I thought Tamar’s post at Techipedia on The Great Social Media Traffic Debate: Niche or General Networks? was pretty good and Tamar Weinberg, when I meet her here in NYC, always strikes me as pretty smart and connected woman - she’s aware of pretty much everything that’s happening in the Tech World, in Social Media and in the Search World.  I don’t think of her so much as an Analyst, yet her Traffic Debate piece was good reading - even if it confirms what we already know.

In fact, if you read her post and then download the Military/Buzzlogic presentation we presented last week (see Social Media Analysis Presentations from Search Engine Strategies San Jose) (see below) ….

sessanjose08_social-media-analysis_tparsons When I brought Military.com and Buzzlogic together I wasn’t really sure what the outcome would be - wisely, Breanna Wigle, living in the Bay Area, was able to meet directly with Buzzlogic, and to her credit, come up with a 5K insertion order to test the concept of Social Media here.  I feel we broke new ground - really new ground - and I give Breanna Wigle a lot of credit for being able to even get Military.com to take a chance.

… you’ll see that Social Media traffic is not only a superior way to get new visitors to a site - but … Social Media traffic, I found, acts in a more directed way than Search Traffic - (darn! I just uttered blasphemy in the Search World).

Yes, depending on the context - Social Media Traffic from Niche Social Networks - traffic from Social Media will typically be more directed and focused than Search Traffic, and paradoxically, often have a lower pages per visit and higher bounce rate while having a higher “engagement” level and more of a “trust” factor.

You may ask me how that can be?

Easy - you know those TinyURLs in a Twitter feed?  How about a Facebook link or a FriendFeed link?  How long do you think a visit to your site from one of those sources is going to last? Not long, because they are looking directly at the content they want - they don’t have to search for it - they found it!

I wrote a post / review on Ranking Manager 6.0 over at The Analytics Guru that I hope you'll read -

Ranking Manager 6.0 Review from Website Management Tools

There really aren't too many choices for good Search Engine Ranking software and I've been using Ranking Manager 1.0 for quite a while - and found it much better than Web Position Gold and perhaps easier to work with than Agent Web Ranking.

Now, Ranking Manager 6.0 runs as a fully Relational Database that you can run custom SQL Queries on - it's also got full Unicode Support - a big deal now that more and more business is international - and therefore, search engine listings need to be monitored in a Geo-centric and multi-language environment - and Ranking Manager 6.0 is, I believe, the best software for that kind of report.

Don't take my word for it - read my review and then try out Ranking Manager 6.0  using a fully functional 14 day trial - and see for your self.

I also want to thank Michael Lange (who owns Website Management Tools and wrote Ranking Manager 1.0 and 6.0) for providing such great support for the original Ranking Manager (1.0) and this product (Ranking Manager 6.0) for whom I supplied some of the ideas (but he ran with them).

I'm very happy with Ranking Manager 6.0 now that I'm running it and seeing what it can do. 

Did you ever get the feeling that you left money of the table because you needed to spend money to make more money - but you didn't know how much to spend or how much you'd miss out if you didn't spend it?

I read a post today in Andrew Goodman's blog - Traffick - titled Relative Complexities of Paid and Organic Search, and Implications for Marketing Effectiveness were Andrew says Paid Search traffic returns superior ROI to the same about of Organic Search Traffic ROI.

I agree that  Paid Search superior to Organic for ROI - Traffik and believe Paid Search is 4 times more effective, visitor to visitor, than Organic Search Traffic - at least, given the stats below.

In fact, it's entirely conceivable that a calculation can be made that would tell you if pays to spend money advertising and by how much - after all, in the site below, if they did nothing, no paid at all, it would take them an average of 54 visitors to get one Newsletter sign up.  On the other hand, when they run a Paid Search Campaign, one out of every 13 visitors from Paid Search Campaigns signs up for the Newsletter.

Ok, you don't spend the money and you get some sign-ups (saved money) but by not spending it - you left more money on the table that you could have made - so it's possible to calculate at what point a site starts to get meaningfully ahead.

I'm not a math wiz, but I see the need for a program like that - based on a site's analytics (perhaps it already exists, I bet it does and I just haven't come across it) but if it doesn't exist, someone should go and write that application.

But the application should not be a fill in spreadsheet - rather, I'd like to see it based on a site's actual analytics - you'd almost have to have that or else you'd just be plugging in numbers to an online form and not really know for sure if you should spend more or not.

Ideally - I see such a calculation in Google AdWords Account Management and Microsoft AdCenter's account management - but it could also be part of Bid Management tools, providing the actual conversion and visitor data, from Organic, Paid and Other Sources are captured. 

I put a lot of thought into Paid Search superior to Organic for ROI - Traffik, hopefully a good read for you. 

Really tired tonight - really, really tired - it's been a long day in snowy Boxbourgh, Mass, where I'm staying till Thursday -learning Visual Sciences and meeting with my team at Monster.com.

Found out earlier tonight that I was written up in SearchEngineWatch.com about my presentation last night at Aspen - here's a link to the presentation - Download SEOSEMWebAnalytics.ppt (1070.5K)  and here's the blog post that mentions me.

However, I wrote in more detail about the writeup in a post on TheAnalyticsGuru.com titled  Written up in SearchEngineWatch.com.

I'm going to be speaking about Search Analytics at the SEO Meetup that happening next Monday - read about it on the HitTail Blog

NYC SEO Meetup

Hi everyone, please stop by Aspen Lounge if you're in the New York City area this Monday, February 11th. There will be a short talk from our own Mike Levin, Kevin Heisler (executive editor of Search Engine Watch), and Marshall Sponder (analytics specialist at Monster.com). Doors open at 5:30 and the formalities begin at 6:00. It should prove to be a great chance to network with other search marketing professionals and bloggers as we already have over 30 people who have RSVP'd for the event.

Details are available on Meetup.com!

 

I have been saying this for a while - 5 Reasons Why Rankings Are A Poor Measure Of Success and there's nothing new in Jill Whalen's post but it's interesting that rankings, more and more, mean less - because it's almost impossible to figure out what's going to change next month, or next year.

Besides, Search Engines come up with new ways to enforce penalties all the time - and what was good last year, last month, yesterday, all of a sudden can get you in the dog house.

On the other hand, if you play it totally safe, you'll often not be doing much SEO or be ranking highly in Search Results, except by accident - and then, figuring out why your ranking well, when you didn't plan to - could be more work than it's worth.

Which is exactly what Google wants - to frustrate us, so we'll give up trying to optimize and "manipulate" content.

I'm chuckling that Microsoft actually went ahead and did exactly what I asked them to do ..two years ago..with the adCenter Add-in for Excel 2007 which allows an AdCenter user to do extensive keyword research and prediction of demand/pricing within Excel.

When I first started using AdCenter, a few years back, I found it useful for many ideas I was experimenting with - but I found myself having to do way too much work to pull the data out of AdCenter and put it into a spreadsheet form.

I first heard about the adCenter add-in for Excel early last month (Microsoft AdCenter adds Keywork Analysis Excel Spreadsheet plugin)  and just about all the work I did in the posts listed below, took me much longer because I didn't have the Excel Plug-in:

Here's the instructions (Direct from Microsoft) along with the chance to sign up for a Webinar on January 23rd, 2008:

Download the adCenter Add-in^Beta today to start researching keywords to help reach the right audience—and capture and convert the right customer.

 

Ready to get started?

Follow three simple steps to get the adCenter Add-in^Beta tool—and begin optimizing your campaigns today.

	1. Download a free Microsoft Office Professional with Excel 2007 60-day trial. adCenter Add-inBeta is only compatible with Microsoft Excel 2007. Already have Excel 2007? Jump ahead to step 2.

	2. Download the adCenter Add-inBeta.(64 MB, ZIP) Note: Transfer times may vary depending on connection type.

	3. Register for the webinar. Join our adCenter experts on January 23, 2008 to get the most out of this new tool and stay on top of your game.

adCenter Add-in ^Beta Support and Feedback

Check out what people are saying about the new adCenter Add-in^Beta in the adCenter Add-in forum. Learn tips, troubleshoot, and share your feedback.

 

Learn more about the adCenter Add-in tool:

Download the product guide. (515 KB, PDF)
Download the features list. (1 MB, PDF)
Download the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). (1.1 MB, PDF)
Download the installation guide. (884 KB, PDF)

Turns out, according to a French Researcher, that Google and Yahoo offer the same link in the first search result 27% of the time, according to a French researcher.

The study was done using French Search Engines though … so I'm not sure if the same results carry over here:

 "..The detailed examination of links returned is equally instructive. The first link offered by Google and Yahoo is identical in 27% of cases. In a previous study (using a slightly different protocol), conducted in December 2005, the proportion was 24%. The order of magnitude is thus similar.

The most surprising result came from the use of Wikipedia. This use was marginal in December 2005 (see study). At the time, for all 10 results on the first page, 2% of the links proposed by Google and 4% of those proposed by Yahoo came from Wikipedia. On the first link alone, Google offered no Wikipedia results (at least not in our sample) and Yahoo offered 7%.

The strategies have changed completely. Today 27% of Google’s results on the first link alone come from Wikipedia, as do 31 % of Yahoo’s."

Kinda wonder if the answer to being #1 is write a lot of WikiPedia entries and then let WikiPedia be number #1 - that's got to be easier then trying to be number one in Google and Yahoo - how many people can get up to the top 27% of the time.   But Wikipedia can, apparently.

 "..How can this sudden interest in Wikipedia by both engines be explained? It is undoubtedly connected with the increasing difficultly engines have in calculating satisfactory ranking. The good old days of PageRank algorithms are over. It was quite well suited to a fairly stable network over time that was quite highly interconnected. The explosion of blogs and news sites has changed the situation considerably. The majority of the Web is now of a volatile and ephemeral nature. In all but exceptional cases, posts and news bulletins are hardly interlinked."

Tell me about it!  Between all the stuff human evaluators do to muck up PageRank and the inability of Google and Yahoo's search algorithms to handle the varieties of content out there, created by people, properly - rankings are…well, not only hard to predict, but often don't really reflect the best content.  

Often, it's people gaming the system that makes it to the top - the Search Engines tend to act inconsistently - sometimes penalizing and other times … not (esp if the listing is from a big advertiser…it used to be mostly Yahoo that let search spam slide, but now Google is  behaving more and more like Yahoo).

Is it coincidence that Search Analytics Select™ from Compete.com and “comScore Marketer”, a New Interactive Search Intelligence Service from comScore were announced on the same day?

The Search Analytics Select™, provides the following information including competitive search performance within specific segments:

1. How many “searchers” are in a given segment each month?
2. What terms and engines does this segment use?
3. How does my segment performance differ versus rivals?
4. What can I do to improve my performance?

comScore Marketer provides these features:

1. Create more efficient and cost-effective campaigns using paid and organic search terms.
2. Identify high performing search terms at a site and category level.
3. Analyze searchers and the use of search terms by demographic segment.
4. Discover high-potential consumer segments and pinpoint the optimal search sites and search terms to reach them.
5. Find out who is competing on search terms to identify prime affiliate marketing partners.
6. Maximize the ROI of search and online marketing investments.

I haven't seen either product but it looks like there's a significant amount of overlap in both - however, Compete's data comes from ISP's while comScore's data comes from Panel data - and I've learnt to distrust Panel data..but that's just me.

Any bet which service is going to end up being more expensive?

Compete.com just announced the availability of Search Analytics Select™, a new service designed for marketers looking to combine their customer segmentation strategies with search engine marketing.

The Search Analytics Select™, provides the following information including competitive search performance within specific segments:

1. How many “searchers” are in a given segment each month?
2. What terms and engines does this segment use?
3. How does my segment performance differ versus rivals?
4. What can I do to improve my performance?

I haven't seen any examples of Search Analytics Select™ reports yet, so I don't have an opinion, yet, on Search Analytics Select™, .  However, I did notice some segmentation on Compete Search Analytics which I have had extensive access to.

I'm assuming the segmentation by audience in Search Select will be similar to what exists in Compete Search Analytics