7 SEO strategies to implement in 2015

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) sounds a bit like rocket science. With the right combo of this widget and that module, add in time, subtract theory and maybe the equation will produce a solution better than the last.
Like most technology, what was applied last year in online marketing efforts may already be outdated. Those tactics are dying a slow half-life while the competition is jumping to the top of search. With every new year, you must reevaluate your strategies without having to dedicate a good chunk of the marketing department’s change.
When much of the bottom-line depends on the ability to reach more potential customers, readers and service users, it only makes sense to do everything in your power to enhance that reach.
To do so, enlist the company of tried and true third party tools as well as free resources from the search engine rulers themselves, Google and Bing. Here are seven effective tactics you should explore in 2015.

1. Optimize for mobile search

In a recent study, GlobalWebIndex took a sampling of 170,000 adults in 32 markets around the globe. The results show that 80 percent of adults now have a smartphone; the average time spent on a mobile device was 1.85 hours a day (over a half hour increase from 2012).
As mentioned in SEO PowerSuite’s recent guide to mobile-friendly sites, for Google, nearly 50 percent of all traffic is mobile. Your mobile site, now more than ever, needs to be equal in presence, content and searchability as your desktop site. Plus, having a mobile-friendly site boosts your ranking slightly from the get-go before diving deep into updates.
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Google Adds Mobile-Friendliness and Indexed Apps as Ranking Factors

After a long testing period, Google has officially decided to consider mobile-friendliness and indexed apps as ranking factors in its search results.
There’s no denying that more and more users are shifting their search habits from desktop to mobile devices, and so in order to help them discover the most relevant, quality results, Google will soon surface more content that is optimized for mobile.
This algorithm update will take effect on April 21 of this year, and it will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide, says Google.
To prepare for the change, Google suggests webmasters should either conduct a mobile-friendly test or examine mobile usability issues by using the Mobile Usability Report in Google's Webmaster Tools.
Additionally, effective immediately Google will consider information from indexed apps as another ranking factor for signed-in users who have the app installed. Specifically, content from indexed apps may rank higher in Google search results for relevant queries. As a result, app developers will have to establish a relationship between their Web pages and app deep links.
In a seemingly related move, Google has just purchased the domain .app for the price of approximately $25 million in an auction held by The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The tech giant didn't disclose specific plans for the .app domain, the purchase will likely enable Google to better promote apps on mobile SERPs in the future.
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New Bing Ads Editor Version (10.7) Now Available

Changes include some subtle but welcome usability updates and, best of all, the ability to edit the text of keywords that have already been synced.

Today, the latest Bing Ads Editor, the indispensable desktop tool for (PC users only) managing campaigns, is now available with several new features. Here’s a look at what the new BAE has to offer.
Interface Changes: You’ll notice some updates in the layout of the new BAE. These aren’t huge changes, but the use of more traditional and prominent icons as well as a change from using all caps is welcome and makes navigating that much easier

 

Keyword Text Editing: The biggest win is probably the ability to edit keywords in the editor pane after they’ve been synced to the cloud. This was one of those seemingly small problems that was actually quite frustrating. All fixed now, so you can edit your keyword text all you want.

Radius Targeting: Radius targets are now included in the location targeting window in a new tab next to Area targeting.
Downloading & Uploading:  The new version also offers more control over which campaigns you can download with a “Campaigns I select” option. You also have the ability to download basic campaign data (read: faster) or to include first page bid estimates, top-of-page bid estimates and quality score in addition to the basics. Similarly, BAE now lets you post changes to an individual campaign rather than in all campaigns.
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The Importance Of Search Data In Your Marketing

When it comes to data utility, search has other digital marketing channels beat hands down. Contributor Alistair Dent explains how to use this and other bits of customer data without spending big bucks. 

I’m not going to lie, search has better data than any other digital channel.

Search might not have third-party data, as much contextual data, viewability stats or engagement/rollover metrics; but search queries are more informative because they provide accurate information about users and their mindsets.

Get your search data into your other channels.

When we categorize keywords, we tend to put them into three separate groupings:

• Keyword type (e.g. navigational, transactional or informational).
• Intent (buy now, best, cheapest, etc).
• Product type (home insurance vs car insurance).

Armed with this knowledge about what a person has searched for, we know how to treat them. If it comes down to a “data shootout”, search is the strongest contender.
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The Hardest AdWords Quiz You’ll Ever Take

You think you're an AdWords expert, but we're betting you can't score 100% on columnist Larry Kim's quiz!

If you’re using Google AdWords on a somewhat regular basis, you probably think you know a lot about the platform and service. But how well do you really know AdWords?
I promise this will be the hardest AdWords quiz you’ll ever take!  I’m timing you… just kidding, but challenge yourself not to go Googling the answers as you work your way through this. See what you really know.
And… GO!

1. What Are The Phone Number And Hours For The Official AdWords Support Line?

 

All right, this is a bit of a trick question.
Answer: Google AdWords offers phone support in over 80 countries, so if you got the hours and phone number for your country, you’re right! But how would you ever know? Check the World Phone Support page and toggle to your country in the dropdown list. If your country isn’t listed, you’ll need to use their Contact Us web form for help.
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Google Search Algorithm Adds Mobile-Friendly Factors & App Indexing To Ranking

Google's mobile ranking algorithm will officially include mobile-friendly usability factors and app indexing. Making sure your site is mobile-friendly is now more important than ever.

Google announced it is making two significant changes to its search algorithm for ranking the mobile search results.
Google will be using mobile-friendly factors in its mobile search results starting on April 21, 2015, and it will rank mobile apps participating in App Indexing for signed-in users better in the mobile search results starting today.

Mobile-Friendly Web Sites To Rank Better In Mobile Search

Google said that on April 21, 2015, Google’s mobile ranking factors will not only label your site as mobile-friendly, but will also use that to determine if your site should rank higher in the search results. Google said this algorithmic change will have a “significant impact” in the mobile search results, impacting all languages worldwide.
Google said this is expanding on its mobile ranking demotion algorithm launched back in 2013.
Google also said “users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.”
Why not now? Google said it wants sites to prepare; so, you have a few months to get your websites mobile-friendly. Google told us it had been experimenting with mobile ranking factors recently, and now it is here.
To prepare, you can use Google’s mobile usability reports and the mobile friendly testing tool. You can also see Google’s mobile guidelines.

Mobile Apps That Google Indexes To Rank Better In Mobile Search

Google further said that starting right now, apps that are indexed by Google through App Indexing will begin to rank better in mobile search. Google said this only will work for signed-in users who have the app installed on their mobile devices, which means only Android apps today. Google explained this “may now surface content from indexed apps more prominently in search.”
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Study: Google Now Displays Rich Answers For 19.45% Of Queries

Rich answers are now displaying for targeted queries at a rate or 19.45% for targeted queries, according to a new study by Stone Temple Consulting.

Google’s rich answers have helped settle many a bet (in near-instant fashion), and these insta-answers seem to be cropping up more and more often.
The folks at Stone Temple Consulting performed an in-depth look at 850,000 search queries and found that 19.45% trigger these rich answers.

 

The study was aimed to uncover these answers, specifically, so the sample size wasn’t randomized. The queries examined were picked as the goal was to try to trigger these queries; the 19.45% display rate isn’t for all searches performed across the web.
The study also includes details on the locations that provide the data leveraged in the rich answer. Of the domains used to power the answers, Stone Temple Consulting reports that more than half used have a domain authority of 60 or less.
The study also covers attribution data uncovered for the rich answers, which is quite fascinating. Only 25% of the queries don’t provide attribution at all. The sector that provides the most attribution was, surprisingly, the lyrics space.
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How To Use Fetch As Googlebot Like An SEO Samurai

For those of you not familiar with this feature in Google Webmaster Tools, contributor John Lincoln explores its capabilities in depth. 

Do you know about Fetch as Googlebot? It is a feature of Webmaster Tools that allows you to input a URL, evaluate it, and (should you choose) submit it to the Google index for a fresh crawl. In this post, I am going to show you how to use the Fetch as Googlebot feature like an SEO samurai.

What Is Fetch As Googlebot

Fetch as Googlebot has two modes.
Fetch – Quick Check
In this mode, Googlebot will crawl a URL based on a path you specify, and you can then view the response your site sent to Googlebot. This can be used to check connectivity, basic errors, redirects or security issues with your website.

Fetch & Render – Deeper View
In this mode, Google crawls the URL and displays the page the way a browser would.

First, Googlebot gets all the resources referenced by your URL such as picture, CSS, and JavaScript files, running any code. to render or capture the visual layout of your page as an image. You can use the rendered image to detect differences between how Googlebot sees your page, and how your browser renders it.

How To Use Fetch As GoogleBot

Here are the basic steps:

1. On the Webmaster Tools home page, select your site.
2. In the left-hand navigation, click Crawl and then select Fetch as Google.
3. In the textbox, enter the path component of a URL on your site that you want Googlebot to retrieve.
4. From the grey drop-down, choose the type of Googlebot with which you wish to perform a fetch (or fetch and render).

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Google Testing A Red “Slow” Label In The Search Results For Slower Sites

Is your site unusually slow? Google is testing a red slow label in the search results that will warn searchers before they click over to your web site.

In 2010, Google baked in page speed as a ranking factor into the search algorithm. Since then, Google has released a ton of reports and tools to help you improve your page speed for both users and the algorithm.
But today I spotted via a Google+ post that Google may be testing red “Slow” labels in the mobile search results. The slow label would indicate if a particular web page is slow and warn the user before clicking over to the site that it may load slowly.
Here is a picture from K Neeraj Kayastha:

 

Of course it is interesting that these two sites labelled as slow are operated by Google.
This reminds me of when Google was testing the mobile-friendly label, which eventually went live in the search results.
We have reached out to Google for a comment on this slow icon and if/when we hear back, we will update this story.
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Yes, Google Is Testing Green Star Reviews In The Search Results

Google says expect more experiments with the colors of the stars in the search results over the next few months. The green starts some of you are seeing is indeed a test.

 About six-months ago, Google began testing color variations for the reviews stars you would see in the search results. Typically you would see orange colored stars next to sites that deployed review rich snippets, but sometimes Google tests different colors.
Over the past week or so, Google has upped these tests, showing mostly green stars as opposed to the orange/yellow stars. A Google spokesperson told us today, “yes, we’ve been experimenting a bit with colors there.” Adding, “you may see more experiments along these lines going forward.”
Here is a picture of the orange/yellow stars that you’d normally see:

 Here is one of many pictures sent to me, this is from @WLau89, showing green stars:

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Yahoo Gains Share And Query Volume In Latest comScore Search Report

Firefox deal powers second straight month of growth for Yahoo search.

Announced last November, the Firefox default search deal continues to pay dividends for Yahoo. ComScore’s January US (desktop) search market share report is out, showing continued volume and share gains for the company.
By comparison Google saw its second consecutive decline in query volume. After growth in December Bing’s share was flat in January.
Yahoo’s query volumes were up a significant 11 percent vs. negative growth for AOL, Ask and Google. Below are the relative shares of the three major engines graphed for the trailing six months.

The comScore numbers above don’t include mobile. This is what the current US mobile search market looks like according to StatCounter:

• Google: 84.2 percent
• Yahoo: 9.6 percent
• Bing: 5.5 percent
• Others: 0.7 percent

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Google Now Warns You Before You Visit Sites That Contain Harmful Downloads

Google releases a new security measure to warn users before they visit sites that contain nefarious downloads.

Google has upgraded their security checks to not just warn you before you download harmful programs to your computer but also to warn you before you visit a site that has these downloads.
Within Google search, before you click to a web site that has such harmful downloads available on it, Google will warn you to stay away from the site. Google has warned users before they visit sites with malware, that are hacked or have other exploits but this is the first time Google is warning about sites with harmful downloads.
Google applied this not just to the organic search results but also to the AdWords listings and Chrome browser.
Google said:

In addition to showing warnings before you download unwanted software, Chrome will show you a new warning, like the one below, before you visit a site that encourages downloads of unwanted software.
Google Search now incorporates signals that identify such deceptive sites. This change reduces the chances you’ll visit these sites via our search results.
Ads: We recently began to disable Google ads that lead to sites with unwanted software.

Google has told me that this is unrelated to the hack mis-classifier from last week.
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Optimizing For The Google Quick Answers Box

Columnist Jim Yu of BrightEdge and Kirill Kronrod of Adobe share tips for getting your content featured in Google's Quick Answer box.

Google has made a lot of strides with the Quick Answer box over the past few years, and these developments have evoked mixed reactions from SEOs who see both the challenges and opportunities therein.
The challenge is, if a searcher can find the answer right in the search results, why would they click through to your site? The opportunity, however, is that if your site’s content is featured in the answer box with a link back to your site, you have prominent visibility.
In fact, the latest news in the quick answers dialogue is that Google is showing action-oriented links – basically calls-to-action – for certain queries in their answers box.

 

In this post, we’ll look at the fundamentals of optimizing for the answers box. I also asked Kirill Kronrod, a senior global SEO Manager at Adobe, to help by offering insights and optimization tips on how to improve quick answers visibility.

Optimizing For The Google Answers Box

For the purposes of this post, I am going to keep this brief but informative. There’s quite a bit to cover when it comes to semantic markup, structured data, and the Knowledge Graph.
The Google Knowledge Graph is what powers certain components on a search results page, and the quick answers box is just one of those components. Semantic markup, like that provided by Schema.org, is just one way to help communicate what’s on a page to search engines –beyond the basic SEO optimization practices we employ.
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Local Search Provider YP Offers All-Inclusive PPC Search Product For SMBs

Company says its platform automates campaigns across networks.

Local search provider YP has launched a one-stop-shop local PPC solution targeting small and medium businesses. It combines YP’s own PPC-search inventory with paid-search ads on Google, Yahoo and Bing.
The company has been a Google AdWords Premier SMB Partner for years, as well as a Yahoo Bing Network Strategic Ambassador. Now it’s adding its own PPC search inventory to reach consumers across its local search network. The same campaign can run across sites/engines.
YP argues that its users are more valuable because they’re typically closer to buying decisions:

According to a recent comScore study commissioned by YP, people who initiated a search on YP bought more often than other internet searchers and were more influenced by advertising, with 66% having made a purchase after their search and six out of ten (61%) having searched for a business after seeing it featured in an ad.

The same generalization can be made about all local searchers and especially mobile search users, the majority of whom are ready to make a purchase within hours.
The new platform behind YP’s new search offering promises “a new optimization engine [that automates] many of the complex tasks required to build and manage a campaign across multiple search sites at once, the engine takes in performance data across those search sites to manage budgets on a daily basis.”
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Google Gives Businesses More Photo Control With My Business Upgrade

New photo section includes the ability to choose between profile, logo and cover images as display for maps and search.

Google is giving businesses more control of photos displayed with their search and map results, today announcing an update to the Google My Business product.
From the Google blog post introducing the change:

Starting today, you can tell us which image you’d like to appear when customers search for your business on Google. Just log in to Google My Business on the web or in the Android or iOS apps, and visit the Photos section. While you’re there, you can also give your business a fresh look online by updating your profile, logo and cover photos.

The new photo interface walks business owners through six categories of images — identity photos, interior photos, exterior photos, photos at work, team photos and additional photos. The dashboard includes explanatory hints for each category (sample: “Interior photos help your customers get a feel for the ambiance and decor of your business. Capture photos that truthfully show what it’s like to stand inside your business as a customer.”)
From the identity section — the profile, logo and cover photos — a business manager can select which image he or she wants displayed on search and map results.
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Google Search Tests “Chat” Button In Local Business Box

Google is testing showing a live chat button in the local search box within the web search results for some businesses.

Matt Gibstein posted on Twitter screen shots of Google testing live chat functionality within the Google search results, where they show local business information in the knowledge graph local box.
The chat button displays in the business box and when initiated opens up a Google Hangouts/Google Chat window. The Chat button also displays the availability of someone from the company available to chat with customers.
Here is that picture, taken from TechCrunch:

 I checked the Google My Business console for a way to activate this feature on businesses I personally manage, but I do not see the option as of yet. I assume that this is tied to “managers” of the business and that if a manager is active on Google Chat/Hangouts, it may show the “chat” button in the local box in the search results.

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The Main Ingredients of an Effective SEO Mix

A website will draw much of its success from search engines. As a low cost, high reward strategy, search engine optimization is a road that all websites have traveled but only a few have succeeded in.
By building a website keeping the best on- and off-page optimization practices in mind, you can rank at the very top page of Google and enjoy thousands of organic traffic. You can then turn your traffic into leads and customers to increase your sales.
But before you can enjoy the benefits of a well-executed SEO strategy, you need to identify the components that make up the greater whole.
Below are the five ingredients that will make up your SEO campaign.

Keyword Research

Finding the right keywords to rank for your website is the most important step before you can execute different on- and off-page optimization tactics.

When choosing keywords, it is ideal to pick keywords that are searched the most times and with little competition from other websites.
To determine how many times the keywords are searched by users on Google, go to Google Keyword Planner and search for your desired keywords there. Look at the average monthly search volume to see the estimate number of times the keywords have been searched. You can filter the results from this row by global or local monthly search volume (for local SEO).
The tool will also return related keywords that you can include in your research. If the tool does not provide enough keyword suggestions, head on to Übersuggest for more lists of keywords to choose from. Another alternative to Google Keyword Planner is Keyword.io, which includes Autocomplete suggestions into the list.
These are the most used and popular keyword research tools that everybody uses. If you want another alternative, AuthorityMetrics is an upcoming keyword tool that will help you find the most profitable and transactional keywords in your niche.

Content Strategy

Your content strategy is the foundation where you website will stand on.Now that you have chosen your keywords to optimize for, you need to identify the objectives, core message, and secondary messages that support the reason why you are building a website in the first place.

You will also need to figure out a way how your social media, blog, and landing pages will function towards achieving the main goal of your website. Do you want to earn money from the sales you make, build a community of paid members, or build a mailing list that you can monetize later?
Using your objectives, determine your target audience. Break them down to your desired demographics (age, gender, location, education, salary, etc.) You will need to create your ideal customer profile, which will be used as basis for creating your marketing strategy.
Conduct a competitor analysis in this stage. Use your keywords to find the highest ranking sites and pages. If the site is similar to yours, identify its strengths and weaknesses. Find a “gap” or a specific item in your agenda that they failed to put in their site so you can fill that gap with your site. For more information on how to do a competitor analysis, read this post on HubSpot.

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Local SEO: Is the ROI Worth the Billing?

There is no doubt that marketing your business on the internet can help you attract new customers and clients, but how can you tell if it is worth the return on your investment? How do you gauge the overall success of your local SEO campaign and measure the effectiveness of an SEO service provider? You may be surprised to find that there are several ways and very specific indicators to help you better determine if your local SEO campaign is worth the return on investment.

SEM and SEO
Paying for online advertising can prove to be very expensive, depending on the marketing methods that are used. Search Engine Marketing and Pay Per Click advertising can bring in a substantial amount of traffic, but it is only a short term tactic that drives traffic to your business. PPC advertising will cost as much money as you can throw at it and will typically be an ongoing expense. If your business is fairly new or just starting to develop an online presence, SEM does serve a purpose in building immediate traffic, but does not provide any long term solutions.

Search engine optimization is the most cost effective solution and will have a much higher ROI. It provides long term benefits and continual traffic, yet it takes more time to establish and get ranked among search engines. Some of these time consuming tasks should be outsourced to industry professionals, as the rules of the game change constantly. Hiring an SEO company will also ensure that your website does not have any potentially negative characteristics that can hurt your rank.

Performance Reports
A good SEO service provider will keep you in the loop as to how much new business and revenue is being generated. Performance reports can be used to compare increases in sales, traffic, inquiries and conversion rates. Bringing in more traffic to your business is important, but converting those leads into sales is the ultimate goal. Having a good knowledge of your past performance and what your sales looked like before implementing a local SEO campaign will help you determine whether your efforts are successful or not. A thorough analysis of your traffic should be included, which can help you hone in on audiences that are more likely to convert into sales. Tracking all of your consumer data allows you to not only achieve better results, but it can also help you lower customer acquisition costs by constantly refining your marketing plan.

Cost vs. Benefits
The benefits of paying for local SEO campaigns typically outweigh the costs, regardless of the business model. Just as every business is unique, so are the specific internet marketing tactics that will be used. What may work for one company, may not for others in the same industry. It is always a good idea to hire an SEO company, as many lack the technical expertise that is required or knowledge of best practices. They can offer valuable insights and fine tune your marketing strategies to realize the maximum benefits.If you are considering on spending money towards a local SEO campaign, you will definitely get positive results.

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Android “Default Search” Class Action Against Google Tossed By Judge

Plaintiffs had failed to show connection between "MADAs" and consumer harm.

Last week, Russian search engine Yandex filed a formal complaint against Google in its home market, arguing that Google was using its control over Android and market power to ensure a privileged position for its apps on Android homescreens and handsets. In the U.S., a similar argument was made in the context of a would-be class action lawsuit filed in May 2014.
At the time, I argued that damages or “consumer harm” would be extremely difficult for plaintiffs to show in the case. Indeed, that seems to be the core of U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman’s decision to dismiss the action. While unlikely to survive, the case isn’t completely dead. Plaintiffs were given the opportunity amend their complaint on damages and some of the other claims made.
When it closed its antitrust case against Google, U.S. FTC decided not to pursue any action against on the same Android “default search” issue. Google has an 84 percent mobile search market share in the U.S., according to StatCounter.
The plaintiffs had argued that Google’s Mobile Application Distribution Agreement (MADA) agreements with hardware makers ultimately result in higher prices paid by consumers for Android smartphones and tablets:

If device manufacturers bound by Google’s distribution agreements were free to choose a default search engine other than Google, the quality of Internet search overall would improve because search engines become more effective as they process more and more search queries. With default search engine status providing access to more searches, Google’s competitors in search would become more effective as they processed more queries, and this competition would push Google to improve as well. Also, if Google’s rivals were allowed to compete for default status, they would do so in part by offering to pay device manufacturers for that status on various Android smartphones and tablets. Such payments to device manufacturers, maximized by way of competitive bidding, would lower the bottom-line cost associated with production of the covered devices, which in turn would lead to lower consumer prices for smartphones and tablets.

According to The Recorder, the judge found the connection between “default search” status on Android devices and consumer harm to be too tenuous or speculative. There was also no showing that consumers couldn’t simply switch to another search engine. And there was no evidence offered that innovation in the market was being negatively affected.
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Here’s What To Expect When You Hire A Paid Search Agency

You've found a great partner to manage your paid search advertising campaigns. What now? Columnist Pauline Jakober explains how to get off on the right foot with your PPC agency. 

You’re a B2B company, and just you hired a paid search agency. What should you expect next? If you’re not prepared to answer that question, there’s probably already something missing.
A good PPC agency will take you through multiple steps leading up to the big launch of a new online advertising program. You should know what to expect each step of the way.
In this post, we’ll look at some ways you can vet a PPC agency by understanding the process that goes into a well-organized paid search engagement, from ink to launch.

Kick-Off Meeting(s) & Onboarding

Every PPC agency will have its own onboarding process for new clients, so how it plays out is custom to the agency itself. However, ensuring a process exists is crucial. If your paid search service provider doesn’t do anything discussed in this section, you may be in for a rocky ride.
The kick-off meeting or meetings, is a crucial time for the agency to get to know the business in depth (beyond the initial sales calls), and for the client to understand how the agency works.
Think of the PPC agency almost as new hires internally, where you get them up to speed on the ins and outs of the business. An agency cannot effectively create a paid search strategy without first understanding the business intimately.
In this stage, the agency should take the lead by sharpening its listening skills, and effectively taking the client through a systematic interview. The result of this discussion should be documentation of the client’s sales process, the services or products, preferred customers and so on.
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Google Showing Colorful Line Separators In Mobile Search Results Snippets

Do you see the new Google mobile interface in the search results? Google colored line breaks instead of the gray colored line breaks.

Many mobile searchers on iOS and Android are noticing Google testing a new mobile interface where instead of showing a gray line separator between the mobile search snippets, they are showing colorized lines, in Google colors.
Here is a before and after screen shot from Android Police:

 

More and more mobile searchers are seeing this look in their mobile search results interface. I personally cannot replicate this on my iOS devices but many people are seeing this. This may signal that this is not necessarily a test but something Google has decided to roll out to all mobile users and the roll out is taking time to propagate fully to everyone.

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Analytics as the Source of Truth – The Power of Data Integration

We’ve all got a big job to do when it comes to our discipline in digital marketing – whether it’s SEO, paid search, social media, or being on a team that does it all. Do you measure your marketing? Do you feel confident in the metrics you’re tracking?
Let’s face it: marketers struggle with and businesses don’t fully have a handle on their Web analytics most of the time. Like most disciplines within Web marketing, analytics is a standalone skill set developed over time.
But no one will ever become great at finding those gems of insight that drive business outcomes without the right analytics. And there are so many ways that Web analytics and a lack of understanding of how to harness analytics are holding businesses back from making the best decisions.
In this post, we’ll look at two big ways your Web analytics could be holding you back right now:

1. A lack of integration with other data points
2. Limitations in tracking insightful metrics

1. Lack of Integration

Have you taken stock lately of the different analytics tools you use on a daily basis that are task-based? You might have one tool that gives you a snapshot of this, and one tool that fills in the gaps in that, and yet another you can layer on top of it all.
This then puts you, the marketer, in the middle of trying to integrate different types of data, and how they might correlate with one another, and then trying to derive meaningful insight from that.
You are not a machine, and this is a highly inefficient use of your time.

How Analytics Should Work – Analytics as the Source of Truth

The right analytics technology should do the heavy lifting for its human counterpart, making it easier for the professionals to do what they do best – making strategic decisions.
Integrating multiple data points, and processing them in a way that standardizes the data and shows the entire picture in one place helps us all solve the problem of big data – that is, finding the right data.
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SEO Reporting – A Simple Yet Powerful Approach

As we all know, reporting for SEO can be very complex. One way to simplify is to begin thinking about it as a two-piece logical flow, SERP first, impact second. In other words, show SERP change followed by the impact on a particular site.
You may have heard before, "Ever since secured search happened, keyword reporting is DEAD!!", or that it’s an outdated way of thinking. A general response to this should be...not really. The retort, "The ability to tie conversion directly to keywords in analytics has died, but we can still show a correlation in SERP change at a URL level."
In this article we’ll walk through how to simply use data available in Google Webmaster Tools and put it next to a URL-level analytics report to obtain keyword-level insights.

Tools:

• Google Webmaster Tool Search Query Top Pages Report
• Google Analytics Report (find custom report here)
• Sheet Template (file -> download to get copy)

Grab Analytics URL Comparison Report

Let’s begin creating a custom report in Google Analytics, you can import this report using this link. If creating manually, look for Customization after clicking through to the profile, then create the report shown below.

 

Select Date Range

Let’s take advantage of the date range comparison functionality of Google Analytics. Select the desired date range and click Apply.

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Yahoo Wants To Syndicate Search To 600,000 Mobile Apps

Flurry gives Yahoo massive mobile reach and developer access.

Yahoo’s first mobile developer conference, held yesterday in San Francisco, was impressive for a company that a couple years ago was pronounced dead from an engineering and product standpoint.
Relying heavily on personnel from Yahoo’s Flurry acquisition and the latter’s deep penetration into the mobile developer community, Yahoo has launched an ambitious plan to extend the reach of its search, display and video ads through a new Mobile Developer Suite.
The free offering brings multiple products together for app developers to help them drive app installs and then analyze and monetize their traffic and usage. The Developer Suite includes:

• Flurry Analytics with Explorer  (app analytics)
• Yahoo App Publishing (app monetization)
• Yahoo App Marketing (user acquisition)
• Yahoo Search in Apps (Yahoo web search integration + ads)
• Flurry Pulse (transmission of data to partners)

Flurry is currently embedded as an analytics solution in more than 600,000 mobile apps. It says it reaches 1.6 billion devices worldwide and sees a third of all app activity globally. For comparison, Facebook said that it had “745 million mobile daily active users on average for December 2014.”
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Bing Offers Link To Order Food Online From Your Favorite Restaurants

Now you can order your food online with Bing search. Just search for a restaurant that offers online ordering and click the order online button.

Bing announced you can now order food from restaurants by clicking on the “order online” button within the Bing local search results.
Bing said it enabled this feature for “restaurants that deliver.” Just click “order online” to launch an ordering service that the restaurant uses. It seems Bing is working with several online ordering services from eat24, EATStreet, BringMeThat and others. Clicking the “order online” button will take you off the Bing search results and directly into the online ordering platform.
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Google AdWords Launches An Android App For Advertisers But Currently Only For Canadians

Canadian Google AdWords advertisers can now download an Android app for free, to manage their AdWords campaign on the go. Google promises to expand support to other countries soon.

Google has launched a new Android app in the Google Play store for AdWords advertisers to stay on top of their campaigns, adjust bids, get support and be notified of changes. The new app is free to download but only currently works for Canadian advertisers – Google promises to expand support to other countries soon.
The new app gives advertisers the ability to view their AdWords campaign statistics, update bids and budgets for those campaigns, and be notified with real-time alerts and notification. It also lets you call a Google expert through the app and even act on suggestions to improve your campaigns.
Google did launch an AdWords Express App back in July 2014, which is a subset of AdWords functionality.

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New ‘Call-Only’ Ad Types Arrives In Google AdWords To Make Mobile Easier

A new ad type will give mobile-centric marketers the ability to set up phone call conversion only campaigns.

A new ad unit has been spotted in AdWords that is geared towards mobile marketers looking at calls for conversions. The new “call-only” ads can be chosen during the ad creation process to help make mobile ad creation (for those into calls) easy.
This functionality was previously able to be accomplished with a detailed call extension set-up, but the new ad type is dead simple. First, users click to create ads, then they can drop down to choose the call-only ad type.

 

After placing in all of their ad information, proper URL and phone call tracking users will have an ad that will not drive traffic to their site, rather will only drive calls. So why the URL you may be asking. It helps show who users are in fact calling, and when the ad is clicked, the number is loaded up on the searcher’s phone. It should also be noted that when a click occurs (not necessarily a call) the advertiser is charged.

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Google News Bug Drops Trending Topics From Side Bar Navigation

A Google bug breaks the Trending Topics feature in Google News. A fix is coming soon, says Google's Stacie Chan.

The Google News home page lost a feature about a week ago that lets you quickly view trending topics on the left hand side bar. Reports began coming in a week ago, which Google only replied to within the past 24 hours in a forum thread.
The trending topics feature would show the most active news related searches on the left hand side bar. Here is a picture of what it looked like some time ago from Adam Shrek’s blog:

That no longer shows up, instead you just see the standard news related categories, such as Word News, Technology, Entertainment and more.
Google’s Stacie Chan said that the appropriate team has been notified and “a fix is being worked on” that will hopefully bring back the feature “shortly.”
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Google’s New Hacked Classifier Misclassifies Some Web Sites As Hacked

Many web sites this morning noticed Google labeled their sites as being hacked and dangerous in the search results. The issue was not with their web sites but rather the Google hacked sites classifier.

Google has released a new hacked page classifier for its search results that had a bug leading to “a small number” of sites being misclassified as hacked.
This morning, I noticed an unusual number of complaints in the help forums with complaints that their hacked-free sites were labeled by Google as “this site may be hacked.” The label is just under the clickable link in the Google search results, which would make any searcher wary about visiting the site.
Here is a screen shot of one of the many examples of sites misclassified:

 

A Google spokesperson told us that this was an issue with a revised hacked page classifier it released last night or this morning. Here is Google’s statement:

We’re slowly rolling out a new hacked page classifier (not CMS specific) and noticed a small number of misclassifications. We’re sorry for any trouble this may have caused — we are working on addressing the issues.

Those who have this warning listed on their website in Google have nothing to do but wait until Google fixes the issue. During that time, one would expect the click-through rate on the search listing would drop heavily.
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5 Techniques To Safely Get Links In 2015

Link building is important, but it can be dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. Today, columnist Neil Patel shares his white hat link building tips.

Any trustworthy SEO knows that “link building,” while necessary, can be potentially dangerous.
In the minds of many, “link building” is synonymous with the spammy, black hat SEO techniques of years past; yet, high-quality links remain the single largest off-site ranking factors used by the search engines.
Google has evolved to the point where it’s simply not possible to indiscriminately build links to a site and expect ranking. Try that, and you’ll get a penalty.
So, how can you safely build links in 2015? There remain several legitimate and appropriate ways. Following are the five that I use most often.

1. Guest Blog & Get Others To Do It, Too

As with any technique, you have to be careful with guest blogging. The declaration from Google head of webspam Matt Cutts that “guest blogging is done” is only partially true. Google took down several major blog networks, indicating that they were really serious about penalizing spammy guest blogging. It is likely that Google will continue to refine their algorithm to weed out even more of these less-than-trustworthy forms of guest blogging.
But there remains and will remain a strong and authentic side to guest blogging. That is what I’m referring to.
Guest blogging is not in itself a method of gaining guest blogs. If a website owner or editor trusts you to create high-quality content, they are not giving you permission to start aiming backlinks at your website. They are instead trusting you to produce excellent content that their readers will love.
If you have a byline or an occasion to mention some other articles you’ve written, then you may be entitled to a link.
Let me be very clear about guest blogging and its relationship to backlinks. The purpose of guest blogging is not backlinks. The minute you start doing that, websites and editors will know what’s going on. You’ll get voted off the island.
If, however, the context, content, and subject of your guest post require it, then you can link to your own material. The goal is to be as helpful, clear, and informative as possible.
Keep in mind that guest blogging is a scalable way to earn great backlinks. If you have other influencers in your company who are skilled and willing to write, then encourage them to get into guest blogging, too. Guest blogging is a powerful method for growing one’s personal brand, and it benefits the company as a whole.
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11 SEO Tactics You Need to Know in 2015

As search engines continue to evolve, marketers must improve their skills to keep up. According to reports 70 percent of the links search users click are from SEO. Also, inbound leads (i.e. SEO) cost 61 percent less than outbound leads (i.e. cold calling).
SEO has a better return on investment (ROI) as well. "SEO leads have a 14.6 percent close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7 percent close rate," according to the same report.
Now that you know SEO is the way to go, here are 11 SEO tactics that you need to know in 2015:

1. Creating Incredible Content That Earns Links

Even after all of the changes with the search engine algorithms, inbound SEO links are still the biggest influence for search engines. This is unlikely to change. On the other hand, other methods of link acquisition have changed. Earning a link from a high-quality, relevant website will not only help with your SEO but also with referral traffic, which can lead to more sales and brand exposure. Creating incredible content that people will want to share is still the best way to earn links.

2. Co-Citation Links

Every time a search engine finds your website next to your competitors, it tells them that your company is in a related niche. To get co-citation links, do a search for "best" or "top 10" items in your niche.
Example: top 10 blue widgets
If you do this search and don’t find your business in the results, get in touch with the publisher and ask that your company be added to the list. Be prepared to justify why your company should be included and where appropriate, give them a summary to go along with a link.

3. Editorial Links

Editorial links can be some of the most powerful for SEO because they come from other publications in your niche mentioning your company. They can also come from thought leadership guest posts that you write and get published on third-party sites.
The easiest way to get editorial links is to create outstanding content that people will want to share with their readers. Another way is to guest post on a high-quality site that is in your niche. Be prepared to create incredible content that may be heavily scrutinized before publishing.
Interviews are another way to get editorial links.
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Local SEO For Franchises Means Teamwork

Contributor Chris Marentis explores the unique SEO challenges and opportunities for franchisees and franchisors.

SEO is commonly viewed as one of the most challenging marketing activities to orchestrate across a national-to-local network. In addition to trying to figure out how to “win” at SEO in general, franchise businesses also often face the unique dilemma of needing multiple sites from the same domain to rank well in a search results.
Localization no doubt comes to mind immediately as the solution to this problem. While this is the ultimate route to success, some very specific considerations must be factored in for a local SEO campaign for franchises to be properly executed.

Start At The Beginning

Certainly the primary website should be the first area to focus on. Duplicate content is, of course, the big no-no here. One way that franchisors can avoid this is to offer their franchisees multiple versions of the basic website.
Each version can include not only slightly different copy but also varied images. It’s important to remember that content is not synonymous with copy.

Localize With Purpose

Gone are the days when localization meant simply changing out the city and state in the body copy or a headline and keeping all other content as is. For starters, localization today should focus not just on a city or geographical region but a neighborhood or smaller locale. The pendulum is shifting back to the more personal and more local.

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