Social Media Blog by Michael Brito
Insights into the social web & real
time community engagement
time community engagement
I own/maintain several websites dating back to 8 years or so. With some of my sites, like this one, I daily monitor my web stats (unique visitors, referring domains, etc.) I’m obsessed with data! With some of my other sites, I rarely, if ever, look at the actual web site much less the stats. However, the other day when I was bored, I decided to check out the stats of one of my sites that’s about 5 years old and I was blown away when I saw the results.
I remember when I first launched these sites, I optimized the meta tags (well, I actually spammed the heck out of the them, and haven’t changed them since); and I HAVE NOT engaged in any link building activity whatsoever. Google and Yahoo referrals accounted for about 75% of the above visitors.
The conclusion is simple. Aggressive link building and fresh content is not [...]
I transferred my blog to this new domain in September 2006 and I am already gettin’ some love from Google and Yahoo (thanks to my utmost ethical link building techniques of course and my outstanding on-page optimization skillz – jk). For the terms “Online Marketing Blog” and “Internet Marketing Blog” I am on the first page of both engines respectively; right under the master blogger himself, Lee Odden who authors Top Rank Blog; a place where I go daily to learn new things. I do attribute some of this love to Lee since he linked to my blog a few months back (Thanks Lee). Now, let’s keep this in perspective here. Both terms ARE NOT that competitive and only account for roughly 3,000 search queries a month across Google and Yahoo; but hey, one thing about successful SEO is that you start with the less competitive keywords first and then work up [...]
Google’s quest for taking over the Internet is continuing. They have released a public beta of its Website Optimizer, a new service that allows marketers to test various versions of landing pages to determine which one has the most effective conversion rate. The Website Optimizer allows marketers to test different variables on a landing page (i.e. different headlines, product features, copy, and creative to determine which configuration has the best conversion rates based on revenue or other metrics. According to ClickZ, Google is providing the beta service “on an acceptance basis” to AdWords and Google Analytics account holders who’d like to sign up.
Technorati Tags: website optimizer, google, conversion rates
Awareness and consideration are fundamental metrics used to measure the effectiveness of paid search. One of the most common ways to measure these two metrics is to simply monitor the impressions and clicks. Impressions are usually associated with awareness and clicks are associated with consideration. But using this methodology can be deceiving. Assuming that when a particular search campaign generates 100 million impressions, that 100 million eyeballs actually see the ad is misleading. There are, however, tools that can help measure the level of engagement with consumers when they click on the ad and arrive at your website; which I believe tell a much more compelling story of your search campaigns. One tool is called SEM Director. This tool allows marketers to assign values to particular actions on the website. For example, one page view can equal 1 point; signing up for a newsletter can be 2 points, watching a [...]
I found this funny Google Dance Video on Youtube earlier today. Too bad there isn’t one floating around from last year when there was a break dancing contest; and several Googlers falling down drunk.
Technorati Tags: google dance video
I was recently at SES last week in San Jose and attended a click fraud session with representatives from Google, Yahoo, Ask, Click Forensics, Click Tracks and a few others.
From the beginning, the gloves were off between one of Google’s Product Manager’s Shuman Ghosemajumder and the third party click fraud auditing firms.
To make a long story short, Google released a report that they claim debunks the methodology (rather, the way some of the auditing firms count clicks). What irritated me and many others in the session was when Shuman said, “there are NO flaws in the way Google tracks click fraud — invalid clicks). It’s wasn’t just his words but his arrogant tone of voice. Here is a great article that explains in more detail.
Technorati Tags: ses, search engine strategies conference , click fraud
