Google quietly reported on Google+ that you can now erase the properties of Google Analytics from inside your analytic's account.

Google said in the past this was not permitted in view of the way the records, properties and profiles were related. Presently, Google said "we're eager to bring this extra adaptability and consistency to our clients, which is the first in an arrangement of enhancements to overseeing erasures in Google Analytics."

Steps To delete a property are mentioned below via image :

Link Source : Seroundtable

Google's Authorship program has been a bit of a bazaar of late. In the first place, creator photographs were dropped from indexed lists and now this: it appears to be as if creator details have turned up lost from Google Webmaster Tools (GWT).

Author's details used to be accessible in GWT under the "Labs" area – however that is no more there.

Source Link :- Search Engine Land

A week ago, Google made new hunt waves when it took off upgrades to its nearby inquiry calculation.

The "Pigeon" update means to convey enhanced neighborhood list items, with updated area positioning parameters.

As indicated by Google, the new neighborhood look calculation ties deeper into the website's web seek capacities, leveraging many positioning signs, alongside inquiry peculiarities like spelling adjustment abilities, equivalent words and Google's information diagram.

Source Link :- Search Engine Land

Back in February, distributed articles on Linkedin was the interesting issue. Linkedin had at long last opened up their distributed stage to all clients, which would help them showcase content and enhance their validity. Sadly, a lot of people are even now having some difficulty making this alternative truly work and getting that perceivability that each article needs to flourish. 

Linkedin is an incredible spot to distribute articles, it simply isn't an extraordinary spot to distribute any old article you have lying around. You ought to have a method and consider what sorts of substance work best for Linkedin on the off chance that you truly need to discover achievement.

Read More : Search Engine Watch

Fifteen years ago, I got a beautiful bound journal. I remember the month and year because the first entry in that journal is dated September 21, 1999.

My intention was to journal every day – I've heard from many successful people that the journaling habit is a crucial part of their success formula.

My second and third entries were also from that month. The fourth entry was made in August 2001, and looks like a page of notes from a prospecting meeting. The fifth entry is from 2009.

Clearly my plans for daily journaling had not panned out.

Then, on January 27, 2014, I picked up the journal and decided to get serious this time. Since then, I've written at least a page a day with only four exceptions.

I used a simple trick to turn a source of frustration and shame into a pretty bulletproof habit. And once you understand it, that same trick can be deployed on your website to get more visitors to convert into leads.

Tiny Habits

BJ Fogg, PhD, has developed a system of habit formation called "Tiny Habits." It's kind of the opposite of the New Year's Resolution.

Instead of making a giant, hard change (like suddenly going to the gym three times a week or giving up cigarettes or yes, writing a page a day in a journal), you implement a tiny habit by identifying the ultimate desired behavior and making the very smallest step in that direction that you can possibly make.

Fogg's flagship example is flossing. He notes that people find starting to floss hard. It can hurt, our gums can bleed, it takes a couple of minutes, the floss can get stuck between our teeth, and so on.

Rather than try to increase our motivation for an unpleasant and difficult behavior, Fogg suggests simply making the behavior much easier.

So instead of flossing, here's his formula for a tiny habit: floss one tooth.

Write One Sentence

My new journaling strategy: Every day I wake up and write one sentence in my journal. There's no quality assurance either: I'm fine with, "Here is my one sentence for today."

And here's what happened: I wrote one sentence.

And since I had already opened the journal and uncapped the pen, I wrote a second one. And a paragraph. And a page. It was really helpful to see my thoughts unfold, my insights come out.

Next day, one sentence. And then the rest of the page.

And so it goes. Each day, I write a single sentence. Sometimes that is all I write, if I'm in a rush or not in the mood. But most of the time I write a page or two.

Should We Focus on Motivation or Ease?

Fogg developed "Tiny Habits" after seeing the implications of his behavior model: that behaviors occur given sufficient motivation, ability, and a trigger occurring simultaneously. The harder the behavior, the higher the motivation required. The easier the behavior, the less motivation.

We search marketers spend so much time analyzing our markets, sleuthing our prospects' fears and desires, and honing our copy, that we naturally default to amping up motivation.

The art of copywriting is all about motivating people to action. Features and benefits, social proof, psychological triggers, urgency, scarcity, and the whole toolkit are there to make our prospects want it more.

But search marketing, although a descendant of the old sales letters that tried to sell anything and everything through the mail to the uninterested masses, is actually a very different beast.

Search marketing is driven by desire. I search for "healthy meal delivery" because I already want vegan meals delivered to my home. Yet the ads and websites triggered by my search are spending most of their real estate on convincing me that I want their product.

For example, BistroMD.com has gorgeous food photos and lots of copy about how much weight I can lose easily and deliciously. But their primary call to action is to order a week's worth of food for $159.95.

I don't care how easy it is to receive, store, reheat, and eat their food. Spending $159.95 is hard for most of us when we don't know if it's a good idea.

Inviting Your Website Visitor to Develop a Tiny Habit

Instead of motivating your prospect to do something hard, why not work the other part of the equation: ability?

BistroMD.com could offer a days' worth of food as the first call to action. Cheaper, simpler, less risky. And that one day, if pleasing to the prospect, can easily be converted into a larger habit, just as my single-sentence journaling easily grew to its natural size. Writing wasn't the hard part; starting was.

And with many of our products and services, once folks get a taste, and develop a tiny habit, they'll increase their order size and frequency to its natural dimensions as well.

So next time you try to increase your conversion rate, try this: make one thing easier for your prospect. You may find that approach becomes a habit.

Source Link:-  Search Engine Watch

There isn't an SEO in existence that doesn't love crawling a site. There's something undeniably powerful in clicking a button and having all-important SEO elements brought to you. Makes the job easier.

What's hard is quantifying and prioritizing that crawl data, then applying it to the site in a way that makes sense to the client.

What follows is a workflow idea that begins not just with a site crawl, but with what most clients already know intimately, types of pages on their site. Focusing on benchmarking non-ranking URLs by page type, we'll use Google site search to help provide an actionable starting point and describe how crawling isn't necessarily the best first step when auditing a site.

Non-Ranking URL Page Type Workflow

We're all familiar with identifying page types, benchmarking, then tracking over time the URLs we want to see in search results. How about applying that same concept to URLs we don't want to see in search results? For the purpose of describing the image below, ranking URLs are what we want in search results versus non-ranking.

Consider the typical technical workflow:

• Crawl site for SEO elements and improvements.
• Try to quantify the scale (apply to page types) of the issue or provide a couple examples.
• Insert findings into client deliverable organized by common SEO issues.

With the typical technical workflow the site crawl is limited to internal linking, which means some URLs may not be found. Identifying scale and which page types the crawl findings apply to, are done secondarily. Finally, these findings are organized with a client deliverable structure that is unfamiliar to non-SEOs.

Now consider the page type workflow:

• Identifying and create comprehensive page type lists.
• Crawl lists for SEO elements and improvements.
• Insert into client deliverable organized by areas of the site the client is familiar with.

By first identifying and crawling comprehensive page type lists, scale is immediately apparent (number of paginated pages for example), existing SEO elements have been identified and benchmarked, a recommendation is given, and everything falls under the umbrella of an area of the site any client can easily understand.

Using Site Search to Identify Non-Ranking Page Types

There are many ways to begin identifying all page types on a site, but probably the easier, most widely accessible way is the ol' trusty Google site search. This is less comprehensive than using analytics (non-organic content views work great), but provides valuable indexation metrics along the way.

Costco Sort URLs Example

Quickly clicking through the Costco site, it's obvious that they use the sortBy parameter to invoke the sorting functionality for product category pages.

http://www.costco.com/auto-tires.html?langId=-1&storeId=10301&catalogId=10701&refine=213503%2B60&identifier=auto-tires&categoryId=213503&sortBy=PriceMin%7C0

A quick site search shows just more than 8,500 URLs in Google index.

Using the Page Type workflow we've identified a page type, since we're using site search we know they're indexed, and changing search settings to show 100 results and using an SEO browser extension like SEOQuake results can be exported 100 at a time.

This list can then be run through an SEO Crawler, identifying the SEO elements on the pages and whether they have any directives or annotations. Based on these findings a recommendation can be created and finally inserted into the deliverable under the more or less client friendly section entitled sort URLs or URLs Generated by Sorting.

Google Drive Subdomain Example

Rather than identify page types by clicking manually through the site, we can use advanced site search to identify non-ranking URL page types.

Take a look at what might be considered the longest advanced Google search ever:

site:google.com/drive/ -site:docs.google.com -site:picasaweb.google.com -site:developers.google.com -site:support.google.com -site:documents.google.com -site:drive.google.com -inurl:ad_s

This also contains keys to what Google may need to clean up from an SEO standpoint for their Google Drive pages.

For this example we started by using the structure of the pages to be optimized.

site:google.com/drive/

Next, we removed subdomains by adding a minus sign. These may all need to be cleaned up or leveraged for Google Drive landing pages.

-site:docs.google.com -site:picasaweb.google.com -site:developers.google.com -site:support.google.com -site:documents.google.com -site:drive.google.com

URL with Tracking Parameter:

-inurl:ad_s

Each of these can be separately searched using similar advanced operator techniques to get an estimate on how many pages Google has indexed as a benchmarked, then checked again after the recommendation has been implemented to see track the effect. For example ideally drive.google.com requires sign in to access content, but Google has almost one million unique URLs for the subdomain. Perhaps a good recommendation would be they remove this subdomain from indices and can refer back to this advanced search as a benchmark.

Source Link:-  Search Engine Watch

In the early 2000s, search engine marketing (SEM) was originally defined as the umbrella under which both paid and organic search would fall. This made perfect sense, as marketing naturally incorporates a wide array of tactics, including advertising.

Over the years, however, the term "search engine marketing" has come to mean different things, depending on who you ask.

When an industry can't come to common consensus about what a high-profile term really means, how can the business and brands shopping for, purchasing, and relying upon the performance of, these services possibly make informed decisions?

Why is There No Consensus on the Definition of SEM?

The definition of SEM is surprisingly different, even contradictory according to the search engines, within the industry, and throughout the business marketplace.

Soon after the term SEM came onto the digital scene, it became synonymous with paid search, at least to some authorities and many professionals working in the industry.

An entire industry has been built under the context of SEM as the practice of paid search. Yet, to others, SEM is still defined as a broader topic, incorporating SEO, paid search, and other techniques to impact search engine visibility.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia definition of SEM a comprehensive approach to increasing visibility of websites in search engine results pages (SERPs) through optimization and advertising, including search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), and even includes SMM (social media marketing).

SEMPO

SEMPO defines SEM as:

A form of internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs). SEM methods include: search engine optimization (SEO), paid placement, contextual advertising, digital asset optimization, and paid inclusion.

Search Engine Watch

Search Engine Watch defines SEM as both paid and organic search. However, SEM posts, training, and ads are frequently related to paid search.

Search Engine Land

There are two posts on Search Engine Land that define SEM slightly differently.

It's unclear which was posted first. However the first post defines "search marketing" as paid and unpaid.

The second post, however, defines the acronym SEM, short for "search engine marketing" as being paid search. It does reference the legacy of SEM as paid and unpaid, stating that the acronym has been adopted by many to refer solely as paid search. They reinforce the separation in site navigation, presenting advertising topics only under SEM.

CIO

CIO.com recognizes SEM as a combination of paid advertising, search engine optimized design, marketing copy, involvement with the online community, and keywords.

The inability of the industry to come to terms on a definitive understanding of what SEM really is has drawn unsuspecting victims into thinking they are getting something they are not.

Let's be honest. SEM services rarely incorporate SEO. In the wake of Google algorithm updates, Penguin, Panda and Hummingbird, many have shifted from offering SEO services to focus on paid search via search engine marketing services.

How Do the Search Engines Define SEM?

Bing

Bing appears to view SEM as paid search as demonstrated on the landing page below, where "search marketing" links directly to a page to get users started on Bing Ads.

However, Bing Webmaster Archive offers the following answer to the question "What is SEM?"

SEM encompasses all of the various ways site owners can use search engines to attract more traffic to their websites. SEM is all about helping users of search engines find your website. SEM is comprised of two major parts: SEO and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising.

Google

In a "Learn with Google" online vocabulary reference Google defines SEM as:

The use of online advertising on search engine results pages to help visitors find your website. SEM often uses pay-per-click (PPC), a bidding model that charges advertisers only when someone clicks on their ad (also referred to as cost-per-click, or CPC)."

Yet, a 2013 Google Analytics Blog "Organic Search Engine Marketing" addresses ways to measure ways to measure organic search engine marketing.

Search Engines Promote SEM as Paid Search

While SEM definitions are accompanied by editorial that appear to promote SEM as a combination of paid and organic, a search results on Google or Bing predominantly present search engine marketing as paid advertising campaigns.

How Do Industry Professionals, Businesses, Brands Define SEM?

No surprise, industry professionals and the clients they serve also have varying perceptions on the definition of SEM.

Below is how professionals in the industry answered the following two questions:

• When you hear SEM do you think of organic or paid search?
• What do you think most marketers and businesses think of when they hear SEM?

"SEM = Paid only" according to Bruce Clay, President of Bruce Clay Inc., a leading authority in search that provides search engine services, tools and training.

"Businesses are split, considering SEM to be either PPC or (PPC + SEO)," Clay said. "I do not think anyone considers SEM to include social. Those in the Internet marketing industry probably think mostly PPC."

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"When I think of SEM, I think of paid search or PPC," said Bill Hartzer, senior SEO strategist at Globe Runner SEO, who is also an industry speaker and blogger. "When referring to organic search it really is SEO. From what I recall, this distinction began around 2005 or 2006."

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"I generally think organic or a combination," said Krista Neher, marketing strategist, author of "Social Media Field Guide", professional trainer, and founder of "Boot Camp Digital". "I think most businesses probably don't know what SEM stands for. I train thousands of businesses a year, and most of them think of search engine marketing as organically getting traffic from search engines."

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"I tend to think of both organic and paid since the acronym stands for 'search engine marketing," said Adam Proehl, founding partner of NordicClick Interactive, industry speaker and trainer. "It varies across the board for business and marketers I come across. I'd say (anecdotally) that about 50 percent think of it as paid. About 25 percent think of it as both. Another 20 percent confuse it with SEO and the last 5 percent has absolutely no idea."

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"To me, SEM covers the whole gamut of marketing via search engines, both organic and paid", said Mark Traphagen, senior director of online marketing at Stone Temple. "The best SEM strategies are built around coordination between the two sides."

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"I used to only think of organic, because I live in an editorial-based public relations world. But today I look at it as a blended force of paid and organic working together and tag teaming the branding, marketing and influencing online public relations," said Lisa Buyer, author of "Social PR Secrets", industry speaker, coach, and trainer. "Most businesses are still figuring out what SEM means. I think most look at it as some sort of Internet marketing or digital marketing probably skewed towards the paid side."

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"I think of organic, expanded," said Kristine Schachinger, CEO of The Vetters, industry speaker and consultant; who added that she thought it could cover PPC and expanded marketing services covered in organic search. "I think businesses say "SE…What?" Oh, you rank stuff on browsers, right?"

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"I think most in 'the biz' think paid when referring to SEM," said Elmer Boutin, associate director of search strategy at Rockfish, and marketing and IT blogger. "I think it's both paid and organic. The idea is to use search engines to market your products or services. To do it best involves both paid and organic in many circumstances."

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So there you have it. Search engines, leading authorities, and industry professionals fail to agree on the definition of "search engine marketing".

What is the Correct Definition of SEM?

As illustrated above, there is a great variety of interpretations of SEM across the industry. It's no wonder that businesses and brands are confused, challenged, and frustrated when attempting to communicate effectively and make informed decisions about how to allocate resources.

There appears to be no right or wrong answer.

But, shouldn't there be just one definition of SEM? What's your definition of SEM?

Source Link:-  Search Engine Watch

Marketing is more complex today than ever. Much of this is due to the progress we've made in technology.

More data means more choices and more ways to interpret success. That's why today, marketers need trusted data more than ever.

In the age of keyword "(not provided)," SEO technology companies are working hard to provide options marketers can use to bridge the gap. One such option comes from gShift.

Search Engine Watch recently chatted with Chris Adams, co-founder and CTO of gShift to talk about the state of "(not provided)" data, what SEO professionals and content marketers should be looking for in terms of data features, and how gShift is helping marketers uncover lost keyword traffic.

Today, There's Uncertainty in Data

The unfortunate reality today as a result of secure search in terms of content marketing and SEO is that it's hard to have meaningful conversations, Adams said, when the majority of keyword traffic data is hidden.

The "(not provided)" traffic is leading marketers to use the word "probable" all too often.

"The word 'probable' is bad in a sales conversation," Adams said. "We need to arm these agencies with better information."

Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) doesn't provide all the answers. Adams said it's OK to get a snapshot in GWT, but it's not a thorough picture of what's happening on the website. It needs additional analysis.

In fact, Adams shared 10 reason why Google Webmaster Tools isn't a foolproof Plan B for secure search:

1. You should be tracking multiple engines, geographic locations and local. Google Webmaster Tools doesn't allow this and only shows average rank.
2. You should be tracking competitors. GWT doesn't allow this.
3. GWT is an average rank over 90 days. New content won't be tracked quickly nor new keyword phrases or keywords that aren't yet ranking.
4. GWT uses universal results. That means if your image is ranking No. 1, the data doesn't mean that your Web page is ranking in the Top 10.
5. GWT limits data. It doesn't show all of your results. This would have a big impact on sites with average visitor traffic and most B2B websites.
6. GWT doesn't differentiate in Web presence data. Is it a video, your Facebook page, a press release or your latest blog post that's ranking?
7. GWT doesn't give you page-level rank data.
8. GWT doesn't give you daily ranking data.
9. GWT only holds on to data for a rolling 90 days. If you want to benchmark data with your clients, you will need to store that data. gShift stores this data for you.
10. Google+ Local listings don't show up in GWT.

Rank Data Continues to Be Essential

Rank data today is very valuable, Adams said. In fact, it could be more valuable than it was before 100 percent secure search was launched, he added. But all rank data isn't created equal. Adams walked through the varying levels of that data:

• Telling a marketer that somewhere, something ranks No. 3 is first base.
• Second base is showing which page is ranking.
• Knowing multiple pages are ranking for the same term is third base.
• And a home run is knowing the entirety of rank across the Web, including rank for Twitter, YouTube, website pages and more.

"The website is not the center of the universe anymore," Adams said. "We need to understand how all of the results are working together to increase visibility." This is a major differentiator of gShift's tools, he added.

When asked about personalization factors that could influence rank data, Adams said, "You'll never rank in personalized search unless you rank generically as well." As a marketer, Adams said he would make sure his content ranked first in a non-personalized way.

How gShift is Helping Uncover Keyword Traffic Data

Next, Adams showed me a demo of how gShift is working to provide data in a "(not provided)" world. The following screenshot shows a sample home page that had 373 organic search entrants. Sixty-nine percent of the keyword traffic was hidden due to secure search, but Adams said gShift was able to identify 96 percent of the site's traffic.

Here's how:

Adams said it starts with the knowledge that the home page ranks No. 1 for the term "barrie condos." Next, the tool would check for estimated search traffic in a given month. In this case, the volume was 207.

Through published click-through rate data from other sources, Adams said sites will typically experience a 36.4 percent CTR when in the No. 1 position in the search results. Doing some simple math from these variables, gShift can estimate this site had 75 people coming from that keyword, "barrie condos."

But the person using the tools still has to apply discretion to the data. Just because you're ranking No. 1 for a term, doesn't mean it's the right term to follow if it has no search volume. So the key is doing the digging to uncover the gems.

Keywords, Hummingbird, and the Future of Data

With Google Hummingbird allowing the search engine to potentially find the same page from multiple queries types or asked in different ways, I wondered how it would impact targeting a phrase like "barrie condos" versus "condos in barrie" when all roads could lead to the same destination.

Adams pointed me to a post on gShift's blog where they talk more about this, and stated that while Hummingbird is the future of search, and centered on voice search and the mobile era, it's really about lending a certain level of comfort to Google users that the search engine will still find the right content for them, no matter how they search.

But it doesn't mean people still aren't searching in an old-school fashion, Adams said, for example [barrie condos] or [condos in barrie]. And gShift will continue to report on the distinction between the two because Google is still providing the data on the differentiation between those phrases.

"Google may start to group phrases together in the future due to Hummingbird that say there's 300 monthly searches overall for a category of phrases," Adams said. "They may get to that level, but they're not doing that yet."

Source Link:-  Search Engine Watch