How To Optimize Your Website For Google Glass: Interview With Rob Garner

How To Optimize Your Website For Google Glass: Interview With Rob Garner

As part of our SEJ interview series, Rob Garner from Advice Interactive discusses how to optimize your website for Google Glass.

This new technology clearly presents new sets of challenges for website owners. Having extensive experience with Google Glass, Rob can tell you what site owners need to be aware of when optimizing for this technology.

Hear what Rob has to say in the video below:

Here are some key takeaways from the video:

• Google Glass is an entirely new screen that can’t be compared with today’s mobile, tablet and desktop screens.
• Google Now is the intelligence engine behind the whole experience, so Rob suggests not just optimizing for search but optimizing for the experience.
• In order to do that, you have to look at Google Now very closely. There are many different elements of Google Now in the form of Google Cards that webmasters need to become familiar with.
• Local search is huge, Rob says. Wherever you go, Google Glass populates a list of suggestions based on things that are nearby.
• Rob suggests experiencing Google Glass for yourself before relying solely on what someone else says. Then think about what kind of unique value your company offers that it can bring to the whole Google Glass experience.
• Rob stresses that if you’re a local business you have to have your local signals in place everywhere, including things like name, address, and phone number.

If you have any questions after watching the video, for either myself or Rob, ask them in the comments section and we will do our best to respond to everyone! Please visit SEJ’s YouTube page for more video interviews. Source: searchenginejournal.com

How You Would Improve Google Webmaster Tools - Matt Cutts

How You Would Improve Google Webmaster Tools - Matt Cutts

Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, published a post on his personal blog today asking for feedback about how Google can improve Webmaster Tools in 2014.

Google’s webmaster console allows you to verify your website and be alerted of manual webspam actions that will directly affect your site.

They have also improved how they alert users of website security issues, including resources to help webmasters if their site has been hacked. They have made improvements to how site owners can view backlinks pointing to their site.

In addition to improvements made within Google Webmaster Tools, Matt also points out they have spent dozens of hours doing Google+ Hangouts for websites and have published around 500 different webmaster videos to help site owners.

Taking all of that into account, Matt poses the question: “What would you like to see from Webmaster Tools (or the larger team) in 2014?”

Matt throws out an entire list of possible suggestions that you can view on his blog, but I will highlight some of the best ones.

Possible suggestions could include making Google Authorship markup easier for site owners, improved reporting of spam and other errors, checklists for new businesses that are just starting out, tools for reporting duplicate content, and faster bulk URL removal.

Matt ends his post with a disclaimer:

To be clear, this is just some personal brainstorming–I’m not saying that the Webmaster Tools team will work on any of these. What I’d really like to hear is what you would like to see in 2014, either in Webmaster Tools or from the larger team that works with webmasters and site owners.

So, let’s hear it! How would you improve Google Webmaster Tools? Please note that I truly appreciate, and usually respond to all comments. But to have your voice heard make sure you also comment on Matt Cutts’ blog post that I have linked to above. Source: searchenginejournal.com

Can the Bing and Google Banner Ads Be Successful?

Can the Bing and Google Banner Ads Be Successful?

With all the headlines that Google, Apple, and Yahoo! have been making recently, it’s easy to forget all about Microsoft. The company may not be making those juicy and highly-buzzed announcements like its competitors, it’s still one of the most dominant sites on the internet. And, at the October 30 Big Ads Event at the Microsoft Campus, the company announced that it’s attempting to make the search engine game a bit more interesting.

It was announced that Bing is toying around with massive ad banners. What exactly does this mean? The so-called ‘hero’ ads are simply huge advertisements that appear in a Bing Smart Search that are tied into Windows 8.1. In other words, when you search for a specific brand, that company will basically take over your screen. As of now, Walt Disney World, The Home Depot, Radio Shack, Land Rover, and Volkswagen are early partners.

The project is currently limited to a small number of consumers running Windows 8.1 in the United States. There’s no word yet on whether or not the ‘hero’ ads pilot will appear on the open web. But it is certain that Microsoft will be analyzing the test results and welcoming feedback from testers so that marketers have something “that works best for advertisers and Windows 8.1 users”.

About a week before the Bing announcement, it was uncovered that Google was tinkering with larger banner ads. On October 23, 2013, @SynrgyHQ posted an image on Twitter that showed a sponsored cover photo for Southwest Airlines. Google confirmed that a small test run was currently going on in the U.S. – less than 5 percent of search queries. So far, about 30 brands, including Crate & Barrel, Southwest Airlines, and Virgin America, are participating.

What’s interesting about Google’s experimentation with massive banner ads is that back in 2005 the company pledged:

There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever.

It appears that Google has since had a change of heart. But, why? Can these type of banner ads be effective?

In response to the Bing ‘hero’ ads, Wordstream, an online advertising company, seems optimistic about the project:

Branded searches have navigational intent – meaning the user is almost always simply trying to navigate to a brand’s website. Companies with strong brands would definitely be interested in providing a better branded experience than a 25-character headline, and the new Hero Ad format delivers user intent, branding and task completion! It’s like a landing page directly in the search results

However, one major drawback for these banners is that related search results are pushed further down than traditional search ads. So while traffic may increase for the specific brand/advertiser, other sites could suffer.

How do you feel about the banner ads that both Bing and Google are experimenting with? Do you think that this will be beneficial for brands and advertisers? Or will this do more damage than good?

Image via Microsoft.com

Source: searchenginejournal.com

Matt Cutts Answers If Every Page Needs To Have A Unique Meta Description

Matt Cutts Answers If Every Page Needs To Have A Unique Meta Description

Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, answers a question about meta descriptions in his latest video where a user writes in to ask:

Is it necessary for each single page within my website to have a unique metatag description?

When it comes to metatag descriptions, Matt says there are really only two viable options. You can either have unique metatag descriptions, or you can choose not to put any metatag description at all. Definitely don’t have duplicate metatag descriptions.

A very easy way to avoid having duplicate metatag descriptions is by registering and verifying your website with the free Google Webmaster Tools console. Google will crawl your website and tell you if they find duplicate metatag descriptions.

Generally speaking, Matt says it’s probably not worth your time to write a unique metatag description for every single page on your website. Matt doesn’t even bother to do that on his own blog. 

Matt recommends doing this only on pages that really matter. Such as your home page or pages that have high ROI. If you notice that some of your pages have really bad auto-generated snippets, you should consider writing a unique metatag description for those as well.

To sum everything up, you should avoid having duplicate metatag descriptions on all pages. Instead, write unique descriptions for some pages and just let Google auto-generate the rest.

What do you think about Matt Cutts’ latest video? Do you write unique metatag descriptions for all pages? Let me know in the comments section!

You can see the full video below:

source: searchenginejournal.com

4 Quick Conversion Rate Tips That Increased Online Sales by $500,000

4 Quick Conversion Rate Tips That Increased Online Sales by $500,000 

Conversion rate optimization is now tied with content marketing as the most important priority for online marketers, ahead of social media, mobile optimization, and brand building.

Online marketers are no longer happy with reporting web traffic as their primary metric. As what’s the use in sending millions of visitors to your website if no one buys anything?

Where’s All the Conversion Rate Tips?

Even though conversion rate optimization is just as important as content marketing, you won’t find nearly as many conversion rate optimization posts. If we take a look at Google Trends, we can see there is no comparison when it comes to the demand for content marketing tips versus conversion rate tips. In fact, it’s not even close!

But what’s the reason for this?

Most conversion rate experts will tell you there’s a science behind understanding your customer and finding out what triggers them to purchase your product or service. In fact, that’s why the tips and best practice pieces are not as common. Tips about creating high quality content can be applied to any industry in any part of the world. But psychology and science, that’s a different ball game. Or is it?

Some of the best CRO success I’ve had has taken less than 10 minutes to implement. And it has directly resulted in more than a $500,000 increase in online sales. Here’s 4 simple conversion rate tips to help to grow your business.

Conversion Rate Tip #1 – Explain the Benefits

In 2009, Hurtigruten launched online booking. To increase the number of people who initiated an online booking, we created a page that outlined all available Norwegian cruises (five in total), which linked directly into the online booking process.

For 1.5 years, the page received a steady stream approximately 300 visits per day. In order to improve the page, we wanted to explain to visitors that booking online was easier than calling into the call center. So, we created a list of 5 reasons why someone should book online.

• No online booking fees
• Online booking guarantee
• 100% secure order process
• Easy to use booking system
• 24/7 Customer support and live chat

These 5 benefits took less than 5 minutes to write and increased the number of initiated bookings by 193%, which resulted in an increase in online sales of approx. $100,000 per year.

Conversion Rate Tip #2 – Collect Customer Feedback

Surveying customers and collecting feedback is vital to improving your product or service. For $79 per month, Qualaroo allows you to collect direct feedback from your web visitors through an online pop-up questionnaire and with their pre-written templates. Just a few basic questions will give you a great deal of information. Ask questions such as:

• What information is missing from this page?
• What can we do to improve our website?
• Would you recommend our website to a friend?

At nameOn, we implemented Qualaroo in the online order process and created a rule that if the visitor wanted to leave the site, we asked them “What stopped you from completing your order?”

One of the responses we received was that the visitor could not continue their order if Javascript was not supported.

We compared conversion rates and revenue with FireFox, Safari, and Chrome in Google Analytics and found that Safari users were not converting at all if JavaScript was not supported. We tested this and found that the “Continue to Payment” button could not be clicked from iPad or iPhone. We had 3,900 people shop online and not one of them could place an order!

Conversion rates for FireFox and Chrome are approximately 8-10%, so by fixing this issue, online sales will increase by $60,000 this year.

Conversion Rate Tip #3 - Make Your Website Easy to Use

Another survey tool we’ve used is iPerceptions (formerly 4Q). iPerceptions offers a free survey tool that asks your web visitors three simple questions:

• How would you rate your site experience?
• What describes the primary purpose of visit?
• Were you able to complete the purpose of your visit today?

Using the feedback, you can prioritize content on your website to help visitors complete their goals. At Hurtigruten, we found that 40% of web visitors were seeking pricing information. Cruise prices were available in the booking engine but we wanted to make it even easier for visitors to find pricing information.

We created a pricing page that showed yearly prices per month for the best-selling cruises. This page had an immediate impact and generated more than 60,000 page views within six months – Making it the third most visited page on the website.

Thousands of more web visitors initiated an online booking from this page, which has resulted in more than $300,000 in online sales.

Conversion Rate Tip #4 - Contact Visitors that Abandon

Email remarketing is powerful! People who abandon your online order process almost purchased from you. Research shows that on average, you have 90 minutes to contact the customer if you want to complete the sale. Otherwise, they are likely to forget about you or shop elsewhere.

At Hurtigruten, we received a copy of every online booking to our mailbox. This helped us quickly see which cruises were selling, where the bookings came from, average number of passengers, etc. Having copies of the booking also gave us access to see when a booking was started but not finished.

The online booking process offers visitors the chance to book online but with the option of not paying immediately. Once a booking was made, an automated email was sent informing them that the booking would be canceled within 48 hours if no payment was received.

We changed this, and on the second day, we started sending personalized emails from our own mailbox informing the customer that we were extending the period from 48 hours to 72 hours, giving them an extra day to make the first payment.

We sent this email to a group of 25 people, who were chosen at random and we were able to save more than 16 bookings, which led to us saving more than $50,000 in online sales.

Conclusion

Not all conversion rate optimization improvements require a scientific approach. Start by speaking with your customers and collect the feedback they provide. It’s helped me increase sales by more than $500,000.

What’s your best conversion rate optimization tip? I’m looking forward to your comments below!

Read more at http://www.searchenginejournal.com/4-quick-conversion-rate-tips-increased-online-sales-500000/75491/#oPyzDgSFRIxFmRRt.99

Gmail Now Lets You Save Attachments Directly to Google Drive

Gmail Now Lets You Save Attachments Directly to Google Drive

BY CHRISTINA WARREN10 HOURS AGO

A new Gmail update will let you view and save attachments directly to Google Drive from within your message.

Google announced the news on its official blog and showcased the new feature with an accompanying GIF.

SEE ALSO: 6 Tips for Sorting Your Gmail Contacts

The new feature is twofold. First, attachments are now visible as previews at the bottom of a message. That means instead of just seeing a list of files with the option to click "preview" (which opens in a separate browser tab), you see a preview within the message itself. Clicking on the preview brings up a fullscreen view of the file, and you can navigate through several attachments the same way you flip through a photo slideshow.

Gmail users on iOS and Android have enjoyed for the attachment preview for quite some time, and it's great to see the feature added to the desktop.

The more significant feature, however, is the ability to save an attachment directly to Google Drive. Simply click on the Google Drive icon that appears when you hover over an attachment and choose where to send your attachment.

You can still download files directly to your computer, but the improved Google Drive integration allows for better file access across multiple devices.

Google says that the new feature will roll out over the next week.

Image: iStockphoto, temizyurek; screenshot, Google