Canadian SEO guest blog with information from North American SEO leaders.

Google has worked with news publishers around the globe for years to help them make the most of the web. Our search engine generates billions of clicks each month, and our advertising solutions (in which we have invested billions of dollars) help them make money from that traffic. And last year, we launched Google Play, which offers new opportunities for publishers to make money—including through paid subscriptions. A healthy news industry is important for Google and our partners, and it is essential to a free society.

Today I announced with President Hollande of France two new initiatives to help stimulate innovation and increase revenues for French publishers. First, Google has agreed to create a €60 million Digital Publishing Innovation Fund to help support transformative digital publishing initiatives for French readers. Second, Google will deepen our partnership with French publishers to help increase their online revenues using our advertising technology.

This exciting announcement builds on the commitments we made in 2011 to increase our investment in France—including our Cultural Institute in Paris to help preserve amazing cultural treasures such as the Dead Sea Scrolls. These agreements show that through business and technology partnerships we can help stimulate digital innovation for the benefit of consumers, our partners and the wider web.

Posted by Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman

Mark Zuckerberg isn’t the only social media company head anxious to get his hands on Google Glass for the betterment of his product. Dennis Crowley, CEO of Foursquare, has been talking about it as well.

At Mobile World Congress, Crowley spoke about the device, and TechCrunch says he also told them “Foursquare is looking at how it can evolve along with that”. Ingrid Lunden quotes him:

“Anywhere there’s a screen, we want to put our stuff on it, whether that’s on a phone, or a watch, or whatever,” he said. He also added that Foursquare hasn’t yet worked with Google Glass itself.

…

Crowley said that Foursquare is gearing up to launch a new feature in the next couple of weeks that builds on this concept, enhancing the “contextual awareness” (his words) introduced by existing services like Radar. (Introduced in 2011, Radar alerts users to when they are near places that they have flagged in their app.)

Crowley, as you may know, co-founded early location-based service Dodgeball, which was acquired by Google in 2005, only to be shut down a few years later in favor of Google Latitude. He came out with Foursquare around that same time period.

He has since expressed interest in working with Google. At SXSW 2011, for example, he said that Google would be a great partner if the timing was right, and that they would “probably” partner with them. Since then, we’ve seen a handful of Foursquare integrations with Google. Google Places started importing Foursquare data, for example. Eventually, they started letting you add Foursquare check-ins to Google Calendar (which could prove quite useful for Foursquare users when combined with the new Google Calendar integration into Google Search).

At one point, it didn’t even seem out of the realm of possibility that Google would make a move to acquire Foursquare. Here’s a snippet from an article in December 2011:

Laura Goode at All Things Digital interviewed Crowley. On the possibility of an acquisition, she quotes Crowley as saying, “I wouldn’t disqualify anything. The thing that’s important to us is doing the things we want to do, which could be partnering with someone, or it could be continuing to grow the product independently.”

That is not exactly saying, “No, we’re not for sale.” For that matter, it doesn’t mean that Google, would be the winner of an acquisition, if in fact Foursquare is for sale. However, the interview is largely about Crowley’s relationship with Google, and how he has been talking with Googlers, including business development Googlers.

That, incidentally, was just after Facebook acquired Foursquare rival Gowalla. I’m not trying to start any new acquisition rumors here or anything. Just pointing out the potential usefulness of Foursquare and Google working together.

While Google is working on collecting a great deal of its own location-based data, even through games like Ingress, Foursquare no doubt has a lot to offer the company, especially for an offering like Google Glass, who co-founder Sergey Brin, by the way, seems to think will replace smartphones.

This year’s big game was filled with action—brothers battled on the field and a 34-minute-long power outage nearly turned the tide of the game. With all the excitement on the field, we looked online to see what fans across the U.S. were searching for during the game.

Overall, the top trending searches on Google during the game were:

1. MM’s
2. Beyonce
3. Baltimore Ravens
4. San Francisco 49ers
5. Colin Kaepernick

Other noteworthy trending searches include those about the power outage, which started trending mid-game and ended up ranking eighth out of the most-searched terms during game time. Searches for Beyonce spiked dramatically during her halftime show. And showing that ads drive consumer interest, searches for Chrysler spiked significantly after their fourth quarter commercial.

The most searched team: The Ravens
As they did in the game, the Ravens narrowly beat out the 49ers as the most searched team during the game on Google. The most searched players of the game were Colin Kaepernick, Joe Flacco, Michael Oher, David Akers and Jacoby Jones—thanks to his 108-yard kickoff return.

The Harbaugh brothers’ on-field battle has been one of the big stories of the game, so it’s no surprise that viewers took to the web to find more information on these coaches. While John Harbaugh took home the trophy, Jim was the most searched brother on Google.

Game day commercials
Lastly, it’s not game day without the commercials. Fans were seeking out commercials online throughout the game, driving searches for big game ads on Google 55 times higher this Sunday than the same time last week. The most searched for commercials on YouTube were ads from MM’s, Mercedes-Benz, Disney’s “Oz Great and Powerful,” Lincoln, and Audi. Searches for “Gangnam Style” were also trending on YouTube, along with searches for big game performers Alicia Keys and Beyonce.

This year many advertisers turned to YouTube to share game day ads and teaser videos in the weeks leading up to the game. In 2013, big game ads or ad teasers were watched more than 66 million times on YouTube before game day.

Now that you’ve seen all the ads, vote for your favorite one on either the YouTube Ad Blitz channel or ADWEEK.com now through February 11. The winners of the Ad Blitz will be announced on the YouTube homepage on February 16.

Will you be Monday-morning quarterbacking the game or the ads?

Posted by Jeffrey Oldham, Software Engineer

“Suddenly the fingers of a man’s hand emerged and began writing opposite the lampstand on the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace, and the king saw the back of the hand that did the writing. Then the king’s face grew pale and his thoughts alarmed him, and his hip joints went slack and his knees began knocking together.”

The Famous Writing on the Wall…

It was King Belshazzar of Babylon whose knees began knocking when he saw the handwriting on the wall. After the interpretation was given, “God has numbered your kingdom and put an end to it,” it was that same night that his kingdom was taken over by Darius the Mede.

Many SEOs can relate to Balshazzar. We’ve spent the last 15 years building an industry around keywords, tags, and links, but Google has made clear the old kingdom is coming to an end, and a new regime is here.

Defining Social SEO

For lack of a better name, we’ll call this new world, “Social SEO.” It’s not a great name, because parts of SEO have been social for a long time, but this is the first time that social signals have been considered a primary ranking factor. Let’s look at what that means, and how it came about.

Changing the System

At first, Facebook’s social graph was merely a way of showing how popular someone was. I have 50 friends, and you have 250 friends. Why would that matter to a search engine? It matters because friendships are based on trust, and search engines use trust as a signal for quality. If you think a page is useful, and I trust you as a person, there’s a good chance that I’ll think the page is useful as well.

As the social graph matured, the search engines realized its usefulness, and began including social signals in their algorithms. Danny Sullivan from SearchEngineLand confirmed this with Google and Bing in 2010.

This means that SEOs must adjust their strategy, and come up with new ways to optimize these new relationship signals. To help you understand Social SEO in greater detail and to capitalize on the associated new opportunities this presents to you as a marketer, you can find a list of five insights into Social SEO as follows:

Insight 1: Where Are the Signals Coming From?

In June of 2012, SearchMetrics put out research showing the correlation between social activity’s and search rankings in Google. The study showed that activity from Facebook and Twitter correlates very strongly with high rankings in Google. The study looked at Google+, but at the time Google+ was less than a year old. Since then, Google has placed significant emphasis on their homegrown social network, and I’m sure this year’s study will reflect that.

From those findings, and our own intuition, we conclude there are four social networks search engines rely on for their signals: Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Insight 2: Why YouTube?

Most people think Google+ is simply a social network like Facebook. What they don’t realize is that Google+ is actually of a system for collecting and displaying social data across all of Google’s products, including their social network.

At the core of most of the products that Google creates is a search bar: Chrome, Android, Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube—you name it. Search is the factor that makes Google’s products better than their competitors. Google+ is important, because it’s a layer of social Google wants to incorporate across its entire portfolio.

For example, let’s say I’m planning a road trip across the United States. I start mapping out my route using Google Maps. Wouldn’t it be great if I could see the routes my friends have taken on their road trips, landmarks they’ve stopped at, and restaurants they’ve enjoyed eating at? Google+ was designed to deliver that social experience to Google Maps. But in order to deliver that personalized experience, Google needs to know who you are, who your friends are and what things you like.

Google+ goes beyond just displaying a personalized experience within its suite of products; it also collects data from them.

For example, let’s say you like Rainn Wilson’s videos on YouTube so much that you decide to subscribe to his SoulPancake channel. By subscribing, you are joining a group of others who share a common interest: SoulPancake videos. This informal grouping is a signal to Google that you have something in common with others in that group. Google may use that signal to recommend web results it may think you’ll like, based on the fact that others in that group liked it.

Among Google products, YouTube’s popularity and levels of engagement (e.g., 800 million monthly unique visitors, more than 4 billion daily video views, etc.) make it a particularly important source of signal generation, which can then be tied back to your profile and social graph through Google+.

Insight 3: A New Strategy and New Team Roles

New signals require new tactics, and new tactics require new strategies.

Managers who plan on adding a social element to their SEO campaign should evaluate their current resources and team makeup.

A skilled technical SEO may not be the best-suited person to execute a relationship-building campaign. Likewise, a community manager may not enjoy keyword research and data analysis.

There are only a small number of individuals who contain a deep understanding of both SEO and Social. If you have such a person on staff, they should develop and lead your new Social SEO strategy, while specialists in their respective fields execute the tactics.

Insight 4: Adjusted KPIs

Rankings matter very little in a world where everyone sees different search results.

Like traditional SEO campaigns, Social SEO still uses conversions and organic traffic as primary KPIs, but their affinity for rankings has diminished.

Secondary KPIs such as social follower growth, influence scores, and content engagement metrics can act as indicators that the campaign is moving in the right direction, but shouldn’t be given much weight individually.

Google and other analytics providers are starting to recognize the importance of measuring social activities, and have begun to offer reports such as Google Analytics’ Social Assisted Conversions in an effort to tie ROI to social actions.

Rankings, in aggregate, can be useful as another directional measurement, but it means very little on an individual keyword level, especially since Google is hiding a great deal of keyword referral data. However, certain objectives, such as reputation management, may make rank tracking a more important KPI for some.

Insight 5: New Tools of the Trade

Social is a high-touch environment, and requires constant attention. Since attention isn’t scalable, we need technology to scale for us. Here are a few useful tools for your Social SEO campaigns:

• HootSuite: One of the most popular social management platforms, HootSuit allows a team to monitor, analyze, and engage with audiences across multiple social networks simultaneously. The scheduled tweets lets campaign managers queue up messages to be sent automatically at scheduled times.
• IFTTT: A unique, rule-based platform where you can automate activates based on social actions. For example, you can create a rule to email the team whenever someone mentions your brand in a tweet.
• Triberr: A content curation and sharing platform. A team can search for and join relevant industry groups to access a constant stream of fresh content that can be automatically shared with social audiences. Likewise, teams can create and share their own content with their social networks.

Additional Research

The insights listed above are from a newly published eBook from Catalyst, “The Art of Social SEO: Mastering the Art of Social SEO.” I was one of several SEOs who contributed to the project. For additional Social SEO insights, download a free copy of the publication here.

In Closing

There once was a day when SEOs could make a few tweaks to a website, and rankings would improve. Now, we need to tweak the website, create new content, ask others to link to the content, share the content, and comment on it. It is a combined effort from Web development, copywriting, design, PR, influencer marketing, social, and in some cases, paid media (if you need to drive traffic to content for additional engagement).

We can no longer go off to do SEO research, strategy, and tactical execution in a silo. Search engine algorithms are more holistic than ever, and SEOs need to be as well. This is our role in Google’s new kingdom. It’s time we embrace the change, because like King Belshazzar, the writing is on the wall.

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Google appears to be taking another step toward emphasizing brands in search results. As pointed out by Gordon Campbell a few days ago, and then again today by Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable, Google is placing brand names at the beginning of titles for links in search results.

One example both point to is for York Fitness.

As Campbell points out, “Google has presented us with the page title ‘York Fitness: Gym Equipment Machines | Weights | Boxing’ but the page title that York Fitness has set is ‘Gym Equipment Machines | Weights | Boxing Equipment | York Fitness’ and truth be told, Google’s version of the page title looks far better.”

They appear to be doing the same thing on a variety of pages.

While it didn’t speak about the brand-specific method of retitling pages, Google has talked about its process for retitling pages in the past.

Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Pierre Far wrote on the Google Webmaster Central Blog over a year ago, “Page titles are an important part of our search results: they’re the first line of each result and they’re the actual links our searchers click to reach websites. Our advice to webmasters has always been to write unique, descriptive page titles (and meta descriptions for the snippets) to describe to searchers what the page is about.”

“We use many signals to decide which title to show to users, primarily the title tag if the webmaster specified one,” he continued. “But for some pages, a single title might not be the best one to show for all queries, and so we have algorithms that generate alternative titles to make it easier for our users to recognize relevant pages. Our testing has shown that these alternative titles are generally more relevant to the query and can substantially improve the clickthrough rate to the result, helping both our searchers and webmasters. About half of the time, this is the reason we show an alternative title.”

“Other times, alternative titles are displayed for pages that have no title or a non-descriptive title specified by the webmaster in the HTML,” he said. “For example, a title using simply the word “Home” is not really indicative of what the page is about. Another common issue we see is when a webmaster uses the same title on almost all of a website’s pages, sometimes exactly duplicating it and sometimes using only minor variations. Lastly, we also try to replace unnecessarily long or hard-to-read titles with more concise and descriptive alternatives.”

As far as brands go, brands are associated with trust and identity. We all know how important Google considers identity these days. A brand is the identity of a company or a product. Google seems to be be making sure content is clearly associated with the brand that puts it out.

Ask any person who’s never traveled to Brazil what he knows about the country and it’s likely that one of their first responses is: Carnival (or Carnaval in Portuguese). It’s no wonder: Carnival is one of the largest celebrations on the planet. As a Brazilian, I can also say that it represents much of what’s wonderful about our country—joy, cultural richness and musical diversity.

From Feb 7-12, YouTube will bring Carnival to the world for the third year in a row—giving you a front-row seat to the entire celebration on the YouTube Carnival channel.

The best Carnival is the one you choose, anytime, anywhere
What better way to experience a party the size of Brazil than by connecting to the rhythms and local traditions of six different cities—from Rio de Janeiro’s samba and Salvador’s axé to southern Brazil’s frevo. This year, you’ll be able to enjoy the festivities of Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, Olinda, São Luís do Maranhão, Ouro Preto and Pirenópolis.

Pick from a series of live feeds, camera angles and performances from the city of your choice, right in the middle of the party. Channel feeds are made possible by a combination of YouTube Live and Google+ Hangouts. In total, you can access a total of 150 hours of live Carnival feeds—from your laptop, tablet or smartphone.

Here’s a little more detail on some of the celebrations:

• YouTube from Rio de Janeiro—From Feb 8-12, you can dance as much samba as you want, as you watch the attractions of the Circo Voador concert hall or check out the calmer celebrations of Terreirão do Samba, a venue that receives various samba musicians and afternoon concert sessions throughout the year.
• YouTube from Salvador de Bahia—For the third year in a row, you’ll be able to check out the best of Salvador’s famed Carnival route, Barra-Ondina. However this time, you’ll be able to choose from four different camera feeds located throughout the Carnival route, so you don’t miss your favorite carnival band. Follow Salvador’s most famous carnival artists such as Claudia Leitte, Chiclete com Banana, Asa de Águia, Ivete Sangalo and others as their mobile stages advance through the circuit.

Google+ joins the party
Everyone knows that a good party generates great photos. That’s why we’ve also joined with photographers who will be uploading pictures daily of Carnaval’s best moments from 20 different Brazilian cities at Google+ Carnaval.

Find the entire agenda of this year’s Carnival events at www.youtube.com/carnaval. To keep track of your favorite events and the artists you want to see, download the Carnaval 2013 extension from the Chrome Web Store, and make sure not to miss a beat.

Posted by Lauren Pachaly, Consumer Marketing Manager, Google Brazil

For a few years it seemed that “display advertising” had become something of a dirty word for many in the Internet marketing community.

Perhaps they only tested contextual targeting on the Google Display Network (GDN) – throwing a few keywords up and hoping for the best? Maybe they tried some large buys from a demand side platform (DSP) and didn’t see the best ROI? Or maybe they signed on with a self-service DSP only to find the platform was confusing and lacking in features?

Whatever the case, there are so many options available for display advertising that you should be out there testing.

Google is pushing the envelope with their offerings on the GDN. But that is just one display network! Peel back the curtain and you will find a big world of networks, DSPs, and remarketing services – all of them offering their own special sauce of algorithms, self-service platforms and generally raising the bar for the entire industry.

Google AdWords – Google Display Network (GDN)

The GDN is the most well-known display network given that it is a part of the Google AdWords platform. However, the consensus among an alarmingly high percentage of advertisers is that GDN doesn’t work. My gut instinct is that the advertisers crying the loudest know the least about how to leverage the range of GDN features to target their customers.

So, if it has been a while, here is a sampling of the myriad ways you can tweak GDN campaigns to generate quality traffic – and yes, conversions:

• Contextual Targeting: This is the basic foundation of the GDN. Input some keywords that are relevant to your product or service, and Google will match your ads to websites. This is where a lot of advertisers stop. But you have to dig deep. Segment your keywords. Google has given us the ability to bid on individual keywords. Review placement performance reports and exclude poor websites. Add demographic settings to gain another layer of relevancy.
• Placement Targeting: Cherry-pick the websites that are most relevant and/or convert the best. Layer on keywords, demographic settings for even more detailed targeting.
• Topic/Category Targeting: Need to increase your ad reach? Try Topics or Categories relevant to your product or service. This will open you up to a much larger portion of the GDN. Be sure to control performance with site exclusions, keyword targeting, and demographic targeting.
• Remarketing: Where do I start? The possibilities are endless! Tag your website and landing pages. Segment those visitors into audiences. Create targeted ads. Voila! – watch the conversions come in!
• Search Companion: Bridging the gap between search and display, Search Companion is a unique feature for the GDN. You create a campaign leveraging keywords you would normally target on search. Google will cookie anyone searching for those keywords on Google.com – regardless of whether they click your ads. You can then target ads to those searchers on the GDN. This is an extremely relevant way to run display ads!
• RLSA: Otherwise known as “remarketing lists for search advertisers.” This is another way Google is bridging the gap between search and display. RLSA functions like typical remarketing, adding a cookie to anyone who visits your website. However, instead of triggering ads on display, your ads are remarketed to these visitors on Google.com. Unfortunately, this beta test is closed. Ask your Google rep for more details.
• Similar Audiences: Already running remarketing? Great! How can you gain even more impressions, clicks, and conversions? Run ads on audiences that are similar to your existing remarketing audiences. Google reviews your audiences and will match you to an audience that expands far beyond those visitors who have already been to your website.

DoubleClick Bid Manager

By now you likely know that Google bought DoubleClick a few years ago. That’s why we now have the Google Ad Planner and now DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBA).

DBA is a demand-side platform that gives you access to ad exchanges with reach far beyond the GDN. Why would you choose DBA over another DSP service?

• DBA is a platform that is similar to AdWords. So there is familiarity and a lower learning curve for managing campaigns.
• Options include contextual, placement, and category targeting. However, you can up the game by targeting third party data segments – which are essentially demographic levers you can pull.
• Want to make a direct buy on a premium website, but don’t have the resources or time? DBA allows for “private exchange deals” which are self-service direct buys on premium websites.

Broader World of Display

Outside of the world of Google, there are countless options for display advertising. Here is a brief sampling:

• DSPs: Also known as demand side platforms, DSPs are the backbone of the display industry. Familiar names include The Trade Desk, Media Math, AppNexus among a host of others. Offerings range from utilitarian display buys (budget, CPM, bam you’re done!), convenient self-service platforms and emerging real-time bidding options (RTB).
• Remarketing: So many advertisers have made the unfortunate connection that Google is the only name in remarketing. Not true. If you want to be a remarketing pro, Google is only the first step. Services like FetchBack, AdRoll and Perfect Audience (among countless others) are changing the face of remarketing every day. Target your previous website visitors on ad exchanges and websites far outside the reach of the GDN. AdRoll and Perfect Audience are specializing in Facebook remarketing, too.

So, even if you have been burned with a poor display experience in the past – or were just too scared to try – know that now is the time to test display again. There are so many options, it is truly like being a kid in a candy store. Options, reach, flexibility and – best of all – great performance!

What is your favorite or preferred display network, DSP, RTB service or remarketing service? Leave a comment!

Become an Expert Digital Marketer at SES New York
March 25-28, 2013: With dozens of sessions on Search, Social, Local and Mobile, you’ll leave SES with everything and everyone you need to know. Hurry, early bird rates expire February 21. Register today!

Google announced some updates to its AdWords Terms Conditions in North America, the Caribbean, and Latin America (except Mexico, Argentina and Brazil). You can see the full country list here.

The main change Googee points out is that the terms now accomodate new advertising products and services.

“For example, we offer third-party ad serving in some situations, so you’ll see provisions about how we resolve ad serving disputes,” explains Mark Martel of the Google Ads Team. “Other changes include updated links to our policies and better consistency among our advertising terms globally.”

Google is giving users 45 days to review and accept the new terms. If you don’t accept them, Google may pause your ad serving until you do. So you might want to do that.

When you sign in to your account, you should be automatically taken to a page with the updates.

If you go to the Google Glass page for “How To Get One,” Google now informs you that the contest is over, and applications are now closed.

“But the conversation is just getting started,” Google says. That’s true, as further evidenced by words from Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley at Mobile World Congress and a recent sighting of Mark Zuckerberg talking to Sergey Brin about the device (not to mention this TMZ “interview”).

Google says this on the page now:

Thank you so much to everyone who applied to be a Glass Explorer.

We have been overwhelmed, entertained and inspired by your responses. #ifihadglass is now closed and we will be notifying successful applicants soon. If you don’t hear from us, don’t despair! There will be more chances to get Glass at a later date.

If you would like to stay informed about Glass, you can sign up here.

There is a form on the page where you can sign up to stay informed.

Google has said that Google Glass will be available to all by the end of the year, and that they will cost less than the $1,500 early contest winners have to pay.