New Features for Google Webmaster

Google have at long last released some useful new features for the Google Webmaster Central control panel.

One of the most handy additions is the new way of granting access to individual sites to other Google Accounts - gone are the days of having to create a separate Google Webmaster account to share with a client, because you don't want to grant access to all your client sites.

There's also a new way of verifying your site ownership using a DNS record.

Finally, there is a lot more detail on impressions and clicks from natural search terms, but I've been reading a fair amount of criticism over the accuracy of the data when you compare it to stats from Google Analytics for example.Far too many long tail search terms are just categorised as getting <10 clicks, which could mean 0 or 10 - there's quite a difference!

How Twitter Followings Illustrate Link Popularity on Google

I've been setting up some new Twitter accounts for clients like Premium Sofas and Zen Cart Web Design, and working to get them more followers. In the process it occurred to me that the relative value of different Twitter accounts based on the Followers/Following quite resembles the theory of link popularity which Google uses to assess popularity of a website.

For example on Twitter, a lot of Followers make a user look good, just like a lot of backlinks to a site look good. But look deeper and if you have more Followers than people you follow, you look even better. More sites linking to your website than you link to, also looks good (which is one of the reasons I don't tend to focus huge amounts of effort on self cancelling reciprocal links).

But then I thought about how your new Twitter account can gain kudos just by having a very popular Twitter user follow you. I mean, imagine the impact of say Stephen Fry following you, based just on the number of people who follow him (nearly 1.5 million followers at time of writing). This immediate surge in publicity is kind of like the extra brownie points Google gives your site when you get a link from a really credible and authorative website, that in turn has a lot of links which point to it.

This is why whenever clients send me a cold link request they've received and ask what I think, I always check the Page Rank of the site offering to trade links first. If it's not popular, there's little point.

In the future I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter replicates some kind of version of Page Rank (if they don't already) based on the difference between your Followers/Following, and the number of Followers your Followers have got.

Great use of mobile marketing

The Museum of London has launched a free iPhone app called StreetMuseum, which guides users to more than 200 historic sites in the capital, where, if they hold up their iPhones, they can see a photo of the past emerge as an overlay across the present scene.

What a fantastic use of smart phone functionality - its truly mobile, feeds geo-specific content to users, and promote the Museum at the same time. Next time I'm in London I'll give it a try.

Quote of the Week: New BMI Social Media Strategy

"We have designed our social media strategy to offer an exponential increase in added value for our customers who choose to engage online, whilst ensuring the sustainability of interaction through a newly re-structured digital team," said Callum Adamson, head of search and social media at bmi.

Now what on earth does that mean? Answers on a postcard, sorry - I mean on an online engagement.....

Where are your website hotspots?

Two recent reports released by web usability guru Jakob Neilsen have shed new light on just whereabouts on a website visitors look the most.

In one report Neilsen revealed that "Web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold. Although users do scroll, they allocate only 20% of their attention below the fold." The fold he refers to is the traditional direct marketing term for information above or below the fold in a letter or mailer. In web terms, he means information below the bottom of edge of your browser window.

In his other report, Neilsen confirms that: "Web users spend 69% of their time viewing the left half of the page and 30% viewing the right half. A conventional layout is thus more likely to make sites profitable."

So in summary if you want to push one thing on your web page - a newsletter sign up, top products, enquiry form etc. - then you should put it on the top left hand section of your web page.

There's also a possible argument for creating short pages that within most browser windows without the need for scrolling, although I have also read a lot of material which says that sales oriented conversion or landing pages should be as long as possible - go figure!