Oxford Digital Marketing

How to use the canonical link

Simon — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:29:15 +0000

The canonical link is used to tell the major search engines which URL you would prefer them to use when you have more than one URL pointing to the same page.

Here are some examples of the sorts of URL’s we are talking about.

www.example.com/product.php?name=shoes&color=black&brand=clarks
www.example.com/product.php?brand=clarks&color=black&name=shoes

If you simply add a tag to specify your preferred version of the page’s URL inside the section of your page then the search engines will treat all variations of the URLs to that page as pointing to the one you specify. So for our examples above you would add the following into the head of each page:

If you are using a content management platform to manage your site (e.g. WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc.) then these platforms can be configured to insert a canonical link into every page automatically.

If you are worried about that your site structure is negatively effecting your search engine rankings, then please use the contact us form and we’d be delighted to see what we can do to help.

For more details on how Google uses the canonical link go here.Similar Posts:

Technorati Tags: canonical link, duplicate content

EU Cookie law and Google Analytics

Simon — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:32:56 +0000

The Google Analytics team have broken a surprisingly long silence regarding the EU Cookie Law and Google Analytics (GA) and how GA will continue to function legally using cookies.

The solution that the UK ICO propose to conform with the EU legal requirement, resulted in a 90% drop in data gathered when they implemented it on the ICO website.

The following question was asked on the latest episode of the Google’s Web Analytics TV series, which is hosted by Google Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik and Nick Mihailovski from the GA team.

The video opens with the following question “It’s now a legal requirement in the EU to get permission before sending cookies. Google Analytics, without accurate eCommerce tracking would be useless. Does Google have plans for a server-side working around, since PHP APIs for posting data already exist?”

Avinash’s reply is as follows: “This is a good question, Matt. Along with other companies, like Microsoft and Yahoo, and Omniture and Webtrends, the team at Google is working with the various entities in the EU to figure out what the implications are.

“Because some clarity is missing as to what applies in individual countries across the entire EU. At the moment that process has not concluded, but when the process is concluded we will post guidelines on the Analytics blog, analytics.blogspot.com. So stay tuned there.

“I did want to emphasise that the word ‘workaround’ is very sensitive in this scenario, so hopefully there are no ‘workarounds’. Google as well as all the other companies are going to follow the laws that are applicable in the individual countries.

“But as to what they are, and what the implications are, we’ll post them on our blog. As will our peer companies in the industry, so watch out for that.”

EU Cookie Law and Google Analytics are not good bed-fellows

I cannot see how the new the EU Cookie Law and Google Analytics will make good bed-follows. I also do not understand how the ICO will be able to enforce this law as millions of websites will be illegal in the UK following its full adoption in May 2012. Let us hope someone sees some sense and repeals the law as it is very disruptive for businesses during this tough economic period.Similar Posts:

Finding My Twitter Voice

Simon — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 10:32:54 +0000

Even though it’s only 140 characters long, for all its simplicity, finding my voice on Twitter was an interesting challenge.

IBM’s social computing guidelines are considered to be amongst the best in the world. In them IBM recommends a simple idea: “Speak in the first person. Use your own voice; bring your own personality to the forefront.”

I find that when I speak directly to other people on Twitter, three interesting things happen.

I get more re-tweets, more followers and generally more feedback.

Also, during our monthly SEO and Social Media seminars, we regularly hear Twitter users say they hate being on the receiving end of people who are obviously just automating their tweets.

Will you share your voice by adding a comment below? I’d love to know how you have found your voice on social media.Similar Posts:

Technorati Tags: social media marketing, Twitter

To Twitter or not to Twitter

Simon — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 21:34:24 +0000

People who attend our SEO and Social Media Marketing seminar who are not yet using Twitter, frequently ask us whether they should start to use Twitter in their marketing. There is a little doubt that Twitter provides another way to engage with your audience and it allows you to initiate a relationship with people who you might not otherwise be able to contact. Growing numbers of people are also seeing some of those relationships develop into business.

One thing I will say if you are still on the fence, take a look at this social media white paper produced by Michael A. Stelzner. The chart above is reproduced from the report (which is chock full of great analysis) shows how Twitter is still a strong player for marketers using Social Media in their marketing mix.

You will most probably need to dedicate a few hours a week to Twitter to get some payback. Use mobile phones and down time to tune in with your followers.

Some feedback that we are regularly receiving from Twitter users is as follows:

Most Twitter users we ask do not enjoy receiving automated series of tips and will often un-follow people who send them.
When you start out, use a client like TweetDeck or HootSuite.
Use a strong password and change it regularly. If your account gets hacked go to the Twitter support page.
If you are worried about opening a particular shortened url you can use expandmyurl.com to reveal the content before opening.
Most people experience better results when they tweet to (@) another person on Twitter rather than just out into the ether.

Share you pate Twitter hates in the comments box below.Similar Posts:

Technorati Tags: social media marketing, Twitter

10 Reasons Search Engines Might Not Index Your Webpage

Simon — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 21:25:30 +0000

Websites become listed on search engine results if, and only if, the search engine spiders are indexing them. If they pass right by your pages, and don’t even know they exist, then you’re simply not going to get listed.

Do this simple check. Go to http://www.google.com and type in site:yourdomain.com. You should see a list of the pages from your web domain that Google has in their index. If there are no pages listed you have either made a mistake typing your domain or Google does not have ANY pages off your web domain in their index. If there are less pages indexed than you had expected here are some reasons why.

You May be Inadvertently Blocking Google

1. We regularly help customers who have either a robots.txt file saying disallow robots or some other block on the search engines.
2. Your pages are ‘hidden’ in an HTML frameset.

You Don’t Want Certain Pages Indexed

Some pages are just not meant to be indexed. This may be as you plan it however it’s useful to understand what spiders do and don’t index. Search engine spiders don’t index:

1. Pages only accessible by using a search form i.e. there are no links to the page from other pages on your website
2. Pages that require a log in
3. Pages that require visitors to submit a form
4. Pages that redirect to a different URL before showing content

While some pages are not meant to be indexed, other pages are and might be missed. Pages that spiders often ignore include:

5. Pages with too many outgoing links – try and keep below 100 (see Google’s Webmaster Guidelines)
6. Pages with complex URLs – these often give spiders an error result
7. Pages which are more than three clicks from the home page, often described as “deep pages”

Other factors may prevent your web pages from being indexed by search engines. These factors include:

8. Broken links from your site
9. A webpage that exceeds 105K
10. A slow loading time or a down server.

Finally, if your page is a flash page, search engine spiders struggle to index it as it may have limited content they can scan. As you’re optimizing your website and specific web pages, pay attention to these factors. The goal, of course is to be indexed and to achieve first page search engine results.

Finally Google recommend submitting a Sitemap using Google Webmaster Tools. Google uses your Sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to increase our coverage of your webpages.Similar Posts:

Technorati Tags: search engine indexing

Collaborate with your competitors

Simon — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 19:34:59 +0000

Collaborating with your competitors can be a good idea. If you have built up a list of people who receive your email newsletter (or even your daily tips;) most of them will never buy what you’re selling. For loads of reason’s they may love getting your material, but most of them will never buy from you. How about approaching a competitor and suggesting that you cross-promote their product to your list?

Now hear me out. I hear your wails of protestation (or is that laughter). But wait a minute. Let’s suppose you have people subscribed to your list and in amongst valuable information you have proposed various of your products/services to them and they have not yet bought from you. There are probably two main reasons why. They don’t want what you’re selling or they don’t want to buy it from you.

Let’s now imagine that you had a meeting with your competitor and said to them “look, I have built up a list of people who are interested in what you and I sell but they do not want to buy my products. Could we do a deal whereby I promote your product to them and if they buy, I get a commission?”

Assuming this discussion worked out well, you could then recommend your competitor’s products to your subscribers and if one of your subscribers did take a look at your competitor’s product and buy it what would this do to you? Firstly it would give you some income which wasn’t there before. Secondly it might raise your status in the eyes of your subscriber. After all, you just acted in some capacity as a trusted advisor (assuming your recommendation turned out well for your subscriber).

Your relationship with your competitor could develop to the point where they recommend your products to their list! Where could that lead? I’m interested in your thoughts. Is this a step too far or actually a good mindset to occupy? What other ways could you collaborate with your competitors?Similar Posts:

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, competition, email marketing, list building, more revenue from your list

Getting Business with Google +1 & Social Media Buttons

Simon — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 19:20:22 +0000

Welcome. Below, you’ll find the recording from the ODM Coaching Club Open session that we ran on the 12th July 2011 entitled “How using Google +1 and other Social Media Buttons on your website can get you business”. The opportunity for getting Business with Google +1 & Social Media Buttons in general is compelling and I would encourage you to watch the video to understand more about what these relatively new marketing tools can be used for.

Please remember to click one of the social buttons above to share the video with others if you found it interesting and leave your comments and feedback below.

This video is part of our Online Marketing Coaching Club. Please find out more about it by clicking the link.

In the recording we cover:

Facebook’s Like button
Twitter’s Tweet button
LinkedIn’s Share Button
Google’s +1 Button

We also give a glimpse of Google+ and discuss the reasons why implementing each of these buttons could bring you new website visitors which can lead to more business.Similar Posts:

Google+ in the UK

Simon — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 07:15:40 +0000

Wow. Busy day yesterday for Google here in the UK and from talking to friends in the US and Australia a big day there as well.

Google+ is currently in a field trial here in the UK

The new Google+ UK Field Trial has rolled out and is very interesting. It is a Facebookesque system that provides video rooms called Hangout where you can jump onto a video sharing space with colleagues or friends – that’s very cool and an interesting threat to Skype’s group video chat. The video experience is first class. Google have come up with an innovative way to handle friends which is by simply adding the ability to organise your friends into Groups called Circles (similar to tagging in LinkedIn). Also there is an interesting feature called Sparks which is providing a Flipboard-like interface to information that you might be interested in. I will report more on that later on Google+ in the UK.

Google+ in the UK is affecting search results

The really interesting thing about this is that I was running one of out SEO trainings yesterday (right at the time that Google was rolling out the new black and white look n feel and adding +1 buttons here in the UK which was interesting to see change as the day progressed).

I happened to do a Google search which showed a friend’s website on the first page for a competitive keyword. The only reason his website was showing on the first page for me because he’d +1′ed his web page. None of the other delegates at the training could see his website on their first page results!

The additionally interesting thing is that I have not actively connected to that friend via any Google service. Google worked out my relationship with him based on all of the data they have on me (I assume he must be in my address book).

Previously I was skeptical about how the +1 button would effect search results but by introducing Google+ into the picture as well and seeing how Google are able to use my data my search experience could get much more influenced by my social connections and relationships very quickly.

Similar Posts:

Managing Content for Social Media

Simon — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 20:53:27 +0000

One of the big barriers to success in Social Media for companies is what to share via social media. I equate this to something similar to writers block. There are two tools I use which I would point you towards and I am including two videos I recorded for our weekly coaching club that go into these two tools.

Google Alerts

The first tool I would start using is Google alerts. You can use this to monitor your brand, keywords you are trying to use in your Search engine Optimisation, your competitors, thought leaders etc.

Google Reader

Use Google Reader to review and filter large quantities of data about your chosen subject.

By combining both of these tools you never run out of things you can comment upon in your Social Marketing.Similar Posts:

Do you want to know where visitors come from?

Simon — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 22:19:30 +0000

One of the things I love most about on-line marketing is that I can usually track most things that happen by studying my analytics. Analytics gives you data about your website visitors. Where they came from, how they got there and what happened when they arrived.

I am a big fan of Google Analytics for this kind of data as it is a free service which provides great stats and it is easy to implement. Within Google Analytics one of the graphs I like to understand is where my traffic is coming from. This graph showing the source of my traffic tells me that some of it is coming from people searching in Google, some from people keying in the URL directly and some from other sites (in this case Twitter and LinkedIn as can be seen in the table.

Google Analytics Traffic Source Table

I can drill into the visitors coming from Google and see which keywords they used to find my site. This is powerful stuff. If I notice that I get a lot of traffic when people search for certain keywords, I can then start to provide a special landing page for that keyword and focus my sales and marketing effort to try and win that visitor as either a customer or at least get them to sign up for a newsletter. I can also write more stuff about that keyword, maybe even introduce a video in order to track more people and start to engage with them.

If you are not currently not getting the most from your Analytics, take a look at our Google Analytics training for business.Similar Posts:

Technorati Tags: Google Analytics, top reffering URLs