SEO News

1. The search results for desktop and mobile are becoming more diverse

When Searchmetrics analysed how search results differ by device last year, we found that more than 25% of Google results on mobile phones are different to those displayed on computers using the same keywords.

Results displayed on tablets differ from those on computers in around 8% of cases.

Over time I would certainly expect these differences to increase as the search engines learn more about what people expect when searching on different devices. 

We know that searchers experience a laptop (with a bigger screen area) differently to a mobile phone and a lot of the times when they search on a laptop their intent is different.

If you search for ‘pizza’ on your laptop, for instance, perhaps you are more likely to be looking for a pizza delivery service to bring pizza to your door. 

But on a mobile, you are more likely to be on the move and hence searching for a restaurant nearby (which is why local is an important factor when performing mobile searches).

In general, Google is beginning to better understand these differences so that laptop and mobile results are starting to differ and this trend is going to continue.

With tablets, data tends to indicate that more people use them in the evening at home, perhaps watching TV on their tablet. So perhaps search results will start to reflect these characteristics.

2. More Knowledge Graph integrations

Those with an interest in search will already know about it, but for those who don’t, the Knowledge Graph is a system that Google introduced to enhance search results by providing popular facts about people, places and things alongside its traditional results.

It pulls data from a variety of trusted online  sources including Freebase, Wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook.

The idea behind Knowledge Graph is that searchers are able to use the information displayed to resolve their queries without having to navigate to other sites and gather the material themselves.

So at the moment if you type in the search query ‘what is the height of the Eiffel tower?’ you get the answer via a Knowledge Graph integration on the search results page.

It’s the same with ‘what’s the population of London?’ Historical figures or celebrities also throw up integrations including images and facts. Try Albert Einstein or Miley Cyrus.

Factual information and answers to straightforward questions will be answered more and more in this way.

So if your business model is based on gathering and providing simple information or facts online then you may find you are at risk.  

3. The role and importance of structured data in the search results is increasing

We already know that one of Google’s aims is trying to answer search queries as quickly as possible, with richer, useful information, without requiring searchers to navigate off search results pages if possible. And structured data is one of the keys to doing that.

Structured data can be defined as information that is formatted in a way that search engines can easily understand, using specific language placed within the source code of web pages.

Search engines use structured data to identify and understand online content, so they can improve the results displayed for specific search queries.  It can be used to display richer results including the additional text, images or links known as rich snippets.

The additional information can include, for example, the average review and pricing information for a shopping product or a  restaurant. Search results for a recipe could be enhanced by a list of ingredients, nutrition facts and cooking time. 

Or the snippet for a music album could list songs along with a link to play each song.

Google wants website owners to add as much structured data to their sites as they can. It is supporting and making tools available to do this, including the likes of Structured Data Markup Helper and Schema.org. 

So if you want to be part of this richer search experience you need to embrace structured data now.

4. User signals are becoming even more important

In recent years, we’ve seen Google increasing the momentum in its fight against web spam. This has included targeting suspicious link-building schemes and other tricks that some shady SEOs have been using to game the system.

Hand in hand with this goes the idea that search engines will start to put even more value on positive user signals (such as click-through rates, bounce rates, time on site when a user visits a page etc ) in determining rankings. 

These factors already play a role, but it’s likely their influence will become even greater. Issues such as bounce rate and time on site relate to how users feel about and engage with the content they find on a site and support Google’s goal of rewarding relevant and good quality content in its results. 

Generally, user signals such as these are a little more difficult to manipulate than factors such as numbers of backlinks so you’d expect search engines to pay attention to them.
 
And of course, there is an ongoing debate about whether user signals from social networks such Google+, Facebook and Twitter etc might eventually become a valuable factor in determining search engine rankings.

5. Content is increasingly required more in-depth

In the past, SEO had been mostly concerned with specific content and the more specific, the better. Each piece of content eg page, blog, video etc was primarily focused on being highly optimized for one specific topic and its related keywords.

Today, semantic and contextual search are becoming the more prominent buzzwords in search. Search is moving from a strongly keyword-specific basis to an approach covering the wider ‘topic’ around a certain keyword.

This means, web content is increasingly supposed to provide more related information on a keyword (see Knowledge Graph) – so potentially more in depth and longer content is required as a result.

When search engines ‘understand’ the intention behind a keyword query, content is required to not only fit a specific keyword, but rather a whole cluster of related topics – including a bunch of terms / keywords around the main topic.

For example the keyword query ‘flu symptoms’, could include a wide number of related areas including  ‘flu therapy’, ‘flu medicine’ or even those such as ‘fever’ and ‘nervous cough’ which don’t even contain the word ‘flu’ from the original keyword.

Search engines, especially Google, are already very good at grasping the semantic meaning behind a query (as well as the intention behind that query – informational, directional, transactional etc) and assessing how effectively and holistically a URL performs against this kind of query, in order to provide the user with the most relevant information.

So instead of focusing on a specific keyword or phrase, content in SEO terms will be increasingly required to cover broad theme or topic areas. 

Posted by GeoffKenyon

When on-boarding a new client, there is a lot that needs to get done. Usually the list includes a tech audit, reviewing content, and combing through back links to name a few tasks. A review of the analytics implementation is often overlooked though.

If you don’t review how the analytics account is set up, you could set yourself up to waste a lot of time down the road, even finding yourself investigating an organic traffic drop that doesn’t exist.

Below is my Google Analytics checklist that I review when starting a new account. Many of these items joined the checklist as the result of previous “learning experiences.” My hope is that this list will help you avoid those same experiences.

The basics

Exclude internal IP addresses

• If we don’t exclude internal and partner IP addresses, we will over-report traffic and reduce our conversion rate.
• To implement, go to Admin > Filters (in the appropriate view) > New Filter.
• Documentation can be found here.

Google Analytics code on all pages

• If GA code is missing from pages, we will get incorrect site engagement metrics and misappropriated conversion data. A quick way to check this is to look at your referrals report. Do you have any self referrals?
• It is not uncommon for pages in the checkout process to not include GA code. If this is the case, you will see almost all conversions are from “referral” or “direct.”
• To check this more thoroughly, fire up Screaming Frog and update the custom field to check for the proper UA ID

UA account is only listed one time

• Running two GA codes simultaneously is ok. Two instances of the same code is not.
• The two separate instances of Track Pageviews will mess up metrics such as pageviews, time on site, bounce rate, and pages per visit.
• The best way to find this one is to pull up the source code and search for “ua-“.

Link Google Analytics and AdWords

• This will allow you to share data across Google Analytics and AdWords
• Documentation can be found here

Link Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools

• This will allow you to share Webmaster Tools data with Google Analytics
• Documentation can be found here.

Auto tagging is enabled for Google Analytics

• If you don’t have auto tagging enabled, odds are your paid search traffic is showing up in Google Analytics as organic traffic
• To check the status of auto tagging, log into your AdWords account, go to Account Settings, and then to Preferences.
• Documentation can be found here.

Non-Google paid search campaign URLs contain UTM tags

• If you’re not including UTM parameters in your non-Google paid campaigns, the traffic is most likely being counted as organic search visits.
• Google Analytics interprets utm_medium=cpc and utm_medium=ppc as paid search traffic, so one of these should be used for the medium.
• Documentation can be found here.

Vanity domains redirect using UTM parameters

• This will allow you to easily attribute visits and conversions from the vanity domain to the campaign associated with the vanity domain

Email campaign links use UTM parameters

• This will allow you to properly attribute visits and conversions to the right email marketing effort

Set up goals

• This should be a wide range of activities such as purchases, contact form completions, creating an account, time on site, signing up for a newsletter, etc.
• Associate monetary value with these goals if possible.
• Documentation can be found here.

Set up e-commerce tracking

• Ecommerce tracking will allow you to understand not only how much revenue you’re making but what channels are responsible for driving revenue
• Documentation can be found here.

Set up event tracking

• Event tracking is a simple way to track how users are interacting with your site.
• You can track just about anything such as videos played, submitted forms, if people scroll through your content, or downloads.
• Here’s an overview of event tracking from the SEER blog.
• Further documentation can be found here.

Create content groupings

• These can be groups of pages like blog posts, ecommerce category, landing pages, or any other group of related pages.
• Here’s a useful RegEx Guide from LunaMetrics.
• Documentation can be found here.

What else do you always check in your Google Analytics implementations? Let me know in the comments.

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