On Oct. 17, Google launched its new algorithm, Penguin 3.0, and completed the full rollout on Oct. 20. The new filter was specifically created to prevent spam and provide more actionable, valuable search results for users. According to Search Engine Land, this updated version of Penguin includes changes in the way Google treats websites that violate its linking guidelines. This means companies might need to consider changing their search engine optimization strategies to ensure that their websites remain high-ranking search results.
Inc. contributor Drew Hendricks noted that, similar to last year's release of Penguin 2.1, this new algorithm may only impact an estimated 1 percent of search queries. However, in the grand scheme of overall Internet traffic, that query count remains astronaumical. For this reason, it is critical that business leaders – particularly those in the e-commerce sector – understand the changes brought by Penguin 3.0 and how to optimize their SEO techniques for the new filter to their advantage.
Penguin refresh: Treatment of spam links
While many are referring to the release as a complete update, Google's Pierre Far noted that this version was more of a refresh of last year's Penguin 2.1. Much of this revolves around Google's treatment of spammy links. Last year, many companies put considerable work to remove spammy inbound links, only to see minimal improvements in search result rankings.
"[T]his means that the site merely updated its algorithms to release those sites that had repaired their issues after the last update and pinpoint any issues that might have been missed by previous updates," Hendricks explained. "As a result, sites that didn't repair issues but remained high in search results may notice a sudden drop."
Moreover, QuickSprout contributor Neil Patel pointed out that Penguin 3.0 also looks for optimized or exact-match keyword anchors, low-quality backlinks and links leading back to guest blogging networks.
Optimize your site for Penguin 3.0
Keeping these points in mind, there are several best practices website administrators and marketing strategists can leverage to prevent being weeded out of search results. Power Retail contributor and digital strategist John Vlasakakis suggested utilizing the following strategies:
Although some companies may think Penguin 3.0 may not impact them, Patel pointed out that there is no harm in optimizing your website for improved search results.
"Even if you don't think you're at risk, performing these actions will help your link profile," Patel wrote. "There's never any harm in taking action to clean up your website. It won't hurt, and it definitely might help."
Google Analytics is a powerful, free tool that can give business leaders an in-depth view of the effectiveness of their company's online presence. In the first part of this series, we examined an array of available features as well as the benefits for enterprises that leverage those capabilities. In this entry, we'll go beyond the surface of the program to get a better idea of the various uses of Google Analytics.
Getting started: Google Analytics homepage
Let's begin with the homepage. Social Media Examiner contributor Kristi Hines noted that this page immediately offers some basic information, including the list of websites connected with your Google Analytics account, the total number and average duration of sessions, and the bounce and goal conversion rates for all the sites listed.
The homepage is searchable and customizable – the page includes a search box for easy navigation of the websites included in your account, as well as the ability to mark the most important sites with a star.
This page also includes a date range feature, enabling you to see historical information about a certain website over a specified time period, or compare these statistics to the platform's current data.
More information: Google Analytics reporting
The homepage provides an overarching view of the basic metrics for each website. However, for a more in-depth picture, users can navigate to the Google Analytics Reporting page, accessible through a menu bar at the top of the screen. This menu also provides options for the homepage, Customization and Admin sections.
Once on the Reporting page, the left sidebar offers the ability to locate and view certain reports and resources:
Customize the view of your audience
One of the biggest advantages of Google Analytics is its insight into your customers' behavior. The program makes it easy for you to take an in-depth look at your website visitors, customizing how information about these consumers is presented.
WordStream contributor Dan Shewan drew attention to the Interests Overview section under Audience reporting, where you can access a broad view of Interests reports, including different subsets of information based on the type of users visiting the site. The Interests and Demographics reports – both accessible within the Audience reporting menu – provide an in-depth view of the type of individuals visiting your site based on their specific interests, age and gender. In the case of Shewan's reports, he was able to glean that the majority of his website visitors are males between 25 and 34 years old, working in financial or investment services who have an interest in technology.
With this information, website owners can create custom segments to separate users depending on the available categories through the Audience reporting menu under the All Sessions drop-down menu. Shewan noted that certain segments can now be viewed and compared.
"This segment can now be measured against other visitor traffic to gain insight into how certain types of visitors behave in comparison to one another," Shewan wrote.
By leveraging these in-depth Google Analytics capabilities, website owners are able to see just how their overall audience is interacting with the platform, how certain subsets are behaving and historical comparisons. Armed with this information, page administrators are able to craft a more focused, effective website that will not only benefit their business, but will provide the solutions their customers are seeking.
Stay tuned for the final chapter of our Google Analytics series, where we'll examine the latest Google search algorithms and what these mean for your site's search engine optimization.
Fifteen years ago, when Google was launched, it included very basic capabilities, boasting that its search index included 25 million pages. That simple search engine evolved into one of the most powerful resources available, expanding to include a whole host of tools beneficial not only for individuals, but for the enterprise community as well.
Google now provides a range of capabilities for users, including Google Analytics. This series will examine the tools available with Google Analytics and how they benefit businesses.
Top Google Analytics Tools
Today, a considerable number of companies within the e-commerce and other sectors utilize Google Analytics. According to Venture Beat contributor John Boitnott, these are some of the platform's most widely utilized capabilities:
• Acquisitions: Track clicks, conversions and other metrics.
• Content drilldown: View website content in terms of which pages visitors are viewing, how often, and their traffic path throughout the site.
• Bounce rates: See how long visitors remain on a page and if a poor bounce rate impacts revenues.
• Keywords: Check the specific words and phrases that drive visitors to the site.
While these are the most well-known features, Google Analytics offers a number of other beneficial tools:
• E-commerce tracking: This tool is specifically geared toward companies that do the bulk of their business online, and allows for real-time revenue measurement. Company leaders can track all purchases made through the website from its launch through that second. Boitnott noted that this can help businesses gain insight into how their online sales compare to those taking place within physical locations.
• Goal flow: This feature allows website administrators to see the path users are taking to navigate the site, where purchases are made, and where customers are leaving the site.
"This flow feature allows marketing analysts to take snapshots of the progression customers are actually taking, including where they loop back, get redirected, or exit midway," Boitnott wrote. "This explains customer behaviors and shows areas of your website where customers are getting confused or losing interest or where steps in the process are becoming entangled."
Using this, decision-makers can see exactly where their website needs improvement to shape consumers behavior.
• Attribution modeling: This tracking capability provides a view of all the touchpoints – places of customer contact – consumers are using to navigate the website. These can include leads from social media, blog links, search results or other sources. In addition, attribution modeling also allows the business to see just how many of these touchpoints resulted in purchases. This offers an in-depth picture of how customers are finding the website and what leads them to buy.
Benefits of Google Analytics
Now that we have a better idea of Google Analytics' capabilities, let's examine the ways in which these tools are beneficial.
One of the most valuable advantages is the ability to adjust and optimize the website for better exposure and increased web traffic, noted Full Traffic contributor Shobha Atre. Through the insights gathered via Google Analytics, website administrators can see which sections or pages of the platform need improvements and can use these findings as a guide when revamping the site.
Another benefit is the ability to track and measure the results of a marketing campaign. Today's businesses put a considerable amount of time and resources into improving their brand visibility. Google Analytics enables these groups to see how their initiatives are paying off.
"There are different functionalities using which you can determine whether your marketing campaign will be successful or not," Atre wrote. "As a result, you can get lots of opportunities for growing and diversifying your online business."
Google Analytics also provides the best view of website traffic, including where users initially land, what pages they visit most and what drives them to make purchases. These insights can be immensely helpful in ensuring the platform's usability and value.
It is worth any administrators' time to examine and utilize the features of Google Analytics to improve their business.
The next part of this series will take a look at the technical side of using Analytics, as well as how Google Algorithms impact search engine optimization.
Customers find their preferred vendors and service providers through a range of avenues, including brand-focused marketing and organic online searches. While some businesses treat these efforts as two separate entities, brand marketing and search engine optimization become much more impactful when they are aligned.
Web presence solutions provider Conductor found that paid searches result in 6 percent of consumer traffic, whereas 47 percent comes from organic searches. Through a combination of these efforts, both sides can be optimized. Ray Comstock of BusinessOnline, who specializes in aligning SEO and marketing, noted that when these aspects are treated separately, businesses are missing out on considerable opportunities.
"Our goal for any campaign is to better align as many marketing channels as possible with SEO best practices in order to better leverage all of these marketing activities from an organic search perspective," Comstock wrote in a post for Search Engine Watch.
Here are a few best practices for coordinating marketing and SEO strategies:
1) The use of regular and long-tail keywords
Using similar keywords and key phrases within both SEO and marketing content presents a unified message across platforms and better aligns these efforts. When choosing these words and phrases, decision-makers should consider what their target audience submits to search engines and what points will lead them to the brand. While singular keywords are important, Synecore contributor Kevin Page recommended focusing on long-tail phrases, as these constitute as much as 70 percent of all search terms. Page also advised utilizing these items strategically, and not stuffing keywords and phrases where they don't organically fit or belong.
"You should determine your long-tail keywords in the same way as you choose your regular keywords and include them within the text of your content, ALT text, meta descriptions [and] subheads," Page wrote. "Best of all, develop content around long-tail keywords that aligns with your products or services. This sets up your company to become a solution to your prospects' problems."
2) Leverage internal links
Organizations can take their keywords and phrases a step further by utilizing internal links to the company's top landing pages.
"Internal links are hyperlinks that send users to another page on your website or blog to ensure visitors stay longer on your site, while exposing them to more relevant and interesting content your company has created," Page noted.
Links can be included wherever keywords and long-tail phrases are used, including within digital marketing campaigns, blog posts, news releases and other business-focused content. As with keywords, internal links should not be overused. Too many key phrases and links can appear spammy and over-promotional.
3) Social media SEO and marketing
Comstock also advised leveraging social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and a company blog for both SEO and marketing purposes. This platform can help "extend messaging, promote content, and engage our target audience" through thought leadership that includes a focused, keyword-centered theme. To take this to the next step, a brand can utilize its social media page to support and encourage readership of its digital content. For instance, if an enterprise leader writes a particularly thoughtful and engaging blog post that includes strategic keywords, the business can promote and link to the post on its Facebook page. This will lead existing and potential customers through the business's different channels, from its social media page to its blog and eventually to its landing pages.
4) Internal training and communication
In order to underscore these efforts, Comstock recommended including this focus within the firm's internal communications to ensure everyone is on the same page. Furthermore, specific training on SEO and marketing can help build a unified team and empower all employees to contribute to the strategy. Comstock suggested training key staff members in keyword research and usage, web page and public relations optimization, social media and search engine optimization best practices, as well as internal linking strategies.
"By demystifying SEO across various groups within the company, we are able to align all of the groups against the goals and priorities of the SEO campaign," Comstock wrote.
5) Maintain a focus on end-user needs
Within this approach, company leaders should ensure that there is always a prime focus on providing for end-user needs, recommended Search Engine Land contributor Jim Yu. By using these demands to frame and govern both marketing and SEO strategies, the organization can be sure it is creating and offering content that matters to its customers.
"Optimizing content for search … has a massive impact on the value of your content while, at the same time, increasing productivity and efficiency of the SEO and content teams," Yu wrote. "This is in addition to the most important wins: greater outcomes for your business and a better experience for your visitors."
With these strategies in mind, your company can present a coherent message. Your SEO and marketing will sing in harmony.
When you build your own website, there are a number of essential factors to consider. These are not limited to the brand messaging, products or services to be featured and other content included on the platform. However, if the website is not optimized for search engines, users will have a very hard time finding – let alone visiting – the page.
For this reason, it is incredibly important that e-commerce firms, as well as businesses in every industry, pay close attention to their online presence. Understanding how Google finds and ranks your website in its search results can make all the difference. Taking this a step further with content marketing specifically geared for search engine optimization is a smart move that every company should consider.
First things first: Googlebot
Before the optimization process can begin, business leaders and website administrators must have a clear understanding of the steps taken by Google to examine and rank the website. Google uses three strategies for its search: crawling, indexing and serving.
Best practices for SEO
Armed with an in-depth understanding of how Googlebot works, website administrators can then utilize certain best practices to ensure that their pages are optimized for high search result rankings. These include:
Email marketing is a tried-and-true method for driving sales and establishing quality connections with prospects and customers. A company newsletter bolsters brand awareness, locks in customer loyalty and fuels profitability. This is a great marketing vehicle that best-of-breed companies have been using for years to keep customers up-to-date with their brand and to continually keep their products and services top-of-mind between purchases.
Is your company’s eNewsletter as good as it can be? If you’re looking to make your eNewsletter campaign more impactful, be sure to have the following best practices checked off of your “To Do” list:
Other Quick Tips for Better eNewsletter Open Rates and Engagement
What other eNewsletter tips and tricks would you include in our lineup? Let us know in the comments section below!
While consumers look forward to decorating, gathering with loved ones and purchasing gifts for their friends and family, retailers have other things on their mind. As the holiday season draws near, vendors should prepare marketing campaigns built to increase brand awareness during this critical time of year.
The holidays aren't just a time for good tidings and cheer – the level of competition rises among merchants. For this reason, these companies must use their website and email to their advantage to ensure that consumers have their brand in mind this holiday season.
Top holiday offers and sales conversion days
According to SteelHouse, organizations find success by offering specialized promotions and see the highest conversion rates on certain days.
Researchers found that the top three holiday offers were free express shipping, buy-more-save-more promotions and post-holiday sales. Furthermore, these deals produced higher conversion rates on Nov. 28 and 30, Dec. 6 and 18. However, the highest general conversion rates came, not surprisingly, on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Holiday email marketing campaigns
Email marketing campaigns also help the brand message reach consumers.
E-commerce predictive analytics software provider Custora suggested that the brand should begin subtly and not seek to shout its message too soon in the season. Furthermore, when it comes to email marketing campaigns, visuals are very important. Custora pointed out that some organizations leverage attention-catching graphics or unconventional design styles to ensure that their message stands out. Some campaigns also take innovative approaches, including encouraging shoppers to not only buy gifts for their friends and family, but themselves as well.
"During a season dedicated to buying gifts for others, a few retailers take a different angle," Custora stated. "They appeal to consumers' not-so-secret desire to treat themselves during a hectic and sometimes stressful time."
Social media marketing campaigns
Reflect a consistent brand image by ensuring your social media campaign messaging matches your emails.
Public relations firm Eastwick noted that holiday activity on social media peaks from Nov. 15 through Jan. 7. These posts should be specifically tailored to suit the brand, while offering discounts and not excluding any particular consumer groups.
"Tactics will differ for every brand, but simply throwing ornaments and glitter on your Facebook or Twitter avatar won't do the trick," Eastwick noted.
Finally, it's important to keep in mind that social media users are looking for advice and engagement, not advertisements. For this reason, companies should seek to highlight the holiday-specific benefits of their promotion or featured product instead of simply providing a call to action.
In the current marketplace, a considerable number of organizations leverage email marketing to connect with potential customers and forge better relationships with existing clients. While there is much debate on its efficiency, the fact remains that when it is carried out effectively, email marketing can be an indispensable way to reach out to a company's consumer base to boost awareness and loyalty to the brand.
"In fact, email is not only alive – it's the number one direct channel in terms of daily use and consumer preference for both personal and marketing communications," Exacttarget contributor Kyle Lacy wrote.
By the numbers: Statistics prove the impact of email marketing
According to Capterra contributor Caroline Malamut, there were 3.9 billion active email accounts across the globe last year. That number is expected to climb to 4.9 billion in the next three years. That means there are nearly 4 billion opportunities for organizations to gain new clients – or improve their standing with existing customers.
Furthermore Malamut noted that consumers who received marketing emails spent an average of 138 percent more with the company than those who didn't.
Taken by themselves, these numbers may not mean much. But collectively – and compounded by the fact that 91 percent of consumers utilize their hosted email accounts at least once a day – they demonstrate the impact email marketing can have for a company. Studies show that email is still a more effective means of growing a group's client base than social media, Malamut pointed out. Overall, the message is clear: Email marketing is essential, and will be for quite some time.
Marketing emails: Make sure they aren't lost in the shuffle
The effect email marketing can have is clear. But clients can only be impacted by these messages if they actually notice them. Users receive countless emails every day, so your message could get lost in the shuffle. However, there are certain strategies businesses can utilize to make it more likely that their email is not only read, but taken to heart, including the follow approaches:
This is the final blog of “Maximizing Your Domain Authority,” a series of three entries on an increasingly crucial element of search engine optimization.
In our prior two entries in this series, we've discussed the importance of Domain Authority, and how to determine your DA score. Now, let's start trying to move it upward.
Here are four techniques for increasing your Domain Authority:
Be Their Guest: Guest blogging is one of the oldest ways of increasing domain authority. It helps you tap into the audience that the website or blog you're submitting to attracts, getting you a wider readership. It also gives you a chance to redirect quality, organic traffic to your website through the guest post. And the new audience reading your blog may share it on social media. Even if they don't visit your site, your post can generate traffic through them, increasing your DA.
Send Out Social Signals: In the smartphone era, more people are getting caught in the social media web. Studies indicate 60% of Americans now have a social media account that they check at least once a day. The social media boom has in turn changed the way Google functions. If your website is riding high on social media, it perceives your content to be good. Do the rounds on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and so on, and you'll send the right social signals to Google. So get active socially, and see your DA increase.
More Than Words: What’s more brain-deadening than a post that goes on and on with no visual/mental relief? Our already short attention spans grow even shorter when we’re online. Don't make your readers go through a 2,000-word article with no images. When creating content, don’t just think of words. Present the content graphically, via powerpoint or an infographic, or any kind of illustration. Presentations can help increase traffic to your website via crossposting to sites like Slideshare and YouTube. Infographics can help you rank higher in Google Image searches. So think different, and you’ll reap the rewards of increased DA.
Stay Fresh: A fan of your blog can be easily lost if he goes through all your posts, returns next week, and finds nothing new. Over time, having stagnant content will lead to you losing organic traffic. This affects your domain authority as well. If readers don’t like what they see, Google will also not like it. Googlebots are constantly looking for updated content to crawl through, and its absence does not send out a very good signal. So make sure your refresh your content regularly.
Finally: One simple step you can take to up your ante is to choose a good web hosting company for your website. Performance plays a crucial, though indirect, role in determining your DA. If your website is slow, or it fails to load in the browser altogether, your visitors will bounce off to another site, no matter how great your content is. If you have a WordPress site and are looking for WordPress hosting plans, choose one which is offered by a reputable host, and one that has got good reviews.
A techie by education and a digital marketing expert by profession with the heart of a writer, Sofia Brooks provides actionable insights and precise content in the field of technology, web hosting and internet marketing. Currently she works with IX Web Hosting, providing the best reviews on web designing, with an experience of 10 years into the same.
This is the second blog of “Maximizing Your Domain Authority,” a series of three entries on an increasingly crucial element of search engine optimization.
In our first entry in this Domain Authority series, we defined DA and discussed what kind of measures go into this calculation. There are three basic components:
Increasing your DA score becomes more difficult as your score rises – the road from 70 to 80 is longer than the road from 20 to 30. So getting near the top goes beyond simply creating an awesome website and writing great content.
So let’s set out to determine your current DA score. There are several applications that help you to check just that:
Our third and final entry in this series will cover the concepts behind raising your DA score.
A techie by education and a digital marketing expert by profession with the heart of a writer, Sofia Brooks provides actionable insights and precise content in the field of technology, web hosting and internet marketing. Currently she works with IX Web Hosting, providing the best reviews on web designing, with an experience of 10 years into the same.