Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, '3 Critical Considerations Before
Tackling Facebook's New Contest Option'
Facebook just made another major changeto its terms of service. Two years ago,
it forbid running promotions directly on a page and required the use of a third
party app for all contests. This week, Facebook made a sudden U-turn, and now
you can run a promotion without using a third party app, including user []3
Critical Considerations Before Tackling Facebooks New Contest Option is a post
from: Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/facebook/3-critical-considerations-before-tackling-facebooks-new-contest-option/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=3-critical-considerations-before-tackling-facebooks-new-contest-option
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Build Backlinks Online
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Saturday 31 August 2013
Friday 30 August 2013
[Build Backlinks Online] The Future of User Behavior - Whiteboard Friday
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'The Future of User Behavior -
Whiteboard Friday'
Posted by willcritchlow
In the early days of search, Google used only your typed query to find the
most relevant results. We're now increasingly seeing SERPs that are influenced
by all kinds of contextual information â the implicit queries.
In today's Whiteboard Friday, Will Critchlow covers what exactly that means
and how it might explain why we see "(not provided)" in our analytics more often
than we'd like.
WBF - Will Critchlow - The Future of User Behavior
PRO Tip: Learn more about how Google ranks pages at Moz Academy.
For reference, here's a still image of this week's whiteboard:
Video Transcription
Hi, Moz fans. I'm Will Critchlow, one of the founders of Distilled, and I
want to talk today about the future of user behavior, something that I've been
talking about a MozCon this year. In particular, I want to talk about the
implications of query enhancement. So I'm going to start by telling you what we
mean by this phrase.
Old-school query, key phrase, this is what we've talked about for a long
time. In SEO, something like "London tube stations," a bunch of words strung
together, that's the entire query, and we would call it a query or a key phrase.
But we've been defining this what we call the "new query" made up of two parts.
The explicit query here in blue is London tube stations, again, in this example,
exactly the same. What we're calling the "implicit query" is essentially all of
the other information that the search engine knows about you, and this what they
know about you in general, what they know about you at this specific moment in
time, and what they know about your recent history and any other factors they
want to factor in.
So, in this particular case, I've said this is an iPhone user, they're on
the street, they're in London. You can imagine how this information changes the
kind of thing that you might be looking for when you perform a query like this
or indeed any other.
This whole model is something that we've been kind of building out and
thinking about a lot this year. Tom Anthony, one of my colleagues in London,
presented this at a conference, and we've been working on it together. We came
up with this kind of visual representation of what we think is happening over
time. As people get used to this behavior, they see it in the search results,
and they adapt to the information that they're receiving back from the search
engine.
So old school search results where everybody's search result was exactly the
same, if they performed a particular query, no matter where in the world they
were, wherever in the country they were, whatever device they were on, whatever
time of day it was, whatever their recent history, everybody's was the same. In
other words, the only information that the search engine is taking into account
in this case is the old-style query, the explicit part.
Then, what we've seen is that there's gradually been this implicit query
information being added on top. You may not be able to see it from my brilliant
hand-drawn diagram here, but my intention is that these blue bars are the same
height out to here. So, at this point, there's all of the explicit query
information being passed over. In other words, I'm doing the same kind of search
I've always done. But Google is taking into account this extra, implicit
information about me, what it knows about me, what it knows about my device,
what it knows about my history and so forth. Therefore, Google has more
information here than they did previously. They can return better results.
That's kind of what we've been talking about for a long time, I think, this
evolution of better search results based on the additional information that the
search engines have about us. But what we're starting to see and what we're
certainly predicting is going to become more and more prevalent is that as the
implicit information that search engines have grows, and, in particular, as
their ability to use that information intelligently improves, then we're
actually going to see users start to give less explicit information over. In
other words, they're going to trust that the search engines are going to pull
out the implicit information that they need. So I can do a much shorter, simpler
query.
But what you see here is, again, to explain my hand-drawn diagram in case
it's not perfectly beautiful, the blue bars are declining here. In other words,
I'm sending less and less explicit information over as time goes along. But
actually, the total information that search engines have to work with, as time
goes on, is actually increasing, because the implicit information they're
gathering is growing faster than the explicit information is declining.
I can give you a concrete example of this. So I vividly remember giving a
talk about keyword research, and it was a few years ago. I was kind of mocking
that business owner. We've all met these business owners who want to rank for
the one-word key phrase. So I want to rank for restaurant or whatever. I say,
"This is ridiculous. What in the world can you imagine somebody is possibly
looking for when they do a search of 'restaurant.' "
Back then, if you did a search like that, you got a kind of weird mix,
because this is back in these days when there essentially no implicit
information being taken in. You've got a mix of the most powerful websites of
actual restaurants anywhere in your country plus some news, like a powerful page
on a big domain, those kinds of things. Probably a Wikipedia entry. Why would a
business owner want to rank for that stuff? That's going to convert horribly
poorly.
But my mind was changed powerfully when I caught myself. I was in Boston,
and I caught myself doing a search for "breakfast." I went to Google, typed in
"breakfast," hit Search. What was I thinking? What exactly was I hoping the
outcome was going to be here? Well, actually, I've trained myself to believe
that all of this other implicit information is going to be taken into account,
and, in fact, it was. So, instead of getting that old-style Wikipedia entry, a
news result, a couple of random restaurants from somewhere in the country, I got
a local pack, and I got some local Boston news articles on the top 10 places to
have breakfast in Boston. It was all customized to my exact location, so I got
some stuff that was really near me, and I found a great place to have breakfast
just around the corner from the hotel. So that worked.
I've actually noticed myself doing this more and more, and I imagine, given
obviously the industry I work in, I'm pretty much an early adopter here. But I
think we're going to see all users adopt this style of searching more and more,
and it's really going to change how we as marketers have to think, because it
doesn't mean that you need to go out there and rank for the generic keyword
"breakfast." But it does mean that you need to take into account all of the
possible ways that people might be searching for these things and the various
different ways that Google might piece together a useful search result when
somebody gives them such apparently unhelpful explicit information, in
particular, obviously, in this case, local.
I kind of mentioned "not provided" down here. This is my one, I guess, non-
conspiracy theory view of what could be going on with the whole not provided
thing, which is that actually, if Google's model is looking more and more like
this and less like this, and, in particular, as we get further over to this end,
and of course, you can consider something like Google Now would be the extreme
of this where is in fact no blue bar and pure orange, then actually the reliance
on keywords goes away. Maybe the not provided thing is actually more of a
strategic message for Google, kind of saying, "We're not necessarily thinking in
terms of keywords anymore. We're thinking in terms of your need at a given
moment in time."
So, anyway, I hope that's been a useful kind of rapid-fire run through over
what I think is going to happen as people get used to the power of query
enhancement. I'm Will Critchlow. Until next time, thanks.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/q7SRw_daRbk/the-future-of-user-behavior-whiteboard-friday
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Whiteboard Friday'
Posted by willcritchlow
In the early days of search, Google used only your typed query to find the
most relevant results. We're now increasingly seeing SERPs that are influenced
by all kinds of contextual information â the implicit queries.
In today's Whiteboard Friday, Will Critchlow covers what exactly that means
and how it might explain why we see "(not provided)" in our analytics more often
than we'd like.
WBF - Will Critchlow - The Future of User Behavior
PRO Tip: Learn more about how Google ranks pages at Moz Academy.
For reference, here's a still image of this week's whiteboard:
Video Transcription
Hi, Moz fans. I'm Will Critchlow, one of the founders of Distilled, and I
want to talk today about the future of user behavior, something that I've been
talking about a MozCon this year. In particular, I want to talk about the
implications of query enhancement. So I'm going to start by telling you what we
mean by this phrase.
Old-school query, key phrase, this is what we've talked about for a long
time. In SEO, something like "London tube stations," a bunch of words strung
together, that's the entire query, and we would call it a query or a key phrase.
But we've been defining this what we call the "new query" made up of two parts.
The explicit query here in blue is London tube stations, again, in this example,
exactly the same. What we're calling the "implicit query" is essentially all of
the other information that the search engine knows about you, and this what they
know about you in general, what they know about you at this specific moment in
time, and what they know about your recent history and any other factors they
want to factor in.
So, in this particular case, I've said this is an iPhone user, they're on
the street, they're in London. You can imagine how this information changes the
kind of thing that you might be looking for when you perform a query like this
or indeed any other.
This whole model is something that we've been kind of building out and
thinking about a lot this year. Tom Anthony, one of my colleagues in London,
presented this at a conference, and we've been working on it together. We came
up with this kind of visual representation of what we think is happening over
time. As people get used to this behavior, they see it in the search results,
and they adapt to the information that they're receiving back from the search
engine.
So old school search results where everybody's search result was exactly the
same, if they performed a particular query, no matter where in the world they
were, wherever in the country they were, whatever device they were on, whatever
time of day it was, whatever their recent history, everybody's was the same. In
other words, the only information that the search engine is taking into account
in this case is the old-style query, the explicit part.
Then, what we've seen is that there's gradually been this implicit query
information being added on top. You may not be able to see it from my brilliant
hand-drawn diagram here, but my intention is that these blue bars are the same
height out to here. So, at this point, there's all of the explicit query
information being passed over. In other words, I'm doing the same kind of search
I've always done. But Google is taking into account this extra, implicit
information about me, what it knows about me, what it knows about my device,
what it knows about my history and so forth. Therefore, Google has more
information here than they did previously. They can return better results.
That's kind of what we've been talking about for a long time, I think, this
evolution of better search results based on the additional information that the
search engines have about us. But what we're starting to see and what we're
certainly predicting is going to become more and more prevalent is that as the
implicit information that search engines have grows, and, in particular, as
their ability to use that information intelligently improves, then we're
actually going to see users start to give less explicit information over. In
other words, they're going to trust that the search engines are going to pull
out the implicit information that they need. So I can do a much shorter, simpler
query.
But what you see here is, again, to explain my hand-drawn diagram in case
it's not perfectly beautiful, the blue bars are declining here. In other words,
I'm sending less and less explicit information over as time goes along. But
actually, the total information that search engines have to work with, as time
goes on, is actually increasing, because the implicit information they're
gathering is growing faster than the explicit information is declining.
I can give you a concrete example of this. So I vividly remember giving a
talk about keyword research, and it was a few years ago. I was kind of mocking
that business owner. We've all met these business owners who want to rank for
the one-word key phrase. So I want to rank for restaurant or whatever. I say,
"This is ridiculous. What in the world can you imagine somebody is possibly
looking for when they do a search of 'restaurant.' "
Back then, if you did a search like that, you got a kind of weird mix,
because this is back in these days when there essentially no implicit
information being taken in. You've got a mix of the most powerful websites of
actual restaurants anywhere in your country plus some news, like a powerful page
on a big domain, those kinds of things. Probably a Wikipedia entry. Why would a
business owner want to rank for that stuff? That's going to convert horribly
poorly.
But my mind was changed powerfully when I caught myself. I was in Boston,
and I caught myself doing a search for "breakfast." I went to Google, typed in
"breakfast," hit Search. What was I thinking? What exactly was I hoping the
outcome was going to be here? Well, actually, I've trained myself to believe
that all of this other implicit information is going to be taken into account,
and, in fact, it was. So, instead of getting that old-style Wikipedia entry, a
news result, a couple of random restaurants from somewhere in the country, I got
a local pack, and I got some local Boston news articles on the top 10 places to
have breakfast in Boston. It was all customized to my exact location, so I got
some stuff that was really near me, and I found a great place to have breakfast
just around the corner from the hotel. So that worked.
I've actually noticed myself doing this more and more, and I imagine, given
obviously the industry I work in, I'm pretty much an early adopter here. But I
think we're going to see all users adopt this style of searching more and more,
and it's really going to change how we as marketers have to think, because it
doesn't mean that you need to go out there and rank for the generic keyword
"breakfast." But it does mean that you need to take into account all of the
possible ways that people might be searching for these things and the various
different ways that Google might piece together a useful search result when
somebody gives them such apparently unhelpful explicit information, in
particular, obviously, in this case, local.
I kind of mentioned "not provided" down here. This is my one, I guess, non-
conspiracy theory view of what could be going on with the whole not provided
thing, which is that actually, if Google's model is looking more and more like
this and less like this, and, in particular, as we get further over to this end,
and of course, you can consider something like Google Now would be the extreme
of this where is in fact no blue bar and pure orange, then actually the reliance
on keywords goes away. Maybe the not provided thing is actually more of a
strategic message for Google, kind of saying, "We're not necessarily thinking in
terms of keywords anymore. We're thinking in terms of your need at a given
moment in time."
So, anyway, I hope that's been a useful kind of rapid-fire run through over
what I think is going to happen as people get used to the power of query
enhancement. I'm Will Critchlow. Until next time, thanks.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/q7SRw_daRbk/the-future-of-user-behavior-whiteboard-friday
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
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Build Backlinks Online
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[Build Backlinks Online] Using Social to Put the “Culture” back in “Agriculture”
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Using Social to Put the
"Culture" back in "Agriculture"'
Jamie van der Molen, Community Manager at Dairy Management Inc., and Ray Prock,
Board Member at Dairy Management Inc. and real live farmer, join the Social Pros
Podcast this week to discuss the growing and powerful presence of the
agriculture industry in social media, humanizing the dairy industry, and how
America feeds its families. Read []Using Social to Put the Culture back in
Agriculture is a post from: Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and
Content Marketing Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-pros-podcast/using-social-to-put-the-culture-back-in-agriculture/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=using-social-to-put-the-culture-back-in-agriculture
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
"Culture" back in "Agriculture"'
Jamie van der Molen, Community Manager at Dairy Management Inc., and Ray Prock,
Board Member at Dairy Management Inc. and real live farmer, join the Social Pros
Podcast this week to discuss the growing and powerful presence of the
agriculture industry in social media, humanizing the dairy industry, and how
America feeds its families. Read []Using Social to Put the Culture back in
Agriculture is a post from: Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and
Content Marketing Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-pros-podcast/using-social-to-put-the-culture-back-in-agriculture/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=using-social-to-put-the-culture-back-in-agriculture
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
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Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
[Build Backlinks Online] How to Dominate the Search Results for Your Name
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'How to Dominate the Search
Results for Your Name'
If you go to the search engine and type in your personal name what are you going
to find? Hopefully a ton of results for YOU and your site properties. Of course
this might be easier said than done depending on what your name is. If you have
the same na...
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BasicBlogTips/~3/c9DNFTuOCVI/search-results-for-your-name.html
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
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Results for Your Name'
If you go to the search engine and type in your personal name what are you going
to find? Hopefully a ton of results for YOU and your site properties. Of course
this might be easier said than done depending on what your name is. If you have
the same na...
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BasicBlogTips/~3/c9DNFTuOCVI/search-results-for-your-name.html
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
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Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Thursday 29 August 2013
[Build Backlinks Online] TITLE
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'The 5 Pillars of a Successful Internet Business'
In this powerful video, you’ll discover the 5 pillars that are crucial to your internet business success. These things are foundational and are what most of the world’s most recognized entrepreneurs have in common. Success and profitability is predictable when you follow this proven formula.
–
Did you like this post? Click the Facebook "like" button below and share it with your friends.
Related Blog Posts:
The 12 Common Denominators of Internet Millionaires
Starting an Internet Business the Sensible Way
How I Got Over 1,800 Facebook Likes to One Blog Post
3 Ways to Add an EXTRA $100,000 in Recurring Income this Year
You may view the latest post at http://dcincome.com/blog/the-5-pillars-of-a-successful-internet-business/ You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com[Build Backlinks Online] Jim Beam Honey Hires Famed Seinfeld Lawyer to Save the Bees and #suethebears
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Jim Beam Honey Hires Famed
Seinfeld Lawyer to Save the Bees and #suethebears'
In an unusual move motivated by sweet justice, Jim Beam Honey has hired famed
Seinfeld attorney Jackie Chiles to, Sue the Bears and Save the Bees. In a
campaign that seemingly takes a page from a Seinfeld episode, the bears, bees,
and several hilarious videos follow suit. Featuring a video that humorously
puts, the class []Jim Beam Honey Hires Famed Seinfeld Lawyer to Save the Bees
and #suethebears is a post from: Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and
Content Marketing Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-image-of-the-week/jim-beam-honey-hires-famed-seinfeld-lawyer-to-save-the-bees-and-suethebears/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=jim-beam-honey-hires-famed-seinfeld-lawyer-to-save-the-bees-and-suethebears
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Seinfeld Lawyer to Save the Bees and #suethebears'
In an unusual move motivated by sweet justice, Jim Beam Honey has hired famed
Seinfeld attorney Jackie Chiles to, Sue the Bears and Save the Bees. In a
campaign that seemingly takes a page from a Seinfeld episode, the bears, bees,
and several hilarious videos follow suit. Featuring a video that humorously
puts, the class []Jim Beam Honey Hires Famed Seinfeld Lawyer to Save the Bees
and #suethebears is a post from: Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and
Content Marketing Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-image-of-the-week/jim-beam-honey-hires-famed-seinfeld-lawyer-to-save-the-bees-and-suethebears/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=jim-beam-honey-hires-famed-seinfeld-lawyer-to-save-the-bees-and-suethebears
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
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Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
[Build Backlinks Online] The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet 2.0
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'The Web Developer's SEO Cheat
Sheet 2.0'
Posted by DannyDover
It is my honor and privilege today to introduce the brand-new version of The
Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet. This free and downloadable document covers all
of the important SEO code and best practices that are needed by online marketers
and developers.
Benefits and features
Save the Google searches for your new inbound visitors: This cheat sheet covers
all of the details you would normally spend hours researching online. This
leaves you with more time for the important things (like laughing at
JennaMarbles or pretending you don't watch Vine compilations).
Available both online and offline: You can store the free downloadable PDF
wherever you want. Save a hard drive, kill a tree! (It's printable.)
Updated for the inbound marketer: With new sections like responsive design and
rel="author", you can uphold your flawless nerd reputation by publicly shaming
those who make syntax errors in their code (and are foolish enough not to
download this cheat sheet!).
Information covered
If it is important, we have you covered!
Page 1
Important HTML Elements
HTTP Status Codes
Canonicalization
URL Best Practices
Webmaster Tools
Page 2
Robot Control Syntax
Important User-agents
Sitemap Syntax
Page 3
Facebook Open Graph
Twitter Cards
Google+
Google+ Authorship
Google+ Publisher
Page 4
Targeting Multiple Languages
Mobile Web Development (Responsive Design)
Backstory:
It has been five years since I created the first version of this cheat sheet.
Frustrated with how hard it was to find technical SEO information, I stayed up
an entire night crafting the original resource. Without getting a second
opinion, I blindly posted it on the company blog and went into the office.
At the time, I was still establishing my professional self and was an intern
at Moz. The company was small, and the future of my unpaid internship was
uncertain.
The blog post announcing the new cheat sheet resource went on to become the
most popular blog post (as judged by thumbs) in the company's history (in fact,
it still is!). The cheat sheet was heavily distributed on popular sites of the
day and drove an incredible amount of much-needed links to the still-developing
SEOmoz domain.
The Moz team was super excited about how many people the resource was
helping, and I gained some desperately needed clout. When Rand tried to show his
excitement over the piece, I learned an incredibly valuable lesson about
intra-office communication.
Note to interns everywhere. Don't actually make vocal sound effects when your
get the opportunity to "blow up" your boss's impromptu pound handshake.
Rand: Great job, Danny! Pound it!
*Reaches out fist in congratulatory manner*
Me: BOOOOM! POW! EXPLOSION!
*Confusion followed by reddened face*â *Saddened apology*
Rand: Erm... good job anyways!
Despite my social mishap :-), Rand and the team continued supporting me and
this resource. Today's version is better than the original and even more
valuable.
Looking back, the Moz team was absolutely fundamental in shaping me into the
person I am today. My career at Moz was some of the most important years of my
life thus far.
After leaving Moz in early 2011, I used the many habits and skills I learned
from the talented team and continued to step up my career.
Thanks to Moz (and partly due to the original version of this cheat sheet), I
am now living my ideal lifestyle by pursuing my bucket list full-time. You can
read more about my story here.
Thank you!
A very special thanks to Cyrus and Dawn Shepard for making this new resource
a reality. Your long hours and persistence have been inspiring. Thanks to the
Moz design team for your artful assets and gleeful glamour (those are good
things!).
Lastly, thanks to all of you for downloading and making this thing a success.
You all rock!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/bKdIvqysWwc/the-web-developers-seo-cheat-sheet-2013-edition
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Sheet 2.0'
Posted by DannyDover
It is my honor and privilege today to introduce the brand-new version of The
Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet. This free and downloadable document covers all
of the important SEO code and best practices that are needed by online marketers
and developers.
Benefits and features
Save the Google searches for your new inbound visitors: This cheat sheet covers
all of the details you would normally spend hours researching online. This
leaves you with more time for the important things (like laughing at
JennaMarbles or pretending you don't watch Vine compilations).
Available both online and offline: You can store the free downloadable PDF
wherever you want. Save a hard drive, kill a tree! (It's printable.)
Updated for the inbound marketer: With new sections like responsive design and
rel="author", you can uphold your flawless nerd reputation by publicly shaming
those who make syntax errors in their code (and are foolish enough not to
download this cheat sheet!).
Information covered
If it is important, we have you covered!
Page 1
Important HTML Elements
HTTP Status Codes
Canonicalization
URL Best Practices
Webmaster Tools
Page 2
Robot Control Syntax
Important User-agents
Sitemap Syntax
Page 3
Facebook Open Graph
Twitter Cards
Google+
Google+ Authorship
Google+ Publisher
Page 4
Targeting Multiple Languages
Mobile Web Development (Responsive Design)
Backstory:
It has been five years since I created the first version of this cheat sheet.
Frustrated with how hard it was to find technical SEO information, I stayed up
an entire night crafting the original resource. Without getting a second
opinion, I blindly posted it on the company blog and went into the office.
At the time, I was still establishing my professional self and was an intern
at Moz. The company was small, and the future of my unpaid internship was
uncertain.
The blog post announcing the new cheat sheet resource went on to become the
most popular blog post (as judged by thumbs) in the company's history (in fact,
it still is!). The cheat sheet was heavily distributed on popular sites of the
day and drove an incredible amount of much-needed links to the still-developing
SEOmoz domain.
The Moz team was super excited about how many people the resource was
helping, and I gained some desperately needed clout. When Rand tried to show his
excitement over the piece, I learned an incredibly valuable lesson about
intra-office communication.
Note to interns everywhere. Don't actually make vocal sound effects when your
get the opportunity to "blow up" your boss's impromptu pound handshake.
Rand: Great job, Danny! Pound it!
*Reaches out fist in congratulatory manner*
Me: BOOOOM! POW! EXPLOSION!
*Confusion followed by reddened face*â *Saddened apology*
Rand: Erm... good job anyways!
Despite my social mishap :-), Rand and the team continued supporting me and
this resource. Today's version is better than the original and even more
valuable.
Looking back, the Moz team was absolutely fundamental in shaping me into the
person I am today. My career at Moz was some of the most important years of my
life thus far.
After leaving Moz in early 2011, I used the many habits and skills I learned
from the talented team and continued to step up my career.
Thanks to Moz (and partly due to the original version of this cheat sheet), I
am now living my ideal lifestyle by pursuing my bucket list full-time. You can
read more about my story here.
Thank you!
A very special thanks to Cyrus and Dawn Shepard for making this new resource
a reality. Your long hours and persistence have been inspiring. Thanks to the
Moz design team for your artful assets and gleeful glamour (those are good
things!).
Lastly, thanks to all of you for downloading and making this thing a success.
You all rock!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/bKdIvqysWwc/the-web-developers-seo-cheat-sheet-2013-edition
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
[Build Backlinks Online] TITLE
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'PPC Budget Guide: Are You Spending Your PPC Budget Wisely?'
The following is an excerpt from a new white paper co-created with Hanapin Marketing. Download the complete white paper here.
In pay-per-click marketing, as with so many things in life, you have to spend money to make money. But how do you figure out what you should spend?
Your monthly and annual budget is a huge part of your PPC strategy, so whether you're new to PPC or have been doing it for years, it's worth taking a step back to figure out if you're making the most of your spend.
The most important consideration for budget planning is your lead needs. You'll need to sit down and figure out some characteristics of your leads, such as:
- Lead quality
- Target cost per lead (CPL)
- Buying cycle
- Visitor frequency
- Geographic location
If you're not sure what your target lead looks like, start by answering the following questions:
- What can I afford to spend?
- How do I place value on a "lead?"
- What is my current conversion rate?
- How many leads do I need through PPC?
Let's take a closer look at the information you'll need to make smart decisions about your PPC budget.
How Much Budget Do You Need to Get Started in PPC?
Once your marketing team knows the answers to these questions, you can do some basic calculations to help you figure out a budget. Here's an example of how that math might work:
If you need 250 new clients in a month and your close rate is 15%, then you need a PPC lead goal of 1667 conversions per month to turn 15% of them into 250 leads. If your cost per lead is $25, you'll need $41,666.67 per month to drive that many leads and clients, or $1388 per day.
What Affects How You Value Your Leads?
The value of a lead will depend on a few factors:
- Geography – Are your leads more or less relevant based on location? Are you willing to pay more for leads from certain areas?
- Frequency of interaction – Do most leads have a complicated attribution system? Are there many "touches" with a prospect before they convert?
- Bounce rate/Time on site – What behavior does your user have post-click? How are they interacting with your site?
- Precedence – What have you seen to be qualified in the past?
You can better control the quality of the leads you bring in through PPC via segmentation strategies like negative keywords (filtering out terms that don't convert), placements/site exclusions (controlling the sites where your display ads appear), and dayparting (adjusting your bids based on time of day and day of the week). In addition, segmentation helps you better understand if you're spending your budget wisely.
For example, if you dig into the data of how your PPC ads perform at different times and in different areas, you might find that your CPL on Saturdays, especially for international traffic, is significantly higher than it is on the other days of the week:
At this point, you'd want to ask yourself: Is the quality of those leads I'm bringing in on the weekends worth the extra cost? Or should I dial it back a bit? This is where bid adjustments or just changing your ad scheduling can come into play and help you maximize the allocation of your budget.
Looking for Growth Opportunities
Will doubling your budget give you double the leads? How can you identify your marginal gain from each dollar spent?
It can be difficult to estimate how changes in your budget will affect your overall results, but Google offers some tools to help you in that regard.
I'm sure at some point you've seen the "Limited by budget" notification in your AdWords account. If that's the case, Google offers a tool that will help you estimate how many more clicks you could expect to get (and at what cost) if you raised your budget:
As you can see, the AdWords Traffic Estimator (now part of the Keyword Planner tool) shows what Google perceives your growth opportunities to be. Were you to expand your budget by X amount, you could potentially garner Y results. If you haven't had a lot of experience working outside your current spend levels, these budget estimations, provided through the Google interface, can give you a view of the traffic you're missing out on.
This table illustrates how you might track your budget settings and adjust your allocations over time. The calculations regarding regular daily spend, remaining spend split over the remaining days of the month, and what changes you need to make – paired with the estimate data – should allow you to establish your budgets for the future.
X vs. Y – Things to Consider When Setting Budgets
Now let's take a look at how some different scenarios will affect your PPC budget, including:
- Keyword considerations
- Search versus the Display Network
- Search engine (Google versus Bing)
- Device (mobile versus desktop/tablet)
High Funnel Keywords vs. Money Keywords vs. Branded Terms
How should you allocate your budget for different types of keywords? It's helpful to think in terms of your lead funnel:
At the top of the funnel, people are just exploring their options; they're not yet ready to buy. This part of the buying process will correspond to top-of-funnel informational keywords; they're worth something to you, but not as valuable as traffic lower down in the funnel.
In the consideration phase, lower down, you'll find people who are narrowing down their options and might be ready to buy. These keywords are probably worth more, since they present an opportunity to increase brand awareness and trust.
Finally, you have the very bottom of the funnel, where customers are in the purchase stage. At this point, the customer hopefully already knows and trusts you. These are your "ready to buy, don't mess this up" keywords – and therefore deserve more of your overall budget.
Here's an example of a working budget model:
Branded Searches – Good for raising account CTR.
High-Funnel Keywords – Lower Quality Score terms (therefore higher costs) that push to informational offers (lower value).
Low-Funnel Keywords – More competition, but higher QS, and push to trials, demos, sales (higher value for your business).
Those are some basic guidelines, but raise or lower your allocations if …
Search vs. Display
The average share of budget allocated to the Display Network on Google is 19%. However, we allocate a higher percentage – almost half. Why? Because we use remarketing as a form of conversion rate optimization to convert other traffic (recent visitors we want to keep engaged).
It's a good idea to raise or lower the percentage of budget you spend on Display depending on two factors: your industry and the level of competition.
Some industries actually have a higher average conversion rate on the Display Network than traditional search – if you operate in those industries (like travel and auto), you might want to allocate more budget to display…
This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.
Wednesday 28 August 2013
[Build Backlinks Online] 5 Lessons Learned from 100,000 Usability Studies
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, '5 Lessons Learned from 100,000
Usability Studies'
Posted by Phil Sharp
This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it
provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are
entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.
It happens all the time.
People get confused, frustrated, and angry while using websites. They sigh,
they groan, and sometimes they even shout. I see it happen with my own eyes each
and every day.
Over the years at UserTesting.com weâve literally watched hundreds of
thousands of usability studies, which gives us a unique perspective into some of
the most common issues that impact users. Iâd like to share five of those
insights with you.
1) Avoid multi-level navs
The person in the video below is struggling to move her mouse through multiple
levels of navigation. Just when she thinks she's made it to the item she's
looking for, the entire navigation disappears. We see this every day on many
different sites and it always frustrates the users.
This person is having a hard time using the site's navigation.
A fix to consider
One possible alternative to this type of navigation is to take an approach
similar to Amazon.com, and have an entire section pop out.
On Amazon.com, the entire section pops out.
This approach makes life much easier for your visitors. Not only does it
remove the need for them to delicately maneuver their mouses, but it also lets
them see all of their options at once. Plus, it gives you the freedom to add
images and other styling to your nav.
For other possible solutions, and a more in-depth look into creating
easy-to-use navigation, check out these resources:
Mega Menus Work Well for Site Navigation
Designing Drop-Down Menus: Examples and Best Practices
2) Your categories might be confusing users
As the video below illustrates, the way we categorize things on our websites
might be confusing our visitors. In fact, it's one of the most common things we
see in all of our user tests.
A person looking for a small vacuum for under $50.
In this particular study, it took our participant 48 seconds to find the
category for a small vacuum. She started her search by looking in "electronics,"
then browsed for something called "household," and finally made her way over to
"Home & Garden."
At this point you're likely thinking one of two things:
Either, "Silly person, it's obvious that a vacuum would be in the 'Home &
Garden' section."
Or, "Silly designer, it's obvious that 'Home & Garden' is a confusing
category."
That's why I need to introduce you to the
"Matt-Damon-and-Good-Will-Hunting-Can-Do-No-Wrong" principle.
The principle is simple: it's not your fault. (Side note: if you don't
understand this reference, then do yourself a favor and watch this video.)
It's not your fault. It's not the user's fault. It's not the designer's fault.
In fact, it's nobody's fault. What's crystal clear to you might be confusing to
me, and no one is to blame for that. It's just something we have to work with.
So, what do we do about it?
One of the best ways to test out your site categorization is to sit someone
down in front of your site and ask them to find a specific item without using
internal search. This is simple, fast, powerful, and very painful to watch.
You're bound to see people struggle to find things that seem obvious to you.
When this happens, remember the
"Matt-Damon-and-Good-Will-Hunting-Can-Do-No-Wrong" principle, make some changes
to your categories, and then test again.
Another way to improve your categories is to use a tool like OptimalSort or
TreeJack. OptimalSort is an online card sorting tool that makes it easy to find
out how people think your content should be organized. Then, once you think you
have everything organized nicely, TreeJack helps you prove that this site
structure will work.
3) Internal search is crucial (and frustrating)
There's a good chance that 10% of your site visitors are using your internal
search. When they search for your most popular items, do you know what the
results look like?
From all our studies, we've found four common types of problems with internal
search:
Search results that don't account for typos, plurals, hyphenations, or other
variants
A search box that isn't long enough
Search results that simply don't make any sense
Search results that aren't sorted by priority
To see an example of #4 in action, let's watch yet another person looking for a
vacuum:
When results aren't sorted by relevance, people are bound to see some weird
things.
Because the search results are automatically sorted by "Most Popular," the
first results are for replacement batteries and filtration paper bags! Yikes!
Or, as my 10th-grade Spanish teacher would say, "que barbaridad!"
If you do only one thing
If you do only one thing, look at your internal search logs and find the top
10-20 keywords that people are searching for on your site. Search for each of
these items yourself to see if you're happy with the results.
Then, search for your company's 10 most important products. How do those
results look?
Lastly, look for some generic, non-product terms. For example, if you're an
e-commerce store, search for "returns," "contact," and "hours." Looking good?
If you can perfect these searches, and change your search results to
automatically sort by relevance, you're most of the way there!
4) Links should look like links
As obvious as it sounds, there are many times when links actually don't look
like links. And, as you probably guessed, this means users don't know they can
click on them.
In the video below, this person is requesting a link to the "basic uploader"
without realizing that "basic uploader" is already a link:
"Okay, that's frustrating. It would make more sense to me that you'd have a
link that I could just click on."
What does a link look like?
This won't come as a big surprise, but to make your visitors happy, links
should be colored and underlined. And, ideally, there should be different colors
for links that have been visited and unvisited.
For more info on the topic, check out this great article from the Nielsen
Norman Group, or this post from Moz.
5) Engage your visitors (in other words, don't be boring)
Sometimes websites are perfectly usable â they have great navigation,
clear categories, helpful internal search, and links that look links â but
they suffer from a major problem: They're boring.
Or, put a nicer way, they're not engaging their visitors. People use the site,
and they could easily buy something if they wanted, but they don't feel a
connection to the brand or the product. Frankly, they just don't care.
In the video below, a person is trying out a mobile app for the first time
ever. Listen to the deep sigh she makes and the tone of her voice:
The sound of boredom.
That's the benefit of watching someone use your website, app or product. You
can hear their tone of voice and pick up on things like boredom that you'd miss
if you were just looking at standard analytics data.
It's tempting to always get wrapped up in analytics or usability, but don't
lose sight of engaging your visitors and building your brand.
Tunnel vision
These are only five of the issues that we see pop up often, but really there
are countless ways that our websites can be turning off our visitors.
Thanks to the amount of time we spend on our own sites, we're blind to many of
the issues that are confusing or frustrating our users. We have tunnel vision.
This is what we look like. Unfortunately, most of us aren't this adorable.
That's why it's so important for us to get our sites in front of real people
with fresh eyes who can give us unbiased feedback. While this feedback is
probably going to be painful to hear, it's going to help us all improve our
sites and make the web a better place.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/jGmI40778BM/5-lessons-learned-from-100000-usability-studies
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Usability Studies'
Posted by Phil Sharp
This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it
provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are
entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.
It happens all the time.
People get confused, frustrated, and angry while using websites. They sigh,
they groan, and sometimes they even shout. I see it happen with my own eyes each
and every day.
Over the years at UserTesting.com weâve literally watched hundreds of
thousands of usability studies, which gives us a unique perspective into some of
the most common issues that impact users. Iâd like to share five of those
insights with you.
1) Avoid multi-level navs
The person in the video below is struggling to move her mouse through multiple
levels of navigation. Just when she thinks she's made it to the item she's
looking for, the entire navigation disappears. We see this every day on many
different sites and it always frustrates the users.
This person is having a hard time using the site's navigation.
A fix to consider
One possible alternative to this type of navigation is to take an approach
similar to Amazon.com, and have an entire section pop out.
On Amazon.com, the entire section pops out.
This approach makes life much easier for your visitors. Not only does it
remove the need for them to delicately maneuver their mouses, but it also lets
them see all of their options at once. Plus, it gives you the freedom to add
images and other styling to your nav.
For other possible solutions, and a more in-depth look into creating
easy-to-use navigation, check out these resources:
Mega Menus Work Well for Site Navigation
Designing Drop-Down Menus: Examples and Best Practices
2) Your categories might be confusing users
As the video below illustrates, the way we categorize things on our websites
might be confusing our visitors. In fact, it's one of the most common things we
see in all of our user tests.
A person looking for a small vacuum for under $50.
In this particular study, it took our participant 48 seconds to find the
category for a small vacuum. She started her search by looking in "electronics,"
then browsed for something called "household," and finally made her way over to
"Home & Garden."
At this point you're likely thinking one of two things:
Either, "Silly person, it's obvious that a vacuum would be in the 'Home &
Garden' section."
Or, "Silly designer, it's obvious that 'Home & Garden' is a confusing
category."
That's why I need to introduce you to the
"Matt-Damon-and-Good-Will-Hunting-Can-Do-No-Wrong" principle.
The principle is simple: it's not your fault. (Side note: if you don't
understand this reference, then do yourself a favor and watch this video.)
It's not your fault. It's not the user's fault. It's not the designer's fault.
In fact, it's nobody's fault. What's crystal clear to you might be confusing to
me, and no one is to blame for that. It's just something we have to work with.
So, what do we do about it?
One of the best ways to test out your site categorization is to sit someone
down in front of your site and ask them to find a specific item without using
internal search. This is simple, fast, powerful, and very painful to watch.
You're bound to see people struggle to find things that seem obvious to you.
When this happens, remember the
"Matt-Damon-and-Good-Will-Hunting-Can-Do-No-Wrong" principle, make some changes
to your categories, and then test again.
Another way to improve your categories is to use a tool like OptimalSort or
TreeJack. OptimalSort is an online card sorting tool that makes it easy to find
out how people think your content should be organized. Then, once you think you
have everything organized nicely, TreeJack helps you prove that this site
structure will work.
3) Internal search is crucial (and frustrating)
There's a good chance that 10% of your site visitors are using your internal
search. When they search for your most popular items, do you know what the
results look like?
From all our studies, we've found four common types of problems with internal
search:
Search results that don't account for typos, plurals, hyphenations, or other
variants
A search box that isn't long enough
Search results that simply don't make any sense
Search results that aren't sorted by priority
To see an example of #4 in action, let's watch yet another person looking for a
vacuum:
When results aren't sorted by relevance, people are bound to see some weird
things.
Because the search results are automatically sorted by "Most Popular," the
first results are for replacement batteries and filtration paper bags! Yikes!
Or, as my 10th-grade Spanish teacher would say, "que barbaridad!"
If you do only one thing
If you do only one thing, look at your internal search logs and find the top
10-20 keywords that people are searching for on your site. Search for each of
these items yourself to see if you're happy with the results.
Then, search for your company's 10 most important products. How do those
results look?
Lastly, look for some generic, non-product terms. For example, if you're an
e-commerce store, search for "returns," "contact," and "hours." Looking good?
If you can perfect these searches, and change your search results to
automatically sort by relevance, you're most of the way there!
4) Links should look like links
As obvious as it sounds, there are many times when links actually don't look
like links. And, as you probably guessed, this means users don't know they can
click on them.
In the video below, this person is requesting a link to the "basic uploader"
without realizing that "basic uploader" is already a link:
"Okay, that's frustrating. It would make more sense to me that you'd have a
link that I could just click on."
What does a link look like?
This won't come as a big surprise, but to make your visitors happy, links
should be colored and underlined. And, ideally, there should be different colors
for links that have been visited and unvisited.
For more info on the topic, check out this great article from the Nielsen
Norman Group, or this post from Moz.
5) Engage your visitors (in other words, don't be boring)
Sometimes websites are perfectly usable â they have great navigation,
clear categories, helpful internal search, and links that look links â but
they suffer from a major problem: They're boring.
Or, put a nicer way, they're not engaging their visitors. People use the site,
and they could easily buy something if they wanted, but they don't feel a
connection to the brand or the product. Frankly, they just don't care.
In the video below, a person is trying out a mobile app for the first time
ever. Listen to the deep sigh she makes and the tone of her voice:
The sound of boredom.
That's the benefit of watching someone use your website, app or product. You
can hear their tone of voice and pick up on things like boredom that you'd miss
if you were just looking at standard analytics data.
It's tempting to always get wrapped up in analytics or usability, but don't
lose sight of engaging your visitors and building your brand.
Tunnel vision
These are only five of the issues that we see pop up often, but really there
are countless ways that our websites can be turning off our visitors.
Thanks to the amount of time we spend on our own sites, we're blind to many of
the issues that are confusing or frustrating our users. We have tunnel vision.
This is what we look like. Unfortunately, most of us aren't this adorable.
That's why it's so important for us to get our sites in front of real people
with fresh eyes who can give us unbiased feedback. While this feedback is
probably going to be painful to hear, it's going to help us all improve our
sites and make the web a better place.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/jGmI40778BM/5-lessons-learned-from-100000-usability-studies
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
[Build Backlinks Online] New Research Shows Twitter Boosts TV Ratings (sometimes)
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'New Research Shows Twitter Boosts
TV Ratings (sometimes)'
In another bandwidth-deficient edition of The Baer Facts, I talk withKyle
LacyofExactTargetabout new research from Nielsen that shows tweets causing
actual increases in television ratings. Is Social TV Overrated? Ive been a
skeptic of the relationship between Twitter chatter and TV ratings for a long
time. To me, the people tweeting about a show are []New Research Shows Twitter
Boosts TV Ratings (sometimes) is a post from: Convince and Convert: Social Media
Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-research-2/new-research-shows-twitter-boosts-tv-ratings-sometimes/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-research-shows-twitter-boosts-tv-ratings-sometimes
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
TV Ratings (sometimes)'
In another bandwidth-deficient edition of The Baer Facts, I talk withKyle
LacyofExactTargetabout new research from Nielsen that shows tweets causing
actual increases in television ratings. Is Social TV Overrated? Ive been a
skeptic of the relationship between Twitter chatter and TV ratings for a long
time. To me, the people tweeting about a show are []New Research Shows Twitter
Boosts TV Ratings (sometimes) is a post from: Convince and Convert: Social Media
Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-research-2/new-research-shows-twitter-boosts-tv-ratings-sometimes/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-research-shows-twitter-boosts-tv-ratings-sometimes
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
[Build Backlinks Online] TITLE
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Creating Mobile Websites: Prepare Your Business for the Mobile Takeover'
We're on a bit of a mobile kick lately – my last post was about mobile marketing basics, and today we're diving head first into mobile websites.
Image borrowed from Mashable
We will be covering different approaches to mobile website design, mobile site best practices, and what you can do to easily make your site mobile-optimized! Get ready to touch, tap, and swipe your way into the world of mobile web design!
We’ll be delving into:
- Mobile Website Statistics
- Mobile Website Design’s Biggest Rule: Keep it Simple
- Approach #1 to Mobile Site Design: Creating a .Mobi Domain
- Approach #2 to Mobile Site Design: Responsive Design
- Choosing Between .Mobi vs. Responsive Design
- Mobile Websites vs. Apps
- Mobile Website Examples: Learn From the Top Mobile Sites
- Mobile Website Ads
- Mobile Website Tips & Best Practices
- How to Test Your Mobile Site
Mobile Website Statistics: Why You Need a Mobile Friendly Website
If you aren't quite sure about whether or not it's worth your time to learn about mobile site design, these mobile website statistics will convince you!
- Global mobile traffic now accounts for 15% of all Internet traffic
- No one screen size has more than 20% of the market share
- 61% of people have a better opinion of brands when they offer a good mobile experience
- 60% of mobile shoppers use their smartphones while in a store, and another 50% while on their way to a store
- Tablet users spend 50% more than PC users
- Mobile-based searches make up one quarter of all searches
- Every 100ms increase in load time decreases sales by 1%
Mobile Website Design's Biggest Rule: Keep it Simple
Your mobile website doesn't need to have the same kind of pizazz and showmanship as your regular, full-size site. On a tiny screen, big, flashy graphics take up too much space and can result in snail-paced load times, which mobile users simply won't accept.
Mobile sites should be more basic and bare bones, with a simplified design. Remember that most mobile users are visiting mobile sites for hard info, not for curiosity or general interest. The goal is to provide mobile users with the information they want and nothing extra. This means streamline navigation and layout, keeping things as easy and simple as possible.
That being said, this doesn't lock you into having an ugly site – aesthetes rejoice! You can still create beautiful mobile websites. CSS3 lets mobile website designers create some pretty attractive graphics with features like gradients and drop-shadows, letting you have a polished mobile website without the clunky weight of large graphic files.
With this overarching concept of mobile simplicity in mind, we can start to think about how to actually go about our mobile website design plan. There are generally two approaches.
The Two Approaches to Creating Mobile Websites:
1. Build a unique mobile website
2. Design existing website to adjust itself for various mobile devices (what is called "responsive design"
We'll be discussing these two different methods in detail. There's no right or wrong answer, but your business's priorities might make one option better suited for you.
Approach #1: A Domain of Their Own – Creating a .Mobi Website
.Mobi websites are sites that have been specifically designed to be viewed and navigated on mobile devices. Technically any domain can be viewed on a mobile device, but .mobi sites claim superior usability.
From a user perspective, .mobi is preferable since all .mobi sites MUST be optimized for viewing on a mobile device. From a business perspective, there is a solid assortment of both pros and cons in taking the .mobi design route.
PROS of Building a .Mobi Website:
- Specifically designed to work well on small mobile screens
- Minimum amounts of bandwidth is used, letting sites load faster
- Simple, light, and streamlined
- More likely to appear than .com sites on mobile searches
- Since you're building a separate website, you can adjust content to rank for specific mobile search queries, which often vary from classic desktop searches
CONS of Building a .Mobi Website:
- You now have two separate websites to maintain (your regular .com domain and .mobi mobile domain)
- You must start SEO work for your .mobi from scratch
- Having two domains means the increased possibility of duplicate content, which could mean getting penalized by the Googs
Approach #2: Go With the Flow – Responsive Web Design
Responsive web design enables a pre-existing website to resize and re-adjust automatically for various mobile devices. Technologies like CSS3 and HTML5 make it easy to design your site to adapt to any device it's being viewed on, converting the website to a mobile layout for better viewing.
Responsive web design is a great option, and growing more popular by the day as the variety of devices that access the web grows. Mashable noted that last year they were accessed on over 2,000 different mobile devices! Responsive design aims to make your site look gorgeous on all of them. Naturally there are some pros and cons.
PROS of Responsive Design:
- One single website adapting to different devices, rather than managing separate sites for different devices
- There are many responsive web design themes from WordPress for under $100
- Responsive web design is the Google-recommended method of mobile website design
CONS of Responsive Design:
- Sites implementing responsive mobile web design can be slower to load than .mobi sites
- Website ads often break when being adjusted with responsive web design
- Information architecture and functionality can get screwy
Choosing Between .Mobi vs. Responsive Design
The .mobi vs. responsive web design battle is as great a rivalry as Coke vs. Pepsi, Energizer vs. Duracell, Mac vs. PC! Well, OK, it may not be quite that intense, but many web experts really do have some pretty strong feelings about which is the preferred method of mobile site design.
So which method is right for you?
Image from Google Mobile Ads Blog
There really is no right or wrong answer. Responsive design is easier to maintain, since you are dealing with one single website. However, creating sites customized specifically for mobile devices means you'll have the chance to experiment with mobile-specific features like GPS and cameras.
Usually such functionality is resigned to apps, but implementing this kind of experience into mobile sites can result in extremely engaging and exciting sites. As Bryson Meunnier of Search Engine Land notes, this kind of app-like behavior on sites should be more common, especially considering how some brands like Answers.com have found great success with this technique.
Some experts recommend that businesses with a smaller number of mobile visitors should go with responsive web design, while those with a large number of mobile users should create a mobile-specific site. Ultimately, it's your call.
BTW: You can create a mobile specific site without creating a .mobi domain. You can just as easily set up a sub-domain like "http://m.domain.com" to put your mobile site on.
Mobile Websites vs. Apps: We Didn't Forget Them!
I know, you're probably thinking "Umm, hey, what about apps? Apps are great! There's an app for that!" Apple did a pretty phenomenal marketing job getting us all excited about the idea of mobile apps. And while mobile apps are great, they really aren't suited to every business.
Apps are software applications that need to be written in the native language of a selected platform like the Apple iPhone or the Google Android. There are some nifty advantages of creating a mobile app, but for most small to medium-sized businesses, it isn't worth the effort.
PROS of Building an App:
- Since your code is specifically built for one platform, it's more likely to perform well
- Getting an app distributed in app stores could increase attention and notice
- Apps can use a mobile device’s functionality, like a built-in camera or accelerometer
CONS of Building an App:
- Expensive to develop and maintain
- User must take more actions before being engaged (they must download the platform-specific app marketplace, download the app, update the app, etc.)
- Individual app must be made for each platform
- Fees are involved with promoting the app on app stores
The truth is, you probably don't really need (or heck, even want) an app for your business. Mobile websites earn a larger reach compared to apps, and consumers tend to prefer using the mobile web interface for searching, surfing, and shopping. According to the Pew Research Center, 60% of tablet users prefer reading news on the mobile web to reading on an app.
What businesses will benefit from apps? As noted on Adaptistration, the businesses who will benefit most from apps are those who have specific content delivery needs, like wanting to stream HD video for subscribers of a specific membership program (Netflix, HBO GO, Hulu Plus etc.). Apps are also great for specific tools, such as an app to help users find the nearest gluten-free restaurant.
Don't hop on the app bandwagon just because it sounds cool. If you want to put in the time and money to build an app, it should have a real purpose.
Mobile Website Examples: Learn From the Top Mobile Sites
Here's a look at some of the best mobile websites brands have come up with.
Abercrombie & Fitch
Image borrowed from Impact
What They’re Doing Right: Collapsible navigation and a clean, simple design.
Caribou Coffee
Borrowed from Impact
What They’re Doing Right: Collapsible navigation, aimed for local intent with Location Finder and Offers, key information with nothing extraneous
Hyundai
Image borrowed from Mashable
What They’re Doing Right: Simple and easy to understand
Image borrowed from Mashable
The sites above manage to be fun, creative, and engaging while still maintaining a simplicity that works well for mobile.
Examples of Responsive Mobile Design
Home Depot
Images taken from Google Think Insights
Home Depot does a couple things really well with their mobile responsive web design:
- They've optimized the mobile experience for local, putting the "Store Locator" option at the top of the navigation menu
- Consistent and easy to navigate across screens
- Mobile device navigation is vertical and collapsible, keeping things simple for users.
Starbucks
Images taken from Google Think Insights
- Like Home Depot, Starbucks prioritizes the "Store Locator" option
- Main image is consistent across devices, but sized appropriately for each screen
- Easy to navigate
Mobile Website Ads: Break It and No One Buys It
Mobile website ads can be somewhat problematic when functioning with responsive web design. The ads, which are shown across a wide variety of different-sized devices, end up being unintentionally warped or distorted. Stretch Armstrong rocks, stretchy pants are comfy as heck, but stretchy ads are just no good.
Image borrowed from CMS Wire
Thankfully, Google has been crafting a workaround. Google has updated the AdSense ad code policy so that code can be modified by advertisers to display ads properly across different devices. Originally, AdSense ads were shown in fixed slots. The new policy lets AdSense users format their ads to fit any device with a small change in the javascript code. Pretty neat!
Want to see how your mobile PPC ads are performing? Our free AdWords Grader tool can help you out.
Mobile Website Design Tips & Best Practices
- Stick with Single Column - Single column designs are more manageable on smaller screens and convert from horizontal to vertical better.
- Think About How Your Content Will be Stacked - Define how your content will stack and reorder itself going from desktop to mobile.
Image from Creative Bloq
- Go With a Collapsible Navigation - Collapsible navigation keeps your mobile design simple and clean. With collapsible navigation, menu items can be tapped to expand more options.
- Consider the Translation from Mouse Clicks to Finger Taps – Desktop computers allow users to easily handle designs where precise clicking is required, but since mobile devices use finger and thumb tapping, users need larger buttons that are less exact. Same goes for hover items – navigation menus that normally appear after a hover action need to instead expand with a tap.
- Don't Forget Visual Indicators – While many desktop browsers have built-in progress indicators like loading symbols, these aren't as common on mobile browsers. It's best if you provide your own visual feedback as part of your mobile design. When a user taps a button, have the button change its appearance to show that a tap has happened. Try spinning icons for loading indicators, etc.
- Test Across Lots of Devices – Test, test, and test again! There's a bunch of testing tools and device emulators to help you see how your site looks across different mobile devices (we've got some recommendations below!)
- Stay Practical - Most mobile users aren't looking to dilly-dally. They are looking for information and they want it fast! Keep things simple, crisp, and to the point.
- Keep It Consistent - While you'll absolutely want to change your design layout and maybe even add or adjust content for mobile, your core identity and message should be consistent across devices. Your mobile design shouldn't look like a totally different animal than your classic site.
- Know Your Audience – Really take some time to consider your core audience and what they are looking to get out of your mobile site. Their intent on mobile is likely to be different than intent on desktops.
- Keep Text Input Minimal - While great progress is being made to make text input easier on mobile devices, it's still a nuisance. Only make users input text when it's essential.
How to Test Your Mobile Site
We've collected a bunch of free mobile site design testing tools to help you make sure your site looks great no matter who is using it. To be the best, you gotta test!
- MobiReady: a testing tool that evaluates the how well optimized your site is for mobile devices, taking into account mobile best practices and industry standards. You'll get a score from 1-5 and a full site analysis.
- The Responsinator: A free tool for testing your mobile responsive design across popular mobile devices.
- GoMoMeer: This tool from Google shows how your site looks on a smartphone and offers a free report with personalized recommendations on how to be better optimized for mobile.
- Screenfly: Screenfly lets you view your website on variety of devices. Just pop in your URL.
- Mobile Phone Emulator: A popular mobile phone emulator, this tool allows you to test your site across a large number of mobile devices.
- iPad Peek: As its name implies, this tool lets you see how your site appears on the iPad or iPhone.
And there you have it – the complete guide to mobile websites and mobile design. Go forth and go mobile friends!
This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.
Tuesday 27 August 2013
[Build Backlinks Online] New Research: Do Pictures of People Increase Facebook Engagement?
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'New Research: Do Pictures of
People Increase Facebook Engagement?'
Marketers often spend hours selecting and producing visual content to post on
Facebook brand pages. Creatives, strategists, and managers can go
round-and-around debating which images work and which dont for a brand.
Sometimes they debate over whether or not the brand should show people in brand
images, and everyone has their differing opinions. At Taggs, []New Research: Do
Pictures of People Increase Facebook Engagement? is a post from: Convince and
Convert: Social Media Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-research-2/new-research-do-pictures-of-people-increase-facebook-engagement/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-research-do-pictures-of-people-increase-facebook-engagement
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
People Increase Facebook Engagement?'
Marketers often spend hours selecting and producing visual content to post on
Facebook brand pages. Creatives, strategists, and managers can go
round-and-around debating which images work and which dont for a brand.
Sometimes they debate over whether or not the brand should show people in brand
images, and everyone has their differing opinions. At Taggs, []New Research: Do
Pictures of People Increase Facebook Engagement? is a post from: Convince and
Convert: Social Media Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy
You may view the latest post at
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-research-2/new-research-do-pictures-of-people-increase-facebook-engagement/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-research-do-pictures-of-people-increase-facebook-engagement
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
[Build Backlinks Online] Comparing the Google+ and Google Places Page Management Interfaces
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Comparing the Google+ and Google
Places Page Management Interfaces'
Posted by David Mihm
Caveat: I am definitely not a professional interface designer; this task I
leave largely to the experts on our UX & Design team. My goal behind this post
is to increase usage of Places for Business, however, and raise the visibility
of that destination among the small-business-focused marketing community.
Setting aside the difficulty that Google had integrating Zagat into its
product mix, its own branding difficulties in the Local space have been
well-chronicled. Following the zigzag from Local to Maps to Places to
Places-with-Hotspot, back to just Places, then to Plus-Local, and (finally?)
plain ol' Plus has been like observing a misguided exercise in corporate
alligator escapism.
Although the result of this hodgepodge of brands appears largely the same to
consumers, who probably weren't all that keyed into the evolution anyway,
Google's ill-defined brand in Local has almost certainly been a contributing
factor to its deficit in business owner engagement relative to Facebook.
It's just not clear to the average brick-and-mortar business owner, let alone
the average SEO, where she should go to get started at Google. While Google's
"first responders" in the support forums have been darned consistent in their
mantra of using Places for Business to manage this presence, this destination
gets very little love in Google's mainstream advertising â or even
AdWords. It's impossible to get to from Google's primary business-oriented
pages, and a number of searches (including "Google Plus Local Page") return this
answer.
Which is a shame, because the Plus management interface offers a vastly
inferior experience for business owners. Although I recommended it last year,
here's why I no longer encourage business owners (or SEOs) to use it, and why
I've come around to places.google.com.
The deficiencies of the Google+ page management interface
1. No UI hierarchy
This interface is a jumble of Pinterest-like modules, with none more or less
important than the others. If I were to answer my own question ("What am I
supposed to look at?"), my natural inclination would seem to be the big green
box in the middle â "Start a video call with your followers." Hardly
something the average business owner is going to have time for or get any value
out of.
Meanwhile, attributes that are core to a business's success (categories,
hours, location information) are hidden behind a white-on-white button, and my
natural primary activity (posting as my business rather than as myself) is easy
to miss when juxtaposed alongside the "green monster." It's no wonder that even
LinkedIn beats Google+ for social sharing.
2. Mis-targeting the average SMB
The eager-beaver SMBs who explore the navigation beyond the first page are
likely to find themselves pretty lost. They're asked to install plugins,
buttons, and even connect to the Google APIs console (while being consoled that
it's only a 3-step process). Something like 50% of this audience doesn't even
have a website, and 90% doesn't even have a mobile website, for goodness sake.
3. Slightly misleading insights
The Places dashboard hasn't exactly been a paragon of useful information, but
my main complaint with this tab is presentation, rather than data. There's
actually quite a bit of useful information here, but unfortunately it's hidden
in the default view. "Actions" and "Views" are presented flatly, where a view of
a post is treated with the same importance as a click for driving directions or
into a business's website. So a business is likely to miss out on what are
actually some pretty important metrics, or at least see some inflated numbers.
4. No help
The only way to get help with this far-from-simple product is to click first
into settings, and then into "Learn More" on the section that you're interested
in.
The strengths of the Places management interface
1. Extremely clear messaging
Strong calls to action pop right off the page here: the green-backgrounded
"Complete your business information," the blue-backgrounded "Edit information,"
and even the boringness of the grayed-out "Add photo" area all point directly to
what Google and the SMB are both trying to accomplish with this product.
2. Perfect targeting of the average SMB
It's evident that the designers of the Places Dashboard have spent plenty of
time watching business owners using their product. Clicking the question mark
just once brings up tooltips alongside all the major sections of the tool. Not
only does this decrease the number of questions Google is likely to receive from
business owners, but it answers those questions in a clear, friendly tone that
gives less-sophisticated owners a great first impression of Google's products.
3. Clear(er) insights
This simplistic interface is very transparent about the data it's showing
(number of times this listing appeared in a local search result), and presents a
much more representative view of a business's presence at Google (my page only
has 3 actions) without overcomplicating the situation for the business owner.
4. Terrific tooltips and inline help text
Here's where the experience of the Places team really shines through: They
don't take any pre-existing knowledge of how business listings work for granted,
walking the business owner through every step of the page-creation process.
5. Phone support (!)
And of course, if a business owner isn't able to figure things out on their
own, there are plenty of relevant links directly to the most-commonly asked
questions, and the process highlights Google's revolutionary option of phone
support.
Conclusion
Given how much effort has been put into the Local Business Center / Places for
Business Dashboard over the last several years â and the extremely
polished result those efforts have yielded â I'm surprised Google
continues to throw any energy into promoting the Plus management option to small
businesses, let alone developing and maintaining it.
Any business owner who visits Plus should be sent right over to the Places for
Business Dashboard. It seems to be much more empathetic to the typical business
owner's level of sophistication, and solves their most important needs more
directly than Plus.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/LgqKBSa-ggQ/google-local-page-management-comparison
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
Places Page Management Interfaces'
Posted by David Mihm
Caveat: I am definitely not a professional interface designer; this task I
leave largely to the experts on our UX & Design team. My goal behind this post
is to increase usage of Places for Business, however, and raise the visibility
of that destination among the small-business-focused marketing community.
Setting aside the difficulty that Google had integrating Zagat into its
product mix, its own branding difficulties in the Local space have been
well-chronicled. Following the zigzag from Local to Maps to Places to
Places-with-Hotspot, back to just Places, then to Plus-Local, and (finally?)
plain ol' Plus has been like observing a misguided exercise in corporate
alligator escapism.
Although the result of this hodgepodge of brands appears largely the same to
consumers, who probably weren't all that keyed into the evolution anyway,
Google's ill-defined brand in Local has almost certainly been a contributing
factor to its deficit in business owner engagement relative to Facebook.
It's just not clear to the average brick-and-mortar business owner, let alone
the average SEO, where she should go to get started at Google. While Google's
"first responders" in the support forums have been darned consistent in their
mantra of using Places for Business to manage this presence, this destination
gets very little love in Google's mainstream advertising â or even
AdWords. It's impossible to get to from Google's primary business-oriented
pages, and a number of searches (including "Google Plus Local Page") return this
answer.
Which is a shame, because the Plus management interface offers a vastly
inferior experience for business owners. Although I recommended it last year,
here's why I no longer encourage business owners (or SEOs) to use it, and why
I've come around to places.google.com.
The deficiencies of the Google+ page management interface
1. No UI hierarchy
This interface is a jumble of Pinterest-like modules, with none more or less
important than the others. If I were to answer my own question ("What am I
supposed to look at?"), my natural inclination would seem to be the big green
box in the middle â "Start a video call with your followers." Hardly
something the average business owner is going to have time for or get any value
out of.
Meanwhile, attributes that are core to a business's success (categories,
hours, location information) are hidden behind a white-on-white button, and my
natural primary activity (posting as my business rather than as myself) is easy
to miss when juxtaposed alongside the "green monster." It's no wonder that even
LinkedIn beats Google+ for social sharing.
2. Mis-targeting the average SMB
The eager-beaver SMBs who explore the navigation beyond the first page are
likely to find themselves pretty lost. They're asked to install plugins,
buttons, and even connect to the Google APIs console (while being consoled that
it's only a 3-step process). Something like 50% of this audience doesn't even
have a website, and 90% doesn't even have a mobile website, for goodness sake.
3. Slightly misleading insights
The Places dashboard hasn't exactly been a paragon of useful information, but
my main complaint with this tab is presentation, rather than data. There's
actually quite a bit of useful information here, but unfortunately it's hidden
in the default view. "Actions" and "Views" are presented flatly, where a view of
a post is treated with the same importance as a click for driving directions or
into a business's website. So a business is likely to miss out on what are
actually some pretty important metrics, or at least see some inflated numbers.
4. No help
The only way to get help with this far-from-simple product is to click first
into settings, and then into "Learn More" on the section that you're interested
in.
The strengths of the Places management interface
1. Extremely clear messaging
Strong calls to action pop right off the page here: the green-backgrounded
"Complete your business information," the blue-backgrounded "Edit information,"
and even the boringness of the grayed-out "Add photo" area all point directly to
what Google and the SMB are both trying to accomplish with this product.
2. Perfect targeting of the average SMB
It's evident that the designers of the Places Dashboard have spent plenty of
time watching business owners using their product. Clicking the question mark
just once brings up tooltips alongside all the major sections of the tool. Not
only does this decrease the number of questions Google is likely to receive from
business owners, but it answers those questions in a clear, friendly tone that
gives less-sophisticated owners a great first impression of Google's products.
3. Clear(er) insights
This simplistic interface is very transparent about the data it's showing
(number of times this listing appeared in a local search result), and presents a
much more representative view of a business's presence at Google (my page only
has 3 actions) without overcomplicating the situation for the business owner.
4. Terrific tooltips and inline help text
Here's where the experience of the Places team really shines through: They
don't take any pre-existing knowledge of how business listings work for granted,
walking the business owner through every step of the page-creation process.
5. Phone support (!)
And of course, if a business owner isn't able to figure things out on their
own, there are plenty of relevant links directly to the most-commonly asked
questions, and the process highlights Google's revolutionary option of phone
support.
Conclusion
Given how much effort has been put into the Local Business Center / Places for
Business Dashboard over the last several years â and the extremely
polished result those efforts have yielded â I'm surprised Google
continues to throw any energy into promoting the Plus management option to small
businesses, let alone developing and maintaining it.
Any business owner who visits Plus should be sent right over to the Places for
Business Dashboard. It seems to be much more empathetic to the typical business
owner's level of sophistication, and solves their most important needs more
directly than Plus.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/LgqKBSa-ggQ/google-local-page-management-comparison
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
[Build Backlinks Online] TITLE
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Bid Stacking in AdWords: How to Pay Less When Using Multiple Match Types'
A little while back, my fellow CS specialist Lisa wrote a great post to guide advertisers towards picking the right match types. In her post, Lisa pointed to the benefits of testing the same keyword with different match types to help determine which match type is the right fit for an advertiser's account.
Now let's explore a situation where you might want to actually keep running different match types simultaneously. In the below example, we have set a sample keyword (literally titled Keyword) to Broad Match and Phrase Match. Why would you want to want to keep these two particular keywords running simultaneously?
Well, let's say after testing your keyword at different match types you have decided you really like Broad Match. There could be a whole host of reasons why you've decided to choose Broad Match. Say you want to cast a wider net to catch more search volume, or say you've decided to partake in some keyword discovery. By bidding on Broad Match, a more permissive/inclusive match type, you'll have access to a wider variety of search queries through the Search Query Reports in AdWords (or QueryStream for our WordStream users!). You can use these queries to add new keyword variations or to discover long-tail keyword ideas.
Now, although you've chosen to run with the Broad Match keyword, you know that there are also perks to using more restrictive match types – like increased relevancy. In addition, more restrictive match types like Phrase or Exact generally tend to cost less than less restrictive match types like Broad. Given this information, you certainly do not want to be paying more for the less relevant clicks coming in through Broad.
So how do you avoid spending more than you have to on the queries that actually do come in at Phrase? If you are trying to ensure that you are paying the lowest amount possible per click, you can employ a Tiered Bidding or Stacked Bidding strategy to help ensure you're not paying more for less. With Bid Stacking, it is possible (in the words of Hannah Montana) to get the best of both worlds!
So How Does Stacked Bidding Work?
You can see from the aforementioned example that even though you are bidding the same amount on both match types, the Broad Match keyword is being served over 66% of the time. Additionally, the average CPC for the Broad Match keyword is higher ($4.08) than the average CPC of its Phrase Match counterpart ($3.68).
One simple way to ensure that you pay $3.68 per click whenever possible is to keep the keyword at both Broad and Phrase, and bid higher on the more restrictive match type by about 10-15%. In this specific example, we would adjust our Phrase Match bid to $7.70. If our Broad Match and Phrase Match Keyword enters the same auction, our higher bid on Phrase will beat our Broad and win the auction. This in turn will ensure that we pay $3.68 per click whenever possible as opposed to $4.08. Adjusting your bids in such a fashion will make sure that AdWords will serve your Phrase keyword whenever possible, delivering you a lower CPC when queries are matched by Phrase.
Now that you know how to set up Stacked Bidding, you can start benefitting from the higher search volume of Broad Match while still paying lower CPCs whenever possible! Once you "mix it all together, you know that it's the best … you get the best of both worlds!" (For those who are curious, I babysit a lot..)
This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.
Monday 26 August 2013
[Build Backlinks Online] From Keywords to Contexts: the New Query Model
Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'From Keywords to Contexts: the
New Query Model'
Posted by Tom Anthony
As SEOs we talk a lot about "search queries" (or simply "searches"), yet I
think search has outgrown our definition of what exactly a search query is. In
this post I'm going to explain how I think the old definition is fast becoming
less and less useful to us, and also how I believe this is going to mean we're
going to talk about keywords less and less.
Traditional query model
I recently spoke at Kahenacon in Israel about the evolution of search (deck),
where I discussed four trends I identified that were influencing the changes I
expect to see in search over the next 3-4 years. I noticed that there was a
common theme that kept coming up amongst them: Our understanding of what we mean
when we say "query" has become too narrow.
The traditional query model is the one where a search query looks like this:
This is the keyword-focused model we have always used, and it has served us
well for two decades. However, things are changing, and I think we are already
at a point where thinking of a search query in this way is inadequate.
First, let's examine things from Google's perspective. They want to understand
the users intent when they did this search: what the expectation of the user is,
what they are looking for, and more specifically, what search results would best
help answer their query. Some questions Google might ask about the "london tube
stations" query:
Is this a schoolchild looking for a history of the tube stations for some
homework?
Is this someone looking for a list of all the tube station names (we have a
fair amount of drinking games in the UK based on these names)?
Is this someone looking for a tube station?
etc.
There are clearly lots more possible situations, and it is quite hard to
determine what the user wants. However, the keyword(s) I type in are not the
entire query; they are not everything Google has to go on in order to answer
this query. It actually looks more like this to Google:
The query consists of the keywords that we explicitly typed in, but also the
implicit portion of our request based on our context.
With this information, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to determine what the
user is likely looking for and what types of response will best help them.
Furthermore, my example above only gives me a 3-4 extra data points (location,
device, potentially a guess at connection type from IP address and connection
speed). However, Google are using a lot more signals than that (at least 57 if
you aren't logged in), so I imagine the implicit aspect of the query probably
contains a lot more.
New query model
I don't think there is a scenario where Google is not using an implicit aspect
to a query â even if we put aside things such as language and which
version of Google you are using. There are multiple facets to what is covered by
this implicit search (see the next section on context), but the main takeaway is
that the search results are always dependent on some implicit aspects.
Therefore, I think we need to adjust our understanding of what a query is.
After some discussion in the Distilled office, our initial proposal is
relatively simple:
If we accept my premise, then it is hard to move backwards from this
realisation of what a query actually is.
However, a good question at this point might be: does it actually change
anything? Before I try to answer that, let me first try to make sure we are all
understanding what I mean when I say context.
Context: the source of the implicit query
We've talked a lot about âmobile search' and âpersonalised search'
over the last few years in the SEO community. However, I believe both of these
phrases are too narrow:
Mobile search: This has traditionally referred to the device that I'm using, but
that is clearly misleading. More and more people are searching on their
smartphones from their houses. People are using tablets and ultrabooks on the
move. Mobile search should talk about the person and their state (staying still
or on the move). However, it doesn't cover every aspect of their state (are they
walking or driving, are they at work or play, etc.) â so we need something
broader.
Personalised search: A couple of years ago we fought personalised search, doing
things like manipulating the Google query string to try to disable it, as we
wanted to know what the "real results" were. However, I think a wave of
acceptance is washing over the community as we realise that concept is in our
rear view mirror. However, personalised search is only partially responsible for
that. When we talk about personalised search, the common understanding of it
points to a user's preferences (determined by social connections, search history
etc.). To me this causes confusion â if I run the same search at a
different time of the day at a different location, I get different results. Both
are personalised, but personalisation doesn't capture nearly every aspect of why
my search results are different in each case.
Beyond these two examples I imagine there are a whole host of other facets
that are responsible for the customisation of the search results. I've begun
calling all of these various aspects "context." Context encapsulates both mobile
and personalisation, and a whole host of other signals (including those that
Google has yet to discover/begin using).
The implicit-aspect of queries comes from the users' context, so these two
concepts are completely intertwined.
I expect that we are going to continue to see more and more context signals
being used to drive richer and more detailed implicit-aspects to queries. Just a
couple of months ago at Google's I/O conference they announced this new Android
API:
It allows anyone writing an app for Android to ask the phone whether it
believes the user is walking, cycling, or driving. I can certainly imagine this
being part of the implicit query â a good example being a restaurant
search, which might cover a larger radius if I'm in a car than if I am on foot.
Furthermore, earlier this year Google acquired Behavio, the team behind funf,
the "Social and Behavioural Sensing Framework." This framework basically tries
to predict what a user will be doing next based on the current and past states
of various sensors on their phone (which wifi networks they've connected to at
what times, social proximity, etc.). Imagine a prediction of what you'll be
doing next as part of the context of a search. It sounds crazy, yet in some
aspects we are already there.
Implicit-only searches
When Google was founded, Sergey and Larry dreamed of a world where there was
no search query at all:
He was talking about having no explicit query, and we are rapidly reaching a
situation where such searches are a reality; many people report fantastic
results from Google Now, where the query is entirely context-based:
What does this mean for keywords?
For as long as there has been web search engines, there has been SEO, and for
as long as there has been SEO, there has been a focus on keywords. I believe we
are at a transition point wherein the next 2-3 years is going to see a declining
focus on keywords.
Imagine the absurdity a couple of years ago if a small-restaurant owner said
he wanted to be in position 1 (or even page 1) for the terms "restaurant" or
"breakfast." Sure, there are local results, but actually ranking in the "main"
results is silly! Then along came the Venice update (post via Mike Ramsay) and
suddenly that didn't seem so silly. (Will Critchlow recalls how a 'breakfast'
search worked great for him in this Distilled Live video.) Now it is possible
for small companies to rank for things like "restaurant," or the "divorce
attorney" from Mike's post, but only within certain limited contexts.
There are a couple of other points of consideration around the future of
keywords:
The move towards the knowledge graph, entity searches, and Google's associated
shift from indexing to understanding.
The move from "web search" to "contextual search" (think Google Glass and
Siri).
(not provided) is on the rise, and we're rapidly losing keyword data anyway.
I did cover some of this stuff in the deck, and it is outside of the scope of
this post. However, I will likely be talking about this at SearchLove London in
October, and likely writing more about it over the coming months, as I think
think the combination of these things means we are going to look back on 2013
and 2014 as an inflection point for search.
So, you're saying keywords aren't important?
Not quite. As long as people are doing language-driven searches (be it text or
spoken word) â which is going to be for some time to come â keywords
are obviously going to be important. What the user explicitly enters as part of
their search query is clearly always going to be important.
What I'm saying (in this post) is that we need to stop looking at keywords and
starting looking at queries â which are nowadays so much more than just
the keywords. A query will have explicit and implicit aspects, and the explicit
aspect could be a chain of several keywords and additional metadata.
In addition, the move from indexing to understanding (not really covered in
this post â see the Distilled Live video and my deck) means that even
putting aside the above point, the link between the keywords that the user types
in and the keyword(s) Google for which shows listings is no longer as direct as
it once was. As Google comes to understand the entities involved, the link
becomes far more complex; we'll see some benefits (stop worrying about synonyms
and long tail) and some downsides (Google won't grasp all entities and
relationships perfectly).
Finally, the keywords your users are typing in can be really insightful to
understand what their intent is â what they really want. This is a point
made by AJ Kohn in his recent post on keywords.
So, then... what does this mean for doing SEO?
That is an excellent question, and I'll start by saying I certainly don't have
all of the answers to this. I'm mostly writing this post as this is something
we've been talking about at Distilled, but I would really love to hear from the
Moz community about your thoughts around this and what you guys think it could
mean.
A few initial thoughts:
When you are looking at traffic in your analytics, broken down by keywords, you
need to bear in mind that there was likely a variety of contexts involved (for
any specific keyword, but also across keywords). Working out what contexts you
are performing well in is going to be something that is going to be increasingly
valuable.
We need to begin working out the "context personas" that we think we can serve
with our pages; there are users in a variety of different situations and we need
to identify how their intents differ and how we can best serve them. In the near
future, this might include having landing pages targeting contexts (or intents)
rather than keywords.
The way we report to our clients (or management) needs to begin to change in
some instances. Reporting on raw keywords is going to potentially become less
and less worthwhile, and we need to start educating our clients now such that
they understand this shift.
Final words
I imagine there are potentially going to be some people who rise up to defend
keywords, but please realise I'm not saying keywords are dead â just that
they no longer give the full picture. I think that Google is going to
increasingly consider context, and we should begin working out how we can work
that into our understanding.
Whether you agree/disagree or have a slightly different idea of how we should
model this, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/IP0qTOehXBU/from-keywords-to-contexts-the-new-query-model
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
New Query Model'
Posted by Tom Anthony
As SEOs we talk a lot about "search queries" (or simply "searches"), yet I
think search has outgrown our definition of what exactly a search query is. In
this post I'm going to explain how I think the old definition is fast becoming
less and less useful to us, and also how I believe this is going to mean we're
going to talk about keywords less and less.
Traditional query model
I recently spoke at Kahenacon in Israel about the evolution of search (deck),
where I discussed four trends I identified that were influencing the changes I
expect to see in search over the next 3-4 years. I noticed that there was a
common theme that kept coming up amongst them: Our understanding of what we mean
when we say "query" has become too narrow.
The traditional query model is the one where a search query looks like this:
This is the keyword-focused model we have always used, and it has served us
well for two decades. However, things are changing, and I think we are already
at a point where thinking of a search query in this way is inadequate.
First, let's examine things from Google's perspective. They want to understand
the users intent when they did this search: what the expectation of the user is,
what they are looking for, and more specifically, what search results would best
help answer their query. Some questions Google might ask about the "london tube
stations" query:
Is this a schoolchild looking for a history of the tube stations for some
homework?
Is this someone looking for a list of all the tube station names (we have a
fair amount of drinking games in the UK based on these names)?
Is this someone looking for a tube station?
etc.
There are clearly lots more possible situations, and it is quite hard to
determine what the user wants. However, the keyword(s) I type in are not the
entire query; they are not everything Google has to go on in order to answer
this query. It actually looks more like this to Google:
The query consists of the keywords that we explicitly typed in, but also the
implicit portion of our request based on our context.
With this information, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to determine what the
user is likely looking for and what types of response will best help them.
Furthermore, my example above only gives me a 3-4 extra data points (location,
device, potentially a guess at connection type from IP address and connection
speed). However, Google are using a lot more signals than that (at least 57 if
you aren't logged in), so I imagine the implicit aspect of the query probably
contains a lot more.
New query model
I don't think there is a scenario where Google is not using an implicit aspect
to a query â even if we put aside things such as language and which
version of Google you are using. There are multiple facets to what is covered by
this implicit search (see the next section on context), but the main takeaway is
that the search results are always dependent on some implicit aspects.
Therefore, I think we need to adjust our understanding of what a query is.
After some discussion in the Distilled office, our initial proposal is
relatively simple:
If we accept my premise, then it is hard to move backwards from this
realisation of what a query actually is.
However, a good question at this point might be: does it actually change
anything? Before I try to answer that, let me first try to make sure we are all
understanding what I mean when I say context.
Context: the source of the implicit query
We've talked a lot about âmobile search' and âpersonalised search'
over the last few years in the SEO community. However, I believe both of these
phrases are too narrow:
Mobile search: This has traditionally referred to the device that I'm using, but
that is clearly misleading. More and more people are searching on their
smartphones from their houses. People are using tablets and ultrabooks on the
move. Mobile search should talk about the person and their state (staying still
or on the move). However, it doesn't cover every aspect of their state (are they
walking or driving, are they at work or play, etc.) â so we need something
broader.
Personalised search: A couple of years ago we fought personalised search, doing
things like manipulating the Google query string to try to disable it, as we
wanted to know what the "real results" were. However, I think a wave of
acceptance is washing over the community as we realise that concept is in our
rear view mirror. However, personalised search is only partially responsible for
that. When we talk about personalised search, the common understanding of it
points to a user's preferences (determined by social connections, search history
etc.). To me this causes confusion â if I run the same search at a
different time of the day at a different location, I get different results. Both
are personalised, but personalisation doesn't capture nearly every aspect of why
my search results are different in each case.
Beyond these two examples I imagine there are a whole host of other facets
that are responsible for the customisation of the search results. I've begun
calling all of these various aspects "context." Context encapsulates both mobile
and personalisation, and a whole host of other signals (including those that
Google has yet to discover/begin using).
The implicit-aspect of queries comes from the users' context, so these two
concepts are completely intertwined.
I expect that we are going to continue to see more and more context signals
being used to drive richer and more detailed implicit-aspects to queries. Just a
couple of months ago at Google's I/O conference they announced this new Android
API:
It allows anyone writing an app for Android to ask the phone whether it
believes the user is walking, cycling, or driving. I can certainly imagine this
being part of the implicit query â a good example being a restaurant
search, which might cover a larger radius if I'm in a car than if I am on foot.
Furthermore, earlier this year Google acquired Behavio, the team behind funf,
the "Social and Behavioural Sensing Framework." This framework basically tries
to predict what a user will be doing next based on the current and past states
of various sensors on their phone (which wifi networks they've connected to at
what times, social proximity, etc.). Imagine a prediction of what you'll be
doing next as part of the context of a search. It sounds crazy, yet in some
aspects we are already there.
Implicit-only searches
When Google was founded, Sergey and Larry dreamed of a world where there was
no search query at all:
He was talking about having no explicit query, and we are rapidly reaching a
situation where such searches are a reality; many people report fantastic
results from Google Now, where the query is entirely context-based:
What does this mean for keywords?
For as long as there has been web search engines, there has been SEO, and for
as long as there has been SEO, there has been a focus on keywords. I believe we
are at a transition point wherein the next 2-3 years is going to see a declining
focus on keywords.
Imagine the absurdity a couple of years ago if a small-restaurant owner said
he wanted to be in position 1 (or even page 1) for the terms "restaurant" or
"breakfast." Sure, there are local results, but actually ranking in the "main"
results is silly! Then along came the Venice update (post via Mike Ramsay) and
suddenly that didn't seem so silly. (Will Critchlow recalls how a 'breakfast'
search worked great for him in this Distilled Live video.) Now it is possible
for small companies to rank for things like "restaurant," or the "divorce
attorney" from Mike's post, but only within certain limited contexts.
There are a couple of other points of consideration around the future of
keywords:
The move towards the knowledge graph, entity searches, and Google's associated
shift from indexing to understanding.
The move from "web search" to "contextual search" (think Google Glass and
Siri).
(not provided) is on the rise, and we're rapidly losing keyword data anyway.
I did cover some of this stuff in the deck, and it is outside of the scope of
this post. However, I will likely be talking about this at SearchLove London in
October, and likely writing more about it over the coming months, as I think
think the combination of these things means we are going to look back on 2013
and 2014 as an inflection point for search.
So, you're saying keywords aren't important?
Not quite. As long as people are doing language-driven searches (be it text or
spoken word) â which is going to be for some time to come â keywords
are obviously going to be important. What the user explicitly enters as part of
their search query is clearly always going to be important.
What I'm saying (in this post) is that we need to stop looking at keywords and
starting looking at queries â which are nowadays so much more than just
the keywords. A query will have explicit and implicit aspects, and the explicit
aspect could be a chain of several keywords and additional metadata.
In addition, the move from indexing to understanding (not really covered in
this post â see the Distilled Live video and my deck) means that even
putting aside the above point, the link between the keywords that the user types
in and the keyword(s) Google for which shows listings is no longer as direct as
it once was. As Google comes to understand the entities involved, the link
becomes far more complex; we'll see some benefits (stop worrying about synonyms
and long tail) and some downsides (Google won't grasp all entities and
relationships perfectly).
Finally, the keywords your users are typing in can be really insightful to
understand what their intent is â what they really want. This is a point
made by AJ Kohn in his recent post on keywords.
So, then... what does this mean for doing SEO?
That is an excellent question, and I'll start by saying I certainly don't have
all of the answers to this. I'm mostly writing this post as this is something
we've been talking about at Distilled, but I would really love to hear from the
Moz community about your thoughts around this and what you guys think it could
mean.
A few initial thoughts:
When you are looking at traffic in your analytics, broken down by keywords, you
need to bear in mind that there was likely a variety of contexts involved (for
any specific keyword, but also across keywords). Working out what contexts you
are performing well in is going to be something that is going to be increasingly
valuable.
We need to begin working out the "context personas" that we think we can serve
with our pages; there are users in a variety of different situations and we need
to identify how their intents differ and how we can best serve them. In the near
future, this might include having landing pages targeting contexts (or intents)
rather than keywords.
The way we report to our clients (or management) needs to begin to change in
some instances. Reporting on raw keywords is going to potentially become less
and less worthwhile, and we need to start educating our clients now such that
they understand this shift.
Final words
I imagine there are potentially going to be some people who rise up to defend
keywords, but please realise I'm not saying keywords are dead â just that
they no longer give the full picture. I think that Google is going to
increasingly consider context, and we should begin working out how we can work
that into our understanding.
Whether you agree/disagree or have a slightly different idea of how we should
model this, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten
hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think
of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but
want to read!
You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/IP0qTOehXBU/from-keywords-to-contexts-the-new-query-model
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
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