Equator Live

Google has recently launched Trusted Stores. Trusted Stores is an e-commerce certificate where e-commerce stores can apply to Google for the certificate – if accepted websites can display the certificate on their site, showing consumers the website has Google’s seal of approval.

Why would a webmaster want to apply for the certificate?

Google is trying to build more consumer trust in the online retail market. Having the trusted stores certificate badge displayed will let users know the site meets stringent requirements.

What kind of requirements do sites have to meet?

To qualify for a trusted stores certificate the webmaster must apply and agree to share information with Google. Google will use the websites internal data to determine if the website qualifies for the Trusted Stores certificate.

Criteria states participating websites must have a good reliable customer service team who quickly resolve consumer problems and issues. A good time keeping record on shipping products to customers is also required.

Google will grade each participating store based on customer service and shipping and display grades live on the retailer’s website.

For Google’s part, they will offer free purchase protection to consumers worth $1000. Google claim they have no plans to integrate other products like AdWords, Google Wallet, Check Out, etc, however if the scheme is successful, we would expect Google to try and take advantage of this at some point.

Posted on January 20th, 2012 in SEO with no comments

Early October saw another Panda update from Google – the 7^th update to date. The big news in this update is that video content is the big winner. Big brand video sites such as CBS, NBC, Hulu, HBO, MTV and of course YouTube are the biggest winners according Searchmetrics – basically, all these sites have huge amounts of video content on them.

Out with international websites like the ones mentioned above, the new update also looks to favour smaller websites who use video content, although it is still early days and more testing will need to be completed and analysed before this can be confirmed with conviction.

So why has Google decided to put more weight on videos?

Google are constantly testing search trends, click through rates, etc, looking for better ways to improve the overall search experience for users. Not that Google shows these results to anyone however; there are other clever folk out there trying to replicate the kind of tests Google does.

Mirametrix is one of those companies and specialise in eye tracking software. Recently they decided to test and share some insights through SEOMOZ. In a nutshell the eye tracker shows Google searchers are attracted to video results in the search engine results pages.

We’re also assuming Google has click through rate data to back this up hence the reason video content is the big winner in this Panda update.

Other ranking metrics to be given more weight in this update are Google’s +1s. This comes as no surprise, and we expect more of the same in future updates.  Google plus for businesses will be available later this year but in the meantime make sure your company website has the +1 button on all priority pages.

Posted on January 20th, 2012 in SEO with no comments

Google have been showing recently with some sleek new improvements to their free analytics package. Around four months ago, Google started a pilot scheme that linked web master tools with Google analytics.

For those of you who are not familiar with web master tools, this is a free package were webmasters can monitor various aspects of a site’s performance like search queries, impressions and click through rates. There is also a load of other cool techie stuff stored in web master tool accounts.

All of this helpful data has now been integrated with Google Analytics and can be found in the traffic sources section under the label ‘search engine optimisation’.

The biggest improvement is that Google has introduced real time analytics reports. This is a brand new feature that will be rolled out to everyone in the near future.

It does exactly what it says on the tin – shows activity on a website as it happens. It is worth noting this is an extra report that can only be accessed separately from the main reporting area. There is however still a 24-hour lag between the time it takes Google to process complete reports.

What live reporting looks like:

Posted on January 20th, 2012 in SEO with no comments

In September Twitter announced (http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2111480/twitter-rolls-uk-geo-targeting) that it will now offer geo-targeting in the UK for all advertising products.  Twitter has three types of ads: Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts and Promoted Trends.  With Promoted Trends now on the list, all three are available with UK-only geo-targeting (although Promoted Trends is still in beta with only a select group of advertisers).  Promoted Trends are featured next to a user’s timeline in a prominent position – promoting these means a priority spot for your trend.

Posted on January 20th, 2012 in Media with no comments

We found this article (http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/154587/) when doing some investigating on frequency.  With nearly 2 billion ad impressions analysed for the purposes of this research from Casale there were some obvious findings: above the fold ads were (7 times) more effective than below.  But there were also some more in-depth findings such as above the fold and within the first or second screen of a user’s browser window were far more effective.  Also, despite ad effectiveness dropping drastically after the first two screens, the study did find that repetition – frequency – does work.  “Ads shown five times or more to a user were 12 to 14 times more effective than ads shown less than five times.”  One thing is clear – to be as effective as possible, you need to consider the when, where and how much.

Posted on January 20th, 2012 in Media with no comments

Video video video.  Anyone who has run a campaign with a video component knows that they are more difficult to put together, much more expensive but worth it.  From engagement to click through to conversion, video is the way to go.  The emergence of pre-roll video ads was simple – the problem is that there wasn’t enough inventory so inventory was created in the form of in-banner which would include targeting and other bells and whistles from larger, possibly blind buys.  But just because in-banner video exists doesn’t mean it’s good – or as good as pre-roll: http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/rats-attic-made-realize-wrong-video-pre-rolls/229934/ , it’s the context within which the video ad sits that makes it so successful.  In-banner video has all the flare of video ads but it is only one of many vying for attention.  Pre-roll on the other hand gets your target when they are captive and receptive: “they’ve actively selected a video to watch, and will happily tolerate a 15 second ad before watching their video.”  Of course you’re not always going to hit someone that the ad is relevant for but you will increase message recall and brand affinity.

Posted on January 20th, 2012 in Media with no comments

During September Google announced that the latest part of their Google+ project is the addition of the +1 button to display ads. Prior to this Google had enabled websites to add the +1 button to site pages and search ads. With one of the main purposes of the Display Network being brand building (rather than direct response) it seems that the +1 button may be better suited in this domain than in the SERPs.

One of the things we’ve been most eager for since Google launched their Search Funnels is visibility of Display Network campaigns, specifically being able to determine what role they have played in assisting conversions. Sadly this feature was never available in the PPC-only Search Funnels but it looks like the Multi-Channel Funnels have one more string to their bow – offering end to end visibility of re-marketing campaigns. This is great news as it offers another dimension to analysis of re-marketing campaigns.

Posted on January 20th, 2012 in PPC with no comments

Remember the fuss a few years back when Google starting letting UK advertisers bid on competitor keywords (and the ensuing legal action from Interflora against M&S)? The case ended up at the Court of Justice of the European Union who ruled in late September that Interflora cannot stop M&S from bidding on their brand name.

On the one hand the outcome of this case was no bad thing. There has been many an occasion where tactically bidding on competing providers’ brand names has worked out well for our clients, serving as a solid source of additional revenue and of course increasing brand awareness for our client’s brands.  On the other it underlines the need to employ both paid search and SEO listings to dominate (as much as possible) the available real estate and protect our client’s brands.

Posted on January 20th, 2012 in PPC with no comments

Google recently added another element to the Adwords interface which they feel should help us PPC-ers in optimising our accounts: top of page bid estimates. Working hand-in-hand with the first page bid estimates feature, these estimates give you an idea of how much you’ll need to be willing to pay to both make it to page 1 of the SERPs and make it to number 1 of the PPC results.

Of course off-paper things are not quite as black and white. As with the first page estimates, bidding above the amounts specified in the top page estimates section does not guarantee your position. As with mostly everything in the PPC landscape, actual results are tied to your Quality Score.

From a PPC management perspective we find it slightly frustrating that such info is not available in the Google Keyword Tool as knowing this information prior to entering new PPC marketplaces would be invaluable – especially since the ‘average across all positions’ CPC data currently provided in the tool can be so far off sometimes!

Posted on January 20th, 2012 in PPC with no comments

One of the first things a new affiliate programme will encounter is the question of cookie life. Most affiliate programmes offer a 30 to 90 day cookie.

An affiliate cookie is used when a user visits a merchant’s website; a small text file (the cookie) is automatically placed on their browser which enables the affiliate network to track the time stamp when the person clicks on the affiliate link. Once the cookie is set, the user can leave the site and come back another day (even if they don’t use the same affiliate url). As long as the user makes a purchase before the cookie expires, affiliates will get their cut of the sale.

The life span of an affiliate cookie is set from the time that the user clicks on an affiliate link and it will end on the day that the merchant decides that they do not wish to pay the affiliate their commission on the orders placed by the referred customer.

Some brands will set their cookie life at just 24 hours; however we would not recommend this, as a short cookie period is not attractive for affiliates as it looks like the merchant is trying to skim the commission that the affiliate could have earned from referring the user. The vast majority of affiliate generated sales happen in the first 2 days of the original click. Many merchants set their affiliate cookie to coincide with their returns policy – e.g. 28 days return period, 30 day cookie. However there is no scientific reason to doing this, so we would recommend clients increase their cookie period for as long as possible. This tells affiliates that you are an affiliate friendly programme and they will see it as a bonus for their activity.

Posted on January 20th, 2012 in Affiliates with no comments