Search Engine Land’s Top 10 News Stories Of 2014: When Pandas, Penguins & Pigeons Attack

We begin two weeks of year-in-review articles with a look at the most popular news stories we covered in 2014.

The clock is ticking on 2014. In a matter of days, we’ll all turn our calendars to 2015 and close the books on another year. Before we do that, the editorial team that brings you daily news and features on Search Engine Land and Marketing Land is going to look back at the most popular content we published during these past 12 months.

If you’re a new or recent reader, you’ll likely find some important news and commentary that you missed the first time around. If you’ve been reading our sites all year, you’ll hopefully enjoy a reminder of the year’s important marketing news. (And thanks for being a long-time reader!)

Over the next week two weeks, we’ll reveal our most popular columns (overall, and broken down by topic) and our most shared stories on the main social networks. But let’s start today with a look back at the most popular news stories we published in 2014.

Search Engine Land’s Most Popular News Stories Of 2014

This list is based on pageviews, and includes news stories published through December 18th.

1.) Google Begins Rolling Out Panda 4.0 Now

Barry Schwartz, May 20: “Is this the softer and gentler Panda algorithm? From talking to Google, it sounds like this update will be gentler for some sites, and lay the groundwork for future changes in that direction.

“Google told us that Panda 4.0 affects different languages to different degrees. In English for example, the impact is ~7.5% of queries that are affected to a degree that a regular user might notice.”

2.) Google’s Logo Moves Some Pixels Around

Barry Schwartz, May 26: “Google made a slight change to their logo recently, as a Reddit user posted. The “g” in the latter part of the word was moved left one pixel and the “l” in the Google logo was moved down a pixel.”

3.) It’s Over: The Rise & Fall Of Google Authorship For Search Results

Eric Enge, August 28: “The primary reason behind this shuffle of products is Google’s unswerving commitment to testing. Every product, and every change or innovation within each product, is constantly tested and evaluated. Anything that the data show as not meeting Google’s goals, not having sufficient user adoption, or not providing significant user value, will get the axe.”

4.) Panda 4.1 — Google’s 27th Panda Update — Is Rolling Out

Danny Sullivan, September 25: “The rollout means anyone who was penalized by Panda in the last update has a chance to emerge, if they made the right changes. So if you were hit by Panda, made alterations to your site, you’ll know by the end of next week if those were good enough, if you see an increase in traffic.

“The rollout also means that new sites not previously hit by Panda might get impacted. If you’ve seen a sudden traffic drop from Google this week, or note one in the coming days, then this latest Panda Update is likely to blame.”

5.) Google Releases Penguin 3.0 — First Penguin Update In Over A Year

Barry Schwartz, October 19: “Publishers hit by the last version of Penguin — back in October 2013 — have been waiting until now to see if actions they’re tried such as removing spammy links have worked. If so, they’re likely seeing some improvement in traffic this weekend. If not, they have to try making more changes and then waiting until however long it takes for Google to release Penguin again.

“By the way, for those who tried disavowing bad links, if you did that within the last three weeks, that was too late for this Penguin update.”

6.) Google “Pigeon” Updates Local Search Algorithm With Stronger Ties To Web Search Signal

Barry Schwartz, July 24: “Google told us that the new local search algorithm ties deeper into their web search capabilities, including the hundreds of ranking signals they use in web search along with search features such as Knowledge Graph, spelling correction, synonyms and more.

“In addition, Google said that this new algorithm improves their distance and location ranking parameters.”

7.) Google’s “Olympic Charter” Logo Stands Up To Russia’s Anti-Gay Legislation

Danny Sullivan, February 6: “If you had any doubts over how Google feels about Russia’s legislation against gay “propaganda,” just go the Google home page. The company has started what will be a string of special logos for the Olympics with one that includes a quote stressing that the official Olympic Charter is against discrimination and using the colors of the rainbow gay pride flag.”

8.) Apple Drops Google For Bing As “Spotlight” Search Provider In iOS 8 & Mac OS X “Yosemite”

Danny Sullivan, June 2: “This is a big new integration for Bing, which last year knocked Google out of Siri. Currently, Spotlight offers a “Web Searches” option which launches Safari (if you haven’t changed your default browser), which in turn runs a Google search, as Google is the default on Safari.”

9.) How A Single Guest Post May Have Gotten An Entire Site Penalized By Google

Danny Sullivan, March 26: “More broadly, while it’s easy to dismiss all this as some type of SEO squawking, it should be pretty disturbing to any publisher that Google might fairly broadly decide just how narrow your site has to be, in order to escape a penalty, if you have guest authors it deems writing off-topic.”

10.) Is eBay A Big Loser In Google’s Panda 4.0 Update? — Winners & Losers Data

Barry Schwartz, May 21: “Yesterday, Google began rolling out their Panda 4.0 update designed to punch low-quality content. That’s generated both “winners” who have moved up in rankings as “losers” have dropped down — and eBay might be one of the big losers.”

With just a couple exceptions, the top 10 articles are specifically about Google rankings, algorithms and search results — which is no surprise. Last year’s list was 100 percent Google-related, and also filled with articles about Google’s various animal-related algorithm updates/filters. If you need a refresher on those beyond the articles linked above, see our article library to get caught up:

• Google: Panda Update
• Google: Penguin Update
• Google: Pigeon Update

We’ve also compiled a similar list on our sister site, Marketing Land: Marketing Land’s Top 10 News Stories Of 2014: Facebook Layout Changes, Oscar Selfies, CIA Tweets & More.

On behalf of the Search Engine Land editorial team, thanks for reading us during 2014. Happy holidays to you and best wishes for 2015!

Source Of: http://searchengineland.com/sel-top-10-news-stories-of-2014-211443

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2014 Year In Review: A Look Back On What Happened With SEO

Columnist Erin Everhart provides a round-up of the biggest SEO developments of 2014.

Every year, we say how much has changed in the industry – and every year, we’re right.

It never ceases to  amaze me how much SEO constantly refines itself to more sophisticated Google guidelines and smarter, savvier searchers. Think about it: Since 2011, Moz has counted more than 83 major algorithm updates to the search engine giant.

That’s 83 times we’ve had to change our tactics in three years! Can you think of any other industry that has gone through that much fluctuation? Unlikely.

So, as part of the end-of-year trends, let’s take a look back on everything that went down this in 2014.

January

Expedia was the first big brand of the year to get reportedly hit by a penalty for unnatural link building. Rankings plummeted, and Searchmetrics suggested the company lost 25% of its visibility in Google because of the penalty.

Matt Cutts put the hammer down on guest blogging, urging any SEO using this tactic as a way to build links to cease fire of suffer the consequences.

Rap Genius is finally back on Google after getting doled a manual penalty in late 2013 for link schemes.

Google announced a new Googlebot user-agent for crawling mobile content. “Googlebot-Mobile” was retired in place of the standard Googlebot, causing webmasters to update their robots.txt and technical structure of their site for mobile optimization.

February

In late 2013, Google moved to 100% secure search, thus taking all of our keyword data with it. By February, Not Provided had topped more than 80%.

March

Webmasters started chatting about an update after seeing fluctuations in Google’s search results. Google never confirmed an update, but 

SERPs.com (among many others) noted a heavy increase in Google’s index volatility.

Google redesigned its SERPs for desktop users, removing underlined hyperlinks, increasing the font size slightly for title tags, and changing how ads are displayed.

April

The Heartbleed bug was revealed. Google, Rackspace, AWS and a host of security software used by millions of websites were affected, causing serious privacy concerns among anyone who uses the Internet.

Vic Gundotra, head of Google+ and Google’s social efforts, announced his departure from Google. Many questioned what this would mean for Google+ and its integration into organic search results. TechCrunch got word from multiple sources that Google+ will no longer be a product, but a platform, thus ending competition with Facebook and Twitter.

May

Panda 4.0 rolled out, the next wave in targeting sites with low quality content. Ask.com and RetailMeNot were among the big brands affected by the change.

eBay is the latest big brand to get hit by a (speculated) manual search engine penalty in addition to the Panda 4.0 update. eBay later suggested that this cost the business $200 million in revenue.

June

Authorship photos in SERPs listings were removed. Many questioned if this was the end to the entire program itself.

Google hosted its main event of the year, I/O 2014, where it announced news about the company and its future vision, including a new, consistent design across Chrome, Android and the web, an updated visual element to search, and wearables. You can read more about all the announcements at Verge.

July

Google added another animal to the algorithm apocalypse, releasing a local search algorithm update dubbed “Pigeon.” This update drastically changed which factors Google looks at when determining local rankings, including stronger ties to traditional web ranking signals.

Matt Cutts announced he was going on leave from Google, planning to return in October, and leaving his web spam duties behind. People panicked but were, on the whole, supportive.

Groupon ran a study showing that 60% of its direct traffic was actually organic search traffic, proving something many SEOs had long thought about their own “direct” traffic. Following that experiment, Conductor updated their 2013 study of web traffic, claiming that now 64% of all web traffic was from organic search.

August

Google announced that it would begin using HTTPS as a ranking signal, encouraging everyone to move from HTTP to HTTPS. This was seen as a sign that Google is trying to take this whole Internet privacy thing seriously.

We all saw this coming: Two months after the removed authorship photos, Google abandoned its Authorship program, which aimed to provide a stronger tie between content writers and content publishers.

The blogosphere was all abuzz over an influx of negative SEO extortion emails in which someone claimed they’d ruin your site’s rankings unless you wired them $XX amount of money.

September

Dentsu Aegis Network, a multinational media and digital communications company, acquired Covario, one of the largest search agencies in the United States. Rio SEO, Covario’s software business, was not a part of the deal.

Searchmetrics released their 2014 SEO Ranking Factors. High quality content, strong page architecture, and user signals saw the biggest increases in affecting ranking, while keyword links and social signals both decreased in value.

October

Authority Labs released one of the most comprehensive organic CTR studies. It segmented out desktop and mobile clicks, branded and non-branded keywords, and search intent (e.g. informational vs. transactional).

Google finally refreshed Penguin, the algorithm filter that targets web spam, over optimization and unnatural links. This was particularly noteworthy because it meant that everyone who was hit by the last Penguin and submitted a reconsideration request could finally get the opportunity to be reinstated into Google’s good graces.

Microsoft laid off Duane Forrester, Bing’s longest-serving face to the SEO community, not to mention the darling of the industry, having just won Search Personality of the Year.

Just a day later, Cutts decided Google web spam hadn’t crumbled in his absence and extended his time off until 2015. Speculations of a pending retirement ensued.

November

Google ditched its Local Carousel for hotels, restaurants, nightlight and entertainment. The SEO industry rejoiced.

Mobile became even more important to SEO as Google rolled out the mobile-friendly search label for mobile search results and a mobile friendly test tool in Google Webmaster Tools. This was the beginning of Google experimenting with a new ranking algorithm for mobile friendly sites.

December

Bing released its version of Panda, and frankly, did a better job at outlining what it actually considers good content.

Stone Temple Consulting released an extensive Twitter engagement study of more than 4 million tweets. One of the big findings was that time of day had little to no impact on “retweetability.”

What a year, right? I know I didn’t get it all, so what did I miss? What else monumental happened in 2015?

Source Of: http://searchengineland.com/2014-year-review-look-back-happened-seo-210959

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Best SEO Tips And Tricks For 2015

Search Engine Optimization in 2015 is too complex for beginners so they must need to follow some Best SEO Tips and Tricks that will boost their Website ranking better in modern Search Engines.

So here we are going to see some Basic and Intermediate SEO Tips and Tricks that helps to improve your 3 important website ranking and also in Search Engine Results Page.

Below SEO tips and techniques are provided as per Google Best Practices and this cover most of the onpage factors.

Tips and Techniques for Keyword Analysis

The Below list will help to improve the Keyword Analysis better.

1. Use this Google Keyword Planner for Keyword research
2. Find Less Competitive Keywords with high search Volume
3. Choose Key phrases
4. List out Relative Keywords by relevance

Google Keyword Planner - Google Keyword Planner is the free SEO tool that is provided by Google and it helps to find out the Keywords search volume and relative Keyword ideas for you. Useful tool compare with other keyword analysis tool because Google is the top Search Engine used by people so it's worth to use this tool. Also use this 8 Free Google SEO Tools that help to Optimize your website

Less Competitive Keyword with high Search Volume - Finding this one is crucial part of SEO because if you find out this Keyword then you can get high search visitors. More competitor's means ranking high is also too much tough. So find out less completive Keywords.

Choose Key Phrases - Rather than selecting a single Keyword it's better chance to ranking more than one keyword if you chosen Key Phrases. So select Key phrases that works better compare to keywords.

List out Relative Keywords by relevance - List the relevant Searches and Keywords and use the words or phrase in the article going to publish in the blog for the selected keyword. This is going to help get ranking in more phrases than you targeted.

Excellent SEO Tips to improve On-Page optimization

Use this free top 10 wordpress SEO Plugins for better on-page seo for Wordpress blogs.

1. Interesting and Descriptive to read
2. Quality of the Content
3. Short and Sweet Title
4. Relative Meta Description
5. Use this Optimal Keyword Density Ratio in content
6. SEO Friendly Url
7. Keywords in First Paragraph
8. Use of Headings
9. Focusing Keywords
10. Image Optimization

Interesting and Descriptive article - No one is going to like boring long articles so write your content interest to read and descriptive content that will clear all things about the article title.

Quality of the Content - Don't copy Paste whole content from the other website that never going to bring you traffic. Google has very good eye to find out the Duplicate contents. Avoid Keyword stuffing and other Black-hat SEO tricks.

Shot and Sweet Title - Title must be relative and the Key phrase Keywords must be present in the Title. And in length is better to keep it between 40 to 65 Characters. To make website title tag to more search engine friendly read this Tips to optimize the title tag .

Relative Meta Description - Writ a short and sweet 156 Characters that will explain your whole story of the article will help to know better in Search Engines Results Page.

Optimal Keyword Density Ratio - Maintain your Keyword Density in the Safe manner to not getting Google Algorithm Penalties.

SEO Friendly URL - Url of the content must be meaning full to the content. Then search Engine highlight the Url Keywords also it's a boosting signal for the SEO.

Keyword in First Paragraph - Use the Keywords in First Paragraph so search Engines know this is the content really explains about the Title.

Use of Headings - Use prober headings tags h1, h2, etc... It will make readability easier and Nice Chapter wise content.

Focusing Keywords - Highlighting the Keyword with strong or em tag will increase the visibility of the point you are really want to reader by people also it's add some weight in SEO.

Image Optimization - One Image can explain everything better than long story content so add an image and Optimize image using proper Alt Tags.

Tips to improve Off-Page SEO

1. Use of Social Media
2. Quality Link Building

Use of Social Media - Use of Social Media not going to build follow back links but it's a powerful source to deliver traffic to the website. Traffic signal is also important factor in SEO so use the social media to get traffic.

Quality Link Building - Don't build your Link too much faster. Quantity of Back links that's not matter Quality will Matter. So write your articles good and interesting then the Back link will flow automatically to your content.

Useful SEO Tricks for 2015

1. Find LSI Keywords
2. Use LSI Keywords more
3. SEO Check Up

Find LSI Keywords - Find the Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords related to your keywords using different methods available in the internet.

Use LSI Keywords more - Rather than Keyword stuffing the new idea use mixes it up LSI Keywords with Keywords as Keyword Stuffing. Use it in all important On-Page SEO Factors.

SEO Check Up - Take SEO Check Up and using different tools available in the Internet and improve the SEO Score by fixing by the tips then you can get a better rank in SERP.

Add a Bookmark of this Page above Tricks will be updated in regular manner to maintain the Quality of the Article.

Necessaries of SEO Tips and Tricks in 2015

Competitive world everything will have some Guidelines and rules that must we need to follow. So we need to follow this techniques to survive our ranking in search Engines.

Always one thing we need to remember in SEO that is if we write Unique and Good Articles that is interest to read for a user not for search engines this is the one rule always survives you in SERP.

Hope this SEO Tips and Tricks will helps to boost your rank in Google in 2015.
Source Of: http://googlexpres.blogspot.in/2014/12/seo-tips-and-tricks-for-2015-googlexpres.html

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5 SEO Tactics To Kick-Start The New Year

How can you give your business a leg up in 2015? Columnist Casie Gillette suggests some simple tactics you can apply as the year is winding down.

If you’re like most people, you’ve probably already checked out for the year. Clients are out of the office, you’re on vacation, and 2015 contracts have already been signed. There’s nothing left to do but close that computer, put on your slippers, throw a log on the fire, and hibernate until January 2nd.

Or…keep that laptop open, give your site a good scrub, and get a jump-start on your competition going into next year!

After all, they key to a solid SEO strategy is continuous improvement. As Stoney deGeyter pointed out in a recent article, “you don’t always get your SEO perfect the first time out.” We have to use our learnings and data to adjust our strategies and make the site better.

So, as we head into the New Year and everyone else is busy resting, give your business a leg up by revisiting, revising, and readying your site for 2015.

1. Give The Site A Technical Once Over

When you started your SEO program, you probably got a killer technical audit. You knew the details of every page. You knew where all the errors and redirects were coming from, where all the broken images were, where your site was lagging, and much, much more. And you fixed it.

But what has been done to the site since?

Pages have likely been added or removed, tags modified, images removed. Perhaps URLs changed, the site was redesigned, new sections were added, etc. 

Do you know where the site stands at this exact moment?

Make sure the site is technically sound going into the New Year by taking these steps:

Use Screaming Frog

Run a Screaming Frog report to identify any existing errors, redirects, duplicate URLs, and/or canonical errors.

You can also make sure you have the correct Google Analytics code on every page. How? Check out this great post from SEER Interactive.

Once you have all your information gathered, you can begin fixing any and all issues.

Check Webmaster Tools

Webmaster Tools is another good place to identify any errors occurring on the site. Aside from the standard 404 errors you might see, you can also check for robots issues, server issues, and sitemap errors.

If you’ve implemented Schema markup or Hreflang tags, Webmaster Tools will also provide information on both of those, showcasing any errors that may be occurring within those tags.

Update Google Analytics Goals

While it (thankfully) doesn’t happen too often, I’ve certainly seen cases in which goal URLs are changed or new forms are added and the proper tracking is not put into place.

One of the nice things Google Analytics (GA) now does is provide information on goal tracking. It will alert you if there are any drastic changes to your goal numbers or if it sees any irregularities within your account.

Make sure to take a look at your GA goals to ensure the URLs are correct, are tracking properly, and you aren’t missing any important information.

As I noted above, use Screaming Frog to ensure GA tracking code is on all pages.

2. Identify A Few Quick Wins

As the year progresses and we focus on our campaigns, it’s easy to get caught up in the big picture and overlook some of the small stuff.

Revisit The Basics

The basics — like title tags, meta descriptions, and ALT text — may not be high up on your list of strategies, but you shouldn’t forget them.

Using your Screaming Frog report, Export the HTML list and take a fresh look at your tagging. Make sure there are no missing titles or descriptions and no duplicate tags, and ensure that your brand is contained in all titles.

You can also export the list of missing ALT tags to identify opportunities for image tagging.

While these things may seem insignificant in themselves, they can go a long way in helping with that big picture we discussed above.

Repurpose Content

One of my favorite things to do at the end of each year is to sit down and evaluate the content from the past 12 months. How did it perform? Which content did the best? How can we use this information going forward?

Another avenue to this is, “What can we repurpose?”

Companies spend thousands and thousands of dollars creating content, only for it be posted and never thought of again. It’s really quite sad.

Erin Everhart wrote a post earlier this year, “How To Repurpose Content Without Looking Like A Total Jerk,” that showed how to repurpose both blog content and social updates. I also wrote a post on how to turn old content into new links, which breaks down both the content audit portion and the link building portion.

If you’re interested in repurposing some of that wonderful content you created this year, give them both a read. It’ll give you some easy and valuable content ideas heading into next year.

3. Scope Out Editorial Opportunities

As publications get ready to kick off the year, their editorial calendars are updated and they are already starting to generate their stories. Get a jump on the year by identifying any opportunities for your business or clients.

As I outlined in a past article, editorial calendars are pretty common and can be found through simple site searches, Google searches, or by using a tool like EdCals.

If you’ve found an editorial calendar that isn’t updated or is only partially updated, start tracking it with TrackedContent or ChangeDetection.

Both of these tools will alert you when the content on a selected page is changed, giving you the jump on fresh press opportunities.

 4. Clean Up Your Business Listings 

Did your office move this year? Did you lose or gain any team members? Were there any significant changes that happened within the business? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes,” it’s important that your online presence reflects those changes.

The first place to start is your contact info. I can’t tell you how many people call the KoMarketing office thinking we are at our address from 9 years ago. Where are they getting that information?!?

As it turns out, tools like Moz Local will actually give me that answer:

See where incomplete, inconsistent, and duplicate listings reside. It even includes your social networks like G+, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Bonus: If you need to update your site, Moz Local will adjust the listings for you, ensuring a consistent presence across the web.

Don’t forget about places like Wikipedia or Crunchbase, where consistently changing information like revenue, employees, and stock prices resides.

We can’t control everything on the web that’s said about us, but we can at least try to control our business information.

5. Perform A Quick Competitive Analysis 

Last but not least, we can’t get a leg up on our competitors without actually looking at them!

While you probably don’t need to go “full-fledged stalker” in your competitive analysis, giving your existing analysis a quick refresh could certainly be beneficial.

Revisit Links 

Using Majestic, Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs, or your other favorite link-checking tool, scan competitor sites to see what new links they’ve acquired recently.

Look at what press mentions they’ve received over the past few months, and identify any potential blogs that also fit your business. Also, take a look to see what their top linked content is.

If you’ve performed a competitive analysis in the past, you likely already have a pretty good idea of what their link building strategy (if any) is, but you may find a few new media targets or influencers to add to your list.

Validate Content Ideas

I’m not a huge fan of looking at a competitor’s site and just stealing their content ideas. I am, however, a huge fan of looking at a competitor’s site, evaluating how their content is performing, and using that data to inform my own content strategy.

With budgets being one of the biggest hurdles to content marketing, understanding where to put those dollars is invaluable.

Use the link data mentioned above to find the top linked pages, or plug your competitor’s site into BuzzSumo to see what their most shared content is. Both of these can provide you with insights into what your audience likes and wants, helping you figure out where you may want to spend your dollars next year.

Identify Strategic Changes 

One of the biggest benefits to a competitive analysis refresh is you get a look inside their strategy going into the next year and a better understanding of where they see the future of the business.

Do they have any “coming soon” or new product pages? Did they rename a product or any part of their company?

These types of things can indicate a fundamental shift in how a competitor views the industry, the market, and their product/service. While this is not something you are necessarily going to use in your own strategy, it can help show you some new places to look.

For example, if a competitor is suddenly calling out HR professionals, that may be an audience you want to look at if you haven’t already. If they are using new terminology to describe the industry or their products, you may want to take a look to see if this impacts you. Check Google Trends and search volume data for any additional information.

Knowing what your competitors are doing can help you better understand the landscape, the target market, and inform your own online marketing strategy.

So before you leave the office or throw on those PJs, think about doing these five small things to help give your business a leg up in 2015. Happy holidays!

Source Of: http://searchengineland.com/5-seo-tactics-kick-start-new-year-211198

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Google Pigeon Update Rolls Out To UK, Canada & Australia

Google's new local ranking algorithm that launched in the US earlier this year has rolled out to the UK, Canada and Australia.

Google has confirmed that their local Pigeon update, which rolled out in the U.S. on July 24, 2014 has now expanded over last week to the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. 

After questioning Google about rumors of this change, a Google spokesperson told us, ” I can confirm that this update has rolled out to the UK, Canada and Australia.”

BrightLocal first spotted the changes and asked if Google did roll out the Pigeon update beyond the US. They were indeed right. 

The original Pigeon update aimed at providing a more useful, relevant and accurate local search results that are tied more closely to traditional web search ranking signals. 

This rollout happened late last week, and may indeed impact local shopping traffic for many merchants in the UK, Canada or Australia. Which again is surprising to us that they have not held this update until after the holiday shopping season. 

Postscript: Google added today (same day as this story published) that they are still rolling this out and it now goes beyond just the UK, Canada and Australia. This update is being rolled out to all English-speaking locales except India.

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Source Of: http://searchengineland.com/google-pigeon-update-rolls-uk-canada-australia-211576

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Effective Keyword Targeting: The Key To Growing Traffic & Revenue

Columnist Trond Lyngbo explains how proper keyword targeting is the key to improving your site's visibility in search engines.

When it comes to keywords, your aim shouldn’t be to target everything. Rather, you should aim to discover where the richest vein of gold lies, and then focus your efforts on extracting it. By correctly identifying areas of growth potential, you can transform a website into a traffic machine with high revenue potential.

With my e-commerce business clients, I begin by analyzing their market (keywords) and implementing a growth plan in selected areas with high traffic potential. I’ve usually found that most of them can boost traffic and sales with a simple optimization system.

The key to success is knowing where your biggest traffic and revenue increases are lying hidden, just waiting for you to uncover them. I call this “the low hanging fruit” of search marketing, where implementing small changes or just making a few small adjustments and fixes can reap rich rewards.

Discovering and capitalizing on this low-hanging fruit involves three steps:

1. Gather
2. Prioritize
3. Act

Let’s talk about each in more detail.

1. Gather Relevant Data

First, you want to know what your audience is looking for.

• Which keywords and phrases are users typing into Google to search for your business or your products?
• What is their intent while searching?
  
  • Is it to place an order right away?
  • To learn more about the product?
  • To compare your product against others?

Next, you should look at what you’re already offering them.

• Are you focusing on the right keywords?
• Are the branch terms, jargon and brand names your prospective buyers use to search the same ones your website is optimized for?

Keyword research and analysis can help answer these questions.

Your initial goal is to come up with the top 40 most popular keywords and phrases that have high search volume and for which pages on your website are generating revenue. Jot down these terms in one column of a spreadsheet.

For big e-commerce stores that sell a wide range of products, there will be many top level categories, with complex URL hierarchies leading to sub-categories and smaller sub-divisions, each loaded with a range of products and brands. In this case, you’ll want to write up a top 40 list of keywords for each category.

Before running a growth analysis, you’ll want a complete list of keywords that your prospective customers use to find information or buy products from your web store. Here are some tips and tools that will help.

a. Google Analytics: Go to the report page which lists top keywords and phrases that have sent search traffic to your website over the years. Export the list of keywords into your spreadsheet.

Look at data from as far back as you can. It’s particularly helpful if you can access keyword data from before September 2013, when Google moved to 100% secure search (thus taking away keyword referrer data for Google searches).

b. Google Webmaster Tools: Append all keyword data from your Google Webmaster Tools (or Bing, or Yandex) account to the same spreadsheet. You’ll now have a large collection of search terms, along with some general ranking data.

c. Internal Site Search: Collect keywords that your visitors are using on internal search tools on your web store when they navigate around it or seek specific information on products or categories. Add these terms to the spreadsheet.

d. Google AdWords: Export any data from your previous PPC campaigns to include in your growing list.

e. Google Keyword Planner: Type your web store URL and Google Keyword Planner will throw up keyword suggestions it thinks are relevant to your site. Add these terms to your growing collection.

Repeat the steps with URLs to your site’s category and sub-category pages, as well as your most important product pages.

You now have a meaty dataset to study.

Looking at the information you’ve gathered, it will become apparent that:

• The keywords are all related in one way or another to content available on your site.
• Most of these keywords drive search traffic to your website, some more than others.
• The list reflects your self-imposed limitations on which keywords you believed were right to use – or, to put it another way, there are probably many more keywords that your prospective buyers used to search for your products, but which are not found on your site!

Armed with this treasure trove of keyword data, you’re now ready to shift gears to enter the next phase of your strategy.

2. Prioritize Your Targets

Now that you’ve built up this big list of keywords related to your site, it is time to pare it down to those with the greatest potential to grow your traffic and revenue. From there, you can expand the list to include common variations of these high-value keywords.

You should also examine which keywords your successful competitors are focusing on — your research may uncover valuable keywords you hadn’t even thought to target!

Tip: Long-tail keywords are especially interesting because they have potential to quickly and easily rake in more revenue since they have generally lower competition and target visitors who are ready to buy.

To expand your list of existing high-value keywords, I recommend the following tools:

a. Keywordtool.io: This long-tail keyword research tool can provide thousands of keyword suggestions from real user queries. I recommend running it on all product category and sub-category names e.g. shoes, running shoes, and brand names (like “Nike running shoes”).

You’ll get plenty of long-tail keyword suggestions, which are often the most under-estimated assets for many of my ecommerce store clients.

While it’s true that general keywords like [shoes] and [running shoes] have higher search volume than a search phrase like [Nike running shoes red], the latter converts very well into sales because the visitor is almost ready to buy.

b. Google Correlate: By correlating words and topics, this helpful tool can throw up keyword suggestions, including variants on more popular and commonly used search terms.

c. Merge Words: By using this tool, you can expand your list by adding words like [cheap], [affordable], [expensive] and so on to the front (or end) of your keywords. e.g., [affordable Nike running shoes].

Do this for popular brands in your store. If your e-commerce store targets a local audience, include location data. Follow the same procedure, but add city/town, neighborhood or locality names to the keywords.

You can do the same with colors (e.g., [red Nike running shoes]), or try other variations based on trends, seasons, holidays, special occasions and so on.

To see which keywords your competitors are targeting, try the following tools:

a. SEMrush: SEMrush can provide data on keyword and ads (for organic and paid keywords) on your competition. You can find out which keywords others in your business are using, and include them in your growing list of search terms.

b. Google Keyword Planner: You used tool this in step 1 above to identify keywords which Google deemed relevant to your own site. Now, carry out this exercise using URLs of your competitors’ web stores.

c. Open Site Explorer: Investigate your competitor’s backlinks and find out which keywords are in their anchor texts. This works particularly well if you have competitors that have been around for many years and are performing very well in SEO terms.

Studying their link profiles and the keywords they target can offer clues for exploitation. Delete obviously irrelevant data, URLs and phrases like “click here.” Remove any duplicates, and then add the remaining data to your keyword list.

3. Take Action

From here, you can act on your data. The preparatory steps ensure that your actions will focus on the areas of highest ROI.

There are several steps in the action plan to dominate SERPs in each category, including:

• Content Marketing
• Topic marketing
• Positioning as an typical expert/authority
• Personalization
• Retargeting
• Niche specialization (e.g. by Weather, Season or Trends)

And when you take action on your priority areas, you’ll see results very fast.

• Focusing on high search volume keywords will naturally bring in more visitors as your rankings improve.
• Improving page titles and meta descriptions for keywords that you’re already ranking for will lead to a higher click-through rate. By your research and planning, you know these are keywords that serious prospects are already clicking on to buy – from your competitors. Direct that traffic to your store instead.
• Focusing on long-tail keywords will deliver prospects to sections of your site designed to maximize sales and profit, where a few simple tweaks and techniques will ensure that your pages outrank the weak competition on SERPs.

I’m constantly surprised at how difficult most e-commerce web store owners and search marketing consultants make this process. With proper keyword research, analysis and targeting, you can enjoy traffic and revenue boosts, too.

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