Promediacorp : Search Engine Strategists
Promediacorp is a team of online marketing strategists who provide a full range of services to enterprise level corporations.
Our services are intended to help your customers find you on the web, resulting in enhanced visibility, greater conversions, and increased revenue.
We manage search marketing campaigns across many industries, specializing in real estate, luxury brands, and tech.

Link Baiting & Viral Search Success

by Avi Wilensky

Filed under: SES San Jose 2007, Social Media, Viral Marketing, Viral Videos

This is a transcript of the live session in San Jose, August 21, 2007. Subject to typographical errors.

What better way to get links than by doing something that makes people feel compelled to link to you? That’s link baiting — coming up with an idea, a service, even a controversy — that gets people talking and linking your way. A viral campaign is similar — a program, a system or an encouragement that gets people linking to you over time. This session is designed for experienced marketers. Beginners should only attend if they’ve gone through the Link Building Basics session earlier in the conference.

Moderator:

 

Speakers:

 

Rebecca Kelley:

Content specifically aimed to target the linkerati - tool, article, list, video - anything people want to share. Succesful link bait brings in alot of traffic. A clever way to get site noticed, and have people link to it.

Who are the linkerati? The web savvy bloggers, journalists, etc. Focus on tech centric link happy audience. Also keep users in mind.

Linkbait opportunities: Go to various social media and news site. Look for industry relevant content. Look if competitiors have done successful campaigns. Get an idea of what works. Discover the big players in your field. Research blogs, forums, communities. Leverage community after launch. Target community appropriate to your subject.

First - select a content focus - wrote blog post about “dating my ex was like playing doom 2 in nightmare mode”. Meld together branding and viral elements. Want to build brand value - brand association. Want to be on topic if you can, to get keyword relevance.

Web 2.0 look and feel is good, but not essential. Some sketches on paper have gotten many Diggs. Make your link bait simple and user friendly. Target emotions, the emotions that make people link. The linkerati are emotional. They are angry, excited, like controversy - take advantage of this. Don’t forget vanity - stroke the ego. Cartoons, images of people are good examples.

The launch process: Do a little prelaunch PR. Leverage the community - the forums, the blogs. Connect with them - ask opinion before launching your piece. If they contribute - more likely to help out.

Once launched, want to monitor and make sure traffic is handled. First 15 minutes crucial for the RSS community. A succesful piece can get 10,000 visitors and hour from Digg or StumbleUpon. Static pages can handle alot of traffic, dynamic pages might have problems.

Recieving ongoing value from linkbait. Take advtange of traffic increase - get a bump in users - the stickiness factor. People will return. Great way to build userbase. Good link bait is relevant, and continuous. Sometimes traffic pours in for months.

Keep in mind that linkbait is not a sure thing. Sometimes campaigns don’t work out. Sooner or later you will find the formula for success - lots of trial and error. Link bait targets a specific audience. Need to think outside the box and think in their shoes. Figure out what people want to link to.

Link bait is not a quick fix. No set and forget. Need to take advantage of traffic and new users. Can’t be lazy. Clever and fun way to get links, but it is no easy solution.

Cameron Olthius:

Linkbait is remarkable content or feature on your website that compels others to link to you from other sites. Informational, Controversial, Humor, News - first to break a story or a good opinion, and Tools.

Benefits: Links! Duh! It’s link building in mass. Traditional linking is time consuming. Link bait can get 500 to 1000 links in a days effort. Link building in mass. These natural links look great as a backlink profile. Traffic, branding - people percieve you as an authority on a topic. Bookmarks are extra links and they want to revisit your site.

Finding link bait ideas. Find what communities like that are already relevant. Gives great inspiration. Do a brainstorming session based on research - throw on whiteboard. Next, create the content. Make it social media friendly. When they come to a site, they want to get a quick 30 second read, bookmark it, link to it. Don’t spend much time on the site!

Keys to promotion: Have a power account. It’s possible to get content out if not a power user - but if you are the success rate becomes higher. To build a power account, want to provide value to the community. People look at profiles and hate self promotion. Must appear to be a legitimate user. Need good titles and descriptions. Will make or break it. Need to submit content to proper category. Target proper sites. The big guys give good bang for the buck, but many times - niche is better - like Sphinn.

Ideas beyond content: Flash games, viral videos, mashups, images, widgets - very powerful, and tools.

Jenifer Laycock:

It is primarily about links - thats the core. There are side benefits. Works well because people are looking for things to talk about -to post, to blog. Fill that need.

What is viral marketing? More about word of mouth shifted to online world. More than just links - great for brand building and driving conversions. Viral marketing works so well, because people listen to friends, and trustworthy people. People are building trust relationships online - viewed different than advertising. Why viral? Cost is in your idea. No placement cost. Takes alot of creativity and originality, but free placement. Also it creates brand evangelists. Increases your credibility. Finally, there is a rapid response rate. It spreads instantly. Word of mouth on crack!

How? Ask yourself - what sparks passion in customers. Find out where customers are talking - and find out what sparks long threads, and many comments. Play off that. What hasn’t been done before. How will your idea benefit your users? Ask yourself if audience will risk reputation on this. Use other people’s resources. Get ad space without buying an ad. Widgets are great - like MyBlogLog. Cheap example - blog quiz. Huge on Myspace, Facebook.

Be ready to act. Understand how to use social media so when opportunity comes up you can take advantage of this. When opportunity presents itself - be ready to act. Shows her Lactivist site. Prepare the right story. Lengthy blog post filled with humor. Need a buzzworthy hook. Need a call to action. Make it easy to spread. Plant the seeds - send a few emails out. Motivate linking. People who link get a link back.

Chris Boggs:

Plenty of ways to build links without social communities and Digg. Best practices - quid pro quo. Linkbaiting - the valuable thing is the content, and in exchange a link is returned. Getting links on Matt Cutt’s blog is a best practice LOL.

Link Baiting Research: Use Yahoo Site Explorer. Shows tips and tricks. Link baiting is effective in getting links to subpages - because in most cases the bait is not on the homepage. Increases deep link ratio.

Degrees of separation exercise: When looking for links, going to run out of sites in the same topic. Look for closely related content site. Goes out to 6 or 7 degrees of separation. There is a semantic connectivity between the degrees of seperation.

Once mapped, additional research is required for linkbaiting efforts. Examine buzzworthy topics. Look for trends across all the 7 degrees of separation. Participate in communities discussing the issues. Create ubiquitous link bait - which will be more likely to draw links form a larger variety of web sites - and looks very natural! The majority of links should be semantically relevant. Take it viral. One idea builds on another.

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Write comment August 22, 2007 2:30 pm

Are Paid Links Evil? The Debate Between Matt Cutts & The Black Hats

by Avi Wilensky

Filed under: Google, SES San Jose 2007

This is a transcript of the live session in San Jose, August 20, 2007. Subject to typographical errors.

Are Paid Links Evil?
Search engines, especially Google, say don’t do ‘em. But some search marketers say paid links work. Are paid links subverting search quality? Or are they simply a fact of life, here to stay? We explore the issues, in this session.

Moderator:

Speakers:

Opens up with a joke - a new tag - the make me #1 tag! Funny video clip. On the Home Rental Blog.

 

Matt Cutts:

 

Want’s to tell us if its a good strategy - not evilness. It’s the wrong question. Do paid links violate SE guidelines. Yes, they do. Clear. Background info. The FTC was asked about word of mouth marketing, and if you get paid - it should be disclosed.

It’s about disclosure. What’s the user of the web- robots, machines, people. You need to disclose links in a machine readable way. They care about this. 5 ways to do it- meta nofollow, nofollow tags, robots.txt, etc. All OK for telling the machines that its not passing PageRank. Google is OK with buying links - as long as they don’t pass PR. Companies like AdBrite are OK. Shows slide of paid link site with casinos and bad neighborhood. The text above the links are an image - labeled sponsored links. These are images that are not machine readable. This stuff is not good for the web. It’s like littering and going into the carpool lane with one person. Disclosure should be clear and machine readable. What you want to do is create good content is create a good video like the one he showed. It’s gonna get alot of links. Even if you think your doing a good job buying links - you can be dealing with a sloppy seller - in with a crappy crowd of links. Also, you can get duped by cloaking. The seller can make it look like you are seeing links, but the SE doesn’t see it.

 

Google’s approach: Use algorithms and humans. Have a paid link form to tattle on competition. Google and most search engines take strong action, and strong focus.

 

Michael Gray:  

 

Wearing Google shirt. Google is not the government. Not a They have no agenda but to make money.  Don’t listen to corporate propoganda. This is not the way the real world works. They expect you to change your site for them and their flaws. Google wants you to sacrifice profits to make them more profitable, and want you to do it for free. When nofollow was instituded it was supposed to combat blog spam. They changed the rules. Now supposed to be used for paid links. Google took advantage to keep them more profitable.

What is a paid link? Google checkout even had an ad on the page with paid links. Google buys links, we are going to blog about the Google dance. You really don’t know whats a paid link as long as your one of the 2 people involved. Google doesnt like paid links because they work. They dont want you to mess with algo. Nearly impossible without paid links. Reported paid links is shooting self if foot.

Google is trying to give false propoganda, the FTC was an opinion. Google is not the government, cannot pass laws or judge ethics. They create fear of losing rankings to create fear. Google oversteped its bounds. Mission is to organize worlds info. Not to tell you how to build site or how to sell or buy ads or run your business.

 

Follow up question: Would you agree Organize is subjective? Michael - Yes. Q: If you were deindexed, would you have a problem? M: Yes - it’s their index.

 

Todd Malicoat:

 

7 Reasons why hei s a link Libetarian.

1. When is a paid link paid? Direct $? Buy pizza? Buying a company? Does that constitute a paid link? Is that related to paid links? Every link has a relative value of cost. Even creating a video has a cost.

2. Blame the algorithm. The PR bar gave us a micro economy of paid links. Helps people buy links. Risky, but not illegal.

3. Economics: Sure they can fight it, but it will be balanced out by efficient market. Eventually there will be a price point where people will stop buying links.

4. Transparency and relevancy: Never been fully transparent - games, movies, have ads - no disclosure. Consumers like disclosures, as an advertiser - not your job. Bill Gross proved paying for links can be more relevant.

5. Fear buys time for the algo.

6. Adsense needs a competitor. Fuels advertisers.

7. It’s a billion dollar industry - text link ads, Google, Yahoo, text link brokers.

 

Design sites as if no search engines. But there are. In an ideal world buy links for traffic.

Risks vs. Rewards: There are risks - competition is looking at your backlinks - price of link goes up. Theres the invisible nofollow. May incur a penalty. Rewards: It works and converts. Size matters. Small brands - link buying.

Intent and extent. Don’t fish with dynamite. There is no black and white line.  Buy under the radar.

 

Never report paid links. If you think it’s OK, don’t report. Eventually we will all get tired of links and move on. Stay relevant, make it obvious. Don’t include disclosures.

 

Todd Friesen:

 

Not much more to ad. There is a middle ground. Matt shows the casinos and spammy sites. Never see him show other stuff. It’s more fun for him to show gambling sites. Are you going to go out and buy many off topic links, or buy them as media placement and buys? You have to play in the space and compete in your vertical. Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight. If you follow all the rules, you won’t compete and buy Adwords. Point is go in with eyes open. Worse case scenario - wasting money. As Michael pointed out, noone knows except the buyer and seller. So Google in good conscience cannot prove it. If that was the case there will be a new industry of link sabotoge. Shoemoney does free T shirt friday. Gives links in exchange of links. Is that paid? Be careful - don”t buy run of site. Just realize you need to stay in space, and follow rules that govern your vertical.

 

Greg Boser:

 

Matt mentioned pollution of the web. His examples are too extreme and off topic. You cannot apply that to everyone else. The video we started with - will get many off topic links. That’s polluting the web. Like those top 10 lists on Digg. That’s pollution. Makes fun of Neil Patel. Site owners make good editorial decisions. Review your advertisers, excersize editorial judgement - don’t have to put a link condom on a link! The Yahoo! directory - they say its not a paid link - but it is, and its filled with crap. So the notion of the impact of the web is nonsense. Makes fun of Yahoo paid listing policy. Rumors about SELand paid links. Danny has a good rep. Trust his judgment and those links should count.Site owners should make good judgment about buying links. If you select good sites, and make deals - thats your business and Google should stay out.

 

Andy Baio:

 

An outsider perspective. Agrees with Todd. If there is editorial judgment and pay attention to quality, should worry in his opinion. That doesn’t pollute the web. Upcoming.org is part of Yahoo but not representing it. Not part of SEO world, invited because of articles on his site. No self interest in the issue. Speaking on behalf of users. Everyone wants web to be easy and meaningful - everyone has a stake. Feels strongly  that it might be a form of spam and to be wary. Comes to ethics - are you improving the web or making it worse? The industry of middlemen trying to make a quick buck - brokers . Many of us would not do email spam or comment spam even though cheap and effective. But it’s unethical and can damage image. Paid link brokers - if the focus is traffic - the head is in the right place. But brokers are there too trick search engines. That’s the intent. Get’s shady - don’t use Java like legitimate ad networks  - so links pass juice.  Advertise the PR not the site. The top 10 - you should be different from competition - in reality if you are good you dont need link brokers. We are at a state where link spam is effective, but over time will backfire. Going back a few years - popups were novel and advertisers loved them. Yahoo! ran them. The more popular they got, the worse the web experience got. So browsers killed popups. Now paid links seem innoculous.

 

Matt: People understand why SE’s are against it. Brave of Andy to come up and take SE’s sides. For the most part, it comes down to whether it’s worth money. 5 years ago, guestbook links made alot of money, and SE’s took care of it. Want to look at long term. Want the links that will last. Looking for the white hat ways, will be a better long term strategies.

 

Michael: Casino links are not deceptive - your getting what you click on.

 

Greg: Buying links that are on target is so not comment spam, and rediculous to say this. Brand damage? BMW - how many people bought Mercedes because of this? Wordpress - got banned for 8 hours because of Hot Nacho. And now Wordpress is a great product. The google algo is flawed and its not our problem. Many big brands play both sides of the fence. Believes in long term strategy, but when people are playing hard you got to play hard too. Fixing this problem is dedicated resources is equal enforcement. Google doesn’t treat big brands equally across the board. At some point need to go out and compete - even if might drive you out of business. Would like to see this issue fixed, but the reality is that this is the world we live in.

 

Matt: So many options for ranking well. Just starting a blog can have a tremendous effect. So many white hat ways.

 

Q: Does Google want to ban big brands permanently that behave poorly - not the BMW’s?

 

Matt: BMW was out for a week. And you dont hear about the other sites  - like one guy who got banned for 43 days. People need to be aware of risks.

 

The Search King case - The trial courts ruled that Google can remove you from index, and they don’t owe you anything.

 

Todd F: Expected sites to get burned, and churned. But that was the game.

 

Michael: Google created the monster and looking for us to fix it.

 

Todd F: If go to broker and buy lots of links, and look at indivudual sites and it makes sense to be there - you shouldn’t have to worry - even if it’s relevant.

 

Matt: Response: Are they labeled as paid? Do people know they were bought?

 

Greg: Most are labeled paid, but  for us its temporary. Takes sometimes a flow of juice in the site - and then earns reputation. People find sites to link to from search engine. Now need links to get in to get the natural links. Sometimes you just need 3 - 5 links to get in. Job is to get results.

 

Rand: Building a viral video like in the intro. Gets into it! Wouldnt google prefer to find links without nofollow? many people dont know about nofollow. What’s the point of nofollow?

 

Matt: First line of defense is algorithmic.  Supposed we have a Japanese job board -  that noone at Google’s manual team can look at. Let’s them take control. If there are two software packages - one has nofollow built in, one has none - the nofollow will sell because it will get links. The idea is that all search engines look for paid links - nofollow is a self service mechanism.

 

Q: AdSense is not as good user experience as text links sometimes. Less attractive.

 

A: A directory that looks for things to add - and do editorial review - puts you at the high end spectrum of a directory. Become a good resource.

 

Q: Define excessive?

 

Matt:  Use common sense. Off topics,  automated exchange.

 

There is no substitute for creativity. A video was made saying “Google” over and over again.  On one hand - it may be easy to buy the links. The creativity is missing.  If you are in a place where links are bought, comes down to who has the pocket book. Good example is after Katrina - Red Cross was $50 a bid. Don’t wan’t to get into that.

 

Michael: Sometimes creativity is expensive. People need to outsource it because not creative.

 

Matt:  Lets talk about non commercial. Some guy asked why he wasn’t #1 for english to japanese translation. The #1 site was a better resource. Did the same thing, but the #1 was a better resource. There was no depth. Don’t have to shell out money to get creativity. Everyone knows there are white hat ways that work. Content cost vs. link cost.

 

Q: XML, Perl.com etc. had voting power taken away - do you penalize sitewide, or individual.

 

Matt: We can hit sites, directories, individual links, etc.

 

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Write comment August 21, 2007 6:00 pm

Web Analytics & Measuring Success Overview

by Avi Wilensky

Filed under: Analytics, SES San Jose 2007

This is a transcript of the live session in San Jose, August 20, 2007. Subject to typographical errors.

How do you know if you’ve been successful with search engines? You can check your “rank” at search engines for particular keywords, analyze log files to see the actual terms people used to reach your web site or make the ultimate jump and “close the loop” by measuring sales conversions and return-on-investment (ROI). This panel explores ways to measure success and what statistics you should really care about.

Moderator:

 

Speakers:

 

Matthew Baily:

Old school metrics vs. new school metrics. Old school = hits, top 10 keywords, top 10 pages, to him it’s BS. Doesn’t tell the full picture.

SEO: If you cant be found, you dont exist. Same with usability. Usability - if they cant find a conversion point on the site - not there. Analytics tells us what happens and how to improve it.

Goals: Every site needs goals. A primary goal. People need to go thru a process to convert, unless its a 2 page site. Action is made of macroactions, tiny steps. Navigation, etc. All these little things that add up. Thats where analytics is key. How can we improve the process. Where are the microactions stopping people from getting from point A to point B.

Only by segmenting traffic will you undersrtand whats happening. Can understand analytics by looking at his Star Trek example - 59 deaths in 5 years of the show. Thats a 13% conversion rate. Yellow shirt that trekies that died wore 10%, blue shirts - 7.2%, etc. Why? What is the reasoning for this. You want to figure out what improves conversion rate.

Principal of segmention: Only by doing this can you understand what factors that are causing actions on the site. We have intelligence that gives us the answers. Take these factors and apply them to site. Need conversion rates based on different users and searchers and search queries. Can figure out where you are losing visitors, gaining conversions. You need to break up traffic into different areas. Tie $ to actions.

Three C’s of analytics: #’s must be put in context - need backing , a situation. Thats why hits, time on site, are BS. Need to compare segments to eachother. Comparison- once segmented, you can compare and contrast and find problems. Especially if you are doing well in one segment and not the other. Tells you what to change and what to avoid.

Key performance indicators: What do you want buyers to do? Conversions, time on site, etc. When you look at it by segment - things look clear. If someone came searching for X, and bouncing, it gives us intelligence. He likes to segment based on keywords and keyword groups. Compares major groups against eachother. Did they come from blogs? Social news? Search? Break this down, and compare and contrast.

A case study: People that entered from homepage, lower conversion rate than thru subpage. Makes sense. Also found 404 error pages for #2 keyword. You need analytics to see these, and segmentation is key. Segment conversion names from brand name searches - do they have a higher CR? Gives focus to optimization!

Engagement factors: Look at how people found site and compare metrics. Keywords, Referrers, Ads - measure CR’s, PV’s, Time on Site. In case study - social news / social media brought 0 conversions, but lots of traffic.

How traffic compares: Blogs and articles do well for him - its like word of mouth. Topical search - pretty well engaged. Social news - competing against others - audience its more time wasting. So this forces us to look at links bringing the most sales, and find context of the link. It’s the context of the link that sets up expectation. It’s a competition for attention. You have many links competing for attention. If you get a link on a blog - you get people’s attention and the conversions will be high. More link juice + context is crucial.

START WITH A QUESTION! QUESTIONS MAKE ANALYTICS SUCCESSFUL. Measure each segment, compare and contrast the results, put the results in context, focus on business value!

Lionel L. (sitting in for Dean) from Fathom.

How do you measure success and what stats should you watch? Quick answer = technology. Not the complete answer. In fact, in his opinion, cannot automate marketing profitable. No setting and forgetting for optimization. Technology is just a piece of the process. Here to understand web analytics. Goal is to provide with some clarity and guidence how best to revisit your numbers, and take a look at it differently.

First place to start is a definition: A term that is losely used by marketers to cover A-Z. According to WAA its the trackin, collection, measurement, reporting, and alaysis of quantitive internet data to optimize websirtes and web marketing initiatives. A little short sighted, because in his opionon there needs a more robust opinion. One focused on ROI, not just quantative analysis. A paradigm shift for marketers - you need to connect the Silos. The cross channels - the TV, offline media, etc. At the end we are striving for max profitibility.

Analytics is time consuming and difficult. 82% Don’t know what it is - organizations struggle with the topic. Many are too busy to manage / monitor it. About Half struggle with the tools- w/ 2 years experience. It’s confusing because theres too much info to collect. We are trying to reach billions across multiple channels - there’s search, emerging platforms - mobile, gaming, 2.0 sites - YouTube, social media, 3rd party ad servers - Atlas, etc. And CRM. Too much data to close loop entirely. That said, we need to consider technology that reaches beyond visits, click streams, and other ways to collect market information. Analytics measures all marketing, not just online marketing. Brick and mortar + offline advertising + sales teams, call centers, etc. are all part of the mix.

Most of us look at one silo at a time - search, tv, email. We need to collect info across all channels and make it actionable. First question is what data do we need to make great decisions to produce great results. Few measure all this and connect the silos. Many marketers cannot or do not measure ROI. Third party tracking is key to integrating your marketing programs for analysis. We can use techniques, such as call tracking, etc.

Conversion funnel analysis. Evaluate keywords for both paid and unpaid data. Analytics tells us to make decisions how much to spend on paid ads. Gives us the tool to make investment decisions.

How do we get started? Before we can extract any data, we need to start with the basics. Test theories. Need a plan and tie it back to marketing objectives. What will give you efficiency and profibility. User patterns. Correlation between offline and online activity. Can’t track all of it, but technologies are emerging. It’s about OBJECTIVES not metrics. Identify what data is available and not available. Regularly work with the data. Can’t put it on a shelf. Can’t automate this stuff. Continuous process.

What stats should we care about? Every organization is unique and has it’s own objectives. At the end, what counts is that the data goals align with business goals. Depends on the business. Proper upfront work - find out what metrics are available.

Continuous cycle of monitoring, reporting, and analyzing. Key is to use tools to spend time in the data. Think beyond the CTR. Make sure tools are flexible to measure data sources - PPC, SEO, CRM, Call Center, etc.

Laura Thieme:

Searc, site, blog, and social media analytics. Landscape is changing in what you need to track. Is your data accurate - organic vs. paid - comes up alot. Autotagging, etc. What does your KPI matrix look like? Are you using Google Analytics and another tool or just one?

New Google Analytics and Bounce Rate Obsessions.

Basic Paid Search KPI - your basic dashboard - ad console. Any variation based on what you’ve customized. Advanced KPI s - deeper - CPA, Cost Profit, Net Profit, ROI, ROAS. Not always possible. They need 27 tools to service 5 clients!

Recommends book: Managing Customers as Investments  Sunil Gupta. The value of customers in the long run.

Do a checkup on tracking URL’s and tagging. What about Autotagging - some people are told by Google that Autotagging does everything that you need. Wish there was a standard. Are you 100% confident that everything is accurate? Are you tracking spider activity? Google can index content within hours. Don’t believe the 3-6 months myth. Latency, ROAS, competition. Webposition Gold tells you whose next to you - competitive analysis.

When to run ranking reports? They do biweekly. Automatic schedule reports in PDF is nice. Need to look at bounce rate by KW - otherwise meaningless.

Clicktracks funnel reports slide. Shows the microactions in visual. Darker pages are most persuasive. Heat maps. Case studies and company profile is where the most important for us.

Top traffic drivers were blog entries to her site.  Bloggers have such an effect on SEO in her opinion. Double traffic by blogging, but bounce rate is up. Obscure off topic queries giving 100% bounce rates.

Tracking is like solving a crossworld puzzle. Can be time consuming, time wasting as well. Time is money. Not everyone is good at crossword puzzles.

Agencies are more willing to invest in this. Be willing to spend time discussing the findings. Influence what your clients think.

Write comment August 21, 2007 11:42 am
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