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With the fitness rage settling in, almost everyone has some sort of exercise regime that they try to keep up with. However, without regularly recording your fitness stats it is difficult to see results or know how to maintain their workout motivation. iStats.com offers a few great tools that will help members […]
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Posted by great scott!
This week Jane Copland takes you through some handy tips on navigating and participating in Social Media sites such as Stumbleupon, Yahoo! Answers, Facebook, and del.icio.us in anticipation of our new Premium Guide to Social Media Marketing.
PS-Congratulations to Jane on receiving her hard sought Permanent Residency visa! Now she won’t have to go back to Mordor.
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Posted by randfish
I’m taking a temporary break in conference coverage (don’t worry - there will be more next week) to poll some of the smartest people I know (that’s you, SEOmoz readers), about an issue that’s been keeping Gillian and me up plenty of nights during the past 3 months.
SEOmoz is at a tipping point of sorts - we’ve gone from being primarily a search marketing consultancy business to one that’s heavily focused on an SEO product - premium content & membership. In the 6 months since launch, we’ve had approximately 1800 people sign up for our premium membership, of which ~1200 are members today (looking at our subscriber details, it appears that many folks will sign up for one month, cancel, then sign up again 3-4 months later).
Right now, SEOmoz membership and content isn’t for everyone. If you’re someone who regularly works on multiple site campaigns, the tools are terrific. If you need a little bit of strategic consulting or experienced professionals to bounce ideas off, the Q+A is great (BTW - sorry for my slower than normal responses due to the conference). Even novice search marketers can get a lot of benefit out of the guides & tips. However, there are certainly folks for whom premium membership isn’t a terrific value - our goal is to change that.
We’ve recently been working with a venture capital firm, thinking about investment from them, as well as considering other options like private financing. Why? Well there’s a lot of things we want to do, like:
To do this, we need to hire more people, add hardware, grow our marketing budget & put investment into R&D. Inside SEOmoz’s offices there are two extra-large whiteboards, filled to capacity with all of the products and services we’d like to launch (both free and premium). At our current development rate, it would take between 18-24 months to roll out all these great ideas, but with investment capital, we think we could probably do it in 6 months. Not to mention the fact that we come up with about 10 great ideas per week that generally go on the shelf.
We’re looking at our financial & growth projections and thinking that something between $750K and $2million (for something between 10-20% of company ownership) should take us where we need to go at this point. While this is a rare amount for VC participation, we’ve had some interest even at this small level.
And so, the question fundamentally becomes - do we take outside investment and grow fast, scale up and use marketing to expose more people to premium content? Or, should we continue to grow slowly, reject external financing and keep a tight marketing budget?
Pros of taking outside financing:
Cons of taking outside financing:
What do you think we should do?
p.s. Yes, I know you’re never supposed to share this stuff outside the company, but that’s what makes us different 
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Posted by randfish
In our continuing series of coverage, I’m pleased to present one of the most talked-about, anticipated and dramatic sessions of the SES San Jose conference so far (though I heard that the session on click fraud was also extremely contentious).
For the past 2-3 years, Google (along with Yahoo! and MSN/Live) have hounded the micro-economy of paid link advertising and paid link networks at conferences, on blogs and, when possible, in the search results themselves. The basic argument that search engineers in general, and Matt Cutts in particular, has presented is that paid links represent manipulation and pollution in the index. The links are not "editorially vouching" for the quality and relevancy of the pages they point to, but due to the ulterior motive of financial compensation, adversely affect the quality of search results.
The panel for this session included:
Todd Malicoat & Michael Gray prepare for the Fight
Prior to the panel’s start, moderator Jeffrey Rohrs played a video from David Dugdale of Rentvine that later become part of the panel’s debate. I’ve embedded it below:
The video was a lighthearted introduction to a panel that was shockingly negative at times.
Matt Cutts began with a presentation called, simply, "Paid Links." He started by telling the audience that the title of the panel, "Are Paid Links Evil?" was the wrong question to ask. Rather, in his opinion, a more proper question would be "Do paid links that pass PageRank violate search engines’ quality guidelines?" And the answer, according to Matt, is that since 2005, Google has been explicitly clear that the answer is "Yes."
Matt notes that in the offline world, the FCC demands disclosure of all paid marketing activities. In his opinion, when that disclosure carries over to the web, it must include disclosure for both humans and machines, meaning that a mention of "sponsored links" or "advertising links" in the body copy or as an image that’s visible to humans is not enough - those who link to sources from which they have received compensation should be labeled in one of the following ways:
Use a redirect through URL blocked by robots.txt
Redirect through a URL using a 302
Use Javascript to direct the link
Apply the rel=”nofollow” attribute to the link
Add the Meta Robots = "nofollow" to the page header
Matt goes on to say that Google certainly does not recommend you buy links - in fact, they’re happy with link buyers who use sources like:
He says that using non-no-follow links is akin to littering or driving in the carpool lane with only one person - it has an overall negative impact on society (in this case, the web). Matt also says that it’s very difficult to buy paid links effectively as a business or as a search marketer because Google does such a good job detecting and eliminating the value of those links. He notes the following pitfalls:
Links that are bought for a limited time (may not provide long term value)
Links that are "run of site" which Google is very good at finding and eliminating
Links that are purchased from "sloppy sellers" who link to bad sites and bad neighborhoods
Links that are bought from sellers that cloak the links only to you, so Google never sees them
Buying links that can be found and reported by a competitor
Matt mentions that David’s (very) recent viral video is an excellent example of how you can be creative and interesting to entice links to come to your site and notes that despite what some SEOs might say, it’s much harder to fly under the radar than you/we think.
Matt wraps up by mentioning a post of mine from several months back; Paid Links - Can’t be a White Hat With ‘em, Can’t Rank without ‘em. He notes that for all of the queries but one, Google had already algorithmically detected and removed the value of those links. Matt had some further reading from sources like the Washington Post, the FCC and his own blog that he promised to write about in the near future.
Michael Gray was next to the stage. His presentation titled, "A Tale of Propaganda and Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt," was confrontational, political and emotional to a degree that I have not preivously seen at an SES conference. Michael is certainly an exceptionally effective speaker - he pulled the audience with him throughout the course of his arguments and was frequently interrupted by applause as he played to the emotions of the crowd and launched a rhetorically powerful indictment of Google’s motivations.
Sadly, due to Michael’s exceptional speed with his presentation, I was not able to effectively take notes. However, I will do my best to summarize his arguments and hope that he posts the presentation online in the near future.
At the core of Michael’s anti-Google sermon was the following series of arguments:
Michael noted that Google is not the government, should not be attempting to influence how webmasters build sites and is engaged in precisely the activity they claim to abhor - paid link sales, albeit in a different format, and one that makes themselves the primary earner.
Michael also claimed that Google was deceptive in its launch and use of nofollow in 2005. According to him, nofollow was initially launched to protect blogs and content publishers from linking to bad neighborhoods and allow them to control and reduce the comment spam problem. It was only after widespread adoption - 3-6 months after nofollow was announced, that Google began publicly claiming that it should also be placed on paid links. Michael claims that this effort was part of a conspiracy by Google to deflect criticism about nofollow and their policies on paid links by subverting the issue until after the rollout.
Personally, I had a tough time with these claims, though certainly the reaction of the audience would seem to indicate that they very much agreed or, at least, enjoyed the roasting of the popular search giant. However, I have a tough time arguing that none of Michael’s points had validity - I’m hoping to catch him on video tomorrow, possibly with Mike McDonald & WebProNews - and discuss his conjecturing in more detail.
Todd Malicoat spoke next, with a presentation entitled - "7 Reasons Why I am a Link Libertarian." His seven reasons included:
Todd also indicted the following AdWords ads as an example of hypocrisy from Google:
He wrapped up his presentation noting that when buying links, SEOs and businesses must stay alert and aware - keeping links relevant, hidden and believable as natural. He also said that as SEOs, we need to stop publicly talking about the practice of buying links, both in panels (such as this) and in the online environment. To that, I say, good luck
Todd Friesen from Range spoke next. He had not prepared a Powerpoint, but made several exceptionally intelligent points (in my opinion):
Greg Boser from Webguerrilla also did not prepare a presentation, but made noteworthy points in a short speech:
Andy Baio from Upcoming/Yahoo! is last up (note: he’s also the blogger behind Waxy.org, though updates on that site are infrequent). He mentions that he’s on the panel to "represent users of the web and of search engines" as he is not in the search marketing field and had to do "a lot" of research before coming to the panel, though he has not prepared a formal presentation.
Andy first agrees with many of the things that Greg & Todd mentioned, saying that if the link has relevance and a true editorial review, it probably should not be discounted by the engines. He continues on to say that he’s “not” representing Upcoming.org or Yahoo!, but he did consult with the Yahoo! Search team and they generally agree with Google on the topic of paid links. The only reason that he’s on the panel is that he feels strongly that this is spam and that this practice makes the web worse. Andy says that If you (or your business) wouldn’t resort to email spam or comment spam, why are paid links acceptable?
According to Andy, paid links shouldn’t be used because they ruin a public resource, are deceptive and hurt ordinary users. If your focus is traffic, that’s terrific. But that’s not the focus and Andy believes that the industry (of paid links) is “shady.” However, he strongly agrees with Todd (Malicoat) that allowing link brokers to run ads on Google is hypocritical.
Andy wraps up by noting that If the websites who wanted to rank were “good enough,” they wouldn’t need to buy links. He feels that “it’s clear that eventually the technique will backfire. It’s going to hurt your reputation and your pocketbook.”
Q+A produces almost as many questions as answers, but I’ll do my best to recount them:
I (Rand) posed two questions to the panel:
Other questions posed to the panel:
Matt says that viral content is a great way to show Google you can be creative and interest people across the web. One exact quote that I found valuable was "Starting a blog can have a tremendous effect on the amount and quality of links you earn."
The session wrapped up with dozens of questions pending, and the panel did get somewhat swarmed afterwards:
While I was fascinated by this panel, I’m not sure that it solved any issues or brought webmasters closer to any solutions or solid answers in the paid links debate. I believe there’s plenty more that needs addressing around this topic, and hope that all of the panelists (even Andy Baio) will have more to contribute in their blogs or online in the next few days.
BTW - Tomorrow I’ll be speaking on the SEO Pricing panel at 3:15pm on how much SEOs should charge, how much clients of SEO should expect to pay and how we at SEOmoz have gone through radical shifts in our own business model to create a more scalable model. Rebecca, meanwhile, will be speaking on Linkbaiting and Viral Search Success, where I expect she will rock
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Posted by randfish
I’m taking a new approach with events and attempting to do more in-depth coverage of a couple of what I feel are the best, most interesting, most innovative or least discussed sessions at the conference. Since contextual advertising is an area where I have little to no experience, I found the panel fascinating - and certainly Microsoft’s announcement of a contextual ad product on the Microsoft network of sites made this panel even more intriguing. What follows are excerpts of interest from my notes, organized as best I could manage:
Panelists: Anton Konikoff from Acronym Media (BTW - this is very odd), Lora Parker from Range Media, Gopi Kallayi from Google AdSense and Natala Menezes from Microsoft AdCenter
Anton Konikoff was up first. He works with a lot of large companies, including Accenture, WebMD, Sirius, ADP, Nokia, Siemens, Four Seasons and many more. According to Anton, there are four prevalent types of online activity:
Searching using keywords
Clicking on hyperlinks that contain keywords
Looking for keyword matches in written content
Creating content using keywords
He claims that "there is a definite keyword theme in everything we do online." I’m personally thinking that a lot of blog reading, content consumption and email isn’t truly keyword driven, but he’s certainly right that, at the least, a lot of online activity centers around keywords. Anton also walked us through some examples of basic contextual ads:
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The "Ads by Google" section on the left shows contextual ads for Pink Floyd
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These ads appear at the bottom of many InformationWeek articles and are served by IndustryBrains
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Anton notes that contextual search does have some weaknesses - it generally does not perform as well as search advertising (which shouldn’t surprise most of us in the search business). However, it does present some exciting elements:
Provides an additional layer of customer intelligence that helps us to better understand customers use of a keyword
Helps with “social” context and “verbal” context
Context can redefine messaging – different visitors to different sites respond differently
So when is contextual appropriate? According to Anton, it’s when it:
Gets around the search inventory issue
Provides access to everyone who reads online (not just those who search)
Assists with awareness building (I have my doubts here, personally - I don’t know how many people really SEE contextual ads as they read other content)
Fits with direct response and provides flexibilty with CPM/CPC/CPA pricing models
One of Anton’s most brilliant tips, from my perspective, was his suggestion that savvy advertisers can "supercharge" press releases by targeting a term/phrase that is unique to a single press release or product so that call-to-action ads can appear alongside any mention of the news. This is the kind of clever thinking that makes these conferences worthwhile, IMO. That tip alone is probably worth the entire price of a trip to San Jose for the right folks
Anton continues and mentions that for Acronym Media, which does a lot of work in the contextual space, but also provides other SEM services, 40% of the traffic they drive to their clients’ sites comes from contextual. In certain countries with low search inventory, this number goes up to 90%.
Anton notes that all of the following provide contextual ad services:
He also provides a bucket-load of tips for optimizing campaigns:
Use fewer keywords in each ad groups – use many ad groups with very tight targeting and more granularity (which allows for better tracking)
Use Exact and Phrase Match
Always separate search from contextual for tracking (this may not be easy, as engines don’t always do a good job showing this)
Track on a site level where possible – track based on referral source (so you can exclude non-performing vendors)
Leverage your best converting PPC search terms (this is not a literal translation but it’s a good starting program)
Look at where banners perform best and target those sites first
Negative keywords – add them over time as you see lower value and obviously irrelevant terms
Site exclusion – as above
Your rep can help you to get rid of sites for you, so build up relationships at the engines if you’re doing contextual advertising on a large scale
Ad Copy in contextual must be more persuasive than the rest of the page copy (often more so than search ads)
Contextual clickers are usually NOT as far along in the buying process, so the targeting point is earlier (this means you can capture and brand earlier, but should expect a lower conversion rate on average)
Create different calls to action based on the breadth and depth of the source of the ad – niche site calls for different ads than broad news site
Most publishers opt for only a few ads on their sites, so it’s critical to be in the top 2-3.
In testing from Anton – the actual rank is less important – i.e. #2 and #3 get almost as much traffic in contextual as #1
Relevancy in AdWords is determined at the AdGroup level, not the CTR
Work to avoid negative association, but be aware that there will be bad stuff out there. For example, Anton’s client – Four Seasons – is worried that contextual will damage their brand association. They only want to be near premium/luxury travel content, but because of this, they miss out on a lot of traffic and branding opportunities.
A major concern that many folks seem to have centers around click fraud. Anton has some recommendations here as well:
Learn all the options and tools available to publishers – launch AdSense on your own sites
Look at sizes, formats, colors – what works to get you the best clicks?
CTR is largely irrelevant - .033% CTR is terrific – you don’t want to increase CTR necessarily. Look at above-the-fold impressions, conversions and ROI
Anton mentions a couple of sample clients that he’s worked with, which is exceptionally engaging. The first, Free Ringtones Galore (which I can’t even find because ringtone SERPs are so spammed up with junk) was able to reach an audience that was far too expensive to approach in search ads through contextual. The second, Humana Medicare, targeted seniors in particular and climbed from an initial conversion rate of 0.5% to over 3% by eliminating negative keywords and careful site targeting over the course of several months. Overall, contextual for Humana delivered 10X the impressions of search advertising at a 30% lower cost. To me, this shows just how much work is required to stay on top of contextual ads, but clearly the return is worthwhile.
Anton kindly invited anyone to email him with questions - anton at acronym.com
The next speaker, Lora Parker from Range Online, presented a variety of case studies from the world of contextual.
Consumer Electronics Client – global brand with no brick-and-mortar.
Focused primarily on brand terms
Allocated 5% of total budget to contextual
25% higher ROI on contextual than search
35% of total campaign impressions
Education client – not a well known brand
Launch with limited test – only top performing terms
1% of total budget
13.2% higher cost-per-lead than search
10% of total impressions
Conversion rate – 50% lower than search
Content is seasonal and will run only during peak seasons (when meeting cost per lead goal)
Financial Services – well known brand (leader)
Goal – drive transactions at $30 per transaction or less
Allocated 10% of total budget
Cost was 50/50 between branded vs. non-branded
18% of transactions were completley new customers (search at 23%)
Retail – Luxury shoe retailer – goal to drive online sales
Launched with brand and high non-brand performing terms
5% of budget allocated to content
Increased impressions by 4X
Store locator jumped 15% from contextual (offline metric)
Campaign ROAS – not met, so program was discontinued (they think they can refine as Google, et al get better)
Technology/Software but not well known brand
Launched only brand terms and some high performing non-brand terms
10% of total search budget was allocated to content
Ended with slightly below ROAS goal
Travel – not a well-known, but an up-and-coming brand
10% of search budget to content
Tested in all categories – hotels, flights, etc.
50% of total impressions from content
Conversion rate lower, but CPC also much lower
Top performing category is only one left running (in air)
Average Numbers:
Impressions – far cheaper than search
CPC - $0.18 lower
CTR – 2.8X lower
Conversion – 31% lower
A quick note - Anton says during Q+A that the average numbers are useless (though I find them very compelling as a way to both introduce potential players to the contextual search world and to compare against any campaigns we may run). In his opinion, however, the only real expectation is lower CTR - everything else is up for grabs depending on the campaign.
Lora kindly provides her email as well and offers to take follow-ups – Lora at RangeOnlineMedia.com.
Gopi Kallayi, a (maybe "the&quo 
product manager for Google AdSense, was up third. Sadly, his presentation included no Powerpoint and lacked any quality content about the subject. He noted that Google had shared a total of $3.3 billion in advertising revenue last year with publishers then talked about two stories of his own personal experiences of seeing relevant contextual ads for pot washing faucets and diapers for birds. While entertaining, I certainly didn’t learn anything and felt frustrated that Gopi had no deck prepared or relevant data to share - particularly since Google is the market leader in this space and so many folks have questions about the ins and outs of AdSense optimization. On the plus side, Gopi did allow more time for Q+A, which proved quite valuable.
Gopi was also the only presenter to decline to provide an email address, even when specifically asked for a support email during Q+A.
The final presenter was someone about whom I cannot claim any degree of objectivity. Natala Menezes of MSN AdCenter is not only a colleague, but also a great friend and one of my very favorite people. It appeared to me that many of the folks in the audience knew or had known Natala previously and also had positive opinions of her prior to her presentation - she was certainly warmly received (which is good, since I’d probably have to shoot nasty looks at anyone who was mean to her).
Natala announced some interesting news from Microsoft - primarily that they will be offering contextual advertising for advertisers on the Microsoft AdCenter platform on many MSN properties that were previously closed to only large advertisers. The ROI and quality here is expected to be very high, while the costs will most likely be low, at least at first. I suspect there will be a number of folks who are able to very effectively monetize this new inventory availability, at least in the first few months.
One very controversial part of the announcement, however, is that Microsoft, like Google, will be turning on content network advertising by default - a move that I can understand, but may not provide the best experience for advertisers. Basically, let’s say you are advertising on AdCenter today for a search term - after next Wednesday, you’ll be automatically included in the ads that appear on the content network. To Microsoft’s credit, advertisers do have the ability to opt-out until this Sunday night, in advance of the launch and can opt-out at any time after that (of course). They’re also sending out emails to all advertisers indicating the change.
Despite these concessions, many folks in the room still seemed surprised, if not fully taken aback. There was considerably complaining by multiple parties and a general grumbliness about the move, though, to be fair, much of this criticism was equally directed at Google for auto-enrolling all advertisers in Google AdSense and forcing an opt-out.
During Q+A, Natala was asked what properties would be included in the contextual rollout, and mentioned that in addition to MSN sites (like autos, finance, travel, real estate, health, etc.), Facebook, Digg & the Windows Marketplace website would all be included. She also was asked about a rollout for Canada, but noted that Microsoft has no timeframe for that launch. One excellent question asked - why is Microsoft selling these ads to smaller advertisers if they currently provide them to large, display advertisers. Natala responded noting that in many cases, even the high CPM rates were not as optimal a use of the space as targeted, contextual ads - fascinating stuff.
Natala also provided her email address for feedback – natalam at microsoft.com or adccfeed at microsoft.com.
To me, this session was particularly illuminating. I’ve never before considered using contextual ads, as my experiences in the past with them have been horrifyingly bad (low CTR, no conversions, high costs and usually the result of me forgetting to find and turn off contextual inside the AdWords console). After this, I’m definitely feeling a lot more educated and ready to take on the process.
Please let me know in the comments (and with the thumbs) not only what you thought of this particular post, but if you enjoy this coverage format for events.
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Posted by Oatmeal
I’ve just put the finishing touches on a new tool that’s exclusive to our premium members. (Not a premium member? Read through to the bottom of this post - goodies are on the way).
Backlink Anchor Text Analysis Tool
In addition to being incredibly difficult to say five times fast, the Backlink Anchor Text Analysis Tool connects to the Google API, Yahoo! Site Explorer API, and Technorati API to aggregate and report your inbound links in a presentable format. It shows you what anchor text is the most commonly used and also provides the results in HTML or CSV. The links fetched are a mixture of authoritative and fresh (new), and the tool is great if you want to keep an eye on what keywords your competitors are targeting. You can view a sample report here.
Coming Soon
I’m currently at SES San Jose so my schedule is pretty busy, but next week when I return I’m going to be launching two new features on the SEOmoz website. The first is the SEOmoz dashboard, which is basically a form of secondary navigation that sits underneath the header of the site and provides easy access to premium tools and content. I’ve made a browser button that’ll allow you to go directly from whatever website you’re visiting straight into any of the SEOmoz tools with the URL pre-populated in the form. It’s basically doing away with having to use a bunch of different browser buttons. The SEOmoz dashboard is going to be exclusive to premium members.
In addition, the SEOmoz dashboard will provide quick access to a new set of tools that are free for everyone to use. I’m creating an "SEO toolbox," which is a collection of stripped down SEO tools that all perform highly specific tasks, such as checking for strong pages on a domain or examining an http status code. I’ll post more about it next week, but essentially it’s going to be a giant bag of free tools.
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Posted by randfish
To help keep the balance, I’ll shine some light on some of my favorite things about search conferences:
OK - Your job is to fill up the other 25 in the comments…
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Posted by great scott!
Hey Gang,
This week, Rand’s got some insight for you into a down-and-dirty, nasty little trick Mert Sahinoglu clued us into. I can see you all drooling right now…wipe it up. Okay, okay. What if we told you there was a way to bump just about any competitor from the top two positions on Google? Bollocks, you say? It’s true, my dear readers, all you have to do is game Wikipedia through a little process we like to call Wiki-Jacking…
FYI - Of note this week is a major instance of social media poisoning at Reddit - Someone is trying to tarnish the name of xkcd.com artist.
SEOmoz, Rand Fishkin, SEO, Google, Wikipedia
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