Verify Google Webmaster Tools with Google Analytics Tracking Code

To use Google Webmaster Tools (and/or any of the reports, e.g. Google Webmaster Tools search queries), you will have to verify the ownership of your website. Verifying Google Webmaster Tools for your site can be done through:

  • HTML File Verification
  • Meta Tag Verification
  • DNS Record Verification

Google Analytics Asynchronous Tracking Code Snippet Verification

If you have set up Google Analytics, your website’s ownership can be verified with Google Analytics asynchronous tracking code snippet on your site’s root directory (e.g. index page).

Link to your Google Analytics account

You can use this option if your site already has a Google Analytics tracking code that uses the asynchronous snippet. You must be an administrator on the Analytics account.

Google will not access your Google Analytics account’s data when verifying site ownership through Google Analytics asynchronous tracking code snippet.

Google Webmaster Tools Verification Errors

If you go through Google Webmaster Tools verification with methods other than your site’s Google Analytics code (e.g. HTML file, meta tag, or DNS record), and have verification issues, review the possible verification errors.

Posted on March 17, 2011
Category: Google Webmaster Tools | 1 Comment

Optimize SEO META Tags, Page Title, Description, Keywords, Robots

SEO glossary provides definitions for the common SEO META tags that are found within the opening HEAD tag and closing HEAD tag of web pages:

  • Page title tags
  • META description tags
  • META keywords tags
  • META Robots tags

META Tags for SEO

Google offers official overviews (1 and 2) on SEO META tags.

META tags are a great way for webmasters to provide search engines with information about their sites. META tags can be used to provide information to all sorts of clients, and each system processes only the META tags they understand and ignores the rest.

On-page search engine optimization (SEO) involves optimizing your web pages’ META tags. The updated Google SEO beginners guide offers the best practices to optimize META tags for SEO.

Page Title META Tag

Page title tags affect Google’s, Yahoo’s and Bing’s search algorithms and your search results’ click through rate (CTR).

META Description Tag

META descriptions (snippets) are for users to understand what your website offers, and affect your search results’ click through rate (CTR).

META Keywords Tag

Histories and Google’s official confirmation on META keywords tags:

META Robots Tag

Use META robots tags to control how search engine bots (e.g. GoogleBot, Baiduspider, Bing’s MSNBot, Yahoo’s Slurp) access your sites.

Robots.txt

Use instructions in Robots.txt when META robots tags alone are not enough.

SEO Tools for META Tags

Tools to help you with creating and optimizing META tags:

On-page SEO Checklist

Double check your optimized META tags.

Posted on March 11, 2011
Category: SEO | Leave a Comment

Adwords Broad Match Modifier

Google launched Adwords broad match modifier, a keyword match type different to broad match and phrase match, to advertisers.

Issues with Broad Match Keywords, Negative Keywords

Google offers Adwords broad match keywords and Adwords negative keywords which have issues narrowing down irrelevant keywords:

  • Broad match in Adwords has capabilities equal to expanded broad match that allows ads to appear on extremely vast number of related and unrelated user search queries.
  • When serving ads, Google’s matching algorithm for broad match keywords combines search queries from two successive searches. When a user searches and then uses the search box on the first search’s results pages again, the first query and the second query are both used to determine what ad to display.
  • Filtering all unrelated keywords with negative matching is impossible due to infinite number of combinations of unrelated keywords.

Adwords Broad Match Modifier, Phrase Match, Broad Match

Keywords using Google Adwords broad match modifier have:

  • Less reach to search queries than broad match keywords, with more control
  • Greater reach to search queries than phrase match keywords

Using Adwords Broad Match Modifier

Guidelines and benefits when using Google Adwords broad match modifier:

  • To test the effects of Adwords broad match modifier, keep your existing broad match keywords unchanged and add new keywords with Adwords broad match modifier.
  • Pay attention to “+” symbol and spaces when creating new broad match keywords with broad match modifier.
  • If you have the same keyword with one in broad match and the other with broad match modifier in one ad group, then a search query for the exact term will trigger the broad match keyword with modifier.
  • Using Adwords broad match modifier does not directly affect your keywords’ Google Adwords quality score.
  • You can add the “+” sign to one, many, or all words in a broad match keyword, but the “+” sign does not work for exact, phrase or negative keywords.
  • Track Adwords PPC conversions in Google Analytics and/or Adwords conversion tracking.
  • Analyze Adwords search query report before expanding and/or narrowing down your keyword lists.
  • RKG provides 3 examples of how Adwords broad match modifier can be used.

Adwords Broad Match Modifier for Chinese Keywords

Adwords Broad Match Modifier now supports keywords in Chinese language, research and expand your Chinese keywords with:

Posted on March 5, 2011
Category: Adwords Tips | 1 Comment

Follow5.com Chinese SNS, Microblogging Tool

If you use several SNS / microblogging services to communicate through China’s Internet, consider using Follow5.

What is Follow5?

Follow5.com is a Chinese social network site, and a microblogging tool.

With Follow5, you can manage your usernames/passwords and “sent” messages of 24 microblogging sites, SNS, and sharing sites including Sina Weibo, Tencent QQ Weibo, Twitter, Google Buzz, Kaixin001.com, Xiaonei.com/Renren.com, Douban, Friendfeed, Plurk, Baidu’s Microblog, 9911 and HelloTxt, all through one user interface (UI).

How to Set Up Follow5?

To use Follow5:

  • Sign-up to Follow5 and choose a screen name (e.g. gordonchoicom).
  • Connect Follow5 to up to 24 microblogging services / SNS / sharing sites (mostly Chinese sites) that you previously have signed-up with and allow Follow5 to connect via the OAuth protocol.

Use Follow5 as SNS

When you use Follow5 as an SNS:

  • Find friends and connect to them through “following”.
  • Your friends/connections can be “following” and/or “followers”.
    Gordon Choi on Follow5

Use Follow5 as Twitter-microblogging Tool

When you use Follow5 as a message broadcast tool to several of your microblogging/SNS accounts (e.g. Twitter):

  • You can send up to 200 Chinese characters per message (which is more than Sina Weibo’s and Twitter’s maximum limits on message length) from Follow5.
  • You can send messages to Follow5 through your MSN messenger, Gtalk or QQ messenger accounts.
  • The messages you sent will immediately be synchronized to social media sites/tools including Sina Weibo, Twitter, Google Buzz, Douban, Plurk, RenRen.com and Kaixin001.com.

Posted on February 20, 2011
Category: China SNS | 1 Comment

Google Analytics Unique Page Views

Google Analytics metrics explains the different metrics being used in Google Analytics reports. Unique Pageview metric can be found in Google Analytics Top Content report after your website’s Google Analytics setup completes.

Page Views

Page views are the number of times a web page is viewed. Additional page view counts can be triggered via visiting the same web page multiple times by the same visitor, when the visitor:

  • Reloads after reaching the web page.
  • Navigates to a different web page and then returns to the original web page.

Pageviews is one of the useless web metrics.

Unique Page Views

Unique page views are the total number of unique visitors to a given web page during the same session (visit).

  • If a visitor views the same web page 3 times during the same visit, then it will count as 3 page views and 1 unique page view.
  • If the same visitor exits your site, comes back after 30 minutes (session expires) and views the same web page again, it will count as 3 page views and 2 unique page views.

Additional page views will not be counted during the same session for the visitor:

  • If the visitor reloads the web page.
  • If the visitor navigates to a different web page and then returns to the original web page within 30 minutes (before session expires).

Entrances vs Unique Page Views

Unique page views and entrances are different.

  • Unique pageviews are the number of unique visits that view specific pages which include visits that land on landing pages (or entry pages) of your site.
  • Entrance is a Google Analytics metric that has to do with visitors and landing pages (or entry pages) of your site. Entrances are the number of visits that land on specific web pages as landing pages.

Example to differentiate unique page views and entrances:

  • Your site contains 3 web pages. A visitor enters your site through page A, then page A gets 1 entrance and 1 unique page view. Then the visitor views page B which counts as a unique page view for page B, but does not count as an entrance. The result is 2 unique page views and 1 entrance.

Posted on February 15, 2011
Category: Google Analytics | 2 Comments

Quora Ranking Algorithm for Answers

The Q&A site Quora ranks all the answers of different topics with a ranking algorithm, just as Google’s, Yahoo’s and Bing’s search algorithms that rank web pages on organic search engine results pages.

How Quora’s Algorithm Ranks Answers

Quora’s CEO Adam D’Angelo briefly explains Quora’s ranking algorithm for answers.

In Quora, upvotes, downvotes, and history and credibility of an answerer can all contribute to the ranking of answers.

  • Upvotes may improve the ranking of your answers.
  • Downvotes may decrease the ranking of your answers.

Votes from different users may or may not count more or less weight to answers.

  • Upvotes and/or downvotes from answerers who have previously given good answers on Quora will count more weight to the ranking of your answers.
  • Answers provided by an answerer who have previously given good answers on Quora will be ranked highers.
  • The role of an answer (admin/reviewer/user) does not affect the ranking of answers.

Quora’s ranking algorithm is valid as of February 5 and may change as Quora improves.

How Quora Fights Spammed Answers

To minimize the effect of spammed answers:

  • Votes from users detected to be spamming Quora’s ranking algorithm will be minimized or not be counted.

Quora’s has strict policies/rules on voting answers:

Solicitation for upvotes is not allowed on Quora.com and users are not allowed make offers to (1) buy upvotes, (2) reward users for upvotes with consideration, and/or (3) trade for upvotes.

Quora Sign-up / Quora Invitation

Sign up to Quora now to ask questions and/or provide answers.

Posted on February 9, 2011
Category: Quora | 2 Comments

Blekko Slashtag Search Engine, Blekko.com

Blekko.com is a slashtag search engine (or Web 2.0 search engine), based in Silicon Valley, that offers vertical search (or topical search).

About Blekko

  • Blekko was created in 2007 by founders of DMOZ (the open directory) and Topix, including CEO Rich Skrenta.
  • Blekko was opened to public users (out-of-Beta) in October 2010.
  • Blekko is crawling over 200 million web pages per day with 3 billion pages in total.
  • Blekko refreshes the SERP from minutes for homepages of very popular news sites to 2 weeks for other much less visited sites.
  • Blekko received 30 million search queries in January 2011.

Blekko’s web search bill of rights includes:

  • Search shall be open
  • Search results shall involve people
  • Ranking data shall not be kept secret
  • Web data shall be readily available
  • There is no one-size-fits-all for search
  • Advanced search shall be accessible
  • Search engine tools shall be open to all
  • Search & community go hand-in-hand
  • Spam does not belong in search results
  • Privacy of searchers shall not be violated

Blekko’s ScoutJet Web Crawler

Blekko search engine’s web crawler/spider is called Scoutjet.

To block Blekko’s Scoutjet from crawling/indexing your site, include the following instructions in your site’s Robots.txt file:

User-agent: ScoutJet
Disallow: /
Allow: /public

Review the search engine crawler instructions in Baidu Robots.txt.

Blekko Search Engine’s Architecture/System

Read Write Web explains the search engine has top-notch technologies as Blekko has created an architecture/system that allows processing massive data sets in a very dynamic way.

  • Blekko built a decentralized architecture/system that are simple to write and debug, in which the crawling, analysis and delivery of results could use a single data store and a set of programming primitives.
  • Each of Blekko’s server is configured identically, assigned with no special roles. All servers are running CentOS.
  • Enter this into your browser’s address bar: http://blekko.com/ws/+/date. By repeatedly refreshing Blekko’s search results page, the new web pages crawled by ScoutJet will show up on the fly, within a couple of seconds. Even Google’s Caffeine (or Google’s next generation search engine) doesn’t have this fast refreshing rate.

How to Search with Slashtags on Blekko.com

Search on Blekko through slashtag search commands in the formats:

"your search query" /slashtag
"your search query" /slashtag /slashtag

Blekko offers built-in slashtags, including:

  • /date – Sorts web pages in descending order by date.
  • /map – Returns a map location of a specific search query.
  • /amazon or /amazon.com – Searches content from a specific site that have Blekko’s API enabled. e.g. seth godin /amazon
  • /link – Displays all the site linking to a specific domain / web page (URL) and is similar to Google’s link:www.example.com command.
  • /rank – Provides summary views of websites/pages that rank for the specific search query.
  • /seo – Shows the SEO factors that contribute to a site’s organic search ranking on Blekko.

Blekko allows you to search your Facebook “Likes” if you connect your Facebook account to Blekko:

http://blekko.com/ws/eyetracking+/likes+/date

Danny Sullivan explains how Blekko works and differs to Google and other conventional search engines.

  • Blekko allows the use of slashtags in search queries that represents a collection of websites on particular topics.
  • Blekko’s slashtags are actually vertical search – Both Google and Bing offer vertical search in key niches, but Blekko can offer vertical search in much wider range of topics by grouping each topic through slashtags.
  • Blekko allows searching with built-in slashtags.
  • Big search engines’ (Google’s and Bing’s) indexes have tens of billions of documents which make the search results much more comprehensive than Blekko for very specific search queries.
  • Blekko reveals the organic search algorithm by offering SEO reports to the public (which are similar reports in Google Webmaster Tools and/or Bing Webmaster Tools) – Blekko’s site ranking factors include domain name of the site, anchor/link text pointing at the web page, page title tags, and web page’s URLs, which are SEO factors included in Google’s, Yahoo’s and Bing’s search algorithms.

Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta offers his top 3 Blekko searches that can’t be done on Google:

  • Search for links to yourself by time i.e. http://www.techcrunch.com/ /link /date
  • Search for sites in a Google ad network with an Adsense ID i.e. techcrunch /adsense
  • Search for coverage of a certain topic over a certain period of time by a certain media sector, such as an initial coverage of Cuil to see if people predicted that it too was doomed cuil/dr=2008/techblogs

Blekko to Remove Web Spams

Blekko decided to remove a list of websites that have participated in creating content farm spams from showing up in Blekko.com’s organic search results.

Blekko’s Mobile Search on iPhone, Android

For mobile search, Blekko launched mobile applications for iPhone and Android.

  • The app offers a simple interface for users to view search results that are sorted by most relevant and by date.
  • The app allows searching for topics by slashtags.
  • Suggested slashtags are displayed for each search in the app.
  • “Mark as Spam”, “View SEO info”, “Add to Slashtags” and “Open in Safari” options are available next to each individual search result.

Posted on February 8, 2011
Category: Blekko | 1 Comment

Google vs Bing Search Algorithms

I previously revised Google’s, Yahoo’s, and Bing’s search engine ranking factors from Canadian SEO guru Stephen Noton’s 2006 findings.

With Bing-Yahoo Search Alliance, targeting the major English-speaking markets through search engine optimization will require to master:

Google’s 200 Ranking Factors

Microsoft’s Bing search engine tried to offer “different” algorithmic search results to Google’s search results, however:

  • Bing may still believe Google’s search algorithm is still superior to and produces more relevant search results than Bing’s search algorithm.
  • Eric Schmidt once admitted Google’s 200 search engine ranking factors (including Google PageRank) are business secrets.

Danny Sullivan made a list of Google’s ranking factors (incomplete list):

  • Presence of search term in HTML title tag
  • Presence of search term in HTML body copy
  • Use of bold around search term
  • Use of header tags around search term
  • Presence of search term in anchor text leading to page
  • PageRank of a page
  • PageRank / authority of an entire domain
  • Speed of web site

Google’s ranking factors also contain social signals including click through rates (CTR) and low bounce rates which can be collected through sources from:

Bing Copied Google’s Search Algorithm

Google recently put up an accusation about Microsoft Bing:

  • Google discovered in October 2010 that Bing was showing a much greater overlap with Google’s top 10 search results and an increase in the percentage of times listed exactly the same page in the number one spot as Google’s, than in previous months.
  • Google set up a bait (i.e. sting operation) by creating 100 “synthetic” searches (i.e. queries that few users would ever enter in Google’s search box).
  • Google verified Bing has been indeed copying Google’s search results as within 2 weeks, the “synthetic” search results started showing up on Bing’s search results.
  • Google accused Bing for copying Google’s search algorithm when both representatives of Google and Bing showed up in a panel at the ThinkBig Farsight 2011 event.

Bing did not directly deny Google’s accusation and revealed:

  • Bing’s search algorithm consists of over 1,000 signals.
  • Bing uses clickstream data collected from users who have opt-ed in to share anonymous data when navigate the web.

Danny Sullivan’s provided insights for search engine optimization on both Bing and Google:

Well, as a search marketer, I learned something new – how you rank on Google may have an impact on how you rank on Bing. Probably a tiny impact.

Google said they didn’t use toolbar data for to help sites. But I also pointed out that they do use it for measuring site speed – which is a ranking factor.

Optimize your sites for Bing:

  • Be consistent with ranking signals in URL structure, internal linking, canonical tags, XML sitemaps, and robots.txt
  • Make it easy for Bing’s crawler, MSNbot, to discover your web pages – e.g. One of Google’s suggestions is to optimize website’s page load time
  • Create high quality, original content
  • Bing is susceptible to link spam
  • Run SEO keyword research through Bing’s keyword tools
  • Use information in Bing’s Webmaster Tools

Eye Tracking Study: Google vs Bing Search Results

User Centric conducted eye tracking tests to compare the amount and distribution of attention on Bing’s and Google’s search engine results pages (SERP). The image below was extracted from User Centric eye tracking study:

Google/Bing SERP Eye Tracking

The test results indicate the users spend more time viewing Google’s organic search results with 14.7 seconds to Bing’s 10.7 seconds. The percentages of users that have viewed the 4 areas of the SERP:

  • Sponsored results at the top – Google: 91%, Bing: 90%
  • Sponsored results to the right of the organic search results – Google: 28%, Bing: 21%
  • Organic search results – Google: 100%, Bing: 100%
  • Left pane – Google: 17%, Bing: 18%

About User Centric’s test method on Bing and Google:

  • Twenty-four experienced users of both Google and Bing participated in the tests.
  • Users’ eye movements were recorded with the Tobii T60 eye tracker.
  • The eye tracking study analyzed the percentage of users (i.e. hit rate) who looked at each of the 4 areas and the time (i.e. gaze time) the users spent viewing the 4 areas.
  • Each user conducted 4 Google searches (with Google Instant disabled) and 4 Bing searches, in which 2 searches were informational (“healthy food” and “landscaping”) and the other 2 searches were transactional (“engagement ring” and “last minute vacations”).

Posted on February 3, 2011
Category: SEO | 2 Comments

Content Farm Spams, Google Search Algorithm Update

Google offered a reply to the recent content farm sites’ search engine spam issues.

What are Content Farm Sites?

Content farms are large quantities of low quality content that can spam search engine results. Content farm sites are intended to:

  • Acquire visitors from search queries through search engines
  • Drive the search engine visitors to click on ads that are on the content farm sites

Wikipedia defines content farm sites:

Content farms are companies that employ large numbers of writers to generate large amounts of textual content. Content farms are criticized for providing relatively low quality content as they maximize profit by producing just “good enough” rather than best possible quality articles. Search engines see content farms as a problem, as they tend to bring the user to the less relevant and lower quality results of the search.

Google Search Algorithm Update

To minimize search engine spam from content farm sites, Matt Cutts confirmed Google’s search algorithm change will affect:

  • Sites that copy other sites’ content and sites with low levels of original content
  • The ranking of over 2% of search queries

Blekko Bans Content Farm Sites

Blekko.com, the slashtag search engine, is to remove a list of content farm sites from search results:

Google’s Content Farm Algorithm, Scraper Algorithm

Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Round Table said:

  • Google hasn’t yet algorithmically block content farms.
  • Google has launched a scraper algorithm to prevent low quality content from showing up in Google’s SERP.

Posted on February 3, 2011
Category: Google SEO | Leave a Comment

SEO, PPC, Search Engines, Web Analytics Trends 2011

Search engine industry trends in 2011 include:

  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • Paid Search (PPC)
  • Search Engines in APAC, China, Russia
  • Web Analytics for SEO and PPC

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO factors for 2011 include:

Google made search algorithm changes to allow a domain to show up 3 or more times in the SERP by a single search query, if relevant enough.

Regarding web search spam:

  • Web search spamming techniques including keyword stuffing no longer work.
  • Google is to improve organic search quality by identifying “content farms” through document-level classifier that will make it difficult for spammy on-page content to rank high in Google’s search engine results pages (SERP).

SEO must be built into your website development when creating your site:

  • Technologies
  • Browser support
  • SEO strategies
  • Site architecture (linking structures) and site navigation (includes breadcrumb navigation)
  • Content outline / development
  • Site / page design
  • URL structure
  • Social media / multimedia plans

Master Baidu SEO and Yandex SEO when your websites target users in China and Russia which are both fast growing search markets.

Paid Search (PPC)

In 2011′s PPC Trends, expect:

  • Growth of display advertising
  • Actionable attribution
  • The dawn of “No” keywords
  • Maturity of Facebook PPC

Google still plays the major part in paid search (PPC) – With Google Adwords, start with structuring your account and then apply PPC optimization:

Inside Adwords listed the top 10 Google Adwords tool/feature innovations in 2010:

Baidu, China’s number 1 search engine, continued improving the paid search platform, Baidu Phoenix Nest, and tried to reduce the technology gap that has left Baidu PPC behind Adwords:

In both Google Adwords and Bing Adcenter:

  • Ads’ click through rate (CTR) should be lowered for achieving better ROI in some cases.

With Bing Adcenter’s optimization and transition from Yahoo Search Marketing, apply:

Search Engines in APAC, China, Russia

APAC countries’ search marketing trends in 2011 include:

  • In South Korea, Google dominates mobile search on smart phones – Smart phone users will reach 30 million by 2012.
  • The demand of real-time search and social search in South Korea will increase.
  • South Korea’s number 1 search engine Naver is to launch a paid search platform to replace Yahoo Search Marketing.
  • Google has started to power Yahoo’s SEO / organic search results in Japan in December 2010.
  • In APAC, Google dominates the English-speaking countries with search market share, but trails behind in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.
  • Alibaba, China’s B2B search engine, claims to have overtaken Google for ad sales revenues in China.
  • The Chinese language will soon take over English to become the Internet’s most popular language.
  • The search traffic of Yandex Russia search engine may grow 30-40% in 2011.

Web Analytics for SEO and PPC

In both SEO and PPC, you need to understand the keywords that are leading visitors to your site and eventually driving conversions for your site.

  • Most web analytics tools’ tracking includes Google Analytics works on last click attribution by default – All conversions are allocated to the last source of a visit for that visitor.
  • Kenshoo Search offers Path To Conversion for keyword conversion attribution – Path To Conversion tracks the entire click-conversion path (from the first click to the conversion) across multiple paid search engines. Conversion credit weights can be distributed to keywords in the click-conversion path based on your keyword conversion attribution setup.

Third party web analytics tools have been becoming compulsory for all sizes of websites. Major web analytics tools including:

  • Omniture was acquired by Adobe in 2009.
  • Coremetrics and Unica were acquired by IBM in 2010.

Web analytics guru Avinash Kaushik has this beginner’s guide to web analytics:

  • Visit the website. Note objectives, customer experience, suckiness
  • How good is the acquisition strategy? Traffic Sources Report
  • How strongly do Visitors orbit the website? Visitor Loyalty & Recency
  • What can I find that is broken and quickly fixable? Top Landing Pages
  • What content makes us most money? $Index Value Metric
  • How Sophisticated Is Their Search Strategy? Keyword Tag Clouds
  • Are they making money or making noise? Goals & Goal Values
  • Can the Marketing Budget be optimized? Campaign Conversions/Outcomes
  • Are we helping the already convinced buyers? Funnel Visualization
  • What are the unknown unknowns I am blind to? Analytics Intelligence

Kaushik also offers a list of analytics tools (including web analytics 2.0 tools) for SEO, PPC and mobile search:

Regarding mobile apps tracking, Apple allows third-party web analytics vendors to collect data including Motally, Flurry, Distimo, Localytics and Medialets to collect data from iPhone 4.0 operating system, the default OS for iPhones and iPads.

Posted on February 1, 2011
Category: SEM | 1 Comment

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