Les Jones

Google Rich Snippets

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 | E-commerce | Permalink | No Comments |

This - Google Rich Snippets - makes all kinds of Googley sense. You can markup your Web page content semantically to help Google index it. Google’s initial push is to index content on review and social media Web sites. The idea is that the additional data will appear in Google search results, like this:

Here’s the inline markup for products:

   <div class="hproduct">
<span class="brand">ACME</span>
   <span class="category">Heavy objects</span>
   <span class="fn">Large all-purpose anvil</span>
   <span class="description">If you need an object to drop from a height, the classic
A23859 anvil from ACME is the way to go.</span>
   <span class="url">http://anvil.example.com</span>
</div>

Marking up our product page template took all of 10 minutes max. Best of all it looks exactly the same as it did before. It only looks different in the source code and to Google.

Once you’ve completed your markup changes run your URL through the Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool to make sure your semantic markup is copacetic.

Previously - New “canonical link” element for search engine optimization

Tags: google

Do you talk like you Google?

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 | E-commerce | Permalink | No Comments |

I was in a meeting yesterday, talking about a new Web site. The discussion turned to the terminology we were going to use for services. Different people in our industry use slightly different names for the same services.

I had statistics from inbound search engine links showing exactly what terms customers were using to find our site. There was no question which of the competing terms our customers were using. I had gotten agreement from management to use those terms on the new site to improve our search engine ranking.

A particular term surprised one person in the meeting. He said he had always used a different term and so had most of his customers. I believe him.

There’s a simple reason for the disconnect between his experience in talking to people and what I found via analyzing Web logs using software. People don’t talk the same way they Google.

If I ask a friend how to cook a turkey I’d say something like “Do you have any advice you can give me on preparing a turkey in the oven?” On Google I’d grunt out something more like “how cook turkey.”

Google has trained me to know that it ignores words like to, a, and and the, so I’ve dropped them from my Google search syntax. Over the years I’ve learned phrases that score good search results and I’m sure you have, also. We’re dumbing ourselves down to think like a search engine.

People don’t talk like they Google. Everyday intuition is sometimes inadequate for predicting how people search. If you want to know what words people are using to find your site use software like Sitemeter, WebTrends, Google Analytics and Google AdWords that parse referring URLs from search engines and analyze the search keywords inside the URLs.

If you’re using Google Adwords, be sure to visit the Opportunities tab and check for keyword ideas. I continue to find search phrases there I never would have guessed on my own. The latest surprise is that people are using the same search phrases they’ve always used to find our services but adding the word professional to the mix. Apparently some people have learned that without that keyword their searches are returning freebie advice and tools that aren’t doing the job they need.

Tags: google, google adwords, SEO

Google: we ignore meta keywords tags

Monday, September 21st, 2009 | E-commerce | Permalink | No Comments |

Google makes it official.

Recently we received some questions about how Google uses (or more accurately, doesn’t use) the “keywords” meta tag in ranking web search results. Suppose you have two website owners, Alice and Bob. Alice runs a company called AliceCo and Bob runs BobCo. One day while looking at Bob’s site, Alice notices that Bob has copied some of the words that she uses in her “keywords” meta tag. Even more interesting, Bob has added the words “AliceCo” to his “keywords” meta tag. Should Alice be concerned?

At least for Google’s web search results currently (September 2009), the answer is no. Google doesn’t use the “keywords” meta tag in our web search ranking.

Tags: google

My quick advice on getting the most from Google Adwords

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 | E-commerce | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Doug is asking for Google Adwords advice, so I’ve typed up a bit of what I know.

Some basic considerations

How many Adwords accounts should you have? My company has multiple Web sites. I have each in its own Adwords account with its own login. That makes it easier to keep track of the marketing costs for each site. Right now I’m managing the marketing for all of the sites, but by having their Adwords account I’ve made it easier to delegate the work in the future.

Campaigns
How many campaigns? Each Adwords account can have multiple campaigns. Inside those campaigns you can have subgroups, each with their own set of keywords, their own ad text, daily limits, geography limits, etc. That makes it easy to see how much money is being spent on a group of ads and keywords.

Here’s one way to use campaigns. Say you offer products from 10 manufacturers. Create a campaign for each one. Then you can track how much you’re spending to advertise each manufacturer. The next step beyond that is to compare your ad costs for each manufacturer versus your profit. I’ve had to drop product lines because the advertising costs began eating up too much of the profit. That typically happened when there were too many competitors advertising the same product on Adwords - the cost of the ads got bid up on the advertising side while good old fashioned competition ate up the profits side.

Landing pages
When you create your ads Google will ask for a URL. That may or may not be the front page of your Web site. The more pages on your site the less likely the front page should be the landing page. Search engine visitors are often impatient. You want them to find what they want immediately without making them decipher your site’s navigation structure. Use the most relevant landing page for each campaign.

Conserving your marketing money

At first everyone wants as many clicks as possible. Sooner or later reality will intrude and you’ll start asking yourself how you can get more bang for your buck.

You have the option of showing your ads on Google, their search partners (such as Amazon), their content network (such as sites showing Adsense ads, including my blog). For our products and services I only show our ads on Google itself, for reasons I’ve mentioned before. If what you’re selling is more consumer-oriented you might experiment with the other options. By default your ads will display on both regular computers and iPhones and other mobile devices. Our site isn’t designed for display on mobile devices, so I disable that option on all of our ad campaigns.

Geographic locations
Part of the setup process for every campaign is selecting geographic locations, such as countries and states. Adwords will only display your ads to people in those locations. Limit your ads to the parts of the world where you think you can realistically makes sales. For instance, if you only sell products and services in Tennessee there’s no point paying to advertise in the other 49 states, much less the rest of the world. We limit our ads to the U.S. and Canada because most of our reseller contracts limit us to the North American market.

As a variation on that idea, you could create one ad to display in Tennessee and another ad to display in all other states. The Tennessee ad might include the state’s name right in the ad. You might also bid more on the Tennessee ad because you feel you’re more likely to makes sales in Tennessee.

Ad variations
When you create your campaign you can have multiple ads for the same keywords. Some ads do dramatically better than others so it’s worth experimenting with different ad text. Google will rotate the ads and keep track of the click-through rates. The better-performing ads will be shown more frequently. (Make sure that under Settings tab for the campaign that “Optimize: Show better performing ads more often” is selected.)

Words like “sale” and “free shipping” never hurt. Pay attention to your competitors’ ideas. Borrow the good ones.

Scheduling
By default Adwords displays your ads 24×7. If your sales approach depends on someone picking up the phone and calling you, and you only work 8×5, that’s wasteful. Also consider your time zone vs. that of customers on the other side of the country. Do you want people seeing your ad, visiting your Web site, and calling you before your office has opened or after it’s closed? You can schedule the hours and days of the week your campaign appears under the campaign settings.

Negative keywords
Use negative keywords to keep your ad spending in check. When someone’s search phrases matches your keywords, but the search phrase includes one of your negative keywords, your ad won’t show. That means the person won’t see it, can’t click on it, and you can’t be charged for the click.

Why use negative keywords? To avoid clicks from people who won’t buy anything. Example. For our products Web site some of the negative keywords I use include free, demo, download, driver, manual, open source, FAQ, review, shareware, cracked, warez, and some others. People searching for any of those words along with the products we sell isn’t interested in buying anything. You can create negative keywords at the bottom of the keywords page.

Use Sitemeter or similar Web analytics programs to monitor the keywords people are using to come to your site. That will help you refine your keywords and negative keywords. In Sitemeter, pay attention to the Search Words screen. For instance, we sell Juniper Networks firewalls, switches, and routers. I noticed people searching for “juniper bush” and specific juniper cultivars were clicking on our ads, so I used negative keywords to eliminate those wasted clicks.

Web traffic analysis - Sitemeter and Google Analytics

While you’re signing up for Sitemeter you should also sign up for Google Analytics. Both have different strengths.

Sitemeter is better for taking the immediate pulse of your site and seeing what individual visitors are doing. I also like the fact that Sitemeter will email a weekly traffic summary. I have that email sent to our sales team so they can get a feel for our Web traffic.

Analytics is better for broad analysis and long-term trends. Google is adding more and more integration between Adwords and Analytics.

Tracking inbound clicks and conversions

Always include a tracking code in the URL you provide for each ad. It can be as simple as adding “?Adwords” to the end of the URL. (The Web server ignores anything after the question mark.) The tracking code makes it easy to tell by looking at the entry page URL if someone came to your site as a result of your Google Adwords campaign, as opposed to a natural, unpaid Google search engine ranking.

I wound up writing some code on our Web site that looks for the tracking code, then stores the code, the visitor’s IP address, the referring URL (which contains the search keywords) and a datetimestamp to a cookie on the customer’s computer and to an SQL database on our server. Whenever someone makes a purchase or uses a Web contact form I query the cookie and the SQL database to see how they originally found us (the tracking code), when they first found us (the datetimestamp), and what they originally wanted (the referring URL). I include that information in the email we receive so it’s clear which of our advertising campaigns drove the sale.

Use email contact forms, not email addresses
Speaking of tracking, don’t provide an email address for contact. You can get more information if you provide an email contact form instead. Typical forms can capture the person’s IP address. You can then find that IP address in Sitemeter’s Details screen. Once you find it click on the Detail number to get more information about how the person came to your site. You’ll also see what pages they visited and how much time they spent on each page.

At a minimum every page on your site should have a prominent link to your contact form. Better still is a compact email contact form right on the page.

Conversion tracking
Along the same lines take advantage of Adwords own conversion tracking. A conversion is a customer interaction such as a purchase, quote request, newsletter signup, etc. Get the conversion code from Google Adwords and add it to a results page. For instance, if your goal is to get customer quote requests add the conversion code to the page where people are directed after they submit their request. Google will keep track of which ads and keywords produced conversions.

If your site has a shopping cart add the code to the final page people see after their credit card payment is accepted. You can then modify Google’s conversion code to report the dollar amount of the sale back to Google. Google will track your sales versus your ad spend so you can see how much money each conversion costs in terms of actual sales.

You call that “quick advice”?

That was longer than I had intended, but it really just covers the basics. There’s much more in terms of keyword selection and writing ad copy. Those are topics for another day.

Tags: google

Try Googling your own blog

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 | Blogging | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Tags: google

Build your own tinyurl-style URL shortener

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 | Tech | Permalink | No Comments |

Mashable tells you how. You can also use Google Apps.

Tags: google

Google Maps is now a real estate search engine

Monday, August 10th, 2009 | Economics, Misc, Tech | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Just visit Google Maps and select “Real Estate” instead of “All Results.”

Tags: google

You first

Thursday, June 11th, 2009 | Blogging, Tech | Permalink | No Comments |

WordPress 2.8 is out. Announcement and full feature list. There are more features and it’s supposed to be faster. I’ll probably wait a bit to let some of the inevitable new release bugs get worked out.

I just upgraded to 2.7.1 a few weeks ago when I moved to a new server. It turns out that wasn’t a wasted effort. Beginning with 2.7 you can upgrade to new versions automatically without re-installing.

Automatic updates over the Internet are one of the best changes in tech in the last 10 years for productivity and security. Good stuff.

P.S. Here’s a cool WordPress widgets/Google hack: Add Custom Search to any site in two minutes. I’ve added it to my sidebar to see if I like it (and it actually took less than two minutes). Looks like I need to play around with the formatting for long titles.

Tags: google, wordpress