Monday, April 30, 2007
A while ago the major search engines agreed to use the same sitemap protocol. Now, you can add the URL of your sitemap to your robots.txt file, so search engines robots can easily locate where it is.
All you need to do is add something like this to your robots.txt file:
Sitemap: http://www.searchpath.co.uk/sitemap.xml (this is where ours is, just replace this address with your sitemap address.
If you want to find out how to format your sitemap, all the information you need is at
http://www.sitemaps.org.
It is well worth doing this as it allows search engines robots to, more effectively, navigate your site and its pages.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
As we know, links into your site are the most important thing in optimising your place in the search engine results.
This tip for a link may not be contextual i.e. your link may not be in an area that is devoted to your subject matter, but it is relevant for your visitors and will be trusted by Google.
So, why not contact your old school, college or university and tell them what you are doing now. If you are still in the area where you were educated, this is especially relevant because it may provide the conduit for someone to get in touch with you who could become a business contact.
Google holds education based websites in high regard, so if your company gets a link from your profile on your old schools page, then this is a good vote for your site. This is another way for Google to build its trust in you and your website.
Lastly, as with any link building the benefits are only there if you go about your link building in an ethical way. There is nothing wrong with telling your old school what you have been up to and then providing them with a profile of you and your company. Your old school will only put you on their site if you are doing something of worth and something that is genuine and beneficial. That is exactly why these types of websites are such a trusted source for search engines.
The Google Website Optimiser tool has now been made available to all AdWords advertisers, enabling the testing of landing page content, with the addition of just a small piece of JavaScript to advertiser’s web pages. An array of different images, buy buttons, as well as entire colour schemes can be tested, to see which combination promotes the most conversions.
The tool can also be tied in with Google Analytics to enable advertisers to view more in-depth data on website user behaviour, once they have clicked the AdWords advert.
To make the most from this new tool, and your Pay Per Click campaign(s) in general, give SearchPath a call today.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Have you ever wanted a quick and simple way of removing content once it has been indexed by Google?
Well, Webmaster Tools now offers you this ability. You can remove individual URLs, a whole directory, your entire site or cached copies.
Obviously the best course of action is to not let Google index pages you don't want seen, by using a robots.txt file. If Google has indexed pages you didn't want it to, then use this new URL removal tool, but as with deleting anything, use with care!
More info at Google
Webmaster Central Blog.
Unlike other search engines Google does not simply use a Cost per Click (CPC) system to decide where ads appear. Simple CPC models (such as Yahoo’s) mean that whoever is bidding the most for a search term will appear in position number 1 and so on, often leading to ‘bidding wars’.
Instead, Google adopts an “ad ranking” or ‘cost plus performance’ system, where several factors are taken into account when determining which position ads will appear in. Ensuring your ads perform well will result in paying less to appear in higher positions – the CPC for an ad at no. 1 could be less than a poorly performing ad in position no. 5.
So, to ensure your AdWords campaign runs effectively, follow these simply steps:
1. Keep keywords specific and relevant
2. Maintain a competitive bid
3. Ensure ads relate to keywords
4. Match keywords to landing page content and avoid using Flash or images instead of text
A good Click Through Rate (CTR) should work to reduce your AdWords campaign’s CPC. You will also help ensure the clicks you do receive are relevant, improving your ROI.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Now, Google's Supplemental Index is not as big and scary as you first thought. It is not a punishment, it is just that Google does not think the page in question to be that important or it is too similar to other pages.
This could be because you have directly lifted content from another site. More likely, is that the content is too similar to content already on your site.
Also, if your site has a lot of pages but does not have either quality links into the site or many links in general (or both!), you are spreading your importance too thin. Google then takes a view that you don't deserve to have lots and lots of pages in their main index.
Having said all of this, is the Supplemental Index a desirable place to be... the answer is, an emphatic, NO!
So, a quick way to check which pages on your site are in Google's Supplemental Index, you just type this into the Google search bar.
site:www.YourDomain.com *** -view
Obviously, substitute YourDomain with your actual domain!
Hope there are not too many in there!
Monday, April 23, 2007
Have you seen Google Webmaster Tool's yet?
Google is now putting in a great deal of effort to help you and us make websites more Google-friendly and to help us market them better.
Webmaster Tools shows you how Google views your site - it shows the inbound links that Google has found, the anchor text used to link to your site, how many pages Google indexes, you can test your robots.txt file and gives you intersting stats of the top queries on your site, where your site is in the search results etc.
You can also tell Google more about your site by submitting a sitemap.
For more info, go to
Webmaster Tools.
Friday, April 20, 2007
A long time in coming, but we are now allowing comments on our blog. So, please feel free to comment on anything you like.
Also, if you wish to link to any of the articles on our blog we have now made this easier by adding "create a link". You will also be able to see the link from your site/blog listed on our site.
Lastly, if you have any Internet marketing related questions you would like us to research and create a post about, please just let us know.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Google have added yet another pricing option for PPC advertisers on AdWords. The new "preferred cost bidding option" will allow advertisers to set an average cost which they are willing to pay for each click received.
This new bidding option should work to stabilise campaign spending and give advertisers more control over how much they pay for clicks. This new option is enabled at campaign level with a default value, which every keyword adopts. Not enabling this new feature will leave existing campaign cost settings unchanged.
Struggling to keep track with the new advances in the PPC community? Give SearchPath a call today and we will happily help you get your PPC campaign up to date, increasing your ROI!
Yes, our team is expanding - our latest recruit to the SearchPath team is Dan Clarke, joining us as an Internet Marketing Exec. Dan's expertise lies in coding, and will be helping further develop clients' websites, adding additional functionality and helping us with on-page SEO.
Welcome to Dan!
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Some great news - we have now attained Google Qualified Company Status for AdWords.
This Agency Qualification is granted only to those companies meeting Google’s strict criteria, which includes managing multiple AdWords account, maintaining a minimum budget spend and having multiple individuals within the company who have passed the Google Advertising Professional Exam.
More importantly, what does this mean to you and our clients?
- Google recognises us as tested and proven AdWords experts
- It demonstrates our experience of creating and managing large-scale Google PPC Campaigns
- Our staff have the knowledge and experience to run AdWords campaigns that really deliver great ROI for our clients
If you're looking for help with an AdWords campaign, call SearchPath - the professionals!
Thursday, April 12, 2007
A few more interesting stats from E-Consultancy's UK Search Engine Marketing Report 2007.
- 61% of search marketing budget is spent on paid search and 33% is spent on SEO.
- 56% of respondents said their companies spend more than £10,000 annually on paid search. 25% spend more than £100,000 annually.
- 65% of companies will be increasing both their paid search and SEO budgets this year.
Search Marketing is clearly of growing importance for companies and is taking an increasing share of marketing budgets. However, many companies are still trying to implement Search Marketing cmapaigns in-house and are struggling. The biggest issues they reported are lack of internal resources, lack of know-how and difficulty of implementation.
If you find yourself in this situation, give us a call - we can help!
I thought I'd just share some interesting stats from a recent report (E-Consultancy: UK Search Engine Marketing Report 2007).
For those actually tracking their ROI (more about the % actually tracking later!), in Paid Search 50% are seeing returns >300%, and 22% are getting returns >500%.
For SEO, those figures are even higher. 68% are seeing return >300% and 40% are getting over 500%.
Without a doubt these are great returns and should be encouraging to anyone considering implementing an Internet marketing campaign.
Now back to ROI tracking. Far more people are not tracking ROI than those that are - up to 64% for SEO. With the advent of Google Analytics, it is no relatively straight-forward to measure & analyse your ROI - without it, how can you measure an campaign's performance?
For more information about analytics, give SearchPath a call on 01285 643 496 or see our
Web Analytics page.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Just a quick one.
If you want to access great articles and resources on the search industry try
Search Engine News.
We subscribe and use it often for information and reference.
