Q and A: What is Google Website Optimizer?

Posted At : June 26, 2009 10:16 AM | Posted By :
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Every week we take Internet marketing questions from friends, acquaintances and client business partners and unravel them at the end of these enewsletters. Is there something you would like to know about the weirdly wonderful world of websites? Ask us here and we shall answer.

Question: What is Google Website Optimizer?

Answer: Per Google's dry summation:

Google Website Optimizer is a free A/B testing and multivariate testing application that helps online marketers and webmasters increase visitor conversion rates and overall visitor satisfaction by continually testing different combinations of website content. But, if you're a website owner or an Internet marketer with "mad scientist" tendencies…

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Friday Bookmarks | Design Ads to Meet Campaign Objectives, PPC Tools & Other Interesting Discoveries

Posted At : June 12, 2009 3:43 PM | Posted By :
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In this issue of Friday Bookmarks, we're opening up the Congruent Media del.icio.us account to share some of the more interesting articles delivered by the  the online advertising industry last month, along with a collection of research & analysis tools to help facilitate better planning, management and measurement of online campaigns.

(For those unfamiliar, Friday Bookmarks is a series in which we share link worthy articles from around the web.)

So. Open your bookmarking service and pour a glass of O.J. ... here's your edition of Friday Bookmarks.

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Q & A: Managing legacy content

Posted At : May 21, 2009 1:56 PM | Posted By :
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Every week we take Internet marketing questions from friends, acquaintances and client business partners and unravel them at the end of these enewsletters. Is there something you would like to know about the weirdly wonderful world of websites? Ask us here and we shall answer.

Q: What should we do with all of our old pages when we launch our redesigned website?

Short Answer: Always back it up and map your legacy content to new locations.

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Google, Yahoo & Microsoft all agree on something. Huh?

Posted At : May 6, 2009 7:44 AM | Posted By :
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goole yahoo msn logosBack in February, with relatively little fanfare, the big three in search all agreed on supporting a new HTML tag to help reduce duplicate content on the web. That tag is referred to as a "canonical" tag. Canonic is defined as "conforming to orthodox or recognized rules." Makes sense to me, so what's it all about.

Basically, there are lots of ways a web page's URL can play out depending on how your hosting server is setup, what programming languages your site uses, what type of analytics tracking you're using, SessionIDs and so on.

For example:

http://www.CongruentMedia.com
http://CongruentMedia.com
http://CongruentMedia.com/index.cfm
http://www.CongruentMedia.com/index.cfm?TrackingID=TrackWhereThatMugCameFrom

All of these URLs lead to the homepage of our website, but have different formats. The search engines want to provide developers and marketers like us the tools we need to properly tag the sites we want properly indexed so they can better do their job of indexing the pages. To that end, they got together at the local Starbucks and with pen in hand, scribbled down the following code and sent it out to all of the web coders and SEO experts of the world.

Simply put, add this <link> tag to specify your preferred version:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.CongruentMedia.com" />

inside the <head> section of the duplicate content URLs:

http://CongruentMedia.com
http://CongruentMedia.com/index.cfm
http://www.CongruentMedia.com/index.cfm?TrackingID=TrackWhereThatMugCameFrom

and the major search engines will all get that the duplicates all refer to the canonical URL: http://www.CongruentMedia.com. Additional URL properties, like PageRank and related signals also make it through.

Google's Webmaster Central Blog does more justice to the nuts and bolts of it all, so I'll turn it over to them if you've got SEO in your blood. Click here to read more.

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"If the smell of paper is the biggest push back, then we're good to go."

Posted At : May 5, 2009 9:14 AM | Posted By :
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SmartCEO logoI had coffee this morning with Erika Huff from SmartCEO magazine. She was excited to show me the new digital version of their publication that is launching in July. The prototype had some issues on the Panera Bread wireless, but that's what makes it a prototype. If the presentation was smooth as silk, I'd have been looking at the first digital issue.

As we went through the prototype, complete with links, rollovers, embedded video (albeit a bit clunky in the demo), I steered the discussion towards adoption. Who is the audience? How are you going to get it in front of them? The answers make sense - some people are going to stick with reading their print version, but going digital allows for a much wider audience to experience (not just read) the content, at a much lower delivery cost for the publisher. New eyeballs...people that want the content, but wont' subscribe (pay) for the printing and delivery.

After our meeting a very timely article in Fast Company came across my RSS reader. It's a short series of quotes by Steve Haber who developed the Sony Reader. Obviously he's biased, but he makes some great points about what he's witnessing in terms of people adopting digital readers instead of picking up bound pieces of paper for their content. They rang true for me. I didn't dig my Blackberry screen at first, but now I wonder what I did without it. The thought of all of my books on a reader at once sounds good to me.

10 years huh? I'm guessing half that...

A good quick read. Check it out here.

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Pew Report: Yep, Search Engines are Still Important

Posted At : April 28, 2009 5:43 PM | Posted By :
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This report by Pew Internet & American Life Project illustrates how important search engine marketing remains in today's online world. According to the report, released in January of this year, 89% of online Americans "use search engines."

In fact it is the 2nd most frequent online activity overall, behind only email (91%). The 3rd most frequent activity was "research product," which 81% of online Americans reported doing. 

For comparison purposes, 47% reported getting info about a job, 38% of all respondents reported using instant messaging and 35% reported using a social networking site. These numbers are from all responses combined. Once repsonses are separated by age group, the younger generations obviously had a much higher percentage of adoption on social networking and instant messaging.

Still though, using search engines was still the 2nd highest reported activity in each generation.

This report is a good reminder that even in the rapidly evolving online landscape, where communication is being redefined on a daily basis, effectively marketing online means incorporating a solid search engine marketing foundation. It also means understanding what people are finding when they search for your company.

One of the greatest things about search engine marketing is that it allows you to be at that exact place and time where prospects are searching for what you have to offer. 

Search engines are still the biggest portal through which internet users are finding information on the web. What are they finding when they search for your company? And, when they search for your product or service, are you there to greet them?

 

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How Do You Track Social Media Engagement?

Posted At : April 24, 2009 12:58 PM | Posted By :
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Tracking the effectiveness of a social media campaign is challenging, yet critical. It's easy to see how big of an audience you've attracted by simply looking at how many followers, fans or blog post views you've accumulated.

But is your amassed audience actually listening? How much of your audience is actively participating in your conversation?

"Engagement" is defined differently according to the particular goals of each social media campaign, but here are a few general suggestions to think about. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but hopefully it will get you thinking of different ways to track the effectiveness of your social media efforts.

Blogs

  • Comment to View Ratio: Divide the number of comments your latest post received by the number of views. Focus on increasing the percentage of viewers who are compelled to leave a comment.
  • Trackbacks:  Trackbacks are a way of monitoring who is linking to your blog post. For a full explanation check out this Wikipedia entry. If your post is being linked to by a bunch of other bloggers, your content has been deemed useful.
  • Drill into Analytics: Dive deep into your analytics tool. Is there a traffic spike from Facebook? Someone probably posted your blogpost there, an indication of engagement.

Twitter

  • Clickthroughs: Some URL shorteners will track how many times your Tweeted link has been clicked. I use BudURL, which offers a bunch of statistics. This definitely helps you track active engaging.
  • Responses to Questions: How many answers do you get from questions you pose on Twitter? This is very subjective, maybe your questions are very niche. Still though, conversation is two-way, so how many responses you get is much more indicative of participation than followers.
  • Retweets: This is when one of your followers forwards your tweet to their followers. It looks like: RT@seanoakley. An easy way to track is just use twitter’s search, and enter RT@yourprofile.

Again, certainly not a comprehensive list. But hopefully it's given  you a few ideas on how to track engagement. Of course, once we've figured out how to track audience participation, the real goal is to increase it. I'll save that for a later post.

Have a way of tracking engagement I didn't mention above? We'd love to hear your thoughts, please leave a comment.

Photo Credit: Tim Morgan on Flickr

 

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We're 6 Years Old!

Posted At : April 23, 2009 1:57 PM | Posted By :
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Today is Congruent Media's 6 year anniversary. I wasn't with the team at the beginning, but from the many stories my teammates have shared, the company has come a long way since it's first humble office in the old Broom factory building on Fleet St. 

Since then we moved to an office in Little Italy, then completed the loop by coming back to Brewer's Hill at our current residence in the Natty Boh Tower. We also expanded by opening an office in St. Paul, MN a year and a half ago.

I keep trying to convince Dan and Jeffrey to open an office somewhere in the Caribbean. I of course would take one for the team, and travel down there to open it. Unfortunately, my attempts at convincing Dan and Jeffrey have failed.

All poor jokes aside, we never forget to whom we owe our consistent growth and continued success: our wonderful clients and many friends. We've been priveleged with some remarkable clients, and cannot thank you all enough. We're looking forward to delivering comprehensive online marketing solutions to you for many years to come.

Happy 6 years Congruent!

 

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Google Profiles Showing Up in Name Searches

Posted At : April 22, 2009 4:38 PM | Posted By :
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Google announced this week that they have begun to show Google Profile results at the bottom of search results pages for US names.  Detailing the way it works in this post on their blog, Google is making it easier for you to control what people find when they Google your name. I mean, surely you've Googled your own name, right? 

Google has also started providing links on the results page to search for a name in popular social media sites: Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, etc:

Google Profiles have been around for awhile. They are a simple, clean, one page summary you can edit about yourself. It's tied into your Google account, and the profile allows you to write a brief bio, link to all of your social accounts, show off pictures from your Picasa account, etc:

But while Google profiles have been around for awhile, giving profiles such visibility in search results is a new and meaningful development. Yes, the stated motivation for displaying your profile is to provide you with more control over your name's search results. But there has long been the question about Google's absence in the social networking scene. The social networking site Orkut is a Google project, but has really only taken off in Brazil. 

Profiles, along with the networking features in Reader, Picasa and other Google apps is definitely a move towards a social network. Giving profiles a prominent display on search results pages is obviously a move to spark more user adoption.

But beyond social networking, Google Profiles is really another step towards Google providing you a comprehensive online identity, which is what I believe is their ultimate goal.

Anyways, don't want to go too far off on a tangent. If you don't have a Googe Profile, you should set one up. It's painless and easy. Just do a google search for "me" and follow the instructions.

Being aware of what's showing up when employers, prospects and colleagues search for your name is an absolute must in today's world. And having more control over what's showing up when they do search for your name is an opportunity you do not want to pass up.

 

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Should I be using segmentation?

Posted At : April 8, 2009 9:40 AM | Posted By :
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Segmentation (email and mobile marketing segmentation) is the practice of organizing and tweaking both the delivery and message of your communications based upon your various audiences' likeliness to respond favorably to it. Accordingly, the opposite of segmentation is blasting all of your leads, clients, major clients, friends, family, and any stray animals that may have stumbled into your sign-up forms with the fire hose of potentially irrelevant calls to action. Studies have shown that segmented campaigns yield better open and click rates and, generally, a correctly segmented campaign will feed your subscribers info they want to receive and are therefore more likely to act upon (favorably). So, yes, if you can segment you definitely should!

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