You will frequently see Google Maps & Places operating closely together when you perform a local search:  the map is typically displayed in the upper right hand-side, while Places listings are frequently listed either before or embedded within the organic results.

Optimizing for Google Maps

You should also understand that Google Maps is a recommendation engine and it is a Google property, which means that while you may want Google to display certain information about you, at best you can only influence what is displayed.  You cannot guarantee that Google Maps displays only the information you want displayed.

Please review this URL for creating a Google Maps listing:

http://www.google.com/local/add/g?hl=en-US&gl=US#phonelookup

Following are Rankpay’s Best Practices for optimizing Google Maps: 

1. Be in the Target Location – use your physical address and not a post office box or a an address service as Google does not like them and it violates their ToS;
2. Ensure you select the correct business category – it is tempting to cast your net as widely as possible, but this is usually self-defeating;  it is best to be precise and concise
3. Use a keyword in the business name – where/if applicable , examples:  San Diego Transportation Co, Richmond Dentistry, Portland Tax Services; etc..
4. Garner Local reviews – Work hard for quality consumer experiences and encourage reviews.
5. Complete Google Places listing – this is a major influencer in Google Maps (see next section); and
6. Be Consistent with NAP – NAP is Name Address Phone – use them consistently online, this means using “Street” not “St”, use the area code of your phone (and use a local dialing code rather than a toll-free or vanity number) – and make sure you use the same format everywhere; on the site, in emails, social media, review sites and forums – this helps build trust and authority with Google.

Optimizing for Google Places

Bear in mind that while Google Maps and Google Places are used very closely within the SERPs, they are not the same application. You therefore have to claim your listings in both instances, so once you have followed the tips for Google Maps above, you need to go through a similar optimization process for Google Places.

Follow this link to get started with claiming your Google Places listing:

http://www.google.com/places/

Google Places is where you get an opportunity to provide very detailed information about who you, where you are, what you do and upload images and video. You can also input opening hours and specify your service areas and tell the world about how you operate.  You also need to “claim” the listing and go through a verification process which involves giving Google your physical address and being sent a PIN through the mail. You will then need to input the PIN into a verification page to confirm you are where you say you are.

Following are Rankpay’s Best Practices for optimizing Google Places:

1. Use your real business name – If you are “Smith & Jones” on your website and letterhead, don’t be tempted to call yourself “Smith & Jones Plumbers” – if you already have a keyword included in your company name, that’s great, but otherwise don’t invent one;
2. Upload Images & Video – you have the opportunity to upload 10 images and 5 videos – this is a great opportunity to showcase your business.
3. Include Professional Affiliations – if you are a member of local association, say so – include all affiliations and accreditations as this will help both Google and prospects gain trust and authority;
4. Select Service Area – while it may be tempting to claim the entire country as your service area, be realistic.  It is better to focus on your true local area/physical location instead of trying to get displayed in Boise, Idaho when you are in Coral Gables, Florida;
5. Use Offers – you can provide information on special offers and you should use these and keep them regularly updated too – remember this is an opportunity to introduce your business to new prospects and consumers.
6. Register Your Business in Directories – Google pulls information in from a wide range of directories and customer review sites such as Angie’s List, Dex, Merchant Circle, Yelp and more. Encourage your customers to create reviews of your business and make sure you register your business wherever possible.

As with Google Maps, you do not “own” this listing: this means that you may not be able to get all the information you want displayed, or have it presented how you want it exactly. Google also employs a series of bots and human reviewers to review and modify listings to ensure compliance with its ToS.  This means you need to monitor your listing regularly .

Summary

Google Places & Maps remain the #1 Local Platform…  following these Best Practices will help you solidify your local search presence, especially with mobile search emerging. The 1^st key to become prominent within Google Maps & Places is to ensure that your listing is accurate and consistent with respect to your business name, service category and location.  We will continue to share more insight in this incredibly important segment of Search Optimization.

Related Articles:

• 5 Tips for Optimizing Local Search Ranking
• Pillars of Local Search

SEO “Versus” Social Media

SEO helps improve the opportunity for a web page to be displayed as a prominent result for search queries a potential customer would use when seeking your product or service. This positions your business as one of the primary considerations a customer will consider for the good/service being sought. Since there’s no direct outreach being done, SEO can be seen as a preemptive strategy.

When a piece of content receives a “Like” or “+1″, a user is given the option to add a comment and share the content to their contacts on the respective social network. Through social media, instantaneous visibility to a potentially vast network of people can result all from one click. Unlike with SEO, users who see social network activity may or may not have a need or interest in your site, product or service. However, should the need for your product/service arise, a user will be far more likely to consider your offering if they’ve seen your company or brand appear in the social streams of people a user knows and trusts.

Both SEO and Social Media strategies are fundamental to an online business’s growth and revenue. Neither strategy can completely replace the other, but can instead complement the other to maximize conversion potential.

SEO “With” Social Media

Social media’s role in search is centered around the idea that content recommended by peers holds greater appeal to a user than content promoted by strangers.

In applying this concept to Search, social media has begun to expand beyond limits of each social network’s virtual walled garden. Facebook Likes are not just highlighted on the Facebook.com website anymore – Facebook activity that is relevant to a search query appears within Bing’s results. In a similar fashion, Google’s own search engine recently launched “Search Plus Your World”, which supplements result pages with relevant activities and content from its own Google+ social network. These changes have introduced a recommendation layer to search engines that is powered by the activity of peers.

Social network activities produce lasting signals that can utilize user data to help curate the web for everyone. If a user is logged into an account with the engine, social media integration in search results will now show if a user has promoted (Facebook Like/Google +1) a page in the past, as well as any social network contacts that have also promoted the page in question.

On top of the relative newness of these features, market share is undoubtedly a limiting factor: Google, the world’s largest search engine, aggregates data from its modestly new Google+ social network. Conversely, where Microsoft’s Bing has a respectable, but overall lower market share percentage, it uses data from Facebook, to personalize search engine results pages. As the use of these activities continues to grow and search engines refine social network integration, these activities will become a core aspect of a site’s SEO strategy.

There are numerous benefits to integrating social networks into your site’s design. Though these activities won’t cause a direct increase in ranking position keywords, the visibility and engagement they invite are extremely valuable to any website owner today.

At RankPay, we are increasing our outreach to customers to help them optimally set-up Social Sharing buttons on their sites on behalf of Google & Facebook… please visit our Social Integration & Implementation Page for additional support and insight.

Website re-design is important in an effort to keep improving site navigation, and overall customer experience.  If you feel change is in order, beware that redesigning your website can have consequences for your website’s SEO value and rankings unless you prepare accordingly.

Remember, your old site’s rankings which are derived from a variety of factors, notably the on-site content (principally the text used), and the links which have been built to your traditional web pages.  If you redesign the site, you must do all you can to preserve the SEO value of the old site, and transfer it to the new.

With that in mind, following are RankPay’s top SEO tips for a site redesign:

Preserve the URL Structure

Wherever possible maintain the same URL structure as the old site.  If you have a URL which looks like, http://www.mydomain.com/product, but you then change the URL for the new site to http://www.mydomain.com/widget, then all the links built to the original URL are not going to support the new URL.

In addition, Google in particular does not like change in URL structure, so try to maintain the same URLs as far as you possibly can.

Use 301 Redirects

A 301 redirect is a way to tell the search engines that a page has been permanently moved to another page (for “page” read “URL”). This will ensure that the search engine will not use the “old” page in the SERPs.

Be warned that you are not guaranteed that the search engines will accept your 301-redirect as the new page which should be ranked (which is why you should preserve your URL structure as much as possible in the first instance).

Ensure Only One Version of Your Site Exists – the Canonical Issue

This is confusing to many site owners, but you can do this for yourself – input www.google.com into a browser and then input google.com (without the www.)  Each time look at what the browser bar shows – in both cases it is http://www.google.com whether you use the www. Prefix or not.

The problem is search engines look at www.my domain.com and domain.com as 2 different websites, so links built to the www.versions are not counted towards the non-www version.

This is known as a canonical issue, and you need to tell the search engines which version of your website is the one you wish to consider as original. Whichever one you decide on, that is the site you build links to.

Remember SEO Fundamentals

Search engines cannot watch a video or look at an image – they can only interpret text. This means you need words as the leading search engine content element on your site, and remember the old content is what has been valued and ranked by the search engines, so any modification of that content should be undertaken with great care.

Loading your site with Flash, slow loading graphics and video will also impact your rankings because page load speed is a factor in ranking a page. Your designer may be steering you down this path because it looks good, but it’s no use if your SERPs are destroyed before they get to see it.

Ensure all graphics are compressed, that your website code is as clean as possible and your page load speeds are accelerated.

Delete the Old Site

If you are hosting on the same server, always delete the old site because while you may call it “old”, the web crawlers may not view it that way. Make a copy and delete it to be safe (even if you are using 301-redirects).

Developers/Designers May Not Be Aware of SEO Implications

Sad but true – and in any event you should never let the person who designs/develops your site audit their own work. Get your in-house or external SEO Partner to perform a site audit to make sure everything is as it should be.

Install rtobots.txt

This will ensure that /admin and /dev sections are not indexed, which frequently leads to a dilution of your website SERP power.  It’s better to have this installed prior to launch as it is easier to keep a page out of SERPs rather than try to get it removed later.

Use an XML Sitemap

Always create a XML Sitemap when you launch the site: this will speed up indexing.

Make sure you remove the old XML Sitemap from Google’s Webmaster Tools (and Bing’s Webmaster Central), and delete it from the hosting server BEFORE you install the new one.

Other SEO Design Issues

As you can see, there are a host of SEO issues stemming from a site redesign, but these are universally applicable whether you are starting from scratch or performing virtual plastic surgery on a site. We’ve written on this topic on a few other occasions… please use the list of resources below that may help address other questions: which you should consider before you pull the plug on your old site:

On-Site SEO Techniques for your Site:

http://blog.rankpay.com/nine-on-site-seo-techniques-for-your-website/

Common SEO Mistakes:

http://blog.rankpay.com/7-seo-mistakes-you-can-easily-spot/

Using Rich Media & SEO:

http://blog.rankpay.com/3-seo-tips-for-managing-rich-media/

Please note: if you’re a current RankPay customer or potential future client… we would welcome the opportunity to work with you through your Site Re-design consideration process.

Within the search results, it’s always a David –vs- Goliath fight, and Goliath often wins.  However, with respect to geo-based search, ex: “San Diego Rental Homes” — David (Local) has a very clear advantage over Goliath (National).

The only problem facing David, or smaller local or regional based businesses, is that they do not always utilize local search best practices consistently with their online marketing efforts.  Local Search best practices are based upon 3 Pillars:

• Local Submission
• Local PPC
• Local SEO

Local Submission

Many online services that focus on local or regional areas (think real-estate agents, legal services, etc.) are well-positioned on the local optimization road due to their physical address and local telephone number on their websites which marks their connection to a particular town or city. With that, every local business should ensure an accurate and complete listing in Google Places / Maps. (Note: avoid using toll-free numbers because it’s against Google TOS); and make sure you include the local dial numbers too, as the area code is used to help pinpoint your location too.  Google always takes relevancy and distance factors into consideration, therefore make sure that your business is accurately tied the most appropriate business listing category, and always include your updated address(es); accordingly.

Also, in addition to submitting to Google – submit your website to alternative credible local directories, and be sure to include your company location information, including full address (not PO boxes) with local telephone and fax numbers (remember your business information is a critical weighting used by Google to showcase your business overlayed on maps).  Start with Yelp and MojoPages… there are many more to consider as well.

Local PPC

There are two issues at work here for a local business; first, you have the option within Google Adwords (and other ad-serving platforms) to restrict where your ads will be shown by both location, search intent and time. If you wish to concentrate on your locality you can limit ad displays to searchers within your target location, however this may not be effective if you are looking to attract customers to come into your locale.

A great PPC tip is to include your telephone number within the displayed ad – this let’s PPC ads act as your free local billboard.  You get your telephone number displayed at no charge, unless a searcher actually decides to click on your ad before picking up the telephone.

Local SEO

Developing a relevant link portfolio is important for every site’s SEO Program.  When it comes to developing a targeted program for a local query, explore the opportunity to obtain relevant links from other sites which operate within your locality or use your area as the subject matter for their own content.  Securing strong geo-based, relevant links when optimizing for select local search queries will help you gain trust and authority from the engines’ perspective.

Also, when optimizing On-Page… do not focus exclusively on one town or city name if possible.  But rather, optimize selected names of suburbs and neighboring towns. For instance, ABC Widgets is based in New York City, so aside from New York, New York City and NYC terms, you should include location terms such as Brooklyn, Manhattan, Hoboken, and so on.

On a final note, social’s impact on SEO does not stop at the national level.  In fact, we trust that social signal’s such as +1s and Facebook Likes will play an increasingly more important role in the Engine’s geo-centric ranking algorithm as we move forward.  That said, make sure that you have Google +1 and Facebook Like Buttons prominent on your site.  In fact, if you run a consumer-driven business such as a bar or restaurant – also, embrace check-in services such as Foursquare as well.  The value of check-ins and social signals regarding your products and/or services will soon provide the Engines’ with accurate real-time intelligence to ensure that their rankings definitively reflect the true popularity of your offering.

Investing in Local Submission, Local PPC and Local SEO will help every local business remain in consumers’ consideration set.  Following these best practices will ensure that your business remains competitive when you’re prospective customers are researching at home, or on the go in real-time.

Will spending money on SEO (Google + Bing) or Social Media (Facebook, etc.) generate more ROI?  When we look at SEO, we’re really talking about Google more than any other search engine.  When we talk about Social Media, we’re really talking about Facebook more than any other platform.  So the question is simplified to this – do we spend money on optimizing for Google versus Facebook?

Facebook versus Google

ComScore recently published traffic numbers for the top 50 websites in December 2011:

A realistic interpretation is that the search engines benefit from consumers research and purchasing behavior, despite the continued increase of traffic to/from social media platforms. When a user is embarking to purchase a product or service, they often start and utilize a search engine throughout the researching process.  Search continues to win with respect to facilitating transactions.

But Social Media Dominates User Time

Social Media advocates will rightly point out that despite lower unique visitors, networking sites like Facebook attract users for much greater lengths of time. Although, this also creates a bit of a challenge as Facebook is built primarily around socializing which creates the marketing issue of how do advertisers appropriately and effectively engage with limited context and without disrupting the consumer experience?

So far, this has been a challenging dynamic to ensure that the engagement remains in-tact while introducing timely offers and messages.  The second item to take into consideration reminds us that we have to measure ROI of every campaign and program.  Facebook highlights amazing Daily Active User metrics, however, we have to remember that (DAU) includes:

“….connections via a third-party website that is integrated with Facebook…”

In other words, if you click a “Like” button on a website you visit, or you log in to a website using your Facebook ID or somehow interact using Facebook’s web infrastructure, you are then classed as a DAU, even though you may not have spent dedicated time on Facebook for that particular day.  These numbers are reflected in the annual revenue statistics: Google generates $30 a year per user, whereas Facebook only makes $5, despite many more hours of user time online.

Summary

The ROI reality is this: Social Media will continue to grow and deepen engagement, there is no question.  Also, Search Engines will continue to grow and become more effective at providing consumers exactly the product or service solution they’re looking for.  And both, will continue to improve experiences while consumers are mobile.

Both segments of the industry are incredibly powerful, and will remain very complementary to each other.  As marketers, we have to pay close attention to the social media signals that Google and Bing are incorporating, and in-parallel, we have to keep testing and optimizing social media, as we do with our Search Marketing investments to ensure the right balance.

Whether Panda is an algorithm change or a ranking filter is irrelevant if you have been hit by the beast; what really matters is how you prepare your site to help ensure that Panda recognizes your site’s content and services as relevant and timely.

Panda updates are pushed manually by Google (which precludes it from being an algorithm change and more akin to a SERP filter).  What this means is that irrespective of your current SERPs, determined by the algorithm, your website is being re-assessed as each Panda update is pushed. If you do get hit by Panda, you are effectively being tagged as sub-standard and won’t be scored again until the next Panda update is rolled out.

Following are the primary helpful tips to remain or return to favorability with Panda:

Use Good Quality Writers for Content

Panda is largely aimed at “thin content” sites – those which have poor quality content, typically created with a poor understanding of the subject matter.  You know it when you read it, because you get the immediate feeling your 5 year old could write it better.  Google’s introduction of tracking and rating authors is a further response to finding and giving good credit to well-constructed and written content. “Content is King” has never been a more important or relevant maxim to follow.

Write for Human Users

“This is an article on replacement windows San Diego CA, and you should always choose XYZ replacement windows San Diego CA company for your home improvements.”

That line may have been OK for SEO copy a year ago, but in terms of the delivery of relevant information to the user contemplating replacing glass at their house, it is poor quality and clearly not written for human consumption.  The focus is clearly upon people and their needs, so while there is a requirement for optimized copy which search engines can use, your main priority (by a large margin) is to write in a manner clearly aimed at real people.

“XYZ Home Improvements has been proudly serving customers in San Diego for over 20 years, and carries a wide choice of replacement windows styles suitable for your budget.”

Remove all Duplicate Content

Panda initially set out to eliminate poor quality content from getting ranked, but if you are using duplicate content you are not gaining any benefit from having it on your site, and Panda is looking for this type of behavior.  Copying other site’s content is simply inviting a Panda penalty – don’t go there.

Diversify Your Traffic

Think of your keyword portfolio as a stock portfolio – you need to diversify it so you are not relying on one stock too much and you can cover losses if one does not perform well.  The same risk principle should be applied to your keywords, and the underlining principle is to diversify your portfolio as much as possible. This means increasing the number of keywords you are ranking for.

You can take this diversification principle even further and diversify your traffic. This means looking at developing sources of traffic from all search engines including Yahoo! and Bing, and continuing to invest in your paid search and social strategies to maximize your portfolio strategy.

Summary – Do Not Feed the Bear

Panda is looking for poor quality content, therefore, stay far away from someone else’s content and if you do have duplicated content on your website, (for instance with repeated product descriptions), look up and use the canonical feature, so Google knows you are not stealing someone else’s thunder.

Craft quality content for human readers, update it frequently, and you’ll be well-positioned to maintain and increase your rankings on relevant keywords, if coupled with a consistent SEO program.  Panda loves fresh, good quality content.

SOPA is a sister bill (a bill with proposed legislation which has not yet become law) to the Protect IP Act (PRO IP), which itself aims to hold hosting companies accountable for the content on sites.  For instance, if a website deals in counterfeit goods, or is selling pirated movies or music, then the hosting company could be held liable, and not just the website owners operating the business.

SOPA goes much further than PRO IP in that it provides the US Government with the power to tackle not only websites using copyright protected materials, but also the Government would have the ability to associate damages to the users of that content as well.  In addition, a website can effectively be made to disappear for just one violation.

On the one hand, SOPA is ostensibly aimed at online piracy.  However, the highly controversial segment is that SOPA takes aim at not only pirates themselves (who are typically beyond US jurisdiction), but anyone who facilitates their activities. e.g. hosting companies, and individual users who download, use or purchase the wrongful goods and/or services.

On the other hand, SOPA delivers a powerful tool into the hands of the US Government to censor the Internet. The vague wording of the Bill, together with the application of what is known as “extra-territoriality” (the extension of US law into overseas, sovereign jurisdictions by the US Government), has created many serious objectors to SOPA.

Worded as it is, if your website used a song segment or created a screenshot GIF from a TV show or movie, which may be perfectly legal under Fair Use provisions of existing copyright laws, then you may be subject to association given SOPA restrictions. Potentially, the charged website could be sued, fined, face criminal penalties, or have its’ site removed entirely contingent upon not meeting SOPA guidelines.

The current US legal framework for the Internet is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and this currently provides websites with immunity against liability for content posted on their sites by users.  For instance, YouTube is not taken down every time a consumer posts a clip of a TV show or movie. SOPA will end this protection, opening the door to websites themselves potentially being held liable for what their users post on them – just think of Facebook as well as other social networking sites, and you’ll start to see the challenges tied to ubiquitous censorship.

A website could be punished for simply not doing what the US Government perceives to be “not enough.”  This is obviously an important topic for all websites, large or small; respectively.

Over the past few days, news agencies reported that Congress has dropped SOPA following an announcement from the White House that President Obama may veto the bill. We’ll continue to watch closely on what develops, and plan to post again on SOPA as more information is released.

Google started the year dominating search, and no surprise, Google still dominates search now; although Bing was able to capture modest market share gains.  According to comScore, there were 17.8 billion searches in November 2011, of which 11.7 billion were run on Google, and Yahoo! + Bing accounted for 5.4 billion collectively.

Wake Up with Caffeine

In January, Google kicked-off 2011 with a revamped version of Caffeine, their super-fast ability to crawl and index content, allowing real-time content to be displayed in the results within minutes, and therefore, firmly establishing that content freshness will be an increasingly important ranking factor.

Social Influence Officially becomes a Part of the Ranking Calculation

In February, Google makes the “official” announcement that social signals are part of the SERPs weighted algorithm. Bing stays on the sidelines until the following month and then joins-in… a tacit admission by the major search engines that social media is here to stay.

Year of the Panda

Also in Q1, we saw the launch of Google’s Panda – a qualitative filter aimed at “thin” content sites.  Overnight many content networks see rankings plummet across the board.  The fear of Pandalization becomes every webmasters fear, as several reiterations are run throughout the year.

Google Launches the +1 Button & Google +

In Q2, the world experiences the launch of the +1 button – the Google equivalent of the Facebook “Like” icon. Google proceeds with a full-scale launch of Google +, an online social network in June.

Google Sitelinks

In Q3, Google continues to dominate the headlines – August sees the introduction of  ‘jumbo sitelinks’ – providing all brands with multiple links to help engage consumers identify deeper pages within their sites quickly to further improve relevancy and site engagement.

Yahoo! Site Explorer

Also in Q3, Yahoo! declares that Site Explorer will be sunset in 2011, and while there are alternatives on the market – Yahoo! Site Explorer was the only link graph tool produced exclusively by a major search engine.

Secure Search

In Q4, the SEO Industry sees the introduction of “Secure Search” by Google. If a user is signed into Google, their search terms are automatically stripped from the keyword data which shows up in Analytics.

November/December Holiday Retailers Cheer

The US consumer showcases online spending confidence with record sales across the board for the Holiday Sales Season – online sales surpass $30 billion.  Amazon is the clear winner.

What else?

Bing gets accused of copying Google search results, Google and Microsoft bicker. Author authority introduced and Google provides guidance on content duplication issues with canonical tags. Google embroiled in anti-trust investigation and Eric Schmidt goes to Washington to testify.

Google launches “trusted stores” and makes massive moves into the ecommerce space. Facebook ties up with Skype (and Microsoft) in a video chat deal, and Twitter severed ties with Google.

Goodbye 2011…  Hello 2012

Innovation across the Search Landscape continues to evolve at an increasingly rapid pace.  From RankPay’s perspective, we are working hard to remain current (and hopefully ahead) of continued innovation around the page design implications of local and mobile, and of course the never-ending algorithm enhancements with respect to content freshness and social influence.  We hope each of you had a fantastic 2011, and wish you continued success in 2012.

Website optimization is the art of maximizing the experience to achieve a desired outcome, such as: new customer sign-ups, registrations, sales, avg time on site, etc. Website optimization is the natural, logical complement to well-optimized search rankings.

Following are a handful of Website Optimization practices that we’ve found are working consistently:

Multiple Payment Options

Provide site visitors with multiple payment methods and promote this fact throughout the site so there are no surprises at checkout.  Make it simple – take as many forms of plastic as you can.

Provide a Simple Buying Proposition

Website visitors assess and consume information in small pieces – they are grazers over the web and look for information to be presented fast.  Get to the core value offering… and do it quickly:

• What is the problem… (which “it” your product or service solves);
• Why they need “it”… (for the problem they have);
• How much “it” costs… (upfront pricing);
• What does the prospect need to do next…  (clear next steps)

Customer Testimonials

Customer testimonials are extremely powerful – they instill confidence.   Always use testimonials and do not discount their value.  Also, the process creates a great way to further connect with your customers as well.

Toll Free Contact Number & Live Chat Functionality

A toll free number should be prominently displayed throughout the site. Make it easy for visitors to speak to a human being on your side. Placing the number within the header and footer are good options, but if you have a long landing page, make sure the number either “floats” so it is always in view, or simply repeat it through the page body or sidebar.

Live Chat functionality is very powerful in providing visitors access to information for immediate settling of buying questions.

Site Security

Buying is based upon trust. Every new customer must trust in the brand, the product or service, and the security of the transaction. Users will question how secure their credit information is, and you have to answer that question with definitive integrity.  Invest in excellent security with an established leader in the industry, and make this a selling point.

Takeaway

Site promotion through SEO remains critically important, however make sure that your Website Optimization is also getting the same level of attention.  Over time, you’ll find that increasing in-market, pre-qualified visitors from SEO, and investing in proven Website Optimization practices will compound your ROI, and your long-term success.

At RankPay, our primary keyword analysis tool is Google Analytics… it has an incredibly robust feature set, provides great insight into site visitors including what search term was used to find our site, and hundreds of other reporting outputs that allows us to effectively measure every variable tied to site conversion — traffic sources, volume, avg time spent, bounce rates, time of day effectiveness, landing page UI positives/negatives, and literally every other component that impacts conversion.

Last month, Google announced the introduction of “Secure Search” within Google Analytics.  Essentially, this was a User Privacy initiative.  Google has reset reporting so that any consumer that is performing a search while signed into their personal Google Account will now have the search terms they use hidden from the sites that they visit.

This means that Google Analytics will continue to report the usage from the searcher however they now report the data and display the source as “Not Provided”.  Google estimates that this change only affects a minority of traffic, likely a single-digit percentage number of users.  Analytics still provides complete insights on this Traffic such as:  conversion rates, segmentations, bounce rates and so on.

We also continue to find value in utilizing Google’s Webmaster Tools offering for additional keyword search analysis.  Just sign in to your Google account, and click on “Webmaster Tools”, and you will be taken to the Dashboard. Here you can add your site and will be taken through a verification process (which is simple,  and as easy as adding Analytics).  Their Search Query tool showcases data over the past (30) days, so it is helpful (and free), but limited compared to Google Analytics.

Also, checkout www.RankPay.net  — we created this site to share a handful of Free SEO Tools that you will find helpful as you explore adding additional keywords to optimize through SEO, and measure effectiveness.

We’re continuing to watch the data from our “Not Provided” segment and compare it to our “Sourced Traffic” segment each month.  We recommend that all small businesses and webmasters follow this same practice to further understand your sites’ Visitor Experience Trends to better select and optimize keywords that ultimately impact your business, and help drive the most qualified visitors to your product or service.  If you’re not measuring effectiveness with Google Analytics, start today – http://www.google.com/analytics/