If you hadn’t yet noticed, Google Webmaster Tools has really been adding a ton of new features. Making the announcement on the Webmaster Central blog last week, a Google rep wrote:

We previously just reported the average position at which your site’s pages appeared in the search results for a particular query. Now you can click on a given search query in the Top search queries report to see a breakdown of the number of impressions and the amount of clickthrough for each position that your site’s pages appeared at in the search results associated with that query.

The obvious question here might be what, if any, practical value do these new data provide?

And the answer is that it depends on much traffic and search volume your site gets.

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Last week, a few of us here at Digital Third Coast attended the first-ever Stratigent Google Analytics User Conference at the Field Museum in Chicago. The conference brought together a variety of users of GA and gave us all an opportunity to interact with many of Google’s top Analytics engineers. During the days’ presentations and discussions, one exciting (and soon-to-be-released) feature kept coming up: Google Analytics Intelligence.

On a basic level, GA Intelligence will provide alerts whenever there is an unusual spike in activity from virtually any user location, page section, referrer, and so on. The feature will have customizable settings for sensitivity, meaning that users will have the option to determine with precision just what level of activity will trigger an alert.

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One of the most important things a local business can do is to create a locally visible presence. 20 years ago a billboard may have seemed like the best option. Perhaps a 30 second spot on local television, or maybe a newspaper ad. Not having a Yellow Pages was small business suicide as it was the only place that people would actively look for what your small business had to offer. Today more and more people are jumping online to actively find local businesses.

It’s said that as much as 40% of all online searches have a local intent, with a said whopping 80% of commercial searches having local intent. This makes sense. If I search for “pet store”, I almost assuredly am looking for one in Chicago, where I live, and not in Florida. It’s not the most refined search, but these generic searches certainly occur with regularity. Read More

Ahhh Goals — Don’t you love ‘em…and hate ‘em! Once the hangover from the holidays wears off you are faced with the fact that it’s a new year and just like everybody else you feel compelled to make this the year that your going to make it happen.

Make what happen?

You know, that thing that you’ve been thinking about for the last 3 months. That thing that you KNOW you should’ve been doing by now. They say you should keep your goals simple and try not to take on too many things at once so I’m going to give you one simple suggestion that will help make your SEO campaign goals successful in 09.
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