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Blogworld Session Summaries

Andy Beal — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 22:02:31 +0000

The opening day for Blogworld was a great success. While aimed mostly at corporate attendees–the real geeks get here today–there was still enough of a buzz surrounding the inaugural conference.

I spoke on two different panels.

The first looked at SEO for blogs, and I was joined by Vanessa Fox, Stephen Spencer, and Aaron Wall. WebProNews was there filming the session and they put together a video summary for you to enjoy.

I also joined a great panel of social media marketers–Paul Dunay, Paul Gillin. Tom Gerace, Maggie Fox–to discuss how companies can integrate social media with their normal marketing efforts.

K T Cat took excellent notes of the panel if you’d like a recap.

I got to meet a number of great bloggers for the first time–including Dave Taylor, Jim Kukral, Brian Solis, Andy Wibbels, and many more!

Now if you’ll excuse me, the exhibit hall opens today. Dozens of companies with cool blogging toys! Christmas has come early!

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Ad:tech Pics – Day 1

Lee Odden — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 21:23:38 +0000

Arriving at JFK was surprisingly un-eventful and smooth. Carry on is certainly the way to go.

I walked right off the plane and to the taxi area where a town car agreed to take me to Midtown for the same price as a cab. There is no substitute for a ride with legroom.

Upon arrival at the Hilton where the ad:tech NYC conference was being held, I ran into Patrick Gavin of Text Link Ads/Media Whiz. A great guy and very successful as well. I didn’t think to take a photo, but in case you don’t know him, he looks like that fellow on the show “The Bachelor”.

Next I ran into Bruce Clay who will speak Thursday on what is arguably the only session in the whole conference dedicated to search engine optimization. Unfortunately I have to fly out before the session.

In the press room I had the pleasure of running into Larry Chase which turned into (as always) a great conversation about online marketing and in this case, applications for repurposing blog content while avoiding duplicate content issues. David Berkowitz of 360i and Mediapost’s Search Insider Summit was in press room attendance as well.

After meeting with Larry, Kevin Lee stopped by with his new book, “The Eyes Have It”, which I plan on reading when I get back to Minnesota. Congrats to Kevin on the new book.

The exhibit hall floors here at the Hilton are PACKED. There’s literally a maze of rooms on level one with more ad networks and affiliate program vendors than I ever thought a market could bear.

Cheese! On the floor Becky Ryan was doing her magic at the Trellian booth and along came Brandy Shapiro-Babin of WebmasterRadio.FM. We hope Daron gets better ASAP.

While ad:tech is notorious for booth babes, this NYC event had some more colorful characters.

I wasn’t scheduled to cover any sessions today but I did stop by the Internet Economy Session

Oliver Ryan of Fortune moderated and panelists included: Imran Khan, Bob Davis, Gene DeRose and Larry Harris. The conversation ranged from social networks (Facebook) to ad networks to Google phone to valuations for companies in the space.

After the session the scholarly looking Sara Houlebeck said hello along with Jay Sears of ContextWeb. You can find more photos at the ad:tech NYC Flickr Set. You can also find daily blog coverage on the official ad:tech blog where I’ll be posting tomorrow.

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SES – Session: Video Search Optimization

Stoney deGeyter — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 19:41:43 +0000

Multimedia Track, Tuesday 3:15 – 4:30 PM
Video Search Optimization

Moderator: Sapna Satagopan, Associate Analyst, JupiterResearch
Gregory Markel, President, Infuse Creative, LLC
Jeremy Clem, DoubleClick
Sherwood Stranieri, Search Marketing Director, Catalyst Online
Stephen Baker, Chief Revenue Officer, Everyzing

Sherwood Stranieri starts off noting that video is a great way to bring visitors to your site. With the rollout of blended and Universal search video can be even more important because of the exposure that good videos can bring. Sherwood suggests that you can develop some good video content throw a couple samples of them on YouTube which can bring people to your site which will gain traffic and links outside of YouTube.

He suggest using video testimonials or how-to videos is a great way to build up a video library. YouTube and most other video portals are for entertainment only, but they can be used to generate links and even demonstrate some products. He suggests that someone might popularize a business or Do-it-yourself video portal, or other specific niche industries.

Jeremy Clem provides stats on video usage and views. He points out that the videos that get seen most are usually from those on sites that are well-optimized. It’s not just about the video but being sure you optimize the page the video is on to ensure the search engines can know what the video is about. Jeremy suggests that you make it easy as possible to make it so others can distribute your video content. It doesn’t hurt to make it easy for the SEs to find the videos either.

He talked a good deal about being sure your video is also optimized, tags, keywords, titles, etc. All of that matters and if you hope to have your video get spidered and possibly ranked, you need to pay attention to these small details.

Gregory Markel says that we can be an expert video optimizer by the end of his talk. He discusses the various aspects necessary to optimize your video content for search. I won’t rehash everything here but I would say that it’s smart to look at each of the video upload services you use and take advantage of the things they offer that allow you to keyword, tag and title your videos. And use your friends to help you out giving your video a boost. Something worth noting, YouTube takes a frame about a minute and 20 seconds into each video to use as the snapshot. gotta make sure that frame is a good one.

Stephen Baker spent a good amount of time telling us what what his company does and, uh, well, that’s all.

I’m off to start thinking about what kind of videos we can make for our clients. Actually, I just emailed Ed some ideas… and purchased two domain names for it. How fun.

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SES – Session: Web Analytics & Measuring Success

Thomas McMahon — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:39:38 +0000

Analytics is a big part of a website’s success, However, even though analytics software is getting better and cheaper, website owners still don’t really know what to do with it.

Matt Bailey with Site Logic is an excellent speaker on this topic. He talks about how analytics is more than just hits, it’s about segmenting and tracking and learning how your visitors are using the site. Tracking things like page views, top 10 entry pages, keywords and hits are just scraping the surface. There is so much more that should be happening. What are the KPIs? Analytics numbers are just numbers with no action and figuring out what they mean is the key to success.

Matt states that when it comes to analytics it should always start with a question. Then segment by verticals and acquisition methods. Measure segments, compare and contrast results. Then put the results into context and keep a focus on the value to the business. You should also be looking at referrers and segment them by blogs, websites, search and social news and figure out how each of those area are converting. Use that information to figure out in what context your visitors are getting to the site and work on creating more exposure in those areas.

Lionel Largaespada of Agency Services gave some stats on how users feel about analytics. In the findings, 82% of respondents say that web analytics is poorly understood and those that interact with the data don’t understand it. Within those that have been working with analytics platforms for over two years, 56% still find it quite confusing.

Lionel also made a good point that you shouldn’t just use one analytics program. Different programs have different features and you don’t need to choose just one.

Laura Thieme of Bizresearch talked about how we should be concerned with social media tracking. There aren’t too many good tools out there at the moment to automate this, however there are photos and videos in places like YouTube that can contribute to getting leads or brand awareness without the user ever visiting your website. She stated that with five of her clients, she has to use 27 different tools to get all the data.

Laura also talked about how some people are to obsessed with bounce rates now that Google Analytics makes them a bit more visible. However, pages should be researched and analyzed separately to find out why their bounce rate is what it is. It could be that the visitor is picking up the phone and calling which isn’t a bad thing. Or, the user could be coming into the site on phrases that you just aren’t optimized for. So, in that case, the bounce rate isn’t a big deal for those pages.

She closes by saying that we need a new web analytics tool that really takes social media and all the different avenues of the web into mind. She also had a great point about how analytics is like a crossword puzzle. It may take a lot of time to actually figure it all out and not everyone is good at solving the puzzle.

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SES – Session: Personalization, User Data & Search

Thomas McMahon — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:16:05 +0000

The personalization of search results is not the only way to target someone, you can also personalize your website to ensure your visitors feel engaged as soon as they arrive.

Gordon Hotchkiss gave some great examples and data behind personalized search and proved that I actually does work. Everyone remembers the golden triangle right? It shows how people use Google and where they actually click. Now, with personalized search and universal search enabled, the golden triangle changes quite a it. The focus shifts to the content targeted directly to the user and, if there is imagery in the results, the users start there. In their test, Gordon said that when personalized search results were given, users were 3x more likely to click on a results and much less likely to click on ads.

Jonathan Mendez said that personalization is being done daily in the PPC area and nothing works better than personalized results. He gives pointers on all the information that you can get from a Google referral string. Things like language, browser and source are just a few items that you can use to help personalize your content when someone arrives. Even just re-assuring your visitors that you know why they came can help keep them on your site. You can get the searchers keywords from the Google referral URL easy enough and display them on the page as reassurance. He also talked about how testing is a key item. For a client of theirs, one homepage layout worked best on weekdays, where as a different layout worked best on weekends. For another client, simply placing a cookie that remembered their musical interests worked well as when the user returned, they got content targeted towards what they liked in the past.

Richard Zwicky of Enquisite re-enforced some of the items I’ve heard earlier in the day. One was that 80% of searchers don’t go past page one. He also had a great point about optimizing products for the different names that different areas in the country call them. People searching for a house, cabin or villa may all be searching for the exact same thing, just from different parts of the country. Is anyone optimizing for each term? Or are they just picking what they feel is correct? The key point Richard made was that companies need to hire a SEO consultant as there is no way that companies can keep up with the industry unless they have a search consultant to do it for them.

Dave Davies of Search Engine Posting ran through a few patent documents that Google has out there and gave a few interesting points on widgets and personal page rank. Personal page rank is the same idea as Digg authority where as Google may value what an active user bookmarks or visits more than what the casual user does. He also talked about creating widgets to not bring visitors to your website, but get your brand in front of users and, when the user is looking for services you offer, they may be more willing to choose you due to brand awareness.

Personalization on a web page can be very positive to keeping users on your site and making them feel your site has value. Consider a few test to display specific messages to individuals based on their history on your site, or where they are coming from. Personalization seems to be where the web is headed and you can start testing out a few items today and see how your visitors react.

It all rotates around the user.

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SES – Domaining & Address Bar-Driven Traffic Session

Navneet Kaushal — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 16:23:32 +0000

Plenty of people are searching for things by typing in words into their address bars, slapping on a .com and figuring they’ll get to a relevant site. More and more, domainers are ensuring they don’t draw a blank. Domainers purchase popular generic domain names and populate the sites with ads from the major search networks. Learn how the business is growing, how it can deliver relevant traffic to advertisers, as well as issues with typo domains and opt-out issues.

Moderator:

Detlev Johnson, VP, Director of Consulting, Position Technologies

Speakers:

Jon Lisbin, Chief Strategist, Point It, Inc.

Andrew Beckman, President, SearchAdNetwork

Monte Cahn, Founder and CEO, Moniker

Sean Moriarty, Director, Business Development, Yahoo! Search Marketing

In the place of Danny Sullivan now is Detlev Johnson the VP & Director of Consulting, Position Technologies.

First to speak was Monte Cahn of Moniker. The talk stated on a positive note with Monte describing the vusiness of Domain as "healthy". Come to think of it Business.com sold for a king’s ransom of $350 million. This year saw a rise of 25 % as 10.7 million domains were listed within this year’s initial first quarter.

Useful tips for entrepreneurs:-

Choose a natural, organic domain name as this means more search volume.

Pick a descriptive, easy to remember and simple domain moniker.

There are opportunities to make money via CPA, direct-traffic deals, CPC and CPM.

Jon Lisbon of Domain Parking & PPC, in true Jedi style said a "dark side" existed in domaining. With Domain parking business worth an estimate of s alittle below $1 billion. Some other problems that are part of the dark side and existed in domaining are typo-squatting, click fraud, domain kiting or tasting and cyber-squatting.

CHECKLIST:

Investigate your referrer report. If your advertisements are surfacing on sites that generate clicks but if these clicks do not translate into conversions, stay out!

Mention the zero combination sites in your listy of sites that have been excluded.

Next up was Andrew Beckman of SearchAdNetwork.

Andrew states the importance of using a conversion tracking tool or even Google Analytics or another web analytics tool on all of your domains to investigate traffic levels. This way you get an idea of whether you are losing or making money. For supplemental information, Andrew also suggests using Google’s new placement report through which one can even know the source of your traffic.

A current trend among major corporates today is the acquisition of generic sites which are then redirected to the main site through a 301.

Apparently yahoo too has a similar tool which they will be unveiling very soon.

The fourth and last speaker of the day was Sean Moriarty, who is the Director, Business Development of Yahoo! Search Marketing. Moriarty states that parked sites have evolved and progressed to now becoming full-on, full-fledged websites. Depending on factors like trademark typos, conversion rates (CR), domain suitability etc quality search engines like Yahoo! filter out domains. These are all done to serve the advertiser better.

TIPS:

To create a domain name of popular keyword or query use both .com and .net. However, if you are creating company domain names, make of every possible variation.

Stealth acquisition is a good idea for those seeking to buy domain names.

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SES – Personalization, User Search & Data Session

Navneet Kaushal — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 16:21:15 +0000

This year, Google made its personalized search service much more the default for many users. Other search engines have user data that could be used to reshape search results. This session looks at existing and possible moves in the space.

Moderator:

Chris Sherman, Co-Chair, SES San Jose

Speakers:

Jonathan Mendez, Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, OTTO Digital

Richard Zwicky, Founder & CEO, Enquisite

Dave Davies, CEO, Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning, Inc.

Gordon Hotchkiss, President & CEO, Enquiro Search Solutions Inc.

Q&A Speakers:

Sepandar Kamvar, Google

Tim Mayer, Director of Product Management, Yahoo! Inc.

First to speak on Personalization, User Search And Data is Gordon Hotchkiss of Enquiro Search Solutions Inc.

What drives personalization?

User volunteered information

Search history

Web history

Community choices

Task context

Geo targeting

Platform information

Origin of search

The crux of the discussion on Personalization, User Data, & Search were:-

Personalization has changed the landscape of how people use search. Reports of Eye tracking conclude that after search became personalized, our focus has been turned towards organic listings while also giving predominance to the listings in the 3rd, 4th and 5th positions in the SERPs too.

In Google land, personal rank is a status of importance which are granted to people. As many websites today want to swap links with those of sites with hig page ranks, in the coming years webmasters will then want links from other websites with high PR.

Sepandar Kamvar of Google stated that Google favors building widgets. Besides the No.1 search engine is working on creating results for the keyword “Zero Word Query” with iGoogle.

Richard Zwicky, Founder & CEO, Enquisite states that if you want a rank in SERPs, the answer lies in ads. The future for SEOs is getting harder and harder. Therefore, optimization campaigns have to become more hi-tech for which one also requires good research tools and reports.

Tim Mayer says that yahoo! is focusing all its energies on Social Data. Use services such as del.icio.us, Sphinn, Digg, etc to advance yourself.

Make your visitors find the correct link to the site that they are seeking and this will better your chances of top return to SERPS.

IMAGE SOURCE: SE Round table

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It’s a Targeted Targeted World

Anil Batra — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 19:50:13 +0000

In a recent survey CNET asked AOL, Ask.com, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo about their privacy policies and behavioral targeting. In some cases they asked follow-up questions for clarification.

Here are the results:

Source: http://news.com.com/How+search+engines+
rate+on+privacy/2100-1029_3-6202068.html

So what did the Search engines say about Behavioral Targeting?

AOL was very open about using Behavioral Targeting. They have been using Revenue Science and recently purchased Revenue Science’s competitor Tacoda.

ASK said they do not use behavioral targeting. I have not paid much attention to ASK so I cannot comment if that is true or not.

ASK said they do not use behavioral targeting. I have not paid attention to ask so cannot comment if that is true or not.
Google said they do not use behavioral targeting. However as I showed you last month, they use same session targeting, I call it behavioral targeting. Their following answers were not clear to me

"CNET: Do you do behavioral targeting, meaning showing ads to users based on their behavior across multiple queries?
Grand: We are committed to protecting user privacy. We also want to provide users with a more rewarding online experience by making the advertising and content users see relevant to them. We believe the targeting capabilities, reporting and analytics we offer today provide advertisers with an excellent ROI and provide a high-quality user experience. Currently, our system incorporates a large number of signals (such as the user’s query, the user’s location, type of site, content, and the advertiser’s landing page) when targeting and ranking ads. We have not focused on demographic targeting to date for targeting ads on search result pages."

Isn’t that what is called behavioral targeting? Demographic is one element and is not the main ingredient for Behavioral Targeting, Behavioral Targeting is based on behavior, demographic provides another criteria to segment the behavior by but is not required. Once again, do not confuse Behavioral Targeting with targeting based on Demographic information. Seems like Google is saying since we do not use Demograohic information we are not doing Behavioral Targeting.

"CNET: We weren’t able to figure out your answer to our question asking whether you do behavioral targeting. In other words, if I search for "New York City vacation" in one query and "vacation hotels" in a second query a moment later, does Google.com evaluate the two responses, figure out that I’m probably looking for New York City hotels, and display ads appropriately?
Grand (Google): No.

Well, I showed some examples of it last month, check out my article titled "Ad Targeting on Google Search Engine".

MSN: Representative of MSN said that they offer Behavioral Targeting through AdCenter. He indicated that they will begin offering behavioral ad targeting on third-party sites. He also said that MSN uses some demographic data from services such as Hotmail and Windows Live for targeting but uses in non-identifiable fashion."

Yahoo, was very open about using behavioral targeting. According to yahoo, "Per our privacy policy, when a user is logged into a Yahoo product or service, they are not anonymous to us. Logged-in users may receive customized ads based on general demographic categories such as geo-location, gender, and/or age range."

What does this all mean?

Well, Behavioral Targeting has arrived, you will be targeted (and already are weather you know it or not). Yahoo, MSN and AOL are doing it. Google, even if they are denying it, is already targeting you. ASK will follow suite soon. "It’s a Targeted Targeted Targeted Targeted World".

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Google, Yahoo Reps Speak At SES Latino 2007

Doug Caverly — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 22:15:38 +0000

At SES Latino 2007 there was, as you might expect, a focus on the search market as it pertains to Central and South America; representatives from both Google and Yahoo see a huge potential for growth in the region.

We can begin with the keynote, which was given by Gonzalo Alonso, Google’s General Manager for Spanish-Speaking Latin America. Search Engine Roundtable has provided a transcript, and, according to Alonso, Latin America is “[g]rowing faster than the US, most of Europe and places in Asia.”

Also, in the event you’ve noticed Google building in Kenya, Israel, and China – just about everywhere other than the countries to America’s south – Alonso continued, “In the last 12 months, Latin America has become a number one priority for Google.”

And thus began the conference. Later on, speakers at one session outlined the importance of mobile search in the Spanish-speaking market. “61% of US Hispanics own cell phones,” announced Sarah Carberry, Google’s Sales and Marketing Multicultural Development Manager. “Mobile searching, and therefore advertising, is on the rise.”

Rafael Jimenez, the General Manger of Yahoo Hispanic America’s Advertiser and Publisher Group (and also the holder of another really long title), agreed, listing several contributing factors. “Mobile data plans are getting cheaper,” he pointed out, “[a]wareness is increasing,” there is an “[i]ncrease in mobile content/applications,” and “[c]ellular networks are getting faster.”

Jimenez also emphasized the importance of social search in Latin America. “The good thing about social search is that you’re leveraging the knowledge of the collective, rather than relying solely on the machines,” he stated. “A lot of people are looking at alternative ways to find the answers they’re looking for on the web.”

And a lot of people, as the very existence of SES Latino 2007 proves, live within the Latin American market. Businesses who keep that in mind will probably do quite well.

Windows Live Platform Discussion

Darren Straight — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 20:39:40 +0000

Windows Live is best known as a collection of end-user offerings – like Messenger, Spaces, Search, Hotmail and a whole bunch more. It’s also in the process of evolving into a platform. Koji Kato and Danny Thorpe, from the Windows Live platform team, discuss with Catherine Heller a Windows Live Technical Evangelist on Channel 9 their views on internet software and what it means to “componentize” Windows Live.

Koji sets some context by drawing an analogy to Office (00:02:27), and its early evolution from a set of end-user targeted apps to a set of components. Beta versions of the Windows Live Contacts Control and Spaces Photo Control (described by Danny around 00:11:37) represent some of the initial Windows Live components, and include customization plans (00:21:21), international/localization support (00:19:13), and support for multiple browsers (00:18:15).

Koji Kato is a Group Program Manager on the Windows Live platform team.

Danny Thorpe is Architect on the Windows Live platform team.

The interview was conducted by Catherine Heller, Windows Live Technical Evangelist (who you may remember from her former Windows Vista evangelism days).

Check out the video here.

But Koji, why aren’t you blogging yet? you said at the 2nd Windows Live Session in London last year that you would think about it! surely you haven’t decided not too!

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