http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog We share tips on search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, local search optimizing, and other tactics to improve your online presence. Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:12:23 +0000 en hourly 1 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/5-tips-google-analytics-site-search-reports http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/5-tips-google-analytics-site-search-reports#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:40:57 +0000 Taylor http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=2628 setting up goals so that you can see what actions users performed once they reached your website - this is very important! This can show you the value of the traffic coming to your website and how well your marketing is working for your business. All the upward trending graphs and thousands of visitors don't mean much for reporting purposes if you don't know what actions those visitors took. Now the next step is figuring out how the users interacted with your website and one great way to understand both user action and user intent is through the Site Search reports.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/5-tips-google-analytics-site-search-reports/feed 0 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/google-analytics-keyword-not-provided-statistics http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/google-analytics-keyword-not-provided-statistics#comments Tue, 29 Nov 2011 21:53:20 +0000 Steven http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=2169 encrypt searches for those signed in to a Google profile, rendering a portion of keyword referrer data "(not provided)" within Google Analytics reports. Webmasters and professionals throughout our industry utilize this information to improve a site or campaign. At the time that Google announced this decision, Google associate Matt Cutts attempted to allay fears that a large percentage of this keyword data would be lost by stating that only a "single digit" percentage of people are actually signed in while searching. Since then there has been much debate as to whether or not Cutts' statement was accurate. We decided to investigate further with a study of our own.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/google-analytics-keyword-not-provided-statistics/feed 0 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/image-seo-basics-optimizing-pictures-search-engines http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/image-seo-basics-optimizing-pictures-search-engines#comments Wed, 06 Jul 2011 17:05:19 +0000 Tim http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=1538


But Image Search can also be used for legitimately useful purposes. On sites where a large amount of the content is visual (such as image hosting sites, art galleries, celebrity photo sites, and more), it can often make more sense to target potential users via Image Search than traditional channels. And even when a site isn't completely 'visual', there are always plenty of opportunities to draw traffic using Image SEO.

Every type of non-traditional SEO, from Blog Optimization to Video Optimization, has its own set of best practices and rules. Image search is, of course, no exception to this rule. For the rest of this post, I'm going to go over a few of the most basic best practices for Image SEO.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/image-seo-basics-optimizing-pictures-search-engines/feed 0 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/compete-competitors-avoiding-internal-keyword-competition http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/compete-competitors-avoiding-internal-keyword-competition#comments Mon, 27 Jun 2011 17:59:36 +0000 Roger http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=1519 SEO basics lately would be an understatement. Though there are many other topics I could have just as easily chosen, I thought I’d write about eliminating internal competition among a website’s pages by targeting each keyword or keyword phrase on only one page of the site.

When you’re assigning the keywords you’d like to rank for across the pages of a website, it’s important that you target each keyword on only one page of the site. Targeting the same keyword on multiple pages causes the ranking power that you build for that keyword, through things like on-site SEO and link building, to be diluted by spreading it across several pages. This weakens each of the page’s ability to rank for the term. In addition, it causes the individual pages to compete against each other for the keyword in the search engines, just as they compete with other websites. Concentrating all of the ranking power of each keyword onto only one page of a site solves these problems. ]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/compete-competitors-avoiding-internal-keyword-competition/feed 0 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/5-long-term-benefits-ppc-advertising http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/5-long-term-benefits-ppc-advertising#comments Wed, 15 Jun 2011 16:59:49 +0000 Nathan http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=1431 PPC is typically seen as a short-term investment. You pay money and in return receive traffic to your website. When you stop paying that money to the search engines, the traffic dries up.

That being said, if you have retained access to your accounts and if have associated your paid search accounts with your Google Analytics account, then the data left behind can bring some additional value to your paid search efforts. So the truth is that a well-planned and properly executed PPC campaign can provide a lot of value long after the traffic has stopped.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/5-long-term-benefits-ppc-advertising/feed 0 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/mobile-website-keyword-research http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/mobile-website-keyword-research#comments Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:54:55 +0000 Nathan http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=817 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/mobile-website-keyword-research/feed 0 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/google-referral-string-rankings-analytics http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/google-referral-string-rankings-analytics#comments Wed, 15 Apr 2009 21:26:44 +0000 George http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=203
The old url referral string looked something like this:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=flowers&btnG=Google+Search

The new one will look something like this:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=7&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fmypage.htm&ei=0SjdSa-1N5O8M_qW8dQN&rct=j&q=flowers&usg=AFQjCNHJXSUh7Vw7oubPaO3tZOzz-F-u_w&sig2=X8uCFh6IoPtnwmvGMULQfw]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/google-referral-string-rankings-analytics/feed 0 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/google-rolls-longer-meta-description-snippets http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/google-rolls-longer-meta-description-snippets#comments Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:57:41 +0000 George http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=175 Google announced that they are rolling out longer meta description snippets for some keyword searches. The new feature will appear in search results for queries that are 3 words or longer and have a very specific intent. So for example, if you are searching for something like "Google Rolls Out Extended Snippets" you'll see some results that have longer meta description snippets (3 or 4 lines instead of only 2) like this:]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/google-rolls-longer-meta-description-snippets/feed 3 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/ppc-seo-guide http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/ppc-seo-guide#comments Fri, 05 Sep 2008 07:32:59 +0000 Nathan http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/ppc-seo-guide PPC traffic can show some valuable search trends. Well here’s the point: PPC and SEO help to inform each other consistently.

There are reasons why SEO and PPC should always be in cahoots: On the SEO side, a simple look at the analytics queries that come through and spend time on site are usually from keywords that are relevant and have a value. If there is evidence that some terms that show up organically on page 2 or deeper in the SERPs are getting hit are are converting, then these are that have value for PPC. We can immediately pay PPC to be seen next to the top ranking organic sites showing for these competitive terms. Of course, because this is PAID traffic, and because CPCs can be so wildly different for each industry or vertical, ROI calculations should be applied constantly.

Now it gets interesting.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/ppc-seo-guide/feed 0 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/advanced-keyword-research-adwords http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/advanced-keyword-research-adwords#comments Fri, 11 Jul 2008 02:27:28 +0000 Nathan http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/advanced-keyword-research-adwords PPC manager out there begins a campaign with keyword research in order to find what keywords are going to generate the desired traffic to a website. This will typically include picking basic, generic keywords and finding similar search queries which will provide the basis for an extended, or long tail, keyword universe.

While gathering these initial nuts and bolts of a campaign negative keywords will also be identified, ensuring ads will not show if certain keywords are added to the query. Some of these negative keywords will be obvious, while others can be surprising as there are now so many unique industries and websites catering to niche markets. This type of research is invaluable since it is impossible to know a priori every possible query that could trigger an ad that, if clicked, will cost money resulting in no ROI. (Of course negative keywords are only valuable in a campaign if broad or phrase match terms are used - though that discussion will have to wait for a future post.)]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/advanced-keyword-research-adwords/feed 0