War is on. Amazon vs Google

Brief Notes :
- Amazon stopped selling Google's chromecast
- Google dropped Youtube ads.
- Now Amazon is droppping all Shopping listing ads.

It has been reported that Amazon has stopped bidding on Google’s Product Listing Auctions as of April 28th. Google’s Product Listing Ads are ads with product images that appear at the top of certain search results. Amazon had been a top bidder in that auction for a year and a half. In the meantime, Amazon had been cultivating a competing product. What’s next and how this affects your business.
What is Google’s Shopping Ads Program?

Google’s Shopping Ads program is an enhanced version of standard AdWords advertising. It allows a merchant to upload a feed of their products, including photos. It results in an attractive product listing at the top of Google’s organic search results.

The benefit of a Shopping Ad is higher click through rate (CTR) that Google’s Support Page reports can be as high as 300% better than standard text ads. The leads are better because a user is able to view product information before clicking an ad, so they know what they are clicking to when they click the shopping ad. These ads tend to take up more space in a mobile device, crowding out the organic results.
Is the Competition Between Amazon and Google Intensifying?

I asked PPC expert Jim Stratton, PPC Director at Jason Hennessey Consultingabout Amazon’s possible next move and he said,


“This might be a battle between Amazon and Google where Amazon was trying to gain insights to further advance their own bidding systems and technology.”

Putting on my tin foil hat, I noted that Amazon’s participation may have helped drive the up the cost of Google’s Shopping program, possibly discouraging some advertisers from competing on Google Shopping Ads against Amazon. Jim expressed interest in the idea:


“…strategic bidding to pump up the cost of Google’s PLA and make Amazon’s more attractive is an interesting concept.”
Amazon is Google’s Competitor

Amazon is a formidable competitor for shopping advertising. As YouTube is a search engine for videos, Amazon is where consumers go directly to search for products.


Amazon is not just an online marketplace. Amazon is a shopping search engine. A shopping search engine is the most profitable slice of Google’s pie and that makes Amazon Google’s biggest threat because of Amazon’s PPC program.
Takeaway for PPC and Merchants

Jim Stratton believes this is a moment of opportunity for merchants.


“The opportunity for PPC bidders, with Amazon dropping out, this opens up the space for competitors. Those advertisers who have been historically competing with Amazon will see their ad positions increase, higher click through rate percentages, and increased click volume, which will lead to higher ad spends but proportionally higher sales and profits.

I believe that this will open up the space for new advertisers who have been sitting on the sidelines because they didn’t want to battle Amazons deep pockets for their respective products and categories.”

So it may be that the moment is now for merchants to give Google Shopping a try because now is as good as it’s going to get. Read the full story at Merkleinc.com, Amazon Abruptly Shuts Down Google Shopping Program

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Update on Google Algo : Google confirms core search ranking algorithm update - March 2018

Google has confirmed that they ran a “broad core algorithm update” last week that has impacted the appearance and rankings of some websites in the search results.

Google posted on Twitter that Google does these types of updates “several times per year” and there is nothing a site can do specifically to “fix” their ranking after the core update runs. “Some sites may note drops or gains,” Google explained and said if a page drops, it doesn’t necessarily mean there is something wrong with that page, it is just how Google changed their ranking models that now benefits “pages that were previously under-rewarded.”

Here is Google’s statement on Twitter:

Each day, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve our results. Some are focused around specific improvements. Some are broad changes. Last week, we released a broad core algorithm update. We do these routinely several times per year.

As with any update, some sites may note drops or gains. There’s nothing wrong with pages that may now perform less well. Instead, it’s that changes to our systems are benefiting pages that were previously under-rewarded.

There’s no “fix” for pages that may perform less well other than to remain focused on building great content. Over time, it may be that your content may rise relative to other pages.

There was speculation over the weekend about a Google update; this is Google confirming that speculation.

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Search Result Update on Google "People also search for"

I have just found that while searching for some query google starts to display "People also search for" just below to each result once you click on that link and coe back to google result page.

Some thought leaders have also tweeted this :

Have anyone observed these kind of SERP results. Google displaying "People also search for" just below to every result once you click and open that links. @rustybrick @neilpatel @semrush pic.twitter.com/DHGYF4v4nv

— Jaswant Singh 🔵 (@OMGJaswant) February 22, 2018

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SEO classification - New Vs Old

SEO approach New Vs Old

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SEO Tips for Prestashop Stores

I would like to talk about SEO for eCommerce stores based on the Prestashop platform: both basic points and some more advanced stuff which requires changing the Presta code and installing modules.

Let’s start by the beginning.

1- Define well the keywords you will be working with

It’s very important to think from which side you will attack before entering battle. Otherwise, you may end up dead in a very short time. You must sit down with plenty of time, pick up paper and pen, and write down the words you want to work with. For example, suppose you want to sell office furniture in the Spanish market. You would write down keywords such as office furniture, online sale of office furniture, office chair, office desk, etc.

But which are the relevant words to position your business? The best thing to do is ask the company that dominates the search market: Google. There’s a tool in Google Adwords which, until a few weeks ago, was great, and which has now been integrated in the keyword planner – a monstrosity which unfortunately continues to be the best beacon in the dark. By using the tool “Enter or upload keywords to see their performance” you can find the number of global and local searches for those words which take place every month, whether those keywords are relevant, and what the competition is.

It is recommended to always use words with the relevant average competition and number of searches, taking the usual variables into account: time and money. Do you have the time and money to create a contents and social network relevance strategy that gives you visibility when competing for those words? If the answer is yes, go ahead. If the answer is no or you don’t know, let it go: you will lose your time and money.

Another tool that can help you in this sense, even though it’s a payment tool, is Semrush, with competition results honed by SEO and SEM. A great application that is well worth your money.

2- Fill all the fields in the product info sheet

Leaving the obvious aside – don’t copy descriptions from other websites, enter descriptions by hand –you should ALWAYS enter the meta titles, meta descriptions, and meta labels in the product info sheets, and include a coherent URL that aids SEO. The same goes for your categories and manufacturers. This information is crucial for Google, and makes it possible to provide Google with much more SEO-friendly data when it crawls through your product info sheets.

3- Sitemap and robots.txt

These two extremely important files are sometimes not generated, due to an oversight or to ignorance. The sitemap (which you should later send to Google via the Google Webmaster Tools) is generated by means of the Google Sitemap by PrestaShop module, in the module SEO tab. The robots file is generated in Tools > Prestashop 1.4 generators and in Preferences > SEO & URLs in Prestashop 1.5.

Always check that your robots.txt file is “hindering” the indexing of the pages in your sitemap.

4- Site speed

Very important. Never overlook your website speed. Most likely, you will have a dedicated server sharing an IP with 300 “neighbors” (you can find this by means of the Majestic SEO Neighbourhood Checker). At the very least, have your website load as fast as possible. You can achieve this by using the cache and by deactivating the recompilation. Recompiling is used in development environments to reload Prestashop templates, CSS, and Javascripts from scratch in order to see the changes that are applied to the front-office code (what users see). Once you are done developing and are in the production environment, deactivate it to enable the website to work properly.

In Prestashop 1.4, go to preferences > performance and check:

• Force compilation > No
• Cache > Yes
• Use CCC for stylesheets
• Use CCC for the JavaScript code
• Reduce the HTML code after executing the Smarty compilation
• In tools > generators activate Apache Optimization when you generate the htaccess

In Prestashop 1.5, go to advanced parameters > performance and check:

• “Never recompile the template files”
• Activate cache
• Use CCC for stylesheets
• Use CCC for the JavaScript code
• Reduce the HTML code after executing the Smarty compilation
• JavaScript compression in the HTML code after executing the Smarty compilation
• Apache optimization

Another option which you might consider is hosting CSS, Javascripts, and images in external serversso that the page skeleton loads more quickly. This option is included in the sections I have just mentioned as “Media servers (use only when CCC is activated)”. Prestashop offers integration directly from its official modules using Amazon Cloudfront (paid service).

5- URLs and duplicate titles

One of the problems which Prestashop hasn’t troubleshot yet is duplicate pages. This happens in any website which has pagination for category, brand, and supplier pages. Product page 1, 2, 3… generates repeated titles, meta descriptions, and duplicate URLs (the URL is the same one, only parameters change). You can find them straight away via Google Webmaster Tools (in Search look > HTML improvements).

Unfortunately, the two only ways to get rid of this is including all products in a single page, with no pagination (impossible for large catalogs) or else working on the Prestashop core to change the title, page meta description, and URL.

6- Redirecting from old to new pages

A very common mistake in migrations. Suppose that I come from osCommerce and migrate to Prestashop. I had 700 products indexed in Google, 20 CMS pages, and 30 categories. Those pages will be left orphaned, as the osCommerce URL structure has nothing to do with Prestashop.

The best option is to create a permanent 301 redirect to tell Google that where your former URL used to be (http://www.domain.com/category/cat003-product-name-p-8576.html) now it will find http://www.domain.com/category/product-name.html

It’s best to use a redirect-generating tool like this one and be patient, because you’ve got to do it by hand.

7- URL *^Ǩ+`!!! Ids

Prestashop insists on associating an ID with category, manufacturer, supplier, CMS page, and product URLs. This, in addition to being ugly, is not useful for SEO. You can fix it by changing the core or buy a module to remove those IDs. We will all be grateful. Including Google.

8- URL accents

One of the bugs in Prestashop 1.5 in Spanish is the fact that it can generate this URL for the product “Radio eléctrica portátil de baño”: http://www.domain.com/radios-de-baño/Radio-eléctrica-portátil-de-baño. Yes, really.

There are free patches and payment modules that can fix it. Please fix it.

9- Structured data

Google Rich Snippets help to send structured data to the search engine (manufacturer, price, delivery period, delivery cost, etc.) and can serve to include rating stars in the product reviews in page searches and even include ratings from services like eKomi. Here is an example of how good the final result looks.

10- Integrate Schema.org

Schema.org is a directive that tells search engines how to classify the contents of a website. It works for Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Yandex (Russia). The key is the “itemtype” tag which tells the search engine whether something is a website, a store, or another service. The full list of data that can be included in Schema for “store” is here: http://schema.org/Store. In the case presented at the beginning (office furniture) you would want to be classified as Furniture Store http://schema.org/FurnitureStore

I hope that these tips work for you. Implement them carefully and never cease to work on and optimize your in-page SEO. There is nothing worse than working on the off-page SEO to achieve relevance and then having Google find that your website is a mess.

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Some Useful SEO terms that you should know!

If you have a website or blog, or if you work with anything related to the Internet, you’ll certainly need to know a bit about search engine optimization (SEO). A good way to get started is to familiarize yourself with the most common terms of the trade, and below you’ll find 20 of them. (For those who already know SEO, consider this post as a refresher!).

1. SEM: Stands for Search Engine Marketing, and as the name implies it involves marketing services or products via search engines. SEM is divided into two main pillars: SEO and PPC. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is the practice of optimizing websites to make their pages appear in the organic search results. PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click, and it is the practice of purchasing clicks from search engines. The clicks come from sponsored listings in the search results.

2. Backlink: Also called inlink or simply link, it is an hyperlink on another website pointing back to your own website. Backlinks are important for SEO because they affect directly the PageRank of any web page, influencing its search rankings.

3. PageRank: PageRank is an algorithm that Google uses to estimate the relative important of pages around the web. The basic idea behind the algorithm is the fact that a link from page A to page B can be seen as a vote of trust from page A to page B. The higher the number of links (weighted to their value) to a page, therefore, the higher the probability that such page is important.

4. Linkbait: A linkbait is a piece of web content published on a website or blog with the goal of attracting as many backlinks as possible (in order to improve one’s search rankings). Usually it’s a written piece, but it can also be a video, a picture, a quiz or anything else. A classic example of linkbait are the “Top 10″ lists that tend to become popular on social bookmarking sites.

5. Link farm. A link farm is a group of websites where every website links to every other website, with the purpose of artificially increasing the PageRank of all the sites in the farm. This practice was effective in the early days of search engines, but today they are seeing as a spamming technique (and thus can get you penalized).

6. Anchor text: The anchor text of a backlink is the text that is clickable on the web page. Having keyword rich anchor texts help with SEO because Google will associate these keywords with the content of your website. If you have a weight loss blog, for instance, it would help your search rankings if some of your backlinks had “weight loss” as their anchor texts.

7. NoFollow: The nofollow is a link attribute used by website owners to signal to Google that they don’t endorse the website they are linking to. This can happen either when the link is created by the users themselves (e.g., blog comments), or when the link was paid for (e.g., sponsors and advertisers). When Google sees the nofollow attribute it will basically not count that link for the PageRank and search algorithms.

8. Link Sculpting: By using the nofollow attribute strategically webmasters were able to channel the flow of PageRank within their websites, thus increasing the search rankings of desired pages. This practice is no longer effective as Google recently change how it handles the nofollow attribute.

9. Title Tag: The title tag is literally the title of a web page, and it’s one of the most important factors inside Google’s search algorithm. Ideally your title tag should be unique and contain the main keywords of your page. You can see the title tag of any web page on top of the browser while navigating it.

10. Meta Tags: Like the title tag, meta tags are used to give search engines more information regarding the content of your pages. The meta tags are placed inside the HEAD section of your HTML code, and thus are not visible to human visitors.

11. Search Algorithm: Google’s search algorithm is used to find the most relevant web pages for any search query. The algorithm considers over 200 factors (according to Google itself), including the PageRank value, the title tag, the meta tags, the content of the website, the age of the domain and so on.

12. SERP: Stands for Search Engine Results Page. It’s basically the page you’ll get when you search for a specific keyword on Google or on other search engines. The amount of search traffic your website will receive depends on the rankings it will have inside the SERPs.

13. Sandbox: Google basically has a separate index, the sandbox, where it places all newly discovered websites. When websites are on the sandbox, they won’t appear in the search results for normal search queries. Once Google verifies that the website is legitimate, it will move it out of the sandbox and into the main index.

14. Keyword Density: To find the keyword density of any particular page you just need to divide the number of times that keyword is used by the total number of words in the page. Keyword density used to be an important SEO factor, as the early algorithms placed a heavy emphasis on it. This is not the case anymore.

15. Keyword Stuffing: Since keyword density was an important factor on the early search algorithms, webmasters started to game the system by artificially inflating the keyword density inside their websites. This is called keyword stuffing. These days this practice won’t help you, and it can also get you penalized.

16. Cloaking. This technique involves making the same web page show different content to search engines and to human visitors. The purpose is to get the page ranked for specific keywords, and then use the incoming traffic to promote unrelated products or services. This practice is considering spamming and can get you penalized (if not banned) on most search engines.

17. Web Crawler: Also called search bot or spider, it’s a computer program that browses the web on behalf of search engines, trying to discover new links and new pages. This is the first step on the indexation process.

18. Duplicate Content: Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. You should avoid having duplicate content on your website because it can get you penalized.

19. Canonical URL: Canonicalization is a process for converting data that has more than one possible representation into a “standard” canonical representation. A canonical URL, therefore, is the standard URL for accessing a specific page within your website. For instance, the canonical version of your domain might be http://www.domain.com instead of http://domain.com.

20. Robots.txt: This is nothing more than a file, placed in the root of the domain, that is used to inform search bots about the structure of the website. For instance, via the robots.txt file it’s possible to block specific search robots and to restrict the access to specific folders of section inside the website.

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How to see Google.com USA results from a different country

If you or your clients have a global or international market, then it can be difficult to understand how your SEO is performing in those countries due to the localisation of search results in Google.

Over the past few years, Google has worked to “regionalise” most of its search results.  This means that with each search request, it takes into account which Google domain you are using (e.g. google.co.uk), where you are physically located (usually based on your IP address), any geographical indicators in your search (e.g. Portsmouth), etc.

We have a few clients who are marketing their services globally.  This used to be simpler.  Google.com was always the “international” or “global” search engine.  If you wanted UK companies, you searched Google.co.uk.  If you wanted to see how you were doing internationally, then you searched Google.com  – because all the results in Google.com used to be the same – no matter where you were located.  But regionalisation has changed this.

A number one ranking in Google.co.uk with the “search the web” option is not the same as Google.com.  Furthermore, if you search Google.com from the UK you will not see the same results as you would if you searched Google.com from Dallas, Texas.

This really hit home when client’s would brag to their friends in the USA about their SEO company and the number one position in Google – only to be told that when they performed the same search in the States, they were on the second page and not even the first.

Google provides a search parameter that you can use to see how the search results look from different geographical locations – “gl”.

The syntax is something like this:

http://www.google.com/search?q=your+search+term&gl=XX

Where XX has a number of options:

    a two digit country code such as US, UK, AU, FR
    a US zip code such as 90210
    Longitude and Latitude such as 32.90,-97.03  (getting ready for Mobile Search!)

These results are still not exact – I’m not sure why.  I have tested several queries from our servers in the USA and compared them with results when using this option and they are always close but not an exact match.  The best option is to use the US Zip Code or Long/Latitude.  Using the country code (e.g. gl=US) still brought back UK listings that are not present when using the zip code.

Even with its flaws, this is a very useful facility.  If you are targeting foreign markets then this can be a real eye opener.

Article source : verticalleap.co.uk

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SEO Tips to get higher ranking of websites

Ø       Write great content.

Ø       Write unique content.

Ø       Create a great keyword phrase.

Ø       Write an accessible site.

Ø       Use the keyword phrase in your title tag.

Ø       Use the keyword phrase in your title tag.

Ø       Use the keyword phrase in your URL.

Ø       Use your keyword phrase a lot, but not too much.

Ø       Use your keyword phrase in headlines.

Ø       Use your keyword phrase in anchor text of links.

Ø       Try to get links from reputable sites.

Ø       Keep your site live as long as possible.

Ø       Create a sitemap

Ø       Write a descriptive meta description

Ø       If you must use Flash, always include alternative text

Ø       Don't link a lot to external sites

Ø       Don't use images instead of text links

Ø       Don't misspell your keywords in your content

Ø       Don't try to optimize for more than 2-3 keywords and phrases

Ø       Don't use your keyword phrase too much

Ø       Don't have more than 10 words in your URL

Ø       Don't link to link farms

Ø       Don't create pages of links

Ø       Don't have broken links on your site

Ø       Don't use the meta refresh tag to redirect users

Ø       Don't use 302 redirects

Ø       Don't duplicate content on your site 

Ø       Don't write bad or incorrect HTML

Ø       Don't use frames

Ø       Never redirect to another domain

Ø       Don't Use Doorway Pages - Your Site Will Be Banned

Ø       Don't Cloak Websites - Your Site Will Be Banned

Ø       Never display different content to a spider than customers

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SEO Process Helps ranking of Websites.

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Online Marketing Concept

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