Amit Singhal’s keynote speech

Amit Singhal is a Google Fellow, and head of the Core Ranking Team. His speech took the form of a Q&A with Danny Sullivan, and despite some sound issues, was a really interesting insight into the minds of Google.

1. Google made 525 algorithm changes last year.
2. The aim is to get the best site for the user, not the site with the best SEO.
3. Whilst personalised search results are a goal for Google, they don’t want it to take over.
4. There is still more work to do before Search Plus Your World is ready to roll out in Europe.
5. Amit rewrote the Google algorithm when he got there! But even he can’t understand all parts of Google as it’s now so big that no one person can!

Winning the Click: Writing great PPC ads

1. Remember the basics and get them into your ads! Mention: USPs, prices, calls to action, keywords, tried & tested phrases (free delivery!); think about intent; weed out the wrong customers; match your ad to your landing page; experiment. Ben Beard, Adobe
   
2. 32 % of queries with ads have at least 1 new ad format (e.g. sitelinks, video…) Ben Beard
   
   
3. Use AdWords Campaign Experiments to try out different permutations of your ads/keywords/adgroups etc, without having too much of an impact on your account. Ben Beard
   
4. Identify your prospects and write ads that target them. Use you/your in ads to appeal to their emotions and make sure your ads address their needs/fears. Use sitelinks to further this, with links to your testimonials, guarantees, etc. Pamela Olson, King Schools
   
5. We buy on emotion and justify with logic, so front load the benefits of your product/service in your ads, and backup with fact. Pamela Olson
   
6. Write copy that people ENVY – Appeal to the customers Emotions and Needs, give them Validation and provide the Yay! factor (make them feel they got a deal). Pamela Olson
   
7. ALWAYS look at your Site Query Reports to see what queries generated your ads. This should form the backbone of what you do in PPC. Ed Schofield, Expedia
   
8. Develop your keyword match type strategy. Start broad, and then refine. Ed Schofield

Winning the Conversion

1. Landing page design – AVOID:
   • anything that looks like an advertisement
   • anything that violates design conventions
   • pages that don’t answer user questions
   Instead, go for:
   • simple, easy to use designs for less complex products/services (Mailchimp is a great example)
   • informative content for more complex products
   • graphically rich content for branding. Malcolm Graham, LimeTree
   
2. Split test different landing pages. Malcolm Graham
   
3. Increasing your conversion rate from 2% to 3% could increase your revenue by 50%. Malcolm Graham
   
4. Every landing page should have a purpose and a defined desired response. Guy Levine, Return on Digital
   
5. Think above the fold – make sure the answers to your users’ questions are easy to see as soon as they get to a page. Don’t make them scroll down. Guy Levine
   
6. Track conversions. Use Analytics to track goals and events, and use AdWords tracking for phone calls. And make your conversions defined events, rather than time on site or pages viewed. Guy Levine
   
7. First impressions count – 0.2 of a second is all it takes to form an impression of your site that sticks. Brian Lewis, Solutions-insight Interactive
   
8. Use cases – think about the different ‘roles’ of people coming to your site, what might be important to them, and what their level of knowledge is. Brian Lewis
   
9. Your Call to Action is vital – test different wording/colour/placement to make sure you get it right. Stephen Pavlovich, Conversion Factory

Call to Action from ASOS.com

Hardcore Local SEO

1. If you have a global site, make sure it functions at the local level. Jonathan Ashton, TBWA
   
2. Use segments and custom variables in Analytics to identify local search traffic and behaviour.  Martijn Beijk, comScore
   
3. Local operations need local pages – Make your site Venice friendly, and create a landing page for each area you focus on. Aleyda Solis, Forex Club
   
4. Optimise your Google Places presence. Aleyda Solis
   
5. Keep a flow of fresh and relevant localised content. Aleyda Solis
   
6. Make the most out of SOLOMO (Social, Local, Mobile) – mobilise and socialise your local presence. Aleyda Solis

Overlooked, Underloved and Unknown Analytics

1. Have an Analytics PLAN – this is often overlooked. Dennis Hart, SE Jones
   
2. Develop your KPIs over time. Dennis Hart
   
3. Set up conversion values even for conversions such as email signups. Dennis Hart
   
4. Use custom variables to create highly specific reports. Daniel Waisberg, Online Behavior
   
5. Use the new Social section of Google Analytics to monitor your activity across Social sites and your website. Find out which Social networks convert, which buttons are clicked and measure interaction. Anna Lewis, Koozai

We’ll be adding more tips, info and our thoughts about SMX London 2012 over the next couple of days, so keep an eye out for our roundup of day 2.

AdWords current ad rotation settings

In your AdWords campaign settings, you have three options when it comes to ad rotation:

• Optimise for clicks – where ads expected to provide more clicks are shown
• Optimise for conversions – where ads expected to provide more conversions are shown
• Rotate – where ads are shown evenly.

In AdWords, and on its Inside AdWords blog, Google says this change is an “improvement”, but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in the PPC community who thinks so. Most blog posts on the subject seem to decry the decision.

In fact, there is now a petition to get Google to reconsider their ad rotation change, so unpopular is it with online advertisers.

What does the ad rotation change actually mean?

In theory, the ad rotation change means that advertisers will only be showing the ads that Google deems to be most relevant… in terms of clicks. But what gets the best clickthrough rate may not get the most conversions. In other words, Google seems to be failing to take into account that advertisers might measure their success by other metrics.

In practice, it means that advertisers will only have 30 days to make decisions of their own about whether their ad copy is working. And 30 days isn’t always enough to make an informed decision.

It’s worth noting that, if you make changes to an ad, or add in a new one, this resets the clock, and you get another 30 days. But if you’re split testing your ad copy (and you really should be!), this pretty much renders any data useless as, again, there’s not enough time to make an informed decision.

As things stand, it’s hard not to see the whole thing as a money-making exercise on Google’s part. AdWords is its only paid-for service, and more clicks means more money. But small businesses and agencies – in fact all online advertisers – are going to have their work cut out for them to see what really works and what doesn’t.

Is the ad rotation change a massive fail on Google’s part, as many seem to think? Let us know in the comments.

Further reading:

Google AdWords: Pros and cons

For Goodness Sakes. What is Google changing now?

A Guide to AdWords Keyword Match Types

What is the Venice Update?

The Venice Update is targeted at local search, so if you’re a local business owner, it’s going to affect you. Big time.

In a list of algorithm updates (where do they get the codenames from?) published on their Inside Search blog in February, Google put it thus:

• Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.
  
• Improved local results. We launched a new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably. Now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.

What does the Venice Update mean?

Basically, the Venice Update is Google’s attempt to make local search results more relevant. It looks at where you are and serves up the results it deems most relevant to your location and query. And it will now serve up local results for a whole host of queries, so you really can’t afford to ignore local anymore.

How will Venice affect my business?

The main way in which the Venice Update will affect you is that you’ll really need to focus some time on your local SEO. If you’re a company that works in local areas, this is something you should already be doing anyway, but this is even more the case following this update. A lot of companies seem to think that having a list of the places they serve on their homepage, or in the footer of their site is enough, but it most definitely isn’t.

How does Google know where I am?

If you run a search in Google, on the left hand side of the screen, you’ll see your location. Google detects this automatically, from your IP address, but you can also change your location manually if you wish. Hallam are located in Nottingham, so if I run a search, this is what I see:

How do I optimise for local search?

If you’re a local company, or a larger company with lots of local offices, then you need to have a page devoted to each of the places you serve. This means, local keyword rich content, local Title tags & Meta Descriptions. If you look at the search results for something like “family lawyers”, for example, you can see that the companies appearing at the top of the search results are all optimising for Nottingham:

But what you MUST NOT do is have the same content on all of your local pages. That means no “find and replace”. Make sure that each page is unique and keyword rich. You may not have physical locations in all of the places you cover, and for Google Places, this matters, but for the organic search results, it doesn’t.

Make sure your Google Places page is set up, verified and well-optimised. Your Places page name should be your business name, nothing else. Don’t try and stuff your keywords in. And don’t forget to claim your listing.

Consider adding a KML file to your site. This little file will tell Google your latitude and longitude, among other things, so it’ll know exactly where you are.

The most important thing with regard to local SEO is consistency. Your company name, address and telephone number should be EXACTLY the same, and in exactly the same format across every local platform, whether it’s your website, your Google Places page, or your local citations. If you do this, you leave Google in no doubt about where you are.

Background reading:

SEOmoz’s Understand and Rock the Google Venice Update

SEOptimise’s Big Algorithm Boost for Local

Further reading:

Team Hallam Top Tips: Local SEO

Author Information in the Google Search Results
A Brief History of Google (Interactive Timeline)

Rainbows offers specialist care and support for children and young people suffering from life-limiting conditions, either in the hospice, or in their homes. They’re the East Midlands’ only hospice for children and young people, which is why the work they do is so important.

Naturally, we’re all training all hours of the day and night (when we’re not busy SEO-ing, of course!), to make sure we’re in tip-top condition on the day.

The race is being held at Victoria Embankment on the River Trent, so come on down and cheer us on! If you’d like to make a donation, we’ve set up a Hallam Internet JustGiving page, where you can do so.

We’d love to see you there. If you’re coming along, do let us know!

But paid advertising won’t work for everyone. Sometimes it’s just not worth the extra time and investment that you need to put in. So you need to think very carefully about what you want to achieve, and how much you’re willing to pay to achieve that. And, like everything else, there are pros and cons to AdWords.

What IS Google AdWords?

AdWords is Google’s paid advertising product. You know those little ads that you see at the top, sides and sometimes bottom of the search results? Yep, those are AdWords ads. Whether you like them or not, or whether you click on them or not (I know several people who refuse to!), the fact remains that they are (or can be) hugely successful in driving traffic.

Adverts appear when someone types a search query, in this case “summer dresses” into Google. Companies advertising bid for keywords related to their particular business. Within a fraction of a second, Google enters thousands of keywords and ads into an “auction” to determine which of them are most relevant to the search query, and the “winning ads” are what is served up at the top of the results.

But, as mentioned above, it simply doesn’t work for every business.

So, without further ado, I present:

Google AdWords pros

AdWords ads can be really helpful if you’re looking to drive traffic to your site quickly. SEO can take weeks, sometimes months to take effect. AdWords is instant.

You can be up and running on AdWords in a very short space of time. While there is a lot more to AdWords than just campaigns, adgroups, keywords and ads, these are the building blocks. And you can set them up very quickly. Do a bit of keyword research, decide on your budget,  set up a campaign and a few adgroups, write some killer ad copy, and away you go! Your ads will appear as soon as they’ve been approved, which could be instantaneous.

You have the chance to appear on the first page of the Internet’s largest search engine! And what does that mean? Exposure, exposure, exposure. And you’re appearing to someone who’s actively searching for what you offer when they really need it. Timing is, as they say, everything!

It can be done on a budget. AdWords doesn’t have to be expensive. Sure, if you’re a personal injury lawyer, you might be looking at a cost per click of about £50-£60, but if you’re not, it’s quite easy for small businesses to set up small, tightly optimised campaigns and reap the benefits. You can specify how much you’re willing to spend, and set your maximum cost per click for your keywords, and then you only pay for clicks. This allows you to maintain control of your spend.

Google AdWords cons

And now onto the cons of Google AdWords

You pay for clicks. That means that you pay whenever someone clicks on your ad, regardless of whether that click converted or not. So you may get clicks from visitors who have no intention of ever buying your product or service.

You are restricted by the amount of characters you’re allowed. 25 in the headline, 35 each in the two lines of text and 35 in the display URL. And you ideally need to include an attention-grabbing headline, keywords, benefits and a call to action in that.

It can be tricky. There’s a rather steep learning curve when it comes to AdWords, and mistakes may cost you dear. You need to invest quite a lot of time after the campaign’s been set up to ensure that it has been done so properly. And then you need to keep monitoring it to find out what’s converting and what’s not, and so on.

Google looks at the quality of your landing pages too, so if your website is not up to scratch in terms of relevancy to the search query, so you can’t just rely on AdWords to get you traffic and neglect your SEO. Make sure your landing pages are good, and that they relate to what’s in your ads. This will improve your Quality Score, which will mean you pay less for your clicks.

Further reading:

 Google Media Ads: Videos in Google AdWords

What Does Google Know About You?

A Guide to AdWords KeyWord Match Types

I studied languages at university, so I do tend to get somewhat obsessive about spelling and grammar, as those who know me will attest! And sometimes (okay, a LOT of times!) I come across websites that make me want to tear my hair out/sit there muttering darkly/take out my metaphorical red pen and write “see me” at the end.

I’m not just talking about badly written SEO copy here, either, but just general website copy that’s full of spelling mistakes, misplaced apostrophes, random capital letters or just generally bad grammar.

Image credit: http://spandg.blogspot.com/

And guess what? It puts people off!

Why? Well, for one thing, spam, scam and phishing sites are often chock-full of misspellings and bad grammar, so people are automatically on their guard when they see these. In fact, consumer watchdog Which? actually lists bad spelling as one way to spot a scam website. That’s not really the kind of association you want, is it?

In fact, last year, the BBC reported that bad spelling could cost millions in online sales, according to Charles Duncombe, an Internet entrepreneur. So it’s important to get it right.

Content is king

My first ever blog post for Hallam (more than a year ago – how time flies!) was entitled Content is King, and looked at content from an SEO perspective. Whilst many people would no doubt disagree with this oft-quoted saying, and many things have changed since I wrote that post, much of what I wrote still applies. Your content, i.e. your copy, is what makes your site, and what convinces people to buy. If it’s confusing or poorly written, then they’re just going to leave instead.

SEO copywriting

The old days of stuffing pages with every permutation of your keywords under the sun and relying on this to get you to the top of the search results are long gone (thankfully!), but a surprising number of websites still make this mistake with copywriting for SEO. I have come across several that are seemingly well-optimised – in that they have the keywords in all the right places – but when the keywords are just shoved into the copy so that it verges on making no sense, I know I’m just going to leave, frustrated or confused. Or both.

Getting to the top of the search results is one thing, but if your visitors aren’t converting to paying customers, it’s all for naught. So make sure your copy is well written, persuasive, and benefit-led.

So what can you do if you think your copy’s not up to scratch?

If you don’t feel comfortable writing your own copy, hire a copywriter to write it. They’ll produce brilliantly written, benefit-led copy for you that’s designed to convert visitors to customers.

Or if you’d like to give it a go yourself but just feel you need a push in the right direction, Copyblogger’s blog is great, and full of useful articles and tutorials covering everything from misused words to writing for Social Media.

Do you agree with Mr Duncombe that bad copy can lose sales? Do poorly written sites bother you when you’re looking for something online? Let us know in the comments.

And just for fun:

The Alot is Better Than You at Everything

Did I Use the Wrong Your Again? (slightly NSFW!)

Further reading:

5 Fundamental Website Mistakes to Avoid

Why Don’t People Buy from My E-Commerce Website?

Why Don’t People Buy from My E-Commerce Website? (Part 2)

 Thumbnail image from: http://the11thhour.blogspot.com

AdWords Conversion Optimiser

And instead of specifying a cost per click (CPC), you specify a cost per acquisition (CPA), which is the amount you’re willing to pay to get a conversion. You can choose the maximum amount you’re willing to pay, however, your actual CPA might exceed this due to factors outside Google’s control.

You still pay for all clicks, though, not just the ones that convert!

According to Google, by using AdWords Conversion Optimiser, many advertisers have seen “double digit percentage increases in conversions”, whilst paying the same or less to achieve each conversion.

Can anyone use AdWords Conversion Optimiser?

No. Your campaign must satisfy the following requirements before it’s eligible to use Conversion Optimiser:

• AdWords Conversion Tracking must be enabled (if this is not done already, set it up now, especially if you’re running an e commerce site!). A conversion might be a purchase, or newsletter sign up, a request for a quote, or any other action you want to track.
• Your campaign must have received 15 conversions or more within the last 30 days.
• Your campaign must have received conversions at a similar rate over the course of a few days.

If that sounds like one of your campaigns, then read on…

Setting up Conversion Optimiser

To enable AdWords Conversion Optimiser on your campaign:

• Sign into your AdWords account
• Select the “Settings”" tab for the campaign you wish to enable Conversion Optimiser for
• Scroll down to “Bidding and Budget”, and “Bidding Option”
• Click “Edit”
• Click the radio button next to “Focus on conversions”

It’s worth noting that you should not make any major changes to your account whilst Conversion Optimiser is enabled, such as moving your tracking code or switching multiple campaigns into one. If you’re going to do this, turn Conversion Optimiser off for the time being. To do this, follow the steps above, but select “Focus on clicks” under “Bidding Option”.

For more information and to read success stories, visit Google’s AdWords Conversion Optimiser Support

Has Conversion Optimiser worked for you? Let us know in the comments?

Related blog posts:

7 Quick Tips: AdWords on a small budget

What Does Google Know About You?

How Can I See which Keywords Trigger My Ads?

Google, apparently, is a bit of a film buff (who knew?), so if you type in a search query like “the film where bacon goes into space”, “the film with the russian roulette” or “the film where Costner plays golf” Google somehow knows exactly what you want and shows it at #1.

Well, never ones to back down from a challenge, we wanted to see who was the bigger film geek? Google, or Team Hallam? We tried to come up with the most abstract queries we could think of, and Google got most of them!

Here are some of our favourites:

But Bing? Needs to see more movies:

How does Google know, and Bing doesn’t? It’s all very clever.

Try it yourself and post your best queries in the comments!

Facebook advertising

In fact, Facebook is so popular that, according to this rather awesome (and eye-opening) video: Social Media Revolution, in the US, Facebook actually gets more traffic than Google!

Which is why you can’t overlook Facebook advertising as a means of engaging with your customers.

What is Facebook advertising?

You know when you go on Facebook, and you see those boxes to the right of your profile? Those are the ads, and the companies behind them will have most likely used Facebook to note what you like, how old you are, whether you’re male or female and a whole host of other info, and to serve their ads to you, trusting that you’re the kind of person that is going to buy from them.

For example, I have “Liked” arty, crafty things, so when I logged in earlier, I saw this ad:

Facebook ads consist of a headline, thumbnail image and copy. You do get slightly more characters with Facebook than with, say, AdWords,(although I think they are reducing this soon), but it’s still not a lot, so make sure your ad is concise, memorable and contains a call to action to encourage people to click “Like”.

Like AdWords, Facebook advertising is pay per click. However, you can instead opt to pay for impressions, if it’s simply brand awareness you’re looking for.

Facebook advertising – advantages

• The big advantage of Facebook advertising is how super-targeted you can make it. If you’ve cater for broad demographic, you can tailor your ads to each segment of this (different images & copy for younger users vs. older, for example, or for men vs. women). If you have a smaller target market, you can really focus your efforts in on that particular segment of Facebook users.
• You can think local – Facebook’s targeting allows you to only serve your ads in a certain area, a particular town, say. If you’re a local business, this is a huge advantage. Say you’re a solicitor in Lincoln. Facebook advertising gives you the opportunity to show your ad to anyone who has put Lincoln as their hometown, and there’s your market right there.
• You can see your potential reach – When you’re designing your ad, Facebook lets you know how many people are likely to see it. This is good for knowing what’s worth targeting and what isn’t.
• It snowballs – once someone Likes your page through your ad, this fact shows up on the Facebook news feeds of all their friends. And because people tend to trust recommendations from their friends, they may well click Like too.
• You can use images – choosing an eye-catching image that speaks to your target market is vital, Try split testing ads with different images to see what works.

Facebook advertising – disadvantages

• Low clickthrough and conversion rates. If you’ve used AdWords, you should be looking at a clickthrough rate of around 2% on your ads. The same for a conversion rate. With Facebook, both are far lower, which can be discouraging.
• Irrelevant ads – some ads that are shown are not targeted at all, and can leave you frustrated with the perceived intrusion.
• It’s difficult to catch people’s attention – People are so busy on Facebook that they often don’t pay any attention to the ads. They are far more interested in chatting to their friends.

But if you can get the right mix of demographic, copy and image, then you can really make Facebook advertising work for you.

For a great resource on Facebook advertising, take a look at Marty Weintraub’s book, Killer Facebook Ads: Master Cutting-Edge Facebook Advertising Techniques.

Have you tried Facebook advertising? Or are you a bit daunted by it all? Let us know!

Further reading:

Team Hallam Top Tips: Facebook

Encourage People to Share Your Content on Facebook

With hashtags, you can bring your Tweets, effectively, to other people’s attention. Twitter users track certain hashtags that interest them, so you need to find out what your target audience is interested in, and start using these hashtags in your Tweets.

Using hashtags

So, how do you actually use Twitter hashtags?

To make a word into a hashtag, simply place the # symbol directly in front of it, with no space. Like so: #SEO. You can also run words together to make a hashtag, for example if  you’re tweeting about a company, phrase, celebrity or an event (e.g. #BurgerKing, #humanrights, #LadyGaga, #Baftas2012).

To track a hashtag, you can use software such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite, which allow you to add columns to track searches, or set up  a Twilert for your hashtag, that’ll let you know if someone uses it in a Tweet.

Hashtags.org is also great for finding up to date information about top hashtags.

When good hashtags go bad

Time for a word of caution when using hashtags – they can be hijacked. The furniture retailer Habitat hit the headlines a couple of years back for hijacking popular hashtags at the time and using them to spam people with promotional offers. Hijacking these hashtags? Not good marketing practice in general. But hijacking hashtags related to serious issues such as the Iran elections? Really, really bad.

Or, as the Australian airline Qantas, and fast-food giant McDonalds have found out, if customers (or anyone else!) have any issues, they can quite easily turn your hashtag against you, resulting in a Twitter nightmare.

6 Tips for using Twitter hashtags

• Do some research – find out whether the subject you’re tweeting about has an existing hashtag you can use.
• If you’re holding/attending an event, use a hashtag (e.g. #brightonseo, #BETT2012) This will enable you to see who is talking about it, what, they’re saying, and make sure you put the hashtag in your marketing info, so that people know what they’re looking for.
• #Don’t #make #every #word #a #hashtag. One or two per Tweet is sufficient. More than that makes your Tweets difficult to read. Plus, it’s annoying!
• On that note, keep your Tweets short & to the point. You want to make it easy for people to retweet you.
• Don’t use hashtags in every Tweet. It looks spammy.
• Learn from Habitat’s mistake, and make sure your Tweets add value to the topic – no spamming popular hashtags!

Do you use hashtags in your Tweets? Had any hashtag disasters? Let us know below!

Further reading:

Hallam’s Free Social Media Content Calendar

Twitter: Why aren’t people following me?

Team Hallam Top Tips: Twitter