Following a seven-year investigation by the European Commission, it was revealed today that Google will be fined a record-breaking £2.1 billion for abusing its power and dominating search results with its own AdWords-driven shopping services. This is the largest fine to be given out by the EU for a monopoly abuse case.

The case concludes that Google has been favouring its own comparison shopping service and the products on Google Shopping in the SERPS, thereby demoting competitor sites. Under EU antitrust rules, this is classed as illegal and a distortion of the market. The European Commission believes that this practice has denied other companies the ability to compete based on their merits, as well as denying consumers an accurate choice of products and services.

Google fervently denies these claims and stands by their opinion that their method provides consumers with the best shopping experience, making it easier for them to find the products they want.

However, despite their denial, Google has been given 90 days to cease these practices or face further penalties.

So, what could this mean for Digital Marketing?

Well, if Google have to change the appearance of its search engine results, something that they've systematically changed to dominate the online advertising space, then surely this will have a huge impact on their income streams, and on how we advertise websites! Google have 90% of the search market share in Europe alone, and whilst this form of advertising is becoming more and more expensive with its auction-style bidding, there's unfortunately no getting away from the fact that it works, and many businesses rely on it heavily for their businesses.

At the moment, Google generates a massive amount of its income through its advertising platform, and this fine whilst seemingly huge and record-breaking, is nothing compared to the loss they would incur if they had to stop using it. It's hard to see how they will get around this anti-trust ruling, but it will surely have an effect on millions of companies employing the advertising platform, and all those companies like ourselves who are work very closely with it.

Year by year, Google Ads are becoming more of a priority to Google, with the current number of Ads standing at 4 at the top of each SERP. This, along with the introduction of Google Business and local services, means that no organic search results are shown to users ‘before the fold’.

As can be seen in the image above, the entire right-hand side of the page is dominated by Google Shopping adverts. These are also paid for adverts, as can be seen by the small ‘sponsored’ badge at the top of the page. Due to this, most of the SERPs are dominated by adverts which have been paid for by those advertising companies. Google Ads even appear at the bottom of the page, meaning only the middle 10 results are organic. From this, it is easy to agree that consumers may not be provided with the best possible choice when it comes to shopping on Google.

You have to take your hats off to Google for their genius. Where else in the world can you find an example where a business owner pays an advertising company hundreds of thousands, or even millions of pounds in advertising spend, where you can't speak to anyone, you can't get any loyalty discounts, and you even have to rely on their own statistics about the click costs, click stats, fraud clicks, etc. They absolutely dominate this space, they most definitely monopolise, and they do of course favour anything that earn's money for Google! But, is this unfair practice worthy of a fine, or just a phenomenally intelligent advertising platform?

It is unsure what changes Google may make to the world’s most popular search engine, but if they do impose changes it is likely that they will create a new way to fill the gap left by the favouritism of its own Google Shopping channel. Digital Marketers may need to change their methods to fit in with the changes and come up with new marketing strategies. It will definitely be interesting to see where this goes.

However, there is also a chance that Google will not impose any changes at all and just pay the higher fine after the 90-day period. This fine is the first in the three-pronged investigation into the companies practices and so over the coming months, we may see the super-power fined for other anti-trust practices.

For more updates on this story, you can follow our Twitter or our Facebook here!

When attempting to achieve high Google rankings, there are lots of different factors to take into consideration. For most keywords, you won't get anywhere near the first page unless you have a user-friendly website that is technically sound, loads quickly, and contains excellent content that is ultra-relevant to the topic in question and ultra-helpful for your site visitors.

If you've ticked all of those boxes, congratulations, but the bad news is that you're still not guaranteed a prominent position in the SERPs. There's another ranking factor that still carries a huge amount of sway: links.

How search engines use links

To search engines like Google and Bing, links from one website to another are like votes of confidence. If somebody links to you, then as far as Google's bots are concerned, they're effectively saying 'I endorse this website and believe that it is interesting, helpful and/or entertaining'. Even if the link was created because somebody was trashing your company on a forum, the link itself will still pass 'juice' to your website and therefore improve your chances of ranking in search results.

Of course, it's not quite as simple as 'more links = better rankings'. For one thing, some links are worth considerably more than others - you might have a hundred links from obscure blogs and local businesses, but if a competitor gains one link from a well-known, high-authority website (think BBC News, the Financial Times, a government page), they may well blow you out of the water overnight.

Furthermore, certain links can do more harm than good when it comes to your SERP rankings. Google's quality guidelines warn against creating manipulative links - this means that your website may be penalised (i.e. lose its rankings) if:

• You pay for links on other people's websites (adverts should be marked with a 'nofollow' tag so as not to pass link juice)
• You build a lot of links from websites that aren't relevant to yours in any way
• You deliberately create links for the sole purpose of affecting your organic rankings
• You participate in shady link exchange schemes, private blog networks (PBNs), etc.

Your rankings may also be adversely affected if you have a lot of links from spammy and/or low-quality websites. For instance, you probably don't want any online casinos or pornography sites linking to you (although this may not apply if your own website falls into one of these categories).

Why not just create a whole bunch of websites and link to yourself?

Genuine organic links from high-quality websites usually don't come along on their own, and link outreach (contacting other site owners to ask if they'll link to your page from theirs) is a time-consuming task that is by no means guaranteed to get results.

With that in mind, it's not hard to see why some webmasters - and some SEO/marketing agencies - have the following thought:

"Why bother begging other people for links when I could just create a few websites of my own and link to myself?"

Here's an example: if your main website is an online store that sells laptop computers, you might set up a blog on a different domain, write a couple of articles about how to choose the right laptop, and cleverly include a few links to your main site - your 'money' site - in the body of each post. You might then repeat this process a few times so that you end up with a number of different domains all linking to your laptop store.

From one point of view, this is a sound enough strategy. Whereas you can spend hours researching and emailing link prospects that you may never hear back from, it doesn't take long to create a simple site using Blogger or Wordpress, and you're guaranteed a new link at the end of it. But is this really an effective way to bolster your link profile and boost your organic rankings?

We'd argue that no, it isn't. Here are three reasons why:

1. It's potentially manipulative - and thus leaves you open to Google penalties.

At time of writing, there's nothing in Google's guidelines on link schemes and unnatural links that specifically forbids creating new websites and linking them to your main site. However, here's what they do say:

"Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines. This includes any behaviour that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site."

This statement is deliberately vague - it puts the onus on you, the webmaster, to judge whether your link creation tactics are manipulative or not. If you participate in any questionable linking practices, you're potentially opening yourself up to present and future Google penalties, and as anyone who saw their rankings fall when Penguin and Panda were first brought in will tell you, that's not a risk worth taking.

There is no doubt that the tactic of creating new websites for the express purpose of building PageRank-passing links to your 'money' site could be classed as manipulative. The new sites will likely add no value whatsoever to the web, and the links themselves will probably be a dead giveaway, making it clear that your satellite websites were set up for unnatural SEO purposes and not to serve any particular need.

2. The links will be practically worthless anyway.

Broadly speaking, it's good to have inbound links from a variety of different domains, and it's true that creating a dozen simple Wordpress blogs and giving each one its own unique web address is a quick and easy way to grow your list of linking domains. But here's the thing about links: quantity is less important than quality. As mentioned above, a single link from a high-authority domain is worth more than a hundred links from low-authority websites, and a brand new blog that was created in a hurry and doesn't contain any real content is about as low-authority as it gets.

In other words, you can spend weeks setting up new websites and linking to yourself, but any positive impact on your rankings will be minimal - you're better off spending that time looking for genuine link/collaboration opportunities that will actually benefit your website. (At least then you won't be at risk of getting hit by a thin content penalty!)

But okay - let's assume that you're taking a slightly more considered approach to this. Instead of creating a basic blog page, publishing one or two keyword-stuffed posts containing over-optimised links to your main site, then repeating these two steps ad infinitum, let's imagine that you've taken the time to create a high-quality website that really does add value to the web. You've written a lot of genuinely useful, insightful content; you've given the site an appealing design instead of just using a template; and you've only linked to your 'money' website where it's actually appropriate to do so, perhaps scattering a few other external links throughout the new site for balance. Maybe you've even done such a good job that several other people have linked to your new website, thereby boosting its reputation in the eyes of the search engine bots.

But here's the thing...

3. Why not put all of that effort into your main website?

Creating good content and building a website's reputation is extremely time-consuming, and if you're prepared to do all of the above to ensure that the links on your satellite site(s) will actually have a positive effect, it rather begs the question: why aren't you prepared to do that on your 'money' site?

Instead of using your time and resources to convince Google that your linking site is legitimate, it's surely better to create high-quality content for your main site that will drive more traffic and increase user engagement in the place where it actually affects your company's bottom line.

* * *

One final clarification: what we're not necessarily saying here is that you should never link between two websites that you control. If you own two separate websites, each with its own independent reason to exist, then it's fine to link between them as long as there is a natural reason to do so.

For instance, if you have one website that sells laser printers and another that sells toner cartridges, it may well make sense to link from one to the other - not only will this potentially benefit your Google rankings, it will also provide a better online experience for your users (since someone who buys a printer will naturally want to know where they can buy toner for it in the future).

Worried about your website's link profile? Not sure of the best way to climb the Google rankings? Our SEO specialists can help - contact Designer Websites today to discuss your requirements.

At this year's Google Marketing Next Keynote 2017, Sridhar Ramaswamy, Bhanu Narasimhan, Bill Kee, Karen Yao, Roshan Khan and Jennifer Liu announced a range of new and exciting Google updates which will be provided to the public before the end of the year. Many of these updates strive to make many everyday marketing tasks quicker and more accessible to everyone, alongside working to improve every businesses conversion rates. 

If you happened to miss this year's Google Marketing Next Keynote, we've put together the top 10 useful features and insights we took note of while watching the presentation.  

1. The Introduction of Google Lens

Google lens will now allow you to view the world through Google. Whether it is a restaurant you want to see the reviews for, a flower you don’t know the species of or the password on a wifi router, simply direct your Google lens at it and all the information you need to know will become available. 

2. New Beta AMP Landing Pages

With each second your page needs to load, the bounce rate increases by 20%. Google is introducing the option to have new AMP landing pages wich will speed up your ads vastly, leading to an increased conversion rate. 70% of people search for something before they buy it, so it is in your best interest to ensure your ads are the first thing they see. 

3. Introduction of Location Extensions and Store Visits

Google will soon be introducing location extensions to the general public, which means that when your video advert is displayed, your businesses location, opening times and distance away from the nearest store will appear beneath the video. This will hopefully improve the rate of consumers visiting businesses in person, which can then be tracked through the store visits data Google introduced 2 years ago. 

4. New Tools to Measure Store Sales Will Link Google Ads to Offline Sales

91% of people decide to buy a product after seeing a relevant ad, which is why Google are introducing two new tools which will allow you to see how your ads directly related to offline sales. The first will allow you to import transaction data into AdWords to see store sales and revenue at the campaign level you use for search and shopping campaigns.

The second new tool will allow you to take advantage of Googles 3rd party partnerships to get store sales data. Their partnerships cover 70% of credit and debit card transactions in the US, and paired with the previous store visits Google map data, this new feature will be able to link offline purchases to online ads. 

5. Customer Patterns and Life Events To Link to Google Ad Targeting

New Customer Pattern and Life Event data will help businesses understand where people shop and when life's biggest events take place such as graduation, moving and getting married. This key information will allow businesses to make their ads even more targeted to their key consumers.

6. Follow Your Customers Buying Path with Google Attribution

Instead of all your data being based on last click attribution, Google Analytics will soon let you see precisely what adverts lead the consumer towards buying your product. Therefore, instead of the analytics stating your consumer came through organic traffic, you will now be able to see if they saw an advert for your product 1 week ago, watched a youtube video for your product, had a retargeted ad and then finally searched for your product directly. 

Through unique reach information, you will be able to see exactly how well your adverts performed which will contribute to making more precise marketing decisions in the future. 

7. Google 360 Will Manage All Campaigns in One Place

It has been found that there is a shocking 40% higher bounce rate from mobile landing pages when compared to desktop. Google is working to improve this figure with new landing page features on Google 360. A new landing page tab will include reports about each of your current campaigns, so you can keep an eye on it at all times and pay attention to the pages that are not performing as well as they should be. 

8. Google Adwords and Google Optimize Will Soon Integrate

Adwords will also be integrating with Google Optimize, meaning different variants of your landing pages can be tested on different members of your audience. This A/B split testing is available for use on web pages at the moment, but bringing it to landing pages is sure to provide the most insightful analytics for business.

9. DoubleClick to Introduce DoubleClick Bid Manager

This feature will use machine learning to analyse past campaigns and recommend the right inventory, audiences and budget based on your goals. It will also provide an estimated impression volume and reach, which will be a useful insight for many campaign managers. This is currently available in beta and will be provided to all customers in the coming months. 

10. Google Home To Develop Local Inventory Knowledge 

The Google Assitant is getting smarter and can now tell you precisely where you can find a shop selling the product you are searching for. If a company would like their business information to be available to Google assistant, they must submit their local inventory data to Google. Google Assistant will then be able to provide your consumers with directions, opening times and price of the product consumers search for. With 20% of all searches now being made by voice, this update will be widely useful for many businesses across the globe.

If you'd like to use some of these new features for your business but need some guidance, then you've come to the right place, our development teams and SEO team are already working with these features and can help your business take advantage of them too. Contact us today to request a website optimisation quote. 

Late last year, Google released a free version of Google Optimize on an invite-only basis. However, in April 2017, Google Optimize was released globally to the general public without the need for an invitation. This is big news for website owners because Google Optimize is a free A/B testing platform which allows you to quickly create and test different variants of your web pages to see which versions are most effective.

This will be a great benefit to many businesses as it eliminates the need for hours of tedious coding, testing and analytical analysis. If you're new to this tool, read our handy step-by-step guide to Google Optimize below - remember, if you don't want to use this tool yourself, our SEO experts can perform split tests for you in order to improve your website's performance.

About Google Optimize

Let's say your website isn't doing as well as you'd like and you want to change a few things to see if you can boost your conversion rate. Instead of completely replacing your old web page with a new version, Google Optimize allows you to create an alternate version of your web page and set it to be shown to some of the people who visit it. The rest of the time, the original version of the page will be shown. This A/B testing experiment allows you to see which version of the page works best; all you have to do is tell Google what your 'goal' for that page is (e.g. a purchase or enquiry form submission), and Google Optimize will measure which variant is better at achieving the goal.

To put it simply, Google Optimize allows you to edit the look and content of your pages and test parallel page variants without writing a line of code yourself. Experiments can be set up in minutes, and they will begin gathering data right away.

How to Use Google Optimize

Before you begin using Google Optimize, you need to ensure you have a clear goal in mind for the page you're testing. There is no point editing a page without a reason, so have a look at your website's analytics and look closely for areas that could be improved. Reasons to conduct a Google Optimize test may include:

• Trialling different versions of your contact/enquiry page to see which one converts better
• Changing the look of your homepage in an effort to reduce bounce rate
• Revising the layout of a product page in order to boost sales
• Rewording a blog post or information page to improve reader engagement

One of the best features of Google Optimize is that it is integrated with Google Analytics, making it tremendously easy (assuming you already use Google Analytics) to review the data your experiment generates.

Step 1 - Add the Optimize Snippets to Your Website

In order for Google Optimize to work, you first need to add the Optimize snippets to your website. This is essentially a line of code that must be added to the Google Analytics tracking code that should already be on your website.

You can find your snippet by going to the Container page on your Google Optimize account and clicking ‘Install Optimize Snippet’. From that point, you will be able to click ‘View Snippet’ which will provide you with a modified Analytics tracking code to use.

To run experiments on your website, you need to add the snippet to the HTML code on the pages you want to experiment on. Be sure to place it as early as possible in the source code.

For more information on how to complete this step, just click here. You may need to ask your web developer to add the code for you.

Step 2 - Create an Experiment

Once you have created your Google Optimize account and added the snippet to your website, you will be able to find a blue button that says ‘Create Experiment’ on the Container page. 

The next page allows you to name your experiment and enter the URL of the page you would like to edit. After this step, you can choose which type of experiment you would like to conduct - the options are as follows:

• A/B test (tests different versions of a web page)
• Multivariate test (tests multiple variants of multiple sections on a page - currently in beta)
• Redirect Test (tests different destination URLs - allows you to create two totally different pages with different URLs and see which one is more effective)

For the purpose of this guide, we're going to focus on the A/B test option as this is probably the one you'll use most often.

Step 3 - Test the Variants

This is where the magic happens! At this stage, you will be able to create the different variant(s) of your web page. To get a good understanding of how well a page is working, ensure there is an even split between the variants and the original version. Make sure you set objectives prior to running the experiment to ensure you get as much information out of the test as possible.

After this stage, you can edit your variation with Optimize's visual editor tool. Once you've downloaded the Chrome extension, you can start to edit the text, layout, fonts, colours, and many other parts of your page - basically, implement any change that might make the page more likely to achieve its goal.

Once you have finished retooling your page, you can click 'Save' to go back to the experiment page. You are then free to create another variant or start running the experiment with the variants you've got.

Step 4 - Run the Experiment

Google recommends letting your experiment run for at least 2 weeks before analysing the results, but the longer you run it, the more data you'll gather and the more confident you'll feel when you declare which variant works best. Especially if you’re editing a page that tends to get fewer views than others, it may be best to run your experiment for quite a bit longer than 2 weeks.

When your experiment has ended, you will be provided with data on the level of improvement, the number of sessions, and the probability that each variant will perform better than your original page. As you can imagine, this information is incredibly useful as it enables you to make the best possible decision when it comes to testing the new features of your website.

If you like the sound of using Google Optimize but don't know where to start, we can help you to make the most of this tool's capabilities. Contact us now to request a website optimisation quote >

When presented with a sparkling, brand-new website that looks great and functions perfectly, it’s easy to assume that you’ve done all you can for the online side of your business. Your customers can find you, they can buy your products from the comfort of their own homes or even on the go using their smartphones - what more is there to be done?

But setting up your company's site is really just phase one! Now that it's live, you need to come up with a plan of action that centres on how to get the most out of your website.

Falling into a rut with your website is not only damaging for the website, it could potentially impact your business on a larger scale. In order to guide you past this pitfall, we’ve put together a few tips to help you get the most out of your website.

Update Your Blog Frequently with Engaging Content

If your website includes a blog, you should ensure that it is updated frequently with engaging content. If your blog is left stagnant or updated less than, say, once a month, it will not drive traffic like it ought to and it may even end up harming rather than helping your online success.

By creating new and engaging content on a regular basis, you will be able to draw in new customers and rank for new keywords.

Stay Active on Social Media

Similar to your blog section, if you have links on your website to company social media accounts (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn), make sure these accounts are updated frequently. Social media is a vastly important tool for any online business, so by neglecting it, not only will you certainly not get the most out of your website, you may also damage people's perception of your brand in the process. Just think about it - if someone spots that your last tweet went out nearly a year ago, they may worry that you've gone out of business and cease to feel confident enough to buy from you!

If you want to learn more about why social media marketing is so important for modern businesses, you can read all about it in our recent blog post on the topic. 

Use 301 Redirects Intelligently

Updating your pages and products frequently is a great way to keep customers/visitors interested and your business running smoothly. However, if you decide to delete a page, you should consider adding a 301 redirect to ensure that anyone trying to access that page in future is redirected to a relevant page that still exists (rather than seeing a 'page not found' 404 error notice).

All you need to do is get in touch with the people who built your website and ask them to redirect the old URL to a different, still-live one. However, you shouldn't just use 301 redirects to ensure that nobody ever sees a 404 'not found' page - here are some good rules of thumb:

• If you have moved a piece of content from one URL to another, use a 301 redirect so that anyone who enters the old URL will automatically arrive on the new one.
  
  
• If you have deleted a piece of content outright, but you have another page that meets the user's needs equally well, you can redirect the old URL to that page - although, technically speaking, a 404 'not found' notice is the correct response when someone tries to access a piece of content that no longer exists. That being said, if you delete an old product that you no longer sell but you have a newer version/model of that product in stock, it's a good idea to redirect to the new version as this will improve user experience on your website.
  
  
• You should never redirect to a page that isn't relevant to the piece of content the user is trying to reach - it makes for a poor user experience (more so than if you just showed a 404 page) and may put you in line for a rankings penalty on Google.

Use High-Quality Photos

Whether you're selling products or promoting your company's services, it's important to use good-quality images - and continue to use good-quality images when you upload new products or content. Nothing will put a potential customer off more quickly than a blurry, cheap-looking image. Producing your own good-quality photos is easy to do, and the best part is that you can be certain your images are 100% royalty free.

If you want to get more from your website (whether through blog posts, search engine optimisation, or a whole-site redesign), get in touch with Designer Websites today to find out how we can help.