SiteVisibility

Quick SEO Wins for eCommerce Websites.

Kelvin — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:03:48 +0000

Not everyone has the luxury of reworking or launching their ecommerce site when they realise they have made SEO oversights. Or maybe your doing everything right but need that little extra push to overtake a competitor in the rankings.

Below are a number of quick wins we’ve implemented for clients across all sectors but some of which would work especially well for online retailers.

Use PPC Ads to Inspire Meta Descriptions

I’ve got a lot of respect for the guys who work in our PPC team and those managing campaigns all over the world. They need to regularly come up with creative ideas for text to encourage people to click. We, like a lot of agencies, talk about integrating SEO and PPC for our clients, in our experience one of the quickest wins of integration is using your successful adverts to inspire your meta descriptions.

Meta Descriptions are one of the hardest working but under appreciated elements of an SEO campaign. Take what you know gets the click from PPC and apply it to your meta.

Show your Product Feed Some Love

I talked a few weeks ago about setting up a product feed for the first time; if you don’t have a product feed that’s a great place to start. Even if you do have a feed how much time have you spent on it recently?

Your analytics will show you just how important your product feed is to sales and revenue so make sure it gets the attention it deserves.

Incentivize your repeat customers to link

Link building is hard work. If you already have community of people who believe in your service enough to buy from you repeatably their prime candidates to link to your website.

These incentives can work in different ways. Perhaps you could produce a widget which allows them to syndicate your most link worthy content on the site, maybe an SEO friendly affiliate scheme or maybe an old fashioned polite request will work!

Use you Imagery to Build Links

In my presentation about punching above your weight in eccommerce I touched on a theme which I think many retailers would be wise to explore – using their imagery as a link building tool.

The spread of user generated content has been great for written text and video about products but still imagery is still light years behind.

This is your opportunity, have more photos than all your competitors, vary them from the manufacturers and encourage people to use them on their own site. It may cost you a few pence in bandwidth but the links will be priceless.

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Quick SEO Wins for eCommerce Websites.

Want to be a Micropreneur? Rob Walling and Mike Taber Interview – Podcast Episode #60

Kelvin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:36:41 +0000

It’s that time of the week again! This week’s episode of the Internet Marketing Podcast features an interview from Andy White with the two co-founders of Micropreneur, Rob Walling & Mike Taber. They run a community website aimed at people looking to set up software businesses.

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As always you can listen in the player below, subscribe in iTunes or subscribe to the RSS feed of just the podcast here.

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Want to be a Micropreneur? Rob Walling and Mike Taber Interview – Podcast Episode #60

Seventeen Social Sites Simply Summarised

Kelvin — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:16:17 +0000

You all know how much I love creating presentations, here’s one that formed part of a crash course in social media which quickly introduced the main networks and sites with a very brief intro to the functionality.

I know most of you are a dab hand at social media but thought it might prove useful to some of you.

17 Social Sites Simply Summarised

View more presentations from Kelvin Newman.

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Seventeen Social Sites Simply Summarised

The Myth of the Perfect Link

Kelvin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:14:48 +0000

There’s no such thing as the perfect link.

I’m going to repeat this – there’s no such thing as a perfect link.

When we go about link building we aim to get a mix of links that improve as many of the following areas of a link portfolio as possible:

Authority

Anchor text

Velocity

Volume

But it’s very rare a link will allow us to do all of these things at the same time.

A link from the Guardian (unless it’s paid for) will be very hard to get, so great for your authority but not so good on the velocity and volume front.

Article syndication is great for anchor text, and can help with the volume and velocity but it’s so likely to help on your authority.

What I’m trying to get across here you need to realise you need a link building strategy which enables your site to get a variety of links but each individual link will have a different purpose in the strategy to increase your search performance.

So aim for the variety because you’re never going to get the perfect link, no matter how hard you try.

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The Myth of the Perfect Link

The Importance of Keyword Consistency

Kelvin — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:49:23 +0000

No matter how many new products Google roll out then scale back, or shifts made in the algo; there are certain elements of the search marketing process that I can’t envisage changing any time soon.

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At the very beginning of every search project there is the task of including keywords in the relevant places in a website. And just because this method is ubiquitous doesn’t mean we should take it any less seriously.

Recently when providing training to small business owners trying to pick up the basics of SEO, I’ve been referring a lot to the concept of keyword consistency.

I think it’s really helpful as an idea to beginners, but I think even the more seasoned hands should have keyword consistency on their radar.

Once you’ve decided what keywords you are targeting on a particular page you need to ensure that you’re following through with your optimisation so you’ve got every box ticked.

I normally start with the title tag as that’s still the biggest signal websites send to the engines. Don’t rush the process as there will be a number of possibilities or sequence of words, and your job is to make the best selection.

Collaborate with your colleagues

By explaining and justifying your choices you will help to ensure you’ve made the best choices.

Follow through with your h1 header

The content will probably differ from the title tag but make sure there’s a strong similarity between the content in the h1 and title tag.

Then look at your first paragraph of the body copy

If it’s not possible to put your main phrases in the first paragraph I’d question whether you’re targeting the right term.

Work through the rest of the main body copy

Are there any opportunities to slightly tweak the syntax to match the content up with the title tag and Meta description?

Read through any sub headings

These really should be marked up as h2 or h3s. People will be skim-reading your content so including the keywords will help them quickly grasp what the page is about, but also shout loudly to the search engines that there is no question about the terms you are chasing.

Then we move to two more areas in which to consider keyword consistency away from the page.

Internal Anchor Text

Whenever you mention the keyword on other pages are you linking to the page targeting the term? Don’t underestimate the importance of internal anchor text, so spend some time getting it right.

External Anchor Text

Last, and definitely not least, try and get some external deep links to the internal pages of your site. If it’s a product page you may struggle to attract links so consider using some of the link building tactics under your direct control (press releases, articles, directories) to direct links at these pages. These tactics may not have a huge influence on your sites authority, but not every link has to achieve everything.

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The Importance of Keyword Consistency

Is Your Link Building Dealing With Your Anchor Text Deficiencies?

Kelvin — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:39:39 +0000

When we look at any back link portfolio, we want to look at four key areas:

Link Volume, Link Velocity, Link Authority and Link Anchor Text.

A varied and inventive link building campaign will usually deal with the first three factors by default, but are you making sure you get the right anchor text?

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And when we talk about the right anchor text, it’s more than just aiming to get the odd keyword here and there – you need to know what the breakdown of your anchor text is.

How does that differ from your competitors anchor text?

What are your deficiencies?

And how are you going to deal with them?

Unfortunately it’s often difficult to control the anchor text which people use to link to your site. We’ve previously talked about a few ways you can influence how people link to you and these strategies become even more important when you know where your weakness lies.

Sometimes it won’t be keyword-rich anchor text you’re looking for.

Recent shifts in the algorhythm may mean your balance of keyword-rich links is an anomaly in comparison to the top ranking sites.

If you’re in this situation, tactics like press release syndication and directory submission may be your friend. Or back link analysis focusing on who is linking to your competitors using their brand as the anchor text.

Other times there will be a very clear correlation between your anchor text and the types of key phrases you are ranking fo.

Here you’ll want to increase the variety of keywords in the anchor text to rank on other terms. One of the easiest ways to do this is to create content with link potential where you use the keywords.

People link to articles or blog posts using their titles, so make sure your titles include the keyword variations you’re looking for.

Whatever your situation, you shouldn’t be carrying out your link building without an appreciation of the anchor text landscape.

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Is Your Link Building Dealing With Your Anchor Text Deficiencies?

Pubsubhubbub, Flash 5, Google Webmaster Tools & OpenSiteExplorer.org – Podcast Episode #59

Kelvin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:02:14 +0000

It’s here, the first of our new weekly episodes of the podcast.

As always you can listen to the player at the end of this post, subscribe to this feed or via itunes

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In this weeks edition we cover

Wordpress Supporting Pubsubhubbub – The video explaining it
HTML 5 & the iPad Killing Flash?
New Functionality of Google Webmaster Tools - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/sharing-verification-love.html
New Link Building Tool from SEOmoz – OpenSiteExplorer.org
Digital Economy Bill - Open Rights Group

As always you can get in touch by emailing kelvin.newman@sitevisibility.com or use the hash tag #impc on twitter

So what do you think about the Digital Economy Bill?

Can you pronounce Pubsubhubbub?

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Pubsubhubbub, Flash 5, Google Webmaster Tools & OpenSiteExplorer.org – Podcast Episode #59

Rand Fishkin Interview – SEO & Link Building

Kelvin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:00:29 +0000

We get to interview some great people for our podcast but sometimes being part of a bigger podcast they can get a little lost. So we’ve started taking our favourite inteviews and uploading them to blip.tv to make them easy to find and listen to.

This time we’ve got the poster boy of link analysis Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz we asked him about swithing from a consultancy business to a SaaP model and what he’s learn’t about search engines building his own index of the web.

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Rand Fishkin Interview – SEO & Link Building

Link Building Ideas Come Easily, the Skill is Making Them Happen

Kelvin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:07:25 +0000

On twitter I mostly share interesting blog links and spout rubbish, but one tweet I made the other day seemed to strike a bit of a chord with a few people.

I think it applies to most areas of life but I think it is also spot on when it comes to link building.

There’s hundreds, if not thousands of well trained, creative search marketers in the UK.

Despite all this talent it is still possible to get a website to rank, why? Because there’s a huge difference between creativity and execution.

Not surprisingly Seth Godin summed this up pretty well in his last book Linchpin with the mantra “Real Artists Ship”

So you should be judging your success as a creative link builder not by how many great ideas you come up with, or how inventive and unprecedented your idea was, but by whether it actually achieved results.

Without that follow-up, creativity counts for nothing.

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Link Building Ideas Come Easily, the Skill is Making Them Happen

How to Make Natural Links a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Kelvin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:19:20 +0000

In the SEO business we always talk about producing link-worthy content. It might mean a valuable, informative resource, or its trashier cousin link bait. We always recommend producing content that appeals to your audience and the people with the power to link.

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Beyond the vague recommendation to “produce great content”, what can you do to ensure it’s something that will appeal to the elusive linkerati?

Go Early

If you know a new topic or product is going to get plenty of coverage there’s leverage in being one of the first people to attack the subject. The future pieces will try and reference back the early protagonists in the debate, so we always suggest getting something out there early.

Don’t be scared about rushing something out, you can come back later and expand the piece. Even better produce a separate follow-up piece that can attract new links in its own right.

Become the De-facto Resource

Even if you’re not first to the party you can attract more links by being the most comprehensive page on a given topic.

Think of your role as a curator as well as writer.

Take what has already been written across the web, explain what it all means, synthesise it into a coherent whole and you’ll have no trouble attracting links from subsequent stories.

Produce Something Substantial

I know early I said get something out the door as quick as you can but the more valuable someone feels a piece of content is the more likely they are to reward you with a link.

Glen over at Viperchill has done a great job of analysing blog post length that makes for an interesting read

Appeal to Skim Readers

We’ve all been there when writing a blog post, we feel it needs a little extra credibility so we go on a hunt to find some other articles we can link to that supports are argument.

These people are going to quickly skim read the piece to see if it’s a good fit before giving it their full attention. Clear headings, frequent sub headings and great visuals will appeal to skim readers as well as your regular punters.

Interestingly this phenomenon makes ranking for a keyword a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you rank highly people will find you more easily and you get more links. Another reason to go early.

Use other Mediums

If you’re a regular reader here you’ll be bored of me harping on about our podcast (did I mention it’s the third most popular marketing podcast in the iTunes US?) and though we try our best to produce a great show, I think a major reason for its success is we’re using a different medium.

There tens of thousands of internet marketing blogs but only a few hundred podcasts. Which do you think is easier to get traction in?

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How to Make Natural Links a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

How to punch above your weight in eCommerce SEO

Kelvin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:04:22 +0000

We’ve worked on lots of successful SEO projects for ecommerce companies over the years and wanted to share a few of our most succesful techniques that have helped companies punch above their weight against bigger or more established competitors.

How to punch above your weight in eCommerce SEO

View more presentations from Kelvin Newman.

If you can implement these kinds of techniques on your ecommerce site you’ll quickly discover some quick wins that will help with your SEO performance.

If you work on an ecommerce site do you have any suggestions for easy ways companies can improve their SEO?

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How to punch above your weight in eCommerce SEO

Can You Outsource SEO like Tim Ferriss would in the 4 Hour Work Week?

Kelvin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:16:38 +0000

A little while back we had the pleasure of interviewing Tim Ferriss for our Podcast, this post is a follow-up exploring some of the ideas he raised in our chat.

It’s hard to argue with the central theme of Tim Ferriss’s 4-Hour Workweek, that time is your most precious resource. One of Tim’s ideas of how to spend less time on work is to outsource large chunks of it to qualified staff, often overseas. In-house SEOs or small businesses may not have the resources to fund a UK based search agency, so consider other options.

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Can you outsource your SEO in your own geo-arbitrage scheme? I asked Tim in our recent podcast interview about outsourcing marketing and he gave a clear response that almost every task can be outsourced to some extent. He said to keep the mission critical tasks with people you trust and start with low risk and low skill requests.

So if you’ve followed that advice how can you go about outsourcing your search engine marketing?

Break your task down

There are hundreds of overseas SEO companies offering a full range of services. Some are no doubt very good at their job. Some, based on our clients experience, are useless. Unless you are showing due dillegence you might end up with one of the rubbish ones.

One quick way to avoid this is to break down the elements of your link building into smaller, less-specialist tasks. Perhaps you have a list of potential link prospects; could an experienced web researcher save you time by compiling their contact details for you to follow up yourself?

Perhaps you want to write an in-depth whitepaper but the formatting is skew-whiff and could do with a good hand spell check – again much more sensible to outsource than a generic ‘SEO’ brief.

Make your brief crystal clear

Not a lot of people like to hear this but when off-shore out-sourcing goes wrong it’s normally the clients fault rather than the supplier. They may have provided an insufficient brief or assumed their partner understands their internal jargon, so don’t assume anything. The simpler and more precise the brief the better.

Fully expect that it may take longer to write the specification than it would take you to do the task, but the efficiency savings would come in the future when the task can be performed with the same specification.

Just because labour is cheaper than the UK, don’t treat it as a commodity

I’ve come across many examples of people who would normally make purchasing decisions based on quality and reputation completely change their approach when they off-shore work.

The average cost may be cheaper than in the UK and US, but that doesn’t mean your purchasing decision should be price sensitive.

Explore Different Opportunities

On a few personal projects I’ve used elance to tap into expert resource overseas and can definitely recommend their service, but there are other very well regarded services you should explore. Here are a few of the most popular options:

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Can You Outsource SEO like Tim Ferriss would in the 4 Hour Work Week?

Interview with Alicia Navarro from SkimLinks Plus Questions and answers – Podcast Episode #58

Kelvin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:36:13 +0000

In this podcast we cover a variety of questions from our listeners and interviewed Alicia Navarro one of the founders of SkimLinks, a tool which could completely change the way you monetise your website. Alicia also reveals some exclusive new tools!

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Plus also some huge news, we’re taking the podcast weekly!

You can listen in itunes or in the player below.

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Interview with Alicia Navarro from SkimLinks Plus Questions and answers – Podcast Episode #58

Stephen Waddington Interview – Online PR

Kelvin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:00:37 +0000

Online PR is a bit of a battleground between various disciplines all of whom think they are best qualified to deliver the service. But the best practitioner haven’t got involved in the debate they’ve just been busy delivering great work. One of the most respected proponents of online PR is Stephen Waddington.

In the podcast interview available below I asked him about how to get started in Online PR, what makes it different from offline and our shared interest of “The Apprentice”

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Stephen Waddington Interview – Online PR

The Marketing Directors’ Guide to Search – A Whitepaper

Kelvin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:16:06 +0000

I love the process of putting together a whitepaper,

You can take processes you use internally and package them up to share with the industry, you can use the opportunity research new areas and strategies or, in the case of our latest whitepaper, take some complex ideas and synthesis them into a coherent whole.

In The Marketing Directors’ Guide to Search we’ve tried to take the insular world of search into the wider marketing mix.

We’ve all heard about search engine optimisation but what’s all the fuss about, and how do you make it fit seamlessly into your existing business marketing strategy?

The Marketing Directors’ Guide to Search will show you how existing common marketing models like Ansoff and Boston can be applied to the world of digital marketing.

Download The Marketing Directors’ Guide to Search here or pick up a copy from our stand H32 at TFM where we’re also giving away a pair of noise cancelling headphones

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The Marketing Directors’ Guide to Search – A Whitepaper

Why the Affiliate Industry PWNS Specialist Search Marketers

Kelvin — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 09:00:41 +0000

As an SEO through and through it pains me to say this but affiliate marketers are better at SEO than search marketers whether they work in-house or agency side.

I don’t think this is because they understand engines any better, or because they are more inventive or creative; it’s because of some of their strengths and opportunity they are more effective at their job.

But why are affiliate marketers better at SEO

Take bigger risks – if you do SEO for a living, the chances are you don’t ‘own’ the websites you work on. Agency or in-house the chances you are the best you can hope for is to be a pretty big stakeholder. Lots of affiliates have complete control over their site so can take bigger risks or make the full scale changes that efficient SEO often requires.

They don’t have to have their decisions approved by clients or their bosses so can respond quickly and take advantage of opportunities while search marketers are dealing with red-tape.

Genuinely understand ROI – if you only get paid every-time you make a sale and you can track that sale back to a particularly combination of marketing techniques you’re only going to invest your time and money in what works.

That’s not to say SEO’s don’t get ROI, but very few of us live and die by the sword in the same way and affiliate does to make a living.

Tracking is second nature – search marketers appreciation and understanding is growing no end, everyday I read a post in the SEO blogosphere about a new metric or hack to Google Analytics.

But hardened brazen affiliates have always had access to numbers and stats from their network so in many cases are much more confident, competant & canny with their tracking solution of choice.

Have to do more to stay level – Google’s fairly recent Vince update isn’t the only way search results favour those who are old school big-boys. The whole page rank and link building paradigm is skewed in such a way that if you already have a share of mind and attention it doesn’t require as much effort to carry out SEO techniques. If you’re an agile one man affiliate empire you’ve got to run fast to stay still.

Many of the clever and inventive techniques used by affiliates if they were applied to bigger sites would absolutely decimate the search ranking results pages.

Right level of focus - there’s two main SEO roles. in-house or agency. If your in-house there’s a good chance you’ll only work on a couple or small number of sites; there’s a chance you’ll get caught up in minute of the site or worse still struggle for inventive new ideas. Agency staff have a different problem, the fact is they’ll be working on a large number of campaigns, if they’re not careful they won’t have enough time or attention to give a site the thought it deserves.

All that being said I think SEO’s do a great job, and it’s not easy which means when you consistently deliver results (which most of us do) it’s even more impressive given the challenges you have to deal with.

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Why the Affiliate Industry PWNS Specialist Search Marketers

Cut-out & keep guide to affiliate links that help your SEO

Kelvin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 09:00:14 +0000

Just before Christmas walking SEO oracle Rob Kerry put up a post on his new blog about the options for affiliate tracking which can help your SEO by passing trust and page rank.

If you haven’t read it already I suggest you head over there and give his post a good read. It’s a great exploration of the possibilities and seems to suggest that # anchor based affiliate links are the best option if you have an in-house affiliate scheme.

SiteVisibility's Cut-out & Keep Guide to affiliate links that help your SEO (125)

I liked Rob’s post but I want to summarise the points in a print out I could give other members of the team and our clients so I put the findings in a nice chart which I’m sharing above. I hope it proves useful and Rob doesn’t mind me stealing his ideas!

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Cut-out & keep guide to affiliate links that help your SEO

Crenk’s Greatest Hits

Kelvin — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:08:09 +0000

Unlike a lot of the blogs we’ve covered in our greatest hits series I’m actually a fairly recent convert to the work of the chaps over at Crenk. But looking back through their archive seems I’ve missed some classic posts.

So they seemed like a perfect choice to highlight and share some of our favourite posts of theirs.

We ‘re nearing the end of the first batch of sites we have compile our top tens for, so if there’s any particular sites you’d like us to cover drop us a note and we’ll add them to the list!

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Crenk’s Greatest Hits

Win a set of noise canceling Sennheiser headphones at our stand at TFM

Kelvin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:26:38 +0000

We’re exhibiting next week at TFM&A where we’ll be sharing our new whitepaper which is a guide to Search for Marketing Directors. You can pick up a copy at our stand H32.

And if that wasn’t reason enough to come visit us we’ll also be giving away a pair of Sennheiser noise cancelling headphone each day of the event. The perfect set of cans to listen to the world’s second most listened to Marketing Podcast.

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Win a set of noise canceling Sennheiser headphones at our stand at TFM

Interview with Brian Clifton Author of Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics

Kelvin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:00:32 +0000

Ahead of SES London we’ve been lucky enough to interview a few of the speakers at the event. When we saw the agenda though there was someone who sprung out as someone we really wanted to interview, Brian Clifton.

If you’ve not come across Brian before he’s the author of the excellent Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics and also maintains a really practical and readable blog on analytics.

We asked Brian about how he measure’s SEO ahead of his session Meaningful SEO Metrics: Going Beyond the Numbers

Q. What’s the biggest mistake people make when measuring their SEO?

A. Focusing only on SEO! Seriously, you would be surprised at how many people still treat SEO as a silo. As for all an organisation’s marketing efforts, SEO needs to be compared and understood along side other channels. For example, there is a great deal an SEO expert can learn from the results of PPC, email, social media and even offline marketing campaigns. Although the reasons for arriving at your website may be different if you came from say, organic search, the visitor is still a potential customer seeking you out. Hence, the performance of a visitor from a PPC keyword click-through, for example, is valuable research data when planning an SEO strategy. Answers to questions such as, did the PPC visitor purchase on first visit? Conduct an on-site product search? If so, using which keywords are all important pieces of information for the SEO expert.

I also find people make the mistake of not looking beyond the referral data. In other words, what visitors do once on the site. They can be too focused on achieving the top positions at Google. For example, you might be number 1 for fifty keywords and it all looks good, However, these may not be the keywords that convert visitors to engaged visitors, or engaged visitors into customers.

Q. How do you measure link building?

A. Unless a visitor actually arrives on your website from a referral link, you cannot measure who is linking to you on the web using an “on-site” web analytics tool such as Google Analytics, Yahoo Analytics, Omniture etc. That is the realm of off-site tools. However, if visitors do follow those links you have from other websites, then you can track them. The trick is to group or categorise your referrers so you can compare performance.

For example, if a travel site is receiving referral visits from tripadvisor.com, www.guardian.co.uk/travel, www.virtualtourist.com etc, these should be grouped as “Review referrals” or similar, and compared with “Social network referrals”, “Partner referrals” and so forth. That way you avoid missing key data spikes that can be buried under the plethora of referrals that most sites receive (typically thousands per month). In Google Analytics, you achieve this either by using Advanced Segments or re-write Filters.

Q. What’s your favourite over looked SEO metric?

A. Farming for new relevant keywords from visitors that use on-site search i.e. internal search. OK, this is not a metric per se – more of a process, but it is a great opportunity that is often over-looked. On-site search is an excellent feedback mechanism for your search marketing department. That is, visitors telling you exactly what they want to see on your website.

In addition to discovering new keywords, perhaps there are variations in usage or spelling you can take account of in your page content. Perhaps visitors are using relevant keywords after they are on your site that you are not aware of. For example, visitors looking for books may also use keywords such as “how-to guides,” “manuals,” “whitepapers,” and “tech sheets” on your internal site search. This is a perfect opportunity to build and optimize your website content for those additional, related terms.

Q. You’re a big fan of Google Analytics is there ever a reason to chose a paid option?

A. Yes, its true I have drunk a lot of Google cool-aid in the past and I am a big fan. But I have worked both sides of the Google fence and their products have strengths and weaknesses just like any other. In addition, its important to bear in mind that no one tool can achieve everything. Some reasons for looking at an alternative web metrics solution include:

ISP/Hosting providers
These require large scale automation – particularly for account setup. Google Analytics is just not setup that way. For this, the better solution is to run licensed software on your web servers.
Intranets
Google Analytics requires an open Internet connection to communicate with Google data collection servers. If that is not possible, behind a firewall/intranet for example, then licensed software is the alternative.
Customisation
If you are a CMS, CRM vendor, or you are a large portal, you may wish to embed a custom analytics tool into your products. For example, including only certain metrics or creating your own product specific ones. There are now customisation abilities with the GA Export API, though that still queries pre-processed data. Sometimes you want the raw data.

Despite those caveats for using Google Analytics, Google does have a product that can also meet those needs – you just can’t get away from them – and its called Urchin Software (www.google.com/urchin). My thoughts of Urchin v GA are discussed here: http://www.advanced-web-metrics.com/blog/2010/01/29/what-is-urchin-6/

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Interview with Brian Clifton Author of Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics

The Real Reasons Marketers Love Twitter

Kelvin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:29:34 +0000

Marketers absolutely luuuuuuuurrrrrrrve Twitter, but whats the real reasons why they are so infatuated with the service…

The Real Reasons Marketers Love Twitter

View more presentations from Kelvin Newman.

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The Real Reasons Marketers Love Twitter

Next #BrightonSEO Meet-Up Friday 19th of FEB – Beers and Mini Conference

Kelvin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:05:51 +0000

Brighton is a hotspot of SEO talent, you only need to look at the pages of the WiredSussex directory to appreciate that. But unlike our cousins up in London it’s rare we get to sit down together, talk a little shop, gossip about other companies and generally have a good chinwag.

The guys at FreshEgg kindly sponsored the last #BrightonSEO event before Christmas and after seeing the great success it was a few of us talked about making the next event even bigger and better.

So I bit the bullet and booked the next event at The Quadrant Brighton from 2PM on February 19th. Even the more hardened drinkers among you may blink at starting at 2 but it’s that early to include a half day free mini-conference as well as the social beers in the evening from half 6.

Anyone is welcome offer to give a knowledge sharing presentation in the afternoon (by droping me an email on kelvin.newman@sitevisibility.com) we’ve already had some great volunteers from local experts and a few people from the rest of the country but it would be great to highlight some new talent who may never have spoken at an event like this before.

As always with these kind of events they go better with a few free beers for everyone, so if you sell a product or service to search marketers and want to buy their favour with beverages get in touch and we’ll see if we can come to an arrangement. Or maybe your feeling generous and fancy buying a round in advance anyways.

So spread the news on your blogs and twitter accounts and let us know in the comments here or on linkedin if your coming.

Post from Apple Pie & Custard the blog from SiteVisibility a Brighton SEO Company

Next #BrightonSEO Meet-Up Friday 19th of FEB – Beers and Mini Conference

Avinash Kaushik Interview – Measuring Social Media & Analytics

Kelvin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 09:01:43 +0000

Awhile ago for the podcast we interviewed Avinash Kaushik the world renowned Google Analytics authority about measuring social media and hacking Google Analytics.

I know for some people the thought of listening to a full podcast can be a little scary, so I’ve taken the interview and uploaded it with some stills to blip.tv

Post from Apple Pie & Custard the blog from SiteVisibility a Brighton SEO Company

Avinash Kaushik Interview – Measuring Social Media & Analytics

A Crash Course in SEO Outsourcing & Offshoring with Abhishek Rungta

Kelvin — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:39:45 +0000

Last week we did a follow up blog post to our interview with Tim Ferris asking whether you could outsource your SEO in the manner of 4 Hour Work Week which make a good companion read to this interview we carried out Abhishek Rungta of Indus Net Technologies, a top Indian SEO company.

Abhishek Rungta

In the run up to SES London, we’ve been fortunate enough to interview several of the speakers ahead of the event. Abhishek is talking on Best Practices in Offshore Outsourcing for Digital Marketing which promises to be one of the most interesting panels of the event.

I asked him about the practicalities of outsourcing and how to avoid getting your fingers burnt.

In your panel at SES London you’ll be talking about outsourcing in SEO, why would someone want to outsource their search marketing?

People outsource for various reasons:

Unavailability of in-house resource / talent / capabilities
Scaling a business model without worrying about delivery
Cost-cutting / cost-rationalization / profit optimization
Temporary staffing needs / seasonal peaks in work

Search marketing is a fast changing field. Techniques and best practices are changing all the times and therefore it needs specialized hands i.e. a search marketing company to do justice to the job.

Besides, some simple tasks in a search marketing project are highly manpower intensive. Therefore there is an opportunity to optimize the process through an outsourcing company and reduce the cost to increase operating margins.

Last, but not the least, it will become a necessity in days to come. We are living in a flat world and competition will use outsourcing as a competitive tool to outsmart their peers. It is always good to be an early adopter and gain competitive advantage.

A lot of people who have outsourced their SEO have had their fingers burnt, what’s the best way to avoid wasting your money?

Very good question. Some ways to avoid disappointment are:

1. Ask for references.
2. Check out their expertise and experience by checking their past results
3. Verify the infrastructure and manpower claim that the company makes
4. Verify their financial stability. Ask for credit report and audited financial statements.
5. Check out their social media presence. Are their top management accessible through social media?
6. Start small, get compatible, spend time in building relationship and then scale up
7. Avoid outsourcing ‘rush projects’ or ‘projects past their deadline’

One more thing (specially for search marketing outsourcing) -

8. Discuss (in detail) the process / procedure that they will be following (avoid black-hat)

Do you think agencies or individuals should disclose to their customers that they are using an overseas resource?

This is a personal choice. If an agency is offering lower rates and want to convince their customer of their sound business model, they may like to disclose the fact that they have optimized their cost by outsourcing. In my experience, most of the agencies prefer ‘not to disclose’ the outsourcing relationship because:

1. They do not want their customer to get anxious
2. There is a lot of negative sentiments about ‘outsourcing’ in general
3. They do not want their competitors to get a hint of their strategic move

Outsourcing is something that mankind has been doing for years now. When we walk into a restaurant, we are outsourcing our food! When we can outsource things as critical as our food, what is wrong in outsourcing a simple project or a business process? And, with the flatter world, the sourcing can be done from any corner of the world. I presume, it will take some time for all of us to get comfortable with the changes that has surfaced due to this flat world order. And it is understandable.

How has the problems with the economy effected the Indian SEO out-sourcing industry?

The economy has not been a major dampener in search marketing outsourcing industry. The industry is in its nascent stage and is yet to achieve a critical mass. Therefore, the economic downturn has not impacted the industry in terms of order volumes. In fact it has benefited the outsourcing industry by providing option for better processes and lower costs model.

With the talent at India’s disposal do you think the next Google/Twitter/Facebook etc could be launched their and achieve the same success in the western world?

It is very much possible. In fact Slideshare is partially Indian. ZOHO is 100% Indian.

Besides this, there are several ventures which uses India as its back office. This results in practical learning for the technology community, and eventually it will result in several ventures to bloom in days to come.

I, along with Pallav Nadhani, have launched a seed fund called Seeders (www.seeders.in) to incubate and fund such ventures. We are clearly seeing the shift. I can confidently tell you that it is just a matter of time.

Post from Apple Pie & Custard the blog from SiteVisibility a Brighton SEO Company

A Crash Course in SEO Outsourcing & Offshoring with Abhishek Rungta

Is Rel Canonical the Answer To Your International Search Woes?

Kelvin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:45:36 +0000

We’ve talked a little recently about how the Rel Canonical tag can be used to avoid common place duplication problems.

How to avoid your sites fighting over the same content – Credit

Recently we’ve been trailing the attribute to deal with some of the common problems which occur when developing two different websites, each targeting variations of the English language.

In the following example we’ll talk about a site currently in the UK launching an American equivalent, which was the exact problem our client had.

For example, if it is a property site, it might be possible to look at overseas American property on the UK site and on the American site look at what is your local copy.

Content will be available in two places, and this causes a duplication problem which will impair the ability of both sites to rank well for long-tail keywords contained on the individual property page.

The best practice solution would be to vary the content so the two listings were suitably different, so as to avoid tripping any duplication filters. This is unlikely to be scalable, so I would suggest a different option based on Google’s newly introduced cross domain ‘rel canonical’ protocol.

The rel canonical protocol allows a webmaster to communicate to a search engine that they are aware of the duplication occurring and where the original definitive version of the page is located even if this is on a different domain.

This could work really well to avoid the duplication between the UK and American version of your site. In this example I’d recommend using the rel canonical tag to let Google know the location of the equivalent job listing on the American site.

How do you do it? You would need to create a element as follows:

Copy this link into the section of all non-canonical versions of the page, such as www.example.co.uk /american/property123. SEOmoz have even pointed out recently it does no harm to use the canonical tag on the canon page.

Of course ideally this process will be managed dynamically by your database.

We’re trialing this as we speak, and have seen some great initial findings. Have any readers been doing this longer term? What successes or failures have you seen?

Post from Apple Pie & Custard the blog from SiteVisibility a Brighton SEO Company

Is Rel Canonical the Answer To Your International Search Woes?