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?

Compucall congratulates Motti Nissim for passing the new Google Advertising Fundmanetals exam.

“The exam was harder than expected, but very challenging. It certainly raises the bar for people looking for official accreditation. I’m happy to be among the first few people in the country to pass this exam”, said Motti right after completing the exam.

The 2 hour long exam contains 120 questions. The new exam is designed to be more rigorous and strategy-oriented and covers all current products and best practices to help run and manage AdWords campaigns.

Following the success it had early last year SphinnCon is coming back to Jerusalem, on March 7, 2010.

SphinnCon Israel is the premier networking event designed for SEOs, SEMs, SMOs and affiliate marketers to exchange ideas, influence the industry and build their networks.

Hosted by Barry Schwartz, it will be held at the Jerusalem College of Technology. Make sure you register early and not be among those who couldn’t get a seat last time.

During this one day event you will be able to join sessions on SEO, PPC, Web Analytics, Social Media and much more. With both global and local experts in search marketing, including representatives from Google, Search Engine Land and other well-known companies – there is nothing like this event anywhere.

Sponsored by the Jerusalem College of Technology, the tickets are only $50 per attendee, but space is limited to 200 attendees.

Compucall Web Marketing is among the sponsors, and Mr. Ophir Cohen, CEO, will be speaking at the event.

Don’t miss out, follow this link to find out more details and book a seat.

In addition to the launch of Google real time search, a new feature was presented. The new service actually takes the Google Universal Search Results ( available today in the list of the results of a query ) and insert it to the search box at the end of the Google Suggest values.

An example for it could be found when one queries the weather in Belgium – it would be enough writing the first words of the query and the answer will be available in the search box itself, without the need to wait for writing the whole query and clicking for the results. As can be seen in the image below.

This new service supports queries in field such as: weather, flight schedules, local time, postal code, package tracking, answers, definitions, calculator, currency and units conversion.

Currently the service is available only in Google.com, but in the future intends to cover other areas of interest and regions.

Have you ever found yourself in a fancy dinner asked by your host about his new expensive bottle of wine standing in front of you on the table, but you didn’t have the knowledge on which harvest it was?

Well, Google is proud to solve all of these problems with its new service – Google Goggles.

Google posted in its official Mobile Blog of its new search service called Google Goggles. The new service allows you to take a picture of an item ( could be a bulding, site, product, restaurant,  etc ) and get immediate information about that item back to you cell phone. The service also suggests to take a picture of other person’s business card, for example, and get his personal details sent to the contact list in your cell phone.

This service is added to a list of other similar services brought by Google ( such as – Search by Voice,  ”What’s Nearby” , etc ) which intend to spread the search into other areas than the classic web search we are all used to.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the future, so it says, we will be able to walk in the fields and characterize plants and flowers, and even plan our next Chess steps.

One might concern about the future ability of such service, for example, if we could take pictures of people we don’t know and yet get a lot of information about them ( an ability which today is almost possible with all the social networks around us ) without getting their permission to do so.

All in all it seems like a very innovative service, and would be very interesting to see where it will take us.

This weekend Compucall was attending Google Analytics for Professionals training at Google HQ in London.

The speaker of this event was Justin Cutroni, Director of Analytics and Testing for EpikOne. Justin has consulted with hundreds of organizations around the globe to optimize their use of Google Analytics.

An analytics industry leader, widely read blogger and author of Google Analytics Shortcuts from O’Reilly, Justin will provide best practices for analyzing and optimizing your implementation and marketing initiatives with Google Analytics.

Following the insightful sessions Justin has kindly agreed to answer a few questions in a quick and spontaneous video interview. Take into account it was shot with a Nokia E71, hence the poor sound and visual quality.

In the interview Justin explained the importance of continuing testing as a key to successful analytics strategy, in addition to his view on where is the industry going to.

Have a Google Analytics question? Please comment below…

In my wanderings through the web, for shopping, information or even when getting acquainted with a new client, I’m often amazed with how difficult those websites make my task of finding what I need.

What companies often do not realize when going on-line is that writing content for the web is different in many aspects than writing content for the off-line media.

The wrong way of writing content for the web is characterized by:

1. Content rich articles, sometimes monstrosities with more than 1,000 words
2. Content rich paragraphs, having multiple sentences
3. Overly creative headlines, sometimes trying to get clever with the readers

These companies are losing quite a bit of potential customers, hence revenue, by not realizing that writing for the web is a lot different than writing for the off-line media.

How much do users see on the web?

Dr. Jakob Nielsen shows a result of analyzing 45,000 pageviews containing between 30 and 1,250 words.

The following table shows the maximum percentage of text users could read during an average visit to pages with different word counts:

As you may notice the curve approaches 20% very rapidly as the word-count increases.

In a case of a very modest page, containing 250 words, the average user will read less than 40% of content. This fact alone should raise a red flag for anyone planning to upload an existing magazine article to his website.

The best practice would be to have short and precise pieces of content, having 250-500 words. And, to concentrate your main ideas towards the top of the content.

But wait, it gets better…

What do users see on the web?

In a different study, Dr. Nielsen examines user behavior on a page since first arriving to a site.

After recording users’ eye movements with an infra-red camera, Dr. Nielsen discovered a common pattern in the page reading behavior:

1. Users first read (scan) across the top two paragraphs of content
2. Users proceed to quickly scan the first few words of the content

These two parts of the reading pattern create a resemblance to the letter F, which sometime can be the letter E if the user scans the third paragraph as well, as demonstrated in the following image:

Before Writing Any Web Content

Keeping the above findings in mind, one should always think about the following guidelines when writing content for the web:

1. Keeping the content short and precise, having 250-500 words
2. Revealing the main idea in the beginning of the content, preferably in the first two paragraphs
3. Informative, rather than creative, headlines
4. Main keywords in the beginning of the headline
5. Using bullets and numbered lists, that are easier to scan, instead of long multi-sentence paragraphs
6. Keeping the content short, between 250 and 400 words

Further Reading

I would recommend reading through this informative resource to understand how to achieve better results on-line: Writing for the Web

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