Interview - Infosurv President Jared Heyman
| Manoj Jasra - Wednesday, January 31, 2007 1 Comments |
According to a speaker at a CASRO® (Council of American Survey Research Organizations®) conference this past fall, online surveys surpassed telephone in terms of overall market research survey volume in 2005.I recently learned about a company in this sector called InfoSurv (a full service market resrarch company) and I also had an opportunity to speak with its President Jared Heyman:
Please tell me a little bit about yoruself (and your company) and your background
I’m a fourth generation entrepreneur. I’ve known since I was a child that I wanted to own my own business, and plan to start several businesses in my lifetime. In the late 1990s, the online boom was changing several industries - including market research. Through my internships at Bain & Company and a small tech firm called Collective Technologies while I was studying marketing at the University of Texas (Austin), I saw how using the Internet could leverage and empower market research at a level never before possible.
In 1998, I started Infosurv as one of the first providers of online, Web-based surveys. Now Infosurv is a leading global marketing research firm based in Atlanta. We help our clients execute the most accurate, most actionable survey research possible with a combination of talent and technology that’s simply unmatched in our industry.
What is your product (also talk about various versions if applicable)
Research, marketing, and human resource professionals turn to Infosurv for:
- Customer surveys (http://www.infosurv.com/customer_surveys.htm)
- Employee surveys (http://www.infosurv.com/employee_surveys.htm)
- Market surveys (http://www.infosurv.com/market_research_surveys.htm) and in general,
- Online surveys (http://www.infosurv.com/online-surveys.htm)
What target market is the product geared for?
We serve four main markets:
- Corporations and large companies that need to efficiently survey their employees or customers
- Communications firms, including advertising, public relations, and marketing agencies, that need to get a quantified understanding of a situation - for example, researching new product development directions or new advertising concepts
- Associations that need to survey their members
- Government and non profits
What user pains does your product solve?
When it comes to survey research, there’s traditionally been a trade off between gathering data in a timely and cost effective manner while at the same time gathering complete information.
In the past, the broader your respondent sample, the more time it takes to collect a statistically valid number of surveys, and with that greater time comes greater cost. By leveraging proprietary technologies and processes, Infosurv’s team of research specialists - any of whom have advanced degrees - are able to help our clients actually experience better, faster, AND more affordable research.
We help them design the tool, focus the audience that needs to respond, incent response, and then, of course, synthesize the results into actionable knowledge.
In short, we help our clients make more informed decisions through better, more affordable research.
What is the cost of your service?
I’m so glad you asked! We’re one of the only survey firms that actually publishes our pricing. Our clients, like Harvard University, MasterCard, and Merck, demand the best, but that doesn’t mean they have to pay "an arm and a leg" for it.
You’ve probably noticed that many research firms have what I call a "black box" pricing method- they price by the project, and you can’t tell where the number comes from. We’re extremely transparent with our pricing, and we’re quite proud that we provide details. Our current price sheet can be downloaded at http://www.infosurv.com/brochure.html.
To push this point a bit further, we’ve developed an extensive buyer’s guide for professionals shopping for research services. It really helps you understand how research pricing is structured. Whether you go with Infosurv or not - and I hope you do of course - you’ll gain a better understanding of the metrics underlying the pricing of outsourcing your survey research. You can see our detailed competitive buyer’s guide for market research at http://www.infosurv.com/buyers-guide.html.
Along those lines, I’d also like to share a specific case study with you that hasn’t been previously published. Although each of our clients is unique, the experience of National Safety Council (NSC) serves to illustrate what our clients tend to appreciate about the Infosurv experience.
Compass Internet Systems and VisiStat
| Manoj Jasra - Tuesday, January 30, 2007 7 Comments |
Compass Internet Systems and VisiStat have formed a strategic alliance in order to offer search engine optimization and placement services to the real estate marketing industry. VisiStat has also been offering their free analytics tool (www.webreportertool.com) along with every hosting subscription generated by Compass Internet Systems.
I have written about VisiStat in the past and have even demoed their analytics software. I compared VisiStat to Google Analytics and was surprised how well VisiStat matched up against Google Analytics.
Source: http://www.rismedia.com/wp/2007-01-28/compass-internet-systems-and-visistat-incform-strategic-alliance/
I have written about VisiStat in the past and have even demoed their analytics software. I compared VisiStat to Google Analytics and was surprised how well VisiStat matched up against Google Analytics.
Source: http://www.rismedia.com/wp/2007-01-28/compass-internet-systems-and-visistat-incform-strategic-alliance/
Blogger, Mandatory Upgrade
| Manoj Jasra - 0 Comments |
Blogger has started forcing users to upgrade to its latest version (in fact I had to update mine just minutes ago). The process was quite painless however I noticed the Blogger Navigation bar was covering up a portion of my header. I know that many people will find the following code, which removes the navigation bar, quite useful (simply copy and paste within the style tags):
#navbar-iframe {
height: 0px;
visibility: hidden;
display: none;
}
The Macification of Windows: Vista vs. OSX
| Manoj Jasra - Monday, January 29, 2007 0 Comments |
UseTube.net compares Vista vs. OSX. This is right after Microsoft released 100 reasons why users should select Windows Vista. However many of these so called "new features" have been available on OSX for over 2 years.
read more | digg story
Interview - Bill Slawski, President SEO by the Sea
| Manoj Jasra - 1 Comments |
Last week I had a great chat over the phone with SEO by the Sea President, Bill Slawski. Bill Slawski has been in involved with Internet Marketing since 1996 and is also a correspondent to SearchEngineLand related to search patents and research. Below are a few of the topics we discussed:- Bill's thoughts on SEM in 2006 (specifically Social Media Optimization and Social Bookmarking)
- What we can expect in SEM in 2007
- New patents by Google and what we can expect from Google in the future
- Bill's thoughts on Google's steady Growth and Google's competitors
- The future of Yahoo, MSN and how they can make up ground on Google
- Danny Sullivan's Search Marketing Expo
Have a listen...
Bill Slawski Interview (approx 18 minutes)
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Web Analytics in Europe
| Manoj Jasra - Friday, January 26, 2007 0 Comments |
I caught up with Lars Johansson earlier this week to discuss Web Analytics in Europe. Lars was able to provide me with some great information, read below for the entire conversation...
Please tell me a little bit about yourself (and your company) and your background.
I am coordinator for Web Analytics Association in Sweden and work for one of Europe's largest energy companies that also offers services such as district heating, telephony and high-speed Internet connections. My background is in working with offline campaigns but have been working with both online and offline campaigns for some time. I have worked with all channels: Internet, e-mail, direct marketing mail-outs, inbound calls and telemarketing. I have also done survey work and I even spent several months talking directly with the most displeased customers. Bringing all of that together I think I have a pretty good idea about what's going on on our customers' minds. I am currently busy optimizing various campaigns on the Internet and making certain our new website will be fully measurable.
Neil Mason has written a couple of ClickZ columns on that topic that describes the situation quite well. Europe has been behind the U.S. for some time but is starting to catch up. Looking at Sweden, where I am, things are really starting to move. It used to be rare to see companies hire full-time web analysts but it seems like they have woken up the last six months. There is an increasing number of job openings for dedicated web analysts. Maybe that can in part be attributed to the attention created by Web Analytics Wednesdays.
How does the recent purchase of Instadia by Omniture effect Instadia?
My understanding is that it's business as usual for Instadia's customers. They can continue to use ClientStep at the same time as they can take advantage of SiteCatalyst and the other tools and services offered by Omniture.
Where do you see Web Analytics (KPIs and measurement of them) going in 2007?
I don't think the page view will die in 2007, but it will be really, really, sick. It will be interesting to see what its illness will do to vendor pricing.
Either way, bloated page views as a means of tricking advertisers will hopefully die a painful death in 2007. Cost per impression will hopefully once and for all have to give way to cost per unique visitor and cost per action, though I wouldn't count on it.
I also think discussions about engagement metrics will grow in importance since the buzz about social media will continue.
I hope that measurement of SEO will focus on whether that new top position on Google leads to a higher conversion rate than your old position and whether it will produce a lower CPA than can be achieved through PPC. Being number one shouldn't be the goal in itself, the goal should be getting the right visitors who do the right things. Web analysts will have to revise the work of SEO firms and educate ad networks and advertisers.
All web design agencies should have to employ web analysts.
What do you think are the biggest client pains in regards to Web Analytics (KPIs + measurement) in Europe?
A major pain point is web design agencies creating "cool" Flash movies based on someone's personal preference rather than solid analysis. Especially in large organizations there will always be a number of people who don't understand the value of web analytics since people leave and join all of the time. You have to continually educate people in all business units on the importance of data-driven decisions.
Other pain points include excessive obsessing over data quality. That is, not finding a level of confidence with the data, moving on and start focusing on trends rather than arguing about raw numbers down to the last digit.
And, as I mentioned previously, advertising agencies only talking about page views, impressions and CPM is tiring when you're wanting to measure success in sales and not based on long-term branding goals.
I don't know whether your situation differs, but over here advertising networks and web design agencies seriously need to learn web analytics and be held accountable much more than is the case today.
For more information please visit: http://www.webanalysts.info
Interview - SEMPO President Dana Todd
| Manoj Jasra - Thursday, January 25, 2007 0 Comments |
Yesterday I had the opportunity to interview SEMPO President/Chairperson of the SEMPO Educational Committee, Dana Todd. Our topic of conversation revolved entirely on the new SEMPO Institute. Over the course of the interview I asked Dana questions regarding:- The Institutes' Target Market
- The Grading Scale of Courses
- Benefits of the courses
- The Advanced curriculum offered in March
- The strategies behind keeping the course content up to date
- How SEMPO plans on working with post secondary institutions
Have a listen below (approx 13 minutes long)...
Dana Todd Interview
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Google Analytics and Google Checkout Part 2
| Manoj Jasra - Wednesday, January 24, 2007 0 Comments |
The Google Analytics Team is continuing their series on Tracking Google Checkout Sales with Part 2 which talks about the alternate method of posting Checkout API requests.
In this method, the form that displays the Google Checkout button submits to another URL on the merchant’s website. That URL hosts an application that creates a Checkout API request, executes a server-to-server POST request, and lastly captures Google’s response to that request. The response contains the Google Checkout URL to which the customer should be redirected.
Read the rest here: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2007/01/tracking-google-checkout-sales-part-2.html
Keeping up with Latest Website Products/Services
| Manoj Jasra - 2 Comments |
There are SO many products and services available to search marketers and bloggers to help measure and market their websites that one can't simply keep up with. So I thought I would begin assembling a list of some of the popular products/services I am familiar with in order to help spread the word (I took snippets of descriptions from each of the products' websites). I hope to continuously expand on this list so that it makes a little bit easier for people (especially me) to keep on top of everything.
I hope to test out Wengo Visio and Eurekster more in the future as they are the products I have used the least.
| Product or Service | Description |
| ClickDensity is a type of Analytics Software which reports where users have clicked . Identify usability and information architecture issues on your site. clickdensity is not another statistics or web analytics tool - instead it allows you to analyze the user experience and identify usability and information architecture issues that would have been impossible to identify without it. Get instant insight. The ClickDensity heat map shows at a glance the relative popularity of components on your pages. Getting similar data from standard web analytics tools can be impossible, or at best complex and time consuming. - See where people are clicking that they shouldn't be. - See exactly where your users are clicking. | |
Very similar to ClickDensity but has an entirely free version.
| |
| FeedBurner provides the ability for users to easily optimize and publicize their content through the use of RSS feeds. FeedBurner also provides reporting which allows users to see metrics regarding their subscribers. FeedBurner provides users another way to promote their blogs or podcasts. FeedBurner also formats your Feed's content making it readable by all major directories that consumers use. | |
| HitTail reveals in real-time the least utilized, most promising keywords hidden in the Long Tail of your natural search results. It presents these terms to you as suggestions that when acted on can boost the natural search results of your site It helps you brainstorm ways to focus on your long tail inventory so your blogging or marketing campaigns can be more effective in reaching a larger number of people. Why anyone would want to analyze the long tail? Because search traffic on the collective searches for long tail keywords can equal or exceed all of your most popular terms added together. | |
When you join, you create a profile that summarizes your professional accomplishments. Your profile helps you find and be found by former colleagues, clients, and partners. You can add more connections by inviting trusted contacts to join LinkedIn and connect to you. Your network consists of your connections, your connections’ connections, and the people they know, linking you to thousands of qualified professionals.
| |
MyBlogLog is a Communities service to empower authors and readers to operate at the same level. Everyone who reads a web site or blog can learn about and engage with one another, and in the process take the conversation to a whole new level. Authors can learn more about their readers individually and as a group. What do they like and what are they ignoring? What are they reading elsewhere on the Web? MyBlogLog enables you to take advantage of your existing presence on the Web and ties it into communities of like-minded readers and authors to add context to the conversations in which you take part. | |
A free and reliableinvisible web tracker, highly configurablehit counter and real-time detailedweb stats. Insert a simple piece of our code on your web page and you will be able to analyze and monitor all the visitors to your website in real-time!
| |
| Tag clouds are informative, appealing representations about what's happening in your website. WithZoomClouds you can put small (or large) tag clouds on your website that relate to whatever is going on in your website. And because you have control regarding the look and feel of the cloud, you will be able to enhance the content and appearance of your page with minimal effort and no cost to you, and at the same time, provide your visitors with an appealing way to see what terms are more often mentioned in your website. | |
| Stumble Upon | StumbleUpon helps you discover and share great websites. As you click Stumble!, we deliver high-quality pages matched to your personal preferences. These pages have been explicitly recommended by your friends or one of 1,799,347 other websurfers with interests similar to you. Rating these sites you like automatically shares them with like-minded people – and helps you discover great sites your friends recommend |
Digg is a user driven social content website. Everything on Digg is submitted by its community. After you submit content, other people read your submission and Digg what they like best. If your story rocks and receives enough Diggs, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of visitors to see. What can you do as a Digg user? Lots. Every person can digg (help promote), bury (help remove spam), and comment on stories... you can even Digg and bury comments you like or dislike. Digg also allows you to track your friends' activity throughout the site — want to share a video or news story with a friend? Digg it! | |
| A source for what's new and popular on the web -- personalized for you. We want to democratize the traditional model by giving editorial control to the people who use the site, not those who run it. Your votes train a filter, so let reddit know what you liked and disliked, because you'll begin to berecommended links filtered to your tastes. All of the content on reddit is from users who are rewarded for good submissions (and punished for bad ones) by their peers; you decide what appears on your front page and which submissions rise to fame or fall into obscurity. | |
del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website -- the primary use of del.icio.us is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. On del.icio.us, you can use tags to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders. You can also use del.icio.us to see the interesting links that your friends and other people bookmark, and share links with them in return. You can even browse and search del.icio.us to discover the cool and useful bookmarks that everyone else has saved -- which is made easy with tags. | |
| Squidoo is community based on the creation of lenses. A lens is one person's view on a topic that matters to her. It's an easy-to-build, single web page that can point to blogs, favorite links, RSS feeds, Flickr photos, Google maps, eBay auctions, CafePress designs, Amazon books or music, and more. Then, when someone is looking for recommended information, fast, your lens gets him started and sends him off in the right direction. It's a place for searchers to start, not finish. | |
| PollDaddy | PollDaddy is a Free online tool, which allows you to create free polls and place them on your website, blog MySpace, Bebo or Facebook account or anywhere online that you can paste a bit of JavaScript or Flash! |
| WikeSeek | WikiSEek is custom search engine for Wikipedia. Wikiseek utilizes Searchme's category refinement technology, providing suggested search refinements based on user tagging and categorization within Wikipedia, making results more relevant than conventional search engines. |
| Wengo Visio | Wengovisio is a Flash-based widget 100% Free that you can embed in your blog/webpage to allow readers to call you when you’re available through their web browser without downloading any software. The readers have the possibility to make both live audio or video phone calls (without subscribing). You need to signup for a Wengo account and give your site URL to generate the widget code to embed in the website. |
| Eurekster | Joining a Eurekster SearchParty™ is like being part of a true democracy. When you form a SearchParty for your site, every time someone searches and finds a useful result, Eurekster automatically casts their vote for that result. The more people that do the same, the higher that result is ranked. So future searches get faster and results more relevant. The results are dictated by the people, not by a corporation or an editor. |
SEMPO Institute is Live
| Manoj Jasra - Tuesday, January 23, 2007 0 Comments |
Today Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) officially opened the doors to its very own SEM Training Institute. There will be 2 comprehensive curriculums offered: entry level learning and advanced professional SEM Training.Enrollment is now open at www.sempo.org/training on the SEMPO web site for the first course, “Fundamentals of Search Marketing,” which begins immediately. Fundamentals consists of 14 lessons intended to give the student a high level understanding of the essentials of Search Engine Marketing. Cost of the Fundamentals course is $499. Since it is distance learning, students can immediately begin their education after enrollment.
Comments on WikiPedia's NoFollow Update
| Manoj Jasra - Monday, January 22, 2007 1 Comments |
It was recently announced that Wikipedia has recently updated it's framework so that outgoing links now have a NoFollow attribute appended to them. This means that any website previously receiving Search Engine value from these links will now no longer have such an authoritative back link. The good news is that sites will still receive the same traffic from WikiPedia itself.
Here are thoughts around the industry:
- http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-January/061137.html
- http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=1648
- http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/blogtalk/wpn-58-20070122HasWikipediaGoneNoFollow.html
- http://www.searchengineposition.com/blog/default.asp?Display=28
- http://www.searchnewz.com/blog/talk/sn-6-20070122WikipediaAddsNofollowtoOutgoingLinks.html
- http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/01/wikipedia_adds_.html
- http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/10642
- http://searchengineland.com/070122-091812.php
- http://blogs.guardian.co.uk
- http://news.techwhack.com/5111/wikipedia-nofollow/
New VP at WebTrends Inc.
| Manoj Jasra - 0 Comments |
Darc Dencker-Rasmussen, formerly of SAP has been appointed WebTrends new Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Client Services
Reporting directly to Greg Drew, WebTrends CEO, Rasmussen will be responsible for directing WebTrends industry-leading client services organization and managing direct and channel sales efforts worldwide, further accelerating the record-breaking sales of WebTrends Marketing Lab(TM) solutions.
Rasmussen is a seasoned sales professional with more than 20 years of experience in high tech companies
Source: Digital50.com
Google Search API Issues
| Manoj Jasra - 0 Comments |
Ever since Google stopped the ability for new users to sign up for its SOAP based search API, I have noticed inconsistencies with the results returned from it. Although new sign ups have stopped, users who still possess API keys are able to run their applications using it.Look at the following results when returning the number of competitors for a given keyword. I have compared the results of the Google Search API (SOAP) with Yahoo and actual Google Numbers. Do remember that results can change across Data Centers.
| Keyword | Google Search API | Yahoo API | Google Actual |
| apple ipod | 9,160,000 | 73,100,000 | 158,000,000 |
| cars | 29,600,000 | 463,000,000 | 483,000,000 |
| car parts | 7,080,000 | 137,000,000 | 106,000,000 |
| dog food | 3,580,000 | 59,700,000 | 73,100,000 |
| lawyers | 11,400,000 | 80,900,000 | 165,000,000 |
| searchengineland | 8,990 | 80,200 | 128,000 |
| sony | 23,500,000 | 305,000,000 | 399,000,000 |
| walmart | 1,570,000 | 14,600,000 | 23,800,000 |
The Google API results for competitors are way off, so does this mean that Google wants all SOAP API users to switch over to the AJAX based one? Possibly, however I ran some queries for pages indexed and the results were actually a lot more accurate.
| URL | Yahoo | MSN | Google Actual | |
| aol.com | 6,890,000 | 14,680,150 | 4,064,217 | 5,550,000 |
| ask.com | 241,000 | 537,397 | 85,653 | 241,000 |
| google.com | 7,610,000 | 24,870,092 | 1,628,312 | 7,040,000 |
| msn.com | 37,600,000 | 65,592,820 | 1,565,948 | 39,100,000 |
| yahoo.com | 101,000,000 | 823,133,053 | 3,931,774 | 94,500,000 |
Here are some great resources for the Google Search API (Search and AJAX based):
- http://battellemedia.com/archives/003212.php
- http://www.fiftyfoureleven.com/weblog/web-development/programming-and-scripts/apis/google-search-api
- http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=AB073
- http://www.wwwsearchsolutions.com/google.php
- http://www.programmableweb.com/api/Google
- http://www.pluralsight.com/blogs/dbox/archive/2006/12/20/45379.aspx
- http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/12/google_depreciates_SOAP_API.html
- http://zamples.com/JspExplorer/samples/google.jsp
- http://www.dankarran.com/googleapi-phpsitesearch/
- http://www.pluralsight.com/blogs/dbox/archive/2006/12/20/45381.aspx
- http://www.gnucitizen.org/blog/google-search-api-worms
- http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/create-web-apps-on-top-of-google.html
- http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/006996.html
- http://www.masternewmedia.org
- http://www.federatedmedia.net/tech/2006/12/google_search_api_dropped.php
- http://www.clonethegoogleapi.com/
- http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/06/google-search-api-20.html
- http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-12-18-n73.html
- http://googleajaxsearchapi.blogspot.com/
- http://ajaxsearch.typepad.com/
- http://ajaxsearch.blogspot.com/
- http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3635731
Google Analytics and Google Checkout
| Manoj Jasra - Friday, January 19, 2007 0 Comments |
Google has always been the best at having full integration within its suite of products. Over at the Google Analytics Blog, the Google Analytics Team has posted part 1 of a multi-part series on how to setup tracking on Google Checkout.Merchants can use Google Analytics to track buyers who leave their sites to complete the checkout process with Google Checkout. With the help of Google Analytics, Google Checkout merchants will be able to separately track activity on:
1) the Login page, or the first page to appear after a buyer click the Google Checkout button,
2) the Place Order page, which appears after the buyer logs in to Google Checkout, and
3) the Order Confirmed page, which appears after the buyer places the order.
With all these relatively inexpensive and free services provided by Google, the average small-mid sized business owner doesn't have to look far for a way to propel their website in the online market space.
Omniture Acquires Instadia
| Manoj Jasra - Thursday, January 18, 2007 0 Comments |
Leading European Web Analytics Provider, Instadia has been acquired by Web Analytics Heavyweight Omniture Inc. Instadia's tools will be integrated into Omniture's platform and will give Omniture a stronger reach into the European Market.Instadia ClientStep™ is the leading solution for controlling and optimizing web sites using real-time tracking, reporting and analytics. Instadia ClientStep™ delivers critical web intelligence by tracking and combining online behavior with visitor opinions to provide full understanding of your visitors' motivations and experience of your web site.
Will 2007 be the year where we'll see smaller Analytics firm get taken over by one of the Big 3 (WebSideStory, Omniture, WebTrends). Last year we did see quite a few alliances begin to develop between Analytics vendors and SEM Firms.
Source: http://www.techrockies.com/story/0007148.html
Finding Hidden Nuggets using Analytics
| Manoj Jasra - 0 Comments |
We rely heavily on Analytics at Enquiro and one of my favorite tasks is to dig into a client's analytics in order to find "nuggets" which will help the client succeed in their online marketing efforts. We use Omniture's SiteCatalyst quite frequently and here is some of the data that I find useful:
- By using the referring domains report I like to figure out how much traffic is coming from Search Engines and if it is less than 30-40% I make a point to note down this area of opportunity by suggesting Organic SEM strategies (fresh keyword rich content, link building/baiting, directory submissions, etc...).
- Furthermore I like to see the spread of traffic from Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK and how it compares to current market shares. If Yahoo and MSN are lower than normal we can explore focused strategies for those engines. As an example, Yahoo gives higher values to sites who have incoming links from .edu or .org sites.
- Next I like to get an understanding of how much branded keyword traffic the site is receiving. If the top 5 or 10 keywords are branded then the client should capitalize on some keyword rich content to help drive more non branded traffic. If the client is McDonalds and the current referring keywords consist of: McDonalds, McDonalds Restaurants, McDonalds Burgers, we would also like to see more traffic from phrases such as: Chicken Burgers, French Fries, Fast Food Restaurants, and Fun Food for Kids.
- The popular pages report is another useful report, in this case I like to sort the report in ascending order of page views to help identify dead content on the site as well as the least popular pages. If there are pages that I feel should be getting more traffic I use SiteCatalyst's pathfinder report to identify barriers that might be troubling visitors to arrive at the given page.
- When I consult on an implementation I make sure we track internal search terms because they are vital in understanding what visitors are looking for on a site. Internal search terms can also help identify the content that a website should be offering in order to engage them (hopefully complete one of the site's conversions).
- I also think that for sites who have sections that require log-in information they should be collecting user ids or user names. This will show organizations who there most active visitors are, which allows the organization to approach these users in order to get their opinion on the site's content/functionality. Not only does this make your organization appear more personable to its clients it also helps improve your site by getting advice from your most frequent visitors and biggest critics.
There are lots more I can think of and if you're really interested send me an email and I'd be happy to discuss it with you.
News Management Strategy
| Manoj Jasra - Wednesday, January 17, 2007 0 Comments |
What is the best way to promote a Press Release? The obvious choice would be to create a viral marketing campaign which would hopefully end up sticking around for months. What options are available to an organization to help promote their hottest news items? I have come up with a few but if anyone can suggest others please let me know.- SMO/Social Bookmarking: Using services such as Digg, Reddit, Netscape, Del.icio.us and Furl to distribute your news item to millions of users very quickly. It is important to understand who your audience is because services like Digg are very tech focused. Making your title and summary as enticing as possible can help generate more interest.
- Google News: If your site is constantly up to date with its industry's news you should consider applying to become a Google News Source (news-feedback@google.com). Otherwise launching searches on Google News related to your topic and compiling a list of sites to submit to is another way to end up on Google News.
- PRWeb: After a $40-200 contribution you can submit your news item to PRWeb which will eventually get your content posted on Google News. PRWeb also emails your news items to hundreds of affiliate partners. PRWeb comes with a small stats package to help you track the effectiveness of your content.
- EzineArticles: This is free service which allows content to be submitted to dozens of categories; EzineAriticles has developed quite the content network. EzineArticles allows 10 free submissions and if your content is really great you can potentially be granted "Platinum Status" (unlimited submissions).
Other Services to consider:
- Squidoo
- PRleap
- Promotion World
Poll Daddy Enhancement
| Manoj Jasra - Tuesday, January 16, 2007 1 Comments |
If you haven't used Poll Daddy before you are really missing out one of the coolest Poll services available. It's completely free and now they have added the ability to make Polls in flash, thereby making it more compatible with blogging software such as blogger. In the past I have always had to use iFrames in order to use any Poll Services. Below is an example using Flash, Go ahead and fill it out.
Web Analytics News
| Manoj Jasra - 0 Comments |
Here are some interesting articles/posts/press releases I read today:
- WebTrends Inc. has named a new Chief Marketing Officer: Tim Kopp (formerly from Coca Cola)
- Many stories regarding Microsoft's new Analytics Software: Gastineau (look out Google)
- WebSideStory reports that Internet Explorer 7 has reached 100 million installs.
- Eric Peterson explains how to fill a web analytics position at your organization.
- Gary Angel explains why a 100% conversion rate is a bad thing.
StatCounter adds Popular Pages Segmentation
| Manoj Jasra - Monday, January 15, 2007 3 Comments |
A suggestion by a StatCounter user was made that he would like to see a drill down added to the most popular pages report in order to see where his visitors came from. This past weekend the team at StatCounter made this happen, here's the official message from my login screen:This is THE BOMB. Now we can see exactly what sources are sending all you folks to us to sign up with StatCounter – all on one page! We love it! We hope you do too.
Go to Popular Pages and click the drill down icon to the left of the web page you are interested in.
For example, let’s say that you want people to make a purchase on your site. And let’s say that successful purchases result in the visitor hitting the page purchase_made.html – you want to know what referral sources are sending people to this page i.e. who is your biggest revenue generator? Someone might be sending you LOADS of traffic...but are these visits being turned into purchases, sign-ups, transactions??
How do you find out this CRUCIAL information??By using our NEW FEATURE – that’s how!
Click the Came From Drill Down option and there you go. NOW you can see what URLs are sending the people who successfully, for example, make a purchase.
I've mentioned StatCounter in the past because it's a fairly useful analytics tool which can be implemented quickly in order to gain insight on your website's performance. It's nice to know their team is working hard to continually improve their service.
Blog Marketing 2007
| Manoj Jasra - Thursday, January 11, 2007 1 Comments |
Tony Hung guest blogging for ProBlogger has written one of the most comprehensive and useful blog promotion posts I have read in a long time.
He offers 41 tips grouped into 4 Categories: "Get Your Own House In Order", "Getting the Word Out", "Connect, Connect, Connect" and "Make Social Media Work For You"
Here are a few tidbits from each category:
- Get Your MyBlogLog widget and work it, work it, work it (in a nice way):
- Participate on larger blogs in comments
- Publish original research
- Create free stuff for yourself and give it away (, digests of your favourite posts, pdfs)
- Guest blog: Offer to do it for free
- Join Helium: Helium is a new site that is actively looking people to head new categories of content
Well done Tony!
My Morning SEM Routine
| Manoj Jasra - 1 Comments |
Every morning when I arrive to work at Enquiro(around 8,8:30ish) I like following a routine I have established. I am paid to write and keep on top of the latest news in the SEM world so no matter what I have on my plate for that day, I have to do the following:
1) Login to Gmail, check to see if I have to moderate any comments for my blog. Lately I have noticed a lot more spam than normal. I often get emails from various companies asking me to check out their latest products (i.e. Adisem this week.)
2) Check out Technorati to see how my blog is doing in terms of Technorati Rank. I also observe how Enquiro's SearchEnginePosition.com blog is doing as well.
3) Go to my FeedBurner account to check out the latests subscriber metrics for my blog. Lately I am really enjoying the extra stats FeedBurner has started to Offer.
4) Then I need to know my blog's performance from the previous day, therefore I go to my Google Analytics and StatCounter accounts.
5) I login to Enquiro's Omniture SiteCatalyst account to get an understanding of how our latest articles are performing.
6) I read some of my favorite SEM news sites: WebProNews, SEOMoz, TopRankBlog, Occam's Razor as well some of my colleagues' blogs: Out of my Gord and SEO Space
I sometimes Blog in the morning but otherwise thats the just of it!
Search for SEM Blogs
| Manoj Jasra - Wednesday, January 10, 2007 2 Comments |
As many of you know TopRankBlog recently released a list of the top 250+ blogs you MUST read (Web Analytics World did make the list).
Alister Cameron has gone one step further and created a search engine around those 250 blogs.
Click on Image below for full view:
Technorati App - Rank Estimator
| Manoj Jasra - 0 Comments |
Today I was looking for a way how to determine a blog's Technorati Rank based on the number of blogs linking back to it when I stumbled across the following nifty app (posted on the Modern Life blog by Stuart Brown):
Stuart explains how he came up with the formula as well the flaws as you steer away from the top 100 ranks. For instance my blog - Web Analytics World is ranked approx 19,700 with 164 Blogs linked but this tool says it should be ranking 27,000th. So you still have to apply your own scale but it's still a very cool app nonetheless.
New Apple iPhone - June 2007
| Manoj Jasra - Tuesday, January 09, 2007 4 Comments |
Couldn't resist mentioning the release of the Apple iPhone. All of a sudden I need a new phone.- Release date: June 2007 in the US (time enough to get FCC approval); late 2007 in Europe.
- Price: 4GB model for $499; 8GB for $599
Features:
- OSX operating system
- Visual Voicemail (for choosing which voicemail to listen to directly);
- SMS with full QWERTY soft keyboard;
- Calendar application that syncs with PC or Mac;
- 2 megapixel camera and photo management software;
- Quad-band GSM phone with EDGE and Wi-Fi for data networking
- Widescreen iPod that syncs with simultaneously launched Apple TV
- HTML email client compatible with POP3, IMAP, MS Exchange, Apple .Mac Mail, AOL Mail, Gmail, and Yahoo! Mail.
- Safari web browser with full web display and zoom-in capability activated by double-tapping the screen.
- Google Maps
- Yahoo oneSearch
- Unlockable by sliding finger across screen
See Jason Miller's post for more detail: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/wpn-60-20070109iPhoneDropsEveryoneStartsCussin.html
Predicting Potential Website Traffic
| Manoj Jasra - 3 Comments |
Wouldn't it be useful if your SEM company could accurately predict how much organic search traffic they could get your organization? I was trying to figure this out today and there are many variables/metrics that could come into play.
The difficult part is which metrics to consider when trying to arrive at the potential traffic, here are a few that we thought are useful:
- Keyword Search Volume is an obvious one because it creates the base number for the potential traffic. We use Keyword Discovery because it provides monthly search volume numbers from a variety of sources including Overture, EBay and various meta engines.
- Search Engine Market Share. Traffic Potential should be derived per search engine (for accuracy purposes) because a given keyword is going to provide you with more traffic on Google than it will AltaVista. The market share numbers can be gathered from Nielsen/Net Ratings or Hitwise, but I suggest getting it from your own Analytics (because it's focused for your own company)
- Rank and Click through rate. What organic search rank do we want to achieve for a given keyword and what is the click through rate for a given ranking? Click through rate can be gathered through research such as Enquiro's eye tracking study.
- Competitors. How difficult is it for a website to become visible for a keyword is important to understand. Difficulty to achieve higher ranking increases as the number of competitors grow.
- Incoming Links. This factor also determines how competitive other websites are in terms of visibility on the search engines. Incoming links is a relatively strong factor that search engines use in order to assign ranking order.
- Page Rank. Is this as important anymore? It's still a value that can be use to compare websites globally, so I think it's definitely worth while to include when try to determine difficulty in achieving organic rankings.
- Keyword Density. If the top competitors have high keyword densities does this mean your site will have to have the same amount? You don't want to go as far as spamming your pages with keywords but the number of occurrences for keywords are important.
I am interested in hearing everyone's thoughts on what metrics they think should be included when trying to predict how much traffic a given keyword can expect to provide.
5 Questions - Adisem's Rob Drabkin
| Manoj Jasra - Monday, January 08, 2007 0 Comments |
1.) Please tell me a little bit about yourself (and your company) and your background.
Adisem, AdWords Management for the rest of us, is a fully automated AdWords Management and Optimization website focused on medium sized, existing online advertisers. As of January 2007, Adisem is managing 120 customer accounts. As distinct from earlier software packages, Adisem is an automated, non rules based system, total time to set the system up is 2 minutes.
Ron Drabkin is VP of Sales and Marketing at Adisem. Prior to Adisem he was a co-founder and VP of Business Development at JRG Software; Ron lead the successful effort to sell JRG to CDC Software. Prior to entering the startup world, he spent his career as a manufacturing and supply chain manager at Intel Corporation.
2.) What is your product (also talk about various versions if applicable)?
Adisem's product automates management of the day to day AdWords pricing. It imports prices, keywords, histories from AdWords via the API and runs them though patent pending software. Once it comes up with the new, better prices, it puts them back into AdWords automatically. In addition, Adisem offers click quality monitoring screens that allow customers to see who is driving traffic to their site, and exclude the poor quality ones from their Google Ads.
3) What target market is the product geared for?
Adisem is targeted at medium sized advertisers. Although we have customers of all sizes, most typically the largest advertisers will have some combination of complicated internal software, in house experts, or external agency management, and therefore do not need an automated approach. In addition, smaller advertisers, or beginning advertisers, may benefit from advice from an expert in setting up their campaign, prior to automating the day to day with Adisem.
4.) What user pains does your product solve?
Adisem addresses two pains. By automating day to day pricing management and Adwords settings, it saves time for busy advertisers. In addition the optimization typically generates a combination of lower price per click/action and more clicks/actions. Improved results of 25-35% are typical.
5) What is the cost of your service?
All Adisem customers get a two week free trial so that they can see if the service works before paying anything. After the two week period, the charge is 10% of adwords spend, calculated automatically at the end of the month and charged to a credit card. There are no commitments, no minimums and cancellation/reset can be done at any time.
Click Image below for full size:
Amazon Launches AskVille
| Manoj Jasra - Thursday, January 04, 2007 0 Comments |
Google Answers has come and gone while Yahoo Answers is still going strong. But look out Yahoo because now Amazon has launched a similar user driven Question and Answer service called Askville. The product has an intuitive interface and has the potential for a very strong user base.Askville is a place where you can share and discuss knowledge with other people by asking and answering questions on any topic. It’s a fun place to meet others with similar interests to you and a place where you can share what you know. You can learn something new everyday or help and meet others using your knowledge. Askville even helps you learn by giving you cool tools to help you find information online while you are answering questions.
Wishlist for 2007
| Manoj Jasra - 0 Comments |
The following are things I would like to see happen this year in the Online Marketing world.1) A new wave of technologies similar to Social Media and Bookmarking. I loved how anyone could market to services like Digg and Reddit and not solely have to rely on Search Engines. It would be quite fun to use new services this year to have similar marketing effects for a given blog or website.
2) More useful services with intuitive interfaces. On this point I am specifically referring to services such as Gmail, Google Analytics and FeedBurner. All 3 are very powerful tools which provide so much in an easy to use format. We'd see a dramatic decrease in abandonment rates if all products were this simple.
3) Enquiro Released its second Eye Tracking Study (comparing Google, Yahoo and MSN) and I wish we could have more usability tools in addition to eye tracking and analytics tools such as CrazyEgg to really help search marketers gain more insight on the end users.
4) For Google and Yahoo to provide search volume numbers. Services like Keyword Discovery and Word Tracker do a reasonably good job but only offer a small percentage of actual searches. Imagine what search marketers could do in regards to predicting potential search traffic for their clients.
There are many more but these are the main 4 that came to me at 11 pm on a Wednesday evening.
Matt Cutt's Ties with Google
| Manoj Jasra - Wednesday, January 03, 2007 0 Comments |
Beyond Traditional Search Engine Marketing
| Manoj Jasra - 0 Comments |
2006 brought us strategies in online marketing that went beyond traditional SEM tactics. In 2007 these latest tactics will become the bare minimum; in this article I will mention a few items that I think businesses should really take advantage of.
Visibility on the internet can now be achieved through Social Bookmarking, RSS (Feed Management) and Blogging rather than just search engines. This is not to say search engines aren’t important anymore, rather, you should know there are many more short term options available. These options all revolve around the exposure of content through syndication and sharing which basically allows anyone to capitalize on these opportunities.
Blogs
In my opinion, Blogs are a great compliment to any website. When done correctly they are written from more of a human perspective which makes them very appealing for visitors to read. Blogs can serve different purposes for varying websites, here are some examples:
- Support Based Website – Get a few of your support technicians to resolve frequently asked questions in detail as well as talk about upcoming product enhancements. This does a few things for your business: It creates a community feel where your customers can go to find answers to their issues, it allows for marketing of your latest product releases and it reduces support time for issues that can be answered via the blog.
- Service Based Website – Encourage your senior frontline team members
to become thought leaders in your industry by getting them to create their own blogs. In the Search Marketing industry you will often see analysts blogging in order to establish themselves as an authority in the industry and to add further credibility for their organizations. - Sales/Marketing Website – A blog is a great way to spread the word about your product or service. It allows for your sales/marketing team to talk directly about the benefits of your company’s product and furthermore converse with visitors in order to begin the process of converting them into customers.
RSS Feeds (Content Syndication)
Content rich websites such as news portals and forums are driven by visitors reading and subscribing to the information. Setting up an RSS feed is crucial in gaining the broadest range of subscribers. Here is how RSS can benefit your business:
- Adding a link to an RSS Feed on different sections of your website provides users with feed readers a personalized way to view the content. By providing snippets of code entices users to click through to your site.
- For visitors not accustomed to feed readers you can offer RSS subscriptions via email (providing them with daily updates to your latest content).
- Services like FeedBurner gives you the ability to manage your RSS feeds and create separate URLs for all these RSS feeds. These new web pages are content rich and get indexed in search engines quickly creating more visibility for your business. (See
http://feeds.feedburner.com/webanalyticsworld). - Webinars and Conferences which are offered in audio/video formats can also be incorporated into RSS feeds. Users can subscribe to these types of RSS feeds & Podcasts through software such as iTunes and Juice.
- You can also incorporate Ads such as Google Adsense within your feed allowing you to potentially make revenue through your RSS Feed. I recommend this be implemented with some testing because some users may be “turned off” by the ads.
Content sharing and promotion through sites such as Digg, Delicious, Reddit and Technorati was an extremely hot topic in 2006 (this is closely related to the Social Bookmarking concept). With hundreds of categories and a wide range of users, businesses can advertise their latest product releases and news items before the pages even get indexed in search engines. The process is quite simple but being successful requires some effort. Here are some basic guidelines:
- Set up an account at Digg or Delicious, this will take less than a minute
You can then proceed to submit your most interesting pieces of content to these services - Don’t submit every single content item because everything is not worthy of being submitted. Other users vote for submissions (so they build authority) therefore you don’t want to gain a bad reputation. This type of viral marketing can have both negative and positive effects.
- Think of interesting titles and descriptions for your submissions, this will entice user to click through to your website (be honest and be creative).
- Make sure to submit your content to the appropriate categories.
- Don’t give up because it does require some practice and testing
2007 will bring new ways to promote your business and in order to harness these methods it will require everyone to quickly get up to speed on the latest concepts. However, don’t forget to take advantage of the services already available because they provide some great opportunities for online success.
2006 Web Analytics Data for Web Analytics World
| Manoj Jasra - Monday, January 01, 2007 0 Comments |
Happy New Year!
I really liked Lee Odden's Post about his Top Posts on TopRank Blog, so I thought I would do the same for Web Analytics World
Top 10 Blog Posts
1) Microsoft Selects WebTrends
2) Enquiro EyeTracking Study: Yahoo and MSN Compared
3) SEM Has no Future
4) Interview with Google Analytics' Brett Crosby
5) Visistat vs. Google Analytics Comparison
6) Omniture ActionSource: Advanced Flash Tracking
7) Viral Marketing Gone Bad
8) Push Marketing & Search Marketing -
Two Great Tastes that Don't Taste Great Together
9) Analytics - You can't afford not to Track
10) FireFox Beating IE
Top 10 Referrers
1) Google (Organic)
2) Web Analytics Association
3) WebTrends.com
4) Google.com (i.e. Google Blog Search)
5) Digg
6) Kaushik.net
7) Reddit.com
8) WebAnalyticsDemystified.com
9) blog.guykawasaki.com
10) Technorati
Top 10 Organic Keyword Referrals
1) Manoj Jasra
2) omniture actionsource
3) actionsource
4) web analytics
5) clickdensity
6) myspace virus
7) web analytics world
8) omniture flash tracking
9) webtrends
10) visistat
Top 10 Country Referrals
1) USA
2) Canada
3) UK
4) India
5) Germany
6) Australia
7) Netherlands
8) France
9) Spain
10) Japan
I really liked Lee Odden's Post about his Top Posts on TopRank Blog, so I thought I would do the same for Web Analytics World
Top 10 Blog Posts
1) Microsoft Selects WebTrends
2) Enquiro EyeTracking Study: Yahoo and MSN Compared
3) SEM Has no Future
4) Interview with Google Analytics' Brett Crosby
5) Visistat vs. Google Analytics Comparison
6) Omniture ActionSource: Advanced Flash Tracking
7) Viral Marketing Gone Bad
8) Push Marketing & Search Marketing -
Two Great Tastes that Don't Taste Great Together
9) Analytics - You can't afford not to Track
10) FireFox Beating IE
Top 10 Referrers
1) Google (Organic)
2) Web Analytics Association
3) WebTrends.com
4) Google.com (i.e. Google Blog Search)
5) Digg
6) Kaushik.net
7) Reddit.com
8) WebAnalyticsDemystified.com
9) blog.guykawasaki.com
10) Technorati
Top 10 Organic Keyword Referrals
1) Manoj Jasra
2) omniture actionsource
3) actionsource
4) web analytics
5) clickdensity
6) myspace virus
7) web analytics world
8) omniture flash tracking
9) webtrends
10) visistat
Top 10 Country Referrals
1) USA
2) Canada
3) UK
4) India
5) Germany
6) Australia
7) Netherlands
8) France
9) Spain
10) Japan
Looking forward to 2007!
