X SEO

by Mike Moran

From across the room, you see…THE ONE. Wow. Your heart goes pit-a-pat
at the sight. Immediately, your thoughts start racing. You are ready to
do anything, be anything to be attractive to that one person you are
fixated on. Is that the right approach? You probably know that it’s not
the right approach in dating, but did you know that it fails in search
marketing, too?

You know it doesn’t work with dating because if you are literally
willing to do anything, that includes projecting a completely false
image of who you are. It’s one thing to put your best foot forward, but
it’s quite another to twist yourself into a pretzel to attract someone.
When you do, two possibilities exist, both bad:

• You get rejected. Despite your best efforts to attract THE ONE, nothing works. You tried everything and you are still without your dream date.
• You succeed.
  Now, I know this seems like a good thing, but in the long run, it
  isn’t, because if you’ve morphed yourself to be attractive, your dream
  date is not actually attracted to you. The attraction is to this made-up
  person that you’ve become, and eventually the truth will out, and
  you’ll get rejected.

I’m not telling you this because I’ve
suddenly fancied myself writing advice to the lovelorn. No, all these
things you know about dating apply to search marketing, too, but most
people don’t realize it.

When people start thinking about search
marketing, Google is THE ONE and they sometimes seem ready to try just
about anything to succeed. They focus on taking advice from just about
anyone who seems to know what to do, and often that advice is bad.

They
start by focusing on the most popular keywords. They plaster them onto
their pages and wait for that great traffic to come. And one of two
things happen, both of which are bad. They might get no traffic at all.
Or they might get traffic, but from all the wrong people.

They
also spend a lot of time trying to outfox Google–chasing the algorithm,
it’s called. Whatever some expert says that Google wants, that’s what
they do. No matter that the algorithm changes so frequently that only a
true expert can keep up. They are willing to do whatever it takes to
attract Google.

In dating, I hope someone gave you the advice to
be yourself because you want to attract the right kind of attention from
the right people. It’s worthless to act like someone you’re not because
you’ll attract someone interested in some other kind of person. Worse,
the people who would be attracted to the real you never figure it out.

Search
marketing is no different. It’s fine to pay attention to search
optimization. It’s a good idea to do keyword research and use those
words on your pages, but only the ones that really match what you sell.
If you are willing to do anything to get search traffic, you just end up
looking desperate, and you attract all the wrong elements, just like in
dating. And the people really looking for you won’t find you–and they
are the ones who buy.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

There is little doubt that mobile search is the hot topic in the SEO world at the moment. Some brands are now finding that more than 30 percent of all searches come from mobile devices, according to Mobile Marketer. It’s fair to say that mobile search is quickly moving out of the Stone Age and [...]



Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Why does it seem like a paid search launch has as many moving parts as launching a space shuttle? To make sure that everything gets taken care of, I adhere to a five step launch process when building a new paid search program. This process makes it easier to divide and conquer developing each part…



Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

I'm immensely excited about how completely mobile platforms impact our lives.

Not just the hyper-fast access information and being able to call whomever you want wherever you are, but also in more fundamental ways around the globe by empowering farmers to get better rates for their crops, or helping children to learn in new ways, or making revolutions ever more efficient.

I'm a lot less excited when I think about the imagination that we've brought to bear on mobile platforms and business/marketing. Legions of companies (large and extra large) still don't fundamentally grok the sweet power that this platform brings with it. They are slow to grasp new opportunities to rethink customer relationships, to revolutionize products and services, marketing, advertising, acquisition, and to deliver delight and make people happy. They are still stuck, for the most part, in 1980s thinking.

I want to try and fix a little bit of that in this post.

I'll share two examples of companies that are doing something non-normal when it comes to mobile marketing. Specifically they are re-thinking four key success factors that make will make any business successful in the future:

1. Customer acquisition
2. Moving from shouting to providing value
3. Re-imagining what it means to get access to customer data and
4. Behavior/intent targeting (this one is so cool!)

Two companies, Skullcandy and TripIt, delivering on four amazing outcomes that inspire us to set the bar significantly higher for our mobile efforts in 2015 (or sooner!).

Reality Check / Don't Stink Today, If Possible.

It is hard to talk about AMAZING, INCREDIBLE, LET'S AIM TO REINVENT THE FUTURE marketing when the current state of affairs is so poor. And it is.

Here's a representative example.

I'm on the road a lot and to book an upcoming flight, I take out my Samsung Galaxy S3 (my review + tips) and type in the name of my favorite website, Travelocity. I see a link to Cheap Flights under their search results, I click on it, the page loads, and I start crying…

How it is possible that in 2012 an organization as successful, as profitable, and as full of intelligent people as Travelocity has still not figured out how to configure their CMS to detect a mobile browser user agent id and serve me a mobile-friendly webpage?

I pinch and zoom and I try to use the page. But my tears are in the way. I give up.

Heartbreaking but Travelocity is not the exception to the rule.

I go back to Google and try Kayak, , and then Hotwire, . Finally, just when my tears are almost exhausted I type in "cheapflights" and I smile…

Now was that really hard?

An astonishing percent of travel-related queries now happen on mobile platforms. If you are in the travel business, please consider meeting the lowest bar God could have created: Deliver a smart phone – and tablet friendly – website.

And travel is by no means unique; try any of your normal brands. You'll cry most of the time.

2009 was the year of mobile. It is time to fix your website. Please. Let's not wait and see if this mobile thing is really a fad. It is not too late to be early.

While you are at it, consider having a non-stinky mobile app. This is the lowest bar there is: The simplest, most intuitive way to complete the core tasks of your digital existence.

Remember, at least for now, fingers on these devices belong to a highly prized & desirable demographic. You want to be BFFs with them!

If your company has a non-stinky mobile website and mobile app then congratulations: you have successfully solved the problem of 2009! Celebrate a little.

But then ponder this: Is this the best we can do with mobile?

No.

Re-think Customer Acquisition, Brand Engagement.

Why should we rely on shouting on TV or Radio to acquire new customers? Why should we persistently pimp our products and services on Facebook or Twitter hoping someone will read our feed? Why should we wait for the Bing/Google/Yandex auction to work in our favor to ensure our ad shows up in front of the right people?

Why not rethink acquisition?

Why should we spend our marketing budget on the "99 guaranteed ways to make your video go viral" to deliver a great brand ad? Why should we wait for someone to walk into our store to be wow-ed by our new paint/furniture/experience? Why should we hope and pray that you love our latest ad with the cute baby and get a positive brand impression?

Why not rethink branding? Why not rethink brand value?

Mobile presents a unique opportunity to shift from interruption to becoming a persistent part of someone's life. I'm very excited about this possibility for all of us.

Let me give you an example.

Like everyone in California, I surf. ^)

To fit surfing into my three concurrent jobs, two small kids, and one magnificent spouse lifestyle I need a surf reports app that will give me precise information about the waves.

I do what everyone does: I type that query into Google on my mobile phone. I'm surprised to see an AdWords ad for a Skullcandy app.

Wait. Don't they make headphones? And is it not true that you can't wear headphones while you surf?

The ad description is for an app that sounds exactly like what I need, so I click on it. Rather than going to a lame webpage with links to iTunes or Google Play, the ad recognizes the platform I'm on and takes me directly to the app download page on the Google Play store. How unexpectedly delightful!

Two clicks and ten seconds later, I'm in the app!

You will notice very quickly, as I did, that this is not a "let's pimp headphones aggressively" app. In fact, on the main menu there is everything except pimping. TV and music to deliver a great brand experience. Snow, skate, surf and motox reports are perfectly targeted to the potential audience's tastes.

It takes just one click to find surf reports (auto location detection via GPS is so cool!). I pick the beach with the best waves and place a call to my boss to let her know I'll be working from home for the rest of the day. Data-driven decision making!

The Skullcandy app includes other micro-conversions, such as news about the company and its sponsored athletes. If you work hard enough, you can find a link to sign up for a mailing list or the macro-conversion of buying some headphones.

But the app overwhelmingly exists to do just two things: 1. Selflessly deliver an incredible amount of value to Skullcandy's target audience and 2. Do so in a beautiful (for their audience and immersive brand experience.

For that, Skullcandy gets the greatest gift any company can get from me: Attention. It is manifested as an icon on the home screen of a device that never leaves my side. All because they made my life a little bit better.

I see that icon every day. They've never asked me to buy their headphones (who likes a nag?), but since I've had their app, I've purchased six pairs of Skullcandy headphones for my family and to give away.

I call this phenomenon utility marketing.

In normal marketing, we do research and bidding and guessing and demographic / psychographic / behavior targeting and so much more just to guess when to interrupt people with a message about our brand.

Utility marketing is about delivering such incredible value that you simply become part of your audience's life!

Completely coincidently, I received the below tweet just as I was drafting this post. It took me a second to get it, and then a few more seconds to locate the icon (can you find it faster?)…

But I was thrilled to see my utility marketing strategy in action!

It made my day. Thank you Paul !!

One other quick favorite example of a company that does utility marketing really well on mobile platforms: Proctor & Gamble. My Beauty Adviser, Iams Vet 24/7, Stain Brain , the uber-famous SitOrSquat and the fun Crunch Band are just some examples of apps that allow P&G, at a very low cost, to become part of our lives by helping us look beautiful, solve pet problems, remove stains and find a clean public restroom in a hurry.

So, what is your company's mobile strategy? Interruption or utility marketing? Is there anything compelling and of value that you deliver, selflessely, to your current and potential audiences?

If you don't, it is time to future-proof your marketing strategy, because the world is most definitely moving to utility marketing.

And for now it is pretty cheap. A decent mobile app costs infinitely less than producing a single TV commercial, , and — done right — delivers a hyper-relevant audience with whom you can build a relationship unlike what is possible via any other channel on the planet. And you'll never have to remember to interrupt them, because you'll be part of their life already!

Get off the sidelines. Re-think customer acquisition and brand engagement.

You'll notice that along with the other two benefits above you are also collecting data about your customers (with permission). That brings me to my second in the future when we all do this it is so cool example.

Re-think Customer Data Acquisition, Intent Targeting/Monetization.

Skullcandy and P&G are (with permission) collecting anonymous data about user behavior in their apps. They can learn a lot about what customers do in the apps and improve them to make them even more delightful. [Google Analytics Mobile Application Analytics Suite]

But what if we make data collection the primary purpose of our mobile app and then use that data (with permission) to create hyper-targeted, right moment, right time monetization strategies?

In lay terms: Why not deliver such incredible value to our customers that they are willing to share their data with us, which in turn (with permission) we can use to become smarter about how we money?

Sounds incredible, does it not?

Here's a great example of such a marketing strategy in action, and it is only possible in any robust sense on a mobile platform.

One of my favorite apps is TripIt. I simply email the air, hotel, car rental confirmation to TripIt and they organize it beautifully into a cohesive itinerary for my trip. I can access it on the web, but more importantly, I can have it all on my phone in an app.

As you can see I have the Pro version of the app (note: this is method No. 1 of how TripIt makes money). Here's what a complete itinerary looks like for a recent trip:

I also get flight delay alerts, maps, directions and so much more. I'm also a Pro member of TripIt (method No. 2 for who they make money — $49 per year).

The app is really good. And TripIt could stop there.

But why do that?

I'm already giving them so much of my data. Why not use that data to find new monetization strategies?

So TripIt does something very smart. It monitors my trips, and it notices that for my trip to Orlando I've only sent in email confirmation for the flights. The hotel is missing…

Consider what an incredible gift this is! I'm not randomly searching Google. I'm not upper or lower funnel. I'm not watching the Broncos on TV (Go Manning!) and maybe on the lookout for a relevant TV ad. I'm telling them where I'm going to be, and that I don't have a hotel! No guessing! And time to move into action.

So here's what they do … within 24 hours I get this sweet email from TripIt…

What are the chances that I booked this hotel?

Super duper high!

I'm sure you are impressed at the data mining and intent targeting efforts of TripIt.

But I don't think you fully appreciate them. Let me explain.

Unlike every other travel company that might attempt this, TripIt did not send me a dumb list of 50 hotels in Orlando. That would have been an easy thing to do based on data mining (lame data mining!).

They actually went through my history, noticed that I usually stay at a Hilton, and they have my Hilton Honors program ID number (scraped from the confirmation emails!).

They use that information to send me an email with one hotel in it. Just one.

When I got this email, as a Marketer and Data Mining connoisseur, I had to smile. It was just so smart.

And when I clicked on Book Now, I was taken to a web page with hotel details and a reservation box (with my Hilton Honors number already filled out!). #omg

Another example, for my upcoming stay in NYC, TripIt noticed I've not booked a hotel yet. Last night I got an email from them to book a hotel. It was not any random Hilton in NYC (there are at least 25 just in Manhattan). It was the Hilton close to the Google office where I stay most of the time! #omg #omg

People don't mind behavior/intent targeting. What people mind is lame unintelligent behavior targeting. Remember that.

TripIt offers a free service as well, but it has managed to create value for itself in three ways: Pay for the pro version of the service, the app, and intent targeted reservations. That is what all marketing in 2015 will look like.

Back to your business. Are you using the mobile platform to exchange data for value? Have you thought of innovative ways you can use that data to create hyper-relevant targeting opportunities based on strong intent signals?

If no, why not?

There is an additional question I ask myself.

Why hasn't Expedia created an app like this? Why is their app, just like every other one, just a "I'll remember to look for your app out of 20 I have and proactively search for a hotel/airline ticket and make a reservation but that is all it will do" app?

Surely it can't be the tiny amount of money it costs — it is small. Surely it can't be the resources required — they have a ton. Surely it can't be that they don't want my intent data — what better way for Expedia to target me with relevant products? Surely it can't be because they don't have the data mining chops — they do.

So, why not? Why not add to their existing strategies of guessing if I need travel services and bombarding me with TV ads or those on Bing, why not create a proposition where they deliver something of value to me, I exchange that for data, and they do smart targeting tied me my already declared needs? Why have marketing only be in the business of interrupting people and praying that it works? Why can't marketing be in the business of creating insane initial value for consumers?

I don't know.

But I hope that people at Expedia, Priceline, United and every other company in the world will pause from the traditional shouting on TV and unleashing a tsunami of digital display ads long enough to consider these amazing new opportunities that bring customers closer to them, give incredible insights into customer intent, and create high converting monetization opportunities.

If you were looking for another incredible example, from a different industry of (with permission) exchanging data for value that is then gets converted into monetization opportunities for a company, look no further than another one of my other favorite apps: Pageonce – Money & Bills.

Pageonce provides single point access to all my finances that would put any bank/financial institution (along with the Quickens/Mints of the world to shame). Banking, brokerages, investments, credit cards, 100% of my bills, and of course allow me to pay said bills – along with real time access to my entire everything financial on every platform I want it!

I can't believe every financial institution in the world is not falling all over themselves to do this. Why not be like Pageonce and exchange value for data (with permission)? Make money on the primary services, but ALSO make money on the data (in case of Pageonce using hyper-targeted relevant card offers or other services – not the annoying kind, rather based on actual consumer behavior and smart data mining)

Chase bank, Fidelity investments, Vanguard, utility companies, (and even Intuit)… why not?

Carpe Diem!

Measurement? Totally.

It would not be my blog if there was not at least a word about measurement.

Everything described above is measureable.

Smart phones run powerful browsers that render javascript and accept cookies and all that other sweet stuff. You can use your standard web analytics tool to measure customer behavior on your mobile-friendly website. Just segment for smart phones and tablets separately.

Yes there are still some phones in the world that don't render javascript or accept cookies. These are not monetization opportunities either. So we focus where we can deliver delight and make money.

Mobile application analytics solutions provide a very robust set of data about your apps. I'm particularly excited about collecting not just the normal "page view" data for apps, but also behavior data from the app stores (acquisition metrics), unique user tracking, and ecommerce (micro and macro conversion) happening inside the app.

Closing Thoughts.

Mobile platforms present an opportunity to achieve every marketer's dream: right message at the right time to the right person.

But they do demand that we forget traditional unimaginative ways of creating experiences and delivering value like relying on shouting/guessing. The opportunity has not exploded yet, but we are approaching that moment.

In 2015, marketing will look like a turbo-charged version of what Skullcandy, P&G, TripIt and Pageonce are doing. I hope you find inspiration in their work today to start your company's evolution to execute on the possibilities of utility marketing.

Good luck!

As always it's your turn now.

What are your favorite examples of utility marketing? Which companies have you honored with icons on your phone/tablet's home screen? Has your company tried innovative data mining off mobile customer or application behavior data? What are your management's excuses for not creating incredible mobile experience (site or app)?

Please share your tips, stories, feedback and critique via comments.

Thank you.

Mobile Marketing 2015: Rethink Customer Acquisition, Intent Targeting is a post from: Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik

The recent share trends between the two largest search engines continued this month.

• Google’s share declined by 0.2ppts from June to July, while Bing picked up that share.
• Both Yahoo!’s and AOL’s share remained flat M-O-M.
• Google Powered now represents 66% of the market and Bing Powered has over a third of the US web search market at 34%.
• When looking at Y-O-Y query volumes, Google’s core search query volume declined 11.7% while Bing’s core search query volume increased 25.6%.
• With the 31 days in July and despite the holiday, total search volume across the engines increased 3.9% from June to July.

To learn more about Compete’s point of view on the competitive search space, specifically Search Engine Results Pages, click to download our free report, ‘Seeing Between the Lines…of the Search and the Click’.

A couple weeks back I'd requested the nice folks following me on Google+ and Facebook to submit their most important digital marketing and analytics questions.

The questions reveal a bunch of things we used to worry about, and continue to, like data quality and creating data driven cultures. They also reveal things that starting to become scary (Privacy! EU Cookies!) and others that are already delivering nightmares (a multi device world!). Finally there were questions we can always count on: setting goals and tracking conversions, justifying analytics and wanting to track the absolutely impossible (why can't I track people across all devices and all websites?).

I'll answer those questions, and more, in this post. Just the questions total up to 1,353 words. I'm going to try, really hard, and be cogent in my replies to ensure this does not end up being a super long post.

I've categorized the questions and answers into four distinct categories: The "really difficult," "oh that's not so bad," "omg that's easy" and the "unknown unknowns."

While reading the entire post will be of value (and ensure world peace), you're welcome to jump to the section that sounds most appealing.

Let's do this!

The really difficult questions.

Yehoshua Coren:

Best ways to measure user behavior in a multi-touch, multi-device digital world. Some tools do pan-session analysis better than others, and there are a number of relatively new analytics solutions on the market today. What tools / methodologies do you use to answer pan-session sorts of business questions? What can analysts do, if anything, to overcome the multi-device challenge

Yehoshua I've covered this topic in detail in this blog post: Multi-Channel Attribution: Definitions, Models and a Reality Check

I explain three different models (Online to Store, Across Multiple Devices, Across Digital Channels) and for each I've highlighted:

Please read the post in detail with you have ten peaceful minutes.

If I were to summarize. Incentivising your visitors to log into their account with you is the only clean permission based way to track them across devices. Then you build a massive data store that you can query for data to analyze. Web Analytics tools in the market are not the answer (especially across multi-channel and multi-devices). Even "specialized tools" are not the answer because they rarely have the end to end data or the analytical capabilities you'll need.

If you can't incent people to log in, you are out of luck (except for MCA Across Digital Channels – for that see post above and also GA MCF). Simply because you are going to bump into privacy and government regulations.

So accept what you can do. Accept what you can't. Then do what you can do and move on to making decisions, even if they are small in some scenarios.

Please see the post for all the details.

Bjoern Sjut3:

My main issue at the moment: How will multi-channel funnels and ROI calculations work in a multi device world? We all have smart phones, laptops, tablets and soon Smart TVs – but most of our measurements are usually done in Cookies that are device/browser specific. That means: All of these metrics are off. How can I e.g. determine the ROI of my mobile traffic acquisition, when people regularly convert on their laptops later….

What would be the current best practice to move towards a proper cross-device attribution, while maintaining or improving on privacy standards at the same time??

See the above answer Bjoern, and do please read the post because there are still things you can do.

If your wish in the second part is to track effectiveness of advertising (how to determine ROI) then please see this post: Measuring Incrementality: Controlled Experiments to the Rescue! That is the solution. The only challenge is that it is not easy, and everyone wants easy. It takes effort and time, but if you are a large company it works like a charm.

I wanted to include your question in this post because of that last part. What you are asking for is impossible. Being able to track the person across all devices necessarily means you have to relax privacy because… well you want to track a person. How will that go with, as you put it, improving privacy standards?

This is not a problem for Marketers or Analysts to solve. This is problem for governments, privacy regulators and the public to solve. We will adapt to whatever they decide.

My perspective on this multi-channel multi-device multi-visit multi-campaign challenge is best summarized by the Serenity Prayer:

I assure you that for your business there are still a massive number of solveable challenges when it comes to being smarter with digital, I'd take those on for now.

Jeroen Hesterman:

My biggest challenge is this: I've created a data platform which captures all campaign (paid) traffic and can attribute a conversion to each based on whatever model I choose. Now… how do I create actionable insights from this data which are going to help me decide where to spend my budget? What report would you want to see on conversion attribution that would help you decide where to spend??

[context]
I believe that attribution modeling is not the path to the smartest decisions for multi-touch multi-visit digital campaigns. This is practically heresy in our industry, but it's what I've learned from my experience.

A lot of people buy tools and consulting and go love crazy with attribution modeling. Yet at the end of all that money and all that love, they struggle to make even a single decision about shifting media spend (from Facebook to Email or Google to Bing or whatever).

That's simply because the ecosystem we live in is insanely complex, "path analysis" on campaign data is just as much of a waste of time as path analysis for, well, website path data, and every attribution model has built into it biases and opinions that often struggle to stand any intellectual scrutiny, or the simple laws of common sense.

If you want to make the smartest decisions about your budget allocation then leveraging the time tested methodology of media mix modeling (at its core powered by controlled experiments) is the only way to go. It is hard, it is time consuming, but it also allows you to test your hypotheses on possible optimal allocations, test them in the real world, find the best answers and be brilliant with your marketing spend mix.
[/context]

(That said…) If you would like to make smarter (not the smartest decisions, beyond simplistic last click, then you can just build what Google Analytics has built into its tool.

Sorry I meant to say, be inspired by what they've built.

Ignore the patently bad models like first click attribution, linear attribution, daily planetary alignment etc. Start with models like Time Decay and Position Based to understand what the conversion portfolio might look like (last two columns above) and create hypotheses about what a better budget allocation might look like. Roll that out to your entire portfolio (or to a subset as a controlled experiment) and measure conversion improvements. Rinse and repeat.

Without a doubt with a cyclical process like above you'll be better than you were in a last click world.

If you want to go one step further you can build into your tool, again just providing inspiration , the capacity to allow your users to leverage their unique business knowledge to create hyper customized models, like the one I'm creating here using the Google Analytics custom attribution modeling feature…

Go back and scroll through the image again, slowly, and infer the knowledge, leaps of faith, sophistication and knowledge of my business that I'm able to put into the model. I'm valuing different positions differently, with a heavy emphasis on the converting touch points. Then I'm using data from the standard Days to Conversion report to limit who gets credit (no one beyond 27!). The credit distribution is proportional to content consumption (I like page count and not time) and finally apply the rules based on position in the path.

Pretty cool right?

Remember, this may or may not work for you. That's simply because this model is unique to my business and my understand of our data. The nice thing is that my custom attribution model will give me a unique view of the conversion path on MY site (a new column to look at under "% Change from Last Interaction"). I can use that to hypothesize what an optimal budget allocation might look like.

You could consider something like this in your tool, your users will like you a lot.

Attribution modeling is a feature available only in Google Analytics Premium, a paid version.

Remember at the end of the day attribution modeling is just a bit smarter than last click, it brings the benefit of knowing that one should optimize portfolios and not a silo (which last click pushes). For the smartest portfolio allocations the answer is media mix modeling (powered by controlled experiments).

Mark Tollerman:

I've often observed insights to be the sole responsibility of analysts rather than designers, PMs, engineers and execs resulting in fear and lack of understanding of data and therefore increased use of opinion over fact. How does one go about changing a corporate culture to make data driven insight an implicit demand of an organization frightened of data?

There are 19,276 books on org design on Amazon right now, so you can imagine how difficult it is to answer your question in just a few words. If you really want help here, hire a very very good business (not analytics) consultant.

But here are some quick thoughts…

Insights can only come from a cohesive team that is responsible for qualitative and quantitative analysis. It is very hard to bring these two camps together, but when we managed to do that in my last job it worked magnificently because there was renewed understanding of what's important, where to go for the best data and how to bring left and right brain thinking to solving customer problems with unique solutions.

Optimal ownership of the analytics team inside the company will increase the likelihood of data and not faith will drive decisions. Here's a post you might find valuable: Who Owns Web Analytics? A Framework For Critical Thinking.

Finally, you'd referenced boss/exec issues, here you go: Six Rules For Creating A Data Driven Boss!

Christian Rose:

How the hell do I eek out goals out of web authors that could hardly care less about them.. (other than the fact that they are authoring content that happens to fall on our website?) and the baby-boomers C-levels in charge of the company that have little to no attention for web stuff, other than the fact that they inherited this website when they started to work here?

Boy do I have a post for you to read, it is written to solve the precise problem you are running into.

Check it out: The Biggest Mistake Web Analysts Make… And How To Avoid It!

It outlines a six step process you can use to:

Success won't come overnight Christian, but the above way is the only one I know of ensuring consistent scalable success.

Johan Johansson:

My question got to be what kind of organization structure you recommend to support data driven culture and decision making? And what key functions/roles do you need in that structure?

See my note to Mark above about how hard this is. And please do read the post on who owns web analytics .

Org design is hard, and there is no perfect answer…

(Source: Manu Cornet)

But here are three thoughts in a digital analytics context from my many failures:

If the organization is young and resource strapped then a centralized org structure is very effective, and efficient.

As the organization rapidly explodes and is growing across divisions and countries, a decentralized model makes the most sense. A centralized structure for analytics in this case will end up being a traditional worst case "IT mental model" roadblock. Eww!

In mature organizations a centralized-decentralized model works best. The central team is responsible for analytics frameworks, centralized contracts (tools, consultants), for aggregated company level analysis, complex project execution (experimentation, media mix models etc) and for setting standards. The decentralized teams understand the difference between reporting and analysis, and simply focus on fast, hyper-relevant analysis!

(This is not a pitch but if you are interested my book Web Analytics 2.0, in addition to other goodies, has an entire chapter on how to create data driven organizations.)

Good luck Johan!

The oh that's not so bad Questions.

Francisco Meza (and Faiz Sheikh):

(not provided) in organic and (not set) in Paid. It's just missing information I can't use?

Yes and no.

You'll only see (not provided) in your organic search keywords report. It represents the queries done on Google by folks who were logged into their Google.com account or using https (secure) search. Google does not pass those queries to the website in the referral string. Hence none of the web analytics tools are able to report that data so they bucket them in a "not provided" bucket (the name may be different in SiteCatalyst, Yahoo! Web Analytics etc).

The size of this unknown bucket will be different for each site. For my site it is currently 50% of the search traffic…

Learn more about how I analyze (not provided) data to get some understanding in this post: Smarter Data Analysis of Google's https (not provided) change: 5 Steps

(not set) is a completely different issue, and you can fix it.

You'll see (not set) in many places in Google Analytics (and other tools as well, though it might have a different name), including your paid search reports. That label is applied when data is not available for the dimension you are looking at in your reports.

In the Search reports it might be there because AdWords auto-tagging is broken, in the Campaign reports it indicates that the UTM parameters were not properly coded (or are completely missing), in the Matched Query report it might indicate you are looking at "content targeting" were you use content and not keywords to do the targeting.

(not set) just needs you to dig deeper, identify the problem and fix it. If you are using GA and you need help then hire a GACP (http://bit.ly/gaac ), if you are using Adobe, WebTrends, IBM et al then please hire a consultant with experience in those tools.

Jacob Funnell:

The company I work for sells writing courses. We have many course pages. The idea is that they generate leads. I have these leads tracked in Google Analytics as goals. I can see which pages end in conversions if they're taken as landing pages. But how can I see which pages merely assist conversions?

This is exactly why the Page Value metric (in the past called $index value) was created.

It helps you understand the "contribution" of the pages that are viewed in converting visits (using conversions for ecommerce websites and goals values for non-ecommerce websites, like this blog, or both).

Here's a helpful blog post: Understanding And Using Page Value

I'm imploring the Google Analytics team to make this metric available in custom reports where it would be multiple times more helpful. Hopefully soon!

Edward Cowell

"Was the data correct?" No matter what the stats actually say, I always go back to asking did we track it correctly, maybe miss something, not tag all the pages etc.?

Dealing with data quality doubt is every day and, sadly, very complex challenge for many, if not most, of us. This is compounded by the fact that a whole lot of analytics implementations are incorrect and incomplete. My recommendation is that you follow the virtuous data quality cycle…

Here's the blog post that describes each of the six elements in greater detail: Web Data Quality: A 6 Step Process To Evolve Your Mental Model

If your responsibility is on the analytics side, and not the data collection side where the above process applies 100%, and the challenge is purely the leaders in the company then please review the guidance in this blog post: Slay The Analytics Data Quality Dragon & Win Your HiPPO's Love!

Please pay particular attention to recommendation #4 ("Head" data can be actionable in the first week / month), #5 (Data precision actually goes up lower in the "funnel") and #9 (Be Aware of two upsetting distractions: Illogical customer behavior. Inaccuracy benchmarks).

Remember when it comes to data quality: "An educated mistake is better than no action at all."

Joe Brown:

How will digital analytics be impacted by Do Not Track browser policies and DAA policy efforts? What do you envision the IE10 default DNT impact will be?

Microsoft has evolved its position on the Do Not Track / Default settings in IE10.

Regardless… this is a subject I'd covered in detail recently: EU Cookie / Privacy Laws: Implications On Data Collection And Analysis

To provide a hyper-fast non-nuanced summary… please invest in:

The impact is less than what you might imagine in most cases, and a bit more in other cases. Please see the post for lots of specific detail.

Larissa Martins:

Hi Avinash Kaushik, first of all, thanks for the opportunity!. My questions are 2 (among maaaany others). 1- How can we apply all the web analytics concepts and knowledge in the real world? I mean, we read blog posts, books, go to conferences and consume great WA content. But clients in the real world do not follow us, especially in Latin America where companies, even the multinational ones, are mostly intuition driven and there´s a lack of qualified professionals. 2 – To be simple and direct and I´d really like to hear your honest opinion, GA or SiteCatalyst?

Let's do the second one first, during my looooong career I've yet to interact with a single company where the lack of digital success was due to the web analytics tool they used. I wish it were so, would be great for me and you, but sadly that is not the case. If companies have 15 challenges to deal with, picking the right analytics tool would rank #15. So if you have SiteCatalyst, use it like crazy. It is fantastic at what it does. If you have WebTrends, ditto. If you have Google Analytics, ditto.

Only consultants and internal IT/"Analytics" folks who want to make money/preserve careers obsess about the tool. Then spend 18 months implementing it while the company makes ever more decisions on faith.

If you have a tool from a well established vendor, use it. Spend all other time in solving the other 14 important business problems.

That leads us to your first question… how do we get people to care, what to we do instead of obsessing about tools?

Three things.

The problem is not the HiPPOs or CEOs, the problem is us.

They don't care about data or digital because we, yes you and me, have never worked hard to make them understand the real impact of digital, the real outcomes of leveraging the opportunities of digital. Because we are too busy collecting data and data puking. You fix that problem and you'll have every CEO in the world knocking down your door to have a few more minutes with you.

The omg that's easy questions.

Sudhir Mantena:

Integrating data from AdWords and Google Analytics into single report to help make decisions such as:
- Set of Keywords with best and worst ROI.
- Set of negative Keywords to block
- Keywords with potential to convert in near future
What other meaningful reports should an advertiser care about??

If you use Google Analytics then you have a delightful set of helpful standard reports available to you that pre-integrate the two disparate data sources. Go to Advertising and then AdWords in the interface.

You also have the capability to create some incredible custom reports. You can download some of my favorites here: Google Analytics Custom Reports: Paid Search Campaigns Analysis

If you don't use Google Analytics consider using the AdWords API to get data into the web analytics tool. Or use the web analytics tool's API and the AdWords API to pull data into a data store of your choosing. Then analyze like your life depended on it!

Rob Mclaughlin:

From big cheese to me: "Explain why I should listen to you with you charts and numbers when our customers are shouting their feedback and frustrations at us?"

Simple, people who live in an or world are less effective when making decisions than people who live in an and world.

Customers articulating their problems are an incredible source of issues that should be fixed. But we don't just want to rely on the noisy few.

We want to use qualitative data as well as quantitative data because the latter will allow us to "listen" to all the customers, the latter will be an excellent source of understanding what the reasons might be for the frustration, and it will be the only source of data to understand how much money you are making, why you are making that little (or lot), where is it coming from!

So there.

Marius Pop:

How do I find out exactly what the visitors are looking for on the page? With that I'm looking to reduce the bounce rate.

Exactly is such a hard word. Brings with it burdensome expectations, and an enormous cost.

So we move from exactly to close to exactly. Sounds reasonable?

In your case you'll have to solve this problem:

Here is how you do it: Six Tips For Improving High Bounce Rate / Low Conversion Web Pages

The unknown unknowns questions.

Joe Librizzi:

In lieu of major infrastructure changes, how can the impact of offline campaigns be measured within GA's multi-channel funnels

Sadly in life sometimes there is no in lieu of. There are many conditions in life that might preclude us from doing what's required, but sadly sometimes you have to do the right thing. Even if it is hard.

Here are two posts that cover the complexity of multi-channel analytics: Tracking Offline Conversions. 7 Best Practices, Bonus Tips, Tracking Online Impact Of Offline Campaigns.

Lucas Deibler:

What is the best use of analytics for helping shape a full site redesign, specifically for a content site?

Understanding customer intent. Understanding current sand traps. Understanding the user interaction model.

Hire a consultant with quantitative and qualitative experience in digital analytics and they'll be able to give you a lot more specific detail to suit your unique situation.

Jeremy Kolb:

What are the best tools in the industry for building a social brand?

I'm not sure that there is a tool to build social brand.

But here's the formula that works: Wake up in the morning. Identify the intersection of your competence and passion. From that place deliver something incredible of value to your social audience. Repeat it the next day.

Michael Krupinsky:

I'd like to combine impressions (paid media, organic search and paid search), clicks, lands, and return visits during their purchase cycle. I don't want last click attribution; I want a full view of my prospects as they are exposed to my external messaging and then go through their online decision process. Did they read a review on Amazon after they were exposed to an ad? Did that later lead to a search and a click on a paid brand search term which brought them in to sign up on our email list…which then then bought from after receiving an email offer 2 weeks later?

You can track what people do on your site. You can track what people do when exposed to your ads on other websites. You can't track what people do on sites where your tracking code does not exist, and tie it to what they do on your site or a competitors.

Life's tough.

You still have more data than anyone should legitimately have in this world. If you don't have in-house expertise to pull off most of what you outline above then please consider hiring a consultant who has skills in business intelligence, web analytics 2.0 and hard core quantitative analysis.

Lisa Murphy Carlston:

How do you approach the identification of good leading, or predictive metrics? Are there criteria you use? Any tips for proofing whether there is causation vs. correlation between the potential leading metric and the outcome desired?

Hire a very smart statistician with strong data modeling skills and a very deep comfort level in working with incomplete large data sets with missing variables. She/he will be able to create something for you.

Roni Leibovitch"

With multi-channel funnels and goal conversion GA allows us to build a fairly comprehensive attribution model. This data is usually reviewed in the form of a report. Even if I assess it in near real-time my domain cannot make a real-time decision based on these metrics w/o relying on 3rd party CRM tools. Can I use my Google Analytics attribution model to test UI/UX in real-time, or build a decision engine based on JS queried from my analytics? For example, offer the visitor who is more likely to complete an 'assisted social conversion' based on my model, a different UI than someone entering the site via search.

It looks like you are volunteering to build a new analytics and behavior targeting solution.

When it comes to real time remember that right time is substantially more important (and cheaper and effective) than real time. See point #4 here: A Big Data Imperative: Driving Big Action

Phew!

Did I not say we got some incredible questions? I hope you had as much fun with this post as I did.

I want to close with three very quick macro thoughts.

I wish you all the very best.

As always it's your turn now.

How do you tackle attribution modeling? What strategies have resulted in your organization becoming data driven rather than faith driven? Who owns web analytics in your company? How have you avoided the data quality quicksand trap? Do you know of a company that has solved the multi-device tracking problem? What is your secret to valuing content on your website?

Please share your thoughts, critique, brilliant ideas, and life lessons via comments.

Thank you.

Dear Avinash: Attribution Modeling, Org Culture, Deeper Analysis +++ is a post from: Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik

Today’s post is by guest blogger, Olga Ionel.

SEO is a term that virtually everyone has heard. In simple terms, SEO is the utilization of specific techniques to optimize a website in order to gain and maintain maximum visibility and ranking. This concept is useful for anyone who wants to develop a wide readership for their site, but is particularly beneficial for companies that are seeking to promote their products and services through Internet marketing.

Whether you want to utilize SEO to bring attention to your company’s website or for the purpose of driving traffic to your affiliate marketing blog, an effective strategy is important to developing an SEO campaign that will help you to achieve your professional goals.

What is an SEO Strategy?

Planning is an essential aspect of running any business. It is next to impossible to handle the various responsibilities and obligations of a company without properly planning these activities and how they will be fulfilled. When it comes to SEO your company’s strategy will be focused on the various SEO activities that you would like to utilize, and how each of these will be implemented.

Search Engine Optimization is not just one activity, nor does it require only one form of application. It is important that you determine which SEO techniques would be most appropriate for your particular internet presence and the most powerful way that you can use these techniques in conjunction with your promotional strategies.

There are three core aspects of any SEO campaign. Your strategy for developing your campaign should be balanced among these aspects, with attention given to optimizing the techniques to your niche and your audience.

1. Website Design

   The appearance of your site is the foundation on which you will build the rest of your strategy. Internet spiders, the software that explores the World Wide Web in order to build an index of the words that are used on individual web pages, cannot detect things such as images, videos, or Flash media, so the way that your site looks will make little impact on the results of the crawl. The look will, however, make a tremendous impact on the impression that your site makes on your visitors.

   Once a visitor has found your site it is important that they are compelled to stay on it. Your design choices can greatly influence the traffic that your receive and maintain. One way to optimize this design is by using WordPress themes. These make developing an attractive, well-organized site simple and user-friendly.

2. Keyword Placement

   Your primary SEO strategy will begin with keyword placement. The spiders will crawl your site in order to gather the words that you use, as well as information on how you use them. These keywords will be the frequently-used search terms as are related to your niche, and should be strategically integrated into your content in order to be picked up by the spiders, but also appreciated by human readers.

   Creating valuable content is essential to the success of your site, regardless of the main goal of the site, and must read naturally and comfortable, not as if the keywords were forced into the text. The most effective SEO strategies involve creating distinct, unique pages for each primary keyword that you wish to highlight on your site. This content will be what draws in the traffic and encourages the readers to stay and explore your site further.

3. Link Optimization

   The second aspect of your SEO strategy will be using links to direct greater volumes of traffic to your site. The spiders will also be able to find these links and follow them to each of your pages, as well as to other related sites, thereby increasing the validity and visibility of your site so that it can be ranked higher in the results. It is crucial that you choose SEO linkbuilding tactics that are ethical, rather than linking to unrelated sites or spamming your links throughout the Internet with no real purpose.

Participation in blogs, forums, and other interactive online communities is an effective way of building valuable links to enhance your SEO campaign.

As I've gotten older I've come to appreciate the value of frameworks a lot more.

When we are young, the answers to everything are simpler because, of course, we know everything.

What metrics should I use? Use BR & CV. What digital marketing works? Definitely Y, do that. How can I improve my business? Simple, do A then B and you're done. So on and so forth.

One upside (or is it a downside?) of age is the wisdom of realizing how much you don't know. Suddenly you don't have concrete answers because you realize: 1. You usually lack all the information you need and 2. Even the most mundane and obvious situations are incredibly complex and unique.

So you start answering questions like "What is two plus two?" with "Tell me a little bit more about what you are adding" or "It really depends on the process you use to add them" or … you get my point.

This is the main reason I love frameworks. They don't contain answers; rather, they help place a situation or a process or steps and encourage you to think a certain way. They force you to step back and think. They make you go talk to other people. They force you to say “hmmm …” And if you can make a person think, if you can encourage them to cover all the bases, if you can get them to ask themselves some tough questions, then you have given them the greatest gift of all. Not the pat answers, but rather the way to figure out the best answers for themselves all by themselves.

So, whenever possible, don't ask for perfect answers, ask how to think. You'll thank me.

Two of the frameworks I've built and shared on this blog are the Digital Marketing & Measurement Model (how to pick the best KPIs for your business that guarantee success, using a powerful five-step process) and the Clear Line of Sight Model (to ensure every bit of Marketing and Analytics you are doing is tied to the Net Income of the company).

The DMMM and CLoS are strategic frameworks (you should embrace them right away!), and in this post I want to share a really, really simple framework for structuring web analytics consulting contracts.

The Web Analytics Consultant Quandary

BB sent this query:

If I take on a consulting project then what could be expectations out of me?

From what I understand, I would be creating a Web Analytic Report and giving my recommendations. That would be one deliverable from my end.

What could be the other deliverable for a web analytic project? What could be their expectation beyond submitting the report?

Would I be required to set up various A/B and multivariate tests for that company?

And what if they are at initial stage and have just set up Google Analytics with no goals, events or internal search tracking. Would I be required to implement goals, events or set up internal search tracking as well as exit survey?

What is the timeline of a web analytic project in the above case where there is no tracking and as a consultant I set up tracking for them. When should I start creating reports?

When does this project end? I mean where do I put a stop.

When I get this type of open-ended query my instinct is to figure out how to create a framework that would encourage structured thinking, force for assumptions and flaws and opportunities to rise to the fore.

And it does not have to be complicated, even for something as open and expansive as the query above.

For any web analytics consulting contract, the beginning, middle and end really depend on the contract you've signed, and – you'll be surprised – not the actual amount of work that needs to be done. The contract, and the hourly rate it provides for, will motivate the consultant to do as much or as little as is required to meet the contractual terms.

So, what's the fix?

The Optimal Web Analytics Consulting Framework: DC – DR – DA

Before jumping into any engagement (and signing a contract) I recommend using this simple framework for web analytics consulting contracts: Data Capture. Data Reporting. Data Analysis.

Ask your client: "What is it that you would like to accomplish in these three simple buckets: DC, DR, DA?"

This will force them to think about what they really want to get done, and their reply will be a really huge gift to you because you'll know:

So, what type of work falls into each of these three buckets?

Data Capture:

There are lots and lots of pure Data Capture consulting contracts, and sometimes they'll also include our next bucket…

Data Reporting:

Bonus Pro Tip: If you are going to take a lot of Data Reporting contracts, then you should create for yourself (and your company) a massive bank of the best of breed custom reports for various purposes (types of companies and types of reports requested). Then when you sign a Data Reporting contract you can pick the best custom reports from your bank, simply import them into your client's account, and boom (!) you're already in business. Don't forget to ask for a bonus for finishing early.

Bonus Custom Reports: You can download my favorite Paid Search Custom Reports and my Content Efficiency, Visitor Acquisition Efficiency and Search Micro-Ecosystem reports and get a head start with your own reports bank!

Data Analysis:

So when does the work of a web analytics consultant start or end? How much can they charge for it? Are they required to fix the code or set up experiments? What about customized data dumps?

It all depends. Is it a Data Capture, Data Reporting or Data Analysis contract?

You would be right to state that there are probably no pure DC, DR or DA contracts. They are rare, mostly because when you start doing analysis you'll notice you can't get away from meeting some reporting needs at your client. When you do reporting and analysis you'll discover implementation problems and then someone (you?) have to go fix that.

There is most certainly a symbiotic relationship between the DC, DR and DA.

But it is not uncommon for a contract to be heavily weighted in only one of these three areas. If you use this web analytics consulting framework then you'll be able to identify that upfront and set optimal scope for your contract, charge an appropriate lump sum or hourly rate, and go about working like crazy to become super rich!

A Client Perspective:

If your company is looking to hire a consultant then you should go through this exercise upfront as well. Before you call the blogger you're impressed with, before you sign on the dotted line from a consulting company that's "certified," before you extend a contract to the speaker at an industry conference.

What work do you actually have for the consultant/consulting company?

Is it majorly Data Capture? Data Reporting? Data Analysis?

What is your core weakness in terms of skills inside the company?

Why is it that your organization is HiPPO- or gut-driven, rather than you providing cogent insights to your HiPPOs so that they can mix data and their experience (or gut) to make optimal decisions?

It is never obvious.

But if you take our simple framework, ask the right questions and do some root cause analysis (or just soul searching or at least sleep on it for one night) then you'll be able to better understand what you need, you'll pay optimally for that need to be fulfilled (both contract amount and contract duration) and, I cannot tell you how brilliantly important this is, you'll find the optimal consultant who has the optimal skills you need.

It is not unusual for a million dollars to have been spent and the company to have progressed to zero percent data driven. That's because they thought they were getting a real analyst, they got a superb implementation specialist who's done data reporting but possesses zero actual analytical skills. This person, group of people if a consulting company, then spent a year (charging a million dollars) doing the world's most sophisticated implementation of Site Catalyst / WebTrends / Google Analytics. The company now has 900x more data than it needs, they have 25x more reports than they need. They just don't have any analysis.

That's a big company story.

But if you are a small business you don't have that kind of money. Hence it's even more critical that you go through, even a rough exercise, the DC, DR, DA framework. You likely need all three. Know that it is very, very hard to find the Purple Elephant that will be good at all three, so figure out where you have the greatest need. Hire her. When she's done with her core competence, go out and get the next person to take you to the next level. (And then the next.)

The Data Capture, Data Reporting and Data Analysis framework helps both clients and consultants have an immense amount of clarity on what the needs are (client), what skills are required to meet those needs (consultant) and how much time and money will be required (from the client to the consultant) to deliver glory.

I've created a helpful summary based on my humble experience along four key dimensions that I think you'll find to be of value (regardless of if you are the client or the consultant):

So use our delightful framework. Spread happiness in the world, happiness that only actions based on great data analysis can deliver.

Ok, as always it is your turn.

Do you have an alternative approach to sizing up the opportunity with a client? As a client, do you have a specific set of instructions you send out when looking for consultants? What kind of contracts are most common out there? Why can't we find more fantastic analysts in our ecosystem? What are your secrets to delivering joy to your clients? If you are a client, what secret ingredients did your last DC, DR or DA consultant possess?

Please share your insights, advice, kudos, and critique below via comments.

Thank you.

Web Analytics Consulting: A Simple Framework For Smarter Decisions is a post from: Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik

by Stoney deGeyter

Since the Bible is the best selling book of all time, I figured I might be able to find some indispensable wisdom for the Internet age. Who knew the Bible could provide us with sage advice for SEO and Internet marketing!

Each book of the Bible has an overarching historical theme. These themes can be applied to our online marketing and SEO campaigns. While the Bible doesn’t quite give us specific SEO strategies (who’d follow them anyway?), we can look at some general principles to help guide our online marketing efforts.

Genesis: The Book of Beginnings
When creating a Web marketing strategy, the foundation of your website can make or break your success. As our marketing efforts progress over time, we often find ourselves off course from the original plan. Getting back to solid marketing strategies can help ensure you’re back to the right path of a successful campaign.

Exodus: The Book of Deliverance
Sometimes we are held hostage to developers, programmers and even old marketing strategies that are holding us back. We have to be willing to break free from anything that is preventing us from building the best site possible and ensuring that search and conversion optimization strategies can be as successful as possible.

Leviticus: The Book of the Law
There are always rules that need to be followed if you want your marketing efforts to be successful. If you don’t know the basic principles of good SEO and online marketing, you’ll be wandering around in the wilderness, waiting to get to the promised land of business success.

Numbers: The Book of Counting
If you’re not looking at your analytics, you don’t know what’s working and what isn’t. Use your analytics to help you figure out what’s getting you conversions and what isn’t. Rankings get you exposure, but they don’t get you sales. In the end, conversion numbers and ROI matter most.

Deuteronomy: The Second Law
If at first you don’t succeed, make sure you’re doing it right. See Leviticus.

Joshua: The Book of War
Conquering new land with a new site is definitely a challenge. Don’t expect all your competitors to come crashing down around you as you speed up through the search results. It can take years for an effective online marketing strategy to produce ROI, but you should be seeing many victories along the way.

Judges: The Book of Rebellion and Leadership
Going it alone carries risks. Disregarding the advice of your SEO and marketing strategists will often destroy the progress you’ve made and cause you to lose ground to your competition. Follow the leadership of those who know and be free from the bondage of poor results.

Ruth: The Story of an Unlikely Redemption
Great online marketing successes may come from the most unlikely of places. Look for unique opportunities that you can incorporate into your online marketing strategy to help create a unique advantage over your competition.

1&2 Samuel: The Book of the First Kings
Choose who is going to lead your optimization and marketing strategies carefully. Putting the wrong person at the forefront of your efforts can lead to being ineffective when you’re facing key battles. However, when led by someone with their heart and mind in SEO, they can turn even sure defeats into marketing victories.

Kings & Chronicles: The Books of Succeeding Kings
Sometimes you have to go through a lot of trial and error to find conversion strategies that get the best results. Keep testing until you find a winner. Then test that to make sure it’s truly the best strategy. Never hold on to poor performing strategies.

Ezra: The Book of the Rebuilding of the Temple
If any search engine puts you in exile, there is a way out. It starts by going back to the basics, getting back to the foundational SEO and marketing strategies.

Nehemiah: The Book of the Rebuilding of the Wall
With your SEO foundation back on track, rebuilding your walls of defense is essential. Implement quality SEO strategies as quickly as possible and don’t get suckered into anything that got you into exile to begin with.

Esther: A Book of Unlikely Deliverance
Your competitors are out to destroy you. Never let your guard down and be willing to fight back! If you let your competition outpace your online marketing efforts, you will be wiped out.

Job: A Book of Pain and Healing
You can’t expect a 100% success rate. Even sites that “deserve” to be on top get beat out by a lesser competitor. These setbacks may seem disastrous, but are temporary, as long as you persevere in building up a solid website with a worthy reputation.

Psalms: A book of Poetic Prayers
There is no shortage of SEO and other online marketing stories, tips and tutorials that can help you improve your online marketing success. Learn from others so you don’t make the same mistakes.

Proverbs: The Book of Wisdom
Look for trusted sources of SEO wisdom and follow them regularly. Take what you learn to heart and apply their wisdom wherever you can.

Ecclesiastes: The Book of Common Wisdom
Conventional SEO wisdom isn’t always good wisdom, even coming from “trusted” sources. Make sure anything you read aligns with good online marketing strategies you already know.

Song of Songs: A Love Story
A properly implemented marketing strategy gets results and makes everyone happy. It’s love at its best!

The Prophets: The Books of Things to Come
Keep en eye on the future. Good SEO principles stand the test of time, but if you don’t know what’s coming, you won’t be ready to apply those principles to the current or coming age.

I’m a firm believer in finding new ways to understand SEO and online marketing. It’s not that any perspective is necessarily new, but framing good concepts in a new way can sometimes help something jump out at us and give us a new perspective. The concepts above are not new, but hopefully this collection can, God willing, help you understand your online marketing efforts more clearly and perhaps breathe new life into your SEO campaign.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Mike Fleming

When it comes to online marketing, I see and hear about way too many
companies that don’t take the paid traffic channel seriously enough.
They either don’t do it (huge mistake), or they do a
less-than-professional job of it. Maybe they do it in-house. Or, they
have an agency do it, but one that doesn’t have a dedicated paid traffic
specialist. While Google, Bing and others continuously refine their
systems to make campaign management “easier” than ever, many changes
that are made to make management “easier” come at the sacrifice of ROI. 
Also, there are strategies that professionals use that others simply
won’t know because of lack of knowledge and experience.

From
my experience, that all adds up to it being very close to 100% of the
time that the money wasted from shoddy account management more than
exceeds any management fees that a professional account manager would
charge.

Not
only that, but if you let a pro handle it, you save time and energy and
can focus on improving other aspects of your business.  So, how do you
know if you’ve set the bar high enough for choosing a PPC manager? 
Well, you should have a sense if someone is living and breathing PPC,
but here are some things you never want to hear a PPC manager say.

Bad PPC Thoughts…

“I check it every few months to make sure things are still running ok.”

“No, I don’t have brand keyword campaigns.  You already rank #1 organically for them.”

“So, what keywords do you like?”

“I just send everyone to the homepage. That way they can shop for whatever they want on the site when they get there.”

“I control the daily budget with the budget tool.”

“I only bid on terms that cost under 50 cents.”

“What are match types?”

“What are negative keywords?”

“I bid so I can be #1 for your main keywords.  Being #1 is the best, right?”

“I bid what you can afford.”

“I use automatic bidding because Google says it’s the best option and I’ll get the most clicks for the budget.”

“Isn’t that great how Google gives all those suggestions for your account?”

“I (fill in the blank) ’cause Google said so.”

“I have no idea how much each visitor to the site is worth to the company.”

“I don’t spend much time on crafting ads.  I mean, they’re only a couple simple lines, right?”

“What’s AdWords Editor?”

“I really don’t have time to test.”

“When I test ads, I keep the one that earns the highest click-through rate.”

“I use conversion rate as my success metric for all the keywords.”

“If a keyword doesn’t convert, I delete it.”

“I just run the Search and Display Networks in the same campaign.”

“I have a few campaigns with a few ad groups in each campaign.”

“Mostly, our ads communicate to the searcher what’s great about you.”

“We just use search ads for the display network too. We wrote good ones that should work anywhere.”

“I don’t look at the competition too much. I just focus on making you the best.”

(For
marketing executives) “We don’t need a professional. We can just do it
ourselves because we want control over our messaging.”

Thanks to Stoney for his contributions!

Be sure and visit our small business news site.