Not surprisingly, the larger a website is, the higher the percentage of in-view display ads. The top 50 sites for each brand’s industry vertical had the highest in-view percentage at 77%, but then declined steadily when broadened to include the top 100, 200, and so on.

Display ad size also seems to affect its in-view frequency. Leaderboard ad units, the 728×90 pixel display ads that appear across the top of a webpage, were in-view 74% of the time, the largest percentage of any position. Medium rectangles were in-view 69% of the time, with so-called “wide skyscrapers”, those ads that span vertically down the page, ranking last at 66%. This data points to one of our previous blog posts regarding the importance of above-the-scroll web design and advertising. It also shows that any ad that you have to scroll down to view entirely, such as a wide skyscraper, is going to lose the viewers interest. And conversely, a large vivid ad at the very top of a webpage is going to be the premium spot.

Most importantly, comScore and AdSafe Media’s research reveals that, regardless of ad size or placement, a sizable portion of display ads are not even meeting the lowest standard of branding impact. When looking at pure impressions, the percentages would assuredly go up; however, it does not mean that the ads are engaging the viewer in any real sense.

We are already seeing a trend towards finding alternatives to display ads, and also novel attempts to find clearer standards for more effectively measuring their ROI. For example, the respected online advertising management provider Marin Software recently found that Facebook ad spending is shifting from marketplace ads, those targeted display ads that show up in a user’s right-hand column (as determined by “likes” and demographics), toward Sponsored Stories. These are posts that brands actually pay for to promote greater visibility and which users can interact with, thereby becoming measurable data culled from each user’s social graph.

In less than a year, from April 2011 to March 2012, Facebook ad budgets allocated to social ads grew from just 5% to 23%, with Marin expecting this trend to reach 50% soon. Another indicator of this switch is that cost per click for social ads increased 86% and display ads decreased 15% over the same period. Is it a more effective form of advertising? According to the click-through data, Marin determined consumer engagement with Facebook ads had increased 50%.

Of course, Facebook is only one area of the online landscape. None of this is to say advertisers should, or will, reject display advertising. When properly deployed, it continues to thrive in the search, classifieds, and mobile categories. Recently, it’s become trendy to predict the eventual demise of display advertising, but much more likely in the months and years to come is a more integrated relationship between display and social advertising, and the adoption of more accurate measurements for the effectiveness of traditional display ads other than simple impressions.

When running a website, being able to figure out where your traffic is coming from and what it’s doing once it reaches your site is critical. Because of this glaring necessity, Google Analytics is arguably one of the best things that’s ever happened to webmasters, but it can also be an information overload to the uninitiated. Even those who have been using the tool for a long time often discover a new feature or a new way to take advantage of an existing one.

If you’re going to start using any version of web analytics, be it paid or free, learning the lingo is a good foundation to build upon. Once you learn some of the basics, the intuitiveness of many of these platforms, especially Google Analytics, will allow you to track and influence your site’s traffic and significantly increase its value.

Common Terms

Understanding some common terms in analytics is essential. For instance, “bounce rate” is a term that is thrown around frequently. The bounce rate is simply the ratio of people who visit your site and leave after seeing one page compared to the total number of visitors. “Unique visitors” is another term that is used often. This is a term that simply refers to individuals who come to your site for the first time. Also, learn your acronyms! Terms like CPA (cost per action), CPC (cost per click), and CTR (click through rate) are some of the most commonly referred to, and most important metrics within web analytics.

Identify Where Revenue Comes From

One of the nice things about using web analytics is that you can actually see exactly where your revenue is coming from by identifying which traffic sources produce the most sales or conversions. For instance, if people that get to your site from the search engines convert at a much higher rate than those who get there from advertising, you’ll know which visitors you want more of on your site. Additionally, you can create custom channels to segment the data even further. Find out which traffic sources are being used by people who have already been to your site, and which are being used by first time visitors.

Broaden Your View

Try to use a holistic approach to examining your website traffic. These means focusing on several key parameters in order to get a comprehensive idea of what is happening. Most people who use analytics focus on just one piece of data, like the overall number of visitors, or the keyword that is sending the most traffic, or with the highest conversion rate. These can only give you a skewed view of what’s happening. It’s just as important to focus on time on site and many other factors that aren’t always immediately obvious.

Use Calculated Metrics

When examining the traffic from your website, you need to use calculated metrics as much as possible. For example, using the ROI or return on investment metric will help you see exactly what you are getting out of the dollars that you’re investing in your site.

Get Visual

Another attractive feature of using analytics software is that it allows you to convert the data into graph mode. When you see things on a graph, they are much easier to visualize, especially historically. This allows you to figure out where trends are occurring and what is really happening on your site. Since numbers can only go so far to give you an idea of what is going on, using graph mode is the best way to get a bird’s eye view of what’s really happening on your site – the image at the top of the post being a great example of this.

In our ongoing effort to provide the highest standard of web analytics consulting, we’re introducing our new ongoing Google Analytics series today. We plan to cover both general strategies as well as more granular tactics that both web analytics novices and experts can glean helpful information from. To begin, we answer a simple question: what are the benefits of using web analytics?

Analytics is the difference between a good website and a great website. Without knowing where your traffic comes from or when and why it leaves, your website will not be able to become the successful website you want it to be. Google Analytics fulfills this essential need by creating a web analytics solution that can be used by both website owners and marketers to better understand their users’ experiences, optimize site content, and track marketing performance. In essence, Google Analytics is a lot like a football team’s video analysis personnel who monitor every play for exactly why it failed or succeeded. It’s not glamorous and it doesn’t come with a lot of thanks, but without it, any team is hard pressed to win.

Google Analytics is user friendly and intuitive to use, meaning anyone with a website can set up Google Analytics relatively easily and start tracking the traffic to their website in a short amount of time. The data is reliable, and for a free service, quite robust. Website owners can establish goals, track conversions, determine which keywords are driving people to their site, and with newer versions of Analytics, even determine what percentage of clicks certain buttons on a page drive. Once Google Analytics is installed it starts collecting all of this data and more about the website in order to help website owners make informed decisions that can help their websites succeed.

Regardless of your objectives for your website, it’s important that some sort of analytics tracking is established to monitor how your website is performing. Without analytics a website owners’ ability to grow their website into a successful, thriving business or community is almost impossible. Google Analytics is the best choice for any website owner looking to improve their website and have a myriad of tools at their disposal for little to no cost.

Keep coming back for more information about best practices for using Google Analytics, as we plan to cover many of its important aspects and how it can help your business in the posts to come.

According to a recent report by Experian, Pinterest has become the third most popular social network in the United States, behind only Facebook and Twitter. The widely circulated Hitwise report, released early this month, reveals huge increases in visitors to Pinterest’s website – most impressively, a 50% gain from January to February that put it over both LinkedIn and Google+.

The rankings, by total visits for March, are as follows:

1. Facebook: 7 billion
2. Twitter: 182 million
3. Pinterest: 104 million
4. LinkedIn: 86 million
5. Tagged: 72 million
6. Google+: 61 million

Perhaps most startling about this data is how clearly it illustrates the stranglehold that Facebook has within the social media realm, to say nothing of Pinterest claiming over 20 million more visits than LinkedIn. Not bad for a digital bulletin board site that’s only 2 years old and was, until recently, frequented primarily by hobbyists and crafters.

It should be noted that in the report, Experian was only measuring visitors, while several other market research services got slightly different results by including pageviews into their data. For example, Alexa.com ranks Pinterest only fourth among social networks, still behind LinkedIn. Complete.com, ranking.com, quantcast.com, and urltrends.com list Pinterest fourth among social sites as well.

And Pinterest isn’t the only network growing. From December 2010 to December 2011 Twitter grew by 45% and LinkedIn by 98%. And everyone’s favorite whipping boy at the moment, Google+, actually grew a very impressive 800% from August 2011 to December 2011.

Regardless of slight differences in the ranking data, it clearly shows that Pinterest should not be ignored by businesses looking for further connection with their customers. There are already several great examples of companies who have embraced its simple, highly-visual pin/repin dynamic, such as Southwest Airlines, Etsy (no surprise there), and Whole Foods.

It offers another outlet for businesses to let their hair down a bit and have fun with their audience, but also provides inroads to unique demographics vis-à-vis other social networks: women accounted for 60% of the visitors and a higher percentage of users in the Midwest, Northwest, and Southeast.

While a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign can be a powerful tool for a small business to help drive conversions and traffic, PPC campaigns are not always the best solution for small businesses that rely on local sales, such as restaurants and coffee houses. Additionally, small businesses often have a hard time tracking how effective their PPC campaigns are unless they use a “whisper” code or some other method to identify that the client was sent in via the PPC campaign.

A study conducted by Google found that 62% of small businesses nationwide do not have a website, 1 out of 5 Google map queries are local businesses or places, and 97% of consumers use mobile phones to research a purchase they plan to make that day. All of this means that more consumers are using the Web to make decisions about where they decide to spend their money than ever before.

Google took note of this and launched AdWords Express to accommodate small businesses that are concerned with attracting local customers, but may not have the budget or time to establish a successful PPC campaign. A company establishes its AdWords Express account by first signing up via Google. The account can then be connected to its own free Google Places page and Google Maps entry so that customers searching for location specific queries will see their business. Once the company is signed up, it claims its business type from one of many pre-defined categories which are, in turn, linked to sets of pre-selected keywords applicable to the business type. Google then runs its own algorithm against the keywords to determine if the keywords are attracting an acceptable amount of traffic and clicks. If the algorithm determines that the keywords are not driving enough clicks, it adjusts the campaign to increase traffic. The budget is set by the company and the campaign automatically turns off once this is spent.

AdWords Express is displayed in the same area as AdWords and competes in the same auction, with Express also determining its cost per click rates using the same method as AdWords. Google’s ultimate goal with Express was to make it indistinguishable from traditional AdWords from a user perspective, just more flexible for a small business.

While a traditional PPC campaign still holds many benefits over AdWords Express, such as increased customization and reach, Express offers an easy and affordable solution for small businesses to increase their exposure. The ubiquity of the Web now requires any small business to establish their marketing campaign and budget with a digital presence in mind, and for any small businesses that rely on local customers and sales, Express should be an effective solution to increasing their customer base.

How do smaller online marketing firms maintain the edge in their hyper-competitive industry? There are probably a thousand different answers to that question, and in reality, it is a combination of many factors. But while experience, knowledge, and a passion for delivering client success are important, customer-centricity remains one of, if not the biggest, factor.

One of the biggest trends sweeping online business today is for companies to focus an increasing amount of their attention and resources on customer service and customer experience. We see this both within our clients’ industries as well as our own, and the pace is only increasing. For this reason, we were happy with the results of our most recent client survey. Our clients’ feedback illustrated the fact that paying constant, close attention to their needs and desires, coupled with round-the-clock availability, is of the utmost importance.

Respected online marketer and blogger, Nick Stamoulis’ recent post on setting expectations for potential clients brings up a few good points as well. Once you start working with a client, their needs, obviously, take precedence, and part of delivering premier customer care is taking whatever time is necessary to make that happen. But before the contact is signed and a potential client is inquiring about your services, you can’t sacrifice too much of your precious time (and at a small online marketing firm, time is very precious) answering questions and giving advice. He outlines three general rules that are good for businesses seeking online consulting services to remember during the initial stages:

1) Don’t go looking for free advice This may seem self-evident, but it can be surprisingly common. Of course, this doesn’t mean that online marketers should be dismissive or rude, but rather that we can’t properly do our jobs without access to a client’s analytics, AdWords accounts, and other pertinent data. So it’s best for both parties to wait until the contract is signed before consulting.

2) Don’t expect me to drop everything to call you back This can be tricky, but when forging a relationship with a client, you want to show that you’re willing to go the extra mile for them, but without neglecting your current clients. Stamoulis has had prospects call several times a day, and expect their voicemails and emails to be answered within the hour – and that just isn’t realistic.

3) Don’t second guess your instinct This roughly translates to not wasting your time and the marketing firm’s time by unnecessarily drawing out the vetting process. Be decisive, if your gut tells you that this firm is a good fit for your company, then go for it. Besides, the sooner you get started with your new SEO, PPC, and SMO campaigns, the sooner you’ll start to reap the benefits.

By now you’ve probably heard the news that, as of March 1st, Google will consolidate its 70+ privacy policies into one, marking a sea change in Google’s attitude toward privacy and tracking. Much of the buzz has been negative, and Google has been putting out fires for the past week, but the switch does not necessarily mean that the search giant is dropping the “Don’t” from their famous motto, “Don’t Be Evil”. First, the Google blog spin:

“Finally, what we’re not changing. We remain committed to data liberation, so if you want to take your information elsewhere you can. We don’t sell your personal information, nor do we share it externally without your permission except in very limited circumstances like a valid court order. We try hard to be transparent about the information we collect, and to give you meaningful choices about how it is used—for example our Ads Preferences Manager enables you to edit the interest categories we advertise against or turn off certain Google ads altogether. And we continue to design privacy controls, like Google+’s circles, into our products from the ground up.”

While this may be reassuring to some, the bolded section (our emphasis) leaves a much open to interpretation. Will they begin selling this to advertisers if they continue to be threatened by Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft? What happens when the next innovative search engine or social network gains traction and gets big? This remains to be seen.

From an advertising standpoint, though, this integration is aimed at providing users more targeted, relevant ads by combining the vast stores of user data from Gmail, search, YouTube, et al. This has obvious benefits for the user, but is also a boon to advertisers:

• Higher Quality Scores start with better relevancy, eventually leading to lower paid search costs. Google’s update could lead to hyper-targeted paid search and display ads.
• As Google learns more about each user, including demographic and behavioral data, the organic SERP could become hyper-personalized to that user. This complicates the SEO process and leads to our third point:
• Success in Google Search will be largely dependent upon the level of interaction you can generate across all Google properties. The future of SEO may become as connected to content marketing strategies as it is to current optimization best practices.

The recent IPO filing by Facebook, combined with these radical changes by Google indicate a new stage in the ongoing struggle for user data and advertising dollars between the two giants. Since the early aughts, Google has had virtually no competition in search and online advertising, but that has now changed, and they no longer have the luxury of eschewing common business practices that are seen in more competitive vertical markets. To maintain dominance, Google now has to make some tough decisions, this only being the latest.

Amid widespread and passionate outcry, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, Nevada) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R, Texas), who was the chief sponsor for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), decided to drop the controversial bill from being considered by the House Judiciary Committee last Friday. While the decision has been met with a collective sigh of relief from all corners of the globe, it is likely more of a temporary reprieve than an outright victory for web users and sites.

Both SOPA and its sister bill in the Senate, PIPA (Protect IP Act) were proposed as wide-ranging, anti-piracy legislation that would seek to block any sites that are in any way connected to the sharing of pirated, copyright-protected material online. The problems with these bills are manifold and have been debated ad nauseum for the past few weeks and months. Aside from their rather blatant attempt to censor the free expression of ideas and speech, the bills would enact a quasi-police state on the web, making all websites responsible for every link and every sentence that appears in their content. The implications for SEM businesses would be potentially disastrous:

• When generating new content, it would become necessary to verify every single source that you link to is not also violating SOPA in some way. This extends to articles, videos, images and any type of online content. Not only would this will be a huge waste of resources and time each time you post content, it would also substantially decrease interlinking between sites and greatly affect SEO.
• Google indexing would become more difficult and time-consuming as they would also need to adjust to the new rules and regulations. Google would have to verify that every site they are indexing did not violate any copyright laws.
• New back-linking methods might emerge such as “no-follow” or “no-right”. The SEO industry would adapt to SOPA and PIPA by linking to sources with much more caution. While that sounds nice in theory, it would mean that interlinking will happen but with specific codes such as “no-right-follow” which would mean that the linked site’s information has not been verified.

In a reasoned rebuttal to Rep. Smith, the members of SEMPO (non-profit advocacy group for search and digital marketers) wrote the following, which has largely been echoed throughout the industry:

“Our members are intimately aware of the value of intellectual property. The mantra of most search marketers substantiates this: “Content is king.” Our members spend their days creating unique content for their clients so that consumers can better find and understand the clients’ products and services – and therefore be more likely to purchase them. We don’t like it when our content is duplicated or plagiarized either. It undermines our effectiveness. However, we find that we have all the laws and legal resources we need to fight IP theft right now. What SOPA seeks is not to target the perpetrators of IP theft or piracy, rather to impose upon innocent companies – companies that compose the Internet as a medium – a mandate to become policemen and lawyers, enforced with sanctions or jail time.”

In the wake of the bill’s abrupt death last week, millions have lauded its defeat as a major victory for online protests – one which saw the likes of Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon etc. joining forces with grassroots campaigns from ordinary citizens. And perhaps most ironically, the defeat of SOPA and PIPA has showcased yet again – after a year of historic examples in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt – the growing power of the web to galvanize people and affect change.

The SEO industry has been crying foul since October over the controversial decision by Google to make Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) search the “default experience” for signed-in users. Why? Because SSL allows Google users to encrypt their search queries, and as a consequence, stops passing query data to analytics software – including Google Analytics. Once the switch was made, analytics users began to see “not provided” appearing in their data, indicating that the search had been encrypted and the keyword data was therefore not available.

Google’s reasoning, ostensibly, was to protect the privacy of its signed-in users. As they explain on their blog, “(Secure Sockets Layer) is a protocol that helps provide secure Internet communications for services like web browsing, e-mail, instant messaging, and other data transfers.” Though this may be true, there are a few glaring holes in this move towards increased “privacy”:

• Google’s rapidly expanding suite of services and social media encourages users to stay logged-in, depriving webmasters the necessary data on their users to improve their content and engagement.
• Part of the reason they made the switch was to reduce the effectiveness of their competitor’s products. Google has accused Bing of using Google data to boost their own search algorithm on a few occasions, and they’re attempting to block as much of this data as possible from being seen by anyone but Google.
• Google is giving PPC advertisers exclusive access to query data while refusing to provide insights to site owners who want to grow and improve the traffic organically. So it seems that the privacy protection does not extend to you if you click on a paid ad.
• It appears to be another bold move toward boosting their expanding social network, Google+. They crave the “+1”s that users add while logged-in, so that they can recommend sites to the people in your circles. Since their main rival at the moment, Facebook, has had a few major headaches in the past over privacy issues, Google continues to position itself as the more private, secure network.

But what benefit, if any, does this provide the user? The general consensus is that it does not accomplish much of anything, other than making analytics users’ lives more difficult. That, in and of itself, is not necessarily a horrible thing; however, if the user’s privacy and online experience is in no way enhanced by these changes, then it seems like a questionable decision .

And bear in mind that HTTPS (what shows in the URL field) is not a catch-all solution for online security. While it is good for protecting login pages and forms that handle sensitive information, essentially forcing much of the web to use this protocol could be considerably expensive, while providing minimal benefits:

• HTTPS uses more bandwidth, requiring more power and more servers.
• Pages usually load more slowly – especially on mobile devices and congested networks.
• Offers no real security advantages for static HTML pages – you can still be spied-on while browsing.
• It can cost a few hundred dollars per annum, per domain to set up HTTPS. For a small business that may be a prohibitive expense.

Obviously, we have not been thrilled with the news here at RSO. Not allowing us to see where some of our clients’ organic traffic is coming from (and it remains to be seen what percentage of the data is being blocked) is not so much detrimental to us, but to our clients’ business. Tell us what you think.

Courtesy urbn.com

Is it really good business practice to get on the bandwagon just because everyone else is doing it? Like a moth to a flame, you will end up losing more time and resources by blindly following the latest marketing trend. Resist the urge, and instead, devote yourself to articulating your product and brand strategy – what it is and what it is not.

1) Test and measure your needs Here, the old adage applies, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” As of now, what social media channels are you working with? Active channels only. Dead accounts with profiles but no activity don’t count. Say your company has a presence with a consistent blog and Twitter that is managed by your CEO. That’s not a bad start. First, can you measure which of these is either 1) creating online dialogue or 2) creating leads or partnerships (these metrics are more telling than the simple follower or fan count). For the latter, those will take time to quantify – a year or more! With these results, you might even find that you can eliminate one that isn’t producing or redirect to a new audience, find a professional writer, etc. If your audience likes re-tweeting quick and easy micro-blogs, no need to spend hours writing blog posts.

2) Assess your resources and prioritize The caveat to your toolkit is “Don’t bite off more than you can chew.” No need to give in to peer pressure and create a blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube channel, Tumblr, etc, etc all at once if you can’t create and manage enough (useful) content for them all. How big is your marketing team? One full-time person? Three part-time contractors? An intern?

First rule – don’t make it harder than it is! You don’t want to over-manage too many outlets and duplicate content that you can streamline. For instance, Facebook is getting better with automatically integrating website blogs into their feed.

3) Creator vs. Contributor Your marketing efforts should reflect a healthy balance between “creator” and “contributor” – meaning you should generate content for your own blog while writing guest post for blogs on partner sites (and linking the two!). Your platform for doing so will also be determined by length – from short tweets, to tumblr photo or FB status updates, to full-length blogs and articles. These tasks will become much more manageable if you outline these posts in a calendar. If your industry is particularly volatile or fast-paced – do this every two weeks or so – but if not, every month or quarter will do. That does not mean scripting out tweets 10 days in advance (but that’s okay too!), but having a theme in mind for a fixed period will give your feed focus and add credibility to your expertise. For those of you with promotions and peak sale seasons, opt for focused banner and ad space with external expert bloggers in your industry. io9.com, a blog for sci-fi geeks(and its sister sites and themes managed under gawker.com) displays ads for related television specials and movie trailers. Foodgawker.com, a crowd-sourced “feast for the eyes” has cleverly placed adds buried amongst their appetizing photos.

The overall message is not to succumb to the pressures of creating pages and pages of content – but rather implementing a well-rounded presence online on diverse platforms.