The recent changes by Google to the way that local search results are being displayed has placed even more focus on the importance of the Google Places listings and, in particular, what local businesses need to do in order to increase their presence. If your business doesn’t yet appear within the Google Places results, or you need to claim and optimise your listing, then it’s time to act now!

Google has been developing their local business listings over the past few years, providing searchers with a directory of relevant businesses in a local area. Initially the business listings are taken from Yellow Pages and therefore the information is dependent on what Yellow Pages holds (which can also sometimes be significantly out of date!). However, Google gives business owners to opportunity to ‘claim’ their listing and then to add additional content to help improve ranking visibility and to provide more information for users.

The best way to check how your business is being listed is to search for your business name and location on Google Maps. If you have some type of listing then your business should appear in the results to the left of the map. If not, it may mean that your business listing is not even on Yellow Pages or Google, or that the information is inaccurate or out of date.

If your business is listed, click on the ‘more info’ link to see the details being shown for the location, and then select the ‘Business owner?’ link to the top right of the listing. You need to sign-in or set-up a new Google account to access this, but once done, you can edit the information or add any new content. Before any of this information is then accepted by Google, you need to verify your listing via a mailing to your stated business address, or sometimes via an automated phone message – both of which will provide a verification code for you to input against your listing to prove that you are the rightful owner.

If your listing doesn’t appear at all, then you can still set up the new details on Google Places, once you’ve logged into your Google account. Again, you will need to verify the details and, as a new listing, you will only be able to do this via a mailing to your business address. However, once done, your listing will be accessible from your Google account and you can add or update information as necessary in the future.

This is the essential first step to optimising your Google Places listing and one that should be done sooner rather than later. Next month we’ll talk about the best ways to manage and optimise your listing, to help your local search visibility and to see how users are viewing your business details. However, if you’d like more information about this before next month, or if you need help finding our claiming your Google Places listing, please contact us now.

We made 5 predictions for 2010 last January, so here we review these and assess what actually happened during the year:

1) Pay-per-click advertising opportunities increase: there was probably no question that PPC advertising would continue to grow at a rapid rate, and in Australia this largely means Google AdWords which continues to dominate the market. The quarterly IAB figures showed double-digit growth both quarterly and annually, with the search marketing sector showing a strong upward trend – however, this data is estimated as Google doesn’t release these figures and much of their turnover is ‘hidden’ within their Eire billing office. In some ways the PPC opportunities increased through reach and advert formats, but the core of the AdWords offering remains much the same with the main search space becoming increasingly competitive as more companies use this medium. The Yahoo! PPC service continues to be low-key and covers a much smaller share of the market, but this may change once the merger with Microsoft is completed (see below).

2) The Bing-Yahoo merger takes effect: the ongoing acquisition of Yahoo’s search service by Microsoft developed during 2010 and both the natural search and PPC services on Yahoo! started to display Microsoft’s results by the year end – at least in the US. This rollout will continue into 2011 and is expected to happen in the UK during the first half of 2011. Early reports from the new merged PPC model in the US have been limited, and although Microsoft / Bing appears to be gaining some market share there, there is still some way to go before they significantly challenge Google.

3) Personalised search impacts search marketing: there has been no data published by Google into the level of adoption of personalised search, although this is likely to be more extensive now than a year ago through a gradual ‘creep’ of this facility for anyone using a Google account. Although some of the tools that were originally provided to searchers to personalise their results have disappeared, Google is undoubtedly tracking individual’s search behaviour and site’s visited to help adapt search – and paid search – results. The more notable change during 2010 was the introduction of Google Instant results, which is likely to change the way people search by generating suggestions and instantly displaying changing results as users type or adapt their search on the screen. Changing search behaviour is also likely to impact search marketing activity, although the underlying targeting of relevant search traffic remains the same basic aim.

4) Twitter’s make or break year: 2010 really didn’t go either way for the popular micro-blogging site. Twitter certainly survived any acquisition activity, at least for the time being, and became ever more popular as a communication tool, although many companies have still to see the real benefits of this. Twitter signed deals with Microsoft and Google to integrate content within the search engine results, and also started to offer ‘Promoted Tweets’ as a first move into generating advertising revenue from the massive user base. However, this balance between commercialisation and the whole premise of this service has yet to be met but a recent funding injection of $200m may herald the launch of further new services in 2011.

5) Local search options see new developments: local search has certainly gained more opportunities in 2010 and is expected to grow further in 2011 through the use of social networking tools (see below). The biggest change from Google in the past few months was the way in which local search results are now presented, with a closer integration between the Google Places listings and the optimisation of a website. For locally-targeted business, search remains a huge opportunity for many and the new features in Google Places (including Google Hotpot) as well as the use of mobile technology is something that should be a core part of their marketing strategy.

We have made some more predictions for the main trends we expect to see this year in terms of web search and online marketing. As usual, the online market continues to develop at a fast rate and new websites or services can change the landscape in a short space of time, but these are our expectations for 2011:

1) Rising CPCs encourage more creativity: the gradually increasing Cost-per-Click (CPC) within PPC advertising campaigns – notably on Google – means that companies have to become more creative to get the best results from their advertising spend. This means getting more targeted with the use of search terms and also increasing the conversion rate from the visitors to the site. With the former, Google already provides a good collection of tools to improve the targeting of an AdWords campaign and to test the best approaches, plus new data segmentation and keyword tools introduced in 2010 should provide more focus. When it comes to conversions, the use of website analytics and conversion testing tools can help companies improve their conversion rates and so maintain the cost-effectiveness of their search engine marketing activity, despite more competitors entering the field.

2) Mobile marketing becomes more prominent: we’ve predicted this before several times and it still hasn’t really happened yet, so will 2011 be the changing point? The signs are certainly there, the technology is in place and the use of Internet-capable mobile phones is rapidly growing. It seems to be more of the mindset of advertisers to harness this new area, particularly for local advertisers, yet with the combination of social media tools (see below) and the integration of PPC advertising on the mobile platform, the opportunities are there. It’s now more a question of the creativity of using mobile marketing and, in some cases, adapting websites to be more accessible on mobile phones, which will herald the rapid growth of this sector, which is forecast by some to grow at a faster rate than the initial take-up of web usage.

3) Location marketing will be a big new opportunity: in the same way that local search marketing has developed over the past few years, companies that are targeting a local catchment area now need to take advantage of location tools – that are accessed through mobile phones and via social networking sites – to attract new business. The initial use of sites like Foursquare started to gain some traction, but the launch of Facebook Places at the end of 2010 is likely to really shake up the market for local businesses. As users of these social networking services identify their location to friends, companies can now use this geo-targeting to provide offers and rewards in a flexible and targeted way that hasn’t been possible before.

4) The line between social media and search becomes blurred: as the previous 2 predictions have shown, we are expecting big changes for this year to come from mobile marketing and social media tools. Social media – now dominated by Facebook – is undoubtedly changing the way people use the web and therefore it provides new opportunities for advertisers, although few have yet to find a solution that can be as cost-effective as search marketing. However, social networking tools are clearly going to develop, by introducing new tools and services to users and advertisers, and therefore can’t be ignored. Microsoft’s Bing search results are now integrated within Facebook, while Google is looking at ways to get more involved in the social networking sector and is therefore likely to become a bigger player, either by innovation or acquisition. Google has also confirmed that social media ‘signals’ are now being used to some extent within search results, so that companies need to consider how to use search and social together, in the most cost-effective way.

5) Video marketing and advertising gains market share: although still a relatively small share of the online advertising sector, video advertising is growing at a rapid pace and provides many new opportunities for advertisers to reach their market in different ways – either through the use of the medium of their websites, or through viral marketing, or by advertising to the online video audience. Google has provided new advertising opportunities and tools through YouTube so that companies can target this massive user base, although of course targeting of the right audience remains essential. Video can also be used as an information or marketing tool on a website, and although different techniques have been tested over the past few years, companies need to find the best use of this medium to suit their market and users.

Recent articles from The Marketing Workbench

The Marketing Workbench is our regular web marketing blog covering news and comment on Internet marketing events and trends. If you want to keep track of current stories you can visit this section of our website on a regular basis, or set up an RSS feed. These are just some of the items posted over the past month:

• Online ad value now exceeds newspapers
• Twitter raises $200m funding
• New enhancements in Google AdWords
• Automated Rules for Google AdWords
• Skipping Ads on YouTube

We hope you’ve enjoyed reading this month’s issue and found some useful information for your business. Please contact us if you need any more information on the items covered, or our advice on any aspect of your website’s performance. Also, if there are any issues you would like to see in future editions of this newsletter, please submit your suggestions to us.



This month marks 10 years since Web Marketing Workshop first started trading in the UK. In Internet years, 10 years has been a very long time and the online world has changed considerably since 2000. In addition to this, many companies now understand why they need to be marketing their business online, through search or related sites, and more recently through social media.

Back in September 2000, creating a website was the priority task, so that working out how to get visitors and what to do with them was not so important! The number of prominent search engines was higher then, since Google was still growing their market share following their launch in 1997, but optimising your website was rare and so those that did could get good rankings quite quickly and easily. Pay-per-click advertising had not really grown as a popular and commercial tool, and social media and networking was not even on the horizon.

We’ve listed a few other things that were happening 10 years ago here – some may not seem that long ago, others might be a distant memory! To mark these 10 years, we’ve decided to change the format of our newsletter over the next few months and consider 10 of the most common questions that have been raised over the years about online marketing issues.

This month, we review 10 common questions about Search Engine Optimisation and link building, and we provide our answers and explanations for these. Next month we’ll look at pay-per-click advertising and Google AdWords. Then we’ll consider 10 questions about website analytics and Google Analytics, and then our final issue in this series will look at the more recent trends in Social Media Marketing.

We hope you enjoy these issues of the newsletter and perhaps we’ll answer a few questions that you’ve always wondered about! If not, and you have a burning question, please let us know and we’ll respond directly to you.

On to this month’s edition…

Common FAQs for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

So what is “search engine optimisation”?

Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is the process of making planned changes to a website in order to target relevant search terms that will help it to rank higher in the “natural” or “organic” search results when potential customers are looking for a product or service. All search engines, including Google, will take into account many factors to determine how to rank web pages within the results for a specific search term, although the number and importance of these factors remains a closely guarded secret. However, companies that want to attract relevant visitors to their websites need to target the main factors that will make a difference to their rankings, including on-site factors (such as page content, title tags, site structure and page links) as well as off-site factors, such as links from other websites. More information on search engine optimisation can be found here.

Why is search engine optimisation important?

If you have a website, then you should give it every opportunity to rank within the search results that your potential customers might be viewing. The “natural” search results attract the highest clickthrough rates and companies don’t pay for these clicks once they achieve a good ranking position, so SEO is vital to attract relevant and low-cost visits to your website. Search engine marketing is probably the most cost-effective and targeted form of marketing, and websites should be aiming to attract as many visits as possible from the most popular search terms, as well as from “long tail” terms (those wide range of very specific terms that may be used quite rarely but together can comprise a high overall volume of targeted search traffic).

How can the SEO for my website be improved?

There are a wide range of factors that need to be considered and some are easier to influence than others. All search engines operate in a similar way although ranking performance can vary between sites such as Google or Bing. Firstly, you need to ensure that your website is being indexed correctly so that every page has a chance to appear in the ranking results. You also need to have a design that allows this to happen and some good content, which is what the search engines really appreciate! You also need to determine the search terms that your potential customers will be looking for, and how these terms can be used on each page of the site. Most importantly, you need to identify the best search terms that will give your website a good ranking and drive relevant traffic to your site – which may not be possible for the most competitive terms in the short term, but there will always be others that can work effectively for your business.

How do I get my website “indexed” and how long will it take?

Whether you have a new website or one that already appears in the search engine results, getting all your pages “indexed” (added to the search engines’ database) is vital. You also need to get new pages or updated content indexed as quickly as possible. This process is partly to do with the link structure within your site or from other websites, as well as how often your pages are updated. All the main search engines, including Google, provide a “webmaster service” where you can register your site and submit an approved sitemap.xml file, which can help to speed up the indexing process and allows you to monitor how often the site is being visited by the search engines. It should be possible to get a new website indexed within several weeks, and existing sites can have pages revisited from every few days to every few months, based on how regularly the content is being updated.

Why can’t I get my site to achieve a high ranking on Google?

This really depends on the search terms you want to rank under, and how well your site is optimised. Many business websites now use SEO as a core part of their online marketing strategy, so the competition to get the top ranking positions on Google can be intense. However, every website should be able to achieve some good ranking positions and so your SEO strategy should aim to achieve the best possible rankings for your target market now, and then work towards more competitive terms in the mid to long term. That means you need to look at all the relevant factors that will help your site rank well, including the combination of search terms that your potential customers might be using. Achieving a high ranking for popular terms is not something that happens overnight and can take many months of development and testing, which may also require an investment in link building.

What are “Universal” search results and why are these important?

Over the past few years, achieving a high ranking on Google doesn’t just depend on the traditional methods of optimising the content on your website. The introduction of “universal” search results by all the main search engines has meant that a user’s search can often display results from other sources, such as Google Maps for local business searches, images or video results, news stories, and more recently blog posts and Twitter comments. You therefore need to consider optimising for these additional results as well, which can sometimes be an easier way of gaining search visibility and driving additional visitor traffic to your website.

Why are links a key part of an SEO strategy?

Links from other websites that point to your website can make a real difference to how well your site will rank for a particular search term. The factor of “link popularity” has been central to Google’s success as a search engine and those sites that rank well are often there due to a high number of links pointing to their domain. This means that although you can have a very well optimised site for a range of search terms, you also need to develop this “off-site” factor to perform well in the search results. Links can also drive traffic from other sources, but most importantly they will indicate to Google, and to the other search engines to a lesser extent, that your website is a relevant and “respected” website in your target market.

How can I get more links pointing to my website?

Although links that point to your website are an important factor, they can also be a difficult one to influence effectively, which is one reason why Google uses these as a key ranking criteria, since links need to evolve over time and should reflect the relative importance of one website compared to another. There are a number of strategies to attract links, although you should avoid methods that Google may penalise, such as buying into text link networks. Adding links to relevant directories or sites that are relevant to your market is important, as are links from business partners or suppliers. Creating unique content or other features on your website that attract links from other sites are ideal, but often hard to achieve. Links from blogs and other social media sites can be good for generating site traffic, but the link value from these sites is often limited. More information about link building can be found here.

How do I measure the success of my SEO strategy?

The visibility of your website in the ranking results for your market’s commonly used search terms is one clear indication that your SEO strategy is working. However, these ranking positions also need to translate into increased visitors to your website and, if the search terms being targeted are effective, good quality visitors that results in enquiries and new business. Reviewing your website analytics data (such as Google Analytics) is the best way to see the improving trend in search engine referrals from your SEO work and you can also see which search terms have been commonly used to find your website. This data, of course, reflects how your site is ranking and not necessarily how your potential customers are searching, so you also need to continually review search term activity and your site’s rankings for these terms. SEO can require ongoing review and revision, the development of links, and the continual “raising of the bar” to increase your ranking positions for the most popular and relevant search terms for your market.

How much will it cost to optimise my website?

If you decide to outsource your SEO to a specialist agency then prices for the work can vary wildly and don’t necessarily reflect expertise and quality. The quoted cost should be based on the expected hourly rate and so this will vary depending on the type of website you have, how many pages it contains and, importantly, which market and search terms you are targeting. You also need to consider the link development aspect of your website’s SEO work and how much time might be required over a period of some months. The best approach is to get some quotes and compare the approaches of a number of SEO companies. We always provide an initial free website assessment which outlines how a website currently performs, what work should be implemented and how much it would cost in that instance.

We hope that the above questions and answers have helped to explain or clarify some of the core issues surrounding search engine optimisation. If you would like any further information on any of these points, or would like us to answer any other questions that you have, please contact us now.

The first decade of Web Marketing Workshop, 2000-2010

A lot of changes have happened in the online world since we first launched Web Marketing Workshop in the UK in 2000. Ten years ago, online business was just starting to develop as a significant marketing channel, despite the dot.com boom and bust!

These are some of things that were happening a decade ago:

• In the UK, 27% of households (19.5 million) had Internet access in September 2000, which meant that the country ranked 3rd in the world in terms of total Internet users, behind the US and Japan. Today, over 80% of households have access to the Internet but the country now ranks 8th in terms of total users.
• 30% of users in the UK had broadband access in 2000, compared to dial-up access.
• The culmination of the so-called ‘Dot com’ boom and bust period had affected many websites and investors earlier in 2000 and resulted in a reality check in the growth forecasts and development of commercial websites – notable ‘failures’ at the time included boo.com in the UK, pets.com in the US, as well as Go.com and Infospace.
• Some of the popular search engines at the time included Lycos, AltaVista, Excite, Direct Hit (purchased by Ask Jeeves).
• Google was a relatively new player in the search market, having launched in 1997, but it was beginning to gain market share and signed a deal to power Yahoo searches in 2000 as Yahoo had begun to realise that their human-edited directory was starting to fall behind the rapid growth in new website launches.
• GoTo was developing the original paid search service and gaining wide coverage on many search engines, except for Google. However, paid search was still seen as an unwelcome commercial intrusion into search engine services by many people. GoTo was eventually rebranded as Overture and then bought by Yahoo several years later.
• Some search engines, such as Ask Jeeves and Looksmart, also offered a paid inclusion service to get editorial listings appearing in search results, plus Yahoo introduced a paid submission fee to be considered for their directory listings in 2000.
• Google launched AdWords in 2000 and without the level of fanfare or comment that new launches from Google receive these days! AdWords was originally offered on a cost-per-impression basis, before it later changed to a cost-per-click model and started become more widely used around 2002.
• In the wider world, September 2000 saw the United Nations Millennium Summit being held in New York, marking the largest meeting of world leaders in history.
• In the UK, anger about fuel taxes led to blockades of many refineries and fuel depots, leading to petrol shortages.
• And, of course, in Sydney there was the small matter of the 2000 Olympic Games being held in September!

It’s difficult to visualise how the online world will be in another 10 years but there’s sure to be more significant changes in trends and market leading websites. You can keep up with the latest developments through our monthly newsletter, web marketing blog or Twitter account, and Web Marketing Workshop will be here for the next 10 years, supporting our customers to get the most from their online businesses.

The HTML Title tag is one of the most important factors in search engine optimisation, yet it is often overlooked or used incorrectly. A well written Title tag can support search engine rankings and also increase the clickthrough rate from the search results list into a website.

The Title tag should be included in the ‘head’ code section of every website page and remains one of the key elements within the SEO factors on a website and page. There are 2 reasons for this – firstly, because a still plays an important role in keyword targeting, and secondly because the text that’s included in the Title tag also forms the hyperlink from the search engine results page. In addition, this text also appears in the browser bar when a user views the page, although the length of the tag is important in both of these cases as the number of characters being displayed will be limited by Internet Explorer and also by Google within the ranking results.

Websites are often built with little attention to the Title tag, which will simply reflect the page name (such as ‘Home Page’ or ‘About Us’) or will use a generic wording throughout the site (such as ‘Welcome to XYZ Company’). This is really missing a great opportunity to improve the ranking potential of a site, whereby the targeted optimisation of different search terms throughout all pages of the site should be driven by the page content and the focused use of 2 or 3 search phrases in the Title tag.

Once these targeted search phrases are included in the Title tag, they should also be reflected in the description tag and the body content of the page, including headlines where appropriate. This will give the website a better opportunity to rank well for relevant terms in its market, although the tag may need to be adapted and tested in different ways to establish the best possible ranking position that can be achieved at the time.

As noted above, consideration also needs to be given to the way the Title tag will be displayed in the search results, so that it encourages searchers to click on the link into the site and, if important, establishes product or brand awareness as well. Google tends to cut off the Title tag content after 55-65 characters, so it’s worth testing this and seeing how the Title tag displays within Google’s results once the updated page has been indexed.

Some websites may see an immediate impact coming from some basic changes to their Title tags, whereas others will need to work harder on getting this optimisation factor to work well with the rest of the site. If you would like more information about how the Title tag could be used better with your website, please contact us now.

The Google Webmaster blog recently announced a ‘secret project’, since dubbed ‘Google Caffeine’, that the company has been working on over previous months. It is supposedly the next-generation architecture for Google’s web search engine and, in an unusual move, they have opened up the test site to users, requesting feedback on the performance of the new technology.

The new Google Caffeine search engine can be viewed and tested here . There are no obvious differences to the look of the search interface because Google has been working on changes ‘under the hood’, targeting improvements in the size of the search database, the indexing speed, accuracy and comprehensiveness of the search experience.

Although Google makes almost constant changes to its search algorithms and infrastructure, it hasn’t made an update of this magnitude since 2006 and cynics note how this announcement of the new Caffeine search indexing tool has come so soon after Microsoft launched their new Bing search engine and combined with Yahoo!. However, Google say they have been working on these latest developments for many months and not surprisingly, such an announcement has generated much press interest and comment, as well as some initial good reviews about the performance of the new tool.

The impact of the new indexing infrastructure does seem to have increased the speed at which the results are generated for some searches, although of course the test site isn’t yet under the usage pressures of the main site, plus there doesn’t appear to be so much integration of the ‘universal’ results at this stage, such as videos, images and news stories. Tests of the results being generated are showing notable differences in some areas and very little ranking changes in others, depending on the type of searches made.

Of course the test site is still undergoing development and feedback, so Google will do a lot of fine tuning before making Caffeine mainstream, but there’s a suspicion that social media will be playing a bigger role in Google’s results. Those in the search engine optimisation industry are keeping a close eye on how this will affect ranking positions but the basic principles of SEO are still likely to apply in a significant way.

Once the developments from Google Caffeine are finalised and rolled out to the main search market, Google is hoping that the relevancy of results will be improved for the user and so maintain their dominant position in the search market, whatever attention and search enhancements Bing achieves. There may well be implications for the ranking visibility of some companies who depend on their Google rankings for their site visits, but this is an accepted risk of achieving natural rankings on search engines.

We will continue to review and assess what wider impact these changes at Google may have on the search and online business market, but if you would like any further information in the short term, please contact us now.

Google has made a number of notable changes to their search results in the past month. The first development has increased the frequency of local business listings being displayed within the first page of the search results, which has a significant benefit for local advertisers. The second enhancement concerns the inclusion of additional ‘sitelinks’ below selected search listings, which offers the searcher more opportunities to enter the listed website at different points.

The recent change that Google has made to the use of the Local Business Listings means that the small map and accompanying business listings for up to 10 companies are now appearing across more search results, rather than ones that specifically include a location within the search phrase. Google is trying to recognise typical search phrases that would have a local search intent (such as ‘plumbers’ or ‘accommodation’), even if the searcher has not included a location term in their search. When this happens, Google will display the business listings below the top 3 ranking results and bases the map and location details on the recognised IP address of a searcher’s ISP (Internet Service Provider).

The intention is clearly to focus the results to meet a searcher’s intended need and although the method of targeting is by no means a perfect solution, this is an important enhancement that may improve clickthroughs for companies listed in the local business listings. Therefore it’s now more important than ever that companies who are targeting a local market ensure that their business is listed on this section of Google and is optimised as effectively as possible to increase the chances of being found.

The second recent change to Google’s rankings concerns the ‘sitelinks’ displayed below selected websites in the ranking results. These have been visible for some time for large websites or when a specific business website is searched for, with the intention of giving searchers an idea of what the site includes and also more opportunities to click directly into a prominent section of the site. Previously these were displayed as a short list below the main ranking result and for the first search result only. Google has now introduced an expansion of these sitelinks into a single row of links, which will be displayed even for results that aren’t in the first position. This will help to show searchers some relevant sub-pages within more sites and potential increase the opportunities for people will clickthrough into the ranked website.

Google says that, just like the previous sitelinks, the new one-line sitelinks are generated algorithmically and the decisions on when to show them and which links to display are entirely based on the expected benefit to users. Therefore site owners can’t tell Google which links to include, but they can block some or all of these links if there is any reason they may not want to show them. This can be done through a Google Webmasters account, but removing these links is not recommended in most cases because the inclusion of these additional links will probably increase the visibility of, and traffic to, a website, whilst also improving the experience of users.

To find out more about increasing the marketing opportunities for your website on Google’s search results, please contact us now for more information.

n our continuing series about how to get the most out of Google Analytics, this month’s newsletter takes a look at the Motion Charts feature. This recently added report allows you to compare visually the performance of several keywords over time and adds a new angle to the analysis of a marketing campaign.Usually, when viewing keyword performance from the Traffic Sources section of Google Analytics, it’s not possible to see a graphical depiction that compares individual keywords, although by clicking on the ‘visualise’ button above the graph, this is now possible. By doing this, keyword data can be analysed at a glance, over a specified time period. Any number of keywords can be selected and the time line can be moved to clearly see how particular keywords have performed over this period. For example, with ‘time’ selected on the X-axis and ‘visits’ on the Y-axis, a comparison of the number of visits each keyword has generated can be viewed and compared.

The parameters for comparison can be changed from visits to bounce rate, conversion rate, average time on site and more, so by selecting the ‘trails’ feature, the dots can be joined by a line, which shows the flow between them. The colour of the dots can also be changed to show the chosen parameters, which adds another dimension to the amount of data shown. To add yet more data to the comparison, the size of the dots can also be changed to represent any of these parameters. It’s therefore possible to see visits, bounce rate and average time on site over this period, and any other combination, including conversions and per visit goal conversion, which is a quick way to determine which keywords regularly produce the most revenue for a site.

The Motion Charts feature is a valuable tool for comparing different keywords’ performance on up to three parameters at a time. This enables a quick analysis of which ones are performing best and which are not doing so well, enabling the bids for those to be adjusted accordingly within Google Adwords. Over time, this quick comparison tool could lead to large cost saving within an advertising campaign.

If you’d like to know more about how this particular tool, or how Google Analytics could be used to enhance your website’s performance, please contact us for further information.

The HTML Title tag is one of the most important factors in search engine optimisation, yet it is often overlooked or used incorrectly. A well written Title tag can support search engine rankings and also increase the clickthrough rate from the search results list into a website.

The Title tag should be included in the ‘head’ code section of every website page and remains one of the key elements within the SEO factors on a website and page. There are 2 reasons for this – firstly, because a still plays an important role in keyword targeting, and secondly because the text that’s included in the Title tag also forms the hyperlink from the search engine results page. In addition, this text also appears in the browser bar when a user views the page, although the length of the tag is important in both of these cases as the number of characters being displayed will be limited by Internet Explorer and also by Google within the ranking results.

Websites are often built with little attention to the Title tag, which will simply reflect the page name (such as ‘Home Page’ or ‘About Us’) or will use a generic wording throughout the site (such as ‘Welcome to XYZ Company’). This is really missing a great opportunity to improve the ranking potential of a site, whereby the targeted optimisation of different search terms throughout all pages of the site should be driven by the page content and the focused use of 2 or 3 search phrases in the Title tag.

Once these targeted search phrases are included in the Title tag, they should also be reflected in the description tag and the body content of the page, including headlines where appropriate. This will give the website a better opportunity to rank well for relevant terms in its market, although the tag may need to be adapted and tested in different ways to establish the best possible ranking position that can be achieved at the time.

As noted above, consideration also needs to be given to the way the Title tag will be displayed in the search results, so that it encourages searchers to click on the link into the site and, if important, establishes product or brand awareness as well. Google tends to cut off the Title tag content after 55-65 characters, so it’s worth testing this and seeing how the Title tag displays within Google’s results once the updated page has been indexed.

Some websites may see an immediate impact coming from some basic changes to their Title tags, whereas others will need to work harder on getting this optimisation factor to work well with the rest of the site. If you would like more information about how the Title tag could be used better with your website, please contact us now.