We’ve seen the launch of the Google+ project in addition to seeing +1 buttons appear in organic search results and next to AdWords ads (if you’re logged into your Google account).

This is of huge significance to marketers as there will be countless debates about the +1 button’s impact on search rank and click through rates in addition to its persuasive effect a la social commerce.

Google also announced that Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools have added new social monitoring tools tracking the impact of +1′s, Twitter tweets, Facebook likes and other social actions on your website traffic.

Google Webmaster Tools +1 Metric

+1 Metrics in Google Webmaster Tools publishes the impact +1 buttons have had on your search performance.

The search impact report illustrates the number of +1 annotated impressions by page in addition to CTR (click through rate) with and without +1 annotated impressions.

+1 annotated impressions refer to the number of times a user saw a page in SERPS with a personalised annotation. The metrics will quickly highlight the impact of social advocacy in search results.

Google Webmaster Tools also publishes an Activity report indicating how many +1′s your individual web pages have received; and an Audience report illustrating demographic and geographic data about the people who have clicked on the +1 button on your web pages.

Google Analytics Social Tracking

As if that wasn’t enough excitement for one day, Google Analytics (the new interface) now publishes Social Engagement reports enabling marketers to see a plethora of social data such as how visitors shared your website content via social actions. This could include Google +1 button clicks, Twitter tweets, Facebook Likes and Del.icio.us bookmarks.

This is a welcome addition to Google Analytics and not surprising as Google seriously ramps up its social offerings.

Before we look at the 2011 update, let’s mind ourselves about the original 2009 results (illustrated below).

The top 5 ranking factors contained 4 link building factors, with only one position in the top 5 pertaining to on-page content (in this case keyword use anywhere in the title tag).

Top 5 Ranking Factors from 2009:

The more notable points from the 2011 update are as follows:

• Social signals cannot be ignored as a ranking factor – they are highly correlated!
• For Twitter links, authority counts more than number of links; whereas for Facebook, number of shares is more important than authority of sharers
• The importance of page level linking metrics has increased
• The influence of exact match domains has declined considerably
• Number of linking root domains is consistent as a ranking factor
• Keyword based factors are generally less well correlated compared with links
• Longer documents may well rank better than shorter ones (but what about usability?)
• Long titles and URLs should be avoided
• Linking IP addresses and C-blocks cannot be ignored as a ranking factor
• Number of Google AdSense slots on the page is a negative ranking factor as is response time and domain name length
• Nofollow links may well help with ranking!

Before looking at the presentation, bear in mind that this is early data taken from 132 SEO professionals. And furthermore, as stated on slide 4, opinions are not facts!

Ranking Factors Data 2011: SMX Elite Sydney

It’s a bit like Google Trends or Google Insights for Search in reverse where users can enter a query and receive search trends by time and location. With Google Correlate, users enter data and get back a list of search queries which follow a similar pattern. Hence the name Google Correlate. Clever eh!

If you’d prefer, you can even upload your own data or draw your own line chart and Google Correlate will try to publish the same correlation search data as your own. But that’s for later.

Keyword research for search marketers

So I’m a keen cyclist and I wanted to know what correlation data existed around the search term “cycling”. Google found the following correlations after entering “cycling”.

The results may not be particularly surprising in this instance as search terms like “road biking” and “road bicycle” are obvious synonyms of cycling. But nonetheless, this is useful when carrying out keyword research for your search marketing activity.

And it’s one step up from the Google Keyword Tool we all know and love.

Google Correlate will also output either a line chart or a pretty cool scatter plot showing correlations by time (which you can zoom in on by selecting a time period):

If you want a better understanding of correlation data by region (currently US only), Google Correlate will accommodate:

Interestingly, in this instance, Google Correlate chose to correlate cycling with cycling clothing regionally, possibly due to climate differences across the US.

Draw your own line chart and find correlation data…

Turning Google Correlation in reverse, you can draw your own line chart and Google Correlate will find correlation data that matches. This took some attempts on my part and eventually I came up with the following results from my drawn series.

Not a bad tool amidst a dizzying week of announcements including the launch of  the Twitter “follow” and Google +1 buttons. But that’s for another blog post…

We’ve looked at lots of error 404′s and here’s our list of the best 40 we could find, scored in no particular order on the basis either good design, good copy, humour, originality, customer engagement or a combination of all of these.

Error 404 pages – otherwise known as page missing or page not found – are an inevitable part of web design and search engine optimisation.

Savvy marketers and designers know that investing a little extra time in designing and writing content for error 404 pages can pay dividends in terms of engaging users and showing off a bit of brand personality.

We’ve looked at lots of error 404′s and here’s our list of the best 40 we could find, scored in no particular order on the basis of either good design, good copy, humour, originality, customer engagement or a combination of all of these.

Anyone involved in digital marketing will know how much performance data is available to assist in tracking online marketing campaigns and ROI.

The same applies to search engine optimisation where SEO’ers are provided a constant deluge of campaign data be it from web analytics or specialist SEO software.

At the most basic level, the setting up of Google Analytics ecommerce tracking (below) will reveal whether or not your organic performance is providing good ROI or not.

Given this, you’d think that accountability wouldn’t be an issue as the truth is often seen in the numbers.

In-house or outsource?

Having personally run hundreds of SEO training courses over the last few years, it never ceases to amaze me how many businesses are still being left high and dry by their SEO agency or web design suppliers.

One of the most common reason organisations want to take SEO in-house is that they cannot justify the on-going costs of running an SEO campaign using an agency, when the rewards are not proportional to the financial outlay.

Poor quality link building practices

One particularly popular recurring complaint is that “my SEO agency has been acquiring irrelevant links that has cost excessive amounts of money with little in the way of reward”.

Having recently carried out an SEO audit for a large chain of hotels, I was privy to astonishing examples of links that had been purchased from contextually irrelevant, low quality websites or directories. To add salt to the wound, the agency had not only charged the client for their labour but had also considerably marked up the net cost of the links.

Measuring link velocity from tools such as Majestic SEO is one way of measuring accountability, as you would expect to see a steady growth in link uptake, but of course they have to be the right links.

Getting the basics right

Link building is only one of many examples where agencies need to demonstrate accountability.

Getting the basics wrong such as error 404′s, missing metadata, no sitemaps, domain canonicalisation issues, poor quality content, bad site structure (the list goes on), is simply not forgivable and makes you wonder what agencies are actually doing when running SEO campaigns?

Tools (above) provided by SEOmoz allow marketers to regain that control by providing easy-to-understand dashboards and reporting. Organisations hiring SEO agencies should be privy to the software they are using in order to maintain complete transparency and trust.

Education is key

Whilst SEO agencies have a moral responsibility to run search campaigns ethically and to the best of their abilities, the blame for poor performance (or at least poor bang for buck) also falls into the lap of the client.

Having worked agency-side since the mid-90′s, the adage “the output is only as good as the brief” rings true. Managing your agency, or should I say challenging your agency, is key to any successful relationship.

But herein lies the problem. If you can’t challenge your SEO agency due to your own lack of understanding of the intricacies of running SEO campaigns, then inevitably you may well not be getting the best out of an agency.

SEO, like any other digital strategy such as PPC and email marketing requires constant testing and measurement to identify cause and effect. Challenging your agency will encourage such testing which otherwise may have been put on the back-burner.

The reputation of the author or creator is now considered to be a recognised signal, whereas back in May 2010 Matt Cutts admits that this wasn’t the case.

Matt also hints that in the same way PageRank is calculated using quality of links rather than sheer numbers, the same can apply to the authority of social links rather than their abundance.

Anyone involved in search engine optimisation knows the value of anchor text links – be they external or internal.  However, convincing an audience who are less experienced at SEO or SEO copywriting is another matter.

Whenever we run an SEO course, we ask attendees “who ranks #1 for the search term click here“?

They initially look somewhat bewildered at such an odd question, but the answer quickly highlights the value search engines attribute to the anchor text of a link – especially an external link.

And the winner is…

Ok let’s look at the current set of results. On Google, Adobe ranks #1 for click here. Note that the URL refers to the Adobe Reader.

On Bing, clickhere.com ranks #1 followed by Adobe in position 2. Again the Adobe Reader URL is the landing page.

On Yahoo, interestingly, Google currently ranks #1.

Seeing the Adobe Reader URL rank prominently in both Google and Bing SERPS, it very quickly dawns on the group why Adobe should rank so well for an innocuous search term such as click here; the large number of backlinks containing the anchor text click here being the answer.

In fact according to SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer, the URL http://get.adobe.com/reader/ has 104,119 linking root domains and 1,722,798 links in total.

In terms of anchor text, Open Site Explorer reports that the URL http://get.adobe.com/reader/ has 5,894 linking root domains and 35,710 links containing click here as the anchor text (row 5).

So there we have it. Not a huge revelation to experienced SEO’ers but possibly more eye opening to editors or copywriters who may not appreciate the value of anchor text.

Hopefully they do now!

In the last couple of weeks, Google has tacitly launched Google Instant, an enhancement to the Google SERPS user interface where the SERP updates dynamically to show results as the user types search terms.

The effect is that searchers will see results more quickly than before (where searchers would have traditionally either clicked the search button or the “enter” key).

Currently, Google Instant is only available to Google account holders, but no doubt it’ll be rolled out across all users in time.

The question on the lips of digital marketers is: how will Google Instant affect SEO and PPC performance. The possible effects on metrics and measurement, brand and content strategy need to be taken into consideration.

Impression metrics according to Google

Let’s just talk about metrics first. According to Google, they will only record an impression in the following situations:

• The user begins to type a query and then clicks anywhere on the page
• The user chooses a particular query by clicking the Search button, pressing Enter or selecting one of the predicted queries
• The user stops typing and the results are displayed for a minimum of three  seconds

PPC Performance

1. Impact on Quality Score

From a Google AdWords performance perspective, Google’s definition of an impression should in theory mean that Quality Score wont be negatively affected on the occasions where searchers change their search term rapidly. However, the question begs, how many of us dwell for longer than 3 seconds when searching; or click “enter” or the search button by default? And will the effect of Google Instant change our behaviour requiring us to search less than before?

2. Listing position strategy – which position will perform best?

Aside from Quality Score implications, my feeling is that the first three ads (appearing in the box directly above the organic results) will most likely get more attention than they may have had in the past. This could mean that traditional ad positions such as 4 and 5 – that were often cited as the most efficient in terms of CTR and conversion rate – may lose their popularity in favour of ad positions 1 – 3. Only time will tell!

If this is the case, our keyword CPCs will need to increase – or respective keyword Quality Score will need to increase to improve our listing position.

SEO Performance

1. More impressions – lower CTR

The first thing that springs to mind is, will I get more impressions as the number of SERPS presented to searchers increases. The answer is most likely, yes. 

Google has kindly illustrated this as we can see on the left.

But what about SERP click-through rates (CTR)?

If we see a drop in CTR for each of our keyphrases, this could impact on our SEO performance. Again, back to Google’s definition of an impression: if searchers don’t click on the screen, refresh their query before 3 seconds is up, or don’t click “enter” or “search”, then in theory no impression will be recorded.

But given that even Google estimate impressions will increase, the chances are strong that CTRs will indeed decrease.

Once again, time will tell.

2. The decline of the long tail?

As searchers type in search terms, the dynamic and instant results are likely to prevent us from searching long tail. Not only does the screen distract us, but the constant nature of being spoon-fed results may well make us less interested in long tail searches.

If this is the case, we may need to rethink our content strategy and focus more on the first two or three words in a phrase as opposed to qualifiers that make up long tail phrases.

As Microsoft pointed out with the launch of Bing, only one query in four is successful and hits the nail on the head first time round; this may well be set to change as Google Instant gives us more instant feedback.

3. Bigger brands will benefit

What about the brand effect with Google Instant?

Many SEO consultants have already hinted that big brands that are more likely to rank well with single short tail search terms – branded or not – will get more exposure. So, whether I’m searching for “apple” or “hotels”, the bigger brands with the higher search rank will receive impressions as the searcher types the initial part of a search term.

Furthermore, even if searchers do make it to a long tail search term, the top half of the SERP – often dominated by bigger brands – is likely to receive even more attention.

The IAB has just released their 2010 search marketing barometer which makes for essential reading if you operate in the digital marketing or search engine marketing arenas.

A total of 144 questionnaires were completed by 91 top brand (chosen as they are were the top advertising spenders for April/May this year).

A summary of the IAB findings are as follows:

1. Integration opportunity – only 28.7% of advertisers said search is fully integrated with the rest of the marketing mix, yet 99% said there is a greater opportunity to integrate and 100% of Search Council agencies felt all of their clients could do more to integrate.
2. Brand building – 78% respondents said search can build brand either directly or as part of the full user journey, reflected by actual use. 70% include brand building as a primary objective of SEO and over 50% for PPC.
3. Budget – 99% of SEO budgets and 90% of PPC budgets will stay the same or increase in 2010 (55% and 43% increase respectively).
4. PPC Activity – Only 14% of respondents DON’T employ a PPC agency; and 72% of respondents are restricted by their PPC budgets.
5. Website effectiveness – only 37% of websites are ‘good’ at achieving objectives, leaving much room for improvement once consumers reach their destination.
6. Advanced testing – 19.4% of respondents carry out A/B testing with 5% carrying out MVT (multi-variate testing); 35% carry out both. 39% of respondents do not carry out testing – so clearly there’s room for improvement.
7. Strong understanding of search? – the majority of respondent claim to understand the main principles of SEO and PPC (only 38.6% feel teams outside of digital also understand the importance of search); but few have enough information about new or advanced tools and data. This would indicate that knowledge is not being filtered to all levels, which is also hindered by an ever changing IT landscape.
8. Efficiency of search – cost, value and resource are clear concerns at the moment, indicating a shift in advertiser attitudes to search where reviewing and optimising activity is currently of greater importance.
9. Finding skills – 37% of respondents said they found it hard to find staff with skills in search marketing; and search qualifications were considered unimportant for 53%.
10. Social Media and mobile – 39% of respondents believe social media will be more important than search in 2015; 49% believe mobile search will overtake desktop search by 2015.

This data is crucial in measuring the effectiveness of your website metadata as well as keyphrase performance according to landing page.

As you can see from the above screen grab, Google reports on the position of keyphrases in SERPS. The reported position fluctuates from 3 – 10, which highlights the reality of personalised search where rankings will vary by individual.

The second columns refers to number of impressions over the reported time period. The third column highlights the click through rate (CTR) for that keyphrase – in this case 11%.

The published fluctuations in rank gives us a useful insight into the effects of personalised search. But even more crucially, the reported click through rate allows us to measure our SERPS effectiveness and adjust our metadata as part of our SEO copywriting campaigns.

Whilst the Webmaster Tools data may not exactly match our web analytics data, it gives us enough insight to make iterative improvements to our SERPS content.