Google AdWords Dynamic Search Ads: 10 Quick Tips to Get Started

As advertisers, we're always trying to find new and innovative ways to showcase our products. Sometimes it isn't just about the "look and feel" of our products, but the placement of them as well.

Where can we put our products and ads so that they stand out to our customers? In a grocery store, this is the equivalent to learning whether we should be placing our products on an endcap display, up front by the register, or in a "bull's eye zone."

With digital advertising – we learn where to "place" our products by using our existing data to make assumptions about our customers' behavior. Where are they looking for our product? When is the right time for them to receive messaging about our product?

The Way People Search Online Is Always Evolving

In paid search specifically, we have tons of data. There are the keywords that drive users to purchase, the ones that don't, and everything in between.

Many times, a query will tell us that a particular user wants more information but they aren't yet ready to purchase, or that they have a high intent to make a purchase within the next 24 hours.

One of the most helpful ways to discover how our customers are behaving is to review search query reports. The terms within these reports can help us learn how consumers are finding our ads, and are supported with accompanying data that tell us which of those queries turn into sales or conversions.

But, have you ever thought that you are limiting your business by only looking at your existing keyword data? What about finding new keywords?

Should you rely on using more broad match keywords to bring in relevant queries? Or check out the Keyword Planner?

What about looking into competitor data? Plus, there's always that Paid vs. Organic Report, right?

As advertisers, we know the way people search online is evolving, so how can we also evolve? Well, here's a simple and quick idea. Launch a Dynamic Search Ad (DSA) campaign through Google AdWords.

How Dynamic Search Ads Work

Dynamic Search Ad campaigns target relevant Google searches by scanning the text of your existing website and serving up ads on Google when a query matches your site.

To do this, Google will use their organic Web crawling technology to scan your website and keep a fresh index of your inventory. Then, when a user searches for something relevant and related to your website, Google will match the query to your website and serve an ad.

The ad will be pretty targeted, as Google dynamically generates a headline based on the query and the relevant landing page, though you will create the pre-set description lines and display URLs. The ad will then enter the auction and compete normally, so bidding is a factor.

With Dynamic Search Ads, you get the benefit of more query data without having to create more keywords. You can then use the data to further expand your campaigns and continuously keep up with searcher behavior, which tends to be a moving target.

But, don't be deceived – this isn't a "set it and forget it" campaign. It takes work and refinement, but over time, if created and optimized correctly, this campaign can become your very own gold mine. According to Google Ad Innovations, "During pilot testing, most advertiser's saw 5-10% more clicks and conversions with satisfactory ROI."

How to Get Started With DSA CampaignsCheck out this article to see if DSA campaigns are a good fit for you.Learn how to set up a Dynamic Search Ads campaign and how to create targets for your ads.When creating targets for your DSA campaign, think of how you can break them out into different ad groups. That way, you can use your ad description lines to be as relevant as possible.Understand the correct way to set up your destination URLs. It's important! I prefer the {unescapedlpurl} ValueTrack parameter appended with any third party tracking.Be sure to add a decent set of generic terms as negative keywords for your Dynamic Search Ads campaign. Many of us already have generic campaigns running to catch non-branded keywords, but we usually intentionally limit their budget. If during the day your generic campaigns cap out, Dynamic Search Ads can continue serving ads on those generic terms (if they're a good match to your site) unless you add them as negative keywords to your DSA campaign.Consider adding some high-volume brand keywords as negatives too. You don't want to pull traffic away from any top performers once you launch your DSA campaign.Once you're up and running, check your Search Term and Category Reports often. This is where you'll find your query data. You won't find anything in your Keywords tab, so don't be alarmed if this tab is empty.If you've found a high-converting query in your Search Term report, move the keyword to the appropriate traditional campaign (with a relevant ad) and then also add the keyword as a negative to your Dynamic campaign, so that it won't continue to serve for your Dynamic campaign. Similarly, if you find search terms or categories with sufficient volume that aren't converting, these should also be added as negatives for the DSA campaign, and potentially for other campaigns as well.Feel free to set up your regular bells and whistles, too. You can add most of your regular ad extensions to your dynamic campaigns. For sitelinks, you can either create your own, our let the DSA campaign pick "automatic sitelinks" for your campaign. These, much like the ad headline, are dynamically created based on the search.Just like with the rest of your enhanced campaigns, you can make bid adjustments to your DSA campaign. Also, there are a number of bidding options as well, including CPC bidding, eCPC bidding, Conversion Optimizer, and more. Pick the strategy that works best for your business and its goals.Conclusion

If you want to learn more about DSA campaigns, have any questions about how to get started, or want to discuss your experience with these campaigns, please comment below.

5 Steps to Quick Insights Using Google Analytics Solutions Gallery

What if you could map advanced Analytics users' knowledge over your own data? Well, don’t imagine any longer, you can (and should) do this today.

Google released the Dashboard Analytics Solutions Gallery more than 14 months ago but very few marketers have taken advantage of this free resource. Most advanced Google Analytics users have created custom dashboards but few have imported templates from the Solutions Gallery.

These dashboards can be used to find insights and drive more profit. This post will help you set up and utilize these proven dashboards as part of your daily, weekly, or monthly analysis.

There are 16 categories you can select from to customize your data and find the insight you're looking for. These templates are created by Analytics gurus and can help you dig into data not provided in the standard reports. The best part is they can be segmented by category and are reviewed by other users so you don’t have to waste your time trying to find the best ones.

Google says: "Crowd Source Google Analtyics Insights. This solutions gallery contains in-product solutions (such as dashboards, custom reports and segments) to deepen your use of Google Analytics and accelerate your learning curve."

You can set up and use these dashboards for quicker reporting and deeper insights using the following five steps.

Step 1: Decide What Insights You're Looking For

You must begin with the end in mind if you really want to get value from these dashboards. Are you looking to analyze marketing campaigns and their performance? How is my website speed and responsiveness? Are you trying to set marketing budgets and need to understand what is working and what should be cut?

If you're looking for SEO insights, this great post by Chuck Price shows you exactly what templates to use and how to analyze them.

There are hundreds of possible questions and insights you can look for using Google Analytics but the more specific you can be when creating a hypothesis the quicker you will find the best dashboard and get to the insight.

Step 2: Create New Dashboard and Import From Gallery

In order to take advantage of the Google Analytics Solutions Gallery, you must first create a new dashboard. Instead of entering the title and clicking "create dashboard" you click on "Import from Gallery."

Step 3: Filter Gallery Results by Popularity, Reviews, Category, or Type

When you first start looking at the solution gallery it can be a little intimidating. Filter your results based on the insights you are looking for.

Are you looking to analyze site performance, mobile, engagement, PPC, SEO, social, or display campaigns? Depending on what you would like to accomplish, filter by type:

DashboardCustom ReportSegmentAttribution ModelGoal

Here's an example of the browsing and filter options.

Using the ratings and reviews, you can see what has been helpful for other users and which dashboards have not provided value. Once you have found the template you want to use, simply click import.

Step 4: View the Data, Look for Insights, & Automate Reporting

After you import the dashboard your data will be populated and the analysis can begin. Usually the insights will appear right away, but sometimes you need to compare date ranges or flip back between a few reports to finalize your conclusion.

The template will be saved for as long as you keep it and can become part of your daily, weekly, or monthly analysis. Agencies love using the Solutions Gallery to help automate reporting to clients and show data that isn’t available in the standard reports.

Step 5: Edit, Customize, or Segments Data

Sometimes even the most popular and highly rated Google Solutions Templates don’t have exactly what you need. Google Analytics allows you to customize or edit the metrics within each dashboard in order for you to find the insight you are looking for.

For advanced users, customizing or editing these templates can help answer tough questions that need more data points in order to see the entire picture. If the template doesn’t get you to quick insights, customize or edit as shown here.

Summary

Use the Google Analytics Solutions Gallery to find custom dashboards that have been created by experts to speed up the time to insights. You don’t have to be an analytics guru to use these dashboards, but you can monetize the data in Google Analytics and make better decisions quicker.

Leverage the knowledge of other people who have had success and let the crowd sourcing of reviews drive which template you import. My 10 favorite Solutions Gallery templates to use are in these categories:

SocialSite OptimizationPaid SearchOrganic SearchMobileEngagementDisplay AdvertisingConversionCampaignAcquisition

Do you have any favorite templates you would like to share? Please comment below as we would love to know if you use the Solutions Gallery or how you go about analyzing your Google Analytics data to gain insights.

Yandex Reports 62% Share Of Russian Search Market With Q1 2014 Revenue Up 36%

Yandex 2014 first-quarter earnings release shows the Russian search engine’s revenue was up 36 percent year-over-year since the first quarter of 2013, totaling RUR 10.9 billion ($305 million).

The site’s share of the Russian search market averaged 61.9 percent, with search queries growing 21 percent from the first quarter of last year.

Yandex net income for the first quarter of the year was RUR 2.6 billion ($71.5 million), up six percent from Q1 2013. “We enjoyed growth in the number of advertisers, enhanced Yandex.Direct functionality for domestic and international clients and made several important launches on the mobile front,” said Yandex CEO Arkady Volozh.

Yandex advertising revenues were up 39 percent since first quarter 2013, with text-based ads representing 92 percent of its total revenues in Q1 and display ads accounting for 7 percent. At more than 280,000, the number of advertisers on the site is up 25 percent since Q1 2013. Yandex says text-based ad revenues from its own ad network� was up 104 percent compared to Q1 2013:

Our agreement with Mail.ru to power paid search results is the principal driver of our increase in partner network revenues as well as the increase in growth rate of the ad network.

The company also announced a partnership for Real-Time Bidding with Google during the quarter. Financial Highlights from Yandex Q1 2014 Earnings Report:

Not counting revenue associated with its Yandex.Money, the search engine expects to generate full year ruble-based revenue growth of 25 percent to 30 percent in 2014.

New Google Maps “Digital Timeline” Shows Street View Images Dating Back 7 Years

Google Maps has launched a cool new feature for its Street View images that lets you see past pictures of various landmarks dating back seven years.

From the announcement, “If you see a clock icon in the upper left-hand portion of a Street View image, click on it and move the slider through time and select a thumbnail to see that same place in previous years or seasons.”

Going back to 2007, the “digital timeline” offers images of various locations, including New York City’s Freedom Tower:

The announcement also included images of Onagawa, Japan, showing how the feature could be used to see the areas impacted by the tragic 2011 earthquake.

Google recommended travelers could use the feature to see what a destination looks like during different seasons.

4 Keyword Research Techniques in an Age of Vanishing Keyword Data

The other week, we went a little crazy – it's cool, we came back – over a rumor that Google would start blocking paid keyword data for AdWords advertisers like it did with "(not provided)" in organic data.

Frankly, I've never been a fan of keyword data. It makes us weak. It encourages us to rely on meaningless metrics instead of tracking key-performance indicators (KPIs) that actually matter.

But no matter what side of the fence you stand on, we've got a situation on our hands. Keywords still matter; Google is just making it harder for us to find them.

Harder, but not impossible. Here are four tools you can use for keyword research in the age of vanishing keyword data.

Small AdWords Campaigns

Keyword data in paid campaigns isn't going away. That data will no longer get passed to your analytics provider, but you can still access your paid keyword performance in the AdWords interface, making this a great way to test keywords first before implementing them in your strategy. If your paid search efforts are also synced with your marketing automation software, you can see the quality of lead that these keywords brought, too.

Start in small chunks with a group of keywords at the time. If your budget is really tight, localize it to your city, state, or region.

Google Webmaster Tools

Even though you can't see what happened with this keyword after it came to your site (Did it bounce? Did it convert?), Google Webmaster Tools is one of the only consistently reliable sources to get keyword data, CTR, and average rankings. Armed with this data, you know, at least, what's working for you currently and it provides a good starting point.

High impressions and rankings but low CTR? Make sure your result matches the query that people are searching for. Just like in AdWords quality score, relevancy here is critical. Your goal isn't to have the highest ranking; it's to have the most attractive listing in the search results.

UberSuggest

UberSuggest is one of my favorite tools because of the wealth of things you can do with the data once you have it. In it's simplest form, it's a great way to see trends in what Google is recommending people search for based on your keyword root.

Start with your most basic keyword: Let's use "dog treats." Select all keywords.

Click "Get."

And copy and paste every suggestion into in XLS.

Do this for slight variations of that keyword, like "dog treat." Then, group the duplicates. The more times it appears, the more often Google recommends it and that's a key signal for you that that keyword should be in your keyword strategy. Note that these will be better for longer tail keywords.

User Interviews or Surveys

User interviews will take more time than pulling data from a tool, but you're going to get more valuable data because you're finding out how your target audience searches for products or services like yours. Tools are great, but they can't get that contextual.

First, find your users to interview.

If it's a more general audience, you could easily pull this off by hanging out at your local coffee shop and buying a small coffee for someone for 10 minutes of their time. If it's more specific, head to LinkedIn Answers or Quora and look for people asking questions about the industry.

You can also join LinkedIn Groups related to your industry or set up a small LinkedIn Sponsored Post or LinkedIn Ad campaign soliciting people for their feedback.

Then, talk to them.

With 10 or 15 minutes for each interview, you're going to cover a lot of ground to understand exactly how your target audience is shopping for your product or service. Since it's keywords you're looking for, ask them what they searched for when they were shopping around. Give them time to answer; they'll probably tell you more than one.

You can also streamline this by setting up a survey, but you'll miss the value of one-to-one conversations, which gives you more detailed information.

What did I miss? What are some other tools you use for keyword research?

Google Wants to Woo Enterprise Clients Away From AdWords Management Platforms

Google announced a number of new AdWords features and enhancements this morning from their Step Inside AdWords live (and live-streamed) event in Half Moon Bay.

Interestingly, two of these new features add powerful, enterprise-level AdWords management functionality previously available through outside platforms like Kenshoo and Marin. Both are great tools with the obvious value-add around multi-platform management, but it seems as though Google is taking aim at these kinds of third-party platforms with this update.

Two more new features are completely unique to Google and when they launch, will surely give other management solutions a run for their money.

Jerry Dischler, Google's vice president of AdWords Product Management, announced four enterprise-class tools to improve workflow, reporting, and optimization in AdWords:

Bulk actions: Now you can set up location targeting, ad rotation, and other settings across thousands of campaigns.Automated bidding: This is an expansion of their existing automated bidding capabilities, with the addition of the ability to maximize conversions for volume and revenue.Advanced reporting: They're calling this a multi-dimensional tool; I'm calling it Excel for AdWords.Drafts & Experiments: Google will allow you to turn your account into Draft mode and set up experiments you can run using a percentage of your real-world traffic.

On the need for bulk actions and automated bidding enhancements, Dischler said, "Tens of thousands of advertisers are already using automated bidding to complete over a billion bidding decisions a day." Their goal, he said, is to bring an enterprise-level solution to every advertiser, directly within AdWords.

The really cool news is in the last two features, though: Excel for AdWords (my name, not theirs) and Drafts & Experiments.

Dischler called the new Spreadsheets functionality within AdWords "a beautiful way to visualize your data and test your insights," and it really, really is. Check this out:

Keep in mind, this isn't released yet, but will be rolling out sometime in the coming months. What you see here is a drag and drop spreadsheet within AdWords that will allow you to make data exploration simpler and more visual. Choose your attributions and datasets by dropping them into the spreadsheet area, so you can create charts, graphs, and more within AdWords, like this:

Or this:

The other new feature that's coming soon is Drafts & Experiments. Basically, this allows you to put your entire account into Draft mode to test potential changes in your account, like this:

The really amazing part, though, is that you can then set up experiments that run with a percentage of your real-world traffic.

In December, I predicted that Google would retire AdWords editor sometime this year. Indeed, these new features may just be the last nail in its coffin.

Dischler said at one point, "Many of you have told us that working in AdWords is just too complicated." He also noted that the new bidding and bulk actions features previously were available only in AdWords Editor and in third-party tools.

Google is making a big play at the enterprise-level AdWords management market and if these new tools are any indication, they plan on bringing as much in-house as possible.

What do you think, are Google's new enterprise toys enough to keep you within their platform alone, or are there still scenarios that will leave you craving an outside tool?

Yahoo Testing A Google Knowledge Graph Lookalike In Search Results

One of Yahoo’s latest search results tests should look awfully familiar.

The website All Google Testing discovered a test that turns the right column of Yahoo’s search results page into a dead ringer for Google’s Knowledge Graph.

The post even offers some instructions on how to enable the test in your own browser, but I wasn’t able to get it working myself last night. Thankfully, this video shows the test in action.

Each of the tech company examples included in the video has a section on Yahoo called “Top Products” — that’s different from Google when I look at the real Knowledge Graph results for those companies.

It reminds me of Yahoo’s recent rollout of local business snapshots in its right column — a user interface change that also looks a lot like Google.

Google Marks Earth Day 2014 With 6 Animated Animal Logos, Including a Hummingbird

Google is wishing everyone a happy Earth Day this year with six animated Doodles.

For Google's annual salute to Earth Day in 2014, the company has incorporated a series of six animals – the Rufous hummingbird, dung beetle, moon jellyfish, Japanese macaque, puffer fish, and veiled chameleon – into various animated logos:

Keep clicking on the logos to cycle through them all. You can also share the logos on Google+, Facebook, or Twitter, or do a Google search for more information on all of the animals.

The hummingbird logo may perhaps be a bit of an "hat tip" to those who regularly follow Google search news. In September, Google revealed Hummingbird, an overhaul of its core search technology that aimed to answer more complex queries.

One of the more comical animated logos is the one featuring a dung beetle, where the second O in the Google logo is – you guessed it – a piece of dung.

Google is also teaming up with Time magazine to celebrate Earth Day, asking users to share their favorite photos on Google+ with the #MyBeautifulEarth hashtag, and Time will be sharing them on their website. You can also view all the entries here.

The theme of this year's Earth Day is "Green Cities," with the goal of rebuilding cities and towns to be more sustainable. First celebrated in 1970, Earth Day is observed every April 22 in more than 190 countries to raise awareness about environmental issues.

Google has a long history of Earth Day doodles, starting back in 2001. The interactive 2013 Earth Day logo let you control the weather, while the 2012 Doodle featured an animation of flowers blooming, and an animal-themed Doodle in 2011 featured a panda, penguin, and other cute creatures.

Here's a look back at all of Google's Earth Day Doodles dating back to 2001:

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

Search Ads Yield 68% More Revenue per Conversion When Integrated With Social

Does an integrated search and social advertising strategy yield superior results to when they're pursued as separate channels? This is a key question Marin Software set out to answer when it conducted research and published findings in a new white paper, "The Multiplier Effect of Integrating Search and Social Advertising."

What the research found was that customers who clicked on both search and social ads were about twice as likely to convert versus those who clicked on a search ad alone.

"The impact of a cross-channel touch was even greater when examining social clicks. Users who clicked on both the search and social ads had a click-through rate approximately four and a half times higher than users who only clicked on social ads," Marin stated in its paper.

According to Marin, customers also spent more when clicking on both search and social ads with two times more revenue per click.

"Multi-channel touch points are even more valuable for social advertising," Marin reported. "Users who clicked on both a search and social ad contributed four times more revenue per click than users who clicked on a social ad only."

And search campaigns that were managed alongside social ad campaigns had 26 percent more revenue per click than search campaigns managed alone. In addition, the integration of ad campaign management for the two channels yielded 68 percent higher revenue per conversion for search campaigns when managed with social advertising, Marin said.

"Successful marketing executives recognize that meeting overall business objectives requires focusing on the customer, not the channel," Marin said in its paper. "For example, a channel-focused approach is mainly concerned with the right keywords, the right targeting settings and the best bids. While a single-channel management focus can have some tactical advantages, it often ignores the strategic goals of the overall marketing effort: acquiring the right customer with the right buying intentions at the right time.

"Marketing is fundamentally about target audience, while the channel is the means of delivering a message to that audience. Successful marketers are beginning to shift focus away from the individual channel and instead use the strengths of each channel to reach their intended audience."

Marin said the results of the research are better understood when we put ourselves in the customer's shoes:

"As customers, we are generally more likely to buy a brand when we believe its message, trust the company and see value in the product. When these purchase criteria are positively reinforced through multiple channels, we are typically more comfortable buying from the brand."

In its white paper, Marin gave several detailed tips on how to manage an integrated advertising campaign online, including:

How to assess the organization's ability for cross-channel capabilities.How to target high-value audiences across search and social.How to measure performance and optimize across channels for audience lifetime value.

For access to the full white paper go here.

A Knowledge Gap Analysis Will Tell You What Web Analytics Can't

Web analytics are like footprints in the sand. They tell you where someone went, but not who they were or why they went that way.

Designers often place too much emphasis on website analytics to determine what changes to make to improve a website's conversion rates.

There's Only So Much You Can Learn From a Footprint

Analytics are a valuable tool to measure the effect of any design changes, but they can't tell you what changes to make.

Website analytics are reactive in that they can only be collected after you publish the changes. Using analytics as a design refinement tool forces a reactive, trial-and-error design and development process that devours time and resources. Rarely does this approach result in any dramatic improvements.

Designers are often satisfied to see a .1 percent lift, not realizing that a more proactive approach routinely produces conversion rate lifts of 2x, 5x, and even 10x.

The implicit fallacy of Web analytics is that the existing website design is somewhat correct and only needs minor refinement. The reality is that most websites are too far off the mark to be corrected with minor changes.

As they say in Maine when you ask for directions, "You can't get there from here." In such cases, Web analytics only help designers polish the brass when they could be mining for gold.

Web analytics provides incremental improvements to an existing site, but have not demonstrated the same "bang for the buck" that UX design strategies have for increasing conversion rates.

Proactive UX design processes raise conversion rates much more than reactions to analytics data that risk optimizing the wrong things by basing everything on past user behavior on poorly designed sites.

Before launching into a long-term polishing project, make sure your design is accurate, meaning that your site does the right things, first.

Knowledge Gap Analysis

One effective method to determine the accuracy of a site's design is to conduct a knowledge gap analysis. This is a straightforward process of identifying the differences between what your user personas suggest your users will actually know at each step of the task and the knowledge required to complete the task correctly.

Utilizing your user personas and task analyses to create a set of "perfect world" task flows, one for each user and task, compare your existing design to each perfect straw man task flow to identify where your design differs from these task flows.

These design gaps are the reason for your site's diminished performance. Bridging these gaps will dramatically improve your conversion rates. Once you've bridged those gaps, you'll see even more value out of your Web analytics and A/B testing efforts.

If there aren't major gaps between the perfect flow and your existing design, then you should question your analysis before simply believing that your design is that accurate. Or put another way, if your design was that accurate, you would already be seeing double-digit conversions.

Like most companies, you probably haven't done a real task analysis yet, and need to start from scratch. That's not really such a bad thing, though.

A task analysis forces you to take that objective step back and analyze your user's tasks from a different, innovative perspective, unfettered by the existing misconceptions of what your site should do. You’ll quickly realize that not only is your site incorrectly designed, but that your competitors are doing the wrong things, also. This is your opportunity to create a more task-oriented user experience that successfully differentiates your site from your competitors.

Knowledge Gap Analysis vs. Competitive Analysis

It should be noted that a knowledge gap analysis differs from a competitive analysis. Instead of comparing your site to competitor sites, you compare it to an idealized perfect task flow.

A competitive analysis produces very different results. The limitation of a competitive analysis is that it assumes the competitors have done it right, which usually is an incorrect assumption. Any analysis of an inaccurate solution will likely only yield another inaccurate design.

The greatest difficulty in performing this task analysis is avoiding the inherent biases of being too familiar with your existing design and creating task flows that simply justify your current site. Remember, your design is inaccurate, so if your analysis says it isn't, then your analysis is equally as inaccurate.

How to Include Knowledge in Your Design

The magical and innovative part of the knowledge gap analysis process is that it not only identifies the gap, but also suggests what knowledge you need to add to your design.

Your task analysis should indicate what knowledge is required by the user to successfully navigate your site and perform necessary functions. Your design must somehow include that knowledge if you can't expect your users to already have that requisite knowledge.

Some common ways to include knowledge in your design are to promote a single best practice approach to completing a task, provide templates, and provide "calculators" to help users more accurately determine what they need.

If there is more than one way to perform a task, avoid relying on the users to know what the right way is.

When an engineer sees 100 users doing the same thing 100 different ways, they think that they need to design an interface flexible enough to allow anyone to perform the task any way they want.

When a UX designers sees 100 users doing the same thing 100 different ways, they realize that no one knows how to do it the right way and they need an interface that guides them down a single, best practices path.

While conventional thinking might suggest a flexible interface, a single path interface will likely be much more successful.

Provide Templates or Calculators

If the user’s task involves creating something, avoid forcing them to create something from scratch. Give them reasonable templates that they can modify to suit their needs.

It's far easier to recognize that a template needs changing than it is to create the correct product from scratch. A template will likely contain elements that many users had not thought of until they saw them in the template. FedEx Office Print Online provides templates that users start with and then walks the users through the potential changes, eventually arriving a just the right result.

"Calculator" is more of a metaphor than an actual calculator. For instance, an insurance site might ask users a few questions to determine what insurance needs that user might have.

Does the user have kids? Are the kids active in various sports? Are they nearing graduation?

These questions determine what type and amounts of insurance a homeowner might need and how those needs could change over time.

If you’ve ever had to change your insurance policy, you’ll recall that insurance companies each offer different policies and options that can be quite confusing to the average consumer. Given the complexities of insurance policies, relying on the user to assimilate and understand all of these complexities in order to choose the right options places an inordinate reliance on user knowledge.

Since we know that individual user knowledge is highly variable, any design that relies on that highly variable user knowledge can only achieve an equally variable level of successful. A calculator reduces the dependency on individual user knowledge and increases user engagement, which increases conversions.

Summary

Conducting a knowledge gap analysis should be your first step in finding ways to increase your conversions. Once you've corrected your site design, your Web analytics will provide more accurate insight into what incremental changes you could make to refine your conversion success.

Don't be afraid if your site looks and acts differently than the competitor sites. It should. If it doesn't, then either they have done a knowledge gap analysis and you are just now catching up, or you've done something wrong and are vulnerable to someone else doing a knowledge gap analysis and leaving you behind. In either case, you can't afford not to do it.

New processes and tools are evolving everyday in the fast-paced world of e-commerce and this is one tool you should definitely add to your website analysis toolkit.

Rank Still Matters in the Age of Secure Search

The days of judging SEO success purely based on rank are long gone.

Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird, the Knowledge Graph, Google Carousel, and most recently secure search mean that there is no longer a linear path to achieving rank, nor is there only one rank metric.

Rank is a fluid, multi-dimensional metric, and it still has everything to do with your business.

In one fell swoop last fall, Google changed everything with the removal of keyword data, and the other search engines followed suit earlier this year. Two former metrics of SEO success are difficult to measure: traffic from keyword data and accurate rank. This calls for a new approach to SEO, outlined in the Secure Search Manifesto.

In order to find out what’s on the mind of search marketers as they looked ahead to 2014, at the beginning of the year my company sent a survey to 20,000 SEO professionals across 8,400 brands.

Focus on the Page/Content Based Approach to SEO

The page/content based approach to SEO is important for 100 percent of SEO professionals – and 85 percent said it would be more or much more important for them in 2014 compared to 2013.

But what specifically about the page-based approach to SEO is going to be important for marketers in 2014?

84 percent said that understanding the business impact of the page or content in terms of actual traffic, conversions and revenue would be more important. SEO success goes far beyond traffic – it affects the bottom line.78 percent said that they would place more or much more important on understanding content performance at the individual page level as well as the page group level. Smart marketers know that they must align their page/content groupings with how their business is structured in order to get a real measure of business impact.67 percent said that understanding content performance across search engines geographies, and devices would be more important for them in 2014.The fact that a minority (49 percent) of marketers surveyed said that assessing the impact of keywords by attributing revenue, conversions, and traffic suggests that SEO professionals are increasingly adopting the page-based approach and moving away from the focus on the keyword.

The Basics of SEO and Rank

With an increasing number of ranking variables, what’s on the minds of marketers when they think about rank?

71 percent said understanding the correlations between social sharing and rank will be more or much more important in 2014. This is where the cross-functional role of the SEO comes into play: SEO professionals must increasingly bridge the gap between departments to drive business success.57 percent said measuring rank on Universal Search results such as video, image, site links will be more or much important in 2014. As Google expands its results options and issues continual updates to the Knowledge Graph, SEO professionals need to be ever-more vigilant as to how these changes affect their business.The majority of SEO professionals are satisfied with their efforts at accessing accurate rank data and identifying anomalies and explaining the root cause of those anomalies. There is only so much time in the day, and not every measurement metrics can be "more important" for everyone!44 percent of respondents stated that Google Carousel results were displayed on keywords in their industry. Of those with Carousel Results, 72 percent said that measuring rank on those results would be more important for them in 2014. Carousel, while great for the user experience, adds more complexity to optimization and measurement.

Rank Is More Complex

We all know that rank is no longer a list of 10 blue links, page after page. Rank differs across devices, locations. One result can have multiple links, links can be served in a pack, or they can appear as images on the above-mentioned Carousel.

Which ranking variables are brands most concerned about as they head into 2014?

85 percent said measuring rank across mobile devices such as tablets as smartphones would be more or much more important in 2014. This is not surprising, as traffic from mobile devices approaches one-third of all Web traffic.53 percent of brands said that measuring rank across local markets would be more important for them in 2014. This number likely varies as the business impact of location-based search varies by business type.The majority of brands said measuring rank across global markets and multiple search engines would be as important in 2014 as 2013, suggesting that they have a good handle on how to measure those ranking variables based on their business.

Rank and Its Business Impact

Rank is solely a vanity metric unless it can be translates to business results. That’s why measuring success at the page/content level is so important.

But marketers must also factor in how rank is affecting page performance, and always conduct their work with an eye toward improving rank, no matter what the geography, device, or SERP looks like.

Click curves can help provide a better understanding of how rank affects performance, and data from Google Webmaster Tools can also help gauge the effect of rank. Fragmentation on the user end means also means fragmentation of data sources, and it’s important to work with vendors who can integrate data from multiple sources for actionable metrics.

Conclusion

Rank is about the user experience: Are your results delivering users what they want, and is your content successful at converting them? An unrelenting focus on rank metrics can blind us to other obvious signals beyond rank.

Do the keywords, tags, and rich snippets accurately represent the content? Does the content fulfill its stated purpose?

If rank is the doorway to success in SEO, conversion is the ultimate success. The more we can use rank metrics to inform our conversion efforts, the more successful we will be.

Bing in the Classroom Now Open to All U.S. Schools

Bing has announced that their Bing in the Classroom program is now open to all kindergarten to 12th grade U.S. schools. Bing for Schools search, which incorporates both safe search and an ad free search environment, has been tested in a pilot project since the start of the school year, with more than 5,000 schools and 4.5 million children.

Bing for Schools was first announced in June 2013, and was followed in August with a Scroogled campaign targeting the fact that Google shows ads in their search results while Bing's new school search would not. Bing also states they add filters to prevent adult content.

"We created Bing in the Classroom because we believe students deserve a search environment tailored for learning. Classrooms should be ad-free, and that should be as true online as it is offline," said Matt Wallaert, creator of Bing in the Classroom, Microsoft.

Bing for Schools requires registration by the school, so users who just want an ad-free version of Bing can't use it for home use. However, students using Bing for Schools can earn credits with the Bing Rewards program for new Surface tablets for their school.

Bing will also have daily lesson plans based on the image used each day on the Bing homepage. They want to incorporate these images into the classroom. Bing has a Microsoft Educator Network available, where previous images used on the homepage will have lesson plans.

While Bing won't be earning revenue specifically from ads, since ads are disabled, what they are hoping for is that children who are using Bing in school will start using Bing at home – where they will see advertisements – as well as on their smartphones. After all, these are the next generation of searchers who will buy things through search engine ads.

Bing states that they are the only major search engine that provides a safe ad-free search for students. There have been many fake Google "safe search for kids" websites set up, many running through the AdSense program to generate revenue from ads, and many of which are used in schools as their default search engine. But Google has never done one specifically for schools before.

Can Bing Predict Reality Show Winners?

Right now, Bing is gathering and processing search and social signals to attempt to predict outcomes of events, like which contestants will be eliminated or move onto the next round in shows like The Voice, American Idol, and Dancing With the Stars. 

"One of the most interesting aspects of search engines is their ability to process trillions of signals to reflect what is happening in the real world," Bing said in its announcement.

The way it works, said Bing, is that winners and losers are predicted based on popularity defined by the frequency and sentiment of searches combined with social signals and keywords. "Placing these signals into our model, we can predict the outcome of an event with high confidence," Bing stated.

In addition, the predictive modeling takes into account regional preferences, and factors like previous popularity of a contestant combined with his or her performance contribution. 

"Although we might believe that the outcome of this week’s The Voice comes down to how well someone belts out a tune, our data indicates that many people have 'favorites' regardless of individual week-to-week performances," Bing said.

Here's how you can try it:

Search on Bing for a contestant or a show like The Voice, for example. Bing will display a carousel of results that estimates who is on top. Here's a sample query. 

And Bing isn't the only search engine getting intimately involved with popular reality entertainment. Not too long ago, Google announced it would allow people to vote for contestants on American Idol right in the search results. 

Bing said more predictions would be coming soon for sports, most popular vacation destinations, concert ticket prices, and more.

Matt Cutts on How Google Handles 404 & 410 Status Codes

If you're into super technical details regarding Google's Web crawling and how they interact with different status codes, you'll probably be interested in the new webmaster help video regarding the differences between how Google handles 404 and 410 status codes. While technically they both mean "page not found," Matt Cutts talks about the nuances of each and how Googlebot treats each slightly differently.

For those who aren't too technically savvy, Cutts first explains what the difference is between a 404 and a 410, because most webmasters are far more familiar with the 404 status code.

"So 404 vs. 410 refers to an HTTP status code, so whenever the browser or Googlebot asks for page, the Web server sends back a status code – 200 might mean everything went totally fine, 404 means page not found, 410 typically means gone, as in the page is not found and we do not expect it to come back," Cutts said. "So 410 has a little more of connotation that the page is permanently gone."

That said, does Googlebot interact any differently when they encounter a 410?

"The short answer is that we do sometimes treat for 404s and 410s a little bit differently, but for the most part you shouldn't worry about it," Cutts said. "If a page is gone and you think it's temporary, go ahead and use a 404. If the page is gone and you know no other page that should substitute for it, you don't have anywhere else that you should point to, and you know that that page is going to be gone never come back, then go ahead and serve a 410."

On the positive side, Googlebot does have some redundancies built in, for when a webmaster or IT department makes a mistake in how they status codes.

"It turns out webmasters shoot themselves in the foot pretty often – pages go missing, people misconfigure sites, sites go down, people block Googlebot by accident, people block regular users by accident – so if you look at the entire Web, the crawl team has to design to be robust against that," Cutts said. "So with 404s, along with I think 401s and maybe 403s, if we see a page and we get a 404, we are gonna protect that page for 24 hours in the crawling system, so we sort of wait and we say maybe that was a transient 404, maybe it really wasn't intended to be a page not found."

"If we see a 410, then the site crawling system says, OK we assume the webmasters knows what they're doing because they went off the beaten path to deliberately say this page is gone," he said. "So they immediately convert that 410 to an error, rather than protecting it for 24 hours.

So when you do serve a 410 status code on a page that really isn't gone permanently, you haven't killed that page off permanently. Googlebot will return the check and see if the page needs to be returned to the index.

"Now don't take this too much the wrong way, we'll still go back and recheck and make sure are those pages really gone, or maybe the pages have come back alive again," Cutts said. "And I wouldn't rely on the assumption that that behavior will always be exactly the same.

"In general, sometimes webmasters get a little too caught up in the tiny little details and so if the page is gone, it's fine to serve a 404, if you know it's gone for real it's fine to serve a 410," he said. "But we'll design our crawling system to try and be robust so that if your site goes down, or if you get hacked, or whatever that we try to make sure that we can still find the good content whenever it's available."

So this is one of those things where it's a tiny little detail that webmasters probably shouldn't be overly concerned about. They are treated nearly identically, but if in doubt, the more common 404 route is probably the best way to go.

Bing Supports Today’s Boston Marathon By Spotlighting Runners On Its Homepage

Bing made an unconventional move today and changed its homepage image midday, switching from its initial image of Boston’s Bunker Hill Bridge to a photo of Boston Marathon runners with fans cheering them on, and two BostonStrong flags waving in the foreground.

To start the day, Bing tweeted the following picture of its homepage:

Beyond this bridge is TD Garden, home of the @NHLBruins and the @Celtics. http://t.co/Tp49Png2n0 pic.twitter.com/sS4STPvJaU

� Bing (@bing) April 21, 2014

 

Later in the day, Bing announced it had changed its homepage image with the following tweet:

We don’t usually change the homepage in the middle of the day, but today we couldn’t resist. http://t.co/Tp49Png2n0 pic.twitter.com/105EPg6rAc

� Bing (@bing) April 21, 2014

The image honoring the Boston Marathon and runners included links to race-related searches highlighting today’s winners of the men’s title and the wheelchair division, as well as a links to Boston’s connection to Patriot Day, and Boston Marathon history.

Postscript: This story was updated to include Bing’s first homepage image for the day.

What Type of Content Should You Create: Long or Short?

For a long time the Holy Grail of blogging was the 500-word blog post. It was the winning formula. It worked every time. Until it didn't.

Then in August 2013, Google updated their algorithm for showing search results for in-depth articles. Google explained this by saying that "up to 10% of users' daily information needs involve learning about a broad topic." And so we saw an influx of brands publishing upward of 2,000 words per post!

So, going forward, which form of content should you focus your content creation energy on: short or long, or perhaps a mix? If you go for a mix, then at what ratio? Let's look at some factors you need to consider that will help you make this decision.

A caveat before we proceed: I think we can all agree that content length for the sake of length is not just a dumb strategy, but it will backfire all of the advantages discussed below. So we'll continue this analysis with the hypothesis that all content being created, whether long or short, meets quality criteria (i.e., it is valuable, helpful, entertaining, etc.).

Long-Form Content

Long-form content is described as content that is typically 2,000 words in length or thereabouts and makes for a compelling, insightful read. Examples of long-form content include whitepapers, e-books, guides, resources, videos, and webinars.

Pros:

Google has a dedicated ranking mechanism for long articles.Keeps audience on site longer, increases engagement.Supports evergreen, foundational content.Presents a broader, deeper view on the topic.Caters to a deeply invested audience.Provides quality backlinks.Establishes credibility and thought-leadership.

Cons:

People don't always have time to read.Short attention spans.Typically less shareable.Probably won't go viral.Length itself doesn't guarantee higher ranking.

Here's what experts in the long-form content camp have to say about its value:

Short-Form Content

According to Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, "The average post on WordPress is 280 words long, and that's remained 'relatively constant' over the past few years." Examples of short-form content include blog posts that are less than 1,000 words, list posts, Vine videos, and infographics.

Pros:

People scan online, rather than read.Lends itself to being shared.Mobile-friendly.Attract more eyeballs.Potential to go viral.Fun!

Cons:

Spouts me-too content.People have become blind to formulaic posts.Can't go in-depth into topic.Too shallow.May not provide enough info about topic.

People in the short-form content camp include Mark Schaefer and Jakob Nielsen.

Long vs. Short Content: Which Should You Create More of?

So, which form of content should you be focused on creating? Common sense would dictate that you produce both types of content because both serve a different need. But how you decide what ratio they should be in? How much long-form and how much short content should you be producing?

It really depends on six questions:

1. What Stage of Business Are You At?

Early-stage start-ups may not have the resources or time required to produce long-form content. They would be looking to gain traction sooner rather than later and so might prefer shorter stories that would be more likely to be shared.

Conversely, a business that's an industry heavyweight would have both the expertise and the resources to produce foundation-building evergreen long-form content.

2. What's Your Personality & Style?

Seth Godin produces blog posts in small spurts. That's his style. Is that your style? Does that suit your business's tone and voice?

Your decision to go long or short will also depend on what matches the style that is most authentic to your personality. You will attract an audience who loves you for your style and personality, rather than the other way around of building a style to support an audience you feel you should be catering to. I'm a big believer in being authentic because anything else is not a sustainable strategy.

3. What's the Goal of Your Content?

Your answer may be different if your goal is to be a NY Times best-selling author versus becoming your industry's go-to news guy. What are the goals you wish to achieve with your content: engagement, discussion, industry status, shareability, traffic, search rankings, or more?

It's OK for goals to evolve and change with time as your business grows. Develop content according to the goals it can achieve today.

4. What Platform Will It Be Consumed On?

It's a no-brainer to remember that people prefer consuming short-form content on their mobiles while they are on-the-go.

Tablets are traditionally used to read e-books and watch movies since we're comfortable with holding the lightweight devices in our hands for a longer time.

Desktops and laptops can potentially be used to consume both short-form (Twitter Web) and long-form (downloadable guides) content.

5. Who's the End Consumer?

Who's your audience: people bored on the Internet looking for something funny or industry professionals? The length of your content and therefore, its appeal, would depend on what kind of material your customer most prefers.

6. What Are the Topic's Requirements?

What does the topic itself require? For example, if you're tackling an ultimate guide that would naturally demand long-form content versus if you're writing about celebrity gossip.

Although for some businesses it makes sense to produce only long-form or only short-form content, for most of us, it makes sense to choose both.

So what should the ratio be? Some businesses might be more suited to producing more of long-form than short, while others may benefit from shorter bite-sized nuggets.

Summary

Look at the table below and decide for yourself how these six fields may influence your content length decision:

These are rough guidelines, but you can use them as a starting point when deciding which type of content to produce. Ultimately, though, whichever form of content you create, it must meet your current goals.

What Type of Content Should You Create: Long or Short?

For a long time the Holy Grail of blogging was the 500-word blog post. It was the winning formula. It worked every time. Until it didn't.

Then in August 2013, Google updated their algorithm for showing search results for in-depth articles. Google explained this by saying that "up to 10% of users' daily information needs involve learning about a broad topic." And so we saw an influx of brands publishing upward of 2,000 words per post!

So, going forward, which form of content should you focus your content creation energy on: short or long, or perhaps a mix? If you go for a mix, then at what ratio? Let's look at some factors you need to consider that will help you make this decision.

A caveat before we proceed: I think we can all agree that content length for the sake of length is not just a dumb strategy, but it will backfire all of the advantages discussed below. So we'll continue this analysis with the hypothesis that all content being created, whether long or short, meets quality criteria (i.e., it is valuable, helpful, entertaining, etc.).

Long-Form Content

Long-form content is described as content that is typically 2,000 words in length or thereabouts and makes for a compelling, insightful read. Examples of long-form content include whitepapers, e-books, guides, resources, videos, and webinars.

Pros:

Google has a dedicated ranking mechanism for long articles.Keeps audience on site longer, increases engagement.Supports evergreen, foundational content.Presents a broader, deeper view on the topic.Caters to a deeply invested audience.Provides quality backlinks.Establishes credibility and thought-leadership.

Cons:

People don't always have time to read.Short attention spans.Typically less shareable.Probably won't go viral.Length itself doesn't guarantee higher ranking.

Here's what experts in the long-form content camp have to say about its value:

Short-Form Content

According to Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, "The average post on WordPress is 280 words long, and that's remained 'relatively constant' over the past few years." Examples of short-form content include blog posts that are less than 1,000 words, list posts, Vine videos, and infographics.

Pros:

People scan online, rather than read.Lends itself to being shared.Mobile-friendly.Attract more eyeballs.Potential to go viral.Fun!

Cons:

Spouts me-too content.People have become blind to formulaic posts.Can't go in-depth into topic.Too shallow.May not provide enough info about topic.

People in the short-form content camp include Mark Schaefer and Jakob Nielsen.

Long vs. Short Content: Which Should You Create More of?

So, which form of content should you be focused on creating? Common sense would dictate that you produce both types of content because both serve a different need. But how you decide what ratio they should be in? How much long-form and how much short content should you be producing?

It really depends on six questions:

1. What Stage of Business Are You At?

Early-stage start-ups may not have the resources or time required to produce long-form content. They would be looking to gain traction sooner rather than later and so might prefer shorter stories that would be more likely to be shared.

Conversely, a business that's an industry heavyweight would have both the expertise and the resources to produce foundation-building evergreen long-form content.

2. What's Your Personality & Style?

Seth Godin produces blog posts in small spurts. That's his style. Is that your style? Does that suit your business's tone and voice?

Your decision to go long or short will also depend on what matches the style that is most authentic to your personality. You will attract an audience who loves you for your style and personality, rather than the other way around of building a style to support an audience you feel you should be catering to. I'm a big believer in being authentic because anything else is not a sustainable strategy.

3. What's the Goal of Your Content?

Your answer may be different if your goal is to be a NY Times best-selling author versus becoming your industry's go-to news guy. What are the goals you wish to achieve with your content: engagement, discussion, industry status, shareability, traffic, search rankings, or more?

It's OK for goals to evolve and change with time as your business grows. Develop content according to the goals it can achieve today.

4. What Platform Will It Be Consumed On?

It's a no-brainer to remember that people prefer consuming short-form content on their mobiles while they are on-the-go.

Tablets are traditionally used to read e-books and watch movies since we're comfortable with holding the lightweight devices in our hands for a longer time.

Desktops and laptops can potentially be used to consume both short-form (Twitter Web) and long-form (downloadable guides) content.

5. Who's the End Consumer?

Who's your audience: people bored on the Internet looking for something funny or industry professionals? The length of your content and therefore, its appeal, would depend on what kind of material your customer most prefers.

6. What Are the Topic's Requirements?

What does the topic itself require? For example, if you're tackling an ultimate guide that would naturally demand long-form content versus if you're writing about celebrity gossip.

Although for some businesses it makes sense to produce only long-form or only short-form content, for most of us, it makes sense to choose both.

So what should the ratio be? Some businesses might be more suited to producing more of long-form than short, while others may benefit from shorter bite-sized nuggets.

Summary

Look at the table below and decide for yourself how these six fields may influence your content length decision:

These are rough guidelines, but you can use them as a starting point when deciding which type of content to produce. Ultimately, though, whichever form of content you create, it must meet your current goals.

PostJoint Google Penalty Fallout Continues

PostJoint has reconfirmed their penalty in Google. PostJoint's penalty was for unnatural inbound links, which seems to be Google's stock penalty for blog networks. It was not a new business model violations penalty, as has been reported elsewhere.

There has been lots of discussion that the network actually received a new penalty called a "business model violations” penalty, but this isn't true. PostJoint made a mock-up of a fake Google Webmaster Central warning, however it wasn't really clear to some people that it was a fake warning, especially considering how often people quickly scan articles.

It's now known that PostJoint bloggers have been penalized for participating in this guest blog network. Despite the company's assurances that there were "no footprints" that Google could possibly find and target, some bloggers received a penalty, and have also been inundated with link removal and nofollow requests by those who "bought” links.

PostJoint initially claimed only 16 percent of their network had been hit with a penalty, based upon PageRank only, but they have since removed this statement. However, they confirmed via Twitter when someone asked about how they determined that only 16 percent was hit.

@darrensheffield we looked at sites that lost PR on our system and majority of them are fine.

— PostJoint (@PostJoint) April 20, 2014

But since this was removed on the blog post, it's very likely that they've since learned the penalty is significantly higher across the network.

Another user posted a comment that eight of their sites were penalized, yet the ones using guest blog posts that weren't through PostJoint were fine. He also explained that all advertisers can see the URLs within their network, so it would be easy for a disgruntled advertiser to report the entire network, complete with URLs, to Google.

They do have instructions for any of their users who been penalized, including some interesting instructions for their bloggers. They asked that the bloggers notify the marketers via their messaging system when they nofollow any links. But they are asking people to nofollow the links, rather than removing them outright.

Title Tags & SEO: 3 Golden Rules

It used to be conventional wisdom that title tags should be between 65 and 70 characters in length. Early this year Google began experimenting with a new search layout design that reduces the number of characters shown to lengths between 48 and 62 characters.

The title tag remains an important part of SEO for one basic reason – it is the overall label for the content of a page, and because the number of characters is limited there isn’t much room to do that much with it.

Here are three golden rules of title tags.

Rule 1: Have One Distinct Page for Each Major User Need You Address

This is one of the most common mistakes that people make with their sites. Interested visitors to their site have many different types of needs and ways of thinking about their needs that relate to your product or service. For that reason, it is useful to create pages that address each of those major needs.

Ideally, there are many stages in this process, such as getting your key team members together and brainstorming, polling users on their needs, studying competitive sites, and then supplementing that with keyword research. To simplify things for purposes of this column, let's explore this with an example using keyword research for a resume writing business.

To do this I pulled a keyword report from Wordtracker, and after some examination I noticed some patterns. Here are a few keywords that I pulled out of the top 75 keywords:

What you notice is three types of categories of keywords:

Global: Keywords that define the whole space.Regional: For people looking for local help.Profession specific: Keywords related to the profession of the searcher

These all represent opportunities to address specific prospective customer needs. Of course, you should only create specific pages if you fulfill the need. Don't go creating a bunch of location pages if you're an online service.

You also want to group these things logically. You don't want to create a page for every single variant of the search terms that you come across (more on that in the next rule).

Rule 2: Don't Overdo the Granularity

There are clear limits for how granular you should get. To illustrate the point, let's look more closely at the keyword data. In this chart I show all of the top variants of "global" terms that data returned to me by Wordtracker:

There are 23 terms show in this table, but in my original table I ignored all but four of them. I don't want separate pages for "resume writing services", "resume writing", "resume writing service", and "good resume writing". Creating all these different pages would offer a really poor user experience, and is also begging for Google's Panda algorithm to wreak havoc on your site.

I refer to the practice of creating all these pages with insignificant differences "thin slicing", and it is very important that you avoid doing it!

Rule 3: Don't Reuse Title Tags

When we run our crawler on a client's website, one of the most common problems we see is that many pages use the same title tag. This isn't a good thing.

Even if the page is different, it is still essentially duplicate content. The title tag is the title for the page! This is why Google and Bing place major weight on this in determining the relevancy of a page.

You may find cases where you have trouble coming up with different title tags. If you can't define a distinct title tag for a web page, then why does that page exist?

You may be falling into thin slicing at this point, or you may have some other architecture problems where you are unnecessarily duplicating pages. This is one of the easiest things to detect in an SEO audit, and a really good thing to fix.

Summary

There are many other considerations in on page SEO, and in your site's information architecture, but title tags remain an important part of SEO, and are well worth some attention. You can use these three golden rules to give you some quick guidance on what to do with them, and for recognizing problems.