Graduated Search Marketers at eMetrics San Francisco?

I love Jim Sterne. He comes up with the most fun sessions for his eMetrics conferences! I will be on a session called Serious Search. In our cap and gowns a few us will provide the audience with the top 3 things we learned in graduate school and open the floor to discussions about - well - search analytics. eMetrics is THE educational conference for advanced web analytics people with a great focus on teaching the basics of managing paid search marketing. May 5-7 in San Francisco. He saved the best for last - come hang out with us on Wednesday May 7th.

SA-6 Wednesday, 1:30 - 2:30
Serious Search - Graduate Level

Barbara Coll, WebMama.com Inc.
Gary Angel, Semphonic
Michael Stebbins, Market Motive

You’ve read the books, you track the blogs, you’ve got most of your search marketing in hand and are doing a pretty good job of it. Now it’s time to take it to the next level. Find out what Gary, Michael and Barbara learned in 30 years of combined experience in search and analytics. They have definitely matriculated and are ready to outline where things are going next with online search. Come learn from the graduates.

Dana Todd and The WebMama Working Together

Dana Todd and WebMama.com are joining forces to provide WebMama.com clients and prospects with exciting (some would say explosive) insights into the future of marketing. Dana and I are both well known in the world of internet/online/web marketing and have been search marketing visionaries and disturbers of the peace for at least 10 years each. Both are founders of SEMPO. Both have been Presidents and Chairs for the organization. Dana has the reddest hair and WebMama is one of the most recognizable brand names in the industry. What a team!

Dana's forward-thinking into direct marketing and brand marketing strategies will provide my company with opportunities to discuss with the C-Suite the value of search marketing as an integral part of all marketing strategies and programs. For the prospects and clients who can handle the phenomenal, out-of-the-box ideas and the fast-paced presentation style of Dana Todd, there will be great rewards in helping their company navigate the ever changing world of search and web marketing.

In addition, Dana will be working with the WebMama team to increase their knowledge of a broader range of marketing strategies and tactics based on Dana's experiences with SiteLab. Dana has also announced her involvement in start-up NewsForce, working as CMO.

Can you imagine the two of us together in front of companies like HP, Guthy-Renker and VMware? Can you imagine the two of us ever letting the clients get a word in edgewise!!!??

Moving your Site to a New Domain Name - Scary!!

The Google Central Webmaster blog has posted "Best practices When Moving Your Site"; and it confirms everything my team and I have been preaching for years and adds some additional good stuff. A summary in my own words:

- Use a 301 redirect on a file by file or directory by directory basis (this is really hard)
- Check to see if the new pages are in the index and the old pages are being taken out
- Don't change too much at once. Move the entire site, let it settle and then throw up a redesign or vice versa
- Watch to make sure pages aren't ending up in 404s unless absolutely unavoidable
- Make sure all internal links are pointing to the new domain
- Try (this is really, really hard) to get external links pointed to the new domain
- Keep the old site up and running for a while (Google suggests 180 days). [I would never give up control but I might take it offline]
- Submit a sitemap to all engines that accept the standard

They suggest using Google Webmaster Tools on both domains to help track 404s and to ensure that 301s are working. Some great questions and comments follow the posting.

Thanks for the validation and the great information Google.

Google Ads on Yahoo - Screenshot as proof

On the East coast my colleague has seen our client advertising campaigns on Yahoo switch from Yahoo/Overture to Google AdWords. On the West coast I can not duplicate the appearance. Here is a screen shot from the East.

Search yourselves for VMware or Vonage and send me what you see. DON'T CLICK unless you are interested in the product ;) We measure everything!

The Definitive List of Resources for Keyword Analysis

Determining what keywords to use for optimizing a website is the first step in the SEO process isn’t easy. Here the WebMama team gives you our list of sources for information for this critical stage in all Search Engine Marketing projects. Hope they help make you more successful.

Tools

1. WordTracker [info , free trial]
2. Google AdWords [tool – no account required]
3. Google Trends [tool – relative volume analysis]
4. MSN Keyword Focus [tool - volume analysis]
5. MSN Keyword Group Detection [tool – no account required]
6. Keyword Discovery [info – free trial]
7. Thesaurus
8. Overture [tool – times out regularly]
9. Answers.com

Informational Online Sources

Inside the Client Properties

10. Corporate Blogs
11. Blog Tags
12. Press Releases
13. Current website content
14. Marketing creatives for banners, etc
15. Email campaign content
16. Personas developed for the site

Outside the Client Properties

17. Industry forums
18. Product/Service reviews (and comments)
19. Online magazines
20. Competition’s sites and marketing campaigns
21. Relevant social media group discussions

Non-Online Sources

22. TV ads
23. Radio copy
24. Print ads
25. Focus groups “what would you put in a search box to find our products and/or services”
26. Magazines/newspapers
27. Video advertising
28. Other forms of marketing, especially those of competitors
29. Sales training materials

Data Sources

30. Paid search statistics from all campaigns
31. Organic traffic statistics
32. Internal site search

People in the Company

33. Executives
34. Product Managers
35. Web Developers
36. Web Producers
37. User Interface Designers
38. Customer Experience team
39. Direct Sales
40. Inside Sales
41. Call Center
42. Customer Service
43. Content writers
44. Marketing brand managers
45. ‘whomever hired us’

Use your source information, filter it through the VCR edict that all keywords need to be a balance of Volume, Conversion and Relevancy, and the result will be the right keywords for optimizing your website and increasing visibility and converting traffic to your website.

This list is available in a Word document called KeywordResourceList.doc should you want to spread the word.

Google Filling in Forms - security risks & marketing disaster

Seriously this is scary. Matt Cutts talked about Google filling in forms to get at more data. From an SEO point of view it is unnecessary - if the site owner wants stuff indexed they should make it available. WebMama's clients are all directed this way.

From all other points of view I see this as a real problem.

1. Marketing uses forms all the time to capture lead information. And they measure it. Let’s say Google tries to ‘fill out’ the form and get to the inside information once a day for a month. That is 30 hits on the form that were completed but did not convert. Kind of messes with the data.

2. No matter what they say would you, as a security/risk manager, be satisfied that Google isn’t going to try and ‘guess’ the login or password just because the button or form element has something familiar on it like ‘password’. A lot of personal information (aka healthcare) and business information (aka intranet access) lie behind forms.

3. What if the form is about gathering demographic information. I am not sure that the demographics of a search engine or the demographics of some bot with keywords that are randomly chosen is information an advertiser is trying to capture.

“So now we get GoogleBot instead of Donald Duck as the false name on our forms.”

Google Organic Search - Second Search Based On Previous Query

This is important. Danny Sullivan reports from Austrailia today:

Previous Query

Last year, we covered (and here) how Google was changing the ads it displayed based on the previous query someone performed. For example, search for [spain] then do a new search for [travel], and you may notice how the ads will be targeted around Spanish travel (see also Google's help page on this).

Google's never given this feature a formal name, but Marissa said internally the company calls it "Previous Query," the first time to my knowledge that we've had some type of formal name put to it. Learn the name well, because Previous Query refinement is now coming to unpaid or "organic" search results, she said.

For example, if someone were to search for [spain] and then [travel] after that, BOTH the ads and the organic results will be altered to take the previous query into account. To some degree, it will be as if the second query was for [spain travel].

This is a big deal. Big deal. It means that the results for many "single word" queries, which can be hard for sites to rank for when billions of listings come back, will become queries involving two or more words -- and much more specific ones.

When's it happening? "Soon." Indeed, it's already been happening for several weeks for some people randomly selected. Who will get it, when live? Everyone that accepts a cookie. IE, it's not personalized search thing that only happens if you're logged in.

How could a user opt-out. Heh. I didn't get to asking that, sorry. But I imagine any search where the + symbol is used before a word or words will override Previous Query.

Google & Trademarks & UK: A Good Thing For Clients

What is all the complaining about? I am thrilled we will be able to bid on competitor's brand words in the UK and Ireland starting in May 2008. That has always been a successful tactic - for years and years. People seem concerned that the bid price will go up. Yes, the price will probably go up but it has been cheap for a long time and I am sure that smart marketers can find a way to control their Affiliates and Partners. We had to put those controls in in the US/Canada a long time ago. I am not saying it isn't still a battle and that it doesn't take constant policing, it does.

NetImperative- Google Sparks Controversy with New Trademark Policy
BigMouthMedia - Google to Introduce Open Keyword bidding on all terms in UK and Ireland
WebProNews -Google Gives UK Adwords Trademark Bidding
BlogStorm - Big Changes to Google's Adwords Trademark Policy and its follow up reactions

Note - I am constantly surprised by people who think Google shouldn't do this to 'line their pockets'. Of course they should. They are a public company who is accountable for their bottom line to stockholders. It isn't about good and evil - it is about growth and making Wall Street happy.

More Search within a Search - tell Google to take it down.

Search within Search addition to Google search results is a more implementation of Google's desire to get more people to see ads if they don't click on them the first time. And I agree with Janel Landis that this may increase advertiser's brand search CPC.

Janel's article on 'Working with Google's Search with Search Functionality' April 4, 2008.

One note - 10 cents for a brand search!!!! No way. Higher, higher, higher. And even higher if you don't have your affiliates, resellers and/or competitors under control.

Google Sitelinks - Observations and Recommendations

Ellen Ferlazzo, WebMama.com Content Optimization Specialist, on Google Sitelinks:

Barb recently asked me to take another look at sitelinks, those links on Google search results below your main entry. Sitelinks are now appearing in the SERPs for smaller sites as well as larger ones.

How do you get sitelinks to show up?

You seem most likely to get sitelinks when users search for your branded term and your home page ranks #1 for that term. But while branded terms are more common, I know some sites that have sitelinks on non-branded terms. This seems to occur most often when the home page rather than an internal page is ranked #1 for that non-branded term. But I have also seen internal pages that are getting sitelinks so it’s not a hard and fast rule. I suspect the algorithms are being tweaked and tested.

As to getting sitelinks, I think the basics are still the key. Make sure you have:

• Clear navigation for the user
• Appropriate title tags, H1s, etc.
• Internal linking on or near key terms pointing to your important pages

Which pages show up in the sitelinks?

Google says the selection is totally automated. Some sitelinks pages are popular pages but others are not. They do not have to be linked to directly from the home page but all the ones I have seen are linked to quite often. Speculation is that Google is analyzing user behavior as well as site navigation to select these. One of my clients has two different sitelinks with slightly different text going to slightly different pages. I suspect one will disappear soon as it doesn’t seem very useful. Once Google has selected sitelinks for you, you can log into your Google Webmaster Tools account and block a particular page from being used as a sitelink but you do not get say in what ones should be included; you can’t even make suggestions along that line.

What text is used in the sitelinks?

Matt Cutts said Google is varying the text used in sitelinks, sometimes a bit from the page title and other times from the link text, which is certainly what I’m seeing today. For one of my clients, they’re picking up the text near a link placed underneath the Flash for those who have Flash disabled. One of their other text links exists nowhere on the home page, but it is a common call to action in one section of the site. Again though, Google is not using the actual linked text here. At one point they were picking up part of a title tag but they’ve changed that to be just part of the link text at this point.

Something else new: a new search button below sitelinks

Several of my client sites now have a search field and customized button “Search theirsite.com”) underneath their sitelinks. On one of them, Google reduced the number of sitelinks from 8 to 6. The other stayed at 8. Experimentation is definitely the name of the game at this point. [note from Barb – this box is a bad things for our clients. Searchers use the box thinking they will be sent to results inside the site, but no, they are sent to another Google page with more ads. Bad user experience and if you ask nicely, Google is taking it down.]

More blogs on sitelinks

Matt Cutts video from Nov 2007
Vanessa Fox from Nov 2007
SeoPedia FAQ from March 2008
blah,blah technology from Feb 2008

More about the Google Patent that relates to sitelinks:

From SEO By the Sea:
Google filed a patent talking about how they "might" use these. Best guesses are that Google is accessing:

* how often the page is accessed
* how long people stay on the page
* the likelihood of making a purchase there

The patent application suggests they're using toolbar-gathered info as well as general SEO practices. The patent also suggests they might eventually present personalized sitelinks based on your past behavior but this does not seem to be happening now.

How links are generated

http://searchengineland.com/070212-093435.php suggests it's mainly based on internal link structure and the popularity of internal pages.
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/8704 suggests actionable web pages get higher value (downloads, contact us, buy.) I suspect Google is trying to provide a mix of information pages and action pages.