Industry Comment

Archive for the ‘Industry Comment’ Category

Motionlab Hits The Headlines Again!

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

After earning a two-page spread in the May/June edition of Lancashire Business View, Motionlab has once again appeared in the latest edition of the county’s foremost business publication.

Since the turn of the year, we have managed to greatly expand our client range and as a result of this, recruited four new members of staff to help us cope with demand.

You can read the full story of a successful first half of 2011 for Motionlab by ordering your copy at: http://www.lancashirebusinessview.co.uk/latest-edition.htm

Posted in Industry Comment, Motionlab Marketing, The Team | No Comments »

The ICO ignore their new Cookie law!

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

Today the law changed in the UK and Europe as a whole with regards cookies. To be enforced by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

In theory all websites must request permission from the user to set a cookie on the users machine unless the cookie is for a service explicitly requested by the user i.e. adding an item to a basket.

I have a few issues with this:

1. Practically all Content Managed sites start a session with a session cookie before the first page has loaded. How do we ask permission for this? Or are we to re-code every site we have built or manage so we don’t set it until we have permission.

2. If the user doesn’t give us permission what should we do? Just leave a popup on screen asking for permission whilst still allowing full function of the site, or kick them off?

3. The ICO have no idea how to be completely compliant yet, EVEN THOUGH THIS IS NOW LAW with regards 3rd party cookies:
“This may be the most challenging area in which to achieve
compliance with the new rules and we are working with industry
and other European data protection authorities to assist in
addressing complexities and finding the right answers.”

4. Should we ask permission to set a cookie to remember the user has been asked permission? I don’t want the same user to keep getting the same request, even though they will every time they use another machine/browser/device or empty their cookies!

5. In theory it is acceptable that permission can be obtained in the web browser, BUT to quote the ICO:
“At present, most browser settings are not sophisticated enough to allow you to assume that the user has given their consent to allow your website to set a cookie”

6. THE BIGGIE! The ICO website itself www.ico.gov.uk sets a session cookie before having my permission. If this is acceptable you have just created another repetitive annoying popup for no reason!

I could imagine some bright spark coming up with this legislation in the 90’s, the early days, but to do it now, when most web sites are dynamic, intelligent and in the true spirit of web 2.0 share information to enhance the user experience seems stupid!

To quote Al Murray, the pub landlord:

“BACK OFF BRUSSELS!”

ICO Document on this subject

Tags: cookie law, cookies, ico, information commissioner's office, law
Posted in Code, Industry Comment | No Comments »

Choosing a SEO Keyword Tracker – SEOmoz vs. Raven vs. WebCEO

Tuesday, March 15th, 2011

Now before you say ‘Why are you obsessed with keyword rankings?’ I’m not! But in my opinion tracking keyword positions is still an important part of understanding how your SEO campaign is performing.

With this in mind, I set about doing a simple test for one of our clients campaigns. I compared three different keyword trackers from SEOmoz, Raven & WebCEO, to find out which tool was the most accurate for a single set of keywords against my own manually checked results.

I decided not to go down the route of testing thousands of keywords as I simply don’t have the time, so this review is merely using sample data. It should also be noted that my own manually checked results will only represent those from a single Google data centre, so results may vary.

The Tools:

SEOmoz Pro ($99 Per Month for 250 Keywords)
Raven Pro ($99 Per Month for 1,000 Keywords)
WebCEO ($49 Per Month for Unlimited Keywords)

(Prices are listed in dollars as the exchange rate is obviously variable)

The Facts:

Search Engine: Google.co.uk
Keywords Tested: 14
Date Tested: 10/03/2011
Industry: Solar Panels (I can’t disclose the keywords used due to client privacy)

Scoring

Comparing against my manually checked results, each tool was awarded points for the following rates of accuracy for each keyword.

3 Points: Within 1 Position +/-
2 Points: Within 3 Positions +/-
1 Point: Within 4-10 Positions +/-
-1 Point: More than 10 Positions +/-

The Results

1^st Place with 36 Points was SEOmoz

2^nd Place with 30 Points was WebCEO

3^rd Place with 26 Points was Raven

Breakdown of Points

SEOmoz:
10 Keywords within 1 position (30 Points)
2 Keywords within 3 positions (4 Points)
2 Keywords with 4-6 Positions (2 Points)
0 Keywords within 10+ Positions (0 Points)

WebCEO:
7 Keywords within 1 position (21 Points)
4 Keywords within 3 positions (8 Points)
2 Keywords with 4-6 Positions (2 Points)
1 Keywords within 10+ Positions (-1 Point)

Raven:
6 Keywords within 1 position (18 Points)
2 Keywords within 3 positions (4 Points)
5 Keywords with 4-6 Positions (5 Points)
1 Keywords within 10+ Positions (-1 Points)

Summary

SEOmoz Pro

If you’re looking for a complete SEO tools set, SEOmoz offers good value with the highest points for accuracy, an average cost per accuracy point of $2.75. However, it must be noted that you are limited to tracking only 250 Keywords.

WebCEO

If you’re just looking for a good keyword tracking tool that doesn’t cost the earth, then WebCEO at $49/£30 pm is the cheapest with an average cost per accuracy point of ($1.63). Although, the wider tool set doesn’t match that of its competitors.

Raven Pro SEO Tools

Surprisingly given its monthly cost, Raven had the lowest points for accuracy with 26 points. It is the weakest of the three tools we tested with an average cost per accuracy point of $3.80 making it the most expensive for accuracy. Although Raven also have a very strong set of link building tools which Shark SEO has reviewed. Finally It should be noted though that although more expensive per point, Raven allows the tracking of 1,000 keywords compared to SEOmoz’s 250.

Posted in Google, Industry Comment, Knowledge Base, Marketing, SEO | No Comments »

Personalised Media: The Saviour or The Enemy?

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

I’m not normally one for watching Newsnight, but on Tuesday night I accidently turned on BBC2 and came across a debate involving many traditional media big wigs: The Guardian’s Alan Rusbridger, Editor of the Financial Times Lionel Barber, BBC Director General Mark Thompson, Anne McElvoy from The Economist, with soul representative of the online community being Google’s Director of External Relations Peter Barron.

You can watch the Newsnight debate here, but the part that interested me the most was the debate centred around ‘personalised news’ and how it could create “atomised” sociality were people only read about a narrow range of subjects which interest them.

In my opinion, I think personalisation is the future as I myself use twitter as a tailored feed for news which interests me. Additionally tools such as Mashable’s follow tool and Facebook’s Instant Personalisation system are strong examples of how users now and in the future may tailor content towards their particular interests.

The debate suggested that this could result in myself and other personalised media users to become unaware of the wider world.

However, one point not discussed was the use of personalised media within social media and the sharing of the content (e.g. retweets). Yes I read the BBC News website etc… to gain a wider picture of the world, but even without media sources such as this I feel that the content shared within the social media networks I use is enough to keep me informed of what is going on in the world.

With this in mind, I felt that the debate fell flat on one key point. Rather than be wary of personalised media and hope digital magazines on devices such as Apple iPad prove to be a digital saviour, they should maybe focus on delivering thorough personalised content which links to the wider world. Google is the perfect example of how personalisation can work well, whilst still providing users with content across several subject areas.

In SEO, text links (such as those used in this blog post) to related or wider stories are a key function of what we do. By including this function it would allow traditional media outlets to realise the advantages of personalised media and still enable them to present the ‘whole world view’ they so highly value.

At Motionlab we understand the benefits of tailoring site content and social media. If you want to find out how we can help personalise your site, or develop a social media strategy that targets the information your clients want to read, give us a call on 01772 865050.

Posted in Google, Industry Comment, Motionlab Marketing, SEO, Social Media, Twitter | No Comments »

The Google Hendrix Experience

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

Today I was surprised to see an example of Google trying to use pretty clever semantics in its search results, which occurred during a search for “Noel Redding Costume” – don’t ask, it’s a long story involving a Jimi Hendrix tribute band. Anyway, although Google appears to be calling up results using a synonym of my main query, it falls down by using it in the wrong context.

As you can see, Google has produced results with both the expected variants of “costume” and “costumes”; however it’s also produced results for the synonym, “outfit”. This would indeed be an impressive jump in Google’s general ability to interpret the users search query more creatively and produce a broader spectrum of results, however it is a bit let down by the fact that it has taken the word “outfit” out of context. (In this case, all the results produced use the phrase “outfit” in the context of a band or group rather than the intended meaning of “clothing”.)

Whilst it is slightly disappointing that the query failed to produce what I was looking for, I thought it might be a good time to try the search again in Bing, to see if they were any better.

As you can see from the results below, Bing stuck religiously to the keywords in the query, with only “Costume” related results appearing. It’s just a shame that their overall quality can only be described as terrible, especially the “Cheap Medical Pharmacy Online” spam results in positions 3 and 4.

So, if nothing else, regardless of whether or not Google’s semantic analysis is firing on all cylinders as of yet, it’s still one hell of a lot better than Bing.

Posted in Bing, Google, Industry Comment, SEO | No Comments »

Some Thoughts On Google Page Preview

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

Recently, as already reported in other industry blogs, Google has started testing a new website preview feature in its SERP’s. Much like the emergence of Google Instant, ‘Page Preview’ is currently being tested sporadically, with only a limited number of Google users seeing it.

So how does it work?

Simply activate by clicking the magnifying glass next to a SERP listing and from then on you will get a preview whenever your mouse hovers over any part of a listing e.g. title and description.

What do you see?

As shown in the example below, Google generates a dynamic preview of the site and pulls out a snippet of the most relevant text it can find on the page.

Where the dynamic preview gets interesting is that Google is currently unable to generate page previews for sites built with Adobe Flash as shown below:

The new feature, if rolled out like Google Instant, could have a large impact on our industry specifically in terms of web design. Fellow members of the Motionlab team has shared their thoughts on what this could mean:

Further reductions in the use of Adobe’s flash, unless Google start supporting this technology
A continued SEO push on good content to ensure the right text is selected for ‘Page Preview’ descriptions
The possibilities of improvements to organic click through rates where well designed websites gain a higher CTR, even from lower positions and conversely a reduction of clicks for poorly designed sites.
A design style change towards the use of large images so they show up in ‘Page Preview’ more effectively

If you have any thoughts on the possible impact of ‘Page Preview’ should it go live, or if you are interested in ensuring that your website is optimised and designed in a way that can take advantage of Google’s new feature, why not give Motionlab a call.

Posted in Google, Industry Comment, Motionlab Marketing, SEO, Web Design | No Comments »

Google’s Little Blue Arrow and AdWords

Friday, October 8th, 2010

In the last few weeks, various search professionals have been blogging and tweeting about Google’s ‘little blue arrow’ and speculating as to the effect of it.

If you are not already aware of it, the ‘little blue arrow’ is a small arrow (see image below) that starts by pointing out the 1^st result within Google SERP’s. Its purpose is to allow the navigation of all paid and organic search results via the keyboard arrows. The enter/return key is also used to ‘select/click’ the AdWords advert or organic result it points to. Additionally, an extended hold or a ‘double tab’ press of the enter key, post typing search, will select the first result and direct the user to that page.

Given that the first result is often a paid AdWords advert, the ‘extended press/double tap’ effect appears from our stats to be resulting in increased clicks. The obvious downside to this effect is that unnecessary clicks are being driven by the sites. This results in a higher bounce rate which will also affect your CPC due to a potentially lower Quality Score, costing the advertiser more in the process.

Below is an example from one of our client’s whose bounce rate (stable for many months) has suddenly shot up as a result of the ‘little blue arrow’.

Now some may argue that the simple remedy to this is to not bid for position one. While this may be ‘best practice’ for the industry as often positions 3-5 result in the best ROI from paid search, it is not always suitable. Take for example brand protection where your competitors are always bidding on your brand name or verticals where traffic is low so a high position is more suitable or necessary.

Whether the keyboard navigation of Google SERP’s turns out to be purely a testing phase for Google which will be improved or a permanent feature is still to be seen, but what is clear is that the ‘extended press/double tap’ has a negative effect for advertisers. The potential of more high priced clicks (whether relevant or irrelevant) which are too tempting for Google to resist will prove the most worrying prospect for PPC professionals. Although if this feature does take affect it could conversely result in a devaluing of CPC bid’s for the number 1 position for paid adverts in AdWords.

Whether or not Google keeps this feature in its current format, it is clear that if Google continues to roll out features such as these we may have to start thinking differently about the number one position within paid search.

Posted in Google, Google Adwords, Industry Comment, PPC Management | No Comments »

Google’s enhanced snippets give more than we’d bargained for

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

As some of you might have noticed, back in May, Google released what they call “rich snippets” which essentially aims to “highlight structured data embedded in web pages” or, in other words, provide a more detailed meta description within their search results. These rich snippets aimed to provide things like product or service ratings and they released a set of mark-up formats to ensure webmasters could highlight the data they wanted to use.

This has since been extended to include local search information through the greater integration of HTML formats in web design like hCard to gain information about businesses services and indeed their physical address.

Whilst this is certainly a good step towards greater control of how your site is displayed in the serps, we’ve seen two rather interesting examples of rich snippets in action and it has to be said they haven’t yielded much of an improvement.

The first major change we noticed was when Google suddenly began using DMOZ listing data to provide title and meta descriptions on a couple of our client’s websites. Whilst this in itself is nothing new and was easily fixed with the right meta tags, it does seem strange that Google would decide to implement these now. As rich snippets go it’s a bit of a cop out.

The second example of Google going one step further occurred on our Motionlab web design site and was discovered when I was surprised to see we had some Google traffic for the phrase “Malawi Marketing agencies” whilst looking through the Analytics data.

A quick look at the results revealed that Google had taken a rather liberal editorial attitude to our sites snippet as seen here:

After the initial amusement had worn off, it became clear that Google was combining our introductory blurb with a blog article snippet about one of our client’s conservation work in Malawi.

Whilst we appreciate the number 2 spot, it’s not really deserved and just goes to highlight how Google still has some way to go in refining this aspect of its search results.

The first major change we noticed was when Google suddenly began using DMOZ listing data to provide title and meta descriptions on a couple of our client’s websites. Whilst this was easily fixed with the right meta tags, as rich snippets go it would seem to be a bit of a cop out.

A quick look at the results revealed that Google had taken a rather liberal editorial attitude to our sites snippet.

After the initial amusement had worn off, it became clear that Google was combining our introductory blurb with a blog article snippet about one of our client’s conservation work in Malawi.

Whilst we appreciate the number 2 spot, it’s not really deserved and just goes to highlight how Google still has some way to go in refining this aspect of its search results.

Tags: Google, Motionlab, SEO, Web Design
Posted in Industry Comment, Motionlab Marketing, SEO, Web Design | No Comments »

Google Latest Brand of Coffee: Google Instant

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

Google’s big announcement yesterday, as predicted by many, was the release of Google Instant, its next evolution following on from Google Caffeine which was released earlier this year.

So what is it?

Surfers will have by now become used to Google’s ‘predicted search’ function where your search query is predicted as you type. Google Instant takes this one step further with the use of AJAX, by instantly updating the search result for your query as you type, as shown in the examples below:

CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE

So what does this mean for SEO and PPC campaigns?

Well despite some ‘panic’ from those looking for excuses as to why campaigns aren’t successful, some SEO experts with a more considered approach rightly point out that doing the basics correctly is as paramount as ever.

Although it is already highly important to generate that all important click through, well written page titles and meta descriptions, and the need for more creative and well written titles may increase as Google Instant may reduce the amount of time you have to capture the users attention, especially in the case of more generic terms.

For users of Google AdWords these changes may be felt more immediately, especially in the case of impressions. Big G tells us that from now on impressions generated using Google Instant only count when a user carries out some form of action such as: Pressing the Enter key, clicking anywhere on the page or viewing a SERP for more than 3 seconds after typing.

It is also worth pointing out that Google Instant is only available for users with the very latest browsers. More importantly, for those not using Google.com, they must be signed in with a Google account to utilise this new feature. Whether this is rolled out to users not signed into Google in the future is currently unknown.

So what could this mean for AdWords and SEO campaign managers? Well, like Google we won’t truly know the effect it will have on campaigns until enough time has elapsed to truly judge the result, and it would unsuitable to comment beforehand. But, we will speedily follow this up with a further blog post once we can judge the results.

Tags: Google Caffeine, Google Instant, SEO, SEO experts
Posted in Industry Comment, Motionlab Marketing, SEO | No Comments »

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