'Farmville' Makers Putting Stock In Virtual Goods

Enlarge Courtesy of Misiek Piskorski

A screenshot of Piskorskiville. Five percent of Zynga's 200 million monthly users buy "virtual goods" to get ahead in the game or beautify their city.

Courtesy of Misiek Piskorski

A screenshot of Piskorskiville. Five percent of Zynga's 200 million monthly users buy "virtual goods" to get ahead in the game or beautify their city.

Zynga is a company that makes money by selling nothing. Or, to be fair, by selling imaginary things, like tractors that plow farms on Facebook.

A "virtual good" is the term of art for an industry that minted $9 billion last year alone. Zynga is America's first virtual goods company to file an initial public offering. The IPO is expected to go through before Thanksgiving and will test whether the company's modern day alchemy ? turning virtual goods into real money ? is a game-changer for the gaming industry.

Misiek Piskorski is a professor at Harvard Business School. His job: to play and study popular online games like Cityville by Zynga.

"I forgot to come back to my city, so some of my plants have withered away," Piskorski explains as he plays the game on Facebook. "My friends actually have been kind enough to come back and unwither some of my plants."

Piskorski harvests his virtual crop and sells to a local grocer. Not for cash ? at least, not the green, folding type. His money, like his goods, is virtual.

But for 5 percent of Zynga's 200 million monthly users, that's not the case. They buy a special currency to get ahead in the game, without relying on friends for help.

Or, Piskorski explains, they use the virtual money to buy luxury condos, yachts ? goods that don't have a use per se, but are "just really beautiful to look at."

Zynga raked in $1 billion this last year, in sales of virtual tractors that plow virtual farms, or avatars that embody gamers' Web personas.

Zynga

Lady Gaga released her album "Born This Way" on Farmville in May 2011.

Tierra Cates, 19, sells Zynga currency at a CVS in Washington, D.C. She points to a shelf lined with pre-paid cards for Starbucks, Loews theaters and other businesses. One card has a goofy duck waddling up a pasture. It's for Farmville, Zynga's original mega-hit.

"I've seen kids come in with their parents and cry for these cards," Cates says. "My dad does it, too. And I think it's like, ridiculous."

Traditional video games make you pay up front. Zynga inverted the model: play for free. And, once you're hooked, pay to get ahead.

Revenue from virtual goods has helped Zynga kick the addiction to ad revenue ? the curse of online businesses. The ads it does feature enhance the game. American Express sponsors blue virtual windmills that help grow crops. Lady Gaga sexed up the scene by releasing her album Born This Way on Gagaville.

Zynga officials declined an interview because, they said, they're in a "quiet period" required by the Securities and Exchange Commission before the IPO.

Eric Ries, author of The New York Times bestseller The Lean Start Up, is a Zynga fan. To be more precise, he's a defender of virtual goods. For skeptics who think virtual goods aren't real, he has this retort: "I don't think that you're using the word 'real' correctly."

Fashionistas spend $2,000 on a Prada handbag. Gamers spend $20 on an imaginary tractor or avatar or sword. It's the same, Ries says, except "the virtual objects are all tied to the specific environment in which they were developed." A sword purchased in the game World of Warcraft can't be taken into the real world, or into other games.

Sam Hamadeh, CEO of PrivCo, sifts through the financial data of private corporations and isn't so sure that virtual goods sales are anything more than a fad. Yet he estimates Zynga is worth $5 billion. Others say $20 billion.

Enlarge Jeff Chiu/AP

Zynga software engineer and developer Davy Sulock works in the Mafia Wars 2 studio in San Francisco. Zynga is adding ways to play its Web games as it prepares for an initial public offering of stock.

Jeff Chiu/AP

Zynga software engineer and developer Davy Sulock works in the Mafia Wars 2 studio in San Francisco. Zynga is adding ways to play its Web games as it prepares for an initial public offering of stock.

The value comes down to whether competitors ? traditional gaming companies like Electronic Arts or Activision ? buy into the business model, Hamadah says. "Will Disney start offering games with their characters, in the same model?"

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Tips for Avoiding Adwords Mistakes

Adwords is the perfect platform for any webmaster who wishes to get lots of convertible traffic. Lots of individuals rely on Adwords to get their business exposed and to experience more leads and sales. There still exist lots of people for whom Adwords hasn\'t done very much. This is mainly due to them not doing what their supposed to with Adwords, and also because they\'re not prepping the right way. You won\'t be able to just dump money into Adwords and then see traffic and sales. If your goal is to lose money, go ahead. In this article we will be talking about a few AdWords mistakes that you must stay away from.

It\'s not difficult to get fed up with Adwords if it\'s not doing for you what you want it to. I\'s not right to just throw in the towel when Adwords doesn\'t produce. You should, instead, discover what you\'re not doing right and then do it correctly. Most novice Adwords users suffer a loss here and there and then don\'t try again. But you have to understand that like any other marketing medium, even AdWords has a learning curve that you need to go through. When you look into your campaigns you will realize what mistakes you had been making. It could be that your keywords are incorrect or maybe even your copy needs work. You wouldn\'t know any of this, however, unless you kept with it. Yes, you might lose some money in the start. If you don\'t test out your campaigns, you\'ll never know what works and what doesn\'t. Once you know a campaign is working, there\'s no looking back. If you want a successful campaign, then, you must optimize it, test it and then run it.

You also don\'t want to make the mistake of not using the negative keyword option. Would you like to know why? Simply because you can save a lot of money by excluding all those keywords that you don\'t want. It doesn\'t make much sense to have people clicking on free ads when you\'re trying to get them to buy from you. It just makes sense to use this function so that you can make more money. It\'s not just about making money but it\'s about not losing, too.

When you first begin with your Adwords account, the default setting will include the content network. If your aim is to attract high quality traffic without wasting your money, uncheck the option that allows your ads to be shown on the content network. This is usually because the content network doesn\'t always send the good quality traffic. You could see a lower than normal CTr, even though you might be getting plenty of impressions. Your main goal with AdWords is to boost your CTR but when your ads are just shown to random people on Google\'s partnering sites, you won\'t see many clicks. And when you do receive those clicks, they tend not to have a very good conversion rate.

Overall, AdWords isn\'t rocket science, unless you see it that way. Succeeding at Adwords is as easy as creating campaigns that you constantly test and then alter so that they become as profitable as possible.

Become Successful Internet Marketer

Affiliate marketing is so popular because it is relatively ready to get started with and can supply you with a hefty income. But you also need to be aware of some of the myths that surround affiliate marketing so that you know where you\'re going.
Largely due to the amount of cyber crime, many unassuming people believe affiliate marketing to be a way to steal internet searchers money. Since so many people don\'t take their marketing efforts seriously, you will create a huge advantage for yourself by treating it as a business that requires real skills and strategy. You can\'t just jump into it from nowhere and expect to become a tycoon. The good news for those who are willing to learn the ropes, you can make lots of money overnight after you learn the necessary skills. When you become an affiliate marketer, you get the freedom to work from anywhere across the globe.
Working as an affiliate can be a daunting task but if you have a workable plan and a system to follow then you have just made things a lot easier. It\'s all about being organized and having goals with a solid plan to reach them; this may be different from what you are used to but it will pay off in a major way. But when you\'re starting an affiliate marketing business, you\'re carrying the responsibility of everything, right from generating traffic to minimizing the losses. The key is to have a system in place and to be organized. Affiliate marketing is your own real business, a multi-level marketing program is working for an organization and 100x harder to succeed in. If you find anyone selling you a product that teaches you how to become a super affiliate \'easily,\' stay away from it. We always hear about people\'s affiliate marketing success stories and also about people who have been at this for years without nothing to show, which group will you fall into?
Don\'t fall for the work with one good affiliate program myth.
The main reason not to do it is because you run the risk of losing everything if something bad happens. And how will you know if something isn\'t a better fit for your business if you\'re stuck with one program. A winner is easy to find with a little bit of testing. If affiliate marketing is your only source of income then you will want to be especially careful about placing all of your income sources with one affiliate program. You can also test which networks bring the highest return on investment. Some affiliate programs won\'t be worth your time and you will inevitably come across some of these during your career. With experience you will quickly be able to determine what doesn\'t meet your qualifications. Finding a good affiliate program is not rocket science and can be as simple as looking around and listening to what affiliates are saying about various programs. Your job is to uncover the quality of the program. You want to promote quality products that so what they promise to do. Your main priority is to make money but you must do it honestly.
Another myth is that an affiliate\'s main tactic is to spam. There are spammers out there, but the most successful affiliates use paid advertising. There are actually members in the internet marketing community who are on a crusade to reduce spamming. In summary, the above affiliate marketing myths are only a tip of the ice berg, you\'ll come across many more, so be aware.

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Conversation Marketing: A definition

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I've written 2,890 posts on Conversation Marketing now. I just crossed 10,000 (non-spam) comments, too.

But I've never actually provided a definition of Conversation Marketing.

Lots of other people have. Some did OK. Some are just ridiculous. So I figured I'd give it a shot.

I'm not trying to define it in a "this is what it means, so screw the rest of you" way. I just mean, define what I mean when I say the phrase.

So, here goes:

Conversation marketing: Highly iterative, internet-driven marketing where customer needs drive design, content and technology, analysis drives changes, and customers are long-term participants.

I figure I should go into a bit more detail, though. I'm going to do it in reverse:

Customers are long-term participants

I am not going to use the word 'engagement'. When I say 'long-term participants' I mean that:

1. Companies give customers the option to keep in touch. Think of a Facebook 'like' button, or an e-mail signup form.
2. The company provides value in exchange: Useful information, free stuff, coupons, or just the intrinsic benefits of 'belonging'.
3. The company invites participation. The company talks to the customers who opt in. 'Talks to' means 'starts discussions' and 'informs', not just 'rams coupons down their throats'. For example, the company might send out a quick guide for getting the most out of their product.

Analysis drives changes

I'm all for gut instinct when it comes to marketing. But at some point you need to observe and adjust.

This was actually why I started using the phrase 'conversation marketing' in the first place. The internet is the first place, short of an in-person discussion, where you can make a statement, watch how your audience responds, and adjust your next statement accordingly.

With analytics tools, log files, surveys, etc., you can easily use data to tweak and refine your message.

Customer needs drive design, content, technology

This one sounds like corporate marketspeak. Cringe.

But ego-driven marketing still seems to have the edge out there, and I find that infuriating. Just because you, Ms. CEO, think that purple mouse trails are the greatest thing ever, doesn't mean your customers agree.

Let the customers drive what you do. Not your ego.

Highly iterative

Finally, conversation marketing means a lot of iteration. If analysis drives change, and you can constantly observe, then you should constantly adjust, too.

That's the other unique property of internet marketing: You can change content in a heartbeat. If you're not iterating, you're probably wasting a lot of potential.

There you have it

I'll warn you: I change this definition with frightening regularity. But the basics are the same: Create, observe, analyze, iterate.

If you have your own definition, fire away.

Other stuff

• Fast pages convert 2 times better
• 10 tips for writing that sells
• The agency employees’ guide to bosses
• A marketing agency boss’s guide to employees
• 15 report writing tips
• Elizabeth Marsten’s new 2-part PPC e-book for small business. $37 for books 1 and 2, and a money back guarantee.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/conversationmarketing/MRJI/~3/EK5OH8mEkDQ/conversation-marketing-definition-2011.htm

e-mail marketing web site design marketing communications online marketing

Category Killer Domain Names?

Dr. Pete shared examples of the marketing funnel, highlighting how we must overcome hurdles (or break through barriers to conversion) in order to make a sale.

Why People Buy Premium Domain Names

The idea of an exact match domain (EMD) is that you are buying a piece of land right next to the highway. You sink in a lot of money upfront, but hope that it backs out over time by lowering your traffic acquisition costs. For many years this model was both logical and profitable.

At the peak of the domain name bubble recently, the domain name Poker.org sold for a million Dollars.

A domain name is an asset just like a stack of cash, a piece of gold, or a CDO is. But rather than having a fixed universal value, it is only a *relative* store of value that can go up or down based on market conditions.

Search Engines Influence the Value of Domain Names

Search is the primary mode of online navigation. For years search has been replacing almost all other forms of online navigation as the new default. There are about 7 billion people in the world with about half of them online. Google likely gets about a search per person every day!

Search engines can decide what variables they want to count & how much. In a world where subjective marketing aspects (like branding) are replacing signals of relevancy the value of keyword domain names is greatly diminished.

If your model works out to where it takes 3 or 4 years to break even & recoup the initial investment, then that model may look quite different if Google manages to redirect 50% or 60% of that traffic stream at some point in time ... at some point the price of the domain has to adjust to the new market conditions.

An Example of the New Normal in Search

With the above in mind, I thought it would be worth highlighting how the domain bubble grew & ultimately popped.

First, lets start with a current search result. The below example is for "pool tables."

Note that brands get a number of options to play here: AdWords ads, AdWords product ads, Google Product Search, branded navigation, big brands in the organic search results, niche vertical brands, and any local results for nationwide chain brands with a local outlet. Go back a couple years and this search result would have mostly been dominated by smaller online retailers & niche hobbyist websites.

Now the exact match domain is forced to buy AdWords to compete for it's own name. Without the AdWords ad, the exact match domain would require a searcher to skip over 45 other links before finding it somewhere below the fold.

Other keywords (like engagement rings) which once left room for review & comparison sites have been completely dominated by brands. Outside of end consumer reviews (and who but an expert publicly reviews more than 1 engagement ring? and who is not biased in their review of said rings with emotional attachments?) there is no way to get a comparative view of quality. There is no room for such an idea in Google's brand-only search results.

Let's pick apart how we got here...

Google Boosting Rankings of Authoritative Brands

In 2008 Eric Schmidt made the famous quote about how consumers are hardwired for branding. I mentioned how he was signaling the future of the algorithm, but was largely ignored at the time. Since then Google has launched:

• the Vince update, which was driven by query refinement (and thus promotes brands)
• the Panda update, which puts such an emphasis on brand-like signals that it allows doorway pages & scraped Tweets to rank on select authoritative websites

The algorithm is only going to keep adding more signals that boost brands. PoolTables.com might have better editorial content than a mega-retailer like Amazon.com, but it is hard for them to collect as many reviews as Amazon can.

Social Search Brand Boost

Matt Cutts also stated that they like the potential of +1:

Cutts confirmed what Google said when the +1 button launched: Google will use +1 activity to influence its search results.

?It?s definitely a signal we?re paying a lot of attention to,? Cutts said. ?It has tons of potential. It looks very promising.?

Big brands can do giveaways to their core customer base to expand into new markets, allowing customers to pay for the discounts with a vote, stuffing the ballot box on these new "relevancy" signals.

Bigger AdWords Ads

Google shifted the top AdWords ads to having a longer headline, which provides roughly a 13% lift in CTR.

In addition, AdWords ads have grown larger due to other ad extensions, like:

• sitelinks
• product extensions
• phone numbers
• maps
• other nascent extensions, like videos

For commercially viable keywords these have the net effect of pushing the organic search results further down the page. A recent study by Optify highlighted that while low CPC & tail keywords send most clicks (~89%) to the organic search results, for high CPC & head keywords AdWords ads consume most search clicks (~ 60%).

Google Comparison Ads

In certain high money verticals Google offers Google Comparison / Google Advisor ads, which allow them to place a 4th ad slot above the organic search results.

Notice how much larger some of these ads are than typical ad units. When Google targets your keyword with one of these ads they significantly change the dynamics of the market.

Product Ads

Google has offered graphical product ads automatically matched to the search results. Generally for bigger brands Google offers these on a risk-free cost per acquisition pricing, whereas smaller advertisers need to pay by the click to use this ad format.

Googler announced that searchers clicked on this ad format nearly twice as often as regular search ads & in some cases Google has even started testing including these ads in their ad space that appears above the organic search results.

Search clicks are a zero sum game, so the more risk-free clicks the big box brands get from this ad format the lest clicks there is to go around for everyone else.

Product Search Listings

These serve as more eye candy to distract searchers from the organic search results. Once again these typically feature listings from larger brands & Google doesn't mind if these are a bit off because they still push the eye away from the organic results and toward the AdWords ads.

Look how off those "necklaces" are. Evidently if you are not a sport's fan you have no business wearing necklaces ;)

Localization

Localization is a boon for small local businesses which can now gain a slice of the local traffic stream that they were priced out of the market on. However, as a domain buyer, the value of AutoInsurance.com drops significantly after the large metro areas have localized results which do not allow the cost of an expensive domain to be amortized by the potential to rank everywhere. What is worse, is that the largest cities are the ones with the most vibrant economic activities (more businesses, more residents, larger loan sizes, and so on). Through localization any generic unbranded nationwide player simply misses out on the most valuable traffic.

Verticalization & Double Dipping Ads

Much like how localization locks generic players out of local markets, Google's increased verticalization (and allowing certain brands to double or triple dip on ad serving) now means that some results have over 80% of the screen's real estate dominated by a single key player.

Search Box > Address Bar

When Google Chrome launched it replaced the address bar with a search box.

That allows Google to...

• intercept & redirect type-in traffic demand
• re-highlight content you have already seen in the past (likely to be from some larger brands, as they have larger ad budgets & more ways to be found)
• recommend popular searched-for keywords (which are often brands, since awareness-based advertising creates search demand

When Internet Explorer 9 was launched Microsoft also adopted these features

Taking control of the address bar one step further, Google has a beta version of Chrome out where the address bar is not even visible unless you scroll over that part of the page. Firefox also offers a similar beta extension! If this feature goes mainstream it wouldn't be surprising to see Microsoft follow suit.

Google Suggest / Instant

Google Instant's search auto-completion directs users away from some keywords and toward others. At first that statement seems like it could be saying that it consolidates search volume to a smaller set of keywords & thus could make domain names more valuable. However, if you have ever looked at a list of the most popular keywords you would know that they are largely filled with branded keywords. The media was aware of this obvious shift & Amit Singhal had to do an interview stating that there was no brand bias to Google Instant.

Awareness-based advertising biases keyword recommendations, which is why Pontiac ran a TV commercial telling you to search Google for their brand. Of course when SEO consultants did similar things they got whacked. ;)

Extra White Space

In the most recent beta Google has tamed this down a bit from the absurdity they were first testing, but Google has shown an interest in using whitespace trickery to drive the organic search results further down the page.

The rise of mobile applications & mobile search devices further pull leverage away from publishers & toward ad networks.

Google Acting as a Publisher & Affiliate

Not only Google, but all the major search engines are beginning to act as publishers & affiliates.

What's worse, is through personalization they have an asymmetrical information advantage over publishers in their ad network. They can tell you that you are getting 68% of the value of an ad click, but how do you know if they don't undervalue the contribution of that click while overvaluing the contribution for clicks where they keep 100% of the income on?

Google Small Business Taxes

Some sites get the benefit of the doubt, whereas other sites just get doubt. I highlighted how Google's approach to link buying, AdWords penalties & other issues vary based on who is getting whacked in our recent post about Google small business taxes.

Too Small to Matter

Smaller sites are more likely to come under attack from "the algorithm" as they are easier to knock over & are generally less stable. That gives them a higher risk factor & makes it even harder to build reliable business processes around it. How do you scale employment (or even inventory) when one month you are up 50% and the next month you are arbitrarily off 60%?

Further, Google has consistently screwed up original source attribution, which makes it even harder to justify for a small business to go the extra mile & spend extra money creating premium content, if the result will be Google paying someone to steal that content & wrap it in AdSense ads.

Where Does this Lead Us?

If you buy a "category killer" it is critical that you rank #1, but in many niches the exact match domains that ranked #1 for nearly a decade are now #3 or #4 in the organic results. Add in 3 AdWords ads above the organic results & things like product ads and it isn't hard to end up below the fold. If your relationship to that 1 keyword is your core competitive strategy but you can't even promote the keyword (because you are below the fold) then the strategy is a failed one.

Further, as Google keeps adding more usage signals into the relevancy mix that will keep favoring brands.

This is not to say domain names are dead across the board. there is still plenty of opportunity in some areas, but equally some names require large investment & as an SEO strategy may get thrown under the bus by any of the above (or similar future moves in other market niches).

I Stopped Buying Domain Names

I believe I was one of the first SEOs to publicly highlight the benefits of exact match domain names. Back when Google engineers were dismissive of it some of the smart money was dismissive of what the engineers stated and made plenty of money from it. But I have prettymuch stopped buying domains at this point...as in most cases the valuations generally don't make sense on a risk adjusted basis in the current market (let alone what the market will look like after the introduction of +1 & other brand signals).

Deep Pocketed SEOs Are Selling Their Domain Names

The person who was likely the single SEO most responsible for running up the price of exact match domain names (he over-paid for some of them based on the presumption that the numbers would back out similarly to some of his earlier investments in a market that was dominated by a government-sponsored bubble) has now become a domain seller.

You don't get much more amoral capitalist opportunistic than this person is (see the following before and after for his payday loans effort)

Now even he is now dumping many of his exact match domains, which I discovered in the most recent Media Options newsletter:

In March Matt Cutts talked down exact match domain names, but the truth is that Google never really needed to discount them, simply by adding more criteria to the relevancy algorithm which boosts brands they already had the same impact.

Search has moved away from relevancy toward promoting brands. As SEOs we don't control Google. We can only focus on promoting that which they reward.

The smart money is now saying that domain names are generally significantly overpriced, especially as an asset class valued based on SEO potential.

Where do you place your wager?

Categories: 

domain names

google

Source: http://www.seobook.com/category-killer-domain-names

Conversation Marketing Internet Marketing Strategy e-mail marketing

Google Panda Algorithm Exploit Uncovered

In the Manufacturing Consent DVD a newspaper executive highlighted that they liked to have a 60/40 ratio between ads and content.

Google says that if over half your page's content is ads then your pages are of insufficient value.

What Google engineers miss when delivering sermons to webmasters is that Google is fine with disappearing their organic search results for self promotion & even advertises that consumers can't tell the difference between their search ads and the organic results.

You see, tricking people is bad. Unless you are Google. In which case you have to hit the quarterly numbers.

Everyone else needs to read Google platitudes, create deep content, and pray to turn the corner before bankruptcy hits.

Matt Cutts stated that you should make your products like Apple products by packaging them nicely.

For illustrative purposes:

It was easy for Google to speak from a moral high ground when their growth was above 50% a year, but now that growth has slowed over the past couple years they have been willing to do things they wouldn't have. In November of 2009 when I saw the following I knew the writing was on the wall.

Since then Google has only dialed up local more. If you are not in the top 1 or 2 organic (non-localized) search results then in some cases when they get localized you end up somewhere on page #2.

When Google Instant launched, we got to test Google's 50% content theory. And they hit the numbers perfectly. A full 50% of web users could see 2 organic listings above the fold when instant was extended (the other half of folks could only see one or none).

As if the massive Youtube promotion & the magically shrinking search results for everyone else were not bad enough, with Panda they suck at determining the original content source.

This site you are reading wasn't hit by Panda, which makes us lucky, as it allows us to rank as high as #3 for our own content (while Google pays dozens of other webmasters to snag it wholesale and wrap it in AdSense).

We got lucky though. If we had been hit by Panda (like 10,000's of other webmasters) we probably wouldn't even rank on the first page of the search results for our own content.

When Google screws up source attribution they are working counter to open culture, because they are having you bear 100% of the cost of content production, and then they are immediately paying someone else for your work. Do that long enough and the quality content disappears & we get a web full of eHow-like sites.

And yet Google tells us the secret recipe (which may or may not work at some unknown time) is to pour more money into content development.

The solution to this problem is more deep content. Keep feeding Google (and their AdSense scraper partners) and hope that after you pour $50,000 into your site that some small fraction of it ends up back in your bank account (while the larger share winds up in Google's and their AdSense partners).

As bad as all that is, I recently got selected as a lucky beta user for the next version of Google's search results. Notice the horizontal spacing that drives down the organic search results. After the top AdWords listings the organic listings start off 88 pixels lower on the screen.

I have a huge monitor. Less than 10% of people have a monitor as large as mine. Before this new search result I saw 8 organic search results above the fold on my large monitor. Now it is down to 5 (and that is with no Google video ad, no Google vertical comparison ad like the above credit card one, no browser toolbars, no browser status bar, and only 1 of the advertisers having ad sitelinks).

So how does Google score now on their ad to content ratio?

When Google's new search results roll out, there are some keywords where less than 1 in 3 searchers will be able to see a single organic listing above the fold! And lest you think that spacing is about improving user experience, notice how wide the spacing in the left column is, and how narrow the right rail AdWords spacing is. This is all about juicing revenues & hitting the number.

Which leads me to the Google Panda loophole I mentioned in the headline. It is an easy (but painful) one-step process.

All Google's propaganda about the horrors of paid inclusion look absurd when compared against the search result with 0 organic listings above the fold for half of desktop computer users.

The only "exploit" here is how Google is paying people to steal other's content, then ranking the stolen stuff above the original source.

PS: wake up Larry! ;)

Categories: 

google

Source: http://www.seobook.com/google-panda-algorithm-exploit

e-mail marketing web site design marketing communications online marketing

New Hootsuite Analytics Reporting: First look

Hootsuite just launched a new analytics tool, and it's pretty slick. It doesn't do anything new, but it integrates Hootsuite, Google Analytics and other data in a really elegant, white-label-able interface.

Cool features include:

• Nice PDF report export;
• Basic branding: Put in your logo, contact info;
• Track Google Analytics against retweets;
• Track Facebook likes/unlikes all on one page;
• 'Quick analytics' looks at clicks on ow.ly traffic, Facebook response, Google Analytics data (these aren't new, but they're easier to find).

It's simple, elegant and easy to use. Here's a quick report I set up. I haven't used Ow.ly much, so you'll have to use your imagination a bit:

Other stuff

• 25 tips for building your own agency
• Trash the web sites: What Gawker Media (probably) said
• 11 signs you're not ready to run your own company
• Groupon’s days are numbered
• Discounts: The vicodin of internet marketing
• Companies need tension: Avoiding the ‘you go’ effect.
• My SEO copywriting e-book - $7

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/conversationmarketing/MRJI/~3/6_vU9-8WsJY/new-hootsuite-analytics.htm

seo Conversation Marketing Internet Marketing Strategy e-mail marketing

Poke The Box. Just do it in private.

“Are you OK sir?”

The guy next to me at SeaTac gate S8 was eyeing me dubiously as I sat reading Seth Godin’s Poke The Box. I’d just finished yet another passage that made me think “Hell YES!” Apparently, I was also nodding vigorously. My inner monologue was showing. It creeped out my fellow traveler.

He didn’t call the TSA. Instead, he called me ‘sir’. Sir? SIR? Should I get my walker?!

Take this story as a warning: Reading Poke The Box while conscious, thinking and/or breathing may lead to strong feelings of “Hell yeah” and “Damn right”. It may also get you off your ass. If you’re leading a large, publicly-traded company or a political party, avoid this book at all costs.

Otherwise, read it in private, or people may think you're nuts.

Like many of Seth Godin’s books, Poke The Box (PTB) is a series of small, digestible ideas written to inspire. As he explains, he’s not providing a blueprint or a map—that’s your job. He’s explaining why it’s so important that you make things happen. He encapsulates that idea in the first of several great quotes in this book:

“Please stop waiting for a map. We reward those who draw maps, not those who follow them.”

And about adaptation:

“Part of initiating is being willing to discover that what you end up with is different from what you set out to accomplish. If you’re not willing to discover that surprise, it’s no wonder you’re afraid to start.

Amen.

Later on, he writes about the moral obligation to start:

“_Once you’ve engaged with an organization or a relationship or a community, you owe it to your team to start. To initiate. To be the one who makes something happen._

To do less is to steal from them."

SAY IT BRUTHAH!!!!! TESTIFY!!!!!!!!

Ahem. Sorry.

I won’t say that Poke The Box broke new ground for me. If you’re the target audience, it won’t be revolutionary for you, either. Instead, it will reinforce values you probably already have:

• Change is important.
• Without it, the best organization dies.
• You have to innovate. Have to. It’s not an option, it’s a moral imperative.

If you’re not the target audience, read Poke The Box, and you might join it. Read this book and you’ll want to create a ruckus.

And that’s good.

Poke The Box, by Seth Godin
[ Kindle Edition ]
[ Paper Edition ]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/conversationmarketing/MRJI/~3/iBoUjV7OYDg/poke-the-box-review.htm

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10 tips for Larry Page

Yo, Larry. I know we go way back. So I’ve got a bit of business advice for ya:

1. Keep your eye on the ball. Google’s been all over the damned map: Wave, for heaven’s sake? Focus on what you do well: Making tons of stuff findable.
2. Keep spam in check. Right now, your rankings are starting to resemble my inbox in 2002: More spam than useful. With all those smart people you’ve got, you can certainly address this. Get to work.
3. Make social searchable. You didn’t write a million books. You scanned them and made ‘em searchable. Hmmm. Maybe that’d be a good idea in the social space, too?
4. Drop instant. Watching you guys do Instant Search has been like watching Laurence Olivier get an anvil dropped on his head: You’re supposed to be the height of your craft. Don’t resort to parlor tricks.
5. Find a new PageRank. If you enjoy hearing your name a lot, find the next guiding factor for PageRank. Links no longer work. I’m tired of explaining to clients that their competitors are kicking their asses by building sham link networks that I can unravel in 15 minutes.
6. Break up the company. Android’s great (I own a Droid) but it shouldn’t be siphoning resources away from search. Take Google back to being a search company. Make Android its own thing. Make Docs/Gmail their own things. Continue to integrate them all. But don’t ever make Matt Cutts say he didn’t have the resources to fight spam, ever again. Ever ever ever.
7. Fix the ranking pages. If you stuff any more crap into the rankings pages they’re going to cause seizures. I know why: You’re chasing dollars. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re starting to look more like Bing than Bing.
8. Remember the mantra. “Don’t be evil” isn’t about what other people think. It’s about you and your team doing the right thing. You got rich that way.
9. Remember the mantra, 2. Sometimes, doing your work badly is just as evil as doing bad works. Clean up your act. Reduce noisy inputs, and find new, harder-to-compromise ones.
10. Have a sense of mission. Yes, Google is a profit-seeking business. But you also have to take some responsibility for the fact that you, in large part, power the web. You don’t have to be a martyr. That sense of mission can help Google grow and profit, too. Go off-mission, though, and you’ll end up being one more commodity.

Drop me a line some time. We can go grab a beer, talk strategy and throw darts at pictures of Mark Zuckerberg.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/conversationmarketing/MRJI/~3/pyVoJLgFhRE/10-tips-larry-page.htm

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Free Competitive Research on Domains

We love free stuff, especially when it comes to SEO tools and SEO data. Recently, we published a post on how to do a good bit of competitive research with free tools and now we are going to do that for competitive research on domains.

There are a number of tools we can use here. We are going to focus on using these tools to help evaluate a domain from a competitive research point of view:

• SeoBook Toolbar
• SemRush
• Compete
• AdWords Keyword Tool
• Open SIte Explorer
• Alexa
• Quantcast
• Google Ad Planner

It is worth noting that we reviewed the paid elements of most of the prominent spy tools about a year ago.

Getting Started with a Domain

Researching a competitive domain can have many benefits. Beyond evaluating the strength of a domain with respect to age, links, and engagement statistics you can find things like:

• High traffic keywords
• Profitable keywords
• Low hanging keyword fruit (keywords they are ranking for mostly off domain/brand authority)
• Site structure
• Competing domains and overlapping keywords
• Keywords being purchased for PPC

So you can do a few different things with domains. You might want to evaluate the strength of the domain as a whole if you are beyond the keyword research phase or perhaps you want to do that in addition to checking out potential keywords you can add to your campaign.

There are a few different tools you can use for this and I like to start with the SeoBook Toolbar because it's quick, easy, and incorporates the tools I want to use in one spot.

Using the SeoBook Toolbar

The toolbar links through to a ton of external tools and most of the tools listed above. It also provides a way to quickly review a bunch of the most relevant data with a simple click. Turn the toolbar on, visit the domain you want to research, and click the blue "I" icon shown below, next to the SeoBook icon:

Once you click on the blue info ball you get all this nice data immediately:

So in what really amounts to a quick, 3 step process you are able to instantly see helpful information about:

• High level site data about age, Pagerank, indexed pages, and recent cache date
• Link data from Yahoo! Site Explorer, Open Site Explorer, and Majestic SEO
• Rough traffic estimates from sources like Compete.Com, Alexa, and SEM Rush
• Social stats
• Important directory links

It will be somewhat clear just by looking at the chart how strong the domain is. In this case, the domain is one of the stronger ones on the web.

You can link through to each tool/statistic from this chart and also from the icons on the toolbar itself.

As you continue down the toolbar you can see the link-thru icons Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO, and Blekko. The "Dir" dropdown will show you the appearance of the site in the more important directories on the web.

Then you also can link thru to the Archive, Compete.Com, SEM Rush, the free SeoBook Rank Checker (to quickly check rankings of a keyword on a particular domain you might be researching), and the X-Ray Tool.

The "Competition" drop down will show you the following:

So here you can link through to a variety of sites to check out all sorts of data points about a domain including, but no limited to, domain registration, demographic data, and keyword data.

If that weren't enough, the toolbar also offers more tools:

The first link gives you the following drop down, which links through to a bunch of keyword tools based on the keyword you enter in the form field to the left of the book:

The highlighter highlights the typed in keyword on the current page and then you've got a link to SeoBook archives, recommended RSS feeds, no-follow highlighting, and a button which allows you to compare up to 5 domains at once.

Typically, I use the SeoBook toolbar as my research assistant of sorts when researching different aspects of a domain. It links through to the relevant tools I need to properly evaluate and research a particular domain.

SemRush

An appropriate disclaimer would be that data can be limited on these free accounts but they can help establish a rough baseline to start off of. From the SeoBook toolbar you can easily link through to an SemRush report which gives you limited data on:

• Organic keywords a site is ranking for
• Keywords a site is buying in AdWords
• Domain competition in organic SERPS
• Domain competition in AdWords
• Actual AdWords ad copy
• Potential traffic/ad buyers/sellers based on the AdWords and Organic competitive data

A comprehensive review on SemRush can be found here.

Focusing on the organic keywords, you can get the top ten keywords driving traffic to a site (disclaimer: Spy tools should be taken as rough data points rather than data that is 100% accurate. In order to achieve 100% accuracy you'd need access to a site's analytics :D )

This can be helpful if you are trying to research whether traffic is heavily branded traffic or if it's more keyword centric traffic as well as the overall rankings of a site across a wide spectrum of keywords.

In the above example you can see that many of the top keywords are brands but they also rank highly for really competitive, core keywords. This conicides with our initial findings, via the SeoBook Toolbar, that this site is a very strong site.

If you wanted to dig deeper you can subscribe to one of SemRush's paid accounts. We also offer up to 1,000 results per query (organic data) with our Competitive Research Tool (which pulls data from SemRush) in both our membership options We also have our own custom data calculations inside the Competitive Research Tool which are pretty sweet :)

Compete

Compete is a more expensive competitive research tool but they do give you a fair amount of data for free on a domain.

So here is an example of the free data they give on a "Site Profile" report:

Some of the key points missing on a free account are (besides full access to the teaser data) are demographics and some deeper engagement metrics.

We can get some semblance of demographic data from Google Ad Planner and Quantcast for free.

This report can give you some, albeit small, keyword data outside of a Google tool in addition to traffic history (searching for victims of Panda as an example) and some high level signals about how many sites the domain is getting traffic from.
I would use a free Compete site profile to get a really high level overview of traffic size, top keywords outside of a Google tool, and traffic/visitor trends and history.

This report certainly lines up with the site being an extremely competitive one, a large brand with lots of traffic sources, and a site unaffected by the latest Google update.

AdWords Keyword Tool

So once you move away from looking at some keyword and traffic sampling numbers, as well as the solid high level overview provided by the SeoBook Toolbar, you might want to consider site structure and keyword structure.

A neat feature in the AdWords Keyword Tool is you can enter a domain and Google will list the keywords and the page assigned to that particular keyword (in their eyes):

*Other columns were removed to show this feature specifically:

This can be helpful in terms of breaking down the site structure of a competing site, finding profitable keywords they are ranking for but not necessarily targeting, and helping you plan your site structure.

Open Site Explorer

Since this post is on free tools, I would go with Open Site Explorer here (you could also use Yahoo! Site Explorer and Blekko for more data points but OSE offers a really quick, easy to use interface and has tons of link data).

Using this tool you can find things like the anchor text distribution of a site (see if they are targeting keywords that you might be considering or if lots of their anchor text is brand related)

Inside of OSE you can find other key data points like:

• Top linked to pages on the site
• List of linking domains
• External linking pages
• % of no-follow to followed links
• % of internal versus external links
• 301 redirected domains/links

I do like using Yahoo and Blekko as well but I find that when looking at the free data options, OSE provides the deepest data out of the three and it's very easy/quick to use. On the paid side it competes with Majestic SEO which is a solid paid option as well.

Alexa

I think Alexa can be somewhat useful when doing quick and free competitive research, but it's also a tool that gets a bad rap due to internet hype marketers promoting it as the BEST THING EVER!.

We did an in-depth review of Alexa here and a review of their paid tool here. Alexa gives out a few different data points:

• Traffic Stats
• Search Analytics
• Audience Profile
• Clickstream

Within those sections Alexa offers a lot of data points (based mainly on their toolbar data). Here we have data similar to Compete's:

You can also see things like global traffic ranks (where the site ranks in Alexa's Top Sites in each country)

Helpful information on where folks are navigating on the site (if you are in the same market are there site features you could be missing out on?)

Similar to SemRush stats but based on a smaller sample:

Trailing data on traffic being received from search engines:

Keywords that they are growing and keywords where they are slipping:

Potentially profitable keywords they are ranking for (factoring in advertising competition)

They also offer some demographic data compared to a relative baseline figure for each demo section:

Find out what sites people are coming to the site from (possible ad partners or related domains you can target in the same way you are targeting the current one from a competitive research perspective):

Where people are going when they leave:

Again, Alexa's data (like most spy tools) should be taken as rough figures rather than exact data. It's helpful to compare data from multiple sources as you can start to see patterns emerge or you can prove or disprove theories you may have about the site and your proposed method of attack.

Quantcast

Most sites I run across are not "quantified" so the data is a rough estimate (again).

So with Quantcast you can get more of that same traffic data along with some deeper demographic data:

This is on the overview page, there are separate sections for traffic and demographic data which break the information down a bit further:

You can also see data about what other sites are used/liked by visitors of the site you are doing research on:

This is on the demographics page and can give you an idea of what type of customer you'll be encountering which can help in determining how to present your offer and what to offer:

I like to use Quantcast mostly for demographc research on competiting or similar website (similar to products or services I am offering to help shape those offers and the presentation of my site).

Google Ad Planner

Ad Planner offers similar demographic data to Quantcast and similar traffic data to Alexa and Compete.

The big difference is the data is obtained from various Google products so it's probably somewhat safer to assume that the data might be a bit more relevant or accurate since Google has lots more data than any of the tools mentioned above (at least in terms of traffic data).

Ad Planner will show you "Google-ized" data for traffic patterns:

Unique visitor data in addition to Google Analytics data (for those who like to share)

You can also see top search queries:

As well as demographic data and audience interest data:

When to Go Paid

As you can see, free tools can give you lots of data but at some point you might have to scale up to use some paid tools. Paid tools certainly give you more data to work with but you can accomplish a lot of competitive research and background research on a domain with free tools.

Categories: 

seo tools

Source: http://www.seobook.com/free-competitive-research-domains

online marketing seo Conversation Marketing Internet Marketing Strategy