Moe Tamani's Internet Marketing and SEO Blog, Articles and Search Engine Optimization Tips

The way to Google is through our stomachs…

admin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 15:53:19 +0000

The way to Google is through our stomachs…

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

Kiwis seem to be rediscovering the joys of home cooking in a big way, and when our friends at the Sunday Star Times asked us to find out if this trend was supported by Google search statistics, we were happy to oblige.

We investigated the most searched-for cooking terms on Google.co.nz in 2009 and, as a comparison, back in 2004. We also pulled a few more cooking-related trends from around the world, which make for really interesting reading.

Since 2004 we‘ve seen cooking and food-related Google searches continually trending up across the globe, indicating that more and more people are making use of the spontaneity and choice that the internet offers those searching for meal-time inspiration.

And while we’re looking online for recipes, we’re also using the web to learn more about favourite TV food shows such as Top Chef and Masterchef, which routinely perform well in New Zealand TV ratings.

What the recipe search lists reveal is that New Zealand shares a number of classic culinary favourites, such as pancakes and chocolate cake, with our closest cultural neighbours – Australia, the US and the UK. But while we have much in common, it’s fascinating to see the regional variations that so clearly reflect our cultures too. For instance, the US Top 20 list is instantly identifiable by American favourites such as meatloaf, pumpkin pie, salsa, margaritas and guacamole; and where else but the UK would you find Yorkshire pudding, fish pie and sloe gin making the top 20?

Back in New Zealand, the popularity of searches for international dishes such as biscotti, tiramisu and sushi has waned slightly since Google records began in 2004. Muffins – popular in 2004 – have been superseded by the current rage for cupcakes, though we have to say it’s great to see the good old Kiwi lolly cake still makes it in to the most recent top 20. And if there was ever any doubt that New Zealand is the spiritual home of the pavlova, you only need to use the NZ and Australian top 20 recipe lists as evidence – ‘pavlova’ comes in at No 13 on the New Zealand list compared with No 20 in Australia.

(thanks norwichnuts for the photo)

Finally, it’s encouraging to see that despite the craze for big-name international celebrity chefs, our homegrown kitchen talent is just proving as popular with Kiwis, with half of the Top 10 chefs hailing from NZ.

We hope you find these search results as interesting as we have!

2009 – New Zealand – Top 20 ‘recipe’ searches
pancake recipe
banana cake recipe
chocolate cake recipe
cupcake recipe
pumpkin soup recipe
butter chicken recipe
scone recipe
apple crumble recipe
chocolate brownie recipe
cheesecake recipe
carrot cake recipe
waffle recipe
pavlova recipe
tiramisu recipe
quiche recipe
meatloaf recipe
gingerbread men recipe
lolly cake recipe
pizza base recipe
hummus recipe

2004 – New Zealand – Top 20 ‘recipe’ searches
banana cake recipe
pancake recipe
chocolate cake recipe
bread recipe
tiramisu recipe
biscotti recipe
sushi recipe
russian fudge recipe
gingerbread men recipe
scone recipe
lolly cake recipe
hummus recipe
waffle recipe
butter chicken recipe
mulled wine recipe
carrot cake recipe
apple crumble recipe
muffin recipe
pumpkin pie recipe
pavlova recipe

2009 – Australia – Top 20 ‘recipe’ searches
Pancake recipe
Banana cake recipe
Banana bread recipe
Scone recipe
Pumpkin soup recipe
Chocolate cake recipe
Quiche recipe
Cheesecake recipe
Cupcake recipe
Anzac biscuit recipe
Playdough recipe
Potato bake recipe
Fried rice recipe
Tiramisu recipe
Carbonara recipe
Pavlova recipe
Apple crumble recipe
Lamb shanks recipe
Meatloaf recipe
Butter chicken recipe

2009 – USA – Top 20 ‘recipe’ searches
banana bread recipe
meatloaf recipe
chili recipe
pancake recipe
cheesecake recipe
sangria recipe
mojito recipe
apple pie recipe
lasagna recipe
salsa recipe
french toast recipe
hummus recipe
meatball recipe
margarita recipe
chicken salad recipe
apple crisp recipe
sugar cookie recipe
pumpkin pie recipe
guacamole recipe
pesto recipe

2009 – UK – Top 20 ‘recipe’ searches
pancake recipe
chocolate cake recipe
cheesecake recipe
flapjack recipe
yorkshire pudding recipe
cookie recipe
victoria sponge recipe
sponge cake recipe
paella recipe
shortbread recipe
apple crumble recipe
cupcake recipe
carrot cake recipe
banana cake recipe
mojito recipe
fish pie recipe
biscuit recipe
lasagne recipe
sloe gin recipe
cake recipe

NZ – 2009 – Top 10 ‘chef’ searches
top chef
master chef
sous chef
chef jobs
iron chef
chef training
chef de partie
kenwood chef
youda sushi chef
thai chef

NZ – Top 10 chefs’ recipes searches
jamie oliver recipes
nigella lawson recipes
jo seagar recipes
gordon ramsay recipes
alison holst recipes
donna hay recipes
rick stein recipes
ruth pretty recipes
richard till recipes
julia childs recipes

Posted by Annie Baxter, Google New Zealand

Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship for Women in Technology

admin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 15:53:13 +0000

Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship for Women in Technology

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

Dr. Anita Borg devoted her adult life to revolutionising the way we think about technology and dismantling barriers that keep women and minorities from entering computing and technology fields. Anita’s technical expertise and fearless vision inspires and motivates women to become leaders in creating technology.

At Google, we believe that the wave of information and communications on the web is changing lives for the better and creates fantastic options for students choosing careers in technology. We want to continue Anita’s vision for women and we’re excited to announce the 2010 Google Australia and New Zealand Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship. Through the scholarship, we aim to encourage women to excel in computing and technology and become active role models and leaders.

We’re looking for women with a strong academic background who have demonstrated leadership. Each scholar recipient will receive a $5,000 scholarship towards the 2011 academic year. In addition all finalists and scholarship recipients will be invited to an expenses-paid networking retreat to be held at Google’s Sydney Engineering centre in September.

The scholarship is open for women students at an Australian or New Zealand university who have completed one or more years of a Bachelors degree with at least one year of study remaining, whether as part of a Bachelors or postgraduate degree. We’re looking for women studying Computer Science, Software Engineering, Informatics, or a closely related technical field, who have maintained an excellent academic record. See full information and apply here.

Good luck!

Posted by Isa Notermans, People Programs Specialist

Learning With Real Time Results: AdWords in the Curriculum Students Help Detroit Windsor Dance Make a Grand Jeté Into Online Marketing

admin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 06:06:44 +0000

Learning With Real Time Results: AdWords in the Curriculum Students Help Detroit Windsor Dance Make a Grand Jeté Into Online Marketing

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

Day 30 of an AdWords campaign should look very different than Day 1. Wayne State students of AdWords in the Curriculum learned this lesson quickly, according to Professor of Marketing Kevin Ketels. “I intentionally let students launch underdeveloped campaigns so they could watch the evolution from a non-performing to performing program,” he said. Launching and then optimizing based on data proved successful for the Detroit Windsor Dance Academy team, particularly.

“When the team for the Detroit Windsor Dance Academy changed their general dance ad group to multiple ad groups that addressed specific types of dance (hip-hop, belly, adult, etc) with targeted ads, their results improved dramatically. Hip-hop ended up with 125 clicks and a 3.75% clickthrough rate (CTR). Belly dancing had 27 clicks and a 2.02% CTR, and Adult finished with 42 clicks and a 1.44% CTR. It was an amazing turnaround,” explained Professor Ketels.

Taking a hands-on learning approach led students to discover best practices, rather than having them prescribed beforehand. The students also learned about differing strategies based on particular distinguishing features of a non-profit. For instance, competitive advantage can be essential for some non-profits, and less of a priority for others. “Another team did very well by identifying popular organizations that shared their mission,” said Professor Ketels. “They then created ads that highlighted a competitive advantage held by their non-profit versus the other organizations. It worked brilliantly and resulted in more than 200 clicks and a CTR for several keywords exceeding 2% and one keyword topping out at 13%.”

Campaigns are also affected by external factors which may be beyond their control, as the students learned. For instance, saturation in an industry caused some non-profits in the program to face high competition on keywords. “Developing a campaign for a hostelling non-profit was very difficult because of the extraordinary competition and bidding for keywords in the area of student and low cost travel. This team tried perhaps a hundred different combinations of keywords and perhaps different ten ad groups,” Professor Ketels recapped.

While dealing with challenges of high competition or concluding that a keyword simply won’t work for a campaign can be disheartening, the speed of results has been a win for effective campaign management and learning the platform. Rather than needing to invest hours in a campaign for months on end before learning that part of it is not working, testing periods can be a matter of days. From a teaching standpoint, it also changes timelines around grading for AdWords in the Curriculum students. Professor Ketels noted, “When you’re dealing with a live project where you can see substantive results in just a few days, it is archaic to ask students to turn in a paper status report that is then returned a week later.”

With a semester of wins and challenges, Professor Ketels praised AdWords in the Curriculum as immensely valuable for his students. We’re pleased that the program has been beneficial to students and non-profits alike.

“It was outstanding to teach the creative copy development process in conjunction with a defined target audience and to have almost instantaneous real-world feedback,” said Professor Ketels. “I didn’t have to tell my students if they were successful or not, they could see their clickthrough rates immediately. It is quite simply an exercise that cannot be replicated in a traditional classroom environment.”

Posted by Anita Varma, Google Ann Arbor

Advanced Webinar Recap #2

admin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 06:06:36 +0000

Advanced Webinar Recap #2

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

Last Thursday’s webinar with NTEN.org was focused on monitoring and evaluating the performance of your Google Grants AdWords account. This session was the second in a four-part series and was designed for our advanced Grantees who are looking for more strategic ways to gauge the value of their campaigns, ads and keywords. Jessica, one of our Grants team members, shared valuable tips for evaluating account performance through AdWords reports and powerful Google Analytics data. How-tos and best practices were discussed, with heavy emphasis on the types of reports that could be the most helpful and the use of Analytics information to evaluate the effectiveness of your website as well. Analytics reports including Map Overlay and Site Content were two of the many highlights in this session. You can learn more about Google Analytics reporting in the Google Analytics Help Center.

If you were unable to attend this session and want to learn more, please review the slides from the webinar here. You can also purchase the audio recording of the session here. As we shared on this blog last week, we’ve included some hands-on exercises to put the information covered in this session into practice. This homework can be found in the session slides and we encourage everyone to try it out!

The next session in the advanced series will take place Thursday, March 11th at 11am Pacific. This session is titled ‘Optimizing Your Google Grants Ads and Keywords’ and will dive into how to improve your ads and keywords now that you have successfully evaluated their performance. Please consider joining us for the next session!

Posted by Kristie Mun, The Google Grants Team

Upcoming Webinar With ReadyTalk

admin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 06:06:33 +0000

Upcoming Webinar With ReadyTalk

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

On Wednesday, March 17th, Google Grants will participate in a webinar with ReadyTalk as part of a non-profit focused series. The session, ‘Non-Profits & Google Grants: Your questions answered’, will offer a high-level view of the program, best practices for grantees, and more. Brett Meyer, Communications and Web Manager for the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN), will share first-hand experiences managing his organization’s Google Grant. Dennis Yu, CEO of BlitzLocal.com, will be on-hand to provide strategies he’s found to be effective in his pro bono work with non-profits and Google AdWords.

The session will take place on March 17th from 11am to 12pm Pacific. You can find more details and register for the webinar here. Please consider joining us for this informative session!

Posted by Kristie Mun, The Google Grants Team

Advanced Webinar Recap #1

admin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 06:06:23 +0000

Advanced Webinar Recap #1

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

Last Thursday, February 25th, we kicked off a 4-part webinar series with NTEN.org designed for more advanced Google Grants organizations. This series, called ‘Maximizing Your Google Grant To Meet Your Organization’s Goals,’ will focus on more advanced tracking and optimizing strategies for your Google Grant, as well as cover additional useful offerings like Google Analytics and other Google for Non-Profit products. If you are interested in learning more about this series, check out the series description and sign-up here.

In last week’s session, Beth, an AdWords specialist and long-time Google Grants volunteer, started off the series discussing the importance of setting goals for your AdWords account. Without taking the time to identify your goals for the account, achieving success (and monitoring your progress towards it) is much more challenging. She also covered how mapping your goals to your account structure is a key part of the process. Many different AdWords tools were discussed, and the most relevant ones for grantees (such as the Ad Preview Tool and the Ads Diagnostic Tool) were highlighted. Beth closed with some hands-on exercises for webinar attendees to put what they learned in the session to practical use. We asked attendees to complete their “homework” before this week’s session and look forward to seeing how they did!

If you’re interested in the above topics, we recommend reviewing the slides from this first advanced session here. We also strongly encourage you to go through the hands-on exercises on your own – we hope they’re helpful and that you’ll learn something new! If you are interested in the audio recording from the webinar, you can purchase it here.

The next session in the advanced series will take place Thursday, March 4th at 11am Pacific. This session is titled ‘Evaluating Performance and Monitoring Your Google Grants Account’ and will focus on strategic ways to monitor your performance, with a heavy emphasis on Google Analytics. We hope you can join us – and don’t forget your homework!

Posted by Kristie Mun, The Google Grants Team

Resource round-up for February

admin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 06:06:10 +0000

Resource round-up for February

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

This month’s resource round-up includes a success story from YouTube’s Video Volunteers program, strategies used by organizations in response to the disaster in Haiti, a grantee’s story about using social media effectively, information about using mobile giving as a non-profit, an announcement about YouTube for Non-profit’s recent launches and a quick reminder on keeping your grant safe from phishing.

Put YouTube to work for your org

YouTube’s Video Volunteers program has been underway since last summer and has been put to work by many organizations that needed outside video-making talent to showcase their cause. In this piece on CNN.com, The Los Angeles Regional Food Bank and a Toronto-based film-maker/philanthropist show how an unlikely pairing made through YouTube’s Video Volunteers can result in success for everyone involved.

And YouTube for Nonprofits is now available in Canada and Australia, in addition to the US and UK!

Mobile phones and disaster response

During and since the recent disaster in Haiti, organizations around the world have been employing social media in different ways to serve their constituencies and the people of Haiti. This article from NetSquared’s Amy Ward, describes how mobile phones are a key player in how we react to and provide service during global disasters, including mapping, fundraising and missing persons strategies.

Learn more about using mobile giving for your organization at Mobile Giving, the mGive Foundation and MobileActive.

Using social media effectively: A grantee’s story

Mercy Corps, an international relief organization, was an early adopter of social media but had seen little effect from all of their efforts until they determined that the way to reach their constituents was to extend the strategies deployed on their website to the different social media outlets. In this blog post on NTEN.org, Roger Burks of Mercy Corps, talks about how they have made social media start working for them.

A reminder about phishing and your AdWords Grants account

We’ve posted before about the dangers of phishing and how to keep your account safe, but it bears repeating. This series from the Trust and Security team here at Google can help you avoid phishing and keep your account safe. Here’s some AdWords-specific information that’s good to keep in mind with regard to phishing emails that may appear in your inbox.

If you come across resources that would be useful to the greater non-profit community, feel free to post it to Non-profit and grantee resources topic in our discussion forum so that everyone can benefit. If you’d like to review previous round-ups, just click here and read through previous months’ round-ups or search for “resource round-up” from the search box at the top of the page.

Posted by Jessica Vaughan, Google Grants Team

The New AdWords Interface: A Quick Navigation Guide, Part 1 of 3

admin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 06:06:03 +0000

The New AdWords Interface: A Quick Navigation Guide, Part 1 of 3

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

Savvy advertisers have been gaining mastery of the new AdWords interface now that it has been around for a little while. To help you take advantage of the new layout and features, we’d like to offer a brief series on the new interface that has taken account management to a new level, making advertising online a lot easier for you.

To begin with, think of the new interface like an online version of AdWords Editor, the free application that enables you to make multiple account changes while you are offline. The left-side panel has a tree view of your account, branching out into campaigns and ad groups. You no longer have to load entire pages to view specific ad groups or campaigns, thanks to this new layout.

The tabs have changed too. You now have the ‘Home’ tab that gives you a quick and easily accessible overview of your account—from campaign and keyword performance metrics to a search box for help, alerts and announcements. The ‘Campaigns’ tab (instead of ‘Campaign Management’) has a detailed view of your online campaigns. You can click into any campaign for which you wish to see all metrics, such as keywords and bids.

The next tab, called ‘Opportunities’, is new; it lists areas of opportunity that might help your online campaigns perform better. This may include budget suggestions or new keywords that are relevant to your account but not already included in your list. This tab also shows all the tools that you can use to track performance and tap into more opportunities.

The ‘Reporting’ tab does just that: give you different options to keep track of your account’s performance. This means that it also includes the link to your Google Analytics account, if you have linked one. The Report Center’s various report templates are also listed under this tab, and you’ll find the ‘Change History’ tool, Website Optimizer and Conversion Tracking data here too.

The ‘Billing’ tab includes billing preferences and the billing summary page. For our Google Grants advertisers, there is no charge, so this tab will not be as important to you.

And finally, the ‘My Account’ tab includes Account Preferences, Account Access and Notification settings.

The new interface offers a tremendous amount of opportunity with its advanced reporting options, filter applications, graphical representations and in-line editing that renders changes instantaneous. The account navigation is now easier, quicker and more intuitive.

In our next post, we’ll provide a more detailed look at the ‘Campaigns’ tab to see how it can make your account management process more efficient.

Posted by Reema Prasanna, AdWords Team in Hyderabad, India

Google Grants Help for Haïti – One month after

admin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 06:05:54 +0000

Google Grants Help for Haïti – One month after

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

Many of the non-profits in the Google Grants program are still taking part in the relief efforts in response to the Haïti Earthquake. In order to provide them with more effective support, many Google Grants volunteers got involved and offered up some helpful tips for managing the increase in traffic.

Across countries, these volunteers helped more than 60 organizations by implementing Haiti support campaigns with customized optimizations. A few of the organizations involved included the Red Cross, Save the Children, Direct Relief, Habitat for Humanity, Unicef, CARE, Plan, Oxfam and many others.

Traffic increased significantly for these organizations, and help from Google Grants volunteers allowed them to leverage their Grants AdWords accounts to raise funds, recruit volunteers and reach their objectives.

We’d like to share a few of the most useful AdWords tips for any organization involved in relief efforts so that you can help your organization effectively manage your campaigns in similar situations.

Disaster campaign tips:

- Build a new targeted campaign for the disaster with keywords and ads which include the name of the disaster and point them to a targeted landing page about the disaster

- Pause all other active campaigns to concentrate budget on the new disaster campaign

- Contact the Grants team for disaster related support, citing “Disaster relief” as the subject of your request

- Check back to see which ads are converting best and driving the most traffic to your disaster related pages

- Take note of the types of landing page content that drives the most action from your constituents for future campaigns

- Reallocate budget to other campaigns when disaster traffic stabilizes

Posted by Yves Taquet, Dublin AdWords Team

Have questions, want answers? Bring them to the forum!

admin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 06:05:42 +0000

Have questions, want answers? Bring them to the forum!

internet marketing Articles from Moe Tamani, the SEO Services Consultant.

In a continued effort to find scalable and efficient ways to support our growing Grantee base, we’ve begun to rely on our User-to-User Discussion Forum. This forum acts as a way for Grantees and non-profits to discuss the Google Grants program and all of its components, including the application process, the AdWords account creation and account review process, and how to best manage an AdWords account after activation.

This outlet also acts as a resource that help you find the answers to questions you can’t find in the Help Center. Examples of questions proposed and answered in the forum include:

“Why am I prompted to enter payment information when building my Grants account?”
“Are non-501(C)(3) organizations eligible for the grants program?”
“How long does the application process take?”

In addition to having your concerns addressed in a timely manner, the Discussion Forum also offers:

improved search results, including posts from current and new forums
the ability to designate especially helpful forum members as “Top Contributors”
a reputation and ranking system
the ability for users, Top Contributors and Googlers to mark questions as answered
easier access to Help Center content
expanded user profiles that highlight your forum activity

If you have a question, suggestion or just want to mix and mingle, we welcome you to “stop by” our forum. Googler “Handy Annie” will check in from time to time to answer questions, listen to feedback and highlight great responses and the people who provided them.

AnnMarie Hill, The Google Grants Team

Moe Tamani's Internet Marketing and SEO Blog, Articles and Search Engine Optimization Tips

The way to Google is through our stomachs…

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