At first gape, these questions seem easy, yes?  “Of course, yes, socialize everything” you shout!”  “After all, isn’t the ‘net  all about social media these days?” How could it be wrong to ever consider omitting the all-powerful and ubiquitous social media click-me-now badges?

Caveat:  We understand that as social-trust augments and even partially supplants trust rank in how content is ranked by search engines, having influential tweeps and and wielding one’s own street cred’ is of paramount importance. This article is not about whether social media participation is important. Of course it’s important.

However when herding traffic to social KPIs, there can be implications in how other crucial KPIs are impacted,  serious analytic concerns and business decisions at hand.  There’s no one size fits all.  While it’s often a good decision to drive traffic from landing pages and email blasts with “follow me/friend me”  links, there a number of issues to consider–especially when socialization is not the primary KPI.  For the sake of clarity, let’s define secondary KPI:

“Secondary KPI” is an additional goal a) if the primary KPI is not reached or b) in addition to the primary goal.

Analytics & Outbound Links Exiting Directly to [Community]
(Third party social assets like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc..)

There are a few analytic problems to sort out, so we’re all on the same page. So far as tracking socialization as either a primary or secondary KPI directly from an email, how do you measure success exactly?  What are viable metrics to track the outbound click (from email or landing page ) directly to [Community]

• First, we all know It’s fairly easy to track an outbound click directly to [Community] from an landing page or email. Google Analytics does not track exit clicks, in the form of destination URL, out of the box. It can be accomplished with a hack.  Most email platform analytics track outbound clicks and destinations by various methods. If technology is lacking, you can always tag outbound links to [Community] and use a script on a domain you track using redirects. Unfortunately tracking the outbound link is not enough data.
• Once users get to  [Community], unless you own [Community], you can’t directly associate clicks from that email (or landing page) with behavior in  [Community] like fanning, grouping, sharing, signing up for an app’, any desired action, etc…How do you measure the KPI?
• We must depend on less empirical, though somewhat effective correlation methods to track the ROI of direct links to [Community] from emails and landing pages.
• We like this formula: (Exits to [Community] Per Day) Graphed to (Signups/Follows/other actions Per Day). We need to see a correlation of escalating traffic and Signup/Follows/Actions. Good testing can make this, otherwise speculative metric, useful. So far as the report all I personally need to see is lines lines moving from left to right on a graph.

• Graphic email exit maps show how traffic bleed and spray effects conversion. Similarly analytic overlays illustrate how users click out from an HMTL page.  Show us on a chart  please. Does the traffic forsake the commercial funnel for the social click? Is that the desired action for the page? Are we bleeding conversions?

• 13 different exit options are nice in a pretty HTML email, but doesn’t one of the paths have more value unless the email is about general branding? If not, should one path  be designated as the primary KPI?  We market for a reason usually. Sometimes good marketing is about removing customers’ options. Herd them like sheep we say.
• If selling or hard-core marketing is the KPI, we often advise that client’s insure that “being social” is always the secondary KPI, so long you can prove it does not distract from the primary conversion. Sometimes putting the links to [Community] should be on the thank-you.php page or on the next page in sequence IF users don’t convert.
• Sometimes it makes sense to sacrifice conversions for happy social BFF pals, but make that decision intentional, data driven and based on real business priorities.
• Never underestimate the value of conversations and making friends. To this author’s mind, socialization should nearly always be, at minimum, a secondary KPI.

Our General Rules:

• I usually want to see traffic I pay for go to a landing on a site I control first, even if it’s from a little Facebook button in an email or landing page.  I don’t own Facebook and ultimately we can’t control it, only work in harmony. The exception is when socializing is the primary KPI. In that scenario it can make sense to cut down on click-count to primary conversion. All the normal caveats regarding the limitations of tracking behavior in third party sites apply.
• Should there be Facebook buttons in every email? Right! Of course there should be…That’s easy to say right? Not…I.M.H.O. sometimes we should place buttons, even much of the time… but not all the time.
• When we do place buttons, consider herding traffic to our feed or landing page, which prompt  FB savvy visitors to login using FacebookConnect.  Then they’re already logged in with a few clicks.
• Sometimes email blasts and landing pages are rather guerrilla in their intent, with immediate, even difficult financial objectives. Saying that we should “always” point them to Facebook like saying there should “always” be PPC,  “always” be Press Releases or always be in Forums, etc…That’s not a mature approach as these sorts of absolutes ignore other business considerations.
• Is the real question here is what are you doing with the Facebook friends you already have? Are they engaged? What’s do their offpage engagement metrics look like? What percentage of buzz surrounding certain content is on site, on page, off site, where, how often, when, who…and how influential is that “who” guy anyway?

Not many humans are social 24/7, nor should marketers be. We’ve even had times where we recommended a nice tight little email/landing page funnel that, instead of spraying traffic in general (albeit good) directions all over the Internet, we supply fewer options to focus.  Honestly dude, sometimes we just don’t have time, inclination or money to be social .

Can’t Squeeze Social Blood
This is especially true when a marketer is engaging in activities which barely have associated analogies in physical life.  For instance, there are no gigantic “Laundromat” analogy-applications on Facebook because real people actually tend to be disengaged and separate when washing clothes in public. Go figure…

Social Media Mirrors Physical life. As I think about it, there are very few analogies in physical life that line up with “Download $2 Walmart Coupon.”  Ok, maybe some guy wearing sandwich boards or a leaflet temp’ in Times Square. Sure their occupation is noble but we don’t ever end up…umm….hanging out, hooking up, you get it.

Coupon clipping in physical life is cool but humans don’t tend to physically congregate around the theme. Does this mean that it’s not a good idea to connect with customers at any given time…like while purveying coupons? Nope. It’s usually a great idea to make friends.

Should marketers attempt to socialize every single impression in any channel? Or, are there sometimes compelling reasons to avoid impacting the conversion funnel? There are so many channels, it’s hard to imagine that it’s always appropriate to place those link to Facebook and Twitter.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge advocate and participant in social media.  Our agency has a humbling roster of SMO (social media optimization) clients, who inspire the hell out of us. SMO is crucial, especially at the intersection SEO.

One thing for sure, there’s “no one-size-fits-all” policy.  Let’s test and push the social envelope. Let’s always remember to place our customers in a well laid funnel, ask for the money and be careful where we fragment the objectives, for any reason.

However, you can make money from your website when properly advised & optimized  by your web analytics, as Jim Sterne so correctly pointed out at SES Chicago 2009. Many of us have access to some sort of analytics for web properties we’re involved with, but how many of us really use the data effectively?  More importantly, are we making real money from analytics insight?  Is there more to life than just the conversion?

The session How To Turn Your Web Analytics Into a Money Making Machine was totally educational, not just because it provided answers, but because it proferred the types of questions we should all ask when pulling up our analytics dashboard over morning tea. 

Moderating this session was Richard Zwicky . Speaking first was Bryan Eisenberg, SES advisory board manager.

Oh My God! Bad Analysis Killed Kenny
Bryan says there aren’t enough people in the world that know what to do with analytics & on top of that, we have a data diarrhea problem. Before Google analytics, not everyone had access to good data.  This is no longer the case. The problem is what do you do with it?

The first extreme people fall into is looking at analytics (even daily reports) & then just filing them without action. The other extreme is from looking so deep into the data that they’re completely removed from revenue.

Bryan says that analytics works because of process. It’s about continuous improvement (kaizen maybe?) Most people can plan, most people can measure, but not everyone can improve. You can’t make money by just looking at reports.

Improvement comes down to:
Budget – Even it you dedicated 5 hours a month of your personal time on things you can to do optimize – you will do better.
People - You need talented people, creative resources to pool.
Culture – Adopt the policy of being a data driven company. For obvious reasons, this can be harder for large companies.

There are three steps for making real improvements based on analytics insight:
1. Every time you see reports, you need a to – do list. What marketing efforts or parts of your site have challenges? What do you think can improve these things? What sort of things do you want to test? Look at your competitor’s efforts and test. Decide what efforts you do more of & what efforts you do less of.

Then you prioritize your improvements & recommendations.  You have to prioritize based on resources and impact. If you only have 5 hours a month and you have something that will take 20 hours, don’t do it.

2. Segment your way out of sadness.  Average metrics product average results – they don’t given you any kind of valuable information. Why? If one of your goals is to improve conversion rate – break down the number of people in your audience – do you treat repeat customers different from new customers? How do you treat people different later vs sooner in the buying cycle?

What do you do with this information? Create personas to classify your potential customers. They have different preferences. If you need to, create little stories around them to relate to these people. Each one of these personas is going through a different journey through the conversion points you send them through. It’s unfair to think everyone who’s never heard of you before wants to come to your website and sleep with you.

Then, look at basic segments in Google. There’s different conversion rates based on different visitors. Maybe users need different information. After you realize this -  that each person is part of a different segment, then prioritize which personas are the most important.

3. Always be Testing! (not a plug, Bryan swears). A/B and multivariate testing is classic, but you have to do other tests. Usability tests are important. Explore new marketing efforts; play with new things to see if they have traction or not.

Consider low cost user testing tools like 5 Second Test & Feedback Army (among several others). You can have people do usability testing of your pages with attached audio commentary for peanuts basically.

If these don’t work for you – Pray!!!

Next up was Phil Mui from Google Analytics. Phil said he admired the other panelists when he was even in grammar school

Making Money with Google Analytics
Most of us have a 2% conversion rate, how do you measure the success of the rest of the 98%? Conversion is such an important KPI, that our world looks like keyword -> website -> conversion. Is optimizing for conversion the main thing you want to do?  Mui says it may not be the right KPI.

Imagine if  Sears only cared about conversion rate at their retail stores. They could give every sales person a knife & force people to buy by knifepoint. Their conversions will go up , but is that really what they want?

Look beyond keywords – do you also optimize creatives. What about landing pages? What are you doing to optimize your ROI at each of these customer touch points?

1st Suggestion: Optimize Holistically
You can use Google analytics at every touch point. Look at creative, using your favorite search tool to test different creatives, then apply unique tracking parameters.

A set of best practices to use when optimizing creatives: There needs to be a strong call to action. Special offers pique attention. Delivery details generally help clickthrough rates. Also, inserting actual prices. Dynamic keyword insertion is generally a best practice. The percentage of capitalization in creatives helps it feel more personal. In the URL word length – keep it 4-6. No exclamation points.

Landing Page & Website Optimizations: You don’t know how effective a landing page is until you test alternatives against it. Google Website optimizer allows you to do two kinds of web/landing page optimization The first type if A/B testing. Alternatively you can use multivariate testing. Break up the page into multiple variable parts and then test them in combination. You can view combination performance in Google Web Optimizer reports.

2nd Suggestion- Always test (just like Byan said)
Most sites have a few “existential KPI’s” – reasons why a site exists. These are your macro conversions.
For a video sharing website it could be # of uploads. Blogs it could be # of subscriptions. Ask “Why are people engaged with the content” “what influenced them”, & “why did they bounce?” Then start measuring successes with micro conversions – little wins at every part of the site.

3rd Suggestions – Analytics Intelligence
One new Google analytics feature is analytics “intelligence.”  These are  proactive insights & will say something like” On this particular day, please look at these particular metrics.”

4th Suggestion: Be vigilant – know the unknown unknowns

Closing the session was Jim Sterne from the Web Analytics association & the Metrics Summit.

3 Tips for turning your website into a money making machine
Tip #1  Optimize that basket - Amazon has done a great job at testing their shopping cart process. Their magic is the 1-click order button. Jim says to focus on optimizing a specific process, what about just the cart process? Users have to add to cart, review, change quantity, shipping, billing, confirming etc. just to get to the all important thank you page.

Where are the problems here? This is what Web analytics are really good at. Are people leaving at shipping page before billing? We have to do classic testing – usability testing or the survey. Analytics will tell you where the problem is and which problem is most significant at the moment. Test and measure and oh by the way – occasionally look at your page.

Tip #2  Determine Visit Value - If I’m spending a lot of money on a keyword or a banner ad or PR – how do you determine the value of a visit? Jim likes to assign a point system:

Time on Site – interesting but not terribly useful. With time on site, it might be “I’m gonna go to your website but then go eat lunch or go on the phone etc. 0-5 points
Page views – cool you went other places on the site. 1-10 points
Events – did you do some activity to prove engagement 5-20 points
Personally identifiable information – Did I get your email address or phone number. 25-50 points
Purchase – did you buy something, worth a lot but not necessarily the most? – 100 points
What’s the Cart Value – Did you spend 5$ versus $500. 200-400 points
Profitability – did you buy the most profitable thing. 400 -600 points

Ultimately, you want to invest in the sources that yield the highest values.

Tip 3#: Determine attribution:
How are these things working in concert? Assist attribution. Compare your quantity of key phrase searches vs conversion. What if you only focus on your high conversion traffic. It could drop off. Your high search volume stuff might be assisting your high converting keywords (excellent food for thought).

Jim then gave us a taste of his upcoming Social Media Metrics book due in 2010:

• Reach – How many people could hear my message. If it’s on a city street, it’s a billboard.

• Frequency – How often are people talking about me? If discussion increases, that’s good. There’s no such thing as bad publicity

• Influence – It’s great to get a blog mention until your realize only the blog owner’s mom and maybe his dog read it.  Who has the most influence? They will help you with your reach.

• Sentiment – Having a lot of people talking about you a lot is great, but you still have to monitor that &  the tools aren’t there yet.

• Outcomes – The actual conversion; did they download the whitepaper, join the discussion, did they buy the product?

Q & A Session Selected Questions:
Q: Any chance in the future that Google analytics data will pass through the rankings.

Mui: We don’t comment on future features. I can say that every year Google analytics is doing better.

Q: What tools do you like to couple with analytics to complement and augment your understanding?

Eisenberg: Usertesting.com. I’m also  a screenshot-aholic, I like grabbing screenshots from competitor’s sites. Personal surveys are great tools, there’s also really cool search tools. Look up “69 free search tools to improve your website”.

Mui: How many of you use insights for search? How many of you are using ad planner? Search based keyword tools? If you have not used these, these will help you gain search intelligence, plan your campaign & understand your search traffic over time.

Hop into the YouTube analytics suite Insight and you’ll notice YouTube has added some new features to the platform. Obvious additions are pretty new color charts allowing us  to view discovery of videos over time. Being able to monitor view-count over the lifespan of a video and tracking the sources of those views is nothing new to Insight. However merging these two measurements is. The new feature allows us to toggle between stats in a cool stacked chart or line chart display.

Also new on the grid is a sweet Mobile Views feature. YouTube stated in recent months that viewership from mobile phones is in the tens of millions each day and phone uploads have shot up 1700% making this new feature highly substantiated. No doubt, this is a reflection of the dramatic increase of smart phone adoption. Be sure to check this metric out. You’ll be surprised the percentage of mobile views your videos are receiving.

Ever wonder how many of your subscribers are coming to check out your content once you hit upload? The Views from Subscribers feature allows account owners to see exactly what subscription modules are garnering views. Although  gathered stats will only show from September 09′ and forward, it’s helpful to see if subs are coming either from the homepage subscriptions box, subscription page and/or subscription emails.

YouTube also hinted at “more releases” soon to come, but made no specific statement regarding what we can expect. For now I’ll settle for crossing a few line items off the ol’ YouTube analytics feature wishlist.

When a video is tailored to a particular audience to reach a specified objective, measuring more granular demographic data about views and viewers can be incredibly powerful. Therefore understanding YouTube’s built in analytics, Insight, is imperative. Let’s go on an inside tour of YouTube Insight analytics must-know-fundamentals.

Deeper questions tend to arise at this point. “Who is my audience and how exactly are they discovering my videos?”  “Does my content keep viewers attention from beginning to end or are they bailing out midway through?”  “Which of my videos are receiving the most ratings, comments and favorites?”  “Which related videos is my content showing next to?” Pretty heady stuff…

Enter YouTube’s analytics tool, Insight. This free tool is available to any YouTube account holder who has uploaded video content to their channel. Take a look at what data is just there for the taking:

Date Range
Changing the date range allows you to view content performance across certain parts of video life in each Insight category.

Views
Find out exactly how many views your videos are getting as a whole or individually as a percentage of total views.

See view count of your videos in different regions across the globe.

Check the ‘Show unique users’ box in the ‘Views’ tab to see the number of unique views in relation to total views. The difference between total and unique views maybe a reflection of the content’s popularity among users. People’s tendency to watch a video multiple times in one sitting may mean they are sharing with friends or just plain can’t get enough of it.

Discovery
One of my favorite areas of Insight, the discovery section reveals the various sources of traffic to your content. Find the spectrum of keywords and phrases that are driving views as well as related videos your content is appearing next to. Also available is the percentage of total views received by embedded players, external links, Google searches, viral means and other YouTube pages.

Hot Spots
Audience attention is recorded to illustrate a video’s rate of retention in relation to videos of comparable length. High points in the graph may reflect parts of the video that viewers are rewinding to see again. Experiment with catchy annotations designed to preview a particular part of the video in order to keep the viewer engaged (ex. wait to see what happens at the next!). Then monitor any shifts in audience attention that may have come as a result of the message.

Call-to-Action
Formerly only available to non-profit organizations, call-to-action overlays allow you to place an external link over your video thereby driving traffic to your channel profile or website. Find the number of clicks your call-to-action overlays have received for a particular video in the call-to-action tab.

Demographics
Insight relays age range and gender of your viewers either for a specific video or across all published content.

Community Engagement
The community engagement tab shows the number of comments, ratings and favorites your videos have received as well as the percentage of engagement in different regions of the world.

Pulling Data
Download all or segments of the gathered data into a .csv reports for an even deeper and more detailed look into video performance.

Ensuring  your video reaches the right audience is a demanding and ongoing process. Luckily YouTube has provided several different metrics with which to gain a better understanding of how your content is being viewed. It’s important to understand that the metrics gathered are just that, metrics. The true benefit comes from using the data to understand changes and opportunities that may be inferred within the pretty graphs and percentages.

Web analytics data provides an abundance of insight that can ultimately increase revenue for a company. The problem is many aren’t up to the task of deciphering the metrics to really understand making associated reports pay. Today’s  SES Toronto session titled “Analytics for Search: ROI, Engagement, Attribution, and More” was just loaded, with a great panel which shared many actionable recommendations to attendees.

Moderating the session was SearchEngineStrategies Advisory Board & Principal Andrew Goodman (Page Zero Media).  Speaking on the panel were Richard Zwicky (Enquisite), Anne Marie Lorriman (Outrider), June Li (ClickInsight) & Bryan Eisenberg (Future Now, Inc.).

First to take the podium was Bryan Eisenberg. His presentation will cover major issues in web analytics at a high level. He reminisces of at time when tracking analytics meant using log files and parsing them in excel. It was a very painful time in the late 90’s. The main goal of analytics has always been the same, to gather an idea of if we have achieved success? Are we winning the game?

These days a lot of people are talking about attribution. Attribution is a tricky thing; you’re probably getting bias answers. Google has been found to be over-reporting search visits. Attribution is a critical thing. What keyword was actually responsible for the conversion? So many time a user will begin their purchase process by looking for information on the product or service with a particular keyword or phrase. Further down the buying process they may enter a completely different phrase to get back to the site and complete the purchase.

Bryan gives the example of being the parent of a kid on a basket ball team. The first player checks the ball in, the second passes down the lane, the third sets up a pass to your child who dishes the ball to center where the player dunks. As the parent of the child, who do you want to give credit to? Who deserves credit for the score? In the game, the guy who dunks gets the credit. The goal of attribution is to identify the assists in the buying process. He shares an example of a client who found a keyword that wasn’t converting and cut it off. After that sales dropped 30%, because it was a crucial keyword in converting further back in the buying process.

What do we need to know?
Google likes to report on the last click or the person that last touched the ball. There has to be a solution that will show you the all time conversion process.  The objective is to get a better idea of the visitors needs and addressing it. Once you do that you can begin correlating what works and what doesn’t.

Problem with People Using Analytics
Astonishingly, out of 79% of people gathering information on their site, only 30% make the changes needed to garner better results. So many people suffer from “data diarrhea,” they find it easier to discard the information then to make the changes. People are forgetting to do the basics of analytics, hoping they can toss the ball all the way down the court and get that 360 dunk right away. You need to figure out how to make changes on the turn of a dime, every single day. Companies that can do this are the ones that are most successful.

What is the Secret?
Have a continuous improvement process. You need to have the ongoing process. The companies that have had success were the ones that made small steps to improve the site continuously (Dell, Intuit, Walmart, Xerox). Ask what do  you need in order to have an organization set up for marketing optimization

3 Key resources
1st – People
Marketing (the ones in charge of making business decisions), analysts (can point you to challenging areas that need to be addressed and areas of opportunity), graphic design, copywriter, creative resources, & a little bit of technical

2^nd – A Process
Identify who you’re trying to talk to, what action you want them to take & what they need to take that action?

3^rd – Tools
The analytics information you used to have to pay for in the past is free today. Get good at free before you go out and purchase a big analytics package.

Increasing conversion is like compounding interest in a bank.  If you improve conversion every month by 3% over the course of a year you will have improved your conversion rate by 42%.

Next up was June Li. She begins by stating that converting data to dollars is what we want. If you don’t have money in the bank, you’re missing the bottom line. She breaks her presentation into suggestions for those that extract analytic reports themselves and those that will need to ask a team for reports and changes.

Data and reports don’t make you money you have to take that information and analyze it.

Data to dollars Conversion Funnel
Collect Data & Reports -> Ask Questions -> Segmentation Analysis -> Take Action -> $$$

It’s important to realize you are the person that makes the data meaningful, not the tools. Hammers and nails don’t build houses people do. The same is true with web analytics tools. Get in on the web design early in the process. All too often the campaign is set up and running and then the team will call for SEO and SEM. If you’re able to be there from the design conception, address what extra tagging or scripting will be necessary and define goals for the future performance of the site.

Once you have the data, now you need to segment. Ask yourself what is different between those that are converting and those that aren’t.

Drive segmentation with questions as simple as what’s working & what’s not working? Do more of what is working and do less of what’s not working. Look at how visitors are converting and compare that to those that aren’t. That sounds easy enough.

Analyze the data and fix the right problem. What you want is a de-bottle necked funnel with good persuasion and good conversion. Sub-optimial conversion can result from – un-targeted promotion attracting the wrong people – good targeting persuasion ineffective conversion – good persuasion through the purchase funnel, but people are leaving right before conversion.

Drive Action with Analysis
Work backwards from the “conversion” or “value event”
- Are there sources that drive more conversions
- What are the keyword or phrases that drive more traffic, what does that tell you about audience you are tracking.
- What days of the week have higher conversions
- What content did those that converted access (pages, downloads, etc.)

If there’s NO ACTION, there’s NO DOLLARS. You have to take action. Get in on the design process!

Andrew goodman – do what you can with the free tools. Custom advanced segments on each page, Google analytics is getting better.

Next to bat was Anne Marie Lorriman. Her presentation focused on what happens when paid targeting fails and how to diagnose and prescribe a remedy. It all starts with targeting the right keywords.

Issues to Diagnose
1 – Offside search result
2 – Hidden defect search result

Offside Search Result
She asks the audience, what does “sonic” mean to you? The problem is this word can have several different products associated with it – DVD publishing company, brand of tooth brush, a restaurant or a video game character. Keywords will inevitably mean different things to different people. You have to regularly go back and review your how keywords are being targeted in your campaign.

Say your trying to target the keyword “car” in the context of a purchase (ie. “buying a car”). Broad match is not a bad strategy but it requires appropriate attention.  The keyword “car” has several different contexts in which people search for it, buying, repairing, selling, etc.  Without filtering out these different irrelevant contexts you’re campaigns may fair poorly. Incorporate negative keywords into your campaigns to drive down high impressions and low click through, thereby increasing your quality score. Negative keywords may reduce the amount of ad impressions, but ultimately your click through rate (CTR) will increase as you hone in on what your targeted audience is looking for.

Prescription
Step 1: run a search query report
Step 2: analyze the report and create negative keywords for those that are not applicable

Hidden Defect Search Result
After filling your offside prescription, look back at your search query report for each campaign to discover the hidden defect search result. Although you may have honed in on the intention of the search, the spider doesn’t realize “car” to be the same thing as “automobile,” this can drive down quality score because of low query relevance. Separate each keyword into their own campaigns: vehicle, car, automobile and auto into their own campaign. Fill these different campaigns with negative keywords of the existing campaign keyword names.

Last to take the podium was Richard Zwicky. He makes note that although we as search marketers know what the marketplace looks like as to paid and organic, it’s astonishing how many customers out there do not. Looking at how most individuals spend time in the search engine result pages (SERPs), you find that there is very strong focus on organic results. How strong? It’s been reported that 88% of traffic from SERPs is through organic listings. Is an organic refferal worth as much as paid referral?  The problem is that it’s much easier to assign a value to paid rather than organic because paid can be directly tied to keywords and other metrics.

Advertising spend in the past year on organic was $1.4 billion, yet accounted for 88% of traffic. Paid advertising on the other hand had a $39 billion piece of total ad spend and only accounted for 12% of traffic. Organic provides so much value but because it’s difficult to track, it’s often overlooked.

There are countless actions to take in order to gain your share of the organic pie. Richard lays out some very specific things to consider. If you want to be recognized for the specific geographical location your company serves, you need to focus on links that reflect that location. If you don’t segment out value, you’ll never see your opportunities. Keep thinking about how you can move placement for keywords. Keep striving to identify what you’ve missed and what else is out there that can drive value to your business.

Analytic data can seem complex and daunting at times, but it’s ability to effect the bottom line makes it an area of search that can’t be overlooked.

All over the world, SEM industry bellwether Twitter’s rocking with chatter surrounding the long awaited public beta release of the Google Analytics API. That’s not surprising given implications for the search industry.

Classically associated with paid search (PPC) applications and keyword research, get ready for more mainstream search marketing API tools to impact methodology and applications by which we publish content and measure organic SERPs (SEO).

Throngs of drooling developers can now mash data from Google’s ubiquitous free analytics package with AdWords, Trellian, LinkScape, Twitter and other public and pay APIs. The practice of blended data by API has already become the norm. Things are only going to get more exciting.

It’s a brave new world of “ToolStrings.” Tech team Witch doctors mashup custom chains of term extractors, crawlers, keyword inventory reports, non-personalized rank checkers, search analytics and other metrics, all delivered by mainstream and boutique APIs.

In coming days and weeks, webmasters will certainly be wiring Google Analytics data to enterprise content management systems to “advise” various tagging and linking schemas by keyword, page, and many other performance metrics.

The implications of the burgeoning API universe, to the world of undertaking  actionable user behavior measurements will make SEO, paid search and social media applications much smarter. Bravo Google.

Here are resources packed with technical information, industry news and  bloggers’ reactions regarding the new Google Analytics Beta API.

From Google

• Attention Developers: Google Analytics now has an API! GoogleCodeBlog
• Google Analytics (Labs) Developers Guide
• Google Analytics Data API-JavaScript Library Google Analytics Labs
• Google Analytics API code.google.com
• Google Analytics Data API-Java Library Google Analytics Labs
• Attention Developers: Google Analytics API Launched! GoogleAnalyticsBlog
• google-analytics-api This official group for all Google Analytics related APIs.
• google-analytics-api-notify This is the official group for future Google Analytics API announcement

News and Blogs

• Google Analytics Opens API SearchEngineLand
• Attention Developers: google analytics api Launched! Webmaster world
• Google Analytics API Now In Public Beta, Desktop Reporting Takes Stats Offline TechCrunch
  SEOs Excited For Google Analytics API SEO RoundTable
• New Google Analytics API / DataSource! Debuggable
• Juiced Google Analytics Python API Juice Analytics
• Google Analytics API Released – Now Get Your Web Site Metrics via Code ProgramableWeb
• Google Analytics Gets an API ReadWriteWeb
• Google feeds Analytics API to world+dog The Register
• Google Analytics Launches API SearchEngineWatch
• Business impact of Google Analytics API Web1Marketing
• Google Launches API for Google Analytics WebProNews
• New API: Google Analytics Your Way HTML Goodies
• New API: Google Analytics Your Way Internet News
• Google launches API for Analytics platform Hudson Horizons
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This is my last session at SES NY today and it’s a winner.  “Wpromote Workshop: 8 Things You Aren’t Doing That Will Boost Your SEM Results” was a WOW.   Follow the advice if you want results.

There was a little bit of everything for the throngs of professionals flocking to our industry and old pros alike.  The session was co-presented by Wpromote colleagues Michael Mothner, Founder & CEO and Michael Stone, Vice President of Sales & Strategy.  Michael and Michael gave real-life examples and told secrets to beating the competition.

1.     Always test everything. Embrace the worldview that everything is broken.  The question is by how much?  There is always room for improvement in the areas of ad creative copy, overall messaging, PPC keywords, buttons, colors, navigation, forms, steps, funnels, and traffic sources.   What are they all worth?  Test what is hot such as: discounts and deals, sense of urgency, expiration dates, and calls to action.

2.    Tell the right story to the right person by keeping messaging consistent. Get the right product in front of the right person.  Send the right message at the right time.  Start the consistent message with the user query.  Continue to the ad and keep it up to the landing page.  Tell the right story to the right customer.

3.    Don’t be fooled by Google broad match. The problem is that it matches to bad keywords and does little more than fund Google’s research.  Additionally, the way things show up in Google isn’t necessary what people are searching for.  Also, you can’t see what keyword Google really matched (to their fiscal benefit). You can only see which keyword from your list brought the click in.

How do you deal with it? One method is to drop broad match completely.  The problem is that it’s hard to replicate the traffic and conversion volume of broad words.  Another option is to track, learn and adjust.  But how?  You could use search query reports.  The problem is that a lot of keywords are hidden – especially the bad ones.

You could look at server logs but this is very difficult and time consuming.   Behold! Never fear, there is another option…Google Analytics Raw Query Hack! This tool cuts through to whatever the user  actually typed it.

There are two easy steps.  1) Install a Google Analytics filter. step 2)  Use the data to optimize your PPC keyword list.  Use good keywords to  bid higher and to further customize your ads and ad groups.  Use the bad keywords for your negative keyword basket.

4. Blogging & SEO. Everybody should have a blog on their website.  It’s great for SEO.  Michael advised writing 3-4 times a week.  Also keep it on your domain so you get the domain authority.

Make your post around 300 words per post and don’t forget to interact with your post and comments.  Guest blogging is also a great thing to do.  Along with creating relationships, it creates  great link popularity.   Always remember to use keywords for your anchor text and don’t forget to be natural.

5.    Usability testing – Do it. Perform user testing with lots of different people.  You may be surprised by what you find.   There are several tools available such as ones that show a click heat map of your site.  Remember that the way YOU cruise content may be very different than your users.  Lastly, make sure your site is compatible to all browsers and computers.

6.    Forms, Funnels, and Fun. Limit the navigation so you don’t lose users.  Attention spans are very small. Get the message to them right away and minimize distractions.  Get them to action.  Create smart forms and don’t forget to collect abandoned leads.  Ask only for required information.  Keep it simple and tight.

7.    Analytics is your friend. Ask yourself, what are the questions we want answered that would help us solve things?  Analytics in a nutshell dictates that the old way was all about hits.  Now, we need to understand what users do and how they do it.  Do this by identifying questions and then using analytics to find the answers.

Track statistics creatively and go granular.  Beware of the pretty dashboard.  It really doesn’t tell you anything.  Look deeper and segment, segment, segment.  Ask yourself,  who came from where and who did what?   Then compare the data by looking at more than one metric at a time.  Try to look at metrics before and after any  change.

Remember context is everything and your stats  will reflect it.  Establish GOALS!  This will help you answer more in-depth questions about conversion based on goal value.  Ultimately, it can help you determine ROI.

8.    Social media and you. It’s the next wave so grab a keyboard and catch it.  It is great way to connect your brand to those who aren’t actually searching for your website.  Tweet your customers.  Have your employees tweet your customers.

Follow these 8 actionable items and be on your way to results.

These days predictive utilities like Trellian, WordTracker and AdWords are only half the keyword research story. State of the art processes combine these standard search predict tools’ output with “what we already know,” by mashing in site-specific datasets at the keyword level.

Additional keyword data might include statistics culled from organic analytics (KW traffic, conversion, behavior criteria), PPC history (CPC, CTR, conversion, etc…) and SEOmoz’s Linkscape (SEO competitiveness-predict).

We all know it’s theoretically useful to “advise” the keyword selection process by aggregating datasets. Very few SEMs actually pull it off. This article will guide you through the process of using spreadsheets to pilot advanced techniques, for API automation later.

What Is Keyword Research For Anyway?
Classic keyword research is all about selecting words for SEO, PPC and offline clarity. However there are other compelling objectives attainable by analytic mashups.

This might include wire-framing SEO based on page strength, taking  SERPs competitiveness into account,  discovering natural search clues for more efficient PPC and a multitude of  seriously useful applications. At the end of the day keyword research is about increasing ROI in All Channels. The approach proffered here can yield extremely deep insights.

Not Your Mother’s Keyword Basket
Using multiple datasets relies on the power of  mashing data together and stacked sorting routines. Even within themselves,  most web based tools only provide a single dimension of data sorting.

For instance AdWords Keyword Tool lets us sort by any single attribute at a time, like estimated average monthly searches or CPC. Creative demographic research artists rock these tools by exporting to .CSV, adding additional keyword-level metrics and executing multiple sorts.

Example: Intersection of Low PPC Cost & Search Frequency
Start with an AdWords keyword basket You’ll find available dataset attributes, in the show/hide columns menu.

Export keyword Basket to an Excel .CSV

Now use the data sort functionality in Excel to identify the intersection of low PPC cost & search frequency. This particular sort is not possible in the AdWords tool’s web UI, because it has 2 steps. That said, it’s super easy in Excel.

The Sort Reveals 269, 400 Annual SEO Keywords, estimated  @ $.05 CPC.

Sorting Analytic Mashups!
Now it’s time to aggregate  keyword predict, organic analytics & PPC datasets into a single spreadsheet for cross channel data sorting. It’s very simple actually. Just create new columns on the spreadsheet and enter each keyword’s data next to the keyword basket’s output.

Import/Collate Each Keyword’s Organic History (Remember, this data is from your site’s web analytics like Google Analytics, ClickTracks, Enquisite, etc…)

• Traffic Frequency
• Conversion Frequency
• Conversion Ratio
• Engagement (Time & Page Views)

Import/Collate Each Keyword’s PPC History (This data comes from your PPC Accounts)

• Click Through Count
• Click Through Ratio (CTR)
• Actual Cost Per Click (CPC)
• Conversion Count
• Conversion Ratio
• Cost Per Conversion

Import Average mR of Each Keyword’s Top 3 Organic SERPs
mR means “MozRank,” which is the LinkScape analogy for Google’s infamous PageRank metric. It’s is SEOmoz toolset’s contribution to measuring page value and organic competitiveness.

Query each each keyword and take the average mR of the top 3 organic results with personalized search turned off. Enter the value into the spreadsheet next to each keyword, as a viable estimate of the SERPs competitiveness for that keyword.

Ready to fly? Now that you have the the predictive, organic & PPC historical data for each keyword on one spreadsheet, there’s  awesome collating power at your data-sorting fingertips. Here is a partial list of “sorts” to cross-advise organic and PPC marketing efforts

High Organic Traffic / Low Organic Conversion
Use this report to identify where organic traffic intersects with low conversion. Obviously the list of  keywords portends site-needs, in order to convert traffic.

Higher Predict Frequency / Lower Organic Competitiveness
This handy little sort finds the intersection of AdWords search volume predict, with easy organic SERPs for the keyword.

Lower Predicted PPC Cost Per Click / High Organic Conversion Ratio
Find low cost keywords that are proven to convert well organically. This is a classic aggregated dataset keyword research report.

High PPC Conversion Frequency / High Organic Traffic / Low Organic Conversion
This triple-sort identifies deficiencies in organic conversion, for keyword where PPC has proven the site converts.  It’s especially useful to seek targets for improvement where there’s already good organic traffic to the site.

Other Fun Keyword Attributes For Research Mashups
There are any number of other (provocative) attributes which comprise organic and PPC historical datasets. They can be mashed into our aggregated-sort approach for spectacular clarity.

• Behavioral Triggers & Funnels
• Users’ Proclivity To Socialize Content
• Geographic Data
• Page Strength (Page on Which The SEO Is Placed)

Pioneering algorithms using spreadsheets is easy.  Practicing these techniques without a number crunching army is quite another story. After refining advanced keyword research sorting with exported data, bring the processes to your development team for automation on the various APIs that comprise keyword basket, organic analytic and PPC reports.

Keep in mind that not every dataset is available for every website. Use what’s available to make keyword research even more valuable. These days predictive keyword basket tools are only part of the show. Also mash in keyword-level metrics for cross-channel sorting, using both what is predictable and known.

SES Chicago Day three had me digging deep into my vernacular and coining the new word “SMAnalytics” which combines analytics and SM, A.K.A. Social Media. Where is this intersection of Social Media and Analytics?

In the session, “Social Media – Measuring the Business Value,” presenters sought to dig into the subject of measuring this business value. Through the use of search and web analytics, social media programs can be shaped and results can be measured.

I know, I know, it’s hard to imagine.  Panelists outlined social media marketing programs they’ve designed and how they have documented the impact. The moderator was Pauline Ores, SES Advisory Board & Senior Marketing Manager, Social Media Engagement, IBM Corporation.

The first speaker was Brian Halligan, CEO and Co-Founder of HubSpot. He tackled the questions of why social media is good and how do we measure it? How influential are you? What should you do next?

Social Media works for marketers because it is a function of the thickness of your brain versus the thickness of your wallet. How clever and interesting can you be? Even in the economic downturn, Social Media continues to show gains and because of its propensity for being budget-friendly, is ideal for small businesses to spread the word.

As time goes on, humans get better and better at blocking messages. Computers are equipped with spam blockers, phones with caller id and do-not-call-lists, and televisions with digital video recorders. Traditional methods of getting the message out don’t always work in these arenas.

Since humans change, the way we send and receive messages also needs to evolve. Through Social Media, marketers can engage audiences all in one place with pertinent information and in-depth engagement. In addition the viral nature of social media is high.

But where does social media reach and how do you measure it? To measure, one must first figure out reach by figuring out where fans and subscribers are coming from. They could be from email campaigns, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to name a few. Next, look at social media trending by analyzing social media funnels. Where did the traffic for visitors versus prospects come from? Figure out which venue sent traffic that turned into a lead or customer and then track the growth.

Bill Hunt, CEO, of Global Strategies International, gave his viewpoint. The “bee in his bonnet wants to know how to quantify. Before embarking on the path to quantification, goals must be defined. Typical social media goals might include generating awareness or getting folks to compare products. It might be about cultivating conversations or building an advocacy base for the offerings, or goals might be about connection. They could also be about support or about optimizing offerings.

As we meander along the path of results enlightenment, it becomes clear that if we could understand the impact of achieving the goals, we could then identify ways to measure progress for the company and then uncover tactics to affect it. After all, what we really want to do is to find the right people and then help them figure out what to do once they are found.

Once goals are established, how do you measure being social? First ask yourself, “are you listening?” Tools such as Google Alerts, Buzz Metrics, MyBlogLog, and Googleblog are a good places to start. It is a great practice to monitor the market conversation regarding your brand. Is the talk good or bad? What are the influences to the conversation? This is all valuable information about your product and about how to market your product.

Social media doesn’t have to be about sitting back and letting the conversation fly by you. JOIN IN! Stimulate the conversation via Twitter. Then, monitor the Tweets to understand the conversation and finally empower evangelists who will advocate for your brand. If you engage, don’t be surprised if blogs and social media bookmarks outrank your site in the SERPS.

Rob Key, CEO, Converseon spoke third and also emphasized the power of social media listening and measurement. Conversation mining can get you deep insight into trends. It’s not just for monitoring anymore. True engagement requires a ‘listen first” approach. From here engagement morphs into four phases: listening, organizing engaging and finally measuring and/or optimizing. Get back to the basics of human communication.

When listening, try to capture and understand the consumer-generated media spewing out. Always listen before you engage. Take the treasure box of what you hear and inform creative, inform media planning, initiate reputation management, adjust search and content creation, and inform market research departments.

Where do you dig for these jewels? Start by mining a wide range of sources such as social networks, blogs, and micro blogs. Mine for volume, source, sentiment, tone, voices/new voices, topic/subtopic, velocity, influence, and demographics to name a few. Find out who is most influential and what they are contributing. Ask yourself, what is the anatomy of the conversation?

For instance, who are the voices and what do they think about the product, the fees, etc. Don’t dismiss the fact that you will also find out more about your product and your competitors through this listening. Even though it may be tempting to turn back to technology, just remember that it can’t get to the unique nuggets and nuances people bring to the table. You still need people.

Speaking of people, remember your staff. Try “listening” to your entire organization for organizational transformation. Social Media from the inside out is not just for marketing but can also be used for organizational issues.

By listening to conversations, you can quantify progress by watching the trending. What is the next big thing moving forward? Take action on what you “hear.”

Keep in mind that no part of internet marketing is mutually exclusive. Use what you learn in Social Media and apply it to your SEO and PPC campaigns and vice versa.

Social media marketing is good but hard to measure since many of the metrics seem intangible. Never fear, it is doable IF you have clearly defined goals and you know what you’re looking for. It’s a jungle out there and if you don’t have an idea of what you’re looking for, you might get tangled up in the millions of threads of conversation.

However, once you establish what you are looking for, set up methods of tracking the data so it you can make sense of it in the plan of attack stage and remember to…”Keep on Talkin’.”

A timeless truth of online marketing is that a substantial percentage of online leads and sales result from “direct brand” searches.  This simply means customers often Google the actual name of your business or branded products, to research and find contact information. Being properly indexed in search engines for permutations of your company’s name is crucial.

Failing to rank for direct brand search, because your new company name is a highly contested literal keyword, is akin to dancing with both arms and legs tied behind your back. It doesn’t matter what SEO tools you have, books read, software purchased or training pursued. Such is the stuff of search engine optimization service riddles.

Classic Organic Search Anecdote
This post has been gestating in my head for a few weeks, ever since I learned that someone I work for has a new competitor starting a recording school in Minnesota. The business is called “Masters Recording Institute.” Cool name right? Let’s take a more careful look.

Well, from an SEO services perspective, it’s a classic search engine optimization blunder. To start: everybody loves initials. From our experience, a good percentage of future direct brand searches could occur on the initials “MRI.”

It’s possible that the curious are already referring to the company as such. Sadly, searches for “MRI” result in harvesting all sorts of information about “magnetic resonance imaging,” which is useless in this context. Needless to say, ranking on the average search engine results page (SERP) for the keyword MRI might take a team of link-building-specialists months– and perhaps cost quite a bit.

Local Search Matters
Potential customers might type “Minnesota MRI” into Google, looking for our recording school friends. In terms of local search, this new business, simply by way of chosen name, now has to slug out regional direct brand prominence with massive SEO competitors like Mayo Clinic.

In this article, we’re not even discussing the ramifications of using the word “masters” in the company name. Remember that folks looking for education sometimes seek a “masters degree.” For a startup with a measured marketing budget (assumption), these types of factors could be like taking on an army with a slingshot.

Another Minnesota recording school, The Institute of Production and Recording (IPR), ranks pretty well for direct brand searches on the initials. (Disclosure: author works for them.) That’s because, for the most part, there are not many businesses who are stakeholders in showing up in Google for the keyword “IPR.” Even so, it took several years to handle incidental competitors like Wikipedia, who are also in the keyword space for bevy of other meanings for the initials “IPR.”

Paid Search Brand Defense
If your company can’t make page one in the “average” user’s Google SERPs, one standard tactic is to buy pay per click (PPC). Even with good organic prominence, PPC is usually a good choice for direct brand defense. The keyword “MRI” could cost our friends a veritable fortune to defend over time because the commercial landscape is so contested.

This much is for sure: AdWords won’t care whether advertisements are about medical products or music production schools. Competition drives PPC marketplace costs. Even with careful delineation of products offered to qualify the intent of customers, clicks may be extremely expensive.

Take A Step Back
Before you name your new business or product, here are a few simple steps you can take:

• Do some Google searches. Remarkable insight can be gained by taking a look at how many other companies optimizing for proposed business names and how formidable they are. Take a look at how many documents are returned for each search. Do an allintitle: query to see how many web pages are optimized for keywords.
• Consider initials & other abbreviations. Customers will find all sorts of creative ways to twist, abbreviate, hack up and misspell your brand name. Anticipate this eventuality and do appropriate research.
• Be willing to change your mind. In any creative process we all get enamored with early ideas, especially if we think they’re great. Be willing to change your mind several times based on what research reveals. Direct brand searches (and localized permutations thereof) can be critical to the success of any fledgling enterprise. Take this reality seriously.
• Reverse the process. Make a list of mid-tail keywords with only moderate competition, and factor them into the exercise of brainstorming names. Most folks find it actually contributes to the creative process. Later on when you have to spend cash for SEO and PPC, this formative & strategic thinking can pay huge dividends (and your SEO vendor will love you).
• Hire an SEO Consultant before you name your startup. Some entrepreneurs are surprised to hear that search marketing focused advertising agencies are retained, on a regular basis, to help startups with their business plan. Evaluate marketing firms very early in the planning process and bring them on board to help with basic business decisions, which can have a tremendous impact on your marketing budget (or very survival) later.
• Use Your Head. Cool is not the only rule. There’s much more to choosing a name for your business than the “groovy factor.” Understandably, starting a business is an exciting endeavor and it’s easy to rush. Typically there’s lots on line financially and socially. Think ahead to the potential SEO implications.

Direct brand search is a vitally important component to the success of any marketing campaign. A significant percentage of leads and sales should result from customers who type in the name of your company to locate or/or validate the credibility of products and services.

Therefore choosing a new company name on a  highly contested litteral keyword and not thinking out other ways customers might search, literally, could make or break a new venture. Think about SEO before your name your company.