Google recently announced that it will now use the encryption protocol called SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) to encrypt all the searches that people do using the Google Search Engine if they are signed-in using their Google Account login.

This means that these logged-in Google users will be redirected to https://www.google.com (note the extra’s’) from http://www.google.com (non SSL) once they are signed-in with their Google account. This switch to SSL encrypts your search query which means that the sites the user visits after clicking on the results from Google will no longer contain the “Referrer data” (data which tells the destination site how it was found, whether from a search term entered into a search engine or from an external link) except in the case of ads.

Only Google and your web browser will see your searches and a third party (not even Google Analytics) will not know what is being searched. The new encryption will block referrer data, which means site owners will know that you came from Google, but won’t receive information on what the exact search was.

How does this affect SEO?

With the new system in place, Organic Traffic can still be tracked, but it will not be possible to drill down to the keywords from which the website visit was derived. Even Google Analytics isn’t spared, one will no longer be able to isolate the search term associated with the visit in GA.

However the keywords or terms Google search engine users use to find their websites will still be offered on Google Webmaster Central. Presently, Google Webmaster Central shows the top 1,000 queries that a site appeared for at Google – as well as was selected for – over a 30 day period.

Referrer Data for Ads:

However referrer data will be passed into the advertiser’s site, which means they (ad sites), will still receive information that they currently get with unencrypted search. The main reason stated by Google being that advertisers need the referrer data to evaluate their ad campaigns, to know which keywords or search terms are driving traffic in order to improve the ads which we believe is to keep the advertisers happy.

However, when the user is signed-in and clicks on an ad with the advertiser’s website being HTTP rather than HTTPS, Google will send the search term for that specific search to the advertiser over HTTP.

The encryption change as per Google will impact only the single digit percentage of search users, anyone who hasn’t signed-in will still send referrer data to the websites he/she visits which means lots of data for SEOs to do a conversion analysis to the keyword level.

With the move to SSL, Google has taken web search security to the next level; the trick is to balance data security for the web users and to keep advertisers happy.

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Until recently, the sitelinks that you have most commonly seen have probably looked something like this:

The purpose of sitelinks is to help searchers navigate a specific page they are in need of as quickly as possible. However, earlier this week, Google announced its improved and expanded version of sitelinks. The newer version is arranged as a column of links and appears more prominently on the search engine results page.

The new sitelinks is certainly helping brands dominate the search results page. According to Google, displaying more sitelinks is designed to help users quickly navigate to the most relevant section of a site. But, let’s try and understand how the changes will affect websites, and how they can adapt and take advantage of them.

For starters, the new sitelinks takes up a large chunk of the first page results thus ruling out potential competitors and other less relevant sites sneaking above the fold. Online user behavior will change as more users will want to click on the pages listed in sitelinks than look for websites listed below in search results, thus helping brand conversions significantly. Also certain is the tangible increase in organic visits and sales from keywords containing brand permutations.

Adapting to this change is critical and website architecture is really important (directory structure, URL naming conventions etc…); also, make full use of Google’s webmaster console to manage sitelinks and take Google’s humanized results page and ranking factors into consideration.

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If you’re using Google Instant Search in one of the countries where it has been rolled out, you may have noticed that a blue arrow now appears next to the first result presented (Whether it’s an advertisement or a natural result). This is the new interface for keyboard navigation, which allows you to move up and down within the results using your keyboard, and hit Enter/ Return to go to the chosen result.

For the SEO community this poses a new challenge, because to the average Google Instant user, the blue triangle may appear to be a suggestion for the most relevant result, even if it is a paid listing. Organic results may thus appear to be less relevant and may receive fewer clicks. Conversely this may drive up bounce rates and cost for paid search traffic.

This may tie in with Google’s recent attempts to speed up search, first with Google Suggest, then with Instant, which of course allows for many more impressions clicks to take place. Time will tell if users will use this new keyboard navigation technique to get to what they’re looking for, we expect to see immediate changes in the habits of power users.

Even if users notice the new blue marker, they may not realize that it is a new keyboard navigation feature and can be moved around with the up and down arrows on their keyboards, since Google Search has neither an introduction nor instructions on how to use this method. Since old habits die hard, we predict that the vast majority of users will assume that the arrow denotes relevance.

With competition for eyeballs getting fiercer by the month, it’s reasonable to assume that paid results will more often than not show up first in Google Instant, with the arrow lending them a big helping hand, while leaving the competition scrambling in their wake to up their bids for keywords and listings. Marketers may be in for surprises like fewer click-throughs in paid search listings; since their ads may need to be scrolled to before they can even be seen. Result: higher bids and greater competition for the top spot.

Watch this space for breaking updates whenever they occur.

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Google rolled out the “Instant” update last week. Needless to say, it has generated lot of interest in the search marketing community, and has both marketers and practitioners coming forth with their analysis and assessment on the impact it will have. The team at Position² has been following developments and is pleased to present views as well as a checklist of a few action items. These are based on interactions with experts at Google, and internal tests. Watch out for more updates in the days to come – Position² Team

For those who came in late…

Google Instant was released by the search engine giant to enable “Faster Searches, Smarter Predictions and Instant Results”, in their words. The entire SEO community wasted no time in going into a huddle to discuss the possible pros and cons, and how they’d have to change their methodologies. Online discussion boards are raging with opinions that run from “Now that’s useful, why didn’t they think of it before?” to “I don’t want Google to put words in my mouth!”.

We saw this coming with the introduction of Google Suggest, which automatically suggests popular searches as you’re typing in your query. Users who were logged in to Google would often see several lines of personalized searches right below the search box, and clicking on any one of them would give you a results page populated with SERPs for the keywords chosen.

What Google Instant does is take the process to its logical conclusion and display actual search results. The rationale being that it takes several seconds to type in a query, but only fractions of a second to read the suggestions that show up, thereby speeding up every search. With Instant, every suggestion that comes up for 3 seconds or more (while typing pauses) is counted as an “impression” though not a click-through or visit.

Though actual search results for those who type in their query and hit “Search” still haven’t changed with Google Instant, some bloggers are bemoaning the fact that long-tail results may not even register or be included, due to popular results crowding them out, along with other changes in the algorithms used to present search results. Others talk of having to rejigger their strategies to give more importance to keyword selection and organic results.

Impact on PPC Campaigns

PPC is an area where we want to keep a close tab on performance and ROI. Naturally, this update raised a lot of concerns. These included questions like, “will we see a sudden jump in impressions?” “Will the lower CTR start affecting the quality score, is there an impact on match types and how we use them?” “Will using generic head terms in a phrase result in a deluge of unwanted clicks?” and so on. We started by posing a few of these questions to the experts at Google

How will my impression volume change?
We’re not able to determine the degree to which you impressions will change. For some advertisers, the number of impressions might increase or decrease.

• How would match types work now?
  Google Instant is a user interface innovation. It simply pre-populates search results based on our best prediction of what the user is looking for. Therefore, match types will not be affected.
• How will it impact my Quality Score?
  This does not change the way we determine the relevance or quality of your ads. As always, we look at yours ad’s performance relative to that of other ads’ for the same query, position, and UI treatment (including whether or not an ad was served using the new Google Instant interface).
• What will happen to my CTR?
  We expect performance metrics to fluctuate as a result of Instant and we encourage you to monitor post-launch metrics and adjust accordingly.
• If my CTR goes down, then my performance will go down and my ad won’t rank well. How do I fix this?
  In general, all advertisers will be affected equally by Google Instant. Therefore, we don’t anticipate any changes in relative advertiser performance.
• Will this impact my ad rank?
  No. This will not impact your ad rank.

In addition to the above, here’s a link to Google AdWords Help Center.

Based on the above, and a few intense sessions of brainstorming, we came up with this “WIP checklist”.

The PPC Google Instant Checklist

1. Monitor account for unnatural spikes/dips in impressions, CPC, CTR and Quality Score.
   
   E.g. If there is a significant increase in impressions for a particular keyword the follow up action would typically involve:

   • Look at match type.
   • Simulate a search, see what triggered the increase. Most likely it will be a very generic head term. In case it’s a phrase or broad match – moving to exact will be a good solution. Or in cases possible – adding negative terms can help.

   E.g. if the keyword is “email marketing”, the increase in impressions can be attributed to “email” which has high search volumes. In this case one cannot add “email” as a negative term, the best option is to move it to phrase or exact.
   
   If the keyword is “web security”, the increase in impression could be due to ads being shown when a user types “web”. Here again, going exact or phrase is the solution.

2. Since Google Instant is sort of an extension of Google Suggest, use Google Suggest to expand keywords and also add negative keywords – where relevant and possible. Here is a good source to get some tips on this.
3. Importance of keyword in the ad copy. With ads being shown and refreshed in a span of 3 seconds (that’s the minimum duration for it to be counted as an impression), text in bold will register faster in the user’s eye.
4. Death of the long tail? With Google putting key phrases into the searchers mind, how many users will type in long tail key phrases? Chances are they will spot something that someone else has already typed.

Impact on SEO Campaigns

From an SEO perspective, one of the biggest impact is going to be on what key phrases users are lead to by the Google Instant prompt.

For e.g., if I initiate a search for “debt consolidation”, and after I type in “debt” – if Google suggests “debt elimination”, the likelihood of the latter being clicked on is higher. So when identifying the key phrases to target – Google Trends & Suggest results play an important role.

The SEO Google Instant Checklist

1. Relook at target keywords based on Google Suggest.
2. It will be all the more important to focus on keywords that have higher search volumes. Since suggest is based on this. This will not have a big impact as search volumes do play a role in how we select keywords.
3. Top 10, may need to be replaced with Top 5. With quick refreshes of pages as a user types the query, do not expect the user’s eye to go beyond the top 5 results pages

To conclude, we do expect Google Instant to have an impact, but how significant the impact will be, remains to be seen. Google Instant has already changed the way the team at Position2 uses search. For most average users, what remains to be seen is how long the novelty factor captures attention, or if a majority of people after some time get tired and just turn it off. The search marketer, for now, needs to play a wait and watch game.

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A recent phenomenon, tag clouds are commonly seen on blogs, ecommerce sites and several ‘Web 2.’ portals. Other than their visual appearance and ‘coolness’ factor there are benefits for your web site, especially for SEO.

What is a Tag Cloud?

A tag cloud or word cloud is a visual depiction of user-generated tags. Sometimes, they are just the word content of your site, typically used to describe what it is about. They are usually single words and are listed alphabetically. The importance of a tag is shown with its font size or color, and they are hyperlinks that lead to a collection of pages associated with the word.

Because of their role in search engine optimization of web pages, tag clouds have become even more popular. When properly implemented tag clouds make your web site appear more interlinked to search engine spiders, and this improves search engine ranking

How Are Tag Clouds Used?

There are two common ways of using tag clouds – by popularity and by relevance.

• In the popularity model, the most frequently used keywords used are displayed as tags on a web site In this method, the most commonly used tags or keywords are displayed in larger font sizes in the tag cloud. Less frequently used tags or keywords are displayed in smaller font sizes.
• The other method to use tag clouds is by relevance. When a user lands on your web page, the tag cloud displays related tags or terms. Clicking on a tag in this cloud would list all the pages or articles associated with that term. This acts as a search-assist, and helps visitors find other relevant pages in the site.

How Do Tag Clouds Impact SEO?

When used correctly, tag clouds can improve the internal linking of your web site, the internal anchor text relevance of pages in your site, and by extension, its SEO. They also increase the keyword density of a page but are better left unused for this specific purpose. This is because of the risk of abuse; keywords stuffed in the page content would make search engines ignore your web site. .

How Are Tag Clouds Used for SEO?

You can either custom build your tag cloud or pick one from the internet – both free and paid versions are available. For the latter, select the tag cloud carefully because most off-the-shelf versions have built in JavaScript or AJAX, and a few even use Flash. These do not help your web site SEO, because search engines ignore content served by JavaScripts, AJAX and Flash.

The best way to use Tag Clouds would be to custom build them using tag micro-formats.

The Ideal Tag Cloud

It is better to have tag clouds that list tags by ‘relevance’ rather than by ‘popularity’. Tag clouds need to be useful to the your site’s visitors, help them find other relevant content, and aid their navigation. Do not use tag clouds that list “most popular searches” or “what others searched for” or “most commonly used terms”. Instead, build tags that list “you may also be interested in”, “other relevant searches”, and “related content”.

Do not compromise and pick a tag cloud for how ‘cool’ it looks. Build a cloud that helps navigation on your site, and it will aid your site’s SEO.

References include: Search Engine Land, Webtop, several other snippets of insight from the web and Position² internal analytics data.

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We all know the SEO value of keywords. But have you ever wondered which of the thousands of relevant keywords brings meaningful traffic to your site and earns you your real money? If not then it’s about time you do.

For a while now, the online marketing community has known that long tail keywords convert cheaper and faster. Long tail keywords are those millions of keywords and phrases that a site is searched for, but go unnoticed.

Long tail is the exact opposite of focused or targeted keywords. In SEO, everyone focuses on the “top keyword”. This is what everybody follows and tries to gain rankings for. But if you just dig deeper into referrals and study the traffic they generate you will realize that you are actually missing a major portion of search keywords and hence the market!

Marketing managers are often pleased to see their top 10 or 20 keywords ranking consistently. The focus is usually only on the popular terms and the number of visitors they bring. It is believed that 80% of the business is driven by these popular terms, but when you evaluate multiple sites, it is quite the opposite.

The top 10 terms do provide a lot of traffic, but when you calculate the percentage of traffic driven by terms after the top 10 or 20 most popular, they will add up to more total visitors than the top terms. More often than not, the visitors who come to your site using long tail keywords spend more time on the site and convert better. Most sites have a majority of their sales and leads generated from these terms. This is the heart of the long tail keyword strategy. So it makes perfect sense to SEO your site for these long tail keywords to the fullest.

Long tail keywords have added benefits when applied to SEO. The skill is to pick the right mid tier keywords and phrases and optimize your site for these. The profit gained from these terms can then be reinvested.

Google AdWords is among the most popular tools that you can use to find these long tail keywords and grow your search traffic. All you have to do is just enter your core keywords in the Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion tool and allow it to suggest other terms. Use “Exact Match” if you are selecting keywords for their SEO value and you will know how many times these keywords are searched for in a month. Then download the entire list in a text or excel format and there you have your own natural long tail keyword list.

If you are an established website then finding out what your competitor does to get traffic to his website is also a good idea. There are chances that your competitor might have already targeted a whole lot of long tail keywords. Your next step then should be optimizing your site and creating new pages which target those keywords as well. There are two ways of doing your investigation. One is to visit your competitor’s website and analyze all the webpages, checking out their title, metatags and backlinks. The other is to use tools like SEODigger. Just enter the site’s URL and you can find out which keywords your competitor is targeting.

So do a little thinking and get your long tail keywords on top and they will undoubtedly increase the amount of traffic you receive from search engines.

Contributed by Shruti Kekre, SEO Team

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Google Base is another one of the hidden gems in Google’s magic box. You don’t hear about on a daily basis but it appears to provide a new way for publishers to distribute and promote content.

What is it?

Google Base is a free online database where you can post any information free of cost as long as it follows Google’s program policies. Products and services, recipes, classified ads, you can post almost anything you can think of. However it is a dream land for those who have a list of good stuff to sell and no forum to market.

How does it work?

It’s really very simple. Just open an account or use an existing account if you have one. Choose to submit a feed and look at the various options for feed types. If you already have an RSS feed for your product, you can submit this, but some information will still be missing, so it is advisable to construct a text file as per Google’s field pattern. This allows you to think and include keywords and key phrases for appropriate searches. After the content is ready, submit it.

What’s amazing is that you can register up to 10 data feeds in your Google Base account and almost one million items equally distributed between 10 feeds.

Google Base and SEO

Submitting your content to Google Base actually helps you get additional organic search engine traffic.

Algorithm for ranking Google Base products is more literal in Google Base. It is not as sophisticated as the algorithm for Google search. This should be taken into account while preparing your product feed. Points such as including factors relevant to your product especially the product name, model etc in your product title and description, become crucial. The keywords you are targeting should also appear in the title and description. The first 10- 15 words are quite significant, so must be used wisely. But beware; do not stuff the description with a whole lot of keywords as this could lead to your listing to be penalized.

Adding relevant images to your feed can increase your click-through rates. This is another important optimisation tip you can use. It will help you rank well in Google Base. Finally, Google product search uses seller ratings; customers leave feedback about their purchase experience with a company as on any online purchasing portal. So try and get as good a rating as possible as this will only positively impact your rating in Google Base.

Contributed By Shruti Kekre

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Looking back at the setting year sets the tone for a year that promises a lot of excitement in the SEO industry and within the SEO team at Position2.

The year started with the entire Position2 team embarking on a challenging journey of developing products around the services that have evolved and matured over the past years. I have been a part of the conceptualization and development of three products for the SEO industry. Designed for agencies and end-users alike, these products promise to not just transform the way SEO is practiced as a discipline at Position2, but also provide a new process-driven perspective to an industry that still depends largely on individual skill and SEO expertise.

This re-engineering from SEO services to SEO products brought its own challenges and excitement. The change in outlook proved the most challenging. Piecing together of the little pieces that needed to come together and form each of the SEO products was a fascinating experience that will continue into 2010. The SEO team was often synonymous with heated debates, a charged atmosphere and the intensity of purpose. We also had celebrations for their own sake, team outings, pranks and a lot of light banter you associate with a team that believes in itself and depends on one another. It was fascinating for me to watch the team mature in this changing landscape and evolve into a formidable outfit, believing in itself and willing to take on the toughest of challenges.

Successes we saw on projects underlined the growth of the SEO team. My team takes a lot of pride in the work we do. The results achieved for Lyris and TRUSTe, two of the projects that have taken a lot of passion and involvement from the SEO team, have been the rewards of relentless hard work and commitment. The contribution of every team member isn’t always noticeable, but it has been the team work that has made every success possible.

The nervous anticipation with which every month’s reports were awaited, the impatient anticipation with which monthly plans were discussed and debated and the energy in everyday work are signs of a team that enjoys what it does, takes a lot of pride in its work and is hungry to raise the bar and back itself into growing into one of the (if not THE) best SEO team anywhere. Leading this team continues to give me a lot of pride as we collectively look forward to a new year.

The icing on the cake this year has been the affection and friendship of a few clients that we have worked closely with. The motivation levels of the team are heartening to watch when the work we do is received not just with appreciation, but a lot of genuine affection. For a team that loves what it does, no volume of business can match the fondness we have received this year from our clients.

The year wasn’t all sugar-sweet. The recession caused a few flutters; a few old colleagues moved on, there was the occasional (healthy) argument while the products were being developed and the pressures of performance in difficult economic conditions flowed as an under-current through the year. However, as the year draws to an end, the highs far outweigh the lows and the entire SEO team at Position2 looks forward to the oncoming year with anticipation and hope.

2010 promises a new era in SEO at Position2, as Website Calibrator and Organic Rank Optimizer evolve and emerge as SEO products. The year also promises growth, new challenges and new successes to achieve. As the captain of a winning team, I look forward to the rewards and challenges that the new year will bring.

And finally, for the benefit of those planning on an extended holiday season, we would like to extend the best wishes from the SEO team at Position2 to all our friends, associates, clients and colleagues. We also would like to wish one and all a 2010 full of excitement, enrichment, discovery and knowledge.

Contributed by Tushar Prabhu

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Wikipedia defines Web Analytics as, “the monitoring and reporting of Web site usage so businesses can better understand the complex interactions between Web visitor actions and Web site offers, as well as leverage that insight for increased customer loyalty and sales.” Simply put, Web Analytics provides information about users of your website on the internet.

Web Analytics helps you understand the user’s experience on your website. Using this information, you can make modifications to your website that will help your website rank higher in search engines and thereby help you get more website traffic. It not only gives information about the number of visitors to the site but gives a world of useful information like time every individual spends on the website, pages visited in the website, where a person left your website, and much more.

SEO importance of Web Analytics

The question here is how does Web Analytics help SEO? Here are some of the ways in which web analytics can influence your SEO campaign:

• Visitors to the site: The very basic of information, this tells you how many visitors came to your site in a given month. You can also compare the data with past information to see how the traffic to your website is growing over a period of time. You can identify trends and seasonality of visitors to your site. In turn, this will help you refine your marketing efforts to coincide with period when visitors to your site are the mximum.

• Top referring keywords: This lists the relevant keywords that brought visitors to your website. Based on this information, you can see where your website ranks for these keywords. In turn, you can make changes that will help your website rank higher for the keyword. The end result is that you can tweak your SEO campaign to rank higher for keywords that are bringing visitors to your website.

• Domains that bring in traffic: Also called referrers, this is another important metric as it gives you an insight about the source of the traffic to your website. If a website is referring visitors to your site, then it tells you the kind of websites you should be present on, which sites the visitors to your site are likely to visit and this can help you refine your link building strategy.

• Click Path: This helps to judge how user friendly your site design is, how people navigate your site and where they are most likely to exit your site. This helps you refine your website navigation and maximize conversions on your website.

• Bounce Rate: This shows how many visitors left your website and which pages they left the site from. This helps you analyze what could be causing people to leave your site and you can accordingly modify the content of your site.

There’s a lot more useful information and data that web analytics provides. The items listed above are the very basic. A proper tracking of your website traffic can provide you with a wealth of information that you can use to refine your SEO campaign and attract more traffic to your website.

Let’s see how Google Analytics helps you track the above details of your website. Google Analytics is a free solution from Google and it can provide you with data that helps you refine your SEO campaigns and attract more traffic. Here’s an example:

In the above image, you can see the details that Google analytics provides about a particular website. You can find that it mentions about number of visits, bounce rates, pageviews, etc. This is a top level view. You can explore details of each of the above metrics, decide refinements to your SEO campaigns and track the impact of the changes you make.

If you do not know the impact of your efforts, it becomes next to impossible to know if your efforts are working. Analyzing the information available through a Web Analytics solution, you can take informed decisions and make changes to your SEO campaigns to drive more website traffic.

Contributed by Sudeep Rao

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What is an anchor text?

Anchor text, also known as link text, is the hyperlinked text on a web page that leads to another web page or web site. In other words, it is the clickable text in a link. Anchor text is meant tell the user what to expect in the content of the link’s destination. For instance:

 In the image, there are a number of anchor texts like email marketing, deliverability tools, content creation, Web analytics software, search marketing and mobile marketing. Clicking on the text “email marketing” for instance, takes you to the page http://www.lyris.com/solutions/lyris-hq/email-marketing, a page dedicated about the company’s email marketing solution.

Anchor text and its implications on search engine optimization 

 Anchor text is an important search engine optimization factor. It is one of the elements that search engines evaluate when ranking websites for specific keywords. Search engines collect information by crawling around the web by following links i.e., hopping around from one page to another through the links on the page. Links then, are a fundamental necessity for search engines to identify websites and to go from one website to the other. Search engines use the links as indicators of the topic of the page they are about to visit.

Types of Anchor Text

 1. Internal Links: The hypertext that is pointing to page within the same website is called an internal link.

 From the search engine optimization point of view, the anchor text of an internal link:

a) ensures that all the pages within a site get crawled and indexed by the search engines.

b) helps to increase the page rank of an internal page.

c) increases the relevance of the linked page for the keyword that may be a part of the anchor text.

 In the  image, “email marketing” as an anchor text is an example of an internal link.

 2. Inbound Links: The links that are pointing to your site from other sites are known as inbound links. If more number of sites link to the webpage “http://www.lyris.com/solutions/lyris-hq/email-marketing” with “email marketing” as the link text, the search engine start associating the page with the term email marketing. In addition to the number of links, the relevance of the link is also important. An inbound link from a well known site about email marketing is more valuable than hundreds of links of an irrelevant website.

Targeting Keywords in Anchor Text

When a particular keyword is extremely relevant to a page in your website, try to make sure that links pointing to the page have the keyword in the anchor text. The more the instances of internal links and inbound links that point to the page with the keyword in the link text, the higher it will rank for that keyword. One needs to be cautious while doing this. If too many links suddenly appear to point to a page with the same anchor text in a very short period of time, then it can raise a red flag with the search engines. It is important to grow the links in a sustained manner over a period of time. Spread the effort over a long term period and also include variations of the keyword in the anchor text.

 Anchor Text and URL alignment

While getting the inbound links with the desired anchor text, make sure that you are linking to the appropriate page rather than always linking to the home page. For instance if desired link text is email marketing, then the link text should point to the email marketing page within the site and not the home page.

When effectively used over a long term, anchor text optimization through internal and inbound links can have a significant impact on your search engine optimization and help your website rank higher for the keywords present in the anchor text.

Contributed by Girish N N

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