Monthly Archives: July 2014

Fast Five in Search – Week 31, 2014

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We’re all about Google in this week’s Fast Five. No Bing, no Yahoo, just Google. Let’s get straight to it.

Here’s this week’s Fast Five:

1) Promoting Modern Websites for Modern Devices in Google Search Results by Google Webmaster Central Blog. Google has introduced a new feature into the search results this month. When Google algorithms detect pages that may not work on a searcher’s device Google will now indicate this to searchers within the search results pages.

2) New Study: Search Ads Lift Brand Awareness by Inside AdWords Blog. It has been suggested for some years now that when consumers see AdWords ads appearing alongside organic search results for the same company in the Google search results pages, they have higher brand recall than consumers who just see organic search results. A new study run by Google and Ipsos MediaCT has proven this, revealing that search ads lift top-of-mind awareness by an average of 6.6 percentage points.

3) Segmenting Brand and Generic Paid Search Traffic in Google Analytics by Google Analytics Blog. Last month, Google Analytics introduced a new feature which automatically identifies brand-aware paid search clicks. That is, Analytics can now identify query terms which demonstrated visitors who had previous awareness of your brand. This means that you can now split your “paid search” channel into two separate channels: “brand paid search” and “generic paid search”. This can be done both for Multi-Channel Funnels (for attribution purposes) and for the main Google Analytics channel grouping.

4) Searching For the Right Balance by Google Official Blog. The “right to be forgotten” ruling against Google in May from the European Court of Justice is causing increasingly large ripples across the search industry and even spilling into the media at large. In this very enlightening post, Google’s Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond, explains the massive challenge Google faces in figuring out what information they must now deliberately omit from search results. He also discusses openly why Google disagrees with the ruling, calling it very vague and subjective. Drummond reveals that Google has already received over 70,000 take-down requests since the ruling, most of which have arrived with little or no context.

and finally…

5) Mirror Your Android Phone to the TV With Chromecast by Google Android Official Blog. As of this month, Nexus and Android device owners can mirror their Android phones and tablets to their TVs using Chromecast, so they can see their favorite apps, photos or anything else, exactly as they see it on their mobile device, but on the big screen.

Happy Googling!

*Image courtesy of Threadless.

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Fast Five in Search – Week 30, 2014

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The news is all about search engines this week. So much is happening in the industry right now, I can barely keep up with it all.

Here’s this week’s Fast Five:

1) Bing Now Accepting Right to Be Forgotten Requests in Europe by Jennifer Cowan. The landmark ruling in May against Google by the European Union Court of Justice has now influenced Bing. The search company has released a request form for Europeans wishing to take advantage of the recent “right to be forgotten” edict issued by Europe’s top court.

2) Yahoo Search Share Falls Below 10 Percent for “All-Time Low” by Greg Sterling. According to comScore’s U.S. search market share data for June, Yahoo’s search market share has now fallen below 10 percent for the first time ever, with analysts putting the figure at 9.8 percent. In this article, Greg Sterling demonstrates how Bing has grown almost entirely at Yahoo’s expense.

3) Google Analytics Gets Its Own Dedicated iPhone App by Darrell Etherington. Google has finally released an iPhone app for Analytics and it’s pretty damn good. It provides the same data you see when viewing the web dashboard on a mobile device, including visits, sources, page views and user behavior insights. Real Time reports are also included, which allow you to view visitor activity in real time.

4) Google Penalty Hits eBay’s Bottom Line, May Cost Up to $200 Million in Revenue by Danny Sullivan. The true impact of Google’s search penalty against eBay this year has finally been revealed. This article by Danny Sullivan shows that the penalty had a devastating financial impact on the Auction site, to the tune of $200 million.

and finally…

5) Edward Snowden Calls on Hackers to Help Whistleblowers Leak More Secrets by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai. My curve ball this week is the remarkable appeal from Edward Snowden to attendees of the Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference for hackers and technologists to help would-be whistleblowers spill more government secrets.

Happy reading!

*Image courtesy of Threadless.

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Q and A: What are some typical daily tasks of a SEO business?

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QuestionHello Kalena

I have read a handful of your blog posts and LOVED THEM. I’ll get to the point. I was looking to see if you could write a post on daily tasks of an SEO business if you had ONE client (to keep it simple).

I have about 60 domains that I use to test SEO techniques, I own two businesses with I SEO myself, I attend many webinars, buy books etc to keep my SEO skills sharp. I pretty good with SEO and running a business.

My problem now is I’d like to run an SEO business but I don’t know what a client wants from me on a day today basis for results. Could you possibly email me or write a post about what I would do day-day for a client. Almost like a checklist. Of course I would have to do many other task that randomly come at me (problem solving).

My brain gets a little jumbled when it comes to organization. Since I’ve never run an SEO business yet, I have no idea what my days would look like. I have my web/graphic design business down perfectly!

I understand you are very busy but if you could give me a little boost I will definitely pay it forward.

Thank you!

Chris

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Hi Chris

You might be interested to know that our SEO Advanced course includes a whole bonus lesson dedicated to setting up your own SEO business, including recommended tools and checklists.

In the meantime, I actually wrote an article a couple of years ago that might help you. Although it might not be quite be written as the day in the life of a SEO, it IS written as a diary of typical SEO tasks that you need to perform over several weeks. It’s called The 10 Week SEO Diet and there is even a video version.

Hope this helps!

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10 Free Ways to Size Up Your Online Competition

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Online competitionWhen it comes to marketing, we all like to keep a close eye on what our competitors are doing. Competitive intelligence essentially means understanding what’s happening in the world outside your business so you can be as competitive as possible.

Here are ten of my favorite tools for sizing up the online competition. All of these are either free of charge or have a free trial that you can take advantage of:

1) Ispionage – This is hands-down my favorite tool for gathering competitive intelligence. You can use it to view a nearly endless range of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) data, including your competitor’s monthly ad budget, SEO keywords, PPC keywords, cached ad copy, affiliate data, top competitors and social media mentions. All reports can be exported as a text file or Excel spreadsheet. Memberships start at USD 53 per month, but they also offer your first 5 reports free of charge, without the need to create an account.

2) Screaming Frog – The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a small desktop program you can install on your PC, Mac or Linux machine which spiders websites from an SEO perspective. It fetches key onsite elements for SEO, presents them in tabs by type and allows you to filter for common SEO issues, or slice and dice the data how you see fit by exporting into Excel. It allows you to quickly analyse, audit and review a competitor’s site and is particulary good for analysing medium to large sites where manually checking every page would be extremely labour intensive. The tool is free to download and run, although if the site you are spidering has over 500 pages, you’ll need to upgrade to a licensed version for GBP 99 per year.

3) Raven Tools – The Research Central component of Raven Tools incorporates data from major online marketing authorities, including Majestic SEO, Moz and Google. You can compare SEO quality, backlink and analytics data for up to five websites from a single view in Research Central. In Raven’s Site Performance and Competitor Manager Reports, you can get a better grip on competitor performance, with side-by-side comparisons of your site and your top competitors. Whether you’re researching competitor’s websites or keywords for SEO, social media engagement, PPC or content marketing performance, Raven provides a plethora of data to analyze. They offer a 30 day free trial, for up to 2 users and 2 domains.

4) Domain Tools – Discover everything about a domain name, IP address or nameserver, including Whois data, who used to own it, how many times it has changed hands, what it’s being used for and what other DNS resources it is connected to, with this Internet-based service. Monthly membership starts at USD 49.95. The site offers a 7 day, fully operational free trial, but does require a credit card to confirm the free account.

5) URL Profiler – This one is desktop software which pulls in marketing research and domain data from various 3rd party sources. With tools for measuring detailed link metrics, SEO performance, analytics, PageRank, social engagement and content quality, URL Profiler is useful for web site audits and competitor site analysis. Available for Windows and Mac only, the software starts at GBP 99 per year and has a fully functioning 30 day free trial.

6) Open Site Explorer – Open Site Explorer is a backlink research tool on steroids, allowing you to download a detailed link profile for any web site. Using a custom-built link anchor index created by the clever team at Moz.com, you can use Open Site Explorer to research both your and competitors link profiles to help with intelligent and targeted link building. Open Site Explorer is free to use and you can compare up to 5 domains at once.

7) SEMRush – is a competitive research tool covering both paid and organic search results, adding data like keyword value and keyword volume to ranking data. The team at SEMRush collect massive amounts of SERP data for more than 100 million keywords and 70 million domains, including: AdWords ad copies and positions, organic positions for domains and landing URLs, search volumes, CPC, competition and number of results. In addition to tracking Google’s global search results, they also track Bing and a range of geographic-specific Google result sets. Pricing starts at USD 69.95 per month, but if you don’t mind entering your billing details, there is a 14 day free trial http://seobook.com/sem-rush-trial, courtesy of SEO Book.

8) Compete – Compete PRO is a Competitive Intelligence tool that helps you to monitor your online competition, benchmark your performance against your industry, and discover new business opportunities. It uses industry-wide competitive analysis to reveal keywords that are sending the most traffic to your competitors. Rather than scraping search results to track rankings like many similar tools, CompetePRO looks at US clickstream data from ISPs, a panel of users & those that have their toolbar installed. A Compete PRO free trial Includes unlimited access to all features available for the paid plan you selected for a period of 24 hours, but does require you to enter your billing details.

9) Keyword Spy – is pitched as a competitive keyword discovery tool, but it is much more than that. You can use it to find out how much your competitors are spending on AdWords and discover which combinations of keywords and advertising copy are working for them. It includes ad copy and affiliate intelligence data and covers US, UK, Australia and Canada. Pricing starts at USD 89.95 per month, but Keyword Spy also offers what they call a “lifetime free trial account”.

10) Mention – is a new approach to media and social monitoring for brands and competitors. You can use it to monitor millions of sources in 42 languages, including anything published on social networks, news sites, forums, blogs and web pages. Generate reports in PDF, XLS, CSV or TSV formats and export data to compare your site with your competitors. You can also access your reports from either PC, Mac or hand-held devices. Mention provides a 14 day free trial as well as a free Basic monthly plan for a single user.

In the Internet age, it’s easier than ever before to keep tabs on your competition. Now that you have these 10 tools to help you, there are no more excuses!

Fast Five in Search – Week 29, 2014

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If you’re a long term reader of this blog, you’ll know that I sometimes write articles for SiteProNews. Sometimes I’ll get a reader question here and I’m able to say “I just wrote an article about that topic” and point to the article over at SPN. But apart from the occasional Q&A reference, I’m not great at promoting my own articles.

So for today’s Fast Five, I thought I’d share with you the last 5 articles I wrote for SiteProNews.

Here’s this week’s Fast Five:

1) What to Blog About When You Have Nothing to Blog About – This article was inspired by the many, many webmasters who approach me about the difficulty they have finding topics to blog about. In this article, I bust the “blogger’s block” myth and show you just how easy it is to come up with topics for your company blog. I even suggest a range of topics to suit blogs in various industries.

2) Five Must-Have Spreadsheets for Online Marketing Professionals – A short piece that highlights five spreadsheet-based marketing tools that I use myself or recommend on a regular basis.

3) 11 Easy Ways to Build Editorial Links – Another article inspired by questions I get on this blog. This one talks about all the ways you can safely build incoming links to your site in the wake of Google Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird algorithm updates. This is a two part article, with Part Two over here.

4) A Beginner’s Guide to Successful Domaining – I wrote this article after my recent experience trying to sell a domain I’ve owned for over 10 years. It’s an introduction to the murky but profitable world of domain flipping and includes a detailed list of domaining resources.

and finally…

5) 20 Free Marketing eBooks You Need to Download Right Now – Trust me, you’ll want to bookmark this one. This article is a review of my favorite free eBooks and White Papers relating to marketing, categorized by theme. In the article, I’ve linked to the jump page from where you can access the PDF file for each freebie.

Happy reading!

*Image courtesy of Threadless.

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