The latest buzz in the online marketing industry has been around Google's announcement last month that they had changed their algorithm to "Hummingbird".

What is Google's Algorithm?

Google, as well as other search engines, have a code and a list of things they look for to determine which sites should rank for which terms. Robots crawl sites to determine how well they fit into the requirements. There are over 400 different criteria that are looked for to determine where a site ranks for a key phrase. 

Since the beginning, Google has been making modifications to this algorithm in order to improve their results and deter spammers. The Penguin and Panda updates are a couple of major modifications Google has made to the algorithm in recent history. Both of these updates simply made changes to the algorithm that was already in place. "Hummingbird", however, is an entirely new algorithm that has replaced the old one. 

Why did Google change to Hummingbird?

Google has said that the main goal of this new algorithm is to make the search engines more human friendly. They want to be able to answer complex questions and respond to more conversational searches.

One of the other major changes Hummingbird has made is to include the Google Knowledge Graph in their search results. The goal is to instantly give searches the answers they're looking for. For example, if someone was typed in "how many calories are in an apple?" Google now answers the questions right away and provides information about apples in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

This type of result is now showing up for a wide variety of searches including comparison searches, general animal/food/event searches and more. To see more on what is showing up in the search results try some of the following searches: "poodle vs yorkie", "nfl schedule", or "beer". 

What does this mean for rankings and SEO?

Hummingbird replaced the old algorithm over a month ago and so far rankings have not been drastically affected. It appears that all of the same factors are still important to ranking well and not much has changed. 

However, the algorithm is changing the way 90% of searches will appear. The biggest affect of the algorithm change for businesses will be the amount of clicks that are going to be lost due to the knowledge graph information. Sites that were previously getting a lot of traffic for searches like "calories in an apple" or "dogs" are now going to see significant drops in the number of clicks they're getting. Viewers will no longer need to go to websites to get the information they need.

Because of this loss in organic traffic it's going to be more important than ever to start finding new ways to get viewers to your site. Having a great content marketing strategy is going to become more and more necessary as things keep changing. Providing viewers with information and advice they can't easily find elsewhere is going to be extremely important in order to help maintain traffic. Social media and other online advertising plans will also be helpful.

As can be seen by Hummingbird, Google is certainly beginning to make changes that are affecting businesses drastically. It's important to keep an eye on the changes that are being made and to take a proactive approach to ensure that your business keeps seeing sustainable growth.

Read More

Pinterest Will Soon Allow Advertising

CEO of Pinterest, Ben Silbermann, announced the other day that Pinterest is going to start promoting paid pins in the future. Last week, Silbermann put up a blog post and sent emails to all Pinterest users informing them that Pinterest is going to begin using "promoted pins". They are not accepting payment for advertisements yet, but simply testing the waters first to see what will work best and what the user response is. These promoted pins will begin appearing in search results and category feeds at first and according to Silbermann they will be unique based on each user's behavior history.

Pinterest seems to be playing this up as a way to help keep users satisfied, even though it is clear that their goal is to finally start making big money off of their 46 million visitors (ComScore, 2013). In an effort to help users accept the change Silbermann opened his post by making an emotional appeal and talking about how he and his child have fun together because of Pinterest. He then said that he knows users use Pinterest in the same way and it would be a shame to see the site go. Then, attempting to make readers happy, he also highlighted that Pinterest is determined not to have banner ads because he knows users don't like them. He makes it seems like they are doing this satisfy users, but in reality it's been proven that integrated advertisements are much more successful than banner ads (AdRoll, 2013). He also stated that the ads will be tasteful and relevant, and that they are interested in hearing feedback about the promoted pins. 

As of right now, it seems that Pinterest advertising could have major benefits to many e-commerce businesses and will help companies get their products seen. It is clear that Pinterest is taking this step with caution to avoid losing their growing number of users. Only time will tell whether these advertisement will be successful in helping users find things they are interested in or if it will scare users off.

Read More

Google Stabs Business In The Back

If you do a lot of web surfing, you probably have seen Microsoft's Ads that say "Don't get Scroogled".  "Scroogled", of course, being a derogatory term for "Google".  Naturally, Microsoft is trying to gain market share in the search business, but I am starting to think they are on to something.  Google has made a move recently that they are pushing as "good things" to the general public, but I suspect are anything but.

If you have been advertising in Google Adwords, you probably noticed that in late July, Google forced everyone into their "enhanced campaigns".  Now, on the surface, this can almost seem like a good thing.  "Enhanced campaigns" provide automatically mobile optimized support for your ads.  In the past, mobile advertising was a bit more difficult for the average business owner.  Now, the mobile side will pretty much just happen as a result of you creating an ad.  Actually, you will be forced into mobile advertising.  So, this sounds like a good thing, right?  Well, not really.  While there are workarounds (we will talk about these later), advertisers are being forced into advertising on mobile compatibility with the auto-upgrade feature.  How is it good for Google?  You need to remember that Adwords is a big auction house.  People bid on keywords and essentially fight for ad space.  What do you think happens when millions of new ads flood the mobile and tablet advertising market?  Starting to see the big picture?  Yes, that's right.  Google makes more money.  Now, making money isn't a bad thing.  So, why am I claiming they "stabbed business in the back"?  Because along with the push to mobile to make Google more money, they raised business's costs and threw some of their money out the window.

The push for enhanced campaigns begins with Google creating automatic bid adjustments based on information it has about what other people are doing in the marketplace that are advertising similarly to you.  Does this mean it is the best thing for you?  No.  Every business and marketing strategy is different, naturally.  What it does do though is it forces the less savvy advertisers into a position of being forced into advertising on mobile.  Mobile can be good for businesses, but mostly for business to consumer purchases.  For Business to business advertisers, it typically doesn't perform as well.  So, many "B to B" companies are now advertising on platforms that are relatively ineffective for them because they are not savvy to the changes, and pretty much just throwing money out the window (or to Google).  The other issue with this is based on all of our client data.  Around the time that Google forced the push, our clients had a spike in their average cost per click of five to seven cents per click.  From everything we can tell, this was entirely a market adjustment and has not entirely ceased.  While we can make adjustments for our clients, you can't completely beat the marketplace.  So, everyone's ads just became more expensive, reducing everyone's return on investment.  So, what can you do?

1.  Enhanced campaigns allow for you to make manual bid adjustments based on device.  If tablet advertising is no good for you, adjust the bid adjustment for tablet advertising by -100%.  This will effectively shut it off.

2.  Also, make sure DO NOT pay too much attention to the "bid simulator" feature.  It is ball park at best, but is almost never correct.

3.  Use the bid adjustment feature to target geographies and demographics better.  In other words, if you find that your ads perform better in a certain state, increase the bid adjustment for that particular state and reduce the bid adjustment for poorly performing states.  Do the same for demographics.

4.  Take advantage of the advanced calling features if mobile is good for.

5.  Google will always tell you to use sitelinks, but they are not always good.  They are always attempting to increase click through rate.  This is not always a good thing.  An ad can effectively screen out bad clicks if worded correctly.  So, CTR is not always reactant of ROI.  So, pay attention to your conversion rates and determine what your true cost per conversion is.  Then, determine how increasing your CTR may effect ROI.  If you believe it will, then use some of the sitelink features to increase the ROI.  

6.  Look at alternative ad platforms.  Bing ads is good, though they certainly make it harder to work on then Adwords as the tools aren't as advanced.  The Yahoo Network is another alternative.  If you do your homework, you can find some great direct opportunities with banners on nice vertical sites.

The last alternative is that you can hire a professional search engine marketer.  I know, I know.  It sounds like a pitch.  Here's the issue though.  If you don't, chances are that you will spend more money in campaign inefficiencies that it would have cost you to hire someone in the first place.  Especially, if you are spending $600 or more per month already.  Essentially, in those cases you are getting someone to manage your ads for free.  At Foremost Media, our average client has sees a reduction in the average cost per click of almost 50%.  So do the math, and if you can afford it, hire a professional.

Read More

Put Some Sizzle In Your Business Blog- 10 Tips From Foremost Media

A business blog should strike the right balance between information and promotion. Blogs should answer questions, be interesting, discuss trends – the good and the bad – and dispense tidbits about your company and what you can do.

It should be an extension of your marketing strategy and it needs to pack enough pizzazz to keep readers coming back. And, it should be a done on a regular basis.

Here are 10 tips to put some sizzle in your blog:

1. Write “how-to” articles. They put you out there as an expert and give the consumer confidence in your business. Include a tip list; they punch up an article by giving information in short readable pieces. If you are having trouble getting started – think of the most common question a consumer or potential customer might have and answer it.
2. Use an event in the news as a jumping off point. Does that event affect your customers or will it have an impact on your business? Is there a myth or scam circulating on the internet or social media that concerns your business or the industry – write about it.
3. Keep posts timely – don’t write about winter car care concerns in the beginning of summer or talk about spring spruce-ups in October.
4. Start a debate - A friendly debate about a product or business policy shows you are willing to discuss all sides of an issue. It also can demonstrate your knowledge and dedication to your business or craft.
5. Go multi-media – use a slide show to demonstrate something or how about a podcast? Make a video showing a step-by-step creation of a product. Use humor – but use it wisely – off color jokes or making fun of a business competitor is never a good idea.
6. Get People Talking- Generate a buzz about something coming up by writing a “sneak peek” post. As an added bonus, it will keep intrigued readers coming back.
7. Use graphics and fact lists. Posts containing graphics, fact lists and polls with results are great for generating shares on Facebook as well as on other social networking sites.
8. Interview customers and share customer feedback. Testimonials and success stories connect you with your audience.
9. Talk about charity work or volunteer work. Profile an employee who is very involved in charity work. Make staff profiles a regular feature because they give a human aspect to your company.
10. Reward your readers – offer a product giveaway to blog readers or promote a new service or product to blog readers before the general public.

Google

Read More

Email Marketing Outperforming Social for Driving Sales

Email marketing is simply the most cost-effective digital marketing channel for your business.

That's not really news to us, but we always like to see data to back it up. Wired has a nice look at some new data released by Custora, a predictive analytics platform.

The report shows that while social channels get all the hype, "it’s a relatively antique tech that appears to be far more important for selling stuff online. . . Over the past four years, online retailers have quadrupled the rate of customers acquired through email."

The number of customers earned through Facebook has stayed small and flat and Twitter, meanwhile, doesn't register at all, according to the report.

Customers acquired through email opt-in are also more valuable — they buy more and more often. Organic search and paid search scored higher than email, according to the Custora data.

In late 2012, Bloomberg noted all the reasons email simply can't be beat for retailers.

What does it all mean? Social channels such as Facebook and Twitter definitely have a place in your marketing toolkit. But when it comes to earning new customers and driving revenue for your business, email remains a top digital channel and one whose power seems only to grow.

Read More

Understanding Duplicate Content

"A client asked me the other day about duplicate content and how it would related to the SEO of their site. Duplicate content refers to content on your website being found to be very similar to content on another page, either on or off the site, and then penalized for it by the search engines. The client was concerned about the percentage of duplicate content on their site, as it related to category pages using bits of product pages as their content. The funny thing is that most SEO's think in terms of only percentages when it comes to duplicate content. It actually doesn't work that way anymore.

Prior to 2011, the algorithms were much simpler in how they operated and scanned for duplicate content. At that time, you could avoid any duplicate content penalities just by making sure your content was 30% unique or more. This seemed to be the cut off at the time. However, after a number of algorithm changes by Google, this all changed.

I'll use made up phrases as an example.

On page 1 we have the following sentence: "The [sick] [dog] went to sleep."

On page 2 we have the following sentence: "The [ill] [canine] went to sleep."

I put terms in parenthesis that are similar. So, the old algorithms would consider both of these sentences to be 33% unique, which would have been fine, because 1/3 of their text was different from each other. The new algorithms would look at it a little differently. They would pass by both pages and note the percentage of difference and similarity in the content. They would then use their latent semantic index engine (essentially an intelligent synonym database), to catalog the terms in both sentences. Next, they match the terms against their existing database to determine if "sick" and "ill" are synonyms. After that, they use assigned "similarity scores" that influence how unique the content is perceived to be to help score the content overall. For instance, the terms "sick" and "ill" might be considered very similar to each other, whereas "sick" and "flu" are perceived as less similar to each other. These individual synonym scores influence the algorithm's perception of the "uniqueness" of the content. Even more interestingly, the semantic database changes daily, and so do the "similarity scores". Google might have learned 100 new synonyms for a word tomorrow, and this will change everything having to do with that word set in the database.

Google will also catalog the different parts of the site. The algorithm is intelligent, and it is very good at understanding the structure of your site. So, for instance, you don't have to worry about the content in your navigation bar being perceived as duplicate because Google knows that it is common practice for websites to have the same menu/navigation across multiple pages. Another example is that if you cite something from other websites or people, the citation will indicate to Google that the content is SUPPOSED TO BE duplicate content. You still won't want your whole page to be citations, but a little is ok. Your primary concern should be the uniqueness of the "body" of the page and making sure that you write it from scratch.

Google made these changes in order to combat marketers that were using small synonym databases to "spin" content in order to produce vast amounts of content without having to write it. This is great news because it means original content is worth even more than it used to be, because the "cheaters" can no longer easily cheat. The bad news though is that Duplicate content issues have become far more prevalent. Make sure you consulting your SEO professional so you don't have any duplicate content issues. Even now, this is one of the most widely ignored aspects of SEO."

About The Author:

Nick Fitzgerald - Vice President Of Online Marketing at Foremost Media, Inc
Nick handles the implementation of Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Management, Reputation Management, and Online Advertising Management for Foremost Media Customers. Nick is an expert in the fields of search engine optimization, online advertising, and reputation management.

Read More

Top 3 Latest Tips for SEO

1. Good quality, in depth content

You hear it again and again that “content is king”. The truth is that content is the most influential part of helping your website rank well.  Well written, interesting content will keep viewers engaged and increase the time they spend on your page. How long visitors stay on your page influences your rankings in the search engines. The more your content is shared, the better you will rank as well. Writing informative, in-depth information will help encourage visitors to share your content. In general you should try to have at least 400 words on each page of your website, but the longer the better in most cases. Longer articles tend to get more shares (according to a recent article by Moz) and help to make it easier for search engines to determine what your page is about.

2. Be social

Not everyone realizes that social media efforts play a part in SEO. The effects of social media on rankings are debated because Google always keeps their exact algorithms secret, but Google has indicated that social factors are playing a bigger role in SEO. A high number of social shares and followers is thought to help boost search engine rankings. Being active on social media sites will bring more traffic to your site, (leading to more sales) which will also help improve rankings.

In order to be more active make sure you at least have a page set up on each of the major social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.). Help encourage people to visit your site by sharing recently updated content to your followers. Making content easy to share on your site can help as well. Make sure you have social sharing buttons located on your website in places that are easy to find. Viewers that want to sure your articles, pictures, etc. will be a huge help to your efforts.

3. Mobile

In the past few years more and more users have started accessing the internet through mobile devices. According to Marketing Land nearly 40% of internet usage takes place on mobile devices. With such a high percent of users on mobile devices it is obvious that it is extremely important to have a mobile friendly site. Currently there are several options for developing mobile friendly sites. You can create a mobile version of your website that users are redirected to when they visit from a mobile device, you can implement a responsive design to your site, or you can convert your site to an app for mobile devices.

Recently Google made an announcement that mobile website usability will soon begin to play a role in rankings. Websites that are not mobile friendly will begin to take a hit on their rankings. Google hinted that websites that use responsive design are the best option and they also suggested that sites that redirect to mobile versions will be most likely to take a hit on their rankings.

Foremost media offers social media packages as well as website design. Contact us today for assistance or for more advice on how to get your site ranking well.

Posted By Jon Ballard

Read More