I recently came across an article talking about the new Wordstream PPC Grader. Of course my curious self had to go try it out and I’m happy to report this tool offers a lot of insight into your Adwords Campaigns.

(Not to bad of a score if I do say so myself)

Here is some of the great info you can learn from this tool:

1. Wasted Spending on Negative Keywords – Luckily my wasted spend wasn’t to high but knowing there still was some tells me I need to go in and add some more negative keywords so I can get the number closer to $0.

2. Quality Score – Here is let’s you know if you scores are below average, average or above average. It also give you an estimate of how much money can be saved by improving your score a point. Example from my report: “By improving your Quality Score by 1.1, you can save $112.28, or get 35more clicks / month.”

3. Click Through Rate (CTR) – This section of the report shows you the average CTR curve and where you lie on it. It also gives you an estimate of how many clicks you can expect to get by increasing your CTR. Example pulled from report: “If you increased your CTR to 4.41%, you could expect 11 more clicks or 1more conversions a month.”

4. Activity Time – This part of the report doesn’t offer much insight although it is nice to see how where you rank among others when it comes to time spent updating campaigns. I ranked in the 87th percentile for this client and got this message “You’re actively devoting time to working on your account — this is good news for your campaigns!”

5. Long Tail Keyword Optimization - We all know long tail keywords are great because they are more specific and most of the time offer high conversion rates. This section of the report let’s you know where you stand with your targeted keywords and how you rank among competitors. As you can see from the image, my campaigns use a lot of 3+ words and I rank pretty well. 

6. Ad Text Optimization – This section I found very helpful because of the visual it gives for your worst text ad and your best. Here I can compare the two in order to figure out why the worst one is performing so bad. As you can see from the image below, I’m doing pretty well with my text ads.

7. Landing Page Optimization – Here you can see how you compare to your competitors when it comes to the amount of landing pages you are sending traffic too. It’s best practice to have targeted landing pages for each ad group so that you’re sending people directly to the information they want to see rather than just sending them to any page on your site. Here I learned that my competitors have double the amount of landing pages I do and I need to step up my game in order to match them.

8. PPC Best Practices – This is the last part to the report and it gives you a Pass (thumbs up) or Fail (thumbs down) grade on each of the best practices experts have defined in order to have a successful PPC campaign.

I was really impressed with this tool and it’s ease of use as well as the great information it has given me. There’s no reason you shouldn’t give it a try considering it’s Free! So go here and check it out!

Make sure you’re following us on Twitter and Facebook! We’ve always got fresh new finds posted for you!

As a software development project manager at Beacon, I’m also proud to say that I’m both an NPR and data geek, so I was elated to hear a story this week that united all of my passions:  Google Searches Are A Window Into Our Culture.  The tool “Google Correlate” is actually a fascinating window into how people are searching for not only one specific term, but an entire web of other related (or maybe not-so-related) terms.

The political example given in the story was somewhat predicable (Democrats– veggie-loving, fitness buffs; Republicans– meat-loving, weight-loss program participants), but my own searches turned up some interesting results on Google Correlate.  I am just starting work on a new website redesign for a well-known business school and was wondering what kind of associations I’d find if using terms related to that school (thinking I might be able to use this information with regard to site design and features).  Here’s the terms I tried:

• business school– while many of the U.S.’s top business schools are listed, I was surprised to see the appearance of “art schools” and “art colleges” as correlating terms.  Wonder if my client has considered cross-promotion with this demographic?  Could a more “artsy” site design have benefits in this area?
• management school– like the “art” association listed above, I was suprized to find “hospital association” as a correlation with “management school.”  Perhaps another marketing opportunity here?  Would a site feature that included possible hospital careers be helpful to these visitors?
• mba school– oddly, this was a much more common search term in Utah than any other state.  Not sure how we can leverage this, but I’m sure we’ll bat it around for a while!

Also, don’t miss the comic book on the Google Correlate site – fun!  The most important point that the comic book emphasizes and bears repeating here– “Remember:  Correlation is not causation.”  Google doesn’t attempt to explain the correlation between terms, just show it to us in a manner for us to interpret and leverage.  Happy correlating!

Found a super article on “How to Google Like Google Googles” at PCWorld today.  Here are a couple of my favorites tips:

1. It is a constant battle with my middle and high school students to get them to use “authoritative sources” for school work (“but Mooooom, EVERYONE uses Wikipedia and my teachers don’t care!”).  Having seen for myself the misinformation purposely posted on Wikipedia, I still insist on .edu, .gov, etc. sites for research and this tip makes that a bit easier (though the battle rages on…)

   Search certain types of sites or just certain sites. You can search a wide variety of sites by inserting a close angle bracket (>) symbol before the type of site you want to search. For example, [penguins site:>.edu] searches for penguins across all .edu sites; and [crater image site:>nasa.gov] searches for crater images across NASA.gov.

2. Would have been soooo helpful on my three day, agonizing move across the country last year with the dog, two distraught teenagers and a dying minivan:

   Find hotel prices directly on Google Maps. No more copying and pasting the address from one site into a map to see its location–for several major cities in the United States, you can easily see nightly rates when you search for hotels in Google Maps. Try it now: Search for a “hotel in Los Angeles” on Google Maps

3. Not a particularly helpful tip, but makes you really want to be a “Google Master” doesn’t it?  Or is that just me???

   Gmail is a very deep program, with too many tips and tricks to list in this article. In fact, Google categorizes its Gmail user tips into four stages–white belt, green belt, black belt, and master. The tips for each belt can be found at Google’s “Become a Gmail ninja” site. There’s even a printible guide; after all, even ninjas forget their moves once in a while.

Based on data collected by Compuware’s benchmarks division, Google Chrome is the fastest web browser in the “real world” of desktop users. The data, collected over a one-month time frame, captured the results of 1.86 billion individual measurements on over 200 websites.

In the chart below, Google Chrome 12 has the fastest page load time (in blue) of 3.433 seconds. While, Safari 4 has the slowest load time of 6.149 seconds. The chart also shows perceived render times (in green) of browsers, which is the amount of time it takes for the visible portion of the page to load in the browser. Firefox 5 has the best perceived render time (in green) of 2.18 seconds, while Chrome comes in second at 2.374 seconds.

I personally use Firefox most of the time due to the number of Add-ons I have installed on my machine, but after reading this article I might have to make the switch to Google Chrome.

Here is the link to the full article found on LinkedIn, if you wish to read further.

Finally, I’m starting to grasp the depth of SEO and how websites are ranked on Search Engines. Who knew there was so much to it? I knew I had a good grasp and understanding when I came to Beacon but I’ve learned a much deeper side to it that I wasn’t so sure of. There is a ton of information out there and its easy to learn once you dig into it and become familiar with it all.

My knowledge of SEO when I started was on an Intermediate level and now after much research and application with good results, I’m confident to say I’ve stepped up to a Competent/Proficient level. I know not everyone has a deep understanding of SEO and I thought I would take it upon myself to give you a short lesson on Ranking Factors for SEO. I’m going to try and make it as easy as possible to understand but if you have questions, please feel free to leave comments. I love knowing I’ve helped someone learn something new because learning is the key to success. So here we go!

Ranking Factors for SEO:

1. Keywords that you use in title tags – This it thought of as the #1 ranking factor for websites. It needs to say in a few short words what the page is about. The most important keywords should be listed first. For Example: Take Staub Leadership, Here you can tell by looking at the homepage this is company that teaches leadership to people. The Title Tag is what is seen at the top of the tab in firefox.
2. Anchor Text of inbound links – This is the text use to link to a site or in other words it’s the word that is hyperlinked. Example: Look at 1 and Staub Leadership is in blue and underlined. So Staub Leadership is the Anchor text.
3. Global link Authority of a site – this represents the quality and quantity of a site’s links. This just means you want to have links on sites that are relevant and that have good page rank because that page rank is carried on to your site.
4. Link Popularity within a site – This means that pages that have links on all the internal pages of a site show that the page being linked is very popular and important. Having the links on many internal pages of site shows search engines that this page is very important.
5. Topic relevance of inbound links – All this means is that you want to put links on pages that are relevant to the pages you are linking to. For Example: Beacon is creating a link to post on another site for our SEO Management page. In order for the link to be beneficial it needs to be posted on a site that is about SEO management. You wouldn’t want to put the link on a site for Health care because there is no relevance between the two.
6. Link Popularity in linking neighborhood – The more links you have coming to your site from websites that are similar to you show search engines that your site has authority and is reputable as long as they are links from other reputable sites. Links from spamming sites will hurt your website in ranking.
7. Keywords in the Body – Search Engines look at keywords in the body of your website as well as the title tags. The title tag keyword should be repeated in the body as well as synonyms for the keywords used. This helps to show the page is relevant to the topic.

The 7 ways I listed are not the only ways to affect ranking but they are the most common and best practices to start with. So that’s my short lesson for you in SEO Ranking Basics. Hope that helps some and like I said feel free to comment!

Lots of <3,

Ashley

Linking out sometimes gets the short shrift to conserve PageRank to internal links. But linking out can give your web page something that is important to the search engines. The appearance of a page’s quality, credibility and salience.

Two quotes that back up this claim:

“In the same way that Google trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods, parts of our system encourage links to good sites.”  – Matt Cutts

“Writing descriptive anchor text, the clickable words in a link, is a useful signal to help search engines and users alike to better understand your content.” – Maile Ohye

So, in much the same way that the PageRank algorithm found it useful to score target pages from anchor text, the text in the  anchor text quite frequently relates to the description of the page content and is used to gather information about that page. More specifically, the anchor text is used in improving page categorization or classification of a page.

Is linking out a ranking factor? Some seo’s suggest it does not influence rankings. Others say yes.

But it appears that Google is giving the anchor text more credence than just the regular text in the content and not just for the pages that they link to.

In my opinion, web-page classification has become more sophisticated and faster since Panda.  Panda has improved the accuracy of  classifiers that use both anchor text and content on the page.

This applies to both internal and external links and influences the  co-training algorithm.

As a result, you may want to follow a few do’s and dont’s:

Do’s:

• Do create descriptive text links that are related to the page category
• Do link to pages of high authority on related topics with your keyphrases in the anchor text
• Do surround the text link with normal language

Don’ts:

• Don’t link out using a large number of unrelated links
• Don’t repeat the exact same keywords in the text links (use Google Sets instead)
• Don’t link out to a page that looks spammy

Since Google’s Panda update, I’ve been looking for a clear definition of what Google means by a “document classifier”. Here’s an excerpt  that mentions it in their official Google blog:

“.. we recently launched a redesigned document-level classifier that makes it harder for spammy on-page content to rank highly. The new classifier is better at detecting spam on individual web pages, e.g., repeated spammy words—the sort of phrases you tend to see in junky, automated, self-promoting blog comments.”

Until now, I haven’t been able to get a definitive explanation of how Google defines a “document classifier”. But I believe I have found what I was looking for in Peter Norvig‘s textbook “Artificial Intelligence. A Modern Approach“. Peter Norvig is currently the Director of Research at Google and was formerly the Director of Search Quality at Google.

Here is an excerpt from chapter 13 “Uncertainty”:

“Text categorization is the task of assigning a given document to one of a fixed set of categories, on the basis of text it contains. Naive Bayes models are often used for this task. In these models, the query variable is the document category, and the “effect” variables are the presence or absence of each word in the language;  the assumption is that the words occur independently in the documents, with frequencies determined by document category.”

Once a document is classified into a category based on the text/content, patterns are looked for a given probability distribution. If your website fits that classification and frequency distribution of keywords, you may or may not find yourself  on the wrong side of the tracks.

Despite the fast paced world of SEO, many decision makers and analysts have a hard time dealing with change.  It is my goal to help you feeling more comfortable with the updated version of GA (still in Beta mode), because whether you like it or not- the older version will be going away.

The newer version allows for users to create up to 20 custom dashboards, each with up to 12 widget sections to be used.  The four types of widget options are metric, timeline, pie chart, and table.

• Metric: Shows the value of a metric and an information graphic of that metric over the selected time period
• Timeline: A graph of any metric over time. You can also compare two metrics in the same graph.
• Pie Chart: Best suited for displaying breakdowns of a metric by a certain dimension. E.g., Visits by Browser Type.
• Table: Think of this as a mini-custom report. You can show one dimension with two metrics and up to 10 rows of data in a table.

The option to have 20 customizable dashboards each with their own ‘quick stats’ widget sections is extremely beneficial for agencies and organizations with multiple people looking at a multitude of metrics.  It will provide faster results when filtering and has a clean looking user interface.

Another cool feature getting a lot of positive press is their new interactivity goal tracking within the reporting feature.  This allows you to have GA track file downloads to improve your products. Charts of your statistics can be analyzed over time on graphs, and a simple toggle between multiple profiles cuts down on confusion when going through the site.

Embrace change, especially when the benefits are great my analytics friends!  You can currently switch back and forth from the current version to the new version of GA by clicking on the option displayed in the top right ‘quick clicks section.’

Long live Social Media and all that it can provide a company when it comes to brand awareness, customer service, link building, and website referral traffic.  The strength of social media and social bookmarking sites grows every day.  Just as your company needs a solid website, so does it also need a presence in the social media world for users that are searching here as opposed to the more traditional search engines.

While each business must determine what networks are best for their company to actively participate, LinkedIn should never be one to cast aside.  LinkedIn’s organization has grown to over thirty-three million members in the United States, and over 60 million world-wide in less than ten years. Recently the company announced its 60 millionth member via a Tweet.

Create / Claim Your Company Profile

Like any other networking site, you want to establish your presence by first creating an account, and then by spreading the word that you are there to get the attention you need.  Once your company profile is created or claimed, you now have the advantage of being indexed by search engines and be able to be presented in the organic search results for your brand.

Any employee if granted access can edit their company page if they are a current employee with their position listed and linked to the company profile page and has a confirmed email address at the company registered to the account, so if you are using a personal email address to access your personal linked account profile, update it to be your company issued email address. If your email address connected to LinkedIn is already your company email address try the below steps:

1.      Click “Companies” at the top of your home page and search for your company name.

2.      Click “Edit” in upper right of the Company “Overview” tab.

3.      Modify information as needed.

4.      Click “Publish”.

If the “Edit” link is not visible, take the following steps to make sure the position on your Profile is properly linked to the company name:

1.      Click on “Profile” towards the top of your home page.

2.      Click “Edit” next to the position in the “Experience” section of your Profile.

3.      Click “Change Company” and begin to type in your company name. A drop-down list will appear.

4.      Click on the correct company name. This step is very important.

5.      Click “Update”.

6.      Follow steps listed above to edit your Company Page information.

If you are still unable to edit information on your Company Page, contact LinkedIn at https://help.linkedin.com/app/ask.

Enormous Profits

The world was profoundly changed. A web connects the country and a communications giant controls almost 80% of the market share of that web. Huge amounts of information are delivered at speeds never before seen by mankind. The costs involved in creating the infrastructure to create this spider-like system grant it a near monopoly and the company makes enormous profits with margins approaching 30%.

This company is held in the public mind as providing an invaluable service and projects the belief that the information it provides is not tainted by preferential bias from outside parties.

The “Victorian Internet”

The name of the company is Western Union. The year is 1869. It is the age of the telegraph and the “Victorian Internet“.

On August 16,1869, Western Union puts out its monthly journal that states, “There has been, unquestionably, much progress made in the promotion of greater efficiency in telegraphic operations,” and further states that, “The difficulty in making such a service as this possible…which requires that no such message shall have preference over another, and that each must take its turn.”

A Financial Empire

Just a few years earlier in 1865, a Western Union telegraph operator had provided news of President Lincoln’s assassination to a favored Oregon newspaper ahead of other competing newspapers on the west coast. The Oregonian newspaper that had paid off the telegraph operator scooped its competition and enjoyed higher sales.

The owner of that newspaper built a financial empire, in part, by gaming the system.

Paid Links and the Lincoln Assassination

Jump ahead 146 years from the Lincoln assassination to February 12th, 2011. The New York Times breaks a story about fortunes made by a company gaming the system of another company that controls a web of links. Paid links artificially boosted the rankings of a company that, no doubt, enjoyed considerable profits for a time.

This time around, the offending links were found out.

Today, that company that is concerned about its public perception is Google.