seo adwords and analytics convergesouth2012

SEO, AdWords and Analytics

Director of SEO at Virante @1918 linkedin.com/in/pbuckley Phil Buckley


Phil Buckley Director of SEO at Virante @1918 linkedin.com/in/pbuckley

Everything you think you know is probably wrong



Since last year’s ConvergeSouth conference…



October 18, 2011

Google announces they will be encrypting search queries, for privacy reasons. Unfortunately, this

disrupts organic keyword referral data, returning "(not provided)" for some organic traffic.



November 3, 2011

Google announces an algorithm change rewarding freshness will impact up to 35% of queries (almost

3X the publicly stated impact of Panda 1.0). This update primarly affects time-sensitive results, but signalls a much stronger focus on recent content.



November 14, 2011

In a bid to appear transparent, Matt Cutts releases a post with 10 recent algorithm updates.



December 1, 2011

Matt Cutts does it again.



January 10, 2012

Search + Your World.



January 19, 2012

Top Heavy.



February, 2012

Google releases another set of “Search Quality Highlights. No actual details, but everyone is talking

about the “new transparency”.



April 24, 2012

After weeks of speculation about an "Over-optimization penalty", Google finally rolled out the "Webspam Update", which was soon after dubbed

"Penguin."



May 16, 2012

In a major step toward semantic search, Google started rolling out "Knowledge Graph", a SERP-

integrated display providing supplemental object about certain people, places, and things.



June 9, 2012

Panda 3.7 is released and causes major SERP fluctuation. This causes even more SERP change

than the Penguin update.



July 19, 2012

Google sent out a large number of unnatural link warnings via Google Webmaster Tools. In a

complete turn-around, they then announced that these new warnings may not actually represent a

serious problem.



August 10, 2012

Google announces that they will start penalizing sites with repeat copyright violations, probably

via DMCA takedown requests.



August 10, 2012

After a summer hiatus, the June and July Search Quality Highlights were rolled out in one mega-post. Major updates included Panda data and algorithm

refreshes, an improved rank-ordering function (?), a ranking boost for "trusted sources", and changes

to site clustering.



August 14, 2012

Google makes a significant change to the first page, limiting it to 7 results for many queries. SEOmoz

research shows that this change impacts about 18% of the keywords they tracked.



September 27, 2012

Panda algorithm update – this would be the 20th This was a fairly major Panda update that impacts 2.4% of English search queries and will rolled out

over multiple days.



September 28, 2012

Google launched a major algorithm update coined as being "minor" that targeted low quality exact

match domains - the EMD update.



October 5, 2012



October 9, 2012



What is “noticeably affected”



So what? What do all those slides mean to me?


Shit just got real


Image from noaa.gov



photo by Philip Roeland



Mesothelioma



http://pdfcast.org/pdf/google-guidelines

2012 Google Quality Rater Guidelines



How to bridge the gap for the 6 months you’re digging yourself out of the hole…



Google wants your money



Insurance (example keywords in this category include "buy car insurance online" and "auto insurance price quotes") Loans (example keywords include "consolidate graduate student loans" and "cheapest homeowner loans") Mortgage (example keywords include “refinanced second mortgages” and “remortgage with bad credit”) Attorney (example keywords include “personal injury attorney” and “dui defense attorney”) Credit (example keywords include “home equity line of credit” and “bad credit home buyer”)



Use AdWords as a highly prices test to see what phrases convert and what drives unqualified traffic.

AdWords as an Organic Test



RIP Exact Match & Phrase Match

• keyword misspellings • singular/plural forms • stemmings (word endings such as "ing", "ed", etc.) • accents • abbreviations



More Details on Quality Score Calculation

By hovering over keyword status, you can now see Google’s rankings (below average, average, above average) for three key attributes: Expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience.



Ad Rotation Changes

You no longer can rotate ads evenly long-term. After 30 90 days of even rotation of ads, Google will start displaying ads that are most likely to get more clicks.



Google Analytics

Not changing every day



A world without keywords

Remember my first slide about Google updates?

Encrypted search = Not provided



Not provided

45% WTF?



Drop off



This slide is not blank



The Future


Phil Buckley Director of SEO at Virante @1918 linkedin.com/in/pbuckley Photo courtesy of sookie via Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sookie/31219031/


Director of SEO at Virante @1918 linkedin.com/in/pbuckley Phil Buckley

Thank you

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