Google Help Needs UX Improvements, A Content Audit & A Better Attitude…

Published on

Help Wanted signAs someone who’s been doing SEO and PPC day in and day out for nearly 5 years, I’m no stranger to Google’s Help sections. While there’s a lot of great search engine marketing advice out there on other people’s blogs, sometimes it’s helpful to see what Google themselves suggest and recommend about Google-y things, especially if it’s a brand new feature or a confusing topic.

Of course, the info isn’t just intended for SEO and AdWords folk: it’s for your everyday webmaster (hence why one of their main Help blogs is called Webmaster Central). Your everyday webmaster (definition: the person responsible for maintaining a website) might be an individual working in marketing, web development or IT, however it might even be the business owner his/herself, especially if it’s a small business. Therefore Google should endeavour that all of its information is sorted in the best way possible for convenience and accessibility and that the sections in general are as easy-to-use as possible in order to reduce frustration.

…But that’s simply not the case.

What Google Help needs is:

  • UX (user experience) improvements,
  • A content audit, and
  • A better attitude…

Why UX improvements?

I had an incident recently that just screamed ‘frustrating user experience’ when I tried to contact the Google AdWords Help team, who – in their own words – are “here” and “love to help.”

Click to read more!

SEOno News & GB Posts: Part 6

Published on

News

Since Part 5 in March, quite a lot has happened…

So, yeah… It’s been pretty busy! 🙂

Posts on other sites

Here’s a few posts I’ve written on other sites since March as well…

#SMsceptic: How To Get More RTs (The Copycat Way)

Published on

This post’s been drafted since February and I’ve been reluctant to publish it, but after reading Cracked.com’s The 5 Most Notorious Joke Thieves on the Internet and particularly #4, I thought “ahh what the heck….”

4 Steps to RT Success!

Step 1
Find a popular tweet of the moment, usually an image or joke that’s getting shared like nobody’s business.

Hipster birds imageStep 2
Put a spin on it. Make it slightly different. Or if you want to be a right git, don’t even bother changing it – copy and paste it as-is.

Step 3
Tweet it in your own right. Don’t RT the source (in the old RT/quote style or otherwise) – just pass it off as your own.

Step 4
Watch the RTs roll in.

Example

Did you see that “R.I.P. Journalism” tweet (about Katy Perry unfollowing Russell Brand on Twitter) that made the rounds a while back?

Here’s the earliest tweet I could find from January 2012:

Click to read more!

3 Things I’ve Learnt 3 Months Into Self-Employment

Published on

Cappuccino imageIn early May I took the plunge – I left my full-time job at an agency to do something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time: become self-employed as a fully-fledged, full-time freelance consultant.

Now that it’s early August, it means that I’ve just hit the 3-month mark. My first observation is just how quickly the time has gone (blimey!) but I’ve also learnt a great deal already, which I felt inspired to put into writing.

So here are 3 things I’ve learnt in the first 3 months…

1) People love saying “yes” (but they may let you down)

Fortunately I already have quite a strong network of contacts in South Wales. In fact, the reason I made the leap when I did is simply because I had a fair few people asking me if I did freelance on the side (in addition to my full-time job), but I didn’t. I thought if only a few of those came off, I’d be set. But it was even fewer than I’d expected.

Click to read more!

Data Discrepancies – Google’s (Old) Keyword Tool vs. (New) Keyword Planner

Published on

Introducing the Keyword Planner

Google AdWords logoBack in May, Google introduced the Keyword Planner: a new version of the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, a handy tool for both PPC and SEO folk for keyword research purposes.

Truthfully, for keyword research projects I’ve carried out recently, I’ve simply continued to use the (old) Keyword Tool. But recently I decided to try out the Keyword Planner, which I’d heard (on the grapevine that is Twitter) wasn’t radically different to what it was replacing, as it was pretty much a merge of the Keyword Tool and the Traffic Estimator and therefore seemingly an aesthetic change that simply combined the two within a new interface.

In order to get properly acquainted with its layout, I decided to run the two tools side-by-side on a quick keyword check job.

A slight discrepancy…

And that’s when I picked up on something alarming…

For effectively the same tool (i.e. one tool replacing the other), the data doesn’t line up.

Looking at “it jobs” keyword suggestions for Computer Recruiter, I noticed discrepancies with both the search volume and average CPC data.

Click to read more!