The filters within Google Analytics allow the tracking, monitoring and recording of a variety of different metrics. One particularly useful filter allows you to track your site’s position within the search engines when a visitor clicks on your listing.
This information can be incredibly valuable as you may be optimising your site for one phrase, but this filter can show that a slightly reworded phrase delivers better quality traffic. If you have e-commerce tracking and goals set up then the real value of these visitors will clearly be displayed.
Before creating the filters it is important that you create a new profile in your Google Analytics Account. Give an appropriate title like, ‘Search Engine Rankings’. There should always be a profile in your Analytics Account which has all your data with no filters, otherwise you won’t have a record of your overall traffic.
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Muddled, linear, maddening…heaven? What would the Internet really be without SEO and can we live without it?
You don’t need me to remind you how unpopular SEO is in some circles. Whilst some see it as a great equaliser and an enabler of smaller websites, others see it as a giant leach, slowly sucking the life out of the Internet as we know it. But is the Internet actually for having SEO?
After all, SEO has helped to form the indexes that the search engines now hold. The dark arts once practised by some have also helped to strengthen algorithms and paved the way for the latest developments.
Everything that achieves great success has to have a nemesis. In politics, fiction (although these two aren’t always mutually exclusive) and business everybody has to have a competitor to drive it forward; but some also need a third element.
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The polka dot adorned King of the Mountains jersey in Le Tour de France might be one of the toughest sporting challenges that nature and mankind have conjured, but online it is the summit of the SERPs that is the beguiling and often impossible goal faces a peloton of websites.
For every keyword there can be only one website at the top of the search engine rankings. Invariably there tend to be a fair number of sites jostling for position, attempting to break away from the pack and take first place for themselves. Just as with our analogical cycling counterparts, it takes a great deal of effort, strategy and knowledge to achieve the ultimate prize.
Getting to number one in Google is the ultimate goal of any SEO; but due to the diversity of SERPs, there are other ways to get noticed. Sometimes getting a spread of good performances within search engine rankings, video marketing, social media, PPC and local search results can gain you the fullest exposure, without even necessarily topping the rankings. Consistently exceptional performances will earn you the Search Engine Marketers yellow jersey, opening the floodgates to highly targeted traffic.
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Today I went to verify ownership of a site in Google Webmaster Tools and received an error message telling me that the verification had failed and the file was empty. Typically the HTML verification file, which was uploaded to the root directory of the site to verify ownership, would simply be blank.
Upon further investigation it appears that Google has updated the HTML Verification file and the HTML file now contains:
google-site-verification: googleefaXXcdXXXXXXXXX.html
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As a part of our new SEO Tools section, Impact Media are pleased to be able to offer our Lead Tracker application.
This simple tool has been designed to help you find out a little more about where your conversions originated from. Using a straightforward piece of coding embedded within your site, you can log where a converting visitor came from and even what they were searching for to find you.
This is a fully automated system that will deliver reports directly to your inbox as and when a conversion occurs. The Lead Tracker will ensure that you are kept right up to date with all your website’s conversions, whilst also giving you valuable information for your future SEO work.
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See your website from a search engine’s point of view with Impact Media’s Website Analyser.
This brand new SEO tool with give you a fantastic insight into how your website is shaping up. With information on your domain, the link profile and the on page SEO work you’ve performed, the Website Analyser covers the full spectrum in one compact package.
As with all of our SEO Tools, the Website Analyser is completely free and there are no obligations attached. To take advantage of this great feature all you need to do is enter your website’s URL or domain name and a few seconds later you’ll have your full, automated report.
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Our in-house SEO Copywriter, Steve Logan, recently made an excellent post that explored the importance of spelling and grammar, with particular reference to writing for the web (see ‘The Typos and Language Errors that Turn Visitors Away).
Another consideration content writers and search engine optimisers need to have is for the use of synonyms in their writing. For some time now, Google have been showing synonyms bolded in the search results for stemming variants, such as the plural of a word, e.g. the searcher enters ‘picture’ but ‘pictures’ is also shown in bold. More…
With the dawning of a new year, we have the opportunity to wipe the slate clean and start over again with renewed vigour. Search engine algorithms have undergone a significant makeover in the past 12 months, perhaps it’s time your website does the same.
Websites aren’t a static marketing tool. They can’t be left to stagnate and simply tick over. So don’t let lethargy undermine your efforts so far; if your site is to succeed in 2010 than you need to be prepared to take the fight to your competitors, which means investing time and effort into each of your pages.
The Internet is a constantly expanding organism that mutates at a similarly speedy rate. The techniques and principles that worked just a few years ago will be almost redundant today. So if your website is suffering in the search engine rankings or isn’t getting the levels of targeted traffic you were hoping for, perhaps it’s time to take a fresh look at it.
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Google Caffeine is a new algorithm introduced by Google that should be going live in the New Year. Google Caffeine is an update to the Google system that has been designed to increase the speed and improve the relevance in which search results are generated.
Any overhaul of a Google Algorithm should not be taken lightly and how much of an affect it will have on SEO and current rankings is anybody’s guess.
Of course, Google have not released any of the details around Google Caffeine as yet but the system has been live on some test servers over the past few months.
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A determining factor in the strength of a site is the number of (quality) links it attracts. A determining factor in how a site ranks in search engines is its strength. Ergo, if you want to your site to perform better in Google, you need to get yourself a fair smattering of inbound links.
Links are the currency of SEO. You don’t want to be too flippant about giving links away and you can never have too much coming in (as long as it’s legal tender of course, toxic links won’t help), it is simple online economics. The challenging aspect of all this though is actually encouraging links.
In terms of providing a little gentle encouragement in boosting your SEO coffers, nothing works better than a little bit of link baiting. Write something amazing, create something unique or just cause flagrant controversy; however you choose to go about it, the more eyes that see your work and the more mouths (virtual or otherwise) discuss it, the better your chances of getting a viral stream of priceless, yet free, inbound links.
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With page load time joining the throngs of ranking factors on Google, more and more websites will need to make a concerted effort to speed things up.
Following on from my post yesterday, ‘10 Tips for Reducing Page Load Time‘, I wanted to provide a few links to potentially helpful resources – both free and premium. Obviously there are plenty of ways that you can improve your page load times, some more obvious than others, but actually implementing changes can be a struggle.
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There are literally dozens of factors that affect a site’s speed. Here we’ve identified 10 of the biggest issues and tips on how you can go about resolving them.
With the Google Caffeine update likely to incorporate page load time as a ranking factor, the need to increase site speed has rarely been greater. The vast majority of sites will have something that is slowing their page load times, so it’s important that you are able to identify these and make the changes required to boost your site’s speed.
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The hubbub surrounding page load times continues to build. Google have been stoking rumours that it will soon (or is perhaps already) a ranking factor [see: Could Page Load Time Become a Ranking Factor on Google?], not least with the recent addition of site speed statistics to their Webmaster Tools application.
With Google mobilising such tools, whilst discussing the importance of page load time so openly it’s time to start taking your site’s speed seriously.
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Page load time has always been a significant factor in how a website is perceived by human visitors. It has also been used to determine quality scores assigned by search engines for PPC campaigns. However, it appears that a site’s page load time could now become a ranking factor for Google SERPs.
The SEO industry has been beset by rumours following Matt Cutts’ appearance at PubCon last week, with the hot topic being the likely emergence of Google Caffeine in the New Year [see: Google to Get a Caffeine Boost...Soon]. However, in terms of importance, the implication that page load time will become a ranking factor in 2010 could well supplant Caffeine.
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By following some straightforward Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) fundamentals, you can be sure that your site is ready to be indexed by the search engines and all set to meet your objectives.
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