Measuring Success 101, Part 2
November 30, 2009
Don’t disregard fundamentals such as defining goals, incorporating benchmarks, and using tools when setting up success metrics. …
SEOmoz’s First Ever PRO Webinar Dec. 10th: We Need Your Feedback & Suggestions
November 29, 2009
Posted by randfish
First off, I hope everyone among our US (and expat) readers had a great holiday weekend, filled with tryptophan and football (I know mine was). Second, I’m very excited to announce that SEOmoz PRO is launching our first ever webinar on Thursday Dec. 10th at 11am Pacific (2pm Eastern, 7pm London/UK). We’ve heard from a number of our members that they’d like to do some live reviewing of strategies and recommendations and get questions tackled in this format. I’ll be running the webinar personally, but I haven’t quite decided on a topic, and that’s one thing I need your help with.
Below is an embedded Google form (they’re pretty spiffy) with three short questions. We’ll use your feedback to help determine the content and format for the webinar, as well as gauge interest level.
We’ll have another blog post in the next few days announcing details (based on your requests + votes), as well as an email to all PRO members with a registration link.
Of course, if you have anything to add in the comments or any recommendations, we’d love to hear from you there, too. If this webinar goes well, we’re certainly planning to make it a monthly event for PRO members, and possibly offer some free webinars to the entire community. A future subject that folks have been asking about is training on the SEOmoz toolset - that’s something we want to do, but we have some changes + additions coming in January, so we’ll get those released first, then follow up.
Thanks for your feedback and happy holiday season!
Whiteboard Friday - Analytics for SEO
November 28, 2009
Posted by great scott!
Happy belated Thanksgiving my American moz-Comrades, and welcome to Black Whiteboard Friday (and just Friday to everyone else)!
This week we’re looking at analytics. No, not the normal stuff you probably pay attention to, but a few sneaky little metrics that can give you some great SEO insight. Since it’s now officially the "Holidays," I’m not going to reveal too much; rather, I’ll let the video serve as an early gift, ready to be opened! Suffice to say, prepare to start looking at your referral traffic, abandonment rates, browse rates, and more in a whole new light 
SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Analytics for SEO from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.
Since it is Black Friday, I want to remind you of some killer deals that are still available for you or your favorite SEO!
There’s still time to get your FREE SES Chicago Pass by purchasing a year of PRO! We’ve only got about a dozen passes left, so you should probably hurry. SES just raised their prices to $1995 for a pass, so $799 for an entire year of PRO and a full-access SES Pass is an awesome deal (and if Chicago’s not your thing, SES will let you exchange the pass for any SES Event in 2010).
You’ve also still got 10 days left to get super-low release pricing on the brand-new SEOmoz Advanced SEO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics six-disk DVD set! Until December 6th, you can get this killer new series for 20% off and Free Shipping anywhere in the world. Hundreds of people have already ordered and supplies are limited, so take advantage while the price is low, and this limited-edition set is still available.
This Week in Search for 11/26/09
November 28, 2009
Posted by Sam Niccolls
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- Google Displaying Site Hierarchies in SERPs:
Google provides yet another reason to have sound site architecture.
- Google Displaying Movie Times in SERPs:
In addition to the many other things Google is testing, movie showtimes are being shown in the SERPs.
- ACC Approves Microsoft Yahoo Deal in Canada & Australia:
After a 40 day review the ACC approved the deal which will allow Bing to power Yahoo search results in Canada & Australia.
- Michael Gray - How Bing & WSJ Could Team Up on Google:
Whether you agree with Gray or not, his post aggregates some of the most relevant articles following Rupert Murdoch’s announcement several weeks ago.
- SEOmoz Advanced Training Series on DVD:
The latest release of the training series has arrived. And if you order the 6-disc DVD set before December 6th you will get 20% off, plus free shipping.
- Avinash Kaushik - Measuring Social Media:
How should you track success on sites like Twitter? In a forward-thinking post on social media analytics Avinash offers several suggestions. On a related note, Econsultancy also has a list of 35 Social Media KPIs worth looking over.
- How Web Analytics Helped the Obama Campaign Win:
Dan Siroker left Google to become the Director of Analytics for the Obama Campaign. In his hour long presentation he shares some amazing statistics & interesting tactics they used to help Obama win the election.
- Cuil Theory Poster:
Licenseplate’s tongue and cheek poster captures the essence of Cuil.
- Link Builders Share Advanced Queries:
You’ve probably used the Advanced Search Operator Guide (it’s a useful resource if you haven’t), but Garrett French’s compilation includes 21 advanced queries used by expert link builders to identify link opportunities.
- 69 Sexy Portfolio Designs:
The designs are not all conversion focused, but Smashing Magazine’s list of 69 portfolio designs has some elegant layouts that’ll provide idea inspiration.
- Google News - Eric Enge Interviews Josh Cohen:
Maile Ohye talked about Google News SEO and best practices a number of months back, but Enge’s interview with Google News’ Senior Business Product Manager offers some useful Google News insights.
- Get Elastic - Increase Average Order Value:
GoDaddy might be the extreme when it comes to upsells during their checkout process, but if you have an e-commerce site, testing the location of your "continue shopping" button on your checkout pages might lead to increases in average order value.
- Online Dating Trends:
How much do looks matter on dating sites? OK Cupid helps answer the question with interesting user behavior data.
- 21 Tools for Spying on Your Competitors:
Bryan Eisenberg’s compilation of competitive analysis tools is a useful one. Although admittedly, if it were my list I might add a few other SEO tools, too.
- Feedburner Integration with Google Analytics:
Google Analytics users now have better campaign tracking and subscriber consumption statistics for their Feedburner feeds.
- Page Load Times & AdWords Quality Score:
Matt Cutts recently talked about how page load times will play an even bigger role in organic search, but ROI Revolution shares a few other reasons to identify and fix long page load times.
- e-Marketer - Cautious Optimism for Holiday Sales:
Good news for e-commerce sites from e-marker. The holiday season could yield big online wins for retailers.
- Google Analytics API - Development Growth Continues:
Juice Analytics’ flow visualization is yet another creative extension of the rapidly growing Google Analytics API.
- Linkbait - Mint Aggregates Finance Related Twitter Streams:
Mint has great design and their blog has it’s fair share of great linkbait, but their new Twitter aggregation is also intriguing.
- Luna Metrics - GA Plugin for Copying Goals & Filters Across Multiple Profiles:
If you’re a GA user and you have to set up 20 profiles with the exact same goals, the Luna Metrics plugin is a great time saver.
Top YOUmoz entries:
Google`s Influence on the Internet Through its Ad Network
November 26, 2009
Google has a reputation as a playful harmless company that strives to do good or at least to not be evil. In fact the search giant has a stronger grasp on the Internet than most people seem to realize. Don t believe it Keep reading….
Demo Microsoft® Unified Communications One Inbox, One Interface. Tear Down Walls That Separate Phones From PCs. See How
Favorite Tidbits from PubCon 2009
November 26, 2009
Posted by jennita
It has been a couple weeks since PubCon and yes, it’s taken me this long to recuperate! Bare with me here as I reminisce about my favorite tidbits over the 3 days of sessions. PubCon does an amazing job of putting together a schedule that covers a multitude of tracks and topics. Which usually means that I often end up with a case of "session envy." You know, when you’re sitting in a session and you start to see tweets about how great another session is. It doesn’t even mean that the one you’re in is bad, it’s just that you want to be in two places at once.
Many people were live blogging the event and obviously there have been quite a few recaps of PubCon as well. I realize I’m a little late to the game. :) But, let’s get to the good stuff! While there were many great speakers and presentations there were a couple that stood out to me. What I was looking for were answers to questions that we often get either through comments on the blog or through Q & A. With that said, these are my favorite take-aways from PubCon 2009.
Day 1 - How Do You Optimize For Universal and Personal Search?
This was a great session, full of valuable information. The biggest takeaway for me, came from Bruce Clay. He took the road of sticking to a very specific topic, image and video content and explained how to get them indexed.
Since these are topics that come up quite a bit in Q & A I was excited to get some specific information on interesting ways to index images and videos. Thanks to Virginia Nussey over at Bruce Clay sending me the actual presentation (woot!).
Case Study - Indexing Images
The first thing Bruce spoke about was a case study they did involving getting images with text indexed. Here are the steps they took:
- Take a newspaper article
- Scan it to create a jpg
- Include that image into a PDF
- Submit that PDF to Google
- Search for info in the article as a PDF and the article is found.
So what happened? Well the PDF was indexed AND the text from the image was also indexed. Take a look at this SERP.
Also, the search query contains text directly from the article which is an image in the PDF. It shows up in the title and meta description. Pretty sweet eh?
Obviously this isn’t going to work for you in all cases, but it’s an interesting way of getting images indexed and could be useful in a number of scenarios.
Case Study - Indexing Video
Next, Bruce went through another case study where they got a video indexed. Here are the steps they took.
- Take a Video
- Run it through our processor
- Edit the text transcript and save with the image
- When playing the video, search for words
- Jump into the Video
You can see this most clearly at Google audio indexing in the Labs section. Do a search for "economy" then notice how it shows you where in the video the word "economy" is spoken. I can see this being the wave of the future. How awesome would it be to have your videos come up in a search for words that were spoken within the video. Yea, pretty cool.
What I really liked about this presentation was that the information was displayed as a case study. If you read SEOmoz often you know how much we like to test theories out and put them to action. And although indexing images and video in this way may not be new to everyone, it’s new to some people and could be a great way to enhance your sites.
Day 2 - SEO/SEM Tools
This was seriously one of my favorite sessions. The speakers (including Rand) had a ton of great information but the one that really stood out to me was Jim Boykin of We Build Pages. He gave away some really great tips but the one I liked the most had to do with how to find out what keywords your competitors are targeting. Here are the steps to take:
- Go to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool
- Enter in the URL of your competitor’s sitemap
- check box for " Include other pages on my site linked from this URL"
- When you get results, Change "Match Type" to "Exact Match"to see actual searches and volume for specific phrases.
Obviously not only does this help with checking out which keywords your competitors are focused on, but it can also help you make sure you’re site is also focusing on the right keywords.
Day 3 - The Search Engine Smackdown
For me the third day was my favorite. I actually wanted to attend every session in the first slot. I ended up watching the first part of the Link Buying session and the second part of the site review with Matt Cutts. I have to admit also that I loved the fact that the PubCon team programmed Matt Cutts doing a site audit at the same time as the Link Buying session… pretty darn ingenious if you ask me! Rand posted information about the site review, so I wont go into detail but it was a great session.
Although I think the best part came after the session when Matt took to shaving Evan Fishkin’s head due to a bet they made while at the SEOmoz Werewolf party earlier in the week. And although that alone was pretty great, I loved the fact that while Matt was shaving Evan’s head, people were asking him questions and he was answering as if it were a regular Q & A. Here’s a short clip of the shaving!
Ok, ok back to the Search Engine Smackdown. I should admit that I debated whether I should head back to the hotel after a long 3 days or go to the final session, and I’m glad I went! These are the topics I found most interesting… and yes they’re all from Matt Cutts.
Google Social Search
Here’s the information straight from the site:
Sign in to Google and do a search. If there’s relevant web content written by people in your social circle, it will automatically show up at the bottom of your search results under a section called "Results from people in your social circle."
To see even more social content you can click the "Show options" link at the top of the results page and then click on the "Social" link.
What is your social circle? It’s a combination of your Gmail chat buddies, your Gmail contacts friends, family and co-worker groups, and people you’re publicly connected to on other social sites (such as Twitter and FriendFeed). Learn more about social search.
I can see myself using this quite a bit. Most of my job is about "social searches" in general,so this one is right up my alley! It was a fun find for me.
Testing for Speed
As Rand mentioned in his post, Google representatives have mentioned several times that page load time is important and Matt himself said at this session that although they haven’t used speed as a ranking factor in the past, that they’re thinking about adding it in the future. He gave some resources on how to check the speed and ways to make it faster.
- http://code.google.com/speed/ - Ways to clean up your site’s speed
- webpagetgest.org - Let’s you input a URL, select test location and other configuration options, then test!
- http://code.google.com/closure/ - a JavaScript compiler
Wrap it up
I’m sure if you follow me on Twitter you know quite well how I feel about Vegas. I really wish there was a good way to clone myself so I could attend multiple sessions at once. With up to 7 tracks going on at the same time, it’s difficult to pick one. In the end PubCon was a hit, and it was great to meet many of our SEOmoz members and see some old friends. See you again next year!
Kate Morris, Dana Lookadoo, Amanda Stewart, Jen Lopez, Kristy Bolsinger, Lyndsay Walker, Joanna Lord, Manda Otto
Thanks to Dana Lookadoo for all the great photos!
Google Give Us Our Rank, Our Daily Bread(Crumbs)
November 25, 2009
Sorry I haven’t made any posts in a while…as we recently took on a big project AND moved hosts on SEO Book (currently on a speedy quad core), and I wanted to have minimal activity around the time of the move.
Google recently announced adding breadcrumbs to the search results for some sites which offer hierarchical breadcrumbs in their navigation. The display looks likeso:
Each breadcrumb is a clickable link to the associated page (which could increase traffic to the target site in some cases), but the initial implementation is a bit sloppy for a couple reasons
- Google initial implementation shows the hierarchy (and places more emphasis on hierarchy) rather than listing the current page…this has a net effect of making the result look less relevant UNLESS the breadcrumbs are really tightly associated with each other and/or the site covers a small tight niche
- when people look at the search results they scan them and match patterns. the lack of showing the current page hurts perceived relevancy, and even when a search keyword is in the breadcrumb it is not highlighted
As an example of how far astray the above 2 points can go, check out the following listing for Joost’s great Wordpress SEO guide.
While seeing the site structure might be nice…the exact reason people are using search is because they don’t want to have to drill down through someone’s site structure…they want the most relevant thing shown in the search results.
So did Google do this for relevancy? It is hard to believe they did given that they don’t list the current page and employ no bolding.
Perhaps they want to make the results harder to scrape? Or they wanted to give advertisers even more options with the ads (many new ad formats hit the organic search results first)? Or maybe, as John Andrews mentioned, “Google would LOVE to eliminate the URL altogether. Just another try…”
Do I recommend using breadcrumbs? Historically I have, but if Google does not fix the above issues it will likely end up costing publishers some perceived relevancy, and in some cases I might not recommend using them except for on small sites or those with tight and descriptive breadcrumb structures. And on larger sites they might make more sense on category listing pages rather than on item detail pages.
Case Study: Six Sigma Methodology for SEO
November 25, 2009
In the previous article in this three-part series you learned the details involved in forming a Six Sigma team and were introduced to the various tools and guidelines involved in going through the DMAIC Six Sigma methods. In this last part you will see everything in action through a complete case study….
Demo Microsoft® Unified Communications One Inbox, One Interface. Tear Down Walls That Separate Phones From PCs. See How
Gain Efficiencies with a Global Search Center of Excellence
November 25, 2009
A central search team can help drive your search marketing success and minimize the number of search crises you encounter each day. …
Vreebit Aims to Change Online Social Networking
November 25, 2009
Vreebit.com claims to be the only Internet tool you’ll ever need. That’s a pretty ambitious claim. The site has been getting a significant amount of press lately, and has generated quite a bit of buzz online.
