Google Enables Multiple AdWords Account Logins

Hear that? That is the communal sigh of relief echoing throughout the paid search world. The days of having several browsers open in order to manage multiple AdWords accounts simultaneously are finally over.

Google announced a new workflow that allows you to switch between Google accounts without having to log out and log in again. Switch accounts and still stay logged into all of them.

Source : Google Enables Multiple AdWords Account Logins

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Panda 4.1 - Google’s 27th Panda Update - Is Rolling Out

Google has announced that the latest version of its Panda Update — a filter designed to penalize “thin” or poor content from ranking well — has been released.

Google said in a post on Google+ that a “slow rollout” began earlier this week and will continue into next week, before being complete. Google said that depending on location, about 3%-to-5% of search queries will be affected.

Anything different about this latest release? Google says it’s supposed to be more precise and will allow more high-quality small and medium-sized sites to rank better. From the post:

Based on user (and webmaster!) feedback, we’ve been able to discover a few more signals to help Panda identify low-quality content more precisely. This results in a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher, which is nice.

Source : Panda 4.1 - Google’s 27th Panda Update - Is Rolling Out

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Image Ad Best Practices For The Google Display Network

Creating image ads can be a daunting task!

If you’re using the Google AdWords ad builder templates, your options are a bit more limited, so make sure you’re following these steps as closely as you can to try and get the best out of them.

If you have an in-house designer or are paying someone to make ads for you, then you don’t want them to have to make several iterations, so take note of the points below before getting started.

1. What Is The Purpose Of Having Image Ads?

Often, brands will just make image ads without thinking about the strategy behind them. What are your plans for them, and do you need to create different sets for different strategies?

Prepare a brief outline of the criteria you’d like for your ads to ensure you get the right message across. Decide if you’re looking for direct response or if the aim is to raise brand awareness, then come up with a plan based on that decision.

It can be costly to create many different sets of ads if you’re using a designer, but it’s important to note that even just a slight variation in text can make all the difference in the world, depending on the audience you’re targeting. Try to get a couple of sets of ads made up to ensure you’re carrying on ad testing here, even if it is just a slight tweak.

You’ll need to consider that remarketing might require a different strategy. As well as thinking about running dynamic remarketing ads to show specific products, you may well want to design some ads to show special messages and offers or to upsell to people.

Once you’ve decided whom you want to target and with which message, then these ads will most likely need to be different to your normal display ads for new users. Again, try to test a couple of different looks or messages.

Source : Image Ad Best Practices For The Google Display Network

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Google Begins Rolling Out Panda 4.0 Now

Google’s Matt Cutts announced on Twitter that they have released version 4.0 of the Google Panda algorithm.

Google’s Panda algorithm is designed to prevent sites with poor quality content from working their way into Google’s top search results.

But didn’t Google stop updating us on Panda refreshes and updates since they are monthly rolling updates? Yes, but this is a bigger update.

Panda 4.0 must be a major update to the actual algorithm versus just a data refresh. Meaning, Google has made changes to how Panda identifies sites and has released a new version of the algorithm today.

Is this the softer and gentler Panda algorithm? From talking to Google, it sounds like this update will be gentler for some sites, and lay the groundwork for future changes in that direction.

Google told us that Panda 4.0 affects different languages to different degrees. In English for example, the impact is ~7.5% of queries that are affected to a degree that a regular user might notice.

Source : http://searchengineland.com/google-begins-rolling-panda-4-0-now-192043

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Matt Cutts Shares 4 Ways Google Evaluates Paid Links

Webmasters and Google how such a love-hate relationship when it comes to backlinks. Webmasters know they need great backlinks in order to rank well, and Google knows they need to keep on top of how to determine if a link is paid or not, so they can react accordingly.

Paid links are an incredibly gray area. What exactly is a paid link? How can Google figure out what is paid and what isn't? Google's Matt Cutts dove into the topic paid links in a webmaster help video.

Because of this, there's where it can be hard to determine if a link is paid. on what exactly a paid link.

Incredibly Clear Paid Links

There are definitely a lot of cases where it is painfully obvious to trained SEOs when a link is paid or not, even when some webmasters think there being pretty clever about it.

The vast majority of the time things are incredibly clear, people are paying money outright for links based on PageRank, flowing the PageRank, trying to get high the rankings," Cutts said. "Ninety-nine percent of the time it's abundantly clear that these are links that are being bought and paid and sold and all that sort of stuff."

But then there's the gray area. What if someone's not paying someone for a back link, but instead the company takes them out and buy them pizza and beer in exchange for that link or story? Does it become paid then? Or where is that line? Cutts continues and tries to explain the differences.

1. Value of the Item

Is it swag you picked up a conference such as a T-shirt or a pen? That likely isn't going to sway your opinion on what you write about the company. But things range in value from cheap pens all the way up to things of high monetary value, and that's where things get tricky. And what about gift cards for smart ones that fall into the realm of things regarding paid links.

Sometimes people might say something like, "Hey, I'd like to send you a gift card.' You know what gift cards are pretty fundable you can convert them to money and back and forth... On the other hand, something like "I'm going to give you a free trial of perfume" or "I'm going to buy you a beer" or something like that, that's less of a connection.

But we do look at how close something is to actual money when we look at those kinds of things. If somebody goes and buys you a dinner and you write a blog post four months later, and the dinner wasn't some huge steak dinner with 18 courses ... that's probably not the sort of thing we worry about, as you would guess.

Read more : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2332787/Matt-Cutts-Shares-4-Ways-Google-Evaluates-Paid-Links

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How to Use Google Analytics Campaign Reports

Following on from my previous article, which outlined the data and benefits within the main Acquisition reports, All Traffic and Channels, this post is going to take a deeper look at the Campaigns report.


Being under Acquisition, you can tell that this report will also contain information about where your website visitors have come from. The Campaign report, however, is one of the more tailored reports in Google Analytics as it is based on the tagging that you use, making the information in each website's report quite different.

What Does Campaign Mean?

Campaign is a term used most in advertising. Each run of advertising comes under a theme – called a campaign.

For your website, the various methods you use to encourage traffic to your website are all campaigns; some of which Google automatically recognizes and tags with Google Analytics information for you, others you have control over what they show as in your reports.

The campaign report is most often used for analyzing email and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns, as these aren't always tagged with information that makes sense easily in Google Analytics.

Campaign Information

All traffic to your website has the ability to send five pieces of information to Google Analytics about where it came from, these are:

• Medium: Traffic type (e.g., CPC)
• Source: Detail about where the user came from (e.g., Google)
• Campaign: Chosen name of the campaign (e.g., Brand)
• Ad content: Name of the ad clicked (e.g., banner 1)
• Keyword: The search query typed or keyword targeted (e.g., cheap red widget)

Not all of these need to be used on every occasion. For example, referral traffic will never need keyword information and organic search traffic won't come with a campaign name, but these five fields are the core to the Acquisition reports and those that use the Campaign field are what we're interested in today.

Read more : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2330558/How-to-Use-Google-Analytics-Campaign-Reports

Note : Take a look at the google campaign reports which contains more generic information on how to access to get better results. These details were written by anna lewis who is very keen on writing about analytic. Catch the action and other news on google+ profile.

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Optimizing Aganist Competitors

You’ve got to feel a little sorry for anyone new to the search marketing field.

On one side, they’ve got to deal with the cryptic black box that is Google. Often inconsistent, always vague, and can be unfair in their dealings with webmasters. On the other side, webmasters must operate in competitive landscapes that often favour incumbent sites, especially if those incumbents are household names.

Sadly, much of the low hanging search fruit is gone. However, there are a number of approaches to optimization that don’t involve link placement and keyword targeting.

Competitive Advantage

Like any highly active and lucrative market sector, the web business can be challenging, but complaining about the nature of the environment will do little good. The only real option is to grab some boxing gloves, jump in the ring and compete.

In the last post, we talked about measurement. We need to make sure we’re measuring the right things in order to win. This post is about measuring our competitors to see if we enjoy a competitive advantage. If not, we need to rethink our approach.

Underlying Advantages

One of the problems with counting links, and other popular SEO metrics, is that they can be reductive. High link counts and pumped-up Google juice do not guarantee success, more traffic, or business success. For example, we might determine our competitor has X links from sites A, B and C, so we should do likewise. If we do likewise, plus a little more, then we win.

But often we don’t.

We often don’t win because there are multiple factors in play. Our competitor’s site might rank for reasons that are difficult to determine, and even more difficult to emulate. They may have brand, engagement metrics or historical advantages. But most challenging of all, they could have some underlying competitive advantage that no amount of link building or ranking for keyword X by a new site will counter. They may just have a better offer.

Winning The Search War Against Your Competitors

There’s an old joke about a two guys out walking in the African Savannah. They come across a hungry lion. The lion eyes them up, then charges them. One man turns and runs. The other man yells at him “you fool, you can’t outrun a lion!” The other man yells back “that’s true, but I don’t have to outrun the lion. I only have to outrun you!”

Once we figure out what Google wants, we then need to outrun other sites in our niche in order to win. Those sites have to deal with Google’s whims, just like we do.

Typically, webmasters will reverse engineer competitor sites, using web metrics as scores to target and beat. Who is linking to this page? How old are the links? What are their most popular keywords? Where are they getting traffic from? That’s part of the puzzle. However, we also need to evaluate non-technical factors that may be underpinning their business.

Read more : http://www.seobook.com/optmizing-against-competitors

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3 Google Updates for AdWords, DoubleClick Advertisers

Google has released a trio of new updates for AdWords and the DoubleClick network that advertisers should be aware of.

1. Changes to AdWords Conversion Tracking

Google AdWords is changing the way conversions are counted. Although Google hasn't publicly mentioned this change, a large number of advertisers received an email from Google regarding the changes. The new conversion changes will take place this month, but it's likely we will see a more detailed update from the Google when it does actually go live.

Google's email said the changes are meant to make it flexible for how advertisers track their conversions, and specify how to count different conversion actions within their account:

For example, you can choose to count all instances of certain conversion actions (such as sales) while counting only unique instances of other conversion actions (such as leads).
Google is also making changes to how the conversions are represented within the account. The Conversions (many-per-click) column will now be replaced by a new "Conversions" column with additional functionality. This column will count the conversions, based on how the advertiser wants each conversion action to be tracked and counted.

Google's email included a detailed description of how the new conversion tracking will work.

Acme Corp uses AdWords to drive two important conversions: sales of their online tax software and leads for their in-person consultation service. They notice that people often make multiple purchases of their tax software – perhaps separate purchases for state and federal taxes. However, people also fill multiple lead forms. While Acme would like to count every sale as a conversion, they would like to count only unique leads.

If a click on their AdWords ad led to two sales and two leads, the previous conversions (many-per-click) would count four conversions whereas conversions (1-per-click) would only count one. Acme would like to see three conversions: one for each sale, and one for the unique lead. Now with flexible conversion counting, Acme can see the right number of conversions for each conversion action they measure in AdWords.

2. New Search Funnels Attribution Modeling Tool

Google announced the new Search Funnels Attribution Modeling Tool. Google said this tool is designed to help advertisers identify keywords that may be actually play a significant role in converting, even if they aren't necessarily the last click prior to conversion:

Read more : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2328568/3-Google-Updates-for-AdWords-DoubleClick-Advertisers

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Google Starts Penalizing Sites for Rich Snippet Spam

If you use rich snippets on your websites, you should be aware that Google is now penalizing websites for spamming structured data markup.

The new warning was first mentioned in a forum post on the Google Webmaster Central forums from a user who is asking for clarification about the warning and what the issue could be. It is a manual action penalty based on incorrect usage of markups, regardless of whether it was deliberate spam or simply a mistake.

The warning that would appear in a user’s accounts if they have manual action taken is:

Markup on some pages on this site appears to use techniques such as marking up content that is invisible to users, marking up irrelevant or misleading content, and/or other manipulative behavior that violates Google's Rich Snippet Quality guidelines.

The writing on the wall for penalties related to rich snippets was back in October at Pubcon when Google's Matt Cutts talked about changes Google was planning in regards to rich snippets and dealing with related snippet spam.

Rich snippets could get a revamp and they will dial back on the number of websites that will be able to display rich snippets. “More reputable websites will get rich snippets while less reputable ones will see theirs removed,” says Matt.

The new penalty seems to affect websites that are misusing rich snippets, such as including authorship on homepages and reviews on pages where there are no reviews. But there was evidence that Google was attempting to educate webmasters on how to use it correctly when they made changes in December to add debugging support for structured data.

Read more : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2327459/Google-Starts-Penalizing-Sites-for-Rich-Snippet-Spam

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Google Search Results Add Details About Notable Websites

Google has announced a change that lets searchers find a little bit more information about the source of a link in the search results before they actually click through to it. This new feature intended to help searchers decide if a site contains the type of information or credibility they are looking for before clicking through to the landing page.

For example, here's what it looks like for Search Engine Watch:

 

Google made the change for sites that they feel are widely recognized as being a notable resource, whenever there is enough information to show the searcher or when they feel the content would be “handy” for the individual searcher.

The information Google displays is actually information coming from Google’s Knowledge Graph. Searchers can learn things such as anything known about the site’s ownership or creation date, awards it has won, and the type of site it is (e.g., if it is a wiki site or nonprofit organization).

Read more : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2324815/Google-Search-Results-Add-Details-About-Notable-Websites

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4 Local Search Tactics That Will Matter More in 2014

One of the more interesting aspects of seeing local search mature over the past seven years has been how little the algorithm driving local search results on Google has shifted.

For example, while Google has made significant changes to which queries trigger local results and how those results display, its stance on citation building and cleansing/optimizing Google Business/Places/Maps/Plus Local listings has remained consistent since day one.


Some of the more recent factors like traditional organic signals are occasionally prominent as Google tests ideal ways to present merged local and organic results in the search engine results pages (SERPs). On the other hand, while review and social media signals are being spoken about frequently and starting to be incorporated in SERPs, the weight of those factors when it comes to local rankings is still fairly limited at this time.

Yet despite Google's consistency in the past, we can expect the importance of certain local factors to grow in the year ahead. Marketers should focus their energies on these key tactics in 2014.

1. Improving Brand/Domain Authority

The shift from keywords to context that started with the Panda updates in 2011 and culminated, most recently, with the Hummingbird update last August have had a clear impact on domain and brand authority, major facets of SEO. These two factors now matter more than ever.

Targeting micro sets of tail end keywords with thin content pages is a tactic that lost a great deal of effectiveness with the Panda release, and with the Hummingbird update, the tactic is poised to go the way of other previously killer SEO techniques that eventually became ineffective like microsites and PageRank sculpting with nofollow tags.

What will matter more is how authoritative searchers and Google view a site relative to any given topic.

Does the site offer the information searchers need? Will it keep visitors on the site after their initial visit? Will they visit again based on the content? Or does the site simply contain pages just to manipulate the search results?

These are the types of questions Google is trying to answer as it orders its search results, and it gets better at this every year.

Read more : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2321848/4-Local-Search-Tactics-That-Will-Matter-More-in-2014

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Google AdWords Bidding Strategies: The Complete Guide

While bidding strategies have evolved over time, there are several core bidding types available in Google AdWords. Now with Flexible Bidding Strategies it may be a bit confusing as to what type of bidding is available and how it works. Cost-per-click (CPC) bidding has never been so advanced – and so complicated.

Manual CPC

This is the classic setting for having total control over bids with a focus on driving click traffic. AdWords will take the ad group default bid first, unless a different bid is manually specified at the keyword level.

Select "I'll manually set my bids for clicks".

Automatic CPC

In this setting, advertisers focus on driving click traffic but give AdWords control over individual CPC bids. Set a daily budget and AdWords automatically adjusts your bids with the goal of getting the most clicks for the budget. With automatic bidding, AdWords does all the work to get the most clicks.

There is also the option to set a CPC bid limit. Setting a limit can help control costs, but might also potentially limit clicks.

Select "AdWords will set my bids to help maximize clicks within my target budget".

Enhanced CPC

This bidding option is for the conversion-focused advertiser. Conversion tracking must be enabled, so that based on conversion tracking data, AdWords will automatically increase or decrease CPC bids to drive most conversions.

Bids can be raised up to 30 percent for clicks that are more likely to lead to conversions. Bids are lowered for clicks less likely to convert.

CPA Bidding

With a focus on conversions at a specific cost-per-acquisition, use CPA bidding. This is also known as Conversion Optimizer.

Advertisers who want to target a specific cost per acquisition/conversion must have at least 15 conversions in 30 days to use this. The conversions history allows AdWords to predict future conversions.

Because Conversion Optimizer automatically applies its own bid adjustments, it isn't compatible with the new enhanced campaigns bid adjustments across days, times, locations, and devices (except for mobile opt-out at -100 percent.). Display bids also don't work. If you turn on Conversion Optimizer with existing bid adjustments, they will simply be ignored.

There are two advanced options for this bid type: Max CPA and Target CPA. The Target CPA is the average CPA you are willing to pay, and Max is the maximum per conversion. The Maximum CPA is scheduled to be discontinued in 2014.

Google recommends a CPA, based on history, which can be used or advertisers can set their own.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2303776/Google-AdWords-Bidding-Strategies-The-Complete-Guide

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List Of Top 10 Search Engines

Here are the world's top search engines that are viewed by most number of people for their day to day purpose.We have analyzed and get into this report and wants to share this informations for your knowledge.Kindly go through the best search engines that are given below.

Google :
900,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 1 - Compete Rank | 1 - Quantcast Rank | 1 - Alexa Rank.
Most Popular Search Engines | Updated 10/1/2013 | techandmarket

bing : 
165,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 13 - Compete Rank | 16 - Quantcast Rank | 22 - Alexa Rank.
Most Popular Search Engines | Updated 10/1/2013 | techandmarket

Yahoo! Search :
160,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | *8* - Compete Rank | *28* - Quantcast Rank | NA - Alexa Rank.
Most Popular Search Engines | Updated 10/1/2013 | techandmarket

ask :
125,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 11 - Compete Rank | 14 - Quantcast Rank | 52 - Alexa Rank.
Most Popular Search Engines | Updated 10/1/2013 | techandmarket

Aol Search :
33,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | *336* - Compete Rank | *240* - Quantcast Rank | NA - Alexa Rank.
Most Popular Search Engines | Updated 10/1/2013 | techandmarket

MyWebSearch :
19,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | *65* - Compete Rank | 409 - Quantcast Rank | 225 - Alexa Rank.
Most Popular Search Engines | Updated 10/1/2013 | techandmarket

blekko :
9,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 499 - Compete Rank | 631 - Quantcast Rank | 715 - Alexa Rank.
Most Popular Search Engines | Updated 10/1/2013 | techandmarket

Lycos :
4,300,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 837 - Compete Rank | 347 - Quantcast Rank | 2,097 - Alexa Rank.
Most Popular Search Engines | Updated 10/1/2013 | techandmarket

Dogpile :
2,900,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 700 - Compete Rank | 876 - Quantcast Rank | 3,545 - Alexa Rank.
Most Popular Search Engines | Updated 10/1/2013 | techandmarket

WebCrawler :
2,700,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 128 - Compete Rank | 1,281 - Quantcast Rank | 4,507 - Alexa Rank.
Most Popular Search Engines | Updated 10/1/2013 | techandmarket

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Best SEO Tools Available Online

There were many online tools available in the market. But each tool has its own style of producing results.For example we can able to check backlinks in backlink checker were we cant able to check those details in multirank checker.Just like that every developer has its own way to give away the tool which can be useful for seo people.Lets we see some of the best SEO tools available online.

• Rank Checker - seomoz.com
• Multirank Checker - iwebtool.com
• SEO Analyzer - sitening.com
• Strongest Subpages / Backlink Checker - webuildpages.com
• SEO for firefox - seobook.com
• Google analytics / Google webmaster console - google.com 

Hope the above set of linkable tools will help you to make your work done easily.

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