Phrase Match

Examples: “luxury bedding,” “wooden television stand,” “online deals on lamps.”

This is where you are looking for a specific phrase that people are typing into the Google search interface. Phrase matches can be contained anywhere within the search term but have to be in the order in which they appear in your keywords. For example, somebody could type in “luxury white bedding for my home” and your ad would appear. It would not appear however, if somebody typed in “bedding for my home” or “luxury bedsheets for my home.” The beauty of phrase match is that it gives you greater control over your accounts, but also catches relevant long tail terms as well.

Exact Match

Examples: [white bedding], [television stand sale].

Exact match is the easiest match type to control because you don’t need to worry about unnecessary or irrelevant clicks. In this match type, your ads will only appear if somebody types in the exact text of your keyword without any additional characters or words. So if [white bedding] is your term, you will only receive clicks from people who have typed in those two words in that order into the search bar. Exact match sounds good on the surface, but in reality it greatly limits the number of clicks you get because you miss out on all the long tail variations and also spelling mistakes that people might make. It should only really be used when you need to focus on very specific terms.

Match type is every bit as important to a successful PPC campaign as the keywords themselves. Controlled correctly, each match type has their merits depending on how specific or general you wish your searches to be. It will also vary from client to client, as ecommerce keywords for example would have to be managed very differently to ones linking to a more general services website.

One final thing that should be remembered is how the on-going management of campaigns is so important. This can be highlighted by Google’s own findings that “between 20 and 25% of all search queries are new.” This, more than anything, shows how a campaign evolves over time and how important the correct match types can truly be.

It's something every ecommerce website should set up and the process is relatively simple for a developer however Google Analytics by default will not differentiate Merchant Center traffic from organic traffic so in order to find out how well it's working, you have to implement a few easy changes...

1. Add An Identifier To The Product URLs

The easiest way to spot traffic coming from Merchant Center is to add a identifier to the end of every product URL. In your feed, append ?ref=gmc. For example, a product URL would now look like:

http://www.ignitionsearch.co.uk/store/category/product.html?ref=gmc

The product will still load but it will have the tag at the end of the URL which is what we can use to identify it as being from Merchant Center.

Once your feed has been updated then you need to re-submit it in your Merchant Center console. Google will take a day or so to update all your products. But in the meantime, head over to Google Analytics...

2. Create An Advanced Segment In Google Analytics

Once you're in Analytics, head to your websites profile and click the Advanced Segments

Open the advanced segment tab at the top of the page and click "New Custom Segment" in the corner of the page.

Enter a name of "Merchant Center", then click the green box and change the value to "Page" and enter "ref=gmc" into the field. Click "Save Segment".

And that's it, now you'll be able to apply your advanced segment and see exactly what your Merchant Center traffic is doing. No longer is the data lost into the haystack. You'll be able to see the worth of your traffic and tailor your site to make the most out of it.

Need A Helping Hand?

If you do need any advice with your current ecommerce website or integrating Google Merchant Center then feel free to get in touch with us!

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Resistance to Paid Search

We often meet resistance to Paid Search.

Sometimes this will be because the company has previously experimented with Paid Search themselves and lost money with no tangible return. Google makes it very easy for anyone to sign up and encourages them to ‘have a go’, but mistakes can be costly even during a learning process and this can put people off quite quickly.

Other times they will have enlisted the help of a firm who has sold the dream of a top spot page 1 ranking; but in reality been bidding on a ridiculously long tail search term that is never typed but sits there in all its glory at the top of the SERP’s for all to see, never generating a single click. This is mis-sold and just plain wrong in our opinion!

Whatever the reason this resistance is understandable but is a great shame as Paid Search delivered properly can transform a business very quickly.

Why is Paid Search so Good?

In simple terms AdWords can deliver targeted traffic direct to the most relevant page on a website based on what keywords are typed into Google. This traffic can be tracked from the initial click right through to sale or completion of a call to action.

This offers extremely valuable data that can be compiled quickly and tweaked, honed and evolved to get better and better.

If this is done correctly it offers tremendous Return on Investment and is completely transparent.

Taking Paid Search Forward

Once a base level campaign is established and working there are many aspects that can be added in to further improve results.

1) Landing Page Split Testing – these are slightly different versions of a page that you drive some of the usual traffic to in order to monitor and compare different results and behaviour. The goal here is to gradually improve the performance of traffic and generate more conversions.

2) E-Commerce Tracking – this should be standard for any e-commerce website but often is not installed! This enables all revenue amounts to be registered against the Source of traffic, Campaign and Ad Group; data can be drilled down to individual keyphrases.

3) Experimenting with new Keyphrases.

4) Identifying long tail searches.

Rolling Paid Search into Other Services

This is where starting with Paid Search makes so much sense.

Search Engine Optimisation is a big investment in time and money so it is critical that the correct keyphrases are being targeted. The webmaster has no way of knowing what works for their website. Of course, keyphrase research can be conducted to establish traffic volume etc but this does not offer any information on CONVERTING traffic. This is trial and error; and organic trial and error takes a long time.

PPC offers an identical route to entry onto the website insofar as a person will type a search into Google, select an entry that takes them to a website, and then navigate through the site. It is dangerous to assume which keyphrases will bring sales, especially when you can establish this information so quickly via AdWords.

Then you can deliver a meaningful and focussed organic strategy based on RESULTS.

First Of All, What Is Magento?

For those unfamiliar, Magento is an open source ecommerce system developed by Varien. You can check out more about Magento on their website which also features a demo or you can view the features list.

Where it Works Great

The reason Magento works great is because a lot of the factors have already been taken into account. They are in no particular order:

URL Structures

Magento has the option to use “pretty URLs”. This means that all categories and products use SEO friendly paths such as:

www.example.com/nice-category/nice-product

This provides for a clean structure for the search engines to crawl and index your site. It also provides the opportunity to get vital keywords into the URLs.

One Click Rel Canonical

One problem that plagues a lot of ecommerce stores is duplicate content, sites that offer multiple ways to view products for example will have a lot of duplicate content if left unchecked.

Magento allows you to automatically add the rel=”canonical” tag with a click of the button solving many of the duplication issues.

Sitemaps

For large stores, getting every vital page indexed isn't always easy, sitemaps are one route to go down and Magento has a built in feature to automatically create one and update whenever required.

Easy To Use CMS

The Magento CMS is very simple to use and allows you to create pages of content within minutes. Unlike some systems that are very locked down, you can create any page you need with any title, url and so on.

Great Plugin Support

No system can tailor for every situation required however there are a wealth of plugins and extensions that the community have written and provide free or for a small fee that can help to improve Magento. These vary from payment systems to even SEO modules.

Reviews & Ratings Built In To Create Unique Content

One big problem that plagues ecommerce sites that sell the same products as their competition is duplication of content; quite often they will simply take the same content as provided by the manufacturer and put it online.

One way to further diversify the content on the product page is through reviews and ratings. Users who post reviews of your products help to add unique content to the page while helping users decide if that product is for them.

Where It Isn't The Best

Like any system Magento does take a trained developer to 1) create a well coded theme and 2) to configure Magento properly to make use of these SEO friendly options. There are small improvements that can be made that aren't implemented straight away that can be missed however this is true of all systems.

Generally speaking, Magento is very search engine friendly out of the box, further easy to implement tweaks can be made to make it very optimised.

So What Should You Use?

Ultimately it makes no difference to the search engines which platform you pick, the code they see at the end (HTML, CSS, Javascript) is the same no matter what has produced it.

If your system is well optimised and easy to use then you shouldn't run into any troubles from an on-site perspective with all things being equal.

You should use a system (whether be custom built or off the shelf) that is user friendly, has a goal orientated theme and follows all the SEO best practices. If you have something that hits the mark then you should have a solid base to go out and build some great links and share socially.

We certainly haven't covered all the aspects of Magento but we think it is a solid system and does a great job at keeping ecommerce sites SEO friendly so there are far worse choices to investigate if you're looking at a new store or your existing one.

Further Reading

• 5 Essentials For Any Ecommerce Website
• Basics For Your Website – What You Could Be Overlooking

Need A Helping Hand?

If you do need any advice with your current ecommerce website or SEO strategy then feel free to get in touch with us!

I'm going to start this post by saying that if you aren't using Goals in your Google analytics profiles, then you may want to revisit that after reading the rest of this post - especially if you are running any forms of traffic development strategies such as SEO, Adwords or maybe Facebook ads.

Hint: If you see the following screen when trying to access goals, you haven't set them up!

For the rest of this post, we are assuming you are pretty comfortable with setting up goals. If you aren't then this help article is worth a read.

Standard Goal Reports

When using Google Analytics, we are all pretty much used to seeing something like this when perusing our goal conversions.

Nice and neat, giving us clear information on which sales channels are working 'the best' for our business.

But there is a problem. You see this may not be as clear cut as you think and your reports could be lacking critical information that ultimately damages your success.

Goal reports allow marketeers to strip out advertising/marketing efforts that don't convert, or don't convert as well as top performing advertising channels. Whilst that is always going to be true to an extent, relying totally on this data can be dangerous and actually negatively impact your best performers in the process - and would you really want to cut an advertising channel that has assisted in potentially thousands of pounds of revenue? Revenue that you didn't know a great deal about? Well the answer to that is probably not - but how do we find this out?

Enter Multi Channel Funnels (MCF's). Understanding them, can make a huge difference to the bottom line.

Using MCF's In Your Management Reports

Understanding how people behave in the decision making cycle is pretty critical to whether your marketing succeeds or doesn't. This is where the standard Goal data falls down a bit. We don't see the often complex relationship between advertising channels and conversions.

The reality for most of us is that customers will complete Goals on your site from a variety of different paths, often stretching days or even weeks. They may use multiple advertising methods to visit (and revisit) your site, many different keywords and in fact sometimes use the same advertising channel over and over again before actually buying your product or signing up for your service.

In this context, MCF reporting is very very useful to marketeers, allowing them to get a clearer picture of not only how customers are finding their site, but importantly which advertising sources are helping to get them over the line with the sale. This data is pure gold for marketing people.

I can feel you warming to MCF's so now is a good time to introduce a screenshot of what an MCF report looks like. Here we are basically seeing the 'assists' in the Goal conversion process. So not only the advertising channel that resulted in a direct conversion - but also those that helped turn that visitor into a customer. This missing step is what can be damaging to marketeers who rely solely on the Goal reports. If you drop a seemingly poor performing campaign based on the standard Goal reporting, then you may be damaging some of your best sales channels in the process - and that is not an appealing prospect to most people we work with!

As we can see in this graphic, SEO not only had 146 last interaction conversions (so those people that visited the site and completed a goal at that point) but also claimed another 50 assists.

Now that sort of data can be very helpful to marketeers - especially as we are all having to work extra hard to convince senior management that our advertising is working.

Where It Gets Really Interesting

Earlier, I mentioned that people may use the same source many times (before converting) or make multiple visits via many different advertising sources and keywords before completing a goal on your site. Traditionally we didn't have this data so making informed decisions wasn't easy.

Take a look at the following graphic. This is a standard report in MCF reporting called 'Top Conversion Paths'. We get a much clearer picture as to how our marketing efforts are performing and interacting with each other.

In the above, we can see that Organic search, Social Networks, Direct Traffic and Referring sites have all played a range of roles in completing the Goal conversion. That Goal maybe a large order, sign up or regular revenue source that helps your business. In the above, we can see that our organic search campaign really is heavily involved with Goal conversions.

In the below screenshot, Paid Advertising has secured 5 of the 9 last interaction Goal conversions - so its doing quite well. However it has also helped secure a further 4 sales that the standard Goal report would not have counted. What if any one of those orders was worth £1,000 or more? you begin to see why the standard Goal reporting is not adequate and MCF reporting is essential for proactive marketeers to assess the true worth of their advertising channels..

MCF reporting really highlights how customers won't necessarily do what you expect them to do and that in many cases, each advertising channel being used will assist in the process. So when trying to justify maybe Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads or even PPC, MCF reports really are your best friend. As an added bonus, if you are running ecommerce reporting, MCF reports also let you put a physical sales value on your assists. Pretty handy stuff.

Conclusions

At Ignition, MCF reporting allows us to highlight both the effectiveness and complexity of our work to clients. For people we don't work with (yet), then we'd recommend having a look into MCF reporting to help uncover the true value of your marketing efforts. It really can be an 'eye opener' to what is actually going behind the scenes.

This post was written by Jon Colegate, Director of Search.

Track Properly To Make Informed Decisions

This is perhaps the most overlooked factor. Being able to track your visitors is fundamental yet so many forget to set up their analytics properly.

Google Analytics has Ecommerce tracking built in that just requires a few extra lines of code on your success page. This allows you to see exactly where your visitor came from (source, keyword and so on), how they interacted with your website and what they purchased.

From this data you can then begin to shape your website and make informed decisions on how to proceed to maximise your sales.

It also provides another metric for success. Knowing which sources are making money and how they compare to the past allows you to see if you're making real progress or just running around in circles.

Make It Easy For Visitors To Checkout

A long complex checkout process requiring users to sign up, re-enter information over several screens, etc is bound to cause drop outs.

You must make your checkout clean and simple to use otherwise you'll be costing yourself sales.

You should ask for the minimum information, not force users to sign up unless absolutely necessary, and the process should be secure (and display this clearly) throughout.

Find someone with limited computer experience and ask them to trial your checkout process, if they find it hard then you know there is something wrong. Learn from people and your data (analytics) and make your checkout process easier.

Don't Hide Your Information, Make It Easy To Find

If you are selling online then you must have your company details, terms and conditions, etc displayed on your website. If you're a new website then you're constantly trying to reinforce trust with your visitor. When these details are missing it becomes a warning sign to your visitors and makes them far less likely to purchase with you.

You should also very clearly display your costs especially delivery, dropping a £7 delivery charge on the final step of your checkout is only going to disgruntle users and cause them to drop out.

Make Your Website Easy To Navigate, Make It Work In All Modern Browsers

Make it easy for your visitors to navigate your website; consistent navigation that is logical makes it easy for visitors to find whatever product they are looking for, you should back this up with search functionality.

If you have large categories then you can use filterable navigation to help users refine what they're looking for.

Create Unique Content, Don't Just Use Manufacturer Content

Copying the manufacturer's content is a bad idea. It's more than likely that you're not the only site selling the same products from the same manufacturers. Manufacturers who most likely offer stock content that several of these competitors use.

This creates a duplicate content issue between the sites that copy the same content. You should always create unique content and product titles and try to get user reviews for your products.

Differentiation is the key to success when you list identical products to others.

Keep It Simple, Be Unique And Have A Good Website

There is nothing revolutionary in this post but these are things that even larger websites miss, if you make sure your website is easy to use, all the information is available and easy to understand and your site works in all browsers then you put yourself in a very strong position to succeed.

You may have noticed recently on your analytics account that a new category has been appearing in your keyword traffic results – this category is appearing as:

(not Provided)

Not too helpful I’m sure you’ll agree. We’ve had many clients ask us what is going on and why this is happening.

Logged in Keyword Search is Not Provided

This new category is fired when a Google user is logged in to their own Google account when browsing. If they search for ‘blue widgets’ and click on the website ‘www.bluewidgets.com’ the webmaster would usually be able to see that the visitor searched for ‘blue widgets’ and came to their site via that keyword. Not any more. This information will only be available if a user is logged out of their Google account.

Clearly this is presenting a few issues for those interested in and reliant on accurate analytical data for ongoing marketing.

Why is Google doing this?

Google has stated that this change is to protect user privacy when they are logged in. It seems strange to offer this as a default setting when a user who wishes to have their browsing habits remain anonymous may select the security of https search manually. If this is not selected surely the assumption should be that the user is happy for a web master to know what keyphrase they searched for in order to find their website.

It is also interesting to observe that if you click on a Google Paid ad the search query IS reported in analytics.

Why is Paid Search Reported Even if Logged In?

There is no official stance on this. Many other ad networks are being very successful in using search referral data from analytics and targeting their campaigns accordingly. If this referral keyphrase data is only available via Google Paid Search this cements Googles Paid Search as a market leader.

What Can You Do?

We at Ignition Search are monitoring what the real impact of this is to our own search results and keeping an eye on the percentage trend of data now being reported as (not provided). We suggest that you do the same.

What we need to establish is what volume and percentage of data are we losing and report this to Google. The overall reason for Google doing this seems to be at odds with Google’s general policy and ethics so we’re sure they will be welcoming feedback.

Take a look at an emergency Whiteboard Friday that SEO Moz produced here.

So, to recap: Free Ale, Pie & Pea Supper, Brewery Tour. What could go wrong?

Well, nothing as it happens!

The event was pitched as a Micro Beer Festival and took place at the Sheffield Brewery on Burton Road. Not many of the guests had heard of this hidden gem but all were raving about it by the end, regardless of the influence of vast quantities of Five Rivers and Blanco Blonde (to name but few) and having been on a riveting tour conducted by Dr Stillman, scientist and brew master general.

The pies went like, erm, hot cakes and the mushy peas were scrumptious; all washed down a treat as the guests continued to revel in what was turning out to be an extremely cheeky evening.

In fact, the guests only had to endure ten minutes of Dan talking about Ignition and where it all began before they were being thrilled by Richard of PapaKata who was guest speaker. Every single person in the place affirmed that they would rather live in one of Richards tents than their various abodes by the end. Job done there Richard – well played!

Most guests also liked the Ignition story. It was a very local affair and that is exactly where Ignition started out, to deliver a solid service to local businesses. This continues to be the case although we now work for major brands as well as one-man bands.

The Ignition team were all in their glad rags and hotly anticipating a night which for them was the culmination of 3 years hard work and graft, with more to come!

The event was organised and slickly conducted by Huston Grey. Hats off to them for some great work in the run up and on the night.

The end result was it seems we COULD actually organise a pi*s up in a brewery.

How Relevant Is The Link

Relevancy is a large part of how good a link is valued by the search engines; if you have a link for your fishing website on a gambling website then to the search engines your link isn’t relevant at all and may look suspicious. If however, you have a link on even a small niche fishing site then your link will be much more beneficial.

There is a lot of talk about the context of the link in the community but as a rule, if your link is on a website about your topic then that link is valuable.

What Anchor Text Does The Link Have?

The actual link text (AKA: anchor text) is also important. If your anchor text is:

“Example site” rather than “Nice Example Keyword” then you could be missing out on some algorithmic benefit.

To add a layer of complexity here, if they see a large number of links with the same exact anchor text then they may see your links as 'unnatural' and that may be a problem. So the message really is - use anchor text, but don't over do it.

Is The Link Followed or Not Followed

Nofollowed links are links that have the rel=”nofollow” attached to them in the HTML code. This tells search engines not to pass value to the link; usually nofollow is attached to links that have been paid for or links that website owners don’t want to pass value to.

In your overall link profile you want to see a mix of followed and no followed links, with a bias towards followed links.

No followed links can still pass value so they shouldn’t be totally dismissed. Having them helps to build a natural link profile but they certainly shouldn’t be the foundation of your links.

Does The Link Redirect?

Quite often you see website links which don’t directly link to the place they should.

For example: A profile on a niche directory may appear to point to www.example.com but in reality it links to www.nichedirectory.com/outgoing.php?id=73. Depending on the type of redirect, those links may pass little to no value so it’s best to get links that point directly to your website.

The Page And Domain Metrics

Another thing to consider is the actual page and domain that the link sits on. You may find what appears to be a great website and achieve a link off it only to find later that Google has penalised the site or doesn’t find it trustworthy.

A good indication of trust, amongst other metrics (such as relevancy), is PageRank. If the website is established and has no PageRank then the web page may not be indexed, penalised or lack authority. Any of these things may reduce the effectiveness of the link.

Why You Need To Look Beyond The Link

Everyone has a different opinion on what makes a good link but there are three factors that everyone agrees on. The website, the link type and the context. If you have a link on a website that is relevant, where the link is followed and around content that matches the link then you will be on your way to building a good link profile and ultimately get the results you’re after.

Link building is hard work so understanding what makes a good link and what will land you in the search engines sandbox is key for your campaign.

Last week, Lyndsey Whitaker, Development Manager of the Federation of Small Businesses contacted me to see whether we could help out with an upcoming e-commerce event they were running in Wakefield.

It's great to be asked firstly and a good networking opportunity, not least because we can show off our new branding (ooh) which we have been working on now for about 6 months.

Our current branding really doesn't do us justice or really reflect the work we are doing these days and its been a big thank you to Alight and Mark Hadley for producing such a stunning result for us.

The event also gives us a good opportunity to show our Conversion Rate Optimisation skills (or CRO) for short. CRO is an emerging part of our portfolio and something that we are slowly moving into. The show will probably be a speaking debut for our SEO Manager Ed Baxter. Remember the name as Ed will be a star of this industry in the next 5 years or so.

The talk will cover the following essential areas of E-commerce and we will throw in some more advanced suggestions to give delegates a decent overview of e-commerce best practice.

• How to get started.
• What are the options available to businesses who want to trade online.
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Ebay, Amazon and others.
• What are the common mistakes made or pitfalls of e-commerce and how to avoid them.
• Hints and tips on making sure customers find you online.
• Advanced tips including using video, reviews and checkout best practices

Date & Time: 8 November 2011 - Registration at 7.30pm, meeting starts at 7.45pm for 8.00pm, food served at 9.00pm

Venue: Holiday Inn Wakefield, Queen’s Drive, Ossett, Wakefield, WF5 9BE (located just off M1 junction 40)

Should you wish to come along, please get in touch with us and we will forward your details to the Federation.

See you there.

Jon

From Good To Great

Unfortunately not many websites are up to scratch with the requirements that take a website from good to great in the eyes of the search engines. Here are just a few of the things that you and your web designer should implement to give you the best chance of achieving your goals.

Title Tags

This is one the key elements of your pages and yet it is overlooked so many times. Each of your pages should have its own unique title that includes the keyword that you’re trying to target.

It also has to be fewer than 70 characters in length, including the spaces. If your title is too long then it will be cut short when displayed in the search engine results page.

You have to avoid stuffing the title with keywords as well. Make it sound natural and helpful for somebody trying to figure out exactly what your page is about.

Meta Descriptions

Just like the title tag, the Meta Description tag is also a key element on your page. It sells what your page does when the user sees your website in the search engines and encourages them to click through to your website.

It too must be unique for every page and be fewer than 150 characters including spaces. Any longer and it runs the risk of being cut short in the results page.

Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is one of the biggest issues that websites face. Without knowing, your website could be displaying the same content across multiple URLs.

Let’s take an ecommerce website for example. You may be selling a chair that appears in multiple categories. The same information for this chair may appear on a number of different URLs such as:

• www.website.com/my-awesome-chair.html
• www.website.com/chairs/my-awesome-chair.html
• www.website.com/furniture/my-awesome-chair.html
• www.website.com/special-offers/my-awesome-chair.html

We can see very clearly that the number of addresses and subsequently the number of duplicate pages that can add up. Throw in pagination, filtering, etc, and the numbers can be massive.

Canonical Issues

Once again, we come back to the issue of duplicate content; one other way to double up your page count and split your hard earned link juice is to not consolidate your sites addresses. For example:

• www.website.com
• www.website.com/
• http://www.website.com
• http://website.com

To the search engines, your website appears on at least 4 different URLs. It is recommended that you use a rewrite rule and consolidate the addresses to a single format. Ideally:

http://www.website.com/

If you redirect all the requests to that format using a 301 redirect then you pass all the link juice to a single address making the page much stronger in the eyes of the search engines.

There is much debate if having this fractured URL addresses can have a negative impact on ranking however it is good practice both from an SEO and usability perspective to merge them.

Closing Words

So there you have it, if you have these common issues corrected then you put yourself in a strong position to get the traffic and rankings your website deservers. If you have any other basic tips, questions and comments then please let us know in the comments below!

We solved both problems via a game called Tea Spin. This is supposedly 5 minutes relaxation time where people leave their chairs, stop staring at their screens for a bit and have fun. Well thats how it started anyway.

Office Tea spin is our 'light hearted' relax time. The game essentially involves three sponge balls, a bin (the basket) and the office players. Normally thats Jon, Dan, Phil, Pol and Ed 'sandbag' Baxter. Sometimes Connor too and any passing customer or supplier we can grab to play (they normally aren't very good and wind up making drinks).

The game is a mini pentathlon. That is each player has a go at getting the 3 little sponge balls into the basket. Points are awarded as follows:

• 5 Points - direct shot in the basket.
• 2 points - hitting in the rim and the ball bouncing up.
• 1 point - hitting the bin.

The rounds are as follows:

• Right Arm bowling
• Left arm under
• Right arm under
• Left arm over
• Right arm throw

What started as a bit of 'fun' has somewhat evolved. We now have a handicap and league table system which is milked beyond belief by certain players (ed & dan mainly). The loser of each game, makes the tea (as you would expect) and we have no prizes at all for winning the weekly competition. Just the immense pride of being office champion for the week is more than enough.

The problem is for some reason, it matters. Everyone tries hard and we have the occasional double rim, claims of mid air 'drift', people being accused of moving (or talking Phill) mid shot and even the odd ball kick when things go wrong.

It sounds silly and it is of course it is. On the other side of things though, we do have fun, we enjoy the game together and all go back to our desks a happy team - unless of course, we just lost.

Then, we don't.

Ps. This game is very addictive so be warned....

The Festival will comprise of a series of focused events, exhibitions, conferences and workshops, with leading global representatives from the world of manufacturing, engineering, politics and education.

SEO Surgery

• Date: Friday 11th March 2011
• Venue: Electric Works, Sheffield Digital Campus, Sheffield, S1 2BJ
• Time: 9am – 5pm

Overview

In 2011, can you afford not to be visible on Google? With 80% of buyers now sourcing suppliers through the internet, taking advantage of search engines can prove to be a valuable source of new business for manufacturing firms of all sizes.

Ignition Search, Sheffield’s leading search engine marketing agency is hosting a series of one to one consultations to help manufacturing firms get more from Google. Dan Kavanagh (MD) and Jon Colegate (Director Of Search) will help uncover your ranking problems providing practical advice, tips and tricks to get more from Google.

This event has limited places available so please book early to secure your slot.

Half Hour Slots

• 09:00 - 09:30
• 09:45 – 10:15
• 10:30 – 11:00
• 11:15 – 11:45

Lunch

• 12:30 – 13:00
• 13:15 – 13:45
• 14:00 – 14:30
• 14:15 – 15:15
• 15:30 – 16:00
• 16:15 – 16:45

Which Firms Should Attend

• Manufacturing firms who wish to improve their website visibility on Google in the UK AND overseas.
• Manufacturing firms wishing to attract more business/sell more products/establish their authority online.

Who Is It Aimed At

• Marketing Directors/Managers
• IT Managers
• MDs
• Sales Directors/Managers

What To Expect

• Practical, easy to implement tips.
• Uncovering Ranking Problems.
• Professional Advice.

What Is Provided

• Refreshments
• Internet Connection
• Technology

What You Need To Bring

• Tools to make notes

With manufacturing taking a lead on the national agenda, particularly in terms of economic growth and skills, the Global Manufacturing Festival: Sheffield will highlight opportunities for development and investment, and aims to inspire the next generation of manufacturing and engineering talent by bridging the gap between education and business.

The headline sponsors of the Global Manufacturing Festival: Sheffield are:

• Nabarro LLP
• Firth Rixson

Global Manufacturing Festival: Sheffield is being led by Square 5 Ltd in partnership with Creative Sheffield and Business & Education South Yorkshire.

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What is a Canonical Issue?

The dictionary offers 2 main definitions of canonical:

• Of, relating to, or required by canon law. A Christian or Ecclesiastical term to belong or be included in a canon of sacred or other officially recognised writings.
• Conforming to orthodox or well established rules or patterns.

So, we’re talking about the second definition.

In its most common form a canonical issue will be a URL problem. Finding the following different URL’s for the home page of a site is all too common:

• www.examplesite.com
• examplesite.com
• examplesite/home.php

The website owner would argue that this is the same page so what does it matter?

The search engines would view these as 3 different pages hence risking dilution of traffic AND duplicate content. Neither of these scenarios is ideal.

How Do You Resolve It?

There are 2 main ways to resolve this issue:

• Make all URL’s across your site consistent.
• Use 301 re-directs.

The first point is self explanatory – be thorough and consistent with your URL’s. Don’t make half of them www. and half non-www. Also stick to a consistent string for each.

The second point is setting your web server to permanently re-direct people to your first choice URL. So, if someone requests ‘examplesite.com’ they automatically get served ‘www.examplesite.com’.

Through this method you are letting the search engines know which one you favour and giving the user a consistent experience, both of which will contribute to better rankings.

Broad Match

Examples: bedding, lamps, tv stands

This is where your keyword can appear anywhere within the google search bar. So if your term is bedding, it will appear if someone types in bedding, plain bedding or the most amazing bedding in the world. Google will also sometimes show your adverts for terms related to bedding that it deems relevant (i.e. duvet, bedsheets etc...). Broad Match is great for getting high volumes of traffic, but is hard to control and unless you have a very well maintained list of negatives (more of them later) it can pull in a lot of irrelevant search. A Broad Match campaign that isn’t managed properly will likely drain your budget very quickly with limited success.

Broad Match Modifier:

Examples: +beautiful +bedding, +luxury +white +bedding.

Broad Match Modifier allows you greater control over your broad matching terms. The +symbol added to the start of words means that the search query has to contain all those words within it in order to show your adverts. For example, a term of +beautiful +bedding will show for beautiful and luxury bedding wholesalers, but not for bedding suppliers online. The Modifier option also isn’t limited to all your words within the search query so there is good room for experimentation. The phrase luxury white bedding for example, could be written +luxury +white bedding, luxury +white +bedding and +luxury white +bedding to pull in every variation of those three terms.

Researching your initial and most profitable keywords, along with ongoing honing of your negative list to make it as relevant as possible, is just one of many key areas to a successful PPC campaign.
Next time I will be looking at Phrase and Exact Matches and, ultimately, where and how these different terms work best.

"Shooting the messenger" is a metaphoric phrase used to describe the act of lashing out at the (blameless) bearer of bad news. Source: Wikipedia

Over the years I’ve been working in the search industry, I’ve seen some projects fly, some go pretty good and others go a bit pear shaped. This has been the case across pretty much every industry I’ve worked in and it has struck me that the most consistent aspect of the projects that ‘fly’ is the client themselves. The ones that succeed are very focused at converting keyword visits into sales. They are good at what they do.

A client and friend of mine once said ‘Jon, you get me the Google traffic and let me worry about making the sales’. That client was at the start of a new Adwords campaign in a tough sector. 5 years on, they are one of the leading companies in their industry - going from local to national in that time. Adwords got them the traffic, they did the rest.

So what does ‘the rest’ really mean? Well based on my experiences anyway, it comes down to things like the following. So many things can influence your success and help you convert that active buyer into a customer. As competition intensifies for customer traffic, taking a step back and evaluating your offer can make a big difference to how things ultimately go.

Create A Good First Impression

A website that looks bad, is difficult to read and navigate can be a real obstacle to some and lead to a higher than wanted bounce rate. The site must be welcoming and create a visually good first impression. Really basic things such as typos, spelling errors or features that don’t work can really damage your conversion rate.

Care For The Visitor

Do you communicate your offer effectively or leave it to the user to figure it out for themselves? Websites that go the extra mile in these areas tend to do best. We all like to be looked after so dumping visitors at the home page and expecting them to collect the information they need is a real gamble on your part.

Responsiveness

I’ve unfortunately seen some clients forget to check enquiry form emails for days and even weeks. I’ve seen others ring back within an hour and have a proposal on the desk in under 24. Which would you do business with? I recently engaged a firm and got a call within 5 minutes of pressing ‘send’. That is a great first impression to give to a new prospect.

Great Product / Marketing

Offering a better deal than the competition helps! That means understanding your market and getting all your bases covered can be highly rewarding – price, delivery, product features and after care being just some of the factors that are massively important things to communicate to prospects delivered by search.

If you’re in e-commerce, don’t expect to convert much business if you are 20% more expensive than the competition, are forcing people to register before buying or are hiding delivery information at the end of the checkout.

Be fair on keywords!

Search can be amazingly successful for those that just need help getting the exposure their business deserves - but a disappointment for those that think it’s going answer all problems.

Search is our job and we are good at it. If you’re good at what you do too, we’d like to help you fly.