Online This Week: Dec. 30, 2011-Happy New Year!
This is my review of noteworthy things that happened this week involving Online Presence Management, search engine internet marketing, search engine news and website SEO. I’ll also be mixing in some technology business news, tech gadgetry news, and tech-culture news.
Here’s my list for the week of Dec. 26 -Dec. 30, 2011
Raspberry PI – the $25 computer
What can you get these days for $25? If the makers of Raspberry PI are successful, you may soon be able to get a computer for $25 ($35 for the deluxe model with Ethernet). The small single board computers are about the size of a bar of soap, run a stripped down version of Linux, and have the following specs:
- 700-megahertz processor
- 128 megabytes of RAM
- SD Card slot for storage
- USB port
- HDMI Port
- Ethernet port (on the $35 model)
You can read more about it in businessinsider.com, at Wikipedia or on their website, raspberrypi.org
Wi-Fi on Steroids: Introducing White Spaces
A new form of wireless network has gotten the go ahead for launch from the FCC. It’s called White Spaces. It uses broadcast television signals, so it can have a very large coverage area. Any place that can pick up a broadcast TV signal should be able to pick up White Spaces. To be sure they don’t interfere with broadcast TV, the FCC requires databases to keep track of broadcast frequencies used, so there has been a delay in rolling it out. Google, Microsoft, Spectrum Bridge, and seven other companies applied to become database administrators of the TV Band Devices (TVBDs). On January 26th the new White Spaces will become available in Wilmington, North Carolina. If it takes off it could quickly become a billion dollar industry. Read more about it in businessinsider.com.
2011 – The Year in Review
This is my last blog post of the year. Here’s a list of the biggest storylines of the year in search engines, SEO, and Online Presence Management:
Google updates: Panda, Freshness – Google makes hundred of changes to their algorithms every year, but two in particular, the ones that came to be known as the Panda update in February and the Freshness Update in November had the most impact across the web.
Google changes results, especially on local search, addition of panoramas- Google seemed to be constantly tinkering with and updating the way results were presented. This years changes particular affected local search results for businesses. Google added the ability of businesses to add panoramic pictures of the inside of their business to Google places.
Rise of Social Media, Dominance of Facebook, Rise of Google+- Probably the biggest ongoing story of the year affecting SEO and Online Presence was the continuously evolving social media. The rise of Google+ and it’s looming battle with Facebook if Google+ ever gets any real traction provided an ongoing storyline.
Continued rise of mobile search- The growth in mobile search and the effects of the growing pervasiveness of smart phones and tablets is changing the way we search, and how businesses need to be found. Will growth in mobile search give rise to new ways to search (Siri?).
2012 – Things to Watch
Also, as my last blog post of this year, here are a few things that I expect to be the big storylines of the new year, as far as search engines, online marketing, SEO, and Online Presence Management are concerned:
Google updates – Google will continue tinkering with their algorithm, providing, I’m sure, plenty of things for online presence managers to deal with in the new year.
Google’s battle with the FTC – A looming battle with the FTC could forever alter the search world. Google has begun to look for new streams to monetize, and they have not always been careful about using their power fairly. Will that catch up to them in 2012?
Social Media : rise or fall? – Has social media reached it’s zenith? Has it fulfilled it’s promise for use as a marketing tool? Will people abandon social media if it becomes too commercialized? Has Facebook already crossed that line? Will Twitter attempt to force more advertising down our throats to monetize it’s assets, and how will we react if it does?
Continued Rise of Mobile search – Mobile search is destined to become the biggest story of 2012. Whoever controls mobile search will rule the web. The big players know it (Google) and the young upstart (Siri) has served notice, 2012 could be a watershed year for the future of mobile search.
Rise of Reputation sites – Reputation sites are set to become an integral part of the search experience. Watch for whoever takes the lead in mobile search to do so because they have seamlessly integrated reputation sites into their search results.
It’s been an interesting year, 2011. I’m sure 2012 holds a lot of surprises for all of us. I personally and sincerely hope it’s a more prosperous, happy, and healthy year for all of us. Happy New Year.
Has Social Media Peaked?
If you have a business, you have an online presence. One of the biggest questions most online presence managers faced this year was how did a social media strategy fit into the big picture of their overall online presence management strategy.
If you believe the hype, social media was the most important development since sliced bread, and if you had a website you had to have a Facebook page, a twitter account, a Google+ page. If you saw through the hype, you probably asked why? What can social media do for my business? As I discussed in my Guide to Online Presence Management blog post on social media, whether or not your business could benefit from social media depends a lot on the type of business, and more specifically, the target demographic of customers you were trying to attract. Social Media is an important component of online presence for some businesses, but now the hype may be tempered with a little reality, as important questions about ROI are finally being asked.
As early as Aug. 15, a Gartner Report stated findings of consumer fatigue with social media. Bloggers in September began to question whether social media had run the course of the “hype” cycle. Here’s an example of that. Every new development in communication on the web seems to go through a cycle where it is adopted, then picked up for use by marketers and heralded as “the greatest marketing tool ever”. Then, sometimes hastened by overuse of marketers, its usefulness wanes as users resist the over-commercialization of the new media. Think of email, then the explosion of spam, and then the settling of email into what it is today. This blog post in smartblogs on Dec. 27th suggested that we have finally hit the peak of the hype cycle in social media.
Does this mean that social media will go away? No. Does this mean that social media was over-hyped? Yes, but every innovative change in online communication was. What does the future of social media hold for businesses looking to social media as part of their online presence management strategy? It has a role to play for some types of businesses, but should only be used when ROI is clearly defined, or it can use up resources best used elsewhere.
Since other technologies have undergone this same “hype” cycle during amazing growth followed by eventual maturation into something important but less than the initial hype, don’t we have a way to discuss and understand this phenomenon? A model of similar growth and finally maturation does exist. To understand what is happening this year in social media, we should look at Geoffrey Moore’s Technology Adoption Life Cycle. This model shows how many technology innovations evolve through innovation to early adopters, a chasm of acceptance by early adopters, the early majority, the late majority, and then the laggards.
You can read more about the Technology Adoption Life Cycle here. Many of the studies cited in the referenced blog posts indicate that we have entered the latter part of the “Late Majority” phase, probably entering the “Laggard” phase for social media. Some of the blog posts use these numbers to claim that slowing growth by social media indicates their imminent demise. The truth is we are probably entering a maturing phase for social media, where it will eventually take its place as the communication media that it is, nothing more, nothing less. It is not the over-hyped be all and end all of marketing communication that some would have had us believe, but it definitely serves a purpose.
Social media can be used to engage customers and potential customers. They can also be used to help improve search engine rankings when they draw those users to your website. How, when and where you use social media, and the resources spent in developing and implementing a social media strategy, should be managed with a realistic eye on Return on Investment (ROI).
How Google will change Web Marketing in 2012
Brian Whalley of Hubspot wrote an interesting blog post for the Harvard Business Review blog that summarizes changes Google has made in 2011 and extrapolates those into what he foresees as some of the major changes in web marketing for the upcoming year. His main predictions are:
- Search results will include more direct information – Google will expand direct information (such as hours of operations for businesses) that it includes in search results. To take advantage of this change, it will be important for businesses to follow certain formats, to make sure that their website provides Google this information in the format that it expects.
- Google will enter new industries and markets – Google purchased ITA software in 2010 to incorporate more travel data into searches. You can now type “BOS to SFO” into google and it understands those are airport codes and gives you travel related data. He predicts Google moving into more markets like this.
- Data that Google makes available will be reduced – Google now sees its tremendous amount of data as a competitive advantage that it must protect. In 2011 they stopped providing the keyword terms used by searchers if they were logged into Google. He predicts this trend will continue, with Google protecting any data that they can.
I agree that all of his predictions on what Google will do in 2012 are based on their past behavior, and that Google will attempt some of these things. But I also believe that pursuing some of those goals aggressively could get Google into some big time trouble. Much of Google’s past behavior has pushed the envelope on fair competitive practices. More telling to me than any arguments he made was the volume and tone of the responses that his blog post received. Read his blog post and comments here. The comments were overwhelmingly and vehemently anti-Google.
Is a backlash building against Google for their over-commercialization of their power? Another way to look at Google past behavior to predict future behavior would be to examine this list of some Google 2011 highlights:
- In March, Google settled with the Federal Trade Commission over “deceptive Privacy practices” in the rollout of its Buzz Social network. That agreement requires 20 years of “privacy audits”.
- In August Google made a $500 million settlement with the government over knowingly placing ads for illegal Canadian pharmacies.
- In September, Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google, was called before the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights.
Now, on December 19th, two senators have called for another FTC probe into anticompetitive practices.
Will 2012 be the year that Google gets held accountable for using their power and deep pockets to crush any competition? Is 2012 the year that the growth of mobile search gives us a whole new way of search (like Siri) and Google is reduced to a bit player?
If you are a business with an Online Presence, a large piece of your online presence is getting found by search. It is important to stay abreast in all of the trends of search if you want to maintain a strong online presence. Whatever the future of search brings, a good online presence manager can keep your business viable in this ever-changing world that we live in.
Senators call for an FTC Inquiry into Google
On December 19th, two US Senators, Herb Kohl and Mike Lee, the Chairman and ranking member of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) calling for an investigation of Google’s trade practices. In the letter, which you can read here, they cite the testimony from Eric Schmidt, Google’s Chairman who testified before them in September. They specifically cite his admission that Google has a monopoly on search. They go on to cite the extent to which search now pervades commerce. Statistics they cite include 240 million Americans use the internet, eCommerce was $170 Billion last year, and 92% of Americans use search engines. They go on to state that Google started as a search engine who’s only goal was to redirect users to relevant sites. They state definitively that Google’s business model has changed dramatically in recent years. They say that Google has made numerous acquisitions, and question whether it is possible for Google to remain an unbiased search engine when they have holdings in so many vertical markets where they tend to favor their properties. They point out that Google has been known to penalize certain websites in their search rankings, and questions whether Google uses these penalties fairly, or to favor their properties or maintain their domination of search. They go on to state that they are not acting out of an interest to protect any specific competitor, but to maintain robust competition in search, especially the mobile search market.
One of Google’s most vociferous opponents, the FairSearch Coalition (fairsearch.org), Released a 44-page paper in October about Google’s “anti-competitive” conduct.
Google’s main response has been a June blog post that they keep referring back to, that according to Google, states their 5 driving principles that will stand up to any non-competitive scrutiny. Those five principles are:
- Do what’s best for the user.
- Provide the most relevant answers as quickly as possible.
- Label advertisements clearly.
- Be transparent.
- Loyalty, not lock-in.
(Read more about these principles here.)
Besides citing these five guiding principles, there other main defense to anti-competitive charges seems to be the “competition is only a click away” argument. This kind of arrogance, in light of their own admission of nearly complete dominance of the search space, is just the kind of hubris that will make me root for the FTC in the coming battle.
Online This Week: Dec. 16, 2011
This is my review of noteworthy things that happened this week involving Online Presence Management, search engine internet marketing, search engine news and website SEO. I’ll also be mixing in some technology business news, tech gadgetry news, and tech-culture news.
Here’s my list for the week of Dec. 12 -Dec. 16, 2011
Google Buys Clever Sense
Google purchase a company called Clever Sense, which makes a local mobile recommendation app called Alfred. Alfred creates an “interest graph” that maps physical locations according to style, characteristics, and attributes, similar to the way Pandora does for music. Google clearly sees a need for mobile recommendations, is this part of Google getting ready for a looming battle with Siri? Read more about it in this SearchEngineLand article “Google buys Clever Sense: An Answer to Siri?”
Amazon Price Check App
Amazon introduced a controversial new app for the iPhone and Android, along with a special promotion for using the app. The app allows you to scan the barcode of a product while shopping in a brick-and-mortar retailer, and then shows you the same product and its price on Amazon. The promotion pays you 5%, up to $5 for up to 3 items, if you end up purchasing the item you have compared from Amazon. The promotion caused usage of the app to triple in one week. It also brought a huge backlash from small business owners and retail trade groups. There is no question that this is a brilliant marketing move, catching consumers right at the point of purchase and potentially enticing them to order online, but has Amazon gone too far? Is this an anti-competitive practice?
Carrier IQ Story Update
The story of the Carrier IQ software, which earlier this month was discovered to be installed on nearly all smart phones, has taken a few more interesting turns this week. Carrier IQ now admits that due to bugs in the software it is now possible that under certain conditions, text messages may have been captured.
Requests were made under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to the FBI to review any documents, manuals, or records it has collected with Carrier IQ, and the requests were denied. The reason the FBI gave for denying the requests? It would interfere with ongoing investigations in that the records contained “information compiled for law enforcement purposes”.
It was also announced this week that the FTC and the FCC have opened investigations into CarrierIQ, to see whether consumer rights or privacy was invaded. Read more about FTC and FCC Investigations here.
Facebook Timeline now available to all
On Thursday Facebook announced that the timeline feature will be available to all users. The timeline allows you to “Tell the whole story of your life on a single page”, according to Mark Zuckerburg. The timeline feature sets up a chronological timeline that starts with your birth. Facebook events are automatically added to the timeline, although you can remove them. You can then go in and use tools to add all kinds of significant events in your life, including pictures. Significant events include graduations, job changes, moves, signing a lease, buying as house, adding a pet, roommate or vehicle, travel, medical history like broke a bone, had surgery, or overcame an illness. I personally tried this feature when it was in Beta, and I’m not sure everyone is going to be thrilled with it. I liked the idea of having a place to journal your life history, but my very next thought is Facebook is NOT the place to do that. I couldn’t get past this creepy filling that Facebook was just trying to pump me for more information about my life so that could better target me for marketing. It felt like it was not good enough that had chronicled my life since I created a Facebook account, now they wanted everything I was willing to give. So I just stopped. I put very few things on Facebook. I almost never post on walls, I use it to keep in touch with friends by direct message only, and except for my profile pic I never post pictures. I think people are starting to feel a little violated by Facebook, and when that feeling overtakes the convenience of keeping in touch with friends, Facebook will be in trouble. I also think that with the Timeline feature, they may have pushed users another big step in that direction. Read more about it in the WebProNews article “Facebook Timeline: Now You Can Put Your Whole Life on Facebook. Will You?”
13 Gadgets that are going to be huge in 2012
Here is as review of a businessinsider.com article predicting what should be the 13 biggest tech gadget stories for 2012:
Cheap, super-thin Ultrabooks and other laptops.
Quad-Core Smartphones like the HTC Edge
Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) Tablets
Nokia Lumia 800 Smart Phone Could save Windows Phone OS
Big iPhone redesign
The Next Nexus by … Motorola?
Blackberry phones running QNX
Refreshed MacBook, including 15 inch MacBook Air
11.6 inch Samsung Tablet
iPad 3
New Larger Kindle Fire with 8.9” or 10” screen
Samsung Galaxy S III
Will Apple Television change your living room?
Top Ten Stories of the Year in Search and Social Marketing
It’s that time of year again, the year in review lists for just about anything you can think of. Search Engine Watch released its list of the top ten stories of the year in Search and Social Marketing. Here’s a summary:
- Google’s Query Encryption Update –Google began encrypting search data, so that Google Analytics will no longer provide the search terms used if the user was logged into Google when they did their search.
- Google’s freshness update – Google modified their search algorithm to give more weight to fresher content, this change affected 35% of all searches.
- Google’s ‘Panda’ Update – rolled out in February, the purpose was to improve relevancy of search results, affected 12% of all searches.
- Facebook becomes biggest site for display ads on earth – In a May report comscore announces that 1.11 trillion display ads had been delivered to US users. Facebook delivered 346 billion of those, nearly 1/3 of all display ads.
- Google adds real time search
- Google+
- Facebook Timeline and Gestures – The timeline and the ‘like’ button
- 1st Digital revolution, The Arab Spring – The vital role of Facebook in the overthrow of Mubarak, “If you want to liberate a country, give them the internet”.
- Google Get’s Premium – Google began charging big time users of it’s map API. A sign of things to come?
- Death of Digg – This pioneer in the social news movement was once such a heavy hitter that a front page story about your business would probably crash your server.
Online Presence Management, Part 11 of 11: Press Release Distribution
In this eleventh and final part of my eleven part series on Online Presence Management I am going to discuss Press Release Distribution.
Although many may view Press Releases as being part of the old-school model of Public Relations, press releases still serve a vital purpose. Studies have shown that journalists and consumers still search for and read press releases. The key is to optimize your press releases to be found, and to provide sufficient linking back to your site to generate the traffic that you want. When your company has something news-worthy to report, a well timed and well placed press release, with appropriate embedded links, can provide a boost of SEO for your site.
Title it well- Your main keyword should be the lead of your title.
Cover the basics – Who, what, where, why and when.
Tell a story – Human interest narrative will help get you distributed.
Include links to your site– Include at least 3 anchor text links, one directly to the homepage, one to the product you are talking about, and one to a blog post that can elaborate in a more informal way on what the press release was about.
Use your keywords – The key phrases you are trying to get your site ranked for should be used liberally throughout your press relesase, as well as locality information.
Include images optimized for search – Be sure and use keyword rich Alt-tags for your images for them to be found by search engines.
Have a Press Release section to you web site – Include a Press Release section on your web site and archive all press releases there
Promote the press release – Mention it on social media, email it to local journalists and bloggers
Avoid PR fatigue – Don’t send press releases unless you have something newsworthy to say
Use a good distribution site or sites – PRweb.com is one of the best paid press release distribution sites. PR.com is a good free site for getting picked up by Google.
Some other free press release distribution sites are:
free-press-release.com, iNewswire.com, MyFreePR.com, NewsWireToday.com, PageRelease.com, TechPRSpider.com, and TheOpenPress.com.
Press releases can be an important part of driving traffic to your website. A well written and well timed press release with links to more in depth information can reach important people who may not know of your business or your website. A complete Online Presence Management plan should include the use of press releases for creating buzz when something happens that is buzz-worthy.
Online Presence Management, Part 10 of 11: Pay-Per-Click Marketing
In this tenth part of my eleven part series on Online Presence Management I am going to discuss Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing.
Pay-Per-Click Marketing basically means paying to have a link to your site placed in a place somehow related to your site, where hopefully the link will have some appeal to the viewer. If the user clicks on your link you pay a fee. The sponsored ads that you see around search engine results in Google, Yahoo, and Bing are pay-per-click advertisements. These ads are positioned in response to what you have typed in as search criteria. When you join a program like Google Adwords, you can select the search criteria for which you would like to have your pay-per-click ad appears. If the user clicks on your ad, you pay a fee. That fee varies depending on the desirability of the search phrase used.
Pay-Per-Click Programs
- Google Ad Words – The biggest and most popular PPC program, easy to use with a high return rate.
- Ask.com Sponsored Listings – different levels to meet different needs, easy to use.
- Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM) – Sponsored search and content match
- Bing Paid Search Advertising – Smaller but growing program
- Pandia’s Guide to Pay Per Click Search Engines– Round up of links to other PPC programs
Some of the advantages of PPC Advertising vs. Organic SEO are:
Speed- Getting listed as a paid advertiser for your key search terms is a lot faster than waiting for organic search engine results for the same key phrases.
Reach- PPC can deliver traffic to your site, especially for highly competitive key phrases. It may be wise to use PPC for highly competitive phrases, while saving you organic SEO effort for less competitive key phrases..
Return on Investment (ROI)-PPC can be extensively tracked, accurately and quickly. This makes calculating the ROI for every dollar spent on a PPC campaign very easy.
Some of the disadvantages of PPC vs. Organic SEO are:
Click thru rates (CTR)- The click thru rates for PPC ads are significantly lower than the click thru rates for organic search engine results on the same page. Savvy search engine users recognize sponsored links and tend to ignore them to a large extent.
Cost and Longevity- PPC Search terms that are highly competitive will be more costly, and you will only see results (traffic) as long as you continue to pay. Although an organic SEO campaign may take longer to get results, it can continue to achieve results for years.
In a comprehensive Online Presence Management strategy, Pay-Per-Click advertising definitely serves a purpose. That purpose may be paying to drive traffic to your site until organic SEO kicks in, or attempting to drive traffic to your site for short-tail keywords where achieving a first page Google ranking is extremely difficult. A good online presence manager can help you establish a balance of organic SEO and PPC campaigns to drive the kind of traffic to your site that you need to meet you online presence business goals.
Online Presence Management, Part 9 of 11: Reputation Management
In this ninth part of my eleven part series on Online Presence Management I am going to discuss Reputation Management.
Your business has an online presence, whether you choose to manage it or not. In many other aspects of your online presence, by failing to manage your online presence you will be missing opportunities. Reputation management is a little different, in that not managing your online reputation could actually be costing you business and you may not even know it.
As more people turn to the internet to find and research businesses online, there are a growing number of sites where your customers can report on their experience with your business. More people than ever are paying attention to reviews they find online while searching for businesses. Reviews appear in social media forums. New forums like Yelp and Angie’s List allow people to comment on their experience with your business. These sites have gained popularity rapidly. Add to that the ever expanding number of bloggers who may be commenting on their experience with your business. It seems that good old-fashioned word of mouth recommendations have found a voice on the internet, and that voice is getting louder and more influential. Market analysis firm Cone Inc. found that 80% of online customers, after reading negative online reviews, will make alternate purchasing decisions. If you have even one customer who has had a bad experience with your business, if they turn to an online forum to voice their displeasure, they can have a dramatic impact on your online presence, and your online credibility can take a hit.
Monitoring Your Reputation
To monitor your online presence, start by making a list of reputations key words. This is a list of all of the names, words or phrases that could be associated with you business and reputation. This should include things like:
- Company
- Brand(s)
- Product(s)
- High profile employees
Using your list of reputation key words, start with simple searches on Google, Yahoo and Bing.
You can then use your list of reputation key words to set up automated tools to alert you to the occurrence of one of your reputation key words.
Google Alerts is a free way to track search results, blogs, news, video and groups. Receive notifications via email when you reputation key words are found.
Yahoo Alerts is a similar service provided by Yahoo to track news by keyword, stocks, local news, feeds and more. Receive notifications via email.
Twitter Search lets you search Twitter for mentions of your reputation key phrases. Advanced tools let you subscribe to a feed for your search results.
Search Technorati allows you to find mentions of your reputation key words across blogs. You can subscribe to the search results feed to be notified of new mentions of you reputation key words.
Social Mention is like Google Alerts for social media. You can subscribe to a feed to get email alerts of mentions.
Trackur is a paid service that can pull reputation key word mentions from a variety of sources. It also allows you to save, sort, tag, share and subscribe to particular feeds. It costs around $20 a month.
Managing Your Reputation
Once you have set up the proper notifications to know when you reputation key words are mentioned on line, there are two situations you may need to respond to. Positive feedback, in which case you can use it as an opportunity to engage your customers and join them in an online dialogue, and negative feedback, which you will want to contain and manage.
Positive comments typically won’t necessarily require much of a response, but there are times when positive reviews are an opportunity to engage your customers. When a blogger creates a positive post referencing your business, a comment or note of thanks could be appropriate, and may be a way to engage them in dialog.
Negative comments need to be proactively handled. A philosophy of ignore them and they’ll go away is a recipe for disaster. Reach out to the customer and attempt to rectify the situation as much as possible. Depending on how the negative comments were made, it is possible to ask the customer what you have to do to have the comments retracted. Once you’ve attempted to work with the complainant, if you feel that you have been wrongfully criticized, you may be able to approach the review site and show your efforts, and ask for the review to be removed. The most important thing is to be proactive in trying to remedy the situation.
If you have multiple negative reviews, there are other options. Some people turn to review sites or blogs because of a perceived lack of customer service. Sites like Suggestion Box or Get Satisfaction can help you add a customer service portal to your web site, and help contain negative review. For every blogger or reviewer at a review site that says something negative about your business, you probably have dozens of satisfied customers who have said nothing. This is human nature. In this case it may become important for you to proactively seek reviews from your customers. Add a customer review section to your website, where customers who are sincerely seeking satisfaction can make their voice heard. There are services that can help you do this by sending email surveys to customers, and possibly even offering discounts or rewards to your customers for completing a survey. This helps combat the human nature effect where the only people who speak up are the ones who had a problem, and can help balance your reviews so that potential customers get a fairer picture of your business.
Like all of the other pieces of the puzzle of managing a strong online presence, online reputation management needs to be considered when planning a strategy for a successful Online Presence. Successful Online Presence Management requires being constantly on the lookout for the trends and changes like the rise of review sites and blogging, which has given rise to a need for online reputation management.
Online Presence Management, Part 8 of 11: Analytics
In this eighth part of my eleven part series on Online Presence Management I am going to discuss Analytics.
Analytic tools are used to measure and report on the status of measurable goals of your online presence. There are a few key areas of measurable analytics where tools are available to monitor your progress. The first is the area of website analytics. These are basic numbers that tell you how many visitors you have to your website. A good analytics package allows you to dissect those visitors on many different parameters, including time spent on site, pages visited, technology used, etc. The second is the area of keyword tracking. This type of analytics allows you to track how well the keywords that you have targeted for your site are ranking in various search engines. The third area of SEO analytics is a tool that can rate your website on overall SEO soundness in a number of key SEO areas.
Website Analytics
There are some paid services for website analytics available, but Google Analytics is far and away the most widely used tool for gathering analytics. It is a free service that provides amazingly detailed and concise reports on traffic to your site, where the traffic is coming from, what search engines the traffic is coming from, search terms that were used, demographics of the visitors to your site, technology being used by visitors to your site, and much more. Google Analytics can also be used to track conversion goals. For example, if your conversion goal is to have users make a purchase or sign up for a free whitepaper, you can tag the landing page for an ad campaign and then tag the page where the conversion transaction completes. Google will automatically report the ROI and other figures on this defined conversion funnel.
Keyword Ranking
During Search Engine Optimization stage you should have selected at least 5-10 key phrases that you want to rank well for on Google. As part of your regular analytics, you should be checking how well you rank for each of those keywords. At least once a month you should review a report of how you rank on the major search engines for your selected key phrases. There are a few tools that help you automate this process. SEO Power Tools, SEOMoz.org, Hubspot.com, WebCEO.com, Kutenda.com, and cuterank.net all offer tools to help you in tracking key SEO analytics, including keyword rank checking.
Overall SEO Website Health
Another tool that can be used to give you an overall picture of your websites general health is Website Grader. This tool gives your website a score on a scale of 1-100. Some of the things it checks for are content (blog exists, how many blog posts, blog grade, blog content reading level), optimization (Metadata, Headers, domain info, MOZ rank, backlinks), promotion (tweets, twitter grade, Facebook), conversion (RSS Feed, conversion form found, email grade), and analytics (traffic, Google analytics set up). This is a good overall indicator of whether a sites online presence has been managed well. A score over 70 indicates the site is in relatively good shape. A score under 50 indicates the management of the site is probably not being handled effectively.
To successfully manage your online presence, it is important to be able to quantify, measure, and track web analytics, to be able to gauge your success or failure. An ongoing online presence management strategy is a continuing process of redefining, measuring, and perfecting various components of your online presence. It takes many components working together to eventually build better search engine rankings. Good online presence managers understand that building a strong online presence takes time, and is an ongoing process of refinement, measuring results, and repeating. Good analytics and tracking are an integral part of this process.
Online This Week: Dec. 9, 2011
This is my review of noteworthy things that happened this week involving Online Presence Management, search engine internet marketing, search engine news and website SEO. I’ll also be mixing in some technology business news, tech gadgetry news, and tech-culture news.
Here’s my list for the week of Dec. 5 -Dec. 9, 2011
Facebook Reveals trends of the year
It’s that time of year, time for all of the “year in review” and “top 10 of the year” lists. So this graph in mashable.com showed the ten most talked about stories on Facebook for the year. The graph shows the number of occurrences of the story in status updates on Facebook across time.
Will Google be around in 2 years?
An article in searchenginejournal.com summarized a Ted Presentation given by Roger McNamee where he predicted some extraordinary changes in the internet, including the marginalization of Google as a major player. He claimed that what he calls “indexed search” is on the decline, and there is a rise in other search that serves particular niches, like Wikipedia, TripAdvisor, and Yelp. This trend is being pushed by more sophisticated users and the growing trend of tablet and mobile search. I gave some more of my thoughts on this in a blog post yesterday.
Twitter Changes, Going after Facebook?
New twitter brand pages allow greater customization, make it easier to embed tweets in blogs and websites, and allow pictures and video to be embedded, as opposed to just linked to, in tweets. According to this article in memeburn.com, they also add what they call the”promoted tweet”, which allow brands to have tweets that include embedded photos and video, that will display in the tweet. This article in marketingland.com calls it a boon to brands. This article in Mashable.com says these changes make it “loud and clear” that Twitter intends to “go after Facebook. So twitter is becoming more commercialized. Marketers call it a boon for brands. What will the users think? Isn’t the main draw of twitter the lack of commercialization? Isn’t part of its draw the fact that you are not bombarded by pictures and video unless you want to follow the shortened embedded link? I personally think twitter may have just shot themselves in the foot.
Google Launches Google Currents
Google has launched a digital magazine that is currently available for iPad, iPhone, and Android smartphones and tablets. They partnered with 150 publishing companies for the content. The app will be integrated with Google+ to allow sharing of stories and to push stories that are trending. Read more about what they are saying about it at allthingsd.com and slashgear.com. Does this fit well with their core business? Is this part of a strategy to make news content a bigger part of search? Will this be another failed step away from that core like knol?
Food for thought: The web will die and be replaced by…
An interesting article in memburn.com summarized a presentation by George Colony, the head of Forrester Research. He makes an argument that the web is not keeping up with the powerful technology of the devices we are using.
He says there have been two major computer models. The first was the PC-based model where we put executables on the desktop. This model is dead. The second model is to put everything in the cloud. He says this model will fail because it fails to utilize the incredible power of the devices we now have. The iPad has roughly the equivalent computing power of a 1986 Cray supercomputer, the fastest computer in the world in 1986. Processing power now doubles every 18 months. Storage doubles every 12 months. He foresees the rise of what he calls the “App-Internet”. In this model very powerful cloud based servers will interact with powerful device based apps. For example, a retail shopping app in conjunction with a powerful server of product data could more completely model a real world shopping experience.
Who are the winners and losers if his predictions are correct? Google and Facebook lose, because they are so tied to HTML that they cannot leverage the increasing computing power of the devices. The winners? Amazon’s silk browser is one of the first models of the next generation of “app-internet” type of integration. They have put in place the infrastructure with their silk browser. It is not only a web browser, but an app that enhances the shopping experience and leverages the computing power of the device. Cloud based servers interact with the silk browser(app) to provide content. Just some food for thought…