Everyone dealing with PPC campaigns or is interested in online marketing knows that Google Adwords updated their display URL policy, which states that the display URL is not to differ from the destination URL.

It’s very much to improve user experience and making it more difficult for affiliate sites to abuse trademarked brand names.

Our account manager however granted us an exemption for one of our clients who is using a different domain for the landing pages as a temporary solution. Google Adwords are finally catching up checking all their records to enforce the new rule from the 1st April. Google is using an automated system to search through all Adwords records and all of a sudden disapproved most of our ads.

My personal theory is that they started at A, as our client starts with S and we are half way through May

Main thing, which is annoying - we had an exemption approved, however our account manager is conveniently off on holiday for a few weeks, which makes it difficult to argue. Our CTR has dropped dramatically, as the landing page URL is not very well known, whereas our client’s brand is well known and trusted.

What to do??

I understand Google’s got another rule, and that it allows different display URLs if the shopping cart or similar is hosted on a different domain. Bingo!! Getting this fact confirmed by Google staff was tedious and took us 3 days!

Let’s face it - it’s really in Google’s interest that we can display the trademarked domain name, as it means a lot more cash for them….

written by admin \\ tags: display url policy, google, google adwords, PPC

Finally I’ve got around to changing my blog to Wordpress. Wohoo! The blog part of my previous site was through Inserit, which is also very userfriendly (just like Wordpress) but unfortunately all the blog pages are hosted with them. Hence I’ve been fairly quiet in the past few months, as I didn’t really see the point in gaining search engine rankings if I couldn’t even preserve them.

One thing though - it took me ages to find a wordpress theme I liked. I just fancied something fairly simple, which my boyfriend, web designer Ruaridh Currie could amend and personalise for me.

Now I don’t have any excuses, let’s get blogging again!

Any comments are welcome!

written by admin \\ tags: blog, inserit, wordpress

Hi everyone,

In the next little while I’ll be compiling an excellent Google Analytics user guide.

Google Analytics is a free web statistics package from Google. It has a lot of benefits from the usual AW or Matrix stats you get from your hosting providers.

To start with the package seems a bit daunting but I’ll provide you with great step-by-step guidance from setting up the tracking code to how to best utilise the Google Analytics data and make it really work for you.

In the meantime, if you need any help at all, don’t hesitate to contact me.

written by admin \\ tags: Google Analytics, user guide, Web statistics

Hello,

My latest project is a multi-lingual SEO project for the German based personnel development and management consultancy Actus Purus. I’m working in collaboration with Ruaridh Currie CSS webdesigner in Glasgow.

I’ve started off with the German site, as this is where the client’s main target market comes from. We are at the end state of building the site, the main content is being finalised and imagery is to be added.

I’m currently establishing a SEO strategy, which I will also apply to the English site.

There will be a more extensive case study and I’ll keep this blog updated to let you know how the site is doing.

I’m also setting up Google Analytics for the site, so I’ll be using this site as my example for the step-by-step user guide.

At the moment I’m planning a big re-vamp of the site, adding SEO and Google Analytics case studies, a Google Analytics user guide, and a general resource for SEO, PPC and Google Analyics related topics.

Bye for now

written by admin \\ tags: actus purus, Multi-lingual SEO, SEO

For experienced SEOs it’s common knowledge that link building is crucial to give a website the necessary boost in order to perform well on search engines.
During many SEO projects I’ve been seeking new and innovative forms of link bait and built links in order to achieve for a myriad of search terms my clients wish to perform on search engines.

It is also a fact that there are really no two links that are indeed the same. Therefore Wiep Knol decided to ask about 17 well known and respected SEOs to gives us their input on link value factors. This article is really interesting and outlines about 40 link factors and their importance.

The importance of each link has been rated as follows:

1. Not of any influence on the value
2. Fractional effect on link value
3. Moterate influence on the link value
4. Strong influence on the link
5. Very strong influencing factor

There is also a section on so called “dampening effects” of links that perhaps lower the strength of a link.

These factors were also rated as follows:

1. No negative effects at all
2. Slight negative effect on the value
3. Somewhat negative effects
4. Big negative effect on the link value
5. Maximum negative effect

It’s about time we had a full “bible” on link value factors.
Read it! It’s an eye opener!!

written by admin \\ tags: Link building, link factors

A Robots.txt file is a simple file containing information for search engine crawlers visiting your site. You can  exactly what parts of your site should be out of bounds for certain bots. This also ensures that page content is indexed faster and more accurately. This has been around for a while now.

Well, breaking news… Google has tightened the way it looks at robots.txt files, if not validated, a lot of site owners could face getting their websites banished from the Google index.

You can easily validate your robots.txt file with robots.txt validator offered in Google’s webmaster console

I found this really interesting thread on these latest robots.txt developments, called “validate your robots.txt, Google might deindex your site” by Sebastian’s Pamphlets.

Anyway, I better double-check my clients robots.txt files now.

written by admin \\ tags: robots.txt, SEO

I watched The Gadget Show, the other week and they had a contest between Jason and Suzie to see who would manage the quicker and better online exposure of their videos.
Suzie got a Viral Marketing campaign for which she probably paid an arm and a leg, whereas Jason went down the cheaper route utilising social media channels. The aim was to find out who would get essentially the bigger amount of hits.
I thought this was a great case study for a social media campaign, which is now more and more used by SEOs as part of their link building and/or brand exposure strategies.
Suzie used the a big viral advertising company to create a short viral game “Suzie says” and a short movie to help build the brand “Suzie Perry”. They embrased the not so new “sex sells” approach, were Suzie is seen in the background getting changed, however nothing is ever revealed, as a mobile phone covers the important bits. Watch the Suzie Perry video.
Jason took the low budget approach utilising the Web 2.0 social media options, which are available to everyone at no cost.
He filmed the “Extreme Caterpillar Breakdance” and placed it on various social networking sites, social bookmarking sites and of course on You Tube and other video domains, such as Break.com and Spike.
Social bookmarking sites included Facebook. The social bookmarking sites were Stumble Upon and Digg.
The results were quite different.
Suzie’s campaign only achieved 127,716 views on YouTube, contrary to Jason’s “Extreme Caterpillar” movie, which received 2,876,874 views.
This shows the power of social media and ought to be part of any good SEO campaign. Of course it’s important to identify which social media strategy is most relevant to a client and a page on Facebook and a YouTube movie may just not always be the most effective.

written by admin \\ tags: digg, Social Media, stumble upon

During my holiday in sunny Corfu, I did a lot of reading and one of the books I devoured was “Don’t make me think” - a common sense approach to web usability by Steve Krug.

I know, a lot of people think, why do you bother with usability, you’re a SEO but if you drive visitors to any site, you want them to convert and Steve Krug really makes it easy to understand.

The book is pretty thin and it covers everything from the first impression your website makes to how to actually undertake usability tests. Really interesting and easy to understand. Everything just seems pretty much common sense…. If you have a couple of spare hours, read it!

written by admin \\ tags: Books, Usability