Former Google SERP for Labor Lawyer NYC

The new SERP looks very different (see screenshot below). The top three ads are still there, but the map is now on the upper right hand side, and ads 4-10 have been moved down the page; many of them are now below the fold, depending on your screen.  The SERP leads with a few organic results from the wider web, but then shows results from Google Places, offering more information than the 7-Pack including pictures, descriptions, and the option to go to the law firm’s website or Places page.

New SERP for Labor Lawyer NYC

Predicted Effects On Paid Search Advertising
The key change for paid search is the location of the map.  By moving the map to the top right, Google has effectively de-emphasized any ad that doesn’t appear on the top of the page (positions 1-3).  Moreover, the map stays visible as you scroll down the page, covering up ads in positions 4 – 10 as it moves.  This, combined with the fact that the ads start lower down to begin with, likely means that ads in positions 4 – 10 will suffer lower click through rates and, potentially, higher costs per click (CPCs) due to declining quality scores.  Most importantly,the reduced value of positions 4 – 10 will lead to higher competition for positions 1 – 3, so we expect a marked increase in the CPCs of those positions.  We’ll watch to see if these predictions come true.

Return of Session-Based Match?
One interesting thing we noticed with the new SERP is the renewed presence of session-based match in the ads displayed.  Session-based match means that Google will show you ads based on previous search queries.  We hadn’t seen this occur in months, but we saw it in a number of searches yesterday and today.  Not only that, but, at least in one case, the ads shown were for queries done days ago.  We’ll keep our eye on this development, too.

Start off with a clean slate

Don’t be tempted to create your mobile campaigns as you would your regular, PC based campaigns.  Best practices in PC search campaigns may not hold water in mobile. So that means no copying your existing campaign, targeting to mobile and calling it a day. And don’t think you can just let mobile piggyback on a campaign that is targeting PC computers either.  Don’t do it! The same way you separate your search and display campaigns, so you must do with mobile! Kerri Smith from Range Online Media says to take it a step further and really speak to your mobile audience. Call to actions like “Call Now” and “…from your SmartPhone” suggest to users that your ad is relevant and made specifically for mobile search. Take the time to create and test new keyword lists. While doing this, remember that…

Less is more

Benny Blum from esearchvision shared some findings on his experimentation with mobile ads.  Contrary to what we usually see in PC SEM campaigns, shorter phrases are the way to go in mobile.  Mobile long tail keyword searches are virtually non-existent, and conversion rates actually go down as the query gets longer. If there are generic, short keywords that don’t work well in your PC search campaigns, mobile may be the place to test them out again.

Be mobile ready…and be mobile ready now

Jesse Haines from Google stressed the importance of being “mobile ready” with your website. With the help of some screen shots, she illustrated how many prominent brands didn’t have their websites optimized for mobile search…and also showed some that did, along with their telltale revenues that validate their efforts.  With lower CPCs and less competition than traditional search, now is the time to get on the mobile search bandwagon, before all your competitors wise up and do it before you and leave you weeping in the dust.

On August 24th, Bing released the statement “This is a great milestone for Bing and Yahoo! and our customers, and we are happy to report the transition has gone smoothly and we feel great about the progress our search alliance has been making over the summer.”

Bing Powered Organic Yahoo Search Results are LIVE as of August 24, 2010

When conducting a search on Yahoo and scroll to the bottom of the page you can actually see “powered by Bing”. The full transition began to take place a week ago and is fully LIVE and running. Senior Vice President of Yahoo, Shashi Seth states ” I am proud to announce that the transition of organic search between Yahoo! and Microsoft is complete.”

The Future of The Yahoo and Bing Migration

What we can expect in the upcoming future regarding the Yahoo and Bing migration? The migration of sponsored listings of course! Bing states “We continue to work hard on the migration to adCenter, and are optimistic about completing this phase later this fall. As we have said all along, our primary goal is to provide advertisers with a quality transition experience in 2010, while being mindful of the holiday season.”

Why Choosing Google Docs As a Communication Platform For Your Business Is a Smart Decision

•    It’s FREE – Using Google Docs is free. Unlike it’s competitors Microsoft Word, which to use their document services is indeed quite expensive, it comes with much for free and interactive features.

•    It’s Web Based - Google Docs has the benefit of web based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, form and data storage services. You are allowed to share this with multiple users and can even give these users designated access to view only and/or edict the document. it also automatically saves your document so you won’t lose information

•    Archive Your Documents No Matter What Browser You’re Using -  Google Docs works on all browsers such as IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome running on Windows Apple OS X and Linux

Google Docs And Its Helpful Features

•    Storage Amount for Users – Google Doc users can store 1,000 spreadsheets, 5,000 images and 5,000 documents/presentations.

•    Save Your Google Docs in Multiple Formats – users can save their document in a variation of formats such as Word, HTML, CVS, PDF, RTF, TXT, ODF and more!

•    Enables Users & Non Users To Collaborate on The Same Document in REAL Time - Multiple users can share, open, and edit documents at the SAME time. Another great feature is that in the case of spreadsheets, all users participating in the editing process will be notified by e-mail of any changes made to the document.

A brand new AdWords beta, perhaps?

It might be from your CMO or your contact that online shoe store you just signed, but whether you do in-house or agency paid search advertising, you’ve undoubtedly had this asked before (perhaps several times).

A couple of answers.

Without Paid Search, You Are Losing Clicks and Sales.

Yes, for brand terms, where you rank #1.

The AdWords agency team recently released notes on an experiment showing the value of paid search for those ranking competitively in natural search.

The experiment involved the clothing company Vineyard Vines, which feared it was paying for brand-related clicks it might have received anyway. They ultimately calculated they’d only replaced about 33% of their paid clicks with organic clicks, meaning the great majority of such clicks were completely lost by not running paid search campaigns.

And these brand clicks, they saw, were converting at over 5%.

The Secret Reason Goldman Sachs Loves Paid Search

Paid search advertising allows you to tightly control the content and prominence of your message, something not always possible when you’re relying solely on natural search.

Currently mired in a dramatically reported mortgage controversy, Goldman’s corporate site does not come up in position 1 naturally for “goldman sachs.” Nor does it appear in position 2, for that matter. Those positions are taken up by bad press.

Thankfully, they’ve read this post.

Sometimes a high-ranking site is as simple as not making the same mistakes as your competitors.  Here are some great tips for SEO marketing your website.

1. Showing Up Late

Being tardy to the party is never in fashion, and now, if your website is late to the game, you’ll be penalized. According to the Google Webmaster kit, page load times affect search rankings. It’s all about having the optimal experience for your sites user, and watching a spinning dial is not the best use of anyone’s time. Analytics will give you average page load time data, and Google recommends a few programs, like YSlow, that have tips for improving site performance.

2. No Lead-in

When mingling at a dinner party, you’ll probably encounter a few guests you haven’t met and there’s an awkward pause. A quick introduction (this is John, he works in online marketing, and went to college with Daisy) is appropriate and often necessary to break the ice. Similarly, the meta-data on your site should act as your calling card, it should be clear, concise, and tell people exactly who don’t already know you who you are and why they should click your link. Leave it blank, and they won’t really understand why you’re at the table. Over-clutter it with too much information, and they’ve already tuned out and into the person to their right.

3. Overdressing

Though the desire might be to add a lot of flashy elements to your wardrobe or website, you don’t always want to be in head-to-toe haute couture. Most sites can accomplish their website goals within an html framework which is, most importantly, readable by search engines, but often choose “fancier” directons that involve a lot of flash or javascript. If you’re industry calls for a visually charged user experience (such as design) use those elements as accessories and limit Flash or Javascript to within frames, not whole site.

4. Dull Conversation

Here’s something we can all understand – being stuck listening to a boring blabbermouth who rambles on and on about the same thing. You’re pretty sure he just keeps repeating the same catchphrase but you’ve already tuned him out, so you aren’t sure. Here’s where a lot of SEO companies go wrong as well. Repeating the key phrase every line, or using it in places that do not make sense, will ultimately damage your brand integrity and will not encourage positive linking.  A good strategist  will be able to write for the user, not Search Engines, and will find opportunities to optimize without sacrificing experience or credibility.

5. Talking With Your Mouth Full

This is pretty simple. Clean page code and html tags are essential for clarity. The search engines can’t figure out what you have to say in between the chewed bits of broccoli.

5. Forgetting to Follow Up

A thank you to the host, or an email to any new connections you’ve made, ensures you’re likely to see more invites in your future. Likewise, new content creation and off-site tactics are essential for successful SEO strategy. Search engines look for sites with continuously updating content, as well as repeat users. If someone has visited your site once, give them a reason to come back – through a regularly updating blog or promotional specials. Similarly, offsite articles and social media profiles can offer new ways for potential clients to discover, or rediscover, your brands.  No ongoing effort pretty much ensures that your dinner party evening was a one-time engagement.

Looking for more tips for SEO and how to get your site ranked? You can read our archived posts for ideas, or visit our case studies section of our website.

Lauren Salazar is a Social Media & SEO Strategist at Path Interactive, a NYC-based Search Engine & Social Media marketing firm.

If you allow your ads to show on search partner sites, it’s important to constantly monitor the traffic those sites generate.  This fact was underscored one day a few weeks ago when a Path Interactive client suffered an 800% traffic spike on one particular adgroup in a Google campaign, with most of the spike coming from one keyword, with no corresponding increase in conversions.

Google Decides It Isn’t Click Fraud

Because we hadn’t made any changes that would explain the spike, we immediately suspected click fraud, and duly notified Google’s click fraud team of our suspicions.  We have seen this sort of thing before on the other engines, and they never failed to immediately issue a refund.  Google turned out to be different.  It took Google’s click fraud team a little over a week to give us an official answer, but their immediate comments and follow-up questions made it pretty clear that they were not going to declare this spike to be fraudulent, and that they would not be refunding our client’s money. The team’s reasoning was that most of the traffic spike came from different computers, so it was legitimate traffic as far as they were concerned.

This disappointed us, because an 800% traffic spike doesn’t occur without some sort of malicious cause.  Google’s reporting tools were of no help in figuring out the cause of the spike, but, luckily, we use our own tracking software.  Doing a deep dive into our logs, we found that most of the traffic spike had come from one of Google’s search partners: Publisher’s Clearing House.

Maybe Not, But It’s Just As Bad

PCH Offers Incentives For People To Search On Its Site

It turns out that Publisher’s Clearing House (PCH) offers visitors to its site a chance to win prizes each time they conduct a search on the PCH site.  PCH’s results page pulls listings from all 4 major engines, but it makes the paid ads look very similar to the organic listings, going so far as to intersperse organic and paid on the results page.  PCH benefits from doing this because it receives a percentage of the ad’s cost when a searcher clicks on it, and Google benefits because they keep the remainder of that cost.

Advertisers, however, lose out.  The fact that PCH gives incentives for people to search on its site, and, in fact offers further incentives to people who conduct numerous searches, lowers the likelihood that the searcher actually cares about the results of the search.  That, combined with the fact that searchers probably don’t know whether they’re clicking on an ad or not, drastically reduces the value of traffic coming to an advertiser’s site.  Our client found this out the hard way: 800% traffic spike, no additional conversions.

Our Google Reps Don’t Have The Tools To Spot This

We took this information to our regular team at Google.  They stated that they were happy we had found the cause of the spike, because they don’t have access to the tools necessary to do so.  Most importantly, they immediately agreed to refund our client for all traffic coming from PCH.  While this is the outcome we were looking for, we remain disappointed in the way Google as a whole handled the situation.  We don’t think it could have been any more obvious that Google had sent our client bad traffic, and we shouldn’t have had to do the work to prove our point.  More importantly, we are dismayed that Google would be in business with a site whose main purpose seems to be to get searchers to click on ads.  We hope that this is a one-time mistake on Google’s part, and not the start of a trend.

We are even more disappointed with Publisher’s Clearing House.  If a company takes an advertiser’s money, it should offer some sort of value in exchange.  Unfortunately, PCH isn’t holding up its end of this bargain; people conducting searches only to win prizes are very unlikely to be worth an advertiser’s money, especially in competitive verticals with high clicks costs. We hope that PCH rectifies this by ceasing to offer incentives for people to search. At the very least, it should separate the ads from the organic listings. Either way, we hope that the major engines drop PCH as a search partner. Our clients just can’t afford to have their ads show on PCH’s site.

James Connell is Search Director at Path Interactive

What Does An Apple IPad Have to Do With Search Engines Optimization?

Your next question might be, “what does Apple IPad have to do with search engine optimization?”

Well, due to a frenzy amount of searches for this product and relating key terms, Apple IPad searchers have become victim to black hat seo techniques leading them to malicious sites.

Symantec’s Candid Wueest warns, “This is just the kind of opportunity fraudsters like to exploit by poisoning search terms. IPad-related spam and phishing attacks hitting consumers hard over the coming weeks.”

As the usual protocol to protect your personal computer from being tampered with, make sure you are using the latest security software and both operating system/browsers are up to date.

Jennifer Gayadin is a SEO Search Strategist for Path Interactive, a NYC Search Marketing Firm