Bing being a key competitor to Google is not different atleast algorithmically as far as the ranking factor goes. There are striking similarities on the criteria used for ranking between Google and Bing.

TLD Extensions – Top level domains with .gov and .org extensions have the highest possibility of ranking higher in both Google and Bing. The most interesting part is .org is rated higher to rank than .com and it is quiet surprising.

Tip – Grab .org extension for your site and build a community on that domain or redirect to your .com domain.

Keyword in Domain – A website with target keywords in the domain name has the highest correlation with rankings higher on search.

Here is a quick example of my blog ranking higher in search because of the keyword in the domain.

Tip – Buy domains with your target keywords and build micro sites with unique content on those domains.

Keyword in subdomain – Sometimes it is harder to get a keyword rich domain and another alternative is to go for a keyword filled sub domain. Data shows that Google gives some important and Bing does not factors this in their SERPs ranking.

Tip – Stay away from creating too many subdomains to gain higher ranking in search. Create sub domains only if you feel it is required from user point of view.

On page keyword usage – Both Bing and Google ranking analysis data show a small correlation between on page keyword usage and ranking. Alt image is useful to search ranking in some cases, and so is putting keywords in the url.

In the example below, the website webhostingsearch.com has the word “dedicated server hosting” 10 times on the page in comparison to webhostinggeeks.com (3 times) and it still ranks lower. The reason is webhostinggeeks.com has over 2000 unique links to the page and webhostingsearch.com has only 246 unique links to the page.

External links - Having a small number of links from multiple websites is 10x better than having a large number of links from the same website. Websites rank higher if they have diversity in link sources and there is a high correlation for this in both Google and Bing.

Tip – Diversify your link building strategies to multiple avenues. Build social links along with content links and viral links.

Length of url – Data shows that shorter urls rank higher in search than longer urls.

Tip – I have seen that blog links with longer url tend to rank higher in search, and clearly Google and Bing have different set of rules for different types of sites. This could be because blog links are generally longer. It is ok to have longer blog post links but keep your website links short because it helps users remember the url easily.

Anchor text – The number of unique links with anchor text influence the ranking of a website. Having anchor text diversity is as important as the link diversity.

Please share your thoughts, insights and comments below.

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Google vs Bing: Advanced SEO Analytics is a post from: Key Web Metrics & Web Analytics Blog

1. Super Local Marketing

Currently, being called as mobile + social is a uqniue way of advertising locally. This new advertising channel will allow the local advertiser to measure the effectiveness of their campaign all the way to physical action i.e visit to a local restaurant / coffee shop to make a purchase.

Google is trying hard to make local advertising more effective. Using data from public reviews is useful, but it still does not provide physical conversion measurement.

Facebook is getting ready to announce the intelligent social ads that could potentially be a breakthrough in local advertising. The concept opens up a whole new way of looking at conversion data and yes it definitely is not going to be your traditional GA goal conversions. It definitely opens up new web analytics measurement possibilities.

2. New Ranking Algorithm

This one seriously aims at Google’s age old core competency – The ranking algorithm. Google has always used links as the core of its ranking algorithm and its page rank metric was developed using link data. However, it is interesting to note that not all links were created manually.

Facebook has decided to go a step further and exploit web user data for calculating website rankings. It is currently testing a new feature that will take the Facebook share button functionality to next level.

The new button will include a feature called “like”. At the frontend it might look like a cool new way to express your feelings about a website but at the backend it will send data to Facebook servers using Facebook connect. This data will go through a series of mathematical calculations and the system will decide the new web rank / site authority.

3. Facebook Analytics

Waging a war against Google should not be limited to search. Google has an endless list of useful products and services and Facebook is ready to battle on all front.

Facebook Insight might be another major announcement at the F8 summit. The concept of data capture is similar to the web analytics solutions where the data is shared through an image beacon file. This allows developers and users to measure events triggered during an API call.

Do you think that Google should be worried about these new features?

Please share your thoughts, insights and comments below.

Here is a list of the related top blog posts on this blog -
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Facebook vs Google & Google Analytics – Final Round?? is a post from: Key Web Metrics & Web Analytics Blog

If you are on the same boat and worried about losing your rankings then here is a quick video from Matt Cutt’s (head of Googles webspam team). In this video, Matt debunks the myth about Google using GA data for SEO or search ranking. Quick and informative!

Click here to view the embedded video.

SEO Implications of Google Analytics Data is a post from: Key Web Metrics & Web Analytics Blog

With significant growth in social media, paid search growth has slowed down a bit year over year. According to latest research done by Forrester Research, Inc., more businesses will shift a larger percentage of their budget towards the social media marketing in next three years.

Source: March 2009 US Interactive Marketing Forecast Online Survey by Forrester Research, Inc.

Google being the biggest player in paid search marketing (more than half of their revenue comes from paid search), is ready to accept the challenge.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Besides adding live twitter updates (watch the video for details) in organic listings to improve search relevancy, Google is testing a lot of new things on the paid search side.

Here are some of the most useful updates on Google paid search-

Paid Search Site Links

Paid search site links is one of the coolest feature available to advertisers on brand terms only. It looks similar to the organic search sites links.

PPC site links offers more visibility on the sponsored links providing a better search experience for users and a higher brand term CTR for advertisers. The links can be used to display multiple offer pages or different product/service offerings.

This is definitely my highest recommended paid search feature. If you have not activated this feature on your account yet then talk to your search/account manager now.

PPC Image Ads

Google is now displaying product images (product extention) on the SERP sponsored listings for some of its advertisers. Advertisers can display multiple product image ads directly in the search results.

Advertisers will be charged on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis. The CPC will be the same for clicks on any one of the image ads. The ads can be controlled from the Google Merchant Center. These ads are triggered when someone searches for the keywords in your adwords keywords list.

This could definitely improve the click through and it will be interesting to see how this feature could clutter the search listings once its out of beta.

Product Listing Ads

Google recently announced the product listing ads feature. The output of this new feature looks similar to the product extention ads but the key difference is the spend model. PLA is focused on the cost-per-action (CPA) performance model. Advertisers will only pay once a user completes a purchase on their site.

Another key differentiator between the Product Extention ads and the Product Listing ads is there is no need for keywords list or ad copy for the latter. Google’s adwords engine automatically pulls the entire inventory from the advertisers Google Merchant Center based on search keyword relevance.

This is a pretty significant step from Google to incorporate the organic search relevancy to paid search.

Hope you enjoyed this post. Email me if you have any questions. Please share your thoughts, insights and comments because it really helps me write more effectively.

PPC 2.0: Google’s Top 3 Paid Search Updates is a post from: Key Web Metrics & Web Analytics Blog

Before you begin reading this post I want to warn you this could possibly give you sleepless nights for long time to come. All your search optimization efforts are at now completely at the mercy of search engines. If you think you are smarter and can “bypass” the search engine guidelines then think again.

Ten years ago, achieving high ranking was as easy as eating a fresh hot New York pizza. Few changes to your website title, meta and keyword tag made you the king of the world. Even my non geek art loving friend achieved top rankings for his ordinary skateboarding blog.

Things changed forever when big G (big G = Google) came and created the rules of search marketing. Unheard terms like search algorithm, page rank, Googlebot, rel=nofollow tags became the fundamental part of the SEO vocabulary. Eventually, search marketing players adapted to the new rules and we all lived happily ever after….Oh wait! If you think the story ends here then you will be surprised to know that it was just the beginning.

Search engine marketing is about to change again, and it’s none other than big G who is causing the change. The latest game changer is what I call “behavioral ranking logic”. Behavioral ranking is latest update in Google’s search algorithm, and it causes automatic change in rankings based on users search behavior. It is designed to provide extremely relevant search listings to the search user in the shortest possible time.

Relevancy has always been the key factor in ranking but adding search users’ behavior element takes it to the next level. Google is doing this for the benefit of its customers (search users). If a user is not satisfied with the search results then it’s pretty obvious he/she might never user the search again.

The behavioral ranking logic changes the search ranking of any website based on the keyword the search user typed prior to conducting a new keyword search. Let’s perform a real time experiment to test this. You can try this at home right now J

Clear your browser cookies and perform a search for the term “business web hosting”. On the SERP (search engine results page) keep an eye on the site at the natural rank #5. On my browser, the #5 ranking site is www.Rackspace.com. Rackspace is a top managed/dedicated hosting company, and they are the luxury hosting service providers (relatively high price and high quality).

Next step is to clear your cookies again and search for the term “cheap web hosting”. Finally, perform a search for the term “business web hosting” again without clearing cookies. Notice that Rackspace.com is gone from the position #5 and from the entire first page. Scary!! Isn’t it?

Any guesses on why Rackspace.com is not #5 anymore for the term “business web hosting”.

Come on… it’s not that hard.

The site Rackspace.com disappeared from the first SERP because the term searched before “business web hosting” i.e.” cheap web hosting” activated the behavioral logic. This logic identified the irrelevancy between the user’s request and Rackspace.com’s target customers (high end hosting customers) and resulted in a change in rankings.

The new update in search algorithm has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is instant delivery of highly relevant results for search users and more qualified visitors for business, in this case Rackspace. Disadvantage is the chance of losing visitors solely based on one criteria i.e. price. Rackspace offers a variety of low cost, scalable cloud hosting packages but is not targeting price related keywords. Another reason could be Rackspace.com is not highly optimized for the keyword “business web hosting” but I am sure this is not the case.

How would this update impact my business?

If you are doing all the right things in search optimization then it should not cost you much. The goal is to target the right keywords with the right message. If you land up in situation similar to this one then you should focus on optimizing more pages on your site with price point.

Please provide your comments, feedback, or tweets here.

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Behavioral Ranking: Shocking Truth about the New Search Marketing Game! is a post from: Key Web Metrics & Web Analytics Blog