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Category Archives: Google Analytics

The Best Keyword Research Tools

14 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Advanced Search, Best Practices, Google Analytics, Google SEO

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Tags

Best Practices, Google Keyword Planner, Keyword, Keyword Tools

Whether you like it or not, keyword research is at the core of pay-per-click marketing and SEO practices. If you aren’t bidding or using the right keywords, short- or long-tail, then you could be selling yourself short on your potential success.

And wouldn’t you rather reel in a big whale shark instead of a few sardines? (You can obviously tell I don’t know my fish very well.)

See, doing good keyword research is like being a seasoned fisherman, casting his net at the right place, at the right time. So whether you’re looking to patch up the holes in your current keyword selection net, or expand the size of it, consider this article a potential algal bloom of profits.

By now you should know that the Google AdWords Keyword Tool is no longer available – Google has folded the tool into Keyword Planner, a combination of the old keyword tool and the Traffic Estimator. Now, you need an AdWords account to get keyword suggestions from Google. But Google is far from the only keyword game in town.

In this article, we’ll look at my eight favorite keyword research tools, plus some fancy tricks you can use to get a wooden peg leg up on your competition. Some are free, and some are not (but well worth the money).

Keyword Research Tools

So without further ado, let’s take you from being like this guy…

Keyword Tools

To this guy.

1. FreshKey ($20 Software)

FreshKey is my #1 go-to keyword research tool that allows me to see beyond the regular Google Instant suggestions and predictions that appear when I start typing things in on Google.

Not only does it give you new keyword ideas, variations, and synonyms, it also sorts the keywords depending on popularity.

FreshKey

Instead of just getting four new keywords from the Google suggestions drop-down, you can now potentially get an unlimited amount of keywords if you keep adding small letter variations like a, b, c, d, etc. to the end of your keyword root.

Keyword Tools

Best Keyword Tool

FreshKey will even give you ideas of which negative keywords to add before you actually have to pay for them the old-fashioned way by going through your search query report.

You can also use it to get Amazon search box suggestion terms.

You can also export the keyword results as a spreadsheet or copy them directly to your clipboard.

BOOM! You can stop reading the rest of this article now. (JK)

2) Soovle (Free)

If you have multiple channels you wish to do keyword research for and want to sound like an idiot explaining the pronunciation of this tool to your watercooler buddies, then Soovle is a perfect fit.

Soovle allows you to explore the most typed in keywords on multiple search engines based on the keyword root you give it. It even includes Amazon and eBay.

Not only is it a great keyword research tool to use, but it’s also a great brainstormer as you can slowly start typing in your ideas and allow it to auto-generate its own ideas.

I would’ve never thought to call a bounce house an inflatable castle, but now I do 🙂

Soovle

3)  Ubersuggest (Free)

Meet the keyword research tool on steroids, Ubersuggest.

Ubersuggest takes any keyword you give it and immediately gives you an almost unlimited list of alphabetized and numerical keyword variations of your original keyword.

You can even take it further by adding “bounce house ab, ac, ad” to uncover more keywords that you could potentially bid on or use for SEO purposes.

Ubersuggest

4) Search Term/Query Reports (Free-Ish)

Now even though you won’t be expanding your keyword net by using search query report mining, you’ll at least be improving your AdWords or Bing Ads account by patching up holes.

One common thing I notice in PPC accounts is the lack of attention and detail in which the account owner or previous agency allows one or a couple of keywords to be the “catch all” for everything. A common example would be to have the keyword +bounce +house or “bounce house” and leave it at that.

The only problem is that you can’t possibly laser-target every ad to the search query, and your landing page will definitely not be as targeted as it could be either. Not even dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) would help, because who wants to click on an ad with the headline of just “Bounce House”? Let’s just say it gets tricky, and you’re a little lazy if that’s all you do.

The search term/query report is a PPC report that shows you what search terms have actually triggered your ads based on the current keywords you’re bidding on. So it won’t expand your reach since your ads are already showing for those terms, but it will help you improve your quality scores and granularity within your account.

Here’s how to access the search term report in Google AdWords:

AdWords Search Queries

Here’s how to access the search query report in Bing Ads:

Bing Keywords

5)  Google Keyword Planner (Free)

Duuuhhh…! Of course this is on the list.

The Google Keyword Planner is sometimes regarded as the alpha and omega of keyword research tools. You must have an AdWords account to access it, and that doesn’t mean you have to pay anything to use it, it’s still free.

The Google Keyword Planner will show you some pretty neat stats like average monthly searches, competition level (high, medium, or low), the average cost per click, and more.

It doesn’t give you exact keyword suggestions like FreshKey or Ubersuggest, but it actually takes it a step further and suggests more synonyms and variations than many other tools available.

Is it accurate? Sort of. I always tell people to take the suggested keyword stats with a grain of salt.

Here’s how to find it. Log in in to your AdWords account and go to the Tools and Analysis tab:

AdWords Keywords

Here are some of the keyword results:

Keyword Planner

6)  WordStream’s Keyword Tool (Free)

Ahhh yes… Of course I could never forget WordStream’s very own keyword tool for both SEO and PPC keyword research.

The WordStream keyword tool allows you to target certain niches (groups of related keywords), gives you further suggestions, and also allows you to group them based off of a common theme for easy ad group launches.

WordStream Keyword Tool

This keyword research tool gives you 30 searches for free, after that you’ll have to sign up for their PPC Advisor to use it additionally.

Hidden bonus? You get a free 7-day trial on top of the 30 free searches you already did!

7) Competitor Source Code (Free)

This might not be the best and most fruitful keyword research tool but it allows you to see what meta keywords your competitors could be using to try to rank organically.

Since I use Google Chrome as my browser, it’s super simple to right-click on a site and select “View Page Source.”

View Meta Keywords

After that, all you have to do is locate the keywords and read what they’ve got. That’s it!

Two caveats for this method:

  • Your competitors might not be using the best keywords
  • Your competitors might not have meta keywords enabled (since Google doesn’t include meta keyword data in its search algorithm anymore)

8. YouTube Keyword Tool (Free)

This one’s for the film nerds! If you’re a brilliant marketer (which you are, you’re reading WordStream after all), then you know that YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world, potentially driving hundreds if not thousands of visitors from your videos, to your site.

Smart people know the value of YouTube and are already using it for their content marketing strategies, so it would make sense to optimize your video headlines and descriptions to get the highest possible rankings.

To do so, go to youtube.com/keyword_tool and use it just like you would the other tools I’ve mentioned.

YouTube Keywords

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Be Careful Using AdWords for Keyword Research

14 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Advanced Search, Best Practices, Google Analytics, Google SEO

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Tags

Best Practices, Google Analytics, Google Keyword Planner, Google Keyword Tool, Keyword

Article thanks to The Moz Blog

February 14th, 2012 – Posted by Rand Fishkin to Keyword Research

For the past decade, most of us in the field of search have relied on Google’s AdWords data (either in the public tool, the API or the tools inside AdWords accounts). It’s the best source we’ve got, but many marketers may not realize that sadly, the numbers and queries may not always match up to what’s actually happening on Google’s search engine. I’ll illustrate with an example.

An SEOmoz blog post ranks in the top 2-3 results for many keywords around the phrase “blog traffic.” Here’s a screenshot of some of those rankings:

Google Search for "Improve Blog Traffic"

I went into our Google Analytics account and pulled the related keywords along with how much traffic they’ve sent in the past 30 days:

Moz Google Analytics Data

Then I went to Google’s AdWords Tool and searched for “blog traffic” to compare the suggestions:

AdWords Search for "Blog Traffic"

Here I got confused, because many of the terms that we receive traffic for are NOT shown above in the list… Is Google hiding them? Do they not know about them?

To be sure, I typed them into Google’s AdWords Tool manually, performing [exact match] searches only:

AdWords Tool Data

Holy cow… There they are. So, AdWords does have volume for these, and will display it, but only if you enter them exactly (or rather, “more exactly” – you can find them if you do sets of imprecise, but closer queries, too). I made the chart below to illustrate which terms were available from the broad reserach:

Comparison of Keywords Suggested vs. Those with Volume

As you can see, there’s ~50% of the terms not shown in the suggestion list, which is fairly substantive and could lead to some serious missed targeting opportunities.

THE IMPORTANT LESSON: Running discovery-focused searches in AdWords may not show you all the valuable/high-volume keyword phrases connected to a word/phrase.

There are a few ways to address this challenge:

  1. If you have the budget, my top recommendation is to buy a few, very broad keywords in AdWords, send them to a relevant landing page on your site, but realize you probably will lose money on the campaign. The goal isn’t conversions, but rather to learn by watching the keyword terms/phrases for which you get impressions. This is also great conversion-testing if you have the budget to invest, but even a week or two of data can be highly valuable for future keyword targeting.
  2. When searching in AdWords, start broad, and then enter narrower queries and note the new phrases that come up. Make sure to use exact match, and be diligent in testing variations. Google only lies through omission.
  3. The relative numbers of searches aren’t perfect (as you can see above), but they are relatively decent. In fact, I’d say they’ve improved in what they show vs. the actuals you’ll see compared to prior years. However,
  4. Use your own analytics as a guide to find new terms/phrases you might be imperfectly targeting. And if you see keyword variations that have a unique or different intent, it might even pay to create a more targeted page for that query, and you often need less work to rank, since Google uses the “indented results” system to drop a second URL from the same domain directly underneath the first one on a given page.

Now I’d love to hear from you – what are your experiences around keyword research in AdWords? Are you seeing the same thing we are? You can share your thoughts in the comments and/or use the poll below (from a new service called Quipol that has some fun twists):

BTW – Given that 30%+ of our referrals from Google searches are keyword (not provided), I’d venture to guess that all of the numbers from our analytics are underreporting by about that same percent. Keep that in mind when comparing the data from AdWords vs. our analytics above.

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2014 Top Social Media Channels

03 Saturday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Bloging, community manager, Facebook, Google Analytics, LInkedIn, Marketing, Multi Channel Marketing, Online Marketing, Pinterest, tumblr., Twitter, Yelp, YouTube

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Community Management, Engagement, facebook page insights bug, Marketing, MOBILE SOCIAL NETWORKING, Online Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, social media tools, Trending

 

sm logos

 

 

 

 

 

 

My clients are always asking me “What is the best social media channel” and I always answer the same, “the one that works best for you. Truth is that not all social media channels are the same, just as not all businesses are the same. I recommend using the channel(s) that best suite your particular business. However to keep the the ranking monkeys happy here is the industry list of social media channels ranked by use, and popularity.

1 | Facebook
3 – eBizMBA Rank | 900,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 3 – Compete Rank | 3 – Quantcast Rank | 2 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Social Networking Sites | eBizMBA
2 | Twitter
12 – eBizMBA Rank | 310,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 21 – Compete Rank | 8 – Quantcast Rank | 8 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Social Networking Sites | eBizMBA
3 | LinkedIn
18 – eBizMBA Rank | 255,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 25 – Compete Rank | 19 – Quantcast Rank | 9 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Social Networking Sites | eBizMBA
4 | Pinterest
22 – eBizMBA Rank | 250,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 27 – Compete Rank | 13 – Quantcast Rank | 26 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Social Networking Sites | eBizMBA
5 | Google Plus+
30 – eBizMBA Rank | 120,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | *32* – Compete Rank |*28* – Quantcast Rank | NA – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.

6 | Tumblr
34 – eBizMBA Rank | 110,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 55 – Compete Rank | *13*- Quantcast Rank | 34 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Social Networking Sites | eBizMBA
7 | Instagram
77 – eBizMBA Rank | 100,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 49 – Compete Rank | 145- Quantcast Rank | 36 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Social Networking Sites | eBizMBA
8 | VK
97 – eBizMBA Rank | 80,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | *150* – Compete Rank |*120* – Quantcast Rank | 21 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Social Networking Sites | eBizMBA
9 | Flickr
123 – eBizMBA Rank | 65,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 138 – Compete Rank | 139- Quantcast Rank | 91 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Social Networking Sites | eBizMBA
10 | Vine
581 – eBizMBA Rank | 42,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 237 – Compete Rank | 335- Quantcast Rank | 1,172 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Social Networking Sites | eBizMBA
11 | Meetup
596 – eBizMBA Rank | 40,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 791 – Compete Rank | 701- Quantcast Rank | 296 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Social Networking Sites | eBizMBA
12 | Tagged
702 – eBizMBA Rank | 38,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 1,082 – Compete Rank |615 – Quantcast Rank | 408 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Social Networking Sites | eBizMBA
13 | Ask.fm
779 – eBizMBA Rank | 37,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 2,046 – Compete Rank |113 – Quantcast Rank | 179 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Social Networking Sites | eBizMBA
14 | MeetMe
1,457 – eBizMBA Rank | 15,500,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 1,407 – Compete Rank |635 – Quantcast Rank | 2,328 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Social Networking Sites | eBizMBA
15 | ClassMates
1,487 – eBizMBA Rank | 15,000,000 – Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 153 – Compete Rank |*285* – Quantcast Rank | 4,022 – Alexa Rank | September 1, 2014.
The Most Popular Social Networking Sites | eBizMBA

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Google’s Acquisition of DeepMind Hints to More Intelligent Web Searches

14 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Google Analytics, Google SEO, Google+

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Google Analytics, Google+, Social Media, social media tools, Strategy

It seems that Google is venturing into sci-fi territory with its latest acquisition. Or is it? Google has shelled out $500 million to acquire the UK startup DeepMind, according to TechCrunch. DeepMind focuses on artificial intelligence and machine learning.

screen-shot-2014-01-27-at-9-16-52-am

To date, Google’s true intentions regarding the acquisition of DeepMind have not been released. Google X Labs produces some innovative and helpful products (i.e. Google Glass and self-driving cars), so there is no shortage of opportunity to utilize artificial intelligence there. Google’s primary mission, though, is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” So it may very well implement new applications in artificial intelligence in more practical instances such as its Web search algorithm instead of trying to create self-aware machines.

 

Improving Search Results

Currently, Google’s internet search results rely on information and content that is properly labeled online. This is why SEO still involves a lot of care toward meta information, word content and descriptive anchor text for links. The exception to this is Google’s image search, which uses a mathematical algorithm to analyze image features to find the same or similar images that have been posted elsewhere online. But these internet search algorithms are woefully inadequate when searching for videos, audio files and interactive content like video games. Yes, these file types can be located when they are labeled correctly in their titles or descriptions, but otherwise these media types are completely missed by search engines.

Here is where artificial intelligence would be useful. By 2012 Google had already developed a neural network that made use of machine learning to recognize the content within YouTube videos. In this case, a “deep learning” model of artificial intelligence was used, where the machine’s conclusion was not based on pre-loaded knowledge and detailed sets of conditional statements but rather on a framework where the machine was able to create its own concepts. The result of this experiment: the computer was able to create the concept of, and identify, a cat, according to the Verge.

 

Artificial Intelligence: Separating Fact from Fiction

The fast-paced development of technology in the 21st century as well as our fascination with the possibilities presented to us through the world of science fiction has built up our belief that science makes just about anything possible. While we have in fact made extraordinary strides in technology thus far, we are still a long way from creating a machine with the intelligence to match anywhere near that of a human being.

The concepts of common sense and even understanding are still elusive in the field of artificial intelligence. Will Google Search ever be developed to the point where it can determine if Web content is humorous or not? Whether Web content is offensive? Google already dealt with this issue back in 2009 when, according to ABC, offensive images appeared as results for the search term “Michelle Obama.” The incident prompted Google to issue the following statement:

The beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google, as well as the opinions of the general public, do not determine or impact our search results.

So while Google does not ultimately feel responsible for the search results it provides, that doesn’t necessarily mean Google doesn’t want to offer users the refined search results they desire. Currently Google Safe Search for Web images censors search results by examining the content of the page hosting an image. It also analyzes images for being potentially explicit, although Chris Crum fromWeb Pro News found that many webmasters are finding their innocuous content blocked from search results because of such efforts. So it seems that an internet search engine that can reliably vet Web content is still an elusive goal.

Deep learning in artificial intelligence forms the foundation for automated machine learning. This can be applied to accomplish relatively simple things such as creating smart home appliances that can program themselves based on the unique activity in a home, teaching a robot how to climb stairs or, more importantly, understanding the purpose of stairs. Deep learning’s goal is to have the machine learn how to climb stairs and why they are used, instead of being programmed step-by-step on how to climb them. In this respect, the idea of machine being intelligent enough to be on par even with a seven-year-old human is still a good way into the future, although some experts say creating such a machine will be possible within the next 100 years.

 

What Makes DeepMind Unique

DeepMind’s moniker comes from an area of machine learning called deep learning. Deep learning tries to mimic the natural neural network in the brain by processing data by means of context, memory and positive reinforcement. Some of DeepMind’s coolest work has been training software to play video games where no information or rules about the video game were loaded onto the program before it started playing. The software learned how to play the video solely upon the positive/negative reinforcement of the game performance or score.

At one point, Facebook was also interested in acquiring DeepMind, according to Re/Code. Facebook’s interest may have lied in deep learning’s potential to make targeted online advertising truly dynamic. It turns out, however, that the world of deep learning experts is pretty small, with a good number of them still in, or fresh out of graduate school. So to say that the professionals at DeepMind and their work are in demand would be being quite modest.

In the end it seems that Google and other companies are looking towards the latest trends in artificial intelligence and determining how to use them in practical applications. While artificial intelligence will always be the mainstay of science fiction fantasies where it is a key feature of the autonomous computers and robots of the future, it’s fascinating to see how artificial intelligence is being used today to enhance our own personal daily technology uses and experiences.

 

This just in.

Google Acquires Artificial Intelligence Startup DeepMind For More Than $500M

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How to Use Google Analytics to Track Your Pinterest Efforts

16 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Google Analytics, Pinterest, Uncategorized

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Tags

Analytics, Google Analytics, Marketing, Metrics, Pinterest, Pinterst

FINALLY!!

Within Google Analytics you can measure the amount of traffic coming to your blog from most social networks including Pinterest.

Step 1: In the top right corner, select the date range you want to measure.

Select date range in Google Analytics

Step 2:From the menu on the right hand side of the screen select acquisition, then click on social.

Find social referrals in Google Analytics

Step 3:Click network referrals.

A screen will appear that lists the social networks referring traffic to your blog.  They will be listed in descending order from the network that sends the most traffic to your site down to the network that sends the least.

Measure social network referrals with Google Analytics

The resulting list will let you know how your traffic referrals from Pinterest stack up against other social networks. If you find that you are putting effort into Pinterest and seeing positive results, keep up the good work. If not, you might need to reassess you Pinterest strategy.

How to measure visits from your blog’s URLs shared on Pinterest

Step 1: From the network referral results list click on Pinterest.

In the example given, Pinterest is the top social network traffic refer, for your blog it might be lower on the list.

How to measure visits from your blog’s URLs shared on Pinterest

Step 2: When Pinterest is selected from the list a window will appear that shows the URLs from your blog that were linked to from Pinterest.

At the top of the list you’ll find the URL of the blog post or page that was most visited from Pinterest for the time period selected.

URLs linked from Pinterest

Having this information can be very helpful in determining what type of content resonates best with Pinterest users. Use this information to help guide future blog post topics and the images used in them.

How to measure which Pinterest pins are bringing you traffic

Each individual pin on Pinterest gets assigned its own URL. Google Analytics tracks how many times your site is visited from each individual pin.

Step 1: From the menu on the right hand side of the screen select acquisition, then click on all referrals.

Measure which Pinterest pins are bringing you traffic

Step 2: A list of all of the places online that refer traffic to your blog will appear.

Find Pinterest on the list and click.

Measure traffic from Pinterest pins

Step 3: A list of links from Pinterest that have referred traffic to your blog will appear.

On this list you might possibly see the link that comes from your Pinterest profile. This shows the importance of including the link to your blog in your profile. It gives Pinterest users a one-click way to get to your blog.

Pinterest pin links in Google Analytics

Screenshot 2013-12-16 09.31.15

There’s a small gray arrow next to each Pinterest pin. When clicked, it will open a new widow with that pin.

In this case, the top referring pin for this time period brought 163 visits to my blog. When I clicked on the gray arrow the pin below opened in a new window. I was surprised to see that is wasn’t a pin that was on my Pinterest board it was from another Pinterest account with over 1 million followers. It was repinned 43 times and liked 32 times.Track Pinterest pins in Google Analytics

I was sure to follow this pinner and repay the favor by following her and repinning from her Pinterest boards. Check the pins that are bringing traffic your way and you can find new accounts to follow that have already shown an interest in your content.

A word of caution, growth on Pinterest as with other social networks does take time. If you’ve only been active on Pinterest a short while you might not yet see Pinterest ranking high in your Google Analytics.

If you find that your efforts aren’t paying off after a significant amount of time you might need toreassess your Pinterest strategy. The amount of time varies depending on the amount of content you publish and your niche.

Google Analytics can provide you a wealth of knowledge about what is happening on your blog, taking a quick look to see if what you’re doing for Pinterest is really paying off and which pins are bringing visitors to your blog. You can use this information to learn more about the people who find your content interesting guide future blog posts or the kinds of images to use in your posts.

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Why Google’s New Hummingbird Algorithm is Good News for Serious Content Creators

22 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Google Analytics, Google SEO, Google+

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algorithm, Best Practices, Google Analytics, Marketing, Metrics, Online Marketing, SEM, SEO, social media tools

Image of a Hummingbird

On October 3rd, 2013 Google announced a major search algorithm release called Hummingbird.

Uh-oh.

Does this mean your content-driven business is in jeopardy? Is keyword researchdead? Are you going to have to reengineer your entire content strategy?

There’s no question that the Hummingbird algorithm is only the beginning of change in search optimization, but smart content creators can be prepared to thrive in this — and any — environment that may come in the future.

This release is basically a platform that enables Google to better handle “conversational” search queries.

To illustrate this, consider the difference between these two queries:

  1. “golden gate pictures”
  2. “give me some pictures of the golden gate bridge”

 

The first query is formed the way people have learned to enter entries using a keyboard. This has been our primary input method since web search was born.

Keyboards are not natural human devices, and even for fast typists they are a bit of an awkward device to use, so learning to abbreviate queries to talk to a search engine is a generally accepted practice.

However, the rise of mobile device usage brings some new challenges.

The mobile keyboard cometh

While many continue to type with the keyboards on phones and tablets, they are a bit more awkward to use.

Over time, people are going to increasingly gravitate to voice search in environments where that is acceptable (e.g. environments where speaking to your device is not seen as intrusive).

Voice queries are far more likely to fall into the pattern of the second query above — natural language queries.

As in all things search, Google wants to dominate mobile search too.

Google wants to process “real” speech patterns

Having the best platform for processing conversational queries is an important part of that, and that’s where Hummingbird fits in, though it’s just the beginning of a long process.

Think of Google’s Hummingbird algorithm as a two-year-old child. So far it’s learned a few very basic concepts.

These concepts represent building blocks, and it is now possible to teach it even more concepts going forward. It appears that a lot of this learning is derived from the rich array of information that Google has on all search queries done on the web, including the query sequences.

For example, consider the following query sequence, starting with the user asking “give me some pictures of the transamerica building”:

 

The user looks at these results, and then decides to ask the next question, “how tall is it”:

 

Note that the latter query recognizes the word “it” as referring to the Transamerica Building because that was identified in the prior query. This is part of the sophistication of natural language queries.

Another example is the notion of comparison queries. Consider the query “pomegranate vs cranberry juice”:

 

The Knowledge Graph

These examples involve Google’s Knowledge Graph, where natural language search benefits from the ability to pull real-time answers to queries that understand the specific context of the query.

Note that the Knowledge Graph has accepted some forms of conversational queries for a while, but a big part of Hummingbird was about expanding this capability to the rest of Google search.

I have seen people argue about whether or not Hummingbird was just a front end translator for search queries, or whether it is really about understanding more complex types of user intent.

The practical examples we have now may behave more like the former, but make no mistake that Google wants to be able to do the latter as well.

The mind reading algorithm

Google wants to understand what is on your mind, well, before its on your mind.

Consider Google Now as ultimately being part of this mix. Imagine being able to have Google address search queries like these:

  1. Where do I find someone that can install my surround sound system?
  2. What year did the Sox lose that one game playoff?
  3. What are the predictions for the price of gas next summer?
  4. What time is my dinner on Tuesday night, where is it, and how do I get there?

No, these queries will not work right now, but it gives you some idea of where this is all headed.

These all require quite a bit of semantic analysis, as well as pulling in additional information including your personal context.

The 4th question I added was to show that Google is not likely to care if the search is happening across web sites, in your address book, or both. Not all of this is Hummingbird, per se, but it is all part of the larger landscape.

To give you an idea on how long this has taken to build, Google’s Amit Singhal first filed a patent called Search queries improved based on query semantic information in March of 2003. In short, development of this technology has taken a very long time, and is a very big deal.

The implications of a Hummingbird search world

It is important to remember that this step forward being described by Google as a new platform.

Like the Caffeine release Google did in June of 2010, the real import of this is yet to come. Google will be able to implement many more capabilities in the future. The implications to search in the long term are potentially huge.

For you as a publisher, the implications are more straightforward. Here are a few things to think about:

1. Will keywords go away?

Not entirely. The language you use is a key part of a semantic analysis of your content.

Hopefully, you abandoned the idea of using the same phrases over and over again in your content a long time ago. It will remain wise to have a straightforward definition of what the page is about in the page title.

I’ll elaborate a bit more on this in point 3 below.

2. Will Google make the long tail of search go away?

Not really. Some of the aspects that trigger long tail type search results may actually be inferred by Google rather than contained in the query. Or they may be in the user’s query itself. Some long tail user queries may also get distilled down to a simpler head term.

There will definitely be shifts here, but the exact path this will take is hard to project. In the long term though, the long tail will be defined by long tail human desires and needs, not keyword strings.

The language you use still matters, because it helps you communicate to users and Google what needs and desires you answer.

3. You need to understand your prospect’s possible intents

That is what Google is trying to do. They are trying to understand the human need, and provide that person with what they need.

Over time, users will be retrained to avoid short simple keyword-ese type queries and just say what they want. Note that this evolution is not likely to be rapid, as Google still has a long way to go still!

As a publisher, you should focus more attention on building pages for each of the different basic needs and intentions of the potential customers for your products and services. Start mapping those needs and use cases and design your site’s architecture, content, and use of language to address those.

In other words, know your audience. Doing this really well takes work, but it starts with knowing your potential customers or clients and why they might buy what you have to sell, and identifying the information they need first.

4. Semantic relevance is the new king

We used to speak about content being king, and that in some sense is still true, but it is becoming more complex than that now.

You now need to think about content that truly addresses specific wants and needs. Does your content communicate relevance to a specific want or need?

In addition, you can’t overlook the need to communicate your overall authority in a specific topic area. Do you answer the need better than anyone else?

While much of being seen as an authority involves other signals such as links, and perhaps some weight related to social shares and interaction, it also involvescreating in-depth content that does more than scratch the surface of a need.

Are you more in-depth than anyone else? If someone has some very specific scenarios for using your product or service, does your content communicate that you address it? Does your content really stand out in some way?

What’s it to you?

As noted above, this is going to be a journey for all of us.

While Google’s eventual destination is easy to imagine (think Star Trek’s on board computer), Hummingbird has only scratched the surface, and the steps along the way are hard to predict. That will be driven by very specific developments in technology.

For you, as an author, blogger, publisher though, your path is reasonably clear as well. Focus on becoming the recognized authority in your space.

Thanks to Bill Slawski of Go Fish Digital for input on some of the specifics of this article (note that all the speculations are mine, not Bill’s :) ).

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What Google’s Hummingbird Update Means for Small Business

12 Saturday Oct 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Google Analytics, Google SEO, Google+

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Advertising, Best Practices, Google Analytics, Marketing, Online Marketing, social media tools, Strategy

“Hummingbird’s emphasis on conversational search queries and natural language parallels the growth voice powered search via iPhones and Android devices,” said Amy Leefe, a digital marketing consultant at Arketi Group, a high-tech B2B public relations and digital marketing agency. “Google has been driving toward deeper support for long-tail queries for some time, and Hummingbird takes this further by concentrating on answers versus data.”

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This is because the keywords people use to search the Internet do not always reflect what they are actually looking for, unlike in real life or when using a voice search on mobile devices.

“For example, people may type things like ‘buy yoga mat Buckhead’ in Google on a browser, but would say a command verbally such as, ‘What’s the closest place to buy a yoga mat to my home?'” Leefe said. “A traditional search engine might focus on finding matches for keywords, such as finding a page that says ‘buy’ and ‘yoga mat,’ for example.”

Instead, Hummingbird helps Google understand the meaning behind those words to deliver better search results, Leefe said.

“It may better understand the actual location of your home, if you’ve shared that with Google,” she said. “It might understand that ‘place’ means you want a brick-and-mortar store. It might get that ‘yoga mat’ is a particular type of workout supply carried by certain stores. Knowing all these meanings may help Google go beyond just finding pages with matching words.”

It’s up to businesses, however, to help Hummingbird tell Google that their page is the page users are looking for.

It’s up to businesses, however, to help Hummingbird tell Google that their page is the page users are looking for.

“Businesses need to consider as many queries as possible, and what the searcher could really be asking,” said Bill Sebald, owner of Greenlane Search Marketing, a search engine optimization consulting group. “If your business is relevant for a search like, ‘the best plasma TV to buy,’ are consumers looking for bang for their buck in this case? Or rationale as to why it’s the best? Popular opinion? Content should now expand to cover as many meanings as possible to be more appetizing to the Hummingbird algorithm.”

As an added benefit, the Hummingbird update also gives businesses more topics to write about and provides an opportunity to update older, evergreen content that suffers from short-sighted tunnel vision, Sebald said.

“Content for the sake of ‘words on a page’ doesn’t have the base value it once had,” Sebald said. “Now, your content really has to answer something. This should move content strategy higher on the list of business marketing objectives; it’s now even more important for desktop and mobile SEO.”

The Dark Side: Is Google Stealing My Data?

One of the biggest changes Hummingbird has to offer is search content displayed right on search pages.

“Say you were searching for Total Recall because you can’t remember what year it came out. If you type in ‘Total Recall,’ Google will bring you back the results it normally does, but on the side, where there was normally blank white space, it will show you the IMDB picture, description, release year, actors, etc.,” said Mike Evans, owner of Boost Rank SEO, a Jacksonville, Fla.-based SEO company.

Although this is helpful for users, it can do a disservice to businesses, Evans said. With this feature, Google not only scrapes content from other websites to display information on search pages, but the process also promotes a Google-only user experience.

“Basically, what Google is doing is trying to keep you on their properties as long as possible,” Evans said. Instead of visiting a website for the information, Google makes the data readily available.

“Imagine you were NBA.com and someone searched for ‘Miami Heat score.’ Google would scrape your site, take your information and display it on the search page. So instead of driving visitors to your site to check the scores, now they have all the information they need and go about their day — and you just lost a visitor,” he said.

In the case of Total Recall, Google also provides a “Watch It Now” link that will take users to Google Play, if applicable, Evans said. Similarly, a search for “flights to Los Angeles” will display airfares that direct users to Google Flight Search, and a search for Staples Center takes you to a Google event ticket search when you click on an event.

“Whenever possible, Google will try to route you to one of their properties, such as YouTube, Play, Picasa, etc.,” he said.

So what should businesses do when Google takes your data and uses it to prevent customers from visiting your website? Adapt, Evans said. “Businesses are going to have to offer something else to their visitors to make it worth the click for them to go to the site.” Although Google does not tolerate content scraping, Evans said businesses have to roll with the punches.

“The Big G gets to make up their own rules,” he said. “If they want to take your data, they do. As an Internet marketer, I’ve learned that’s just part of the game. You’ve got to adapt and roll with it.”

 

Brought to you by Marshable the social media go to guys

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SEOs Freak – Google to Block All Organic Keyword Data

25 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Google Analytics, Google SEO

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Tags

Google Analytics, Google SEM, Google SEO, Organic Search, Paid Search

There is something in Google Analytics called (Not Provided). It is listed as a keyword in the Organic Search Traffic report section. This number represents the amount of non-paid searchers who came to a website who were logged into Google when they performed their search.

Give me Back my Keywords!

Search engine optimization experts and Internet marketers in general have been up in arms about this blocked data for some time. The main reason, the amount of blocked data in the (Not Provided) section just keeps growing. SEO experts had optimistically thought for a long time that this number would one day disappear and Google would graciously hand that data back over. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

On September 23, 2013 Google confirmed that they will be making all searches secure, except of course, Ad clicks. This change marks the beginning of an obstacle or opportunity, depending on how you look at it. The obstacle being, we lose all that easily accessible keyword search data. We will no longer know if terms are branded or non-branded. The opportunity being thatsavvy online marketers will find ways to get around this blocked data by Google.

Why Did Google Block this Data

The first question that arises in our mind is, why the heck did Google do this! It would be comparable to giving my new puppy Brody a treat and letting him chew on it for 5 minutes and then taking it away.

People speculate that they did this to (1) Entice people to buy more ads. If they have less data, then they need to spend more to learn more. (2) According to Search Engine Land, “In June, Google was accused of cooperating to give the NSA instant and direct access to its search data through the PRISM spying program, something the company has strongly denied. That hasn’t saved it from criticism.”

What Can SEO Professionals do About Blocked Organic Keyword Data

At this point, I am sorry to say, there is no easy answer. But one example of something thing you can do is take a look at the URLs that are getting organic search data. If you look at the URL, the keywords that URL is optimized for and match that up with ranking data you can get a pretty good picture of search traffic. There are also some workarounds you can do with Webmaster Tools as well as a few other less effective methods, but I’ll cover that in another post. I will say that I can almost guarantee an SEO software provided will make big bucks off creating a third-party tool that can accurately report on this data.

Summing It Up

It is too bad Google does stuff like this. Microsoft and Yahoo give you all the data you need, but Google seems to be so focused on squeezing out extra revenue that they often inhibit the people who use their products the most. While that is the case, where there is a problem there is an opportunity. Expect to see a post on the top ways to deal with this issue soon. Until then, take a look at Rand’s most recent whiteboard Friday. It covers a few good points, but it still leaves room for more ans

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