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I have checked and double checked this.

GA is showing over the last couple of weeks mysite.com/ppc/landingpage1 as a landing page for organic traffic, where it shouldn't.

Main facts:

• The entire /ppc/ folder is blocked from the googlebot, and doesn't appear on any internal site maps. As far as I can tell, these pages have never been cached for the main index.
• I cannot recreate any of the organic searches myself (i.e. typing in keywords that triggered the traffic, even the almost unique long-tail ones). We just don't appear in the organic listings with these pages.
• The analytics and adwords accounts are linked. We are not paying for this mystery traffic through our PPC - these keywords are not appearing in our AdWords account (though other keywords / traffic are).
• The traffic is real - we have received phone calls from these pages, tracked to the visits recorded as organic

These pages should only receive PPC traffic. They are receiving organic traffic also, but I can't recreate it. Can anyone suggest what's going on? I'm concerned about duplicate content issues and also skewing the analysis of the PPC campaign.

Thanks

My 10 pence ...

I recently advised a client on a similar issue - they're going international and were trying to work out the benefits of ccTLDS vs subdomains vs subfolders (e.g. yoursite.fr vs fr.yoursite.com vs yoursite.com/fr).

They were particularly concerned about which approach would lead to higher rankings (rather than which would cost more / take longer etc).

After some fairly thorough research on the subject, I summarised the issue into two main points:

1. There is no right or wrong way. Amazon / Apple / Wikipedia (for example) all do it differently and it works out fine for them. Right / wrong case studies are very difficult to find, and there's a lot of fence sitting by almost everyone.

2. There is however a tradeoff between geo-targeted relevancy and amount of work needed to promote the sites:

• A well optimised, country specific ccTLD will out perform a subdomain / subfolder in a straight fight, but there's no cross-over in your campaigns. You need to work each campaign from scratch. More work, but greater reward if you can pull it off.
• On the other end of the scale, sub-folder campaigns will all help each other as all links are pointing to the same domain (so perhaps less work needed). However, their potential is not quite as great as the ccTLD approach.
• The sub-domain approach sits between them, but towards the subfolder end of the scale (some crossover, but slightly less potential).

I'm sure the above is old news to you, but it helped my client to visualise that trade-off. Either way, I based my personal recommendation to them (and now to you) on budget / resource.

• If you have the budget / resources to run separate campaigns competitively, play the long game and go for separate domains.
• If you want a slightly more cautious approach, perhaps have a smaller budget than you'd like, go for the sub-folders.

Finally, I must admit, I am an armchair commentator here, having never gone through one of these properly before. This really is my interpretation of the consensus of SEO opinion.

Do let me know which way you decide to go.

Rob

I'm looking to start publishing basic video guides for the company website. Me, a whiteboard and some useful information.... maybe weekly, possibly on a Friday. Think I saw some guy do something similar once...

I'm looking to spend about $300 - $350 on the hardware - I'm thinking $300 on the camera and $50 on an external mic.

Testing with iPhone videos and the video function on point and shoot digital still cameras came back with lighting and sound issues, hence the move to buy some equipment. I don't mind it looking simple, but don't want it looking (and sounding) too cheap.

Does anyone have any recommendations? What (if anything) do you use? Any videos I can watch to judge the quality? Anything you think I should definitely not go without (tripod? etc)

Thanks!

Thanks for the tips guys. Am currently trying to get hold of a bigger budget. Lighting, boom mike and two cameras. Will post a few examples once I have them.

Cheers!

My 10 pence ...

I recently advised a client on a similar issue - they're going international and were trying to work out the benefits of ccTLDS vs subdomains vs subfolders (e.g. yoursite.fr vs fr.yoursite.com vs yoursite.com/fr).

They were particularly concerned about which approach would lead to higher rankings (rather than which would cost more / take longer etc).

After some fairly thorough research on the subject, I summarised the issue into two main points:

1. There is no right or wrong way. Amazon / Apple / Wikipedia (for example) all do it differently and it works out fine for them. Right / wrong case studies are very difficult to find, and there's a lot of fence sitting by almost everyone.

2. There is however a tradeoff between geo-targeted relevancy and amount of work needed to promote the sites:

• A well optimised, country specific ccTLD will out perform a subdomain / subfolder in a straight fight, but there's no cross-over in your campaigns. You need to work each campaign from scratch. More work, but greater reward if you can pull it off.
• On the other end of the scale, sub-folder campaigns will all help each other as all links are pointing to the same domain (so perhaps less work needed). However, their potential is not quite as great as the ccTLD approach.
• The sub-domain approach sits between them, but towards the subfolder end of the scale (some crossover, but slightly less potential).

I'm sure the above is old news to you, but it helped my client to visualise that trade-off. Either way, I based my personal recommendation to them (and now to you) on budget / resource.

• If you have the budget / resources to run separate campaigns competitively, play the long game and go for separate domains.
• If you want a slightly more cautious approach, perhaps have a smaller budget than you'd like, go for the sub-folders.

Finally, I must admit, I am an armchair commentator here, having never gone through one of these properly before. This really is my interpretation of the consensus of SEO opinion.

Do let me know which way you decide to go.

Rob