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How to Benchmark in Analytics

Written on July 27, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: seo

Posted by JoannaLord

We have a lot of changes going on at SEOmoz (feel free to get excited, we sure are!) and with all of these changes to the site comes the need to focus on tracking. Internally we have spent the last few months redirecting our attention to not only the best practices regarding analytics and data mining, but really pushing ourselves to revisit our analytical processes.

You know what we realized? There sure is a lot of data. While I have always appreciated the reporting features in GA, I find that too often people take the reports at face value and fail to go deeper. It’s unfortunate since it is in those deep dives that you usually discover the data that can change your current course of action. So this post is going to tackle an approach to analytics that is often overlooked and (thanks to Google and their silly naming convention decisions) is rarely used to its fullest capacity. Get excited folks we are going to talk about benchmarking {Woohoo! Insert audience applause here}.

All of you excel spreadsheet lovers out there know plenty of ways to extract data and pinpoint specific red flags or recent successes. In fact, most people use analytics to simply analyze the current state of their account. While this is certainly a priority, it really is one dimensional. Instead of stopping there, why not go further? Why not better understand where your data was, and how you are measuring up? In fact, why not use this data to help inform your internal decisions as a company? It’s like an analytical epiphany—“using past and current data to help guide you moving forward.” Glorious.

While many of the analytics platforms out there have given us a number of ways to compare historical data to current data, we are still limited to two distinct time ranges (for the most part). It’s great to see those two ranges stack up against each other, but that still leaves a lot to be desired. Without going further you miss the “interaction” between those two distinct time ranges.

Benchmarking your data is a great way to discover more about this, often overlooked, gray area. Benchmarking simply means you set a standard at which you compare something else to. When used for data mining, it means you plot two distinct variables (time ranges, metrics, dimensions, etc.) over a period of time and then use these “benchmarks” to infer conclusions when making decisions.

You can then see

Google Funds Research of Academics

Written on July 23, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

While we are all quick to open up on Google with both barrels for a variety for reasons including privacy, service speed and more privacy there are some things happening that are not all bad.

Google has announced the that they have awarded about $4 million to about 75 projects “full time faculty pursuing research in a areas of mutual interest” for Q2. In other words, there are people doing things that can help Google who aren’t Google employees. As a result, of course, Google wants in.

While admittedly some of the listed projects are a bit beyond my scope of understanding, it is interesting to see this list from the Official Google Blog to get a glimpse of what is being done with data to help get more mileage from it.

Jeremy Cooperstock, McGill University. A Spatialized Audio Map System for Mobile Blind Users(Geo/maps): A mobile audio system that provides location-based information, primarily for use by the blind and visually impaired communities.

Alexander Pretschner, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. Towards Operational Privacy (Security and privacy): Provide a framework for precise semantic definitions in policies for domain-specific applications to give users a way to define the exact behaviour they expect from a system in application-specific contexts.

Erik Brynjolfsson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Future of Prediction – How Google Searches Foreshadow Housing Prices and Quantities (Economics and market algortihms): How data from search engines like Google provide a highly accurate but simple way to predict future business activities.

Stephen Pulman, Oxford University Computing Laboratory. Automatic Generation of Natural Language Descriptions of Visual Scenes (Natural language processing): Develop a system that automatically generates a description of a visual scene.

Jennifer Rexford, Princeton. Rethinking Wide-Area Traffic Management (Software and hardware systems infrastructure): Drawing on mature techniques from optimization theory, design new traffic-management solutions where the hosts, routers, and management system cooperate in a more effective way.

John Quinn, Makerere University, Uganda. Mobile Crop Surveillance in the Developing World(Multimedia search and audio/video processing): A computer vision system using camera-enabled mobile devices to monitor the spread of viral disease among staple crops.

Allison Druin, University of Maryland. Understanding how Children Change as Searchers (Human-computer interaction): Do children change as searchers as they age? How do searchers typically shift between roles over time? If children change, how many of them become Power Searchers? If children don’t change, what roles do they typically demonstrate?

Ronojoy Adhikari, The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, India. Machine Learning of Syntax in Undeciphered Scripts (Machine learning): Devise algorithms that would learn to search for evidence of semantics in datasets such as the Indus script.

We report on what the market has been given but we don’t often think about what is being worked on for the future. Helping the blind with mobility and the prediction of future business activities based on search is interesting stuff for sure.

I wonder what other companies do in these areas? Have you heard of other programs like this?

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Google Funds Research of Academics

Yahoo: We’re Switching to Bing Next Month…or Maybe Next Year

Written on July 16, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

Yahoo has emailed advertisers to let them know that they should expect a full transition to Bing’s search results as early as August…

…or maybe 2011.

That’s a heck of a window!

I mean, August is just around the corner and the busy holiday season is starts in just a few months. Either you’re ready to make the transition or you are not. Why have marketers go through the process of prepping for the transition, if you’re not entirely sure if it will happen now, or after the holidays?

Still, the fact that Yahoo is emailing advertisers AND warning them to prepare not just for a switch in paid search results but organic too, suggests that the switch will take place in August/September.

Yahoo suggests marketers follow these steps if they wish to be prepared for the eventual switch-over:

Compare your organic search rankings on Yahoo! Search and Bing for the keywords that drive your business, to help determine any potential impact to your traffic and sales

Decide if you’d like to modify your paid search campaigns to compensate for any changes in organic referrals that you anticipate

Review the Bing webmaster tools and optimize your website for the Bing crawler, as Bing results will be displayed for approximately 30%* of overall search query market share after this change

Oh, and Yahoo is testing some Bing results in July. Yes, this month!

Have you spotted Bing in your Yahoo results yet?

(email link via SER)

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Yahoo: We’re Switching to Bing Next Month…or Maybe Next Year

Is Google Getting Sloppy?

Written on July 16, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

I have a question for you.

Do you think Google is getting sloppy?

By that, I mean, does it seem like Google is pushing new products and updates out the door without first conducting in-depth testing and customer feedback?

Exhibit A: Google Buzz. Turns out, it was pushed live without the normal rigorous testing…and Google paid the price.

Exhibit B: Google decides to mimic Bing’s background images…then quickly pulls the feature.

And, Exhibit C: After launching a complete overhaul to Google News, the search giant is now having to backtrack some–making changes in response to the many complaints:

..some of you wrote in to say you missed certain aspects of the previous design, such as the ability to see results grouped by section (U.S., Business, etc.) in two columns.

At Google, we’re all about launching and iterating, so we’ve been making improvements to the design in response to your feedback. For example, we’re now showing the entire cluster of articles for each story, rather than expanding the cluster when you hover your mouse over it. We’ve given you the ability to hide the weather forecast from your local news section. We made the option to switch between List view and Section view more obvious.

Of course, you could argue that Google is merely doing a great job of listening to the feedback from its customers. And, that is true. But, it seems to me that Google’s customers are doing a lot more complaining these days.

Either we’ve raised our expectations of Google, or Google has lowered its standards.

What do you think?

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Is Google Getting Sloppy?

MySpace Looking for a New Ad Buddy

Written on July 5, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, book, marketing

MySpace needs to find another company willing to pay them for the opportunity to advertise to their decreasing number of users. They need to do this at a time when their executive suite has installed a revolving door to more easily handle the traffic in and out of the offices. It also comes at a time when the best company MySpace can find itself in is in the major Internet property rehab wing with Yahoo! and Aol.

So this is not the best situation to be in especially when you had cut a deal in 2006 with Google that should have brought $900 million to MySpace during the period where Google had the advertising exclusive with them. The Wall Street Journal reports

News Corp. is in discussions with Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. about replacing MySpace’s crucial search-advertising partnership with Google, which expires next month, according to people familiar with the matter.

In recent weeks, News Corp. has been discussing new, narrower advertising deals with Google and other companies, said the people familiar with the matter.

People close to News Corp. said any new agreement will be for significantly less money. That would be a further financial challenge for MySpace, which has seen ad revenue slip.

Google and Yahoo declined to comment.

Now the rest of the article in the Wall Street Journal sounds like it comes from a company that owns MySpace and needs to find another advertising sucker partner. The article paints a picture of a valiant company that is doing everything to ‘capitalize’ on the apparent opening Facebook has left because of its security gaffes. It says the usual music, comedy and fashion mix will make the 35 and under crowd desire the new and improved MySpace.

Well, if you want to read the advertorial you certainly can but it is very hard to imagine MySpace once again being at the top of the social media pile. What’s your take? Is this something that will fly? Neil Young once sang that it was better to burn out than to fade away. Don’t ya wish that MySpace would take his advice?

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MySpace Looking for a New Ad Buddy

The Yahoo/Microsoft Search Alliance: Managing Campaigns Through The Transition

Written on July 5, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Object, marketing

You’ve heard about the Microsoft/Yahoo search alliance, but what does it really mean for your paid search marketing campaigns? To minimize the disruption to profitable paid search programs, marketers will have to be thoughtful about campaign structure as they begin to understand the traffic and consumers from the combined search engines.



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The Yahoo/Microsoft Search Alliance: Managing Campaigns Through The Transition

The Inside Line On SEO

Written on June 29, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing, seo

There are so many blogs on search marketing.

Then there are so many forums.

And Tweets.

So much SEO noise, and so little time.

So how does anyone make sense of it? The deluge can be overwhelming for the experienced SEO, let alone the poor beginner. If you are just starting SEO, here are the ten areas you should spend most of your time on when you’re starting up.

1. Stop reading Blogs/Forums/Tweets/Facebook. Too much noise, takin’ all your time

“SPAM = Site’s Positioned Above Mine” - Greg Boser

2. Before your do any SEO, define your niche. What service does your website provide? Who are your readers/customers? What can you provide that your competitors don’t? How are you going to deliver your services and make a profit? There’s no point ranking well for a business that doesn’t work at a fundamentally level.

“Search is a “reverse broadcast system.” In a broadcast system, advertisers spend lots of money to reach a mass audience, hoping to build desire for a product or service. But most of the audience is not interested in their pitches. Search is the reverse. Each search is an expressed desire, something that someone at a particular time actually wants. Advertisers can tune in to the “desire-cast” that’s going on.” - Danny Sullivan

3. Set business-specific goals and include a time frame. “I want to make x in 12 months”. “I want 20,000 RSS subscribers in 6 months”. It’s important to be specific. It’s difficult to measure goals that aren’t specific i.e. “be popular”.

Never let your ads write checks that your website can’t cash. - Avinash Kaushik

4. Create interesting content. If you know your audience, you already know what content they will find interesting. If you don’t, revisit #2.

I’m not even sure myself - Matt Cutts

5. Links. You need links Not just the Google-juice, PR-passing kind. Links are the arteries of the web, Traffic travels across links, so all links, crawlable or not, no-followed or otherwise, are valuable. Asking for links from people you don’t know is pretty much a waste of time. It’s a better idea to create fantastic content, then link out to the popular people who can spread the word. They’ll follow their inbound links back to you. Make sure that what they find is remarkable.

The urgent can drown out the important. - Marissa Meyer

6. Do SEO. All that stuff you’re no longer reading in #1? It all boils down to this: put keywords in your title tag, write on-topic content, make sure your site is crawlable, get links to that content, get people to talk about you. Repeat.

We’re trying hard to find user needs that aren’t being met at all- Larry Page

7. After a month, look at your keyword referral logs. Take those terms and plug ‘em into keyword research tools. Create a list of 30 keyword terms that your audience would find interesting. Those are your article headings. Write 30 articles. Repeat.

8. Look at your competitors. Your competitors are ranking well for a reason. They’re being mentioned elsewhere for a reason. What are they doing that you’re not? Reverse engineer their sites i.e. who links to them, find out what articles they publish and find out who is talking about them, and why. Emulate them, then go one better. Either that, or stop competing with them directly i.e. define a slightly different niche.

We are currently not planning on conquering the world - Sergey Brin

9. Get social. Social media is often over-hyped, but the principles, and numbers behind it, are sound. Getting mentioned is the new link building. It’s about building connections between people. Google has a problem. Using links as a measure of relevant content doesn’t work as well as it used to, so you can be sure Google will be using an evermore complex set of signals. These signals will involve the connections people make with your site. That’s really what Google wants to know - who is most relevant. Consider the many different ways people can connect with you, and enable those connections.

10. Start reading the blogs/forums/twitter. The irony, of course, is that I’ve linked to some truly great resources and thinkers

If you’ve followed the ten steps above, you’re 80% of the way there. The final 20% will take a while longer, and that’s where the minutae comes in.

Keep in mind that some of the most lucrative SEO information isn’t likely to be published in the public domain. Cultivate personal networks to get this information. This is true of any business endeavor.

Network

The rest is here:
The Inside Line On SEO

All Good Content Starts Here: Keyword Research

Written on June 29, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: searchengineguide

by Stoney deGeyter

One of the great things about developing content for your website is that, with a little research, you can know exactly who your target audience is and how create content to meet their needs. Spending a few minutes before setting pen-to-paper, or fingers-to-keys, can tell you just about everything you need to know about what types of things people are searching for on the web. From that, you can determine what kind of content you need to reach your audience.

Using keyword research tools provided by the search engines and third party keyword platforms can help you a great deal in writing for your target consumers. Not only can you learn what keywords people are using, but keyword research can also help you craft your content using the words and phrases that your audience searches for most frequently. This helps you attract the widest audience possible while also focusing your words using higher traffic and better converting terminology.

There are three things that good keyword research will help you uncover: who your audience is, what they are interested in, and what their needs are.

Target Audience

Who is your target audience? Your research will tell you quite a bit about who they are by the searches they perform. Look at the keywords. Are they looking for business solutions? Information that will help them with a hobby? Or maybe something that will help them with their personal or professional education? Even looking for the same product or service, different searchers will use a variety of search words and qualifiers based on what interests and needs they have.

You can use the research to weed out a lot of people simply because you know you don’t provide what they seek based on the words they use in their search. They may be looking for a niche you don’t provide or a variant that you are unable to supply. Either way, by focusing on those terms you can help, while moving away from those you can’t. You’ll find yourself reaching out to a greater percentage of your target market.

Areas of interest

Next, you need to use your research to learn what it is that your customers are interested in. Depending on who they are, each visitor is often searching because they have a specific interest that needs to be satisfied. Some may be looking for information, others education, and still others might only be looking for ideas.

Using this research you can uncover the interests of your audience and use that information to build content that speaks to those interests. With this knowledge, you may be able to create a page, or even multiple pages of content. By looking at specific interests, you are able to engage with your audience on their terms, within the confines of their area of interest. This will help you produce better content that has a stronger chance of converting.

Needs to be met

People are needy! Most searchers are doing so because they need to get answers, solutions, or information. Figuring out what your target audience needs is critical to ensuring you are able to create content that provides them with the answers.

When writing your content to meet visitor needs, you may have to cover a lot of ground. Each searcher wants to know, “what’s in it for me”, and it’s your job to tell them! It all boils down to letting them know what benefits they’ll get from what it is you have to offer. But the benefits won’t be the same for every person. Or rather, the desired benefit won’t be the same, so be sure to hit as many benefits possible.

As you work through your keyword research, you’ll find that there is a lot of crossover between these three categories. Some industries clearly cater to one type or another.

Some business people are looking for ideas, some for information, and still others may be looking to build up their education. Similarly, the same can be said of students and hobbyists as well. You don’t have to be a student to look for education, or a hobbyist to want some new ideas. You need to determine the degree of crossover and whether there is enough to go after those in a category different from your primary audience.

Using your research to uncover all the keyword gems will help you determine the course of your content and maybe even who it is that you want to attract to your site. Some sites can be a catch-all, but many times you’ll find that trying to appeal to everyone appeals to no one. Only you can make this determination.

Keyword research will help you determine how best to reach your target audience. Without it, you’re just struggling around in the dark.

This post was inspired from The Princess Bride themed presentation I gave in early 2010 at SEMpdx’s Searchfest titled Inconceivable Content: The Dread Pirate Robert’s Guide to Creating Swashbuckling Content, Pillaging the Search Engines, and Commandeering a Treasure Trove of Conversions. If you enjoyed this post you also might enjoy other posts inspired from the same. Search for “inconceivable content” on this blog to find them all.

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All Good Content Starts Here: Keyword Research

Lee Odden On SEO And The Social Web – OMS Minneapolis Keynote

Written on June 25, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing, seo

Lee Odden, TopRank Online Marketing CEO gave the opening keynote of Online Marketing Summit Minneapolis.  Lee spoke on the intersection of SEO and social media and provided key takeaways for companies on achieving success.

As the social web and search engines integrate and innovate tighter, the intersection between search and social is growing more meaningful daily.  Following is a summation of this info-packed presentation:

What would happen if your Google traffic disappeared tomorrow?  What impact would that have on your marketing and your business?  For many, this could be disastrous.  This highlights the importance of diversifying your brand’s referring sources and share of voice around the web.

Search and social are intersecting in many ways:  when you look at a comparison of the top search engines, more and more of the engines themselves are on social platforms, and more of the results on the big engines are social.

Think about amplifying the results you are getting from natural SEO by amplifying your content through social channels.

Google dominates search, but should it dominate your marketing?

Lee shared some stats that help support the diversification of your traffic and digital influence:

• 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations, according to Nielsen, but only 14% trust advertisements according to Larry Weber
• Facebook added more than 200 million users in less than a year according to the Facebook timeline
• Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the US
• 2^nd most popular search engine isn’t Yahoo, it’s YouTube according to comScore
• 80% of companies use social media for recruitment, 95% of those are LinkedIn

The stats paint a clear picture:  that social is vital to integrate with search and your marketing program overall.  According to SEMPO, 35% of B2B companies integrate social media and search engine marketing programs – is your brand?

HubSpot is a great social/SEO example – they receive 20,000 leads a month from inbound efforts.

What about search and social as it integrates with PR and media relations?  To research stories:

• 89% of journalists use blogs
• 65% use social networks
• 52% use Twitter

Jon Gordon from NPR noted:

I use search engines on almost every story.  I use social networks to find additional sources as well as for the story idea generation and story feedback.

How to leverage SEO for marketing and PR:

If you already have a keyword glossary, that can be shared with PR to leverage for their content creation to be optimized for journalists.

How do SEO and social media intersect?

Add a layer of search to your social activity:  are you leveraging keywords across your social web participation?  If not, you should be.  Give your keyword glossaries to your social media marketing and PR team to use across marketing efforts.  Cumulatively this leads to better visibility not just in Google but in social search as well.

One of the problems of social media and SEO is that they are usually put in silos within an organization.  But, you can bring them together to amplify results.  You can’t afford not to combine social and SEO.  In fact, if you are in a competitive category, it’s difficult to compete if you aren’t engaged.  As just one example, it’s difficult to acquire lots of high quality, organic links unless you can promote great content to a significant number of people.

Ecommerce is social

Target, 1-800 Flowers, and other e-commerce brands are going social.  They are integrating their online purchasing with social sites in order to tap into networks along with purchasing.  Companies that are doing this type of activity are training their customers to make social a part of the purchasing process.

Customer service is social

Large brands are leveraging social tools for CRM purposes and sales opportunities.  All you need to do to see the opportunity is query a topic customers are seeking information on and you can be the one to respond.

Most importantly, people are social and people search.  As long as there is content that can be sorted, there is an opportunity to optimize it.

Is social a threat to search?  No – search isn’t going anywhere.  Social sites are popular but according to both consumer data and the nature of the web they are not a threat to search.

4 keys to Social SEO:

Listening, content, socialize, measurement

Listening – understand the channels so you can make smart decisions about your tactics.  Listening also provides you social keyword research to mine data from your target audience.  If you have ever created a social listening report, you know it’s keyword-based and the value of understanding the language audiences use.

Content – The thing that makes social or SEO fantastic is content.  If you don’t have a great message, you don’t have anything.  Take stock of content assets in order to be able to maintain consistency with communications.  After inventory, you can sync that up with an editorial plan.  Skipping this step can lead to failure:  for example, many create blogs and run out of things to say quite quickly.  Without a plan, it’s easy to get stuck.  Next, map your content to those social keywords developed to maximize visibility in search.

Socialize – give to get, and grow a network of relevant people.  Even if you have great content, no one will know to link to it or share it unless you promote it.

Distribution channels are essential – create content around the needs of your customers and send through distribution channels that are independent of Google – for example, RSS, email, social, media/PR and contributed articles.  The kicker is if done effectively, your performance in Google skyrockets.

Cycle of social and SEO:

Measure – get social monitoring tools and social analytics in place in order to understand and get feedback on your content and participation.  Look at the performance of your content and your competition’s content in order to provide insight.

Marketo (a TopRank client) as an example created a social SEO strategy that focused on keywords and content their customer finds valuable as opposed to limiting themselves purely to keywords describing the product.

3 things you can do now:
1) Establish a listening program

2) Implement a content marketing strategy

3) Leverage social media marketing campaign management tools (which will be explored in a future post at TopRank Blog).

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Thank You To Our Web Hosting Sponsor VISI

Written on June 24, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing, seo

For the past 3 plus years, TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog has been hosted by Minneapolis based website hosting provider, VISI.  When our past host shut us down without warning for getting too much traffic, VISI and Online Marketing Blog connected and worked out a sponsorship. VISI is the only company with an ongoing “ad” on this blog.

Uptime for Online Marketing Blog has been amazing since we moved to VISI and customer service has been exceptional. With web site hosting, the ideal situation is to forget about them, to not even know they are there because things are working so smoothly.

But when situations arise, and a site goes down, you remember pretty quickly who your hosting company is. VISI was good about working with us when we had a major problem earlier this year and get the right equipment to meet our needs. As our traffic has increased, there hasn’t been a blip of downtime.

Our relationship with VISI has gone well enough that when they launched a tier one cloud computing/cloud hosting service called ReliaCloud, they came to TopRank for Social SEO consulting services.

I’d like to thank Gary Elfert and the team at VISI for being “invisible” 99.99% of the time and being on the spot when we needed them.  If your company is in need of high availability website hosting, check out VISI.com.   If cloud computing or hosting is your thing, then check out their service ReliaCloud.

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