During Day 2 of SES San Jose, Avinash Kaushik, Google Analytics Evangelist, was in fine form discussing Google Analytics changes.

For any of you who have heard Avinash speak you’ll know that he’s an incredibly humorous speaker. But underneath that humor lies wisdom. Even when you think he’s making a joke, if you dissect what he’s saying; underneath, it’s brilliant.

Here are Avinash’s best quotes from his speech and the underlying implication of what he said:

1. “You do not control your homepage. Google controls your homepage”

In other words if …

search engine traffic is responsible for a sizable portion of your traffic (as it typically is)

and

Google determines which page is most relevant for various keyword queries (okay – maybe with a little help from SEO’s)

then, in essence,

Google is picking which page is your Landing Page or Homepage.

The implication of this is that usability just got a whole lot more important. At the very least, every page on your site should have relevant content, intuitive navigation and clear calls to action.

Use your analytics to determine which landing pages are performing best and which are performing worst?

2. “Most analytics tools are data pukers”

Avinash is talking about the majority of analytics reports with 9500+ keywords. He says that these are useless. And he’s right. A really big list in not very meaningful. It’s the ability to identify anomalies and outliers that help make reports of value.

Occam’s Razor Blog Case Study:

• It receives 50,000 visits per month. 20,000 of those visitors came from search through 9,500 keywords

• Most analytics tools want you to use their reports this way. This makes no sense. The wonderful thing about the long tail is that all your branded terms are in the head and the tail represents the category, generic early bird keywords.

• Google Analytics can break out your long tail by a number of different variables such as bounce rate, conversions, dollar value per visit, etc so that you can make meaningful decisions based on which long tail are driving value.

3. “If you don’t rank for your branded terms then you only have to thank your incompetence.”

Solving for the head and solving for the tail are two totally different problems.

With the head of the keywords, you should obsess but obsess efficiently by using Google Analytics Keyword Report says Avinash, “Obsess and stalk keywords so that you can drive positive outcomes for your business”

4. “The long tail contains all the impressions virgins”

Hundreds of thousands of searchers that don’t know what they are looking for.

If we look at the tail we can find the keywords that perform best. Don’t’ analyze based on visits analyze based on conversions.

To analyze the tail install a special plug-in “unusual traffic button” to help analyze the tail because it will help to evaluate the best opportunities.

It’s a great way to look for what is going on beneath the surface. Use it to find trends and patterns in your data that are ahead of the curve. Then figure out if they are monitiz-able or not.

5. “I’m running a toy blog it’s not even a real business”

In Avinash’s opinion, if you are not doing e commerce overview then you should not have your job.

Macro conversions (total sales) are cool but measuring the micro conversions is critical.

Even if you don’t have an e commerce site you can determine conversion value. As an example, for Occam’s Razor the goals are as follows:

a) The first goal is if people go to the All Posts page – “if you come to my blog and read two of my posts you’ll be convinced of my greatness” (LOL!)

b) Second goal is if you go to his About Me page “for no other reason but because it pleases me” again this brought a huge laugh from the audience!!

c) The third goal is the people who go to speaking engagements page. Think of it as if there is affiliate benefit and put in fake dollars. It’s easy to quantify goals. This is important because it changes the type of conversation that you’ll have with your boss than if you were just talking about page views.

On the surface Avinash appear to be tongue in cheek, but if you strip away the humor, what’s left remains great business advice.

Jennifer Osborne is VP Business Development for Search Engine People a Toronto SEO Company

Mobile and Local are tied at the hip, but up until recently the tools weren’t up to the task. But with advent of the iPhone however, all that is changing.

Besides making iPhone a great productivity tool (not to mention GORGEOUS eye candy), Apple has opened up third party application development.

This SES San Jose session demo-ed a few of the existing and up-and-coming applications taking advantage not only of local search, but also of the iPhone’s unique capabilities.

The panel was moderated by Michael Boland, Senior Analyst of the The Kelsey Group and the speakers were: Ethan Lowry, Co-founder, UrbanSpoon, Scott Dunlap, CEO, NearbyNow, Ryan Sarver, Director of Consumer Products, Skyhook Wireless, Siva V. Kumar, Founder & CEO, TheFind.com, Sonia McFarland & Head of Business Development, Yelp.

The iPhone is awesome.
I have been a Mac girl from way back in the 80s in high school and I’ve been an iPhone convert from the beginning.

The iPhone [in author's opinion] is THE best smart phone that exists, for several reasons – one of which is “true web browsing.” There’s no browser emulator – like Blazer on my old Sprint Treo. I’m a chronic Googler and after a few desperate attempts I never touched Blazer again. Now, with my iPhone there are days when I don’t even open my computer. I make constant use of Google maps to orient myself in my new home of New York.

I should note to users who may not be familiar with iPhone that there is a difference between using the iPhone to view a website that has been “optimized” for the iPhone, and downloading and using an iPhone app. For example, urbanspoon.com has an iPhone-optimized website if you view it using your iPhone. However, it lacks the cool iPhone-specific functionality I’ll talk about later if you don’t use the iPhone APPLICATION (which is free!)

The big plus of the iPhone is: it knows where it is. Once you know where you are, you have a reference point to find other things. Local stores want to tell your iPhone where they are. New applications are allowing them to do that.

But first, what is Geo-Location?
Geo-location is a fancy word for locating where you are on the planet.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know that the new iPhone 3G came out in July. The big deal about it is that it is running on the 3G network, and has GPS functionality. Global Satellite Positioning = GPS. The iPhone talks to satellites to find out where it is. Now, other phones had had GPS before (Nokia), but the rest of the hardware wasn’t…well, it wasn’t the iPhone.

GPS is great, but unfortunately, it can be slow (can take a minute or more to “boot up”) and it doesn’t work everywhere (if you are in a dense urban location tall buildings make it hard to get a lock on you). Happily, the iPhone has dual mode functionality – where GPS doesn’t work, it uses wi-fi positioning, based on SkyHook technology. Ryan Sarver from SkyHook talked about the technology behind SkyHook.

SkyHook technology, around since 2005 does one thing: produces location latitude and longitude from wi-fi positioning.

Wi-fi positioning is analogous to GPS. Wi-fi positioning makes use of wireless access points for reference. You know when you turn on your computer and you now see all those wireless networks that are locked so you can’t hop onto them? SkyHook doesn’t need to get “on” to the wi-fit network – it just uses their presence to help triangulate your position. It’s faster than GPS (can locate in a quarter of a second) and it’s pretty darn accurate too (within 20-30 meters).

SkyHook employees are out in their cars finding wi-fi access points in the US, Europe, and Asia. There are about 56 million of them at present (and increasing all the time). Trouble is, SkyHook still needs density for the wi-fi positioning to work (how dense?) It works best in urban areas.  He then showed a map of Manhattan, with red dots showing every wi-fi access point they’d mapped. I swear it looked like a swarm of ants.

So wi-fi positioning works great for iPhone in urban areas, what about rural? Well, that’s where GPS comes in. GPS is great at finding you in wide-open areas. So, iPhone has you covered no matter where you are (and you don’t to know anything about this underlying technology either, iPhone uses whatever technology is the fastest to find itself). What do you do with all this power?

iPhone is first phone to offer true location-based services. Ryan went through the iPhone App Store and found that of the 1000 apps currently there, 30 of them are location-based.

____________________________________________

UrbanSpoon with Ethan Lowry

Urban Spoon – THE hot iPhone App of the Search Engine Strategies Conference!

It seems that someone at every SES session I went to was all foaming at the mouth about UrbanSpoon, so it was nice to see a proper demo of it! Ethan Lowry of Urban Spoon called Urban Spoon “the great discovery engine for local search.” Now, I’d of course narrow that to “discovery engine for food,” but who’s splitting hairs?

Urbanspoon is focused on helping people find a place to eat. They are have been around for a year and a half, they cover 70 cities, and they have a million unique visitors. They combine:

• location
• price
• city/neighborhood
• food type
• reviews (from bloggers, and restaurant critics!)

Take a Gamble On Your Meal

Here’s how it looks, and how it works.

1. You download the app to your iPhone.
2. You either let iPhone find the city you’re in, or you tell it where you are.
3. On the “slot machine” you can use three spinners to input info: neighborhood, food type, and price. You can lock any/all of those spinners to narrow your results.
4. Once you’ve set the sliders, SHAKE the iPhone (it uses the accelerometer). The spinners go just like a slot machine, and CLINK there’s your results!

Now, the result isn’t completely random. It skews to better-reviewed restaurants. Also, there’s’ only one result. If it’s not what you wanted, shake it again to get another suggestion. Obviously, if you want to be presented by a bunch of choices, this app is not for you (try YELP!) but if you like a little kinesthetic interaction when picking your meal (and cool sound effects too!), Urban Spoon is great fun.

When you get your result, all the info you need is there: phone number, map, hours, reviews.

There’s also a social networking component – you invite friends and compare recommendations.

I used it to find lunch today!

__________

NearbyNow Mall Navigation App/Is It Me? with Scott Dunlap

Ok, now we’re getting into the killer shopping app. There are sites on the web that will tell you where you can buy a product. There are sites that can tell you where you can buy it, and whether that product is in stock at the moment.

NearbyNow’s Mall Navigation application sucks down some steroids gives you an application that shows you a mall map, sales in every store in the mall, and a product search – what stores carry that product.

If you want that product, you can click “CHECK STORE INVENTORY and a CONCIERGE (!) will call that store to not only verify that it’s ACTUALLY in stock, but tell them to hold it for you! And then sends you a cute little email or text message that tells you he’s done so. Guess who pays for this service? If you answered, “me” you would be WRONG. You get to use this service for free. Merchants pay a nice chunk of change to get iPhone-addicted people like you to get led directly to their store/merchandise – because people who own iPhones on average have 40 to 50 times more disposable income!

(see this YouTube video to see the Mall Application in action).

This application will be killer come Christmas (it is slated to be released in September/October 2008).

Is It Me?

Oh dear. Now we’re getting into a seriously addictive application. Is It Me? is an iPhone application that lets you take full advantage of the iPhone time-wasting capabilities. Let’s say you’re in a mall, and you see an awesome dress. You want feedback from a friend as to how much they like it for you. Trouble is, you are all alone. What do you do? The 2006 answer would have been, “call them on the phone and describe it to them in a futile attempt to convey its essence.” In 2007, you would send a cell phone pic to them and wait for feedback. It’s 2008, and what you can do now is, using Is It Me?, take a picture with your iPhone, send it to a group of friends, and let them VOTE ON IT.  You can also enter information on where you saw the item (store list is supplied through geo-location). That way, your friend who is envious of your style sense, can go to her local mall and get the exact same thing!! Or, even order it online! Genius.

Note, this functionality isn’t just for clothes, I’m sure lots of folks are going to be using it for, “is this guy hot??”

Note that people you send these things to do not have to have iPhones (although there is more fun functionality to use on the iPhone – as seen in this screenshot.

Is it Me? Is another branded app from the NearByNow folks, available in the September/October 2008 timeframe.

_______________________

Thefind.com with Siva Kumar

Thefind.com is a shopping comparison site that also has customize content, much of it in the “lifestyle” category (i.e. fashion, etc.).

TheFind: Where to Shop is a “location aware” application that enables users to search for products they want to buy and then simply view relevant stores on interactive maps pinpointing local retail locations (identified by “store icons”) near their current physical locations (identified by a “location icon”). The location information is determined using GPS or other positioning methods of the iPhone platform.

Thefind.com is location-based shopping, showing users not only where a retailer is in the customer’s area, but also product availability price, and also cross-checking online pricing for items (!!). Then again, just because ebay has your item for a dollar cheaper isn’t likely to override your desire to have the item NOW. You can also reserve an item for in-store pickup.

Thefind.com has over 250 million products, and works with “big-box” retailers as well as small boutiques.

Thefind.com is live on the web now, and their iPhone app has been submitted to Apple for approval and will hopefully be available in September for download.

__________________________________________

YELP

YELP is another site I use myself. It’s a local review site with local content, provided by local users. It has a huge and loyal community network. I have friends who have their entire social calendar filled by YELP activities. Yelp is not just food (in fact, only 1/3 of their content is food-related).

Yelp already had an extremely strong website chock full of user-generated content, it was just a matter of figuring out which functions were the most important for users of the iPhone app.

The features that made it:

• Find: enter search terms (food, service, neighborhood)
• Near: Current location  (or enter it in)
• Filter criteria: distance from me, price, whether open now
• Map
• Restaurant/Service info (phone, address, hours)
• User Reviews

In the future, you will be able to write reviews on the iPhone, add pictures, and use more social info.

_____________________

IPHONE DEVELOPMENT INFO

• How many people are using location-based services for iPhone? The Metrics are exploding since app store opened – but out of 1000 apps there are about 140 location-based apps.
• How easy is it to get iPhone app developed? The iPhone app approval process is rigorous. You HAVE TO adhere to their UI requirements or you will be rejected outright. For example, if you add an extra icon in a plae not usual for iPhone. And it will be harder next time to get something approved. But, if you follow all their rules and you get extremely lucky, approval process can be as short as 48 hours. Apple also prefers apps that take advantage of iPhone’s unique capabilities – for example, the accelerometer.
• How do you get things developed? Who are the famous iPhone developers? Answer: we don’t know, everyone wants to know. We do know: Objective C is the developer’s language iPhone uses, and it’s not the greatest.  (Charlene note: As someone shopping for an iPhone developer for some apps I have in my head, there are lots of rogue app developers, and from what I’ve heard – at least in New York – many of them are willing to work on projects where they take a cut of profits, and dont’ require being paid up front. Good news if that’s a model you’re comfortable with.)
• Where are your revenues coming from?
  • Skyhook: made a deal with Apple in Jan 2008
  • UrbanSpoon is an ad model, but iPhone app has no monetization right now
  • Nearbynow is 90% lead generation money – stores pay them to send customers to their stores – it’s the offline equivalent of Google clicks.
  • Find.com – CPC, CPA, CPM
  • YELP: ad-supported model, so no monetization on iPhone yet

And now the important stuff: the panel’s favorite iPhone apps:

• Michael Boland: COWBELL (I downloaded this – AWESOME!!)
• Ryan Seaver: URBANSPOON (and NOT from the UrbanSpoon guy!)
• Ethan Lowry: LABYRINTH
• Scott Dunlap: TEXAS HOLDEM
• Siva Kumar: MAPS
• Sonia McFarland: SHAZAM

_____________________________________

Charlene Jaszewski is head honcho over at Smartypants Group, and helps small business and technology play nicely together when she’s not writing articles like this one. She is also addicted to her iPhone and needs a support group pls thx.

Search is all about getting users to your site, but what happens when they get there? Landing Page Optimization is all about making sure users know exactly what to do when they land on your site. These notes are from the SES San Jose “Landing Page Utopia: Expert Round Table panel.”

The moderator was Ron Belanger, Vice President of Agency Development, Yahoo! Search Marketing. Speakers: Scott Brinker, President & Chief Technology Officer, ion interactive, Frans Keylard, Director of Optimization, Widemile, Alissa Ruehl, Manager of Paid Search Services, Apogee Search &  Jonathan Mendez, Founder & CEO, RAMP Digital

Let’s talk terms first:
Landing Page: where users end up after they click search engine results, or type in a direct age

Conversion: when a viewer of the site fulfills the call to action on your site. It is most commonly when a user makes a purchase, but it could also be an action, such as filling out a form, submitting their e-mail, or downloading a PDF.

Engagement, Not Conversion: Scott Brinker of Ion Interactive

• Think in terms of ENGAGEMENT, not necessarily conversion. Just because someone lands on your site doesn’t mean they will convert. In fact, it’s more likely they WON’T convert.
• Have more than one landing page. People will find your site through more than one channel, their landing page should reflect that difference in context.
• Make copious use of post-click segmentation. Let users do self-segmentation (ooh that sounds weird). Let them decide what group they are in. When they sort themselves, the page content following the segmentation can be more customized to them! Forms can get shorter and friendlier, for example. Case study: when Howard Johnson’s offered a choice on their landing page for business or leisure traveler, they got a 73.1% segmentation rate.
• Use widgets and social media – landing page respondents are a natural affinity group. Get people to connect with each other.

Ten Landing Page Proverbs: Alissa Ruehl of Apogee Search

1. DON’T LOOK A GIFT HORSE IN THE MOUTH: Leads are a gift. Don’t ask for mailing address unless you need it. Avoid asking someone to confirm email address for a form, consider emailing the doc. Don’t ask things in forms that you wouldn’t ask in person in first meeting (would you ask someone at first meeting their income?)
2. ARE YOU GOING OUT DRESSED LIKE THAT?: Forms should be clean and functional. Single column forms easier to use if you use two columns, use sensible tabbing. Make fields the right size for the content. Do not have a button to clear or reset the form.
3. BREVITY IS THE SOUL OF WIT: Have a good title, make it short and sweet. Use search keywords when possible. Be careful with dynamic keyword insertion. Avoid all caps if possible.
4. TIDE AND TIME WAITS FOR NO MAN: Visitors won’t wait for a slow site to load – in fact Google will penalize you if you have a slow loading site. However, if it’s imperative for it to be slow, have a good loading message.
5. A PICTURE IS WORTH 1000 WORDS: People get bored with text – break the monotony with some pictures. BUT use real pictures, not stock (they perform better). Check the file size that they load fast.
6. YOU’LL GET BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM YOUR FRIENDS: Get an outside opinion – ask friends, consultants (outside your marketing department), someone outside your industry, your local teenager.
7. PAY ATTENTION TO OTHER PAGES TOO: Some visitor will stray – you need to optimize the whole site – and make sure you have a good about us page!
8. YOUR THANK YOU PAGE IS IMPORTANT TOO: If you have customer downloads (say a white paper), say thanks after it’s complete!
9. TRY TO PLEASE ALL AND YOU’LL PLEASE NONE: Speak to your target audience get ot know customer segment audience and create personas to speak to target by search term.
10. IT’S WHAT ‘S INSIDE THAT COUNTS: Make sure your product has real competitive advantages, and that you have good juicy content.

The World’s Greatest Landing Page; Jonathan Mendez of Ramp Digital
Jonathan Mendez of Ramp Digital spoke last. Jonathan used Google as an example of the world’s greatest landing page, to show the components of an effective landing page.

1. Give people control. (the Google query field). Let the user control the medium. People know their intent better than you do. Self-segmentation is the most powerful technology.  Allow people to maintain control over presentation and delivery of content.
2. Reduce choices. The search battle was won and lost on Google. You can only do one thing on the Google site: search.  You can also search on the Yahoo site, but look at all the othe distracting stuff on the page! Remember paralysis by analysis!
3. Don’t just rely on HTML. Use advanced scripting to do what you need: Javascript APIs, AJAX, semantic markup.
4. Target to content. Keywords become rules. This is what the web is all about! Content targeting!
5. Design for goal, not the person. Google’s design varies ever so slightly per country.
6. The experience you create has HUGE brand value. Google is the number one brand in the world and has never spent a cent on advertising.
7. Always be testing! Google has almost 10,000 people constantly testing every day.

[Editor's note: This post is our continued dissemination of content from this week's  SearchEngineStrategies San Jose search marketing conference, where aimClear had 3 correspondents providing our readers notes and articles. The following is from our friend and blogger-associate, Todd Mintz:]

It’s not always just about sales…it’s about leads first! This SES San Jose panel offered insights into generating copious amounts of high-quality leads for your business, to generate revenue at the bottom of the sales funnel.

Moderator Jeffrey Rohrs is Vice-President, Agency & Search Marketing, for email marketing firm ExactTarget. He joked that the “session is the only obstacle between us and the cocktail hour.” The first speaker up, Patricia Hursh, was President of SmartSearch Marketing.

Patricia ’s Tips for B2B Search Advertisers:

• Reach prospects early in the buying cycle;
• Advertise in “The Tail”;
• Include branded keywords;
• Prequalify clickers;
• Focus and align ad copy;
• Create very specific landing pages / microsites
• Test pages continuously;
• Offer multiple action options;
• Simplify registration forms;
• Turn web inquiries into sales leads.

Notes From The Buying Cycle
Selection Phase: Buyer searches to validate top candidates. Buy keywords specific to brand, products & features.

Collectively, the phrases in the “tail” often account for more traffic than the head plus the leads are more qualified. Tail phrases convert best especially 3 and 4 word search phrases. One needs to measure the entire search history of a person who ultimately converts on a branded term…the earlier searches are from non-branded searches.

Ad copy: needs to address your specific target audience and pre-qualify clickers. Ad copy needs to be aligned with the search query and copy should be modified across the buying cycle.

Test page elements: extremely important. Recommended elements to test: Page layouts, images, benefit statements, action triggers, names and descriptions of downloadable assets, registration form placement, and registration form fields (required and optional).

Track/Improve results. Offer action options. Secondary options can really help increase lead generation.

Registration forms are typically too lengthy…should try to test simplified forms.

Should implement a lead qualification process.

All conversions aren’t leads. A typical conversion hierarchy:

• All conversions reported by search engines;
• Valid inquiries (verified by SmartSearch);
• Accepted inquiries (qualified by client);
• Inquiry subject to follow up process;
• Sales Leads.

The next speaker, Barbara Coll, was CEO of WebMama, a search engine marketing firm focusing on B to B clients.

Search Enterprise & The Sales Force
Marketing Goal: Fill the pipeline with qualified, high qualified leads. Most Sales Reps don’t think “A” leads come from search. In order to get Sales buy-in, trust must be established (which can be done by a trial / download or a demo) A prospect who establishes trust is an “A” lead. Sales Reps tend to cherry-pick leads.

Search needs to drive potential customers through High Priority, High Trust Lead Generation Channels. How? Optimize for more than the home page & product category pages; Point paid search clicks at aggressive lead generation pages.

Make search leads “A” Leads—Force it into the A lead bucket if it is a high converting paid search word (ignore other rules for bucketing); can’t treat all search traffic the same; educate the reps by showing them the paid search numbers; check to see what the reps are following up on when the search leads come in.

Review Sales Success Measures: Close Rate; Time To close; Average Selling Price; Quarterly Quota.

Feedback Loop into Search Buys & Site Optimization. Challenge: Low End Priced Products; High End Enterprise Products; Who gets more of the attention?

Upsell; Final Revenue Numbers; Company Goals; Quality of Store Experience.

The final speaker, Adam Goldberg, is Chief Innovation Officer for Clearsaleing, an advertising technology company.

Starts with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Wrong metrics = Wrong decisions. Cost per lead isn’t necessarily a good metric to follow nor is Cost Per Acquisition. The ultimate metric to follow is profit.

Shows picture of advertising ecosystem.

The web can generate phone leads as well as web leads.

Phone call tracking: Place on your site a number and make sure the customer rep gets that customer link ID and enters it into the CRM. No reference ID? Get them back through the website through an email which is connected to a sale.

Last click fallacy (Multiple Step Purchase Process):

• Problem recognition;
• Information Search;
• Evolution of Alternatives;
• Purchase Decisions;
• Purchase.
  

Every ad responsible for the acquisition of the customer should get credit for the sale (perhaps even equal credit)

Todd Mintz is the Director of Internet Marketing & Information Systems for S.R. Clarke Inc., a Real Estate Development and Residential / Commercial Construction Executive Search / Recruiting Firm headquartered in Fairfax, VA with offices nationwide.

It’s Day 4 at SES San Jose and it looks like they saved the best for last. Moderated by Gregg Stewart SVP, Interactive, TMP Directional Marketing, this session looked at Contextual Advertising from two directions: from a publisher’s perspective on how to generate more revenue dollars and also effective tactics for managing contextual campaigns. David Szetela CEO, Clix Marketing shared world class content targeting  tips from Advertisers perspective.

Contextual Advertising has traditionally been a poorer performer than the search network But…available click inventory is growing at a faster pace than on Search network and it’s not as competitive.

3 main reasons advertisers lose money on Content Network:

1. Ads appear on irrelevant pages and get bad clicks (low conversion rates)
2. Ads don’t distract attention from site content
3. Search and Content should never exist in the same campaign

Contextual is not like Search:

• Readers are not searching for you
• More banner or print advertising
• The first job or your ad is to distract attention away from the content on the page towards your ad

Key Differences:

• Keywords are not discrete entities. The algorithm looks at the keyword list as a whole and judges which sites would be best for the ad
• No more than 30 to 50 keywords per ad group. After that amount the algorithm stops looking at your keyword
• No match type – they are all treated the same
• Individual keyword bids are irrelevant.

HOT TIP: If properly used, they keywords in a content networks’ ad group should describe the kinds of pages where you want your ads to appear

Keyword list should not be describing your keywords; it should be the words that appear most frequently on the pages that you want them to appear.

Ad Copy Differences:

• Ads need to stand out – Distract – feel free to yell
• Yell don’t whisper (animation works well – have a clear call to action, use declarative statements)
• Be more competitive – e.g. free shipping (you are not trying to sell from Content you’re trying to get them to come to your site)
• Test test test

Quality Score Differences:

• Keyword targeted and placement targeted text: CTR, Ad text, Landing Page
• Keyword targeted non-text: only CTR
• Placement targeted non text: only CTR
• Best bidding strategy start high, go low (Buy CTR, then diminish over time)

Google Report is essential

• Google placement performance report – shows which sites and pages your ads are showing on + data. See sites your ads are performing poorly and then use the Site Exclusion Tool to exclude the sites.
• Show performance (clicks, CTR, Etc)

Cynthia Tillo, Senior Product Manager of Advertising Services, Adobe Systems Discusses a Huge new development – Ads for Adobe PDF

PDF Documents – are an exciting new place to advertise. Consider highly trafficked content like Government forms where conceivably we could potentially advertise in the future.

There are over 256 million PDF’s on search. This is a great way for advertisers to reach a difference audience.

Service was launched in Beta In February and is powered in partnership with Yahoo.

This is a way for publishers to increase revenue off their inventory. It’s contextual – adobe’s algorithm is able to determine what the PDF is about. And then with the Yahoo Ad network can get good results in terms of Ad Relevance.

Key Points to these PDF Ads:

• Ads are dynamically matched ads. Every time someone opens the PDF a new ad will be shown. This means that Geo Targeting, Day Parting, Etc can be applied to these ads.
• Has Viral potential – if you download and send the PDF to a friend then the ads will stay and generate revenue.
• Also are letting publishers embed ad content within my content with placeholders:
  • Can put anywhere you want in the PDF.
  • Can change the look and feel of the Ad.

Current Opportunities to Show ads in PDF

• Magazines or newspapers are producing Digital Versions in PDF
• E-Book versions in PDF – people want some content for free. PDF allows them to provide a chapter as a teaser.
• Digests and Compilations
• Archives Market. Some publishers are sitting on 100 years of content – they are scanning old content and putting it online in PDF form.

Jennifer Slegg, Owner, JenSense.com – from Publishers Perspective

There is a way to monetise just about every kind of content on the web.

When you should NOT monetise with contextual adverting?

• When you are a business site selling products – why send your traffic elsewhere?
• Business site selling services – as an accountant why would you advertise other accountants?

ARE you leaving money on the table?

• Why did you choose the ad networks? (Ad Sense isn’t the only game in town)
• Whey did you put the ad where you did? (a well placed ad can earn a lot more money than a poorly place ad)
• Why did you choose the color scheme?
• Did you consider user experience? Don’t just put your ads front and centre and make users search for the content that they came for.

Beyond AdSense

• Image/ graphical ads
• Video ads
• Affiliate ads
• Cost per action
• Cost per thousand
• AdSense for search / Mobile / Feeds if you have a Blog
• Other contextual companies

Testing AdSense – cheat sheet for what to test:

• Placement
• Proximity
• Size selection
• Ad unit colors and boarders
• Keywords
• URL filters
• GeoTargeting

Other Points to Consider:

• Are you using the most profitable ad unit sizes?
• Are you filtering out your revenue? Be aware that your ad blocking filter list will cost you revenue. (you should only be filtering out competitors)
• Ad Heaviness turns off users. Don’t’ select three identical ads for the same page.
• Don’t select Ads just because they pay more CPA – Carefully select any cost per action
• Always do A/B Testing – layout, color, sizes, styles, etc it can make a HUGE difference. Just because something worked well on one site doesn’t mean that it’s going to work well on another site.

“As for editorial content that’s the stuff you separate Ads with” Roy Thompson, Lord Thompson of Fleet

Jennifer Osborne is VP of Business Development for Search Engine People a Toronto SEO Company.

Ron Jones, Search Engine Watch Expert & President/CEO, Symetri Internet Marketing

Google originally rolled out quality score in Aug 05, however as an answer to Yahoo Panama launch they revised the algorithm in Feb 2007 to incorporate landing pages and started to display it as well.

Factors that affect min bid

• Historical CTR for each keyword
• Relevance of the keyword to the ad group
• Quality of your landing page
• Account history (CTR) of all ads and keywords in your account
• Historical CTR of display urls it eh ad group
• Other factors

Factors that affect keyword ad position:

• Historical CTR of ad, display url and matched keyword
• Relevance of the keyword and the ad to the search query
• Account history (CTR of all ads and keywords in your account)
• Other factors.

Case Study:

A client came to Ron with an average min bid of $0.40 across 5 ad groups. Each ad group had about 80 to 100 keywords and when they checked the quality score they were shocked to find that 72% of these keywords had a poor quality score.

Ron’s team built out the campaign significantly by splitting keywords into smaller more targeted ad groups (17 instead of 5). They wrote more relevant ad copy for each ad group and used Google Optimizer to test better ad copy and landing pages.

The Result: Average CPC went from $0.40 down to $0.09! CTR went up by 11%. Conversion rates from 2.6% to 4.8% some as high as 8%. Within 2 weeks QS for 58% of the Keywords went from poor to great. After a month the ones that still had poor quality score were deleted. And most importantly, Ron had a very Happy Client

RON’S HOT TIP: Testing – testing landing pages and testing creatives. As an agency allocate 10% to 15% of your budget to testing. You are really going to learn what’s working and not working.

Makes you look good and makes client look good!!!

Brad Geddes, Founder, bgTheory.com

“There are over 100 factors that can affect quality score. However, not all will be triggered depending on the conditions involved”

-Google Engineer

Why is Quality Score important?

It affects your Ad Rank (higher numbers are better)

Ad Rank + [keyword] Quality Score x Max CPC

Google determines your minimum bid. You are eligible to be shown on search. If your minimum bid is lower than the minimum bid your ad is not eligible for search (but it’s still eligible for the content network).

Where to spend your effort?

Minimum bid of 3 or 4 cents can’t be affected much. 20 to 30 cent bids are the ones that are easiest to tackle. These should be brought down below 10 cents.

Account Organization is #1 factor improve quality score. Better to be as granular as possible.

Your ad copy should meet 1 specific intent!!! If a keyword doesn’t fit that intent then you should move it to another ad group.

You are much better off having 100 ad groups with 10 keywords then 10 ad groups with 1000 keywords.

BRAD’S HOT TIP: Go into reporting and run a bid report sort by minimum bids and you can see the keywords that have a low quality score. Is a great way to diagnose visually where to start affecting quality score?

Kendal Allan Former Managing Director, Incognito Digital, Digital Marketing and Convergence Media Consultant

A closer look at relevancy:

How does the Landing Page affect Quality Score?

• Relevancy and it’s methodology were precursors
• Relevancy has always been delivering on the query
• Landing page factors + content and layout. Usability and navigability and load time

Getting everyone on the same page is crucial to Quality Score. Sales and editorial, visual design and SEO, marketing and it, agency entities.

Guidance – Content rich strategies always a good idea. Robust, descriptive, clear, uniques to your site, alternative if necessary for workaround on ad heavy pages

Usability – useful relevant and direct response to query

Transparency – nature of business, interaction with computer, use of personal information

Load time – minimize number of re-directs, work around for slow servers, balancing design and content consideration.

KENDAL’S HOT TIP – Collaboration. Get interested parties together early on. Also, campaign organization is key. Keep the keywords and ad groups as tight as possible.

Misty Locke President & Co-founder, Range Online Media

1) Quality Score – Keyword Building

• Build out variations on your trademark keywords, non-brand terms as well as the long-tail product specific terms
• Utilize tools to build this list – product feeds keyword research tools Google SQR report
• Goal is to capture every possible relevant query as exact match keyword
• This will provided you with the highest CTR which will improve quality score.

2) Keyword Structure and Organization

• Sort keywords into extremely granular ad groups – don’t build 1000’s of useless keywords build 1000’s of keywords in the way people are searching
• By getting really granular you will

3) Every keyword you run should be on every match type

• Goal should be to make it as exact as possible AS campaign matures and you continue to build your keyword list and negatives using the SQR tool.
• A healthy campaign should see a significant drop off in the Phrase match spend.
• Adjust broad match budgets to scales for additional spend and budget.
• Phase and Broad should be trolling to find the exact match’s. Don’t have to turn off broad if it’s meeting your goals but every keyword you find from the broad
• and phrase then you should move into exact. Also use broad and phrase to find negatives.

4) Creatives

• Run multiple ads in each ad groups to test

5) Dynamic Keyword Insertion

• DKI should not be your best friend. Should have ad groups broken down so granular that you don’t need to use DKI. You should have every product, color type in your ad group.

6) Landing Pages

• MSN – Your landing page isn’t specific enough your keyword could be disapproved.
• Yahoo – if your landing page isn’t specific enough your ad will be disapproved but most important should be for the consumer

As Misty says, “Quality Score brings us back down to the fundamentals of search. Connecting the client with what they’re looking for. Moving us away from getting excited about bid management tools and back to basics.”

This is part two of a post on the session, Facebook, Twitter and Microblogging at Search Engine Strategies San Jose. Catch Part I:Twitter over here. This post talks about Facebook and FriendFeed.

Who uses it? Not just college students anymore (Facebook was started as a way of connecting college students)

• 73% white, 14% black, 6% asian 6% oyher
• People who make a decent living, 30% over 100K
• People who have never attended college (43%)

• Over 90 million people are on it (dude from the audience spoke up to correct him from 40 million- later it’s revealed the dude is from Facebook! Kevin grilled him later too – stay tuned!)
• Connect with others
• Build relationships
• Great for branding
• Spread a message to the masses

Building Relationships

• Facebook shows data about you others can respond to – for example, there’s a birthday reminder!

Great For Branding – if you use it right. Your brand can either be great or suck.

Sharing Information

• Feeds – you can fill out a “status” on facebook (similar to a twitter update). Also actions you take on Facebook are shown (you join a group, you comment on someone’s picture
• Neil uses Simplaris Blogcast – each time he blogs, the post gets pinged to facebook

To Neil’s credit, he showed embarrassing pictures of himself from his Facebook page.

Friendfeed: Dave Snyder

“DM me”

FriendFeed, is a social aggregator that lets you to keep up-to-date on the web pages, photos, videos and music that your friends and family are sharing. It has plug-ins to display on Facebook, for example. It’s like an RSS feed on steroids.

What can you do with it?

• Can create news and content streams replacing your feed reader
• Track topics of interest to you (go to advanced search page, type search phrase and choose “shared by everyone” can limit to blog entries, twitter tweets, whatever stream.
• Interact with Your Networks information (can comment on every item in friendfeed stream)
• Powerful reputation management too
• Establishing a network, RSS monitoring, Mobile rep management, Socila Media Profile, for SERPs. Building Brand Advocates.
• Monitor who’s monitoring you
• Utilize third party tools to manage noise and make engagements read
  • gridjit
  • alert thingy
  • twhirl
  • friendfeedmachine
  • feedalizer
  • noiseriver
• Mashup video, photos, and other content into your stream, allowing instant engagement with content with feedalizer

PANEL COMMENTS

There’s concern from audience that there are just too many networks to keep track of. Also there’s so much crap on Facebook that it makes Facebook less useful.

Andy Beal answered: it’s like going to a candy store and eating all the candy, and them complaining that you’re sick. You just have to pick a few pieces of candy.

Brian Morrissey:

• Twitter is small, only a few million on twitter. We think it’s bigger than it is.
• Facebook – 90 million. Power of Facebook is in small networks.
• These tools are just surfacing peer to peer recommendations. We always trust what our peers say, but now it’s just surfacing that. Much easier for me to find things.
• Far more people read my column than could follow me on twitter.
• It’s the micro-interactions that build brands.
• Follow Zappos on twitter – it’s actually Tony Shea, CEO of zappos.com. He encourages employees to use twitter. Zappos is all about treating people like humans, and it’s the interaction that builds their brand.
• I would care more if someone linked to my story on their blog, than if an editor put my story on their cover.
• Facebook is young. The platform hadn’t been done before. Facebook made mistakes, too much freedom was given to developers. Give em some leeway, it hasn’t been that long.

Andy Beal:

Twitter is an enabler for networking. Imagine this: you tweet something. Someone who is following you decides to retweet it. One of THEIR followers has a technorati feed it gets put on, then someone from Wall Street Journal sees it and picks it up. This happens all the time.

Dave Snyder:

• Even if you don’t tweet yourself, at least monitor what other people are saying about you over tweets
• Twitter might not be here tomorrow, but it’s here and happening right now. So use it. People are engaging with your brand.
• Twitter is least successful when companies are using it as another way to push out marketing messages.
• It’s a step  forward – real time communication on a larger scale.

THE ANGRY FACEBOOK GUY AND THE REAL FACEBOOK GUY (hence the title .
Midway through the questions some folks started leaving and Kevin, called them out and asked them to take the microphone and tell why they were leaving. One guy was quite angry about Facebook being useless because of all the useless applications on it, and it didn’t do anything for his business. Kevin asked the Facebook guy in the audience his reaction to this (after telling us that Facebook declined his request to appear at this particular session).

Facebook guy

• Facebook did revolutionize the industry to open up the platform to third party developers
• It no longer requires you to install the application to randomly interact with it
• We’ve looked into application quality and we now reward apps that have better user experience and good feedback from users
• How apps do viral apps to friends (need certain quality scores in order to distribute)
• Neil Patel’s description was good depiction of the average end user experience but not an accurate reflection how marketers and businesses can use it – for more information go to http://www.facebook.com/business

Kevin Ryan:

Check out what the government is doing with the crime task force and monitoring social sites.

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Charlene Jaszewski is head honcho over at Smartypants Group, where consultants help small businesses and technology play nicely together. You can follow her on twitter @smartypantsgrp.

Twitter, Tweets, Twits, Twats? Facebook apps? You’ve heard about Twitter, Facebook and Microblogging in the blogosphere, find out whether it’s worth your time as a business tool, or just a way to bug your friends.

Moderated by Kevin Ryan, the esteemed panel was composed of: Andy Beal, Consultant, Blogger & Author, Marketing Pilgrim LLC, David Snyder, Search Specialist, JRDunn.com, Neil Patel, Co-founder, ACS & Brian Morrissey, Digital Editor, AdWeek

• @andybeal : goes directly to someone (but still seen by the public. it’s kind of like addressing someone across a small circle of people talking, “hey andy!”)
• d andybeal: direct private message (like IM) – only works if you are mutually following each other.
• #olympics: put at end of their update, tags it for everyone, so search engines can pick up as tags
• Favorite (not a big user of favorites) click on star to favorite it
• Delete, but might not delete from everywhere (they might end up in RSS feed, or was fed into Facebook, etc.

• Tweet: an update
• Tweeple/Tweeps (not twits): people you tweet with
• Follow/followers: people whose updates you view, and who view yours
• ReTweet: someone tweets something you find interesting, you so copy and paste it and resend it as a tweet of your own. Be sure to attribute it  (be careful)
• Check twictionary

Twitter is like One Big Cocktail party of dynamic conversations: Here are some tips:

• Don’t go back ten hour conversations. Keep up.
• Don’t send Twitter spam.
• @conversations to build followers: you might start a conversation directly with someone, but THEIR followers might be interested in what you have to say, and start following YOU.
• Don’t always expect a reply (may not be in contact)
• Sometimes direct messages fall on deaf ears – it will only get thru if person is following you.

Start Sharing!!

• Why should someone follow you on Twitter?
• Do you break news?
• Live-tweet events/conferences
• Good ratio for Tweeting is 80% social/20% business

Cross-Promote Carefully!

• Use Twitterfeed.com – twitter will check your blog, let someone know if your blog updates
• company updates
• trackur -
• if biz heavy, set up profile purely for biz. Updates, announcements, etc.

Tools of the Trade

• Tweetdeck.com
• twhirl.org
• twitterific
• firefox twitter plugin

Online Reputation Management (ORM) Meets Twitter: even if aren’t personally tweeting, use tools to monitor what OTHER PEOPLE are tweeting about your brand.

• Don’t get into negative conversations
• Your Twitter reputation IS your reputation
• Monitor your reputation on Twitter
• http:search.twitter.com
• tweetbeep.com
• search.twitter.com

Some help from Andy’s peeps
http://tinyurl.com/SESTwitter

Charlene would like to add:

• You can add links to your tweets, but they need to be SHORT. So use tinyurl to transform a long URL to a short one.
• Remember: Twitter archives conversations.
• Privacy issues: don’t say anything in Twitter that you shouldn’t.

Be sure to continue to Facebook, Feeds and MicroBlogging Part II: The Angry Facebook Guy.

In particular, scattered amongst the screen shots of how to get the most out of your Google Analytics, lay a number of plug ins and reports that you probably didn’t know about:

1) A script which integrates Google Analytics with Google Docs: http://bit.ly/gadocs

2) A plug in to show raw numbers in GA not just percents http://bit.ly/gagoals

3) A plug in that allows you to see same reports for different profiles http://bit.ly/gatabs

4) Your new BFF, a What’s Changed report which tells a) which referrers have sent most traffic in last few days and b) which have sent most traffic where they never did before http://bit.ly/gaiceberg

5) The Google Trifecta – a YouTube Video that teaches how to use Google Website Optimizer, Webmaster Tools, and Google Analytics to get a comprehensive understanding of your visitors and improve your web pages.

6) If you want to become a Website Optimizer Partner http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer/partnerinfo.html you get

• elevated technical support
• co marketing
• listing on website
• opportunity to be highlighted in website optimizer blog

7) New product updates:

• Combinations report used to send traffic equally to all pages. Google has now found that if it’s unlikely to be the winner you can now “prune” traffic to combinations that you don’t like. Can also unilaterally remove tests. The more you prune the more traffic goes to the rest of the tests which means that you can complete the test faster.
• Improved report’s: color coded confidence intervals, color coded conversion rates, and a winners box
• Added off line validation for A/B tests (if you page is not accessible then you can click to see)

Jennifer Osborne is VP Business Development for Search Engine People a Toronto SEO Company

White hat, black hat, gray hat…SEOs come in ALL colors. As much as we hate to admit it, we still talk about “hats” in SEO. SES San Jose panelists update attendees on the latest black hat / white hat issues with plenty of time for audience involvement. Moderator Matt Bailey is President of SiteLogic, a search marketing consulting and training company.

There wasn’t any formal structure to this session. Instead, these experienced industry veterans participated in a collective conversation (that included the audience + Matt Cutts) about Black Hat / White Hat issues.

Rather than attempting to try to recreate a very free-flowing conversation which is very difficult to do, I’m going to pull apart the conversation structure entirely and assign all the nuggets of wisdom to the panelist who said them. The takeaways are what’s important here and my intent is to make them more accessible by presenting the information in this manner.

(Panelists quotes recounted as accurately as possible)
Greg Boser is the president and founder of WebGuerrilla, LLC, a marketing firm that provides SEO services to interactive agencies, PR agencies, and design firms serving Fortune 1000 clients.

• White hat is a code name for SEO’s with no game.
• Black hat for yourself is R&D that pays really well and that R&D will help white hat clients.
• Too many SEO’s bite off more than they can chew. The sites that rank are the ones that put in the effort.
• Doesn’t view buying links as black / evil.
• Works dual tracks with clients…pure white for long term and other stuff for the short term.
• New client, start with competitive research and figure out the client’s risk tolerance.
• In the reinclusion request is where you might consider asking the search engines to clean up the space.
• Blending into your particular space is key to SEO success.
• No repercussions for big brands to spam.
• Little guys pay the price for dangerous tactics…can get torched and never return.
• The person with the most links wins.
• Solving certain technical issues (involving IP issues) isn’t evil.

Todd Friesen is VP of Search for Visible Technologies.

• Not much on hats…in some vehicles, it’s hard to compete without blackhat techniques (though you need to disclose such things to clients).
• It isn’t common sense what is right and wrong.
• If the goal is link acquisition…perhaps use the quick strategy to gain visibility which could in turn get links naturally.
• Could spend money on marketing instead of paid links.
• Not all affiliate marketing is bad / black hat. Value-add affiliates are good / white hat.
• Doesn’t benefit the client at all to deceive the end user because those pages don’t convert.

Bruce Clay is president of Bruce Clay Inc., an Internet Marketing and Website Promotion Company.

• Search Engines & Clients define “white/black hat”, not SEO’s.
• Gray hats play on the edge…black hats play out of bounds.
• Black hats who do pain to a client are evil.
• Deception is what defines a black hat technique.
• White hat people don’t color outside the lines. Since there are no rules, even white hats could color outside the lines.
• Playing by the rules can be very slow. In the beginning, there weren’t any rules and early on, the search engines didn’t publish any rules and it was a while before they enforced them.
• Buying links for traffic is OK…buying lots of links with the intent of increasing page rank isn’t. Nothing evil about commerce.
• Much more risky to play out of bounds on an established site as opposed to a new site.
• Can’t afford to burn your employer.
• Established brands shouldn’t play on the dark side.

Dave Naylor is a search engine optimization consultant for Bronco.

• Never seen a white hat site rank well in competitive industries.
• Many common mistakes are made from within the organization without the knowledge of the SEO. Good black hats know where the threshold is.
• The link component is the only “black” part of black hat SEO.
• Black Hat isn’t necessary for everyone. Many clients don’t get the dangers of it.
• Be sensible with embedding links in RSS.
• In Branded searches, deception is a different game.
• Lots of link buying sites are starting to get natural links.

Jill Whalen is CEO of HighRankings

• Good SEOs don’t usually need these techniques.
• Making the site better for users and engines is white hat.
• Incompetent SEO’s are worse than white or black hats.
• Don’t need to read the rules… it’s common sense what is right and wrong.
• Need to have something worth linking to.
• The premise of this panel is to share with the audience a collective conversation on Black Hat / White Hat issues.

Matt Cutts (from the audience): Lots of sites get taken out and you don’t know about (including big sites). Matt’s alludes to taking out a lot of bigger sites without letting folks know. In-house SEO’s have a different risk dynamic than agency folks.

Todd Mintz is the Director of Internet Marketing & Information Systems for S.R. Clarke Inc., a Real Estate Development and Residential / Commercial Construction Executive Search / Recruiting Firm headquartered in Fairfax, VA with offices nationwide.