Pulling Levers Blog

Google Webmaster Tools announced recently that the “Fetch as Googlebot” feature allows website owners an opportunity to submit new and updated URLs direct to Google for indexing. This is not a guaranteed way to get indexed, but according to Google, using this submission process will cause the Googlebot to crawl your URL usually within a day.

There are several good uses for using this feature:

• Launched a new site, or new important pages you want Google to recognize faster than normal
• Updated important pages or pages with time sensitive information (i.e. an event you are hosting next week)
• Updated pages with correct content (i.e. in case you publish content on a page that is incorrect or did not intend to publish)

How to Submit URLs

Under the diagnostics menu of your Webmaster Tools Account, select “Fetch as Googlebot” and enter the URL:

You’ll notice on this screen Google does limit your fetches (50) and submissions (10) per month.   It allows you to submit standard web pages, as well as mobile pages.

If fetched successfully, “Submit to Index” link will now appear:

Upon selecting “Submit to Index” you will be prompted to indicate if you want to submit only the URL or the URL and all link pages:

Once you have submitted your URL you will receive a confirmation:

All URLs submitted through this process should have content that is appropriate for Google search results.  To submit images or videos, Google sitemaps should be used instead.

When to use Fetch as Googlebot

With the limitations in the number of fetches and URLs submitted, this tool should not be used for minor content updates.  It should be used when time is of the essence for that page or pages to possibly show in the Google search results. Another great use would be for content that is substantially new to your website, a new service or product that is outside your normal offerings.

I recently signed up for a website to interact with fellow bloggers.  Upon sign up I was confused as to what to do next, and gave up as I had more pressing tasks to deal with.   But no worries, I got an email from the company admitting they have usability problems:

Hey jendavislever,

One of the most frequent complaints I hear is that our site is hard to figure… which is partly true because we have too many quite unique features. Today’s step will help you make sense of the service.

Interesting approach to a usability problem, but obviously not one that helps me use the website.  Granted, admitting the problem is the first step, but they have justified it by indicating they have “too many quite unique features.”

The next part of the email introduced their remedy to fix the problem:

We are doing our best to create a clear, easy-to-understand structure, therefore we have introduced “Categories” to somehow categorize and organize new offers.

But I’m not convinced categories are the right answer, even without looking at the site again because their own wording does not convince me: “to somehow categorize…” The word somehow does not show confidence in this fix.

The email continues by telling me how to use the categories in the different areas of the site.  But it adds to more confusion as in one area I am supposed to “look for ‘Category’ drop down” but in another area I am supposed to browse by category using the “icon navigation on top of it.”  In looking at the website, and sure enough, one area it is drop down, the other it is a set of icons, but the categories are the same. There is no apparent reason for the difference.

Next, there are four different search options on the website.  In some ways this may be good if using advanced options but in this instance there are literally four separate search pages which is not good.  Give the user one search, and provide advanced options to search the site vs. user forums for instance.

And this point I have pretty much abandoned even attempting using the site, as it isn’t worth my time to try and navigate it.  And even it I was still considering it, the next paragraph of the email completely turns me off:

Reporting users and threadsWe are a friendly community and we are willing to welcome everyone. However some people want to abuse our tools and we can protect ourselves by reporting those users:

When do I report users and forum?

What follows is more text about reporting others, more text than was used to explain their usability problems. If bad user behavior is such a problem that it has to be address in an email, this is not a community I want to part of.

This email is listed as the second of a five-step course. I’m already turned off at step two and have completely given up on this service.

Making a great user experience should be the number concern of running any website.  Using email to apologize for user experience is not a way to overcome any usability issues.

As with most Google innovations, upgrades and optimizations are always being worked on.  Google recently announced an opportunity to sign up to see and test upgrades to the +1 button.

Sign up with your Google account at the Google+ Platform Review and when you are logged into the account and visit a website utilizing the Google +1 button, you will be able to view and test the newest functionality of the +1 button.

I signed up and immediately noticed a new component of the +1 button.  Hover and confirmation bubbles now appear to show the user what will happen if the click, what happened after they click, as well as other actions (other friends that have clicked the +1 button).

Google indicates that this will serve as a reminder as to which account the user the signed into as well as that their action will be made public. In addition, you can see which people in your Google+ circles have also used the +1 button.

Remind me to tell Eileen she has to add a photo to your Google+ account!

Google announced a change in the layout for paid search ads optimized for tablets. This is in response to the growth in table usage over the past year and providing tablet users a better search experience. A refresh of the Google Search is now optimized for tablet users to maximize the real estate on the screen as well as easy to navigate by touch.

There are a few visual changes, but the main change of paid search ads is depending on the orientation of the tablet:

• Landscape mode: maximum of two ads will show above the search results
• Portrait mode: maximum of three ads will show above the search results
• In addition, there will be a maximum of three ads below the search results, regardless of orientation

Here are photos of the new Google tablet search results:

With the ability to target tablet devices within campaign settings in AdWords, as well as mobile reporting within Google Analytics, it is now easier to target and measure visitors that use tablets at your website.

 

If you were waiting to add the Google +1 button due to rumors about it slowing down the load time for your pages, Google has just tripled the speed.  We had implemented the +1 button on several client websites, and did not see a delay time in page load (confirmed with site speed in Google Analytics). However, most of these clients have optimized code overall that does not weigh down the page with too many calls out to scripts.

If you have already implemented the +1 button, you are all set, just watch it load 3x faster!

In addition to the speed increase, Google has introduced a new “snippet” to work the asynchronous analytics code that will make the +1 button even faster.  Basically, it allows your page to continue to load and appear while the browser downloads the script behind the +1 button. This way, your page does not stop loading when it hits the call to the script, they are downloaded in parallel. In order to achieve this greater speed with the async code, you will need to update your code with the new snippet.  Use Google’s +1 button configuration tool to generate the +1 button code, as well as the new async code to make it even faster.

1. Titles and descriptions are keys to success

If you can only optimize a couple items, make sure titles and descriptions are your highest priority. Consider the screen shot below:

While the engines accept longer titles than seen here, they also truncate titles in search results.  In this example can you tell what the first item is? Would have guessed staples for a dog fence? What about the last one? The photo may help in this instance, but a quick glance at titles, you may not know it is a dog door.

The middle listing is better, but still lacking a keyword “training.” While deluxe describes the model, it takes up some valuable space.

Take a further look at the part of the description showing in the search result. Again, engines will show more on an individual product page, but it may be too little too late.  The first two include the brand name, although the first listing already includes it in the title. With the repetition of brand name and model number in the description, the first example has wasted too many characters to know what the product is.

The bottom example has wasted all of their characters with marketing text.  Shoppers are not going to search for “advertised price” when shopping for a dog door.

Taking a look at the middle example, again, it is better than the others, but still wasting a couple of characters with “Choose the” and not fitting “training” or “collar” in the description that is showing. However, collar is in the title, so not as necessary.

2. Check your prices

The main reason people use shopping comparison engines is to compare prices. If your prices are surprisingly high compared to competitors you may want to consider not advertising those particular products.

There are other factors to consider if your prices are higher than competitors.  If you offer free shipping, this can make your total price lower than your competitors. In addition if you have better reviews, that might look more favorable to someone who is looking for a bargain, but worried about being ripped-off.

Consider the listings below, based on price, reviews or other options like Google Checkout, where would you rather buy from?

First thing you will notice is a $40 difference in price between the highest and lowest price. The highest four listing do not list shipping or tax, so the price listed may not be the total. Let’s take those top four out of the equation at this point.

Of the lowest three, only one indicates free shipping, only one has reviews, but only two, of which one is good and one is bad. Bargain shoppers may be all right with any of these options, but let’s assume our buyer is willing to pay a little more for a sense of security.

Taking a look at the listings left, in the middle, two jump out at me: ComfortFirst and Sears Marketplace.  They have good ratings, and ComfortFirst, while $10 more than Sears Marketplace, is showing no tax and free shipping. The others don’t offer much more to look at or distinguish it from others except on price.

Every potential customer is different.  Some will migrate to the lower price, some will take other things into consideration, like store reviews, brand name, free shipping options, etc.  Again, if your prices are surprisingly high, and you don’t have other options to attract customers, you may consider suppressing these products until you can build up reviews and other incentives for customers.

3. Update your feed regularly

Sounds simple enough, but many people forget.  We recommend a minimum of refreshing the feed every two weeks once you have the feed, including titles and descriptions, optimized.  You will want to refresh more often if you are changing product information on a regular basis.  Unless you are updating information daily, there is no reason to refresh your feed daily. Some engines like Google Product Search and PriceGrabber actually require updates, or your feed will be removed. PriceGrabber requires a refresh every 3 weeks, Google every 30 days.

What happens if you have made no changes and it is time to a refresh of your data?  The engines do not look at the data to see if there is a difference in text, price or any data, they look at the time stamp on the feed file.  I’m not encouraging you to just change the file time stamp, there are probably always improvements to be made to the feed, but when time is short, it is about just submitting a new file.

4. Tag product URLs for use with your analytics

Sometimes it is not just about the product customers buy, but the product that brought them to your website.  If you are not tagging all your product URLs to work with your analytics for in-depth reporting, and only relying on engine reports, or simply what products were purchased, you are doing your program a disservice.

This is particularly important if your product offering is one main product (i.e. t-shirts) with many different variables (i.e. color, design, etc.). A customer may have initially clicked on the shirt with a clown design, but ended up buying the one with the butterfly.  You cannot optimize for every instance like that, but be aware of products that lure customers into your site, even if it is not the product they end up buying.

5. Use clear product photos

Engines combine product information to show one product offered by many stores, but that doesn’t mean you should skimp on the photos and assume another store will provide one.  Use clear, crisp photos.  Shopping comparison engines are visual.  Having blurry photos, watermarks across the product, etc. is not going to entice people to click, or even recognize the product.  And remember, in search results, photos are smaller, so make sure you can still identify the product in a thumbnail version.

Bottom line

There are a lot of factors that go into running a successful shopping comparison program.  But, if done right, you should see a higher ROI than other programs as well as a lift in paid search when utilizing Google Product Search in conjunction with Google AdWords (product extensions, product listings).

 

Many people jump on Twitter, start tweeting and realize followers just do not magically appear just because someone has something to say.  Here are three quick tips for novice users to get noticed on Twitter and start gaining followers:

1. Participate in the trend

Those who know me personally know how passionate I am about football (Go Steelers!). The end of the NFL lockout is big news in my house, and something I would like to tweet to show my enthusiasm. A quick look at tweets by football players I follow and several are using the same hashmark:  #LockoutOver. (Help with hashmark).  To participate in the trend and have my tweet show up in a search, I just need to add the hashmark to my tweet, and it has the potential to seen by many more than just my followers.

2. Follow your followers, and their followers, and who they are following…

I am not saying to follow everyone that follows you, or everyone they follow, etc.  but follow those that interest you. Think of it as simple networking.  Look at who is following your followers, or who they follow. You should start to see similar trends, passions, ideas, etc.  As you branch out, you become more visible to others as well.

3. Give a link to your Twitter account any where you can

Seems simple, but I if I had a dime for every email without a signature complete with name, title, company and other pertinent information like phone number or website, that I receive I could retire. Review your email signature and include a link to your Twitter account.

Use the link or your username whenever possible, but be careful of sharing a link on forums, make sure you are following the rules of the community.  But if allowed, by all means include it.

And if you are tweeting for business, make sure to include your username on your business card.

Have fun tweeting!

I’m busy (aren’t we all!) I have three monitors at my desk, and I utilize all three. I keep TweekDeck open on one monitor in the background, with columns showing Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Generally I have a Google Analytics screen on top of it, but while sitting at my desk I will glance at TweetDeck about every hour.

In the last couple of days, I have seen posts by a couple of businesses on Facebook that I like that have taken up my whole column and more in TweetDeck. It has bothered me since it takes up the whole column and I am forced to scroll to see other posts.  Below is an example (I blurred the post to protect the innocent!):

As I sat blogging and saw the post, it made me wonder if they had a blog, or posted this information on their own website. So, I started snooping around their website and started realizing I could not remember the last time I was at their website. There was a lot of new information, products to buy, information on events, etc.

I went back through their Facebook posts and saw that in almost every instance all their information was on their posts and fans were not directed to the website. I had obviously missed a couple of Facebook posts and had not been encouraged to visit their website in any of the posts I had seen. I was missing a lot!

Obviously trying to send your fans to your website on every post isn’t feasible.  But consider the length of the post above, this is a great opportunity to provide a teaser and link to read more on a blog.  Now you have an interaction at your website, not just Facebook, and your visitors can see a lot more than just one Facebook post.  Whether it is an event or a new product, use the blog page to include links to other parts of your site.

The key is good content.  Do not just link to products on your Facebook posts, create content that fans will be willing to link to more.

The first part of developing an overall social media strategy is understanding who your audience is and what they are doing. Seems simple, right? But this is the number one mistake so many companies make. Instead of understanding where their audience is, they focus on the latest and greatest social media platform. But what if your audience isn’t on that platform yet?

Marketers take the time to develop customer profiles and use that to drive their spend of marketing budgets, but do not use the same information to determine the right social media strategy. Just like any other marketing campaign, you have to do your research first. So, where to start? Best thing to do is to gather your customer profile/demographics and use the Groundswell Profile Tool (see below). The tool uses the most recent data from Forrester’s surveys to help understand where your target demographic lies within six groups:

• Creators-Very socially active people who create content, including blogs, wikis, videos and the like. They are happy to share their experience and opinions about their passions, hobbies, love of a product or brand. They don’t just join the conversation, they create it.
• Critics-Do not assume critics in only a negative context. Critics share their opinion, both good and bad, typically writing reviews and responding to forums. They also use micro-blogging platforms like Twitter frequently.
• Collectors-It isn’t just about collecting, but sharing as well. Collectors are great at finding items and sharing them on social bookmarking sites. They are most active on Delicious, Digg and StumpleUpon. While it seems they aren’t very important since they are just sharing, they are quite savvy and tend to share only valuable information and can be seen as a power user or authority.
• Joiners-Many creators start as joiners, sharing their experience, interacting on social media sites like Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn or even message boards. They want to connect with people that have their same interest, views or passions.
• Spectators-Rather than taking an active role, spectators love to people watch. They read a lot of blogs, and generally use a feed reader. They will use micro-blogging platforms like Twitter to keep updated on news, sports, and any other passions. They want to hear others opinions on a product or a brand, and those opinions influence their decision making.
• Inactives-no surprises here, these are people that are on the Internet, but don’t participate in social media (yet!)

So, let’s play with the tool a bit. If your demographic is US women, 55+, your audience is mostly spectators. Chances are you won’t see much in conversation from them initially, but have faith that they are out there, reading, watching, and making decisions even if not responding to you directly. Very few are creators, but will voice their opinion (critics) if need be. But also marketers need to watch this segment, as it has a high inactive rate.

But, if we change the demographic to US males, 18-24, there are very few inactives with a strong mix of Joiners and Spectators as well. You’ll see a similar trend among females in the same age group. They are not only watching, contributing to the conversion, they are big creators. It isn’t about just reaching them on the “usual” social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace) it is continuing the conversation on their individual blogs or forums.

It is an easy mistake to make. You want to use the latest and greatest technology to communicate about your company or brand. Before you waste your time, make sure your audience is there.

Announced this week, Google AdWords has a quick way to view campaign, ad group or keyword performance by ad slot position, top vs. side. Reports have shown that ads shown above natural search results tend to receive more clicks than ads that show on the right-hand section.

I can certainly understand the rationale behind this, but it led me to more questions than answers. However, let’s first take a look at the report, as well as how to access it:

Accessing the report is easy. In a campaign, ad group or keyword view, select the “Segment” button and select “Top vs. Side.”

As mentioned, the report raised a couple of questions. As an example, I looked at a keyword that reported an average position of 1.8 on top, and 4.7 on the side. It made me wonder, when it appeared on the side, was that position 4.7 like the example below, where the first three ads are at the top and position four starts at the top of the side:

Or is it like this example, where there are no ads in the top area and ads only appear on the side:

There is a significant difference in placement between a position 4, with three other ads on top vs. position 4 when no ads exist at the top.

Another keyword I looked reported an average position of 2 in both the top and side slots. The ad received more clicks when in the top slot vs. the side, even though the ad on the side received more impressions. Again, I have the problem mentioned above, but I also have another issue. How do I get my ad in position 2 at the top? If there is one competitor in position 1 at the top, obviously outbidding them will get me to the top, but what if the one competitor in the top position is also shown on the side? What then? Again I can outbid the competitor, but that does not necessarily get my ad to show at the top of natural search results.

Overall, the report provides an interesting view, but I find it hard to act on it without more data that does not seem to be available.