Archive for the ‘seo’ Category

Online Archive, Not Just a Search Rank Checker

Friday, January 9th, 2009

Ok, after my previous post and looking at things a bit more. I’ve decided to make the search rank checking tool even more of a knowledge base to help track proceedings over time.

The aim now is to include archiving of:

  • Rankings in search results
  • Number of pages indexed in the different search engines
  • Google Page Rank
  • Back link numbers from Google and Yahoo!

Might also look at lower quality metrics such as alexa ranking.

Is there anything you’d recommend archiving?

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Posted in analytics, search, seo, Web | 3 Comments »

Second Page Search Result Traffic Tracking in Google Analytics

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008

Yesterday I came across this great post: Tracking Referrals from Second Page of Google in Google Analytics

Setup is basic:

  • Add a filter to identify if the referal contains page number information
    Setup details
    Filter Type: Custom Filter >Advanced
    Field A –> Extract A: Referral > (?|&)(start)=([^&]*)
    Output To-> Constructor: User Defined > $A3
    Field A Required: Yes
    Field B Required: No
    Override Output Field: Yes
    Case Sensitive: No
  • Create an advanced segment that selects the user defined information set by the filter above
    Dimension > Visitor > User Defined > Starts with > 10

From an SEO point of view, this information can be used to identify potential keywords that need a little boost to get to the first page of results and if acted on correctly could result in significant increases in traffic.

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Posted in analytics, search, seo, Web | 1 Comment »

Google Service Updates – Reviewed

Monday, December 1st, 2008

Google, Inc.Image via WikipediaA lot has happened with a number of Google services over last few weeks, i’ve summarised them below:

Google SearchWiki

To my frustration, Google launched SearchWiki. Allowing Google users to re-rank and comment on  search results. The frustration comes with automatically opting in everyone that is logged in when searching, with no ability to turn off the extra visual aspects now cluttering up the search results.

Google Analytics Update

Some great new Analytics features rolled out in this update. Personally I particularily like the advanced segmentation, allowing more detailed reports on specific areas of the site, specific referers and more. Love that! One thing that seems a bit buggy is the account screen when you just log in. I’ve got access to multiple accounts, navigating to additional account pages doesn’t seem work.

Google AdWords Update

A couple of interesting updates for AdWords.

  • Quality score improvements, where the quality score is calculated at time of the search. This for me have helped the accounts managed to get higher placement, higher click through rates and higher number of clicks. All this without increasing cost per clicks.
  • A new search based keyword tool was launched. This tool seems pretty sweet! and can help to identify additional keywords that is relevant to your sites content also allows running some competitor analysis.
  • Display ad builder allows you to create image ads online and run on the content network.

Ok, the floors all yours, go on…  leave a comment or two on your experience on these new changes.

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Posted in analytics, search, seo | No Comments »

NZ SEO – The Good

Thursday, September 18th, 2008

Following my previous post about my plan for NZ SEO – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

This post has been the most difficult for me. Having to start over and over again, which is one of the reasons why this has taken so long to do.

“Good SEO” is up for interpretation. Over the last few years content management systems have become more search engine friendly and means it’s possible to have a well “on page” optimised site quickly and easily. What we usually see is a select handful of sites in their own niche dominate groups of searches for their niche.

On top of all that I consider results/performance as being a major factor in determining the success of a sites SEO. From a percentage of sales referred from organic search engine traffic, or the number of visitors received from organic search results.

Anyway as Google places more emphasis on local websites when searching in NZ, here’s something that’s of interest:

Trademe

As NZ’s most popular site it was hard to overlook Trademe.  Now I am not using trademe as the perfect example, because to be honest like most sites theres room for improvement. But one thing you come to notice about trademe is the reach that it has in search engines. Performing many searches in Google can bring trademe up in the serps. From a user point of view, trademe is used to buy new and used goods easily via an auction process. Many of the serp listings are for products that have been put up for auction, a big problem as most of these product results are expired/dated listings.

In the upcoming bad and ugly posts, it’s hopefully going to be a bit easier to nail out.

Feel free to spin your view on any Good examples of SEO in New Zealand.

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Posted in Ramblings, seo | No Comments »

Google Latest Site Links

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

Looks like google is playing with the idea of using latest posts as sitelinks
new google site links

seo blog

nzherald

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Posted in search, seo | 6 Comments »

NZ SEO – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

Following the comments from my post yesterday. I have been thinking about how to structure my shakeup of SEO in New Zealand. I want to be sure I don’t step on anyones toes, nor do I want to post some basic boring post that I wouldn’t want to read myself.

Here’s the plan.

Over the next few days i’m going to do an individual post for Good SEO, Bad SEO and Ugly SEO in NZ.

  • Good SEO
    Examples of plain run of the mill whitehat SEO that gets good results and respect from search engines.
  • Bad SEO
    Examples of sites with no thought about SEO whatsoever.
  • Ugly SEO
    Examples of implementation of spammy blackhat optimisation.

The purpose of these posts will be to enlighten readers of the state of SEO in New Zealand. I hope that no one takes offense.

I look forward to reading the comments.

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Posted in Ramblings, seo | 6 Comments »

Yahoo Searchscan and Your Business

Monday, June 30th, 2008

Yahoo has teamed up with McAfee setup searchscan and displays information within the search results.

Now from a user point of view this is a good thing, it adds an extra safety net to their everyday internet usage. Making the end user aware of any issues regarding a particular search result.

When it comes business, its another precaution step that you take for your everyday workings. You need to make sure that you don’t get flagged within these results, especially when the reason is to do with your business and the services offered. (see image below)

Yahoo Seo Search

If you’re wanting to check your own website you can go to McAfee Siteadvisor and perform an analysis report like this one for webhelp.co.nz

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Posted in business, search, seo | 5 Comments »

Refferal Spam

Friday, April 4th, 2008

Refferal Spam

I was doing some competitor research the other day and while I was searching the competitors domain in Google I found many serps that included pages from multiple website stats packages.

Clicking through it was obvious that these sites were victim of referrer spam. With links to porn and gambling sites. Sites like these exploit the stats package to generate backlinks to their site for free and without the site owner knowing about it.

If you are running some server stats package be sure to restrict access to the folder containing these stats. It doesn’t look good if your domain is associated with these bad neighbourhoods

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Posted in search, seo, Web | No Comments »

Troubles of an Internet Marketer

Wednesday, February 20th, 2008

As an internet marketer, we all know the internet doesn’t stop, there is always something for us to do. Like keeping up with developments, setting up campaigns, tracking roi’s, traffic & more. All this sort of stuff feeds our determination to keep moving forward. This leads getting better results and as a result feel successful in the work that we have taken part in.

However on the flip side is the effect this addiction has on family. The balance between work and family can be one of the most difficult things to overcome.

Here’s a few tips to help through the tough times of trying to balance after hours family and work time:

  1. Schedule family time
    Sometimes we get cought up in what we are doing and forget about spending some much needed time with our families. Schedule movie nights, times to go for a walk or may be even dinner somewhere nice 🙂
  2. Communicate
    Communicate with your partner to prepare her for some specific project that you’re working on and the amount of after hours time that this will take.
  3. Sympathise
    Stand back and think about how your partner might be feeling.
  4. Most importantly create time to spend with your family
    Even if it’s half an hour when you get home from the office, or an hour round dinner time. This can make the difference.

It can be hard to keep up with everything but be sure you think of your loved ones and spend some quality time together.

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Posted in seo, Web | No Comments »

5 Things I Would Like To See In Google Analytics

Monday, February 4th, 2008

I use Google Analytics quite a bit over a number of sites. But there’s some things I would like to see:

  1. Weekly, monthly and yearly trends rather than the current daily trends.
  2. Site performance stats such as page load times and server uptime
  3. Multi path funnels
  4. Search bot stats
  5. Real time stats

I’m sure theres more, feel free to add any others in the comments

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Posted in analytics, search, seo, Web | 4 Comments »

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