aaron dalrymple dot com

I just read a great article by Mike Grehan about the future of Search Engine Optimization. The question, “what is the future of search” is getting asked a lot lately. It’s changed a whole lot since I first got involved just about 10 years ago.

One key element that Grehan points out is that SEO is a really a function of marketing, which I don’t think many people outside the industry (and some inside) really understand. He says,

…even though industry leaders acknowledge that SEO is much more of a marketing process than a technical effort, there’s still a lot of fixation on crawler activity and indexing.

Most new clients and even developers I work with tend to think that I can put up some meta tags and do some voodoo to their code and, POOF, their site will be “optimized.” A lot of people (and, again, developers) call me a week before a new site is set to go live and say, “can you make sure this is optimized?”

Another thing Grehan mentions that stands out to me is:

Personalization and digital asset optimization will end 1999-style ranking reports, as search engine results will be based on blended results from end-user specifics, such as geographic location, time of day, previous searching history, and peer group preference.

Thank god! I’ve already started to ween myself, and clients, off of ranking reports. And with the availability of good analytics programs (like Google Analytics), there is really no need to base success on a handful of keywords. Ranking reports are easy to manipulate, inaccurate, can provide a false sense of SEO success (or failure) and, today, really have very little value.

It HAS to be about conversions! 1000 #1 placements aren’t any good if users aren’t going to and taking action on your site. Unfortunately, the search industry is still pushing rankings (Guaranteed #1 in Google!) as the be-all and end-all of SEO success. Let me make this my new motto:

Rankings are not an End, But a Means to an End…

Another key here is that great rankings and great traffic still aren’t any good on a broken site. This is why I’ve started to include a site analysis incorporating usability best practices as part of my standard SEO offering. My job is not rankings, it’s to help my clients succeed.

Another thing to point out from Grehan’s piece is that SEO is really turning into Reputation Management:

Reputation management will become more important as marketing continues its reversal from a broadcast medium to a listening medium.

It’s part of your overall marketing message. It’s about having a consistent marketing message acorss all channels and monitoring the voice of consumers. It’s social networks, it’s blogs, it’s public relations, it’s search results, and… just a little bit of voodoo. (-;

The Future of SEO - ClickZ

Bookmark:

Tagged as: Google, Search Engines, Marketing, SEO, Online Marketing, Analytics, Mike Grehan, Future of SEO

1 Comment »

Making practical sense of web stats such as time-on-site and pages-per-visit is hard enough. Getting those mysterious numbers to paint a picture that helps quantify results for companies and clients is nearly impossible with most metrics. Spencer Lavery of FreshEgg.com has come up with an equation he calls the “Engagement Factor” to help make sense of user’s behavior that looks beyond visitors and conversions.

Internet travel is so focused on conversion factors that sometimes we forget that engaging users really is the first step to converting them to customers. Many travelers simply don’t buy on their first visit to a given site; if you’re ONLY chasing sales conversion rates you may be missing out on a much more basic conversion factor… converting visitors to return visitors so that you have a second or third chance to convert them to customers.

Check out his equation below. Does this make sense for travel sites? I think it might…

The Engagement Factor - Google, Internet Marketing, Web Design,

Bookmark:

Tagged as: Travel Marketing, Marketing, SEM, Online Marketing, Analytics, metrics, internet marketing, travel marketing, engadgement factor

1 Comment »

More energy continues to go into PPC advertising. According to DoubleClick, while the cost of keywords held steady in Q2:

Year-over-year overall spending on search and impressions grew by almost 50 percent; active keywords grew by 58 percent while total clicks increased by 32 percent.

Obviously marketers are getting smarter about how many keywords they’re using in their campaigns. Without knowing, though, how these increased keywords and increased spending have affected the overall ROI - or effectiveness of PPC advertising - it’s hard to assess what these numbers really mean for marketers.

Clicks increasing by 32% and the fact that terms that previously cost between 21 and 99 cents now go for more than $1, does mean that the engines are making hay.

I’ll bet that when Q3 numbers come out we’ll see an even greater proportional increase in the take for the engines. With 60% of the market share, Google’s recent update is bound to boost its take considerably.

All this can’t help but make me wonder how much longer natural SEO (non-paid results) are going to be relevant. What’s to gain on the part of the search engines by putting any development, resources, etc. into natural results? Especially for Google, who doesn’t have CPM advertising all over their pages…

MediaPost Publications - Performics: Q2 Keyword Costs Flat - 10/02/2006

Bookmark:

Tagged as: Google, Search Engines, Yahoo, SEM, SEO, Online Marketing, Analytics, PPC, MediaPost, DoubleClick, Adwords

No Comments »

I think I mentioned something about this last month. Sure enough, here it is.

Analytics have never been easy to nail down. Even though most internet marketers have a love affair with them, they’re not always reliable or easy to comprehend for that matter. The data you really want many times seems just out of reach for even the best web stats packages. And as technology changes, so does the ability of today’s webstat packages to accurately track visitors on your site.

According to this piece from ClickZ, tabbed browsing, which is part of Firefox and will soon be a part of Microsoft’s IE7, has changed the way that users interact with websites and may, at some point, have an impact on the accuracy of your web analytics. Tabbed browsing may affect cookie tracking, path tracking, time on site (heck, sometimes I have pages open in tabs for days at a time), and others, all mentioned in the article.

Last month I linked to a clickstream study that believes that web services are largely responsible for changes in how users interact with the web, including the fact that 15% of all web navigation actions are now form submissions.

I would also be curious to learn how AJAX is affecting web analytics. In an AJAX application, the interaction with the user all takes place within one page view…

Web Analytics: The Results of Tabbed Browsing

Bookmark:

Tagged as: Travel Marketing, Marketing, Online Marketing, Analytics, AJAX, Web Analytics, IE7, Firefox, Tabbed Browsing, Clickstream

No Comments »

According to OneStat, a web analytics company, most people use two and three word phrases when using a search engine and less people are using one word phrases when compared to last year.

This is important information to consider when coming up with keywords to target for your search engine optimization campaign. One word keywords are also usually the most competitive too. So, the point is, don’t waste a lot of time trying to get a top placement for “travel” when it’s searched for less and has much more competition (Google currently has over 3 billion pages indexed for “travel”).

A better strategy would be to target 10 (or 20 or 100) two to four keyword phrases that more accurately describe your product, then create additional content to cover those terms. Your chances of a top ranking go up and you’ll be appealing to a wide range of searchers who are looking specifically for what you are offering.

Here is the breakdown according to OneStat’s data. The 7 most used word phrases in search engines on the web are:

July 2006
1. 2 word phrases 28.91%
2. 3 word phrase 27.85%
3. 4 word phrases 17.11%
4. 1 word phrases 11.43%
5. 5 word phrases 8.25%
6. 6 word phrases 3.68%
7. 7 word phrases 1.59%

The data is also broken down by country. Most of the countries have similar search behavior with the exception being Germany. Germans seem to be stuck on shorter search terms with 28.89% searching for one word terms and just over 40% searching for two word terms. I wonder why the big difference… Any ideas?

OneStat.com - Press Box

Bookmark:

Tagged as: Google, Search Engines, SEO, Online Marketing, Optimization Tips, Analytics, OneStat, search behavior,

No Comments »

For the low price of your contact information (or a hotmail account you haven’t touched since 1996) you can grab a copy of Omniture’s industry guide for one of five industry segments. The guides are a decent little source of current info, trends and research from one of the top web analytics companies. They’re 10-15 pages of info that is sure to look great on PowerPoint presentations everywhere! Of course they’re a little sales pitchy, but it’s free. The segments include:

• Retail & Commerce
• Media & Content
• Financial Services
• Travel & Hospitality
• B2B & Lead Generation

Get yours here:
Industry Guides

I also see that the Omniture home page is now displaying a new download:
7 Steps to Increase Conversion Engagement - Applying Relevancy

Bookmark:

Tagged as: Travel Marketing, Marketing, Online Marketing, Analytics, omniture, marketing trends, industry guides, Retail, Media, Financial Services, Travel, Hospitality, B2B, Lead Generation

No Comments »

Lee Odden has posted an interview with Eric T. Peterson, Vice President with the Visual Sciences division of WebSideStory.  WebSideStory is a web analytics firm based in San Diego and is the company behind the HitBox stats product as well as HBX Analytics, search and bid management tools, consulting services and more.  Peterson is also the author of several books on web measurement and analytics.  It’s a great post from one of the best general SEO/Online Marketing Blogs out there.

Lee is, like me, based in Minneapolis - although he’s been here a lot longer than I have.  I’ve followed his blog for a year or so and finally got the chance to meet him at Pubcon in Boston this year.

Peterson is speaking tonight in Minneapolis, which I am going to try to make if I can shift around some other plans, and it should give some good insight into web analytics, which most of us do need.  I find that many companies I work with study, view and process web analytics - and LOVE to use them in presentations - but few know how to make that extra step of applying that knowledge to site usability and making the customer experience better and more profitable.

Read Lee’s piece here:
Web Analytics Demystified - Interview with Eric T. Peterson » Online Marketing Blog

Bookmark:

Tagged as: Online Marketing, Blogging, Analytics, web analytics, WebSideStory, Lee Odden, Eric Peterson

No Comments »