September 2013 was a big month for Google. Marking their 15th Anniversary, Google announced the major algorithm update Hummingbird, which will no doubt expand Google’s ability to parse search and lead to more exciting capabilities in the future.

While Google upgraded their algorithm, they downgraded the data webmasters can see in Google Analytics. Specifically, the keyword data associated with a search will not be provided to site owners. This change comes as a byproduct of Google switching all searches on its engine over to encrypted search.

Google started down this road in late 2011 by redirecting users signed into their Google accounts to secure search. Such searches appeared as “(not provided)” in web analytics packages, including Google Analytics. At first this was a fairly small percentage of searches. Now, it is 80-90%, soon to be 100%.

Why Google Made This Change

Google hasn’t offered much comment as to their motive for making this change. A Google representative commented to Search Engine Watch that they are “working to bring this extra protection [secure search] to more users who are not signed in.” It’s a simple explanation, but as with all things Google, any number of factors could be in play. For instance, keyword data is still available…in your AdWords account. If you’re willing to spend money with Google, they’re willing to let you know more about your industry space. Google is not a charity, but SEOs have taken note of this fact.

What You Can Do

Keyword data in Analytics served several purposes. You could compare keyword traffic projections to traffic realities. You could discover which keywords converted best organically, or find long-tail phrases to target with expanded content. You could also identify which keywords were bouncing most off of which page, and adjust your content strategy accordingly so searchers would be directed to a page on your site that better meets their needs.

These are all important functions, but many of these insights can be gained without the assistance of Google’s full keyword data. Google’s Webmaster Tools will provide some limited keyword data. Bounce rate will still be available, and the keyword data from engines like Yahoo & Bing can help you get a handle on how the page is being searched for. Rank trackers, while subject to inaccuracy due to personalization, still provide important clues to the nature of a site’s traffic. If anything, Rank Trackers will now be used more dynamically, not just for one or two word “head” terms, but more complex queries. Seeing your site underperform in the rankings on “red girl’s bicycle,” and perform well on “red boy’s bicycle,” will tell you where you need to add content and make you reconsider the focus of your page all the same.

For a long time now Google has been emphasizing to webmasters and SEOs that on-site content and on-site engagement are more important to them than any other factor, including links. Their technology continues to catch up to their stated aims. While we won’t be able to see, on a granular level, the keywords that are coming to your website from Google, the keys to getting traffic remain the same – provide a lot of content about something people like, and make the experience enjoyable, sharable, and memorable. This is perfectly in line with our values as a company, and at Leverage we’re excited to help our clients create such experiences for their users.

Perhaps due to the launch of Google’s Penguin update and the mounting fear of negative SEO, a tactic in which malicious competitors attempt to harm a site’s rankings through targeted spammy link building, website owners have become more and more worried about the potential harm a bad link could do to their site. Although Google representatives have stated that it is very difficult for a competitor to harm another site’s rankings, it still remains possible. Bing representatives and documentation, have also recently tried to calm webmaster worries by stating that Bing can detect a “sudden appearance of obviously spammy links pointed at your site.”  After detecting these unusual spammy links, Bing is most likely to ignore them. Nevertheless, negative SEO still remains a possibility and links that have been built to a site in the past could be hurting the site’s potential to rank in the search engines now. In the face of this building concern, Bing has responded and offered webmasters a way to distance their sites from unnatural or spammy links that are currently pointing to their domains.

In order to give webmasters more control over which links they want to distance their sites from, Bing created and released the Disavow Links Tool in July. As a part of Bing’s Webmaster Toolbox, this feature allows webmasters to signal which links to their site they don’t trust. Links that appear unnatural or spammy can now be disavowed with this easy-to-use tool. By taking a look through your backlinks using tools like Bing’s own Link Explorer, Raven’s Backlink Explorer or the Open Site Explorer, a webmaster can identify spammy or unnatural links and submit them to the Link Disavow Tool simply by plugging in the URL, choosing a link type and pressing a button. Although Google has been talking about launching a similar tool for months, Bing has beat them to the punch and offered the tool to all users who have verified their site in Bing’s Webmaster Tools.

Bing has recently expanded the set of features in its Webmaster Toolbox to include: an expanded SEO Analyzer which provides SEO suggestions tailored to your site, a keyword research tool that offers keyword statistics and suggestions and a new link explorer tool which allows users to explore links pointing to any domain. With this expanded set of features, Bing seems to have embraced the fact that website owners want to improve their SEO. By providing innovative tools that arm webmasters and search engine optimization specialists with actionable data, Bing has provided what webmasters and specialists need to make websites better. The ramifications this improved functionality could have on Bing’s search results and the web at large could be immense. Additionally, by challenging Google’s Webmaster Tools product to do more, we could see reactive and competitive improvements within their set of Webmaster Tools – all of which could benefit webmasters and the web in general greatly. The strides that Bing has made in terms of search engine algorithm transparency and webmaster assistance have been huge. The Link Disavowal Tool is just another example of how Bing is changing the landscape of search and the web in general and how in some cases Google, the supposed industry leader, is now having to play catch-up.

Within the SEO department here at Leverage Marketing Agency, we monitor both Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools for our clients and leverage the data contained therein to improve our clients’ SEO. I would recommend that all webmasters consider verifying their sites in Bing Webmaster Tools, if they haven’t already, in order to use and leverage the free tools offered within the extensive toolbox. Also, stay tuned for a follow-up post explaining how and when to use the Link Disavow Tool and how to identify a negative SEO attack coming soon from the SEO team.

With millions of users and viewers on YouTube DAILY, it’s no wonder why SEOs have increased their video optimization efforts. When video optimization was a “new” SEO tactic, it was very basic. Optimize the title, description and tags and you’re done. Now, it can be a lengthy process with a large focus on the content and how the videos interact and engage with viewers.

If you or your client has videos, don’t overlook optimization as not worth your time. Videos are a great way to drive traffic to your website and a great way to engage with people to build brand awareness. Videos are very popular and it’s for the same reason why a lot of people have watched a movie-version of a book.

So there are two things that come to mind when I think about video optimization:

1. Ranking in natural search results
   

   Search Results in Google

2. Ranking in YouTube
   

   Search results in YouTube

Optimizing Videos to Appear in Natural Search Results:

In my experience, I have found this to be tricky to accomplish. I haven’t been able to discover an exact method to have videos appear in natural search results. However, here are a few tips that I’ve noticed help videos appear in search results:

• Have a channel that is well established and engaging
  • This includes large number of views, followers, thumbs up or down, multiple videos (This is explained further down)
  • Long-tail keyword phrases in titles and description
    • I think this is key for videos to appear in search results. Videos that utilize very specific long-tail keyword phrases seem to appear much more easily than general searches (even for brand names)

Let’s take a look at a search for “Gabby Douglas” for example:

For a general search of “Gabby Douglas,” no video or video links appear.  Despite having several videos of her on YouTube, and especially with the Olympics going on right now, you expect that many videos of her gymnastics are being watched. So, I’d imagine videos on Gabby Douglas are engaging and popular, yet none show up in a general search.

However, once you search for “Gabby Douglas Floor Routine”… Voila! several videos appear. Once you search for a very specific phrase, more videos appear in the search results. Based on that, I can speculate that in order for your video to show up in search results (more easily), not only do you need a well-established and engaging channel; you need to be very strategic in how you title your videos.

Ranking in YouTube:

Recently, SEOmoz released a Whiteboard Friday on YouTube ranking factors. While his suggestions are almost synonymous to best SEO practices, there are a few ranking factors that are specific to YouTube. I also believe that Jeff McRitchie’s suggestions are overall good tips for video optimization to rank in both search results and YouTube. The take away from his Whiteboard is that your video needs great and creative content and it needs to be engaging. How many times have we heard this? Well, whether it applies to a web site, infographic, copy, and now videos, GREAT content and ENGAGING content is absolutely relevant for just about everything.

So let’s say you have the video, and its very interesting content and it could be a viral success, what now?

I’m going to break it down into two parts: 1) On-site video optimization and 2) Off-site video optimization.

Well as mentioned above, you have to be strategic in what keywords you use for the title, description, and video tags.

On-site Video Optimization:

TITLE:

Just like the title of a page, you don’t want to name your video “KEYWORD KEYWORD KEYWORD.” You want to be able to come up with a creative and relevant title that incorporates a keyword or two. I don’t know how many times I’ve stumbled upon a video that had an interesting title, but the video wasn’t great or relevant. (Or I get Rick Roll’d) Don’t make this mistake! It seems like this will affect how your video ranks. If viewers are only a few seconds into your video and exits, this could hurt your video and make it lose its visibility in the search results.

DESCRIPTION:

I’ve been guilty and have committed a SEO faux-pas, I’ve inserted a link back to the web site and that was it. I know, shame, but I happily report that I no longer am guilty of such a crime. However, do I think you should eliminate adding a link back to your web site all together? Absolutely not, but on the flip side, I do think it is important to actually accurately describe the video. Viewers will always appreciate descriptions (especially short ones) and if your video is engaging, they will be more likely to click-through to your website.

Now, Mr. McRitchie mentions of adding your own transcript, and if you have the time, I say do it. It certainly wouldn’t hurt and also viewers could “skim” through the video more quickly if they’re searching for something specific.

You’re able to add your own captions or transcript by going to your video manager, click on the specific video, edit, and then captions will appear at the top next to annotation.

Here’s what it should look like:

TAGS:

It also looks like in YouTube, you have to be exact when it comes to what keywords you use or it doesn’t rank in YouTube search results. So, be exact and use keywords that are relevant to your video.

Off-site Video Optimization:

When I say “off-site video optimization,” I’m referring to what you should do after you have optimized the title, description and tags. Optimization shouldn’t stop there. With any great content, you have to share with the community and engage with your audience.

USER-ENGAGEMENT METRICS:

Ultimately, for your video to rank well, you have to a “good” video. What indicates to YouTube and the search engines that you have a “good” video? User engagement metrics such as the number of views, how long someone watches your video, thumbs up or thumbs down, commenting, sharing, etc. You want your video to be able to achieve all of those.

SOCIAL SHARING:

But how do people find your video if it’s brand new and has zero user engagement metrics? It’s up to you to share it. Put it on all your social networks, your blog, websites, share it with people you think will find your video interesting and helpful. If it’s a viral success, you’re almost guaranteed that your video will rank well.

COMMENTS:

A great way to build relationships with viewers is comments. It’s a very similar process in how you manage facebook comments, tweets, and Google+ comments. If there’s a question lingering or any sort of feedback, it’s always a great idea to respond. That’s an easy way of building a follower base is if you engage with your viewers and actually interact with them. It potentially could lead to a domino effect where one person shares your channel and video, and then share it with their friends, and so on and so forth.

YOUTUBE ANALYTICS:

Something that isn’t completely new but I think people overlook is the access to analytics for their videos. It’s the perfect way to see whether or not viewers are responding well to your videos; or if your videos are able to retain their attention.

You have access to a multitude of data to assist you. Probably one of the most useful reports is “audience retention.” You’re able to see at what point for each video a user exits. This is handy and will help you understand where you need to edit and how to not make the same mistakes in the future. All other reports are fairly self-explanatory.

So if you’re working on a campaign and have access to videos, don’t overlook video optimization as a tactic. And don’t forget these key tips:

• Create a video that has great content, is creative, and interesting
• Be very strategic for the title, description, and tags
• If you have the time, add a transcript to your video
• Don’t be shy, share your video with the whole world if you can
• Engage and communicate with your viewers

If you have any questions about video optimization, feel free to comment below.

The head of Google’s Search Spam team, Matt Cutts, was recently interviewed by Eric Enge on the subject of “What Makes a Quality Site.”  It’s a good quick read that should get you thinking about how you can improve your site and thus generate more traffic.  Written below is what I got from it.

We know that everybody with a website wants to rank higher in Google to generate additional traffic to their site.  And they want to accomplish the higher rankings as soon as possible and with the least amount of effort.  While in the past it has been quite easy to accomplish this by taking advantage of certain loopholes and ranking indicators, Google is working to make it more difficult.  And this upsets a lot of webmasters.

“Why should I have to work harder for something that was so easy in the past?”

The overarching reason for this is because Google’s search results serve up a lot of spammy, repetitive websites built to manipulate the results.  Pushing for sites to strive for quality is a way ‘to improve the quality of search results’.

What can we take away from this interview to help improve our sites?

1. Rather than regurgitating the same content that already exists, work to bring additional value.
2. Focus on what differentiates you.  Describe what makes you special.  This can be difficult for e-commerce sites that sell the same products as many other sites – get creative.  See number 1 above.
3. Focus on distinguishing yourself in a niche area before going head-to-head with the big players.  If you follow the above steps, your unique content has a good chance at cracking the first page because Google values diversity in the search results.
4. SEO isn’t really about ‘link building’.  Yes, acquiring links to your site helps achieve rankings but focus your efforts at a higher level.  Approach this at the PR/marketing level and you’ll avoid wasting time seeking out useless links.
5. Infographics and other types of link bait might soon be devalued by Google.  This is yet another effort that has been used to garner a large quantity of links and thus used to manipulate search results.  While some/many infographics are useful and of high quality, there are, according to Google, too many that are unresearched and of low quality.
6. Sites that have many entry pages, such as restaurants that have locations in many cities, have typically created pages for each city with virtually the same, redundant copy.  Cutts advises to cut the redundancy and replace with more unique content – even if its only 2 or 3 sentences.  Again, see number 1 above.