Tuesday, April 27, 2010

New AdWords Certification

This week saw Google introduce a new method of certification for their AdWords platform. They have introduced a very thorough set of training pages for anyone to work through, and then you need to take the Google Advertising Fundamentals Exam, plus one more Advanced Advertising Exam. The exams have also been re-vamped with more ideal situations of best practices and real-time situations rather than a simple recall of knowledge like the ones in the past. Full details here.

Google Certification - Barcelona SEO

The benefits of having a clickable badge with your credentials shown to the public directly from Google can have a massive impact on sales for an SEO, but it's also a great thing for any in-house advertising professional to have, and can help in cutting out your budget and getting the most from your advertising budget. Even if you have no intention of taking the exam, you can work your way through the training programme to improve your overall knowledge.

I offer Barcelona AdWords managment and set up, as well as long term website optimisation. Contact me for a chat about your website and how we can drive more traffic together.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

New Information in Webmaster Tools

Google's Webmaster tools is a valuable resource for any website owner, not just someone who is embarking on an seo campaign. The site's interface has slowly got betterand better at providing you with information about your site, and more importantly possible errors, broken urls and possible malware issues.

Top Search Queries - Barcelona SEO Blog

It's also a great way to check for backlinks which Google approve (although it's not 100% accurate) and just recently, Google has started to show the top search queries that your site is ranking for. This is a great way to check within the dashboard of your webmaster tools, the actual clickthrough rates of your top queries. Any information like this is a fantastic way to check your click through rates, and then try and improve.

There are many ways to look at this method. Maybe your landing page is a poor match for the keywords you have targeted or maybe the information is below the fold. Perhaps the calls to action are not good enough, or your snippets have not been marked up, as Google has also recently recommended. Remember that a click through is measured from how your site is displayed in the SERPS, so it's important to check the results pages yourself. Maybe your site is showing below 3 or 4 local listings, so it might be time to invest some time in Local SEO. Also remember that each data centre in Google will show different results depending on location, so this can never be 100% accurate, either, but it's a great start!

If you're looking to improve your web's click through rates, get in touch with me and I can help. Contact me through Barcelona SEO website.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

April Fools Google Joke

I noticed something slightly odd when logging into gmail today. See image below:

Gmail April Fool's Joke 2010

Yes, at first glance it looks gibberish, but it seems all the voewls have been taken out of the usual log-in page.

A quick check in the SERPS confirms that it is indeed an April Fool's joke from Google, something which they've done in previous years, too.



As you can see from the screenshot there, the Query Deserves Freshness has been triggered, and the one box is mid-way down the page, with tweets confirming my suspicion!

Are you not getting the rankings you want in the search engines? Barcelona SEO can help. Contact me for a chat about your site and its goals.