Tomorrow (June 1st 2009) at 17:30, I am going to co-host a session about choosing SEO and SEM agency, a quite popular dilemma online marketers experience.

I hope those of you who attend affilicon will come to the session and find it beneficial, I also invite you to come meet me and my team at our booth #413 (next to the bar) and for those who won’t - perhaps next time…

You can see my presentation embedded here:

Today I will cover two new Google Analytics add-ons - increase your size & snip-n-tag - I strongly recommend using - so you better read on…

Google Analytics Add-on #1 - Supersize Me

No, I’m not talking about the controversial movie but a very nifty add-on for Google Analytics which is going to make my work so much more efficient.

gaDeAnalyse is a greas monkey script which you install and it changes the way web pages look by altering the HTML via JavaScript (very simplified explanation. details here)

gaDeAnalyse solves two very nasty pains of Google analytics:

1. Having Funnel creation/editing form fields too narrow
gaDeAnalyse  simply expands these fields for much better and easier configuration (no more moving back and forth with the arrow…)

Before:

After:

2. Funnel and Filters Auto-Complete
Typing the same filter rules again and again is sometimes very frustrating. so this cool tool gives us the auto-complete too!

This tool was developed by Brian Katz at VKI Studios a colleague I highly respect - way too go Brian!

Installation:

Instructions on installing the script:

1. Make sure you have Greasemonkey installed in Firefox.
2. Click on this install link for gaDeAnalyse
3. Now log-in to your Google Analytics account and enjoy - particularly all you exhibitionists out there who do screencasts and demos of long filter expressions and goal paths.

Google Analytics Add-on #2 - Snip-N-Tag Link Builder

Creating links with good tracking URLs is something I always struggle with my clients. Mistakes often happen when they leave out a mandatory parameter or simply compose the syntax wrong… But these are not close to sending these long parameter rich URLs via email…

So Tyson Kirksey @ NMG built us a firefox sidebar which builds these URLs on the fly. His initial idea was to improve the way we track twitter referrals, but I find his solution (only launched this week) to have a much broader potential to help end users build customized, shortened and traceable links to whatever traffic they are generating for their web properties.

This is much better than the regular Google Analytics Tracking URL builder as the sidebar is much more accessible and does not interfere with the browsing experience (stay on the same page) plus get the short URL in place…

And here’s how it looks like:

Install Snip-n-Tag here.

So folks, thanks to Tyson and Brian we now have better tools - Download, use, feedback, twitter, link etc…

*Cheers*

Ophir

Last few days I saw some weird new metrics on my Google AdWords report center. At first I didn’t pay too much attention, but then came Google’s message and it got me thinking about the whole concept of conversion attribution models and how easily we can get the wrong conclusions when not analyzing the data properly. I will now present how easily we can persuade ourselves to take wrong campaign actions based on data which may seem very promising.

Problem #1: Working solely by Cost per Lead

The simplest example I can think of can be in the finance sector. Let’s assume we are running two campaigns generating leads for mortgages, and focusing on optimizing cost per lead:

Campaign #1 generated 1000 leads, costing $5 lead, $5,000 total cost - and we seem very happy with it.

Campaign #2, generated 500 leads, costing $10 per lead, $5,000 total cost - and we are considering pausing it / changing or whatever else.

Now let’s add to the equation the following parameter:

Parameter k: ration of qualified leads vs. junk leads

Junk leads are those leads where you either find that the data is not validated, unresponsive to phone calls and emails and basically those leads which you find out are worthless i.e. probably not even interested in your product.

Quality leads are those leads which you can put into your sales pipeline and have a probably chance to convert to paying customers.

The ratio of quality leads vs. junk leads (or the proportion of quality leads from the total leads count) is super important, and sometimes will change your overall decision making, such as the following example:

Campaign #1
k=40%
Campaign #1 had 40% quality leads = 400. Its “effective” cost per quality lead is now $5000/400 = $12.5 per quality lead.

Campaign #2
k=80%
Campaign #2 had 80% quality leads > 400. Its “effective” cost per quality lead is now $5000/400 = $12.5 per quality lead.

Are you confused? You should be. Numbers can be very misleading. We now see that our preliminary analysis was misleading us to think one campaign is outperforming the other, while they are actually quite similar.

Ratio of Quality Leads vs. Junk must be put into the Cost per Lead Formula

But let’s make this even more interesting, and move on to Problem #2:

Problem #2: Ignoring the differentiated Value per Lead

Now let’s add to our equation Parameter m: average value per average mortgage requested.

Campaign #1
m=$100,000

Campaign #1 generated 400 leads for mortgages valued at $40,000,000.

Campaign #2
m = $150,000

Campaign #1 generated 400 leads for mortgages valued at $60,000,000.

Bottom line here is that campaign #2 has the potential for much more business than campaign #1, even though its preliminary cost per lead seemed high.

Finally, my point is we really must calculate our entire conversion funnel, from each ad impression cost to actual income, in order to get proper decisions for our campaigns. Decisions which are not based on complete analysis, can sometimes lead us to the complete opposite directions and conclusions.

Canonical Link Elements tools we already have:

• Firefox extension
• Wordpress plugin

Well I got to my email and started looking for blogs and tweets on the subject - and it indeed we are probably entering a new phase in the duplicate content fight.

The Duplicate Content Dilemma in 10 lines:

The most basic way to explain, is where you have a piece of content which can be reached from multiple URL’s. Whenever users and search engines go to 2 distinct URLs and get the same (or almost the same) content the robots need to decide whether to index a second version of the same content or not.

This presents lots of issues with ranking for keywords, ranking at all, receiving more or less of Googlebot’s indexing quota and the bottom is we’ve seen this kill websites and revives them the last few years.

There are spam related issues here but from my vast experience mostly its programming and architecture issues which may cause duplication and triplication of the same content via many URL’s.

Canonical Link Element at page level  - The Night in Shining Armour?

The Canonical Link Element at page level Google presents will allow web site owners to ‘tell’ the engines which version of the page is the original one, which needs to be indexed.

Did you knowe that in many cases, tracking URLs (those we use to spot affiliates and campaigns) are creating duplicate URLs?
example:
http://www.ophircohen.com/new_post/
http://www.ophircohen.com/new_post/?source=twitter&message=new_post

Both URLs will lead to the same content, but the engines most of the time have a hard time telling whether we’re talking about 1 page w tracking parameters or 2 distinct pages.

The new tag assumes to “hint” the engines on the original (=canonical) URL, and is composed as follows:

<head>
…
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.ophircohen.com/new_post/”/>
…
</head>

Tips:

1. This is a new feature - so use it carfully, monitor it’s behavior and don’t count on it TOO much as nobody really knows how fast the engines will be able to process it.

2. Do not stop fighting actual content duplication. Use 301 redirects to make sure all your content look the same and under a unified URL structure. the new link element is just a “hint” to the engine (says Cutts)

Matt Cutts original slides:

And the Video:

Matt Cutts on Canonical

To summarize this, SEO is an evolving creature. Back in the early days “Meta description” was enough, then came Google and links, directories, DMOZ, link exchange, link buyng, link development, link bait and duplicate content. Each of these had a huge hype, buzz and effect on SERPS and on many businesses - It was only a matter of time until Google solves this equazion - the question remains - what’s next?

We received note from the Google team asking us to verify our integration between Google AdWords and Google Analytics as they are about to upgrade the integration between the two on march 4th.

The required actions are simply to verify that the accounts are connected AND that the “apply cost data” checkbox is checked on the analytics profile settings panel.

I’ll take this opportunity to revisit the whole AdWords - Analytics integration process, which is a pretty basic feature most of us can benefit from. However, most of the new accounts I meet are just not set properly hence losing out on some pretty neat features and insights on their websites and campaigns.

Linking Google Adwords and Analytics 101

Why link AdWords and Google Analytics?

• It’s there and it’s free - so why not?
• Consolidate your marketing activities and analyze together.
• See you Google AdWords QUALITY of traffic, not just quantity.
• Cross Reference AdWords campaigns with traffic segments.

Linking Adwords and Analytics in 5 Easy Steps

• Login to AdWords
• Click the “Analytics” tab
• Select “I already have an analytics account“
• Select “Existing Google accounts” and select your Analytics Account
• Make sure both check boxes below are CHECKED

That’s it - You’re Done!!!

(allow a day or two for the data to synch)

Things to remember…

• There is a 1 to 1 relationship between AdWords and Google Analytics accounts. One AdWords Account will connect to only one Google Analytics account and vice verse.
• If your AdWords account contains campaigns to other websites they will also show up on Google Analytics and mess your stats. Keep each website’s campaign on their own account.
• Set both Adwords and Analytics accounts for the same time zone else your stats will be skewed.
• Make sure that on your Google Adwords account settings, Auto Tagging is active. Else, Tag your URLs based on the Google Analytics syntax - URL builder can be found here: http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578I’ve done what you asked for - now what?

Segment you traffic:

There are at least three ways to segment your data on Google Analytics. The behave a bit differently, enable different depth of analysis and clarity of the data - but as long as you use one of them properly it’s OK:

• Using Built in Reports
• Using Custom Filters
• Using Advanced Segments

Look at Adwords data quality - identify problematic campaigns, ad groups, keywords and optimize them based on Analytics KPIs such as goal conversion, bounce rate, time on site, visitor loyalty etc.

Optimize your campaigns

• Optimize Keyword selection
• Optimize Ad copy
• Optimize geo-targeting
• Change bids

References:

http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2008/08/18/linking-adwords-analytics-troubleshooting-guide/

http://www.iqcontent.com/blog/2007/07/linking-up-google-adwords-and-google-analytics/

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2009/01/google-analytics-and-adwords-better.html

60 Seconds and AdWords & Analytics together:

What is _setVar in Google Analytics?

_setVar is a custom variable Google Analytics can read, which enables us to send Google Analytics certain data which is not predefined in google analytics and may be relevant for our reporting needs. Popular examples are differentiation between user’s status (logged in vs. not logged in), male vs. female and whatever else variables we want to segment our traffic on. This can be done with values submitted via forms (username, gender, age group etc.), saved in cookies etc.

All the website owner needs to do is to call the javascript (below the GATC code):
<script type=”text/javascript”>pageTracker._setVar(’logged in’);</script> 

_setVar values are collected into a special report in Google Analytics which can be found under Visitors > User Defined.

Known Limitations of _setVar:

• You can only send one variable, so you are somewhat limited in the customization here. There is a workaround John has posted for this at lunametrics.
• Use of _setVar creates a second instance of Google Analytics one each page, which has lead GA to reduce the bounce rate significantly on pages with _setVar. This Changed yesterday (explanation below).

Some more info from Google help

What is Bounce Rate in Google Analytics

Bounce Rate is best defined as a “bad” visit. It is a quick qualifying metric which determines whether a visitor has acted or not. The basic assumption is that we want our visitors to engage with the websites and pages thus to consume our information, click on links, download stuff, buy stuff etc.
Bounce rate is determined where a visit occured and none of the above interactions occured afterwards:

• Pageview
• Action
• Transaction
• Experiment (Google Website optimizer)
• User Defined Call (_setvar) - will no longer be considered interaction for this calculation.

The true meaning of bounce usually show low interest in a landing page for the bouncing visitors. Bounce Rate is one of the most powerfull fast-metrics we use to find good and bad traffic sources, as well as pinpoint landing pages needs to be improved.

Some more info:

• Avinash Kaushik Video 
• WikiPedia Page for bounce rate
• From Google help

The Change and its Impacts

The recent change changes the way bounce rate is calculated. Bounce Rate will no longer consider a user defined interaction (calling _setVar) in the calculation. The major impact for users who call the user defined finction will be an INCREASE in the bounce rate.

So is it good or bad news?

In my humble opinion this is great news. This change is based on a lot of comments from Google Analytics users and experts around the globe, and reflects Google’s ability to listen and improve their software accordingly. Moreover, the change will simply mae our analysis better and more exact than it was before.

Webmaster tools 101

So why do we need it and what’s in it for me? Well, in general, the webmaster tools panel is the only legitimate and official feedback platform which the engines supply us. That on its own, is more than enough for me to say “hey, let’s take a look at that these guys have to say for themselves”.

the very basic features are:

* One place to submit my standard XML site maps directly to the engines
* Feedback on crawling errors and problems
* Feedback on duplicate content issues (Google only)
* Feedback and settings for regional and domain name issues
* Control over “sitelinks” feature (Google only)

Leveraging Webmaster tools for SEO Success

While these tool are mostly ‘nice to have’, most are not very applicable. in the following clause I will give a few pointers as to how webmaster tools research became my primary place to look for root cause of indexing and ranking issues and how they can be solved using a few examples.

* Feed the crawlers with your content
Create XML site maps, use proper formatting and put only relevant content. make sure your sitemaps update automatically  so Google doesn’t have to crawl the same content again and again.

* Find & Fix Broken links: lists of broken links from the webmaster tools panel will help us fix these broken links which can easily disturb our users. Moreover, they cause the crawlers extra work which ends up with bad results, resulting in reduced indexing and credibility for the entire web site.

* Find Server Problems
the “crawl stats” panel shows last 90 of google’s crawling history on your site: How many pages were downloaded every day, how much data was downloaded and the bandwidth it took. optimizing server performance and code standards can improve these parameters significantly.

* Fix Duplicate Content issues
Google webmaster tools reports duplicate descriptions and titles under the diagnostics > content area. Google shows samples of duplications they found including the actual duplicate links. All you need to do is go back to the programmers and fix the problems and you have more spider food.

* Improve crawling Efficiency
In the past, it was a well known habit to bombard Google with as much content and pages possible. This was, to say the least a bad concept. While we do want Google to take as much content from our website, havin them index our “terms of use” over and over again is really a waste of resources, and based on the assumption that every website received a certain data and bandwidth quote from the crawlers, we want them to maximize the effectiveness of their visit.
Therefore the proper use of robotx.txt directive and nofollow links (internal too) may help to guide Google to our core content and the important pages of the web site.

* Remove unwanted content
using the manual remove you can remove certain pages and even complete websites from the google index fast and at ease. The requirement is that the pages either have a block directive in the robots.txt file, noindex meta tag or to return a 404 - then you can simply enter pages from yur site you want removed an they will be removed almost immediately.
This is good also to improve the crawling and ranking efficiency.

* Find bad outgoing links
A new feature from the Live webmaster tools panel enables reporting of pages suspected as malware as well as outgoing links pointing at malware pages. This is really cool and important and may solve a lot of problems.

* Pump up your link development strategy
Both engines show you exactly which pages are linking to your pages from within your domain and from outside your domain. Analyzing that list can help a lot to understand how engines see your incoming links, where you need to improve and how to do it.

* Improve your regional rankings
Google webmaster tools and Live webmaster tools both offer the option to set your geo-target which may contradict your actual server or IP address location. Moreover, Live webmaster tools offers a very coo feature which presents the nciming links to the domain with their regional setting therefore you can easily see where most your links come from and optimize your link strategy accordingly.

Link Bait Techniques

In order to get high quality links massively and ongoing basis we must ‘re-invent” our selves, our product and offering in order to create enough interest with other bloggers and web site editors to link to us, naturally and favorably.

Some ideas were around leverage seasonality with events such as quarterly reports for public companies, new CEO’s, new product launches etc. Another idea was getting .edu links by finding .edu sites maintained by students and some other cute ideas.

SEO Strategy for Web 2.0

Lead by Vanessa Fox, this session deals with larger scale dynamic UGC websites. Nathan Buggia discussed general strategy of what web sites in the 2.0 era should offer, Tom Critchlow of Distilled discussed aspects of internal linking and enabling external linking more easily using nice examples from last.fm and youtube.

Dave Naylor is talking about his experience with UGC and the limitations of control vs. moderation vs. anarchy and their impolications on business and on SEO specifically. Later on David added that Yahoo! is cloaking their external links from their various products with tracking links, in a debate on how to best deal with AJX and content which needs to be scuplted.

Mikkel deMib (amazing colorful suite, as always) is discussing the web 2.0 issues such as use of AJAX and interactions which may be problematic with SEO.

Mikkel describes issues with using AJAX such as using the “#” sign to mask script URL’s and discusses the questions need to be asked when implementing AJAX solutions on web 2.0 web site.

One very nice example is actually the opposite where Mikkel recommend using AJAX to sculpt links. For example if you do not want too many links out from your homepage you can sculpt your links to sub-categories via AJAX thus to maintain your pagerank flow managed.

Next, Mikkel discussed UGC concepts. For instance, Mikkel describes that you may not need keyword research because people write similarly to how they search Now this theory needs to be checked but it does make some sense you must admit.

One Page - One Link Strategy:

Teach your users to get 1 link to their content. one 1 link for each content piece may mean thousands and thousands of new links every month.

That’s it for now… will keep updating after lunch.

So day 1 at SMX London 2008 has ended..

It was a crazy long day, lots of fun and very interesting. Below are the day’s highlights, from my personal perspective.

SMX London 2008- Day 1

The first session began right on time, with the moderation of Chris Sherman hosting two Microsoft speakers: Nathan Buggia and ZhaoHui Tang. They both spoke mainly on MSN/Live however the products and tools they demonstrated, even though developed by the Microsoft team are relevant to all. The discussion was mainly around the Microsoft adCenter Excel Add-in, the Microsoft Ad Labs with their nifty researching tools and the MSN/Live webmaster center (similar to Google webmaster central)

The Global Search Universe

The next session I attended had Andy Atkins-Kruger, Robin Goad and Linus Gregoriadis discussed international aspects of the Internet usage, insights to search behavior and some interesting data with regards to the search industry in 2007 vs. 2008. While staying at the high level and not drilling down to the very details, the session was very informative, insightful and all speakers provided great value. here are a few slides I took with my mobile and I thought are worthwhile:

Fundamentals of Search Advertising

After lunch came my turn After Chris Sherman’s opening words, I gave the first presentation in the “Fundamentals of Search Advertising” session, a short overview of what I sometimes call “PPC Thinking” - or more practically: “5 steps to mastering Google Adwords Campaigns” (Dowload my SMX London 2008 PPC presentation here). Next to me where Alan K’necht, who spoke about looking at keywords data from the web analytics standpoint, Kelly Gillease who showed tecniques on pulling the rght reports and digging te gold from the tons of data and concluded with and Richard Gregory of Latitude who spoke about some new and exciting concepts and up to date changes (thanks again for dinner).

International SEO

The last session I attended was International SEO, moderated by Vanessa Fox and hosting Andy Atkins-Kruger, Duncan Morris and Heini van Bergen.
This was a very interesting and highly professional session about handling international website from the SEO perspective. What domains to use? what sub domain/ sub folders/ local TLD policy to implement? how to technically make sure all works as it should to maximize the international search potential? A lot of these questions where answered and I must say with very much detail. One thing that caught my eyes specifically was to issue of adding the office addresses to localized versions of pages (similarly to local search guidelines) in order to enable the search engines to sort out the regional relevance of the page properly - I’m sure going to implement this.

After that we headed to a drinking party hosted by LondonSEO.org (thanks fr the beer) and followed by dinner with some friends and a night walk in the streets of London. The rest I really do not remember…