Google | Internet Marketing Blog

How should publishers respond to link removal requests?

Thanks again to Panda, Penguin etc, it seems many webmasters are panicking about links they have obtained in the past, or have been pulled up by Google as a result of over-zealous link building.

As a result, we are receiving many more link removal requests than we ever used to, ten or so in the past couple of months.

To be frank, these requests are annoying, and I'm also a little put out that they see this blog as a risk to them. Chris Lake touched upon this recently and, as he says, 'a lot of folks seem to have a bad case of The Fear'.

I thought it was worth exploring this issue in more detail, so I've asked a few SEO experts for their views...

by Graham Charlton 16 May 2013 10:34am 9 comments

Is guest blogging becoming risky?

After Penguin hit a lot of sites hard last year, it seems many SEOs have turned to guest blogging for alternative methods of link-building.

I see this in the volume of requests I get for guest posts on this blog, and Google presumably sees this in the volume of new links it is seeing from guest blogging.

It seems that Google is now taking a serious interest in guest blogging, so what are the risks for the bloggers and the sites hosting guest articles?

I've been asking some SEO experts for their views on the potential risks and how to avoid them...

by Graham Charlton 13 May 2013 11:23am 27 comments

Google: marketing is more than AdWords and SEO

Google display ads dominate Boston South Station

I’ve been working in digital marketing for over a dozen years. Sometimes, though, when talking to others in digital marketing you would think that traditional marketing channels, such as print, billboards, radio, TV, direct mail, etc., are now worthless

Some say they don’t produce immediate leads or sales and the ROI from multi-channel marketing is difficult to measure.

by Louis Gudema 03 May 2013 17:04pm 4 comments

33 examples of great meta descriptions for search

Despite the current trend to segment your audience as much as possible it's still easy to overlook the art of meta description writing.

After all Google search still reaches all of your target market and beyond.

Here's a reminder of the important considerations for meta description writing with some examples.

by Tim Aldiss 17 April 2013 12:21pm 12 comments

Start Me Up! A profile of Rankinity

As content marketing and SEO grow in importance for all sorts of online business, so does the need for real-time keyword analysis.

Rankinity allows you to check positions of a website for certain keywords in all popular search engines in real time.

The founders of Rankinity are hoping that flexible reports and wide means for joint operation (it can take a lot of cross-department teamwork to successfully manage SEO) will make their service "an irreplaceable assistant both for a SEO savvy and a website owner".

by Ryan Sommer 12 April 2013 18:22pm 0 comments

Is Google right to group desktop and tablet together in Enhanced Campaigns?

A few months ago Google announced a huge change to the way that marketers managed paid search with the launch of Enhanced Campaigns.

One of the biggest changes this involved was the move to group tablet and desktop bids together, so marketers are forced to make one bid for both devices.

In the past we’ve highlighted numerous studies which show that businesses shouldn’t lump tablets and smartphones under one ‘mobile’ umbrella, but now Google has decided to do the opposite by claiming that tablets are essentially the same as desktops.

We recently canvassed opinion among PPC experts about Enhanced Campaigns with the general view being that despite Google’s claim that it's trying to simplify the way AdWords works, it’s actually a ploy to force marketers to increase their mobile spend.

by David Moth 10 April 2013 10:32am 7 comments

Is The Telegraph's metered paywall a good idea?

Yesterday, the Telegraph announced the introduction of a 'metered paywall' which allows visitors to read up to 20 articles before having to subscribe for more.

There are two options: a 'web pack' which allows access to the website and content via apps at £1.99 per month, and a 'digital pack' which adds tablet access and loyalty club membership at £9.99 per month.

But can a paywall ever be a good idea for a general news site like The Telegraph though? And how will it affect the newspaper in terms of SEO and traffic to its ecommerce pages?

by Graham Charlton 27 March 2013 11:30am 15 comments

What are the pros and cons of Enhanced Campaigns so far?

It has been a few months since Google introduced its Enhanced Campaigns, which gave marketers a new way of managing their paid search campaigns.

The focus of the change is to enable advertisers to target people at the right time, in the right place, with the right advert and call-to-action. Effectively, the structuring of Adwords campaigns is becoming device independent, removing the ability to have specific mobile, tablet or desktop targeted campaigns.

Up to now PPC managers have had the choice of whether or not they want to switch over to the new system, although the change will become compulsory in a few months.

To find out how the Enhanced Campaigns are impacting the process of managing paid search, I asked four PPC experts to give us some insight into what they’d noticed so far...

by David Moth 25 March 2013 11:54am 2 comments

Ultimate guide to Google+ Sign-In: more than authentication

With social media authentication a common sight across the web, Google takes it one step further with their latest Google+ Sign-In.

With many questioning the worth of Google+ as a social media channel, there needed to be a change in their marketing model to give brands and publishers a reason to invest time into the platform. So, bright and early on the morning of February 26th, Google introduced Google+ Sign-In to the web community.

Now it is possible for users to sign into a website via Google and bring along their information from the Google+ social graph for an “upgraded experience”; something Facebook and Twitter have been doing for a long time.

by Andrew Isidoro 22 March 2013 09:59am 4 comments

Retail sites dominate list of most visible sites in paid search

Retail websites account for more than half of the top 20 most visible advertisers in Google paid search, according to a new report from Searchmetrics.

Question answering site Ask.com actually takes top spot for paid search, with Amazon and Zappos taking second and third respectively.

The findings come from a study into the top 20 most visible sites in paid search on Google.com and a similar list for the top performers in organic search.

To find out more about paid search, check out our new Paid Search Marketing (PPC) Best Practice Guide.

It includes best practice around mobile paid search, integrating paid search with other channels (including offline), and takes into account Google's new Enhanced Campaigns function.

by David Moth 14 March 2013 11:35am 1 comment