It’s that time of year again — the kiddies are all headed back to school. Now that I’m headed back to school too (MBA = T minus 2 years), it makes me reminisce about all those things I loved about college – the excitement of a new year, catching up with old friends you hadn’t seen all summer, the first night in a new dorm room, the first weekend of parties (when it really still felt like summer camp & not like school), flipping through textbooks ($500 for 2 books – WHAAAAT?!?!) and thinking “This class might actually be interesting” (then leaving the book under the bed until 3 days before finals)… Sometimes I have weird trains of thought, but I was also recently thinking about all the things that I enjoyed discovering in college and how they sort of parallel the recent online developments that I enjoy discovering every day. And one thing I learned in school (and at home): it’s always nice to share. =)

On the horizon, Compete is going to be launching Search Analytics on September 12th with a Pay-as-You-Go pricing model. This service will provide a new level of competitive research accessible for all sizes and types of companies. Compete Search Analytics will provide companies with access to keyword and site referral data so one can compare a site to its competitors and uncover ways to improve a search marketing strategy.

The second development I want to share is a widget. Yes, it seems everyone is widget-crazy these days, but this widget doesn’t apply to the masses — Due Maternity has found a great way to use a widget to connect to their niche. The first of our friends just had their first baby three weeks ago. I’m married to a second-year associate at a law firm and, as I mentioned, I’m about to start back at school for my MBA, so starting our family is a ways off (much to my in-laws disappointment). But my friend’s pregnancy was — and new baby Matthew is — really exciting for us (now, if they didn’t live in Ohio…). If only I had discovered Due Maternity’s desktop widget earlier, I could have shared it with the mommy-to-be. I love it, not only because it’s cute, but because it’s a brilliant marketing idea; Due Maternity has found an alternative marketing avenue to stay in touch with their target audience, and it has a measurable ROI!

“During the first 45 days after launch, the application was downloaded around 10,000 times—customers were enticed with a 10% discount on select purchases—and sales directly attributable to click-throughs from the application to the e-commerce site hit $7,500. The cost? $600.” -Internet Retailer, August 20, 2007

Often companies want to develop a widget just for the sake of having a widget (or because “everyone else is doing it”). The Due Maternity widget really emphasizes thinking about your target audience, the format of your widget, and widget tie-ins that will entice the downloader to return to your site.

(more…)

I had an experience this past weekend that I feel fairly certain many others in the industry can commiserate with. Surrounded by many friends and family members, I found myself asked over and over what I was doing with my life. I already had this conversation multiple times when I joined the SEER team, so one might think it would be easy by now, right? I wish!

My response depended primarily on three things: who I was speaking with, how much time I had to fully explain the answer… and if their eyes started to glaze over before I was finished! I found myself asking a leading question to determine the knowledge of my audience: “Do you ever search for things on Google?” When I got a “yes” response, it made the rest of the conversation flow more smoothly. Imagine my chagrin when I received “no” responses for not just the Google question, but also for searching for anything online, for going online, and for even having a computer! That took some creative thinking that ended with me comparing Google to the Dewey Decimal System and the phone book. I know, both examples are a stretch, but it was an older relative who really wanted to understand exactly what I did, so I did my best!

In the easier conversations, I was able to relate the experiences of my friends and family back to what I do at SEER. They told me themselves that they almost never search past the first page in the SERPs. They recognized the value of getting the keywords right to reach the site’s target market. Once they comprehended the importance of these two key elements of SEO, it was just a matter of explaining the details of how SEO agencies work with clients to develop their sites to be more search friendly.

I did have a few friends who work in either marketing or IT who immediately reacted with comments like, “Wow, you work in SEO?” I hadn’t even used the acronym, but they were already familiar the term “search engine optimization” from their own experiences. Each of them told me how massive this industry is becoming and just how hard it is to break into it. One friend had already heard of SEER! Unfortunately, this level of knowledge seems to be the exception, not the norm.

The whole experience got me thinking. I’m not going to over-generalize based on people who attended the party, but it did seem that people in their 20’s were the ones who might already be somewhat familiar with SEO, while those in their 30’s had less knowledge of it but still found it easy to understand. It was adorable listening to my mom explain what I do, even if it wasn’t perfectly accurate, so it might be inferred that the baby boomers haven’t completely grasped the industry. If this is the trend for the rest of the population, how can we improve the awareness of SEO?

It seems that most people do not understand that the search engines aren’t just magically producing the best possible results for their searches. People can easily understand the marketing industry as a whole, but many do not realize that search engine optimization is a form of marketing that affects them daily.

Has anyone in the industry had an experience like mine? How about any readers who are clients of SEO agencies – Have you had any difficulty explaining the purpose of working with SEO and PPC consultants and how it will benefit your company?

This post over at iMediaconnection by Brandt Dainow has really resonated with me.

The premise is that Google Analytics is going to DOMINATE the web analytics business, and while I do not agree with every point, there are several VERY valid ones. One great point is this:

What Google has done is simply take every feature in every product on the market and put them all into one system, and then make it available for free.

Not EVERY feature, but most of the ones that matter and/or people care about are here and are EASY to get to. Today I have logged into the following analytics systems to extranet custom data for reports:
• Omniture
• Webtrends
• NetTracker / NetInsight
• Google Analytics

When I look at the data most of our clients need to make decisions, Google analytics gets 95% of them, and it is FREE! The hard part is do you want your data stored by a company who offers a service for free, will it always be free? What happens if Google starts looking for cost cutting measures and abandons improvements on the analytics platform? Where does that leave you?
Those questions don’t scare me though.

While those are a few minor questions, when I look at the man & woman hours spent on licensing and implementation of the web analytics tools above, then log into Google analytics as get everything I need, it really makes me scratch my head.

Why would I pay 10-20k for data I can get for free?

I don’t see why most companies (well maybe except for the BIG publishers and retailers) wouldn’t first start with Google Analytics and see if they are able to get the information that they need to make good decisions. Guess what, if you find that Google Analytics doesn’t get you the information you seek, then you now have checklist of things to ask the next vendor, instead of buying blind.

The web analytics buyer can also see if the 5% reporting they get through a different tool is worth the costs. The value is NEVER in the tool, it is in the interpretation of the tool. As Brandt sees, consulting & interpreting the data and helping clients trim costs or grow is where the value is, whatever tools give me the insights I need and am confident in at the best cost is the one I will use.

Marketingpilgrim author Jordan McCollum summarizes a great study done by web analytics demystified titled “ The Problem with Free Analytics”
I think the issue with this approach is a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy.
1 - People in general have a VERY hard time believing FREE (or cheap) can be as good as paid:

a. Ask your teenager to wear Levi jeans, they’ll say NO WAY! Take the same jeans and throw Diesel, AG, or Lucky on them and you’ve made a best friend. Same jeans, different price point.

2 - People who are paying big sums of $$ have an incentive to discount free tools so their bosses don’t ask them why they are spending real money on a tool that could get them the same info for little cost.

3 - One of the take aways that threw me a bit was: “There appears to be a very strong correlation between a lack of investment in web analytics technology and a sub-optimal use of web analytics.”

a. Remember how lack of investment used to work for perception of web technologies. Apache was FREE, Mysql was FREE, Linux FREE, PHP was FREE and people tried time and time again to make us think that “lack of investment” equated to sub-optimal performance, heck they still do. Yet IBM is has over 15,000 Linux support agreements, yes, the value is in support and people, not always in the hardware.

b. I may be one of the few here, but I think putting me in a Nascar doesn’t make me a good Nascar driver in the same way that buying an expensive web analytics tool doesn’t make someone a good web analyst.

c. Umm….FIREFOX?

At the end of the day web analytics is a TOOL. While I am NOT one of those people who looks at a car as just a way to get from point A to point B, I know a lot of folks who do. And to those folks the bells and whistles of the New BMW 335 just don’t resonate when they are trying to get from point A to Point B.
I challenge more of you to stop thinking that the company that posts the most whitepapers and has the most user conferences is the BEST SOLUTION for your web analytics needs. Start your web analytics search by getting a better grasp on what you need to know about your site to make good decisions then start seeking out the right match based on your needs.
Google Analytics is not for everyone, but shouldn’t you make that judgment based on what your needs are and not on some marketing brochure or whitepaper?

Here are a couple of other recommended resources on the differences between web analytics systems:

SEO Brien’s web analytics comparison

Web analytics shootout

Like what you’ve read? Subscribe to our feed.

After the rollout of the Placement Platform, Google Adwords is again proving that they are extremely focused on being innovative in the ever-changing online advertising space. The latest addition to Adwords advertising is the IP Exclusion Feature. Adwords has taken things a step further with allowing advertisers to have control over their advertisements, which is always a welcomed feature by the advertisers. Advertisers have always had the ability to control placements of their ads in terms of choosing language settings, geo-targeting settings, site exclusion settings, etcetera however now with the addition of the new IP Exclusion feature advertisers also have the ability to specify IP addresses where they do not want their ads to show. This is an amazing breakthrough in the online advertising world that will help to prevent click fraud. Advertisers however, should not get overly aggressive with implementing this new feature, as it may result in blocking a ton of relevant traffic.

As BizReport suggested, this feature may contribute in battling the click-fraud that advertisers face but usually do not have much control over. Click-fraud can be identified when an ad is receiving an excessive amount of clicks from the same IP address on a continual basis.

2 Ways to effectively use the IP Exclusion Feature:

Blocking Competitor IP addresses
Blocking IP addresses from competitors could potentially aid in less click-fraud, which in turn may enhance the validity of reporting from Adwords by registering more of the quality clicks versus reports containing the fraud clicks and the quality clicks.

Fortune 1000 companies … Exclude yourselves
Blocking internal IP addresses could also aid in preventing the accidental clicks caused by employees and agencies constantly checking the status of their PPC ads. We saw this happening firsthand with a client of ours. They found that 75% of their clicks on their branded keywords were from their own employees! Another feature Adwords provides for checking Pay Per Click (PPC) ads for employees and agencies to carefully avoid the accidental clicking can be found here.

The downside of IP exclusion is that if you block an IP address that uses a proxy, you may have succeeded in blocking the 1 or 2 people suspected of click fraud, but you may also be blocking hundreds and thousands of legitimate, quality clicks at the same time.

The IP Exclusion Features allows an advertiser to block up to 20 IP addresses per campaign. The IP Exclusion Feature can definitely serve as a benefit to Adwords campaign, but before you decide to enable the feature, be sure you have done your homework on the IP addresses you are about to block and the feature doesn’t backfire on you!