With Google’s introduction of its spam-fighting algorithm, Google Penguin, many websites have suffered from both short and long-term positional drops in search result pages and hence traffic. As Rand Fishkin states on his edition of Whiteboard+, Google Penguin is focused on punishing devalued links from manipulative link profiles, rather than trying to improve the quality of search results. Continue reading →

It is clear that there is still a misunderstanding of what a “robots.txt” file is used for and what meta name=”robots” is and does. Therefore, I thought why not break it down in laymans terms for everyone to hopefully help you when deciding which to employ and when.

Robots.txt

The robots.txt file is a simple text file that resides within the root directory of a website. The purpose of this file is to help search engines understand which content you would like them to illustrate to users within the search engine result pages (SERP’s) and which pages they should ignore. Google and Bing pay very close attention to this file, reason being, they do not want to potentially share information on websites which their webmasters have specifically requested be ignored. Continue reading →

Over the last 24 hours, AdWords has been blowing my mind.

It started yesterday when I learned that Google is giving users the opportunity to block PPC ads from specific domains in their search results. Last year, Google gave the ability to block specific search results and sites but much of this was changed with the launch of “Search Plus Your World.” I understand the concept, especially from a user point of view: you shouldn’t have results appear that you hold absolutely no interest in ever checking out. And even from the point of view of the advertiser: if someone is never going to click my ad, removing their impressions will only help increase my clickthrough rate.

Then this morning I was doing a search for Redbox and came across an ad that allowed me to join their mailing list before clicking through to their site:

I remember reading that Google started testing this feature sometime last month, but now that I see it in my own searches I understand the potential impact more.

This lead collection not only elongates the advertisement providing more SERP “real estate” to the advertiser, but also makes the lead completion simple for the user. In addition, Google is showing that they will pair this lead collection function with sitelinks leaving the possibility for larger ads open. Imagine if those sitelinks were enhanced…

When I first read about Google’s latest algo update, penalizing websites for being “top heavy” with advertisements, I thought it was contradictory considering AdWords ads are known to take up a large majority of above-the-fold results when searching Google. This is especially true when looking over the past couple of years; Google has given PPC advertisers plenty of toys – ad extensions – to play with that have resulted in larger sized ads that take up even more space on the SERPs.

But then I thought about it more.

At the same time that Google is known for pushing out AdWords ads and making money, it is known for working hard to give its users the best possible searching experience. In fact, when I explain PPC to people unfamiliar with the medium, I have told them that the paid ads on Google can be more relevant than the natural results (assuming the advertiser is doing a good job). Now, I understand that is a strong statement that some may disagree with…but for now, at the very least, it can be agreed that paid ads can give just as relevant as search results as found in the top organic listings. And if that is the case, Google’s AdWords ads are helping the user experience, rather than hurting it.

Continue reading →

Our organization just grew larger and wiser within our Search Marketing department with  the addition of Cassandra (Cassy) McClure who joins us as a Sr. Search Marketing Specialist.

Cassy joins us with great paid search experience as well as some web development and quality assurance testing. As a senior search marketer, Cassy will be responsible for delivering best practice deliverable material, industry thought leadership, and drive efficiencies within our internal processes in alignment with current team members.

When not monitoring quality score and average cost-per-click bidding strategies, you can find Cassy playing video games (Zelda) or hopping into the nearest shark cage for a quick swim with her ocean pals. Clearly thrills don’t stop there as the only reason she tried sky diving was because it scared the heck out of her.

It is great to have you on the team Cassy. Welcome to Zeon!

-Ross

A few months have passed now since Google announced it is going to hide search referral data for Google searchers who are logged into their private account. This has meant facing more and more visits associated to the value, “(not provided)” when searching for visits by keyword in Google Analytics.

…Organic visits by keyword that is. That’s right; my favorite medium hasn’t skipped a beat in all of this. Looking at paid traffic in Google Analytics and drilling down to the keyword level is just as visible as it ever was. Regardless of whether a searcher is logged into their Google account, Google Analytics is still providing visibility to the keywords one searched if it resulted in a PPC ad followed by a clickthrough. After all, advertisers paid Google for the word.

This idea brings up a few questions…

• Is PPC going to become an even more practiced form of advertising and driving traffic as it continues to not only provide numerical metrics to the advertiser, but also relevant keyword data that now is difficult to find elsewhere?
• Are search marketing professionals and agencies going to need to ramp up their PPC experience in order to prove their value as internet marketers all together?
• Are SEOs going to rely on statistics and insights from PPC analytical data to get ideas on keywords that may be covered with the value, “(not provided)”?

I’ve always felt that I cannot create or manage a great PPC account without SEO insights, and I’ve always preferred to implement and manage SEO initiatives with PPC insights.  Organic searcher keyword data can provide more insights to my PPC expansion than a given keyword tool. And matched search queries from AdWords has shed light on a searcher intent I was unaware of several times when analyzing a specific page in regards to organic optimization. However, I know there are plenty of other SEMs – and website owners – who do not feel that both practices are necessary. If this hasn’t started to change already, we’ll just give them a few more months of “(not provided)” to analyze.