2015 SEO and PPC Strategies for Your Startup

Holiday shopping has started, but that doesn't mean the search engines are giving you a break. There have been a lot of deals in the last few weeks, as well as algorithm updates over the last couple of months.

Holiday shopping has started, but that doesn't mean the search engines are giving you a break. There has been a lot of deals in the last few weeks, as well as algorithm updates over the last couple of months. With everything going on, now is the time to think about your 2015 SEO and PPC strategies.

Whether you haven't thought about mobile, haven't tried optimizing for Bing/Yahoo! or you haven't reallocated your budget to spend more in another channel, you may want to get started. Here are a couple of reasons why:

PPC

As of two weeks ago, Firefox signed a deal to make Yahoo! its new default engine. Siri and Facebook are using Bing, and that means big trouble for Google. With a large portion of Facebook, email and social media users on mobile devices, and mobile device sales increasing with desktop shrinking, this opens up a huge opportunity to not be dependent on one PPC system.

Depending on when the moves take place, you should be planning to invest more into Yahoo! and Bing instead of the normal 70/30, 80/20 or 90/10 split. When these large sources of traffic have a new engine, and if the continued shift from desktop to mobile device continues, this is where your future traffic and sales could be. Make sure to look at how to convert Yahoo! and Bing better so that if they continue to gain market share, your website and sales funnels are ready.

SEO

If Yahoo! can continue to take market share or reach a goal of becoming the default engine for iPhone and iPad, Google could be in trouble. This means more Facebook, Twitter and other mobile traffic sources may be opening up Yahoo! searches instead of Google.

Google is also rolling out mobile icons next to search engine results for sites that it feels are mobile friendly. With these changes it is important to watch out for and take action on a few things.

1. Make sure your site is mobile friendly and optimized. If end users start to use the icon and you don't have one, it may mean your site gets skipped over and eventually gets a penalty for mobile search.

2. Pay more attention to ranking reports and positions in Yahoo!/Bing. Although the traffic doesn't come anywhere close to Google yet, with the current changes taking place, optimizing for these two could mean large rewards in the near future.

3. Find tools like UpCity.com which give you ranking reports by day/week/month in Google and also in Yahoo!/Bing so you can compare them. This is very important for the future of SEO.

If something was good for Google but bad for Yahoo!/Bing, you know to no longer do it if the traffic shifts change. If it was good for Google and had a positive impact on Yahoo!/Bing then you want to remember what the changes were and test them more.

Search marketing experts like Adam Riemer are also saying:

"Microsoft uses bing for clip art search, Siri uses bing, Facebook uses bing, Firefox uses Yahoo! as a new default, if you aren't prepared for a mobile search shift with a multi-engine marketplace with tools and by tracking your negative and positive effects from optimizing for Google on Yahoo! and Bing, you will be left behind!"

The SEO landscape has always changed with Google alone. When you throw the large new traffic sources into Yahoo! and Bing, the world of SEO just became a lot trickier. Moving into 2015, make sure you site is mobile friendly, and you have your Bing webmaster tools set up properly since Bing/Yahoo! are becoming players again.

Report: U.S. Mobile Search Spend Expected To Overtake Desktop Next Year

eMarketer's lastest estimates encompass PPC and SEO spending on smartphones and tablets.

Starting next year, marketers in the U.S. will spend more on mobile search — both PPC ads and SEO –  than on desktop, according to a new report from digital research firm, eMarketer.

Just last year, the firm estimates, less than a quarter of search spend went to mobile. The report suggests that the tables will turn entirely by 2018, with mobile accounting for 76.7 percent of search spending.

EMarketer includes both tablets and smartphones in its mobile numbers, but says the dramatic shift is being driven primarily by smartphones. Still, it’s worth noting that the market doesn’t have much control over what gets allocated to search advertising on tablets.

Google’s enhanced campaigns eliminated the ability to bid separately on tablet and desktop traffic last year. Bing Ads followed Google’s lead this year and also combined desktop and tablet traffic this fall.

Additionally, because SEO is included in these estimates, it’s not clear what the shift in ad spending actually looks like.

More info: http://searchengineland.com/report-us-mobile-search-spend-expected-overtake-desktop-next-year-210278

GOOGLE’S ALGO CHANGE AND THE EXACT MATCH DOMAIN PENALTY

Does your Web site use an Exact Match Domain name? Beware. Google’s latest algorithm alteration is out to track and penalize the technique. Expect “EMD penalty” to be a much-used buzzword for a while. Why another algo change, you ask? Google wants to curb the use of what it considers unnatural or unfairly easy routes to good rankings. Concerning the newest update, on September 28th, Matt Cutts posted the following messages on his Twitter account:

“Minor weather report: small upcoming Google algo change will reduce low-quality "exact-match" domains in search results.”

“New exact-match domain (EMD) algo affects 0.6% of English-US queries to a noticeable degree. Unrelated to Panda/Penguin.” 

Brace yourself for the same kind of opprobrium that greeted Google’s Penguin and Panda updates. While you’re grunting your way through this inclement online “weather,” remember that it’s no Sandy, 2012’s all too real Frankenstorm, and that not every exact match domain will be affected. All indications point to Google using multiple factors when determining whether to dole out an EMD penalty.

Wading through available data, it appears to me that Web sites are especially at risk to lose rankings if they’ve not been updated in a while, or if they have not been active in link building. Likewise, sites boasting a great many blog updates, but poor-quality backlinks, are susceptible to rank losses on account of EMD.

In my research I’ve found that Web sites using EMD, not undergoing a regular process of betterment, and lacking quality backlinks receive the EMD penalty. If an EMD site’s rankings were attributable solely to its domain name, then it lost rankings with Google’s EMD update.

I cannot say this enough: don’t venture outside of white hat SEO. If you’re experiencing rankings problems because of the EMD penalty, get rid of your low-quality backlinks. And if your content is stale, or if the quality of your written content is subpar -- get started with an overhaul. Remember to keep your content fresh, nicely written, and to keep tabs on the quality of your backlinks.

Google y Bing ‘pelean’ por un algoritmo

Muy interesante este pequeño artículo publicado por CNN sobre la rivalidad de los Search...

Google reveló a través de un periodista estadounidense que su competencia Bing de Microsoft ha copiado el algoritmo con el cual refina sus búsquedas, al menos en los últimos seis meses.
El buscador con mayor participación de mercado en Internet indicó que se percataron de esta copia, luego de que implantaran 100 palabras sin ningún significado en sus tablas de búsqueda y su competencia hizo lo mismo.

Al ingresar las letras como "hiybbprqag" o "mbzrxpgjys" en el buscador de Google, lanzaba el mismo resultado en Bing, aún cuando no tuvieran ningún significado real.

"He pasado mi carrera persiguiendo realizar un buen motor de búsqueda. No tengo ningún problema con un competidor desarrollando su propio algoritmo. Pero copiar no es innovar", dice Amit Singhal, ingeniero de Google, a través del blog SearchEngineLand.

Bing respondió este martes a través de su blog oficial que utilizan más de 1,000 formas para mostrar sus resultados y que durante los dos últimos años se han dedicado a tratar de dar a sus consumidores la mejor experiencia posible.

"Lo que vemos aquí es una historia novelesca con tintes de espía para generar contoversia. Fue una táctica bastante creativa por parte de nuestro competidor y lo tomamos incluso como un halago", dijo Harry Sum, vicepresidente corporativo de Bing.

Ana Paula Blanco, jefa de comunicaciones para el norte de América Latina de Google, comentó que no se planea ninguna acción legal por el momento y que el equipo de ingenieros de la tecnológica está comprometido en hacer cada día mejor su trabajo.

Google se mantiene en el primer lugar dentro del mercado de buscadores de Internet, con 66.2%, seguido por Yahoo, con 16.4% y Bing, que ocupa la tercera posición con 11.8%, de acuerdo con las más recientes cifras de comScore.