Coast Digital Blog

This might be a rather controversial question to be asked by someone who works for an agency that offers search engine optimisation, but I think it’s one that needs thinking about.

"My name’s Rebecca Wheeler and I’m a Twitterholic”

I’ve never been able to resist the lure of social networks. I’ve always used one social networking site or another (rarely one exclusively) and I’ve been thinking about how I use them - and whether this has changed as significantly as I think it has.

Weighing up the benefits

Where I’d once used social networks to share interesting titbits, keep in touch with long distance friends and stay connected with old colleagues, I’ve been using them more and more to find answers to my questions.

Perhaps it’s the influence of my new iPhone, but getting a response from a social network is now incredibly fast. You no longer have to wait until your friends are in front of a Mac or PC to receive @ replies, direct messages and wall posts. We’re all truly mobile now – and better connected than ever.

So, rather than get Google to find something for me, I often find it easier, more fun and much quicker to ask my friends and followers. Because they know me better than Google does (sorry, Big G), they understand exactly what I’m asking for, even if I haven’t expressed my request particularly clearly.

Valuable advice

I’m not suggesting that social networks could give me all of the answers that the search engines can – after all, I’m addressing a distinct set of people and resources. But I do think search engines could learn a thing or two from the way people interact and share information across the various social platforms.

My friends and followers deliver the added bonuses of advice, opinion and recommendation, for instance – whether I’ve asked for them or not. This isn’t a completely alien concept to search engines. We are now offered integrated user ratings and reviews when searching for products, and they’ve sometimes had enough of impact to determine whether or not I bought them.

But do I really listen to the advice of strangers as seriously as I take on board the opinions of my friends?

To Google or not to Google?

So, while I’ll continue to use Google to find information and gain knowledge that my friends might not be able to impart, I’m relying on Twitter and Facebook for responses to my sometimes muddled questions – and to tell me which new apps I should try out this weekend.

Working for an online marketing agency, we spend a lot of time on Google. So you probably won’t be surprised to hear that the Coast Digital team uses the UK’s (and the world's) most popular search engine for more than just finding information and checking our clients’ keyword rankings.

In this post, I’ve collected together a few of the team’s more unusual uses of Google that you may want to have a go with yourself:

Spellchecker

I’m going to hazard a very unscientific guess that this is a rather common way of using Google. If you’re unsure of the correct spelling of a word, type your best guess into a search and see if Google asks, “Did you mean...?” Hey presto, you now have the correct spelling.

This technique is also useful for checking which variations of spellings are more commonly used - if more than one is acceptable. Search for both variations and see which has more results. This can be particularly helpful when checking whether phrases should be hyphenated, for example.

Calculator

Google won’t even send you off its main site to give you the answers to mathematical calculations. Type in your sum (e.g. 3*5) and let Google do the rest:

It’s much quicker (and far less tiresome) than loading up the Microsoft calculator on your PC or locating a physical one on your desk.

Currency / measurement converter

How confident would you be converting foreign currency without going online to check the latest rates first?

For currency calculations, it’s easy as pie to use the internet to find the most up-to-date rates. Search for “USD exchange rate”, for example, and Google will give you the latest figures:

A similar method can also be applied for converting imperial measurements to metric and so on.

Product reviewer

If you’ve got a fairly good idea of which product you’re interested in, using Google to quickly find reviews couldn’t be easier. Type the product name/code into Google and you’ll be presented with graphical star ratings and user reviews in a matter of seconds:

It’s much quicker than visiting dedicated product review sites, although you won’t be given the same level of detail.

Sports results

I have to admit, I hadn’t actually tried this one until a colleague suggested it for this post – but having given it a go, I can now say that it’s brilliant.

If you like to keep up with sports results, type the name of the sportsperson or team into Google and hit search. You’ll then be presented with the latest scores from whichever tournament they’re currently competing in.

For example, a search for “Andy Murray” yields the following result:

Lastly, for fellow online marketing professionals, Google is a fantastic tool for checking whether your clients’ content has been plagiarised by competitors. Copying and pasting an extract into a Google search will instantly show you whether the content remains unique to your website – or whether it has been pilfered.

Since unique content is key to the success of any search engine optimisation campaign, all online marketers should be regularly applying this simple method to check for plagiarists.

What have I missed?

Those are just a few of Coast Digital’s more unusual employments of the UK’s biggest search engine - what else do you use Google for?

About three weeks ago, we reported that the former editor of Scotsman.com, Stewart Kirkpatrick, was planning to launch an online newspaper in Scotland.

At the time, Kirkpatrick announced that "Scotland needs an intelligent title that uses the internet, not fights against it" and that he'd "signed up leading writers, respected authorities in their fields and asked them to let rip".

Well, here's the result:

My first impression was: "Is that it?"

My second was: "What's that weird blob in the masthead? Is it supposed to be an outline of Scotland?" (After squinting at it for a while, I've concluded that it's supposed to be a puddle of mercury - quicksilver, not the planet).

My third was, surely this has been built on Wordpress?

A quick look at the code confirmed the latter (although the normal 'generator' meta tag, which normally names Wordpress, has been removed). But it's definitely Wordpress, and the admin page has been kept in the default location: caledonianmercury.com/wp-admin/.

A great platform, but...

Personally, I love Wordpress. These days, it's much more than just a blogging platform - it's a great content management system. With a bit of nipping, tucking and tweaking, it's also great for search engine optimisation.

It's just a shame that the Caledonian Mercury was thrown so sloppily together.

Firstly, take a look at this page. It's the lead story at the time of writing.

Yes, that's right - the right column encroaches on the main article. This is in Firefox on the Mac, but it's the same story in Chrome.

Equally sloppy, the front page shows evidence of poor HTML coding. This item has a stray fragment of comment mark-up, which should be invisible (-->).

Coding hell

Things don't improve when you do look under the hood. Header tag structure clearly hasn't been thought out, as this document outline shows. This isn't just careless - it's throwing away SEO opportunities.

Equally bad, the header of each document is crammed full of custom CSS that should be called from an external stylesheet, helping to speed up page load times and give search engine spiders easier access to the actual content. This CSS is annotated as:

<!-- Custom CSS : http://wordpresswave.com/ -->

This domain belongs to WP Wave, a company that offers 'Professional Wordpress coding', suggesting that the Caledonian Mercury has used the firm to set up its site.

What about the content?

This is the really tragic thing. The content of the site is good. Well-written, enjoyable, lively in the right places. I had a good laugh at the piece on MacGonagall suppers, and the Robert McNeill sketches are great.

But for a venture that's aiming to use the internet and not fight against it, it has burst into life way too early - more thought was needed.

For that content to appeal more to readers, the pages have to look a lot better. And for more people to find it via search, the pages need to be much better constructed. Stewart - if you'd like a hand, we can help.

Most of all, though, please change the masthead. It looks like Metal Mickey has been sick in the middle of it.

In the last post, we introduced the concept of Google Analytics filters.

In this one, we’re going to look some examples of how filters can be used to make Analytics much more powerful. Some are quite straightforward and will be suitable for most Analytics installations, but others are more specialist and will appeal to the proficient and data-hungry analyst.

Either way, you should find plenty of ideas that will be relevant to your own online activities.

To recap, when you use filters you are specifying rules that keep data clean and in order, as well as splitting off data that relates to specific traffic types and areas of the site. By doing this, you can channel data into separate profiles and apply certain rules to it.

It is also possible for filters to amend data at the point that it is processed by Analytics, allowing additional data to be added to various Analytics fields – we will take a look at some examples of this next.

Top tip – When working with filters, it is good practice to keep a raw data profile in your account that isn’t subject to any filters. This way, if you are testing a new filter with additional profiles, you have a backup of unmodified data if something doesn’t behave as planned.

IP Exclude

Exclude a single IP or a range of IP addresses from appearing in your reports.

This is useful to filter out internal visits from your own organisation, which if left in, can have a noticeable effect on overall site average visit times, bounce rates and page views.

Make sure that you use regular expressions to correctly format the address:

Top tip - Use an include filter to add a profile for internal traffic. This way, colleagues can test out landing pages and other new pages on site that you haven’t linked to from your main site navigation, without affecting your whole-site visitor data.

Organic traffic (or another traffic source) only

This example shows you how track only organic traffic by setting up a profile of its own, but it can be applied to any other source.

One folder only

This tracks traffic to just one folder on site - e.g. sitename.com/blog

Full PPC Keyword Referrer

One limitation of the ‘keyword’ field in Analytics, is the inability to see the exact keyword or phrase that triggered a broad or phrase-match PPC visit.

Without any filters applied, Google will show only the bid keyword that triggered the visit – i.e. the term that the advertiser is bidding on in their PPC account, but not the actual search term.

For example, the broad matched keyword ‘search’ would match to a query for ‘search engine optimisation’. However, Analytics would show the referring keyword as simply ‘search’.

The following filter-set allows the exact search term to be added to the ‘user defined’ field in Analytics, alongside the bid term. This is extremely useful when looking to build out lists of negative keywords to use in a broad or phrase-match campaign, as well as identifying opportunities where exact match terms can be added to an account, helping to reduce overall CPCs (the average cost per click). Ensure that the following filters are added in the order shown:

i)

ii)

iii)

iv)

v)

vi)

Keyword position filter

Google is testing and phasing-in AJAX results pages, which allow search term position data to be collected within Analytics on a search-by-search basis.

This is very experimental at the moment, but it’s a great way to learn about the Google referring data from their search results page. If you export this data to Excel, you can - with a bit of cunning data manipulation - extract positions and analyse them in more depth.

It is worth noting that the position is relative to the top of the organic results section and as such, news, products and other items are also counted as positions. It is also relevant that Ajax results are not shown to every searcher at the moment, so there will also be a lot of undefined data in your Analytics profile. The following filter works for Google.co.uk but can be modified to work with Google.com results.

i) Add a filter for Organic traffic only

ii) Add filters for Google referred traffic only

iii) Add position data to user defined field

Note: the RegEx string in field B in this step reads: [?#&]cd=([^&]+)&

Again, once the profile has collected and is displaying traffic data, navigate to the keyword report and select the user-defined value as the secondary dimension. You will then see the positions recorded for the associated keyword.

There have been many recent blog posts about potential SEO developments for 2010, so I thought I’d gaze into my own crystal ball and see what patterns emerged from the mist.

So, if you want to dominate the natural SERPs over the next 12 months, these are the factors that I think are going to be the most important.

1. Website load time

Check into Google’s Webmaster Tools and you’ll get plenty of feedback on website load time - a sure sign that it’s an element you need to get right.

When the GoogleBot crawls your site, it needs an easy and unblocked route to your content. Many posts on the Google Webmaster Central blog suggest allowing the GoogleBot to crawl all areas of your site - they could be key areas in your visitors’ journeys, and they could have high load times. Giving GoogleBot free rein over your sitemap will make sure you get the best possible feedback about page load times.

Google’s ‘Caffeine’ update incorporates load times as part of its algorithm. So far it’s been difficult to measure the impact of this change in the UK SERPs; but as we move through 2010 this update will affect more sets of keywords and themes. In August last year, the big shake up had a big impact on a set of ‘Hollywood’ search terms, which also gave more power to brand owners. I expect this to roll out even further and – of course – throw up odd results (i.e. from other countries) as we go along.

2. More competitive local search results

Google Local Business listings have proven to be a fantastic channel of traffic for website owners. As more SEO agencies look to leverage the power of these listings at the top of the SERPs, I expect Google to reward top spots by focusing on quality and relevance.

The current set up means you can easily bump your listing into the top spots for relevant searches like ‘Solicitors Kent’, but as we move into 2010 I expect listings that have more reviews, similar location-based inbound links and use other Google products (e.g. AdWords, Product Search) will benefit the most.

I expect Google to tighten the algorithm of local listings further, so it won’t be (potentially) as easy to achieve quick wins in this area.

3. Authority websites to continue to deliver more weight for SEO

The way we search is changing. Whether your original search stemmed from Facebook, a Twitter post or elsewhere, these days we can avoid trawling through pages of search results to find what we’re looking for. In some cases it may just be easier to ask someone within an online community - we are guided by recommendation more then ever.

Although it’s hard to predict the longevity of Twitter’s growth (or decline), networks of this kind will be a growing source of direct visits to your website. Regular visits from authority websites will strengthen your position in the SERPS and need to be taken into consideration for your SEO.

This means you need to embrace social networks: tweet regularly, generate discussion and get your news read!

4. Link building: chasing PageRank will be a thing of the past

Link building strategies are often guided by chasing a link from a site with an awesomely high PageRank; but I predict we will soon be switching our attention to websites that have greater relevance and high crawl rates. Inbound links from static websites that are never updated will be worth very little, whereas a link from news source that isn’t necessarily ‘anchored up to the nines’ will be of greater value.

I also expect PageRank will be removed from the Google toolbar in 2010.

5. Long tail will (still) be the future for 2010

As we use increasingly accurate searches, the user journey through Google’s results pages may be much shorter then previous years.

This means that websites (especially eCommerce or news-related sites with lots of fresh content) need to focus on higher quality ‘SEO friendly’ content. Good descriptive copy, metadata and headings all count towards achieving accurate results.

There will be more pockets of opportunity for long tail searches in SEO; the trick is to identify these terms and build your strategy around them, rather than getting distracted by the the ego-inflating terms that don’t necessarily convert.

So, there you go – a few little gems from Coast Digital’s SEO crystal ball! Let’s hear your predictions for 2010 too... ideas in the comments please.

One of the great strengths of Google Analytics is its adaptability, allowing you to press it into service when you need to measure metrics in complex or unusual situations.

To do this, you normally have to modify the tracking code – the javascript you add to the foot of your pages. Some of the more common modifications can be created automatically from within the Analytics interface, and they follow this format:

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-1041707-1");
<Additional Code Here>
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script>

In all the examples below, the relevant code needs to be added before the line that reads pagetracker._trackPageview();

Tracking Multiple Subdomains

If your site spans a number of subdomains, you need to make sure that Google Analytics treats them all as a single site. For example, if your main site is at www.mysite.com and the secure sections of your eCommerce site are at secure.mysite.com, then you need to make sure that referral information is passed between the two. To do this, add the following code:

pageTracker._setDomainName(".mysite.co.uk");

Tracking across domains (multiple top level domains):

If, for example, your site uses a third party checkout on a separate domain (i.e. you use something like www.checkout-provider.com as well as www.mysite.co.uk), then you need to modify the Analytics tracking code so that referral details apply to both domains. If you don’t, then www.checkout-provider.com will be treated as a referring site, which will skew your data.

To measure both domains, you need to add the following lines to your Analytics code.

pageTracker._setDomainName("none");
pageTracker._setAllowLinker(true);

Note: you will also need to add the _link function to hyperlinks between the two sites. To do this, you should add the code in bold (you may be able to set up your content management system to do this automatically).

<a href="https://www.siteexample.com/checkout" onclick="pageTracker._link(this.href); return false;">Login Now</a>

Custom Segmentation using SetVar

It’s possible to use the setVar function to set custom segmentation rules, allowing you - for example - to segment visitors to a specific section of your website, such as the Business to Business area. That way, you can analyse those visitors as potential customers, rather than as consumers, researchers or members of other groups.

To do this, add the following to your tracking code, replacing SegmentName with your own label:

pageTracker._setVar(”SegmentName”);

Information picked up by setVar function appears in the ‘User Defined’ section of the Google Analytics interface.

Top Tip: If setVar is used on entry pages, bounce rates (a measure of single-page visits) will drop – this is because setVar is interpreted as a second visit to the server.

Filters

Filters are a very powerful Analytics feature in Analytics, and they can work hand in hand with the advanced tracking techniques we have already looked at.

If you use filters, you specify rules to keep data clean and in order, as well as splitting data relating to specific traffic types and areas of the site – allowing it to be channelled into separate profiles.

For example, if you used the subdomain tracking discussed earlier, you could use filters to generate separate profiles, such as for:

• All traffic (without filters)
• Main site traffic (no subdomains – just the www variant of your site)
• The eCommerce store subdomain

Note that any filter applied to a profile works from the moment it is added, not retroactively. For this reason it’s usually a good idea to add filters to a brand new profile, ensuring data continuity.

Top tip: Segment subdomains into profiles of their own by using filters – this way, it is easy to gauge the performance of different subdomains from the summary page and content reports.

When is the novelty of Twitter going to wear off, at least in the media?

For a service that's quite clearly billed as a social network, I find it hard to understand why there's so much fuss about people doing - erm - social things on it. Yes, the sight of people flirting and chatting, lying and scheming, plotting and self-publicising can be fascinating - that's why journalists fill their pages with this sort of stuff.

At least, that's what they tell themselves.

But why the extra hoo-ha when people do these things on Twitter?

Let's take the Twitter stories of last week and assess their real significance.

Dannii Minogue is pregnant

She's pregnant. She announced it on Twitter. "Woo hoo I'm gonna be a mummy!" she said.

Significance: why issue a press release when you can get national coverage with a tweet?

Kerry Katona is not

She isn't. Despite someone on Twitter saying she is.

Significance: who cares? It's just another non-story about Kerry Katona. Turn the page.

Neither is Kate Perry

No baby for Perry either. "Ur gonna make me cry, maybe that's my period tho. THAT'S RIGHT I'M BLEEDING. Face. Better luck next month peepz," she tweeted.

Significance: yet more free publicity for something that hasn't actually occurred.

But Tila Tequila is

She is so. The lover of the late heiress Casey Johnson says she is.

Significance: yet more free publicity for something that has actually occurred.

That's enough pregnant. Now for the pause

And having read all the non-stories, pulled off the internet by hacks who are desperate to fill space, it's hard not to sympathise with the following item of interest.

Ricky Gervais thinks Twitter is duff

He doesn't like Twitter. He's stopped using it after six tweets, claiming it to be 'pointless' and 'undignified'.

And sadly, given the oodles of tedium that seep from Twitter into the pages of the press, it's tempting to agree with him.

But that's to miss the point – Twitter is just like any other social medium, and you can actually derive a lot of pleasure, amusement, satisfaction and even profit from it, without once noticing that a minor celeb is (or is not) carrying a child. It's in the newspapers that you can't avoid that sort of dross.

No matter. Let's end on a positive.

Haiti aid comes by tweet and text

Yes, an additional $5 million has been trickling in. And I'm not along in thinking that's one of the many good sides of Twitter - one that doesn't have much to do with pregnancies, real or imagined, and one that may well have been missed by Ricky Gervais.

Here's how you can donate to Haiti earthquake victims.