Link Bait Techniques

In order to get high quality links massively and ongoing basis we must ‘re-invent” our selves, our product and offering in order to create enough interest with other bloggers and web site editors to link to us, naturally and favorably.

Some ideas were around leverage seasonality with events such as quarterly reports for public companies, new CEO’s, new product launches etc. Another idea was getting .edu links by finding .edu sites maintained by students and some other cute ideas.

SEO Strategy for Web 2.0

Lead by Vanessa Fox, this session deals with larger scale dynamic UGC websites. Nathan Buggia discussed general strategy of what web sites in the 2.0 era should offer, Tom Critchlow of Distilled discussed aspects of internal linking and enabling external linking more easily using nice examples from last.fm and youtube.

Dave Naylor is talking about his experience with UGC and the limitations of control vs. moderation vs. anarchy and their impolications on business and on SEO specifically. Later on David added that Yahoo! is cloaking their external links from their various products with tracking links, in a debate on how to best deal with AJX and content which needs to be scuplted.

Mikkel deMib (amazing colorful suite, as always) is discussing the web 2.0 issues such as use of AJAX and interactions which may be problematic with SEO.

Mikkel describes issues with using AJAX such as using the “#” sign to mask script URL’s and discusses the questions need to be asked when implementing AJAX solutions on web 2.0 web site.

One very nice example is actually the opposite where Mikkel recommend using AJAX to sculpt links. For example if you do not want too many links out from your homepage you can sculpt your links to sub-categories via AJAX thus to maintain your pagerank flow managed.

Next, Mikkel discussed UGC concepts. For instance, Mikkel describes that you may not need keyword research because people write similarly to how they search Now this theory needs to be checked but it does make some sense you must admit.

One Page - One Link Strategy:

Teach your users to get 1 link to their content. one 1 link for each content piece may mean thousands and thousands of new links every month.

That’s it for now… will keep updating after lunch.

So day 1 at SMX London 2008 has ended..

It was a crazy long day, lots of fun and very interesting. Below are the day’s highlights, from my personal perspective.

SMX London 2008- Day 1

The first session began right on time, with the moderation of Chris Sherman hosting two Microsoft speakers: Nathan Buggia and ZhaoHui Tang. They both spoke mainly on MSN/Live however the products and tools they demonstrated, even though developed by the Microsoft team are relevant to all. The discussion was mainly around the Microsoft adCenter Excel Add-in, the Microsoft Ad Labs with their nifty researching tools and the MSN/Live webmaster center (similar to Google webmaster central)

The Global Search Universe

The next session I attended had Andy Atkins-Kruger, Robin Goad and Linus Gregoriadis discussed international aspects of the Internet usage, insights to search behavior and some interesting data with regards to the search industry in 2007 vs. 2008. While staying at the high level and not drilling down to the very details, the session was very informative, insightful and all speakers provided great value. here are a few slides I took with my mobile and I thought are worthwhile:

Fundamentals of Search Advertising

After lunch came my turn After Chris Sherman’s opening words, I gave the first presentation in the “Fundamentals of Search Advertising” session, a short overview of what I sometimes call “PPC Thinking” - or more practically: “5 steps to mastering Google Adwords Campaigns” (Dowload my SMX London 2008 PPC presentation here). Next to me where Alan K’necht, who spoke about looking at keywords data from the web analytics standpoint, Kelly Gillease who showed tecniques on pulling the rght reports and digging te gold from the tons of data and concluded with and Richard Gregory of Latitude who spoke about some new and exciting concepts and up to date changes (thanks again for dinner).

International SEO

The last session I attended was International SEO, moderated by Vanessa Fox and hosting Andy Atkins-Kruger, Duncan Morris and Heini van Bergen.
This was a very interesting and highly professional session about handling international website from the SEO perspective. What domains to use? what sub domain/ sub folders/ local TLD policy to implement? how to technically make sure all works as it should to maximize the international search potential? A lot of these questions where answered and I must say with very much detail. One thing that caught my eyes specifically was to issue of adding the office addresses to localized versions of pages (similarly to local search guidelines) in order to enable the search engines to sort out the regional relevance of the page properly - I’m sure going to implement this.

After that we headed to a drinking party hosted by LondonSEO.org (thanks fr the beer) and followed by dinner with some friends and a night walk in the streets of London. The rest I really do not remember…

SMX London 2008

The famous Search Marketing Expo is coming to London this week. I’ll be speaking about Paid Search on the first day (Tuesday, Nov 4th 2008)  and I’m very excited and thrilled.

For me, every time when I get a chance to visit on of these S** (SMX, SES…) events It’s sort of a fest. You see I’ve been involved in this industry since it’s very beginning back in 1998, and I’ve seen these events grow from a couple of hundred visitors small - friendly - cosy meeting to a full blown conference with thousands of enthusiastic professionals.

At this time tomorrow, I’ll be landing in chilly London.

They say the world divides into two: Those of love London and those who love Paris. Supposedly, these two groups are not correlated at all and they are sort of like Mccain Vs. Obama Anyway - I’m probably in a very small group of people who love both cities. In US elections google found me the term Ohmama - I guess I’m a Parindon :-)  Nevertheless, I’d take SMX in the Pompidoo Center or in the Luxemburg Gardens over the Big Ben anytime.

Professionally speaking, I’ll be opening the ‘ Fundamentals of Search Advertising‘ session, and will present my methodology of how to “think PPC” and strategizing a successful campaign. My fellow speakers will drill down to discuss really interesting concepts from keyword expansion, through integration between SEO and PPC to negative keywords and new regulatory issues in SEM.

I promise to send updates, photos and if time allows even a few video clips - and if you’re there - email, blog, tweet me - let’s have a drink!

*Cheers*
OC

I downloaded and installed the new version, and below are my findings.

Google AdWords Editor 6.5 Installation

Well, First things first - I tried to download and install. The download worked fine, but the installation went really bad. Both versions (old and new) stopped working and I had to uninstall my new and old versions one by one before I had to reinstall the new one to get it to work.

Google AdWords Editor 6.5 Bug

Thanks to the post I read at JumpFly I realized I cannot use the new cute tools the new version offers with my MCC login (that’s a login which enables access to several accounts, mainly used by Agencies.)

Google AdWords Editor 6.5 New Features:

The official AdWords Editor 6.5 Release note presents the following upgrades:
Keyword Opportunities (Beta)
* The Keyword expansion feature generates keyword ideas based on words or phrases.
* The Keyword multiplier combines lists of terms to form new keywords.
* Data view improvements
* Column auto-sizing
* Horizontal scrolling:
* Column selection:
* Date picker:
* Importing and exporting
* New editing options
* Copy campaign or ad group ’shells’
* Create duplicates when replacing or appending text
* Content bids

* To use a separate content bid for an ad group, simply specify the bid on the Ad Groups tab.
Upgrading to version 6.5: When you upgrade, you won’t lose your unposted changes or comments. This means you can choose the ‘Update without Backup’ option in the auto-update message. After you upgrade, your entire account, including comments and unposted changes, will already be in the new version of AdWords Editor.

Keyword Research & Manipulation Tools

While the latter changes are quite insignificant, the keyword Opportunities area is very interesting. There are a lot of paid and free 3rd party tools for keyword expansion, research and manipulation of lists. From the well known wordtracker, through Keyword discovery, the newer tools such as keyword spy and spyfu, google trends, google insight for search (also on this blog), the Google keyword tool and several unique permutation tools such as the RustyBrick Tool and the cute Keyword Permutator,  which help build expanded lists of different keyword matching.

I must say I was a bit disappointed with the current release as the features are basically a simplified version of the excellent Google keyword research tool and keyword permutation tools which are out there for quite a while.

While for the advanced Google AdWords Manager these are not insightful or mind blowing features, I do feel that for novice advertisers these tools, built into the AdWords Editor provide a great addition and value, and positions the AdWords Editor (once again) as a top notch tool for creating and managing Google AdWords campaigns.

What Do you think?

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

hitwise

Google is gaining market share, says Hitwise. According to Hitwise’s latest report, Google receives 71% market share of searches, while Yahoo! receives 18.26%, MSN ( Live) receives 5.32%, Ask.com receives 3.45% and the remaining 46 other engines accounted for 1.95% all together.

Search Engines Market Share US 08 2008

The change vs. July 2008 is not significant, however comparing to August 2007, it is very clear that Google is growing and taking market share from rivals Yahoo! and MSN (LIVE).

Search Engines Market Share

While the Yahoo! search engine market share decrease is “only” ~5 points compared to last year from the total searches, these points represent a 20% decrease from the share Yahoo! had last year. With MSN (LIVE) it’s even more extreme - the ~1 point the lost which may seem insignificant in the general scope, represents 17% of their market share last year - lost.

Search Engines Market Share US 08 2007

Mmm… So what does this all mean to us?

First, it’s kinda interesting for us as marketers to get insights and understand the trends of the industry we’re part of But seriously, this tool can help greatly to plan the media budgets for the upcoming year.

If (and the “if” is critical) our performance on all 3 media outlets ( Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter) is similar in its KPI indicators (conversion rates, cost of clicks, value of traffic, cost per action etc.), the classic action would be to divide our budget evenly between them, pro rata to their market share as follows

According the this market share data and table, for each USD 1,000 spent on Microsoft adCenter, we’d invest USD 3,432 on Yahoo! Search Marketing and USD 13,347 on Google AdWords in order to keep our advertising budget spread inline with the users behavior.

BUT

and it’s a big BUT!

This ALL CHANGES if our KPI’s as explained above are changing. Once MSN adCenter can provide better conversion rate, better cost per action than any of the others, we will need to “milk it” to the fullest extent and take advantage of the inventory they have to offer, on account of the underperforming media outlets.

Google AdWords

I just received an email from Google AdWords stating that the annoying “stats by Google” box on the conversion pages will now be optional. This seems a really good move on their part.

Google AdWords Conversion Tracking

Google AdWords was one of the first platforms to enable advertisers this so important feature which enables tracking conversions for the campaigns from the entire account level, campaign level, ad group, ads and down to the specific keyword. The tool enables advertisers to monitor, review and optimize the spend based on predefined KPI’s therefore to create much more effective campaigns.

Improved AdWords Conversion Tracking

On April 2008, Google AdWords released the renewed conversion tracking user interface which now offers a very intuitive and easy to use step-by-step wizard which enables advertisers to create differntiated tags for each different conversion.
For example, Advertisers can create tags for leads, sales and any other action they wish to track - as long as it is tagged with the Google AdWords Conversion tracking code.

A nice review on this was published on the AdWords Blog and later on on ROI Revolution Blog.

Google Adwords Conversion Tracking

Google AdWords Conversion Tracking Edit Action

Conversion Tracking ‘Stats by Google’ Indicator

For years, the Google AdWords Conversion tracking code created an automatic image which was shown to users arriving at the conversion “thank you” pages. Google rationalized this feature as a mean to improve transparency and privacy issues, however advertisers did not like this at all, even when Google enabled the advertisers to customize the color schemes of the image.

Google Adwords Conversion Tracking Customize Indicator

From Google AdWords email:

If you currently use or have considered using AdWords conversion tracking, we have news that may be of interest to you. Conversion tracking users are no longer required to display the “Google Site Stats” logo on the conversion pages of their web sites.

Previously, a small but visible text block that read “Google Site Stats” automatically appeared on the page where the conversion tracking code was placed on your web site. The logo would appear only after a conversion occurred via your AdWords ad, and it provided converting visitors links to information about AdWords conversion tracking and instructions on how to block the tracking.

However, many advertisers have told us that the logo was redundant with their own privacy policy, where they already notify users about the tracking technologies in use on their sites. As a result, we’re now giving you the option of not showing the Site Stats logo on the conversion page(s) of your site.

If you currently have conversion tracking tags installed on your web site, the Site Stats logo will continue to display unless you take further action. If you choose to remove the logo, please inform users about the tracking methods you employ on your site by modifying your site’s privacy policy.

For those of you who are new to conversion tracking, it’s a powerful tool that allows you to measure conversion metrics for your AdWords campaigns. An added benefit of using conversion tracking is that it allows you to use the Conversion Optimizer, a bidding feature that uses your conversion tracking data to optimize the performance of your campaigns, helping you make the most of your advertising dollars.

Source: Google AdWords Blog.

The Official Quality Score Changes:

1. Up to date calculations - will be performed every time every search query occurs

2. Keywords no longer marked ‘inactive for search’

3. ‘First page bid’ will replace ‘minimum bid’

For more info See google quality score update, August 26th 2008. and on the AdWords Blog from August 21st 2008.

So what’s new?

For the last few days, I am starting to see the effect of the change, which is up until now mainly visual. It seems Google quality score now actually has a score!

Up until now, the score was either Poor, OK or Great - last few days, my quality score shows a rank out of 10 i.e. 2/10 (for poor) or 9/10 for great - ain’t that so cool?

Well, apart from the fact it looks very self explanatory, they added tips and guidelines which are changing based on the score, and based on the different keyword / bid /ad / landing page combination. This is IMO a very important step for better transparency Google now offers advertisers.

Let’s see some examples:

Great Google Quality Score

This example (from a live campaign) is from a high performing keyword. I added the numbers to show the clear correlation between the performance of the keyword and its quality score.

Great Google quality score

great Google quality score details

OK Google Quality Score

In this examples we see the difference between 5/10 and 7/10, where Google decides to add or not to add their comment to my keyword.

OK Google quality score details

Poor Google Quality Score

Pure and simple - poor performance, poor keyword and Google says - Dude, you are better off without this word! It’s not showing ads, it does not convert and the user experience is not good enough. In other words - either optimize your campaign or delete this word.

poor Google quality score details

The official release note is at the AdWords blog

We’ll keep following the changes and updating on new features and implications f this new system. I’m sure there’s more to it than this though.

*cheers*’
Ophir

P.S
Don’t forget to follow my twitter: http://twitter.com/ophirc

The presentation is embed below and the session itself is available on YouTube:

Part I
Part II
Part III

Cheers
OC

I read the comic, read some opinions and downloaded Google Chrome last night. Indeed, it’s a neat cool fast and kinda stable browser, especially if you take into account it’s only in Beta.

But that’s not what Chrome is all about!

Google Chrome Link bait

Chrome is probably the best most successful piece of link bait campaign I saw, IMO, this is a real state of the art well planned online and offline PR move, which amazingly enough moved our entire industry the last 24 hours!!!

After all, and if we take the PR pitch and hype back to their real natural size and power, it’s a browser. It’s not an operating system (still running on windows last time I checked) and at best it will take a nice chunk of market share from Explorer and Firefox and make this life of adapting a website to browsers a bit more complicated.

But the linkbait… man this is fantastic.
So creative - going with the comics creative to make it stand out and tell us “hey, this one is not just a launch, it’s special!”
So well planned - After the “leak” to the blogosphere the media world i.e. newspapers, TV networks and of course the web got the news and everyone starting talking
The Differentiated Pitch: s it a browser? Is it an Operating system? Will it affect Microsoft? What about Firefox and their relationship?

And the results:

• 7,850,000 Search results for “google chrome”
• 8,117 news items on google news
• 73,902 blog results on Google blog search
• 1,380 videos on Google video
• ~2,000 mentions on twitter

In a matter of hours I received dozens of emails from friends, facebook messages, IM links, twitter messages, phone calls and an ongoing discussion in our office - simply and utterly beautiful!

So for sum?

Chapeau to Google’s PR team, Chapeau to the developers for a job well done on the browser and a special chapeau to this guy who offers to sell a chrome email address on eBay !!! (Thanks Olivier)

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