Barry Schwartz, Ophir Cohen and Olivier Amar (L2R)

Today Compucall had the pleasure of hosting a nice SEO get together. With the arrival of Barry Schwartz to Israel, we got a chance to meet and also host some of brighter SEO minds and agencies in Israel for a few hours. In attendance was, of course, Barry of Rustybrick.com, Itai Levitan of Easynet.co.il, Mayer Reich of Rankabove.com, Gilad Sasson of Nekuda.co.il and the Compucall Staff including Ophir Cohen and myself, Olivier Amar, amongst others. There was also a great presentation by the founders of articlesbase.com and bukisa.com.

Barry Schwartz, Meyer Reich and Gilad Sasson

Itai Levitan of Easynet

Firstly, I need to thank Barry for taking some precious time out of his 7 day trip. As part of a very organized Blogger Delegation to Israel with lots of stops along the way, I’m sure it wasn’t easy.

Simon Gelfand and Eyal Halimi ArticlesBase and Bukisa Founders

The meeting started with two short presentations by Simon Gelfand. One on Articlesbase.com and the other on Bukisa.com. He explained to us his huge rise in growth, from zero to one of the main sites in each of their markets, in little to no time. He went over the business models and solid SEO infrastructures of either site. It’s nice to see such a huge website spawn from just an idea with the efforts of just a couple of people and no venture captial whatsoever.

Paid Search in Israel

Barry Schwartz then asked some interesting questions that veered towards paid search in Israel. The general consensus seemed to be that although some of the quality on certain verticals might sometimes be better in Microsoft and Yahoo, the combination of terrible platforms on both Yahoo and MSN and the lack of local offices for either of them, made their offerings here less than ideal. With the Israeli paid search market so much bigger than its population as a result of the number of Israeli companies dealing with foreign markets, both Yahoo and MSN would probably be in a much better position with local offices (as long as they ditched their present platforms and did something that more or less mimicked Googles, I mean why reinvent the wheel right?).

Google Analytics – The Future is Now!

We also touched upon how important Analytics had become in today’s companies and how no matter how far companies had managed to take their in-house analytics, then they never had the resources to go deep enough and get it right. Since both Easynet and Compucall are Google Analtyics Authorized Consultants (GAAC) we both felt that we had not yet come upon a company that had managed to get there alone. As a result it has represented a very viable avenue for both our companies to explore.

The meeting ended with some great smiles and some good catching up. Again, thank you Barry. We’ll get together again soon

Every SEO expert knows that one of the biggest problems we face is duplicate content. When there are two different URLs for one page, the search engine is never clear on how to treat them. It has to decide which page to show for a specific keyword, which page to give the PageRank to and which page to consider as the main authority. It may also divide the authority and page rank, an action that will only take away from the page you’re trying to promote.

There are many ways to create duplicate content. Here are only few::
-    Different URL format for the same page (sort parameters are very popular here)
-    Print versions of pages
-    refid parameters (affiliates etc)
-    Different search query results and navigation issues

The canonical URL tag is a joint initiative of Google, MSN and Yahoo. All three united in order to create a common tag called “canonical URL tag”. This tag lets all the three big search engines know which of the duplicate pages is the main one and it can then pass all the authority, link juice and main focus of the robot to that right page. If there are two similar pages with slight different URLs, a canonical tag placed on the duplicate content URL will tell the robots which page it should promote. As for the importance of this tag, according to Google, “it’s a hint that we honor strongly”.

The canonical tag must be located in the header of the page should will look like this:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.compucall-usa.com/blog”>.

Why is it different from a 301 redirect?

1. As opposed to a 301 redirect that redirects the page both for the user and the search engine, the Canonical URL tag is just for search engines. Users will still be able to reach and view all your duplicate versions. Hence if you’re only trying to sort the results on a page, you can.
2. The engine will verify that the content is similar and that the use of this tag is justified. In a 301 redirect, you can decide whether the redirect is justified. Regarding how much similar the duplicate pages have to be, Google say that they “allow slight differences”.
3. The 301 URL redirect operates exclusively on a single root domain, so you can’t use this tag to redirect between two different domains.

Unclear issues

The “link juice” question is still unclear – we will have to test it and see the results.
Also, the transitivity of the links is unclear (only Yahoo mentioned that they support transitivity of this tag).

For more information, you can read Matt Cutt’s blog post and SEOMOZ’s blog post (by randfish).

So here we go again. A full new release of our favorite Google PPC editing software, Google Adwords Editor, was released covertly in the middle of the night. So let’s see what’s new and we’ll also go over what we think is still missing!

New features available:

First page bid estimates: First page bid estimates for all the keywords in the campaign. There is no longer “Minimum cost-per-click” (CPC) bids. Yay!

Keyword Quality Score: A new tab for the quality score of every keyword in the account. About time this feature graced us. We don’t have to go back and forth with the web version to find out what where we went wrong.

New feature for Keyword Opportunities: Tailor your keywords according to location and language. With all the international clients we have, we’d been begging our local Google representative for this for a long time. This is a big deal for us.

The ‘Volume’ column on the Keyword expansion tab of the Keyword Opportunities tool is now showing absolute numbers (traffic for the last month) instead of scaled values.

Campaign targeting in the data view: You can see the location and language settings on the data view. These columns are hidden by default, but you can select them with the column chooser on the campaigns tab.

What I think is still missing?

• Changing the delivery method: when setting up a campaign I still miss the ability to determine if the delivery method will be standard or accelerated.
• Device platform: show the campaign on desktop or laptop computers or on mobile phones (or both).
• Ad serving: optimize or rotate ad texts.

This is a great step forward from Google. I’m not sure if it’s a full version upgrade, but I’ll take it. The location and language options are a huge plus. This is a better morning for the PPC team here.  Way to go Google.

You can read the official Google Release for Adword Editor 7.0 here.

Google Vodka Ad

On the web there are many speculations for the sudden change; some presume the change is influenced by the financial crisis, and that Google is creating new opportunities in order to expand its advertising market.  Google has rejected this claim, and stated that from time to time advertising policies are modified due to advertiser demand. Barry Shwartz from Search Engine Land asked Google about this claim.

Google stated  in return:

The AdWords program policies are developed based on a combination of factors – and in this case, those included user experience, legal requirements and the fact that many hard alcohol manufacturers have been asking for the ability to promote the alcohol-related information on their sites and reach people who seek that information online.

This post was originally written in Hebrew here by Naomi Sela

Google AdWords is now enabling advertisers to decide on which devices their ads will appear. Advertisers can now opt out of showing ads on desktop and laptop computers and target only mobile users with full browsers.

Full browsers can show standard HTML pages and support an online purchase process from start to finish (like the Iphone). There are not many mobile phones that have this feature. Most mobile phones today have WAP browsers that require a special mobile AdWords campaign.

Google states: “Until recently, this was the default setting on all campaigns. However, we’re now able to allow more granular control of what devices you’d like your ads to appear on. We offer the option to opt out of showing ads on desktop and laptop computers for those advertisers who want to target only mobile users, or for those who want to break out their campaigns for each targeting option.”

This new feature in AdWords is giving the advertiser the option to decide if they want to create two different campaigns: one for mobile users and one for desktop and laptop users.

Following their successful passing of the accreditation and the results we see every day from the PPC campaigns they manage, I have asked them some key questions about the way they use web analytics to improve the campaigns’ ROI.

During our conversation we started to compare the various ways people advertise their products today. Whether it be by “traditional” methods like TV, radio and print or by online campaigns like Adwords, advertisers are constantly looking for ways to increase their conversion rates and ROI. This is when the discussion took a turn towards behavioral targeting and the possibility to retarget visitors. So I decided to write about retargeting and PPC instead.

PPC – How Does the Google Adwords Content Network work?

Google Adwords metrics are centered around keywords and websites that relate to those keywords and allow Google to place your PPC ads on them.

According to Google:
“Using your keywords, Google’s contextual targeting technology can automatically match your ads to web pages in our content network that are most relevant to your business.”

Google Adwords - contextual targeting technology

Google Adwords placement performance reports also allow you to refine the placement of your ads in order to improve your ROI:

“With the Placement Performance Report , you have visibility into where all your ads appear. Review your ad’s performance on a site-by-site basis to see impression, click, cost, and conversion data, and use this data to identify well-performing sites to target more aggressively and low-value placements that require content optimization or exclusion.”

Google Adwords - placement performance report

Retargeting and PPC

The basic idea behind Retargeting is that by visiting a website, the visitors are showing that they are interested in what that website has to offer. Retargeting uses a website visit — or a search ad that led a web user to a website — as a behavior that can be targeted. This behavior can then be used to serve relevant ads to the visitors after they leave the website.
 
For example, if I search for digital camera reviews and click on a PPC ad for a site that is relevant, then by using retargeting methods I could be served PPC ads for digital cameras sold on that site after I already left it. If I click the PPC ad and go back then I am more likely to purchase a camera because I have previously shown an interest in the products. Moreover, I placed interest in a brand, and the retargeting re-enforces the marketing message of the brand I already met (“oh, I already saw that nice site… let’s come back and buy the camera…”)

PPC data – Relevancy or Recency?

As the interview with my colleagues progressed we discussed such web analytics metrics as search queries, top referrers and time on site. But then the conversation turned to retargeting.

One metric that is available in Google analytics but is currently underused by PPC managers is “Visits to purchase”.

Google Analytics - visits to purchase

Right now it is less useful to them because the Adwords PPC ads are arranged by ad groups and not by visitors. This means that you can track a certain Ad’s performance right down to the keyword level and see which keywords perform better than others. But you can’t track visitors that clicked the PPC ads after they leave your site. Google however, can and does.

The Future of PPC?

This is where the conversation got interesting. We all read about the fact that Google has started to serve PPC ads that are targeted to the searchers based on their previous search queries. Google also knows how long it takes for a visitor that came from PPC to convert. Basically, this is the way Google calculates the “Visits to Purchase” metric. This means that using cookies, and Google search history (if you are logged in) Google knows if and when you visited my site before.

Wouldn’t it be great if Google was to add a new feature which allows you to create special ad groups to be shown specifically to user that visited your site before?

Now this is COOL!!! We have keywords campaigns, content campaigns, placement, radio, print, TV, local, mobile – why not “retargeting ads”!

Think about it, you could serve highly targeted and personalized ads for your would be returning visitors. Imagine being able to have an ad on the lines of:

“Remember your last visit to our site www. oursite.com?
You won’t believe the things we have to show you now!”

Hey, I don’t create PPC ads I just analyze them . The above example may be a little simple but you get my point.

 Targeted PPC traffic – would you use it?

After going over the idea several times I finally asked both PPC managers the following question:

If you could create ads targeted specifically for visitors that saw your site before, would you?

One answer was a quick “yes. For sure” while the other one was “probably not. I’m not sure it’s worth the time or even if it will be productive. But it might be interesting to test.”

We all agree that it’s better to make this distinction on the site itself and have special welcome messages and pages for returning visitors, but most sites today can not do that.

I am interested to know what you think on the subject:

If you could retarget visitors that saw your site before, would you?

At Compucall, we’re always proud of our staff’s performance and rarely does anything we do in the world of SEO come with a score. Sure we can rank well and measure traffic, but an actual score out of 100? Doesn’t happen very often.Luck for us, Google scores it’s Adwords Qualified Professionals test scores out of 100 then right?

So let’s all say congratulations to our latest Adword Qualified Professionals, and breath a sigh of relief that the newest people managing the big money you give us seem to have a very good clue about what they’re doing because Evyatar Sagie scored a whopping 93 out of 100  and Shimrit Ben Eliahu scored a 90 out of 100 on their Adwords certification!

You can click on the picture below if you don’t believe us

Adwords Qualified Professional - Evyatar Sagie

The first aim is to choose 1-2 main keywords for that page that we will try to promote that will reach the search results you’re aiming for. If we will choose more than 1-2 main keywords per page, the focus becomes diluted, and we probably won’t make it to where we’re really trying to get. You can choose more than one keyword if you insist, but the rest of the keyword should be variations, synonyms or phrases including the main keyword (this will definitely help since Google knows which keywords are related to others).

1. Keyword Research

The first thing you have to do is review the page and prepare a list of related keywords. From this list we will start to work. From here you will have to choose your favorite keyword analysis tool or several tools (my recommendation is the Adwords Keyword Tool or the SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool by Aaron Wall).
After choosing the tool, examine the keywords, compare competition, length etc. The best keywords will be chosen according to the criteria defined by you or by your client. It is important that in this part your client will be involved, so his needs and experience will be taken into consideration and to be frank, his experience in what’s relevant to his business trumps yours.

SEO Keyword Optimization

2. Look at your competitors

What are your competitors doing? What keywords are they targeting? You might want to target to the same keywords as they are. Competition may be fierce and you may want to build some authority for your page before you. That’s the reason you should use a tool like the Adwords keyword tool or Aaron Walls tool, because it gives you new keyword suggestions and the estimates search traffic for them in the country/area you defined. With this tool, you can also analyze a specific site’s content and conclude what the main keywords are that the site is targeting.

3. Maybe you’re already a success…

Check what your current positions are for past targeted keywords. If you’re located second for a well-searched term/keyword, don’t try too hard – you’re already there. In this case, you’d better create a new page for similar keywords and not change the current one. The website SEODigger can help you find the keywords that your site has rankings for.

4. Start optimizing!

Start inserting h tags, writing keyword targeted content (watch the density!!), insert alt-text tags to your images and so on. If you have many related keywords that you’re interested in promoting, consider changing the page that you’re working on into gate page. One that links to many different sub-pages, each targeted to one of the keyword variations.

5. Did you think that we wouldn’t mention social media??

Submit your newly SEO optimized page to a bunch of web 2.0 and social media sites – create virtual presence to this page. This process will not be whole without some bookmarking.

6. Internal linking

Whether it’s a new page or an old one, review your site’s internal linking. Add suitable links to your footer/sitemap. By doing so you’re not only making sure that it will be easy for Google to reach this page and index it, but also letting Google know that these are the most important pages on your site. Just don’t overdo it. Too many pages in your footer and Google thinks you’re trying to mess with it and then it might penalize you accordingly.

7. Follow, review and analyze

This is crucial to measure exactly how the changes that you have made affect the search results. Prepare a special sheet describing the changes that have been made in the site and include the original location in the search results. This way, in case you harm the page (which can happen if you over-optimize), you can always undo what you did.

You may also want to take a look at a great post for Keyword discovery by Rishil on SEOmoz which is called Building Bricks: Keyword Discovery Process for Small Businesses

And another great hubpage I wrote in the same topic: http://hubpages.com/hub/10-First-SEO-Steps

The big difference between 2005 and 2008 is that we are now (the Adwords users/sharks) ready and welcome this change with wide open hands.

Why? We’ve learned what Adwords wants and look for it as well as build our new accounts by their requirements – Relevant and targeted campaigns from the ad to the landing page with, on one hand, friendly code and, on the other, a strong business model.

This all brings us to this latest change in the Adwords Quality Score. I can honestly say Google has listened and blessed us.

So what’s this change about?

We were, until just a little while ago, in an era where the Quality Score was 3 years old and not efficient enough for the level of professionalism and sophistication and work that people are presently doing in Adwords (that’s not to say everyone out there has a high level). From now on, the Quality Score will be calculate in real time, per the source of traffic – search networks – for each ad that’s being triggered taking into consideration its real-time keyword history performance. On the basis of that calculation, Adwords will then determine how much needs to be paid to get on to the first page results – Yay – no more “inactive keywords” : )

So now we can enjoy better targeting of our good ads and a higher cost for our bad ads which means it will make the competition more stringent and accurate. Oh, let’s also not forget that this will also make Google a whole lot more money.