Blogs are written by diarists, organizations, corporations, journalists, and come in all shapes and sizes. As part of an online marketing strategy, a blog can serve a multitude of purposes. A blog can drive brand awareness, it can put a friendly face on a large corporation, and amongst a billion other things, it can create conversations.

Blogs can and often should be a part of an SEO effort. Without ensuing quality links, your on-page optimization may not reach its full potential.

Blogs can be integral to a social media outreach. When reaching out to bloggers, the goal may be to receive quality links.  If that cannot be accomplished, sometimes conversation and awareness drive searches and traffic in a more indirect way.

Relevant display advertising on blogs can resemble display advertisements in other areas, including television, ads in public transporation, and most similarly, the targeting that is provided by niche magazines.

Public blogging may not be appropriate for all corporations and organizations. But, there is an evident trend of institutional readiness to include all possible marketing efforts.  At Serengeti, we urge our clients to think and thrive outside their marketing box.  Marketing success and possibilities are not finite.

If blogging isn’t appropriate for you, either because of internal obstacles or because our team has done the research and says it isn’t the right idea for now, that does not mean future blogging is entirely out of your prospective marketing mix. 

Many companies offer “Audits,” so there is a wide range of definitions and hard deliverables associated with these types of services.

At Serengeti, we define an Audit as a data-based assessment of a client’s digital marketing/communications program, including:

1. Content assets used to attract and convert traffic;
2. Traffic driving tactics and engagement activity across all digital channels;
3. Conversion performance;
4. Analytics/data infrastructure.

In our view, an Audit should be based primarily on hard facts and concise data. Due to data and information gaps, Audits almost always include some “best practices” recommendations. However, we are uncomfortable with the word “Audit” if the assessment and/or recommendations are based primarily on a best practices review.

Since we are data junkies, there are few things more exciting to us than an Audit. Digging into the data, connecting the dots, experiencing the “aha!” moments…it’s, well, FUN. Even if we didn’t enjoy it so much, we would still encourage Audits. In fact, we like to start every client engagement with an Audit. Why?

You can’t be successful without a plan; you can’t create a successful plan without fully understanding where you are now (where you really are, not where you wish you were); and establishing where it is you need to go.

So, what should you look for in an Audit?

A good Audit should give you a firm grasp on the following:

1. Performance and ROI assessment of all current channels;
2. Where you are in comparison to your top competitors, not just in search rankings or pay per click but across all digital channels including social media visibility and engagement;
3. The reliability and implications of your existing data and specific instructions for fixing any problems;
4. Identification of data gaps and recommendations for improvements, including integration of data sources;
5. Revised goals and metrics for each channel in your marketing mix; Revised goals and metrics for your Web site(s) and recommended enhancements to the conversion funnels/persuasive architecture of the site(s);
6. A two to five year plan with specific, detailed recommendations on content assets, traffic driving tactics, communications tactics (social media, new media engagement, etc.) conversion enhancement, testing and data infrastructure.

If Social Media is part of your communications strategy, your Audit should also include Opinion Mining/Buzz Monitoring in order to determine what is being said online about your brand, your products, your customer service, your competitors, etc.

An Audit is a great place to start if your marketing program is under-delivering. Audit findings based on real data can also help make the budget case to upper management for enhancements you may want to make to your web site, and/or marketing tactics. And of course, there is nothing better than data (or the obvious lack of it) to make the case for investing in Analytics.

This session, headed by Mike Grehan has 3 presenters talking about European Search Marketing through a selection of case studies.

The first presenter to be called to the podium is Andy Atkins-Kruger who is covering PPC campaigns previously run for Icelandair.

The competitors in this marketplace are mostly big, inflexible ‘dinosaurs’. Icelandair is more nimble, flying their marketing campaigns under the radar (pardon the pun).

The biggest initial success for Icelandair was as a result of centralizing their campaigns, running it all through a single agency, which resulted in a reduction in costs and increased performance while also reducing response time.

Things that you can usefully benchmark

• CPA
• CPC
• Keyword set ratios – performance
• Keyword success types
• SE performance
• Landing page types
• Demand to population – share of voice

When examining the different locales, it was noticed that German had a longer tail than English – hence next year will see a very large increase in keywords for the German market.

Tips for PPC success

• Make sure your tracking is great
• Do regular long tail uploads
• Look at your negative keywords
• Don’t assume, measure and examine the results: i.e. Cheap flights isn’t always the best keyword

CPS ranked by country

• Germany (most expensive)
• UK
• Holland
• France (least expensive)

Next up Andrew Girdwood on the Hilton.

Hilton spread throughout the world, so the initial challenge was to identify the appropriate communication channel. With such a large brand, they were able to have 3 way meetings with the Search Engines to discuss strategies for the brand.

The campaigns were expanded to targeting 64 countries worldwide from five. Copy & landing pages were created in 10 languages. Used local language managers to understand regional variances of campaigns. Must have a strong campaign structure (brand and generic split into own campaigns to allow budget control) Good quality landing pages

The new structure enabled then to optimize and manage the needs of 250+ hotels across the globe. In addition to Google Maps, also added in Yahoo travel & MSN adcenter (demographic targeting worked well).

Problems: Servers moved to states. Duplicate content on multiple websites. Some IT outsouurced to India. Not able to view the source code before it went live. Development windows fully booked for 2 years. Press releases in nearly a dozen languages

Local business ads – 75:1 ROI and massive incremental growth

Tips:

• Don’t translate – localize
• View the SERPs with the right IP geography
• Understand how Google works (internal structure / divisions)
• Make yourself available to all stakeholders
• Understand each locale as well as you can.

Last up Jaron Schaechte, coming from the project management side of things

• 65% of projects fail to deliver on their objectives.
• Geographical differences are huge.
  • USA – SEO 2008- Unversal, blended, local
  • UK / Germany / Holland – SEO 2006 – Leading in Europe
  • Scandinavia – SEO 2005 – SEs are still working on local language
  • Eastern Europe – SEO 1999 – Strong competition and expansion – grey hat still works
• Think sequential and iterative, not parallel (unless you have massive resources)
• Methodology, QA and tools are critical.
• Understand the local search market -
  • Google does not handle Finnish well.
  • In the Czech republic – Seznam & Atlas are the main players (Google 20% market share).

1. Reconcile Your Financial Data
Just because web analytics can report on revenue does not necessarily mean that you should use analytics for all financial decisions. Comparing your revenue data from your e-commerce database to your web analytics can result in confusion and frustration. Web analytics work well in determining where converting traffic is coming from, detecting behavior patterns, and understanding what is not working. But, there are many factors that can negatively impact the accuracy of the actual dollar volume of sales.

2. Analyze Individual Visitor Paths
Although this may seem interesting and a excellent way to kill a lot of time, information gleaned at a level this granular is not going to provide much, if any, value. It is best to segment your traffic into meaningful visitor groups and detect patterns at that level.

3. Compare Different Analytic Packages                                                    (and expect to see similar numbers)
There are different methodologies for calculations, even slightly different definitions of key stats, as well as different factors that are used to calculate numbers. For example, an older version of a log file analytic tool may not filter out search engine spiders and bots. Conversion calculation can be different as well.  (Some packages count latent conversions and others can’t.)

4. Obsess about Meaningless or Outdated Stats
Although ‘hits’ are still calculated in many analytic packages, viewing that data point does not specifically decipher the actualities of your web traffic. Depending on how your web site was built (Ajax), page views may also be meaningless.

5. Focus on One Data Point
It is very easy to get hung up on just one data point such as Unique Visitors or Return Visitors. It is much more efficient to look at the big picture and understand all of pertinent facets on your site.

6. Focus on Everything
The best and worst thing about many web analytic packages is that anything can be reported on. It is essential to try not to analyze everything. Understand your web site business goals, create logical visitor groups, and determine conversions. Target your reporting to these actualities. Do not attempt to respond to every single data point. You will wind up in ‘analysis paralysis.’

7. Make Decisions on Bad Data
Decision making based on erroneous data is risky when you’ve inherited an analytic solution that you were not involved with the implementation. It is essential to have confidence that your solution was implemented correctly.  It may take spending time to review and confirm the implementation.

8. Ignore Analytics
Of course, the biggest mistake of all is to ignore analytics completely and continue making decisions based on your gut.  Instinct can often be misleading.

I’m writing this review despite not being in the audience for this presentation.  Instead of watching the session, I was on stage presenting it.

Jon Myers was the moderator and took the job earnestly. Jon went the extra mile and had us each review our presentations to ensure that any overlap was minimal.  He also met with both Patricia Hirsch and myself prior to the presentation to ensure we were comfortable and knowledgeable with the format and content of the session. 

Patricia began her presentation on the basics of local search with some great UK centric examples for her local SEO slides. After Patricia finished her presentation, I covered essential basics of the UK market along with geotargeting options for UK advertisers.  I continued with solid examples detailing how UK advertisers can get their listings into Google Maps & Yahoo Local.

If you’d like to see my slides, they’re available on the resources section of the Serengeticommunications.com site or directly from here.

The session ended with an interesting Q&A with the audience which included some intriguing questions that Patricia and I answered.  Jon jumped in when needed with his detailed working knowledge of the UK market.

All in all, I’d say it was a good session  Time will tell, as one mechanism that SES uses to score quality is an attendee survey.  Survey results are emailed to each presenter.  This determines our overall effectiveness.

The Competitive Research panel is moderated by Andrew Goodman, who immediately calls Andy Beal to the podium.

Andy walked through a list of tools for competitive research:

• Domaintools.com – whois lookup (uses subscription for more info)
• Ranks.nl/tools/spider.html – keyword density tool
• Use siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com for link checking – backlinks are ordered by importance
• seomoz.org/tools – particularly the page strength tool.
• soloseo.com/tools/indexrank.html – index rank tool
• copernic.com – tracks changes on pages
• Technorati.com – set up rss feeds and find out when a competitor is talked about
• Google alerts – the glue and baling wire approach
• searchanalytics.compete.com – shows referrals that a site is getting from the search engines
• Touchgraph.com – shows hubs
• google.com/patents – look for new products
• monster.co.uk – look for job listings (new services, replacements, etc)
• Read your competitor’s employee blogs
• Searchstatus for firefox

Next up Maxime Grandchamp.

Sources of information are not only online, think offline too – newspapers, financial information, etc.

You can know that a competitor makes a change, but you don’t know why. Don’t assume that it’s necessarily because they’re improving their site, it could be for any number of reasons.

Competitive Research companies typically collect their data from many sources

• ISP data
• User panels
• Website Search History

Make sure you know who your competitor is, they may not be the ones you’re thinking of, look at who is ranking / bidding for your audience to find out who your competition really is.

Info you want to get on your competitors

• Who is sending them traffic?
• How much traffic?
• What keywords are being clicked on to get them there?

Search engines are not the only source of traffic, and if search engines are your only source of traffic, start to panic now!

Learn from your competitors. Knowing performance will help you optimize your site around proven data, streamlining your spend and increase your ROI.

Don’t guess at keywords, do your research, and get above your competitors where it really counts. See what drives traffic to them, and steal that traffic.

Last up Robin Goad.

Search accounts for a third of all traffic sent to websites.

• Brand and navigational search is on the rise, but the long tail of smaller terms is also getting bigger.
• Analysis of search data provides insight into what people are thinking
• Hitwise tracks 10m search terms per month

Showed a comparable graph for Tesco and Asda, showing the same valleys and peaks (both internet traffic to their sites, and for their brand terms).

He then showed a search term suggestion tool that showed the different terms searched for – showing the products that people associate with them – i.e. insurance with Tesco, George for Asda. 3 x as many searches for Tesco as Asda

Next was looking at the actual destination of the traffic. Not all searches are equal. George is important for Asda, but ranks below other areas that seemed less important in search data – people don’t necessarily click through to the brand site.

So, you are ready to take your analytics to the next level. You’ve realized the wealth of actionable information available and you want to invest in a tool that will help you find and use this information.

1. Data source
Probably the first question to answer is will you be using log files or java script? There are pros and cons to both. The obvious benefit of log files is that they already exist. No code needs to be added to your Web site. And you get history. The biggest benefit of java script is that using java script you can report on things that are not generally found in log files. (This can also be done using log files but it involves exposing lots of information in the URL or storing it in a cookie).

2. Ease of implementation
This is likely a topic that gets glossed over or minimized in the sales process. This is definitely not something that should be taken lightly. Implementation involves everything from determining (or purchasing) required hardware, assigning resources (to implement, to learn, to use, to maintain), implementing, testing and QA of the solution. Regardless of what you expect or how well you plan, implementation is almost always more complex and takes longer than originally anticipated.

3. Ease of use
The best and worst aspect of many solutions out there is the ability to configure the products to report on anything. It is incredibly important to have a solid understanding of the business goals of your Web site, the capabilities of the analytic solution and a plan for getting the necessary reporting in place before you commit to a product. An analytic solution will not be that useful in the long run if each time new information is needed it takes hours to configure.

4. Who owns the data?
When using a java script solution especially when the vendor is hosting the data (e.g. you are paying a monthly fee) make sure to find out who owns the data. Ask questions like: Can you have access to the data if you stop using that vendor? Will you retain all history or does data get deleted? Is it in a format that can be used by other analytic solutions?

5. Segmentation
Understanding what everyone is doing on your site is important. But the real value of an analytic solution is when you can analyze behavior of specific visitor groups. If an analytic package offers segmentation find out how complicated it is to set up, if there is a limit (e.g. 20 segments) and segments can be configured and applied to historic traffic.

6. Customization
Customization is important but means different things to different vendors. Again having an understanding for what you want to report on ahead of times is very important. Customization includes the customization of the java script to include specific data points, as well as customizing profiles or reports to view the data. When thinking about customization it is also important to keep ease of use in mind.

7. Integration
Many products offer integration with other data sources or applications. Just because a product can integrate with another data source does not mean that it should. There is some information that it makes sense to analyze in terms of web traffic and some that should be analyzed in a database.

8. Support
Another decision point that should not be glossed over during the sales process is support. What are the support policies? What is covered under support and what is not? Will you be able to call or chat with an actual person or is everything automated?

9. Pricing
My feelings about the price of a web analytics solution is that it is always worth it, it always has a positive ROI IF the commitment is made ahead of time to understand what can be reported on, what should be reported on, who is going to be responsible for the reporting and implementing the ‘fixes’ based on the reporting. If analytics will just be an afterthought, with no real owner (which is a shame) than it is not even worth investing money in it.

There are different pricing models out there. It is important to choose the one that makes sense for your company.
The most popular models have historically been either software (one time fee) or ASP/On Demand (monthly pricing for page views). Some vendors offer scaled back versions of their product (e.g. SMB) as a less expensive option. Of course the ‘free’ model became quite popular last year.

One last point, maybe you are not ready to make the investment in an actual product. It is definitely worthwhile to understand the importance of good data and the danger of making decisions based on bad data. It is a worthwhile investment in having someone to evaluate your implementation of a free program to make sure the data you are seeing is accurate.

Today’s SES London interview is with Jon Myers of Mediavest, a Manchester, England based firm. Jon is actually involved with 5 different sessions at this conference, but this interview deals directly with the Auditing Paid Listings & Click Fraud Issues session on Tuesday Feb 19th at 11am

Hi Jon, let’s start by getting a little background on you for those people who don’t know the only member of the Geordie SEO society not named Mike…
I have worked in search marketing and online media for more than nine years now. I am working with Mediavest (MVi) as Head of Search/Associate Director and have been involved in SEO for years and Paid Search (PPC) since its inception here in the U.K. As you say I am Geordie born and bred and very proud of it. Newcastle is a fantastic place and me and Mike have spend many a night reminiscing about search and the North East.

It’s hard to believe that paid search has only really been around in the UK for 7 years and how much is has changed. I remember the good old days when Google had 2 staff in London, Yahoo was Go International/Overture and Espotting was going strong. For me to be able to say I can remember day 1 of UK PPC and be in my 10th year of search, as you can imagine people seem to think I am a lot older. I think the market has reached a level of maturity but still has a lot of growing to do. Just look at Yahoo and Microsoft, who would have thought one would be trying to buy the other!

I have actively been involved over the years with industry bodies such as SEMPO, IPA and the IAB as a Search Task Force committee member. As well as a regular presenter at industry events.

So, click fraud. It seems so 2006, people don’t seem to be talking about it as much.

• a)Is it really still much of an issue?
  
• b)Are the big 3 doing better these days?
  
• c)Is it really more of a 2nd and 3rd tier engine issue?
  
• d)Why aren’t people talking about it post Google settlement?

Wow all these questions! Lets deal with them one at a time.

a)This is my 4th Year presenting on Click Fraud and I still believe a lot of marketers are still waking up to the potential threat of Click Fraud so it is still getting interest and talked about a lot. If you think it has matured with the marketplace to the point we now have ‘Click Quality Councils and the IAB has taken an interest in it with click measurement.

b)I would be tempted to say it is not as much of an issue as lot of the Search Engines have undertaken better filtering and guys like us have been pointing out for years poor quality traffic. But as far as the search engines are concerned after they have filtered the traffic and removed what they call non commercial intent traffic they believe all traffic is good traffic unless we say otherwise.

This is due to the fact that they can’t see conversion, it is up to us as marketers to analyse our traffic and conversion data and report back on anomalies and poor quality traffic. It is not a difficult thing to do if you have a decent log analysis package and best practice knowhow which I would hope our panel at SES this year will give you! The search engines are willing to review your data and make refunds against it, in return you are helping them clean up their networks. The big 3 search engines are working hard to improve their traffic performance and quality and it is more refined than it used to be but there is still a lot of work to do. Take the Google Content network back in 2004 you could either switch it on or off and conversion was really poor. Now we can refine the traffic and site target which only improves quality. The thing is that people and technology are always moving forward and finding new ways to create revenue streams via Click Fraud so it will be an ongoing an evolving process.

c)Focus your time into the 2nd tier search engines on the main networks. These are the sites that have taken a search feed from the main engines and these are areas open to the most abuse. This is where a good log analyser comes in, it will allow you to see the urls of the actual site carrying the feed and not that it is just traffic from Yahoo or Google. There are so many ways to look at your data, from site level to increased traffic or conversion drop at keyword level.

A good tip is to use Google Invalid Clicks report, this will tell you how many clicks Google have removed by account that you are not paying for but to me it is a good indicator of accounts or industry sectors that are open to abuse and it may be worth investing your time towards, not only on Google but Yahoo and Microsoft as well.

d)What can I say about the Lanes Gifts and Collectables Settlement of $90 million dollars. A lot of people say it was not enough and always will. It was open to all advertisers on Google from day one until the claim date to apply for refunds. I certainly did as we had spent a bit in the time period. I often wondered when I would see the refund the reality was it went straight back onto the account in Adwords and was that small I probably missed it. This would have been the case for a lot of people as $90 million compared to the billions of turn over in the time period is a very small amount.

What do you think the level of click fraud out there is these days?

For years we have heard number banded around as high as 30% and at the minute we are looking at anywhere from the Google quoted 0.02% to 28% from some of the click monitoring companies. My stance is regardless of the levels, you have to work with it while it may be affecting your traffic. It does exist and it won’t go away, it is part of the industry and has been for years. This is why I can stress enough the need to analyse your traffic data

Some people just lock their advertising down to the main Google, Yahoo and Microsoft search engines as historically and correctly this is the lowest Click Fraud risk at maybe 2-3% in my eyes as most. To me this though is limiting your reach, potential coverage and traffic volumes. There is a need to find a balance and drive online business but at the same time optimise, review and police your traffic.

Do you think there’s any difference in the level of click fraud in the UK market compared to the US?
Looking at some of the data in the market place, they say that the UK and Europe has a much higher risk compared to the US. For me again it comes back to the principles of a need to monitor and police your traffic. There is no doubt that online has grown over the years and will continue to here in the UK. This is down to the fact that it is giving marketers and companies some of the best conversion and sales volumes around. Imagine by policing your traffic how much better that could be?

You’re also speaking on 2 other panels and moderating 2 other sessions at SES London, which of those are you most looking forward to?
I think it would have to be the panel on Day 2 Called Searcher Behaviour Research Update. I am moderating this one. The line up for the panel is a good one with Piers Stobbs of ComScore Europe, Erica Schmidt, of Isobar, Dr. Jon Dodd, Bunnyfoot and John Marshall, of Market Motive. These are all good people with a few years in the industry and after being in contact with the speakers the panel content is looking great. I would say all the other are shaping up to be good ones as well. Not to mention the Local Search on Day 3 that you are on with me as well Simon!

Which of the sessions that you’re not involved with do you think is a ‘must see’?
Looking at the panels across the conference there are some great ones but for me it would have to be the one on Day 1 called “Orion Panel: Universal, Blended and Vertical Search.” It is being moderated by Kevin Ryan with Andrew Goodman, Adam Lasnik of Google, Mike Grehan, Jeff Revoy of Yahoo! This should be a hot topic for everyone to get in to watch and understand. There are some great panelist with a lot of experience in the industry talking about a subject that is important to understand.

If you’re interested in hearing Jon and others talk at SES London, then there’s still time to register for the SES-London show, running from Tuesday Feb 19th until Thursday Feb 21st.

My last post began laying out the process of creating a data driven business culture. This is part two of the series and deals with what needs to take place after the analytics managers have met and have gotten buy in from each department head.The next step is meeting with each stakeholder. This is a very important step as these are the individuals who will be using this data not just in reports, but they will be using it to make site changes that will improve the company’s bottom line. During the meetings with each stakeholder it is important to not only determine what each stakeholder is interested in tracking, but also to help determine the goals and resulting metrics that will need to be tracked. This will enable the analytics manager to determine how best to setup dashboards for each stakeholder so that they will have all the necessary data at their fingertips. During the process it is also imperative to address any issues that each stakeholder may have so that they will not be skeptical of the changes that are taking place.

With SES-London less than a week away, I thought it would be a good idea to talk to some of the presenters and find out what we can expect at the conference next week. First up is Piers Stobbs, Vp of ComScore Europe, who’ll be on the Searcher Behaviour Research Update panel on Wednesday Feb 20th at 4pm.

Let’s start off by having you talk a little about your background, and about how someone with a degree in Physics ended up in marketing.
Long story;-) In what seems like a previous lifetime I was an oilfield engineer in the Middle East… I eventually decided I needed a job that didn’t require a hard hat, so ended up at business school in the US, and went from there into a number of different online startups. I then stumbled on comScore- I have always had an affinity for numbers and pulling the “so what” from disparate data sources and it proved to be an excellent fit. I’ve now been with the company five years, first in the US and then for the last two years heading up our custom research business here in London

So what does what ComScore Europe do?
We have a worldwide panel of 2 million online consumers and we passively track everything they do online. This generates a vast amount of incredibly useful data- everything from sites visited, items purchased, applications run and ads exposed to. We have a syndicated audience measurement service, Media Metrix which we sell on a licensing basis to media planners and online advertisers and publishers; we also conduct custom research projects based on the same underlying data sets.

Having worked in both the US and Europe, have you seen any particular differences in user behaviour in particular sectors that you find interesting?
I think the striking and somewhat surprising thing is that European online consumers and quite a bit more active than their US counter parts. For instance, in December, we estimate European searchers averaged almost 100 searches in the month, compared to under 80 in North America. The figure was even higher in the UK at 114. We see similar things across most metrics- total time online, pages viewed, videos streamed etc.

I think it’s due to a combination of cultural and structural reasons. Culturally, Europeans became used to searching more actively because the directory based portals originated in the US and were much less compelling a source of information in Europe. Structurally, the broadband market has been much more competitive in general- so while broadband penetration rates are comparable between the US and EU, you tend to get a lot more performance (upload and download speed) for your money in Europe. Not everything dubbed ‘broadband’ is the same!

Do you think that the increasing trend towards personalization of search results is affecting user behaviour?
I’m not sure about this yet. I think there has been a lot of speculation about how a combination of user generated/community generated search results combined with algorithmic results could significantly improve the user experience. I think the difficulty lies in the truly long tail nature of search, where by even the most popular individual queries are still only used by a small fraction of the online population- thus generating enough community volume in terms can be problematic. However, I do think there is significant potential, I’m just not sure it has been realized yet.

Any teasers you want to give for your presentation next Wednesday?
We have conducted some very interesting path to purchase research commissioned by Google – analyzing how consumers go about researching online travel, from the first search, through all subsequent searches and travel site visits all the way to online purchase. There are some very powerful findings for search marketers- including how long the process can take- 45% of online travel transactions occurred more than 4 weeks from the first search.

Which session at SES London, that you’re not involved with, are you most looking forward to attending?
The Analytics panel (1:30 on Tuesday) looks interesting; and it’s always good to check out the Keynote (3:30 Tuesday)

If you’re interested in hearing Piers and others talk at SES London, then there’s still time to register for the SES-London show, running from Tuesday Feb 19th until Thursday Feb 21st.