Are you looking for the number one spot?
There are many reasons to advise against an obsession with the number 1 slot in the Google organic search results. Which keywords? Who are you competing with? What is the real value of the keyword to your business? And so on. Some research from SEOmoz this week is indicating that there are even more reasons to make sure that your SEO thinking is broad and strategic. The research looks at eye tracking results and there is a clear tendency to favour images and Google Places style results. Of course, it’s just one study and eye tracking and tracking clicks is not the same but it’s interesting.
Google Places '7 - Pack' Gets Lots of Attention
Webmaster Tools search query data can now be imported into Google Analytics
You can now import search query data from Webmaster Tools and view it directly in your Google Analytics reports. The data includes:
- Search Queries: impressions, clicks, position and CTR (click through rate) for the top Google search queries your site appeared in.
- Landing Pages: impressions, clicks, search positions and CTR for your top landing pages.
- Geographical Summary: impressions, clicks and CTR by country.
To see how this is done you can read our post: How to import search data into your analytics.
Facebook add new features to their page analytics
A range of new analytics possibilities is now available to companies using Facebook. Facebook says that the new metrics will help companies understand how their content is being shared and give them the information they need to maximize the benfit of promoting on Facebook. The new features are presented and discussed at Search Engine Watch. They include ‘Friends of Fans’, ‘People Talking About This’, inclusion of the last 500 posts in analytics, inclusion of social signals such as ‘Likes’ in ads and connections between these metrics. It will take some time to see how much benefit these changes can bring.
Google Panda Update
Google confirmed a new iteration to its Panda update this week. They have not given any specifics about the update, merely issuing a general statement:
“We’re continuing to iterate on our Panda algorithm as part of our commitment to returning high-quality sites to Google users. This most recent update is one of the roughly 500 changes we make to our ranking algorithms each year.”
It is safe to assume that poor, duplicate and irrelevant content is in the spotlight along with associated low quality link building.
Webmaster reconsideration requests to become more transparent
Google has announced that they intend to take a more transparent approach to reconsideration requests. When businesses lose rankings or are banned altogether and do not believe they have violated Webmaster rules, they can make a reconsideration request. It is good to hear that this process is to become more transparent. Businesses rely quite heavily on Google and it is only right that they should be able to find out what has gone wrong when they hit serious problems. Particularly if those problems were not of their doing.
Related posts:
- Online Marketing News this Week – 26th Aug. 2011
- Online Marketing News this Week – 30th Sept 2011
- Online Marketing News this Week – 2nd Sept 2011
- How to Import Search Query Data Into Your Analytics
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[...] Interesting, mostly, for the effect it could have on the look of search result pages. Eye-tracking research already tells us how important such visual changes can be and SEO strategies will need to be ready [...]