SEO News

Agencies offer a full range of services

• According to the UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report, published in association with NetBooster, agencies are moving towards a fuller service offering to cater for the increased demand for a holistic approach to marketing and data.
• More than half (52%) of agencies said they offered ‘a full range of digital marketing services’, an increase from 45% in 2012 and 42% in 2011.
• This compares to just 12% of agencies specialising only in SEO and 7% focused exclusively on paid search. A further 10% of agencies carry out both SEO and paid search.
• Looking at the demand side (i.e. in-company responses), 91% of responding companies carry out SEO, 81% carry out analytics (81%), 78% practise paid search marketing and the same proportion (78%) do social media marketing.
• The survey, carried out in the spring of 2013, is based on a survey of more than 750 companies and agencies, making this the most authoritative report on the UK SEM marketplace.

What area is your main focus as an agency?

Australians struggle with cross-channel marketing

• The Australia Cross-Channel Marketing Survey Report, published by Econsultancy in partnership with Experian Marketing Services, found that only a quarter of businesses (26%) rated the online cross-channel customer experience delivered by their own or their clients’ organisations as ‘excellent’ (2%) or ‘good’ (24%).
• Nearly half of responding businesses (48%) said they take a short-term, campaign-centric approach without a view to longer term strategy.
• On average, only 51% of Australian marketing campaigns are run across channels with integrated messaging, creative and offer.
• The report report is based on a survey of nearly 200 Australian businesses to an online survey carried out during May and June 2013.

Companies understand the importance of the user experience

• User experience (UX) is not a new concept within digital marketing, but it is becoming a growing priority for business according to the Australia User Experience Report, published by Econsultancy in association with Macquarie Telecom.
• The survey shows that three-quarters (74%) of respondents say their companies are committed to delivering the best possible online user experience, including 17% who say they are seriously committed.
• More than half of survey respondents (52%) said that developing the user experience was ‘very important’ to their company, and only 1% said it was not important at all.
• In addition, 96% of respondents agree that user experience must lead all marketing and ecommerce efforts, including 54% who strongly agree.

How committed is your organisation / are your clients to delivering the best possible online user experience?

Companies realise they need to focus more on building relationships

• The second annual Cross-Channel Marketing Report, published by Econsultancy in association with Responsys, shows that companies recognise the importance of building value for and from their customers as part of an on-going relationship.
• Almost three-quarters of responding companies (70%) agree with the statement that “it is cheaper to retain than acquire a customer”, and just under half (49%) agree that “pound for pound, we achieve better ROI by investing in relationship over acquisition marketing”.
• However, just 30% of companies say they are “very committed” to relationship marketing, with 22% conducting no relationship marketing at all.
• The research is based on a 2013 survey of nearly 900 companies and agencies.

Digital captures a significant share of Asian marketing dollars

• Two in five (42%) companies surveyed in the State of Digital in Asia Report plan to increase their overall marketing investment over the next 12 months (down from 49% in 2012), while two-thirds (66%) report increases for their digital budgets this year.
• For comparison, just under a fifth (19%) of responding companies plan to increase their traditional (offline) budgets.
• Compared to last year, the proportion of client-side marketers saying their organisations will increase their digital budgets by more than 50% has tripled (from 4% in 2012 to 13% this year).
• The report, published in association with Campaign Asia-Pacific, is based on a survey of almost 400 company and agency marketers carried out in June and July 2013.

Facebook remains king of social ads

• There are a huge number of social networks vying for marketers’ attention, yet Facebook remains the most attractive according to the Econsultancy/Adobe Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing.
• Facebook newsfeed ads proved to be the most popular channel among business respondents (66%), followed by Facebook marketplace ads (45%) and Promoted Tweets (40%).
• The agency perspective is even more favourable, with the majority (84%) of respondents saying that newsfeed ads are most popular among their clients.
• The report, entitled Optimising Paid Media, is based on a survey of more than 600 Econsultancy and Adobe subscribers.

Strong investment from advertisers in online display advertising

• The third Online Advertisers Survey Report, published in association with Rubicon Project, found that spending across online advertising channels has increased in the last year, which builds on the growth highlighted by our last online advertising survey carried out in 2011.
• In the case of display advertising, the proportion of advertisers citing an increase in spend has risen from 57% in 2009 to 64% in 2013.
• The growing investment in display has led to an increase in pricing, with almost half (48%) of the advertisers surveyed having witnessed an increase in prices in the last year. A further 41% of buy-side survey respondents say that prices have remained the same.
• Online display appears to be particularly buoyant in France, where 88% of advertisers cited an increase in spend over the last year. Advertisers in Germany are least likely to have increased their spend in the last year, with 33% having decreased investment in display.
• The report is based on a survey of more than 650 advertisers and agencies. The findings are presented globally, with key charts broken down for the UK, US, France, Germany and Asia Pacific.

According to Google (via Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land): 

We want to provide SSL protection to as many users as we can, in as many regions as we can — we added non-signed-in Chrome omnibox searches earlier this year, and more recently other users who aren’t signed in.

We’re going to continue expanding our use of SSL in our services because we believe it’s a good thing for users….The motivation here is not to drive the ads side — it’s for our search users. 

Powerhouse Fitness has commemorated the occasion with a special new product: 

What does the removal of (most of the) remaining keyword data mean for search marketers? 

Rishi Lakhani, Search Strategist:

Depends on what type of a search marketer you are to be honest. Will it make reporting more difficult? Probably. Will our SEO get a little bit less smarter? Probably.

You have to remember that Google keyword tool and Google WMT are highly inaccurate when it comes to reporting keyword data – I have clients that get organic traffic much higher than reported for keyword traffic suggested by Google.  

On the other hand, I have been an SEO from the days when we used to use Overture and the google KW tool did not exits. I remember having to run logfile analytics as free analytics packages didnt exist (any one remember AWstats?). As search marketers, most of us are fairly resilient.

If we can’t report on keyword traffic, we will find work-arounds, and maybe bring back rank reporting as an important metric.

So coming back to your question what it would mean to search marketers? It depends on what type of a search marketer you are. If you are resilient, you would take this in your stride. 

Andy Heaps, Operations Director at Epiphany: 

First and foremost it means there is less data to analyse and use to inform the strategic and tactical focus of SEO campaigns.

A lack of keyword data makes it more difficult to identify low-hanging fruit (e.g. keywords that drive a relatively high amount of traffic from relatively low positions). Spotting trends in keyword data has also been made more difficult.

If organic traffic / conversions goes up but we can’t see what has driven the increase (was it brand or non-brand, was it one keyword or all keywords?), the ability to measure the impact of SEO work is significantly more difficult.

Dan Thornton, Founder at TheWayoftheWeb:

There are already various alternative ways and workarounds to get a reasonable idea of keyword data.

So it simply means more time and expense for search marketers, which may then be passed onto the business or clients.

Neil Yeomans, Head of SEO at Lakestar McCann:

Greater reliance on third party tools and rank tracking software to monitor success.  

People will still want a measure of non-brand growth, so we expect tools such as Google Webmaster Tools search query data, Searchmetrics and SEMRush to become much more important over the coming months.

Why do you think Google is doing this?

Rishi Lakhani:

Frankly, who knows? However their idea of privacy is ridiculous to say the least. You cant offer privacy, but still SELL the data to adwords advertisers. It’s the same user. It’s the same action.

So why should paying marketers get the data they need and organic not?

Your privacy is only protected from people who refuse to pay Google. Period.

Andy Heaps: 

Given that this only applies to referrals from organic search and not paid search, the argument about privacy doesn’t make sense.

The reason has to be commercial – if the only way to get accurate insight into what is working and what isn’t is via Adwords, marketers may be more inclined to invest more into paid search.

Dan Thornton:

The current speculation and vague reasons suggest the motivation is increasing privacy for users, particularly in light of recent NSA allegations etc.

But I don’t believe that at all – in terms of Governmental intrusions, it won’t make any difference as long as they have a server or business address on U.S soil.

Personally I believe it’s another attempt to shift the efforts of businesses away from search and increasingly towards paid advertising and Google+.

Neil Yeomans:

It will further muddy the waters for active SEO and position AdWords / Google Shopping as more transparent and accountable search marketing channels.

It also forces the hand of someone who wishes to analyse keyword performance e.g. conversion rate. To find out, people will need to invest in AdWords or trust Bing / Yahoo! data, which in itself is a drop in the ocean compared to Google’s reach.

Could it be good for SEOs, in that it makes it harder for amateurs? 

Rishi Lakhani:

Not really. With the loss ofkeyword data, ranking reports will take a larger share of reporting, and actually it’s easier to report on rankings than why a specific set of keywords lost their traffic…

Frankly nothing makes it hard to get into SEO. Anyone who ‘thinks’ they can do it will still get in the game. 

Andy Heaps: 

SEO has always been hard for amateurs! This will force SEOs to consider and analyse a greater breadth of data sources to understand how campaigns are performing.

There is a risk that the SEO industry will regress a few years and start to once again obsess about rankings but there is also an opportunity to get smarter about how results are reported, looking more at the wider role SEO plays in the overall marketing mix and how much of a role it plays as an enabler as well as a direct response channel.

Dan Thornton:

Not really. It won’t massively affect larger agencies and companies who can afford the additional time and cost.

But it will damage small businesses, including agencies, who now have an additional challenge to building their businesses, and I think eventually this will hurt both search results and indirectly impact on search usage, as the incumbents for any term become much more entrenched.

Neil Yeomans:

As with any major shakeup like this there are opportunities for more seasoned SEOs to react quickly, find an alternate way of looking at SEO metrics, and move away from the crowd.

Is this positive for Bing/Yahoo? Will SEOs now pay more attention to referral data there? 

Rishi Lakhani:

The same way we used to equate silly formulas such as Overture keyword data multiplied by 3.5 (because site’s traffic from Google was 3.5 of Yahoo’s) to work out keyword potential, is the same way we will start using arbitrary figures to report.

However, today’s search marketers are much smarter, and have many more tools at their disposal, which means that despite the fact that reporting this way may be inaccurate, it might still give you a decent and potentially truer “trend” that can be used to optimise sites.

But is it positive for Bing / Yahoo? Not really. Not unless Bing decides to create a public nightmare for Google by running a PR campaign telling users how their data is still available, for people who pay the price (AKA Adwords).

SEOs dont make the search engines, users do.

Andy Heaps: 

Bing data is going to be more useful now as it’s still providing the keyword data that Google now isn’t.

I doubt there’ll be any immediate benefit for Bing in terms of gaining market share from Google because the regular search engine user is oblivious to all this – and it isn’t going to have any immediate or direct impact on the quality of the SERPs.

Dan Thornton:

Hopefully. I’d certainly like to see more of a challenge to Google’s dominance, regardless whether it comes from Bing, Blekko, or DuckDuckGo. Certainly Bing seems more likely to continue improving its services and working with the SEO community, rather than pushing people away from them, as Google has done.

After all, most search improvements are aligned with usability and accessibility improvements, so a layer of good quality SEO advice and assistance only helps to improve the internet experience.

Neil Yeomans:

No, because people are still interested in Google rankings.  

While Bing and Yahoo! might give some insights to the performance of non-brand keywords the volumes are tiny in comparison to Google, so is the depth of the long-tail, which is far greater than other search engines.

The following graph shows this rapid increase:

Some facts about images:

• 100bn images are captured and made available online each year.
• 750m camera equipped mobile phones are sold each year.
• 100m digital cameras are sold each year.

Images are important to search. Increasingly important. Don’t just take our word for it though.

R.J Pittman, Google Director of Product Management, Feb 2009:

Image search makes up about 5.7% of all Google Searches and 5% of all search is image related.

However, very few websites are optimised to take advantage. A recent study we conducted on the top 20 websites in a particular industry (thought to have fairly advanced SEO), highlighted that their optimisation in this area was poor, at best.

So what can be done to capitalise on this free traffic?

Cookieless domain

Ideally images should be hosted under a cookieless domain. A cookie is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user’s web browser while the user is browsing that website.

Cookies are usually used to maintain session state, etc. Despite being relatively small, it is unnecessary for them to be sent with every image request as it needlessly slows down the user’s experience.

This is particularly important for mobile users. For example, if your website is www.site.com then you should consider www.sitecontent.com or images.sitecontent.com or some other variation as long as the domain does not set cookies.

Of course you need to make sure you own the domain. You may also need to register the domain with the various search engine site master tools.

Image filename

Images should have meaningful filenames. Using an ID, e.g. SKU, is simply not good enough and does nothing to inform search engines about the contents of the image.

Filenames, like the following, are common examples of what should be avoided:

• 112354_main.jpg
• Method-01-2011-med.jpg
• e9b8fb52-6c02-11e0-b36e-00144feab49a.img

Images should have meaningful filenames without overly long paths, e.g.

images.site.com/department/brand/sportswear-fashion-jacket.jpg

Don’t forget to include location information, if that is relevant too, e.g.

images.site.com/hotelname-street-london-uk.jpg

If a website is translated into multiple languages, then image filenames could be too. However, this can prove a challenge for some systems and will often require images to be duplicated, unless a dynamic imaging system is used. 

Ideally you want to be able to change the image filename, without having to re-upload the image. However, make sure that your image URLs cannot be tampered with by malicious people, e.g.

images.site.com/short-black-dress-1226354.jpg

Make sure short-black-dress cannot be replaced and the image is still served correctly

images.site.com/insert-brand-damaging-text-1226354.jpg

Sitemaps

Google has extended its Sitemap capabilities to include support for images. You are now able to provide a caption, title, geo location and license for each image.

It makes sense to use this new capability although Google does not guarantee that it will include your images. It is important to make sure that you are not including thumbnail images and main product images.

Include your main product images rather than thumbnails.

Googlebot

Google uses a special crawler to crawl the web for images. To prevent Googlebot-image from indexing small images (e.g. search result thumbnail images), as opposed to the large images you want them to index, you could sniff the UserAgent string and serve it the large image URL.

That way Google won’t accidentally include any small images that are less valuable.

Site speed

In April 2010, Google announced that it was adding site speed as a signal in their search ranking algorithms. Amazon has released research showing that every 100 ms increase in page load time decreased sales by 1%. These are both compelling reasons to improve site speed.

As images typically represent the vast majority of page weight they can have a significant impact on site speed.

This example has been taken from an online shoe store and it’s by no means the worst case!

There are several techniques to mitigate this:

• File size reduction, i.e. compression.
• Intelligent caching.
• Delivery acceleration.

It is not good enough to implement one or two of these techniques. All should be implemented!

International

Websites with international customers are often providing a poor user experience because they are not optimised to cope with the distance.

The distance problem comes down to latency:

• 40 to 80 ms from Europe to UK.
• 80 to 180 ms from USA to UK.
• 250 to 300 ms from Japan to UK.
• 300 to 350 ms from Australia to UK.
• 500 to 600 ms from China to UK.

As stated above, Amazon research shows that every 100 ms increase in page load time decreases sales by 1%.

We tested the loading time of a designer shoe website from London and Sao Paulo. It took eight seconds for the site to load from London and just over 20 seconds from Sao Paulo. The situation is even worse with China.

With appropriate delivery acceleration (edge caching) in place it should not have taken much longer.

If you have any doubt, as to the purchasing power of these countries, see the table below. At its current growth rate, India would easily have more High Net Worth Individuals than the UK by 2018.

Endless aisle

Prior to the internet, retailers were restricted by the location and floor space of their shops. This not only restricted who they could sell to, but which products they could sell.

With the advent of the internet, these physical restrictions have largely been removed. Retailers may stock the top products in their stores, but are able to offer the long tail of products online.

Retailers are also able to offer categories of products that are complimentary to their brand that they wouldn’t ordinarily sell in their physical stores, or wish to stock in their warehouses.

Increasingly people are using search engines to find products rather than visiting sites directly.

Long tail products increase your content and the likelihood that people using search engines will find your site.

Discontinued products

Products (and their images) that have been discontinued should not be removed from websites as there will likely be residual links and hence traffic to them.

Visitors should be shown the discontinued product and offered one or more of the following:

• The replacement product.
• Products from the same category.
• Products from the same brand.

Multichannel

Using a Dynamic Imaging solution you are able to optimise images (dimensions and/or file size) for different device models, e.g. PCs, smartphones, tablets, kiosks, ePoS, smart TVs, etc.

For example you may serve a picture at 85% quality (read compression) for a PC, but serve it at 60% quality for smartphones. Whilst 60% may be unacceptable on a PC, smartphones user will not notice and will appreciate the quicker download.

Search engines such as Google are now crawling websites with different mobile user agents to see if they find different content or mobile optimised content.

Social media

Facebook

The Facebook Like button is incredibly powerful. See below for an example of how it can be added

In this example the social media buttons only appear when the user hovers their mouse over the thumbnail in the search results.

When a user clicks a Facebook Like button, Facebook downloads a copy of the image. The following graph shows for August the % of image Bot requests that Facebook accounts for with a website that uses Facebook Like buttons with their product images.

As you can see it is a very high percentage!

Pinterest

Pinterest is a virtual pinboard which allows users to organize and share things they find on the web. Users can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share their interests.

Pinterest’s Pin It Button can be easily added to your website.

Twitter

As with Facebook and Pinterest you can add a Twitter button so users can tweet about the products they like.

Google SERP images

Google increasingly displays images in its search results. For example:

When users click on an image Google displays a page such as the following:

The user’s web browser makes a request for the original image with Google set as the referrer.

The following graph shows the number of image requests where Google is the referrer.

Over 1% of the image requests on a daily basis are now referrals from Google and this percentage is increasing!

This highlights the importance of images as part of an SEO strategy.