Natural Search &
Online Tourism Consultant

As websites have become complex (take Amazon which has millions of pages) users will use the internal search tool to find what they want. Internal search usage numbers are easy to retrieve using Google Analytics Site Search tool combined with Google’s Custom Search Engine (CSE).

This shows the statistics from the site search report in Google Analytics.

The CSE will index 100% of the sites content if provided via an XML feed (Google has 2 indexes, 1 for regular search and one for its Custom Search Engines). This was the easiest way to gather user search data and didn’t involve developing a search function. The benefit of using the CSE is the results are algorithmically generated not just a simple SQL query based search, this results in far better targeted results.

Site Search is of great value to copywriters and web masters. Being able to understand the user when engineering information architecture is a crucial step in the future success of a website and one of those steps is analysing Site Search.

The data is usually quite difficult to come by as the information contains sensitive business information. If you have a similar website in the same market, this insight gave an understanding of what the user expected to see from the Mumbles.co.uk brand. Based on those results determined the information architecture for the new Citys.info internet franchise and what order to put on channels i.e. Hotels, Restaurants, Bars, and Beaches. Instead of offering content which the user might not have wanted to read by understanding the site search results it gave a voice to the user. By further analysing site search data, it will give good content suggestions which otherwise might not have been thought of. This is effectively a vertical search marketing and content suggestion tool in the hands of every webmaster.

The choice of domain name is critical for business. The generic domain name is something that a lot of people strive for and the Citys.info internet franchise is no different. Depending on the market the decision to go with a generic or a branded domain is a tough call to make. In a lot of markets the generic domain name offers instant product or service recognition and will give confidence to the user as to what content they will find when they click on the link. This helps to improve click through rates on a multitude of on-line areas from organic SERPS, PPC listings and blog links amongst others.

The ranking benefits of having a generic domain cannot be underestimated either. Search engines rely on text links from external sources as a voting mechanism to credit sites as being authentic high value sources of information. When an author of content links from one website to another the text that is linked is known as the anchor text.

When read in context the links give the user a very clear guide as to the subsequent content they will find. Search engines use this text in helping them to better understand what information the linked too site is about. This helps improve rankings for the keyword phrases in the anchor text for the linked to website.

The decision to go with a generic or a branded domain is a tough call so testing the performance of both would be useful. The Citys.info internet franchise team conducted tests to see the performance differences in branded versus a generic domain through the Google Adwords platform. This allows an advertiser to bid on terms that users search for in the Google Search Engine. After submitting an initial bid, Google will then give a quality score (a list of variables that affect the cost per click aka CPC) for the keyword selected. The higher the click through rate on the advert the higher the quality score the lower cost to bid in the higher positions. So there is a direct cost implication in an advert not performing well in its click through rate.

The Citys.info platform is an affiliate of the Vue Cinema network and one of the revenue channels is selling cinema tickets. So the test also encompassed a feasibility study to see whether bidding on these terms was cost effective in achieving a target CPA.
Shows an advert displayed around the keywords “Vue Cinema Swansea” and Vue Cinema Cardiff”

Shows what the search results pages looked like at the time of the trial for the Swansea.info version of the test.

The adverts were run simultaneously over a 3 week campaign and the results were vastly different, the two domains Swansea.info and netcardiff.co.uk were run with the same advert creative and a maximum cost per click of £0.10. netcardiff.co.uk received a CTR rate of around 13% where as Swansea.info was consistently receiving a CTR of 56% which is an almost unheard of figure in any main stream PPC campaign.

Given the exact wording and exact same levels of competition that both adverts received the only conculsion that can be made from the test is that the domain name played a very important part in securing the click from the user resulting in a quality score of 10/10 on Swansea.info and 7/10 on netCardiff.co.uk.

On a day to day basis web analytics are a window in to what has been happening on a given website.  Data generated by the user is reported in very simple terms and decisions can be made around that data based on the behavioural patterns of users. Different websites even if they appear to be exactly the same and in the same sector can throw up different search reporting trends and it is in this analysis that the power of analytical data comes in to its own.

With a first page ranking on a generic term such as “Mumbles Hotels” or “Mumbles” the user is at stage one of their search and although reasonably narrowed down to Hotels in Mumbles they might be open to 3 or even 5 star accommodation and are likely to look through multiple pages before they find their desired outcome.

Take the 6 search terms below mumbles, the mumbles, China China Swansea, mumbles Swansea, Mumbles Wales and mumbles hotels. Each tells a very different story about that user’s interest in the content based on the data available.

The keyword “Mumbles Hotels” is a reasonably generic term although the user has narrowed down a place and a product they still have the type of product such as 3 or 5 star hotels. It is fair to say that user would look through a variety of hotels listed on the website before they made their decision. It appears given the level of page views for that term at 7.46 per visit that is the case. Also note the very low bounce rate at 8.24%. So 92.76% of users look at more than 1 page of content on that search term.

Bounce rate is a very good indicator of how users react to the content offering when initially put in front of them. That search term would also suggest that the user is in “buying mode” and is thinking about conducting a transaction so giving them “call to actions” to send the hotels an enquiry would be a good idea on this content.

This shows the top keywords and associated data driving traffic to Mumbles.co.uk

The keyword “china china Swansea” (the name of a Chinese restaurant) gives a very different insight in to those particular users’ intentions. The low page views per visit at 2.18 suggests a very short visit and from the average time at 56 seconds that is true. The bounce rate is the highest in the list likewise the percentage of traffic that is a new visitor.

When the page is analysed the intentions of the user become clear. The page in question is a listings page for the restaurant and contains information like address and telephone number for reservations.

China China had a very poor launch strategy when the restaurant was opened and took over 6 months for any listings to appear in the likes of Yellow Pages or Yell.com. The listings on Mumbles.co.uk have been online since day one of the restaurant opening and were indexed by Google shortly after.

Being first with information is a helpful step in ranking well in any search engine: industry leaders will often have information first and Google will reward with good listings. The search engines are also in competition with each other after all if the user consistently finds more up to date information else where there is the potential for them to swap search engines.

Even different search engines will return a different type of user. This shows Google, although driving vastly more traffic to Mumbles.co.uk, users from Yahoo are far more engaged with the content and look at 21% more pages than an average Google user. Yahoo also delivers traffic which does not bounce as much as Google.

Understanding users and how they are interacting with content allows for informed decisions about potential strategy changes such as content or more relevant links around the content. For example with a restaurant page on Swansea.info a SQL query is run which generates 6 restaurants underneath the listing so it is easy for the user to move onto related content, the more targeted the options the more likely they are to click on it. This also gave a great opportunity to develop a good internal linking strategy on Swansea.info around the restaurants channel.

Giving users related content to generate page views is completely the opposite of websites which operate on a conversion basis (CPA – cost per acquisition). The last thing a CPA business model wants is for users to be distracted from the goal, usually financial (also known as the conversion funnel) so the closer the user comes to the end result, the less options are available to navigate away

Here are some other examples from Webmaster Central which gives an insight in to how Google treats new websites. There is often the discussion (Wallace, 2005) that the sand boxing (a testing/validation environment) of new websites takes place that are entering the index. This is highlighted in the following graphs which show Mumbles.co.uk, an established site and well respected in Google, although varying greatly on a daily basis is reasonably consistent from month to month.
This image shows the number of pages crawled per day by Google Bot on Mumbles.co.uk

Figure 61 shows the number of kilobytes downloaded per day by Google Bot on Mumbles.co.uk
In contrast Tenby.info is a recent launch for the platform, notice the gradual increase in the amount of pages that Google crawls, this is to do with the sand boxing that Google implements with new websites that enter its index. This image shows the number of pages crawled by Google Bot on Tenby.info

Sand boxing
When attempting to be indexed by Google and before any kind of rankings are awarded the search engine will want to know the source of information is a credible one and understand what type of content is being offered. This is known as the sand boxing period and will result in any version of the Citys.info internet franchise being put in to one of hundreds of categories, hopefully all sitting in travel/tourism. This means hopefully competing with like for like websites on competitive terms.

Various sources believe this categorisation is a manual process which can take up to 3 months. It is realistic to think this is the case and would keep the quality of the index high allowing for benchmarking in analytics packages against other websites in a sector.

User generated content is key for a portal like Citys.info, local knowledge is a fundamental part of building a website which is powered by people who know the area. By taking on site editors who know the local area and keeping them informed of the websites performance through tools like Google Analytics, the Admin2 Panel and by giving them financial incentives to provide an excellent user experience makes each portal a powerful branch to the overall internet franchise brand.

The business listings content management system has been made as simple to use as possible to give them full and powerful access to their listings. By building the tools to give users the option to do this it not only cuts down on start up costs for new site editors but through research on the Mumbles.co.uk platform the reporting found that the same people were posting information time and time again who belonged to organisations and events companies who saw a free approach to some of their marketing. This in turn drives traffic to the portals sites and provides users with information and the portal with content.

The administration suite is made up of 8 channels from accommodation administration to events and job postings. With the added feature of Google Maps, exact driving directions can be added to each and every listing on the website. All the user generated content has to be managed and reviewed before it goes live on to the website to avoid the sites being the target of automated posting bots. This filtering keeps the quality of the content high and spam to an absolute, almost eradicated level with a simple 1/0 column in the database which activates (1) or de activates (0) on any given listing, we also recently introduced Captcha which again reduces the spam further.

When analysing data produced by users navigating a website, it is essential to not only understand their behaviour but be able to measure KPI.

Unless data is available documenting how the website is performing, how can the internet franchise owners be expected to sell against that data. Savvy advertisers will easily be able to trip up a site owner about facts and figures and quote competitors information if they have not been shown how to interpret the site KPIs and analytics data.

Recording data about the sites performance over a period of time allowed for trending information to be analysed such as brand specific traffic. This might give an inclination of how a specific area was performing on the wider tourism map then by looking at the sector as a whole this might be a common trend. As seen below there is a gradual rise from March peaking at the school holidays and Easter and reaching a peak again in July when the schools finish for their summer holidays falling off dramatically in early September. This is a classic tourism yearly trend model for any UK seaside resort.

One of the great things about an online business is its ability to be measured and during the development of the Citys.info internet franchise some advanced uses of Google analytics were implemented to try and measure KPIs on a site wide level from accommodation enquiries right through to premium advert performance.

In Google Analytics there is a function to create “Goals”. Goals are achievements that have been made based on a set of pre defined variables. Maybe a user clicked on a call to action they can then be measured against an older version of that same call to action or maybe a user has clicked on a form and made a hotel reservation. As well as goals these are also known as conversions. The website converted someone to do something and it has been tracked in the analytics.

Conversion tracking can take many forms and become very complicated for example if the keyword “Majorca Holidays” is bought via Google Adwords taking the user to holiday information page for Majorca. Although all the functionality and call to action might be there for the user to complete that booking transaction they may just be researching the market to see what is available and what prices are like. This research may go on for weeks maybe months until the user finally navigates their way back to the original keyword they used some period of time ago and bought the holiday, this is known as an assisted keyword conversion and requires complex tracking software usually in the form of a cookie (a text file assigned to a users browser triggered by visiting a web page).

With Citys.info due to the nature of the content and the lack of paid traffic it is not really necessary to track the conversion down to that granular level. It is important to track hotel enquiries to individual hotels and hotel content in general purely from a sales perspective in giving customers an update on how their listing is performing. At a top level, looking at all the hotels on the website and to get a total number of enquiries for any given time frame some event tracking can be configured in Google analytics.

We have worked extensively with Citys.info to implement KPI measurement to a very granular level. Get in touch to see how we can help you.

Information Architecture tends to wrongly not get the attention it deserves during planning usually for its lack of immediate results. This is something that might take a lot longer to realise results from than for example implementing a link building campaign but rest assured for usability this is key.  Users will appreciate the time taken to make sure that the structure that has been implemented is hierarchically correct for the information that is being portrayed to the user.

But just how important is information architecture? Where does it come on the list of priorities for the new site design and development? Most would argue that it is of less importance, but during the build process, the more knowledge that is gained in understanding how search engines interact with the content it is felt that its importance is under-estimated.

Not only will this investment in time and development help the user in terms of accessibility, but with search engine optimisation an established method of improving a websites performance it is felt that by truly understanding what a user wants to get from the content how else can content strategy and layout design be implemented?

Without a sound foundation provided by effective information architecture the site was likely to be less usable, accessible and less persuasive in its sales pitch. When the word accessible is used in these circumstances, that not only means user accessibility it also implies its crawlability by search engine spiders.

Search engine optimisation is not the dark art that many marketing professionals make it out to be. It is about ensuring that the websites are running at their optimum performance from each and every aspect that editors and users want to look at them; whether that is page views per visit, page loads times at server level (for a search engines eye view on this variable visit Google Webmaster Central), the quality of the content offering right through to how efficiently a users browser deals with the website. Webmaster central might suggest load times are long, resulting in crashing the user’s browser and that is something that’s not going to have a good effect on the platforms reputation.

The only way to gather user information is through testing or being able to analyse a product of service in the same market as is being developed. Even then if there are slight differences in what the user’s expectations are; what might be working for one website will not necessarily work for another. During the information architecture design on the Citys.info franchise a lot of time was spent understanding navigation trends on Mumbles.co.uk. Top line navigation paths that users were requesting were checked and analysed. Understanding if there was any content that was missing relied on the internal search queries used by visitors when browsing the website. Internal search is discussed in more depth later in the paper but is a vital step in understanding a market if the information is available.

Citys.info is developed with the theory in mind that content is king and structure and relevance is queen but both are required to get the best performance. Like with any publication having well structured content to take users on a journey through each section is going to help give them a good experience. The platform structure and content offering are developed for the user but always taking in to consideration how a search engine would deal with the same content offering.

To help the web property owners to better understand what interaction their website is having with the search engines, Google has developed what they call Webmaster Central. It is a collection of tools and reports that give an insight in to how the Google Bot interacts with a website. This data is often very useful for debugging problems that might be occurring with a website such as indexing issues, problems with a site map or just to tell Google what region to associate a domain with. For country specific TLD’s such as .co.uk this is pre configured.  Think of Webmaster Central as a service centre for websites.

A recent indexing issue on Swansea.info after the re-launch was dramatically highlighted by webmaster central. The problem was first highlighted when the homepage was not being shown for brand related searches and the total indexed page count visible through WMC was reporting lower than normal figures. The total size of the site map is some 1740 URLs of which 1268 have been indexed by Google but at the time of the problem this was showing only 500.

A point to note here is that if a site has been running for a period of time before a site map has been added, the first few weeks after adding a site map will show how many pages are indexed. This initial period might highlight some site structure problems which are causing indexing issues such as Google Bot not being able to crawl drop down menus.