You can find Term Cloud feature in the ‘View’ menu, along with other views – table, pie chart, pivot, etc.

So what is it? Essentially it’s a tag cloud populated with your Google Analytics report dimensions, e.g. keywords, terms, referring sites, etc. And this is how it looks like:

Is that it? Well, yes and no. Whilst it is just a term cloud what makes it special is the fact you can generate a term cloud for any dimensions you want (keywords, landing pages, country, medium, etc), then slice and dice cloud data using advanced Google Analytics filters (regex, etc.) and then regenerate the term cloud using different metrics (visits, revenue, transactions, goal value, conversion rate, etc.) so the size of terms changes as you switch between GA metrics. As usual, you can also change the date range and the number of terms you want to see in the cloud.

Still can’t see this being helpful? Let’s take a look at the example of the organic generic keyword data report. Let’s say we want to show the client keywords which drive people to the site but we’re not able to keep them on the site and they leave (bounce). Well, step 1, let’s generate the term cloud:

As you can see this is fine but it doesn’t tell me a lot as it’s full of terms which don’t drive a lot of traffic and happen to have a low bounce rate. Let’s modify the Advanced Filter and say we want to see only those terms which drove more than 50 visits:

As you can see below that’s more like it, we start seeing some patterns:

Ok, so we’re left with popular terms which drive people to the site but visitors leave soon after that. Why? Is it because they land on the wrong page? If they do end up on the right page, is the messaging and topic relevant to that query. One of many possibly. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Yes, I agree it’s just another way of viewing data, but extremely visually appealing one. You and your client don’t have to scroll through hundreds of keywords to look for patterns – there they are, you can see them straight away.

Whilst PDF export function remained unchanged, the email scheduler got few new options. You can now choose to get email reports only once, daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly. While you do that you can also select day of the week or month when you want to get it. Another useful feature is in ‘Advanced Options’ where you can specify how long you want the schedule to be active for, e.g. 1 month, 3 months, etc.

To export any Google Analytics report as PDF simply click on the ‘Export’ drop down menu and select PDF:

To send any Google Analytics report as email, or to schedule reoccurring email report delivery, click on the ‘Email’ button at the top of the console, configure all options and press Send. And that’s it.

The SEO kick off meeting or conference call is often the very first occasion when you or your team members have the chance to meet the client on a more personal, less formal way.

It is very important to organise the meeting but it’s even more important to be prepared for it. After all, you want to make a good first impression, don’t you? Think how people tend to make up their mind about another person in first 2 minutes of the conversation. Then imagine how the client feels about this meeting. Clients are usually very excited to get started and are willing to give you all you need.

Step 1: Know your audience

Before you even start compiling questions, you have to know what your audience is. Are you talking to internal SEO Manager, webmaster, developer, CEO, marketing director?

The key here is to have all the questions as if you were talking to the SEO Manager only, but ask only those that are interesting to the current audience. If you’re in a room with many people from the client side, keep the meeting brief. Don’t bore them with “We need analytics and webmaster tools access” as you’ll lose their attention straight away.

Have some general info and questions in regards to main points of contact, timelines, etc. and make sure that everyone knows you’ll be circulating more detailed questions to relevant people afterwards.

Step 2: What to ask and discuss?

Discuss the SEO delivery process

On-page, off-page and all that. I’m sure you’ve done that many times so let’s press on.

Historical data

Here you can ask for things like old SEO and PPC strategy documents, reports, keywords. This is also a good opportunity to hear client’s attitude towards previous SEO company – learn from that. This is also where you can ask for analytics and other access details you’ll need. Just remember that not everyone in the room might be interested in this. Ask yourself: “Do I need all these people to get that answer?”. I’d also recommend asking the client if there are any particular keywords or products they want to focus on more than others. That will help when you get to your KWA and first quick wins recommendations.

Contacts

Unless you already know this, it’s useful to ask the client who will be your main point of contact for different queries, e.g. day to day queries, strategy and channel integration, reporting, recommendations, technical issues, off-page SEO, social and bloggers, online PR, PPC and so on. I’m sure you get those emails where you’re asked to copy this and don’t copy that person in an email. This is a waste of your and clients time so get rid of it by asking the right question at the beginning.

Content and copywriting

This is actually part of the previous section but since online PR and content generally is a crucial ingredient of any successful on-page and off-page SEO campaign, and so it deserves better. There are really two main questions to ask here. Firstly, you need to know whether copywriting is done internally or externally. Once you know that, it might be useful to know how long is the turnaround time for getting the optimised content approved.

Competitors

Ok, this is a no-brainer. The SEO kick off meeting is the best time to ask who their competitors are. Make sure you explain that you know who their Google competitors are but would be interesting to know who their “real” life and off-line competitors are too. This will help tremendously throughout your campaign – from the initial keyword research to building landing pages and link building further down the line.

CMS and SEO

Before you start any SEO recommendations, make sure you understand capabilities of client website’s Content Management System (CMS). You won’t look too clever if it turns out that the work you’ve done can’t be actually implemented.

Link building

If relevant, ask what was done in the past in regards to the link building. Are there any potential issues (spamming, etc.) and opportunities (no keyword focus in the past).

Reporting

Ask the client how often they would like to get the report and, at the same time, suggest what you think is best. Then reconfirm who should be getting those. You can also ask how granular the report should be, but be careful with this as you can get a lot more admin work for your team by doing so.

Review meetings/calls

Finally, check when all the review meetings should take place and suggest the most efficient way of doing that.

Step 3: Present the timeline and put deadlines in place

Make sure everyone understands what they need to do and when they need to do this by. Tell the client when they can expect the first batch of quick wins SEO recommendations, when is the next catch up call or meeting. Use this section as an way to build the connection with the client and make sure they know you’ll be on the case every day and night. Make them feel important and then deliver on your promises.

Step 4: Next Steps

Finally, ensure that everyone knows what they’re supposed to do after leaving the meeting. Follow it up with the summary, actions and more detailed questions if needed.

Windows 3.x, 95, 98, and ME BSoD

Windows 2000 BSoD

Windows 7 BSoD

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BSoD Fails

In the past SEOs had to rely on manual submissions if they wanted to get the new page indexed in Google. This was neither efficient nor exciting thing to do. However, those days are long gone and nowadays there are several ways to get the page indexed.

There are at least 6 different methods of getting Google to index the web page:

• Old-school manual URL submission
• Sitemap.xml file submitted in Google Webmaster Tools
• Link from a well-known and often indexed external website
• Social media signals and shares (Digg, Twitter)
• ‘Submit to index’ option of the ‘Fetch as Googlebot’ tool in Webmaster Tools
• Sharing the page in Google+ and ‘+1-ing’ it

Which is the quickest?

The question I’m often asked is: which is the quickest way of getting the page indexed? Unfortunately, there is no straight forward answer to that. It really does depend on the domain/page authority, how often other pages on this domain are indexed, quality of the referring external domain, and others.

Study results

In order to find out which method gets a completely brand new page (without any history) indexed in Google, I did few experiments and was stunned with the results.

Here’s how quickly pages got indexed (on average):

1. Manual submission: 2h
2. Fetch as Googlebot: 9h
3. Digg submission: 14h (this varies a lot though)
4. Google+ and +1: 2d 4h
5. Sitemap.xml: 5d
6. External link: 3h+ (depending on the referring page/domain)

As you can see, the oldest method out there – the ‘Add the URL’ tool was the quickest. The page was in the index after only couple of hours. Remember that these were all brand new pages with no history or links.

The ‘Fetch as Googlebot’ tool was also quick. After only 9 hours the page was indexed. What I found surprising though was the fact that it took Google 5 days to index the page submitted via the sitemap.xml file.

Conclusion

Summarising, if you want to get a single new URL indexed in Google ASAP then using the ‘Add the URL’ submission tool and ‘Fetch as Googlebot’ in Webmaster Tools should do the trick. It’s likely that the page will be indexed even on the same day.

Great infographic showing the growth and usage of social media on mobile devices

Source: Flowtown Social Marketing Blog

What is really interesting about this video is that it gives some insight into the process of discovering new search features, then testing, developing and launching them. And they do that quite often – over 500 algorithm updates every year. I bet you that after you watched it you’ll be thinking: “I really want to work there”.

Also, nice to see Mr Cutts tucked away in the meeting room corner too

For last few years Google’s been experimenting with different layouts of sitelinks. They started off with a list of links as bullet points. Then they kept moving them around until they decided to show all sitelinks as separate results. This meant that for search query like ‘sky’ the whole of page one in Google was dominated by the sky.com domain. After only few months Google scrapped the idea without giving specific explanation. To be fair though, I’m not surprised they did as this meant they almost suffocated the affiliate sector, price comparison websites and at the end haven’t really improved their main goal – relevancy. They then returned to the old way of laying out sitelinks.

After several attempts at improving the sitelinks, it looks like Google has finally cracked it this time (official blog post). Strong brands now get extra four to twelve sitelinks, each with a prominent title, URL and mini description, see below:

Image of East Midlands Trains search results.

So what does that mean for SEO, PPC and Search in general?

New sitelinks and CTR

Well, to start with, your CTR for brand searches may go up. You’ll suddenly dominate page 1 for your best traffic driving search terms.

All good times then? No, not necessarily, and definitely not if your website is on the exact match domain and uses generic keywords as a domain name, e.g. http://www.cheapflights.co.uk/ (notice no sitelinks when you search for cheap flights). The good thing is that you’re not really losing anything in this scenario, but whilst the majority of your competitors benefit from the sitelinks update, you don’t.

Another crucial activity and one of the first things everyone should do is checking what sort of sitleinks you get. Are they sitelinks to your key landing pages? Do you get any sitelinks which you don’t want people to see (e.g. privacy, terms & conditions)? Are there any sitelinks you want to keep but you don’t like what they say?

To remove the sitelink, log in to the Webmaster Tools account and remove those you don’t want. Easy! Google will most likely replace the removed sitelink with another one – hopefully more meaningful one.

To change what the sitelink title says, you need to first find where Google pulls that text from on your page. In most cases that’s a link anchor text from your navigation, footer or main body. It could also pull it from the page title or headings.

To change what the mini description says you have to change the meta description tag of that page. Remember that Google will only show up to 32 characters with spaces in the sitelink description.

New sitelinks and AdWords

Based on the above it would be perfectly normal to ask: why do I need to bid on my own brand now? After all, your website links dominate the search results page. Whilst it makes perfect sense, you might be seeing conversions going down if you do so. Yes, organic search results will capture the majority of PPC traffic, but since you can do very little in terms of editing sitelinks you can’t treat it as a PPC ad substitute.

Additionally, you can rest assured that Google planned it very carefully since AdWords brings them 97% of their annual profit. One could say that this is also why they disabled the option to browse through all your sitelinks in Webmaster Tools.

Positive or negative change?

So far the update has been received positively. As long as Google differentiates between brand names and generic search terms everyone should be relatively happy with it. Google will start delivering more relevant results without affecting their main revenue tream, users will find what they want quicker and easier, companies will have another tool in their arsenal to battle affiliates, concessions, resellers and price comparison websites.

Since it also allows recruiters to find candidates, candidates to look up the company/employees and companies to check candidates it’s a win-win-win situation. The problem is that if your LinkedIn profile is weak then neither recruiters nor companies will not find you. That means no one wins. If you want everyone in that ‘recruiter-you-company’ circle to win, follow these simple steps and your LinkedIn profile will be out there with the best.

Best LinkedIn Profile – Step 1

100% Profile completeness

One of the most important factors influencing how high up in search results your LinkedIn profile appears is your profile completeness. Whilst next steps will go into more details on how to optimise your profile, keep that at the back of your mind. Reaching 100% profile completeness is a must.

Best LinkedIn Profile – Step 2

Make sure your profile is visible outside your connections

Another thing to check is whether your LinkedIn profile and activity broadcast (shares, tweets, etc.) is visible to people outside of your connections network. Just go to your account settings and turn on visibility settings.

Best LinkedIn Profile – Step 3

Add as many connections as possible/suitable

Although this seems like a no brainer, it’s crucial that you’re connected to as many friends, colleagues, teachers, fellow students, etc. LinkedIn provides a useful ‘People You May Know’ functionality (under Contacts). Whilst you might not know all people on that list, you will find many people you haven’t thought about too. Once you’re connected, check out you new connections’ groups and see if any of them are worth joining.

Best LinkedIn Profile – Step 4

Optimise your profile

If you think about it, LinkedIn uses similar metrics to Google when it comes to ranking relevant search results. The good thing with LinkedIn is that it’s relatively easier to improve your LinkedIn profile rankings than it is with Google.

Firstly, make sure that you change your profile URL so it ends with your first name and surname – see my profile for example – Artur Jach. This will help to get your public LinkedIn profile to rank on page 1 in Google when someone searches for your name.

Secondly, make sure that you repeat relevant keywords in the summary, previous experience, skills, interests, honors and awards, and education sections. At the same time remember that you’re writing it for real people so make sure it still reads well. There are many angles you can take and topics you can use to find opportunity to include keywords, e.g. your responsibilities, clients, achievements, university module names, etc.

Thirdly, make use of the headline (below your name) and include relevant keywords in there too. If it’s the job that you’re after you can also include your email address in the headline – make it easier for recruiters and companies to get in touch. Whilst you’re editing the headline you must specify you location and industry. This will increase your chances of ranking well for industry or location based searches.

Lastly, make use of three external link opportunities (under Websites). Link out to your blog or a website, your employer’s site or any other site that is relevant to what you’re trying to achieve by improving your profile. One thing to note here is that when you edit the ‘Websites’ section you can select ‘Other’ from the drop down and customise the link anchor text. This can boost the level of optimisation of the destination website.

Best LinkedIn Profile – Step 5

Maximise relevant & minimise irrelevant experience info

This should be straight forward. If you’re after being more visible for the search term ‘web developer’ then expand on your professional or academic experience relating to development. Although it’s worth mentioning your previous jobs, there’s no need to write essays about your work as a chef or a builder.

Best LinkedIn Profile – Step 6

Make yourself contactable

There are several areas in your LinkedIn profile where you can provide contact information:

• Personal Information section
• Add your email address to the headline
• Configure the built-in Twitter functionality (if you are on Twitter)
• Provide a link to external page with your contact details in the ‘Websites’ section

Best LinkedIn Profile – Step 7

Ask for recommendations. Then ask again!

From this step onwards we get to optional activities which can make your profile really stand out and what can make it that 10% better than others.

Recommendations are very important factor for LinkedIn as well as for potential recruiters and employers. They are also very difficult to get. However, once you get 2-4 good recommendations from your friends, colleagues, associates or family it will not only help your credibility but also profile visibility on LinkedIn. If you’re familiar with SEO, think about recommendations as inbound /external links from high quality websites. Additionally, people giving you recommendations are likely to include relevant keywords in your recommendation.

Best LinkedIn Profile – Step 8

Join relevant industry groups

Joining relevant LinkedIn groups is like vote of confidence – you effectively tell LinkedIn you actively seek industry news and you deserve to be visible. I want to stress the word ‘relevant’ here. The group name and conversations taking place within it can be matched with keywords you optimised your LinkedIn profile for in previous steps.

Best LinkedIn Profile – Step 9

Participate in groups and share news

You can improve your LinkedIn profile ranking further by actively participating and engaging in group discussions. Sharing interesting and relevant articles with the group helps as well. I’ve seen massive improvements in my own profile rankings after sharing my SEO related blog posts with SEO focused groups. Strongly recommended!

Best LinkedIn Profile – Step 10

Create an active industry group

You can also take it a step further and create your own group. If you’re a specialist in the area and don’t mind spending 15-30 minutes a week managing the group then why not? This is another activity which helped me to push my own LinkedIn profile up for target keywords.

Best LinkedIn Profile – Step 11

Use LinkedIn applications and link with your Twitter

Yet another add-on which allows showing off your skills and knowledge (and number of keywords on your profile page) is LinkedIn Applications. Although some are better than others, I’d definitely recommend configuring the ‘BlogLink’ or ‘WordPress’ (to display your blog’s RSS feed) and ‘Google Presentation’ or ‘SlideShare’ (to show off your awesome presentations).

Although discussed in previous steps, make sure you link your Twitter account so your Twitter feed is displayed on your profile. Note you have to make it visible to the outside world by changing activity broadcast settings.

Power of Google+, Facebook, Twitter and others

Whilst it took search engines some time to figure out how to use social media signals to their advantage, it looks like with the launch of like of Google+ search engines have finally realised that it’s not always about how great and complicated algorithm factors are. Google is arguably leading way in this area and it’s been proven on many occasions recently that social media signals from Twitter, Google+ and other social networks do help indexation and rankings. So more people talk about you in the social space, more likely they are to share the link to your site. Google and others monitor those links/mentions and will reward you for the effort.

Personalised search is there for a reason

Ok, I must admit that personalised search results did make SEO slightly more complicated, but despite calls from many SEOs, I do not think it killed it. Whilst before the personalisation was mainly based on your own web history and most visited sites, now Google started showing people from your Google+ circles who +1ed the page. There’s no need for a genius here to figure out that this is likely to be also included as a vote towards bumping particular page up in rankings (only when you’re signed in of course).

Bloggers are your friends!

You might be wondering why bloggers and what can we actually get out of them? Yes, I know that very often they are just needy creatures who will not do anything without getting something in return. Having said that, if you eventually get it right with the bloggers, the link juice will start flowing into your direction from all sorts of relevant websites.

There are two fundamental rules whenever you do any blogger outreach. Firstly, find the right bloggers. It seems to be easy, yet it’s very often forgotten. Do you really think that car bloggers are interested in latest fashion trends client you’re doing SEO for? Or what do you think when you try to approach the most influential blogger in that sector and ask them to do something for free? So except the common sense, try using tools that you’ve most probably been using already: Open Site Explorer to find bloggers who have already linked to you or competitors in the past, social media monitoring tools (e.g. Addictomatic) to find those who haven’t linked but mentioned your brand or keyword. If you have a pleasure working in a bigger team where you have a dedicated social media team, talk to them – they most likely talk to industry bloggers already so use their relationships (without ruining them with over-optimised copy or links).

The second rule is actually quite simple – approach bloggers only if you have something interesting for them. If your content, brochures, videos or anything you want to share with the bloggers doesn’t have any value (not for you, for them) then leave it.

SEO loves virals and infographics

Virals and infographics are by far the best ways of getting high number of quality websites linking back to you (as long as you provide the embed code that is). Virals and infographics have changed the way we do link building as suddenly it turned out that it’s in fact not online PR that’s the best link driving force, but social with its potential to grow links naturally and really fast. Come on now, what’s better than people doing link building for you, right? Whilst it’s still quite difficult to produce a multi-million YouTube views campaign, it a lot cheaper and easier to create cool and interesting infographic. If you then tie it all in with the blogger outreach discussed above, you’ll see how this all starts to come together.