Google Penguin 2014

Recently Google rolled out its latest iteration of its Penguin algorithm bringing the world of search version 3.

What is Penguin Algorithm?

Google has a bit of an animal theme to its search algorithms, but unlike large versions like Panda (currently on version 4.1) Penguin has since April 2012 been aimed solely at taking the fight to webspam in the search results.  It does this by cracking down on sites that use ‘Black Hat’ SEO techniques or are just plain spammy.  The kind of things it looks at are paid links, keyword stuffing and anything that contravenes the Google Webmaster Guidelines.  In previous updates Google has added any tricks it missed the previous times.

As this update is yearly at present this has meant a site affected in one version has had to wait until the next version to be re-assessed, so a year possibly of being unlisted. Obviously as a business this can be catastrophic if you are affected especially if it’s down to poor SEO rather than any spammy or nefarious intent.

How do I avoid Penguin?

Advanced Search Engine Optimisation SEO a Guide

So you’ve invested time in the basics of SEO as described in my previous article about Simple Search Engine Optimisation – SEO and now want to take the next step to really ramp up your blog or website SEO?

You’re on the right page, in the following article I’m going to go over some more advanced SEO techniques that will really help boost your ranking and more importantly your CTR.

First off lets have a look at the bridge between basic SEO and Advanced SEO with maybe what we should call Medium SEO.   One of the most important actions we can take as marketers is

Focus on Customer experience and engagement.

Search engines are continually changing the way they rank sites, and one of the most recent trends has been to look at engagement and branding signals.  What this basically means is does the page the Search Engine links to in the search results provide engaging and useful content for the user.  Having inbound links to your web pages used to be a strong indicator for Search Engines but this time is now more.  Yes inbound links still are factors, but nowhere near as strong as they used to be.

Relevance is till a strong factor and this has now been built our to include the relevance and quality of a web page or piece of content therefore we need to think about this more then we do about link building.  To rank strongly you need to start providing genuinely useful content that engages with your target audience.  I touch on this a bit in my article on creating an effective website.

For SEO purposes (and of course in view of turning users into customers) I have 4 points that you need to avoid and should form the bases of assessing your sites effectiveness:

1. Avoid low quality content.
2. Avoid having unclear or  no calls to action.
3. Avoid having poor navigation (this includes via mobile device).
4. Avoid content that does not serve the user.

To help you avoid these common obstacles it is worth taking time to fully asses your site and to keep assessing it moving forwards.  long gone are the days when you launched a website and just left it untended.  You need to really get into your analytics and start to understand your customers.  What interests them? what Social Media do they use, What demographics or segments are there?

Once you know your audience then you can start to look at how they use your site, and develop effective navigation, remembering the F-pattern and prominent CTAs!  Use your analytics and tools like Google Webmaster Tools to identify search terms that are driving users to specific content.  Check Page views, unique views, time on site and bounce rate to identify not just your best and most engaging content but also the low quality content.  If its not performing then don’t be scared of removing it.  Also if something is performing poorly then its a good indicator not to continue with content of that type.  Conversely if you have something that is performing well, then it gives you a bases to build out more quality content on a theme that interests your audience.

The move into semantic search

As Search Engines like Google get more advanced, so to do their methods. You may have heard about Google’s Hummingbird update, basically this is semantic search.  It uses artificial intelligence in order to understand the search intent and the meaning of the search query rather than just parsing through keywords – a bit like a dictionary.  With semantic search when you search, Google returns your results based solely on the text and the keywords that you put in that search.

With semantic search, Google will look into the relationship between the words you type in the search box, how they work together.  In fact Google moves away from keywords and starts to look at entities.   In Googles terms an entity is any real world item, concept or fact that has a number of pages related to it.  An entity can be either  businesses, products, movies, authors, people, places, events and many more.  Google uses these entities to better understand a users intended search.  Let me give you an example of how this works in search.  If I’m planning a weekend sightseeing trip to Paris I might want to find out more information about Notre Dame Cathedral, if we approach the search in a structured way that hit all the SEO markers I would probably search “Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris”  now what if I had just heard about a famous Cathedral in Paris that should be on my sightseeing list and didn’t know its name? Well this is were semantic search helps  now a search for “that famous cathedral in paris” will also work pretty well.  That big clock in London?  yep that returns Big Ben pages.

Semantic search essentially makes it easier for Google to return relevant pages for even ambiguous search requests.

When you are creating content you really need to think about how your content answers a specific search question.  Its no longer about using specific keyword from a list in your content, but much more about answering these specific questions.  For example lets take ‘Scuba Diving’ as our keyword group, it is very unlikely users with just ask Google about ‘Scuba Diving’  so as a content writer you will need to ask yourself with every sentence you write, what questions does this answer.   You will need to focus strongly on natural language use.  The Keywords ‘Scuba Diving’ can make up many questions.

• Where to learn Scuba Diving
• Where to go Scuba Diving
• How much does Scuba Diving cost
• Is Scuba Diving safe
• etc etc

Which one do you want your page to answer?

Advanced SEO – Rich Snippets and Schema markup

One of the ways to take full advantage of semantic search, and old search also is using structured data or rich snippets in your code. What do rich snippets do?  Well they help provide more indepth information about a page and its content and how its entities are related.  What are rich snippets?  Rich snippets are a form of on page mark up that displays extra information on a search result. Check out this infographic that gives you all the important information about rich snippets in a clear and understandable way, and saves me some typing!

 Tweak, improve and measure for success

As I’ve mentioned before SEO is not a destination but a journey that continually evolves and needs working on.  So once you have completed your review, don’t let it drop, keep checking the analytics, keep reassessing your site and working on enhancing it.   Keep checking your website regularly for the following

• HTML/XHTML errors
• CSS errors or problems
• Dead links, page not found 404 error
• Check on Multiple browsers
• Check on Multiple devices

You can use Google Webmaster Tools to help you with the 1st 3 points or you can visit Crawl Tools by SEOmoz or visit the W3C validation tools.

Social Media Image sizes – A guide

One of the trickiest parts of Social Media is getting the image sizes right.   As time passes more and more networks are resizing images we post to fit, even when we post links to blog articles or web pages.  But gone also are the days when we could use one image for all our Social Media.  Images are important in Social Media so its important that we have great images that appear correctly in our Social Media to achieve maximum impact and of course engagement.

This is a quick reference guide for image sizes as they currently stand (they are always changing so I will endeavour to update this guide)

Social Media Image Size Guide

All sizes given in pixels.

Facebook Image Sizes

1. Cover Photos – 851W x 315H
2. Profile picture – 180W x 180H  Facebook resizes this to 160×160
3. Custom Tab images – 111W x 74H
4. Images displayed in Posts – 470W x 394H  images with are tall will be scaled to max height and horizontal images to max width.  In the case of tall images this leaves a lot of white space to the right.
5. Pasted links – 470W x 246H so make sure your blog articles featured image scales to this dimension, anything smaller will be cropped to 154 x 154 with the image appearing to the right of the link and taller images cropped.
6. Page post Photo Ad – 1200W x 1200H
7. Page post Video Ad – 1200W x 675H
8. Page Post Link Ad – 1200W x 627H minimum size 560W x 292H
9. Offer Ad – 1200W x 627H minimum size 400W x 209H
10. Event Ad – 1200 x 450 minimum size 560W x 210H
11. Mobile Ap Ad 1200W x 627H

Google+ Image Sizes

1. Cover image – 2120W x 1192H Max and  480W x 270W minimum
2. Profile image – 270 x 270 this displays as a circle so make sure your logo clearly displays in this circle
3. Posted images – 2048 x 2048 images need to be at least 497W  for best results
4. Posted link images – Need to be at least 506W Google automatically resizes another suggestion is 500 x 500 is ideal

Twitter Image Sizes

1. Cover image – 400 x 400 
2. Profile image – 1500W x 500H
3. In stream Preview – 440W x 220H

Pinterest Image Sizes

1. Board cover – 222W x 227H
2. Profile image – 165 x 165
3. Pinned image – 554W but height is open and taller images stick out more in stream

LinkedIn Image Sizes

1. Profile Image – 500 x 500 ideal size, not smaller then 200 x 200 and images over 4000W will not be uploaded
2. Cover photo – 646W x 220H
3. Shared link – 180W x 110H

 

Simple Search Engine Optimisation SEO

This guide covers the basics of On page Search Engine Optimisation (SEO for short) and by ‘On page’  I mean items that can be changed directly on your web pages.

You need to apply these simple guidelines to ensure every page on your website is working hard for you.  Every page that sells your product we want to rank in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).  It can be argued that the most important part of you site for search engines is the pages and content themselves. Though it is often said that links from other sites are everything (and Back links are still important) if you don’t have good content then you will find it hard to attract links anyway. Search engines use each page to determine the subject of your page and  also to identify the keywords your page maybe relevant for. On-page optimisation ensures that all the appropriate signposts are used to aid Search engines. Getting it right can be the difference for you between position 5 and position 1. On-page optimisation will also help you create and manage a website which is structured and readable for your users – and these are the people you are looking to gain as customers.

How can it go wrong? 

What SEO is not, is loading your pages at every opportunity with the same keyword. Think quality not quantity. Adding the word Diving to a page 60 times will not make you rank 1st for Diving even if your competitor only uses it 40 times.

Leading on from this, if your page is stuffed with keywords, how will it read to the user? A good well ranked site will be easy to read and navigate, have well written relevant and original content and be somewhere a user wants to return. A walk in customer will prefer a clean tidy store to a messy dirty one, the same is true about websites.

Lack of Knowledge is a common problem and not the fault of the person building or maintaining the site, especially if they’re running their own site. This is where we can help you understand some of the basic factors and empower you to confidently manage your own site.

Keywords – what is the search term a user might use when searching for information?

All pages of your website should have keywords which try and capture some of the search traffic, the keywords should be relevant to the page they are on.

You can either have Individual words i.e. PADI or Phrases like “PADI Dive Courses” but limit these to 3-5 words.

Keywords should be placed in the following 7 places, and the further up the page they appear the more weight they carry.

1.  Title
2.  Headings H1, H2, H3
3.  Page Names
4.  Page Text
5.  Link text
6.  Alt text
7.  Image Name
8.  Meta Description

Let’s take a look at these in more depth below.

1.Page Title 

This is the page or browser title, and it is displayed either in the top right of your browser or on the tabs depending on your browser.

It also appears as the first line of the Google results (the purple text). You can see all your sites pages as Google search results by typing the following into the search bar site:www.padi.com/scuba replacing http://www.padi.com/scuba with your domain. Better still why not try a competitors site and see what they are doing, you never know you might find some helpful tips!

Exceptionally Important: Since this is what people click on in the search results and is the first thing people see about your site Search Engines place significant weight on it.

When you navigate to a website with your browser it will appear on the top, or in the Tab..(this example is IE9)

Or you can find the title by viewing source and looking for the <title> tag near the top of the page

Things to think about: 

Is the title less than 70 characters? Only 65 – 70 characters are displayed in SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) 5 to 9 words, the most important first.

Does it include your main keywords or key phrase? Its important that the title contains the key phrase that you wish you pages to appear under on the SERPS.

Each page should have individual and unique titles. Having 50 pages titled ‘Cheese’ means you spread your search traffic across 50 pages instead of concentrating on one. So cheese becomes a weak keyword.

Generic words such as “website home” or “welcome to” should not appear in your page title.

The beginning of the title is also more important, so Keywords or Phrases should appear here and your brand name last.

Which do you think is better for a page describing Open Water?

Welcome to PADI find out about Dive courses here

PADI | The way the world learns to dive| Diving courses

Open Water Diver | Dive Courses | PADI

Always use | or – to separate keywords in a title.

Remember to keep titles short and precise, with every page title unique. Make sure a user can understand what the page is about form the title. 

2.Headings 

Use heading tags (<h1><h2><h3>) to give pages structure. Good structure is important as it helps users read and get the information they need quickly.

You can spot headings on pages by the font size, <h1> headings being the largest. Headings also promote your page subject to Search Engines and tell them that you structure your copy.

Think how a newspaper uses Headlines and sub headlines to draw readers in.

Every page should have a <h1> heading – but only 1 and it is important that the 2nd Heading on a page is <h2> all the way until <h6> if need be.

You should use your keyword or phrase in this heading the same as the page title

Here we see after clicking on the above search result the title and Header Match, but aren’t exactly the same.

3.Page Names 

Page names are also important, though often beyond the control of Content uploaders, as these are often controlled by developers or coders. Though many a CMS will allow you to control this to an extent and if you use a CMS product you should think about page names carefully.

So for example you might have a page for Open water courses called

http://www.padi.com/courses2/default.aspx

But is this any good?

Would this be better for Google to index?

http://www.padi.com/padi-courses/openwater.aspx

It is considered good practice to use only lowercase letters.

Also consider the full URL of a page, it is much better to keep this as short as possible, but still be clear. Try not to have more than 2 levels.

Ie http://www.padi.com/padi-courses/openwater-prices.aspx is better then

http://www.padi.com/padi-courses/prices/germany/openwater.aspx

Don’t use special characters or spaces in naming conventions. It is clearer to separate words with – if you need to rather than use space or _ (underscore)

4. Page Text 

Page text is of growing importance, in fact as stated earlier it can be argued to be the single most important factor now. Why?

Since Google’s ‘Panda’ update earlier this year, it could be fair to say that Content may again be King. But not just any Content. It is hard to know exactly what Google’s algorithms look for, but the trend seems to be towards user experience.

But don’t we all write Content for our users anyway? Probably not. Or at least not the way Google or the users see it.

So what do we do? Simple answer is to create well written, structured and original Content. Use headings and Sub-headings as described in section 2. Keep the content as short and relevant as possible and pack as much information in at the beginning as possible, including any calls to action. Users skim read in an F pattern.

The importance of good Copy cannot be overstated, sites that have unoriginal copy have lost out in search rankings with the latest update. Think, has this text been used on another site? Can I amend it or re-edit it, can I add freshness. Do I just use a manufactures description, or do I add my own words as well? (How many sites could the manufactures description be on already?)

Aim for around 350 words for a page..it can be more or less, but not by much. If you have good link text in and out of pages then this helps if the content is shorter. Don’t rely on images and videos to tell a story, Google can’t read these (yet!) and its always best to give a text description aswell.

An additional benefit of good content is the fact that users are more likely to want to link to it or share it via Social media, which bring powerful SEO benefits. As the more links and shares the better as back links are also still King.

5. Link Text 

Link text is import for Google to understand which page its crawler is going to, and how to index it.

Its import for internal links, external links, and how people link into your sites (if you can influence how people link in to you, then the benefits are great)

Link text is one of the easiest, things to get wrong, but it is also one of the easiest to get right!

What is good link text? Maybe we should start with bad link text.

Bad link text is a link that tells you nothing about the link you are about to click on.

The most common culprits are for example:

Check out our new course Click here

Or

More information about PADIs courses

With a little bit of fore thought and consideration you can rewrite link text as part of your copy so its more informative and of more SEO value

New PADI underwater communication speciality course check it out!

Or

PADI Open Water Diver course information

6. ALT text (or image titles) 

Alt Text is what appears when you hover the mouse over an image. Not only is it import for Disability readability laws in various countries but it also helps with SEO and general readability and a page that reads well is more likely to engage.

Alt text should be descriptive of what appears in the image, and should contain a keyword or phrase, but remember do not use to many keywords as this may be considered spam and will lead to low page scores. If using a CMS then also make sure you add the same text to the image title aswell.

7. Image Name 

Essentially what you call the image file and as you can probably see by now this needs to be clear and relevant and is ideal for keywords.

What is important is to try and keep the file names short.

A bad filename would be

Image2.jpg

B777_D_divestore_banner_logo.jpg

A good filename would be:

PADI-scuba-diver.jpg

PADI-divecenter-spain.jpg

8. Meta description 

Meta description like Meta keywords has fallen by the wayside for purely SEO uses. But it is still very important as it is the description that appears on every SERPs entry. It should be different and unique for each individual page. Again you should use Keywords, but as they have little SEO value they should be used to reinforce the page message.

Maybe a better way of looking at the Meta description is as a mini sales pitch. A Good description on a SERPS page is far more likely to make users click on your link, so investing the extra time to hone an individual sales pitch for each page can be worthwhile. Look to use no more then 20-30 words.

It should reinforce the keywords in the page title, targeting alternate versions but it should also read well.

Your Meta description should also help differentiate your site from competing ranked sites.

Which result would you click on?

If you don’t have a Meta Description in place then Google will create its own from whatever text it finds on the page, this is certainly to be avoided!

Helpful Google search commands

site: Indexed pages in your site: http://www.yourdomain.com

link: Pages that link to your site’s front page link: http://www.yourdomain.com

cache: The current cache of your Site cache: http://www.yourdomain.com

info: Information we have about your site: http://www.yourdomain.com

related: Pages that are similar to your site: http://www.yourdomain.com

Pinterest surprises in SEO signals

Recently I stumbled on an interesting graph from Search Metrics that made me think about some of the advice I was giving out for SEO.

Now at the top of this chart of what essentially a break down of what gives you the most SEO juice, we see Social Media signals continue to rank highly.

Facebook Still Rules

With 4 markers in the top 10 Facebook is still king of social when it comes to link placement.  Though I now also see two points of interest that are important for anyone with a link strategy in place.   The first and the most obvious given that Google is in charge is that Google +1 comes out at top of the list.  Theres nothing like pushing your own products Google!  Flippancy aside, its still important to note, as having a Google+ presence  (maybe I should say active presence) either as an individual or business is still pretty rare.  Until recently when I have been asked if a business should be on Google+ I have only really responded that its for businesses that want to go that extra digital mile.  Mainly as the setup and linking to other Google Products like Google Local and Youtube can be quite daunting and frustrating for small businesses.  Now with this clear signal that the SEO worth is so considerable I have changed my advice to Yes! Yes! Yes!  Google+ needs to be a integrale part of your digital strategy now.  Googles making it harder and harder to ignore.

The 2nd surprise for me was that Pinterest actually appears above Twitter, even if ever so slightly.  Are you investing time in Twitter yes for SEO purposes? Have you got Pinterest boards?  Probably not.  Now I’m not saying to divest time spent on Twitter for Pinterest.  But I am saying that time needs to be spent on Pinterest.  I’ve started to use Pinterest a lot more to push traffic be it human or spiders back to my web domains.  Its not just about curating other peoples content but its also about creating your own.  For an idea of how you can leverage the SEO juice of Pinterest check  one of my pins:

So happy pinning!

 

SEO Mistakes to Avoid

There are lots for things you can and should do when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation (known universally as plain old SEO)  but in this blog I’m going to look at some that your definitely should not do!

Know your Canonicalization

Have I lost you already?  Canonicalization is process for converting data that has more than one possible representation into a “standard” or “normal” or Canonical form.  Still lost?  Well to put it simply it is a long word that is hard to say quickly but refers to normalising multiple URLs.  To give you an example, a user (and lets not forget Search Engine crawlers) are sometimes able to navigate to the same page of your website via many different URLs.

Let’s take an example that Google uses to illustrate this point, the following URLs could all land on the same page:

http://www.example.com/products/women/dresses
http://www.example.com/products?category=dresses&color=green&cruel=no
http://example.com/shop/index.php?product_id=32&highlight=green+dress&cat_id=1&sessionid=123&affid=431
http://example.com/dresses/cocktail?gclid=ABCD
http://www.example.com/dresses/greendress.html

This can not only be confusing for the user when navigating your site, but also importantly it is confusing for Search Engines as they will view each URL as a distinct page.  Why spread the SEO juice across in this case 5 pages when it would be much more effective on one – your Canonical page.

It’s confusing for a user and it’s especially confusing to Google which will view each of these URLs as distinct pages. So to avoid this you need to specify your preferred version to help Search Engines better understand your site.  You can do so by adding rel=”canonical” tag to your preferred page.

This leads us perfectly to mistake number 2.

301 Redirects

The other method of ensuring that only one URL is indexed by search engines (and one thats more fail safe then rel tags) is to have the alternate URLs  redirected using the 301 redirect.  But thats not all, one of the commonest issues I see on SEO audits is that no 301 redirects are in place at all.  If you go to a browser and type in your domain with or without www. in the address you will probably still get to your website, for example:

http://www.example.com  and  http://example.com  will both go to the same page.

Without a 301 redirect in place Google will take this as two separate pages so already your whole site is duplicated!  Use the 301 to redirect all traffic permanently to only one of those.  Check out this handy guide to various methods of setting up 301 redirects.

Duplicate Page Content

The first two points I talk about discuss technical elements of your sites structure to avoid duplication.  But there is also one other area that we need to address in the war against duplication.   Page Content.  What is actually written on your page, also counts.  Is it unique? have you copied an pasted content from another page?  Its easy to do, grab the manufactures description of a product and pop it on your page with no thought.  Well now think how many other websites now also have that exact same text from the manufacture on them.  Now why should Google display your page above them in Search results?  Exactly so this is where you need to add your own spin on text that might already be in use by others.

In fact it does not just have to be manufacturer, supplier or partner information that has potential to be duplicated, maybe you have 3 store locations each with a website, but each offers the same services or products.   Were you tempted just to copy text from one site across all 3?  Well now you have duplicate page content.

Broken Links AKA 404 errors

Search Engines penalise sites with broken links.  So its important that you stay active on your website and keep checking links.  Not just internal links but links to suppliers or 3rd party websites.  Pages are removed or sites die or are relaunched all the time so broken links are going to occur and who has not made a small typo and not noticed it.
Also if its bad for Search Engines then its probably bad for customers, have a broken link to your booking form and you’ll soon notice the drop in business and wonder why!

The easiest way to keep track of 404 errors is via a Google Webmaster account a must have tool for all website owners with the added benefit of being free.  It will provide you will a report of broken links on your pages, making it very easy to remedy.  I would suggest maybe having a weekly look at you account.

This article was meant to be a short look at some of the more hidden aspects of SEO but actually it turned into a more complex look at SEO then I had expected.   Stay tuned and I will also do a much more simple SEO mistakes to avoid looking at a few other aspects that won’t require that much technical knowledge.

Gmail via Google+

2014 and Google continues with its Google+ push with something that I know a lot of people are unhappy about – The integration of Gmail and Google+

The biggest issue this has raised is that now anyone with a Google+ account can email you via Google+ even if they don’t know your address.  I guess in future this will be integrated fully into Hangouts like Text Messaging  has been on Android (will that mean Google+ users will then also be able to text you.!!)

As with all new Google features you will find that this one has is launched already enabled.   So users have to opt out instead of opt in.   So what you probably want to know is how do I turn this off?

Well it’s a simple process under your settings tab, and if you don’t want to turn it off completely you can choose to allow emails via Google+ from your extended circles, just your circles or no one (and the default – Anyone).

Here is a simple 4 step guide:

1. Login to your Gmail account(s) and click the gear icon at the top right of your screen
2. Select > Settings > General > Email via Google+
3. Click the drop down menu and select the audience you want to have the ability to send you Gmail (Anyone, Extended Circles, Circles or No One)
4. Save Changes

One thing to note is that no one will be able to see your email address, unless you then reply to a message sent to you in this way.   If you use the Inbox categories then any mails received will be filtered with all mails from people in your circles going to Primary and any from users outside of your circles going into the Social tab.

In the meantime I will still have to wait for Google to find a way of associating older Gmail accounts with a Google+ account.

Digital Marketing Trends for 2014

Its that time of year we all look back on the year that has been and what the year ahead might bring.   2013 was definitely the year that even the most stick in the mud businesses realised that Digital and Social marketing is the new marketing.  I was also the year I hope that businesses realised that having a Facebook profile and Twitter account does not make a Social Marketer, at least not a successful one.

Googles trends graph shows the rapid increase in Digital Marketing

So here are my is where I see effective Digital Marketing in 2014:

2014 Digital Marketing Tends

1. Mobile – Do I really need to say this? Yes it seems so.   Mobile is the future and yet many businesses are still way behind the curve. 2014 is going to be the year we see mobile start to dominate channel traffic.   The desktop is dead, multi device mobile is the future and you need to prepare for it now.  Can I access your content or complete my purchase on my phone? Tablet? Smart watch?
2. Content Marketing – Its still king and the success will be in balancing Paid, Earned and Owned to maxium effectiveness.  If you are not content marketing then you will lose out to those that do.  This means, photo, video and written content.
3. Responsive content – But straightforward content will no longer be enough, it will need to be responsive, not just for the platform it is consumed on, be that mobile phone or the ever growing number of Smart TVs or new generation games consoles. But also using location and device sensors to serve up relevant tailored content to users.  For example if I was looking at your business website while sitting on a bus in Zurich, then I get the offers and directions to the Zurich store as part of the dynamic responsive content.  Remember we need to make it as simple as possible for users to commit to a purchase.
4. Device Tracking – The challenge here is to be able to follow our customers across their various devices.  Customers might click on a Facebook ad on their phone, then follow it up on their tablet later.  Not only do you need to track this for conversion and ROI metrics but you also want to be able to remarket where necessary.
5. Google+ – Yes Google+ the ever growing behemoth of forced user sign up is here to stay now we all have an account, and once the issues of merging various Youtube, Gmail, Google+ etc have been resolved it will become a powerful tool for Business.
6. Tracking Data – With the continued improvements and changes to Googles Analytics 2014 will be the year that tracking final moves away from the IT guys and into the hands of Marketers.  Creating and implementing remarketing and campaign tracking without the need for web developers should make this a massive tool for marketers.
7. Mobile – Have I mentioned how important mobile will be?
8. SEO –  The continued growth of personal search will be mixed with more social signals and the end of back link value.  Context sensitive earned back links will probably be the last ones to bring any SEO juice.  With the continued growth of Google Analytics and its use by marketers, then I think we will also see Google use this data for SEO, page exits, bounce rates, time spent on page and many more factors might soon start to influence your ranking.
9. Facebook in decline – Okay maybe thats just an attention grabbing headline, Facebook is an will continue to be an important tool.  But only for a certain demographic.  To 16-18 year olds its already dead and buried according to recent research in Europe. Its seen as place for old people. Once parents feared what their children might be doing on Facebook now the children fear what their parents are posting!  So where does this leave marketers.  Well I think in 2014 we will see a more concerted move to instant and more closed social media.  Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Snapchat and a whole host of other messaging apps will fill the gap.
10. Privacy and Data – The fact is most young people don’t care about this as much as some older internet users do, and this presents continued opportunity for Marketers.  As discussed above, responsive and relevant messaging will the the important factor in its use.  Big data is here to stay.
11. Social CRM tools and integration – Bringing you social and CRM data together as a powerful tool to target market.

 

finally not so much a direct marketing issue, but 2014 will see UX & UI designers move away from flat design again.

 

Google+ Custom URLs – At last!

Get your Google+ Custom URL

Its been a while in coming, but finally Google has made it possible for Google+ pages to get a custom URL (often called vanity URLs).

This is something that Facebook has offered business for a while, and its great to see Google+ catch up.  So what is a custom URL?  well put it simply is a short and descriptive URL.

PADI’s Google+ page previously could be found under the URL https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/104221044456560811502/104221044456560811502/posts

Short, snappy and memorable?   No!  Especially when you consider our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/PADI  how much simpler and easier to remember is that, and it’ll also show up in searches for PADI a lot better.

Since the change my Google+ URL is: https://google.com/+trevorsanford

Much better, and a lot simpler.  Soon I’ll just be able to advertise +trevorsanford and people will know what to do.

So how do you get this custom URL for your own Google+ page?

First off, Google actually assigns the custom URL to you, and you only get the chance to customise this if its not unique.  ie. if there is more then one business on the web with your name.  There are also number of eligibility requirements, depending if its a personal profile, Google Local connected or non Connected business page.

efore you can get a custom URL, your account needs to be in good standing and meet the following requirements:

Eligibility for People:

• Ten or more followers
• Your account is 30 days old or more
• A profile photo

Eligibility for Local Google+ pages: Must be a verified local business

Eligibility for Non-local Google+ pages: Must be linked to a website

So How do I claim my Google+ URL

If you are eligible through the above criteria you will see a notification at the top of your Google+ profile or page.  The just follow these simple steps as described by Google:

1. Click Get a custom URL button to get started. Alternatively, from the “About” tab on your Profile, click the “Get” link located under your Google+ URL.
2. You’ll see the URL(s) you’ve been approved for. If you see more than one option, select the one you like best. You may also be asked to add a few numbers or letters to make the custom URL unique to you.
3. Check the box to agree to the Terms of Service.
4. Click Change URL.
5. Google may ask you to verify your account by your mobile phone number. If you need to do this, you’ll see a box pop up asking you to do so.
   a. Enter your mobile phone number.
   b. Check the box to make it easier for people who have your phone number to find you on Google services.
   c. Check your phone for the code that was sent to you.
   d. Enter that code in the box.
   e. Click Verify.
6. Once approved, this URL will be linked to your Google+ page or Profile, so be sure everything is exactly the way you want it. Once your URL has been approved, you can’t request to change it. When you’re certain, click Confirm.

Using your custom URL; now you can use this simple short url in your advertising or when printing flyers or on email signatures.  Also using these short cuts you can direct people to specific areas of your page or profile.

• google.com/+customURL/posts
• google.com/+customURL/about
• google.com/+customURL/photos
• google.com/+customURL/videos
• google.com/+customURL/plusones

Are you using Google Authorship to stand out in search?

Originally Posted on November 4, 2013 by TrevorPADI http://padiproseurope.com/are-you-using-google-authorship-to-stand-out-in-search/

What is Google Authorship?

Google authorship is an essential tool for anyone using a blog to drive their dive business.  It is something that helps you stick our in search results, certainly a very important proposition.

 

As you can see in the above screen shot of a search result, my blog post appears with my image (taken from your Google+ profile) and a by.. tag line.  Why is this important?  Well for one it makes your post stand out from the search results crowd, and this is certainly going to bring you more clicks.   In fact one independent study found that it leads to a 150% increase in clicks.  So if you use a blog as a business tool it strikes me as clearly negligent not to set up Google Authorship!