SEO Website Audits: Everything You Need to Know Part II

In a follow-up to an earlier column on what a site audit is in general, today I am going to spend a bit more time helping with the understanding of what a good audit is and why you would get with a tools audit vs. a human one.

Website SEO Audits - What Are They?

The term website SEO audit is a very general one that means anything that the auditor wants it to mean. This means I could be spending hours laboring over every detail of your site looking for issues, challenges, and areas of improvement or I could be running a tool that spits out a report and I spend an few hours writing up a few actionable items for you. So which is it?

It Is All of the Above.

Is it wrong if someone just uses some tools and writes up a few actionable items and gives that to you? Is it worth the money to pay for someone to pour over every nook and cranny looking for the slightest detail that might be out of place? The answer is that it depends. Why are you doing the audit? What do you want from the audit? And what is your budget?

Tools Vs. Humans

So when you are getting an audit, the most important thing you need to know is what you are paying for and why you are paying for it. In most cases, your audit reports and costs will be based on who is doing the auditing: tool or human.

Tools-Based Audits

All audits have some level of tool involvement: reports are run, analytics reviewed, links pulled for evaluation. The question is, does the auditor write most of the analysis for you or does the tool?

Vine Your Way to ClickZ Live San Francisco

by ClickZ ,July 7, 2014Comments

Interested in attending ClickZ Live San Francisco in August? Enter to win travel, accommodations, and a Platinum pass to the event by creating your best Vine video clip using your favorite toys. Yep, you heard that right, we did say "TOYS"...after all, who isn't a big kid at heart?!

From the announcement:

We want you to tell us the biggest challenge you've faced in digital marketing in a Vine video, using toys (because, being digital types, we know you've all got a toy cupboard in your office …)

For inspiration, ClickZ has created a few Vine videos of its own, featuring Ken (of Ken and Barbie), Legos, Thor, and Darth Vader.

"Think twice about building unnecessary apps":

"Keep in mind your global audience":

"Too much social":

"Keeping up with Google’s algorithm updates":

To enter, tweet your Vine video using the hashtag #DigitalMarketingChallenges. The favorites will be posted on the ClickZ Live Twitter feed.

The competition will close at midnight (PDT) on Wednesday, July 16. The best five will be put to a public vote, and the winner will be announced on Friday, July 25. Good luck!

This article was originally published on ClickZ.

Lucky Duck: Why Things Are Going Swimmingly for DuckDuckGo

by Jessica Lee,July 7, 2014Comments

DuckDuckGo continues to delight users with new, novel features on top of the foundations the search engine is known for, and why many people choose DuckDuckGo over giants like Google: DuckDuckGo does not track users, and it does not "filter" search results.

Mobile Now Exceeds PC: The Biggest Shift Since the Internet Began

by Rebecca Murtagh,July 8, 2014Comments

If you're still struggling to leverage the website to support goals, you have some catching up to do, as the landscape has recently experienced a tectonic shift.

Mobile Exceeds PC Internet Usage for First Time in History

In early 2014, the landscape in which businesses operate changed forever when Internet usage on mobile devices exceeded PC usage.

Top Keyword Combos for PPC Retail Ads During Back to School [Data]

The back-to-school and back-to-college retail audience spent an estimated combined $72.5 billion in 2013 – this season is second only behind the holidays for highest spending.

The critical thing about the back-to-school shopping season is that it's long – about three months! This is because school start dates vary across the country, from as early as the first week of August (Hawaii's public schools) to mid-September (New York City public schools).

Shoppers time their back-to-school shopping to the school start date, with 73 percent of shoppers filling their carts three weeks to more than two months before school starts.

Does Advertiser Spend on Keywords Match Top Queries?

To get an indication of the search terms the back-to-school shopper is using, we can look at advertiser spending on keywords that are relevant to back-to-school. Our friends at AdGooroo aggregated this data from both Google AdWords and the Yahoo Bing Network. It shows ad spend and impressions served – giving you a peek into how the two match up:

Google's Matt Cutts Goes on Leave, but Says Don't Panic

Remember a few weeks ago when Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts made himself invisible to prove a point about the importance of having a website? Well, now it seems Cutts is literally going to disappear from his very prominent position as the face of all things Google SEO.

Last week, Cutts announced he would be taking a few months of leave from Google to spend more time at home, returning in November. In his announcement, he made it clear he would not be answering emails or working (instead, he and his wife would be taking up ballroom dancing). 

He did leave a list of resources people can go to in his absence, and reiterated that the SEO community was in capable hands.

“Thanks to a deep bench of smart engineers and spam fighters, the webspam team is in more-than-capable hands. Seriously, they’re much better at spam fighting than I am, so don’t worry on that score,” Cutts said in his post.

We’ll miss Cutts as the star of the Q&A Google Webmasters videos on YouTube, but while he’s gone, here’s a list of resources he gave for webmasters and SEOs to turn to:

Webmaster forumsOffice Hours Hangouts Google Webmaster Central on TwitterGoogle Webmasters on Google

'Delete' is Now 'Remove' In AdWords

announced yesterday a tiny change to the language within its user interface (UI) that could have a big impact on how people view "old" campaigns. In about two weeks, AdWords will replace most instances of the word "delete" with the word "remove" in its UI.