About Ross Barefoot

Ross Barefoot has been involved in website development and search engine marketing since Google was merely a gleam in Sergey and Larry's eye. He has recently joined the Search Engine Academy team as a Master Level Instructor and operates the Rocky Mountain Search Engine Academy, offering training in Colorado and Utah.

Local SEO: What to do About Google’s Utterly Unpredictable Moods

April 23, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Local Search Can be a Frightening Place

alice and the cheshire cat“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

Local Search is a visit to Wonderland through the Looking Glass.  I’ve encountered this strange terrain increasingly as I work with more and more clients who need to be present in local search results.  I’m going to use a recent adventure that I encountered on behalf of my client, and I want to share what I learned as a cautionary tale.  Warning, this is not for the faint of heart.

 

 

 

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

alice and humpty

Local means what Google says it means, neither more nor less.  The client I referred to above is ranked very well for traditional organic results but is invisible in local results.  This stems from some interesting confusion about their address (I wrote a separate blog post about the mess surrounding that situation and how we resolved it: “What to do When Google Maps Has it Wrong“).

One of our goals for this client is to make sure that they establish a presence in Google Local results.  This means targeting the infamous Google “7-Pack,” the block of local results that Google displays when they think the searcher has “local intent.”  In this case our client is moving company in a major metropolitan area.

A local listing can be a great advantage, but at the same time, Google has so stripped down what local search results display that in our practice we would always prefer a traditional organic listing to a local listing if – and this is a major “if” – the organic listing tops the 7-pack.  The reason for our preference for a pure organic listing has to do with our desire to optimize the title of the listing for improved conversions.  Typically the title of the search engine results page (SERP) listing is drawn from the “Title Tag” of the page that the listing links to.  But in local, typically the title of the listing is the business name.   This leads to an undesirable result if the business name is less than intuitive.  For example, I found this listing in a search for moving companies in San Diego:

 

Google search results for 7-pack listing

(click to see larger)

 

Additionally, you may have noticed that Google does not display an additional text snippet in local results, which in traditional organic results is usually taken from the Meta Description tag (especially if one has been optimized for the page, something we always do for our clients).

This leads to another, related concern: usually Google seems reluctant to display a traditional organic listing for business and a local search listing on the same page.  This is sometimes called a “double.”  And in some markets for some terms it’s easy to score a double, but usually only if there are very few results for the search term.  The following is an example of a double:

screen shot of google local results

(click to see larger)

But in this case a double seems unlikely.  I checked the term “moving companies” in about 6 different metro markets and could not find a single instance where any of the search results showed the same company in both organic and local results on the same page.   While I was checking, I was struck again by the stark inconsistency of how Google displays results.  And this is not an issue of personalization of search, because in each case they are displaying the results to the same confused person: me.

So take a look at the following screen shots, which contrasts the different results in 3 metro areas.  Below the screen captures, you’ll see my takeaways on this mess.

A Split 7-Pack in Google Search Results for San Diego

screen shot of google search for moving companies san diego

In San Diego only the top two traditional organic listings appear above the fold, and both of those are claimed by Yelp. So, good luck in San Diego.

 

 In Salt Lake City the 7-Pack Rules the SERP

 

screen shot of google search results for "moving companies salt lake city"

In Salt Lake City not a single traditional organic result for "moving companies" appears above the fold.

 

 In Los Angeles Your 7-Pack is Down to a Threebie

 

screen shot of google search results for "moving companies los angeles"

Only 3 local results in L.A. Probably because it's such a small city.

 

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” 
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – - that’s all.”  

So how do you master such uncertain terrain as what Google has created for us?  Really you only have one option: you have to master it all.  Your best result would be a top organic ranking, if it shows above the 7-pack.  But since you have no guarantee that will happen, you must also work toward a position in local results.  My recommendation would be to go aggressively after the traditional organic ranking by studying the competitive landscape.  Be present in Google Places/Plus Local, but don’t abandon your traditional SEO for a local emphasis just yet.

I’d love to here your experiences in Wonderland.  Leave a comment.

By the way, our Master SEO Class (which I teach in Colorado and Utah) goes into considerable depth on the techniques that you need, not merely for traditional SEO, but local search optimization as well.  To find a class near you, check out our schedule of SEO Workshops.

 

 

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Filed Under: Local Search, SEO Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Local Search Optimization: What to Do When Google Maps Has it Wrong

April 19, 2013 By Leave a Comment

image showing huge Google push pinGoogle Gets Confused Just like the Rest of Us

Local Search is a strange place, but one thing seems to be clear:  One of the single most important factors in Local SEO is something you might hear cryptically called “NAP Match” or “NAP consistency.”  NAP stands for “Name, Address, Phone.”  Making sure that the NAP is consistent between various local directories, and especially that it is consistent between your website and Google/Bing/Yahoo/Yelp (otherwise known as the “Gang of 4″) is one of the basic best practices of Local SEO.  (You can find this and other information contained here in David Mihm’s incredibly useful local search ranking factors survey.)  Naturally, you run a big risk if you choose to represent your address in a way that conflicts with Google.  Unless of course you can get Google to see reason and correct their version of the address.  Doesn’t that sound easy?  Well, sometimes.

how to submit a problem report in Google Maps

(click to see larger)

Correcting An Address When it’s Easy

To correct your address, you can log into your Google Places page, if you’ve verified that you’re the owner, and correct it.  Or, if you don’t own the business, you can conduct a search at maps.google.com, find the listing, and “Report a Problem.”  (See screen shot at left)

But, what happens when Google does NOT show your business, verified or not, in its vast and conflicted database of local businesses?  How do you submit a correction?

I recently had to struggle with a situation where Google did not have the business in Places, but was convinced that the business address was incorrect.  Allow me to clarify.

My client has a business location in a fairly new industrial park in Las Vegas.  By fairly new, I mean it’s only been there about a year.  However even that is long enough for Google to show the industrial park correctly in a map view.

 

Spring Valley “Trumps” Las Vegas

Unfortunately for my client, Google decided that the neighborhood was more important than the exact city in showing the address.  When I Google the address for this business, notice what Google changes the city to in the next screen shot.

screen shot of address mismatch in Google places search

(click to see larger)

Now before we go any further, let me explain that the address I typed into the search field is a postal-service-verified address, and that the actual city really is Las Vegas.  Spring Valley is an unincorporated township within Las Vegas, in essence a sub-division.  My client needs to be recognized as being a Las Vegas business, not a Spring Valley business (I think lots of Las Vegans don’t know where Spring Valley really is, and I grew up near Spring Valley in San Diego County, so the potential for confusion is considerable).

What adds to the complication is the fact that my client’s business name was unknown to Google.  When I Googled my client’s business, I got irrelevant, unrelated business results.  The client has no Place Page, in other words.

In order to try and figure out what was going on, I gave it another try, but this time I omitted the zip code when I searched.  Hurray!  Google let me keep the city name as Las Vegas.

image of another local search address mismatch in Google

(click to see larger)

But wait.  What’s this I see?  They’ve changed the zip code to 89148.  That’s not even close.

I won’t even mention the variant where Google gave me the correct city but switched the zip code to 89118, but they did that as well.

Can You Fight Google Hall?

At this point I had a dilemma.  Do I create a place page using an address that Google won’t validate?  I already have on client where Google simply won’t accept a correction I made to their address via their Place Page.  I can’t really move forward and list the client with an inaccurate zip code, and although Spring Valley might create an address where mail will find them, it’s an unacceptable marketing and branding situation.

 

Getting Help

At this point I turned to an excellent resource for local search issues, the Catalyst eMarketing Local Search forum run by Local SEO guru Linda Buquet.  My question sparked a very informative thread that reminded me of a long forgotten, and little noticed, branch of Google’s empire called Google Mapmaker.  And mapmaker proved to be the solution to my problem.

I was able to log into my personal Google account, navigate to http://www.google.com/mapmaker and create a business listing at the correct address.  Google allowed me to input whatever I wanted in that way.  Google reviews such submissions, but I was able to attach a note explaining the situation and clarifying the correct zip and city name for the client’s business.  Google reviewed and approved it within 24 hours and, voila!, my client’s business now shows under its correct and approved name.  Additionally, they also immediately showed up in Places and I was able to merely claim them using the traditional claiming process.

screen capture of adding a place to Google map maker

(click to see larger)

Now that Map Maker is back on, er, my map…I can see one more option in my steadily increasing list of local SEO tools.

By the way, in our Master SEO Class we do an in-depth module on local search.  The class is in a workshop format and is taught across the United States, as well as Europe, Asia, and Australia.  For SEO class dates, please check our schedule.  And if you are looking for specific local SEO information, I highly recommend Linda and the community at http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com.

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Filed Under: Local Search, Misc, SEO Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Google Webmaster Tools: Checking out Blocked URLs Warning

January 25, 2013 By Leave a Comment

This Search Engine Optimization Utility can Sometimes be Read Incorrectly

Intended audience for this post: Beginning users of Google Webmaster Tools

Main Takeaways:

  • Google Webmaster Tools can sometimes give warnings that can be ignored
  • You sometimes have to be patient and do a little digging to figure out whether a warning is really valid

Webmaster tools is the versatile tool in your kitI think anyone who follows this blog much will realize how valuable Google Webmaster Tools is in the world of search marketing.  It’s a veritable Swiss Army Knife of useful tools and information.  Any professional SEO, and many webmasters wearing SEO hats from time to time, will visit Webmaster Tools regularly to assess the health of their site by looking at the number of pages Google is crawling, whether Google is reporting any problems, inventorying links, checking search interactions, and so much more.

Additionally, a quick check of Webmaster Tools from time to time can reveal some serious trouble spots before they cause major damage.  I remember once instance where I made a change to a robots.txt file to block Chinese search engine Baidu from needlessly hammering our customer’s site.  I put a line in the wrong order through carelessness and inadvertently blocked Googlebot from the entire site.  Fortunately my able assistant Eliathah did a health check on the set the next day by checking Webmaster Tools and was alerted to the problem.  In fact, when Googlebot is blocked from a site, Google considers it such an unusual event they put a warning message top and center on your GWT dashboard.

Google gives out other warnings and error messages on the primary dashboard of Webmaster Tools, and it makes sense to pay attention to all of them.  But that doesn’t mean all of them require a panic-mode reaction and response.

Here’s a recent example.  We had a client with a new website and one of our novice techs was disconcerted to log into Webmaster Tools and see a notice for a whole bunch of warnings, as illustrated in the next screenshot. In fact, this shows 7 times more warnings than there are pages in this brand new site. So here’s how I’d recommend following up on warnings, using this particular warning as an example.

 

screenshot of webmaster tools warning

First click on the warning text, which will take you to a page that shows you what Google calls “Examples” of the types of warning that they are reporting. Note the description. This one says that the URLs have been blocked by your robots.txt (see screenshot).

 

Webmaster tools screenshot

Also note especially the date in the “Detected” column. This will give you some context. What was going on around that date? In this case, is it safe to assume that the site was still in preview? Could it have been that the robots.txt was blocking these URL’s because the site hadn’t been published yet?

Think through anything that was going on that might have generated that warning, and then ask yourself if that situation is the same now.

So let’s say that you think this particular warning is no longer valid. There’s a way to test that, especially if the warning has to do with possible blocking going on by your robots.txt. As this next screenshot shows, click on “Health” and then “Blocked URL’s.” It will tell you how many URLs are being blocked in the table at the top. More importantly it will allow you to test a particular URL and see if it’s currently being blocked.

Another webmaster tools screenshot

 

In the next screen shot I’ve illustrated how to use the “Test URL” function in the “Blocked URLs” section of GWT. First I selected one of the URLs that Google reported I’ve done is selected one of the URLs Google displayed (seen my second screenshot above) and I’ve pasted it into the URLs field (1). Now I can click on the “Test” button (2) and I will see the results of my test below it (3). In this case it indicates that the URL is “Allowed,” which means that we’re okay to ignore these warnings.

Last screenshot of Google Webmaster tools

The bottom line on this is to remember that Google warnings were valid at the time they were detected, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you still have an issue. Take a bit of time to check it out, and you’ll save time in the long run by avoiding correcting problems that are no longer problems.  (Thanks to Horizon Web Marketing for this demonstration example and screenshots.)

Google Webmaster Tools are just one of the many utilities that we cover in our Search Engine Workshops SEO Master class.  To see our schedule of upcoming classes, click here.

 

 

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Filed Under: Google Webmaster Tools, Misc Tagged With: ,

Google Panda, SEO and Content Creation – Avoiding the Tsunami

January 3, 2013 By Leave a Comment

photo of tsunami to illustrate content creation seo overloadGoogle Panda has insured that content creation and SEO have become inseparable, but this post is not going to encourage you to create simply more content.  Instead it is designed to help you do more with content you are already creating.

In Brief

Who this article is for

SEO professionals, marketers, content writers, and business people who hire them

Main takeaways

  • Content creation is unavoidable
  • Merely creating content won’t necessarily help you in the long run
  • Think more in terms of engaging the interest of the visitor than just spinning content

The Problem with Content

Yes, if you’re an SEO professional you will have to do that.  Google’s Panda initiative (or really initiatives, since the Panda filter has gone through repeated updates, refinements, revisions, and corrections) is specifically designed to insure that pages that are heavy on “quality” content rise to the top of search results.  In principle this is terrific.  After all, none of us enjoys arriving at a “made for Adsense website” when we’re looking for an important fact or opinion.

Excerpt:  I feel like I spend the majority of my work day wading through this ocean of digital debris.  I don’t need more content.  I need a better way to understand the content that’s already out there.

photo of woman in water to illustrate drowning in informationBut there is an unintended consequence to rewarding the creation of content.  As any parent, dog trainer, or public policy official can attest, whatever you reward you will get more of.  The problem with rewarding the creation of content is personal to me: I am awash in content.  I am overwhelmed, inundated, choking for air.  I feel like I spend the majority of my work day wading through this ocean of digital debris.  I don’t need more content.  I need a better way to understand the content that’s already out there.  I need a way to find the content that really matters to me.  As alpha-numeric characters are disgorged from the mouths of websites the world over I feel a sense of panic.  Every billion new words that are blogged, tweeted, posted, shared, articled, archived, optimized, or otherwise placed into my universe are another billion that will obscure the several hundred I may need today.  Or even this week.

Excerpt: I’m going to urge you to create your content in such a way that people will take the time to actually read it.

Don’t Think Content, Think “Engagement”

And as an SEO trainer, I have no choice but to promote the creation of further content, because after all…what Google rewards is what we teach you to provide.  At the same time, I don’t want to be complicit in this flood of information.  Instead I’m going to urge you to create your content in such a way that people will take the time to actually read it.  There’s an unseen benefit to this beyond merely having more words on your site for Google to paw through and ponder.  Panda is designed not merely to reward more content, not merely to reward quality content, but to reward engagement.   Google doesn’t just look at the number of words in your post and say “may the wordiest page win.”  They also look at things like the time your visitor spends on your page and your site, whether there’s a high adjusted bounce rate, social shares for the page and other measurements to answer the basic question: “did people like your page once they saw it?”

Key Thought

Google doesn’t just reward “content,” they reward “engagement.  Key elements of engagement are:

  • Time spent on page
  • Time spent on site
  • Adjusted bounce rate

 

screen capture of blog article

My Eyes Glazeth Over

Take for example the blog post reproduced on the right.  Yes, it’s too small to read.  I’ve left it small because reading it is not the point.  What’s your visceral reaction once you see it?  Maybe you’re the crazy type of person who says, “oh goody, lots of small print and words to read without any annoying fluff like illustrations and bullet points.”  However, be aware that such a reaction distinguishes you from the vast majority of humans in this ADHD age who see it and say, simply, “yuk!” before hitting the back button.

Take for example the blog post reproduced on the right.  What’s your visceral reaction once you see it?

Instead, make sure you format your content so that the typical reader is able to approach it without the intimidation of vast fields of densely populated text.  For example, note how at the top of this post I’ve included some quick takeaways and an overview.  Even if someone doesn’t have time for the whole article, they know whether they need to come back.  I don’t know why I don’t see this more often (in fact I could count on the fingers of one hand the times I do see it).  I for one don’t have the time to read an article unless I know up front whether it will be of use to me.  And when I get to the end – if I get to the end – if I feel like I’ve wasted my time I often go away with a bad taste in my mouth for that author or site.

The information in the post on the right might be terrific, but it also needs to draw the reader in.  Here are some of the things that work:

Ideas for Breaking Up Your Content

A pleasing image, especially of a human face (yes, happy, smiling people are a bit trite, but our brains are hardwired to be attracted to them)

  • Excerpts
  • Bullet points
  • Summaries
  • Headings
  • Blockquotes
  • Boldface
  • A big enough font
  • A captivating headline
I’m sure you can think of more of your own.  So get to work on your content.  And if you think that my post violates my own rules (and if you’ve got far enough to read this line), please let me know in the comments.  Feedback is important if we’re ever going to hit that suite spot between information and overload.

 

 

 

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Filed Under: Article Marketing, Content Marketing, Events, Rant Tagged With: , , , , ,

SEO Workshops at the Search Engine Academy Given Complete Overhaul for 2013 #SEO News

December 31, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Our Search Engine Academy SEO workshops are going to be reflecting as much change next year as the world of search did this year.

2012 is almost wrapped up and put away, and once again it’s been a year of dramatic change in the world of search. Google’s “Penguin” algorithm update has joined their “Panda” filter. These two earthshaking Google initiatives have received so much attention that even people who are not search specialists have heard about them (which is unusual in search engine optimization).

But Penguin and Panda were only part of the story.  With the growing emphasis on social signals, personalization of search,  mobile search and countless other shifts in the Internet landscape, at the Search Engine Academy we became convinced that our materials needed a thorough review and update.

During the period September – November the Search Engine Academy educational committee members set aside workshops and consulting work to going through every day of our 5-day Advanced SEO workshop – almost 1000 PowerPoint slides – so that our students can be confident that the information they’re receiving at the Search Engine Academy is both the latest in SEO, and also that every piece of material we teach is peer reviewed.

Due to this extensive overhaul and review, new material on SEO processes and strategies for link building, content writing and incorporating microdata has been added to the classes. In addition, we still offer keyword research, social media, blogging, pay per click SEO and more.

If you’ve been contemplating attending one of our workshops, or if you’ve gone in the past and are wondering if a review is in order, now is a perfect time to sign up. You’ll be at the forefront of industry knowledge, and we’re eager to give you the best advice as to how to apply it.

Check out our schedule of classes today and see which workshop works for you http://www.searchengineacademy.com/dates

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Filed Under: Insights for Search, Local Search, News, Press Releases, SEO, Workshops Tagged With: ,

SEO Content Writing: Blogging Priorities 1 and 2

August 21, 2012 By 3 Comments

SEO Content creation: it ain’t literature, that’s for sure.

(By the way, when I use the acronym “SEO” with content, you should probably read it like this: “Search Engine Optimized Content.”)

During our SEO workshops one of the reliable moments of moaning and groaning comes when I mention blogging.  I think people combine the collective disgust at the culture of narcissism (hey everyone, listen to me) with post-traumatic flashbacks to high school and college, and those memories of realizing that the due date for that long put-off 2,000 word essay was now only one sleepless, caffeinated, exhausting night away.

First let’s make sure we do a reality check.  Using a blog for SEO content writing is certainly not the same as writing literature.  My 16-year-old son, Nick, is a brilliant writer.   His heroes are Kerouak, Kafka, Steinbeck, Milton and the like.  But when it comes to blogging, his creative juices suddenly dry up.  I’ve tried to interest him in blogging for my business, and his eyes glaze over.  To him, blogging is simply not “writing.”

In order to succeed in the world of blogging, you first need to deal with it as a world separate and apart from traditional writing.  One of the reasons for this is the ephemeral nature of the medium.  I think deep down Milton knew he was writing for future generations.  A blog, like journalism, is rooted in the here and now.  In fact, from a business perspective, that’s the whole point.  The immediacy of blogs is the very thing that makes them desirable.

We’ve documented our blog posts being indexed and showing up in search results, sometimes for pretty highly trafficked terms, in as short as 5 minutes.  I kid you not.   That tells us that Google has a high sense of urgency about getting blog results in front of searchers.  Therefore…

Blog Writing Priority 1: Urgency is Job 1

I’m not talking about the sense of urgency you need to have about writing for the blog (although that is pretty important as well).  I’m referring to the nature of what you write about.  The way Google treats blogs, namely as Internet content that must be indexed quickly, helps inform our blog writing.  If you’re writing about some great feature of your best selling widget, and it’s a feature that’s been around for a number of years, you’ve chosen the wrong subject.

What if you have nothing urgent to write about?  Create something.  If your site is ecommerce, it could be a price reduction or new inventory.  If your site is informational, it could be the latest developments, however minor, in the area that your blog covers.  If it’s a company information site, it could be developments at your company.

Plan your marketing with this urgency in view, and with the idea that you will be integrating marketing with your blog content creation.

Leave Perfectionism for Your Novel

During a recent training one of my students asked me for a list of the stupid things that bloggers do to defeat their blog.  I fished around for a moment, and it wasn’t until later that I thought of one of the key mistakes: being a perfectionist.  Many blog authors are hindered by a desire to find the perfect subject, the perfect voice, the perfect timing, and the perfect prose.  In this case the perfect becomes the enemy of the good: they are so busy thinking about perfect that they end up frozen.  Creating a good blog post never happens.

I believe that often the perfectionism has another component as well: as long as we insist on doing things exactly write, it gives us an unassailable excuse to do nothing.

“Whew!”  This unconscious mindset exclaims, “Not enough time to write a ‘proper’ blog post (as the English might say), better put it off a bit longer.  Certainly I’ll have enough time to do it ‘right’ next week.”

Urgency requires a “good enough” approach to this whole exercise.

After all, this week’s blog post will be lining digital birdcages next week.  (And if you don’t understand that analogy, read a newspaper once in a while, will ya’?).

 

 

… more insightful thoughts should be imagined here …

At the Search Engine Academy, teaching you how to make your business blog useful to your website is part of what we do.  Check out our SEO Course Catalog for more information on our workshops and how you can attend.

 

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Filed Under: SEO, SEO Blogging Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Managing Multiple Google Analytics Properties and Accounts

August 10, 2012 By 3 Comments

Google Analytics data is wonderful; Google Analytics account management is maddening.

(If reading is not your thing, I’ll be covering these topics in an upcoming webinar (unless you’re reading this after August 22, 2012, in which case a recording of the Webinar should be posted on the site or on the SEO how-to pages at the Rocky Mountain Search Engine Academy website.)

If you’re a professional SEO or someone in charge of a lot of different website domains for a large company, you’ve probably become addicted to the vast amounts of free tracking data that Google Analytics provides.  But you may also have found it hard to keep track of multiple accounts in GA.

Why Does Google Analytics Account Management Have to be so Dang Confusing?

Man pulling out his hair in frustration about Google Analytics and SEOFirst there’s the terminology.  You have a Google account, one or more Google Analytics accounts, properties, profiles, users, user roles, and all sorts of other stuff.  Many of these can exist in a many-to-one or a many-to-many relationship.  For example you can have up to 25 Google Analytics accounts tied to one Google account (many to one).  You can also be an admin on many different Google Analytics accounts, and any given Analytics account can have multiple admins (many to many)

Then there’s the problem of separation.  If you’re not paying attention you might set up a Google Analytics account for a client tied to your own Google account.  Then if the client ever wants to take their GA account and part company with you, you find that you can’t give access to them and you can’t give them the data either.  Talk about a bitter split.  It becomes a “who gets custody of the Google Analytics Data” battle.

But there is a better way that can give you two solid advantages:

  • Centralized management for me (I don’t want to have different logins for different clients)
  • Independence (if my client ever leaves the relationship I want to be able to give them their data and their account without compromising the privacy of any of my other clients)

Google’s Organizational Structure

If you look at the documentation for getting started with Google Analytics, they say that the Analytics “Account” is “the topmost level of organization.”  That’s accurate if you are looking at this solely from “within the framework of Analytics.”  But from a business perspective, that’s not really the “topmost level.”  The topmost level really is the Google Account.  This is the account that you originally create when you sell your soul to Google, which of course we all have done.  This is not the same as a Gmail account, because you don’t need a Gmail address to have a Google Account.

With this added super account included (I call it the “Mother of all Google Accounts” or simply the “Mother G Account” for short), the Analytics structure looks like this:

Google Analytics organization structure diagram

When I was starting out with Analytics, I did the natural thing when setting up new GA accounts for my SEO clients, namely, I created their GA account while logged in to my own Mother G account.  That’s fine, up until you hit 25 accounts, whereupon Google tells you that you’ve maxed out.   When it happened to me, I didn’t see a clear path forward.  So I created another Mother G account and started the process all over.  Very tedious.

Now that we understand better these limitations, instead of creating multiple Analytics accounts within one Mother G Account, I take the trouble to create a separate Mother G Account for each Analytics account I want to set up.  The way I set it up is like this:

The Step by Step

Let’s say I have a client named Big Sleep Rental Houses (you’ll only understand the name if you’re a Humphrey Bogart fan, heck, maybe you won’t understand it even then), who has the domain name bigsleeprentals.com. Here’s my step by step on getting them set up in GA:

  1. I create an email address called analytics@bigsleeprentals.com.  It doesn’t matter what you call it, as long as you can take the next step, which is…
  2. I put a forwarder in place on this email address so any notifications come to my usual email in-box
  3. I create a Google account (that’s a Mother G Account, not an Analytics account) using this email address.  I don’t bother to create a Gmail address for this.  It’s not necessary.
  4. Next I log in to that Google account and create the Google Analytics account.  I set up the Analytics account with the client domain, install the UA code, etc.
  5. Now I go to Admin > Users (tab) > New User and add my usual email address (not the one I just created for the client) with this account as an Administrator.

I can do this any number of times without coming up against a limitation on number of administrators.  As far as I can tell there is no limit on the number of Analytics accounts that a person can be an administrator of.

Once I log into Google Analytics with my usual email address I will see in one location all the accounts where I’m an administrator.  One login, one management interface.

What Happens When the Love Dies?

Let’s say a client wants to fire me or I want to fire a client.  Here’s what I do:

  • I remove myself as a user on the Analytics account
  • I send the login information for the Google Mother G Account I created for this client to the client
  • I’m done.

I hope this helps you to regain your Analytics sanity.  Now if we can only figure out what Google did with all our souls, maybe order in the universe will be restored.

(Google Analytics is just one of the tools that we cover in depth at our Search Engine Academy workshops.  Check out our schedule for dates and times that are of interest to you.)

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Filed Under: Google Analytics, SEO Tagged With: , , , , ,

Mobile Search Optimization is Local Search Optimization in a New Set of Clothes

July 6, 2012 By 3 Comments

Have you noticed?  Mobile Search Optimization is becoming increasingly critical in the online world.  In case any of you have been wondering about the impact and importance of Mobile Search, and what to do about it, this article should bring you to some very clear conclusions on the matter. I will also give you some general information on the best way to go about optimizing your website for Mobile Search.  How and when you implement that information is up to you, but I suggest you don’t wait very long.

Everyone agrees that modern mobile devices have changed the way we interact, keep track, stay organized, play games etc. But the sea change toward mobile leaves most of my business clients with many unanswered questions, such as

  • What has the impact of mobile devices been on the way we browse the internet?
  • What are users looking for when they type in a search query on their smartphone in contrast to their computer at home?
  • And most importantly for you, how can companies, large and small, take advantage of mobile search optimization?

The first thing you should know about mobile search is that the impact it has made in all these areas has been enormous, and it’s still growing rapidly. By the year 2014 it is estimated that smartphones will be the most popular tool for accessing the internet, and search will obviously be a high percentage of the time spent on those mobile devices.

The Facts about Mobile Search

Here’s another interesting statistic. According to Google, 95% of all smartphone users have searched for local information, and local searches currently account for about 40% of all mobile searches. This is something that any business, especially small businesses who deal mostly locally, should take notice of.

What’s even more interesting is how these users are acting upon their searches. Roughly 61% of users have called a business after a search, 59% of these have visited a physical business location following a search, and 90% of these users acted within 24 hours.

The Increasing Importance of Long Tail Keywords

One of the key things to take note of is the differences in search queries from desktops to smartphone. Mobile search queries are typically longer and more descriptive with more keywords. That seems crazy to me, since I hate “thumbing” a bunch of stuff into my Droid Razr Maxx. But I’m old school…I learned to type on an IBM Selectric (yikes, talk about dating myself), and I will never be comfortable for long without my keyboard.

The difference is that for most mobile users, these people know what they want, they’re out and about looking, and they’re ready to act. The website that’s coming up highest in those mobile search results, with that smooth simple and professional user interface, offering a clear call the action is going to win their business.

Are you convinced yet of the impact and importance of Mobile Search and the need for Mobile Search Optimization? You were before I wasted 10 minutes proving it to you, right? So what small steps can you take in 2012 to start getting more out of mobile search? Well here a few simple steps to start implementing right away.

  • First and foremost, build a mobile website. Over 55% of users say they don’t recommend businesses with poorly-designed mobile sites. Of those, 40% have switched to a competitor’s site after a bad experience. You want your site to operate as much like a phone app as possible.
  • Make sure you have a clear call to action. It is very important to have a “Call Now”, “Email” and “Find Us” buttons at the forefront of your site. Remember, these people are ready to take action and these buttons will encourage them to contact you or show them your physical location.
  • Mobile use steadily grows throughout the day into the evening, so if you are open late, include that info on your site.
  • Mobile Search Queries are generally longer and more descriptive, so while the actual results are almost identical to desktop results, users are searching differently. Optimize your site for this by adding “long-tail” keyphrases to your title tags and more detailed descriptions with more keywords.
  • Not only are a high percentage of mobile searches local, but local results are more likely to show regardless of whether or not the user actually included a location in the search. (Here’s a good reference for local search optimization, by the way.)
  • The SERP’s are almost exactly the same from mobile to desktop, so high rankings for your desktop website should translate into high rankings for your mobile site. But the window of opportunity is smaller. It takes more to get “above the fold” on a mobile screen than your desktop or laptop, for obvious reasons.

Mobile Search Takeaway

To succeed at Mobile Search make sure your website is optimized for a mobile device, your local search optimization is first rate, and your organic SEO includes plenty of long-tail, specific keyword phrases.

For hands-on training that includes local and mobile search optimization, check out one of our 5-day SEO Workshops.

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Filed Under: Local Search, Mobile Marketing, SEO Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Web Analysis and That Popular “Not Provided” Keyword – One Partial Workaround

June 29, 2012 By 4 Comments

Sometimes I feel like I’m having a stroke.

OK, so Website analysis perhaps doesn’t deserve that kind of melodrama.  After all, I can’t really know what it feels like to have a stroke, since I have never had one (wait…I don’t think I’ve had one…).   What pushes me into the realm of hyperbole is my experience with Google Analytics (GA) and my cursory knowledge of one of the early symptoms of stroke: a blind spot in your vision.

It’s probably no surprise to any of you who have taken a Search Engine Academy SEO workshop recently or have been regularly following the progress of your website story on that channel known as GA that one choice at least in the GA constellation of features is becoming increasingly fractured and hard to see with clarity, namely visits prompted by specific search queries.  For example, when you log into Google Analytics one of the common, and tantalizing, navigational destinations is traffic that originates with specific keyword searches on Google, as you can see in the following screen shot:

Google Analytics screenshot 1

(Click on the image to see it full size)

Promise and Disappointment

To someone who has just a cursory acquaintance with Google web analysis and its many mysteries, to first see this is an exciting moment.  How wonderful to actually know what keywords people are using.  And until fairly recently, at least in terms of geologic time, this indeed was a fair measure of the success of your website in Google search results.  In fact, checking on traffic from keyword searches had the promise of being the best method of determining the success of SEO, since the worth of checking rankings has been called into question because of the increasing impact of personalization of search.

So it sounds like a great idea: instead of checking where we place in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), we track the effectiveness of our SEO efforts by monitoring the amount of traffic we get as a result of keywords used in organic search.  But there’s a flaw in this model as well. That flaw was blown into large proportion earlier this year when Google announced its expansion of secure search.  The net effect of this is that the keyword phrases visitors use to find your site are not passed along to Google Analytics if a user is logged into their Gmail or Plus account (which of course amounts to almost one and the same nowadays).

When this change came down the pipeline Google was quoted as saying this would affect at most about 5% of search results.  Well, of course no one believed that. And the skeptics were justified.  Here is a screen shot from that same GA account that I showed above, expanded a bit to show the keyword searches registered in Analytics:

screenshot of Google Analytics data

(click on the image to see it larger)

So, as we can see, the hidden “not provided” search terms are suddenly a large enough chunk of our analytics report that our data is becoming useless, at least for this metric.

So, how do we compensate?

Landing Page Visits to the Rescue

Now that we’ve been effectively deprived of consistent and clean SERP ranking data (due to personalization of search) and hit  with a massive “not provided” blindspot in our Google Analytics data (due to personalization of search), what sort of website analysis can we do to measure the effectiveness of our SEO efforts?  There is no magical answer, but there is a pretty good workaround, depending on how you handle the creation of your website pages.  That answer is to track the performance of landing pages.

Typically, if we are building landing pages to target specific search engine terms, and if the focus of those landing pages is pretty tight, and if our link building efforts are also focused on those keyword-specific landing pages (yes, I know, lots of “if’s”), then the traffic that those SEO engineered pages receive is a very good indication of how well or poorly our SEO efforts are holding up.

To track the performance of your landing pages using Google Analytics, you will be drilling down into the content section of your GA account (see the screen shot below):

screen shot of landing pages data in Google Analytics

(click on the image to see it larger)

Yes, this is a class “b” solution to the blind spot in your SEO efforts, but just like a stroke victim, we need to do the best with what we have.  And hope for a cure, of course.

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Filed Under: Google Analytics, SEO Tagged With: , , , , , ,

How to SEO Your Business Blog…Continued

June 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

“How to SEO Your Business Blog” was the topic of our Webinar Wednesday just about a month ago (May 9, 2012 to be exact).  Thomas Petty and Nancy Wigal of the Search Engine Academy interviewed Tom Williams, Founder of Innogage, an SEO-centric, collaborative blogging platform.  That webinar was a great discussion of ideas around the value of a business blog, generating blog content, the power of cross-linking, some of the challenges teams face when they work on a shared blog, and how Innoblogs, a powerful Innogage tool, could help in that type of environment.

Illustration representing blogging conceptsOur upcoming Webinar Wednesday builds on that start and will examine some down-and-dirty specifics of what you need to do to get the most SEO juice out of your own blog.  Innoblogs, which we use heavily at the Search Engine Academy, is terrific for automating the process and providing consistent quality control, particularly for teams.  However you may be in a small business situation where you’re maintaining a blog largely on your own, and don’t have access to high-powered tools such as Innoblogs.  In that case this webinar will be perfect for you, because it will focus on what you need to do even if you are not using an automated tool to ease the process.

Basic Blogging SEO

Some of the factors that are crucial in this process (and which we’ll cover in greater detail in the webinar), are

  • Taking your audience into account before you write your blog post
  • Making sure you are keyword aware both in determining the subjects you write about, as well as how you write about those subjects
  • Writing according to your particular area of expertise, and what to do if you are NOT the expert on the topic
  • Attention to details like title tag, Meta description tag, headlines, keyword prominence, internal and external linking, and more
Join SEO Master Instructor Ross Barefoot for a quick, action-oriented – and Free – webinar that will help you get the most out of your business blog.  Sign up today.  The Webinar will be held live this coming Wednesday, June 13th at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time, 10:30 a.m. Pacific Time.  And if you’re reading this post after the fact, the recorded version of the webinar should be available from our Webinar Wednesday page.
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Filed Under: SEO, SEO Blogging, WordPress Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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