I suggest as it signifies you will have where can i buy a research paper online whatever you need for research maintaining all where can i buy a research paper online your guides in the home. Yes No Can you inform US about Apparel Spots? Ensure where can i buy a research paper online you paper writer for hire begin where can i buy a research paper online the machine at the least weekly. Advertisement Your aid could be definitely used by us! Advertisement. where can i buy a research paper online Don’t state: Eat fats. Read the rest of this entry »
test
Dec 13
test
Having a blog is the latest trend in SEO. It seems that everywhere you look there are online shops with blogs filled to bursting with content carefully written to target the phrases identified in their keyword research plan. The theory is that blogs are the easiest way to update any website with fresh content and build up a good body of text that will help build relevance in the eyes of Google spiders.
It works. There is no doubt that having a regularly updated blog is good SEO, particularly if it’s backed up by solid keyword research.
But here’s the catch. Google, Bing, and the other search engines aim to identify the best and most relevant website matching a particular query. That is the best website from the searcher’s point of view, not the one that pours the most effort into search engine optimisation.
The people who write Google’s ranking algorithms aren’t slow on the uptake. Sooner or later they’ll realise that not every online retailer really needs a blog and that many of them exist for search engine optimisation only. It remains to be seen just how rankings will change in response.
For now, blogging is a very effective tool for building SEO. It works, so we’re not going to tell you not to do it, but we do advise keeping it in perspective. Pay attention as much attention to other site content, to social media, and to link building as you do to blogging. The only SEO guaranteed to work in the long term is creating a great site.
Big changes at Google mean big changes in SEO. They hold something like 60% of the total search market, so when a major algorithm change comes through, smart search engine optimisation companies are quick to respond.
Instant hasn’t been rolled out across the board yet, and it’ll be a while before most of us see it as the everyday search tool that pops up as a matter of course. You can, however, try it at google.com/instant, and I recommend that anyone paying attention to SEO or a specific website’s performance do that ASAP.
This is a major change in the way organic search works. Now, you type in a query, click the button, and get results. Under Instant, suggestions will start popping up based on partial queries as soon as you start typing, and they’ll keep changing until you finish. Some users will ignore the partial results and just keep typing their search query, that’s pretty certain. Others may see something they like appear and abandon the full keyword phrase.
What this means for SEO is a whole slew of partial keywords that will become important, whereas up until now they saw precious little traffic if any. The cynical among us may see a clever way of making more PPC revenue from new keywords, but there is no doubt that Google Instant will impact organic search patterns and smart companies will adapt their SEO.
Organic search traffic keywords will change as Instant comes into common use. Longer keyword phrases will probably become less important sources and new shorter or partial ones will appear. Some websites will lose out, others will see gains.
Now is a very good time to go back to keyword research. Check out the new tool and see where and when your website appears for your existing keywords, and try to pick up any opportunities in the partial keywords. Smart people who get in quick will almost certainly find something valuable.
Banner ads by stealth
Sep 10
Banner advertising is a struggling beast, and as the massive pay per click industry depends on it, something had to change.
‘Banner blindness’ is the name given to the new-found ability of the brain to ignore any piece of a website that looks like an advertising banner. It’s not just an invention of SEO and web marketing types, but a well established and well understood phenomenon. Some internet users choose to block ads with software, others are so used to gaudy banners along the top of their browser screens that they simply don’t see them any more.
Making ads stand out from the background has been the favourite method of combating banner blindness for years. The idea has been to make ’em bigger, make ’em brighter, and in extreme cases make ’em flash on and off or jump around the page. This strategy didn’t work, and annoying Flash-based PPC ads only really served to drive more people to install better ad blocking software.
Every impression that doesn’t result in a click is lost revenue, so obviously this banner blindness thing is a serious problem for AdWords and other PPC systems.
A couple of PPC providers got clever and started placing ads away from the usual locations, eg in sidebars, and this probably did work for a little while. Then, of course, users got used to an ad in the right hand sidebar and started ignoring it. The human brain is quick to adapt.
Google’s new search engine results page format takes a completely different approach to PPC ad placement. Smart cookies that they are, Google realised that making ads stand out is not the answer. The paid ads that now appear on their results pages now look more like organic search results than ever before. They blend in almost seamlessly, and even the most jaded internet brain has to actually look at the ads to decide whether or not they are in fact ads at all.
Seeing and reading are the first steps along the way to clicking a PPC ad. Will this new strategy drive up click through rates? Who knows, but I expect we’ll see more steathly advertising and less neon colours and flashy graphics in the near future.
Both very good and not very good at all. Google Analytics is very good at giving simple answers to complex questions, which is great news for anyone without the budget to pay for expensive web analytics software. The bad news is that the answers it gives are far from exact, and you are usually not warned when this is the case.
To start with, Google Analytics is based on the activation of snippets of Java code. Not everyone browses with Java enabled and anyone who doesn’t will slip through the net undetected. Estimates for the proportion of users who routinely use the internet without Java are as high as 15%, sometimes a little more. Straight away that’s anything up to 15% of users who won’t be included in statistics generated by Google Analytics. Ouch!
It’s not all bad though. Assuming the proportion of users without Java enabled stays more or less constant, you can still get a lot of value out of the traffic values and trends reported by Google Analytics. Serious problems with the trends have been reported by several analytics professionals, so they shouldn’t be taken as gospel, but in most cases solid information can be obtained.
But then there are the errors. Some fancy site architectures cause huge problems when you try to apply tag-based web analytics solutions. False visits can be generated and sources can get all mixed up. Most of these issues can be fixed with very careful application of the code snippets, but in order to fix something you must first be aware that there is a problem. Watch for a large volume of tiny duration visits or a higher than expected proportion of direct arrivals- these could be a sign that something’s wrong, particularly if you are trying to track Flash activity.
Take care when applying segments other than the basic ‘All Visits’. Some calculations can’t be performed in other segments, be they your own custom ones or the standards that come ready-defined, and if you try to make these happen the active segment will revert to ‘All Visits’. Sharp eyes will note an error message but it’s easy to miss.
Of the multitude of calculations and investigations that can be made with Google Analytics, some work really well and some don’t. If you do a lot of comparison with past time periods you will probably see some inconsistencies appear pretty quickly, and that is just one example. The trick lies in knowing what you can rely on and what’s shaky, and what can be helped along with data from other sources.
But let’s take a step back here. We’re talking about a free web analytics tool, not something that costs tens of thousands of pounds a month (these services do exist, and people do pay for them). While Google Analytics does add value to AdWords and other revenue generating bits of the Google family, it is still free to all comers. Is it perfect? No, but web analytics is a very complicated discipline and it can’t be expected to be. Is it useful? Absolutely, if it’s used properly.
Google Analytics is a fabulous tool. It provides access to a level of detail that was previously only available to through a few tricky and/or expensive means and brought it into almost anyone’s reach. But like any complex piece of machinery, it needs to be treated with care and understood intimately if you’re to get accurate and actionable results out of it.
“Building an analytics culture in your company”. It sounds like a buzzword (ok, buzzphrase) and to be honest it probably is, but there is something of value in there.
In order to get real value out of web analytics, you and your staff and contractors need to understand exactly what they are looking at, but most of the responsibility of conveying web analytics information smoothly and directly belongs to us, and not to our clients. To this end we use visualisations and graphs, tables, and the written word in various forms. There is a world of difference between data and information. We believe that anyone looking at one of our reports should understand what’s being conveyed without difficulty.
The culture of analytics doesn’t mean your staff need to understand how to get at web analytics data or do a statistics course. They certainly don’t need to feel like an external analytics agency is judging their every move. All they really need is to understand how the information can help them. We like to work with a wide range of staff handling different aspects of a client’s business, and it usually doesn’t take long before different departments start to ask their own questions and engage with the analytics process.
Common sense SEO
Jun 21
SEO isn’t rocket science, or at least, not for small to medium sized websites. Unless you’re aiming to rank for very competitive keywords (in which case rocket science would probably be simpler, quicker, and cheaper), most SEO is pretty simple and you can almost certainly do it yourself if you feel the inclination.
Hiring SEO services is easier and saves time, but it can be expensive. To this end we can offer SEO advice and evaluation instead of a full package, which can be expensive, if you prefer. Sometimes not even that is necessary. Much can be done to improve the rankings for small websites with just a little guidance.
As with all search engine opimisation, content is king. Identify the search phrases you’d like to rank for and check where and how often they appear on your site. Aim for somewhere at around one occurrence of each per 100 words. Too many and your copy will look spammy and it won’t read well. Too few and search engine crawlers won’t pick up on the keywords and decide your page is relevant. Write for real readers, but keep your keywords in mind, and if you sell it, describe it.
Make sure your html is tidy, meta tags are populated, and the site looks professional. Ask for opinions from your mates and pay attention to what they say.
Once the site is up to scratch, submit it to some local directories. Google Places (the new name for the business directory linked to Google Maps) is free and inclusion is pretty much guarantees to all comers.
There is a great deal more to SEO, but to be entirely honest, small local businesses who are looking for publicity rather than full scale eCommerce probably don’t need to know too much about it. Make your site a good one and the rankings will follow.
Measures and metrics
Jun 13
Traffic data is difficult to collect. Tag-based tracking systems like Google Analytics inevitably miss some visitors, and server log analysis isn’t perfectly accurate either. Let’s assume your tracking is Java-based, and perfectly optimised. It will still miss the 10 to 15% of users that routinely browse the wonders of the internet without Java enabled. However, that doesn’t mean you’ve got a total visit count with a 15% error on it.
What you have is a figure that is usually labelled ‘Total Visitors’, but is in fact not that at all. More correctly, it’s a lower bound on total visitors. It’s a measure of total visitor numbers, sure, but it is not the total number of visitors. When the measure goes up, you know visitors have gone up (assuming the fraction of Java-less users remains the same, which is not unreasonable). When the measure goes down, it’s fair to say that traffic has dropped.
The lower bound on total visitors is a very useful thing to know, but it’s also useful to acknowledge that it is not a true and perfect total visitor count. For a start, presenting the real state of affairs to potential investors or advertisers lets you a use bigger best estimate traffic figure than the one presented by your Java-based tracking system. Your website looks more popular. In fact, it probably is more popular than you think if all you are relying on right now is Java-based tracking like that used by Google Analytics.
We believe you should always try and get an idea of how accurate all your figures are. Knowing that protects you from making poor decisions based on poor data and gives you the confidence to move forward from a fully justifiable position, but in cases like the one discussed above, acknowledging inaccuracy in your stats will actually do you a pretty big favour.
Patience is a virtue, except on the internet. The sheer speed of online communication is astounding when you consider the distances involved, and we’ve all come to expect more or less instant access to data housed anywhere in the world.
However, not everything comes quickly. The benefits of SEO in particular come to those who wait. The time scale for a comprehensive search engine optimisation campaign is rarely less than a month or two for sites in a moderately competitive field. Sites that start out with very little content and few links may see gains fast if they choose keywords conservatively and keep their focus localised, but most companies looking to make serious money using the internet will have to wait a little longer to see strong progress.
That’s often said on various blogs and forums, but what is less commonly mentioned is that the initial ranking gains made during an SEO campaign may not last long. Don’t get too excited if someone gets you into the top spot for your chosen keyword, because that shift in rankings may or may not be robust. Algorithm changes- and Google makes at least one algorithm change per day on average- and action by competing sites can see your place in the result pages drop back down.
Some SEO actions produce more robust gains than others, and the stability of your step up in the rankings will also depend on how competitive your field and your keywords are. SEO is a long term process and it needs to be ongoing- a least to some degree- if you intend to keep any gains you make, but there will probably be short term fluctuations in your rankings from day to day as well.
Whether your rankings change for the better for for the worse, wait at least four or five days before celebrating or panicking.