Google, Web Site Activity & Other Strangers

August 31, 2010 in Marketing | Tags: | Leave a comment

Google revolutionized the use of search engine algorithms by making back-links (i.e. links pointing to a given web site from other web site) the single most important factor when determining how well a given page ranks. Up until then, all that mattered in how well a site ranked in the search engines was what keywords were used, where those keywords were use (i.e. placed on the web page) and how often the keywords were used.

Before Google came along, building links was a minor part of search engine optimization; after Google came along, it became the most important part of search engine optimization. Google has openly admitted that one of its main goals is to make “off site” factors (back-links) more important than “on site” factors (i.e. content) to how its algorithm ranks a given web page to make it search engine’s results more accurate.

The Latest Search Engine Twist: ‘Activity’
Recently, it was reported in Google’s Webmaster Central Blog that a given site’s “activity” will also affect it’s ranking in Google. For the purposes of this article, a site’s “activity” is defined as any action taken by someone on the web that indicates that they think your website is worthy of mention excluding actual back-links. Usually this takes the form of someone making a reference to your site (a.k.a. citation) by mentioning the site’s name or the company, phone number, physical address or the name of a particular product/service unique to that web site (e.g. a McDonald’s “Big Mac”), but a website’s activity can also be how long a visitor stays on a given site before they leave or if they decide to interact with the site (such as commenting on a website’s blog posting).

It’s important to keep in mind that Google has never officially stated that activity/citations will actual benefit a given web site. However, it is widely known among search engine marketers that the more a site is noticed, monitored, talked about and referenced to the more chance it will rank better in Google for whatever keywords is optimized for. In other words, where there’s smoke there’s fire.

Webmaster Confusion & Google Go Together
What is clear from Google is that there are certain types of visitor-inspired activity that tell Google is that a given site is significant and therefore should rank higher in a search engine than the plethora of junk web sites that make up the vast majority of websites out there. In short, this is the type of activity Google likes to see;

  1. Longer Visitations. When a site’s visitors leave right away, that results in a high bounceback ratio leaving Google with the impression that the site is either of poor quality or not on topic to the keyword the visitor used to search with.
  2. More Revisitations. The higher to the amount of people that revisit a web site (i.e. revisitations), the higher-quality Google considers that site to be. The good news is that “re-visitors” are also more likely to be customers in addition to helping that site to rank better in Google’s search engine.
  3. User Participation. For those sites that allow visitors to interact, the more Google sees different people posting in forums, placing comments, joining e-mail lists or bookmarking the site, the greater chance that Google will see that web site as worthy of better rankings.

However, while Google’s does consider activity/citations in its search engine algorithm, I can say with complete confidence that one quality back-link is worth dozens if not hundreds of citations. Knowing what constitutes a quality back-link is one of the services search engine marketing consultants like myself get paid to do.

Using AdCenter’s Audience Intelligence Tool

July 31, 2010 in Marketing | Tags: | Leave a comment

Gain New Customers & Keep Old Ones By Using This Online Tool

For Home-based entrepreneurs looking to promote their website, online marketers and savvy online business people around the world, Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN AdCenter are great places to come to take advantage of some seriously useful marketing data that can turn your marketing heavy club into a hybrid cruise missile rapid marketing attack needle.

While Google Adwords may be the standard for search engine marketing, MSN AdCenter has some interesting tools which are worth exploring as they provide some unique options to help to improve your ad exposure to the right people. Amidst the menagerie of tools in AdCenter there is one section called Audience Intelligence which is particularly clever.

Audience Intelligence is a group of tools which are orientated to allow advertisers to improve their online advertising success by “accurately modelling users and predicting their intent”. Knowing more about a user through the sorts of keywords and phrases they type into search engines is a valuable weapon. What people search for is influenced by: their demographic (age, gender etc), the context in which they are searching and the social networks they are a part of. Also, being able to judge a user’s hidden intent based on their search queries and browsing history is another powerful armament.

The following three components of the Audience Intelligence tool help you to discover these important details about your users.

Demographics Prediction
Like the name suggests, this tool predicts what demographic a user is likely to fit into from the keyphrase they input. So if you put in ‘Ford Ka’ you might think that the key demographic for that phrase is 17 year old girls. When in actual fact the results showed that 67% of males between 25-34 searches for ‘Ford Ka’. This prediction is based on the online behaviour captured while people make searches and visit websites. This is a great tool for giving AdCenter advertisers the opportunity to better tailor the keywords they select in order to target their desired audience more accurately.

As you can see, you can also search by URL as well as by search query. The percentage of gender orientation is shown, with handy examples of male and female appearances, and the age distribution is shown at the bottom. The age distribution is an age breakdown of MSN Search users. The General Distribution column is based for each search on one-month search logs and is not dependant on the actual search query. The ‘Predicted Distribution’ column is the same but is tailored to the search query you are researching and AdCenter’s predictive model.
Detecting Online Commercial Intention

Websites in general have two uses: as a source of information or as a destination for shopping (transactions). This ‘Detecting Online Commercial Intention’ tool detects, based on the keyword or URL you input, whether people that make this search are looking for information or to make a transaction. (Commercial or non-commercial.) It seems pretty straight forward really: if you typed in ‘black shoes’, the likelihood is that you would only be putting this in if you wanted to buy a pair of black shoes from somewhere. It is less likely that you are researching different coloured shoes, even though you might be, but it would certainly be less likely. ‘Black shoes’ has a 95% commercial intention rate, i.e. Microsoft has found that when someone searches for ‘black shoes’ there is a 95% chance that they are looking to buy some black shoes.

You will notice that they ask you if it is accurate with a ‘yes-no’ check-box. This is what, in the ‘learn more’ section I believe they mean by ‘human evaluators’, though they may well have in house teams too. Here is an example of a non-commercial result for a URL search.

With a little persistence you can use this tool to find keywords that have commercial value but don’t have particularly high ad coverage, so will therefore be cheaper. Finding keywords with a low bid density but high commercial value is an important goal for any PPC advertiser.

Microsoft provides a link to the research they have conducted into commercial/non-commercial user intent in the ‘learn more’ section. It includes some reassuring information to back up their engines results.

MS’s Interactive Query Manager
This tool is basically an interactive query manager which analyses a web site’s content and its audience for ad placement and targeting. It lets you specify your search query and the audience you want to reach, then provides you with advice on where in Microsoft’s ad network you should run your ad for best results. So say you want to know where it would be best to run an advert for ‘Rod Stewart tickets’ you can input this in, or the URL of your site, along with your target audience and the Explore MSN tool will provide you with a list of URLs where they think your advert would best perform. The ‘i’ icon can show you information on the audience and the location of the people who view each particular page so you can check you are on the right track.

By letting this tool help you find a location for your advert, you can, if you trust it, cut out a lot of time spent trawling through websites trying to find ones with content similar to that of your site or your search term. Explore MSN can also help you make sure that where you place your ad is the best place for people who are in that area. For example, you could place your ad on a great site that is perfectly suited to your topic and has loads of massive Rod Stewart fans visiting it regularly, but if 99% of these fans come from the other side of the world, there might be little point in placing your ad here.

In Conclusion
Audience Intelligence is indeed an impressive range of tools which could seriously improve the success of your online advertising quickly. While each tool in this section is in itself valuable, they are best used in conjunction with each other. Unfortunately for Microsoft though, Google Adwords is still better overall compared to Adcenter, not least of all due to its wider audience. At least one of its rivals ‘Yahoo Search Marketing’ is coming under Microsoft’s wing soon. But then, there is that behemoth in waiting looming nonchalantly on the horizon…Facebook.

Apparently the next tool to be included in the Audience Intelligence segment of AdCenter will be called the ‘Behavioural Targeting System’ which will “create precise, flexible behavioural segments by taking advantage of various data sources, including click stream, search query, and demographic information.” Nice. This will no doubt provide us with an insight into the typical pattern of exploration that users follow, allowing you to use this information to discover where a website might be causing users to leave prematurely, so that you can work to avoid this from happening with better usability and more compelling content.

SEM-ifying Your Twitter Tweets

June 30, 2010 in Marketing | Tags: | Leave a comment

Without a doubt, “Twittering” has become an extremely popular activity among the under-30 crowd and increasingly in the over-30 crowd as well. Twitter.com is one of the highest traffic websites around and it would be to any small business owners advantage to realize potential for using this social media technology to get more traffic to their business Web site and ultimately increased sales.

Knowing how to use Twitter to benefit your business can result in some significant marketing benefits, because both Google.com and Bing.com are now incorporating Tweets into their search engine results via the “Real-Time” search option so that searchers can get real-time information on a hot topic (such as a breaking news event).

In order for your business to make the most of searchers using the “Real-Time” search option, there are a few simple Search Engine Marketing (SEM) rules you should remember to follow when Tweeting about your business to increase the chances that your Tweets show up in the search engines;

  1. Because the first 42 characters of your Tweet is what Google use is to index your Tweet in its database, make texture sure to use these characters wisely. For instance, use abbreviations whenever possible such as “&” instead of “and”.
  2. Include your most important keywords in your Tweets if at all possible, being careful not to sound too spammy. Always follow the K.I.S.S. principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid) in mind went composing business-related Tweets.
  3. Encourage your followers to Retweet your messages by limiting your Tweets to no more than 120 characters so as to save room for the “RT @ username” that is added when someone Retweets your messages to their followers.
  4. Do your best to increase your Twitter account’s “Usage” (i.e. number of new visitors to your account, referring sites, page views, time spent on the site, etc.) as it’s generally believed that the higher your Usage, better chance your Tweets will rank higher in the search engine results for your keywords.

Remember, having and using a Twitter account for your business will get you more visitors is the search engines but the real value lies in non-SEM benefits. Links from social media sites like Twitter can improve your business’s overall reputation both in the search engines as well as on the Internet, and this increase presence comes to facilitate branding.