Monitor Which Social Networks Your Visitors are Logged Into With Google Analytics

Posted on February 19, 2012 by Tom Anthony

Posted by Tom Anthony

At Distilled's SearchLove conference in London back in October, Mat Clayton from Mixcloud provided a great snippet of Javascript that could be used to record whether visitors to your site were logged into Facebook or not. This has a few uses, such as customising which social buttons you show your user or just for recording how many of your users are logged in to Facebook and then using this to show your boss that you guys should really be interacting with your visitors there.

I wanted to take this idea and extend it to Twitter and Google+, and record whether users were logged in there too. It wouldn't provided me with any immediately actionable intelligence, but over time I'd love to see the trends of what percentage of a website's visitors were logged into the different social networks. As a side project, I was also interested to record what percentage of visitors were logged into a Google account and were therefore responsible for the dreaded (not provided) in my Analytics, and also what percentage of these users were registered for Google+.

However, whilst Facebook provides an API to allow this kind of intelligence gathering, there is no such API for Twitter and Google+, and a bit of research failed to turn up any techniques that worked across all the browsers. So I rolled up my sleeves and did some digging around, eventually finding a way to trick the login mechanism of these sites to reveal whether a visitor to my site was currently logged in. If you want to try it out visit my Social Network Login Status Detector Demo; it should return something like:

Setting up the tracking

If you're a code junkie and don't need any help then you can just go and pull the code from this template page. Otherwise, let me walk you through it. There are two main steps:

  1. Setup an empty Facebook app. This is free and only takes 60 seconds - it is required for the Facebook API code to work for your domain.
  2. Install the Javascript code.

Complicated, eh?!

Setup a Facebook App

I'm going to blast through this quickly; but if you want more details there are plenty of tutorials online. If you already have an App that is registered for the domain you wish to track then you just need the AppID and can skip to the next section. We need to create an empty Facebook App because the Facebook API will only allow code on a domain to make requests regarding an App that is linked to that domain.

  1. Login to Facebook.
  2. Go to the Facebook Developers page: https://developers.facebook.com/apps
  3. Press "Create New App" in the top right corner.
  4. For "App Display Name" enter anything you want; I used "TomTrack". Check the box to agree to the FB Policies and on to the next page.
  5. The next stage is pretty easy, just enter your domain in both the "App Domain" and "Website" sections:

  1. Hit "Save Changes" .
  2. Grab the App ID from the top of the page and save it ready for the next section.

Install Javascript Code

Firstly, make sure you have your Google Analytics on the page; the code below is for the asynchronous version of the code. Next you need to add this snippet of Javascript to the top of your page in the <head> section; this function will do the recording to analytics for us:

So far, so good. You'll notice that I used _setCustomVar, whereas Mat had originally used _trackEvent - I'm sure there are pros and cons to both, and the code on the template page provides both options.

Next we add the following code to the bottom of the page before the </body> tag, ensuring you replce the appID in the Facebook code with that AppID you created above.

You can copy and paste the code from the source code of this template page.

That's it - your tracking is all set!

Setting up Google Analytics

Once the code is installed you will be tracking right away, and can view the data in Audience > Demograhics > Customer Variables, assuming you are using the 'new' layout in Google Analytics. However, the power of this data becomes far greater when you setup Custom Segments so you can view how users logged into different Social Networks interact with the site compared to one another and compared to regular visitors.

Setup Custom Segments

Custom segments are really easy to setup, and can give a keen insight into your analytics when used well. 

  1. Click "Advanced Segments" at the top of your analytics screen (once you're into the relevant profile), and hit "+ New Custom Segment" at the bottom right of the drop down.
  2. You'll be prompted to select a name for your segment and to select which facets to base it on. We'll be using the Custom Variable slots that the Javascript tracking code uses. Analytics allows 5 Custom Variable slots, and the code above uses 4 of these (1 = Google, 2 = Google+, 3 = Twitter, and 4=Facebook) [side note: I think you could cram all these into 1 slot possibly]. We'll make a segment for each; here is how I setup my Twitter segment:

  1. Hit "Save Segment" and you're done. Now repeat this for each of the other variables. Ensure you are selecting "Custom Variable (Value xx)" and not "Custom Variable (Key xx)".
  2. You're done and are ready to play with some data.

Viewing the data in analytics

Once you have the tracking installed and segments setup you need to wait a few hours before you will see the first data appearing in Google Analytics. Once you have data coming in, the first step is to select which segments from your shiny new advanced segments you'd like to use:

Select those you are interested in and "All Visits" if you also wish to compare against all the traffic, and hit Apply. You can now go into any of your regular report screens and see these 2 demographics against one another; here you can see Facebook visitors to one of my test sites starting to be tracked after I installed the tracking code on Feb 13th:

We can immediately see that about 40% of the traffic to this site are logged into Facebook whilst browsing the site and the trend of visitors generally correlate. By adding a couple more segments I can see at the top of the page this breakdown across the networks

It turns out that most staff of this website are on Twitter and Google+, hence the quite high number for Google+ (this is a non-tech website) and the correlation between the 2 figures.

There are loads and loads of metrics you can compare and find of interest and you can spend hours playing around and digging down into the data for your site yourselves. One interesting one for this site, which has an explicit Conversion Goal (yes - comparing conversions could be a lot of fun) of trying to retain users on the site for 10 minutes or more:

Looks like driving users over from the Facebook page could be an area to think more about! They reach this target 50% more of the time than the average user. Just another little example of the kind of things you could be thinking about - I'd love to hear more suggestions and discussion in the comments for what other facets could be useful to look at.

Wrap Up

Currently, whilst Facebook provides a 'proper' API to access this information, Twitter and Google don't, and you should be aware that they might 'fix' the way this process works anytime soon. In the meantime I think there is some really actionable analytics you can gather in the meantime, beyond measuring the details in analytics. You might want to change the details of which social buttons are shown, or maybe provide a popup window to prompt further interaction via a particular Social Network.

In the meantime, I'd love to here what sort of suggestions people have for actionable intelligence based on the analytics you can gather via these techniques. I look forward to hearing what people suggest in the comments. :)


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Broken Link Building Guide: From Noob to Novice

Posted on February 19, 2012 by Anthony D. Nelson

Posted by Anthony D. Nelson

Howdy Mozzers,

My name is Anthony and I'm from Fargo, ND. First-time YouMozzer here. After reading this post, I hope you (in?)voluntarily scroll back up to the top to follow me on twitter (@anthonydnelson) and check out my blog Northside SEO.

Today's post is about broken link building. It's been a popular topic in the industry, but I also noticed that SEOmoz didn't have a lot on the subject, so I thought it would be nice to write a kick-ass piece for the large SEOmoz community. Now, on to the post.

BROKEN LINK BUILDING: From Noob to Novice

broken glasschain linkbuilding with bricks

Broken [broh-kuhn] adjective: not functioning properly; out of working order

Link [lingk] noun: anything serving to connect one part or thing with another

Building [bil-ding] verb (used with object): to construct (especially something complex) by assembling and joining parts

Definitions taken from dictionary.com.

Broken Link Building [lingk bil-ding gohld] verb: the act of acquiring a link to your website by pointing out a broken link on someone else's website

What is Broken Link Building?

Broken link building (sometimes called dead link building) is a technique that involves pointing out a link on another website that is no longer working and also asking for a link to your website. Often the broken link leads to a 404 page. The link will be on a page that is relevant to your niche and appears to be a good fit for inclusion of your site. You perform a solid by pointing out the broken link to the webmaster and in return, suggest that your link be added or be used as a replacement.

Why has Broken Link Building been so Popular Lately?

  1. SEOs feel like they are making the web a better place. They are helping webmaster's deal with the problem of link rot. SEOs care about the quality of the web. The fewer broken links, the better.
  2. It gives the link builder an easy value add to their email. You are helping them out, before asking them to help you out.
  3. It can result in quick links. When broken link building emails are successful, you usually get your link within a day or two of sending the email. Much quicker then allowing a site owner to try and review a product or spending time making a connection and pitching a guest blog post.
  4. It's a relatively new technique that has already yielded good results for numerous link builders.

google chrome logo check my links chrome open site explorer logo xenu-link-sleuth-logo screaming-frog-logo W3C-Logo

Broken Link Building Required Tools:

  1. A website that doesn't suck (no one is going to link to your crappy site, even if you point out a broken link)
  2. Google Chrome with Check My Links Extension or Domain Hunter+ (Domain Hunter+ was recently featured on YouMoz)
  3. Open Site Explorer: Limited use for everyone if you register for a free account at SEOmoz

Additional Tools for Increase Efficiency:

  1. Xenu Link Sleuth (unless you're really cool like me and use a Mac)
  2. Screaming Frog
  3. W3C's Link Checker
  4. Gmail plugins Rapporative and Boomerang
  5. Canned Responses in Gmail or saving stationary templates in Mac mail are major time saving wins

How to Find Broken Links

  1. Use the Check My Links Extension on any webpage you happen to visit and cross your fingers.
  2. Check Top Pages tab in OSE for any competitor or site in your niche and look for 404 pages with external links pointing at them in the Top Pages tab.
  3. Use search operators in Google to find relevant sites (my examples just below). This should result in hundreds of sites with lists of links specific to your industry. Switch your search settings to display the top 100 results and export them to a CSV using the MozBar's SERP Control Panel. Sort by Page Authority or Domain Authority and you're good to go. Find more useful link building search operaters or advanced search queries on Himanshu's site. Visit the sites and run a link checker extension.
    1. intitle:KEYWORD inurl:links -exchange
    2. intitle:KEYWORD inurl:resources
    3. inurl:links KEYWORD -
  4. Add exported lists of links to Xenu/Screaming Frog to find 404 pages and easily run them through OSE. Alternatively, you can run a single page through to easily find the status codes of its outbound links.
  5. Run a website through W3C's Link Checker to find broken links
  6. When you find a broken link, run that link through OSE to determine who else is linking to it. You may find 5-10 other good link prospects from a single broken link.
  7. Export numerous competitor's followed back link profiles in OSE. Combine results. Filter for URLs containing Link, Directory, Where to Buy, Resources or whatever words fit your industry. Sort sites by PA/DA, visit, run link checker, email.

domain quality for link buildingDetermining Link Target Quality

After you find a page with some broken links on it, you have to decide if it's worth your time sending an email and asking for a link.

Ask for a Link Don't Bother
• Noticeable Page Rank / MozRank

• Approximately one thousand links on the page
• Signs of social sharing • Spam links present (viagra, ipods, etc)
• Nice web design • Over 10 broken links

But there are too many broken links!

brokenlinkcheckerIt's a bit of a road block to run into a page with decent authority only to realize that it contains a ton of broken links. When you find a page with too many broken links on it (10+), you have a few options.

  1. Decide the page is low-quality and choose not to contact them.
  2. Send an email pointing out two or three of them and pretend that you don't know about the rest.
  3. Point out all 10+ broken links and risk overwhelming them to the point that they decide not to update the page at all or completely delete it.

It's totally up to you to decide what is right for you and the site you are building links for. Personally, I've gone with all of the techniques above. Often times, it doesn't matter what you decide on because you may not hear back from them at all.

Finding a Website Owner's Contact Information

  • Look for their email address on the contact page, about page or footer of the website
  • Google site:DOMAIN.COM email
  • Google site:DOMAIN.COM @DOMAIN.COM gmail.com hotmail.com yahoo.com msn.com live.com
  • Look for their Twitter handle. A great casual way to introduce yourself
  • Check WhoIs
  • Look for a contact form on their website
  • Citation Labs The Contact Finder if you are working with a large list

Stalk them to the best of your ability. It's OK if they feel a little uncomfortable that you found them through their sister's Twitter account. No contact, no link.

Broken Link Building Email Templates

Now that you know what broken link building is and how to find websites to target, let's get on to email outreach. I'm going to show you five email templates I use which will hopefully help you start your own successful broken link building campaign. Each template is slightly tailored for a different type of website or client. You may find that one of them works best for you, or you may find that you hopping back and forth between styles will give you the best results depending on your client, the niche or the targeted site for link acquisition.

email-template-1Broken Link Building Email Template #1 - Quick and Dirty

Subject Line: (DOMAIN.COM) question

Hey (WEBSITE OWNER FIRST NAME),

Are you still updating (DOMAIN.COM)? I found a broken link I'd like to point out.

-(YOUR FIRST NAME)

Who to Send it to: Perfect for use on websites that look like they were made in the 90's and seem as if they are no longer being updated. Also good for sites that are questionable in quality. Don't waste too much time with on an email for a site you don't expect to reply.

Why it Works: This short and sweet email has one of the highest response rates of any of the templates I use. It comes off as genuine and helpful and leads with a strong question that illicits a response from all webmasters who are actually updating their website. When they reply, simply follow-up by sharing the page and the broken link as well as suggesting your website and explaining the fit and value it offers to that page.

email-template-2Broken Link Building Template #2 - The Pressure is On Them

Subject Line: (DOMAIN.COM) broken link

Hi (WEBSITE OWNER FIRST NAME),
 
My name is (FIRST NAME) and (I WORK FOR COMPANY NAME or I HAVE A WEBSITE CALLED SITENAME) .
I'd love to have (OUR/MY) website (WWW.DOMAIN.COM) added to your great list of (LINKS/RESOURCES).
(LINKS/RESOURCES URL)
 
Also, I found a few broken links on your site. Is this the right place to report them?
 
Look forward to hearing back from you.
 
-(YOUR FIRST NAME) 
 

Who to Send it to: Any website that has a list of links or resources (with a broken link) that you think is a good fit for your site.

Why it Works: You come clean immediately in the email explaining that you want a link. The webmaster might feel the need to include your link in order to find out what links on their site are broken. No webmaster will email you back and say, "No, I won't link to you. Now please show me the broken links." You get a link or they are on their own.

email-template-3Broken Link Building Template #3 - In and Out

Who Should Use This Template: Any link builder that doesn't have time to follow up. This is a one and done send.

Subject Line: (FIRST NAME), (DOMAIN.COM) broken links

Hey (WEBSITE OWNER FIRST NAME),

My name is (YOUR FIRST NAME) and I wanted to let you know I really liked your post about (TOPIC OF ONE OF THEIR BLOG POSTS - NOT THE EXACT TITLE AND NOT THE MOST RECENT ONE). The part I particularly enjoyed was the part about (QUOTE FROM POST BECAUSE....)
 
However, when I was looking at your (DESCRIBE PAGE/POST), I noticed (A/SOME) broken (LINK/LINKS).
(LINK 1)
(LINK 2)
(ETC)
 
When you are fixing the page, I also think you should consider adding these two resources:
(SIMILAR TRUSTWORTHY WEBSITE #1 NAME - WWW.DOMAIN.COM) - (BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF SITE - NOT A CORPORATE DESCRIPTION OR SLOGAN)
(YOUR WEBSITE #2 NAME - WWW.DOMAIN.COM) - (BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF SITE - NOT A CORPORATE DESCRIPTION OR SLOGAN)
 
(PERSONAL ANECDOTE ABOUT HOW THESE TWO SITES HAVE HELPED YOU).
 
I hope this email reaches you safely and helps you out a bit.
 
I look forward to hearing back from you soon.
 
-(YOUR FULL NAME)

Who to Send it to: Any website that has a list of links or resources (with a broken link) that you think is a good fit for your site.

Why it Works: When you nominate two unaffiliated websites for inclusion on the webmasters list of links, they will simply think you are trying to help them. You want to point out some broken links and also give them some additional sites to consider. Make sure the alternate suggested site is not a competitor to your site.

email-template-4Broken Link Building Template #4 - Brand Power

Who Should Use This Template: Link builders (consultants or in-house) who work for a semi-recognizable brand name in their particular industry.

Subject Line: (SITE OWNER FIRST NAME), (DOMAIN.COM) broken link

Hey (WEBSITE OWNER FIRST NAME),

My name is (YOUR FIRST NAME) and I wanted to let you know I really liked your post about (TOPIC OF A BLOG POST - NOT EXACT TITLE AND NOT THE MOST RECENT ONE). The part I particularly enjoyed was the part about (QUOTE FROM THEIR POST).

I work at (COMPANY NAME) and after being in the INDUSTRY/NICHE field for a few years, I've become really passionate about INDUSTRY/NICHE and I'm happy to have found your site.

When I was looking at your (DESCRIPTION OF PAGE WITH BROKEN LINK) page, I noticed that one of the links was broken. The link labeled (BROKEN LINK ANCHOR TEXT) isn't currently working. (OPTIONAL: DO YOU KNOW WHERE THAT LINK IS SUPPOSED TO GO?)

Also, I hope you would consider adding our website (WWW.YOURSITE.COM) as an additional (RESOURCE/RECOMMENDATION/ALTERNATIVE) to your great (DESCRIPTION OF PAGE WITH BROKEN LINK) page. We'd be honored to be included on your site and I think the link would provide great value to your visitors due to our (BRAND UNIQUE SELLING POINT).

Have a nice (DAY/NIGHT).

I look forward to hearing back from you soon.

-(YOUR FULL NAME)

-(COMPANY NAME)

Who to Send it to: Any website that has a list of links or resources (with a broken link) that you think is a good fit for your site.

Why it Works: The website owner is flattered by having someone from a recognizable brand contact them with complements about their site. On top of that, they are grateful for you pointing out the broken links. How could they not give you a link?

Broken Link Building Template #5 - Zen Master Link Builder

zen-master-link-builderThe fifth template is essentially using no template at all. The Zen Master Link Builder builds a relationship before asking for a favor and the placement of a link. I'll outline the basic process below.

  1. Comment on one the website's blog post. Make sure it's thoughtful and genuine.
  2. Send first email with complement and question about a post of theirs or the niche they are in.
  3. After they reply, you email back kindly thanking them. Consider repeating steps two and three if the conversation goes that way.
  4. Follow them on twitter. Casually tweet at them or about their content to remain on their radar.
  5. Email again to point out the broken link as an FYI. Mention your website as a replacement or addition to the page.

Who to Send it to: Ideally everyone. Realistically, use this technique on high quality websites. Sites where links are hard to come by.

Why it Works: You've shown that you care and connected with the website owner on a personal level first. The website owner should be grateful for your support (comments, tweets, emails) and will most likely happily add your link to the page in question.

Note: The Zen Master approach is the best approach to take for all link building outreach. It is definitely not exclusive to broken link building. The ultimate hang-up comes to the overall time and resources required to execute.

Outreach Email Link Building Tips:

  • Send emails one at a time. From you, to them. Be real and try to offer as much value as possible.
  • Don't use full URLs or hyperlinks in your actual email. This increases the chance your email lands in the spam folder.
  • Find the website owner's email address and real name. Cyber stalk them to get it. Google them, find their twitter and check WHOIS.
  • The email templates above will work even better if you personalize them more. Show some personality. Being unique and odd can be more effective than professional and stale. Be a person, not a canned response, even if you start your post from one.
  • Use a woman's name.
  • End emails with a question or a sentence that implies they need to respond to you.
  • Always double check and proof your email. Using templates can be dangerous if you're not careful. Make sure it is personalized to the right website.
  • If you do make a mistake in sending a templated email, come clean and do this.
  • Hustle. You will never get a link for an email you don't send.

telephone-drawing-wikimedia-commonsPro Broken Link Building Outreach Tip

  • If the website has a phone number, call it. A real conversation will monumentally increase your chance at landing a link. Admittedly, I still send emails 99% of the time.

301 Redirect Broken Link Building - Double Dipping

Sometimes the link you point out in your outreach email doesn't even have to be broken to get the webmaster to take action and change the page. I've 301-redirect-iconhad success pointing out links that 301 to a different site. Simply put, if you tell a site owner that they are trying to link to domainA.com and the result is a link to domainB.com they are often willing to remove that link. The benefit of this can be great.

Study your competitors' external backlink profile and find the urls of other websites that are 301ing back to them.

Example: DOMAIN1.com is redirecting to COMPETITOR.com.

Contact the sites who are linking to DOMAIN1.com and explain to them they are not linking to the site they were once intending to. Be sure to offer your website as an additional resource.

The end result: Your competitor loses a link and you gain one. Double win.

This technique will not work for links where the redirect clearly goes to the same company/website at a different URL. This technique works best when combined with an email pointing out a few broken links. "These links are broken and this one doesn't go to the right spot..."

Link Exchanges and Directories

Pointing out broken links is often enough to get you listed in a paid directory or on a site that is requesting link exchanges for submission. Of course, this only means something if you find a paid directory you actually want to be listed in or a site that exchanges links in a non-spammy way.

Content Recreation

Sometimes in the hunt for broken links, you'll find a 404 page that has 5-20 external links pointing at it. Some of them are juicy links. Links that you want. Bad. The problem is, your site doesn't contain a direct replacement for the 404'd content. Here is how you can get them.

Even though your site is in the same niche, your site didn't originally publish the results from that study in 2005 that was referenced so many times and no longer exists. You need to recreate the content. The first step is to put the broken link into the Wayback Machine to find out what the content originally was. Recreate the content for your site. If possible, feel free to repurpose it a bit to fit your branding and style.wayback-machine-logo

Once you have created the similar content, contact the webmasters with the broken link pointing at the now non-existent content and gently nudge them towards your new piece. The exact piece they were looking for.

This technique takes a lot of time and effort but can definitely pay dividends. It is already established that the content you are creating is link worthy in the eyes of multiple webmasters.

18 Additional Broken Link Building Resources

  1. 40 Broken Link Building Resources by Garrett French on Citation Labs
  2. Broken Link Building In Action by Nick LeRoy on nickleroy.com
  3. A Tactical Guide to Broken Link Building by Cleo Kirkland on ROI Factor Blog
  4. The Reciprocity Link Building Method by Melanie Nathan on Search Engine People
  5. Easy Link Building with Your Competitors' 404 Errors by Fabio Ricotta on Ontolo
  6. Need Links? Make Up For Your Competitors Shortcomings by Napoleon Suarez on SEER Interactive Blog
  7. 5 Creative Broken Link Building Strategies by Jon Cooper on Point Blank SEO
  8. Broken Link Building for Content Promotion by Garrett French on Search Engine Watch
  9. Check My Links Chrome Extension - A Link Builder's Dream by Jon Cooper on SEOmoz
  10. Broken Link Building - A Case Study by Ben Jackson on SEO ROI
  11. Broken Link Building: Feast On Your Competitors This Thanksgiving by Napoleon Suarez on SEER Interactive Blog
  12. Fixing the Web's Lost Content: An 8 Step Guide for Link Builders by Jeremy Bencken on Search Engine Watch
  13. 15 Questions with Nick LeRoy on Broken Link Building by Garrett French on Citation Labs
  14. Broken Link Building: How Napoleon Suarez Gets 8-12% Conversions by Garrett French on Citation Labs
  15. Broken Link Building Tips: an Interview with Melanie Nathan by Garrett French on Citation Labs
  16. Busted Links as Reason for Link Request by Wheel on Webmaster World Forum
  17. Improving Corrective Value-Adds in Link Request E-mails by Ross Hudgens on rosshudgens.com
  18. Broken link building with Raven's Link Manager and local directories by Eric Scism on Raven Blog

If you know of a great broken link building resource that I am missing, please post it in the comments and maybe one of the mozzers or I (not sure how this YouMoz editing will work) will be able to add it to the list.

Noob to Novice

I gave this post the title from Noob to Novice because reading blog posts is not going to make you an expert or advanced link builder. You have to get out there and get your hands dirty. Send emails. Send a lot of emails. Try different techniques. Test and record. Broken link building is still a technique that is in its infancy and there is a lot of room for us all to improve and refine our techniques.

I still consider myself a novice link builder. There is so much to learn and the game is always changing.

Broken link building or any outreach based link building campaign is never going to compete with someone who creates link worthy content. Content that will continue to build links on it's own. Content that will build links on the weekends when they're not working.

Outreach link building definitely has its place. It's something I do a lot of. However, you should do it to supplement the natural links your amazing content organically gets. Useful, high-quality content is still king.
 

Be sure to drop a comment and let everyone know about your broken link building successes or failures. It is still a relatively new technique and we can all learn from sharing. Don't be shy on giving this post a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Feedback is needed to grow.


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Help with Nomenclature for Links & Brand Mentions

Posted on February 18, 2012 by randfish

Posted by randfish

Hey gang - short blog post on a topic our product and marketing teams have been noodling around with. As many of you know, we've got our Linkscape index, which is crawled, processed and served out on a monthly basis (there's a new index about every 30 days). We also have a newer datasource, Blogscape, aka Freshscape (which is currently undergoing some repairs in Labs) which crawls a few million "fresh" RSS feeds and indexes full content.

The goal of Linkscape is to present a search-engine size link graph, while the goal with Freshscape is to provide a more realtime, full-content index of links and mentions similar to what Google Alerts does. The problem is... what to call them?

We're currently hard at work on a future iteration of the SEOmoz PRO platform that will include deeper integrations of both Linkscape and Freshscape data (so you can watch and competitively compare your wide link graph metrics as well as these fresher, primarily RSS-based links and brand mentions). As such, we need a way of segmenting these that makes sense to current and future users of PRO, and we'd love your input. The following polls have some of the names we like best right now for classifying Linkscape vs. Freshscape data:

 

If you have other suggestions or ideas, please feel free to include them in the comments. If there's one in particular that receives lots more thumbs up than anything in the poll, we might use your idea in the final version!

Thanks very much for the help - can't wait to show you our new stuff (though it will be more than a few months until this is ready to roll out).


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How To Leverage Pinterest In Your SEM Strategy – Part 2

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Suzanne Sanchez

In a previous post, my coworker Lauren outlined what Pinterest is, how to use it, and why it’s important. As part 2 in a 3 part series, I want to outline how Pinterest is now becoming an important element to any SEM strategy.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is not just about words, it’s about anything and everything that conveys a message to your customer. This includes images, videos, other rich media, and obviously the actual words on your website. Because of Pinterest’s appeal to aesthetics, it is now necessary for websites to seriously consider the images they use. This means stock photography is a thing of the past.

An Example

An important thing to remember about Pinterest is that images are the “hook” to your content. For example, say you have a great recipe for rice pilaf and you have just blogged about it on your food blog. Then a subscriber of yours sees it, and thinks the recipe is rice-tastic and then proceeds to Facebook it, Tweet it and Pin it. But let’s also say that you only included one image with your recipe and it’s a stock photo you found on Google images that’s pixilated and grainy. Well, when your awesome subscriber goes to pin this wonderful recipe and hits their “Pin It” bookmark (to be discussed later), the only image they can pin, to share your recipe, is the pixilated and grainy stock photo. Now, at first you may not see a huge problem with this. Well friends, here’s the issue… take a look at this example of the Food and Drink Pinterest feed.

Look how pretty! You’re pixilated grainy image will get lost in all the amazingness of other, good quality images. You won’t get any repins, or more importantly visits, because your photo doesn’t look appetizing compared to all of these great food shots. This is why images are now crucial to your content strategy.

Pinterest Share Tools

The “Pin It” Bookmark

The “Pin It” bookmark is something Pinterest has developed to make pinning new content easy. You install it by dragging and dropping it to your bookmark tool bar on your browser.

When you want to pin something you see on a page (lets continue with the recipe motif since I love food and I love to cook), you click the “Pin It” bookmark and it gives you options of images it found on the page for you to pin. For example, if I find this delectable recipe for garlic cheese rolls on RaptorToe.com and want to pin it, this is what I see:

Then I hit the “Pin It” bookmark, it gives me several image options based on how many image files were found on the particular page.

I can choose what image I want to pin, then add a description, and choose which board I want to pin it to. From there I can share it to other social networks if I wish.

Give pinners only GREAT options for images.

“Pin It” Share Button

You don’t want to leave it up to chance that pinners will choose the best image that conveys your content. Good news! You can install the Pinterest share button on every post/page of your site to give YOU more control of how your content is shared. You can specify the description to keep messaging consistent and in-brand along with specifying the image shared. Pinterest also provides an advanced code for multiple Pin buttons per page (used mainly for Ecommerce websites). How great are they?!

Pinterest “Follow Button”

If you have created a company or brand profile (if you haven’t already, you should) you can add a follow button to your website. This way, users can keep up with YOUR pins on Pinterest.

Consider This

Here are a few things to consider when implementing images:

  • WHY are you using the image? Are you using an image just because? Does it have a purpose?
  • What is the message you’re trying to convey and what message does it support?
  • Can the image “stand alone”? Can the image convey the message by itself?
  • Is the image compelling enough to draw a click?

Because Pinterest is like crack for ADD-ers, you probably have about .05 seconds to catch the eye of a Pinner. Asking all the above questions will help focus your images so Pinners will be anxious to share your content.

Search Engine Optimization

It’s well known that social media is playing a big role in Google’s ranking factors. Pinterest is now the next big social thing, and brands need to jump on the bandwagon if they are doing SEO.

Pinterest SEO Benefit

Yes, there is SEO benefit.

Pinterest recently updated their look and functionality so some of the SEO benefit has been lost. Previously with every pin, your website received one branded, do-follow, anchor text link. This is no longer that case. You now get one no-follow, image link. Some might argue the benefit is lost. I say, along with others, a link is a link is a link. You want your back link portfolio to look natural, what’s more natural than image links? And guess what, Pinterest links don’t go away.

Tracking Pinterest

One great thing about Pinterest is that is drives traffic. With most analytics packages it tracks under referral traffic. If you use Google Analytics, like me, it’s pretty simple to gather information.

To find referral traffic in GA (Google Analytics):

  • Go to the left sidebar navigation. Click “Traffic Sources,” “Sources” and then “Referrals.”
  • This will give you a list of all the sites that drive traffic to your website. In that list you will find “Pinterest.com” if you are receiving traffic from pins.
  • Click “Pinterest.com” in the list, it will pull open the list of all the individual pins that send visitors. If you have goals or ecommerce tracking set up, you can then see which pins actually drove leads and sales. Very cool.

Affiliate Marketing

How Pinterest Makes Its Money

It has recently come to light that Pinterest has been attaching their affiliate code to URL’s when a pinner clicks through to a website. They have been using a program call Skimlinks to achieve this. According to Adrianne Jefferies’s blog post, Skimlinks crawls through all Pinterest links and checks if the URL points to a merchant store with an affiliate program (like Amazon). When they find one, the program automatically changes the URL to include the Pinterest affiliate code.

The Controversy

The controversy has been over Pinterest’s neglect in disclosing their affiliate program. I personally don’t take offense, and honestly don’t care. But I can see how not being forthcoming can rub some the wrong way. Those that are most perturbed are other affiliate marketers that have been making money off Pinterest by tagging URL’s with their code.

So for those of you who already have or are planning on implementing an affiliate program, Pinterest beat you to the punch.

To Wrap It Up

Pinterest appeals to a very specific demographic, and that requires change in your current online strategies. Don’t miss the boat on this, Pinterest is sticking around. Part 3 of the series will address branding, and how Pinterest can benefit your brand.

And in case you missed the first post, take a look at Pinterest… What Is The Big Deal? – Part 1

Posted in Blog, pinterest, SEO, SEO Tips, Social Media | Comments Off

Link Building – a Helpful Guide to Prospecting and Analysis

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Pak Hou Cheung

Creative Link Building, Link Prospecting or even Link Scouting – call it what you will, the premise is the same:  you are looking for opportunities to build links.

Over the years there have been many different ways that people have been doing this; one of my personal favourites is using Majestic SEO and Open Site Explorer. However useful this is, I still find it time consuming and painful, until thankfully along came Linkdex which came and helped ease the pain.

5::365 - Revisiting

However helpful these tools have been in aiding my link building efforts, it is important as part of any SEO link strategy to think outside the box and establish links where your competitors are not present.

Like many others I am sure, I find quality link prospecting to be a slow process, and knowing where to begin is the hardest and most frustrating.  Hopefully, though, after reading this you’ll be able to analyse quicker and build better quality links.

What You Will Need Beforehand…

Before finding these links, you will need the following extensions installed to your Google Chrome Browser:

  • SEOmoz
  • Scraper

Step 1 | Change Your Google Search Settings

The first step is to change your Google Search settings, you will want to show 100 results per page rather than the standard results of 10.  This can be changed in the search settings as shown below:

Changing Your Search Settings

Step 2 | Knowing Your Operator Queries

I discussed in a previous blog post of mine last month how to understand Google operator queries, and how they can help you better in the art of SEO.  The truth is that knowing these queries will help to aid you quicker in filtering and analysing useful link prospects.

Let’s take an example. With it being the start of London Fashion Week today, let’s say I was on the lookout for guest blogging opportunities to share the world of how great Holly Fulton’s and Dion Lees’ Show Spaces were. I would be thinking about different search query strings that would accept guest blogging opportunities, such as:

  • “write for us” OR “guest post” “fashion”
  • inurl:blog “write for me” OR “Guest Writer” “fashion”

Step 3 | Start Looking for Links

Once you have the extensions, configured your Google search settings and have narrowed down your search results with better defined operator queries, you can start link prospecting.

After displaying your search results, highlight the title tag from the listing and scrape the results using Scraper as shown below:

Scraping Results

Once you have scraped the results, you should export them into a Google Docs file for analysis and research.  What you have now is a highly relevant set of sites to look at when building links.

Step 4 | Analysis and Research

The next step is for you to analyse and take note of the root domains using SEOmoz toolbar.   Once you have, I would recommend filtering them to make the largest at the top and start prospecting.

SEOmoz Bar for Analysis of Prospective Links

Step 5 | Engagement and Action

Finally, after having filtered the prospective links, it’s all up to you to go about and building the links!  Good luck!

© SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. Link Building – a Helpful Guide to Prospecting and Analysis

Related posts:

  1. Link Building: Link Context and Anchor Text Optimisation
  2. 30 Link Building/Link Baiting Techniques That Work in 2011
  3. Linking Out Instead of Link Building to Rank in Google

Posted in Link Building, search, Tools | Comments Off

Location: A Ranking Factor in Organic SERPs

Posted on February 17, 2012 by MichaelC

Posted by MichaelC

We're all familiar with: personalization, SPYW, and the mix of organic + local + shopping + news etc. we call "universal search". Today, we're going to talk about the results that APPEAR to be pure organic, ignoring AdWords, Google Places results, image, news, video, shopping, social influenced results, etc.

Now, looking just at these ordinary organic results, you might expect that if you're signed out, cookies blocked, pws=0, and a ski mask on, you'd get the same results for a given search as you see from any one of a number of rank-checking tools.

But you'd be wrong. Well...in some cases, you'd be wrong. If your location is set (auto-detected via your IP address, or set manually by you), in some cases Google is using your location as a ranking factor.

Mini glossary

Before we dive into some examples, allow me to fabricate some terminology so we're all talking about the same things:

  • pure organic - this is what I'm calling the regular organic, non-Google-Places results that do NOT appear to be location-influenced
  • local-ish: this is what I'm calling the regular organic, non-Google-Places results that DO appear to be location-influenced

Now let's look at some examples

For each, we're going to look at the results for our location set to three US cities: Portland, OR; Chicago, IL; Brooklyn, NY. To set our location, we'll use the "Change Location" option in Google's left menu:

Set location in Google search

 

First, we'll start with a search phrase that we'd expect to have a strong local bias in Google Places results.

Search term: "thai restaurant"

Let's start with Portland, OR:

SERPs for thai restaurant, with location set to Portland

As expected, there's a lot of Google Places results there. But look at result #1: Typhoon. It's got reasonable PA/DA, but not enough to rank nationwide (unlike oshathai.com and sawatdee.com, which rank on page 1 if you set your location to "USA"). It's a Portland restaurant--Google might know this because of its Google Places page; also, it's got Portland in 2 of the footer links. No hCard markup on the address itself anywhere on the site however.

The 2nd result happens to be near Portland, but really located in Beaverton, and is ranking simply because of a near-match domain, in my opinion (it ranks #2 if your location is set to "USA"). Just to be sure Google wasn't still using my IP address and geo-locating me in Portland when I specified my location as "USA", I had Dr. Pete confirm this from his cave in Chicago (thanks Pete!).

In Dr. Pete's honor, we'll look at Chicago next, for this same term:

SERPs for thai restaurant, with location set to Chicago

Now this is getting a little more interesting. Results 1, 3, and 4 are clearly not there because of a Google Places page, but rather, because on-page factors would make the page do pretty well if we'd actually typed in "Chicago thai restaurant", i.e. with the location name behaving like any other keyword. Result #2 is most likely there because of its Google Places page: it's an all-Flash site, with no mention of Chicago anywhere in the HTML; and, of course, Google's helpful "show map of..." link is a clue :-).

Just to be certain, I peered into the guts of a number of these all-Flash restaurant sites using FlashProbe to see if there was location-specific text in there....and for most of them, found nothing of significance.

Next up: Brooklyn.

SERPs for thai restaurant, with location set to Brooklyn, NY

Google Places results all up top, then the rest of the page is all local-ish results. The menupages.com result is clearly not Google-Places related but has "Brooklyn" all over the page, whereas most of the rest must be getting identified via Google Places as "Brooklyn" doesn't appear on their websites at all.

Next, let's look at a search for "auto parts", where you might imagine that what's going to be useful to the user is going to be a mix of the national parts websites and also local parts stores.

Search term: "auto parts"

First up: Portland.

SERPs for auto parts, with location set to Portland

As expected: dominated by about an even mix of Google Places and pure organic. But the last two are local-ish: the first could either be Google-Places influenced, but more likely it's a near exact match domain if you considered the city name to be one of the search terms. And a near exact match page title doesn't hurt either.

Back to Chicago now:

SERPs for auto parts, with location set to Chicago

Similar results to Portland.

Lastly, let's look at Brooklyn:

SERPs for auto parts, with location set to Brooklyn

Similar mix to Portland and Chicago, but clearly from looking at these three sets of results, Google is NOT "designating" slots on the page for each type of result (pure organic, local-ish, Google Places) regardless of city. The behavior is more like an ordering based on an overall scoring, where past click patterns (i.e. are users clicking on Google Places results for this term more, or pure organic, or shopping, or local-ish...etc.) might be a factor, keyword relevance (including the city name as a keyword) is a factor, PA/DA of course...etc.

Now I did some research on some other terms as well, including "web hosting", which returned a similar mix of local-ish results + pure organic...right up to when I started doing screen shots for this blog post, after which all the local-ish results disappeared...for all cities I tried. With the heavy click volume that must happen on a competitive term like that, I can't chalk that up to a change in click behavior statistics--it smells like a manual adjustment for that search term to me when it comes to the mix of types of results.

Conclusions

  1. For some search phrases, the results that we've come to think of as "pure organic" are heavily influenced by location, in addition to the Google Places results.
  2. There are at least two factors that Google is using to rank local-ish results:
    1. the name of the searcher's current location is found in traditional on-page areas (page title, body text, etc.), and
    2. because the Google Places page indicates the location matches the searcher's location.
  3. Clearly the mix of ranking factors for Google Places and local-ish organic results is quite different, as in general, we're seeing the local-ish organic results NOT match the top local results from Google Places.
  4. Certain search terms generate a higher % of local-ish results than others, just like certain search terms generate a higher % of image, or news, or video, or shopping results, BUT the mix of non-local organic and local-ish organic results varies not just by search term, but also by location.
  5. It seems that it's more about a page's overall score in the ranking algorithm getting bumped by either being local (via Google Places) or containing the user's location name in traditional on-page elements, rather than slots in the page 1 results being set aside for local-ish results for a given term.

So what do I do with this information?

  • Directory-type websites: you've got a shot at ranking your city-specific pages...even if the user doesn't type their city name in as part of the search.
  • Local businesses: tune your pages for your city name as well as doing your Google Places page properly (but do NOT put your location name in your Google Places category), as you've got a shot at 2 listings on page 1: a Google Places listing, and a local-ish listing.

I look forward to seeing ideas/theories in the comments that are different from, crazier than, and more accurate than mine. Thanks to David Mihm, Tom Critchlow, Tom Anthony, Wil Reynolds, Carson Ward, Kate Morris, and Pete Meyers for their thoughts and research.


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Roles & Responsibilities of a Web Marketing Team – Whiteboard Friday

Posted on February 16, 2012 by randfish

Posted by randfish

This week we talk about the different roles and responsibilities of a web marketing team. What does it take to have a successful marketing team that will take your brand to the next level? What metrics should your team measure? Your marketing team will go through a few different stages while your company grows and this video walks you through those steps.

Some notes about this video, we shot this a few weeks ago and as with the other video we experienced some quality issues. Please bear with us while we work out the kinks of our new equipment. I also mention that we are looking for another web dev for our marketing team, but I am happy to mention that our new web dev Devin started on Monday! Don't worry we are looking to fill other positions which can be found here.



Video Transcription

Howdy SEOmoz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're talking about some of the roles and responsibilities of a web marketing team and really how to design a successful web marketing team that can accomplish all of the goals that you've got on the Web.

The place that I like to start is with the metrics you care about. The metrics almost always start with customers or with revenue. Customers or revenue. From customers and revenue you can get down to the metrics that matter, the sources from which those people come externally on your site, the internal sources, the funnel, the marketing funnel itself, how far people make it down the funnel, if you're attracting customers, or the quality of those visitors that you're getting, if we're talking about a site that's driven by ad revenue.

The key metrics usually come from places like visits, visit quality, conversions, brand awareness, competitive intelligence, and the quality of customers being acquired. Those are very, very high level, but they typically filter down into deeper ones. When you look at visits, you might be looking at visit sources. You might be looking at the time that people are spending on the site and the number of pages browsed. You might be looking, when you're looking at conversions, at the quality of those conversions, how many of those people come back, what the customer lifetime value is, what the word-of-mouth spread is, you know, for every one customer, how many new customers do we acquire based on some viral co- efficient, etc., etc. You'll know these for your business, and you'll dig down into them.

These metrics map over to the right sort of team format. The teams that I like to build really come in stages. Those stages are natural evolutions and progressions. If you're extremely early stage, what I really like . . . by super early stage, what I mean is maybe there are three of you, four of you, five of you, up to maybe ten people in a business that's trying to do considerable marketing on the Web. I like having someone with a title at the very junior level. The most junior level I would have is a web marketing manager or a director of marketing or VP of marketing. It's certainly fine to have someone very senior so long as they're willing to get their hands dirty. They're responsible for all of this. They're responsible for where do customers and revenue come from, what are the sources from which we can generate those. I'm going to personally build a funnel, personally build out how we execute on all the sources, focus on the right ones, figure out what the channels are that work, etc.

In a mid-stage I like to extrapolate a little more. Have that VP of marketing who's responsible for the key metrics and for setting the goals and responsibilities and then start to break things out into two worlds. One is the inbound, organic world. This can also be organic or non-paid or free marketing or earned media, whatever you like to call this. Those inbound marketers worry about things like SEO, social, content marketing, blogging, videos, etc., all the things that you do on the Web that earn your customers, that earn visits, rather than buying them or interrupting them.

The other side is performance marketers. These are people who do things like paid acquisition, conversion rate optimization. I like having the person who's responsible for paid acquisition also run the CRO and the marketing funnel. The reason why is because these visitors usually are extremely high ROI and cost less. Hopefully, 60 to 80 percent of your traffic is coming through here.

This is where you're going to get a ton of your direct conversions. These people will be paying some cost to acquire those visitors. So owning the funnel makes a lot of sense for them. That way they can say, "Okay, customer lifetime value is $500. We will pay up to $150 to acquire a customer through these five channels. We'll pay up to $250 to acquire a customer through these channels because we know it's worth more. We're going to keep optimizing the funnel and improving the conversion rate."

Then, naturally, the stuff from organic will flow into those paid channels and into that same funnel. The ROI is usually higher, but the directness and ability to increase that takes longer. It takes more effort and more time, more energy expended. You'll have more things where you throw stuff against the wall to see if it sticks versus paid where, hopefully, you learn that very, very quickly. We bid on this keyword, it didn't work. We put an ad on this site, it didn't work. Fine, we take those down.

In terms of who you should assign to these teams, I would say start with one person responsible for each. This person up here, maybe they move into that VP marketing role. If they don't, maybe they move into one of these roles because they're particularly good at performance or at inbound. Then, the VP of marketing comes in and you hire someone more senior to take over those roles.

Then you could get specialized inside those. If you see that SEO is an amazing channel for us and we have a ton of content and ton of material that needs SEO'ing, we need to bring in a full-time technical and content SEO to worry about those types of things. Outreach is huge for us. We need a full-time link builder. Social is huge for us. We need a full-time community and social manager.

Great, those are fine things, and that leads you naturally into the next stage, the later stage or more mature stage where you usually have . . . I actually like to have at this point something like a CMO, someone who's a chief officer and has a higher purview of roles, of responsibility around that. This also means that people who have progressed in the organization from inbound or from performance channels can move into those VP roles: VP of inbound, VP of performance. Then you can have people under them who are very specialized in each of the requirements of that role. So it could be we have someone who just does PR.

We have someone who just does technical SEO. I cannot recommend this enough, have web developers or software engineers who work on each of these teams because it means that someone who's working on performance marketing doesn't need to wait for engineering to get projects done. They have someone who works on the team full-time. This is absolutely amazing here at SEOmoz. We have Casey Henry who works as a full-time web developer, and we're hiring another developer - if you know any great people, please send them our way - to actually work on our marketing team and worry about the www site and the marketing funnel and all the stuff that exists around the inbound and performance side. Obviously, with time, I'd like to see that become two or three or four people.

These people's roles really depend on the channels that are working for you and the channels into which you want to invest. You might have a full-time person who just does video content. You might have a full-time person who just does blogging and they do very little else. That could be a content marketer. You might have multiple people who are managing your community because you have so many people following you and interacting with you on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, through your own social sources on your site if you have a social platform, a high level of community contributions, user generated content, those types of things.

This segmentation and role specialization is excellent too because people can move up and have opportunities as one of these channels takes off and becomes amazing.

An even later stage might be that we've got SEO as an entire department and it has its own director. Underneath the director are people who are responsible for specific parts. This person is responsible for UGC SEO. This person is responsible for video. This person is responsible for technical SEO. All those kinds of roles can get even more specialized, and you can move into a bigger division.

The nice thing about how this whole platform works is that it can organically grow. It can build off itself, and you develop strengths in all the areas without ignoring any channels. Early on in your stages, these people and then these people are going to be experimenting with all types of different channels. As you get here, you have specialists who can perform in those channels, leaving the CMO, the VP, the director free to explore new channels and find places where they might want additional specialists.

For an in-house team, this is how I personally like to do it. I am, of course, looking forward to your comments, seeing how you guys do this, seeing where I might be right or wrong here And I hope you will join us again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com


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Explode Your Keyword List Right – Part 4

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Preston Van Dyke

This last post of the series is one targeted toward SEO campaigns so large that maintaining, monitoring and collectively progressing them on a keyword level can feel like you’re trying to push a beached whale.

In any enterprise campaign, the achilles heel is almost always a lack of organization. With organization will come clarity in goals and strategy, as well as an ability to progressively build upon prior steps.

Keep in mind that while this particular process was built for campaigns targeting a large number of landing pages and keywords, everything big in marketing can always be scaled down. For ideas on a smaller scale keyword expansion and monitoring approach I would first start at Part One, Two or Three in this series.

Data Essential To The Process

Key Performance Indicators

To organize and prioritize a massive keyword list it is essential to know which KPI’s drive the online strategy. The top 2 performance indicators a company online should use to gauge success are either revenue or leads (depending on business model). Both of these will need to be retrieved from your analytics package.

Supportive Indicators

But, as we well know, there are a few other bits of data which incrementally assist in leading to these ultimate goals and allow us as marketers to understand we are on the right direction, or in some cases missing opportunities. On a keyword level these are potential search volume, difficulty, and current position (or rankings).

I call these supportive indicators because they not only provide us insight into what will be required to achieve our ultimate KPI goals but will also be heavily integrated into this particular keyword prioritization process.

Both your search volume and keyword difficulty will come from the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. The current position of each keyword you will need to derive from your choice of ranking analysis tools.

The Process

Primary Target Identification

Your first step in the process will be to single out which pages or specific categories within the site will be part of your overall SEO campaign. Keep in mind that this specific process is meant to expand a keyword list far beyond the obvious terms and ensure all potential traffic is eventually gained through a strategic approach.

This means that you could start with your already top 25-50 performing pages. So your first step would be to gather the top 50 or so location specific pages on your site. For our example we will go at this as though to be targeting a “car rental” niche.

*Note that this process works best as you work with pages that fall under the same niche.

Common Keyphrase Iteration Identification

The next step is to identify the common iterations that create big terms for each of these top pages. For instance, in the travel industry—and especially specific to car rentals—some of the biggest terms revolve around these following types:

  • the word “city” itself
  • the “name” of the city itself (if this doesn’t make sense just wait a moment)
  • “deals”
  • “cheap”
  • “discount”
  • “budget”
  • “low price”
  • or a combination of one or two of the above.
With this basic list you can build a baseline list of iterations which we will expand upon. Such as the following:

Baseline Keyword Iteration List To Expand Upon

Develop Baseline List for Each Page

Now we are ready to expand into a hearty keyword list for each target page. Going along with our example of the top cities for car rentals, we now need to single out each city individually with the iterations brainstormed above and expand out a strong list using the Google Adwords Keyword tool. This can be done by dropping the list above into a notepad and running one FIND & REPLACE key command replacing the term “name” with the actual city (or unique term relevant to a specific page):

Keyword Expansion Process Using Iterations

Aggregate Comprehensive Keyword List

With your terms now specific to the city (or otherwise unique element of the page your web property of focus is) it is now time to expand out a full list of terms from which we will work. This is done by placing each term (on the left) individually into the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and exporting 100 keywords per single term.

Aggregate Comprehensive List With Google Adwords Keyword Tool

With the full list of terms exported. Combine all of them together into one sheet and deduplicate the list. This will leave you with a unique list of terms.

Remove Industry Adjoining, Irrelevant Terms

One common occurrence when using the Adwords Keyword Tool is that adjoined industry terms, irrelevant to your overall purpose, will sneak their way into your keyword list. It is important to identify each of these types of terms and remove them from the list. In our example of  ”car rentals” a few common terms that arise which we remove are:

  • flight
  • air / airport / airline / airfare
  • ticket
  • fly
  • hotel

The best way to keep track of and remove these is to generate your own list on the side. Then each time you expand a list filter the aggregate to remove these irrelevant terms.

Filter & Remove Irrelevant Keywords

Duplicate Process Across All Priority Pages

At this point you have accomplished your list for one of your list of top target pages with which we will be prioritizing. Duplicate this process across each of those top niche pages you have selected for your web property. This means that for us, we moved from Denver to San Francisco to New York and on through the 50 cities special to our “car rental” expansion purposes.

After doing this, we were left with between 250-500 keywords per target page. However, this number will differ for you depending on the industry targeted.

As you are doing this it will be best to keep each pages keywords and the data you will gather for them each in a separate sheet of the same excel document similar to that shown below:

Keep Pages Keywords & Data Separate

Gather Essential Data

As we began this post, specific metrics were outlined that would be essential for this process. All your keywords for this project have been identified, so now it will be important to retrieve those metrics. As a reminder, they are:

  1. Current Position (Ranking)
  2. Search Volume Potential (Exact Match Monthly Search Volume from Adwords Keyword Tool)
  3. Keyword Difficulty (Competition Metric from Adwords Keyword Tool)
  4. Revenue (Best to get about 6-12 months worth of data from your Analytics package)

Set Benchmarks

With all data in place we are ready to start comparing and making decisions. The first step in this comparison process is to get your totals and averages. Run formulas adding up the sum [=SUM(Number 1, Number 2...)] or average [=AVERAGE(Number 1, Number 2...)] of each metric on a page by page basis.

Run Totals & Averages

*Similar to past posts in this series, keep in mind that in order to gather a quality average score for rankings you will need to the value showing that a term is not ranking (usually a “-” or “0″) with a 100.

Having all your data gather, totals and averages set you are now ready to calculate priorities. Rather than walk you through a step by step on this particular portion of the process it would be better to simply place the tools in your hands and let you use it at will:

Calculate Priorities

In order to determine priorities (both on a page to page comparison and a keyword to keyword comparison) the following formula will:

 

.4(Revenue/Max Revenue Top Page)+.3(Search Volume/Max Search Volume)+.2((101-Average Position)/100))+.1(Average Competiton/100%)

 

Let me explain:

  • Weighted Authority: To place a weighted authority on highest value metric, this is done by multiplying each part on a sliding scale of .4 down to .1. Therefore making revenue (this could be leads also) the highest priority, potential search volume the second, ranking performance the third, and so on.
  • Revenue: This is referring to each page’s individual revenue attribution (a sum total of every keywords revenue achieved within a particular page).
  • Max Revenue Top Page: This is referring to the page that has been identified to achieve the highest return on revenue in comparison to all other pages within the campaign.
  • Search Volume: This is referring to the total potential search volume of  a particular page (The sum total of all the keywords within a page).
  • Max Search Volume: This is referring to the page that has been identified to have the highest potential search volume in comparison to all other pages within the campaign.
  • 101-Average Position/100: The term “average position” here is referring to the average ranking of all keywords within a particular page. Because a good average position is a lower number, and all other metrics here are based on “the higher the better,” this equation will take your average position and invert it to reflect this same frame of thought.
  • Average Competition/100%: The term “average competition” is referring to the average ranking of all keywords within a particular page. This is then divided by 100%.

The value achieved from this formula should be considered your “priority value.” Those pages with the highest value should be targeted more heavily first because you either have a gaping missed opportunity or it simply has the highest potential to drive more revenue.

Macrocosm & Microcosm

The beauty of this formula is that it can be calculated on a level to compare a series of web pages to each other and determine which should be targeted first (as shown above)—this is what I would call our “macrocosm”—and it can also be calculated within each page comparing keyword to keyword to determine which keywords are highest priority and should be targeted first. Comparing keyword to keyword within one page is your “microcosm.”

Is Your Brain Fried?

If your brain feels fried right now don’t worry. Mine is fried just trying to explain all of this in one blog post. As with anything else, you will likely begin to understand it more as you put it to practice.

Start by doing this process with 4-5 pages only. Get your metrics together and begin playing with the calculations. It won’t be long before you start scaling up.

Disclaimer: On-Site & Branding Signals

Above all else, when looking at targeting keywords remember that without the proper branding signals in place with quality on-page optimization, no website will sustain an quality ranking. The best way to look at search engine marketing is to:

First, be sure your on-page optimization is pristine. Each page should be optimized with purpose. If those purposes do not involve (1) usability, (2) conversion and (3) keyword targeted optimization, you are off the mark.

Second, it is essential to establish your business as an authoritative brand in the eyes of the search engine. Links pointing the site from partners websites, branded links using the business name and the URL itself as their anchor text as well as images linking to the website. Basically anything type of link that would be created in a purely natural process can be considered branded.

And lastly, begin targeting specific terms in your content and link building strategy. This last step is where the posts in this series will come into play.

Other Posts In The Series:

Post 1 - Building a Keyword List Based On Top Relevant Terms in Google Webmasters

Post 2 - Using Google Analytics for Long Tail Identification & Quick Wins

Post 3 – Using Google Webmaster Tools To Locate New Terms & Build Strong Variations

Posted in Blog, enterprise seo, keyword expansion, keyword optimization, keyword strategy, Keyword Targeting, keyword-research, SEO Tips | Comments Off

Excel Hints for PPC

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Tamsin Mehew

Excel is one of the best tools for PPC. Downloading your data into Excel gives much more scope for analysis and complex change than using a browser interface or AdWords Editor.

I *Heart* Excel

You may have already read Distilled’s Excel for SEO or some of PPCHero’s Excel tips, but here are my own hints.

Concatenation

If there’s one thing you can put into practice from this post, it is this: you can use ampersands instead of CONCATENATE().

A1&A2 is the same as CONCATENATE(A1,A2), except for being far fewer characters and not adding to the oft inevitable nightmare of nested brackets.

Wildcards

Excel has three wildcard characters:

  • A question mark (?) can match a single character, but it can be any character. So ‘ca?’ will match ‘cat’ and ‘cab’ but not ‘ca’ or ‘cattle’.
  • Tilde is the escape character – if you actually want to search for asterisks, question marks or tildes you have to add a tilde (~) before them. So ‘Where am I?’ will match ‘Where am Id’, while ‘Where am I~?’ will match ‘Where am I?’ and nothing else.
  •  An asterisk, *, can represent zero or any number of any characters. ‘*’ will match anything. ‘*where’ will match ‘where’, ‘somewhere’ and ‘thwsohfkjsgnsmnglsnwhere’ but not ‘where am I’.

Main takeaway: ‘*where*’ will match anything with ‘where’ in it. You can use this to check text for a single word.

Wildcards do not work in all functions (you can’t use them in SUBSTITUTE(), for example) but will work in SEARCH(), SUMIF(), SUMIFS(), COUNTIF(), COUNTIFS() and VLOOKUP(). You can use also wildcards in Find and Replace.

Checking Ads

Pretty basic tip: You can check that all the bits of your ads are the right length using LEN(), and then having conditional formatting to highlight where text is too long.

More advanced: what if you use dynamic keyword insertion? Then your ad text’s actual length can be over 25, as AdWords won’t count the ‘{KeyWord:}’ when counting the characters. You can get around this by using:

=LEN(A2)-10*COUNTIF(A2,”*{KeyWord:*}*”)

You usually would use COUNTIF() on a range of cells, but you can also use it to check just one cell – if A2 uses DKI, then COUNTIF() will return 1, and if it doesn’t COUNTIF() will return 0. There are 10 characters in ‘{KeyWord:}’, so if COUNTIF() is 1 the formula gives then length of A2 minus 10.

COUNTIF() is case insensitive, so it won’t matter if your ads use ‘{keyword:’, ‘{Keyword:’ or ‘{KeyWord:’.

Checking Search Query Reports

Search query reports are great providers of negative and positive keywords. But it can be difficult to spot trends if people phrase their queries slightly differently. You can use SUMIF() and wildcards to see the performance of all search queries that have an individual word in them.

First, download your search query report into Excel – here’s an entirely made-up example:

Made-up Search Term Report

Then add a second worksheet, and set up these headings:
Column headings - Word, Clicks, Impressions, CTR, Avg. CPC, Cost, Conv. (1-per-click) etc

The ‘Word’ column is for the word or phrase you’re searching the search terms for. Add some words that recur in the search terms.

In cell B2, we want to add up all the clicks of search terms containing whatever’s in A2. So use the formula

=SUMIF(‘Search term report’!A:A,”*”&A2&”*”,’Search term report’!E:E)

There are three parameters inside SUMIF():

  • the first is the range of cells to test
  • the second is the criteria to test those cells
  • the third gives the range of cells to add up if the tested cell fulfils the criteria (This argument is optional – leave it blank if you’re adding up the cells you’re testing)

So the SUMIF() will look at ‘Search term report’!A:A (which is the column of search terms) and see if any match “*”&A2&”*”. So if A2 is ‘cheap’ then the function will look for search terms that match “*cheap*” – which means any search term that uses the word ’cheap’. It then sums the numbers in ‘Search term report’!E:E (the Clicks column).

The formula for Impressions is

=SUMIF(‘Search term report’!A:A,”*”&A2&”*”,’Search term report’!F:F)

which is the same except that the third parameter is now the Impressions column.

In the Cost column the third parameter should be ‘Search term report’!I:I, and in the Conv column the third parameter should be Search term report’!K:K.

The CTR, CPC, Cost/conv and Conv rate columns can’t be filled in using SUMIF(), as they aren’t sums – calculate these from the other columns.

Then copy the formulae in Row 2 and paste them downwards.

The final results!

In this example, searches with the word ‘cheap’ get good CTR and bad cost/conv, suggesting that ‘cheap’ should either be added as a negative keyword or effort needs to be spend improving their performance. It also shows there’s a lot of traffic for ‘blue’ which converts well, so separating ‘blue widgets’ into their own ad group might web a good idea.

What words should you check? Look at your search queries and see what keeps coming up. You might want to check for words suggesting an informational search (like ‘why’, ‘how’, ‘what’, ‘where’ or ‘which’). Or you can check for people searching for websites with words like ‘www’ or ‘com’.

Note that the CTR calculated is likely to be higher than the actual CTR of all searches containing your word – some queries are collated under ‘Other Search Queries’, and if a search query had a click it’s less likely to be one of those. So it may be better to focus on the cost and conversion metrics.

excel logo

Download the Sumif Example sheet here

Any More?

I hope you’ve found these tips useful – there’s so much depth to Excel that it’s easy to miss the things you can do with it. Please share your own tips in the comments!

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Posted in ppc, Tools | Comments Off

What the Wikipedia Study Really Means for SEO

Posted on February 16, 2012 by SEO Chat - Search Engine Optimization Tutorials
If you would like to peruse the study yourself, you can read Intelligent Positioning's blog post. To really understand what we can learn from the study, we must first consider its methodology. The researchers conducted the entire study in English, using a random noun generator to compile a list of 1,000 words. They then searched for those words on Google's UK site, through the Google Chrome Incognito browser to get around any personalization or customization. On the surface, the results seem to speak for themselves. For fully 99 percent of the searches, a Wikipedia entry appeared on the first ...
Posted in Google Optimization Help | Comments Off