Julie Kurpiewski

Really Google? The F-Word in a Title Above the Fold?

2009-11-20T08:08:00.001-08:00

I’ve become a food nerd and while I was researching wheatgrass shots, I found the below result and it was above the fold (#3 to be specific). I don’t think I’ve ever seen the f-word (how else should I refer to it?!) in a title…especially for a search query like “wheatgrass shot.”

Google Products, a Necessity for Ecommerce Companies

2009-11-19T08:58:00.001-08:00

What kind of SEM doesn’t love a good quality source of traffic…that actually converts?

The magical source of traffic I’m referring to is Google Products (or Froogle, Google Base, etc…). If you own an ecommerce company and do not feature your products on Google Base then shame on you. Google Products has now become our third top source of traffic, has a conversion rate of about 3%, is completely free and is basically on auto-pilot.

A/S has been using Google Products since before I started. It performed mediocre-ly at best back then. Things took a turn for the worse when we launched our new site. Hmmm why? Well like most Google products, there is mystery associated with how to be the top dog. My first guess? There is some sort of quality score with Google Products.

This sharp decline became a cause for concern when things did not improve as the rest of our site was being nicely indexed by Google.

Here’s a visual of what happened…yikes! (and then WOW!).

I know you can’t see the numbers (PS I did that on purpose) but they’re really irrelevant to get an idea of what went on.

So what did I do? I looked at what everyone else was doing…it’s true. I noticed EVERYONE’s descriptions were longer (not necessarily better) than ours.

Because our feeds are created dynamically (we have almost 20,000 part numbers), I had our IT guy add another snippet of description to the title which added relevant and useful keywords. Google weighs title tags so heavily so it’s not a stretch to say Google puts a lot of emphasis on the title of Google Products submissions. Keep in mind, this snippet was relevant and made sense where it was being used…it was well worded and not too long. The new description looks clean and professional which may be why we get so much traffic.

BINGO…we saw improvements within a day or two. I still think Google Products has a quality score of some sort since the better we do, the more clicks we get. Also, Google seems to love fresh feeds. We upload our feed every day…this helps us ensure our prices are accurate.

Moral of the story: You optimize for organic results, you optimize your AdWords ads, why wouldn’t your comparison shopping engine (CSE) feeds need optimized too?

Browser Wars…I Love Good Competition

2009-11-18T13:33:00.001-08:00

Earlier today I was reading an interesting article on Mashable regarding the speculative death of Internet Explorer in the year 2012.

Hmmm interesting. Here’s the jist of the article: in 2004 IE had over 90% of the browser market share…today, they have 66%. Yes, it is still the majority but that’s a decrease of 24% in just five years.

You guys know I’m a recent convert to Google Chrome. I actually just made Chrome my default on my home desktop. Chrome is fast and simple…there’s not a lot of junk taking up space. My favorite feature: the combined search/URL bar.

This got me thinking about A/S’s customers who have been big IE fans and are slightly behind the curve. So I ran some numbers…they didn’t surprise me in the least bit and actually reinforce what the Mashable article reported.

I’ve color coded the numbers based on their increase or decrease from the previous quarter (or year). Of course green means increase and red signifies a decrease.

2008 (entire year)

IE – 77.82%

Firefox – 17.78%

Safari – 3.01%

Opera - .59%

Chrome - .25%

Q1 – 2009

IE – 73.64% (-5.4%)

Firefox – 20.49%

Safari – 3.51%

Chrome - .93%

Opera - .60%

Q2 - 2009

IE – 72.60% (-1.41%)

Firefox – 21.25%

Safari – 3.60%

Chrome – 1.47

Opera - .69%

Q3 – 2009

IE – 69.64% (-4.08%)

Firefox – 22.61%

Safari – 4.51%

Chrome – 2.11%

Opera - .66%

Q4 – 2009 to date (11/18/2009)

IE – 68.24% (-2.01%)

Firefox – 23.10%

Safari – 5.21%

Chrome – 2.32%

Opera - .69%

Summary:

Internet Explorers’ share decreased every time
Firefox, Safari and Chrome all increased every time
Opera increased, decreased but was otherwise unchanged
With all this close competition I’m thinking we are going to have some kick butt browsers in the next few years

Loving the Google Logos This Week

2009-11-06T06:26:00.001-08:00

I think the Cookie Monster logo on Thursday night was my favorite but I didn’t even think to grab it.

Ah ha! AdWords Sitelinks Appear

2009-11-06T06:21:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I wrote about how I added sitelinks to our AdWords campaigns but the links weren’t showing up. It dawned on me I forgot to add sitelinks to our best (cheapest and highest conversion rate) campaign and most important brand…US! duh!

I added our top six pages as sitelinks. If I were to choose links off the top of my head I would not choose the majority of these but I can’t argue with stats. I added the links at about 8:30 a.m. and they were showing up by 9:15 a.m.

woo hoo! I love new AdWords tools! Now I’m on a mission to find the sitelinks on our other campaigns.

Google AdWords Sitelinks

2009-11-05T14:25:00.001-08:00

Word on the street: Google is now displaying sitelinks for select AdWords ads.

I immediately added sitelinks options for my campaigns but I’ve yet to see any sitelinks for the ads.

Anyone else have luck with the AdWords sitelinks??

Interesting Discussion on .gb.com Sites

2009-10-30T13:54:00.001-07:00

The Google Webmaster Tools Forum is one of the best places to find discussions on off-the-beaten-path topics plus you’re bound to get sucked into to the [sometimes egotistical] arguments.

I was browsing the forum on Thursday and found an interesting thread from a guy asking if .gb.com domains are banned in Google.

As of 10 a.m. on Friday, the thread had over 150 replies. I definitely recommend you read it. I’m not really concerned with any other domains at the time but I found it very interesting.

A UK SEO blogger claims to prove the gb.com domains are penalized (or at least not treated like a TLD)…I don’t have much experience with any other domains except .com but he seems to have some good data to back up his statement.

One of the big debates of the GWMT thread was if .gb.com sites were treated differently because it is a subdomain OR the parent site of the subdomain isn’t trusted and that lack of trust is passed on the subdomain OR if there is a correlation between .gb.com and lower quality sites.

I haven’t researched it enough to come to a personal conclusion but the whole topic is pretty interesting.

Redz: the Future of Search? Uh Probably Not…

2009-10-28T11:58:00.001-07:00

I have to talk with the phone salesmen (and women) several times a week. Most of the time they are selling pretty crappy products but on occasion there is something good…or at least something good to talk about.

In the past month I’ve had two salesman contact me from Redz. Have you ever seen (or heard of) this site? Redz (formerly RedZee) is a picture based search engine in which you use the scroll wheel on your mouse to view the various sites.

Here’s where it gets interesting. The top three sites can be sold…these are also the most visible. It’s clear the site does not care about relevancy but cares a lot about revenue (what business doesn’t, but at what costs?).

Here’s a more tangible example of this search engine’s awesomeness. Search for “cnn” here are the results:

The first site looks like a Wikipedia page for “cat;” if you double click the image you will get to the Wikipedia page for “cnn.”

Here’s what I get when I search for “julie kurpiewski.”

It’s clear the site has a problem with assigning the correct image to the correct site. It’s also interesting to note Redz believes whitepages.com is the most relevant result for my name. hmm…

Redz has quite the history. The site was originally named RedZee but ran into some negative publicity. They re-launched as Redz and from what I read, the negative publicity has followed them.

The guy I talked to from Redz seemed to think their search engine is the future…I strongly disagree but decide for yourself…it is definitely worth five minutes of your time.

Two Reviews: Google Chrome and Grooveshark

2009-10-22T11:37:00.001-07:00

Over the past week I’ve tried out two new (and free) products I really really like.

#1 Google Chrome – I’m a huge Firefox fan but I’m always in need of two browsers when I’m at work. I need two because I have a Google account for all my work stuff (AdWords, WT, Analytics, etc..) but I also like to be able to access my personal Gmail account and Blogger account.

For the past year or so I’ve kept Firefox open on my left monitor and IE open on my right monitor. But I just got fed up with IE…I only used it because I use FF for my work stuff. Soo out of the blue I thought I’d try Chrome (talk about a late adopter…Chrome has been out for a year :) )

First thoughts on Chrome:

-It seems lightweight…not bulky…I think it’s the lack of the Google Toolbar, the second box and all those silly icons

-Speed – nothing to complain about here…it definitely holds its own

-Google Chrome has themes!! I’m currently sporting a striped Kate Spade inspired theme…see pic below. I’m not sure if both males and females dig the opportunity to customize programs but I always take advantage of it. My Windows Live Writer is pink :)

-Best feature: you can enter URLs and search queries in the same box…awesome!

The worst part of Chrome is some sites do not work with it (ahem Microsoft adCenter…they claim they’re working on it) or do not display correctly… i.e. NexTag.

Summary: Definitely a better alternative to IE and right up there with Firefox. I’m considering switching my home browser from Firefox to Chrome. I know, crazy!

#2 Grooveshark – I’ve been using Pandora for about two years now…great service! Putting my headphones on and jammin’ to Frank Sinatra is a great way for me to get lost in my work.

Anyhow, back in June my little brother told me about Grooveshark…another music service. I wasn’t disappointed with Pandora, just curious about Grooveshark. I only signed up a few days ago but I really like it so far.

Initial reaction:

-I love the navigation! It’s very intuitive in my opinion.

-You can search for a specific song and listen to it over and over…I do this a lot!

-Best feature: Create playlists with your favorite songs

-Listen to playlists others have created…I search for Michael Buble…I can browse through specific songs to add to my queue or I can add a playlist to my queue

-The sound quality seems better than Pandora…not that Pandora’s is terrible…

Summary: For me, Grooveshark does not replace Pandora…it’s just a different way to listen to music. I’ll probably alternate the two depending on my mood.

Preventing Brain Rot with PHP

2009-10-16T12:27:00.001-07:00

I’m not sure the exact moment but at some point in college I discovered I do my best work when I have a challenge and I’m learning something new. For the past year and a half I’ve been challenged with SEO, PPC, etc… but a couple months ago I started craving a new challenge. Yes, SEM never stops and it’s never complete but I’ve discovered I love the technical side, hence my interest in analytics, robots.txt, etc… So I’ve decided to learn PHP.

One of my friends is a programmer/designer/developer, etc… so he let me borrow his PHP 5 book and pointed me in the right direction with Notepad++ and WampServer.

This is all ironic because the one class I struggled the most with in college was…computer science. ha ha I just could not comprehend the why and when. I asked my roommate for help, went to tutoring…I just couldn’t figure it out. (I couldn’t wrap my brain around calculus in high school or college but took a calc. class after I graduated and passed with flying colors).

Anyhow, I guess I learned how to use my brain…

I’ll keep you posted with my progress.

Google Bar Code Logo

2009-10-07T03:13:00.001-07:00

I never ever catch these things early but check out the Google logo today!

This Washington Post article believes the Google logo is in celebration of the 57th anniversary of the first patent on the bar code.

Pretty neat.

Yahoo! Search Marketing to Launch Desktop Tool

2009-10-06T08:18:00.000-07:00

All I can say is FINALLY! I’ve been waiting for this since I started managing our Google, Yahoo! and MSN campaigns.

The Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog has announced they’ll be releasing their desktop tool to help people manage large campaigns (yah!)…but not until next year.

I’ve been using AdWords for a while but I only use it if I’m making mass changes since their web-based tool is pretty speedy and easy to navigate. But the MSN desktop tool is great and I prefer to use their desktop tool over the web-based tool. My biggest complaint with MSN and Yahoo’s paid interfaces is how sllooooooow they are.

Several months ago I asked our Yahoo! rep about the desktop tool…I figured it would be a huge help for the redesign. Our rep said I was on the list and I should receive an e-mail…never happened. Eh maybe I’ll sign up to test the beta version.

Side note: It’s nice to see Yahoo! still cares their search product.

Today’s the Day for Google Wave

2009-09-30T08:07:00.001-07:00

I’ve been excited about Google Wave since they announced it back in May. I watched Google’s super long video and sign up for an invite.

No Wave invite as of 11 a.m. but I don’t really expect one because there are waaaay more power users out there. Note: no one I know has received one yet.

I did see an invite listed on ebay for $72 with two days left in the auction. Crazy! Everyone talks about how the introduction of Wave is similar to Google’s intro to Gmail. Do you know my bf was actually one of those to buy a Gmail invite off ebay? He definitely didn’t pay $72 or anywhere close to that…

Yah for new geeky toys!

Indexed Pages Jump

2009-09-30T07:28:00.001-07:00

Since we’ve launched the new AS website we had a steady increase in our indexed pages…this was up until about a month ago when our pages started dropping from the index (always scary for any SEO!). So I buried my nose Google Webmaster Tools forum and any other site where I could find information. I was struggling because most people complaining of the same problem were doing some not-so-white-hat-things or were just super noobs. I knew we had a duplicate content problem because of our navigation, filters, tracking codes, etc… but I wasn’t completely convinced that the dup. content was the cause for the decrease.

In the beginning of September we added our sitemaps and /*? to our robots. txt. Within a few days we had thousands and thousands of these yucky filter URLs blocked from the robots…yah! This also significantly decreased our duplicate meta and title tags (in the HTML suggestions). It was nice to see all those ugly URLs being blocked.

I’ve talked about implementing the canonical link element before…I thought it was the perfect solution for our product pages. We stuck the tag in all our product pages September 28.

As of this morning (September 30), our indexed pages for one sitemap jumped 50% and 40% for the other. My question: is this a coincidence or does Google just really the love canonical element (or hate dup. content)? OR is this a temporary jump?

I guess the next question is does Google devalue duplicate content that much? I’m guessing so but only time will tell.

Sitelinks Have Returned

2009-09-24T11:18:00.000-07:00

Back at the end of August I wrote a post about Google Sitelinks and mentioned AS's sitelinks had disappeared. I checked last week and we still had just the double indent, but as of September 21, 2009...our sitelinks are back!

It's always interesting to see what links Google uses for the sitelinks. I'm surprised to see links for ESD-Safe Garments, the blog and the help page. I'm also shocked the Soldering & Rework and Tools links aren't up there...those are our top category pages as far as traffic goes.

Google Webmaster Tools Parameter Handling

2009-09-18T13:58:00.001-07:00

Has anyone used this yet? I’m really interested in it but should it be used in conjunction with the canonical element and any commands in the robots.txt?

In case you haven’t read about the parameter handling…within Google Webmaster Tools you can specify up to 15 parameters you’d like Google to ignore. Just like the canonical element… it’s just a suggestion. The example Google uses is a URL for a product page that uses a session ID. Search Engine Land also has a great article on this new feature.

I plan to research this a little more next week and possibly implement it then.

How to access parameter handling? Webmaster Tools -> Site Configuration -> Settings -> Parameter Handling (4^th on the list)

PS Apparently Yahoo! Site Explorer has this feature and they’ve had it for a while.

For the Love of SEO

2009-09-11T07:55:00.001-07:00

I really had no intentions of getting involved with SEO…right out of college I was working as a web producer at a local TV station. I LOVED my job but the pay was just terrible. I did some job searching and accepted a job as an internet marketing assistant.

I knew nothing about SEO or SEM when I started but caught on quickly. I learned SEO on a well established site where the SEO in place worked really well. With that said, I saw an opportunity to learn and then improve our paid campaigns. I did just that and learned to love AdWords, YSM and adCenter. I knew my SEO but it wasn’t very advanced. I strongly believe you can read SEO books all day, everyday but you’re not really going to understand it until you DO it.

I was obsessed with paid ads until we re-designed our site…I had the opportunity to play (per se) SEO with a basically brand new site. yah!!

I loved the structure of SEM and balance of creativity+statistics+knowledge of paid ads but my now I’m torn between the SEM and the SEO…luckily I don’t have to choose either with my job.

Stock Photos on About Us Pages

2009-09-08T14:04:00.001-07:00

Ok I lied, my posting may be a little slower :) But this is something that I’ve been wanting to write about for a few weeks now.

The big hoo-ray these days is all about social media, correct? A huge benefit that comes to businesses using social media is the “face” or personality that is now associated with this company, correct? Well why on earth would a company (small or medium sized) use a stock image of perfectly poised professionals on the about us, contact us, etc… pages? Doesn’t this un-do some of the time invested with social media? Plus it’s kinda cheesy…

I understand the value of using an occasional stock photo on a website but using a random stock photo of a group of people that is supposed to portray a group of employees is just deceiving. In this day and age when companies are putting it all out there with Twitter, Facebook, etc... why not put an actual photo of your employees on the site?!

This just seems like a no-brainer to me.

I'll Be Back

2009-09-08T10:41:00.000-07:00

My posting is going to be really slow for the next few weeks because I broke my hand riding my horse. It'll heal just find but I will have to have the cast on for 3-4 weeks. Booo! The cast makes typing (and everything really) quite difficult. :)

Adding Your Sitemap to the Robots.txt

2009-09-01T06:23:00.000-07:00

From time to time I spent days doing nothing but research on SEO, paid ads, etc...just to keep me in the loop plus I just get engrossed in what I'm reading about.

Last week I stumbled upon something about including your sitemap in the robots.txt file. Hmmmm interesting... I already use Google Webmaster Tools to submit my sitemaps to Google and I've submitted sitemaps to Bing but regardless, Google still recommends including the sitemap address in the robots.txt.

Resume

2009-08-28T11:48:00.003-07:00

Julianne Kurpiewski - Resume

Specialties
SEO, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, MSN adCenter, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Wordpress, Comparison Shopping Engines, E-mail Marketing, Basic HTML, SEO for Site Redesign

Experience
October 2008-Present
All-Spec Industries - Internet Marketing Manager
-Manage all aspects of internet marketing - SEO, SEM and social media
-Monitor PPC campaigns for $12 million/year company website
-Report web analytics/stats to management on a weekly and monthly basis
-Maintain company blog - All-Spec Current
-Plan monthly and quarterly promotions

January 2008-October 2008
All-Spec Industries - Internet Marketing Assistant
-Aide supervisor in employing various SEO techniques
-Perform competitive analysis on established and new product lines
-Maintain company blog
-Write and edit HTML product descriptions

June 2008-Present
Perspective Internet Marketing - Content Writer
-Write blog articles, press releases, etc...
-Expand keyword lists and ads for client Google AdWords accounts
-Proofread website copy and make edits if necessary
-Write title tags and meta descriptions based on keyword research

July 2007-January 2008
WECT-TV - Web Producer
-Re-write/proofread stories from the wires and scripts into print-style stories for the web
-Select, edit, and post pertinent video from daily newscasts
-Post national video from NBC Newschannel
-Monitor web trends on a daily and weekly basis

October 2005-May 2007
Peace Point Equestrian Center - Public Relations Intern
-Design and produce quarterly organization newsletter
-Compose and distribute press releases - several published in local paper
-Improve previous promotional/recruiting tools
-Writer articles for various publications

Education
Bethany College - B.A. Communications - Public Relations
GPA: 3.913

My Sites
All-Spec Industries
All-Spec Current
JulieKurpiewski.com
BroadandReel

Contact me

2009-08-28T11:48:00.001-07:00

Julianne Kurpiewski

jkurpiew [at] gmail com

Twitter - @jkurpiew
LinkedIn
Facebook
Google Profile

The Power of LinkedIn

2009-08-28T10:43:00.001-07:00

I've recently been paying more attention to LinkedIn...why? Because it's all of a sudden showing up everywhere!

I Google "all-spec" and "all-spec industries" from time to time just to monitor...I did a search yesterday for "all-spec industries" and noticed MY LinkedIn page was above the fold...just below all-spec.com and our blog. Holy Cow!

Does Google have a crush on LinkedIn?

Google Sitelink Changes

2009-08-28T09:20:00.000-07:00

I read an article on Search Engine Roundtable today about new Google sitelinks and Google penalties...this was of particular interest to me because AS's sitelinks recently disappeared. I figured the sitelinks disappeared temporarily because of our recent redesign and URL changes. A couple weeks ago when I checked the links they were the old links just being redirected.

The article mentions Google may be making some changes to the algo...I wonder if these changes are related to the Caffeine update? I would imagine so.

I'll let you know what becomes of it.

Update: sitelinks have returned

Apparently All SEOs Are Spammers

2009-08-27T07:11:00.001-07:00

Ah yes! I was catching up on my SEOmoz This Week in Search and found a link to a lovely list of the 'Top Online Marketing Jobs to Leave You Friendless' published by Fox News. Included in this list is Search Engine Optimizer...Really Fox News? Come on!
Oh ya and the image Fox included is a screen shot of PAID ADS! Dear Fox News, please don't write about subjects that you aren't familiar with.

Yes, there are black hat SEOs out there but the search engines work every single day to weeds those people out. Search engine optimization is a lot of hard work and can be quite technical.

Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land also voiced his opinion...which is always pretty interesting. He goes into a detailed explanation of why SEO is not spam and even points out someone at Fox News understands the value of SEO because their pages have meta descriptions, robots.txt file, etc...

Nice Fox News...stay classy!