Internet Marketing Blog

Google Insights for Search is a new tool from Google created to help marketers to better optimise keyword research for their online marketing campaigns.

According to Google Insights for Search, it allows you to ‘compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames’ – and it does just that.

The success of any online marketing or PPC campaign requires key word research and an understanding of your users search behaviour. This is often achieved by running test campaigns, common sense, key word research tools (that don’t come cheap) and the monitoring of Google Analytics.

If you want to benefit from the free keyword research tool that Google have recently rolled out, then you need to take a look at Insights for Search.

Google Insights for Search is another tool related to the popular Google Trends, which helps users to compare the world’s interest on any topic. The important feature of the tool is that it shows how frequently the topics or search terms have appeared in Google News Stories and in which Geographical Regions people have searched the most.

Google Trends later evolved giving us information on the hot trends and a snapshot of what is on the public’s mind by viewing the fastest-rising searches at different points in time and website trends.

Google Insights for Search aims to provide insights into broader search patterns and below is how you could use Google Insights for Search as a keyword research tool for optimising your organic or paid search, even down to your location.

Let’s take our very own site, Juretic Media, as an example to explore Insights for Search from Google.

We at Juretic Media offer Web Design, Search Engine Optimisation, Pay per Click Management, Email Marketing, Social Media, PR & Communications and Web Analysis services to aid our clients with their marketing.

The keywords that we want look at are the services that we offer (please note that each term has several keyword variants, but for the purpose of this, we will look at general terms). Since Google Insights for Search restricts you to a 5 keyword comparison at any given time we will target 5 niche keywords and analyse the trends – ‘search engine optimisation’, ‘pay per click management’, ‘email marketing’, ‘social media’ and ‘web analysis’.

To start with open up Google Insights for Search (http://www.google.com/insights/search) and enter the keywords that you want to analyse and click on the search button.

(Note: Use a keyword selection based on your website profile)

Google Insights for Search will now populate the data and display them in accordance to Total Search Volume, Search by Location and Related Searches.

Firstly the data will show you the volume of search over time, allowing you to see what terms are popular.

When you look at these keyterms over time (2004-2008) more people are interested in ‘email marketing’ over ‘search engine optimisation’ and the term ‘social media’, which came about with Web 2.0 in early 2007 and continues to gain popularity.

Insights for Search also allows you to see where the bulk of traffic is coming from, broken down by country. The image below illustrates how the UK are no.1 based on user keyword search for out specific keyword search terms. (Note: We used ‘search engine optimisation’ which is the term used in the UK, whilst our friend across the pond adopt a ‘z’ instead of an ‘s’ to create ‘search engine optimization’. You might want to experiment with spelling when comparing terms).

Insights also looks at related keywords, giving you the chance to explore terms that you might not have considered as search terms. The image below shows you how you can filter alternative or related keywords, in this instance for ‘search engine optimisation’. You can select other keywords from the drop down and find the most related keyword searched to the one you are viewing.

Whilst the alternative or related keywords can help you focus your keyword research, rising searches can provide you some insight into the recent popular terms that people query for. Adapting new trends should be one of key goals for marketers, which is illustrated by the term ‘social media’ when you look at the graph over time.

Insights for Search show volume index based on country, which could be a vital if your company is expanding to you a new market and you wanted to analyse the usage based on country. The graph below also helps you to analyze the country where the keywords are most queried. If you are trying to optimise your site geographically, this graph provides you every possible insight.

Google Insights for Search also allow you to be more specific about your search terms, breaking them down by several filters i.e.: location, date as well as category. This gives you the chance to pinpoint searches and indentify trends easily. You might want to edit the filter based on your profile of your organisation, website or blog.

If you are keen to know more about your keywords and how you rank in search engines and how you can improve this, then why not get in touch? We can talk you through how your site is currently being used and how you can optimise your website conversions and open your eyes to new possibilities.

Let us know what you think about this post and whether it has been of help to you.

We are finding an increasing number of new clients have had their sites penalised by Google from bad search engine optimisation techniques used on their sites in the past.

In most cases they are unaware that their site has been unethically optimised for search engines. There are several levels of penalties that Google use, from a full blown ban or simply losing your ranking for pages that used to rank well.

If you break the Google Webmaster Guidelines in anyway you are likely to get a penalty. Here are a few of the most common causes of a Google Penalty:

Linking to other banned sites

If you link out to other banned sites or bad neighbourhoods, you will be tarred with the same brush as them. If you download the Google Toolbar it will display the Page Rank of sites you visit. If the sites you are linking to have a greyed out Page Rank on the Google Toolbar it is more than likely they have been banned and you will be penalised for linking to them.

Over optimisation of link text

If you have been building text links from other sites and they all point to your home page and have the same text in the link, this can trigger a filter and lower your ranking. We suggest you make sure that you have a variety of different link text linking to different pages on your site.

Reciprocal links

Similar to above, too many reciprocal links may trigger a Google penalty especially if they use the same search term in them and if the link comes from unrelated sites with little relevance to your website. Linking to low quality sites or unrelated sites can also cause a sudden drop in ranking.

So be very carefully who you link to.

Hidden text and links

If your site has hidden text or links, Google will ban you. This can be text the same colour as the page background or having blocks of content that are set to invisible in your style sheets. In most cases the hidden text is simply loaded with keywords and phrases.

The text links are normally to doorway pages you want the search engines to see but not your visitors. Common tricks are to make links with 1 pixel high words or images which can’t been seen.

Website cross linking

If you run several websites and have extensive cross linking between them, particularly if they are run off the same server with the same C Class IP address this can be viewed as “link schemes” by Google which breaks their Webmaster code of conduct. It’s also very easy to spot by Google.

The risks are even higher where site A site wide links (links that appear on every page) to site B and site B wide links back to site A.

Another common error is registering several domains and have them all linking to one site, this will ring alarms at Google HQ.

Link buying or selling

If you buy or sell links to gain Page Rank and increase your search results you will be penalised.

Keyword stuffing

Stuffing keywords into content which bloats the density of your keywords within the page. This again is a bad search engine optimisation technique and can lead to penalties. Your content should be semantically correct and readable!!

Duplicate content

If you have copied content from another site, Google can work out that it is a copy and will lower its importance. A big mistake usually made with ecommerce site is copying and pasting product information from manufactures brochures. If every sites selling the same product has the same manufactures information there is little chance the page will rank. Your content needs to be unique.

Cloaking

Cloaking is when you display different content to a search engine than a user. Cloaked content is normally stuffed with keywords and has links to doorway pages etc.

Doorway pages

Several years ago it was common practice to have a series for interlinked pages specially developed to target different keywords. These sort of pages normally will have a dubious link structure and will not be available if you navigate through your site in the normal manner. These links are hidden or buried away somewhere on your site. This is a big no no.

Automated page redirects

Automated browser re-directs in any of your pages using Meta Refresh and JavaScript can often result in Google penalties as the pages using them are often seen as doorway pages which you don’t want the user to read. Again very easy to detect.

Automatic rank checking software

It is against Google guidelines to use a piece of software that uses Google’s API to check your sites ranking. This is automatically picked up on, particularly if it’s from the same IP address of your website and will lead to a ban.

Google Penalty Recovery Service

It can take many months to recover from a penalty. Most of the penalties are applied automatically by triggering filters in Google’s Algorithm, and will automatically be removed once you have taken away the offending elements.

If you have removed every offending element that could trigger the penalty, but your site still isn’t ranking you can then apply for a re-inclusion request, this can take months too.

If your site has been penalised and you’d like some expert help to get it back in the rankings then give us a call on 0845 838 7435 and we will be happy to help you out.

When your site is listed in the search results, you can improve the click through rate of your site dramatically by making sure the snippet of information shown in the results is enticing and relevant to the search.

If you look at the example below, for the search of “Pension Release”, our client’s site is listed 1st in the results : ) and the snippet is highly relevant telling the user exactly what the site is about.

Your site might get great ranking, but by nature people will skim read the results and click on the site they think is the most relevant. They take no prisons; this is your only chance in grabbing their attention and making them click on your search result listing.

By optimising your snippet, you can make your search result an enticing mini advert for your website, which is just as effective a Pay per Click Ad.

The first line in the results is taken for the browser title of the page that is ranked. Google limit the amount of characters displayed to 66. So you can develop quite a catchy little title.

The next snippet of information is taken from the meta descriptions tag within the code of the page. If you don’t have a meta description tag with relevant information then Google will cut out a piece of content from the page which has the keywords in. By adding a relevant descriptive meta description tag to your page you can take control of what is listed in the results and improve your traffic.

It is good practice to develop a unique title and meta description tag of every page on your site.

Some search result snippets will display your entry from your listing in the DMOZ Directory. You can turn this off by using the tag <META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOODP”> within the page code.

If you want your new website to perform well in search engines it is vitally important to plan your website information architecture and usability before the designers start working on design concepts.

The way you design and layout your website content and information has a huge impact on the way it performs in search engines. You need to decide what is the most important content on the site; it’s most likely to be your products or services. If your products and services are hidden away a few clicks from the home page then they aren’t going to perform well in search engines.

Here are a few factors to consider when designing a website for search engines:

1. The homepage is normally seen as the strongest page of your website by search engines. So any links on the home page will give more weight to the pages they are linking too. This will mean they will rank higher in the search engines.

2. Links and content at the top of a page are more important than links and content at bottom of the page.

3. When you label your links, make sure that they are descriptive. Don’t use the word “Products” or “Services”. If your products are “Telephones Systems” label the link “Telephone Systems”. The text within a link helps improve ranking of that term and page. Never use “Click here” link text.

4. The more internal links you have pointing at a page the more important that page will become in search engines. So try and design a site that has your main product or service categories in their own menu and that this is displayed on every page - this should be the primary menu. This will bring your services to the forefront of your website and give them good ranking. This is also good for usability.

5. When it comes to coding your website, make sure that the underlining code is clean and not ‘bloated’. By using the latest coding techniques you can move the important content and menus above the less important content and menus, even if visually they look like they appear under them. You don’t want the first link a search engine sees on your site is to go to a page such as “Contact Us” - it needs to be a link to your important content, i.e.: your products and services.

6. Try and not have off site links on the home page and always make sure they are below any important content. You do not want a search engine to come into your site and be lead straight off to another site. By doing this you are telling a search engine that you think the other site is more important than yours; this will devalue your site in the search engine, I’m sure you don’t want to do this!!!

7. Try not to use graphics for page titles or links. Search engines can’t read a graphic. If you do use graphics make sure that use the latest CSS coding techniques that can replace text with a graphic when it is displayed in a browser.

8. Homepage title text; make sure it’s not simply “Welcome to ……..”. It should be relevant to your services or products such as “Best4Systems – Telephone Systems, Headsets and Telecom Equipment for UK Business and Offices”

If you follow these basic rules when designing your website you will give yourselves a head start in the search engines.