Why should you use Campaign URLs?

Make the most of your data by setting up tracking URLs for the current campaigns that you're running. This allows you to group together visits coming in from various sources based on a common campaign theme, which can be as generic as grouping all of your summer campaigns, or as specific as grouping your newsletters. This can be a very powerful tool when trying to gauge the overall success of a campaign - whether that's based on traffic numbers, conversions or another ROI metric.

When should you use Campaign URLs?

There are many great uses for campaign URLs, they can be used as checks and balances for media buys. This way you have a point of reference instead of just relying on publisher data, which can vary greatly depending on how they track clicks and impressions. Another use of campaign URLs is to track domain redirects, which are not captured in Google Analytics. Our SEO team can set up a 301 redirect directly to a campaign URL, which will also help to measure print or radio ads. Campaign URLs are also very useful for tracking visits from Twitter. The referring source is often stripped out with Twitter traffic, causing it to show up in Google Analytics as direct traffic. If you're creating a campaign URL for Twitter, you should use a URL shortener such as bit.ly since tracking URLs can be pretty long.

URL Builder

There is a simple online tool for creating Google campaign URLs: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578

Creating the Campaign URL

The most important thing about tracking URLs is that you're consistent - make sure you build the URL the same way each time so that the data appears in the same place in Google Analytics. It is recommended that you set up a spreadsheet template that you use each time to create tracking URLs.

Here is an example of how to structure a tracking URL:

   Source = twitter OR october-newsletter
   Medium = social media OR email
   Campaign Name = social OR newsletters

The URL will look something like this:
http://www.simpleviewinc.com/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social-media&utm_campaign=social

You can see the different elements right in the URL, with the "source=facebook" and "medium=social-media".

The tracking URL should be used in place of the destination URL, so this would be provided to a publisher for a banner ad or it can be used to track links to your website from a newsletter or from social media posts.

Once the URL has been clicked on, the data will automatically propagate in Google Analytics.

Note: If you're testing a URL, you may need to wait a little while since Google Analytics is not real time.

Viewing the Data in Google Analytics

Log in to your Google Analytics account and go to Traffic Sources, then Campaigns.

This defaults to show the data from the source that you entered into your campaign URL. You can click on the word Source to view the data by Campaign Name or Medium.

Once you get the hang of creating campaign URLs it's pretty quick and easy. It just adds one step to the process of generating your newsletter or sending out banner ads for your next media buy. The value that it provides - in ways that you can view campaign data - is well worth it and it will save you time down the road.

Feel free to contact your SEO Analyst or your Account Manager with any questions.

Even if you haven't heard of Google Places, you've probably seen the listings when conducting a search on Google.com. Whenever a user conducts a local search, such as "pizza" in the example below, Google will present businesses listed in Google Places towards the top of the organic results. Reviews a business has collected will be presented along with the business' information and website. Ensuring that your business is listed is vital, and best of all, free!

To begin, go to www.google.com/placesforbusiness and create a Google account if you do not already have one; the "Sign Up" button is in the top right corner. Once you are signed in, you simply need to add your business. You will need to verify your business with Google once you have added it. This will be done either over the phone or by postcard. New listings typically are verified with a PIN number that Google mails to the address on your listing. Updates to your existing listing may be able to be completed by phone.

Tips:

• Make sure you complete all of the fields available, including optional ones if they apply to your business. The better you can describe your business, the easier it will be for Google to determine your business' relevancy.
• Add photos to your Places listing.
• Encourage your customers to write a review about your business and respond to those reviews to thank them for their time and kind review.
• If you receive a poor review, make sure you reach out to that customer to resolve their complaint. Make sure you respond to reviews respectfully and complete your resolutions. Users respond favorably when business owners are actively engaging with their customers.

For more tips on how to fully utilize Google Places, as well as how to respond to reviewers, check out "How to Pimp Your Google Places Listing."

 

Google has added 40 new updates to their search algorithm for February. Some of the highlights include more accurate detection of official pages, improved local results and improvements to Google's "Freshness" update. Read more at the official Google Search Blog for details!

An image alt tag is a brief description of an image on a webpage; this text is not visible when the image is displayed to the user. This tag is useful for visually impaired users, users who set their web browsers to disable images or for users on a text-only browser. The description lets the user know what the image depicts and it tells search engine spiders what the image is about. As with all things SEO, optimizing your website for users also helps search engines.

When describing your image, keep it very brief. Use your keyword research when possible and applicable. Filling the alt tag with a description that does not match your image or your content is neither helpful for the user nor the search engine. Adding too many keywords to your image can also be damaging to your site if it is widespread as it can appear to a search engine that you are "keyword stuffing."

Keep in mind that this image can appear in a search engine's image database, like Google Images or Bing Images. If you are mis-tagging your image, you will either receive no visits or visits from a user who immediately leaves your website because the image didn't match his/her search. Below, you can see an example of what can happen if you don't flag your image accurately. A search of "Tucson Hiking" has displayed an image of Van Gogh's The Starry Night mixed in with mountains and hiking trails.

 As with link title tags, adding an image alt tag is fairly simple in most CMS platforms. To add one in the simpleview CMS, you simply need to add your description in the "Image Description" field after you have added the image location.

The title field can also be filled in with the same text or a unique description. The title field displays the text to the user, unlike the image alt tag which is only visible when the image is not displayed or to text-only browsers. The image's alt tag is more important than the image's title tag, so if you only want to fill out one field, complete the image description with useful, relevant information.

If your website is image heavy, adding alt tags to them all can be time consuming. Avoid feeling overwhelmed by grouping your pages in order of importance and handling them in smaller batches. Remember, patience and research are key to optimizing your website well for users and search engines!

Link title tags are different than the title of your page. This title tag is specific only to the link on the page. When a user hovers his or her cursor over the link, a box will display with text describing where the content of the page to which the link is pointing. This only shows if you have specified the content of the link's title tag. If nothing is there, it will do nothing when the cursor is placed over the link. In the example below, you can see the text box that displayed when the cursor was held over the first link, "Potential East Coast Snowstorm".

The link title tag is the perfect opportunity to add a very brief description of the page you are to which linking. Keep it brief and use one of your keywords if it applies. An example would be if you were to add a link on your homepage that points to your hotel page. Simply add a link title tag with your destination's name plus the word hotels. It doesn't need to be any longer than that.

Most CMS systems have an easy method to add the link title tag. In the simpleview CMS, adding the title tag to the link is easy. While adding a link to your page, simply fill out the "Title" field after adding your link URL and save:

After publishing or saving and previewing the page, your new link title tag is ready for viewing:

Keep your link title tags brief, concise and relevant. Too much in the title tag will waste your efforts to help users and search engines understand the content of the destination page. When linking to an external page, you can choose either to provide a description of the destination page or you can simply title it "external site" to let the user know they will be taken off of your site. Don't worry, if they want to view your website again, studies show users will use their back button to return! One other thing to keep in mind when adding your link title tag is carefully choosing which words you are using to link to another page. Use your keyword research to choose optimal words, such as "hotels" over "accommodations" and be very sparing about using "click here" or "more" as they are generic terms and do not provide a good description of the destination page.

Remember, with search engine optimization, it's not one big thing that helps your website perform, it's all of the little things that add up. A link title tag is just another small step to improve your site for an optimal user and search engine experience!

Interested in attending an SEO-focused conference? Here are a few conferences our team members have attended (or plan to attend):

• SES Accelerator
• PubCon
• SearchFest
• Search Marketing Expo - SMX
• Search Marketing Expo - SMX Advanced
• MozCon
• Search Engine Strategies (SES)

Because SEO is constantly evolving, staying up-to-date on industry best practices is crucial to ensuring the strategies you're using are effective.

So, what are meta tags? The meta tags you should focus on include the title tag, the meta description, and the meta keywords. These tags are used in various ways to inform search engines and internet users of the content and focus of your website's pages.

There are a few reasons to make sure you routinely review your website's meta tags:

1. First, you will want to make sure that the meta tags match the content of the page. If the page's focus has changed, you will need to update the tags as well. 
2. Second, you'll want to make sure that your meta tags match what your keyword research has revealed. Of course, you'll also want to ensure that the content also focuses on what your keyword research has shown. 
3. Finally, you will want to make sure that every page on your website has unique tags that are concise and focused on the page's content.

The title tag is what displays on the top of your browser when you are viewing a page on a website. This tag also displays on the search engine results page. The purpose is to tell the user (and the search engine) what the content of your page is. Title tags should be about 50 to 65 characters in length, which includes spaces, to properly fit on a search engine's result page. If your title is longer than 69 characters long, then the search engine will cut off the rest of the information. It also helps you keep your page's title concise and focused on your important keywords. In the example below, you can see the title tag looks like in a search engine result. The keywords that match the search terms are bolded, and the title tag is clickable.

The meta description tag does not display when a user is on your webpage. This tag is viewable to search engine spiders and provides a brief description of your page's content. It is viewable to users on the search engine results page to provide them with an idea of what your page will contain if they click through to view it. The description should be about 140 to 155 characters in length, including spaces, to ensure it will be completely viewable on the results page. If the description is longer than 155 characters, it will be clipped off. In the example below, you can see that the words in the description matching the search term are in bold. Also, you can see what it looks like when a description fits or when it is too long.

The meta keywords tag is not used for ranking purposes in the larger search engines, but they help you to organize your thoughts and your page's content. The meta keywords tag should contain no more than seven keywords. They keywords should be found in the content of your page. Smaller search engines may use this tag in order to help determine the focus of your page, so remain concise when choosing them. If you find that you have too many keywords, you may want to consider whether your page is not focused enough or should be broken into separate pages.

If you feel overwhelmed by the amount of pages to update, prioritize your pages by importance or pageviews and update the meta tags in smaller, more manageable batches. It can take a lot of time to conduct keyword research and to ensure that each page has focused content and concise meta tags, but the end result is worth all the hard work!

The Search Engine Marketing (SEM) department completed an analysis of organic website traffic of current simpleview clients.  In this analysis, we compared 2011 traffic to 2010 traffic to determine how well websites performed year-over-year. The comparison was split almost evenly between clients currently receiving search engine optimization (SEO) services and clients not being serviced by the SEM department. On average, all of the websites compared experienced growth in organic traffic; however, clients serviced by the SEM department had a higher percent increase in visits.

Other statistics, such as pages per visit, average time on site and bounce rate were also reviewed. These statistics took a little bit of a hit across most of the websites, although SEM clients fared better on average.

It can be easy to forget about them, but your website's backlinks are important to review regularly. Backlinks, or inbound links to your website from another website, are an important indicator to search engines on how other sites view the importance or relevance of your website. There are a number of factors that search engines use, but in general, links from quality and authoritative sites convey popularity and importance to your website's content.

So, why should you check them?  You'll want to make sure that these inbound links are pointing to existing pages on your website. Some of these links might be old, so the pages they are linking to may have been moved or even deleted from your website. The importance of that link is wasted if the search engines' spiders cannot get to that page and review the content. Maybe you were considering removing the page but find that it is being heavily linked to - you may want to reconsider the move and leave the page if other websites and users find it to be useful content.

Now that you've checked your backlinks and found links that are pointing to pages that have moved or been removed, what do you do? You have a few options. First, and best, contact the website to let them know the page moved and ask if he or she would mind changing the link to the page's new location. If the page was removed, you could suggest another page that would be relevant to their users and content of their page. What if you are unable to reach the website owner and there are a number of links pointing to the old page? Your second option is to set up a 301 redirect to point the incoming link to the new page's location so users following the link can still get to your content instead of receiving a "page not found" error.

There are many free and paid tools you can use to check your backlinks; one of our favorite tools is Open Site Explorer. Just do a search for "backlink checker" and choose the tool that works best for you!

If you're thinking about taking your website offline for a day or two (like today for SOPA/PIPA opposition, along with major websites like Wikipedia), please make sure you're doing it correctly so as to not hurt your SEO efforts. In a nutshell, the advice is to use a 503 HTTP status code to tell spiders that the website is temporary unavailable. Click here to read the full explanation.

For more information on these two pieces of legislation: http://www.pcworld.com/article/248298/sopa_and_pipa_just_the_facts.html

http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/17/technology/sopa_explained/index.htm