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.

Mobile SEO Basic Guidelines

Mobile search is growing rapidly and Google is, as usual, very dominant. When you create the mobile version of your site, follow the basic SEO guidelines, but pay attention to the following issues:

1.      Include the word “mobile” in the search term you’re aiming to.
2.      Keep your titles short and your content in small amounts. Remember the mobile site is targeted to people on the road or on their way to some place – They need this info fast and simple and preferably on one page.
3.      Submit your mobile site to Google, Yahoo and other directories – it can’t hurt.
4.      Don’t waste your time on building links. Will Critchlow wrote in SEOMOZ blog that according to his experience, links are not a factor in the mobile search algorithm. It also makes sense because mobile users don’t tend to link to other sites or to click on links due to the nature of their searches. Therefore, at least for now, it is advisable not to waste your time on link building for mobile sites.
5.      Will Critchlow mentioned that keyword phrases in the domain name are not required

Technical Mobile Marketing Guidelines

1.      Google advises to upload a mobile sitemap.
2.      Use well-formed markup (WML, cHTML, XHTML Basic or XHTML MP) – Validate your markup through the W3C Validator.
3.      The W3C’s Mobile Web Initiative published their own recommendations of Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0.
4.      Create a Small, lightweight and fast-loading site (which means smaller than 20kb per page). Remember that in the mobile world, usability and minimalism are very important.
5.      Use UTF-8 character encoding.
6.      Use JPEG / GIF images.

Some Useful Mobile Tools for Marketers

1.      This tool enables you to test your mobile site in various mobile devices – Dot Mobi Tool.
2.      A great testing tool that gives your mobile site a grade and in-depth analysis of pages – Ready.mobi.

Potential mobile users have lots of constraints – they have shorter searches, more misspellings, and only parts of the products are appropriate for

mobile marketing. You can’t sell furniture through a mobile site, at least not yet. They are also usually short on time and need to find what they need to quickly. Therefore, your whole marketing approach should be different – and you should always stay up to date with the latest changes in this unique and fast-growing market.

There aren’t many places on the web today, where you can place your highly valued, original content and wait for the traffic to come. Most of these content sharing sites are spammy and don’t contain any non-commercial content. Since I’m an SMO freak and really obsessed with finding new ways to promote our content via various web 2.0 and social media channels, when I ran into the flagships idea I couldn’t avoid trying it.

What is Hubpages.com and what is a Flagship?

Hubpages defines itself as an online content publishing eco-system. The “hubbers” (hubpages users) use this platform to create “hubs” (their own unique pages), in which they upload content. This is a useful and friendly platform to share the world with your knowledge and expertise.
Flagships are actually the top-quality-hubs, which follow a long list of requirements and demands. The main idea of the flagships concept is to create unique and valuable content database. Furthermore, flagship hubs are SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly, and when built properly, can gain very good rankings, as well as revenue (Hubpages offers incentive based on revenue share with the writers).

How can you leverage Hubpages for Web Marketing purposes?

Hubpages is a great online platform that enables you to create content pages containing videos, images, links, RSS feeds, related tags lists and more.
The main advantage of this platform, which is more significant in flagships, is that an excellent and popular content can be promoted independently on search engines, thanks to the friendliness of this platform to search engines.
Suppose you’re a nutrition expert, and you write this great article about the importance of eating in various colors. Creating a flagship in this theme is much better than any article syndication act or even a blog posting. After submitting the nutrition flagship, the hubpages staff will review your flagship content, and once accepted, they will actively promote the page and you may do the same. So basically, your high valued content does the work for you! You can reach the top of the search results pages very quickly (suppose they aren’t that competitive) and your target audience will stumble upon your flagship. Since this types of pages are very informative and professional, they have a high tendency to to convert later on.

In order to create a flagship, you have to register to the flagships program, choose a unique subject from the subjects’ pool and sign the flagships contract. You can view some finished flagship examples here.

Some Flagships Tips

1 – Write creatively, use unique images, videos and news updates.
Don’t spam or use the flagship as a link farm (in this case, you will also be banned by the flagships program).
2 – Link to other unique and interesting sources that have a real added value to your readers. If your flagship will be a real information source for a high-searched term, you can make great profits.
3 – Let’s not forget the SMO and the full circle SEO strategy! Always create social media links to your new flagship – Facebook it, twitter it and so on… If it’s a niche flagship, don’t hesitate to create links in niche blogs, forums and more. Just be creative about it. Another important thing is that every link to your flagship increases the chance to earn more money.

To conclude, hubpages.com is above all a content sharing platform, which can be used as a web marketing tool, especially when using the flagships with unique and high quality content. Don’t forget to follow Hubpages requirement and you’ll probably get great results. Of course, there are many other similar content platforms that you can use (such as Scribd.com, Squidoo.com etc) but I’ll write about them specifically next time.

]]> http://www.compucall-usa.com/2008/11/24/flagships-and-using-hubpages-for-web-marketing/feed/ 1 http://www.compucall-usa.com/2008/11/24/view-through-metrics/ http://www.compucall-usa.com/2008/11/24/view-through-metrics/#comments Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:02:26 +0000 Ohad Marom http://www.compucall-usa.com/?p=560 On Monday, Nov 17th COMSCORE announced the viability of view-through metrics as a key performance indicator for Web advertising.

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.

Following their successful passing of the accreditation and the results we see every day from the PPC campaigns they manage, I have asked them some key questions about the way they use web analytics to improve the campaigns’ ROI.

During our conversation we started to compare the various ways people advertise their products today. Whether it be by “traditional” methods like TV, radio and print or by online campaigns like Adwords, advertisers are constantly looking for ways to increase their conversion rates and ROI. This is when the discussion took a turn towards behavioral targeting and the possibility to retarget visitors. So I decided to write about retargeting and PPC instead.

PPC – How Does the Google Adwords Content Network work?

Google Adwords metrics are centered around keywords and websites that relate to those keywords and allow Google to place your PPC ads on them.

According to Google:
“Using your keywords, Google’s contextual targeting technology can automatically match your ads to web pages in our content network that are most relevant to your business.”

Google Adwords - contextual targeting technology

Google Adwords placement performance reports also allow you to refine the placement of your ads in order to improve your ROI:

“With the Placement Performance Report , you have visibility into where all your ads appear. Review your ad’s performance on a site-by-site basis to see impression, click, cost, and conversion data, and use this data to identify well-performing sites to target more aggressively and low-value placements that require content optimization or exclusion.”

Google Adwords - placement performance report

Retargeting and PPC

The basic idea behind Retargeting is that by visiting a website, the visitors are showing that they are interested in what that website has to offer. Retargeting uses a website visit — or a search ad that led a web user to a website — as a behavior that can be targeted. This behavior can then be used to serve relevant ads to the visitors after they leave the website.
 
For example, if I search for digital camera reviews and click on a PPC ad for a site that is relevant, then by using retargeting methods I could be served PPC ads for digital cameras sold on that site after I already left it. If I click the PPC ad and go back then I am more likely to purchase a camera because I have previously shown an interest in the products. Moreover, I placed interest in a brand, and the retargeting re-enforces the marketing message of the brand I already met (“oh, I already saw that nice site… let’s come back and buy the camera…”)

PPC data – Relevancy or Recency?

As the interview with my colleagues progressed we discussed such web analytics metrics as search queries, top referrers and time on site. But then the conversation turned to retargeting.

One metric that is available in Google analytics but is currently underused by PPC managers is “Visits to purchase”.

Google Analytics - visits to purchase

Right now it is less useful to them because the Adwords PPC ads are arranged by ad groups and not by visitors. This means that you can track a certain Ad’s performance right down to the keyword level and see which keywords perform better than others. But you can’t track visitors that clicked the PPC ads after they leave your site. Google however, can and does.

The Future of PPC?

This is where the conversation got interesting. We all read about the fact that Google has started to serve PPC ads that are targeted to the searchers based on their previous search queries. Google also knows how long it takes for a visitor that came from PPC to convert. Basically, this is the way Google calculates the “Visits to Purchase” metric. This means that using cookies, and Google search history (if you are logged in) Google knows if and when you visited my site before.

Wouldn’t it be great if Google was to add a new feature which allows you to create special ad groups to be shown specifically to user that visited your site before?

Now this is COOL!!! We have keywords campaigns, content campaigns, placement, radio, print, TV, local, mobile – why not “retargeting ads”!

Think about it, you could serve highly targeted and personalized ads for your would be returning visitors. Imagine being able to have an ad on the lines of:

“Remember your last visit to our site www. oursite.com?
You won’t believe the things we have to show you now!”

Hey, I don’t create PPC ads I just analyze them . The above example may be a little simple but you get my point.

 Targeted PPC traffic – would you use it?

After going over the idea several times I finally asked both PPC managers the following question:

If you could create ads targeted specifically for visitors that saw your site before, would you?

One answer was a quick “yes. For sure” while the other one was “probably not. I’m not sure it’s worth the time or even if it will be productive. But it might be interesting to test.”

We all agree that it’s better to make this distinction on the site itself and have special welcome messages and pages for returning visitors, but most sites today can not do that.

I am interested to know what you think on the subject:

If you could retarget visitors that saw your site before, would you?

The original phrase tells you that “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink”. I don’t necessarily agree with that when it comes to marketing and especially web marketing. I think you can definitely convince a horse to drink, if you know the horse well enough.

Currently I am running  a behavioral targeting and multi variable test for one of our sites. The main purpose being to improve our marketing strategy and online advertising campaigns for our sites and our clients.

Multi Variable Testing (MVT) why is it so important?

According to wikipedia:

“In internet marketing, multivariate testing is a process by which more than one component of a website may be tested in a live environment. It can be thought of in simple terms as numerous split tests or A/B tests performed on one page at the same time.”

Or in other words, Multi Variable Testing is a good way of convincing your horse to drink, increasing your conversions and improving your ROI

Multi Variable Testing on your landing page:

Using Google’s Website Optimizer I am testing a landing page and have created 3 variations of the original. Once the test gathers enough information I will be able to see which landing page did better, conversion wise, in regards to a specific target audience.

It is possible that for visitors that match one set of criteria the first landing page will be better and for another group of visitors the 4^th one will be better.

The marketing strategy:

Using the information I got while doing my web marketing research and combining it with the results of my MVT, I will be able to create a better match between the visitors that searched for a relevant keyword, entered the site and are then more likely to convert.

The most important thing to remember when compiling the marketing strategy is that the ultimate goal of a site is not to have a high amount of traffic but to convert visitors from visitors to buyers and, hopefully, to leads (depending on the purpose of the site).

I believe that multi variable testing and a correct analysis of the results combined with a good understanding of your market will help achieve your goals and make your site convert better both for paid and non paid organic traffic.

I’ll keep you updated once I’ve run the tests and seen the results.