Roland Dunn

Google does not tell us when it visits which sections of sites in Webmaster Tools.

Use your webserver log files for more insight. If you can write a script to dig into these files, this can provide some real insight.

You can plot visits to the top level sections of your site on a chart to see how Googlebot is crawling your site.

Insight you can gain from log files:

• Does Googlebot actually request all URLs seved by a website?
• How does Googlebot spend its time, what does it request?
• Does Googlebot spend its time cost-effectively?

Googlebot does not request all content at once, can become distracted, lost. Googlebot does not spend its time efficiently, so we need to point it towards things that we value.If Google doesn’t thing that your site is valuable to users, it won’t crawl it as frequently.

Example Googlebot log:

Conclusions

Searchbot visits are precious, you need to make sure you point in them in the right direction. Embrace your log files to determine behaviour and alter internal navigation and linking.

Glenn Jones

People using a generic term ‘rich snippets’ for markup data, but there are several different types:

Microformats

Mark up data with pre existing attributes of HTML.

Full example of a recipe in Microformat

Microdata

A method of marking up data with HTML 5 attributes.

Full example of a recipe in Microdata

RDFa

A method of marking up data with custom attributes and namespaces. Complex but flexible.

Full example of a recipe in RDFa

See full

Microformats vs Microdata/RDFa

Microformats are simple, easy to use.

Useful for events, products etc. Pages with video etc, use microdata to describe objects that are unusual.

Marking up a Yorkshire Pudding recipe

• Look at Recipe on microformats.org.
• Add the top level class around the HTML containing your data.
• One property can live inside another.
• A property can have child properties.
• A property can take data from the text of an element or another attribute.

Things Glenn is asked most: How does this effect SEO?

Answer: Suspects is a signal but more importantly is CTR can see improvement of 10% – 20% when rich snippets are present in search results.

Further reading and tools

http://schema.org/

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

Adam Lee

Great market research:

• Understands customer needs
• Needs to be accurate and up to date
• Reacts to fast-changing markets

Example one

Jo runs a company selling baby products, wants to go online understands importance of SEO. Generic terms too competitive. Builds personas around her customers – Parents

Uses social media channels to monitor discussions.

Monitors key engagement channels – blog footfall from social media tools such as Brandwatch, Klout and FollowerWonk.

Geographical data can also be gained by using Google insights.

From this insight she can create a keyword set to influence, design, layout and copy on the site.

Demographics – Doublick Addplanner can help you gain insight into your customer demongraphic, and from this you ca decide whatsites to advertise on.

Results - Segmentation research, Demand estimations etc.

Example two

Bill runs a large software company. Creates community to engage wth customers.

Observations -Uses tracking tools such as Clicktale, Google Think Insights

Polls – Facebook, Twitter, apps, – Twtpoll

Questionnaires – Email, Apps – Survey Monkey

Questionnaire Design Process -Determine objectives, resources and constraints, data collection model. Be brief, but specific. Analyse the results.

Example three

Steve wants to build brand loyalty with an intuitive user experience. Grabs attention through recall, recognition and user-testing.