Since October 2011, there’s a good chance you’ve seen “(not provided)” reported as a keyword for organic search in Google Analytics. For many websites, (not provided) may even be the top organic search keyword.
But what causes keywords to be “(not provided)”, why is the percentage of (not provided) keywords continually increasing and what effect is this having on organic search analysis?
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Whenever you perform a search online, your results will appear with a few lines of text underneath each of the pages’ titles.
That small snippet of information is there to provide users with a brief summary of what the page behind the title is about. When used properly, the meta description acts as a form of marketing or advert for the page, explaining how this page is more relevant for the users’ needs when compared to all the others. Read more
Surviving as a top ranking site on any search engine is a risky balancing act. It’s an incredibly competitive landscape that requires you to constantly adapt.
If you can’t keep up with the search engine’s continuous tweaks and updates to their guidelines then you’ll quickly find yourself and your site in hot water.
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It’s coming up to that time of year again, love heart motif banners litter shopping centers and the price of roses have been hiked up, it must be nearly Valentine’s Day.
If you haven’t already, then you should definitely be thinking about how your business can take advantage of the romantic themes associated with February 14th.
Whether you were taught about digital marketing at university, or are have spent years teaching yourself to perfect the art, learning and understanding SEO is a tough task to undertake.
This is partly due to the fact that the web is such a dynamic space, and the rules dictating what works and what doesn’t are constantly shifting. That’s not to say it isn’t worth learning, because it certainly is, it can just prove difficult to keep up with the constant influx of new rules.
Despite the prolific stories you hear of people finding stardom through the internet, being seen on the web is actually much harder than it may at first seem. This is where tactics such as SEO and PPC come into play. Both are complementary of one another, and work best when deployed together. However, whilst succeeding in SEO is a slow-building process that involves varying amounts of trial and error and thus requires a lot of effort and skill, you can succeed in PPC (theoretically at least) in relatively short period by
If you’ve got enough to pay for each click then you can land yourself a top spot when people search your terms. That’s not to necessarily say that PPC doesn’t require a lot of skill, particularly if you don’t have money to burn. As it costs you for every click-through, running an unsuccessful pay per click advertising campaign can be a very expensive mistake to make.
Take a long hard look at your website, think about how it looks to you and, even more importantly, how it looks to your visitors. Does the content make sense? If not, ask yourself why; did you write it yourself or is it scraped, copied or translated from somewhere else? If the problem lies in the former, then it’s time to revaluate your writing style and make sure you proof read you work in the future. However, if your blog is full of automatically generated content then it’s time to have a serious think about how you run your site.
Google are already cracking down on web designers who use automatically generated content and updates like Panda and Penguin have seen affected sites gradually drop in rankings. The Google AdSense team have also issued an official statement stating that they will no longer be allowing “Sites with auto-generated or otherwise unoriginal content to participate in the AdSense program”.
AdSense can be great for you, your website and your wallet. If used properly a few Google ads dotted around your site can be a constant and healthy stream of revenue, especially if your website is particularly popular. However abusing AdSense can have drastic effects on not only your income but also your rankings.
Google attacked many sites featuring excessive advertising as part of the Panda Update and have subsequently targeted anybody featuring ads above the fold. So getting the balance right is becoming increasingly important.
Within the past 12 months or so, the search landscape has changed dramatically. Where keywords and anchor text were once top priorities, many SEOs are now talking about the value of brand awareness and building communities. So where exactly does that leave keyword research, and is it still necessary for every new site?
It’s hard to avoid the shifting sands of Google’s results pages. There is very little in the way of stability, with some sites being punished for over-optimisation and others struggling to compete against major brands in their sector. With the increased integration of local and social results, traditional organic listings are being shuffled further down the pack. Therefore, it would be easy to claim that the value of research is being limited.
When it comes to your website, your title tags are important to get right from the start. These tags are viewable to firstly, your customers, and secondly, the search engines and they can be found in the search engine results pages and also at the top of your web browser page. Search engines use these when they index a website and they allow the engines to establish what the page or site is about so that it can be categorised accordingly. As a result of this, they are an important part of the whole SEO picture and so time should be spend on getting these tags right.
