StepForth SEO News Blog

Friday, March 28, 2008

• Have you been tracking key performance indicator(s) (KPI) since the inception of the campaign?
  Let me explain; say you launched an SEO campaign to drive more traffic to the “Norco Bikes For Sale” page on your website. In this case a very simple key performance indicator (KPI) would be how many visits the page has received from people that stayed longer than, say 6 or 7 seconds (this time qualifier would all-but-eliminate low quality clickthroughs). If you tracked this all the way from the inception of the campaign and you saw that this KPI had increased perhaps more research is in order before cancelling this campaign. If you saw no measureable improvement in your KPI then the campaign should be canned, or at the very least, paused.
  
  


• If you haven’t adequately monitored the success of a campaign from the start is there a way to determine it now?
  Usually there is a method to determine the success of a campaign using historical data but the method depends on a multitude of circumstances. Here are a couple of the most common methods:
  
  Dig into your web statistics: any hosting company worth its salt (like LunarPages or WeDoHosting) will have web statistics compiled for your website. These stats can provide revealing historical information on the ups and downs of traffic on your website.
  
  Note: I recommend setting up Google Analytics on your website (free) for an alternative view of your stats. I find it best to have Google Analytics installed if even just for piece of mind that you have a backup of your stats (if you move hosting providers for example). If you do this, however, please read this handy article by Matt McGee on protecting your privacy while using Google Analytics.
  
  If web site statistics are not an option then you may have to review your income history and see how much of your income you can tie into the specific marketing campaign. This process is not likely to be painless and may very well be impossible if you have a large number of campaigns going on at the same time; however, it could prove worthwhile if it keeps you from wrongly shutting down a profitable campaign.
  


• What do your frontlines say? Are you getting more sales from the web?
  Every sales person in your office should be asking how prospects found you and they should be keeping meticulous notes on this information. If they are then ask them if they have seen a marked increase in web-related phone calls and whether they found you through a (specific) search engine. This kind of info is invaluable to determining the success of any marketing campaign.
  
  


• Is the campaign nearly profitable but not quite?
  If you can see the campaign is close to being profitable then I strongly recommend sticking to your guns (if you can afford to) and conduct testing to increase the viability of the campaign before giving up on it.
  
  Multivariate testing is often a great technique for improving a campaign. Multivariate testing is a term used to describe the tweaking of a landing page in manner that (hopefully) influences a desired reaction from the visitor. Tweaks could be as simple as removing an image of a Norco Bike at the top of the landing page which in-turn moves the marketing text higher up the page. A multivariate test would examine how this seemingly minor change positively or negatively affects the page. Usually a positive reaction would be an increase in clickthroughs to a goal page (such as a purchase page or an inquiry form).
  
  Here is an excellent example of successful multivariate testing.
  
  


• Did you check to see if your pay-per-click campaign was profitable before turning it off?
  When you are looking at cost cutting your attention will most likely be focused on major expenditures like pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns and rightfully so; a poorly performing campaign can be a major drain. That said, you must do your homework before shutting down a PPC campaign because it could be delivering the profit you desperately need. In a perfect world this question would be a waste of space but I am sure a vast number of PPC campaigns are run without proper monitoring so I feel this reminder to verify profitability is warranted. If your campaign has not been properly monitored then I suggest thinking carefully about your next step. You can either turn it off for the time being and see what effect it has on your sales OR immediately install the appropriate mechanisms to track a pay-per-click campaign and monitor it long enough to determine if it is in fact successful; the time required depends on the breadth of the campaign but 2 weeks should do the trick.

• Has there been a regular and distinct increase in subscribers to your blog RSS feed or newsletter subscriptions?
  If you are using Feedburner or another RSS management tool look at your average sign-ups on a weekly basis (take more than one sample) before you start your SMM campaign(s) and then compare that to a sampling of a few weeks over the past month or two. Do the same examination for your newsletter subscriptions (using whatever management tool you use to monitor signups). Do you see a substantial increase in signups on a weekly basis? If not then have an in-depth discussion with your SMM team or vendor and determine where the disconnect is. After all, these assets have to be doing something for their money – perhaps they see another metric increasing.
  
  


• Are you seeing more traffic from social media websites? If so, are they of a high enough quality?
  Open your web site statistics, go to your referral stats and look for increased traffic from social media websites your SMM team is concentrating on. If you don’t find any additional traffic stop at this point and have a serious discussion with your SMM team.
  
  If you do find an increase of traffic from social sites then further segment this data and determine the quality of this traffic. For example, using ClickTracks Professional it is easy to create a filter that shows only visitors from StumbleUpon (or another group of social sites) that stays on your website longer than 5 seconds; this will eliminate zero second (aka “useless”) traffic and leave you with the worthwhile data. Now take this traffic and compare it to the expense of acquiring it through your current SMM campaign. If the numbers appear favourable and you feel the benefit outweighs the costs then you have your answer – keep the program. If the numbers are unfavourable either sit down with your SMM team to adjust/tweak/modifiy your campaign (by finding more appropriate social sites to become active on) or shut the campaign down until the winds are again favourable to refocus and try again.
  
  


• Are you or your company getting talked about more often? Is it positive or negative talk?
  No matter what type of campaign you have running it is important to keep tabs on your online reputation. While running a SMM campaign it is easy to step on toes and cause ill-will; especially if your marketers are not taking care to understand the unique etiquette of each social property they participate in. If you are not sure of your current reputation then try searching Google for specific iterations of your business name and your key employee names. Document anything that appears positive or negative. Also make certain to setup a Google News Alert for specific key phrases so that you can be alerted whenever relevant fresh content is made available in Google’s vast database. If you find negative press then handle it immediately by responding to it (decide how this best be done) and quickly inform your SMM team of the issue so they can learn from it and avoid a reoccurrence. If you find a lot of negative press then you need to decide if your SMM campaign is worthwhile continuing since you have to spend so much time pursuing damage control.

Labels: PPC, Reputation Management, Ross Dunn, SEO Tips, Social Marketing, Tutorials

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Recessions Can Teach Valuable Marketing Lessons

Earlier this month Google launched a new function which allows searchers to search deeper within existing authority search results.

When searchers enter a query for certain terms, typically brand names such as "best buy", an additional search box appears next to the authority listing allowing for a deeper site search. This site search will then search the specified site for your next query. This feature has been available for some time using the Google Toolbar, or by entering the command " site:domain.com", but was only recently integrated into the actual search results.

But some retailers up in arms about this new feature. The New York Times reported Monday that a number of retailers and web publishers are complaining that this additional search takes users to yet another Google page, rather than to the official company's website. This in itself may not be that big of a deal as the entire selection of organic results generated are for the single domain, however the problem escalates with the placement of paid AdWords results along side, prompting the opportunity for potential customers to stray off to the competition instead.

Alan Rimm-Kaufman, a former Crutchfield executive, told the New York Times "Google's decision to sell ads on the secondary search page ignores the user's initial interest in a brand retailer like Best Buy."

When someone searches for a specific brand such as "Best Buy" and then performs a secondary search, they will now see the ads for competing sites, providing Google additional profit from these ads.

A Few Personal Thoughts

• One relatively simple way to satisfy the unhappy retailers would be to add a simple check box within Google Webmaster Tools, If certain retailers do not want the search box appearing next to their result, then they could simply check the box and be done with it.
  
  
• This new feature is of no use to me personally, as when times require me to more deeply search a specific website I tend to use the Google toolbar to do so, (especially when a site's built in search functionality is insufficient), but I can see many potential searchers taking advantage of it.
  
  
• I think retailers are missing one big advantage. Aside from already being the #1 organic listing, this search box helps to draw additional attention to their ranking making it stand out even more, and possibly drawing a slightly higher click through rate to the main site.

As with all new search features there are pro's and cons. Only time will tell if this new feature will remain, or see its demise due to some angry retailers.

Labels: Google, Scott Van Achte

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: New Google Search Function Makes Waves

Have you ever wondered exactly when and where viewers watch your YouTube videos? YouTube Insight, a new tool has been created by Google's engineering team in Zurich, to allow users to dive deeper into the statistics behind their posted videos.

Guardian.co.uk reported on the new addition Thursday morning.

"We know a lot of data about video consumption and we want to give some of that back," Jacobi said. "A lot of bands use the site, and YouTube Insight is a very easy way to work out where in the world your fans are. That's very important for planning, marketing and touring, and helps tailor their product."

Users will now be able to see statistics such as how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, overall popularity against related videos, the lifecycle of videos, and what happens to your videos as popularity peaks. Soon they will also be adding additional features including what time of day your videos get the most views, and how viewers discovered them in the first place.

To view statistical information about your Videos, follow these simple steps:

• Log into your YouTube account
• Click "account" at the top right
• Near the top left, hover over "My Account" and select "Videos, Favorites, & Playlists"
• Click the "About this Video" button to the right of the video you are interested in.

More information can be found in the YouTube blog.

Labels: Scott Van Achte, YouTube

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: YouTube Introduces Insight

Search Engine Roundtable reported Tuesday that Microsoft Live Search, in an effort to "loosen up the spam filter", has seen a major update. Over at WebmasterWorld however many are annoyed at the apparent level of poor results.

'caveman', one of the moderators at WebmasterWorld, made the comment "the net result has been more pages from iffy, third tier sites ranking than I have seen in long while"

If across the board results will continue to be of lower quality, it would not be surprising to see Microsoft roll back the update - either that or watch their market share dip even lower into the single digits; a loss they can't afford to take.

Labels: Live Search, Microsoft, Scott Van Achte

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Update at Microsoft Live Search

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Labels: Andrew Clough, Google, Link Forth, Online Statistics, Social Marketing, StepForth

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Today's Social Media and SEO Linkforth

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

In order to help curb the possibility of rioting, the Chinese government has blocked all access to both YouTube and Google News to prevent the viewing of news reports and video footage documenting riots and protests in Tibet. Other web properties blocked include giants Yahoo, CNN, and the BBC.

Cnet reported on the blockage over the weekend and many others such as the New York Times have also picked up the story.

Google has before been blocked by the Chinese government. Back in 2002 searches through the internet giant were blocked to the Chinese population leading into a Communist Party congress in November of that year.

In 2002 the Chinese government reported that an estimated 45.8 million Chinese were online. In July of 2007 this number had increased to approximately 137 million. Since then the total of those online has continued to skyrocket. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, and reported at the Register, the communist country, exceeded that of the US and reached an estimated 216 million online users by the end of 2007.

Labels: Google, Scott Van Achte, YouTube

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Google, Youtube, Blocked by China

Friday, March 14, 2008

• Matches consumer specified search terms for something they are already interested in researching/purchasing, with the advertiser providing what they are looking for.

• A well managed campaign allows consumer behavior to be monitored to assist in adjusting the effectiveness of the campaign while it’s running.

• In some cases, particularly ecommerce sites, ROI can be tracked very accurately.

• Advertiser pays only when potential customers interact with their ad.

• Ad copy is very limited in size which makes it difficult to “shoehorn” in a lot of information to attract customers.

• Cost per click is dynamic not fixed; rates can depend on a number of different factors. Potential overspend is offset easily by setting a budgetary cap.

• PPC can be susceptible to abuse, such as click fraud. However, there are methods employed by search engines to detect much of this. Additionally, aftermarket analytics solutions such as ClickTracks, can also be of significant help in narrowing down possible click fraud and generate a report for advertisers to send to the appropriate search engine.

• PPC differs from more traditional forms of advertising in that it displays ads to those who are actively looking, rather than merely “display and pray” to a demographic. Also, the ability to gather information and adjust an advertising campaign at any given time makes it a more flexible alternative to broadcast or printed media.

• As a rule, using keywords most relevant to the content on your site’s landing page(s) will net the most qualified traffic and result in better positioning within a search engine for reduced cost.

• Keywords that are very general will usually result in greatly increased cost by displaying ads to searchers that are unlikely to follow through to purchase.

• One technique often overlooked is the use of negative keywords to filter out unwanted traffic. For example, using the word “free” as a negative keyword would block out any searches that include the word “free”. If you are not offering free products or services you would definitely not want ads displayed to searchers using that term. This can also be a very effective optimization technique to enable the use of keywords that are too general otherwise.

• Using “long tail” keywords. Keywords that are highly relevant but not often searched for can be a very inexpensive means of boosting niche traffic.

• Ads should first and foremost be designed to get the searchers attention through relevance and a little creative writing.

• Testing different ads against each other is the best way to optimize the effectiveness of an ad group.

• Whenever possible, employing keywords in the ad text is best practice. It can be difficult to do this while keeping the ads appealing to searchers, but it will increase the quality of the ad to the search provider and will generally result in better positioning at reduced costs.

• The ad destination must be a working link to a landing page relevant to the user’s search. Consequences of not following this guideline range from greatly increased cost per click to having ad service declined outright by the search engines.

• Rather than arbitrarily setting out bids based on estimations, best practice is to start low and spend a bit of time daily adjusting upwards until reaching optimal bids.

• In some cases, particularly when bidding on very competitive keywords, it’s not always the best approach to vie for the number 1 position. Avoid getting locked into a bidding war over the top positions.

Labels: PPC, Tim Rule

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: What is PPC?

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

"takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next. In our collections, you can access gigabytes of photos in seconds, view a scene from nearly any angle, find similar photos with a single click, and zoom in to make the smallest detail as big as your monitor."

Evidence 2) PicLens by cooliris
PicLens is a fantastic plugin that allows searchers to navigate a 3d gallery of images associated with the topic they are searching. The user can also surf related images by simply clicking on a small play icon that appears on images anywhere in their browser (the icon appears on the image when the user's mouse hovers over it for a moment). So where does PicLens get its content from? PicLens has complete access to the image caches of: Google, Yahoo, Flickr, SmugMug, Photobucket and DeviantArt.

This free, incredibly useful software is available now and it represents a new way for the masses to think about search; instead of showing information in a ranking format, PicLens makes browsing images as simple as a flick of your mouse (momentum will actually allow the images to move by). Right now PicLens is naturally designed for images but who says it needs to stay that way?

Evidence 3) SearchMe
When my colleague showed me the preview of SearchMe I knew I had the linchpin for this very article. SearchMe is a new search engine in private Beta at the moment but this next generation search engine has finally married image search in a manner that will get many tongues wagging.

As the video below outlines in detail SearchMe allows searchers to type in a search and then define the intended topic of their search in order to provide the most relevant results. Once the user selects their topic they are provided with a slick but simple page showing pictures of each resulting web page that can be scanned through in a manner similar to PicLens.

Now these are not images in a classic sense, since they are actually just screenshots of the existing web pages, however, the technology is extremely similar and it seems natural that the final version of SearchMe's image search option would utilize the same technology.

Tying it all Together
What is the one thing that all of these concepts have in common? The answer is marvelously simple; they all focus on the simple concept that a picture is worth a thousand words. Why show a snippet of content in a search engine result page when a complete image could say so much more about the destination?

Are You Excited Yet?

1. Web pages will have to be designed with a tighter focus on usability and simplicity for screenshots to appear interesting/relevant enough to click on.
2. Images will always need to be appropriately tagged and described.
3. Web site images will have to be picked with more care from stock photography sites in order to capture the eyes of image-surfing prospects.
4. SEOs will find it useful to include sales-oriented information in images but not at the expense of the image.
5. Content around images and the overall page text must be extremely relevant to the image and the description and tags that are attributed to it.

Labels: New Tech, Ross Dunn, SEO News, SEO Tips

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Images are the Natural Evolution of Search

Monday, March 10, 2008

Labels: Scott Van Achte, StepForth

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Welcome to the World Emma!

Friday, March 07, 2008

Labels: Google, Ross Dunn

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Free Google 411 Available in Canada

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Labels: Digg, Google

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Today's Social Media Linkforth

• Provider Add-on is a plug-in for Thunderbird that enables synchronization. Here is a great instructional on how to use it to sync the two systems.

• BirdieSync is a commercial application that reportedly does a great job of syncing Google Calendar with Pocket Outlook so that you can then have (by extension) your Google Calendar on your smart phone.
• FinchSync does the same thing as BirdieSync except it is free but that reportedly comes with less user-friendliness and reliability.
  

Labels: Google, New Tech, Ross Dunn

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Google Calendar Gets Vital Usability Boost

"The idea that we're going to become a women's site is just plain wrong. We know that a sizable group of our core user base is women, and we know they come to us for a certain kind of search: to get answers, often in areas of reference, health and entertainment," Graham said.
...

"We want to address the answer-seekers, who put things in a search box in certain ways," Graham said. "We think it's smart to identify who our most active users are. It's smart to identify the kind of searches they're looking for, and focus on building that up. We want to be the first place our core customers come when they're looking for answers."

1. Ask let go of major Ask supporter and icon Gary Price. Gary represented a beacon of hope for Ask and its future as a competitor in mainstream search. By cutting Gary they cut one of the few vital lifelines they had to the search community.
   
   
2. Ask let go of Patrick Crisp, the Director of Public Relations at Ask. Patrick was a fantastic spokesperson for Ask in the SEO and search community; he listened to suggestions and earned my respect by being very candid in his responses. Without Patrick, Ask has lost a very real asset and they must know that; which speaks volumes to their lowered commitment or at the very least to their lacking management team.
   
   
3. Ask has chosen once again to refocus on the Jeeves-style Q&A model. Originally this model was fantastic and frankly I thought it was the only smart branding Ask had but the search company chose to diversify into a broader search market... why abandon this so soon? By once again changing its stripes Ask is beginning to appear like a schizophrenic corner business that keeps changing sign color and name; that hardly inspires trust.
   

Labels: Ask, Ross Dunn

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Ask Claims it is Still Committed to Search

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Labels: Interviews, Live Search, Microsoft, Ross Dunn, smxwest08

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: An Interview with Jeremiah Andrick of Live Search Webmaster Tools

Labels: Ask, Ross Dunn, smxwest08

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Apparently ASK Doesn't Always Have the Right Answer

Labels: Link Forth, Reputation Management, Social Marketing, YouTube

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Today's Social Media Linkforth