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The 16 changes that mattered to Google marketing in 2011
Since December is that time of year when we look forwards and also reflect, I’d take a look at some of the major changes in search in 2011. I hope these will act like a checklist helping you think through what you have covered and what you may have missed. My update includes a combination of paid and natural search and some of the changes to Analytics which have helped us improve our search marketing better (and in some cases less well).
There’s been plenty to keep us busy in getting the most from digital marketing and I’m sure there will be next year.
We don’t know yet how many changes Google made in 2011, but Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Congress that Google made 516 updates in 2010. They tested over 13,000 potential updates!
Well I’ve been tracking the changes carefully and I think there’s far fewer that really matter – just 16 in fact, but do let me know about what I missed – there must be at least 20?
I hope you manage an enjoyable break from the digital world! All the best for a successful 2012.
Let’s go!
The year got off to a quiet start with few changes in January before the major changes in the first part of the year. Read this introduction to finding the volume of mobile searches
The official announcement on Google’s High Quality Site updates
How are finding it so far? See Dan Barker’s analysis of the top 10 new Google Analytics features
View the Google introduction to Google +1
Another of the many ad innovations in Google, this one has been rolled out worldwide. Check Google’s mobile ad features on the Ad Network
Post on Evolving the Google Design and Experience – these changes occurred throughout the yeargoogle
The biggest change to Google Marketing this year. View The What’s New in Google+ page for the latest updates
Not new in 2011, but following-up on site visitors became much more popular in 2011. Read this video introduction to Google’s Remarketing
Read The tutorial from Tim Leighton Boyce on how to use multichannel funnels to help with paid search
The official announcement from Google
Read Dave’s update on ClickThrough’s blog
Read how you can differentially bid for clicks vs calls
These made quite an impact on brand search – did you check the impact? Google’s explanation of the changes to: Expanded sitelinks
See the official announcement for Google+ pages with examples
Social extensions – recommendations appear on your ads – November 2011
Increasing the argument for having fresh content on your site. Read this summary from Chris Soames and see how ClickThrough covered the news.
OK, so what am I missing?
Those closely involved with web analytics and SEO have almost all reacted angrily to the announcement by Google that it will no longer be passing information about some search terms typed by searchers into Google.
I wanted to flag this up, first for the practical reason that you will see this in your analytics system – whether it’s Google’s own Analytics or other systems like Site Catalyst or WebTrends.
“Not provided” refers to when the individual search keywords can’t be viewed in analytics although they are still registered as natural search visits. Google only masks these keywords when users are using a secure Google site such as Gmail or Google+ as logged-in users, but that’s increasing.
Note the impact is much greater for Google US at the moment and there is no announcement from Google when it will be rolled out further, but it is already having some impact in the UK.
This is what you’ll see in Google Analytics, this example is taken Econsultancy’s summary of the impact they’re seeing in the US:
The other reason to mention this is that you may have to rethink with your agency how you review SEO performance. Some compilations from the US have shown that well over 10% of searches are effected and this could increase as use of Gmail and Google+ increases. It clearly makes techniques like search gap analysis less meaningful although relative differences in phrases still give insight. Maybe if this change makes the new Google SEO:Query tool less useful, then marketers will revert more to good old rank checkers which Google has been trying to stop adoption of years.
So, no immediate panic, but one to watch out for in the future.
Did you notice that in September, Google Analytics introduced a major new feature which addresses a well-known limitation in its service? You may not have noticed since around the same time Google Analytics introduced its’ premium service where larger organisations gain support and other features for a fee. This got a lot of the coverage at the time, but the feature I’m talking about got “drowned out” it seemed to me.
The new feature I’m referring to is Google Analytics Real Time. It was announced at the end of September and we’re seeing it introduced to more and more accounts. If you want to check, it’s in the new version of Google Analytics on the Home tab. Note though, that it is a separate set of report – it’s not real-time applied to all existing reports, instead it shows the basic information about current “Active users on the site” such as their campaign source and the content they are viewing, not their landing pages, so it’s far from comprehensive.
Here’s how it looks:
As the name suggests, Real Time gives you immediate feedback as to what is working or not working on your site or in current campaigns. This contrasts with the 2-3 hour delay before data from the most recent day was displayed. I think this is the main reason why Google always previously defaulted to the previous day in its reporting.
So how might be you be able to apply Real Time for your marketing. Here are three ideas to get you started:
So take a look, you may find it useful some time, but remember this is a separate set of reports and it does not give you full details on keywords, conversions, just popular keywords, traffic sources, content and locations.
Google has launched real-time analytics within Google Webmaster Tools and this now presents some great opportunities for co-ordinated marketing campaigns across a multitude of media with real-time tracking of results.
What this means is that there is no more lengthy waiting to judge whether or not a campaign is working. By putting up a blog post with an associated tweet (or series thereof), including tracking devices, you can judge instantaneously when interest picks up, where the peaks are, and when the long tail begins. This offers the chance to reinvigorate a campaign by re-engagement or to pull it if it is of little effect or is generating negative feedback.
You can trial a multitude of different messages to see which proves most effective. You can offer alternate landing pages to judge results from a variety of landing pages to find the most effective for lead generation and sales for your target audience and product set.
Until now, it has been hard work to keep tabs on a campaign throughout its lifetime, particularly when that is extremely short, as is often found with social media campaigns where attention spans are short. These real time results put Google ahead of most of the other free analytics services, and by building them into an environment which most webmasters and search marketing practioners are comfortable with means that adoption will be high.
Can you afford not to make the most of the real time analytics? The reality is that for many website owners, tracking marketing campaigns can be a time-consuming and arduous task, but now the results are available as soon as a campaign begins, there should be little excuse for not checking, monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of your marketing spend.
It really is as simple as including a tracker so that you can watch as a campaign begins to take effect, evaluate where the traffic is being driven from, and make a decision about what to do as that traffic falls away. However, on a more advanced level, the real time analytics will undoubtedly prove worth their weight in gold to search and social media marketing companies who depend on this level of statistics to position effective campaigns for clients, over and over again.
In August, Google announced a new feature which has been dubbed “mega sitelinks”. Although this seems to be a small change which wasn’t widely reported, we think it is important.
The reason, is that for every site of a well-known brand, the most important searches by volume are brand search terms. Sitelinks give an excellent opportunity to engage both customers and prospects by highlighting the best content.
If you’re not familiar with Sitelinks, they are the listing of extra links below the brand main site description when you search on a brand name. Before this change site links in the natural search results gave just a series of links. But this example showing the new sitelinks for ClickThrough Marketing, shows that they now take up much more of the page with 8 to 12 alternatives and include more detailed descriptions.
ClickThrough Marketing - Mega Sitelinks Example
We suggest you take a look at your sitelinks and those of your competitors and answer these questions:
Most established brands will already have sitelinks, so you can skip this question. If you’re a small business or not in the top position the change won’t help you, in fact it could push you down the search results page.
If your sitelinks are wrong or have glitches like an unsuitable title or error page, then it’s worth changing these – this can be done in Google Webmaster Tools as explained below.
Since Google’s site algorithm is automatic it does a good job of highlighting the most important and shared pages on a site – typically those within the main navigation. But also other popular or shared content.
You can’t tell Google what you DO want as a sitelink, but you can tell it what you DON’T want. This is where you go to in Google Webmaster Tools and the new Google facility.
One of the big changes is that the new site link adds a description – if you want to change this, you can through editing the meta description of the page through the CMS.
The most important description is for the home page – often this doesn’t explain the site value prop well, but this one does.
Adwords now has its own “Ad Sitelinks” above the natural listing – you may want to use these to highlight offers that are popular in your natural sitelinks – or missing! These work well for many ClickThrough clients already.
This is where people search for the brand name plus a product or service. It seems that Google may include more of these now, so you check your analytics to see whether Brand plus phrases are driving traffic for you.
You can use the Landing page report in Google Analytics to see the importance of different brand phrases in driving traffic. This graphic summarises the steps to tackle this.
With the announcement over Easter that all users of Google Analytics can now try the new version without signing up for the beta programme, it’s time to ask: “Should we be switching to the new version of Google Analytics?”.
If you haven’t seen the changes, to evaluate the new version just log-on and select “New Version” from the top of the screen.
You may have read that the new change is mainly around interface changes and usability. While this is true, there are plenty of other changes which can help you improve analysis, so in my post this month, I thought I’d alert you to some of the main changes to help you decide whether it’s worthwhile you and your clients switching.
Always the most obvious, there is a cleaner style coupled with some performance improvements which could make changing useful.
Google’s design team has considered the user journeys and have made some features more prominent to encourage usage:
A. Google Analytics Intelligence – this is a great feature to save time – it will alert you to changes in traffic including from Search marketing and individual keywords – well worth setting up.
B. Custom reports – Now more prominent in the design and a big change to the way they are created. In fact, you’ll need to migrate your old reports if you switch to the new system.
The change is worth it though since you can now filter reports, for example to show natural search traffic only which was only previously possible by manually applying an advanced segment.
C. Advanced Segments – I’m a huge fan of these and rightly these have been made more prominent – if you’re not using these, your really missing out on the opportunity to understand site visitor behaviour and change results. In the new version you can select a single segment which makes isolation of one channel like SEO or a group of keyphrases possible.
Once you select the profile you’re interested in you’ll see the reports have changed.
This is a positive change, but it does mean time to learn and some training may be needed.
If you want to review the differences, you may find the Report Finder useful.
There is one major change here to be aware of. These are a new class of goal called Event Goals. These are tracked through an existing feature called Event tracking. With Event Goals you can now place a value against an action such as downloading a PDF, adding to basket or playing a video – this could be a real help with with business reporting. This is particularly the case for non-transactional sites where value may be created for the business through SEO or AdWords, but no Ecommerce sales can be recorded.
As well as the changes to segments and custom reports which will help search marketers, there are some other features that will help search marketers including:
A. Trending search terms. For example, if your site sells ‘Sony Laptops’ & ‘Toshiba Laptops’, you can view a trend graph plotting the search traffic you’ve received for each of those terms. Previously to do that you’d have to set up a custom segment for each, or drill into each one individually & compare the graphs.
B. ‘Term Cloud’ visualisation, showing word clouds of search phrases. I don’t find these so useful since they don’t compare more than one variable. For this I recommend the free Juice Analytics visualation tools – they’re instant to use – just enter your Google Analytics login.
So that’s how I see the new version, I hope you enjoy the speed and functions of the new system.
For the most in-depth review of the new capabilities, see this detailed analysis on 10 key features in the Google Analytics Beta from Dan Barker.
Now, it is far easier to see the breakdown of the routes or paths that your customers take to achieve a goal or conversion on your website.
Google has added multi-funnel analytics to the mix, permitting you to track exactly which paths to conversions are proving most effective and lucrative for your business.
So, if you want to know whether a specific campaign using banner ads, social media, offline advertising, PPC or certain search keywords is proving the most effective at generating sales, or achieving other goals of interest, you can now see all the interaction points that are triggering your conversions.
For more info, watch Google’s handy little video….or ask your internet marketing agency to set up funnels to allow intensive action tracking for maximum conversion optimisation.
In his final post of 2010, Dr Dave Chaffey predicts what he believes will be the major trends in search in 2011, including the importance of social media, understanding consumer intent, video search and local search.
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Well it’s that time of year to take stock of which marketing techniques were effective this year and plan ahead to update our investment in different marketing activities.
To help, here are my views on 11 search trends for 2011 from the big to the small which I’ve described in terms of activities that I think are essential to success. You’ll see many are updates on the main trends in 2010.
1. Investing in content
Success in SEO has really always been about the content. In the early days, success was based on relevant copy formatted the correct way to rank well; more recently, content to attract links and today to encourage social sharing and bookmarking. This is just as true in 2011 as it’s always been. But the bar is higher now, brochureware content won’t cut it. Instead you need exceptional content to attract links. That requires investment and process and is increasingly becoming a core marketing activity.
2. Encouraging social sharing
Such is the growth in social sharing through Likes on Facebook; Retweets on Twitter and Shares through Linked-In, Google has a problem. The number of personal and company bloggers has declined as behaviour has shifted to sharing links – it’s far easier. To remain relevant, particularly for real-time content, Google has been forced to use the social graph. Through it’s data share arrangements with Facebook and Twitter it now rates posts, blogs and even individuals on their popularity. Many, including me have suspected for a long time that Google uses social sharing and bookmarking as a signal for quality to content which should be ranked more highly. This recent interview with search engine representatives now proves for the first time social mentions are used as a ranking signal: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-bing-confirm-twitter-facebook-influence-seo.
3. Responding to real-time search and online conversations
From the start of 2010, Google’s real time search box has featured Facebook and Twitter links. I believe overhyped since it currently only tends to feature in the search results page for major trending topics like the launch of the iPad. Still, it does point to the need to monitor online conversations and manage them.
4. Creating your social content hub
Given the trends suggested by my first point, creating quality, timely content is not a nice-to-have, it’s essential for success in SEO. I believe a blog or media centre is essential to most companies to act as a hub to distribute and share your content and offers. This means a big challenge for many companies, because the implication is that the company needs to become a publisher or at least adopt a publisher mindset.
Of course, search marketing agencies like ClickThrough can help here in creating a content strategy and implementing it.
5. Speed matters
Another change from earlier in the year is that Google is using page download speed as a quality signal. If your platform doesn’t deliver the latency Google requires, you may have a problem ranking.
6. Microformats
Microformats are a tactical way to give you an edge in the search results page – think starred hotel reviews from Trip Advisor. These are based on a standard called hReview used by Google, but increasingly they will use this for product information using hProduct when linked to reviews. If you’re involved in publishing, retail or travel sectors it’s worth exploring the microformat options available via Google.
7. Think Glocal
Google is getting increasingly good at offering specific content for individual countries and for providing content for local searches which often mean mobile searches. This year Google Local Business Centre was renamed to Google Places and companies with a presence on Places have started to appear more prominently. This is a great opportunity for businesses with a distribution network to boost their visibility via paid and natural search. Read more about Google Places best practice: http://www.smartinsights.com/search-marketing-alerts/3-ways-to-optimise-for-google-places/
The new proximity marketing through the Likes of Foursquare and Gowalla also offers opportunities as we noted in our location-based marketing whitepaper: http://www.clickthrough-marketing.com/resources/reports-downloads/location-based-marketing-white-paper
8. Don’t forget YouTube!
One stat that surprised me this year is that YouTube is now the second biggest search engine in the US. This gives opportunities in both natural and paid search. Creating engaging video for natural search is a bit of a hit and miss affair, but within paid search Promoted Videos and Adwords placements give new opportunities to create awareness outside of the text results.
9. Take advantage of new Google Adwords formats
Google innovates a lot to deliver relevance in the natural results, but it’s also keen to maximise the relevance of its ads since that equals relevance so it’s invested in that also. Our clients have seen success this year with several of the new ad formats, in particular the Ad Sitelinks which you can use to advertise specific products or campaigns in response to a brand or navigational search.
10. Advanced SEO = Analytics
I was interested in a recent discussion on seoMoz which asked “what is advanced SEO”? http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-is-advanced-seo. This is a good question for all agencies and clients to be asking. The use of analytics is what struck a chord with me. At Clickthrough we’re increasingly mining Google Analytics and link analysis tools to identify opportunities for search. One approach which we find works well is the gap analysis segmenting and comparing paid and natural visits which I outlined earlier in the year: http://www.clickthrough-marketing.com/the-what-why-and-how-of-a-search-gap-analysis/
11. Understanding customer search journeys
In 2010 Google introduced “Search funnels” (we blogged about search funnels back in August) to tell you whether those 2 or 3 word generic category search terms contribute to conversion since they are often followed by longer product searches or brand terms. With the high cost of clicks in AdWords, understanding which traffic sources influence sale over multiple visits before purchase is important to make the best media decisions. I say can be, because it’s particularly important in more complex, high value purchases. If the majority of you visitors convert on the first visit it’s a lot less significant. Some questions to ask via your analytics are – how many visits does it take to first purchase? What is the latency, i.e. how many days does it take to purchase?
12. Reducing dependence on Google – An Extra Trend!
Every year, the Googlization of digital marketing, all marketing even, seems to get greater. Google has driven the vast majority of searches for a long time, but with its ownership of YouTube and the Google Display Network (formerly the content network which accounts for around 30% of its revenue) this extends far beyond the search box.
So part of digital strategy has to be look for opportunities for de-googlization. Building a memorable brand and an online experience that visitors will want to visit direct helps and Google favours strong brands more and more. Let the affiliates take the costs and risks of Google; find partner sites with low-cost display placements. Try using the Google network for placement targeting or remarketing which was introduced in 2010 and has produced excellent results for some of our clients.
Here’s wishing you every success in your search marketing strategy in 2011!
Rob Stoubos, SEO Manager at ClickThrough, gives a quick introduction to Facebook Per Page Impression Data.
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Facebook has introduced page post impression data to all accounts – it was previously only available to pages with +10,000 likes.
The statistics will be available to the page admin, and give information on the number of ’impressions’ for a page (how many times it has been viewed – same metric used by display ad and ppc marketers) and also a new ‘feedback’ metric.
This feedback metric is a percentage, dividing the number of likes and comments for each post, by the number of times that post has been viewed. This is a reasonably good proxy for user interest in a post, and can help you obtain more information on what posts resonate best with your fans.
For example, with one of our clients we could see that the best time to send out status updates were 4.30pm and 8.45am – just before the start, and end, of the working day.
This new data source also helps you get an idea about what type of Posts are the best. For example, for one of our clients we found that:
These new statistics are only available for posts after June 25, 2010. Also, don’t expect to see clicks or video plays – it’s like and comments only.
Analytics continue to add additional insight to social media marketing campaigns, and this new data source from the biggest social platform of them all can only be welcome.
As part of our Digital Academy staff training program Dave Chaffey, our Insights Director, held a Google Analytics ‘Boot Camp’ training session today for the ClickThrough team. Dave gave a streamlined version of his Econsultancy training session, taking into account the fact that almost everyone at ClickThrough uses Google Analytics on a daily basis!
For our newer members of staff, Dave went through the intermediate skills areas of Google Analytics Advanced Segments, Custom Reports, Goals and Funnels and use of Regular Expressions. Dave also demonstrated how using the Pivot feature in Analytics can help to reduce the need to combine data offline for comparative analysis and how to use custom variables to segment visitors across multiple visits.
It’s great to see that our search conversion experts were already using many of the more powerful functions e.g. Intelligence Alerts, Profile Filters, using regular expressions in goals and URL-based campaign tracking, but also really useful as an opportunity to keep up to date with the latest change to the Google Analytics tracking code as Asynchronous tracking is finally rolled out.
Big thanks to Dave for sharing his web analytics expertise, and to everyone who contributed some great questions.
