Category: Google

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AdWords Conversion Setting Guide

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McCord Web Services is a Google Partner.

In February AdWords will be making some sweeping changes in how it records conversions in your Google AdWords account. The changes will be an improvement and allow you or your account manager to have greater control over that data that Google records for your account.

Here are a few tips to help you get started with the new conversion program.

Conversion one per click. This conversion type is being renamed to Converted Clicks. This type of conversion is best used by those interested in tracking leads like professional consultants or business services firms. Here what is important to track is not the number of times a potential prospect fills out a lead or information request form but rather the number of prospects generated by AdWords.

Conversion many per click. This conversion type is being renamed to Conversions with additional descriptors of All or Unique. This type of conversion is best used by those selling products. Here it is best to record the number of actual sales generated by a click rather than the number of customers and then not recording the value of a click to the amount of sales generated by one customer.

With these new pending changes, Google will allow account managers more control over what is recorded statistically in regards to conversions further showing the real value of AdWords to clients. You can read Google’s full notice in their help section.

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Building Links Using Article Directories is a Dead Strategy

Creating articles that were informational in nature with links back to your website in a bio and placing these on news sites, article directories, and ezine sites for use by other webmasters on their blogs and in their websites in a way to build incoming links is just another previously good tactic that Google has disavowed.

Unfortunately, there are many business owners who are still using this tactic and are encouraged to embrace this tactic by SEO firms mainly based in India. It is very important to know that using this type of tactic today may actually work against you.

Make sure to watch this video on this topic from Matt Cutts the lead web spam engineer from Google and the voice to my industry. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo75Og4M34Q

It is important to understand that this approach was highly useful and beneficial to websites one and definitely two years ago. But now using this tactic may actually drop your organic placement. Guest blogging is also another high profile tactic that has also fallen under Google’s eyes and has also been disavowed as a usable tactic to improve organic search placement.

With Google focusing on high quality unique content, that is not overly keyword dense, and has high user relevancy as tested through click through rate, time on page, and personal search history it is nearly impossible to scam your way to the top of the organic results.

A much better approach for placement today is to focus on improving the user experience on your website, refining the message, and promoting your site to generate traffic on social media and Google AdWords.

There will always be sites that are placed in the top ten slots on Google but getting there now is no longer an art form but rather creating the very best user experience that is the most relevant to a unique search query.

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Can Older Websites Retain Their Organic Placement?

Matt Cutts from Google helps to demystify the issue that many older and previously well placed websites ask frequently, “how can I maintain my organic placement against new website startups in my industry?”

You can watch the full video here.


Here are my tips to assist you even further on this important topic.

1. Just because you’ve had great organic placement for years does not assure that your site will continue to be well placed now and in the future. It is important to know that your placement can be pushed down as new more relevant websites appear. Even those that are brand new.

2. If your website is over five years old, it is absolutely time to budget for a complete redo. Not only a design change but a full review of your content and how you are using technology on your website. If you don’t have YouTube videos on your website, you are really missing a strong channel that will drive traffic and keep visitors coming back to visit.

3. Have you really read your own content? Have you looked at your Google Analytics data in the last month on your website traffic? If things are falling off for you, you will want to look at your message, look at your bounce rate, and time spent on your website. If the numbers are low, it is time to really think of the things you can add or remove from your site to improve value to your readers.

It is very important to understand that just because your business and website have been around for a while does not guarantee organic placement. Google is evaluating click through rates, time spent on your site, and a user’s search history to rack and stack websites. If your numbers are low or your site is stale your placement will drop when compared to other hungrier, more relevant websites.

If you need professional eyes on your site to help understand where you are and where you should be, we offer a SEO placement review that may be of value to you as you evaluate what you should do to move up or retain your site placement. I invite you to read more and check pricing.

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Guest Blogging as We Know It is Dead – Per Matt Cutts

You know something for SEO tactics is dead when Google’s Matt Cutts comes out point blank and says:

“Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company.” Read the full blog post.

But not only does this mean that the tactic is dead, but continuing to use a tactic like this for link building may actually get you penalized in the Google index.

Let’s Explore Guest Blogging Further

Here’s what’s considered bad:

If you or your SEO firm were trolling the web and sending out unsolicited notes to webmasters saying “Hey use this blog post and keep the links as dofollow, or we’ll pay you to post this content”, ouch, watch out! This is exactly what Matt is talking about that you need to steer clear of.

Here’s what’s still considered good:

If you are guest blogging for a news site like SiteProNews, the Huffington Post, industry trade journals – these types of high quality guest blogging opportunities and high profile exposure can really continue to work for you; building your online authority. But the reality of these types of gigs is that they are few and far between and not available to the typical newbie.

Tie the demise of guest blogging in with Matt’s thumb’s down on article marketing and you can clearly see that link building now is considered a spammy practice and one worthy of a Google penalty.