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Google Analytics Alternatives - Measuring Beyond "Last Click Wins"

John Santangelo — 2009-11-04T21:07:20+01:00

Web analytics and attribution management have received more attention this year as companies look to measure results with greater accuracy. However, I have yet to come across a list of vendors that offer robust analytics platforms that measure beyond the “last click wins” reporting method. Based on my research these firms offer analytics reporting beyond the last-click wins attribution method, and some offer much more beyond that.

The Background - What is “Last Click Wins?"

Google Analytics (GA) utilizes the “last click wins” method of attribution. It’s simply a measurement model giving “credit” to the last keyword and/or referrer to your site before a conversion occurs.

Here’s a quick example: Visitor A searches Google researching a product and discovers your site because of your content and organic SEO efforts, but the visitor doesn’t buy. Later that day, Visitor A researches prices and clicks an Adwords ad, doesn’t buy, but remembers the site. Next day, Visitor A remembers your site/company name, searches it, finds Product X, and buys.

So, what does GA tell you? In a nutshell: The conversion tracking you set up tells you that Visitor A came from Google, searched for your company name, and bought Product X. Your brand name got the credit for the sale. Nowhere does your Adwords ad get credit, or your organic SEO efforts for the initial search and site discovery. I know, I know, GA can tell you a lot more information than just that, but you’re still missing the first few steps in the conversion process.

Why Measure “Beyond” the Last Click?

In addition to getting the real picture behind the branded keyword conversions and getting your SEO efforts the credit, you may have other missing or misleading data! You may be spending time, money, and effort on organic and paid search efforts that don’t show any conversions in GA. Should you keep up those efforts or cut them? If you said cut them, hold on.

That general keyphrase or vanity keyword doesn’t convert, you say. Banner ads, laughable! But what if they were the first introduction of your brand and site to the customer? Is it still the right decision to pull funding from Keyword A even though it can be proven to lead to visits that convert later on?

What Are my Options?

With Google Analytics, by default, you get thelast-click wins view. You can however, override that setting but then your data still isn’t complete. You cannot get the first-click and last-click data at the same time in the same profile. It’s all or nothing.

As a sidenote, you for those advertising heavily on Google’s content network, it’s worth checking out GA’s view-through conversion tracking.

Should I Drop Google Analytics?

For a basic analytics system, Google Analytics is hard to beat. I’m not going to say that it fails for SEO, but you really shouldn’t be relying solely on it, or any javascript-based data capture analytic system anyway. Google Analytics sure has its benefits. After all, it’s free, it can be tweaked to view actual rankings, you can integrate it with your CRM, and with the additional features added recently it’s more robust than ever. But again, you may be missing some important data, especially on sites with long purchase paths such as those selling services rather than physical goods.

GA Alternatives that Measure Beyond the Last Click

The idea of multi-point attribution is gaining steam, and more and more vendors are entering the fray. A lot of them are designed to better measure PPC spend, but can be extremely useful even if you don’t do any PPC at all. Keep in mind that it’s not my intention to recommend any of these solutions, just to have them listed in one place so you can get your research and evaluations kick started. Some may be better suited to compliment existing analytics packages, while others could potentially replace entire systems beyond web analytics packages. Some are even so robust that they include their own data warehouse systems and CRMs.

The Big Guys

CoreMetrics is a big player in the web analytics game, and they offer a flexible attribution platform that can report on data beyond the last click.
Omniture’s online Marketing Suite is “powered by data that provides actionable, real-time intelligence and insight concerning customer interactions and marketing initiatives across multiple touch points.”
One of most robust attribution systems is ClearSaleing. Voted “Technology Platform Search Marketers Can’t Live Without” for its attribution-based advertising portfolio management platform at SES San Jose, they’re at the forefront of the attribution management game and have tight PPC integration, robust reporting, and even a built-in CRM and data warehouse functionality.

The Up-and-Comers

Who else has been providing a look beyond the last click for a number of years? None other than Yahoo! Web Analytics. The Assists metric can “measure the total number of times that display ads or search keywords contribute to the conversion of another ad or keyword”. Less robust than the rest on this list, still a good (Free!) product and hopefully one that Yahoo! doesn’t end up selling off.
The UK’s DC Storm offers Storm Analytics part of their StormIQ product suite. It supports advanced campaign tracking & web analytics and looks tightly integrated with their PPC optimizing and reporting system.
Visual IQ’s IQ Envoy “moves beyond simple attribution by tracking all digital exposures (not just clicks) for an individual across the digital landscape."
Atlas Advanced Analytics lets you choose last click attribution or beyond. Be warned through, their site so fluent in corporate-speak my head nearly exploded. Worth a look though.
X+1 laughs in the face of having a search friendly name, but their tagline is “make every interaction count.” So, that might mean something… but I can’t really tell from their site. If you like exploring every single option before making a decision, dig into this one a bit too.

Did I miss any? What have been your experiences?

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Case Study: How Building a Site for Users Improved our Rankings

csaliba — 2009-10-28T15:19:38+01:00

Posted by csaliba

I've been in the piano industry for five years and am just over a quarter century old. Some of you may or may not know that the piano industry is mostly very "veteran piano employees". Let's just say I am a VERY young representative in the retail piano business. About 15 months ago I was trying to think of ways that I can make a big impact in the piano business. When researching the websites of other piano companies, dealers, and piano communities a light went off in my head. This is in this is how I make my impact in the industry. I realized how stale, similar and unentertaining these piano websites were. Soooo...

I looked at my company websites and decided - I am going to make this a website that consumers will enjoy but, most importantly the will want to visit our store and select a new piano. I had no experience in webdesign, seo, link building and all the other never-ending factors that come along with building a website. The only thing I knew was Facebook and Myspace (Thank You College). So I started by researching, researching, joining SEOmoz, researching, and doing more research. Then I realized one brain can only take in so much research and the research is good but, it useless if you didn't have a site to experiment with.

Before we go further here's some background.... I am the VP of Sales & Marketing for Steinway Hall - Dallas/ Fort Worth/ Plano the exclusive Steinway & Sons piano dealer in North Texas. Our site was static and every 6 months a new page might be added, no conversion forms, looked like just another website. Most unsatisfyingly we were no where to be found in the SERPs. We averaged about 10-20 visits a day.

So, I decided to put together a game plan and go get my feet wet. These are the 5 areas I thought I should target first (1 being the most important) - In parentheses is the result.

1. Design - (Steinway & Sons allowed me to be the "guinea pig" for their Beta Dealer Template"

2. Domain - (steinwaydfw.com)

3. Tools - (Joomla)

4. Pictures - (Used the same from old site)

5. Content -( Lets just say, oops - this in now #!)

Side Note: (no pun intended) I thought the way our site looked was the most important aspect possible.

After about three months we launched our new website to the world. Was this pre-mature? Yes but, I don't regret it. Because it was from this point on I started learning more about creating a user friendly site. After the first three months we did see some improvement. We got a lot of compliments on the "design" of the site and a slight up-tick in daily traffic and started to show up in the first 5 pages in SERPs. That's it, nothing more. I thought what is going on the site looks great whats the problem? So it was back to the research... I thought. But then I realized, the site that we had just launched looked good to us but, we're not the users, or in the market to buy pianos. So we took it to the streets, well not really to the streetsm we went to our past customer base.

Every time I had the opportunity to ask a customer who had just purchased a piano, used our piano services, was local pianist, piano teacher or piano enthusiast I would point blank ask them "What is most important to you when looking to buy a piano? Here are the most common answers I received with. (1 being the most common)

1. Product Information (What is the best piano for me?, NOT what is the best piano?)

2. Socialability (Who do collaborate with, what music organizations, teacher, students?)

3. Site Organization (Where is everything)

4. Customer Testimonials or Stories (How did others feel about their experience with you company?)

5. Company History (Why should I purchase a piano from your company? What's your story?)

After compiling this information I thought to myself: Well, I guess cool design and a lot of great pictures was only important to me.

So what do I do? Hire an website company? No, no one knows my company and my products like I do. And I love challenges. What I decided to do next I think every new website owner should do: Meet the need of the users and over achieve at doing so. This is what I did and how I went about meeting the top five answers above.

1. Product Information - Detail the each product. By not just a picture but with content, history of the product, who usually purchases this piano, and videos.

2. Socialability - Communication at all avenues: Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Blog and anything that you can handle easily. I got overwhelmed by having to many social profiles for our business and wasn't able to dedicate the proper amount of time to each. Quality over Quantity.(Remember earlier I mentioned that the piano industry has a lot of "seasoned experience", you should have seen their face when I said Twitter & Blog.

3. Site organization: I re-catagorized the information so someone who has zero knowledge about the piano could find what they are looking for. Make it SIMPLE!!! (More on this below)

4. Customer Testimonials - I asked had each employee ask their clients for a testimonial. This worked ok, but there is no enjoyment for the customer. Therefore, I set up a section on our blog for customers to submit "Their Steinway Stories" This has just started but, we are planning a big marketing campaign on this. You never know, the author of the "most popular" story may we a trip to tour the Steinway & Sons factory in New York. Stay tuned...

5. Company History - I need to spend more time on this but, we do have a company page about who we are and what we do. Ohh and yes, that is me on the home page, I am the one on the right. We are a family owned company. I am amazed at how clients that see me in the store say "hey that's you on your website." Some people say putting your face on your business website is tacky but, I think there are many who believe that this shows you have nothing to hide and show a sense of pride.

Conclusion: Content is only king if it entertains and gives the user what they are looking for. By dedicating myself to the meet the need of the users our site ranks anywhere form 1-5 in the SERPs for keywords, Average 100-120 unique visits a day, and average 35-50 web inquiries a month = 2 to 4 piano sales a month were the first contact was via our website.

Don't worry I'm almost done. But I want to share three most important things I've learned so far.

1. Think of the users on your website as guests. When you have a guest over to your house you want them to be comfortable. To insure they are comfortable you put everything they might need during their stay in the wide open so they don't get frusterated while SEARCHING for what they want. Could you imagine if every hotel put towels in a differnt place and you had to search for them. You would either leave (page exit) or never return. Organization = User Friendliness.

2. Make your site seem like the customer is already in the store. I found great success by doing trying to accomplish this. When you go to our site, www.steinwaydfw.com, notice that the main categories are in order, from left to right, of the customer buying or shopping experience. In parentheses is a typical in-store retail sales process.

About us - Who is this piano dealer who wants me to buy a piano from them (Greeting & Introduction)
Instruments - About the pianos we represent (Presentation of products)
Institutional Sales- Programs offered to schools, churches, and piano teachers. (Who is the piano for?)
Advantages - Advantages we offer to help the customer make the right decision for their family. (Decision making tools)
Service - Services & Maintenance guidelines we offer for their new piano (After-sales service)
News & Events - Now that they own a piano what concerts, events, headlines is Steinway making (Continuing the relationship.)

3. Successful People Never Stop!!!!!

Thank you for allowing me to share my experience and any comments and/or suggestions you leave will be greatly valued.

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Google Universal Results in Brazil

Fábio Ricotta — 2009-10-22T11:11:32+01:00

Posted by Fábio Ricotta

In May 2007 Google announced the universal results in Google Search with the philosophy of integrating all departments Images, Blogs, News, Products, Maps, Books and videos directly to the traditional results page.

About a year later, Google has enabled this feature to Google results in Brazil. Thus, we could see an usability and integration increase of Google products, providing an increasingly rich content to users' searches. Faced with this growing integration of Google products in Universal Results and thinking about the increase of local results, our company decided to create a test to analyze the current state of Universal Search in Brazil, making several queries on Google Brazil, and thus obtaining information on the amount appearances of each Google Product.

Data Set

This research used 2021 terms, where each one was submitted to Google search 4 times between the period 01 October to 13 October, amounting to a total of 8084 queries. In this 2021 terms group, we had the following scenario:

For each queries we investigate if the result had shown the following Google Products:

BlogsSearch
Images
Maps
News
Videos

Thus, we obtained the following results:

Blog Search

During the four executions we could notice a slight results variation, where the fourth execution, we obtained the least amount of results with BlogsSearch, 183. Already in the first run we got the largest, reaching 245 queries with BlogsSearch.

The overall average of four executions shows that 10.1% results have BlogsSearch and 89.9% do not.

Images

In images scenario we noted that the results show a good amount of related images. In the first execution we got the least image amount results, 963. In the last batch execution, we noticed the greatest image results amount, 1001.

The general average of four executions shows that 48.7% results have images and 51.3% do not.

Maps

Regarding the maps, the scenario is much more stable. In the first three executions we obtained 63 results containing maps and only the last execution we receive results containing 62 maps.

The general average of four executions shows that 3.1% of the results and 96.9% do not. Something curious about this map analysis was that almost all the results containing maps have a city or location tied to any term. This shows that slowly the local searches are being integrated into the universal results.

News

Like images, the news is much more frequent in Google results. According to the data, the third execution had the least results amount with news, 777. In the first batch execution, we noticed the largest results amount with news, 880.

The general average of four executions shows that 40.8% results have news and 59.2% do not.

Videos

In one better scenario than blogs or maps results, videos will appear in a reasonable queries amount. In our executions, we had in last run, the least results amount with videos, 547. In the first batch execution, we noticed the largest results number with videos, 562.

The general average of four executions shows that 27.4% results have and 72.6% do not.

Universal Results Intersection

As we know, a Google Result Page not only shows one of Universal Search Items, but mostly is shown a combination of these items. Below we show a table with the main combinations found in the results pages.

Conclusions

This research drew an X-ray of how Universal Results are displayed in Google Brazil, where we summarize the following scenarios:

10.1% of search queries showed BlogsSearch
48.7% of search queries showed Images
3.1% of search queries showed Maps
40.8% of search queries showed News
27.4% of search queries showed videos

From this research, we want create some variations modifying the terms and time period trying to figure out if it changes how Google Universal results are displayed.

Before ending this article I would like to thank all from our programming team that made this research possible. (Celso Fernandes, Rodrigo Tomonari, Rodrigo Sales, Hiroshi Eduardo and Felipe Rosa)

I hope you enjoyed this research and see you!

Ps.: I would like to know if you are interested in a US Research, so please, comment below asking for and we will do this research.

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Improve the Long Tail - Wordpress Automated Query Insertion!

MOGmartin — 2009-10-21T09:56:31+01:00

Posted by MOGmartin

This is my first stab at a YOUmoz entry, I would welcome your questions or comments either publicly in the comments section or by PM.

A few months back I was reading through my daily dose of SEO blogs, and happened across this post over at BlogStorm by Patrick Altoft concerning the drop in traffic that sribd had suffered from recently.

He handily posted the below graph from Quantcast to quantify their actual loss, and went on to explain that they had been employing a nice tactic to increase search visibility for long tail queries:

"The site used to have a clever internal system which monitored the keywords sending natural search traffic and then added them to the page automatically to make the page seem more relevant than before and therefore get higher rankings."

The concept of taking actual search queries that have triggered clicks to your site I found very interesting, its kind of like UGC but without requiring the surfer to actually do anything, and for most websites building up a decent position on the potentially hundreds of terms per page that 'might' drive traffic is phenomenally difficult unless you have some serious domain authority in your chosen subject, and lets face it, most of us don't!

I tend to use WordPress for most of my smaller sites that I launch around keyword rich domain names, as its a simple and easy way to build out half decent sites in minutes as opposed to days, so I set about writing a plugin that would replicate exactly what scribd had turned off to monitor the results.

In a nutshell, the plugin strips the search term from the referring URL if its come from a search engine (pretty much every major SE as well) and saves it in a table, and displays the queries on the post pages of the wordpress site that a user has used to find that specific page.

The results so far have been pretty good, increasing the total number of clicks that I have received from specific long tail queries, and increasing the unique queries that have passed through hits.

Some example stats taken from one of my sites:

Before the plugin (well, mainly before the plugin, I installed it on this site on August 25th)

After the Plugin (and a week or so)

Further Stats from those time periods: (BP= Before Plugin / AP = After Plugin)

Total Visits from Organic Search: 1,382 BP / 2,627 AP

Total Unique Search Terms (organic): 176 BP / 347 AP

Increase in Organic Traffic = 90.08%

Increase in Unique Search Terms = 97.15%

I have the plugin installed on about 25 different websites at the moment, and I have seen a varying uplift in traffic to old posts on every wordpress site I have installed it on, the stats above are from a site I chose because it has had no new content added or changed and zero linkbuilding done during the period of the test (or immediately before either).

The plugin also gives you a handy control panel where you can see how what queries have triggered clicks for what pages (live stats) and you can also configure a few other parameters, such as how many queries are displayed and the format they are displayed in.

This is my first stab at an SEO plugin (or any plugin in fact) for WordPress, and if any other webmasters here that use WordPress would be interested in giving it a shot, I would love to hear your feedback!

Disclosure: within the plugin list of keywords I have an embedded link back to my new site, if you don't want it to appear on your site then you can remove it from the source, but as noted in the documentation of the plugin, I would really appreciate it if you did link to my site if you find the plugin useful!

If you want to play about with the plugin you can download my Wordpress SEO Plugin Here (download from wordpress.org).

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"Keeping Up With the Joneses" Is 90% of SEO

byrneseyeview — 2009-10-19T22:14:12+01:00

Posted by byrneseyeview

I've seen a few articles recently, on YOUmoz and elsewhere, extolling the benefits of originality in SEO. And I think it's time to set the record straight: in the vast majority of cases, if you are doing something none of your competitors are doing, you are wasting your time and your client's money.

The Case Against Originality

SEO is going corporate. Big companies are doing it in-house instead of hiring a consultant; consultants are scaling up, hiring people, and growing into companies in their own right. Meanwhile, the search engines have more or less made their peace with SEOs: there's a lot that's prohibited, and everything else might as well be mandatory.

Don't buy links.

Do use descriptive title tags.

Don't hide links.

Do structure your site so good content is always a few clicks away.

Etc.

If you come up with a novel strategy, it's probably going to find its way into the dos. Or the don'ts. And using a new strategy means betting your results and your reputation on the outcome. There's no particularly easy way to predict what they will decide—there's no reason ten consecutive "Please link to my site" emails should be morally superior to "link to my site and disclose it to your visitors, and I'll give you a dollar." And yet if you do the latter, and get caught, you're in trouble.

Your strategy might not end up in the dos or the don'ts. It might end up in the "what?!"s, instead. Search engines may not care to endorse or ban your strategy because it doesn't have any visible effect.

It's tempting to point to other technology innovator as proof that innovation can be rewarding. But bast amounts of wealth in technology are made with technology products, not services (Ross Perot, one of the few technology service providers to get really rich, also happened to treat employees like gears in a factory—basically a roundabout way of turning a service into a mass-produced product.)

The Case for Unoriginality

Want to know what works in SEO? Just look at the people who outrank you! You'll mimic many of their results if you can build a structure similar to theirs and get the same bloggers and directories to link to you ("I saw your link to Smith's Guide to Skinning a cat. Surely your readers know there's more than one way to skin a cat. You should have them check out Jones's Guide, too!").

If you do this by rote, you'll be #2 at best. So don't. Find the niches they don't target, and get the same links they do get. Your site will outrank them for the terms they don't quite target, which can often convert at a higher rate than broad terms. If one company sells "shirts" and you sell "souvenier t-shirts," you can mimic their success—for a term that leads far more searchers to make a purchase.

Go ahead. A well-blazes trail is an easy one to follow.

And once you've saved yourself the trouble of chasing wild geese and dead ends, you'll have plenty of time to so the other 10% of SEO: coming up with the unique content and unmatchable links that will put you over the top.

The Exceptions

If you're going after a competitive term, you can't afford to do what everyone else is doing. But targeting a hyper-competitive term isn't just business: it's PR, bragging rights, and general obstinance. The competition to own the term [car insurance quotes] must be brutal. It's easier to get a dozen iterations on, say, [car insurance price honor student discount].

If you really, really have to get a tough term, you can experiment. In fact, you have to. You have to get the links your competitors can't get—and you have to keep doing it, because they're doing the same thing to you.

The SEO market is not saturated. Many SEO professionals know the industry's standards and best practices. While most of us would love to come up with the next big linkbaiting technique or gray-hat trick, the fact remains: most of the time, when you're doing SEO, pioneering doesn't pay.

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True or False: Organic Traffic Converts Better than PPC

drummerboy9000 — 2009-10-19T11:50:24+01:00

Posted by drummerboy9000

As a webmaster of a small business website, I get a lot of SEO's calling me, touting their services.

One of the claims many make is that the traffic from organic searches converts better than that from PPC searches. I currently handle all of our search engine optimization as well as PPC management. Having never tested the theory, I cranked up Google Analytics and started rummaging through data.

The following test is the result. It is using only results from Google.

I first found three metal roofing related keywords on our website that had fairly high traffic from both organic and PPC campaigns. Next I broke down the data, comparing the conversion rates separately for organic and PPC. The following is the data, using data from the last 12 months.

Based on this data, at least for our website, PPC converts better. That's not to say that organic traffic doesn't convert well, it's just that PPC converts better.

Below is the data in Google Analytics (I cut it all up in order to make it fit in a reasonable amount of space)

I only used the data for the "Completed Form" conversion measurement in the graphs, but I left the data for "Contact Page Clicks" for you to see as well. By both measurements PPC traffic converts approximately 50% better than organic data.

I entered this data into an Excel Spreadsheet, which you can download here.

Answers to a few of the questions you might want to ask:

Question: Are the PPC landing pages the same as the organic landing pages?
- Answer: All of the organic landing pages are the home page.
- On keywords #1 and #3, which has the most data, about half of the PPC goes to the home page, while the other half goes to a second level page. The conversion levels remain about the same on either page.
- On keyword #2, all of the PPC goes to a second level page.
Question: So why are you releasing this data? Do you hate SEO?
1. Answer: First of all, I believe the benefits of SEO are massive. 45% of our traffic is organic. I released this data to shed some light on possible misinformation that has been spread around. I love SEO : )
Question: Does this apply to all websites and keywords?
- Answer: I have no clue, not having access to multiple website data. I'm sure it varies from industry to industry. If anyone else has information on this please share it in the comments.

Comments and constructive criticism are always welcome and encouraged.

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Domain Authority - Does it Really Exist as a Ranking Factor?

BenRush — 2009-10-18T21:18:26+01:00

Posted by BenRush

Rand recently published a post discussing 17 ways a search engine values a link. His number 5 reason referred to “domain authority” and caused a little stir within the comments trail as to what “domain authority” actually meant and where the proof of its existence has been seen.

The aim of my first YOUmoz post is to provide an example of where I believe domain authority is highly evident as search engine ranking factor. Apologies but I can’t really include any analytics data due to data protection.

Setting the scene

So it’s October 2008 and progress is slow on making technical and content changes to our transactional sites to improve organic referrals. I have just come up with an idea that I believe will provide some quick wins both on the organic referrals and on our PPC conversion rates on broad commodity type keywords. When I say commodity I refer to keywords that describe a product category, such as capacitors or connectors.

The Tactic

Utilise our root domain to create high level product category landing pages such as:

www.farnell.com/uk/connectors

www.farnell.com/uk/capacitors

These are located within folders on our root domain, rather than in sub domains like our transactional websites. The idea is that they are closer to the root, better optimised and easier to get live quickly. Even back then I believed domain authority was a strong ranking factor for Google.

Here is an example of it for our German business unit. The first shot shows our initial link from our root domain farnell.com to a sub folder /de/

The Result

The results were pretty impressive almost immediately. Within about 30 minutes of promoting a page to production we would be ranking in Google, usually on pages 1-2. After around a day we would usually be on the first page on broad, competitive search terms.

Now consider that these commodity pages were brand new, reasonably well optimised on-page, but contained only 1 single back link from an internal source and we were capable of ranking on just about any search term within the space of 30 minutes. Yes we followed some on-site “best practices” but to my mind the single reason why these pages ranked so well, so quickly was domain authority.

Even now, after being live for a considerable period of time, again without any real SEO work, you will see we proudly sit in top spot for connectors.

Try some other terms across other global search engines as examples:

Kondensatoren – Google Germany

Kondenzatory – Google Czech

Diodi – Google Italy

Kondensatorer – Google Denmark

Interested to hear more thoughts on domain authority from others. Do you feel this proves its importance or do you think other factors played into these

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An Intelligent Way to Plan Your Internal Linking Structure

zoicaremus — 2009-10-16T09:27:17+01:00

Posted by zoicaremus

1) What is the internal linking structure?

- The way the pages of a website link to each other.

2) Why is the internal linking structure important?

To make Google understand what are the most important pages from your website. You know which the most important pages are, but does Google know? If the internal linking structure is good, after the first crawling, at a command like site:mysyte.com, you will obtain a list of pages sorted out by importance. If the list corresponds with the order chosen by you, then you’ve made a good linking structure.
To highlight the important pages, but also to decrease the power transferred to less important pages or to pages that will rank first from the start.
To cut short the link-juice route to the important pages. Every time you will receive a link to a less important page, the juice has to get to the important pages fast.
Because it’s difficult to manipulate. If you place links to the less important pages of your website anywhere, then the quality of your website will decrease.

3) What are the characteristics of a good internal linking structure?

The most important pages have the largest number of links pointing to them (and the most powerful ones).
In a good linking structure, the internal links point to the same page with different anchor texts. By linking with different anchor texts you tell Google more about that page.
Linking through text in the body of the content, not only from menu items.

4) What does a good internal linking structure look like? Example of a website that has 7 pages:

List of all the pages by order of importance:

Personal injury
Accident Claim
Medical Negligence
Car Accident
Accident at work
Injury Solicitors
No win no fee

Number of outgoing links – 2 on the homepage and 3 on every other page (in body links, excluding menu links and other standard links), a total of 20 outgoing links.Number of incoming links (the blue page has blue incoming links):

Personal injury – 6 links
Accident Claim – 4 links
Medical Negligence – 3 links
Car Accident – 2 links
Accident at work – 2 links
Injury Solicitors – 2 links
No win no fee – 1 link

This is just an example; the most important pages have powerful internal links pointing to them and they also have the biggest number of links. You can empower any page you want by placing more links to it. Also use different anchor texts for internal links (secondary keywords, other keywords for which you intend to rank).

5) Use MindMaps to plan your internal linking structure. For the drawing above I used MindManager. I can’t even think about starting a new website without a good plan. The process is this:

Do research and identify the keywords for your new website
Group them by order of importance and divide them on separate pages
Sort the pages by order of importance and decide on the number of links on each of them.
Set up the way in which the pages link to each other, draw the map (use whatever suits your needs)
Choose different anchor texts
Create the content, the links and place them online

Don't neglect the internal linking structure, it's like the blood vessels of your website.

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Learn Link Building From a Will Ferrell Movie

Royur — 2009-10-14T09:07:25+01:00

Posted by Royur

Has anyone watched the movie called Semi-pro? Where a small basketball league called ABA is on the verge of collapse and has to be merged with the NBA to survive, but the NBA only accepts four team to be merged and thus the trouble begins. Flint Tropic (Will Ferrell Team) must make a great basketball play and also get two thousand fans so they could get merged.

I'm not actually a fan of Will Ferrell movies, but there are a lot of things you can learn from this movie. Will Ferrell is the promoter of the team, and I have to admit that he is doing a great job doing it. He realizes that his team is not good enough to have a lot of fans and so he uses other methods to get a lot of fans. He uses an amazing starting line up, eye liner, free corn dogs for the audience if the score reaches a certain point, dare devil by jumping many girls, half court shot for $10.000 and also wrestling with a bear.

In the line of link building sometimes we have to build links but the site is not good enough to generate its own link and thus we have to do what Will Farrel do in the movie, we improvise!

Starting line up or should I say first impression

So if the website content is generally flat and not so interesting for common viewer but the first time you open the site you got an awesome welcoming sign that leaves the viewer remembering your site more than the other site that is competing and has the same boring content as you are. The next time people want to link about the not-so great content they would remember that your site has better impression than the others.

Eye liner

Will Ferrel use eye liner in one of his match to increase his team look on national TV. Make your site different with the other site no matter how silly that would look. Remember that your site is not good enough to get its own link, then why don't you use other method to get link.

Free Corn Dog for audience when the score reach certain point

Give a free gift to the audience of your website when your site reach 10.000 viewer a day for example. This would make the viewers help each other and tell other people to come to your site and probably by linking your link in it. Just remember to put the website stats up front so many people can watch it, but in the movie, Will Ferrel wants to cheat the number so the point would not reach that certain point.

Dare Deviling with pretty girl in it

Never underestimate the power of pretty girl and incredible stunt, combine they would make incredible link building strategy. What do you sell in your website? A dull car? Use the car in a daredevil stunt video with hot chicks behind. What about dull non-flavored candy? No problem, use it as stunt properties with hot chicks as the background.

Half court shot for $10.000

Have you considered building a mini game in your site, where every 100 viewer gets the chance to play the mini game to win $10.000. I'm pretty sure that this would make a great link building strategy. But just make sure that viewer know that the game is beatable and you make it practically impossible to win, just like half court shot.

Wrestling with the bear

In the final act to get 2000 supporters Will Ferrell announces for those who watch spam the news that he would wrestle with a bear in the next match. In link building term this mean sue big company that would make many people talking about it. Just make sure the big company is someone you are close with and know what you're doing and this is all one big drama to get links. The bear in the movie is a tamed bear, but those people in the movie think it is the real deal.

Anyway, this is my first post in YOUmoz and hopefully this has been helpful. I would recommend you to watch the movie even though I think its not a great movie, but in the SEO line of work, I think you could learn a lot. This is only what I think of the movie, if you watch it then you might get another insight on it. Be a promoter just like Jackie Moon (Will Ferrel) in the movie...

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