Chrome’s developer tools are excellent and a must-use for SEOs. Here’s a quick run-through of the features we most regularly use:

How do I access Chrome developer tools?

Simple press F12 on your keyword or right-click on a page and select ‘inspect element‘ from the contextual menu. The benefit of inspect element is it immediately shows you information about the element on the page your pointer was on.

How do I change my location in Google searches?

Want to see a Google search result as if you were in a different city? Press F12 within a Google search page to access developer tools, then select the ‘sensors‘ tab in the bottommost menu. If you’re using developer tools for the first time you will probably have to add this menu: click the three-dot icon in the top-right of the developer bar > More tools > Sensors.

Once you’re in the sensor menu, you can select preset locations or enter latitude-longitude values to change your location to a specific point.

How do I emulate how a mobile phone browser sees a website?

It’s vital that your website is mobile friendly, and this method will let you see your site as if on a mobile browser. Press F12 in Chrome within a Google search page to access developer tools. Look for the mobile and tablet icon in the top-second-left of the developer bar and click it.

You can then select a preset mobile device resolution or other useful resolutions. Once you have selected your option press F5 to refresh and reload the page; it won’t appear correctly until you refresh.

You can also throttle the download speed to replicate the effect of downloading via a 3G or 4G network, and choose your user agent to replicate different mobile browsers on different devices (e.g. Chrome 52 on iPhone).

To throttle the network performance, select the ‘network conditions‘ tab in the bottommost menu and choose a throttling option. You can also select the user agent from this tab. If you’re using developer tools for the first time you will probably have to add this bottommost menu: click the three-dot icon in the top-right of the developer bar > More tools > Sensors.

How do I temporarily change colours and fonts on web pages?

Warning: you’ll need some understanding of CSS to properly implement this, but it’s great for previewing changes to site styling. Press F12 or right-click to get the ‘inspect element’ option. When in developer tools, look within the ‘styles‘ tab on the right-side box for a style you wish to change, such as a font, font size, font colour, or element colour. Simply click the value and type in a replacement to change it on the page instantly. You can view the styles of particular elements by clicking them within the left-side elements list.

You can also click the ‘computed‘ tab within the right-side box to more easily see what styles a particular element has inherited. Click the style within the computed tab and it’ll take you straight to the relevant style within the style tab, ready to be changed.

How do I check how quickly my website/page is loading?

Press F12 or right-click to get the ‘inspect element’ option and access developer tools. Navigate to the ‘timeline‘ tab in the main box. Follow the instruction and press F5 to evaluate and record load performance.

You’ll then provided with a recorded timeline of every load operation and the impact it has on overall page load speed.

You can combine this with the emulation of a mobile phone browser or data throttling described above to show the timeline of how a mobile device would download your webpage content.

The wizards of Moz (ha) are back again with an exciting new tool for we eager SEO’ers. Released back in May, the Keyword Explorer has been a long time coming and some even believe that it is the only keyword research tool you need. While we’re still in the experimental stages and are not quite ready to abandon our precious Google Keyword Planner quite yet, it’s definitely proving to lessen the time it takes to perform the sometimes massive task of keyword exploration. By taking you through discovery, gathering metrics, list building, filtering and prioritising – without even leaving the browser window as well as having the largest English-language online keyword database, we definitely feel like it’s a perfect place to start. It’s also good to note that already this program has not just been a one time launch, with constant ongoing work to update it, with the newest additions coming just a few weeks ago. As I said, we are still researching it’s benefits within our agency, but we do encourage all to give it a go, and with 2 free searches a day for non-Moz members, you’d be silly not to! Check out some of the exciting features and learn more about how you can use it within your organisation to help you to better understand the keywords you can target to attract customers to your site.

4 Key Indicators

When you first type in a term, you will receive results in a simplistic, easy to read page. Along the top of this page you will see 4 separate bar graphs detailing:

Volume – the number of monthly searches for the keyword.
Difficulty – how difficult it may be for you to rank against current competitors
Opportunity – estimation of the click-through-rate in this search result. This also takes into consideration the number of SERP features (shopping ads, text ads, etc) that may bump your organic ranking further down the page.
Potential – a combination of all the above metrics.

These are great as they really give you an excellent feel – just by a quick look – of how well using this keyword could benefit your campaign. Below these metrics, are 3 other boxes: Keyword Suggestions, SERP Analyisis, and Mentions. Mentions shows you a list of sites and links that include the chosen keyword (great for link building). Because Mentions takes you to a new tool, we’ll just focus on the two in-program features.

Keyword Suggestions

Here is where you can begin building your keyword list. Usual keyword research processes involve a variety of tasks in order to discover how people are searching for your site and tend to involve a variety of programs. It can even come down to you just simply typing a word into Google in order to see related or long-tail searches. Keyword Suggestions automatically gives you a list of 1,000 suggestions – an excellent amount to start with – and has already taken all of these other common programs we use into consideration. By using data collected from Keyword Planner, Google Suggest, Related searches as well as clickstream data, Moz has managed to build the largest English-language online keyword database thus cutting the time we would normally spend in many different programs down substantially.

You are also able to search for these keywords in a variety of ways if you’d like your lists to be more or less specific. These include:

a mix of sources (default choice)
only include keywords with all of the query terms
exclude your query terms to get broader ideas
based on closely related topics
based on broadly related topics and synonyms
related to keywords with similar results page
questions

By searching using a combination of these options, you will be able to build a more robust keyword list. Once you view the results, you are able to filter via volume and relevancy as add selections to lists as you go.

SERP Analysis

If you’re curious to see what kind of competition certain keywords have, just select the keyword and head to the SERP Analysis. Here, you will be able to again view those 4 key indicators to give you an idea of the potential for that keyword, but also see the features that may get in the way of the top organic results (as in, if you can at least get on the first page, how many other features will people see before they see you!). Common SERP features include: Adwords, Knowledge Cards, Local Search Listings, Images, and Videos. While this function won’t show you the exact ads showing at that time, they will give you a more visual idea of the competition you’ll face if you choose to target that specific keyword. Below, you’ll see that searching digital marketing agency edinburgh shows 4x Adwords ads, and 3 local packs (usually including, contact information and images) before you even see the actual organic results! This means your organic listing, though it may be on the first page, may still be a bit of a scroll down the page. If you’re not bidding to show for one of those ads, it’s clear the competition may be too high and it might be better worth putting your money towards more specific terms.

Most of the time, building extensive keyword lists involves exporting and importing a variety of keywords to excel lists and hours of separating and filtering until you’re happy with your final list. With Keyword Explorer, while you are able to export and import lists and files as you wish, a lot of the separating and filtering can be done from within the browser window! Once your list has been compiled, you’ll be able to view overall metrics for the list (broken down into again, the same 4 indicators) as well as allowing you to filter even further by these metrics. When you’re finally happy with the way you list works, a simple download to .csv will allow you to share lists with coworkers or clients.

Other benefits and takeaways

We use Moz as a great learning resource around here, so it’s hard to say anything bad about this new offering. We’ve only had the opportunity to use it on one or two clients so far, and still haven’t given ourselves fully to its functionality but feel it really does a lot in regards to bringing all these different tools we used to use into one. We’re still a bit attached to Google’s Keyword Planner tools but definitely believe the Explorer has scope to assist us greatly going forward. Since launch, they’ve added a variety of extra features and have now expanded their keyword data to include international search outside of the US including UK, Canada and Australia. While it is still English-based, we have no doubt they’re continuing to work on growing the features they can offer and look forward to seeing where they’ll take it next!

Are you intrigued by this new product? Head over here, try a couple free keywords and let us know what you think? We’d love to hear your thoughts below!

Attacats Tim and Andrew were recently asked to go and speak at the New Media Breakfast in Edinburgh and Glasgow. (We love #nmbrek, they’re always filled with funky people doing interesting things!)

This week, Andrew and Tim went along to wax lyrical about all things PPC (Pay per click). They make loads of great points and we have done the hard job of picking out the best bits for you. Here’s the slide deck from the talks.

May’s New Media Breakfast is on Video and will take place in Edinburgh on 12th of May and in Glasgow on the 27th of May. Video is one of the biggest trends of 2016 and think it is increasingly becoming a major part of creative strategies – and something we are interested in learning more about!

Highlights

PPC has expanded way beyond search

PPC is not just about product searches anymore. It’s also about about using paid search to promote content. You can take a general subject and create interest before there is any buying intent. e.g. marathon running tips on a running shoe site. There are a lot more search queries for “marathon running tips” than for running shoes but by creating early interest, it means that you are at the top of their mind when they come to buy at a later stage.

PPC is not just about search. It is also about social, and because of their sophisticated targeting Facebook ads are leading the charge. The tracking of customers extends way beyond web activity. We all know that Google knows more about you than your Mum and it now tracks advertising back to sales that occur in store through your location settings. Scary for us mortals but the insight that this gives organisations over their PPC strategy is phenomenal.

The momentum is towards paid

Google is getting much better at commercialising any click as now they focus much more on “moments” as Google describes them as opposed to the search itself. Most of our time online is spent outside Google search – on Youtube, Twitter, Facebook the list goes on. PPC ads can now reach all of these.

Organizations have jumped on this band-wagon massively and have realised the value of using Paid Advertising to appeal to potential customers who haven’t yet developed intent. Complex, but lucrative.

Remarketing

Ever been followed all over the web to within an inch of your life, when all you have done is innocently look a pair of jeans?

Remarketing is a key part of the deal. Yes, it can be done badly (or annoyingly) but when done well it’s what’s going to keep you on the minds of your customers. By using it to link your content to your sales, it allows you to target customers who perhaps checked out your marathon tips and now want to come back for the shoes you’ve been placing throughout their web journey. Remarketing is not just about banner ads any more either. You can now remarket in search ads, shopping search ads,YouTube ads and ads across Social Networks, like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Automation

Not for the faint hearted but using 3rd party data to automatically change bidding strategies is producing great results. Automation in general is becoming a core part of paid search. Knowing when to automate and when not to automate has become a real skill. Not one to try at home.

PPC remains very cost effective

Yes, it is more competitive than it has ever been but PPC still drives results (we track £10 of revenue for every pound spent – on average).

There’s also a common perception that PPC budgets need to rival the levels of small country debt. Not true! Tim showed examples of a start-up spending the odd £100 here and there (as well as those generating more than a million pounds of revenue in a month). Facebook can help you create shareable content for people in the research phase who have been driven to the site for as little as a penny per visit!

In short it’s not about competing on budget size, it’s about being more relevant to your audience.

Would you like us to take a look at your AdWords or Facebook accounts?

A good few attendees have taken us up on our invitation to take a look at their PPC accounts. That offer is still open so please feel free to take us up on it.

Search engine marketing in all of its shapes is really all about space. How do you appear in the most attractive spots and how do you ensure that your brand occupies as much space as possible in the search results. Google announced a few months ago that they would remove the right hand side search ads on their search result page, triggering massive anxiety for PPC professionals worldwide. Would we see CPCs skyrocket? Would advertisers previously aiming for low ad positions be annihilated? The answer so far has pretty much been that not much has happened at all, at least not so far. That being said, there are definitely implications that needs to be considered for any PPC Manager. Instead of showing three search ads above the organic search results, there now are four. What this means in reality is that PPC ads now actually appear even more prominent than before on top of the search result page. This means that if you are aiming at top positions you need to make sure that you take full advantage of this space.

As most search ad extensions are only eligible to show when an ad is showing in top positions it is now more vital than ever to make sure that you have these in place and that you include as much information as possible. I will go through the different ad extensions below and explain how to best take full advantage of them.

Sitelink extensions

Sitelinks are by far the most important type of ad extension that AdWords offer. Why? Because they take up most space. According to Google, having sitelinks can boost your average CTR by 10-20%.

Consider the below example. In addition to the standard search ad, up to four sitelinks are eligible to appear, each with the same character limits for headlines and description lines as the standard ad.

sitelink extension

Studies have shown that the sitelinks themselves are actually not clicked that much, but simply having them there increases the click through rate of the ad significantly. It makes sense, after all, if you compare the above ad to a competitor ad without any sitelinks you are able to include so much more information with the sitelinks. If possible, it is strongly recommended that you include the two description lines in each sitelink, you can still get away with only the headline, but again that would mean less potential ad space used.

Callout extensions

Compared to the sitelinks that have been around for a long time, callouts are a new type of ad extension. They are non-clickable extensions with a character limit of 25. It is recommended to use this space to highlight additional USPs that you might not have had room for in the ad copy. Due to changes (and ongoing experiments) in the way that Google displays ads in top positions, callouts have recently taken on a vital role recently. Look at the ad below – the two description lines are merged into one, and the whole 2nd row are callouts! This is another example of Google actually increasing potential PPC ad exposure and a very clear indication that you need to add callouts now if you are not already using them.

Callout extension

Structured snippet extensions

An even more recent introduction to the ad extension toolbox, structured snippets require you to, hopefully, be able to fit your content into one of the categories as shown below.

structured snippets

Similar to callout extensions, they are non-clickable and appear as a 2nd line of ad text.

structured snippet

Review extensions

This extension allows you to quote positive reviews from third-party review websites. The exact source and URL needs to be specified in order for Google to authenticate the review before it can run. Again, this extension is eligible to show beneath the standard search ad or as a 2nd line of ad text if the two description lines are merged. This is a great opportunity to stand out if you are aiming at top positions and facing tough competition.

review extension

Location extensions

Location extensions are one of the oldest extensions around but still vital if you are advertising a physical location. You will need a Google My Business account setup in order to take advantage of this extension. If the extension is clicked on a desktop you will be shown the location on Google Maps. On a mobile, a click will give you directions (again on Google Maps) from your current location to the business location.

location extension

Call extensions

In terms of taking up space, call extensions are not on top of the list, at least not in the desktop version of the search results (where they usually appear at the right hand side of the display URL). However, it’s another story on mobile devices where, in addition to the standard call extension (simply showing the number), you will also get a “call” button, which will automatically generate a call when clicked.

call extension

Conclusion

I would strongly recommend to add as many of these ad extensions to your ads as possible. In general, they do tend to increase click through rates and they will allow you to display so much more information than you can in a standard ad. Also, as mentioned, Google has been doing a lot of experimentation recently mixing and matching ad text with different types of ad extensions. If you can opt in to as many of the different ad/extension variations as possible, you might just be awarded with a higher quality score.

Follow all the #attamadness action live here

So we’re half way through our Leap Day Challenge and the #attamadness is real! Our Attacats have busy collecting supplier contacts, developing brand guidelines and building websites.

“THE #Attamadness IS REAL”

This morning the business idea was finally revealed to the Attacats. The concept is a UK-based comparison site for blown wood pellet deliveries! The website will work to provide biomass customers to compare prices, order and re-order fuel whilst understanding the direction of prices of biomass fuels. The initial focus of the business will be comparing prices of blown wood pellets acting as cheaper efficient fuel alternative. Were any of you able to guess the business idea from the clues?

After the briefing, the Attacats were unleashed to get to work in their teams, ready to take on the challenge of building this business in a day!

– Action from Attacat HQ –

The branding team swiftly took to naming the business and we had a name by 11am (It’s amazing what you can achieve when you put your mind to it) and thus… “The Woodpicker” was created.

12773080_10153569777070787_165322142_o
– Danielle working on the logo –

The progress has continued at an impressive speed here at Attacat HQ with a primary website developed by Chelsey and Austin! We also have a phone number, a truly impressive logo (Thanks Danielle)!

– The Woodpicker logo –

Big thanks to Fresh Revolution for supplying our delicious lunch of pulled pork rolls and frittata and ensuring we’re fuelled for the rest of the day. Keep up to date with us on Twitter and Facebook where you can see us LIVE in action.

– Megan & Lily hard at work #SocialSquad –

You want to make your blog post look nice with an attractive image, so you go and grab one from Google image search or buy one from a stock photo site. Little do you know you could later be hit by a claim for hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer nor legally trained. This post is intended to gather together experience from our team and further research. Neither I nor Attacat can be held responsible for any charges or issues incurred as a result of following the provided advice.

What is copyright?

Let’s start with the basics:

The legal right granted to an author, composer, playwright, publisher, or distributor to exclusive publication, production, sale, or distribution of a literary, musical, dramatic, or artistic work.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. (2011). Retrieved February 8 2016 from thefreedictionary.com/copyright

Code
Photos
Graphics
Text
Music
Video

When might you get into trouble?

Copyright is granted automatically: if you create something you own the copyright. In very broad and basic terms that means you can’t help yourself to content unless you’ve been given specific permission.

Intellectual property law is struggling to deal with the internet somewhat, but it’s important that you always confirm whether you have the right to use any material in the way you intend.

People often wrongly assume they have permission to freely use copyrighted material or images, and in the following cases you probably don’t have permission:

It’s on the web and seems to be ‘public’
It’s in a press release or on a news site
It’s within someone else’s product that you’ve bought (e.g images in wordpress theme, or in web design)
There’s no copyright notice
You’ve credited the source
It’s an insignificant part of the work you’ve created
There’s a creative commons license
It’s a meme (a website was hit with a near $1000 claim after it used the socially-awkward penguin meme image)
It’s on Wikipedia
You paid the designer/photographer/developer for the work (unless you’ve got an explicit contract passing over the intellectual property rights)
It was originally open source (additions are covered by copyright unless explicitly stated otherwise)

What are main types of copyright?

Copyright

This means that the creator does not want to give up any of their rights under copyright law. Interestingly ‘all rights reserved’ is automatic so this is effectively the default position for creative works and generally doesn’t need to be stated.

Basically, don’t use it in any way unless you’ve clarified and purchased the rights to the material. Break this and you could be liable to incur significant penalty costs.

Open Source

No rights reserved (although it’s not that simple)

This more commonly applies to code and software; for images you’ll see CreativeCommons applied instead. As such I’m not going to really investigate this here.

Creative Commons

Some rights reserved: careful with licence!

Creativecommons.org explains that if you’re using Creative Commons content it always requires “accreditation in the form specified by the copyright owner”. Basically this means the copyright holder is making it available under certain circumstances: online this is normally – but not always – a link to author and another to the license, so that anybody who sees your use of the image can also see the copyright license.

Care is needed because there are different types of CC licenses, but excluding public domain works all require attribution.

Public domain

Copyright waived: use as you need!

Used if the holder of copyright or database rights has waived all interests in the work worldwide (CC0) or if a work is free of known copyright restrictions in all jurisdictions (public domain).

Public domain attribution can only be assigned by the original creator of the work, so if you’re not sure that is the case then do check with a lawyer.

Image from http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/ – modified to include both public domain buttons in one image. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

You need to understand Creative Commons licences

Creative Commons can give you access to fantastic resources and images, but you must ensure that you only use them within the terms of the license that the creator has applied.

Attribution

The ‘loosest’ of the Creative Commons (CC) licenses, you can largely do what you want with these works as long as you appropriately credit the original:

the name of the creator
a copyright notice
a license notice
a disclaimer notice
a link to the material

You must also must indicate if you modified the material and retain an indication of previous modifications.

You’re allowed to give credit and highlight changes in ‘any reasonable manner’ (nice legally loose wording!), but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses your use of the work or you as a person/organisation.

OK for commercial use

ShareAlike

You can use and modify as you want as long as you credit the original and license any new creations under the exact same terms. Basically this forces works based on yours to carry the same CC license, and is notably used by Wikipedia.