Does +1 Impact SEO?

According to Google is “a potential signal to improve search quality.”

Question: “Does +1 affect my site’s performance in search?”

Answer: “Content recommended by friends and acquaintances is often more relevant than content from strangers. For example, a movie review from an expert is useful, but a movie review from a friend who shares your tastes can be even better. Because of this, +1’s from friends and contacts can be a useful signal to Google when determining the relevance of your page to a user’s query. This is just one of many signals Google may use to determine a page’s relevance and ranking, and we’re constantly tweaking and improving our algorithm to improve overall search quality. For +1′s, as with any new ranking signal, we’ll be starting carefully and learning how those signals affect search quality.”

Google +1 has the potential to have a major impact on search results for online retailers. But which of the top 100 Internet retailers are using Google +1 on product pages? We conducted some research to find out.

Even though this a new button, we were surprised to find that only ten out of the top 100 retailers have the Google +1 button on their product pages. I suspect when Google officially announces that Google +1 will start directly affecting search rankings, more retailers will put the button on product pages. But those smart ten retailers that already have the button in place might possibly gain an edge by being early adopters. Here’s the list of the ten companies that are using Google +1:

• Best Buy
• L.L. Bean
• Overstock.com
• Nordstrom
• Redcats
• Buy.com
• BarnesandNoble.com
• Blue Nile
• Hayneedle
• Sierra Trading Post

Here are three examples of Google +1 buttons on product pages:

From Blue Nile.com

From Buy.com

From BestBuy.com

Have you added  Google +1 to your site or are you planning to soon? Check here to get the button.

Content development is a crucial piece of the puzzle for search and social media. A few months ago, I wrote an article for Social Fresh on content development steps that bring together search and social media. I thought it’d be fun to remix the article and turn some of the key points into slides. Hope you enjoy, and drop us a line if you’re looking for assistance with your own content strategy.

7 Days of Search and Social

Search Engine Journal has a weekly edition of what is going on in the search and social world. These editions include links to web articles, blog posts and videos on the subject.

A Tweet’s Effect on Rankings- An Unexpected Case Study

This blog post tells the tale of a tweet’s value on a page’s ranking and traffic. It’s mainly told through screen shots. But here are some main points. A high quantity of tweets from “real” users on Twitter has a pretty substantial impact on rankings in the short term. There is some long-term value carried by tweets in addition to the short-term effects. If this is consistently observed, expect a lot more SEO activity around engaging and incenting tweeting to key URLs.

Future Trends in Search and Social Media

Search is becoming increasingly influenced by social signals. For example, Google and Bing are getting feed data from Twitter and Facebook. If you’re logged in to Google, your search results can be annotated by things your friends have shared on Quora or Flickr. There will be fewer silos between search and social media. Online marketing will focus on customer content that’s both keyword and social media-optimized. Following how content is consumed and shared will make it easier to do those things while monitoring and engaging to develop networks and relationships. Continue to keep business outcomes in mind and be thoughtful about how success will be measured short and long term.

Google +1: Social Meets Search

Google has a new social feature called +1 (plus one), which basically is allows you to endorse URLs. It’s almost the same thing that you do when you “like” or endorse pages on Facebook, but this feature is showing up in Google search results. All of your +1 results with appear on your Google Profile. Google has rolled this feature out as a response to Facebook “Like”, and they claim that +1 can help friends, contacts and others on the web find the best stuff when they search. This might help websites gain more organic traffic from Google.

Search + Social = Authority x Influence

Search is based in information. Google changed their algorithm to reward quality content to combat lesser quality produced by link farms. This is great because now when people use search to find information, results are ranked by authority and quality. On the other hand, social is based in influence. Information is given to social media users based on the connections they have. The information is “digested and shared” creating conversations based on who you follow or friend. Search and social intersect when you can target what people are searching for and push strategies that create conversations around those topics.

Search + Social: A Growing Relationship

Social networks have opened new ways for marketers to display messages, engage with customers and drive sales. Because of this growth, businesses are starting to realize that this is an important part of their marketing efforts. Search engines are recognizing the shift and starting to display social in searches. We are starting to see a correlation between search engine rank and Facebook Likes. For marketing, we need to understand that search and social need to start working together more and we will see better results.

What are some other resources you’ve found that can help people learn more about the intersection of search and social?

Learn How To:

• Know what Google Instant is
• Recognize how Google instant can impact organic and paid search campaigns
• Prepare for possible effects on their campaigns

We hope you’ll join us on Tuesday at 2pm for this show. If you have any questions you would like Jonathan to answer, you can leave a comment here or send us the question through Twitter @ewaydirect

With video becoming more dominant on the internet, video is likely to become more important moving forward in SEO. According to a Forrester Research study conducted last year, a page with video is 53 more times likely to show up on the first Google search engine results page (SERP) than traditional SEO techniques.

So what does this mean for you? Pages with video have a larger presence on the SERP.  This means eye-catching content that in turn equals a better chance of getting clicked on, which should generally increase traffic, conversions and revenue.  Also, distributing your videos to video sharing websites such as YouTube, Facebook and other social media networks, builds quality incoming one-way links which helps in your overall SEO ranking.

For those who have not already considered video as part of your SEO campaign, here are a few ways to ensure that your video content is playing its part in your overall SEO strategy.

• Create a unique title by adding your most important keywords.
• Submit a correctly formatted video sitemap. This allows you to give a better picture of the video to the search engines. Include relevant keywords within the anchor text of all links to the videos that are featured in your video sitemap. For video that is hosted on your own website, use of a video sitemap on your site will help to filter page rank as well as direct search engines where to index your content.
• Create a video library on your site; this way Google knows where to find your video content.
• Use relevant keywords in your Metadata to optimize your video. Include a keyword rich description of the video within the meta descriptions.
• Tag your videos with key phrases that are most reflective of your content.
• Include “video” as a keyword on a regular basis throughout any metadata, as many user searches include the word and it will increase your chances of showing up on those queries.
• Create a YouTube Channel. Each video you post to your channel can be tagged and indexed, increasing the odds your brand name will appear in natural searches for keywords associated with your business.
• Post your video link on Facebook and Twitter. Use your link as a “video reply” to videos on similar topics. Increasing the number of links back to your video is a great way to boost your search results.

Overall, online videos are a way to educate your customers, increase brand identification, generate traffic to your website and ultimately drive sales your way if optimized correctly.

• Your PPC advertisements will be displayed on both Yahoo and Bing SERPs
• You will be able to manage your PPC advertising on a single platform (adCenter)
• Your adCenter account will contain information about your Yahoo and Bing performance for each keyword and ad text as a whole…This means you won’t be able to monitor the performance of a keyword or ad just in Yahoo or just in Bing.
• Any PPC campaigns previously running in Yahoo will have to be moved into adCenter
• The transition is set for September – November, just in time of the holiday season.

With that being said, this transition is going to affect all of us and it’s time to get ready and prepare now. Here are some things that are going to change and will affect your existing PPC campaigns that you should fix ASAP:

• Ad Copy Lengths – Yahoo allows 40 characters in the headline of their ads while Bing only allows 25 characters. Also, ad descriptions can be up to 71 characters in Yahoo, while Bing only allows 70 characters. If you don’t make these changes, the ads will be shortened and set as inactive. You’re going to have to change your Yahoo ads so that they meet Bing’s ad text guidelines.
  • Tip: Revise your ad text now. This will give you time to test the new lengths and different variations of them.
• Match Types – Yahoo has standard and advanced match types which is different than adCenter which has exact, phrase, and broad match types.  This means that you will need to make sure that your Yahoo keywords are expanded to include misspellings, plurals, and apostrophes since Yahoo maps keyword variations for you and adCenter treats the variations as individual keywords. When bidding on the keyword “frame” in Yahoo, you can also receive traffic from queries for “frames” and “frme.” To get the same results from Bing, you will need to bid on the keywords “frame”, “frames” and “frme.”
  • Tip: Prepare a list of keyword variations now to add to your adCenter account when the transition occurs.
• Negative Keywords – adCenter allows thousands of negatives at the campaign and ad group level and while Yahoo only allows 500 at the account level, 1,250 at the campaign level, and 500 at the ad group level. You will now be allowed to add more negatives to your account to help with filtering unwanted impressions.
  • Tip: The account level negatives from Yahoo will now be set to the campaign level in adCenter so make sure to make any adjustments as necessary.
• Minimum Bids – With Yahoo, the minimum bid is $0.01, but the minimum bid in adCenter is $0.05. After the transition, any bids below the minimum will be automatically increased to $.05. Don’t worry! Your affected ads will be paused and you will then have opportunity to make any modifications.

In my opinion, the bottom line is that The Yahoo/Bing Search Alliance will create more customers, more sales opportunities, and give you, the advertiser, more control over your advertising dollars. All you have to do is fix a few things to your existing PPC campaigns and plan accordingly. I suggest you do so now and you can relax and enjoy watching your new favorite Fall TV show.

Pay Per Click (PPC): The Art of Negative Keywords

eWayDirect’s Director of Search Marketing, Jonathan Lawoyin will teach you how to:

• Define negative keywords and their importance
• Locate negative keywords in your PPC account
• Decide what keywords to use

Learn something to you can do right away to improve your online marketing efforts.

We hope you’ll join us on Tuesday at 2pm for this show. If you have any questions you would like Jonathan to answer, you can leave a comment here or send us the question through Twitter @ewaydirect.

Is this a quick and random post? Yes – but so what? Today, on the 3oth anniversary of the legendary game Pac-man, Google has made its page into an interface where the actual game can be played. You can choose to continue searching by clicking “Google Search” or play the game by clicking “Insert Coin”. It’s pretty funny to see how many Twitter updates have been made on the subject. I’d be interested in seeing how this affects the PPC campaigns of video game websites.

This actually brings a thought to mind – What is the effect of Google’s recognition of special occasions on search volume? I am sure that it significantly increases the number of searches on that given subject. Are there opportunities to capture relevant traffic from Google-inspired searches? I am certainly going to try and find out!

Social media optimization (SMO) is refining a website to ensure that the content is spread with little effort through other social media sites and online communities. Visitors and users of the site act as carriers, spreading the message to others. An example of this is giving links like “digg this” or “stumble upon” to content so that other people can share your content

Social media marketing (SMM) is the more general term used to describe the grafting of creative content and then distributing it through social networking sites using a form of viral marketing. The main difference is that the work here is off-site and involves engaging your potential customer base on territory familiar to them.

These terms can also be delineated by labels of push and pull marketing. With SMM, advertisers push their message out into the social media. SMM campaigns start with creation and end shortly with the planting of this campaign. SMO, on the other hand, focuses on pulling people in with an “optimized” site. SMO can be considered the second stage of the SMM process.

Need help with SMM or SMO? Drop us a line so we can set up a conversation and see how we can help!

Email marketing was the strongest performing advertising channel in 2009 according to 39% of marketing executives.

That means with the shifting trend, budgets will be shifting into online and digital marketing. In 2010, 59.8% of marketers are planning to spend over one-half of their budgets on online marketing efforts.

Among specific tactics, over three-quarters (77.6%) of marketers are using targeting as part of their online marketing strategy this year. Some 71.2% say they are employing customer analytics and measurement tools.

Marketers are also increasingly becoming interested in online video and mobile marketing. But one thing that marketers are still hung up on is social media. Marketers aren’t sure whether social media delivers returns; 50.4% say social media will generate quantifiable results this year (vs. 49.4% last year); however, another 37.6% are uncertain and 12.0% say social media cannot deliver quantifiable results this year.

The data suggests that email and search marketing are performing the best for marketers, but those are still only two tools in the online marketing tool belt that can be implemented. What would an ideal mix be?

For the full article and stats, click here.