Popularity: 1% [?]
Popularity: 1% [?]
Google Place Pages is an interesting addition to Google’s Local results that I wrote about here when it came out. We’ve been crawling all over them analyzing them and trying to figure out the best ways to utilize them for the benefit of our clients. One of the most interesting parts of the Google Place Page is the “Web Pages” Section pictured below. Our burning question was: How does Google decide which websites appear here??
The most obvious answer is that Google chooses pages that cite the business in question in some way. For instance, the following page which is the second result on the place page above, includes the Brand Name, a link to the corporate website, the address of the specific Starbucks in question, and a phone number for the specific Starbucks in question:
This is an almost perfect example of the kinds of pages Google gathers for it’s place pages. The only way it could be better is if the Starbucks in question had its own website instead of the corporate website to link to. So, our next question is which types of citations matter the most, since inevitably – as with the following example of Urban Spoon – not every page is going to include all the citations together.
In order to find out which types of citations were most important, we gathered together a list of 33 different web pages from various Google Place Pages to find out which types of citations were included the most. The following graph distills our findings:
As you can see, the Address and Brand name were almost always included. The phone number inclusion seemed to be relatively important. The link and email address were less important. Great. So what combinations of citations worked the best, and which were more or less important from a ranking perspective. Good Question. Unfortunately, to get that kind of information accurately, thousands of place pages would have to be analyzed. But just for fun, and because I figured out how to make pretty colored borders in Excel today, I’ll show you our findings for the 33 pages that we analyzed.
The data suggests that the variety of citation matters quite a bit in deciding the ranking of referring web pages in the Google Place Pages. I’m sure there are about a million other factors that Google takes into consideration algorithmically, but it’s good to know that if we went out there and helped our clients create excellent profiles on some of the seed sites Google seems to typically use to populate the Place Pages, we can help them control a bit of this very powerful user experience.
On a purely anecdotal note, and with no actual information to back me up, it also seemed that the type of page seemed to matter as well. Pages with fewer links on them and ones that appeared to be more than just directory pages seemed to show up higher in this section. Just a thought.
If anyone else has any thoughts, feel free to share them!
Popularity: 4% [?]
Maybe it’s because I’m a bit myopic socially, or maybe it’s because I’m so busy, but I did not realize how many hard-core social media buffs there are in Pittsburgh. Podcamp 4 was an education in that regard all by itself.
I decided to go to Podcamp on a whim after seeing that almost all the tickets were sold out. I expected a small tech seminar with the same old info. I honestly thought it would be more of a networking opportunity than anything else. I have never been so wrong.
I came late (as always) on Saturday and sat in on the second half of a talk given by the guys from the Wrestling Mayhem Show which centered around different podcasting technologies and opportunities as well as the kickbacks these particular lucky guys got for doing their podcasts on beer and such. (You can imagine the tasty nature of these kickbacks.)
Next up was lunch that consisted of Franktuary hot-dogs. Franktuary has a rather large presence on Twitter which made them even more perfect caterer for this event.
Next was a really exciting presentation by Priya Narasimhan of YinzCam. She told us all about the great things she and a team of CMU students have been doing with the Penguins to enhance fan’s experience at Pens games, and how that same technology translated gracefully into iBurgh, the first iPhone app for government interaction. It was really informative and quite motivational to hear about her success.
Last but definitely not least was a talk given by Virginia Montanez and her “butler” Mike Woycheck who run the blog Thatschurch.com, and amazing blog about ‘Burgh life that I am completely and totally hooked on. She had a lot of interesting things to say about living a double life (since she was writing incognito for so long) and some surprisingly technical tips about taking down your blog discreetly and entirely so that no one can bust your cover.
I (sadly) missed Sunday’s sessions due to illness, but I’ll definitely be going back next year.
Popularity: 1% [?]
One thing that keeps popping up in our day to day dealings with clients is a misunderstanding about Pay Per Click and how it relates to Organic SEO. Organic SEO campaigns are not the same as pay per click (or PPC) campaigns. Organic SEO results in the inclusion of your website in the main search results section of the search engine’s search engine results page. The PPC results show up in the left side bar section of the SERPs page.
Ranking highly in the Organic results section results in a much higher clickthrough rate and also leads better traffic to your website for reasons I’m about to explain:
If you’ve done your job right, and you must have if you’re managing to rank first or second for the keywords you’ve optimized for, your web page will be incredibly relevant to the search term that lead visitors to your site. That means that they were already looking for exactly what your site features.
Converting this kind of traffic is far easier. That means that there is a much higher ROI from organic SEO campaigns. Pay per click rankings, on the other had, are largely based on the amount of money that a company is spending on the ad. Therefore, they are rarely as relevant to the web page they lead to as an organic search result would be.
One of the biggest and most definitive differences between an organic search engine optimization campaign and a PPC campaign is the longevity of the results. Although SEO is a continuing process, organic results last a long time after you achieve them.
PPC results, on the other hand, plummet as soon as you take down the adds. That means that all the money you invested in the PPC campaign is completely gone after the campaign ends. On the other hand, your high organic rankings will continue to bring in traffic with a minimum of maintenance effort.
As you can see form the heat map below, the user’s eyes gravitate straight to the top of the organic search results. A first or second place ranking there would be far more useful than ranking highly in the PPC sidebar.
In order to run a successful campaign over several different versions of pay per click (Yahoo!, Google, Bing etc.) you’ll need to learn how to use each different system and set up separate campaigns. With organic SEO, you are applying tactics that are universally recognized. For this reason, organic search campaigns cost less in terms of man hours and provide better results across several search engines.
There are places where PPC is appropriate. For instance, if there is a competitive keyword that you don’t’ have a chance of attaining good rankings for organically, PPC might be a good choice, but in general, the benefits of an SEO campaign far outweigh those of the PPC campaign.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Popularity: 1% [?]
The dramatic upswing in social media popularity means several things to schools. One of the most important ramifications is the importance of blogging. If your school has an online presence, it should also have a supporting blog. Blogging is one of the most effective ways of reaching many people on a personal level. They are typically less formal, more open, and more accessible to students.
Harvard:
Harvard has several blogs, but the one that caught my attention was their publicity blog. This site contains a wealth of interesting information that would be out of place on their website which is basically a student resource.
University Of Pittsburgh
What I liked most about the University of Pittsburgh’s Dean’s blog is that it presents information in a very non-formal, honest and approachable way. This attitude encourages perspective students as well as current students and makes a seemingly imposing professor more personable.
Penn State
Penn State, which just happens to be my Alma Mater, takes a very liberal view of blogging. They have created a platform for students and faculty to publish their own blogs about any facet of Penn State life they wish to. It’s a great way to get the brand out online across a broad range of searches, and allows students and faculty a structured forum to express their views about the school, campus life, etc.
On one hand, blogs are a great way for students to express themselves. On the other hand, blogs are a great way for students to express themselves.
If every student was pleased with the quality of their education and their post secondary school experience, then everything would be fine. The fact is, however, that there is never a case where everyone will be pleased all the time.
Many schools fear giving students a formal outlet for their discontent. What they don’t realize is that those students are going to complain whether there is a place provided to do it or not. Nothing is gained by hiding from the fact that things are not always perfect. It is far better to be aware of problems as they happen or possibly even before they happen.
Popularity: 2% [?]
