Mal Darwen, Julie McNamee and Andrew Tobert were at SMX London this year. We've gathered up 213 tips and takeaways. Read through, learn, and share these tips.
General
1) There's no fixed date for the launch of Google Search Plus For Your World in Europe.
@theamitsinghal, http://www.google.com
2) Google made 525 algorithm changes last year.
Amit Singhal
3) Check you've been penalized. If you lost ranking on some keywordss but not others, you probably weren't, it's just that some links lose value. If you file for re-inclusion with Google, it won't make any difference.
The Search Marketing Experts Panel
PPC
4) The basics in writing copy for your PPC ad:
- Highlight your USP - include prices, promotions and exclusives
- Tell your customers what they can do
- Include at least one of your keywords
- Remember user intent
- Use tried and tested phrases such as "Official site" and "Free Delivery"
- Use language that turns the wrong customers away
- Match your ad to your landing page
- Experiment
Ben Beard, http://www.adobe.com
5) Use Google Ace to experiment on ads, ad groups, keywords, placements, ad creatives, remarketing lists etc.
Ben Beard
6) Bear in mind the types of buyer out there - survivalist, scarcity, convenience, prestige, social, value-minded, fearful, goal-minded.
Pamela Olson, King Schools
7) People buy on emotion and justify with logic. It's when they've gone past the research stage to the buying stage (and you can appeal to that emotion) that you can grab them.
Pamela Olson
8) Nobody wants to make a bad decision - they don't want DRED - discomfort, risk, embarrassment or doubt. So try to allay these fears in your ad copy.
Pamela Olson
9) Use keywords such as reviews, information, testimonials, best, comparison, cost for the person at start at the buying cycle.
Pamela Olson
10) Create a sense of urgency for those further on in the buying cycle.
Pamela Olson
11) Use the term "Your Guarantee" rather than "Our Guarantee" - your prospect will feel that you're talking to them.
Pamela Olson
12) Address fears and be more product-specific by using sitelink extensions.
Pamela Olson
13) Try testing 3-4 ads at a time if you have the amount of traffic that can handle that number. Try out different headlines, offers and USPs.
Pamela Olson
14) Use call extensions if you're the type of business that that suits - eg, if you're a restaurant or taxi firm.
Pamela Olson
15) Use keyword search queries to help increase your CTR and bring down your CPC (cost per click).
Pamela Olson
16) ENVY: Your ad copy should appeal to the consumer's Emotions, Needs, give them Validation and provide the Yay factor (make them feel they've got a deal).
Pamela Olson
17) SQRs (site query reports) should form the backbone of everything you do in PPC
Ed Schofield, Expedia
18) Start with a Broad Match strategy, run that for a couple of weeks, then start using Negatives, Exact Match, Broad Match Modifiers etc.
Ed Schofield
19) 25% of consumers scan the URL for indicator of relevance in search results, so try to have a relevant keyword in there.
Ed Schofield
20) Test attribution models and understand media impact drivers.
Ed Schofield
21) Move beyond last click attribution. Last click is last year!
Ed Schofield
22) Keyword Reports with PPC - put each keyword in its own Adgroup so you can get an impression share report
Scott Krager
SEO
23) Brands possess immense SEO power.
Marcus Tober, http://www.searchmetrics.com
24) On researching .co.uk SERPS, the key finding was that for the number one placing, social signals dominated (although Google+ data is not yet reliable).
Marcus Tober
25) Bounce rate, clickthrough rate in SERPs (search engine ranking pages) and time on site can all be measured.
Marcus Tober
26) A 40% average clickthrough rate (CTR) uplift is being seen with a three line sitelink and 17% with one line.
Ben Beard
27) Backlinks are still a major ranking factor, but quality matters.
Marcus Tober
28) Measure social media signals: motivate users to make your company more famous.
Marcus Tober
29) Become a brand and have recognizable products.
Marcus Tober
30) Google wants to rank the best site for the user, not the site with the best SEO.
Marcus Tandler, http://www.mediadonis.net/
31) Google wants to know which sites get lots of direct traffic (the user expects to see those sites as a result).
Marcus Tandler
32) Be careful with link profiles - use brand terms as well as target keywords.
@DaveNaylor, www.davidnaylor.co.uk/
33) Track keyword data while you still can - track Goals in Analytics (if you're not doing it now, then start).
Scott Krager, http://www.notprovided.com
34) Track keyword rankings - proving your case with numbers can win budget!
Scott Krager
35) Control what you can. Measure what you can.
Scott Krager
36) Share everything with your clients/boss. Transparency is coming.
Scott Krager
37) Power Articles work well: 1,000 - 2,000 words, good quality, in-depth researched material, published weekly.
Duran Inci, http://www.optimum7.com
38) Power Articles are what Google recommends; great content for the user; attracts links; is more effective in social.
Duran Inci
39) Identify pages with poor bounce rate/visits/time on site and de-index them (add no-indexes or no-follows to your robots.txt/).
Duran Inci
40) Microdata is not easy to implement but there are big wins if you do it right.
Duran Inci
41) 45% of algorithm search results are now personalized.
Craig Macdonald
42) Social and intent are going to become bigger ranking factors than links and on-page SEO.
Craig Macdonald
43) Don't assume there's only one English, Spanish or French language. The challenge is to find out the lexicons and slang of local users.
Jonathan Ashton, http://www.tbwa.com via @ShaadHamid
44) It's not a developer task to build schema.org microformats into your content - it's not too complicated.
Richard Baxter, http://www.seogadget.co.uk/
45) Authorship: link content to your Google+ profile, check the implementation and wait for Googlebot crawling!
Pierre Far, http://www.google.com
46) Authorship links should be to the author's page, NOT the publisher's page.
Pierre Far
47) Make sure that your rich snippets markup is correct and complete - many webmasters do this wrongly.
Pierre Far
48) Only use relevant rich snippet markup - make it visible and not misleading.
Pierre Far
49) You can find links to Google Webmaster hangouts at http://bit.ly/KqlTTk
Pierre Far
Landing page optimization
50) Look for inspiration outside the bun fight that is the search results pages - otherwise everybody's ads will end up looking the same. For example, have a look at a magazine to see how it grabs attention.
Guy Levine, http://www.returnondigital.com
51) The greatest uplifts in CTR are seen with the use of sitelinks.
Ben Beard, Adobe
52) Test your images in Facebook (check out the clickthrough rate) and whichever gets the most clicks, add to your Merchant Center.
Ben Beard
53) Don't violate design conventions - lurid colours, black backgrounds etc.
Malcolm Graham, http://www.limetreeonline.com
54) Don't make an ad too obvious eg, "Buy Me Now!" People will avoid the hard sell.
Malcolm Graham
55) An example of a very good landing page is Mailchimp
Malcolm Graham
56) If you're selling complex and expensive products you'll need lots of informative content, or people won't buy it.
Malcolm Graham
57) Offer something free with lots of branding to get good conversion rates.
Malcolm Graham
58) The home page is not a great place to send PPC traffic - it's just a waste of your money.
Guy Levine,
59) Think above the fold.
Guy Levine
60) Repeat your messages - lead the user by the hand to show them what you want them to do.
Guy Levine
61) Restrict the navagation - don't give them too many options.
Guy Levine
62) Build trust - use video.
Guy Levine
63) Every landing page should have a purpose and defined most required response.
Guy Levine
64) Use convincers (mentions in the media, awards, association membership logos.)
Guy Levine
65) Not everyone is in buy mode - use information and a two step sell to get them back to your site.
Guy Levine
66) Use forms scientifically - short increases fill, long improves quality.
Guy Levine
67) Ensure a tight correlation between your ad and your landing page copy.
Guy Levine
68) Measure specific conversion actions - not page views and time on site.
Guy Levine
69) When testing buying pages, the call to action button is the biggest priority.
Guy Levine
70) Your site should say - we are experts, this is what you should buy, please buy it from us!
Guy Levine
71) Landing page mistake: visual bullying - "Buy Now" within an enormous orange button. Brian Lewis
72) Don't use too many font treatments as it's too difficult to read.
Brian Lewis
72) Don't use rotating banners - it's distracting and slows the loading of your page.
Brian Lewis
73) Use tabs for more info etc rather than long, long web pages.
Brian Lewis
74) Make text easy to ready - use high contrast. Eg, blue on a white background.
Brian Lewis
75) 'Use cases' - defining the roles of people coming to your site. What's important to them? Price, warranty, what's their level of knowledge, where are they coming from, who are they?
Brian Lewis
76) They could be there for pre-research, early research, research on your company's advantage, browsing, pice comparison, ready to buy - create content that will be useful to all these people.
Brian Lewis
77) 4 types of trust and credibility
- Presumed credibility (they already know your name)
- Visual credibility
- Industry (insignias and emblems, members of an association, "as seen in New York Times")
- Social (testimonials and reviews)
Brian Lewis
78) Relevance - the landing page should represent what they're looking for. If you mention an offer on the ad, point the link to a page with the offer on.
Stephen Pavlovich
79) Attention - have a clear call to action, an image that grabs.
Stephen Pavlovich
80) Show don't tell eg, Hyundai had an ad where 40 monkeys are challenged to pull apart one of their cars.
Stephen Pavlovich
81) Read "Made to Stick" by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. Make ideas simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and do they tell a story?
Stephen Pavlovich
82) Orientation - look at CampaignMonitor for a good one. Guide the user's hand as they go through their website so that they don't get lost. Make it obvious what they've to do next.
Stephen Pavlovich
83) Basecamp have great landing pages.
Stephen Pavlovich
84) Add a point of action reassurance underneath your call to action button (eg "You can cancel at a later date, there's a 30 day guarantee").
Stephen Pavlovich
85) "Steal" people's ideas with user testing, surveys and speaking to people in coffee shops.
Stephen Pavlovich
86) Google has changed its rule on Exact Match (it now gives close variations eg, plurals and misspellings) - you can revert to the old way in your settings.
Stephen Pavlovich
Cookie Law
87) 2011 Cookie rule asks for consent - May 25th is the cut-off date in the UK.
Andy Atkins-Krueger, http://www.webcertain.com
88) There are different rules for different countries - France's are some of the toughest.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
89) In the UK users need to actively configure their browser settings. But it doesn't affect analytics cookies.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
90) Your cookies should be harmless and non-intrusive.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
91) Audit your site to see if you have "aggressive cookies".
Andy Atkins-Krueger
92) Work to the lowest common denominator eg France's conditions are much tougher than Ireland's.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
93) Do a cookie audit before the Cookie law comes into force (UK). Do you know how many 1st and 3rd party cookies you drop on people's websites?
Andy Atkins-Krueger
94) One of the large Fortune 100 companies is putting the warning into a small Privacy Statement in the footer of their home page.
Anthony Haney
95) Watch what the giants are doing eg, Google and Amazon.
Anthony Haney
96) According to an Econsultancy report, 82% thought cookie opt-out is a bad idea for the consumer. But 80% of consumers thought it was a good idea.
Craig Macdonald, http://www.microsoft.com
97) In another survey 55% considered a cookie to be malware.
Craig Macdonald
98) Opt-out rates are low - only 2% for email (according to a US-based survey). So it may not be so bad when people are asked to opt-out of cookies.
Craig Macdonald
99) Even though the Cookie Law is so far only in Europe, US websites are going to have to pay attention because they have to tailor their websites to the lowest common denominator.
Craig Macdonald
Local search
100) Consumers are adapting to social at faster rates - be nimble.
Jonathan Ashton
101) Don't determine content with scripts for different languages - use a tunnel with hard links to country-specific urls.
Jonathan Ashton
102) Local operations need local pages.
Jonathan Ashton
103) SEOs must form good relationships with IT managers to achieve good results.
Jonathan Ashton
104) Make sure your local site is 'Venice-friendly' (the name of the localization Google algorithm) - build relevant landing pages for each location.
Aleyda Solis, http://www.fxclub.com
105) Maintain a flow of fresh and relevant localized content to succeed in local search.
Aleyda Solis
106) Curated user-generated content can be a great help in local search.
Aleyda Solis
107) Build citations for each location you target - collaborate with local media and bloggers.
Aleyda Solis
108) Mobilize your local presence - use tools like Screenfly to check how your site looks on a mobile.
Aleyda Solis
109) Monitor and follow local activity - stay in touch!
Aleyda Solis
Mobile
110) Use a free app to promote a premium one.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
111) And use a free app if your goal is to promote your brand.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
112) Things to bear in mind - use HTML geared towards mobile, or use apps to drive traffic?
Andy Atkins-Krueger
113) Comscore reports 60% of activity on mobile phones is done at home or in the office - static rather than properly mobile.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
114) Mobile's role from 1% to 20%
115) % of mobile website visitors in the UK has risen from 1% in 2010 to 20% in 2012.
Neil Walker, http://www.seomad.com
116) There's a higher clickthrough rate on mobile although conversions and transactions are still lower than on desktop. This may well change in future, though.
Neil Walker
117) Mobile usability. You have three choices: using a third party mobile site service, building a new mobile site in-house or re-designing your website using responsive design ...
Rob Kerry, http://www.ayima.com
- A third party site is currently not a good option - the site will not be attractive, duplicate content is a result, plus a broken user experience and increased bounce rates and link dilution.
- The best option is reponsive web - re-design your website so that it scales gracefully depending on screen resolution.
- Site redesign: same urls, same content, better usability uses existing infrastructure and CMS but requires a website re-design use HTML5 and CSS3 and responsive design.
- Building a new mobile site will cause duplicate content problems which you can solve with rel=canonical code but you do have more control than you would with a third party site.
- Look at WPtouch plugin or the Magento M-Commerce platform for setting up a mobile site - though not just as good an option as responsive design.
Rob Kerry
118) Don't automatically think of an iPhone app when designing. Think of who your customers will be. Eg China are big Android users.
Rob Kerry
Social
119) In Google Webmaster Tools use Fetch Googlebot>Submit to Index to submit pages to Google to have them prioritized. (Up to 50 URLs a week, domains only (not subdomains)).
Maile Ohye, http://www.google.com
120) And use an accurate (last modification date) to get your updated pages crawled faster.
Maile Ohye
121) Eliminate known duplicate pages or low quality content.
Maile Ohye
122) Only link internally to quality pages and check Webmaster Tools for any internal links to old pages.
Maile Ohye
123) rel="author" is the biggest social signal and Google is ranking individuals over companies and publishers.
Lisa Myers, http://www.vervesearch.com
124) Link building = creativity, communication and execution.
Lisa Myers
125) Timing is becoming more crucial. Experiment about when the best time to tweet is.
Lisa Myers
126) Social is all about personality. Make sure there are distinctive voices writing for you who are known or who can get themselves known.
Lisa Myers
127) Telling an employee not to tweet is like telling a 15yr old not to drink. But if they have a big Twitter following you can give them guidelines rather than telling them not to.
Lisa Myers
128) Facebook is for a general audience, whereas Google+ and Twitter are about news and technology.
James Carson
129) Think about your influencers. You don't always have to follow A-listers. Being tweeted by someone with 50,000 followers might not be as beneficial as being tweeted by someone with fewer followers but with many who have with their own medium-sized following.
James Carson
130) Gameification - eg, have your users earn badges the more comments they make, as a way of encouraging them to do so.
Simon Heseltine
131) Hijack a large happening event, and tweet your way through it eg, Huffington Post tweeted quotes from the state of the union address as it was happening.
Simon Heseltine
132) Don't just worry about the shares you get. Look at your engagement metrics.
Simon Heseltine
133) There's no harm in re-tweeting evergreen posts as long as it's not a time-reliant post.
Simon Heseltine
134) Optimize where you put your social buttons: put them in an obvious place or you won't get shared.
Lisa Myers
135) Google+ isn't terrible, but it's not as good as Facebook. Google+ averages 3 mins per month per user on site as opposed 20 mins per user day on Facebook.
Bas van den Beld, http://www.stateofsearch.com/
136) Don't think of Google+ as a Facebook competitor - it's more of a data-gatherer than a social network.
Bas van den Beld
137) People succumb to peer pressure, taking on recommendations from authorities and people we trust.
Bas van den Beld
138) When we sign up to Google+ we're passing on our identities, our friends and employees' details and information on how we're using the web.
Bas van den Beld
139) Find out what information Google+ has on you at http://www.google.com/s2/search/social
Bas van den Beld
140) Tell intermediaries what content you'd like to see and with a bit of luck the A-listers will get to know about your requests through them.
Bas van den Beld
141) Create content based on what your users want to see rather than what you think it should be based on.
Bas van den Beld
142) If content has been Google+1'd it will appear artificially high in the SERPs, but you may see a lower than average CTR because it's less relevant.
Kevin Gibbons, https://www.found.co.uk/
143) The result of a case study showed that a site with no Google+ profile showed a decrease in organic traffic of 19.5% and those with a strong Google+ profile an increase of 42.6%.
Kevin Gibbons
144) Whatever you do, build up a great content team - bloggers, video producers, writers. Keep doing that and you'll start looking forward to ranking updates.
Kevin Gibbons
145) Force yourself to share something on Google+ every day.
Kevin Gibbons
146) Google said that links are like a democracy - maybe a democracy where you have to be white, male and a property owner. When they said this you needed a blog or a site and you needed to be web-savvy. These days it's much more democratic with social - anyone can comment on anything.
Danny Sullivan, http://www.searchengineland.com/
147) "If you're doing something you don't want the world to know about, maybe you shouldn't be doing it."
Bas van den Beld quoting Eric Schmidt of Google
Panda, Penguin and content
148) 43% of all searches done on the web comprise of four or more words. 64% of searches no exact match.
Ken Dobell, http://www.dacgroup.com
149) Create highly relevant content for the user and for the search engine.
Ken Dobell
150) Panda's had a much greater impact than Penguin but they're both part of a campaign to get rid of webspam.
Ken Dobell
151) Google decides your link profile on many criteria, including age of the page, last date of edit, reciprocity, number of links, age of link, type of link (image,text), and location.
Simon Penson, http://www.zazzlemedia.co.uk/
152) Content marketing is going to be key in future.
Simon Penson
153) Something has changed re using anchor text as a ranking signal. Might it have been turned off altogether?
Simon Penson
154) Remove over-optimized anchor text links avoid/remove sitewide links.
Simon Penson
155) Remove non-relevant links.
Simon Penson
156) Add high quality links.
Simon Penson
157) If you have Penguin-related problems, fix them before your Panda problems.
Simon Penson
158) Clean up your site's index by dealing with extraneous URLs.
Stephen Croome, http://wwwSEOGadget.com
159) Delete or rehome orphan pages and low quality internally linked pages.
Stephen Croome
160) Improve site internal linking - tidy it up and add good internal links to quality pages.
Stephen Croome
161) Get rid of categories that have no content in them.
Stephen Croome
162) Increase the ratio of your good content by throwing away your worst content.
Stephen Croome
163) It's obvious from Google's updates that they are valuing diversity, freshness, quality and authority.
Stephen Croome
164) Content wins big long-term.
Vince Blackham, http://www.97thfloor.com
165) If you're making infographics don't try doing it in Word and saving as a jpg - make it beautiful. Interactive ones are even better with links off to other pages.
Vince Blackham
166) Put your infographic on Pinterest and have the version on your site larger than the one on Pinterest (at least 500px width and 2500px in length), so people will have to click through to see the infographic properly.
Vince Blackham
167) Use Tineye to find out who has used your images and go after links from the sites that have used them.
Vince Blackham
168) Entity rank rather than page rank - is that going to become more important?
Simon Penson
169) Yandex said that either Google are talking to aliens or gods, or they're using the clickthrough rate as a ranking factor.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
170) People avoid spammy-looking URLs.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
171) User testing has shown that people love clicking anything with a numerical character in it on SERPs pages.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
172) Think natural when it comes to anchor text - use brand plus something else. Exact match anchor text looks like a paid link to Google.
Andy Atkins-Krueger
Remarketing and retargeting
173) Understand what the re means - do it again and do it better.
Lisa Williams, http://www.acquisio.com
174) Test on multiple platforms. Different ones will have different pricing structures and customer service etc.
Lisa Williams
175) Use Facebook to get a better feel for your demographics. Target your ads to different groups of people to find out which likes them better.
Lisa Williams
176) Look at your metrics to see what remarketing is doing for other areas of your marketing: brand searches, conversions etc.
Lisa Williams
177) When you're retargeting look at the sites that don't deliver and remove them.
Lisa Williams
178) "Win moment" - if you can target them on the same day you'll get a 50% higher conversion if you don't.
Ariel Bardin, http://google.com
179) There is a significant drop-off in conversion after an hour.
Ariel Bardin
180) Make better decisions - make sure you make use of all your data and that it's in an accessible place.
Ariel Bardin
181) Your conversion is 136% quicker if you use search and display together. And you'll get five times more conversions.
Ariel Bardin
182) The more control you give users, the more engaged they will be.
Lisa Williams
Paid search campaigns
183) Product listing ads is relatively new and up to now there hasn't been much information on them.
Ann Stanley, http://www.anicca-solutions.com/
184) There are two formats for product extensions - linear usually performs better.
Ann Stanley
185) Most companies still don't use it - it will give you a competitive advantage.
Ann Stanley
186) Product listing ad brings extra brand enhancement and a better CTR, although it appears randomly. You have no control over when it is seen.
Ann Stanley
187) Use social extensions if you want your customer engaged with your business before or even after conversion.
George Popstefanov, http://pmg.co/
188) Seller ratings come from external sites such as Reviewcentre, Ciao, Trustpilot, Resellerratings as well as reviews on your site.
George Popstefanov
189) The customer must be searching on Google and you must have at least 30 unique reviews. If your rating isn't four stars or higher they won't show it.
George Popstefanov
190) You don't need to have a Google Merchant Center account for your ads to be eligible for seller ratings.
George Popstefanov
191) You can have up to eight sitelinks.
George Popstefanov
192) Use sitelink extensions as shortcuts to your best-selling products or to highlight offers, but make sure you keep them updated.
George Popstefanov
193) Dynamic search ads where Google generates the headline and the template is worth trying out. Use them if you don't have time, if you're not sure what you're doing or if you have a huge inventory which changes frequently. (Only available as Beta in Europe at the moment, but full version available in the US).
George Popstefanov
194) You can specify that Google uses just one section - eg a category, or pages that contain certain words so you are in control.
George Popstefanov
195) For your ad templates (which you create) have a universal message about your brand, use offers that apply to everything on your site eg free shipping, mention any free resources.
George Popstefanov
196) When a relevant search occurs, Google dynamically generates an ad with a headline based on the query, and the text based on your most relevant landing page.
George Popstefanov
197) With sitelinks: Test -Learn - Roll out - Test. Then do it all again.
Paul Risebury-Crisp, http://www.adobe.com
198) Make sure your sitelinks point to the relevant landing page - don't have them pointing to your home page.
Paul Risebury-Crisp
199) On a mobile screen you have significantly less space so if you have sitelinks you'll take up more of it than your competitors without.
Paul Risebury-Crisp
200) Have sitelinks as part of your brand launch - don't wait for a few weeks to add them.
Paul Risebury-Crisp
201) Google Brand Logo beta - next big thing?
Paul Risebury-Crisp
SEO and social media tools
202) Majestic SEO have launched two new metrics - citation flow and trust flow, alongside their link metrics.
Dixon Jones, http://www.majesticseo.com
203) Pay attention to your competitor rankings but don't obsess about yours.
Dixon Jones
204) For Google Analytics alternatives, try Yahoo Web Analytics.
Dixon Jones
205) Google custom search lets you input specific sites. With every algo update, create a profile of winners and losers. You can then see qualitatively what google is looking for.
Dixon Jones
206) Use Mockingbird for site mockups.
Aleydra Solis
207) Test responsiveness with Screenfly
Aleydra Solis
208) Automate social tasks with IFTTT
Aleydra Solis
209) Social Mention tracks buzz across the web and lets you see the top influencers.
Neil Walker
210) Use Google+ Ripples for Google+ analytics.
Dixon Jones
211) Basecamp for project management.
Dixon Jones
212) If you get a "you've been busted" email, correct everything before you quibble with Google.
The Search Marketing Experts Panel
213) Check you've been penalized. If you lost ranking on some keywordss but not others, you probably weren't, it's just that some links lose value. If you file for re-inclusion with Google, it won't make any difference.
The Search Marketing Experts Panel
