I know the last thing you need is yet another social media account to keep up with – believe me, I get it!  But ignore Google+ at your own peril.  It is becoming more and more important in search engine optimization (SEO) for Google:

• Christine’s blog post earlier this month outlined how big brand Google+ pages have started taking up a lot of room in the organic results.
• Catherine’s blog post two weeks ago talked about how Google’s new “Search Plus Your World” is serving up even more personalized results than before, including yet more Google+ posts, photos and pages.
• Back in June, our newsletter described the impact of the +1 button on the search engine results visually.
• Since then, Google has stated that they often recrawl sites after a +1 button has been clicked.

We’ve covered this — why are we talking about this topic yet again?  Because we recently heard inside scoop that Google is increasing the importance of the +1 button in its organic ranking algorithm, and it eventually may count for even more than inbound links!

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While the world is moving toward more transparency and more data availability, Google recently backtracked on this front.  In a move unnoticed by most, Google is now blocking organic keyword data from being captured for searchers who are logged into Google or searching on Google’s secure (https) site.  This means that when marketers look at their web analytics, keywords used by these searchers are not displayed, but are lumped together under “(not provided).”

Why should you care?  Because taking away this data makes it harder for marketers to measure the performance of their search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.  When we know which keywords drive traffic – and more importantly, conversions – we can invest more of our time and effort into those keywords rather than less valuable ones.  We can ensure that landing pages are directly relevant to the keyword that brought the searcher to that page.  In general, we can continue to hone our efforts and maximize our results.
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How To: Mobile PPC

Part Two of a Two Part Series on Mobile Search Marketing

Last month we covered mobile search engine optimization; now we turn our attention to mobile search advertising (PPC). As we had said, mobile searches have quadrupled in the last year (source).  And this year, marketers in the US will spend over $1 billion on mobile advertising for the first time (source).

Things to Know About Mobile PPC

Mobile PPC campaigns generate, on average, click-through rates nearly three times higher than desktop campaigns…but conversion rates can be much lower, depending on the vertical (source). Google reports that 40% of all mobile searches are related to the person’s location, while Microsoft reports 53% (source). Read more…

How To: Mobile SEO

Part One of a Two Part Series on Mobile Search Marketing

You’ve no doubt already heard the statistics imploring you to care about mobile search.  If not, here is a smattering of factoids:

•    More people worldwide will access the Internet on a mobile device than on a PC by 2013. (source)
•    Mobile searches have quadrupled in the last year.  (source)
•    77% of smartphone users visit search engines (more than any other type of website, including social networking). (source)
•    Nine out of ten smartphone searches result in an action (visiting a store or brand website, making a purchase, etc.). (source)
•    88% of local information seekers take action within a day, mostly within one hour. (source)

It’s crystal clear that marketers need to ensure that they can be found by people searching – and looking to buy – on their mobile devices.  But how?  We’ll cover mobile search engine optimization this month, and mobile search advertising (PPC) next month.

Things to Know About Mobile SEO

Mobile search is different from desktop search – Search Engine Land lists 14 ways.  Note that searchers are more likely to be looking for local results, so these types of sites (and Google Places pages) are typically ranked higher.
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Ask any SEO expert and they’ll tell you that link-building is the least fun and most tedious part of the job that we all otherwise love.  There are a myriad of ways to generate inbound links for a website, including creating good “linkbait” content, optimized press releases, social media, directories, article marketing, partner links, authoritative links, and more.  Any link-building campaign worth its salt must also include analyzing who’s linking to other relevant sites (industry sites, competitors and such) and attempting to get links from their link sources too.

To say this is a chore is an understatement.  It involves using a search engine or software tool to download the links pointing to another site – there may be hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of links.  Then someone has to go through those links by hand to take a look at the sites they’re on and determine if the site’s good quality and likely to link to their site.  And then they need to dig around to find the site owner’s contact information and email or call them to ask for a link.  All this has to be tracked, as a great deal of follow-up is usually required.  It’s an incredibly important thing to do; unfortunately it’s also very time-consuming.
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The first step in driving more web traffic and leads from search engines is to rank high and take up a lot of real estate on the search engine results pages (SERPs).  Google has just made that easier in both the organic and paid results with its recently enhanced sitelinks. That has just gotten easier on Google thanks to its recently enhanced “sitelinks,” both on the organic and paid sides.  Below, we define sitelinks and provide examples, impacts, and tips for how to make sitelinks work for your business.

Organic Sitelinks

When a site is ranked #1 organically on Google (usually for its own brand name), Google now may display up to 12 sitelinks below the main listing.  These are links to other important pages in the site, with the URL listed as well as a very brief snippet of a description.  Here’s how it looks for one of our longtime clients:

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Google+ (“Google plus”), a new social network, launched about two weeks ago.  Although there was much cynicism surrounding the launch (given Google’s late entry into social media and their failed efforts with Google Wave and Google Buzz), early reviews are quite positive and millions have joined Google+ already, despite the fact that it’s still “invitation only.”  We wrote last time about Google’s “+1” button and how it affects search engine marketing – the odd naming of “+1” makes more sense now that we know it’s part of Google+.

So what does Google+ mean for search marketers and how can we leverage it to drive more website traffic, leads and revenue?

On the Search Engine Optimization side…

Social media activity around a piece of content is always positive – it generates posts, links, shares, tweets, likes, +1s, etc.  So having this kind of activity happening directly on a Google property will presumably help popular content rank high organically on Google.  This is the opposite of Facebook, whose content is mostly in a “walled garden” – behind a password and unavailable to search engines. Read more…

Google’s “+1” (“plus one”) button was launched in Google’s results on March 30.  It allows searchers to recommend a site that appears in either the paid or organic listings.  (Here’s Google’s explanation, and here’s what we wrote the day after launch.)  On June 1, Google made the +1 button available to be added to any web page, similar to Facebook’s “Like” button.

What Does +1 Mean to Marketers?

First, let’s look at the impact of the +1 button in the search engine results.  From a purely visual standpoint, it’s desirable to have searchers click the button because the blue +1 button and the notation that someone in your social circle clicked on it help take up more room on the page and draw the searcher’s eye to your listing.

In addition, the fact that others have recommended a listing gives it more credibility and makes it more likely that you’ll click.

On the SEO (search engine optimization) side, Google has said that when a searcher clicks the +1 button, it prompts Google to recrawl the page, which ensures that the freshest copy of the page is in their index.  More importantly, as we predicted in March, Google has stated that +1s may affect rankings: “This is just one of many signals Google may use to determine a page’s relevance and ranking, and we’re constantly tweaking and improving our algorithm to improve overall search quality” (source).

On the PPC (pay-per-click) side, Google reports that while +1s will not affect Quality Score directly, they may indirectly because more searchers may click on your ad (due to the “taking up more room,” “drawing the searcher’s eye” and “credibility” factors cited above).  A higher click-through rate will positively impact your Quality Score, potentially leading to more clicks and a lower cost per click (source). Read more…

The world of search engine optimization evolves rapidly, and there’s always some shiny new toy or technique to learn and play with.  It’s easy to become enamored of “what’s next” – sometimes to the detriment of what’s tried and true.  Before you get too fancy with your SEO efforts, it’s often a good idea to review the basics and make sure you haven’t forgotten anything.

With that in mind, here are some questions to ask yourself about three critical aspects of SEO: on-page optimization, link-building, and optimizing other digital assets.

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By David M. Cox, counsel to Prominent Placement

It’s every marketer’s dream to grow market share by stealing customers from their competitors.  Many companies have attempted to divert prospects away from other providers by bidding on competitors’ name in the search engines.  Imagine searching for “McDonald’s” and seeing a pay-per-click ad for Burger King, for example.  This is a very common practice, and is currently allowed by Google, Yahoo and Bing.

That said, a recent federal lower court case arising in California calls this practice into question.  The Disability Group, a law firm specializing in social security disability claims, paid substantial damages for using the name of its competitor, Binder and Binder, as a keyword in its PPC searches with Google AdWords. This lower court opinion poses substantial risk for companies as well as their officers (personally) who use a competitor’s trademarked name as a PPC keyword.

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