It was a while when Google introduced rich snippets functionality to enhance search result listings. The shame is that only few webmasters are using this method to help their websites to get higher CTR in organic search result, as it is an effective tool which helps to interact with searchers and get more clicks on your search listings.
Rich snippets allow you to mark up important data within HTML code and display additional information in the second line of search listings.
The example below displays stars rating which was implemented using microformats markup language:
Rich snippets can be used to markup various information types:
You can markup your HTML content using Microdata, Microformats or RDF format. To start using them you just need to know your the CMS system your are using and some knowledge of HTML.
Once you’ve implemented rich snippets on your site, you can check them with Rich Snippet testing tool and test that Google is able to parse your markup and display it correctly in search results. Rich Snippets testing tool can be accessed here
*Please note that mark up the data won’t effect your search engine listings.
There are a number strategies and ways how to increase your ppc campaign’s CTR (Click Through Rates). So I’ll try to give you some tips, how to improve your PPC campaign‘s Click Through Rates (CTR).
1. Target right Audience. The most important thing before planning any PPC campaign is to select right keywords and phrases you want to target. These keywords should be related to your product or service you want to advertise via your PPC campaign. It is not recommended to choose very obvious keywords which may generate a lot of impressions and huge amount of low quality clicks. To get higher CTR you may have to use descriptive keywords, so your text will be displayed only for users who are interested to your product.
2. Use Appropriate Keywords Matching. Google Adwords uses various methods of targeting like: Broad Match targeting (PPC Management), Phrase Match targeting (“PPC Management”), Exact Match targeting ([PPC Management]) and Advanced Broad Match targeting (“+PPC +Management”). By using these keyword targeting methods you may reach more targeted audiences and avoid irrelevant impressions as well as clicks.
3. Negative Keyword Strategy. By implementing negative keyword strategy you can reduce your advertising costs and bring more relevant visitors to your website. It is important to select negative keywords properly, because you have to make sure that your negative keywords won’t influence search phrases you want to be advertised for.
4. Create relevant ad groups for different keywords. You will be able to maximize your Click Through Rates by creating relevant ad groups for similar keyword sets.
4. Write a compeling copy of text ads. Another important factor for maintaining healthy CTR is to write a compelling ad copy, by including keywords used in the search query (Automatic keyword insert) and using strong call to action elements.
SEO keyword position monitoring and tracking is one of the most time consuming task for every SEO specialist. As the standard Google Analytics setup is not proving that kind of stats in keywords reports. But, as every Web Analytics specialist may know Google Analytics can be customized using “Custom Variables” funcionality. To start monitoring your keyword positions in Google using Google Analytics reports you have to customize Google Analytics tracking script and add “Custom Variables” on every page of your website.
Please see below the instructions how to record your keyword positions in GA reports:
1. Place the code displayed below on every page somewhere between <head></head> tags.
<script type=”text/javascript”>
function garankings()
{
var url = String(document.referrer);
// confirm they came from G
if (url.indexOf (“google.”) !=-1)
{
var urlVars = {};
var parts = url.replace(/[?&]+([^=&]+)=([^&]*)/gi, function(m,key,value)
{
urlVars[key] = value;
});
// Push to GA Custom Variables
_gaq.push(['_setCustomVar', '1', 'Rankings', urlVars["cd"], 1]);
}
}
</script>
2. Call javascript function garankings() in a body tag. It should look like: <body onLoad=”garankins();”>
3. To start monitoring your keyword rankings go to your analytics, click on “Visitors -> Custom Variables” and then you’ll be able to see what were teh positions of yoru keywords.
A lot of ecommerce websites, might have thousands of products that might temporarily change their stock availability, or just adding a lot of new products to their website on daily basis. So, even if you’ve got very well managed Google Adwords campaigns with thousands of keywords and very themed ad groups it is hard to keep your adwords account updated with every product change.
To resolve this problem Google are launching “Dynamic Search Ads” which will help to keep your ads automatically updated with your stock changes.
So, how “Dynamic Search Ads” functionality will work:
- Dynamic Search Ads will get fresh data about your ecommerce website listings via Google organic crawl system.
- Dynamic Search Ad will be triggered whenever relevant search occurs in Google.
- Google will dynamically generate text ad’s headline, use description template written by advertiser and use the most relevant destination URL.
This additional functionality will allow you to stay in full control and target various part of you website, even if you want to target entire website, specific product category or pages with specific keywords.
In the early October Google released Google Analytics update which will allow to see Google search data in Google Analytics reports. Google search data is gathered from Google Webmaster account.
To start monitoring Google Webmaster stats in Google Analytics you have to link your Google webmaster account with Google Analytics. To do so, go to the new version of Google Analytics, click on “My Site” – > Reports -> Traffic Sources -> “Search Engine Optimisation” and the select “Queries” . Then you will see the window as displayed below:
Click on “Set up Webmaster Tools data sharing” and you will be directed to Google Analytics “Web Property Settings” page where you’ll have to link your analytics with webmaster tools. To link them together you have to click on “edit” as showed below.
Google Analytics search queries report contains three different reports:
- Queries (Number of impressions, Clicks, Average Position, Click Through Rate (CTR))
- Landing pages (Number of impressions, Clicks, Average Position, Click Through Rate (CTR))
- Geographical Summary (Number of impressions, Clicks, Click Through Rate (CTR))
In the next few weeks Google is adding the feature of real-time stats in new version of Google Analytics. This feature will help to understand what is the impact of social media and other sources which are driving traffic to the site. Real-time tracking also will help to make sure that google tracking is correctly installed, before sending visitors to site.
New Teal Time analytics feature will be available under the Dashboard tab. Also only users with full administrator rights will be able to use the feature real time analytics.
Impression share is one of the most important metrics’ which helps to measure a reach of search network campaign. This particular Google Adwords metrics shows the percentage of impressions where the text ads were shown out of the total possible impressions for targeted keywords.
Lost IS Budget column shows the percentage of impressions were lost because of too low budget.
Lost IS Rank column shows the percentage of impressions were lost because of too low ad rank. The reasons for low ad rank can be various: too low max cpc and low quality scores.
The cheapest way to increase impression share is to improve ad rank whilst increasing max CPC or optimising entire Adwords campaign with an aim to improve quality scores.
To fully understand your Google Adwords account performance is important to analyze your paid search visitor’s behavior using Google Analytics stats. As Google Analytics and Google Adwords being one fully integrated system, Google allows to import Google Analytics goals to Google Adwords Conversion tracking interface. This functionality allows to measure different conversions than view of key page. Let’s say one of your goals is based on time spent on site or number of pages visited, Google Adwords won’t be able to measure that kind of conversion, but Google Analytics will, so you just have to setup time spent on time as a goal and import this goal to Google Adwords.
To import Google Analytics into the Google Adwords you have to follow the setps:
1. Login to you Adwords Account and Hover over “reporting and Tools” then select “Conversions”
2. Click on the button “Imported from Google Analytics”
3. Then select The Goals you want to import and click on “Import”
Happy analysing!
Google Webmaster tools “Fetch as GoogleBot” allows to check the Google index status of the particular web pages. Recently Google updated this funcionality and added an option to submit new URLs to Google index.
How to submit a URL to Google index?
1. Login to your Google Webmaster account. Select Diagnostics -> Fetch as Googlebot. Add URL address you want to submit to Google Index
2. After clicking on “Submit to index”, you will see a dialog box which allows to select what do you want to submit, only one URL or all URLs linked from this page
There is a maximum 50 URL submissions per week, whilst submitting URLs with all linked pages there is 10 submissions per month. It is not recommended to sumbit every new URL address on your website. Use this tool only then when you want your new URL to be submited immediately.
As negative keywords management and selection being very complex task is very important to keep the keywords listed in small groups. Keeping negative keywords in small lists will make negative keyword management much easier, because you just can assign negative keywords list for multiple campaigns.
Lets say you are an online store selling wood flooring and want to avoid visitor who are looking for local store or showroom. So you can use negative keyword lists to add all the UK’s towns and counties.
