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?

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).

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/2008/11/17/wordcamp-2008-israel-seo-wordpress-slides/ http://www.compucall-usa.com/2008/11/17/wordcamp-2008-israel-seo-wordpress-slides/#comments Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:43:26 +0000 http://www.compucall-usa.com/?p=545 Yesterday I had the privilege of being invited and to speak at Wordcamp Israel 2008. I was asked to give a presentation about optimizing your WordPress blog for SEO. To tell you the truth, what I thought would be a pretty easy subject matter, turned out to be very hard to fit into 20 minutes. What started off as a big explanation of SEO add-ons for WordPress and linking and keyword research, turned into something much more simple.

To make a long story short, I realized that in order to properly SEO WordPress, then what you really need to do is keep it simple. Have a sound platform or theme, research and write great content, and share it with the community relationships you’ve developed and are actively developing.

Here’s the presentation I gave, WordPress & SEO, slides only. If you have any questions, please share them with me. I’ll be uploading the video later on when tech gets it done.

URL Rewrite – What is it?

URL Rewrite is an application that changes a dynamic URL, which can be long and full of parameters, to one that has meaning and usually shorter making it easier on the surfers and users to understand what the page is usually about or when it is from. It’s usually easier to remember and quicker to type out. In two words it’s a friendly URL. Wikipedia has some good info and links for more information.

Why utilize URL Rewrite?

Rewriting dynamic URL’s are full of marketing advantages: From having people being able to look at a link and know where they’re heading, to being able to send links via Email without breaking them apart to the SEO benefits that come with it. Rand from SEOmoz does a great job of going into the pros and cons here.

php url rewrite

URL rewrite is probably easiest to do in php. php has a built in module called mod_rewrite, an engine which enables you to set rules and rewrites dynamic URL into static url automatically. All you need to do is make a small change to your .htaccess file on the apache webserver and you’re done. You can find more information at apache.org.

dot net url rewrite

URL rewrite in dot net is a bit more complex. You will need to use an isapi filter as explained by SEOconsultants or use the official Microsoft way.

So what am I getting at?!?!

Where I’m confused is why Google would outright recommend using dynamic URL’s over static URL’s just because of the people that do it wrong. Google wants to make the world a better place and to make search easier and more relevant… so why try to make it harder for people surfing the web to understand where they’re going and remember URL’s!

I think where Google got it wrong, is the method in achieving what it wanted to do. Rewrites can sometimes be problematic. Well instead of trying to educate people on why they might be wrong, try and educate them on how to do it right. It’s not a big issue; most people get it right to begin with. A short post on how to do it would have done more service to the Web.

I think Google called the glass half empty not half full on this one.

SEO Targeted WordPress Themes

The first and most crucial thing to consider for a WordPress blog is the theme. Not only because of the importance of the visitors first impression, but also because of how a website’s code can influence the way Google can read you. There are many themes out there, created by people of all kinds. Part of them are designers, others are programmers. Not all of the people that put these themes together took into account the significance of being “friendly” to search engines. The code has to be clean, logical and focused around the content. It is very important that your WordPress theme be CSS/XHTML validated. Although a great many “SEO WordPress themes” out there meet this basic requirement, a lot of them don’t (You can always run yours through the W3C Validator if you want to make sure your blog validates). Some themes also have content optimizing tool possibilities, such as the ability to give SEO friendly page titles and much more. There are websites that also give “SEO grades” to their themes, so make sure you don’t pick a theme with a grade lower than 85

SEO Plugins for WordPress

There are many SEO plugins for WordPress that can enhance your blog’s compatibility to search engines. The most common is the “All in SEO pack” WordPress plugin. This plugin creates an extension within your WordPress platform that lets you insert Meta tags into each post. This plugin also avoids duplicate content issues typical to WordPress and creates titles templates, so you won’t have to optimize your posts titles manually. Simple Tags is another WordPress plugin that enables you to manage the tags all over your blog.

We can’t really discuss blogs marketing without also mentioning SMO (Social Media Optimization). The Sociable plugin (and there are many other plugins) is a tool that gives your readers the possibility to submit your post to many social communities, social websites and bookmarking sites. Creating a social presence for your blog in the social community is a vital component to any blog. After all we don’t want to get into that debate of if you build them a field they will come right?

Analyze Your WordPress Traffic!

Finding out how your visitors reached you is a great way of knowing what you’ve done right and what you’re doing that maybe isn’t doing so well. If you can’t do that then you’re going to be more or less flying in the dark. Wassup lets you analyze traffic and users’ behavior on the site. If you’re hosting WordPress yourself then install Google Analytics or something paid like Clicky.

To sum things up, Design, Content and the Analysis of your blog or site is very important. However, there are marketing aspects that you have to pay attention to. Make sure your blog has social media links and presence, download several SEO plugins and check your theme SEO grade. And the most important advice is – always optimize your blog in order to stay fresh and on top.

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.

The first aim is to choose 1-2 main keywords for that page that we will try to promote that will reach the search results you’re aiming for. If we will choose more than 1-2 main keywords per page, the focus becomes diluted, and we probably won’t make it to where we’re really trying to get. You can choose more than one keyword if you insist, but the rest of the keyword should be variations, synonyms or phrases including the main keyword (this will definitely help since Google knows which keywords are related to others).

1. Keyword Research

The first thing you have to do is review the page and prepare a list of related keywords. From this list we will start to work. From here you will have to choose your favorite keyword analysis tool or several tools (my recommendation is the Adwords Keyword Tool or the SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool by Aaron Wall).
After choosing the tool, examine the keywords, compare competition, length etc. The best keywords will be chosen according to the criteria defined by you or by your client. It is important that in this part your client will be involved, so his needs and experience will be taken into consideration and to be frank, his experience in what’s relevant to his business trumps yours.

SEO Keyword Optimization

2. Look at your competitors

What are your competitors doing? What keywords are they targeting? You might want to target to the same keywords as they are. Competition may be fierce and you may want to build some authority for your page before you. That’s the reason you should use a tool like the Adwords keyword tool or Aaron Walls tool, because it gives you new keyword suggestions and the estimates search traffic for them in the country/area you defined. With this tool, you can also analyze a specific site’s content and conclude what the main keywords are that the site is targeting.

3. Maybe you’re already a success…

Check what your current positions are for past targeted keywords. If you’re located second for a well-searched term/keyword, don’t try too hard – you’re already there. In this case, you’d better create a new page for similar keywords and not change the current one. The website SEODigger can help you find the keywords that your site has rankings for.

4. Start optimizing!

Start inserting h tags, writing keyword targeted content (watch the density!!), insert alt-text tags to your images and so on. If you have many related keywords that you’re interested in promoting, consider changing the page that you’re working on into gate page. One that links to many different sub-pages, each targeted to one of the keyword variations.

5. Did you think that we wouldn’t mention social media??

Submit your newly SEO optimized page to a bunch of web 2.0 and social media sites – create virtual presence to this page. This process will not be whole without some bookmarking.

6. Internal linking

Whether it’s a new page or an old one, review your site’s internal linking. Add suitable links to your footer/sitemap. By doing so you’re not only making sure that it will be easy for Google to reach this page and index it, but also letting Google know that these are the most important pages on your site. Just don’t overdo it. Too many pages in your footer and Google thinks you’re trying to mess with it and then it might penalize you accordingly.

7. Follow, review and analyze

This is crucial to measure exactly how the changes that you have made affect the search results. Prepare a special sheet describing the changes that have been made in the site and include the original location in the search results. This way, in case you harm the page (which can happen if you over-optimize), you can always undo what you did.

You may also want to take a look at a great post for Keyword discovery by Rishil on SEOmoz which is called Building Bricks: Keyword Discovery Process for Small Businesses

And another great hubpage I wrote in the same topic: http://hubpages.com/hub/10-First-SEO-Steps

The Tel Aviv-Yafo Entrepreneur August Meetup, organized by Mr. Gadi Guy and Ms. Or-Tal Kiriati, will cover different topics around social networking where local entrepreneurs will be able to share in a unique occassion, together with Mr. Pulver, their ideas and techniques, get advice and discuss business models.

Mr. Ophir Cohen, Compucall’s CEO, will also give a lecture about the hottest web marketing trends, prior to Jeff’s speech.
We at Compucall believe that educating and sharing are key for the success of our community.