SEO, Adwords, Search Marketing Advice & Tips » Marketing http://blog.clintonbeattie.com SEO, Adwords, Search Marketing Advice & Tips Sat, 05 Jun 2010 16:00:41 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Google’s quality search update http://blog.clintonbeattie.com/googles-quality-search-update/ http://blog.clintonbeattie.com/googles-quality-search-update/#comments Sat, 05 Jun 2010 15:58:21 +0000 Clinton http://blog.clintonbeattie.com/?p=115 During the month of May many people have mentioned a decrease in the number of visits to their website through the Google search engine, mainly from long tail searches. Below, Matt Cutts explains why the update was made and how it may be affecting the number of visits to your website.

Personally, having looked through the statistics of the sites I manage, there has been no significant, if any at all, drop in people arriving at the site through long tail searches.

]]> http://blog.clintonbeattie.com/googles-quality-search-update/feed/ 0 Google Analytics Tips & Tricks – Track Hovered state http://blog.clintonbeattie.com/google-analytics-tips-tricks-track-hovered-state/ http://blog.clintonbeattie.com/google-analytics-tips-tricks-track-hovered-state/#comments Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:31:20 +0000 Clinton http://blog.clintonbeattie.com/?p=62 Getting the most out of data collected by Analytics packages is one of the most important factors when helping a client optimize their websites’ user engagement performance. I first thought about how useful this could be when trying to judge user engagement with a Jquery slideshow on a website I was working on a while back. I had a few niggling questions that weren’t being answered by the data being collected by, in this case, Google Analytics.

For the purpose of explaining this, I have used and altered code from Jquery Globe’s  Slideshow Plugin. You can download my updated code here.

I had two main questions that needed answered:

  • 1. Did users hover over a tab but not click on the content. If not why not?
  • 2. Do users actually use the slideshow. We can monitor the usual clicks, but do that actually even look through the content?

To do this the main point in the excercise is to trigger a click when hovering over one of the tabs. Not too hard with Jquery…

tabs.hover(function() {
if ($(this).hasClass('current')) {
    //triggers click event that logs data to Google Analytics
    $("this").trigger('click');
    return false;
}
slide( tabs.index( this) );
});

The ‘a’ tags will also have to have the tracking code added. I simply labelled mine ‘/slideshow/news-item1′ so I can find it easily in Google Analytics. Find out more about tagging links over in the Google Analytics help articles.

"javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview ('/slideshow/news-item1');"

Hope fully this wil be of use to someone, I know it has been for me.
You could also set up Custom reports to easily access this data on demand.

If you have any suggestions on improving this, or have any other ideas, please share your thoughts below.

]]> http://blog.clintonbeattie.com/google-analytics-tips-tricks-track-hovered-state/feed/ 2 Google updates Toolbar Pagerank http://blog.clintonbeattie.com/google-pushes-toolbar-pagerank-update/ http://blog.clintonbeattie.com/google-pushes-toolbar-pagerank-update/#comments Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:57:30 +0000 Clinton http://blog.clintonbeattie.com/?p=36 It was only recently that Google dropped Pagerank (PR) from Webmaster tools, telling people that they “shouldn’t focus on Pagerank so much”. That move sent out a clear message to webmasters and SEO’s alike, that PR was finally going to take a back seat and the much talked about Trust (Authority) Ranking would take it’s place (It is actually already part of the algorithm that Google uses).

Today, Google officially announced an update to the Toolbar Pagerank, which has sent out a mixed message. Should we now rethink our strategies?

What do you think? Should we still focus our efforts on Pagerank? Is Pagerank just an arbitrary statistic as many people believe? Is it morphing into something else? Share your thoughts below.

]]> http://blog.clintonbeattie.com/google-pushes-toolbar-pagerank-update/feed/ 0 Soft Marketing, no need to SHOUT! http://blog.clintonbeattie.com/no-need-to-shout/ http://blog.clintonbeattie.com/no-need-to-shout/#comments Sat, 26 Sep 2009 16:55:56 +0000 Clinton http://blog.clintonbeattie.com/?p=4 Can a softly, softly approach of marketing online really work? In fact, is there any other way to do it?

While waiting for a flight a couple of weeks ago I picked up a copy of Monocle, an excellent read if you like to keep up to date about Global Affairs, Business, Culture & Design.

This particular issue of the magazine covered the topic of ‘Soft Power’. For those of you who don’t know what this is,  it’s basically…

“…an ability to effect change through persuasion and not coercion”

I would love to say that the days of hard marketing are gone, where pop up windows were all the rage, tempting us to ‘CLICK TO PURCHASE’, or ‘SIGN UP NOW’ but sadly that’s not the case. Technology has progressed and consumers are getting savvier. No-one likes to be forced into doing anything. Why would they? This is where soft marketing comes into play and gentle persuasion
wins the day.

What are your thoughts on this subject?

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