Google Analytics has become the weapon of choice for one of my clients as it does an admirable job of splitting their paid and non-paid traffic, particularly helpful seeing as they're runnning an Adwords campaign or two.

Today I noticed in Google Analytics' menu there's a Benchmarking (Beta) button under the Visitors heading.

"Benchmarking is a service that lets you see how your website's statistics compare against industry verticals. Use benchmarking data to gain a broader context for your site and identify additional opportunities to improve your site's metrics."

Getting further into the Benchmarking (Beta) I had to allow Google to anonymously collect & share data and I've enabled Benchmarking (Beta) for the client's site. When I attempt to use the service, Google's now telling me that benchmarking data is being collected & combined and that

"Industry statistics will appear in this report within two weeks"

Tres cool, now I just have to sit and wait for up to 2 weeks to see how this site is performing against industry verticals. And this is where I'm very curious... Not knowing how Google knows which industry you're in I did a little search amongst all their FAQs and it appears that you have to set the industry vertical yourself... by going into "Open category list" and selecting a category... and yet I'm not seeing that function either in Firefox or my IE6 browser.

This is going to be interesting comparing visits, page views per visit, bounce rate and average time on site with others in the industry... I wonder how we will fare? I'll keep you posted.

Labels: google, seo, services, stats, tools

We've been clamouring for Google to revise the Google Webmaster Tools for some time now, and taking the webmaster tools user survey seems to be paying dividends.

The toolset so far has been fairly simple but it looks like Google are listening to webmasters and putting out some really useful, really helpful new webmaster tools

I noticed yesterday that G's toolset now includes some very useful Content Analysis features...

Under the DIAGNOSTICS tools there is a CONTENT ANALYSIS section that looks at:

Title tag issues

1. Missing title tags
2. Duplicate title tags
3. Long title tags
4. Short title tags
5. Non-informative title tags

Meta description issues

1. Duplicate meta descriptions
2. Long meta descriptions
3. Short meta descriptions

Non-indexable content issues

These are all really burning issues that many SEO people want to know and by pinpointing problems with title tags, meta descriptions and non-indexable pages it looks like Google are giving us what we want in order to make our sites more competitive.

Like they say, fixing these issues may help in addressing the negative impacts that incorrect title and meta may cause, so listen to Google, fix the problems and report back on whether their guidance was a wild goose chase to simply keep people busy or whether you've had any real successes in the serach results...

Labels: google, seo, tools

When you search Google you tend to get a ton of extra data the sometimes you're really not looking for.

Normally you see, in a Google results page, the following data:

[title]
[description]
[link]

When you're looking for something in a hurry e.g. checking out other competitors in the SEO game, you often need to peruse the results pages fast!

So how do you compact Google search results?

I just happened to stumbleupon DaveN's blog whilst Googling for the pros & cons of having a UK website at a US IP address and I noticed his greasemonkey scripts page.

Now I haven't used Greasemonkey in a while but it's a handy little plugin for the Firefox web browser.

On Dave's page there's a totally handy little Google search compactor script for Greasemonkey.

Really handy, give it a try.

Labels: firefox, google, greasemonkey, scripts, seo, tools

What a great idea. SEOHosting.com

What's the crack with this and what the hell does SEO have to do with hosting?

Well, certain search engines, that we won't mention, look at the IP address of where sites are hosted and factors this into their ranking algorithm. What they specifically look at is the class C IP address, so for this site with the current IP address 70.85.48.84 the class C IP is 70.85.48.

If the search engines see links between any of these class C IP addresses then the links are quite simply devalued. I once knew a guy in the US who, many years ago, hooked onto the fact that links boost sites and created something like over 300 sites with virtually no content, all linking to eachother.

Now, the SEs aren't daft so they introduced this cross-linking detection which stops someone setting up hosting on a reseller package and creating tons of sites that all link to eachother.

That's bad news if you're legitimately building sites on the cheap and you find genuine value of linking to other sites, especially if they're in the same arena e.g. you link one Automotive site to another, or you're a designer hosting your clients' sites on your reseller account, pointing to them from your portfolio and having them point back to you.

It's good news if you're a hosting company because to avoid class C IP penalties you'd have to spread your sites over different servers far apart, at different companies etc. For the small fish inthis big pond, that can be quite a pricey problem.

That's where SEO Hosting comes in: SEOHosting.com from Hostgator specifically has a number of class C IP addresses where you can avoid these penalties... for now ;)

So, from an SEO point of view you can optimise, promote, build links and not worry (too much) about Class C IP penalties.

Labels: hosting, seo, server, services

We're currently working with a client by the name of Oceanwide Properties who sell property in Turkey.

As well as consulting for their web design & web development projects we're project managing their SEO strategy and slowly but surely raising their profile in the search engines.

The site will be undergoing a redevelopment & redesign to help their SERPs and we'll be adding features to make the site more useable.

Watch this space.

Labels: consultancy, development, news, search, seo

A new client has asked me for some help with their website and part of the task is to assist them with their SEO.

Their current SEO company have submitted their URL to a few dozen search engines and are apparently re-submitting every month for a fee of £40. For this £40 my client receives a report emailed to them once a month. And what does this report say? It tells my client where they rank in each of the few dozen Search Engines for their own name! They're the only company with their name so they're highly likely to rank in position #1 or rank on the first page for their name/term and they do.

There are two "Search Engines" where they do not have a rank or position. One is Ask.com, and the other is "Open Directory" or DMOZ which is a directory and not a search engine!

Now apparently the contract with this SEO company is due to expire at the end of this month so this is the last report with the SEO company. I have already advised my new client not to waste their money on this "service" again.

To simply run a report and email it to the client on a monthly basis for £480 a year is money for nothing in my book. I'd expect to do a couple of hours work every month for that sort of fee and I suspect the SEO Company is using some simple piece of software to generate this pointless report.

I have to add that this may be a reputable SEO Company but this is certainly not one of their reputable products!

Labels: consultancy, rant, search, seo