What's New

At the end of August Google announced the introduction of Multi-Channel Funnels, with a promise to uncover “untapped opportunities in your conversion path”.  In real terms, what does this update actually mean for online marketers? Quite a lot really.

Digital marketing has always been more measurable than its offline counterparts, though it would be untrue to claim that we could attribute fully the source of a conversion or sale. This is because analytics packages like Google Analytics record a conversion based on the last interaction. However, there is often more than one interaction from more than one source before a sale/conversion is completed.

Multi-Channel Funnels remedy this problem by being able to distinguish between assisted and un-assisted conversions and by demonstrating the paths that users took on their way to converting:

Wickedweb’s SEO team continue to grow – welcome Darryl Kearvell.

SEO is one of our busiest departments here at Wickedweb, and our team is constantly growing. We are delighted to welcome Darryl, who has a strong programming and SEO background. Having worked for one of the largest digital media agencies previously, Darryl has experience with clients such Proctor & Gamble.

With a degree in Computer Science, Darryl has been building websites for 10 years. However he has a specific passion for SEO and pays particular attention to usability and engagement.

Outside of work, Darryl is a massive video games enthusiast and has worked in the industry for the last couple of years. Darryl joined Wickedweb having achieved all he wanted to in the video games industry and was keen to return to SEO.  

We know he will be a hit with our clients....

Google Business Listings, now known as Google Places, offers a great opportunity for less optimised sites to get themselves high up the rankings for relevant search results. Whilst this has previously not been a threat to localised SEO Strategies, there is evidence that Google is moving away from domain authority and content variables, moving towards an enhanced local listing featuire.

Compare the 2 pictures below. The first shows how a localised search currently displays in the UK – the Google places listed alongside the map, with organic results listed just underneath.

Now compare it to this test result page taken from a search recently in the US. As you can see, the map has now been moved to the top right, with enhanced Google Places listings taking up the entire first page – organic results do not feature at all on page 1.

So how can this affect your business? The truth is, it can have both negative and positive results on your localised SEO. Firstly, if you traditionally gain a lot of traffic through good localised SEO, your site may not perform as well for searches related to areas where you do not have a physical presence. Secondly (and this is where it becomes useful for Google), your business may be required to spend aggressively via PPC to gain highly targeted traffic.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. This is just a test and Google carries out thousands of these every year without implementing everything. It may not come into fruition. Even if it does, it can be seen as a way to break back into localised search, especially if you do have a presence in the target area. 

So, is your business listed? It could be the turning point of localised search.

Ever since the Google Caffeine algorithm change and the infamous “May day” update, websites across the globe have seen an a drop in traffic from long-tail keywords, with some webmasters reporting up to a 90% drop in traffic!

It is true, long-tail phrases are more difficult to rank for, especially when larger sites dominate the short-tail rankings. However, those that question the potential of SEO are mistaken – you just need to be smart about your keyword strategy and your link profile development.

To demonstrate how a structured Keyword and Link-Building Strategy can still boost rankings/traffic despite these Google updates, we have just one of many Wickedweb case studies below. It proves that despite the updates being rolled out, Wickedweb have still fundamentally improved the SEO for one of our consumer goods clients. The site is not a direct B2C retailer, so the focus is on data acquisition for special promotions, events and activities etc to enhance brand perceptions. 

Keyword Rankings:

After developing a thorough Keyword Strategy (which has evolved over time to incorporate more target keywords and site content), Wickedweb has carried out activity with the purpose to increase both rankings and traffic. The impact on website rankings for target keywords is shown below:

Traffic:

The picture below shows how Wickedweb have improved the non-branded keyword traffic for one of our clients over the past 12 months. As you can see, the site has been optimised to make regular increases to the number of visits each month.

Conversions:

Thanks to the SEO campaign, the website has generated 1,996 new leads in the past year from search engine traffic alone at a cost per acquisition of less than £3. This is more successful than any other marketing channel by far that the consumer brand employs.

Google Analytics is a wonderful thing. Firstly, it’s free. Secondly, it is a vastly powerful tool that can offer insights of ridiculous proportions (for free!).Thirdly, it’s free. However, day in day out we see this tool being under-used and quite often misunderstood.

Here at Wickedweb we want to offer a couple of insights into how you can learn more about your traffic:

1) Who is Visiting You?
Without being big brother, Analytics cannot tell you exactly who’s visiting you, but sometimes you can learn enough to identify potential customers, competitor activity and more. So how?
•    Access Analytics
•    Click the Visitors Tab on the left
•    Then click Network Properties and click Service Providers

Ok, you’re now faced with a list of Service Providers that on the whole means very little. However, occasionally there’ll be a named network that may just prove to be your next customer.

2) How did they Visit You?
You now know who’s visited, so it’s time to know how. Starting from the Service Providers page, click on the ‘Pivot’ button shown below.

This now gives you the list of service providers pivoted against the different traffic sources (broken down by sites too). Now you know where a particular visit comes from. However, to know even more about this visit, especially from a marketing perspective, you can filter the information again to know the medium.

Was the visit organic or pay per click? If the visit converts, you now can attribute the conversion to a source or even a keyword.

Wickedweb is delighted to be working with Beachcomber Tours, based in Guildford, managing their ongoing search engine optimisation (SEO).

The decision was based on Wickedweb's expertise in online marketing, especially SEO, with the added value of experience working with high-end luxury travel clients.

Beachcomber Tours are a specialist travel company and are one of the leading companies in the UK for Mauritius holidays.  The brief for Wickedweb is to achieve page 1 results in Google for the sector’s major search terms; whilst this is a big undertaking, Wickedweb are excited by the challenge and are confident that we can exceed Beachcomber’s expectations.

The first step in the project is keyword research and defining the Keyword Strategy. This will help to ensure the right phrases are targeted and maximum traffic can be achieved.

On March 23rd Google’s Matt Cutts gave an interview that highlighted a few areas Google look at when ranking and indexing a website. It’s not every day that Google offers an insight into how its algorithm works, so I thought I’d share a few gems with you today. Of course, most of this isn’t new to the SEO community, but it forms the next part of Google’s drip by drip strategy, dangling the carrot in front of Webmasters and SEO enthusiasts alike!

Recently, Google introduced “Site Performance” to their Webmaster Tools platform. It therefore comes as no surprise that Google consider page download speed in their indexing criteria. However, the interesting point here is that if sites have a slow server (typically caused by cheap shared hosting), Google may cap the total number of pages it will index at any one time, limiting your site’s ability to rank better and quicker. This reinforces the view of our own Head of Development who recently published a blog about the importance of good web hosting and follows our best practice recommendations too. Well done Ian!

The number of quality inbound links to your site has always been important in terms of improving Page Rank and keyword positions. However, Google also state that the number of pages they will index is proportional to the number/quality of inbound links. So, developing content is one thing, but if you want it indexed you must develop links.

Duplicate content causes problems. Again, nothing new here. However, Matt Cutts indicated that if you link from one page to a duplicated page, this may affect your page rank. Therefore, it’s very important that if your site does contain a lot of similar content, you should limit the number of links pointing to it to avoid loss of Page Rank.

The final pearl of wisdom relates to site architecture, navigation and how best to influence the flow of Page Rank. In this instance, Matt Cutts said that the best way to flow Page Rank is to link to related and similar content wherever possible. In other words, make important content accessible at all times and recommend relevant content through good navigation structure and links. Again, this sits nicely in line with Wickedweb’s practices of accessibility and usability testing.

The search engine landscape is changing and digital marketing strategies with it. How results are generated is going beyond algorithmic data generated from indexing of the World Wide Web. Firstly, the introduction of real-time/live search has seen greater emphasis placed on news results; and more recently tweets have been taking a high profile on many page 1 results. Whilst some would argue that Google have introduced the latter too soon and without enough relevancy/authority on the tweets, the additional challenges posed to search engine optimisation lie elsewhere.

Good SEO companies have always adapted their practices and rolled with the Google punches, but effective SEM is going to require businesses to re-evaluate their online strategy.

So what is changing? How you use the internet, what search terms you typically use and what websites you visit are all adding up to a wealth of non-web metric data that will contribute to what you see in your search results. Therefore, Google’s ambition to improve relevance in their results has led to “customised search” right down to the individual’s historic web activity.

This doesn’t spell the end for search engine optimisation. Far from it; it actually puts an even greater emphasis on tying together SEO with social media marketing, pay per click advertising and other SEM techniques. OK, there’s nothing new with this, but for a while many companies have been able to focus purely on SEO for their search engine strategy.

So how can businesses respond? Setting up geo-targeted PPC campaigns could be a good starting point. If historic visits will really contribute to organic search engine positions, then PPC may help you to give your SEO activity a boost.

Visitor loyalty and user experience will also become a factor. Every SEO expert will need to review the Analytics of their site to make ongoing changes to improve the user experience and lower bounce rates as much as possible. Usability testing before website development will be crucial and web designs need to engage visitors at every level.

Search engine optimisation is definitely changing, but realistically, strategies need to be about refinement as much as realignment.