Eye Tracking Study Reinforces Importance of Local Search Optimization

While the results of the study may be a bit biased (study was conducted by SEOMOZ) but it does reinforce the importance of optimizing your company website to show up in Local SERP (search engine results page). 


In most regards you would imagine that the majority of people would spend the most time interacting with the top three results. Surprisingly, most of the actual time spent looking at this page is spent not on the top three results, but at the local SERP results on the page.

Based on the results of the study, The local SERP stands out significantly with the additional map, phone and review information. This alone can easily account for it drawing more attention than standard listings in a SERP page. 

What does this mean? I have been saying it since the existence of my blog, but you need to optimize your websites for local search. Not only does it increase your chances of having enhanced listing for localized results, but it gives more relevant information about your business and optimizes it for mobile search. Making it more likely for someone to find you and enhance their lives with your product or service.

Best Regards,

-The Marketing Ninja

Google Social 3.0: "Like" Remixed

(apologies outright for any spelling/grammatical errors. Blogger has been giving me issues lately)


Lets take a look at Google's attempts to enter into the US Social Networking industry. Google likes to first attempt and acquire companies in new business areas that it wants to break into. If that fails then they attempt to create a competing product. With regards to US Social Networking, this strategy is a bust.

2003: After the failed takeover bid for one of the original Social Networking companies Friendster, Google sets it eyes to create its own service to compete in the market. Okrut was born, but so far has only performed will in India and Brazil and did not see much success within the US.

2010: Google Buzz was supposed to change the way that people lived and collaborated with each other. The initial announcement of this product made many social networks nervous as it was going to be run out of Gmail accounts and would launch with millions of users worldwide.The beta had some promising features but the overall usability was extremely cumbersome and not intuitive. This is coming from someone who beta tested the product and knew right away that it wasn't going to take off.

One of the main issues with Buzz was that when it was released it was done so to all Gmail account members, without their knowledge and immediately began sharing information. The public outrage at such an outright violation of privacy has put a ten year long SEC privacy audit on Google that could hinder the future performance and creativity of the company.

2011: It is one year later and Google has released individual profile pages for users. Take a look at mine https://profiles.google.com/AEsposito88/about. Could this be the precursor to Googles new, simplified approach at building their own social network?

Googles Facebook Like
Googles +1 and its affect on PPC

This article on the new Google +1 feature almost solidifies my assumption. The +1 feature is going to be the google version of a like/retweet and it will require users to have a Google Profile in order to +1 an advertisement/webpage. Google has stated that the amount of +1 and how many of your Gmail "contacts" that  +1 a Google search result will affect its search ranking.

Do i think this will be successful? Yes and no.

Yes, I strongly believe that it will be successful for Big Brands and SEO companies as they would not only get the most value out of this feature, but they would have a large fan base and/or employees to gain +1's from. Some companies could even make it an initiative that all employees create a profile and +1 the webpage/advertisements. (unless this would be against +1 guidelines) The main advantage of this would hopefully be higher search standings and higher CTR for advertisements.

No, i believe it will fail for the individual user and as a type of social network. I have doubts that  most people will go out of their way to create a Google profile just to +1 an advertisement or webpage. I hate to say this but we will just have to wait and see what happens. You can bet yourself that i will be keeping an eye on the implementation and success/failure of the Google +1.

Best Regards,

-The Marketing Ninja

Again, Why it is important for Social Media/PR/Search to be Cross functional.

http://searchengineland.com/googles-action-against-link-schemes-continues-overstock-com-and-forbes-com-latest-casualities-conductor-exits-business-65926

Google has again clamped down on two more companies (Forbes.com and Overstock) for violating their search engine terms of agreement. Just recently this had happened to JCPenny and i am sure many companies are wondering "Why are these companies being punished and how do i ensure that this will not happen to my company?".

Google makes it fairly clear that any "paid" links that manipulate PageRank (this is the basic algorithm that returns your search query with "meaningful" results) violate their terms of agreement. This payment for links can come for additional discounts or money directly to the party that you are getting that link from. The types of links you will not get punished for are those involved in editorial content.

This of course makes obvious sense from a SEO perspective. If a trusted site, editor, or blogger is referring a site/content that they find valuable, then the page rank for that trusted site, editor, or blogger will be transferred as well. It's all about bringing people the content that most accurately meets their search query and that they will find the most value in.

All of this reinforces proper SEO best practices being reinforced in Social Media/PR (popular keywords, HTML alt attributes, etc) to make sure that your valuable content is ultra-search friendly. Valuable back links can come from respected online circles of influence. It is up to Social Media/PR and search to cross functionally work together to make sure that this is taken advantage of. What good does great content do if no one can find it?

 While this will not immediately affect search standings like a link farm or paid links will, it is the proper way and most cost efficient way to build search standing.  Initiating best practices will double the value of your content and not dilute the value of your site/brand with penalties from search engines by paying for links.

Best Regards,

-The Marketing Ninja

JCPenny gets their SEO hand caught in the Google cookie jar

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1

JCPenny saw explosive online sales over this holiday season and there might be a pretty good explanation as to why.

The NY Times just released an article showing some suspicious search results where JCPenny was consistently being ranked at the top for general terms like "little black dress" "skinny jeans".

After an investigation using site explorers (Have the ability to track where link-backs come from), NY Times discovered a number of phantom websites about any and all types of products linking back to JCPenny. These fake listings were tricking Google in a Blackhat SEO fashion and having JCPenny show up at the top of search results for very general items "blenders" and brand specific items "Samsung Appliance".

Blackhat SEO tactics such as link building with phantom websites or fake articles violates the terms of agreement with Google (and most search engines). In most cases this will result in decreased search standings when caught or even expulsion from search results until everything gets cleared up.

The fact that this wasnt brought up sooner by JCPennys competitors (Macys, Amazon, OldNavy, etc.) shows an extreme lack of search quality control on a corporate level. Webmasters should be conducting site and search audits once a month to ensure that their search/SEO money is being well spent. JCPennys deceitful online practices (wither this was knowingly done with managements permission or just bad practices from their SEO consultants) have possibly cost these companies millions of dollars in lost online sales and resulted in strict search punishment with regards to JCPenny from Google.

This whole debacle just troubles me in that millions of dollars are spent on search and SEO with what seems to be no proper due diligence or over site of online campaigns.

Best Regards,

-The Marketing Ninja