YouTube Search Adds Time Watched As Ranking Factor

YouTube Search Adds Time Watched As Ranking Factor
http://bit.ly/T5qAa2

The YouTube Blog announced they have adjusted their ranking algorithm to include the time a video was watched.

YouTube said they experimented with this ranking factor with suggested videos and it lead to “less clicking” and “more watching” and thus feels it is a good idea to add to the overall YouTube Search ranking algorithm.

Part of this announcement, YouTube also added the time watched statistics to video producers YouTube Analytics dashboard. You can access the time watched statistics under the “Views” report. There is a section labeled “Estimated minutes watched.” Here are screen shots from two of my videos I made in the past few weeks:

You can see that while the Apple Maps published on September 28th has over twice as many views as the Google EMD video published on October 5th, the time watched on that video is less than the Google EMD video. In fact, I have five times the minutes watched on the Google EMD video than I have views on that video. Which may be why it ranks number one in YouTube for [Google EMD].

Google’s YouTube wrote:

The experimental results of this change have proven positive — less clicking, more watching. We expect the amount of time viewers spend watching videos from search and across the site to increase. As with previous optimizations to our discovery features, this should benefit your channel if your videos drive more viewing time across YouTube.

Related Topics: Google: YouTube & Video | Top News



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VP Debate Spurs Searches Like “Shirtless” (Ryan), “Laughing” (Biden) & Other “Malarkey”

VP Debate Spurs Searches Like “Shirtless” (Ryan), “Laughing” (Biden) & Other “Malarkey”
http://bit.ly/T5mTB9

There’s a kind of Pavlovian response that happens with major national events in the U.S. (and probably elsewhere): internet users taking to the web to comment on and/or learn more about what they’re experiencing.

As expected, conversation spiked on social networking sites during the Vice Presidential debate last night. Twitter says there were 3.5 million tweets just during the debate itself, and another half-million before and after. (Update: For more on the social aspect of last night’s debate, see my Marketing Land article: Red State, Blue State: The Social Network VP Debate Divide Shown In Map Form.)

There was also a lot of search activity, and the search queries varied from the serious to the silly. On its Google+ page, the Google Politics & Elections team shared several charts about the debate, including the top overall search terms for each VP candidate and the top rising search terms.

google-top-terms

google-rising-terms

The “malarkey” mention there was mirrored in search activity on Yahoo. Phrases like [malarkey], [malarkey definition] and [what is malarkey] all jumped into the top searches on Yahoo last night. Yahoo even broke down some demographics about who was searching for “malarkey” — mainly older searchers, but seven percent of searches were from the under-18 set. And the top states that sought to learn about “malarkey” on Yahoo were California, Wisconsin (Ryan’s home state), North Carolina, Virginia and Massachusetts.

malarkey-yahoo-map

Yahoo’s search team has been tweeting some of the other search activity that it’s seen about the debate — some serious and some silly.

 

 

 

 

Google also took a look this morning at the debate moments that produced the most search activity — Biden had the biggest single-spike, but searches related to Ryan were generally higher throughout the debate.

google-debate-moments

Who won the debate? That depends who you ask. Using its Google Consumer Surveys product, Google says 44 percent thought Biden won. CNN, on the other hand, says that its poll favored Ryan 48 percent to 44 percent over Biden.

No word yet on how many think political polls are a bunch of malarkey….

Related Topics: Features: Analysis | Search & Society: General | Stats: Search Behavior



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What Makes Paid Search Programs Successful From Search To Conversion?

What Makes Paid Search Programs Successful From Search To Conversion?
http://bit.ly/TiCQOy

At a high level, I believe it is fair to say that it has a lot to do with the ability to bid on the right keywords, serve very specific ads tailored to each geo/language/device, and redirect to the most appropriate landing page for each geo/language/device.

It’s all about engineering a consistent conversion chain from search to conversion, which implies high resolution targeting.

In an ideal world, search marketers should break down their paid search accounts by user intent, geo, language, device, and more… as long as they see some kind of gain targeting wise.

That all makes sense so far, except that you might end up with several thousands of campaigns, duplicate ad copies and keywords across those campaigns, etc., and gradually lose control over your paid search program.

More specifically, you might run into a scalability issue, which raises the following question: where is the middle ground between high resolution targeting and manageability of your paid search effort?

In this article, I’ll review the main segmentation possibilities in paid search, then identify those that always make sense (=”Must-Have”), and those who might need more in-depth thinking before rolling them out across the board (=”Advanced”).

Segmenting Options: By Account, Campaign & Ad Group

Let’s start from the beginning. Search marketers have lots of segmenting options at their disposal; let’s start at the account level, down to the campaign and ad group level.

You might want to have multiple AdWords accounts if you need to:

  • Set up multiple billing settings (for different businesses for instance)
  • Manage user access by account
  • Build more than 10,000 campaigns (current AdWords limitation)
  • Isolate keywords with a poor (or strong) Quality Score, since the account history is one of the major Quality Score components.

If you don’t need any of these, then you just need one account.

Then, you might want to create separate campaigns if you need to:

  • Allocate separate daily budgets
  • Segment Search vs. GDN (Google Display Network)
  • Segment Desktop vs. Tablet vs. Mobiles
  • Segment by geo (state, city, zip code, it can get incredibly granular)
  • Segment by language (English vs. Spanish, etc…)
  • Exclude terms for certain campaigns only
  • Create sitelinks or any other type of ad extensions

Finally, the ad group level breakdown is really about relevancy and negative keyword management in AdWords, since they are no ad group-level targeting settings (while there are some in Bing Ads).

Must-Have Segmentation #1: Search vs. GDN

While some advertisers still set campaigns to target both the search and GDN networks, it’s been a couple of years since the whole industry has seemed clear about this – you definitely need to split your campaigns by search network vs. GDN.

There are multiple reasons for this:

  • GDN campaign structure is completely different, since you can not only bid on keywords, but also on, placements, audiences, topics.
  • GDN ad copies should be CTR-focused, since the historical CTR is an even more important Quality Score on the GDN.

Must-Have Segmentation #2: Brand vs. Non-Brand

For many reasons, you definitely want to isolate your branded keywords:

  • To maximize your impression share for your branded keywords (in practice, you want to make sure this campaign is never capped due to budget while maintaining high Quality Score and aggressive ranks at a low cost per click).
  • Set up branded site links.
  • You might want to exclude your branded terms from your non-branded campaigns to silo impressions and make sure you’re measuring brand vs. non-brand performance, as opposed to having everything mixed together in one place.

Advanced Segmentation #1: Device Targeting

For lots of advertisers, this is actually a must-have segmentation, since you most likely want to:

  • Allocate device-specific budgets
  • Measure clicks-to-call and other device-specific metrics
  • Set device-specific bidding strategies
  • Adjust your keyword list by device
  • Write specific ad copies by device (even by operating system or carrier)
  • Use device-specific landing pages.

However, if you are already managing 100 campaigns and need to update your ad copies on a regular basis (special offers, holiday season, etc.), perhaps you should not have 300 campaigns instead of 100 because of a scalability issue.

Will the gain in performance outweigh the loss in manageability?

There is no generic answer to that, and it all depends on the paid search platform that you’re using (for instance the ability to easily duplicate campaigns), although it is fair to say that one should take care of branded and the top revenue keywords first.

Advanced Segmentation #2: Geo Targeting

Similarly to the device segmentation, you might be tempted to build out a huge number of campaigns by geo, knowing that geos can be pretty much as granular as you want them to be: by country, state, city, latitude/longitude, zip code, etc.

It makes a ton of sense when wanting to:

  • Allocate geo-specific budgets
  • Set geo-specific bidding strategies
  • Adjust the keyword list by geo such as [keyword] + [city], etc…
  • Write geo-specific ad copies
  • Leverage location extensions if applicable

Again, if you already have 100 campaigns, do you really want to multiply this number by 50 to target each individual US state?

How manageable would 5,000 campaigns be vs. just 100? Same piece of advice here, one should align the effort with what it is worth.

More specifically, what you should really care about are just those couple of top revenue geos (whatever they are: states, cities, etc…) where you are seeing a significantly lower or greater ROAS (return on ad spend) – then you should definitely adjust your spend and strategy by geo for those guys in order to re-allocate your budget from low-performing geos to high-performing geos.

In short, you don’t really need to go through that process if your current ROAS by geo is the same nationwide.

Addressing The Scalability Issue

Beyond the above segmentation possibilities, there are many other ways to break down your paid search program (by language, Google and Search Partners vs. Google only, by time zone for more granular hourly bids and more…), and search marketers will always run into some kind of scalability issue at some point.

So far, I have mostly referred to scalability issues as maintenance/manageability issues, however there is another issue involved with building out high resolution paid search account: data dilution. This can get a serious issue and paralyze your bid decisions if you just don’t have enough data by geo, language or device.

In a nutshell, it is every search marketer’s role to draw the line between granularity and manageability. It depends on the resources available, the maturity of your program, and the platform you’re using.

A general piece of advice from my experience would be to always tier your account by whatever targeting settings you’re considering, and then get more granular just for your tier 1 campaigns (and maybe the tier 2 campaigns as well if reasonable).

To clarify, tier 1 campaigns are typically those accounting for 50% of the conversions/revenue.

As a result, a granular while manageable account structure could be:

The bottom line is that it might not be worth treating tier 2 and 3 campaigns like tier 1 campaigns.

No big surprise here, however, I believe it makes sense to keep this in mind when building out your account. That should help you scale up your account while keeping control over it.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: Search & Conversion

Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

What's Going On with Our Branded Organic Traffic?

What's Going On with Our Branded Organic Traffic?
http://bit.ly/RwuHqN

Posted by RuthBurr

We've been experiencing an interesting pattern in our branded organic traffic over the last few months. I know SEOmoz can't be the only ones experiencing this trend, so I want to call out what I've been seeing in the SEOmoz data.

We've been seeing gentle but steady organic growth in 2012, along with a small seasonal dip in early summer:

SEOmoz Organic Traffic 2012

However, when we look at just our branded organic traffic, we're seeing a different story altogether:

Branded Organic Traffic 2012

Branded organic visits are taken from an Advanced Segment I've set up in Google Analytics. It captures any organic traffic that comes in via keywords including our brand terms (seomoz, open site explorer, etc.) and variations on our brand terms (seo moz, seo mox, OSE, etc.).

Digging into this data a bit, I compared visits from April 2012 (the first available 30-day month of the year) with September 2012 in GA and got the following results for our top four branded terms:

  • "seomoz" declined 26.26%
  • "open site explorer" declined 37.04%
  • "opensiteexplorer" declined 28.16%
  • "seo moz" declined 33.10%

Is interest in our brand declining?

I was pretty sure that the decrease in branded traffic wasn't a decrease at all. Instead, our drop in branded keyword tracking was a casualty of Google masking keyword data for some users.

However, I needed to make sure we weren't losing brand equity. Reduced search volume for our branded terms would be a bad sign for us. I put together a test to make sure our branded organic traffic (probably) wasn't actually declining.

I took a look at Google Trends data for the four terms listed above and found that while some of them have seen some volatility in interest over the course of 2012, none of them has seen a significant decline in search volume when comparing April to September (note the drop at the end from this week's incomplete data).

The term "seomoz" remains very steady:

seomoz interest over time

 

"open site explorer" saw dips in interest in April and July, but had returned to the 80-100 level by September:

open site explorer interest over time

 

"seo moz" has seen the most significant decline, but by removing the three outlying peaks from this cart, we can see interest remaining fairly steady (especially since July):

seo moz interest over time

 

"opensiteexplorer" has actually seen an increase in interest since late July:

opensiteexplorer interest over time

 

For one last sanity check, I exported our rankings history from 2012.  I was pretty sure I'd have noticed if SEOmoz properties had slipped from #1 for these terms, and sure enough, they haven't.

What is going on with our branded traffic?

I'm confident that I cracked the case in regards to our branded traffic. If search volume hasn't declined and we are still ranking the same, it's a reasonable assumption that our branded organic traffic has not, in fact, fallen off.

The culprit is our old pal, (not provided).

In the same period that we saw the decline in branded traffic listed above, we also saw a 42.02% increase in (not provided) traffic. In September, (not provided) accounted for 63% of our organic search traffic, compared to 51.7% of our organic traffic in April. Remember when (not provided) was only supposed to affect 5% of searches? That was fun.

Since (like most sites) our branded terms are also our most popular overall organic terms, it stands to reason that a large portion of that (not provided) traffic is made up of branded organic traffic. SEOmoz is harder-hit by this than some other sites because we have such a tech-savvy audience: our users are more likely than some other demographics to be using Firefox or signed in to Google Accounts.

What kind of increase have you seen in (not provided) traffic since the beginning of the year? Is it affecting your branded terms?


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SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 9, 2012

SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 9, 2012
http://bit.ly/RwuFPG

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

  • How To Develop Helpful Content To Improve Visibility & Conversion

    In this article, we’ll look at another website that was submitted for review from a “Keywords and Content” point of view. The site is Shipping 2 USA, a free service where “you get the lowest quote for shipping to/from the USA.” Add Helpful Information To Your Website I see that the folks at Shipping 2 [...]

  • It’s “Top Heavy 2? As Google Rolls Out Update To Its Page Layout Algorithm

    Another week, another update to part of Google’s search algorithm. This time, Google announced a refresh of its Page Layout filter that it first announced back in January, or what’s often called the “Top Heavy” update. Updates, Updates It’s the fourth Google update in the past two weeks. The rundown so far: Panda Update 20: Sept. 27, [...]

  • Still Stuck Behind Apple’s Doors: The New Google Search App

    Two months ago, Google previewed a new Google Search app that it said would be coming to iOS, bringing with it what seemed a blend of Siri and Google Now-like features. Despite being submitted to the Apple App Store back then, Apple’s still not approved the app. Why not? Apple didn’t have any comment, when I [...]

  • Lowest Rates For SMX Social Media Marketing Expire This Saturday

    With a community of one billion people, Facebook’s reach is undeniable – but how can you make sure you actually connect with your fans and cultivate new ones? Twitter’s new user directory will drive more search traffic – and more advertising opportunities – but is it worth the investment? Attend SMX Social Media Marketing for [...]

  • How The EMD Update Impacts Multinational Businesses

    Dialling back the importance of exact match domains, despite only effecting 0.6% US English search terms, will still have a strong impact in the Retail, Travel, Gambling & Finance verticals.

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

Business Issues

Link Building

Local, Maps & Mobile

Paid Search & Contextual

SEM Industry

SEO & SEM

Social Media

Related Topics: SearchCap



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Like-A-Hug Makes Facebook Likes Mean a Little More

Like-A-Hug Makes Facebook Likes Mean a Little More
http://bit.ly/UEaJAr

Facebook just announced that they’ve hit one billion monthly active users. As a part of that milestone, the company also told us that in the last three and a half years (approximately), Facebook users have hit the “like” button over 1.13 trillion times.

Let that sink in for a second. 1.13 trillion likes. With that kind of cultural dominance, the “like” has become a universal emotion, sometimes divorced from any other tangible human emotion. People “like” an engagement announcement that same way they “like” a funny picture. With Facebook users liking billions of posts every day, maybe the “like” has lost its punch? Does a “like” really mean anything anymore?

What if a like could translate into a physical hug? That way, when you “liked” your sister’s baby photo from across the country, she could feel your “like,” and it may just feel a little bit more like love.

That’s the idea behind the Like-A-Hug, a project from Melissa Chow, Andy Payne, and Phil Seaton of the MIT Media Lab.

“Like-A-Hug is a wearable social media vest that allows for hugs to be given via Facebook, bringing us closer despite physical distance. The vest inflates when friends ‘Like’ a photo, video, or status update on the wearer’s wall, thereby allowing us to feel the warmth, encouragement, support, or love that we feel when we receive hugs. Hugs can also be sent back to the original sender by squeezing the vest and deflating it,” says the project site.

Check out the concept below:

All that stuff about “likes” turning into love and meaning something is nice, but it’s doubtful that you could get that many people to wear an inflatable vest in public. Of course, the idea is probably not going to translate into an actual product – but that wasn’t really the point.

“Connecting it to Facebook conceptually was simply a way to explore how social media might push past the traditional graphic user interface (GUI),” says Chow.

Plus, nothing beats a real hug.

WebProNews » Social Media

5 Facebook Marketing Resources You Didn't Know About

5 Facebook Marketing Resources You Didn't Know About
http://bit.ly/QaV4Dl

Posted by JoannaLord

A few years ago, many of us were skeptical about how Facebook was going to get marketers to spend a significant amount of time and money on their platform, which is clearly not the case these days. One thing I'm sure of now is that Facebook advertising is here to stay.

According to the State of Inbound report HubSpot put out this year, "42% of marketers say Facebook is critical or important to their business." That percentage has gone up 75% from where it was just a few years ago. Talk about up and to the right!

With all that pickup, one would expect Facebook to have some resources out there to help us market our companies more effectively on Facebook. Never fear, for these resources exist! Unfortunately, they are somewhat hidden. Here are five pages and resources worth exploring if you are looking to drive traffic and sales through Facebook.

Facebook Marketing Page

Say what? Yup. Believe it or not, Facebook runs a page (with over 2 million likes, by the way) that they manage actively to help marketers use Facebook more effectively. They often post about webinars they are holding for marketers, answer specific questions posted to their wall, and spotlight valuable statistics that could help you make the case in-house to dedicate more resources to Facebook. 


 

Facebook Advertising Page

For those of you looking to try your hand at Facebook ads, you might find there aren't a ton of resources out there to help you get set up and running smoothly. Luckily for us, Facebook has been investing in their help documentation. In this section, they outline how things work, show off some success stories, and answer top questions. You can also find some contact information for those nagging questions you can’t quite figure out.


 

Facebook Business Page

This might be one of the least known resources that Facebook has put together. Instead of just focusing on how you can set up an ad and spend money with Facebook, they have worked to put together information on how you can get the most out of Facebook as a business. The page covers the basics like building a page and conversation etiquette, but it also gives tips on how to engage your audience and influence friends.



 

Facebook Studio

This is by far my favorite of all the resources Facebook has put together for marketers. Here you will find a gallery of creative Facebook campaigns, explore award-winning campaigns, a directory agencies experience in Facebook marketing campaigns, and more.



 

Facebook Studio Edge

This is a brand new resource for those looking to take Facebook campaign creation in house. Recently released, Facebook Studio Edge is an online course that walks a user through critical knowledge pieces like measurement, research, resources, and tools to help with Facebook marketing. You can request beta entry and get started today. I’m super excited to see them operationalize this learning curve a bit with the facebook studio edge series.


Whoa, that's a ton of good stuff!

We were fortunate enough to host Facebook in the office a few weeks ago, and we were really impressed (but mainly surprised!) to hear about all of these great resources. As more of our time and budget shifts to Facebook, be sure to lean on the resources above to help steer you in the right direction. Perhaps one of the best advantages of investing in Facebook is that they are home to a community of others trying to do the same thing. Connect with other community members on the pages above, and see how you can help each other succeed. Best of luck to you all!

If I missed any other Facebook marketing resources (they don't have to be hosted on Facebook like the list above) feel free to leave them in the comments below!


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Webcast: Finding Quality Sales Leads Among Your Web Visitors Is Easier Than You Think!

Webcast: Finding Quality Sales Leads Among Your Web Visitors Is Easier Than You Think!
http://bit.ly/QaV1r7

Digital Marketing Depot will host a webcast Wednesday October 16th at 1 PM EDT. "Finding Quality Sales Leads Among Your Web Visitors Is Easier Than You Think!"?will feature Matt Heinz, President at Heinz Marketing and Uri-Bar Joseph of Optify.

Get smart. Get sales the info they need to win more deals. The Internet has given today’s buyers unprecedented access to information, putting them firmly in the driver?s seat. But the same web technology that put power in the hands of the buyer can also be used to capture in-depth information about your website visitors and leads.

This free webcast will include a live Q&A session. Register at Digital Marketing Depot.

Thanks to Optify for sponsoring this webcast.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: SMX & DMD Alerts



SMX - Search Marketing Expo Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Deployment SEO Strategy and Checklist

Deployment SEO Strategy and Checklist
http://bit.ly/VRomdj

Posted by Geoff Kenyon

Every time you have a release, do you have a test (automated or manual) that you perform to make sure that everything is good to go from an SEO perspective? This is what we call a deployment SEO strategy. Odds are you might not have one, but you should.

You need a deployment strategy for two reasons: first, accidents happen. Second, not everyone knows SEO. This posts highlights problems to look for when when you're testing a deployment and tips on how to create a deployment SEO strategy that works for you. 

Accidents happen

Between consulting and my in-house experience, I have seen my fair share of accidents and mistakes.

SEO Accidents

Image via Shutter Stock Photos

Some of these accidents were my fault or responsibility, and some I happened to find along the way. The recurring issues I have seen include:

  • Nofollows being added to all internal links
  • Meta robots noindex added to pages
  • Robots.txt updated to disallow: /
  • All title tags being set to the homepage
  • Product canonical tags set to category URLs
  • 301s used for canonicalization being removed
  • H1s disappearing
  • Content disappearing
  • URLs being changed
  • Analytics tracking code removed

All of these issues can have significant impacts on SEO. The reasons for this are far and wide, ranging from the wrong code being copied from the dev server to designers forgetting that title tags are important. As SEOs, we can do things to reduce the likelihood of these things happening by creating systems and processes, but sometimes accidents will happen. Sometimes, something is bound to sneak by. This means you need to have a system in place to find problems when they arise rather than down the road.

Pro Tip: Be an actual user of your site, not just a creator – you will find problems and bugs very quickly this way.

Automated vs Manual

When I was working in-house, we had all of our internal links become nofollowed; the nofollow tag was copied over from a dev environment. After learning from this experience, I began doing manual testing following every deployment to ensure that each one was rolled out properly. With weekly releases and multiple sites, this task quickly became quite time consuming. Fortunately, we had a QA team that I trained to handle the testing themselves.

I started the manual reviews by going to pages that needed to be tested and verified that the SEO elements were all in proper place. To automate the process, I oversaw the development of test scripts built by the QA team to verify everything was in order. This was a much more efficient solution.

Big sites with frequent releases should be doing automated testing. Work with your dev team to get these tests created for you. Further, you should also have a QA team that should be capable of running the tests once they are trained. If you're unable to get the resources necessary, well...try to persevere until you can. You'll still have to do the work manually, but this issue is far too important to ignore. If you can gather the dev resources, you'll still need to perform manual tests until automated testing is created.

If you run a smaller site or don’t have frequent releases, manual testing is probably the better solution for you. Sure, it takes some time, but if you aren’t doing it every week, odds are the manual reviews won’t drive you insane.

Which pages to test

Do you need to test every page? In general, no. If your site runs off a CMS or a template, you should be testing every type of page (product, category, homepage, education pages, etc.). Additionally, if you have important landing pages that are one-off creations, you should test them as well.

Do I really have to do it every time?

Yes, you do. It is important. Again, you’re the SEO, and unfortunately you're to blame if something goes wrong.

Minimizing problems

Earlier we discussed that you can minimize the likelihood and frequency of problems by implementing systems and processes. Typically,creating these steps take two shapes: training and reviews.

Training

SEO impacts many different teams and job functions throughout a business. The impact ranges from developers and product managers to customer support. What this means for the SEO is that you have a fair amount of people who can either help you out a lot or make your life a lot more complicated. My advice is to use this cross-team collaboration to your advantage.

Jobs Impacted By SEO

Obviously not all of the people in these positions needs to be well versed in SEO or have watched every Matt Cutts webmasters video, but it's probably important that they know how their roles can impact SEO. Discuss the impact each role has with your team to make sure everyone is on the same page, and it will help you define your strategy. 

PRO Tip: When you finish training your team, leave people with a handout of the areas that they can impact. A checklist serves as a great reminder for the actions you want them to take.

SEO sign-off

In addition to training, you should create SEO checkpoints in project processes where you (or another member of the SEO team) will have to sign-off that the project meets the SEO requirements you have established. I recommend implementing checkpoints as frequently as possible. This ensures that someone with an SEO mind has thought about the project at each step from idea to execution. This "big picture" mentality will not only help to prevent problems, but will help to capitalize on opportunities.

PRO Tip: Establish SEO requirements for all projects. Make them known to everyone involved and publish them on your internal network.

Deployment of an SEO checklist

The following is a basic list of SEO items to check in every deployment. Use it as a guide to what to look for in each deployment, and feel free to customize based on your specific needs.

On-site

Check BoxPage titles exist and are correct

Check BoxH1s exist and are correct

Check BoxMeta descriptions exist and are correct

Check BoxAlt text is targeted

Check BoxContent exits and is correct

Check BoxCorrect version of site is being shown to search engines (if you do that sort of thing)

Check BoxAccessibility

Check BoxMeta Robots are correct

Check BoxRobots.txt file is correct

Tracking

Check Box Analytics code is correct on every page (type)

Check BoxEcommerce tracking is properly set up

Technical

Check BoxCanonical tag is correct

Check BoxInternal links are followed (unless otherwise stated)

Check Box301 redirects are in place

Check BoxSite is canonicalling properly

Google’s August & September Updates: Panda, Knowledge Graph, Page Quality & SafeSearch

Google’s August & September Updates: Panda, Knowledge Graph, Page Quality & SafeSearch
http://bit.ly/VRmktw

Google has announced details on the search algorithm and quality changes made over the past two months – August and September. In total, Google lists 65 changes over the past two months.

The previous announcement covered two months as well, and was for June and July.

This time the key changes include Panda updates, improved knowledge graph, page quality and ranking changes, snippet changes, freshness updates and SafeSearch changes. Here is the list of some of the changes categorized by topic:

Web Ranking & Indexing

  • LTS. [project “Other Ranking Components”] We improved our web ranking to determine what pages are relevant for queries containing locations.
  • #82279. [project “Other Ranking Components”] We changed to fewer results for some queries to show the most relevant results as quickly as possible.
  • #83709. [project “Other Ranking Components”] This change was a minor bug fix related to the way links are used in ranking.
  • #82546. [project “Indexing”] We made back-end improvements to video indexing to improve the efficiency of our systems.
  • #84010. [project “Page Quality”] We refreshed data for the “Panda” high-quality sites algorithm.
  • #83777. [project “Synonyms”] This change made improvements to rely on fewer “low-confidence” synonyms when the user’s original query has good results.
  • #84586. [project “Other Ranking Components”] This change improved how we rank documents for queries with location terms.

Page Quality & Scoring

  • #82862. [project “Page Quality”] This launch helped you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
  • #83135. [project “Query Understanding”] This change updated term-proximity scoring.
  • Imadex. [project “Freshness”] This change updated handling of stale content and applies a more granular function based on document age.
  • #83689. [project “Page Quality”] This launch helped you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
  • #84394. [project “Page Quality”] This launch helped you find more high-quality content from trusted sources.
  • #83761. [project “Freshness”] This change helped you find the latest content from a given site when two or more documents from the same domain are relevant for a given search query.

Sitelinks & Snippets & UI

  • #83105. [project “Snippets”] We refreshed data used to generate sitelinks.
  • #83442. [project “Snippets”] This change improved a signal we use to determine how relevant a possible result title actually is for the page.
  • #83443. [project “Knowledge Graph”] We added a lists and collections component to the Knowledge Graph.
  • #83012. [project “Knowledge Graph] The Knowledge Graph displays factual information and refinements related to many types of searches. This launch extended the Knowledge Graph to English-speaking locales beyond the U.S.
  • #83304. [project “Knowledge Graph”] This change updated signals that determine when to show summaries of topics in the right-hand panel.
  • Knowledge Graph Carousel. [project “Knowledge Graph”] This change expanded the Knowledge Graph carousel feature globally in English.
  • #82407. [project “Other Search Features”] For pages that we do not crawl because of robots.txt, we are usually unable to generate a snippet for users to preview what’s on the page. This change added a replacement snippet that explains that there’s no description available because of robots.txt.
  • #83670. [project “Snippets”] We made improvements to surface fewer generic phrases like “comments on” and “logo” in search result titles.
  • #84652. [project “Snippets”] We currently generate titles for PDFs (and other non-html docs) when converting the documents to HTML. These auto-generated titles are usually good, but this change made them better by looking at other signals.
  • #84211. [project “Snippets”] This launch led to better snippet titles.

Image Search

  • Maru. [project “SafeSearch”] We updated SafeSearch to improve the handling of adult video content in videos mode for queries that are not looking for adult content.
  • Palace. [project “SafeSearch”] This change decreased the amount of adult content that will show up in Image Search mode when SafeSearch is set to strict.
  • #82872. [project “SafeSearch”] In “strict” SafeSearch mode we remove results if they are not very relevant. This change previously launched in English, and this change expanded it internationally.
  • Sea. [project “SafeSearch”] This change helped prevent adult content from appearing when SafeSearch is in “strict” mode.
  • Cobra. [project “SafeSearch”] We updated SafeSearch algorithms to better detect adult content.
  • #84460. [project “Snippets”] This change helped to better identify important phrases on a given webpage.

Postscript: On the Search Engine Roundtable I asked why weren’t the Panda algorithm updates and the EMD updates mentioned specifically in here. Google sent me a comment I wanted to add here to answer that:

Update: Google sent us a statement on why some items may be perceived as missing, in short, the blog post was written prior to these being released. Here is a statement:

These changes rolled out very recently, and their launch language was approved after the cutoff date where we were finalizing the blog post. We tweeted these changes and were also planning to include those launches in future updates.

Note that this blog post series is primarily a list of new algorithms that are launching rather than data refreshes of existing algorithms. For example, we would publish an entry when our synonym algorithm changes, but we wouldn’t necessarily post if we were just refreshing the data that our existing synonym algorithm uses. That’s a long way of saying that you will often see entries for when we update Panda or Penguin data, but in general we only intend to show entries when a new change went through the launch process for approval, and so you might not see every data refresh in our list. As we said last December, we’re going to keep pushing the envelope when it comes to sharing how our search engine works.

Related Entries

  • Google’s April Updates: Bigger & Tiered Index, Document Ranking, Sitelink Changes & More
  • Google’s March Updates: Anchor Text, Image Search, Navigational Search & More
  • Google Confirms Panda 3.3 Update, Plus Changes To How It Evaluates Links, Local Search Rankings & Much More
  • Google’s January Search Update: Panda In The Pipelines, Fresher Results, Date Detection & More
  • Google: Parked Domains, Scraper Sites Targeted Among New Search Changes
  • Improved Snippets, Rank Boost For “Official” Pages Among 10 New Google Algorithm Changes
  • The EMD Update: Like Panda & Penguin, Expect Further Refreshes To Come

Related Topics: Features: Analysis | Google: Knowledge Graph | Google: SEO | Google: Sitelinks | Google: Web Search | Top News



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