With over 50 sessions a day along with non-stop networking events, Pubcon can be pretty overwhelming. However with an on-going stream of tweets and great recaps being posted across the web, you can get a lot of information even on the sessions you missed.

Instead of recapping all of the sessions I attended, I thought I’d highlight the top tips, tools & trends I came across.

Top Tips from Pubcon 2012

Dr. Robert Cialdini, author of the bestselling book “Influence: Science & Practice” gave the opening keynote and offered some great tips on the universal principles of social influence. Two of the main takeaways:

Use Your About Us Section Better
People like those who like them. Your about us section gives you the ability to connect with potential customers. Give them something about you they can connect with. What kind of hobbies do you have? Where do you live?

Give Customers Something
Did you know that if there’s a mint on the check tray for each diner, tips go up 3.3%? People are eager to give back and will say yes to those they owe. Give your customers something without expecting anything in return.

Pinterest. Pinterest. Pinterest. There was a lot of talk about the intent Pinterest users have versus other social networks. Krista Neher of BootCamp Digital noted that Pinterest traffic converts at 10% higher than other social traffic. Matt Siltala also mentioned Pinterest traffic for BuildDirect as having an average time on-page of ~10 minutes. Create content your Pinterest users want, as they are apparently a very valuable audience.

Target the Timeline & Act Like a Local. Facebook now gives you the ability to target your timeline to specific users. Have an offer that’s only valid in NYC? Make sure it only shows to them. You can also break it down by gender, relationship status, interests and age. – Alison Zarella

Mobile Keywords are Different. Michael Dorausch had a great point about mobile traffic when he said, “not every search is suited for mobile”. Often times, we just assume that we should optimize for the same keywords we are optimizing for on desktop but that may not be the case. His other point, when a search query originates from mobile, the best quality site may lose to the best location. Sometimes, we just want what’s close.

Make the Most of Your Content. Tim Ash was on the conversions in a social world session and one piece of advice he offered was to get more out what you’re doing. It’s easy to put out a piece of content but what happens after? Tim used a webinar as the example. After you have the webinar, there is more you can do. Put the video online. Create a transcript. Write a Blog Post. Encourage people to share it. Take the content and make an ebook. The point is, to do more with what you have.

Top Tools from Pubcon 2012

Going into Pubcon, I thought I was hip to most of the tools out there. Turns out, that’s not the case. There are a lot of very cool tools out there ready to give you some killer information. Here are a few worth checking out:

Open Graph Helper – Aaron Friedman and Mike King developed this tool to help you see what your Open Graph tags will actually look like out in the wild.

WebPageTest.org – Lets you test your load speed, caching, load times and even suggests improvements.

BoardReader.com – Looking for something in a forum? This tool is probably the best public form crawler and can help you find info on a specific brand or topic.

CompeteMonkey.com – Alerts you when a competitor starts using a new service on their site.

PinAlerts – Currently in Beta, this tool alerts you anytime someone pins something from your site.

Repinly – Helps you find the most popular pins, boards and pinners by category.

MajesticSEO – Along with it’s backlink finding capabilities, the tool with show you your IP neighbors, helping you identify any ‘bad neighborhoods’ you might be close to.

Note: The majority of these tools came from the Competitive Intelligence session with Chris Winfield, Matt Siltala & Kristy Bolsinger, which was probably my favorite. Find the session write-up here.

Top Trends from Pubcon 2012

Links are Soooo 2011. While links are still going to matter for quite some time, how they influence search engines is already changing. Ryan Jones had a good quote at his Sustainable SEO session when he said, “It doesn’t matter how many links you have if people come to your site and think it’s crap”. How people interact with your site and how actual people are connected to your site is what’s going to matter.

More Changes More Often. Eric Enge gave a great presentation on the Google algorithms and one thing he mentioned was that while we used to see these big algorithmic updates, what we are now seeing is more updates more often as the search engines improve their capabilities.

Bing. I had to mention Bing because it always amazes me how often they come up at conferences. Duane Forrester does a tremendous job of connecting with the search community, talking about the company, what they are doing and how they are improving. On top of that, the social stuff they are involved in, including their Facebook integration is very cool. It also seems Bing is trying to do big things in the mobile space.

Social, Google+ & Connections. I put these together simply because they all involve the idea of relationships. Not just building them, but maintaining them, utilizing them and most importantly, not faking them! Social networks have given us the ability to connect with people we know, people who like the same things we do, and people who like us. Businesses and people need to be figuring out how to use that for their advantage. It’s already playing a role in the buying process and will continue to play a larger role in the search process.

Overall…

Pubcon was amazing and I highly recommend that anyone involved in the search or social industry put it on his or her list of things to do. The information that came out of each session was useful and actionable and worth the cost.

SEO is filled with the notion that there are shortcuts. When I first started SEO consulting it felt like the reason a large percentage of companies were interested in SEO was because they believed it was a shortcut to online marketing success (it was free, right?). They forgot the time element that factored into the cost of “good SEO”.

Examples of SEO shortcuts:

• Trying to optimize pages without a keyword and marketing strategy in mind
• Ignoring the SEO details (like cross-links, ALT properties, filenames, etc) even though the opportunity presents itself for implementation
• Buying links purely for keyword rankings

Even today, we get asked what are the simple tactics, the “quick wins”, that a budget conscious organization can implement to “push the needle” in their search efforts. Can we help some of them? Absolutely. But in other cases, there are no shortcuts for creating something measurable out of a short-term SEO campaign. Sometimes significant technological or organizational factors need to be overcome before SEO can really become a part of the marketing mix.

Why You Can’t Start With SEO Shortcuts

The primary reason those interested in SEO, either as a profession or in selecting business partners, would not find it wise to start with SEO shortcuts is simple. Shortcuts impair the ability of the SEO professional or partnership to fully understand what or why results in SEO (negative or positive) happen.

The challenge (or opportunity) with SEO is that there are many experiences required to be truly effective over the course of a complete SEO program. The high level examples include (but are not limited to):

• Search Algorithm Understanding
• Technical Site/Web Expertise
• Traditional Marketing Comprehension
• Communications

The examples above don’t specifically define disciplines within each experience that need to be learned as well. For example, what about becoming a good writer or adept at graphics tools, in order to develop effective communication strategies for social and link building outreach? Disciplines within a strategic objective have to be learned and understood as well.

The point is that if you don’t understand the details and steps which can (not will) create good results, it is not really possible to know whether an SEO shortcut will work, hurt, or why it could do either. Will the next search engine algorithm update hurt you today or in the long-run? Understanding the steps, mechanisms, and tactics that brought your site to where it is now with SEO will help answer that question.

Google Penguin Updates and SEO Shortcuts

Google’s recent Penguin Update comes at a perfect time for a post like this. Google’s goal with the Penguin Update was simply stated:

…we’re launching an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s quality guidelines. This algorithm represents another step in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content.

For advocates of quality content, quality link outreach initiatives, and tying SEO more concisely into the overall strategic marketing mix, we will hopefully find a major win in client results with this update. But if your organization or strategies were more heavily invested in SEO shortcuts, this is a concrete example of why they should be avoided.

Don’t Confuse Good SEO Tools for SEO Shortcuts

The difference between SEO tools and SEO shortcuts is their place in the overall search engine optimization campaign. SEO tools help make the job of the search marketing professional more effective, either in analysis, productivity, or management (one, both, or all three). SEO shortcuts attempt to create results in search visibility, at the expense of investing in the use of good SEO tools and practices.

Some of the tools I am fond of using for SEO campaign development.

• SEO Reporting and Management: RavenTools, SEOmoz, Advanced Web Ranking, Google Analytics & Webmaster Tools, (and exploring Search Metrics)
• SEO Campaign Development: Screaming Frog, SearchStatus for Firefox, Web Developer for Firefox, Majestic SEO, Scrapebox, Rex Swain’s HTTP Viewer
• Social Media & Outreach: HootSuite, Contax.io, ManageFlitter, FollowerWonk, Rapportive, Knowem, USPNL, Facebook Ad Manager, SocialMention
• Productivity & Management: Basecamp, Dropbox, Google Docs, Microsoft Excel, (and exploring Confluence)

Don’t mistake SEO tools for SEO shortcuts. Tools make our job of analyzing trends, obtaining data, and aggregating information more productive. It still takes human analysis and experience, good decision making, and understanding of the target markets to execute a good SEO program.

SEO Resources That Tend to Avoid Shortcuts

Learning SEO is a challenging task. That is an understatement. To that end, here are a few resources and publications I find valuable for understanding the fundamentals and keeping up to speed on current events. A warning perhaps that while many of these resources may seem long winded to the uninterested or semi-interested party, there also will be a tremendous amount of insight and care taken towards their depth.

SEO Tutorials

• Search Engine Land Guide: What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?
• SEOmoz: The Beginners Guide to SEO
• SEOmoz: SEO Ranking Factors
• SEO 101: Everything You Need to Know About SEO (But Were Afraid to Ask)
• Google: Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (PDF)

SEO Blogs, Forums, and Places for Ongoing Learning

• Search Engine Land (offers daily email recap called Searchcap as well)
• Search Engine Watch (offers daily email aggregating top daily columns)
• SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog (particularly appropriate for SEO consulting)
• SEOBook (particularly appropriate for the site owner’s perspective on SEO)
• Search Engine Roundtable (aggregates important search forum discussions)
• There are certainly others, but I think writing style preference, frequency, topical relevance, can all come into play at an individual level. TopRank’s Big List of SEO Blogs is a good place to start.

What thoughts do you have about SEO shortcuts? I would love to read your comments below and feel free to engage the discussion even more on Facebook or Google+.

Author Note: Thanks Dan Shure for reminding me to check into Seth Godin’s blog this week for the inspiration for this post.

A common question about keyword research and the Google keyword tool is whether to ignore keyword opportunities that list “not enough data” for global and local search volume estimates.

The answer is NO; the misconception is that “not enough data” means “no one is searching for this keyword”, which in many cases will be far from the truth.

From Google: “If we don’t have enough data for a particular keyword, you’ll see not enough data.”

My interpretation: Google was not able to provide any immediate data on a given keyword; they’re not stating it has never been used as a search query.

Proof Through PPC Impression Data
To verify this assumption, I cross-referenced 30 days worth of PPC impressions from two AdWords accounts with the search volume estimates using Google’s keyword tool.

Here were the results:

For one account, 25 out of 88 keywords which had between 30 and 1000 PPC impressions over the last 30 days showed “not enough data” globally, and an incredible 57 of 88 showed no data for local search volume over the past month (which targets the country/language parameters that are set).

More importantly, 3 of the 45 keywords which generated conversions showed no data available globally, and 10 of those 45 showed no data locally!

For the other account, 36 out of 200 (with 30 – 1000 impressions) provided no search data globally (81 showed no data locally). And while only 1 out of 40 converting keywords showed no search data globally, 9 keywords recorded no local search volume information for the past month.

Conclusions & Observations
Use keyword search tools for comparatives, understanding keyword opportunities (and how people may search), and as an estimate for search volume; they’re never 100% reliable.

In the case of keywords with “not enough data” available, there clearly may be value in these opportunities. Of course, its up to the online marketer to unlock the specific keywords that will drive traffic and leads for their business.

As should be the case this time of year, many online marketing sites are publishing their list of the best posts for 2009. Here is a round up of these “Best of 2009″ posts, organized by Internet Marketing theme.

There is a lot of great information, concepts and writing to read through. If I’ve missed your list, please feel free to send me a message directly or through the comments below. Happy New Year and wishing everyone the best in 2010 and beyond!

Internet Marketing

• Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2009 – Techipedia – Tamar Weinberg’s well researched list covering all aspects of  internet marketing including social media, search engine marketing, and public relations
  
  
• The Top 100 Internet Marketing Posts of 2009 – SEOHosting – 100 top search engine marketing posts organized by month
  
  
• My picks for the 99 most useful Social Media (and PR) Blog posts of 2009 – The Comms Corner – Adam Vincenzini puts together 99 of his favorite posts covering social media, PR, case studies, and additional aspects of online marketing
  
  
• Best Posts of 2009 from Top Internet Marketing Blogs – Unstuck Digital – Taking a look at the best three posts across twenty seven popular search engine marketing blogs
  
  
• The Top 50 SEO Posts of the Year – Evan Carmichael – Evan Carmichael’s second annual review of their top 50 SEO related posts across popular blogs in the internet marketing space
  
  
• Link Building this year – Wiep.net – Wiep Knol’s look back at some of the best link building blog posts in 2009
  
  
• 2009 Month by Month Best Search/Marketing Posts – Small Business SEM – Matt McGee’s month-by-month of his favorite SEO/Marketing related posts in 2009

Business-to-Business Specific

• Top 80 B2B Marketing Posts for 2009 – B2B Marketing Zone – Top B2B Posts of 2009 as defined by Social Filtering – meaning by everyone involved directly or indirectly
  
  
• 30 of the Best B2B Search Marketing Articles of 2009 – Proteus B2B – Galen De Young’s 30+ favorite B2B search-related posts over 2009, focusing directly on search or on the issues that strongly impact search (e.g., content)

Miscellaneous, Internet-Related

• 90 Awesome Blog Posts That Inspired my Blog’s Growth in 2009 – How To Make My Blog – Marko Saric’s list of 90 blog posts that inspired and helped him get his blog to where it is today
  
  
• Top 53 Affiliate Marketing Blog Posts – 2009 – Web Marketing Blog – 50+ posts covering the affiliate marketing space, for affiliate marketing beginners through experts

Site Specific Best of 2009 Posts – Blog posts which highlight the best posts from colleagues & friends whose blogs we read on a regular basis

• Top 10 Social SEO Posts of 2009 - TopRank Blog
  
  
• Online Marketing: The Best 2009 Articles And Reports From MasterNewMedia - MasterNewMedia
  
  
• Dianna Huff’s Top B2B Marketing & Social Media Blog Posts for 2009 – Dianna Hiff’s B2B Marcom Writer Blog
  
  
• HubSpot’s Top 10 Inbound Marketing Blog Articles of 2009 – Hubspot
  
  
• Our Blog’s Greatest Hits of 2009 – WordStream Internet Marketing
  
  
• Most Popular Posts on Social Media B2B in 2009 - Social Media B2B
  
  
• Top B2B marketing posts for 2009 – Chris Koch’s B2B Blog
  
  
• Top Ten Search Marketing Standard Posts From 2009 – The Search Marketing Standard

From KoMarketing Associates
Finally, ten of KoMarketing Associates most popular posts in 2009, based off of page view data, comments and PostRank information (organized by date written)

• 20 PPC Tips For 2009
  
  
• 30 Old Ways to Gain New Links for 2009
  
  
• How Can Your PPC Competitors Actually Help Your Campaigns?
  
  
• PPC Toolbox Series: PPC ROI Calculator
  
  
• The Most Basic “How To Start in Twitter” Tutorial Ever
  
  
• Get Real With Regional PPC Targeting
  
  
• PPC Checklist (for moderate AdWords management)
  
  
• 20 Ways You Can Help a Colleague Online Today
  
  
• Mining The #IMS09 Twitter Stream: 60+ Perspectives & Resources
  
  
• 10 Steps for Turning Social Media Engagement into B2B Leads

CJ Boguszewski Chief Marketing Officer, Hiconversion Twitter: @CJBogus

SEO vs. Conversion Rate Debate Shouldn’t Exist — Three Reasons CRO Complements SEO & SEM

Rand Fishkin, whose SEOmoz.org blog frequently has industry-leading commentary on a wide variety of optimization topics, entitled a post in January 2006 “SEO versus Conversion Rate Debate Shouldn’t Exist.”

In October 2009, the debate is still ongoing.

While the Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) discipline continues to mature alongside the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) categories, most eBusiness organizations frame their understanding of CRO in SEO/SEM terms.

We continue to see mounting evidence that CRO is at least as important an activity for eBusiness as SEO/SEM, and yet traffic generation and search engine Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as visits, page views, and cost-per-click are seen as higher priorities, and optimization of conversion rates (i.e., how many visitors did what you wanted them to do when they got to your site) is a lower one.

Seems odd to the casual reader. Do eBusinesses really care more about how many people visit their site than the amount of revenue, subscriptions, leads, etc. that their sites generate?

That simply cannot be.

And so, given the reality that SEO/SEM is a higher priority for most than CRO, this begs a question – what form does this relative prioritization take? In other words – what is the prevalent perception of CRO in the wider market, and is it contributing to that internal prioritization debate in eBusinesses?

A simple analysis finds that it centers on three things, let’s call them “CRO is less important because it is”:

1) Traffic-Hungry – in order to get the ROI benefit that CRO brings, lots of visitors must be shown the page combinations in order to achieve statistical reliability, and therefore many (hard-earned) visitors will be shown “losing” page combinations.

2) Expensive and Hard To Do – nobody but statisticians can do the multi-variate testing (MVT) and analysis that CRO entails, and those people are expensive/hard-to-get.

3) Financially Risky – without showing visitors lots of “losing” page combinations (see “traffic-hungry”), the test can’t be executed, and each “losing” page means one more visitor who’s not converting into a customer.

Are these the reasons that CRO is seen as a lower priority than SEO/SEM? I’d argue this is 95% of it.

What do most eBusinesses do about CRO, when faced with these perceptions?

• Nothing – in other words, they do “what makes common sense,” or whatever the Highest-Paid Person’s Opinion (HiPPO) is. Trouble is, the customers know best.

• Some A/B Testing – try out two, and only two pages, to see if people prefer option A or option B. Problem is, it’s the many little changes to a page that add up to a big increase in conversion rate.

• Spend lots and do a full MVT – get an expensive product and spend lots of (1) time, (2) money, and (3) traffic trying to draw meaningful conclusions. Issue with that is, not many companies are big enough to be able to afford those three things.

Each of these three options are distasteful. Most companies simply de-prioritze CRO in the face of other, more well-defined areas of business over which they feel they can exert more control, hence KPIs from SEO/SEM coming out of the mouths of most business executives, and not conversion rates.

Software innovation that overcomes these barriers exists, and is poised to revise these options with a fourth possibility:

• Adaptive Multivariate Testing – adaptive MVT at a traffic level that suits the “rest of us”, at a price the “rest of us” can afford – bringing CRO to its rightful place alongside the SEO/SEM disciplines

Driving traffic is important to the health of your website, but so is converting those visitors into customers. You can’t really rely on a HiPPO or “just two options” to be sure that you’re getting the maximum ROI possible on your website, and most businesses simply cannot afford the full MVT.

If you think of the web traffic you get to your eBusiness site as an asset, then “sweating” that asset – getting more out of it – is one of the most important ways that you can increase operational efficiency. That’s exactly what CRO does, and it’s why eBusinesses need it. After all, eBusinesses (well, most of them, anyway) aren’t in business to be glorified billboards.

Four years after Rand’s post, we agree – the SEO versus CRO debate shouldn’t exist. CRO complements SEO, and they are not mutually exclusive disciplines by any stretch of the imagination.

For a general DiggBar overview and thoughts on why this new Digg functionality may be valuable, I’ve written an initial post here.

This post provides a guide to DiggBar functionality and background on recent developments, discussions and updates.

How to Access the DiggBar

Unlike traditional browser-based toolbars, the DiggBar does not require installation of third party software. It is simply an Iframe toolbar that appears at the top of a web browser. When accessed, DiggBar creates a “digg.com” short URL for viewing and sharing Digg submissions.

The three most common ways to access the DiggBar are:

• Click through any Digg submission – clicking almost any Digg submission (on Digg.com) will open the web page with the DiggBar at the top (of the browser window).
  
  
• Use the Digg Bookmarklet – The DiggBar Tools Page offers an easy to use bookmarklet which can be dragged to the browser bookmark section. Clicking the bookmark while on a desired web page will load the DiggBar.
  
  
• Enter “Digg.com/” at the beginning of any web address – Finally, entering “digg.com/” at the beginning of any web address will render the Digg short URL and load the Diggbar as well.

Digg’s API documentation also has information on using the API tools for the DiggBar. The API can be used to create a new short URL on Digg for any given URL or look up a general URL for any Digg short URL.

The Digg Short URL

DiggBar generates a short URL, similar to popular URL shortening services like TinyURL and Bit.ly. This makes it easier to send the web page via messaging and/or micro-blogging services (or email). Unlike some of the other URL shortening tools, DiggBar does not provide tracking outside of specific Digg features though.

Search Engine Land has a comprehensive review of URL shortening services in this article, “Which Shortening Service Should You Use?“.

DiggBar Functionality Reviewed

Unfortunately, in the time I’ve spent developing this post, at least two iterations of the DiggBar have been released. Here is a full list of functionality uncovered, with notes on features no longer available in the current version available to the public.

• Digg It Functionality
  The ability to “Digg” articles and see the number of diggs a web page has received.
  
  
  
  
• Digg Submission
  The DiggBar provides visitors with the title, destination web address and comments. The title is hyperlinked to the Digg submission and article URL links back to the original destination.
  
  
• View Comments
  DiggBar users can see a select number of comments, including the most popular, recent and controversial. Unfortunately, you cannot leave a comment via the toolbar, you must go back to the article on Digg.
  
  
  
  
• View Page Views
  Digg has decided to remove this element from the DiggBar. According to a recent article on CNET, John Quinn, Digg’s VP of Engineering, says, “the removal of the view count was done simply because the actual tracking for that was being done on the DiggBar itself, and without counting clicks from unregistered Digg users (who will no longer be seeing the DiggBar) the number was no longer accurate.“
  
  In a blog post written April 21st, Quinn also wrote that Digg has only “temporarily removed the ‘view count’ number“, so we may see this value come back to the DiggBar with future updates.
  
  
• Related & Source Submissions
  
  
  
  DiggBar provides visitors with the ability to see related submissions and submissions from the same domain. This can be nice to get a high level view of related submissions and other content on the same site that has done well on Digg.
  
  
• View Random Digg Submission
  
  
  
  Similar to StumbleUpon functionality, DiggBar users can view random Digg submissions in an effort to discover new and interesting content.
  
  
• Send to Facebook, Twitter or via Email
  
  
  
  Possibly the most exciting feature is the ability for users to more easily share Digg submissions across Facebook, Twitter and email. See below for more information on the effect this feature has had on Digg traffic and use.
  
  
• Bury Digg Submissions
  Lastly, logged in users are able to bury submissions, which essentially is the communities way of identifying spam, duplicate content and off-topic material.

Feedback and Removing the DiggBar
It’s easy to remove the DiggBar on a per page basis or universally.

On April 15th, Digg released an update which only shows the DiggBar when logged into Digg or manually accessing it (via method listed above). It’s worth noting that even though some have voiced concerns about DiggBar, Digg has indicated that only a “very small number of users have disabled the feature or hit close with any frequency“.

DiggBar and Digg Traffic
Statements made on the Digg blog seem to indicate that this service is here to stay; at least in the short-term. Since launch:

• Roughly 45% of all Digging activity is now happening on the Diggbar
• Over 25% of all DiggBar users are discovering new content they otherwise wouldn’t have by viewing related stories and content from the same source
• Digg has also seen a 10% increase in users sharing short-URLs across Twitter, Facebook, email and other places.

Coupled with the fact that (according to Quantcast data) Digg receives over 26 million visits per month, these percentages are very significant as to the overall traffic growth of Digg and people finding new information because of Digg.

DiggBar and SEO Implications

One of the major concerns for online marketers was how DiggBar and the Digg short URL may impact the link value of Digg submissions appearing on popular pages of Digg.com. Links of course are valuable for search engine optimization.

In that same April 15th update, Digg adjusted the DiggBar functionality so that Digg short URL’s 301 redirect to the original destination when users are not logged in. In addition, non-cookie’d visitors (such as search engines) are pointed to the original articles and web addresses when jumping from Digg.com to a third party destination.

Screenshot of HTML code for links pointing off of the Digg.com Home Page

DiggBar and Traffic Implications

Another concern was how the Digg short URL may impact traffic received to third party sites. According to this post on the Digg Blog, the company reached out to Comscore and Nielson and they both confirmed that publisher traffic statistics won’t be impacted by the DiggBar implementation.

In addition, looking through sites I have access to that have had pages submitted to Digg over the past few weeks, I’ve been able to validate referral traffic from Digg.com, including traffic specifically from the short URL.

Discussions and Links Related to the DiggBar

There is certainly a range of opinion and conversation with regards to the DiggBar and it’s impact. In addition to references sprinkled throughout this article, here are some other interesting discussions related to the DiggBar.

• Will You Block the DiggBar?
• Will the Diggbar Siphon Your Search Traffic?
• DiggBar Pages and Google
• Yet another reminder that users are in charge: the DiggBar backlash

Final Thoughts and Opinions on DiggBar

I personally like the DiggBar and use it frequently. The ability to share content found on Digg, in a relatively unobtrusive manner and through other popular online channels, is valuable to website marketers as well as Digg users.

It also seems that Digg is listening and reacting quickly to feedback and criticism, making adjustments that will satisfy the Digg community and the general online population.

We’ll try to add updates as they are observed as well, and welcome your feedback, suggestions and comments to this post.

There are three magic letters that will make or break any PPC campaign: ROI.  KoMarketing currently provides a very useful excel spreadsheet template that can be used to measure ROI for search engine advertising campaigns, found in the resources section of the website. The sheet calculates helpful information like percent profit, profit per click, and acceptable cost per action. The spreadsheet format is ideal for anyone looking to track this data over a period of time, or create multiple scenarios. But sometimes you just want to do a quick check to see if something is working, or to show a manager or client some potential figures.

We developed the PPC Calculator Gadget to do quick ROI calculations quickly and easily.

Using Google Gadgets, we created a PPC Calculator that can be used as an easy way to get ROI data fast. We have created two different gadgets – one for B2C (i.e. e-commerce) and one for B2B (i.e. lead generation and sales tracking).

You can access each Gadget in these locations:

• B2C (e-commerce) PPC ROI Calculator
• B2B (lead generation) PPC ROI Calculator

How It Works

The tool is fairly straight forward – there are Input data points and Output data that is returned:

Inputs

You can input data from your campaign reports into the boxes on the calculator, or use estimated numbers for scenario testing. The following are the Inputs for the B2C Calculator:

• Impressions
• Click Through Rate
• Conversion Rate
• Avg. CPC
• Average Sale
• COGS (Cost of Goods Sold)
• Operating Overhead %

Outputs

The calculator will then take this information and return back some basic data:

• Clicks
• Conversions
• Revenue
• Cost of Goods Sold
• Operating Expense
• Advertising Cost

In addition to these output calculations, some of which are already included in many paid search reports, the calculator will provide the following ROI data:

• Profit After Advertising – Net profit from advertising after related expenses.
• % Profit – How much profit is made from each sale.
• Profit/click – How much profit is made from each click.
• Target/Acceptable Cost Per Action – The maximum CPA you can afford without losing money on the campaign.

The B2B calculator works in the same manner. However, there are Input fields to accommodate the concept of lead generation and sales tracking:

• % Qualified Leads – As an input, enter the percentage of “Leads” that come into the website become Qualified Leads.
• % Conversion Rate (Qualified Lead to Sale) – Enter the percentage of Qualified Leads that convert into a Sale.

Tips for Using the Calculators

These PPC Calculators are perhaps most useful when you use them to test out assumptions and create multiple test scenarios.

Find your Target Cost Per Click – Plug in variables that seem as reasonable as possible (or perhaps as conservative as possible) and then examine what you can afford to pay.  Play with input variables until you arrive at both a break-even point and a point of acceptable profit.

Maximize Conversion Rate – Adjust your input value in the Conversion Rate field to examine the impact of improving the effectiveness of your landing pages in increasing profitability.  In most PPC campaigns, you will find over time that the Conversion Rate is your biggest leverage point in maximizing the profitability of your program.

Imagine Individual Keywords – You can use the PPC calculator tools to analyze the profitability of an entire program, one single search engine, an individual campaign, a single ad group, or an individual keyword.  The tools are very effective when you input data for a single keyword and develop profitability scenarios for that keyword.

Consider Lifetime Value – When inputting data for average sale/transaction value, consider using the average customer’s lifetime value, and not just the immediate value of a single transaction.  Search engine advertising campaigns often do not produce profitable results until a customer’s repeat purchase (especially in a very competitive bid environment).

The Power of a Google Gadget

The reason we decided to create this tool using Google Gadgets is because it makes the tool easier to share. Rather than coming to our site every time you need to get a quick calculation, you can embed the code onto your own site. Because the calculators are “portable”, you can share the functionality with your customers, clients, executives, or your internal PPC team.

Another reason for creating a gadget is that there is more opportunity for the gadget to be found, and used, by others since it is listed in the Google Gadget directory. If your gadget is well-branded you will reap the benefits of that as well.

Currently, the extent of our interaction with the Search Partner Network (aside from using an outside analytics package for analysis) is through the viewable dashboard on the campaign or ad group level.  You can not get results directly by keyword or search phrase at this time.

After selecting your view, it breaks down the data as follows:

Though results varied, this particular campaign is a perfect example of why we need more robust control over what we can accomplish in the Search Partner Network.  The data clearly shows that the Search Partner network is not performing as well as pure search traffic on the Google search page.  It has a significantly lower conversation rate at more than twice the cost per conversion found on Google.

The only option is to reduce exposure, or stop advertising on the Search Partner Network altogether.  The search portion of “Google” above is performing well, and I don’t want to make any large changes that would effect that.  You can not “detach” Search Partner campaigns, they must be run in concert with a campaign that serves keywords on Google.

So below I’ve detailed some changes that must go into place for us to really get use out of the Search Partner Network.

Let us Run “Search Partner Only” Campaigns:

The example above fits perfectly, in this campaign I would like to continue using the Search Partner Network because it accounts for more than 70% of the impressions and a third of the clicks.

The fate of these campaigns are joined, so I can’t pause or edit keywords without there being repercussions on the Google search side.  If this campaign was only opted into the Partner network I could remove certain keywords or add in additional negatives and make more thorough tests to see how we can reach similarly successful results on the Partner Network.

Allocate Bids by Search Property:

Let us specify bids by the different Search Partners.  It does not have to be so translucent that it lists hundreds of sites, instead list the main sites like AOL, Ask, and other sites that account for a large percentage of Network Partner traffic.  Then add a list for “other” – which would consist of the dozens and dozens of smaller sites that make up the crux of the Search Partner Network.

This way we have the option to bid aggressively for traffic on specific high quality properties, while limiting the risk from the tail end of the network.

Site Exclusion:

This should work similar to the above suggestion, except allow us to reduce or eliminate our exposure on certain properties.

This is probably just the beginning of what we will see from Google regarding the Search Partner Network.  We can only hope that future additions will give managers the ability to actually interact with Google’s Partner Network.

Related Posts:

• What Google’s New Content Enhancements Will Mean for Advertisers
• Is There Hope for Google Placements?
• Google Recently Gave Us a Great Way to Manage Content Campaigns
• Why We Won’t Use Google’s Automatic Matching Beta

I was recently contacted by Leon Krishnayana, CEO & Founder of iSpionage.com.  Leon asked if I would be willing to review the company’s PPC analytics tool.  I had heard of iSpionage before, and had tested their beta version, so I was very interested in peeking under the hood of the full breadth of the tool’s capabilities.

I did make sure that Leon understood that the review would be completely objective, and that is (obviously) how he wanted it.

So, how does iSpionage pan out as a PPC tool?

Why Use It?

Here is the basic value proposition put forth on the iSpionage homepage:

Imagine how much time you will save if you have personal assistant to research and track all of your competitors’ SEM activities and have it delivered to your desk every morning?

You can read all of the benefit statements that iSpionage makes right on their homepage.  Here are a few that stick out to me:

• See all of your competitors’ ads in one place
• Learn from your strongest competitors
• Examine competitors’ A/B split tests
• Impress your boss or clients with fact-based recommendations
• Receive alerts when others start to advertise in your space
• Monitor affiliate programs partners for compliance
• Discover (profitable) keywords your competitors are bidding on
  • iSpionage monitors all 3 major search engines, and if you see that advertisers are buying keywords in all 3, that’s a tip that they are likely getting good results from those words (assuming your competitors are rational)

How It Works

1) Start by creating a “Project” (you can have multiple projects)

2) Add some keywords to start the process (your subscription level will determine how many keywords you can monitor)

3) It may take some time to get your first look at data.  The tool starts processing the keywords immediately, but it may take a full day to get results (although I have had some keywords show data almost immediately)

4) You can attempt to “force a fetch” immediately, but that will only get you a view of the ads that are out there, and not the full analysis that the tool provides)

5) Once all of that is in place, now the fun starts!

The tool allows you (through an easy tabbing interface) to:

a) Add to specific advertisers to a watch list

b) Compare advertisers in one screen

c) Find related keywords

d) Set action items

e) Drill into each individual keyword to see the advertiser landscape

f) Drill into each individual advertiser to see:

i) How they compare for the keywords you have identified

ii) Which keywords they are advertising for in addition to your inputs

iii) A quick view & a detailed view of their ad creative

iv) How they are tagging their destination URLs

v) View a snapshot of each landing page associated with an ad

Example – KoMarketing Associates

Keyword Selection

For this example I am tracking 7 keywords (b2b marketing, b2b pay per click, b2b online marketing, b2b internet marketing, b2b search engine optimization, b2b seo, & b2b ppc).

click on image to enlarge

First, in my opinion, you have to ignore the Avg. CPC and Avg. Clicks/Day data provided here.  At the moment, iSpionage is using the Google AdWords API to pull in Google’s estimates for these two metrics.  We almost always find that the reality on the ground is that Avg. CPC’s can be managed lower through solid PPC tactics (think Ad Quality), and that the Average Search Volume (estimated Clicks/Day) is different than what Google displays (typically there is more actual search volume than what is provided in Google’s estimates).

To iSpionage’s credit, they have made a note to this effect and you can see their “disclaimer” by hovering over the question mark help icons at the top of the two columns in question.

Second, this Keyword Tracking Summary page is a decent page by itself in terms of getting a feel for the competition via the “Ad Counts” data.  But, the real information comes from clicking into each individual keyword and by clicking on “Latest Ads” next to an individual keyword to get a quick snapshot of the ads for the specific keyword.  The latter, makes a great screen shot to capture to show to others in your organization or to clients to give them a feel for the ad creative being used.

Here is a screen shot of the Latest Ads for “b2b seo”:

click on image to enlarge

Advertiser Landscape

The following is a snapshot of some of the advertisers competing for “b2b seo”:

click on image to enlarge

iSpionage is showing that there are 56 advertisers for the term “b2b seo“.  Of course, many of these “advertisers” are not true players in this space (eBay, Hoovers, etc.), others are lead generation portals or directories (vendorseek.com, business.com, etc.), and many of the other advertisers likely are being brought into this screen because they are bidding for broad match terms that contain “seo”, but not necessarily “b2b” (you can get a feel for this by looking at the Latest Ads for a given advertiser and see that the ad copy has not been customized at all for “b2b”).

But, there is plenty of meat to dig into in terms of true competitors.

The column for “Competitive Score” is interesting data.  I used this information during a client presentation a couple of weeks ago, and it was helpful for the audience to see how one of their competitors was dominating the search landscape (hit them in the face even though they already saw anecdotal evidence themselves by searching on the engines from time to time).

Here is iSpionage’s description of Competitive Score:

Indicator for Advertiser’s domination of the keyword.  It’s calculated based on three important aspects of pay per click:

Ad Coverage, Ad Rank,and Ad Frequency:

- Coverage looks at the number of engines being utlized (Google, Yahoo, and MSN)
- Rank looks at the average rank over monitoring period
- Frequency looks at the number of times the ad is served relative to the monitoring period

Keyword Specific Detail

The following is a snapshot of KoMarketing’s ad presence for “b2b seo”:

click on image to enlarge

Note: We do not typically advertise on MSN, but we were supplied with an ad credit and we are using that to test out MSN’s potential to drive traffic.  There is no traffic for our keywords.

In the image above, you can see our ad variations for this Keyword, and you can see the destination URL.

What’s interesting here is that the destination URLs are not associated with the ad versions, but with individual keywords.  It appears as if iSpionage scrapes the destination URL for specific queries that it uses to hit the Google AdWords API (although I believe the intent of the tool is to capture the ads’ destination URLs – based on an answer I received from my contact at iSpionage).  Of course, the keyword destination URLs are more valuable than the ad version destinations because if you are using a web analytics package that requires individual URL tags for each keyword, then the destination of the “ad” is not necessarily what the advertiser put into their ad creative behind the scenes.

With some other keyword/advertiser combinations there is also an icon of a camera that you can click on to view the destination/landing page right there.

So, What Are the Pros and Cons of iSpionage?

Pros

Ease of Use – After some initial exploration of the tool to find how to get the most out of it, the tool is very easy to use on an on-going basis.  In other words, it did take some digging at first to figure out where to get the information I was looking for, but now I feel like the tool has a certain simlicity to it that makes it very easy to manage.

Organization – You can set up multiple Projects in the system.  This is great for grouping keyword concepts, separating out business lines, and organizing for multiple clients.

Keyword Flexibility – Keywords are not set in stone.  It is very easy to delete out keywords, which gives you instant freedom to add more keywords if you have been close to your subscription limit.

Quick Views – There are many different ways to get to the same data quickly and easily.  For example, there are multiple ways to get to views of the ad copy versions out there for a given keyword.  I like the ease of clicking on “Latest Ads” and seeing all of the current ads displayed in a compact block.

Competitive Comparisons – The ability to compare advertisers is possibly one of the most valuable features of the tool.  There is both a summary view of all the advertisers in one screen, and the ability to check off specific competitors and move to a screen with more detail comparing each one.

Related Keyword Suggestions – While you likely already have a good Keyword Research tool that you use, the iSpionage “Related Keyword Suggestions” function is a nice supplement to that.  I would not use this feature to look at keyword volumes, or to do a comprehensive keyword analysis, but the fact that there are related keyword suggestions right there in front of allows you to quickly add words to your tracking portfolio.  And, you may actually see keywords that you had not thought of before (less likely, but possible).

Landing Page Views – The tool provides a quick way to get to the landing page.

Pushing Out Alerts – You can sign up multiple recipients (e-mail addresses) to receive alerts when there is a change in the competitive landscape.  Alerts can be set at two levels – “Project” and “Advertiser”.  This ability to choose either Project or Advertiser is a nice way to either monitor the entire keyword space you have chosen for new advertisers & changes by advertisers, or target specific advertisers to see their changes only.

Data Export – Everything can be downloaded to Excel (or a text file) for you to analyze and present in your own custom way.

Cons

CPC & Search Volume Data From Google AdWords – While I can see why iSpionage has to incorporate this information into their tool in order to fill out the feeling of having a comprehensive tool, the data is next to useless for anyone who is a serious PPC manager.  The data probably also confuses people who are new to the PPC game, because they may not know that the information is there only as a basic “temperature gauge”.  As mentioned previously in this review, iSpionage has put in a “disclaimer” about the data that is accessible by hovering over the help icons.

Lack of “Real” Click Volume Data – OK, I have to be fair here.  With my limited, but dangerous, knowledge of how clickstream data can be obtained on the Internet, this would either be impossible (with any reliability) or would be so expensive that an option for this would make an otherwise very-affordable tool too expensive for most to take advantage of it.  On the other hand, if iSpionage can do it, and make the data as reliable as possible, it would be a huge advantage for them (and for users).

Landing Page Freshness/Accuracy – In looking at the landing pages that iSpionage has identified for sites that we manage, I have seen one or two cases where the landing page was not really where we were pointing people.  In one case, iSpionage “reported” that a page was broken, when in reality all of the ads and keywords were taking people to the exact page we had set up (and it was not broken – but I did have a moment of panic!).  I believe that any potential inaccuracies are caused by either the use of keyword-specific destination URLs or session/cookie handling by the site where the landing page is located.  Likely it is the former.

Summary

In all, I would say that the tool is valuable enough to pay for a subscription (at least to see if it is a fit for you).  I’d stay away from the $49/month entry level, and either choose the $59/month middle level or the $79/month level (the latter option if you want the landing page intelligence and related keywords information).

Based on my interactions with the founder of iSpionage, I’d say that they are also highly proactive and are likely to be constantly improving on what they have.

Read Other Reviews of iSpionage:

• I Spy on You! With iSpionage.com, Heather Paulson
• iSpionage Vs. KeywordSpy, Jonathan Volk

Related PPC Content:

• Landing Page Optimization: Tools for Testing Landing Page Variables

In order to run a successful PPC campaign you have to have ads showing for high-value keywords that are relevant to your business. One aspect of this process is making sure you’ve covered all of your bases in terms of synonyms and variations of similar keywords.

For example, a search term relevant to KoMarketing Associates is the term “B2B SEO”. And while some people will search for that exact term, we want our ads displayed for more than just that one keyword. We want to be found for “B2B Search Engine Optimization”, “Business to Business SEO”, “Business 2 Business SEO”, and many other related terms.

To create large portfolios of keywords quickly, we developed this keyword list generator to do all the manual labor for you.

You still have to do the keyword research and figure out which words and phrases work best for your business and the goals you have established. At least the final step of piecing together all of these keyword components can be done quickly and easily.

How it works:

Add different pieces of a keyword phrase into the appropriate columns.

- Words/Phrase 1
- Words/Phrase 2
- Words/Phrase 3

For the SEO example above, Words/Phrase 1 might be “B2B”, “Business to Business”, and “Business 2 Business”.

The box for Words/Phrases 2 can be used to build the first level of the keyword terms. For our example, “SEO”, “SEM”, “Search Marketing”, and “Search Engine Optimization” are good choices.

The box for Words/Phrases 3 can be used to build your long-tail keywords. Some general examples of appropriate extensions might be “company”, “companies”, “blog”, “blogs”, “strategy”, “strategies”, “tactics”, “best practices”, etc.

After filling the proper fields you simply click “Generate Keywords” and a handy little piece of JavaScript throws together all of the possible outcomes:

b2b seo
b2b sem
b2b search marketing
b2b search engine optimization
business to business seo
business to business sem
business to business search marketing
business to business search engine optimization
business 2 business seo
business 2 business sem
business 2 business search marketing
business 2 business search engine optimization

Just like that, you now have 12 unique search terms.

Other Important Features:

Copy to Master- This allows you to copy a list of words over to a master list so you can start a new list of keywords without losing your previous one.

Remove Duplicate Keywords- While the generator itself will not generate duplicate words, you may have duplicated a keyword phrase or two as you went through the process of creating a large keyword portfolio. This button will remove any of them so they don’t cause you trouble down the road.

Highlight List to Copy– Selects all the text in the master list for easy copying/pasting into other programs (Microsoft Excel, Google Adwords, text editors, etc).