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Wondering if anyone else has noticed a change in site performance since Google has changed the way Adwords are displayed.

We have a site that has been performing well, however this year visits have dropped by 20%. The performance of the keywords has remained the same and bounce rate has actually reduced.

My suspicion is that with Google removing the Ad links from the right side of the page and placing 4 ads at the top of the page, this has pushed down the organinc results. Looking at some of the search results we now appear beyond the results page fold despite being the 1st orgainc result.

The Ad results has site links and there is the Map with local results all pushing our first organic result of the screen.

Has anyone else found this an issue or should I look elsewhere for the drop in visits? (The overall searches for our search terms has not dropped, just our percentage share has)

When managing a clients PPC campaign is there any advice on throttling up and down the accounts depending on the search popularity. Let's take "wedding cake" there are obvious trends here https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=wedding cake but would you advise to spend more on Ads during the quite months as competition is low and you can get more click for less cost, or do you load up on clicks when it is more competitive/expencive .

Please don't get bogged down in the "weeding cake" keyword, I'm looking more for views on when would be best to load an account in terms of return on investment. For example would you get better quality clicks when low search volumes as opposed to high. Lets also assume that our product costs us the same all year round. I have seen different side to the story.

What are your views

Erica, Thanks for your opinion and I agree. we will go for the plain old www.TownNameBID.co.uk .

All the best

So we are setting up a new site for a Business Improvement District (BID) for our local town. So initially we would name the new site TownNameBID.co.uk (or .com) . However with the new domain tld out we are thinking of getting TownName.BID   using the new BID tld.

.BID is meant to be reserved for sites such as auction sites, however this will actually be more of a community support site.

I would have thought that technically it should not really make much difference particularly once all the appropriate Local Business is placed on the site. But what is the possibility that by search engines it may perceive this a an auction site as opposed to a community site.

as well as technical issues are there any anecdotal issues where the wrong tld may put people off.

Thoughts

Miriam,

Love the answer, some great info hidden in those links , Cheers.

Also I love the "Happy thanksgiving" message. Being in the UK it obviously means very little to us apart from for some strange reason we have decided to adopt your "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" .

All we do over here is have a few fireworks on the 5th November to remember some chap who tried to blow up the houses of parliament ages ago, no Turkey till Christmas for us Brits

I hope that you had a great Thanksgiving anyway

Shakar,

Thanks for the advice. So would you say that engaging openly and socially is better than connecting by email and telephone?

I would suspect that you are spot on.

I would guess that we start with a bit of research on targeted businesses/clubs and then write about them either socially or in blogs. After a while if a natural engagement has not occoured then get in touch more personally to build a relationship.

what do you reckon?

Many thanks for that, great idea and will suggest we target one or two local clubs.

What is your experience of gaining local links through email, calls, begging, blackmail etc....  OK not blackmail but you get my drift

Hi,

I am looking to ask for peoples experience on getting local links and the best and most successful approaches made.

Let's say we have a local sports physiotherapist and wants to engage with local sports clubs, running clubs, etc.. What are the best methods for an agency to deploy to try and build relationships and links. Our client may have treated some of the local sports club members but as an agency we may not have the specifics.

What success have Marketing agencies got with emails, telephone, site visits etc in order to assist with building good quality relevant links.

What success do you have with offering discounts to build links or promoting competitions and offering guest blogging at a local level.

Are there other tactics, such as linkedIn or engaing on other social channels.

It would be nice to find out others experiences what ever the business sector for building local links.

Many thanks in advance to all those who contribute.

There are many level to ensuring your site is optimised that is not just text on the page. Page load speed, page name and page bounce must all surely play a factor. This is a nice site that engages with nice images and not ruined by extra text to try an please a search engine.

For keyword content, keep your blog up-to-date with honest genuine content, maybe pointing to a gallery when you update the images.

As far as I can see SEO will become (is becoming) something that reflects good honest and engaging content rather than making sure you have scientifically optimised your site.

Show your passion for your subject and it will be rewarded with visitors interested in your service and products. Try to second guess and over optimise a site and you will be found out , maybe not today or tomorrow but eventually.

That said there are always things to improve Have a look at H1 and H2 settings you have on the home page.

Also notice at the top I did not say it was a quick site have a looks at speeding this up http://www.webpagetest.org/result/141126_61_VQT/ people may bounce away even before viewing your page whatever the great keywords you may have optimised with.

Just my 2 pennies worth, hope it helps

Ok, this should hopefully be a simple one. Not sure if this is a Moz crawl issue of redirect issue.

Moz is reporting duplicate title for

www.site.co.uk , site.co.uk and www.site.co.uk/home.aspx

is this a canonical change or a moz setting I need to get this number lower.

Also very keen to find new location of list. has anyone got suggestions of alternatives that we could use?

Thanks for the feedback and (probably well deserved) slap in the face. Tp you this may be a bleeding obvious question to some others, who are still learning then feedback is great.

I'm getting that there is the Quantity vs Quality issue here. Having had little experience of building an SEO link strategy, I am plainly not aware of how fast to go or the techniques of getting good links.

I see (using  open site explorer) my competitors have 10's of thousands of external links, so even if I kept at this rate it would be many years before I caught up. That is based on my current understanding, so how do I get to those levels, even if it is over a year or two?

Wondering if anyone else has noticed a change in site performance since Google has changed the way Adwords are displayed.

We have a site that has been performing well, however this year visits have dropped by 20%. The performance of the keywords has remained the same and bounce rate has actually reduced.

My suspicion is that with Google removing the Ad links from the right side of the page and placing 4 ads at the top of the page, this has pushed down the organinc results. Looking at some of the search results we now appear beyond the results page fold despite being the 1st orgainc result.

The Ad results has site links and there is the Map with local results all pushing our first organic result of the screen.

Has anyone else found this an issue or should I look elsewhere for the drop in visits? (The overall searches for our search terms has not dropped, just our percentage share has)

Must say that is also a big request from us as well. Sorry i cant answer, but hope we can add weight to the cause

There are many level to ensuring your site is optimised that is not just text on the page. Page load speed, page name and page bounce must all surely play a factor. This is a nice site that engages with nice images and not ruined by extra text to try an please a search engine.

For keyword content, keep your blog up-to-date with honest genuine content, maybe pointing to a gallery when you update the images.

As far as I can see SEO will become (is becoming) something that reflects good honest and engaging content rather than making sure you have scientifically optimised your site.

Show your passion for your subject and it will be rewarded with visitors interested in your service and products. Try to second guess and over optimise a site and you will be found out , maybe not today or tomorrow but eventually.

That said there are always things to improve Have a look at H1 and H2 settings you have on the home page.

Also notice at the top I did not say it was a quick site have a looks at speeding this up http://www.webpagetest.org/result/141126_61_VQT/ people may bounce away even before viewing your page whatever the great keywords you may have optimised with.

Just my 2 pennies worth, hope it helps