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I have no idea why this is happening...

However, I do have a question for you! Do you choose 'Fetch' or 'Fetch and Render'? Just curious!

Also, when you resubmit the page, do you choose to just resubmit the page or those its linked to as well?

Thanks and best wishes,

Amelia

Thank you, much appreciated

Rob has answered this perfectly. However, I would add, don't try to spread yourself too thinly. In my experience (by no means extensive btw) I've found PPC to be a bit of a numbers game - you need quite a lot of clicks before you get a conversion.

I suggest you try a remarketing campaign if you only have a low budget as the clicks are often cheaper, and the traffic highly targeted (and has been exposed to your brand previously, so more likely to convert).

When I set up our remarketing lists/campaigns I found this article incredibly helpful: http://www.ppchero.com/ultimate-guide-to-adwords-remarketing/

I've been running remarketing campaigns for several months, and whilst the ctr is considerably lower than search campaigns, the conversion rate is as high or higher, and of course the cost per click is minuscule in comparison. I find it a cost effective solution and helps convert traffic that may never have revisited the website otherwise.

Depending on how much traffic your website gets, you may have to wait a while for the lists to populate, so I'd set some up anyway, as you may want to switch it on during a busy period (such as mothers day if you sell flowers, or christmas if you sell gifts - whatever works for your business) - better to have something up your sleeve and never use it than want to use it and have to wait!

Good luck and best wishes,

Amelia

Hi,

Thank you for responding. I am using Google analytics experiments. You put some code on the original page and 'magically' the two pages get rotated to show approximately half the visitors one version, and the other half the other version. The new version is often called 'page-name-b' (for example) and if it wins then the content moved to the original version. The only exception to this rule was when we used a page called 'todays-mortgage-deals' - because I wanted to try and get it to list for more than just 'mortgage quote'.

Best wishes, and thank you again for responding

Amelia

Using images you do not have a license for is stealing.

Someone else made those images. Someone else owns the copyright of those images.

It's no different to stealing a car - you wouldn't do that would you? - Even if the keys had been left in the ignition!

Has it increased your average time on page? That may indicate a good user experience so Google may reward you for it. However, as Chris has indicated, load times may suffer with live chat. We took live chat off our website because of this.

Note Ray-pp suggests you use a private directory... Make sure to keep it out of the serps

I'd include a button to say 'buy all ingredients for this recipe' and have it automatically add the ingredients to the users basket. Easy peasy user experience and you potentially get to increase the average basket value. Win win. You could also include individual buttons next to each product in the ingredients list on the recipe page (assuming it's labelled 'ingredients' and 'method'.)

I also wouldn't hid any text if you can help it - especially content that triggers a sale.

Why not use it to your advantage? E.G make all the products available in the recipes easy to buy from the recipe pages?

'Want to make this dundee cake? Buy all the ingredients here' (or similar).

You may of course already be doing this though.

I wouldn't have thought the presence of useful content to be a detriment to rankings.

Good luck!

Amelia

Hi Mozzers,

We've been A-B testing landing pages, and have had some success.

The changes we've been making have been quite radical in some instances - for example we tested this page: https://www.turnkeymortgages.co.uk/todays-mortgage-deals/ against this one: https://www.turnkeymortgages.co.uk/mortgage-quote/ (Today's best deals won, but we've decided to keep the quote page as it does work for some channels). The decision was made to try and optimise Today's best deals for 'best mortgage deals today' rather than 'mortgage quote' because it offers so much more than simply a quote. The quote page is optimised for 'mortgage quote', though it doesn't rank particularly well (I'm not overly concerned by this as even though you'd think that when people are looking for a quote that they would fill in the form, they don't - people are strange!)

As a result of the change above we changed all links that originally went to the quote page to go to Today's best deals instead. As we go through the process of optimising for best conversion will it be damaging if we don't change the url as well. As I can see lots of iterations and lots of work whenever we make changes to the pages (going through the entire site to change the links).

I am worried though that we'll end up with hundreds of landing pages and changing links all over the site - do you think we should keep the URLs the same from now on, unless the content changes as radically as it did in the instance I've highlighted above?

Thanks,

Amelia

Hi,

When quoting sources, we use the blockquote tag.

Information here: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_blockquote.asp

It tells Google that 'yes, I know this isn't original, it comes from here'.

Best of luck,

Amelia

I'm glad it's proved useful for you! Like you, if I find a service/product beneficial I will say so! We definitely find Session Cam incredibly helpful.

Google 'tests' landing pages quite a lot actually. I'd have a poke around in your analytics programme and see what the bounce rate, time on site, pages per visit for each landing page. If the homepage is performing better in these areas than your landing pages then that may be why this is happening. Also look in your webmaster tools at organic CTR - if the homepage has a higher CTR then Google is assuming it's more relevant for the query.

My hunch is that this is the issue - once you've got the comparison data you can look at ways of making your landing pages better for user engagement.

Good luck,

Amelia

As others have said, it depends on how you do it!

Like so many things in life, eh?

Try using a service like Session Cam (http://www.sessioncam.com/)

It records users as they use your website and will help give you the answers to your conversion issues, fairly quickly. Otherwise you could spend months testing stuff without any real idea as to how people actually use your website.

I'm not affiliated with them, I am a customer who happens to think it's an incredibly useful tool. I'm sure there are others out there that do a similar thing so have a hunt around.

Good luck,

Amelia

Using a word twice on a page is indeed, not keyword stuffing - where did I say that it was??? I don't believe I have EVER said that in all the years I've worked in digital marketing!

I said that using the same alt tag would be spammy - the reason I think that is that it either implies that you don't have unique images on the page (so what's the point of them?) or that you have been lazy with your alt tags by repeating the same one over again. Both bad user experiences for folk that need them.

Hi,

I just wanted to dispel a few myths going on here...

1. ALT tags are NOT to 'Tell Google' what the image is about, they are there for people who use screen readers to enrich their use of the internet.
2. Screen readers can be set up to read out alt tags, file names or title attributes - depending on the user's preference and presumably on the site they are looking at
3. Google can and does read image file names: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/32567/A-Marketer-s-Guide-to-Optimizing-Images-for-Google-Search.aspx

If you pick relevant images for your pages then you probably will be able to get keywords into both the alt tag and the file name. I don't think this is spammy! It's accurate.

What would be spammy, and this has already been covered by Issac, is if you repeat the same alt text on the same page - vary it! - 'Blue lego bricks' etc. I personally would avoid saying stuff like 'cheap', 'buy' etc UNLESS the image has that text within it (say a picture of lego with a headline within the image saying 'cheap lego') in which case you are doing exactly what the alt tag is there for - enabling screen reader users to experience as similar experience to us sighted folk as possible.

Sorry for the rant, but it annoys me that something that is meant to help people who are (to my mind) at a disadvantage is abused for SEO purposes!

Best wishes,

Amelia

**EDIT: I am well aware that Google and other search engines use alt tags for rankings. What I wanted the OP to be mindful of is that alt tags were not invented 'to tell google what an image is about'. And to point out their value and use for people using screen readers. Most people do not fully understand how blind users navigate the inter-webs, me included. I just think if I can do something to make it easier for them then I will. If you'd prefer to write alt tags purely for the search engines, that is entirely your prerogative! **

Yes, I think so - TBH I use both together, so it's difficult to say what was from each crawl! I tend to amalgamate the two into my own spreadsheets. I also incorporate stuff from webmaster tools (Google and Bing) if relevant as well. Then I allocate a time-frame by which I want the tasks done and will allocate tasks to team members too if there's something I can't do myself for example if it needs coding skillz.