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As a rule, search engines will always try to index and display the original or “canonical” version. This benefits searchers as they only want to see one version within their search results. On the flip side website owners worry that if search engines find duplicate versions of the same content or page that their link weight will be negatively affected and so lose ranking positions.

Worried about duplicate content on your site? Want to know what “canonical” means? Then read a great summary below, from our friends over at Search Engine Land

Multiple URLs, one page

Duplicate content comes in different forms, but a major scenario is multiple URLs that point to the same page. This can come up for lots of reasons. An ecommerce site might allow various sort orders for a page (by lowest price, highest rated…), the marketing department might want tracking codes added to URLs for analytics. You could end up with 100 pages, but 10 URLs for each page. Suddenly search engines have to sort through 1,000 URLs.

This can be a problem for a couple of reasons.

• Less of the site may get crawled. Search engine crawlers use a limited amount of bandwidth on each site (based on numerous factors). If the crawler only is able to crawl 100 pages of your site in a single visit, you want it to be 100 unique pages, not 10 pages 10 times each.

• Each page may not get full link credit. If a page has 10 URLs that point to it, then other sites can link to it 10 different ways. One link to each URL dilutes the value the page could have if all 10 links pointed to a single URL.

Using the new canonical tag

Specify the canonical version using a tag in the head section of the page as follows:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish“/>

That’s it!

• You can only use the tag on pages within a single site (subdomains and subfolders are fine).
• You can use relative or absolute links, but the search engines recommend absolute links.

This tag will operate in a similar way to a 301 redirect for all URLs that display the page with this tag.

• Links to all URLs will be consolidated to the one specified as canonical.
• Search engines will consider this URL a “strong hint” as to the one to crawl and index.

Canonical URL best practices

The search engines use this as a hint, not as a directive, (Google calls it a “suggestion that we honor strongly”) but are more likely to use it if the URLs use best practices, such as:

• The content rendered for each URL is very similar or exact
• The canonical URL is the shortest version
• The URL uses easy to understand parameter patterns (such as using ? and %)

Can this be abused by spammers? They might try, but Matt Cutts of Google told me that the same safeguards that prevent abuse by other methods (such as redirects) are in place here as well, and that Google reserves the right to take action on sites that are using the tag to manipulate search engines and violate search engine guidelines.

For instance, this tag will only work with very similar or identical content, so you can’t use it to send all of the link value from the less important pages of your site to the more important ones.

If tags conflict (such as pages point to each other as canonical, the URL specified as canonical redirects to a non-canonical version, or the page specified as canonical doesn’t exist), search engines will sort things out just as they do now, and will determine which URL they think is the best canonical version.

The tag in action

This tag will most often be useful in the case of multiple URLs pointing at the same page, but might also be used when multiple versions of a page exist. For instance, wikia.com is using the tag for previous revisions of a page.

Both http://watchmen.wikia.com/index.php?title=Comedian%27s_badge&diff=4901&oldid=4819

and

http://watchmen.wikia.com/index.php?title=Comedian%27s_badge&diff=5401&oldid=4901

reference the latest version of the article (http://watchmen.wikia.com/wiki/Comedian%27s_badge) as the canonical.

The search engines stress that it’s still important to build good URL structure and also note that if you aren’t able to implement this tag, they’ll still keep the processes they have now to determine the canonical. For instance, at SMX West on Tuesday, Maile Ohye of Google explained how Google can detect patterns in URLs if they use standard parameters. For instance, with these URLs:

• http://www.example.com/buffy?cat=spike
• http://www.example.com/buffy?cat=spike&sort=evil
• http://www.example.com/buffy?cat=spike&sort=good

Maile explained that Google can detect (particularly when looking at patterns across the site) that the sort parameter may order the page differently, but that the URLs with the sort parameter display the same content as the shorter URL (http://www.example.com/buffy?cat=spike).

While it’s rare for the search engines to join forces, this isn’t the first time they’ve come together on a standard. In November 2006, they came together to support sitemaps.org. And in June 2008 they announced a standard set of robots.txt directives. Matt Cutts of Google and Nathan Buggia of Microsoft told me that they want to help reduce the clutter on the web, and make things easier for searchers as well as site owners.

This new tag won’t completely solve duplicate issues on the web, but it should help make things quite a bit easier particuarly for ecommerce sites, who likely need all the help they can get in the current economic conditions. Site owners have been asking for help with these issues for a really long time so this should be a greatly welcomed addition.

Reference: Search Engine Land

Free Plugins:

There have aready been some plugins produced to enable Blogs, CMS & eComerce platforms to capatalise on this announcement. Here are some that we know of:

• WordPress Blogging software
• Magento eCommerce Software
• Drupal Content Management System

There is no hiding it, consumers are cutting back and economising on everything from houses & cars to clothing and food.

Currently its hard to find anything to be positive about in monetary terms, however recent research has indicated that grim economic times could bode better for online retailers. A recent Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates survey finds 26% of consumers saying they’ll shop online more if their personal financial situation worsens in the coming year.

These consumers nick named “recession shoppers” buying online for rock-bottom prices, deep discounts and solid deals.

The research has shown that “recession shoppers” prefer ‘Discount Vouchers’ when looking for discounts:

• 68% of “recession shoppers” (and 79% of “weekly shoppers”) purchased something online they wouldn’t have otherwise because of a coupon or discount.
• 64% of “recession shoppers” (and 70% of “weekly shoppers”) said they purchased something from a particular online retailer they wouldn’t have otherwise because of a coupon or discount.

Additional findings include:

• 74% of online shoppers receive e-mail alerts from their favorite retailers
• Recession shoppers are 17 points more likely to research products or services online several times a week than average users
• Consumers - 34 year olds make more online purchases every month than any other age group
• 34% of those surveyed plan buy more online in 2009 than they did last year

At a glance it seems these findings are a positive for online retailers, however there are areas which have not been covered by the research which critical for the viability of online retailers:

• Return On Investment - is there any profit left after discounts, free shipping etc…
• Customer Loyalty - once they that great deal will they return or just hunt out the best bargain from a competitor?
• High Cost Per Acquisition - shoppers and spending more time looking at more sites more time; potentially costing you money in multiple PPC clicks, affiliates and comparison sites + the discount code!

What should Online retailers do?

Sales are sales, and you should aim to get them from wherever or whenever you can. However your bottom line is still the bottom line and profit matters so you should always have a very close handle on this. Ensure your not being a busy fool selling to thousands of “recession shoppers” and making a loss more often that not.

Reference: Econsultancy

10 of the Best:

1. ProFlowers 31.1%
2. LL Bean 25.7%
3. Amazon 23.7%
4. VitaCost 23.0%
5. Coldwater Creek 22.4%
6. QVC 21.1%
7. Roamans 20.4%
8. Office Depot 20.2%
9. LandsEnd 19.3%
10. Victoria’s Secret 19.2%

*Source: Nielsen Online / Marketing Charts

More Useful Retail Benchmarks in December:

According to Coremetrics Benchmark, the percentage of website visits that ended up with product orders increased by 23% from November to December and fell by 2.4% compared to December, 2007. The average number of items per order and average order value fell by 19% and 11% compared to November and by 2% and 3% compared to last year.

Page Views Per Session 12.01
Product Page Views Per Session 2.99
Average Time on Site (in seconds) 503.01
Average Items/Order 4.76
Average Order Value $124.48
Shopping Cart Conversion Rate 38.16%
Shopping Cart Abandonment 61.84%
New Visitor Conversion Rate 2.69%
On-site Search Session 18.97%

* Source: Coremetrics LIVEmark Benchmarks US (PDF) - UK benchmarks PDF available.

Coremetrics LIVEmark leverages aggregate performance data across more than 300 participating brands to deliver over 35 benchmark metrics addressing performance indicators such as campaign and channel effectiveness, site stickiness and conversion rates.

Reference: Grokdotcom

Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results. “Our annual ‘Top 30 UK Online Retail Satisfaction Index’ has indicated that free delivery is still a critical factor in both the channel customers choose (online versus offline) and the retailer they choose (one company over a competitor),”. “But does it drive short-term sales and long-term loyalty? What is the true cost of free delivery to an online retailer?”

Over 7,000 visitors to the top 30 online retail websites during the Christmas shopping weeks and, Freed says, “we found that the answers are more complex than e-retailers may realise.”

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Key findings include:

• Free delivery is becoming increasingly common and highly satisfies shoppers when available: 66% of online Christmas buyers said they received free delivery offers, 23% said free delivery wasn’t offered to them, and 11% couldn’t recall if free delivery was offered.
• Free delivery has limited value as an acquisition tool. It is slightly more effective when it doesn’t involve restrictions, though the researchers note that free delivery with restrictions impact customer satisfaction less than they once did, as shoppers become more accustomed to limitations on offers.
• Delivery costs are a huge factor in whether people choose to buy online or offline. Almost one-fifth of all shoppers (17%) report that when they choose to buy something from a retailer’s store instead of website, avoiding delivery costs is the main reason. When they choose to shop on a retailer’s website instead of in the store, 31% report that the availability of free delivery encouraged them to buy online.
• The availability of free delivery is a key reason shoppers choose one online retailer over another. Free delivery heavily influenced almost half of online purchasers in their decision to purchase with the internet retailer they chose instead of from a competitor.
• In a difficult economic climate, each retailer needs to weigh their own goals and satisfaction profiles. If a primary goal is laying the groundwork for loyalty down the line, these incremental advantages of free delivery may be justified. In addition, individual online retailers may find different factors encouraging their visitors or certain customer segments (such as first time visitors versus repeat visitors).

“Delivery costs still really matter to shoppers,” Freed concludes. “High delivery costs (or perceptions of high delivery costs) drive people to buy in stores and low delivery costs drive people to buy online. Not only do delivery costs influence what channel shoppers choose, they influence the retailer they choose. Only when e-retailers understand the behaviour of their own customers can they really understand the true cost to their company of offering free delivery - or the true cost of not offering free delivery.

The above results we feel back up our findings over the last few years; that one of the best possible ways to increase sales and conversion rates without having to make major changes to your website and its structure it so simply offer heavily discounted if not free shipping.

The trick is to then advertise this every where on your site as clear as is possible and within a few days you should be abale to see the results through your analytics and turnover!

Reference: Internet Retaining

It’s worth mentioning now, for these hacks & plugins to work you will need to install the following onto your machine:

• The Web Browser FireFox
• The amazing GreaseMonkey FireFox extension

Right, in no particular order here are the Google Analytics Top 10 Plugins & Hacks:

1. The Google Analytics Report Enhancer - The handy script enables enhanced segmentation, by transaction, adgroup, and referral path any time a segmenting opportunity comes up. It will allow you to see exactly which transactions are attributed to each source, medium, source/medium, keyword, campaign, new or returning visitors, and more. You also have the ability to see the raw number of conversions for each goal you have as well as goal revenue.
2. Google Analytics Desktop Reporting Suite - This brings Google Analytics to the desktop, with a host of features that help you understand how your website is performing and where you can improve. From tracking your visitors, referrals and campaigns to viewing your AdWords ROI metrics.
3. Adding Business Data to Google Analytics Data - This script lets you add business data to a profile. Notes appear in a concealable table at the top of every report, this is great for businesses who need to keep track of progress and highlight aspects of their findings.
4. Analytics KPI gadget for iGoogle - This is a great widget for iGoogle users that allows you to see important KPI information from Google Analytics directly in iGoogle.
5. Keyword Trends in Google Analytics - This plugin makes it as easy as clicking a button to get reports on ‘what’s changed’ for the following; a) which referrers have sent most traffic in last few days and b) which have sent most traffic where they never did before.
6. Get Detailed PPC Keyword Data from Google Analytics - This hack is great if you want to fine-tune your PPC campaigns by getting greater detail from your GA reports. It shows you how to use a set up a filter that shows exactly the Search Term (i.e. keywords that are searched on) rather than just the Bid Term (i.e. the keywords that triggered a PPC advert).
7. Hack for obtaining full referring URL - This Hack provides two ways to get full referring urls into your Google Analytics.
8. Google Website Optimizer multivariate data to appear in Google Analytics - While Google Website Optimizer by itself can give you a quick look at which combination is best at improving conversion, it tells you nothing about transactions, revenue, micro-conversions, navigation, segmentation by source, and bounce rate. If you integrate Google Analytics into your Google Website Optimizer experiments, you will get much richer data, and be able to get a true idea of how your test is doing.
9. Updated UK & International Search Engine - This hack is an update to the GA list of Search Engines, this new list will distinguish between UK and international search engines, as well as to enable GA to recognise some country-specific search engines, e.g. the BBC’s search engine.
10. Better Google Analytics Firefox extension - This Enhances Google Analytics with a compilation of Plugins & Hacks made by various authors in one easy to install script. It will allow you to do the following:

a) Cleaner Profile Switching - Remebers settings you set when you switch between profiles, and allows you to open another

b) Export To Google Docs from Google Analytics - Allows you to export any report available as CSV to Google Spreadsheets.

c) Google Analytics Absolute Conversion - Converts percent values to absolute values in tables.

d) Google Analytics Advanced Date Selection - Allows you to easily compare the current date range against the same range last year.

e) Google Analytics Table Sorting - Sorts the visible table rows.

f) Social Media Metrics - Adds Digg, Sphinn, Mixx, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, and Yahoo InLink Metrics to your content detail reports.

Do you know of any other hacks or plugins that should be in this list? If So Please Add a Comment!

If you would like to discover how to maximise your website’s potential through conversion optimisation and analytics, EMAIL US or CALL on 0800 6226 975 for a FREE impartial chat about how you can increase sales online.

4Q

4Q is a great little tool which helps you get answers your Analytics’s software just can’t get.

Such as:

• How satisfied are my visitors?
• What are my visitors at my website here to do?
• Are they completing what they set out to do?
• If not, why not?
• If so, what did they like best about the online experience?

Using these findings, you can make changes to your website that will help you convert, retain, or engage more visitors.

We have been using this tool for a few months now and the info we get back is incredibly insightful and having a huge influence on our decision making when working on our site.

If you want to try it out simply Click Here and sign up and drop the code on to your site.

A Useful little add-on for Photoshop. The guys at Telegraphics have a great free download here which makes creating your Favicons very easy.

Go here to download the add-on then add it to:

Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS3\Plug-Ins\File Formats

(NB the ‘Favicon’ is the little icon that appears on teh web browser tabs)

At the latest eMetrics Summit today, Google Analytics unveiled the new functionalities that are a major upgrade to Google Analytics. These new features are gradually being released in beta in all accounts. They will allow users to gain much richer insights into website traffic and make it easier to discover, create, and access important metrics.

They are in brief; Advanced Segmentation, Custom Reports, a data export API (private beta), integrated reporting for AdSense publishers (private beta), multi-dimensional data visualizations called “Motion Charts,” and an updated user and administrative interface.

For the full write up visit the Google Analytics Blog, which has all the detailed info, videos and release info. Alternatively see the YouTube Play list

In an interview with the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones, Mark explains how he started Facebook at college and has grown the company to reach over 100 million users in 4 years through a shared vision for the future of social networking. 

Click image to watch the interview

Microsoft bought into Facebook spending $240 million for a 1.6% stake in the company and the company is said to be valued at around $3.75 billion.

Although now world renowned, Facebook had a controversial beginning. According to reports on Boston.com Zuckerberg allegedly nabbed the concept when working with fellow students on a similar website. The former Harvard associates claim Mark Zuckerberg ripped of their idea for a site called ConnectU, which follows similar principles to the social networking giant.

The case was settled with an undisclosed sum and Facebook stock.

Click Here to watch the full interview

There are a whole host of websites claiming to be able to save you money, give the best money off deals etc… however how do you know which sites are giving you the best deals without having to visit every site? Here is a quick list of the types of sites you should use:

• Comparison websites - These are some of the most highly used sites , they are great when you know what your looking for and want to find the best price.
• Cashback websites - This is when you receive a percentage of the price you pay for an item back when you buy something through a cashback site.
• Voucher Codes websites - These sites have discount coupons for thousands of online stores which can get you savings of up to 20% off the marked price.
• Swap websites - These sites give you an area to swap, buy, sell or barter for second hand clothes, accessories, tickets for theatres, spots events, books, CD’s, DVD’s etc…

Rather than us writing a list of the best sites for money saving, here is a link to an article by Lucy Tobin of the guardian who has done a good job of that already:

‘Her tips for 50 money-saving websites to help us all stay afloat in the coming months’