Now Google +1 button coming on Display Ads

Apart from many exciting +1 feature announcement, Google has made a major announcement for adwords advertisers that +1 button will be displayed on the Google Display network.

Starting early October we will be able to see the +1 button on the display ads shown on Google display network on mobile and desktop both.

Adding up personal recommendation to the advertisement has high impact on decision making of viewers because its like someone from your network is endorsing particular product/service and thus leading to influence the opinions.

For example, take X, who sees an ad for dentist. She +1’s the ad, feeling her friends might value similar deals. Now when X’s friends and contacts are logged into Google and see the discount dentist ad on any of the millions of Google Display Network partner websites, they’ll see X’s picture across the bottom of the ad with a note saying she +1’d it.


Although Google is quite confident about the success of +1 button on display ads, but still if you are apprehensive to its success and don't want to use it, you can opt out at the campaign level in AdWords under campaign settings.

Does Flash Affect my Website Rankings?

A common scenario:

My developer has created a very beautiful website with pure flash, I am worried if its going to affect my rankings and will it have any any indexation issues?

Although Google can index flash content up to some extent still there are chances that the flash page is not going to rank high in search results.

Problem with Flash Pages

As the search engines are text based so they find it difficult to index a page which is totally flash based. Therefore if your webpage is pure flash search engine won't be able to see 95% of your webpage content.

Google has passed various official statements regarding Flash content

"Search engines are text based. This means that in order to be crawled and indexed, your content needs to be in text format. [...] Any content you embed in these files should also be available in text format or it won't be accessible to search engines. [...]

We recommend that you use rich-media technologies like Flash primarily for decorative purposes, and instead use HTML for content and navigation."

"Make sure that your site has a reasonable, seamless experience for visitors without Flash. This may involve creating HTML-only equivalents for your Flash-based content that will automatically be shown to visitors who can't view Flash."

Use of noscript tag

Google's John Mueller indicates that "One of the problems with noscript is - as others have mentioned - that it's been abused quite a bit by spammers, so search engines might treat it with some suspicion.

So if this is really important content, then I wouldn't rely on all search engines treating your noscript elements in the same way as normal, visible, static content on your pages."


Takeaways for your website:

• Avoid using much flash, use it for decorative purpose only.
• The main content of the webpage should be available as simple text.
• Use regular HTML href links for navigation. Links in the JavaScript or flash navigation menu are hard to be parsed by the search engines.
  

Internal Links Optimization for Improved Search Engine Ranking

We know about the importance of web content optimization in search engine rankings. Most people are aware about it therefore spend quality time in optimizing content, titles, meta tags and inbound links.

Internal Links Optimization is a very crucial factor in web content optimization which is often overlooked by most of us.

Importance of Internal Link Structure

Although the internal links do not get as much weight as the external links but these (internal links) are an important signal in search engine ranking algorithm.

How to Optimize Internal Linking Structure

1. Main Navigation Optimization

These are the global links available across your website therefore the best way of optimization is to start from main navigation.

• Make sure to include your keywords in the navigation links.
• Avoid Flash and javascript menu. Use standard HTML and CSS to design your website navigation.

2. Breadcrumb Optimization
Breadcrumb navigation can be utilized to link the sub-pages with the main navigation. Breadcrumbs help the users to locate their exact position on the website.

Use descriptive and keyword rich words in your breadcrumb navigation.
Like
Shoe shop > Sports shoes > Buy Cricket shoes > Adidas deals

3. Ensure that the first link on the page is the right link

Google seems to consider only the text of first link on the web page. For example if page X links with page Y using anchor text "More Information" on the top and with anchor text "Low Price Shoes" at the bottom of the page, thene there are chances that Google is likely going to consider your first anchor text and will ignore the second one (your targeted keyword).

So if you are linking more than once to another page ensure that the first link on the page contains the targeted keywords.

Google Sitelinks and Importance of Meta Description Tag

Last month google made a change in its SERP listing display by showing up extended site links. The sitelinks are displayed if Google is sure that a website is the exact match for a search query. It generally happens in case of product name or company name searches.


If you check the screenshot it can be easily realized that these pages if optimized with good meta description can be as effective as the sponsored listings shown on top of SERP.

An optimized description tag can increase the chances of more clicks on internal pages.

How to Make Sitelinks more clickable

Google uses first 30-35 charactersof meta description tag to show in the sitelink snippet. So the opportunity lies in utilizing it and optimize the meta description tag in such a way that it leads to more clicks.

• Create a unique meta description for each page of your website.
• Utilize these 30-35 characters to display the exact message, call to action.

Why my website is not showing up sitelinks?

To answer this question we have to check our website for few elements:

• Is your website using javascript and flash navigation?
• Are images used for website navigation?

If answer to these question is then you may face problems in seeing sitelinks. In order to resolve this

• Avoid javascript and flash navigation. Try to use as often as possible.
• Provide alternative text for your images. It will help Google determine your link.
• Try to avoid deeper navigation. Better a webpage is linked better chances are there for it to show up in sitelinks.

So take advantage of the sitelink feature to increase more clicks on your website.

Twitter Launches New Web Analytics Tool

Social Media monitoring is the main problem faced by digital marketers and they are always struggling to pull some relevant information without drowning in the pool of data.

Twitter Web Analytics, a new tool announced Tuesday will try to help provide some clarity to website owners who depend on twitter for content distribution. The tool will provide insights on effectiveness of their Twitter integrations.


The official twitter blog mentions that the product provides three key benefits:

• Understand how much your website content is being shared across the Twitter network
• See the amount of traffic Twitter sends to your site
• Measure the effectiveness of your Tweet Button integration

Twitter Web Analytics will be rolled out this week in closed beta testing to a small pilot group of partners, and will be made available to all website owners within the next few weeks.