Search Trends - Search Engine Marketing

Has anyone else noticed that there has been a recent surge in "mommy blogs"? I mean, I know there's a new blog born every second or whatever, but all of a sudden I've seen this huge surge of blogs by people I know. Well I should say women I know. They're setting up blogs (almost all on blogger/blogspot.com) with photos and little anecdotes of what they're up to. Several Christmas cards included a blog URL and I just got an email from my sister in law with their new blog address. It's nuts! Is it just me, or is there new wave of mommy-bloggers coming online?

From the Google Blog: Google is launching Knol - which appears to be a Squidoo-like service with a little Wikipedia thrown in for good measure. Just another step towards total world domination for the big G.

Labels: google

Ok. I kind of suck at live blogging, but it's not all my fault. There aren't a lot of places to plug in and my battery keeps dying...time to get a back up batt.

Anyhow, I'm sitting here in a web analytics session moderated by Amanda Watlington, from Searching for Profit

Matt Bailey - SiteLogic

I came in late, so I missed the first part of Matt's talk, but he seemed to really be keying on the idea of segmenting traffic and conversion rates. Rather than looking at the entire site and saying we get X-number of visits, X conversion rate, look at what your customers are doing based on what keyword they came from, or how they got to your site.

3 C's of Analytics: Context, Comparison, Contrast

Come up with KPI's and look at how those KPI's by user segment. Keyword, landing page, etc.

"Analytics is not about numbers, it's about improving the customer experience." (so true!)

He quoted numbers from some study (not sure which) that showed that companies who hired a web analyst saw improvement between 900-1200% -- IF they take action.


Laura Thieme - BizResearch

Laura talked about specific reports she uses from several different analytics providers, including Omniture, ClickTracks, and Google Analytics. ClickTracks is good for funnel reports, Omniture is good for trend and A/B reports,

C-Level Execs want to see high level, bottom-line numbers like conversion rates, sales, etc.

She recommends using more than one analytics tool. Google is free, so why not use it? There is not any one perfect analytics tool. She like different reports from each one.

Set up conversion goals.

Q&A

Matt: don't be afraid to spend money on analytics. Whatever you spend on a good analytics package, you will make back within a few months. However, it doesn't matter if you have the most expensive analytics tool, but nobody to interpret the data, you won't get any benefit from it. Avinash Kaushik has an 80/20 rule - spend 80% on the person, 20% on the tool.

What do you tell clients who use flash?
Matt: don't do it. He likes to show them that most people back out of that page without even making it to the real site. Laura: Clients need to be educated. Difference between hits/visits.

Couldn't hear the question, maybe something about segmentation...
Matt: The amount of information is limited, but the trick is to not get boggled by numbers. Build the context.

How much time to spend on this stuff?
Matt: How much time do you have? With analytics, it's easy to get wrapped up on stuff. Start with the high level issues and work your way down. Don't get so wrapped up in the details.

Matt: Overlay doesn't matter unless you're segmenting the traffic (clicktracks offers this option)

Labels: web analytics

I thought I would try to live blog this session. I'm realizing that it's hard to keep up with everything that's going on. We'll see if I have the stamina (and laptop battery power) to do more of this live blogging stuff.

Shari Thurow - Omni Marketing Interactive
Web developer, library sciences, human and computer interfaces - wrote Search Engine Visibility

Search Usability
Misconception: SEO and usability do not go together

Ease of use with which users are able to find desired information before they view a web page and while they are viewing a web page.

- effectiveness
- learnability
- efficientcy
- error prevention
- user satisfaction

Search behavior does not only mean querying behavior. Search encompasses a wide variety of behaviors including but not limited to:
- querying
- refining
- expanding
- foraging
- pogosticking
- browsing/surfing
- orienting
- scanning
- reading

Marcia Bates, berry picking

Key Concepts of Search Usability

1. Sense of place
-Where are you?
-Whate page are you viewing?
-What makes you feel confident about this page?

2. Scent of information
-is the info you desire available on the page
-what can you do?
-where can you go
-how do you get there?
-how do you get back?
-where have you been?

When you provide sense of place and scent of information - your pages are keyword optimized

3. Information architecture
- organization of content into groups
- always do keyword research research before you begin info architecture
- headings are the first thing people look at
- primary navigation, 2nd level navigation, etc.

4. Interface
- locational breadcrumb links
(example site: midwestmetalfabrication.com/drilling.html)
use captions (considered primary text, unlike alt text)
people's eyes naturally go from areas of heavy color saturation to areas of low color saturation

5. User confidence

The time to become involved with seo/search usability is before the site is designed.

Website usability testing - measures the ability of a person to complete a task

Behaviors reported in focus groups do not reflect bhaviors observed during usability testing.

Goal is to balance between user (customer) expectations and business goals (the user isn't always right--you have to make money)

Graphic images vs css text - TEST! Don't assume text/css is always better. see which one performs better.

Usability can help with link building, because other site owners are more likely to link to the site that is easier to use.

Also mentioned that the new edition of her book, Search Engine Visibility is coming out very soon (or just came out, I'm not sure).


Matt Baily - Sitelogic

1. Get people to your site
2. Get them to do what you want them to do

If they can't find it, it's not there
If they can't find you, you're not there

Position yourself in a way so that when people get to your site there's no question about what they need to do.

Types of searchers
1. Shartshooters - know what they want - product, brand name, etc
2. Shotgun - concept searching, not specific product or brand, but now generally what they want
3. Artillery - idea search, looking for something that will feel good

Coke website - in flash, still loading

Shop now or enter website (pacific customs website--Matt says it's the worst website he has ever seen)

PetSafe example - nothing on homepage to indicate that they have more than one product.

Taxonomy - how do you organize information?
Hierarchal Structure, Classification, Grouping

Different ways to shop for wine. Wine.com offers many choices to find wine. vs. winerackshop.com - which has adsense ads on the right nav and no clear navigation system on their own site. Plus the blue/black links on dark background. Nice!

Every page on your website is a homepage! From every page on your site they need to be able to find what they need. Navigation should be in grouping that makes sense to the user.

dynamism.com - too many products on a single page
chefgadget.com - have to go back to the main navigation to find the other products in subnav
thinkgeek.com - does a good job with subnav, wine.com also does a good job of this with interior pages

Not just organization of information, but how you display that information
John Deere - example of marketing hooey...doesn't tell people how it will make things better

Hates ppc ads - "big waste of money"

Coke site is still loading

They're not going to find you unless you call it what the customer calls it.
Examples:
Butt Paste (diaper rash ointment)
toilet tank aquarium
doc fizzix - good job using words to explain what their products are
sushi usb

coke is still loading

You should not have to explain to your customer how to use your website.

Geek Toys - usb cup warmer example - paramountzone.com, well written - also used keywords (gadget) in reviews that were not used in the product description

Tip for International websites - make the address fields international friendly in contact forms.

Quote from Jacob Nielsen: After usability design, websites increase desired metrics by 135%

Bob Tripathi - Search Strategist, Discover Financial Services

Website Usability - how easy it is for website visitors to perform/complete a task on your site.

Search Engine Usability - determines how easy it is for search engine crawlers to index your site

Another quote from Jacob Nielsen (these usability gurus love that dude).

Search engines are looking for text, links, images, video, etc. = traffic
Website visitors are looking for information, to buy a product, download software, etc. = convert (sale, lead, etc)

The ownership issue--who is responsible? Your design and development experts and you--the SEO.

In bigger organizations, you have more players, usabilty, design/dev, seo, acquisition, content, legal. Everyone has a stake--and an opinion.

You have to get all the stakeholders in a room (shows picture of two bulls fighting). Your job is to get everyone on the same page and act like a modern Budda - the doctrine of non-attachment. Don't be attached to any one department, but look at the holistic goals.

Collaboration is the king - work with all the various teams and players on what needs to be done.
Keyword generation, SEO guidelines, on-page SEO
Create prototypes, usability testing phase, design phase, quality testing -> website launch

Be clear what needs to be done

Educate each team on the basics of SEO, get them speaking your language. Build together, stay together.

Examples from website usability iemployee.com, goldfish.com.

Q&A
Why do bloggers get our articles to show up better than on our own site? Matt: Bloggers present information in bite-sized chunks. Shari: it's a duplicate content issue--the bloggers have a better link architecture, more links, etc.

How to test w/focus groups & multivariate testing? Shari: Focus groups are guided and aren't always best. Multivariate testing,
Matt: focus groups are liars. for multivariate, make a lot of little mistakes fast and learn from them
Shari: balance user goals and business goals. Sometimes you have to sacrifice user goals to make money, sometimes you'll make more money
Matt: there's no such thing as a completed website, it's never done?

Question for Matt. Can you clarify the considerations for international you mentioned in your presentation?
Matt: US-specific forms ask for state and Zip, but that doesn't work for international addresses.

Labels: usability

Danny is the guest co-host on whiteboard Friday, where he makes some excellent points about how Search doesn't get the respect it deserves as an advertising medium. The discussion talks about how everyone is all nuts about facebook, but they don't realize that search marketing is really the most revolutionary ad medium of the past decade plus.



I first heard Danny talking about this on the Daily Searchcast Podcast a few days back. He also wrote an article for Adage on the topic. He makes very good points and I agree wholeheartedly. The beautiful thing about search is that it doesn't interrupt anything--it gives people exactly what they are looking for. What other type of advertising can do that?

A couple days ago Adobe and Yahoo announced that they are going to start serving up Yahoo ads in PDF docs. It's kind of an interesting development, because this not only expands the types of content that can be used by advertisers, it also gives publishers another way to monetize PDF ebooks and other useful content. There is already a lot of good, free pdf docs out there, but this will give people even more incentive to publish great content that can be monetized with ads rather than charging for the content.

Details about how PDF ads work



Here's a sample screenshot of what the ads look like

Honestly, I'm kind of surprised that it's taken this long for them to figure out this revenue model. Everyone else has been doing this type of ads for a long time. The way it works is that the publisher of the PDF doc has to opt in to show ads on their doc and then they get a cut of the ppc fees. I assume Adobe's making a cut, too, and of course Yahoo gets their piece of the pie. The ads that are displayed are pulled from Yahoo's content ads, based on the content of the pdf.

If you want to sign up for the beta program and display ads in your pdfs, they're taking signups for the beta

If you want to advertise on other people's pdf docs, you can do so thorough a regular YSM account. Just make sure you're using "Content Match" and your ads should start showing up on relevant PDFs.

More on the news from Search Engine Land

Labels: yahoo