Avinash keynote speech at SES London 2010

Main points of discussion (Divided into 4 Acts):

Act 1 – Break down data

Analytics has many rows/columns of data and it’s crucial to weed out the the most important data. Top ten rows of branded keyword data is not the majority of traffic, need to focus on the bulk of data (which includes the largest volume) and analyze it.  Most volume lies in long tail. Using tag clouds can help understand keyword relations, and determining if your website is generating a good balance of organice trafic (long tail vs. short tail; branded vs. non-branded).

Act 2 – Outcomes!

Creating goals with economic values can help lead your clients in the right direction, focusing them on what’s important and what’s not.  Actions such as downloads, e-mail signups, clicking on ads, viewing more than one page, should all be turned into goals with a monetary value (even if it’s a relative value).

Act 3 – Think Long Tail (”Impression Virgins”)

The great thing about long tail non branded search queries is that they are made by people who have yet to decide on what website they want to visit. They are still exploring, looking for the most relevant result on the SERPS. It is our job, as analysts and as SEOs,  to have our results displayed and pages optimized. These are visitors that have yet to make branded short tail visits, they are in a much more preliminary phase of the buying cycle.  Avinash gave an example of HMV, and search based keyword tool, which I will write a separate post about in the near future. Stay tuned, priceless info.

Act 4 – Attribution of Clicks

One of the million dollar questions asked by companies and analysts  is:
Which medium should get credit for a conversion? For example, a visitor may view an ad multiple times, visit the website a few times, click on an organic result, later click on a ppc result, then finally click on a newsletter received by e-mail , at last making a conversion. In this process (or buying cycle),  all of the above mediums had a helping hand in the conversion. So who should get the credit? How do we know where to allocate our ad spend dollars? These questions are all very valid… Stay tuned for a separate post on this issue, the answer may save you a lot of time and money.

Overall, I really enjoyed the info and the way that it was presented. And who knew that later that day Efrat and I would get a more up close and personal session with Avinash.

PPC or SEO? The Ultimate Search Marketing Battle

Another session worth mentioning was called “PPC or SEO? The Ultimate Search Marketing Battle.” This panel was manned by some of the most well know personas in the online marketing arena.
On the SEO side: Ralph Tegtmeier, David Naylor, Rand Fishkin.
On the PPC side: Andrew Goodman, Paul Mead

Ralph Tegtmeier, David Naylor, Rand Fishkin, Paul Mead, Andrew Goodman (sitting from left to right)

The discussion was pretty lively, with Rand heating things up and stressing the growth potential and creativity within the SEO world. Naylor and Tegtimeier shared their fare share of wisdom, with Goodman and Mead firing back with substantial PPC efficiency evidence.

Questions Anyone?

When time was up, the audience had a chance to ask questions. I asked if  SEO will still be a part of first page results in the years to come, as Google has been increasingly pushing PPC results, video/image results, real time search results, product search results, and business local results. Naylor replied that he believes that pretty soon all of Google’s first page results will be paid. Rand said that Google is constantly testing, and it seems to me that he believes SEO has a bright future ahead.

Ohad Marom (me) with Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz.org

Cherry on Top – Up Close and Personal
with Avinash

At the end of the day, Efrat and I were invited by Alan Wrafter from Google to the Google UK office in order to join the GAAC agencies in a more informal session with Avinash. Avinash disclosed some info about the future of Google Analytics and tools that are being developed to help analysts get a better overview of important data.

Efrat Ner-Gaon, Avinash Kaushik, and Ohad Marom

Local Pub with GAAC Forum and Alan Wrafter

The evening was capped off with beers at a local pub with all the GAAC’s and Alan.

Efrat Ner-Gaon, Alan Wrafter (Google), Ohad Marom

A long and fruitful first day… What’s in store for us tomorrow?

Wishing you a Happy Rosh Hashana!

We made a little something, especially for you…

Click Here to see our greeting.

Best regards,
The Compucall Family

Compucall Web Marketing is at Affilicon Israel 2009!

We’ll be at Affilicon 2009 today and tomorrow. Compucals CEO, Ophir Cohen, will also be speaking in three different sessions:

Day 1

10:15-11:30 SEO Panel: Latest developments in Organic SEO Issues (Powered by SMX).

17:30-18:30 The Right SEM Company: How to select the right SEM company

Day 2

9:00-10:15 SEM Panel: Effective Link Building (Powered by SMX)

See you all there!

Compucall Web Marketing
Afflicon Israel 2009
Booth 413
#affiliconil09

Barry Schwartz, Ophir Cohen and Olivier Amar (L2R)

Today Compucall had the pleasure of hosting a nice SEO get together. With the arrival of Barry Schwartz to Israel, we got a chance to meet and also host some of brighter SEO minds and agencies in Israel for a few hours. In attendance was, of course, Barry of Rustybrick.com, Itai Levitan of Easynet.co.il, Mayer Reich of Rankabove.com, Gilad Sasson of Nekuda.co.il and the Compucall Staff including Ophir Cohen and myself, Olivier Amar, amongst others. There was also a great presentation by the founders of articlesbase.com and bukisa.com.

Barry Schwartz, Meyer Reich and Gilad Sasson

Itai Levitan of Easynet

Firstly, I need to thank Barry for taking some precious time out of his 7 day trip. As part of a very organized Blogger Delegation to Israel with lots of stops along the way, I’m sure it wasn’t easy.

Simon Gelfand and Eyal Halimi ArticlesBase and Bukisa Founders

The meeting started with two short presentations by Simon Gelfand. One on Articlesbase.com and the other on Bukisa.com. He explained to us his huge rise in growth, from zero to one of the main sites in each of their markets, in little to no time. He went over the business models and solid SEO infrastructures of either site. It’s nice to see such a huge website spawn from just an idea with the efforts of just a couple of people and no venture captial whatsoever.

Paid Search in Israel

Barry Schwartz then asked some interesting questions that veered towards paid search in Israel. The general consensus seemed to be that although some of the quality on certain verticals might sometimes be better in Microsoft and Yahoo, the combination of terrible platforms on both Yahoo and MSN and the lack of local offices for either of them, made their offerings here less than ideal. With the Israeli paid search market so much bigger than its population as a result of the number of Israeli companies dealing with foreign markets, both Yahoo and MSN would probably be in a much better position with local offices (as long as they ditched their present platforms and did something that more or less mimicked Googles, I mean why reinvent the wheel right?).

Google Analytics – The Future is Now!

We also touched upon how important Analytics had become in today’s companies and how no matter how far companies had managed to take their in-house analytics, then they never had the resources to go deep enough and get it right. Since both Easynet and Compucall are Google Analtyics Authorized Consultants (GAAC) we both felt that we had not yet come upon a company that had managed to get there alone. As a result it has represented a very viable avenue for both our companies to explore.

The meeting ended with some great smiles and some good catching up. Again, thank you Barry. We’ll get together again soon

Then something happened. I came across a post on Outspoken Media written by Lisa Barone that talked about personal branding in SEO and the race to  follow the SEO Stars. I suggest you read it and read the comments too. Very worthwhile. I even learned a new word: Scoble. In any case, where it took me was what I took back from SMX West 2009 in Santa Clara and how it turned out to be much more rewarding than I thought because of the personal branding.

So when I flew off to SMX my expectations were mixed and completely unclear. I’d read about SES, SMX, PubCon, Adtech and to tell you the truth, I couldn’t tell you which one I could take more from. Then something unexpected happened, my pitch to be a speak on Up Close with Google Maps & Local was accepted and I found myself booking a 22 hours flight to Santa Clara.

My time at the convention was great, the panels were strong (most of them), I got to meet some great people and finally introduce myself after I’d been sending them various comments on Twitter. Before I knew it I was back in Tel-Aviv at work playing catch-up.

I didn’t bring back any clients, I didn’t brink back any big contacts (although I did make some relatively strong connections with some affiliates vendors). I did get to speak to Matt Cutts about a problem which mysteriously worked itself out 2 weeks later (If it was you Matt then thank you).

So what did I come away with? Great contacts in the SEO field. David Mihm, of getlisted.org, held a little local networking get together followed by burgers at In-&-Out Burgers (Yes Matt they were really good) and later on we crashed in the bar area of the Hyatt hotel (The permanent fixtures were Lisa Barone, David Mihm, Matt McGee and Eric Lander a bunch more just rotated in and out) . In that space of time between the get together and the Hyatt bar, I literally reached out and managed to finally introduce myself properly to all the people that make the SEO/SEM information bubble flow. We laughed, we drank, we smuggled beer out of the lame radio party and we laughed some more. That was the best quality time I had “branding” myself in the entire 3 days that SMX was held.

So yeah, I learned great things at the panels and I really enjoyed speaking at SMX as a first timer, but what really did it for me was the ability to connect with the people that really have been keeping me in the loop about what’s going on 7-10 hours back in the SEO world. The people who still keep me in the loop and magically respoond now when I message them on Twitter .

Should you go to one of the shows? Absolutely! If only to mingle and mix it up a little and get a feel for who and what your peers are about, it’s worth it. It also helps that they can finally see who you are.

Props go to Barry Schwartz of Rusty Brick for the picture. Thanks Barry.

Every SEO expert knows that one of the biggest problems we face is duplicate content. When there are two different URLs for one page, the search engine is never clear on how to treat them. It has to decide which page to show for a specific keyword, which page to give the PageRank to and which page to consider as the main authority. It may also divide the authority and page rank, an action that will only take away from the page you’re trying to promote.

There are many ways to create duplicate content. Here are only few::
-    Different URL format for the same page (sort parameters are very popular here)
-    Print versions of pages
-    refid parameters (affiliates etc)
-    Different search query results and navigation issues

The canonical URL tag is a joint initiative of Google, MSN and Yahoo. All three united in order to create a common tag called “canonical URL tag”. This tag lets all the three big search engines know which of the duplicate pages is the main one and it can then pass all the authority, link juice and main focus of the robot to that right page. If there are two similar pages with slight different URLs, a canonical tag placed on the duplicate content URL will tell the robots which page it should promote. As for the importance of this tag, according to Google, “it’s a hint that we honor strongly”.

The canonical tag must be located in the header of the page should will look like this:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.compucall-usa.com/blog”>.

Why is it different from a 301 redirect?

1. As opposed to a 301 redirect that redirects the page both for the user and the search engine, the Canonical URL tag is just for search engines. Users will still be able to reach and view all your duplicate versions. Hence if you’re only trying to sort the results on a page, you can.
2. The engine will verify that the content is similar and that the use of this tag is justified. In a 301 redirect, you can decide whether the redirect is justified. Regarding how much similar the duplicate pages have to be, Google say that they “allow slight differences”.
3. The 301 URL redirect operates exclusively on a single root domain, so you can’t use this tag to redirect between two different domains.

Unclear issues

The “link juice” question is still unclear – we will have to test it and see the results.
Also, the transitivity of the links is unclear (only Yahoo mentioned that they support transitivity of this tag).

For more information, you can read Matt Cutt’s blog post and SEOMOZ’s blog post (by randfish).

So… What’s Flypaper?
Flypaper is an application which uses the Flash (Adobe) as a platform, and allows the user creating, editing and programing Flashy presentations, minisites and other interactive products with easier, simplified tools and templates. It also provides the client quite impressive tools to analyze the users’ navigation behavior.

flypaper Screens

What’s the difference between Flypaper and Flash?
The Concept, as I understand it, is to build a higher level of creation that will allow a wider range of users, beside the conventional Flash designers and developers, but including these groups also. The application pretends to upgrade the abilities and results of everyone who needs Flash-based products.

Pretentious? yes. (But evolution is also pretentious)
I can’t say that this application is a finished solution for the destination it aims to yet, but the first steps are behind, proving that in quite simple tools you can communicate with complicated-code-based features and graphics, that can give us the WOW effect that we look for.

Creating interactive structure of screens easily
The program interface is highly visual and intuitive, though it also supports AS (actionscript) codes, even ones that weren’t created in Flypaper. The structure window below the main stage allows you to drag and drop slides into it and create a schematic structure of your product, laying slides one next to the other, one after the other, vertically and horizontally navigation.

flypaper - Interactive Structure

Using Ready-Made objects and templates
the application contains dozens of slide templates, in different styles and for different causes. It contains buttons and ready-made animation editable templates. I still haven’t checked the verity of styles but it looks not bad from the Webinar’s review.

Web Analytics tools in Flypaper
The program contains this exellent tool which is a must on anything we create and want to improve. These tools can track almost any event or action that the end-user made, from page viewing, through the time he watched specific items/pages, and even if the end user copied certain parts of text from the content (If I got it right). Nice. BTW, the analytics data is being stored on Flypaper’s servers.
As for my question if it is synchronized with Google Analytics Tool, I got a “Not yet” answer

Flypaper - Analytics Tools

Finished Product formats
The program offers quite comfortable formats for your product, from Flashy ones to linear-video formats, through the familiar .exe format.

SEO abilities? No Comment (Flashy, remember?)
This is an assumption, since it was not mentioned, and my question regarding this matter stayed open. Therefore it’s a small disappointment. For this kind of evolutionary progress I would expect a reference, even the minimal one. It looks like Google will solve this matter since no one else seem to challenge it.

Open Source
As far as I understand, the program isn’t an open source but released a Chemistry Development Kit (CDK) for developers to build components.
Well, I guess that we all know a little more now. my two bottom lines are:

1. It looks a bit early to put all my “Eggs” in this “Basket”
2. I’m certainly going to drill deep on the trial version, and decide if the licensed $795 application worth the cost.

Google Vodka Ad

On the web there are many speculations for the sudden change; some presume the change is influenced by the financial crisis, and that Google is creating new opportunities in order to expand its advertising market.  Google has rejected this claim, and stated that from time to time advertising policies are modified due to advertiser demand. Barry Shwartz from Search Engine Land asked Google about this claim.

Google stated  in return:

The AdWords program policies are developed based on a combination of factors – and in this case, those included user experience, legal requirements and the fact that many hard alcohol manufacturers have been asking for the ability to promote the alcohol-related information on their sites and reach people who seek that information online.

This post was originally written in Hebrew here by Naomi Sela

SearchWiki users comment on George Bush

Google has recently released a new feature called SearchWiki that allows users to move and comment on search results. This is definitely taking personalized search to the next level.  Having been released just a few days ago, this feature has caused quite a commotion among avid web users. Are we heading towards a revolution in the search engine world, with users manually molding the rankings on the search result pages? Or is SearchWiki simply a passing fad that will be quickly forgotten? In my opinion, only time will tell.
The mission of Google’s search engine, as I understand it, is to display the most “relevant results” for the user.  Since users differ from one another, the phrase “relevant results” also differ. Each user wants to see the results he feels are relevant to him. Hypothetically then, there is an infinite amount of search results that can be relevant depending on the user.
That being the case, Google has created this feature that allows users to personalize their search with the results the users wish to see or not see.  Potentially, with millions of users rearranging their results, Google can deduct which results accumulate the best rankings; furthermore, Google does not at all eliminate the possibility of incorporating this enormously valuable knowledge base into their algorithm.
This could in fact be the end of search engine optimization (SEO) as we know it. If the users control the search results, and the same results will appear consistently for the same keywords, web site owners will have to continuously refresh the content on their site in order to stay interesting and relevant.  Optimizing pages for keywords could become obsolete. Maybe content will return to be king?! And if so, Google will have achieved one of its primary mantras.  Danny Sullivan wrote an illustrated guide to SearchWiki explaining the ins and out of this feature.

I have listed below my opinion on the pros and cons of SearchWiki:

SearchWiki Pros:

•    If natural (organic) search results strive to be natural, they should be largely influenced by the users creating collective search engine results pages (SERPS) that are decided by the users (Democracy at its finest moment).
•    SearchWiki enables the users to fully personalize their search – each user will see only the results he wishes to see at the positions he wishes to see them.
•    No more irrelevant search results! What you want is what you get!

SearchWiki Cons:

•    To go directly against the first pro bulletin point: If natural (organic) search results strive to be natural, they should not be influenced by human interaction. The results should be solely based on neutral parameters that do not involve human bias. Natural does not mean manmade, it means natural!
•    If the user controls the results he sees, how will he see new search results? Doesn’t this defy the purpose of search? Did we forget what the word “search” means? It means that you don’t know which search results you are going to get, that is the point of searching!
•    Continuing on my last point, where will the sense of exploration and curiosity go if my results are controlled and predictable? What about new results? What about the human’s innate instinct to learn and be aroused by fresh information?   Quoting a comment by GrantHammond on a SearchWiki Sphinn, “I have handcuffed my ability to learn. It’s like going to your local library and roping off all of the aisles except for your favorite reference books. Isn’t this basically saving a website into your favorites? Heck, we already have that ability!”
•    Currently, once you start using this feature, there is no legitimate way to reverse engineer your modifications.  The only remedy right now is an open source, GreeseMonkey script available with the Firefox GreaseMonkey add on. You can read more about it on The Next Web.
•    The user comments potentially include a lot of spam that take away from the user experience.

More cons can be found on Michael Gray’s very opinionated post about this topic and how Google is force feeding the users.

Check out this innovative marketing technique by David Naylor -  I guess impersonating Matt Cutts is always worth a shot

Impersonating Matt Cutts

Just before releasing my post, Danny Sullivan added a Q&A with Google on SearchWiki which provides some answers regarding the beef that SearchWiki has been getting.

In summation, here’s my take on this SearchWiki issue – I like the idea of users having the option of personalized search; however, I do believe that one should always be able to see the original organic results without having them weigh into the almighty Google search algorithm.  So is this the beginning of a search revolution? Will Google search never be the same again? Only time will tell…

According to their announcement:

“The comScore norms data provide compelling empirical support for the belief that there is a quantifiable view-thru impact of online ad exposures on brand value and sales.”

View Through metrics – what does it mean and how does it work?

View-throughs, or post-impressions as they are also known, generally refer to online conversions that result from a user seeing an ad online but not clicking on it at that moment.

View-throughs work by leaving a cookie on a visitor’s computer when they are exposed to a banner. Then, when that visitor goes to the site that was advertised on the banner, the system looks up the cookie and can identify the site on which the banner was seen. This way the conversion (if there is one) could be accredited to the relevant banner.

Why are view-throughs important?

According to the ComScore tests there was a difference between the behaviour of visitors that were exposed to an online ad campaign and those that weren’t:

“For the studies in which both retailers’ online and offline sales were analyzed, for periods ranging from two weeks to three months after the initial exposure to an online display ad, the incremental online sales lift was 27 percent and offline sales lift was 17 percent.

Online ad exposures also yield a lift in various important online behaviors, such as brand site visitation and trademark searches…including an increase in search queries that involve the advertiser’s trademark brand name.”

What that means is that even though the click through rates on the campaigns were relatively low, the ad campaigns were still effective because they raised brand awareness and conversions over time.

Are view throughs trustable?

Although I don’t know the tests setup, I tend to believe that the ads were shown on sites that were relevant to the ones advertised. This means that the visitors seeing the ads were already in a mind set that included that specific area and thus might have reached the advertised site on their own.

According to DoubleClick:

“View-through metrics may not be entirely accurate, as they also capture activity that occurs as the result of offline ad recall or other stimulus”

I agree that viewing an ad has an impact on the viewer; however I am not certain that it’s as big as ComScore claims it to be. What is important is that the  view through metrics are becoming more acknowledged as important key performance indicators. And as more and more tests will be done to measure the true effect of post-impressions on online campaigns performance, the metrics will become more accurate and reliable.

All we can do until that happens is continue to optimize our online campaigns for clicks and consider the view-through visits as a very valuable added bonus.