The ‘anchor text’ of inbound links has been one of the key tenets of SEO for many years now. In a nutshell: the text that people use in the actual link when linking to you, is seen as an indicator of the relevance of your page for that phrase.
For example: if someone links to your page about ‘personalised baby blankets‘, and they use the words personalised baby blankets as the link itself, Google receive a strong indication that your page may actually be about that topic.
Of course, ‘savvy’ (ahem) webmasters and SEOs have abused this relevancy signal for almost as long, tending to generate very similar anchor text over and over again when building links.
Google are now very publicly tweaking their algorithm to devalue over-zealous and unnatural link anchor text, in the ongoing attempt to improve search results quality.
It’s easy to drown in numbers when looking at all the available data in Google Analytics. Therefore setting up a useful, usable dashboard for the key performance metrics for your business is essential.
The guys at Portent have a great post on the perfect Google Analytics dashboard. Not only info on how to set it up and what kind of data you should have in there, but also a couple of instant downloads of such dashboards, already set up and ready to use in your Google Analytics account.
You’ve no doubt by now heard of Google+. For the uninitiated, Google+ is Google’s foray into the world of social networking. Think of it as a Facebook competitor, though there are lots of differences between the 2 services.
We’ve been using Google+ personally since soon after its launch last year. We’ve also been using Google+ Pages (a bit like Facebook Pages for business) both for clients and for some of our own internal marketing projects. We actually really love Google+, and think (along with others) that a Google+ strategy is quickly going to be essential for everyone marketing their business on the internet.
However, it’s taken us a while to get round to setting up our own Google+ page. So drum roll please… here’s the brand new Woof Google+ page!
Relax, there isn’t a great deal to see, yet. We’ll be using the page to do what Google+ does best: sharing interesting updates, news and tips from the world of digital marketing.
The new design certainly has more impact, with larger photos and a generally more engaging feel. The navigation is now customisable too.
Dare we say it looks more Facebook…?
Find out more on the Google blog. Expect to see the new design rolled out across all Google+ accounts over the next few days. We can see the new design in several of our Google+ accounts already.
You’ll likely have seen ‘rich snippets’ in Google’s search results before. These are extra bits of information that Google pop into search results to provide more information about each result.
For example:
If the search result is an article, there might be a photo of the author, with a link to his/her Google Profile.
If the search result is a product, there might be a 5-star rating with an indication of how many reviews it’s had.
If the search result is for a local business, it might feature their location and a link to Google Maps and their Google Places listing page.
Rich snippets don’t appear without some work on the part of your developer though. In most cases extra code is required to get these rich snippets to appear.
However, it’s well worth the effort. Searchers are much more likely to click on search results that feature these extra ‘rich snippets’ of information. An article, for example, that features a photo of the author next to it stands out a great deal more than the other results without a photo. It appears to have more authority and therefore trust.
Here’s an example from a client of ours, Mike Thomas from DebtWizard:
The talk was called ‘Google Analytics: How to Set and Forget‘. We tried to convince developers that ‘Set Google Analytics up correctly‘ should be a vital part of any website build checklist.
Here at Woof, we (very) frequently take on new clients whose web developer has either not set up Analytics at all, or has set it up so poorly that the data we have available is either useless or wildly inaccurate.
This is a shame, because the data that Google Analytics provides – if set up correctly – can inform decisions that can seriously increase a business’s profits!
We firstly explained why having correct and accurate Analytics data to hand is so important, with a few ‘real-life’ (ahem) examples. We then we got stuck into the ‘how’, with step-by-step instructions.
The slides are below. I fear they won’t make a great deal of sense if you weren’t there, unfortunately. They’re a bit ‘bare bones’.
If I get time, I’ll expand a bit on it all, with a fuller step-by-step blog post. No promises.
Thanks everyone who came along, mainly for listening but also for not throwing things at us.
Google just announced a major change to their search results pages. Those of you that have a Google Plus profile and are logged in will now be able to see some very personalised search results (well you will if you live in the US anyway, it doesn’t appear to have reached us yet).
So what’s the difference?
There are 3 brand new features in Google search:
Personal Results – Google will display content that you and friends within your Google Plus circles have posted, within the search results.
Profiles in search – You’ll be able to search for profiles of people you might be interested in folowing
People and pages – You’ll be able to find people and profiles related to a particular topic.
Take a look at the video below for a quick preview.
What’s the idea behind it?
Google clearly want to diversify the search results and provide more personal information. Rather than just seeing the really established sites and those who have made a good job of their SEO, Google want you to enjoy a much more personalised experience, including content from your friends or communities you might be interested in.
What does this mean for web site owners?
It could (and is likely to) eventually change search marketing forever. Influencing the search results is going to be much less about SEO and a lot more about being involved in online communities, something we here at Woof have been recommending to our clients for some time.
The top 10 search results will be different for everyone. You may have noticed that Google have been experimenting with the first page of search results quite a bit recently. The first page of results is gradually being eaten up by paid advertising, local results, image and video results and now personalised results.
Claiming your content as an individual is becoming more and more important. Google is placing more and more importance on high quality unique content, written by real people.
Don’t panic! At the moment the personalised search results will only apply to a fairly small number of people. The searcher must be logged in to their Google account, and click the ‘Search Plus’ button when they search.
Future proof your online marketing by investing in social media marketing. Relying entirely on search engine marketing is becoming a risky strategy.
If you would like to discuss future proofing your online marketing strategy, give us a call.
Whether booking a holiday or buying a cooker, we all at some point or another have turned to Google or an appropriate review website to find out what others think. After all, the social proof provided by other people is often the strongest influence on deciding to buy.
Some of our clients have actively courted customer reviews, by signing up for third party customer review sites such as Trustpilot. Trustpilot particularly encourages customers to leave reviews, and our clients’ experiences of the service (and others like it) has been entirely positive.
On the odd occasion a customer has left a slightly negative review, it’s been a great chance to dive straight in, apologise for the issue and publicly offer to put the issue right. The response to this has been fantastic, with the same customer usually replying back with great glee about the personal service they’ve just received. The beauty of this, of course, is that other potential customers see.
