming the best approach to search engine marketing. Inevitably other users from around the web will link your content to their blogs and pages and there are certainly things you can do to foster this. With the Freshness update Google now serves up newer more relevant content to its users and provides businesses with new ways of getting noticed and attracting customers.

The day after the Google Analytics data was affected Google officially announced that they will no longer provide referral data of the logged in users as a result of them using SSL encryption protocol. Google believes that the SSL encryption will further protect the privacy of their users and enhance the personalised user experience.

Impact of Google SSL Encryption

Users who are signed-in to Google will be automatically redirected to https i.e. secure search. While signed in all the referral search terms will be hidden when clicking on a search result.

Webmasters will now lose out on valuable data they receive about how visitors found their website on Google and the queries associated with it; however from an analytics point of view we can still measure conversion rate and segmentation, but the exact keyword which lead to the conversion will be hard (if not impossible) to track.

Online marketers will no longer be able to track visitor queries of logged-in users. So there’s no way to find out if the logged-in visitor entered your website by typing in “internet marketing” or “application development.” The only data you will see is that the visitor entered your website through Organic Search.

REFERRAL AND SEARCH QUERY DATA FOR PAID ADS:

Google has stated the following “we created the token “(not provided)” within Organic Search Traffic Keyword reporting. You will continue to see referrals without any change; only the queries for signed-in user visits will be affected. Note that “cpc” paid search data is not affected.”

This news is somewhat worrisome for webmasters who depend on search query data for remarketing and landing page optimization.Google has always supported content that provides valuable information to the user, but if webmasters are not aware of the keywords that people are using to find their website, then it’s going to be tough to target and optimize the right pages.

It is interesting how keywords from organic traffic will not be visible whereas the paid click data is not affected, even when the users are signed in! Is this a ploy to get more people to use paid search? Please post in your thoughts on this!

MEASURE & TRACK THE “NOT PROVIDED” DATA:

To measure the “not provided data” in your organic keyword search results we can create a new custom segment in Google Analytics and including “Keyword” followed by exactly matching the word “not provided”:

Once if you have created the advanced segment apply the segment to the Organic search traffic source report and custom segment the “(not provided)” keyword data. Here is a sample custom segment report prepared by us to measure the impact of the SSL encryption, currently only 1.25% of the searches has been affected but I am sure that this will only increase in due time.

EXTRACTING SEARCH QUERY DATA USING WEBMASTER TOOLS

For the time being we will have access to the referral and search query data of the website through the webmaster tools. So make sure that the website is verified in webmaster tools to effectively utilize the following:

• Measure the top 1,000 search queries that brought traffic to your website for each of the past 30 days.
• Measure Impressions, clicks, click through rate (CTR), and average position in search results for each query’s data, and compare it to the past 30 days.

Webmaster Tools will display the search queries, but data will not be integrated with visitor activity i.e. you will not be able to track if a visitor has converted after reaching your website. Google has released a new update through which the Webmaster data can be integrated into Google Analytics. If the 30 day time period and the 1000 search query data is extended, then it will give additional information for marketers to harness.

GOOGLE’S PERSONALIZED SEARCH:

SSL encryption was introduced to increase the personalised search experience, but another major factor is to secure Google+ and other Google services. Google has been trying its best to enhance its privacy and also to lure people from Facebook over to Google+ services. I wouldn’t be surprised to find a Google+ application that supports personalised searches.

As Matt Cutts (Head of Google’s Web Spam Team) said the “number of logged in users are in single digits” now, but I am really sure that they will reach mass audience as the network grows and that potential should not be underestimated.” With the SSL update, Google has rolled out another game chenger to improve user experience and this time it’s turning out to be the most talked about topic in the search engine community.

Google has officially stated that the +1 button will indeed affect search engine ranking. This is ground breaking news as it will ultimately shape traffic; with all the hype there is about social search, a few key points should be considered, as they help put things in perspective.

• You must be logged-in to Google in order to see socially influenced results.
• If you don’t have an extensive Gmail or Google+ profile, you may not see any socially influenced results.
• Latest estimates put Google+ users at 40M and Gmail’s user-base has been estimated at 193M as of 2010.
• Although, the above stats are not specific to North America, it’s safe to assume that a large number of North America’s 270M+ person internet population are on Gmail and/or Google+.

So then how will the +1 button affect search engine results?

When you +1 a site you are in effect recommending it to those in your social circle. So if I +1’d a sushi restaurant in Toronto, and one of my Google+ or Gmail contacts searched for “Sushi in Toronto,” a site with the +1 might appear higher in search results than it would have otherwise! So it’s easy to see how having a lot of +1’s can boost your organic search rankings to specific networks of people.

Take a look at the search result below to see how +1 can influence your site.

How Can You Get +1’s?

• Put the +1 on every page of your site. Contact us if you need this done.
• Post on Google Plus, people can plus one your page right from their news feed.
• Rank high organically and in paid search, the +1 button appears in search results and the better you rank the more +1’s you’ll get.
• Send out a newsletter telling people that you’ve installed the +1 button on your page and that you’d appreciate it if they +1’d you.
• Ask people on other social networks like Facebook and Twitter to visit your page and +1.
• People will also be able to +1 your page by clicking on a +1 button from their browser toolbar, but they’ll need an extension like the one for the Chrome browser.

How You Can’t Get +1’s

• You’re not allowed to offer anything in exchange for a +1; Unlike Facebook which allows you to offer coupons and other incentives for liking a page.
• You can’t buy +1’s Google won’t tolerate and has revoked those who have sold +1’s.

In Summary

The +1 button is essentially a vote for your page, every time you vote your recommendation can be echoed across your Google-based social network (Google+, Gmaill, Google account). So if you haven’t already +1’d your own site do so from Google Search and be sure to add the +1 button to your own site!

Search engines have to trust your website in order to rank your “website search pages.” In order to achieve this there should be a considerable number of searches taking place on the website. Big portals and eCommerce sites will gain Google’s trust easily because of the higher number of internal site searches. Below are some tips to optimize your search pages.

Tighten Up Your Internal Search

The search functionality should deliver relevant web pages/products and should strictly relate to the phrases being searched for. For example: If visitors are searching for “Search Engine Optimization,” the site should only retrieve the pages talking about “Search Engine Optimization.”

URL Format

In most cases you will see that search URLs are generated with query URLs – not exactly user friendly. Try to convert it into a friendlier URL, it’s recommended to have the following format:

http://domain.com/search/search-term/ – Recommended Search URL format.
http://domain.com/?=search-term – URL with query strings and not search engine friendly.

Page Title Format

As we all know, page titles play a vital role in SEO. Below I’ve indicated the proper title format for search pages.
“Search Term” | Company/Website Name

H1 Format

It’s best to define the H1 term of the search page by including the search term in it.

Display the Recent/Popular/Relevant Search Terms

To increase user friendliness and to make the search pages more effective, it’s advisable to display the recent/relevant/popular search terms in your site’s left/right navigation.

Also remember that search engines will not be able to crawl your search pages only until it’s linked from the website. So it’s pretty much mandatory to have a “popular search terms” widget on your website in order to rank your search pages in search engines.

How to Track Your Internal Site Search?

Check out our blog entry on tracking internal site search terms in Google Analytics. Google Analytics enables you to sort out the search terms that are being searched within your website, which can later be optimized accordingly. Here are few examples that caught my attention:

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/easy+mp3+cutter+2.9/
http://www.2000shareware.com/downloads/easy/mp3/cutter/online/

Above are two examples of search pages that are listed in Google for the keywords “easy mp3 cutter/easy mp3 cutter 2.9” When you cross check all the points that are mentioned in this blog along with the above listed websites, you’ll notice some very interesting  similarities!

This is obviously prime search engine real estate that anyone doing online marketing for their business will want to have, especially if they have a local marketplace that they hope to capture.  The importance of an effective and high-performing Google Places listing cannot be overstated, but what makes a Google Places listing perform well?  There are several factors, including:

Relevance of content and categorization.

• Google Places listings allow a customized description (up to 200 characters) which should offer clear and informative details about your business.  The description should include your most important keywords, but should also be written in a way that will be appealing and make a good impression.  You can also select up to 5 categories for your listing, and these too should be completely relevant to your business and the products or services that you offer.  Images and videos can also be added, as too can coupons, promotional offers and other details.  The details in your Places listing should of course also correspond with the content of your website.

Number, authority and relevance of citations.

• Citations in the context of Google Places are mentions of the business that Google detects elsewhere on the web e.g. on other websites and other business directories, such as Yelp, HotFrog, Yellow Pages, niche directories and so on.  For a listing or mention to be considered by Google to be a citation, the contact details (business name, address, phone number, website URL) must match those in the Places listing.  When Google has detected citations, they are factored-in as a “vote” for the listing, adding authority and benefiting the ranking.

Reviews.

• This is what we’re focusing on here.  Reviews by clients of the business bring a social element into play and will also help boost rankings.  Happy customers, or even unhappy ones who are logged-in to their Google account can post a testimonial review of your business and service as well as assign it a rating out of 5 stars.  The more reviews your Places listing has, the higher it will likely rank.  One of the important things to keep in mind about Places is that Google wants listings to be informative and useful to their users.  The more accurate and complete a listing is (including reviews), the more useful it will be to Google users, and such higher-quality Places listings will therefore rank better since Google wants to feature them for all to see as valuable content.  So user reviews are important in that respect but also because, like any testimonial, they will show people that your customers are happy with your product or service.

How Do You Get Google Places Reviews?

As is often the case, the simplest answer is the best – to get reviews, ask for them!  If you have a customer who has voiced their satisfaction, invite them to go to your Google Places listing and post their praise there.  Google makes this very easy.  Once on the listing, they should have no problem finding the large red “Write a Review” button at the top-left and there is a second one lower on the page as well, right next to where other reviews may already be posted.  To post a review, they’ll first need a Google account, but then all they have to do is either find your Places listing by searching for it, or you can provide them with the direct link to it.  The direct link to the Places listing can be found by clicking on the “Link” icon in the top-right of the listing page itself.

Simply copy and paste this link into an email and invite your happy customers to post their testimonial, and their 5-star rating too, of course!  As straightforward as this is, your customers will be doing you a huge favour so it’s important to make it as easy as possible for them.  Sending them the link to your Places listing will make it easier and you can also encourage reviews by posting a QR code somewhere highly-visible where your customers will see it, such as on the wall in your lobby, on a door or window in your place of business, in your waiting room or on any printed material that you give to your customers.  QR codes are like a square bar code and, when they’re scanned by most smartphones or mobile devices, are encoded to function exactly like a link on the web, in this case launching a link directly to your Google Places listing.

When someone snaps a picture of the QR code above they will be taken to the TechWyse Google Places listing, please feel free to write a review!

There are plenty of free QR code generators available online which allow you enter any URL, in this case the direct link to your Google Places listing, and instantly create a new QR code image which you can use for this.  Enter the direct link to your Places listing, generate the QR code, print it and use it wherever your customers will see it and you’ll provide people with a very easy way to find your Places listing and post their reviews.

Reviews from Other Sources

In addition to reviews entered directly into your Google Places listing, reviews are also pulled-in from other websites and directories.  These external, third-party reviews are usually simply annotated below the main reviews, but they are nevertheless worth having.  To facilitate the acquisition of these reviews, it’s a good idea to add your business listing to other local business listing systems such as Yelp, HotFrog, Yahoo (and so on) or niche directories specific to your field or industry.

How Not to Get Google Places Reviews

Some tips on getting reviews suggest hiring people to add them for you.  There are lots of networks out there, such as Fiverr.com, populated with thousands of people who for a very low fee will happily provide you with some glowing reviews.  These should be avoided.  When a review is entered, Google receives the IP address of the person posting the review, digitally identifying the submitted review.  At this point, it doesn’t seem that Google is making much of an effort to detect, track, filter out or penalize fraudulent reviews, but they do have the data (the IP address) and the risk that they may one day target bogus reviews seems too great to take the chance.

Dealing with Negative Reviews

If you have a Google Places listing, eventually and whether you deserve it or not, you may receive a negative review.  Don’t despair!  This is a golden opportunity.  If you respond publicly and promptly to the negative review and attempt to resolve the person’s concerns, just as you would with any dissatisfied customer, others will see your willingness to engage and appease an unhappy client as a positive.  Besides, everyone knows that there’s always those people who simply like to complain (especially when safely hidden behind the relative anonymity that the web provides). So don’t fret that others will necessarily believe the negative review anyway, especially if it’s outnumbered by a larger number of positive reviews.

Bottom Line on Google Places Reviews

The growing importance of social authority to organic rankings on search engines makes acquiring reviews in your Google Places listing something that should not be overlooked.  They make your listing more complete and therefore rank higher and, just as importantly, glowing reviews from happy customers provide a clear signal of quality and legitimacy to your online presence that potential clients will appreciate and respond to.  Be willing to ask for and invite reviews, make it simple for people to post them and be prepared to deal with any negative reviews publicly, quickly and effectively.

 

 

Google Search Updating Process

1. The Idea- Coming up with an idea
2. Improved Performance- When a set of motivating searches are not performing, engineers create a hypothesis of what data could be integrated into the search algorithm to improve engagement
3. Testing- The proposed changes are rigorously tested
4. Human Review- Human readers that are trained to review result pages determine which set or SERPs are of the highest quality
5. Sandbox- Live users are tested by diverting a small portion of Google Search traffic to a “sandbox”
6. Evaluation Team- In 2010 Google conducted over 20,000 experiments. Once experiments run, a Google search analysts (Eval Analysts Team) looks at human and algorithmic data.
7. Launch Decision Meeting- Engineers and the Google Search analysts work together in a launch decision meeting where implementation of proposed changes is decided
8. Unity with Users- Alignment of Google users and the Google Tech team result in ongoing improvements to Google Search
9. Global Change- Users around the world (all languages) see the effects of Google Search quality improvements.

This is Part 3 of our series on how to optimize your blog posts.

Whether you’re running a PPC (pay per click) campaign or doing SEO (search engine optimization), having a keyword list that describes your product(s) or service(s) is an essential element for getting your website discovered on search engines. These tips will work the same whether their for blog posts or other content on your website.

For the purposes of this article a keyword will be referred to as a single word or string of words that a user will type into a search engine.

You know your business inside and out, but how do you know what keywords everyday people are using to find you online? This blog will outline several online tools that will aid you in building your keyword list.

1) Google AdWords Keyword Tool

This tool is not just for AdWords, it’s also useful for organic search engine optimization as it gives you related keyword searches that real people are actually using. You’ll also get a snapshot of how competitive the keyword is (in AdWords, but it’s also relevant for organic optimization). The number of global monthly searches for the keyword and local monthly searches are also displayed.

2) Word Tracker

The free version of Word Tracker will provide you with a limited list of keywords and the volume of searches for each keyword. It’s not as extensive as the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, but it’s worth a try since it does come up with different suggestions for related keywords.

3) Keyword Eye

Keyword Eye allows you to create a list of related keywords and view them in different visualizations. You can view keywords in a cloud map (as shown below); red denotes highly competitive keywords, yellow indicates moderate competition and green means low competition. You can also view keyword search volume share represented in a pie chart. Lastly you can view them in a grid that will tell you the search volume, competition, competition score, match type, country and language.

4) Google Analytics

To use Google Analytics you’ll have to install the embed code on your site. To make sure your analytics code is installed correctly try using our GPablo analytics code scanner.

Google Analytics won’t suggest keywords for you, but it does let you uncover the different keywords by which people discover your site. You can then gear additional content around some of the popular searches people are doing to find you.

5) Google Insights for Search

Although still in Beta, Google Insights for Search lets you see what people are searching for. With this tool “you can compare search volumes patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties.” You can also compare how your keywords do seasonally and geographically.

6) Thesaurus.com

This seems like a really obvious solution to finding alternate keywords for your site. For those of us who can’t fire off 10 synonyms for every word they know, a thesaurus is a great way to uncover other words that people may be using to search for your products or services.

In Conclusion

So there you have it, my top 5 free online tools for helping you build your keyword lists. On a side note, Google used to have a tool called the Wonder Wheel that looked like a tree with each keyword spawning a new set of branches and keywords. It would have definitely been a part of this list, but unfortunately Google shut down the Wonder Wheel earlier this year.

As useful as keyword tools are, it’s important to do some good old fashioned brainstorming. Putting yourself in your customers’ shoes and thinking like them will go a long way in helping you uncover valuable keywords. Use these free SEO keyword tools to aid in your own brainstorming and critical thinking.

Did we miss any free keyword tools? Let us know in the comments!

This is Part 2 of our series on how to optimize your blog posts.

So you’ve written your content and your blog post is ready to go, all you need to do is hit update; but before you do, follow these on-page optimization steps that will get your blog seen by more people.

1) Use Images and Name Them

Google will look at the name of your images, so before you upload them to your blogging platform name with something descriptive; use keywords in your descriptions. The more relevant you can make your images to the content, the more valuable they will be in getting you ranked.

2) Create Descriptive Categories

Take the time to think about your blog and narrow down some descriptive categories, but don’t make them span too wide. Having a good mix from post to post will tell search engines that you write a lot of the topics you’ve chosen. For example, some of our more popular categories are “Search Engine Optimization,” “Pay-Per-Click,” “Social Media” and our catch all “Internet Marketing.”

3) Use Keyword Rich Vanity Page Names

A vanity page name is the text that’s appended to the end of a website. The vanity page name tells your browser what page of the website that page exists on. The vanity page names also tells Google what your page is about. So use keywords, you can even use keyword variations that are different from your blog title.

4) Use Keywords in the Comments

If someone leaves a comment on your blog, it’s a good idea to reply back with some of the keywords you’re targeting. This strategy works well, because the next time Google crawls your page it will see new content, and as long as its relevant, it’s a great thing to have.

5) Keep Paragraphs Short

This last on-page optimization technique isn’t so much about making sure Google is able to read your page, but more about making sure your reader is able to. Don’t go into lengthy paragraphs when you’re trying to grab someone’s attention; instead use short punchy sentences and bullet point when you need to name off a list.

In part 3 I will show you several online tools that will help your discover new keywords to use in your copy.

Did we miss anything? Leave your tips in the comments!