Google Anlytics Master Class on Actionable Imsights
Attending a free but powerful event at Orchard Road Singapore.
The misinformation of free
Nothing in the world is free, someone else just has to pay for it.
Pay per click or paid search books
I vaguely realized that there isn’t an books on paid search which says anything much about linking campaigns to analytics and competitive intelligence. I disagree with many assertions which seem to be of the opinion that the most important thing to do in running paid search campaigns is to test adcopies and bids.
To me the most important thing in paid search is to know the competitive landscape and the second most important is to know your directing marketing targets. Forgive me in being blunt but search marketing isn’t about awareness and branding unless the website is purely am awareness site or information site like wwf or wikipedia. When people search it isn’t to be wowed by 70 characters adverts in unremarkably small font nor are they there because It is advertisement time and too lazy to get off the sofa. If you want such things, it’s better to stick to the traditional media or so some online display advertisement where there is more room to be creative.
Now that we get the previous point done of over with, the next point is how to measure direct marketing. Then web analytics fills the need abit imperfectly. Where I realize there are some small or medium correlations to click through rate and marketing conventions, there isn’t and strong links between these two measurement. Use normal paid search metrics at your own risk! Don’t say I didn’t warn you if you found out that an effective Ad copy cannot convert anybody on the website to users after blowing quite a lot of money on paid search. The only awareness you will get from surfers is "What a crappy site this is!" Web analytics would have plugged this hole early in the campaign.
However nothing can be more effective than actually preparing well for a campaign. Take sometime to look at what your competitors are doing and how best can you fill a need in the marketplace others cannot. Look for examples of failure and success and most important look for market and search trends. Grab a few people and question them, participate in forums of interest to your product and start getting to know your customers. Create personas and segments. Then plan your website, micropages and search (and social media, display, offline etc) campaign according to the intelligence you have gathered. Create clear goals and build your metrics around them. Although you might need to improvise in the midst of campaigns but no successful wars are fought without planning and intelligence. The Persians defeated the Egyptians by putting cats(a sacred animal to the Egyptians) on their shields. Nearer to our time guerillas such as Mao Red Army and Vietcong often use their knowledge of terrains to their advantage. Their target is not how many men were not killed (as long as it not too many) or much money was saved. They don’t give a damn. War is war, the objective is usually to secure a strategic location or to destroy a power base.
How do you fight a war on the digital space with search marketing as a focus? Prepare and improvise. Keep your eyes on the main goals and do not let petty statistics such as click through rates and clicks fool you into losing the war.
I realized that I have not talk about books or how to win the search marketing war. More on that in the next few posts.
An exhausing afternoon
I wonder if my client managements skills are lacking. Serious issues to ponder there.
The Shorter Laws of Meetings
1. E-Mail agenda, important information and statistics
2. Assign timekeeper and minutes taker
2. Very short introduction
3. State the Goal(s)
4. Propose solutions or actions
5. Go Round the table
6. Timekeeping and more timekeeping
7. Take unrelated issues offline
8. State action items
9. Restate Goals
10. End within 45 minutes
11. Chase everyone out of the room
12. E-Mail minutes and action items to everyone on the same day.
If there is just one golden rule in life…
Today is already over even if the sun has barely risen, plan for tomorrow instead and plan for next week this week, next month this month and next year this year.
Moving on
This is a test post from my iphone.
There are absolutely no guarantees in Search Engine Optimization
Repeat after me….
“There are absolutely no guarantees in Search Engine Optimization except effort and jobs done” Ok you are liberated. Now run along, now go get a meaningful education in Search Engine Marketing.Time to be taken seriously
What else can I say? Working from the outskirts of the Internet revolution
has created a sense of unease with regards to my career development. I
hope this blog can help launch my career into outer space.
Some Search Engine Optimization Q and A which I have been asked
Many, but these are my favourites. Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Land, SEOMOZ, Bruce Clay, Web Master World, The Various Google Blogs, Yahoo Blogs, Search Marketing Optimization Journal, Adventures of PPC Hero, Media Post, Traffick, S Hamel Web Analytics, Asia Jin, Techcrunch, web20asia.com, Chief Martec, Channy’s Blog (Korean)
First and most important, I would install a web analytics tool to track all the incoming links. There are a few things I bear in mind
a.Top level links are more important
b. Official domains (e.g .edu and .gov) are also important and authorative
c. Pagerank are not that important, so I won’t stop obsessing over them
d. There are three kinds of quality links. 1. Complementary Subject Relevance 2. Expert Relevance Reinforcement 3. Quality testimonial links
e. Links to the experts
f. Make sure the link is useful to the intended users
g. Relevancy is the key
h. Check the links regularly (so as to be sure they are not linked from link farms)
i. Quality of links is much more important that quantity For directories, there are various sources (e.g Search Engine Watch) which provide valuable links not just for link building strategy but also for proper publicity and visibility. I have collection a list over the past few years and categorized them according to page rank, industry, types of directories and whether they are link farms or spammers. For other links, there is the social network marketing to post link baits and releases. I would post lots of articles (with links to the webpage) as well as multimedia (e.g News, pictures, multimedia) to sites such as Digg, Flickr, Youtube, etc and ensure its copyright notices is also posted. When the brand is stable, I would launch a few community initiatives e.g forums, newsgroups to get people to talk about the website and its product. Doing so makes the search engines notice the website even more (plus additional links to the webpage as well).
1. Select a web analytics tool according to needs and budget
2. Map out a tracking and analytics process which will be satisfactory to all stakeholders
3. Brief them on the metrics they expect to get and how they can link it to their own KPIs and what would constitute as goals and success. (e.g Organizational Goals, Measurement Purpose, management Consensus, Goal Continuity)
4. Sites generally can be classified into the following
a. E-Commerce (Goals: sales, cost, conversion rate, recency, frequency etc)
b. Content (Goals: Visit length, page views, number of subscriptions, etc)
c. Lead generation (Goals: material downloads, length of time spent on site, op-ins, lead to close)
d. Self Service (Goals: Length of calls to call centre via dedicated number posted on website, customer ratings)
5. Work with the vendor to ensure a proper implementation
6. On the SEM manager part although the most important metrics is the ROI metrics, depending on campaign objectives, I would use the any of the following stats to create my campaign objectives and link it to the SEO or Paid Search campaigns. E.g Metric/Keyword or Metric/Campaign.
7. Track and deduce the metrics of competitors sites from available data, “e.g Competitive analysis, customers, Google Ad Planner etc)
8. As much as possible, I would create detailed automated dashboards for quick glances for warning signs as well as presentations to the stakeholders. What tools do you use for SEO?
a. SEO Firefox plug ins (e.g SEO Quake, Kgen, SEO Tools ), SEOChat Tools, Web CEO, Web Tools such as Google Insights, Ad Planner, etc. Analytics tools, such as Omniture Site Catalyst, Google Analytics, Yahoo Analytics
b. For Paid Search, I usually use the Google Keyword Tool, Keyword Spy, Spyfu, Clickable, Acquisio
c. For report generation, Microsoft Excel and Office Suite, R for statistical analysis What are the most important on-page elements for search engine performance?
a. Keyword usage in Title Tag
b. Relevant site content (esp in Body)
c. Anchor Text of Inbound Link
d. Link Popularity
e. Age of domain
f. Inbound Links Relevance
g. Link Popularity of Site
h. Link Popularity of Linking sites
i. Rate of New Inbound Links
j. Speed of Website loading time