Advanced Google Analytics - Tips and Tricks Google Analytics affects everyone in search engine marketing (unless you use another analytics package!) but not everyone knows how to take full advantage of it. To take full advantage of it we have to share knowledge and that's what I'm here to do. 1. Advanced segments provide you with the ability to take your reporting up a gear. Social media segment If you are paying for social media traffic then it's imperative that you check the value it yields to sales i.e. does it even generate any direct sales? Click on the My Site tab > Advanced Segments > Then click on +New Custom Segment > Choose a name for it > Then click on +Add a dimension or metric > then add "Source" as a dimension > have it as "include" and "matching regular expression" then using a bit of regex, type the following in the field. (facebook|twitter|linkedin|stumbleupon|youtube|vimeo|myspace|delicious|reddit|tumblr) Click on test segment (check that it works!). Long tail keywords segment ^\s*[^\s]+(\s+[^\s]+){2}\s*$ 2. 3.
Siri,Quora, And The Future Of Search Editor’s note: Contributor Dan Kaplan leads Product Marketing for Twilio and writes occasionally about the extrapolation of the present into the future. With the rise of Google+, the decrease in controversial posting activity by famous tech people and the allure of other shiny new things, the majority of tech press has turned the focus of their gazes away from Quora, my favorite startup of 2010. Well now that Apple has gone and integrated the most sophisticated piece of AI to ever to see the light of the consumer market into its iPhone 4S, I thought it was time to brush some dirt off of Quora’s shoulder and shine a light on what the future of the company could hold. By combining an answer voting mechanism and a reward addiction loop (upvotes are crack) with a strict identity requirement and a one-to-many follower model, Quora started solving the problem of extracting high-quality experiential knowledge out of humanity’s collective head and getting it into structured form on the internet.
Google Adds More Social SEO With +1'd News Articles Google News now highlights +1'd articles from people in your Google+ circles in its Spotlight section. Friends' faces and Google+ profiles are displayed next to the link, just like in Google's social search results. Earlier this month, Google News added the same feature for authors, showing Google+ info under their headlines. While today's new social features are limited to the Spotlight section, it adds another way in which Google News can personalize content for logged-in users using their social data. Google is rolling out these kinds of Google+ features across all its Web properties. Yesterday, Google converted Google Chat to be based on G+ circles rather than email addresses. Google Web search has treated public G+ posts as search results since soon after the social network launched. It's all part of an effort to redefine relevance in the way Google crawls the Web.
How Big is Your Long Tail? - Whiteboard Friday Choosing keywords to optimize for is a tricky business, made all the more tricky as keyphrases grow longer than a couple of words. As Google has said, up to 20% of search queries in any given day are completely unique. Should you try to optimize your tauntaun sleeping bags product page for "tauntaun sleeping bag," for "childrens' tauntaun sleeping bag," or for "childrens' star wars tauntaun sleeping bag from hoth"? How can you research whether or not to optimize for such a long tail query? In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Rand is back to explain just how long of a tail you should be optimizing for. Howdy, SEOmoz fans. Armed With Social Signals, Google Moves Back Towards Real-Time Search Google announced a big change to its search ranking algorithm today that affected around 35% of searches. It now makes an effort to determine when a query should return more up-to-date, "fresher" search results, before more established but older links. For example, if you search for "olympics," you're likely to be looking for information about the upcoming 2012 Summer Olympics, rather than older or more general information. Google search is now fine-tuned to make that assumption. With Google+ indexed in Web search and providing real-time search data, Google now has strong signals for timeliness and relevance. By tweaking search algorithms on one side and gathering social data on the other, Google is working towards a clearer of picture of what's happening on the Web this instant. Today's updates are built on top of Caffeine, Google's new search infrastructure that first came online in 2009. Google Going Real-Time Google+ And Real-Time Search
Google's Matt Cutts: Good Content Trumps SEO This is a message that can't possibly be repeated often enough: Good content trumps SEO. Don't believe me? Fair enough, but how about the head of Google's webspam team? Reassuringly, no. "Even if you do brain-dead stupid things and shoot yourself in the foot, but have good content, we still want to return it," says Cutts. So if you're planning that 2012 site budget, you might want to think twice about hiring that SEO expert and find a content expert instead. The Ultimate Guide To A/B Testing - Smashing Magazine Advertisement A/B testing isn’t a buzz term. A lot of savvy marketers and designs are using it right now to gain insight into visitor behavior and to increase conversion rate. And yet A/B testing is still not as common as such Internet marketing subjects as SEO, Web analytics and usability. What Is A/B Testing? At its core, A/B testing is exactly what it sounds like: you have two versions of an element (A and B) and a metric that defines success. This is similar to the experiments you did in Science 101. 1Large version2 A/B testing on the Web is similar. What To Test? Your choice of what to test will obviously depend on your goals. Even though every A/B test is unique, certain elements are usually tested: The call to action’s (i.e. the button’s) wording, size, color and placement,Headline or product description,Form’s length and types of fields,Layout and style of website,Product pricing and promotional offers,Images on landing and product pages,Amount of text on the page (short vs. long).
5 Google Paid Search Products You Need to Know Tessa Wegert | November 10, 2011 | 1 Comment inShare33 Google is nothing if not progressive, and for this reason many of the innovations made to AdWords warrant a closer look. For many digital marketers, the fall of 2011 might be remembered for bringing dynamic advertising to paid search. Google's newest offering, said to flip "the search engine on its head," does away with the traditional keyword advertising approach in lieu of matching landing pages with the right user search. Dynamic Search Ads is just one of dozens of innovations Google has made to its AdWords product over the past few years. Google Image Search. Google is infamous for experimenting with its AdWords products (not to mention giving them countless different names).
A Guide to SEO Salaries By Market [INFOGRAPHIC] Sometimes finding your dream job is like an Easter egg hunt: It's not only how you look for jobs, but also where you look for them. It seems like common sense, but in order to hedge your bets and ultimately nab a high-profile gig, it's all about location, location, location. This handy map, researched and developed by Onward Search ranks the cities where SEO (Search Engine Optimization) positions are most clustered and breaks down average salary ranges by rank, from entry-level to the big boss. It's unsurprising that the mantle for most available SEO gigs is New York City (with L.A. and San Francisco hot on its heels), but smaller markets like Atlanta are also willing to pay comparable salaries for top-notch talent. Are you hungry for a position in the SEO world? Every week we post a list of social media and web job opportunities. Web Designer at Rodale in Emmaus, PASocial Media Coach at Socialbyte in Lake Zurich, Ill.Front End Developer (HTML) at Big Picture Group in Los Angeles
20+ Essential Resources for Improving Your SEO Skills Mollie Vandor is a product manager at BetterWorks, and the former associate product manager at Cooking.com. Prior to that, she helped launch Ranker.com, where she served as the product manager, amongst many other roles. You can reach her @mollierosev, on her blog, or on her latest addiction – Words With Friends, where she plays under the username “Mollierosev." Search engine optimization isn’t exactly something you can major in — at least, not yet. In fact, many professional search engine optimizers are self-taught. Whether you're looking to build your knowledge of the basics, master more intermediate material or get to the head of the advanced class, a wealth of online resources can help you graduate your SEO skills to the next level. The Basics There are plenty of places to learn freshman level SEO, starting with that most useful of school supplies — the cheat sheet. Intermediate Congratulations, you’ve passed freshman SEO. Advanced Placement Graduation Image courtesy of Flickr, Jeffrey
Siri is not search technology, but it can still hurt Google Steve Jobs was clear last year that he didn’t consider Siri a search company, but instead, an artificial intelligence company. But that doesn’t mean that Siri can’t serve as a threat to Google on iOS devices. With the rollout of Siri on iPhone 4S, the voice-recognition and virtual assistant service is even more robust than when it first appeared last year before Apple bought the company. And it’s showing that while Siri isn’t search technology, when paired with other services including Wolfram Alpha, Wikipedia and Yelp, it has the potential to divert significant traffic away from Google and other search engines. Apple showed off how users can easily ask questions of Siri: anything from inquiring about the weather to getting definitions of words. Siri can also do things like set alarms, schedule appointments and dictate text messages: tasks that don’t deal with search. “On a mobile device, search is not where it’s at, not like on the desktop.