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Online hubs have risen to prominence recently. Offering single pages of information, albeit largely advertorial (no matter how convert), they allow for a free exchange of ideas and advice. But they also allow you to stream numerous sources into one convenient place, providing a plethora of opportunities for information gatherers and producers.
If you look at most current hub pages, there’s a fair chance that they’ll be outwardly informative but also feature links to external sites – ordinarily as part of an extensive SEO link building strategy. However, hubs are more than just an opportunity to sell your wares; they provide the next leap in online communities.
Social networking as we know it has its problems, just as it has many benefits. One of its failings though has to be mediation. However focussed you may be, using bookmarking tools in conjunction with sites like Twitter and Facebook, you are almost inevitably bombarded with erroneous information and conversations.
The ’social’ aspect of Web 2.0 is something that has clearly gripped the imagination of the Global Village’s populous. Rightly so too. Whilst it has been distorted and misused on occasion, the notion of sharing information freely and conversing with like-minded people throughout the world is surely what the Internet was designed for.
But how do hub pages fit in to all this? Well a hub can a pooled resource, bring in and sending out links to other sites of interest across the Internet. They are, in effect, your own hybrid website – complete with social interaction and sharing.
For many companies, not least traditional media and the printed press, the idea of a hub revolution could be seen as a major challenge. They do, after all, represent the embodiment of the free exchange of news. And, unlike most other sources, you don’t have to go hunting for it; information is delivered to you.
Because hubs are, or will become, a vital news source for some – think of the Google Reader as a good example of a potential for expansion – users can be far more selective about what exactly it is they choose to follow. From the latest updates on a favourite sports team to a single source who provide content that you regularly follow.
The Internet offers a myriad of news sources and communication devices. RSS feeders, Twitter trends and websites all channel data to a wider community, helping spread news almost instantaneously. With developments such as Google’s PubSubHubbub, real-time could soon be coming to the world of hubs.
Whilst the strength of an authoritative website will prevail over the temporary traffic provided by social portals such as hubs and social media sites; the Internet is evolving and will continue to do so, and as such, nothing can be taken for granted. Will personal and business hubs become the core of future online usage? That’s still very much up for debate.
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23
Google Helps Children Track Father Christmas!
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Viral Marketing and Games
Google have turned their considerable technological weight to helping children around the world track Santa Claus as we head towards the 25th December.
In their blog post, Tracking Santa, then and now, their Chief Santa Tracker explains the various ways that children can now monitor Santa’s movements using a combination of products, including Google Earth. There’s even a widget you can add to your Google page for up-to-the-minute monitoring of Father Christmas and his sleigh. Ho! Ho! Ho!
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23
What is the difference between Conversion (Many-per-Click) and Conversion (1-Per-Click)?
0 Comments | Posted by andy in FAQ
In April, a new conversion column started appearing in AdWords reports and eventually the main AdWords homepage; it was called “Conversions (many-per-click)” and the old Conversion column was changed to “Conversions (1-per-click)”. This was done with no real fanfare at the time, especially considering the importance of the column. But what is “many per click” and is it better than plain old conversions?
Conversions (1-per-click)
Conversions (1-per-click) count a conversion for every AdWords ad click resulting in a conversion within 30 days. This means if more than one conversion happens following a single ad click, conversions after the first will not count.
Conversions (many-per-click)
Conversions (many-per-click) count a conversion every time that a conversion is made within 30 days following an AdWords ad click. Conversions (many-per-click) will count multiple conversions per click.
In other words, one click can now record multiple conversions.
So let’s break this down with examples:
Let’s say you have a Google AdWords campaign which you have conversion tracking set up for the sale of a product, a contact form enquiry and a newsletter sign up. These are pretty normal methods for collecting conversion data.
Before the conversion tracking changed, if a user found your site through Google AdWords bought something, signed up to your newsletter and filled out your contact form this would count as only one conversion.
But now if that happened it counts as three conversions, which it should.
So this is brilliant right? We get to see exactly how our visitors are converting and the data is more of a true value. Well no, not always unfortunately. The new conversion method can be skewed and very easily at that.
Take this example. A person clicks on your ad text and joins your newsletter, whilst on the converting page they refresh their browser. According to AdWords that is two conversions.
How about another example? A person comes to your website and contacts you via the form on your site which you have conversion tracking set up on. Unfortunately you fail to contact them back (I’m sure this does not apply to anyone reading this, obviously this is hypothetical). Three days later they come back to the site and fill out the contact form again to follow up their previous enquiry. Because of the 30 day tracking, this is classed as another conversion.
One more example. Someone buys something from your website which triggers a conversion. They then browse through your site more but hit the back button and land on your landing page. This again is classed as a secondary conversion.
Another factor that the new conversion tracking brings up is the Cost per Conversion and Conversion Rate. These now have the opportunity of changing drastically for each method, a 50% conversion rate can now become 100% very easily and £1 Cost per Conversion can become £0.50. This is a big difference, especially when running into big numbers.
So do you just ignore the (many-per-click) column then? Of course you don’t, in the same way that when looking at the (many-per-click) column you should not ignore the (1-per-click) column; you have to use them together along with any other reporting method you have.
Essentially you shouldn’t just rely on Google AdWords to tell you how many conversions you’ve received; instead you should use your analytics package and compare it with the data you can see on AdWords. If things look as though they are wrong then look into it. If your (many-per-click) conversions are triple that of your (1-per-click) conversions then don’t just take it at face value and pat yourself on the back for your high conversion rate, investigate it and see if it is right.
Most of all look at both columns all the time and use them concurrently to achieve a successful AdWords campaign.
Further reading from Google’s official help site: What is the difference between conversions (1-per-click) and conversions (many-per-click)?
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When it comes to boosting your websites rankings it is important to remember that ‘Content is King’. Having a good deal of unique, helpful content on your website will help push you up the search engine rankings, whilst keeping your visitors happy.
Sometimes content is overlooked by marketers or executives in the mistaken belief that it’s better to have light copy and more images to attract visitors; but, barring an overkill of epic proportions or some fool-hardy black hat tomfoolery, the truth is language is the one thing that satisfies both the visitors and the search engines.
Having a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s) section on your website is a great opportunity to create keyword-rich copy to increase rankings whilst still providing visitors with useful information. Some examples of what to include in your FAQ section;
- Find out what the most commonly asked questions are that members of your company get asked on a regular basis.
- Target non-branded keywords, so that you can be found for more than just your brand.
- Use Social Media – this is the marketing tool of the moment and it is a great way to find out what your customers are saying about your company/industry, or target specifically what they’re looking for.
- Check web analytics data to find out specific keyword phrases and questions.
FAQ pages also allow companies to promote multiple topics and optimise for multiple keywords on a smaller scale.
Local search is something that bigger companies often neglect, despite the fact that a large percentage of people actually still much prefer to look for businesses within their surrounding area. Determining the best locations to create content for can be done using tools such as Google Insights. This has been developed to provide an insight into the terms people search for in Google by creating a visual representation of regional interest on a map. Typing in a keyword will bring up the top regions that have an interest in that keyword topic – allowing you to focus special efforts on reaching that demographic.
This is undoubtedly a growing field and one that SEO agencies are beginning to push more and more due to the commercial benefits. While it might not help someone that is searching for services on the other side of the globe, in terms of getting the most focussed target audience, there aren’t many practices better than local search.
The strength of a site is often determined by the number and, more importantly, the quality of inbound links. Whilst there are hundreds of ways to get a link, through directories, articles and press releases, why not try something more adventurous?
Link baiting is by no means a guaranteed way of building your inbound link portfolio, but it is one of the most creative and potentially advantageous. If you’re a creative company, show off your creativity. Develop and distribute a unique game, provide a free software sample, write a provocative blog post, just get your message out there and see if people are interested. Whilst the short-term traffic may be nice, it’s the long-term authority generated by the link structure that will ultimately pay dividends.
Whilst SEO as a dicipline is highly focused, to really maximise a sites potential you need to be covering all the bases. So that means that link building, local search and SEO copywriting all need to be addressed. Of course you can get good results with either one of these areas; however, by combining and optimising each of them, you stand a far greater chance of really boosting your web rankings.
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23
Google Drop the Ball with Bounce Rate Jibe?
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Google Analytics
Clearly you need to be talented to work at Google. Sometimes though, this can lead to a superiority complex and following hot on the trail of Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, calling Twitter a “poor man’s email”, it’s now been reported in MediaPost that their analytics evangelist, Avinash Kaushik, has made a comment that “hits”, far from being a way of measuring online success, is actually an acronym standing for “How Idiots Track Success”.
Whilst there may be a degree of truth in the point, the way the message was delivered could have been delivered more subtlety.
In terms of success criteria, he does goes on to make a valid point that bounce rate is a more meaningful measure of how successful your site is performing. Obviously, there are many ways to drive traffic to a website but if visitors aren’t finding what they want when they arrive, why bother spending time and money on getting them there in the first place?
Source: Analytics | SEO Blog
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Last week, Google released the latest wave of updates to Google Analytics. New functionality includes:
- Up to 20 goals per profile
- Engagement Goals including Time on Site and Pages/Visit
- Expanded mobile reporting to enable you to see how mobile users interact with your site.
- Advanced analysis features allows you to add a secondary dimension to the reports.
To find out more check out the videos on the Google Analytics Blog.
Google Analytics has also become intelligent. Analytics Intelligence can be set up to notify you when something occurs in your data patterns for example a traffic surge. This will allow you immediate identify the issue and find out what needs doing.
In addition, all of the above multiple custom variables have been included within the tracking API making it easier to share Custom Reports and Advanced Segments.
Over the next couple of months we will be looking at the new features in more depth and showing you how your website can benefit from them.
For now, you can get to understand a little bit more about the updates at the Google Analytics Blog, which has a range of videos to explain the new features.
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23
What is the difference between Conversion (Many-per-Click) and Conversion (1-Per-Click)?
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Google Analytics
In April, a new conversion column started appearing in AdWords reports and eventually the main AdWords homepage; it was called “Conversions (many-per-click)” and the old Conversion column was changed to “Conversions (1-per-click)”. This was done with no real fanfare at the time, especially considering the importance of the column. But what is “many per click” and is it better than plain old conversions?
Conversions (1-per-click)
Conversions (1-per-click) count a conversion for every AdWords ad click resulting in a conversion within 30 days. This means if more than one conversion happens following a single ad click, conversions after the first will not count.
Conversions (many-per-click)
Conversions (many-per-click) count a conversion every time that a conversion is made within 30 days following an AdWords ad click. Conversions (many-per-click) will count multiple conversions per click.
In other words, one click can now record multiple conversions.
So let’s break this down with examples:
Let’s say you have a Google AdWords campaign which you have conversion tracking set up for the sale of a product, a contact form enquiry and a newsletter sign up. These are pretty normal methods for collecting conversion data.
Before the conversion tracking changed, if a user found your site through Google AdWords bought something, signed up to your newsletter and filled out your contact form this would count as only one conversion.
But now if that happened it counts as three conversions, which it should.
So this is brilliant right? We get to see exactly how our visitors are converting and the data is more of a true value. Well no, not always unfortunately. The new conversion method can be skewed and very easily at that.
Take this example. A person clicks on your ad text and joins your newsletter, whilst on the converting page they refresh their browser. According to AdWords that is two conversions.
How about another example? A person comes to your website and contacts you via the form on your site which you have conversion tracking set up on. Unfortunately you fail to contact them back (I’m sure this does not apply to anyone reading this, obviously this is hypothetical). Three days later they come back to the site and fill out the contact form again to follow up their previous enquiry. Because of the 30 day tracking, this is classed as another conversion.
One more example. Someone buys something from your website which triggers a conversion. They then browse through your site more but hit the back button and land on your landing page. This again is classed as a secondary conversion.
Another factor that the new conversion tracking brings up is the Cost per Conversion and Conversion Rate. These now have the opportunity of changing drastically for each method, a 50% conversion rate can now become 100% very easily and £1 Cost per Conversion can become £0.50. This is a big difference, especially when running into big numbers.
So do you just ignore the (many-per-click) column then? Of course you don’t, in the same way that when looking at the (many-per-click) column you should not ignore the (1-per-click) column; you have to use them together along with any other reporting method you have.
Essentially you shouldn’t just rely on Google AdWords to tell you how many conversions you’ve received; instead you should use your analytics package and compare it with the data you can see on AdWords. If things look as though they are wrong then look into it. If your (many-per-click) conversions are triple that of your (1-per-click) conversions then don’t just take it at face value and pat yourself on the back for your high conversion rate, investigate it and see if it is right.
Most of all look at both columns all the time and use them concurrently to achieve a successful AdWords campaign.
Further reading from Google’s official help site: What is the difference between conversions (1-per-click) and conversions (many-per-click)?
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