Archive for February, 2007
In recent research conducted by compete.com, trends of various Google products were highlighted. The trend was interesting for us Google SEO specialists
Amongst the winners were Google Video, Google Blog, Google Scholar, Google Maps and Google Desktop, whilst the big losers in the report were Google Local, Google Alerts, Google Catalogs and Google’s product network Froogle.
To read the full report, go to the compete.com blog
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February 21st, 2007
Over the last couple of months you have probably heard of link baiting or social media optimisation. If you haven’t time to get reading. Since then a number have posts have appeared regarding the subject, however none as good as “Andy Hagans Ultimate Guide to Linkbaiting and Social Media Marketing“.
In the guide Andy covers all aspects of Linkbaiting including why, how and what to linkbait. Of particular interest was his bit on linkbait hooks as covered below
“News Hook. The news hook is when you are the first to scoop a story; everyone who carries the story will then (theoretically) link to you as the original source. To get a scoop you don`t need to have insider information (though that doesn’t hurt); you can just be the first site to publicly predict something or to reach a controversial conclusion. Bonus points if your scoop is ‘true’ too then many later-proven-to-be-false scoops will make other bloggers and writers hesitant to reference you again.
Resource Hook. The resource hook occurs when you make an extremely helpful piece of content that everyone will naturally want to bookmark (like this one!). This may be my favorite hook, because as opposed to the news hook, it encourages people to link to and bookmark it for a long period of time. Content that sits there and naturally obtains trusted, relevant backlinks passively? Isn’t that the original white hat SEO wet dream?
Contrary Hook. The contrary hook is when you refute a common myth in your niche. Most little areas of the blogosphere hold certain beliefs to be self-evident; all SEOs know that META tags are dead; all Web2.0 designers know that writing validated code is the right thing to do. Calling these people wrong will usually incite them into talking about you, and linking to you.
Humor Hook. People love to laugh, especially at people in their industry or niche. And most niches have so little levity that almost anything will get you a chuckle and a link. You can even directly cite influential people, and if done in a gentle way, they’ll generally be flattered into linking to it.
Tool Hook. A good link bait tool has one of two characteristics: 1) It is actually useful; or 2) It feeds bloggers’ egos. (Very few examples can do both.) Firefox plugins, free design templates and financial calculators are all examples of tools that have received thousands of valuable backlinks. None of them are too hard for a decent programmer to create.
Award Hook. No official awards in your tiny niche? Why not host them yourself? You can either have a more legitimate award with significant organization and actual prize money like the Bloggies, or you can basically nominate everyone in your niche and hope that half link back to you out of enthusiasm for the community, as with the Search Awards. Both tactics work well. The reason is simply that people like positive recognition and they LOVE rankings. Awards get linked to because they help to legitimatize other people it helps the winners when they promote you. Ah, human nature
Giveaway Hook. Anyone who has been to an SEO conference recently (or any other conference for that matter) is stocked for life on pens, highlighters, key rings, and loads of over freebie junk. Companies fight to give trinkets away at certain events because, when directed towards the right audience, giveaways are a great way to drive sales and get a return far better than any ordinary advertising. The Internet is no different. Text Link Ads gets a lot of love around the blogosphere because they offer a free coupon for new clients. Aaron Wall seems to give away an AdWords coupon every other week how else can you get such branding, traffic and links with a $50 piece of paper?
Research/Statistic Hook. Sometimes just compiled numbers, or any kind of scientific survey, will get a lot of link love, especially in an under-studied area. And while a scientifically-conducted study with valid methodology will often get better links, the (sad?) truth is that almost anything can pass as ‘research’ on the Internet.”
Source:Andy Hagans Ultimate Guide to Linkbaiting and Social Media Marketing
Well worth a read…
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February 20th, 2007
Google has introduced new functionality allowing Google Adwords pay-per-click administrators/managers more control including the ability to pause keywords, sites and ad creatives. As of the 15th of February 2007, all AdWords advertisers can pause and resume keywords (for keyword-targeted campaigns), sites (for site-targeted campaigns), and ad creatives.To read the post in full please visit the Google Adwords blog
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February 20th, 2007
Google has recently announced a number of improvements to the Google Adwords “Quality Score”, both in terms of reporting and the Quality Score algorithm itself. This should have significant effects for Pay-per-click specialists.
The two revised changes that Google will be introducing are as follows:
- Greater transparency - via the introduction of a new Quality Score column within the Adwords interface. This will include showing a minimum bid and as well as a Good, OK or poor label for the applicable keyphrase. You can select this column by clicking the ‘Customize Columns’ option in one of your ad groups (selecting this will also automatically populate the column for all other ad groups within that campaign).
The quality label will provide a quick overview of the quality of your keywords, or alternatively provide you with the minimum bid for a granular understanding of your Quality Score.
Remember, the lower the minimum bid is for a keyword, the higher the Quality Score, and vice versa.
- Quality - will also be improved as part of the new improvements to the quality score algorithm. Google have introduced minimum bids for keywords to improve the quality of the ads. This should in theory make it easier for high quality ads to enter the auction while also discouraging low quality ads.
“First, we’re improving the way that we set minimum bids for keywords where we have limited data. For example, if the system does not have any data on a keyword, we’ll try to assign that keyword a lower initial minimum bid until we have enough data to make a more accurate assessment of the Quality Score for that keyword in your account. Second, we’re improving the Quality Score algorithm to make it more accurate in predicting the quality of all ads. This will improve the overall quality of ads that we serve by lowering minimum bids for high quality ads and raising minimum bids for low quality ads. We expect that the higher minimum bids for low quality ads will reduce the number of low quality ads we show to our users.” - Google Adwords blog
To read the full post go to http://adwords.blogspot.com/2007/02/quality-score-updates.html or the Search engine land post
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February 20th, 2007
Click fraud is the latest ‘hot topic’ circulating the online marketing arena, but what is it? And how does it affect you as a merchant running a pay-per-click campaign?
Spending on Internet advertising is growing faster than any other sector of the advertising industry and is expected to surge from $12.5 billion last year to $29 billion by 2010 in the U.S. alone, according to the researcher eMarketer Inc. With around 50% of this spending being spent on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
Here E-Gain New Media Ltd. offer you a complete guide as to what this phenomenon is, who is likely to commit such an act, how to identify & prevent click fraud and how to best report instances of suspected click fraud on your PPC campaign.
What is Click Fraud?
According to Wikipedia “Click fraud is a type of internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad’s link”
Click Fraud is estimated to range from 5% - 15% of pay-per-click traffic (some estimates are as high as 20% - 35%) although Google estimates click fraud at only 2% due to the rigorous detection methods they claim are in place.
In a recent study by Click Forensics, click fraud reached a new high of 14.2% in the last quarter of 2006 with the average rate of click fraud on ‘content networks’ as high as 19.2% for the same quarter.
So who is likely to commit Click Fraud?
The click fraud villain is most likely to fall into one of three categories:
- Online vandals with nothing better to do than cause a nuisance
- A competitor clicking on your search network PPC ads, with the sole intention of increasing your cost-per-acquisition (CPA). This could be interpreted as click fraud, although currently the search engines do not consider this kind of activity as click fraud
- Search Engine advertising affiliates who generate self-income from fraudulent clicks on ‘content network’ adverts displayed on their own websites. This practice, at it’s extreme, involves the use of unscrupulous ‘paid to read’ or PTR sites, which are basically click-fraud rings, some with hundreds or thousands of participants, paid to click on your ads with no regard for your return on investment (ROI) as the advertiser
What are the Search Engines doing about it?
Both Google and Yahoo claim that they filter out most fraudulent clicks. The costs involved for these clicks are either not charged or are reimbursed to advertisers who have been wrongly billed.
To combat click fraud Google applies four layers of fraud detection:
- Automatic detection - this filters clicks from both the search and content networks in real-time with the goal of removing them before their existence is ever shown to the advertiser
- The “Flagging system” - an automatic process to remove invalid AdSense clicks
- The “Manual review” - this process has more than two-dozen Google employees tasked with manually reviewing and removing any suspicious AdSense clicks
- If the first three layers of protection fail then the fourth and final layer of click fraud detection falls to the advertiser and 3rd party click fraud detection companies. Google refers to this layer as “requested investigations”
Googles main aim is that the first three layers of filtering will identify all invalid and fraudulent clicks. These layers currently filter more than 98% of invalid clicks.
And should you be in any doubt, both Google and Yahoo have, in the past, released the following statements:
“We think click fraud is a serious but manageable issue” says John Slade, Yahoo’s senior director for global product management. “Google strives to detect every invalid click that passes through its system” says Shuman Ghosemajumder, the Google manager for trust and safety. “It’s absolutely in our best interest for advertisers to have confidence in this industry.”
As a positive for the future, Google is currently testing a cost-per-action (CPA) platform, which should effectively deal with click fraud. With CPA ads you don’t pay by the click but instead pay when the customer reaches a certain goal: buys a product, fills an enquiry, etc.
How to identify click fraud on your pay-per-click campaign
Before you can even contemplate identifying click fraud you must have effective tracking tools implemented on your website and, if possible, access to your server logs. With tracking tools in place, the most obvious way of spotting click fraud is to simply observe any spikes in traffic where there is no particular shift in your conversions.
Once identified, these spikes can then be analysed by looking for repeated clicks from sources that look similar. This similarity could be an IP address or an IP range; it could be a combination of IP range; browser version; operating system. Basically look for data in groups that looks fraudulent.
If all this is just ‘a bit too heavy’ for you then there are a number of companies out there that can help.
- AdWatcher - claims to able to spot click fraud so that you can report it. Covers other aspects of PPC marketing, by helping you track your ROI, email success, etc.
- Click Auditor - offers the ability to check whether your competitors IP is the one performing any abusive clicking, and says it will stealthily gather your competitors IP addresses for this purpose.
- ClickSentinel - focuses on helping you get refunds on fraudulent clicks, as requesting a refund from your PPC provider can often be very difficult for the un-initiated.
- Click Tracks - reportedly has automatic click fraud reporting along with other click tracking (analytics) tools.
Reporting suspected Click Fraud
When reporting suspected click fraud, you must include as much captured data as possible to increase your likelihood of obtaining a refund or credit.
The following guidelines are recommended:
- Clearly state, at the very beginning of your claim, that you are reporting suspected click fraud
- Provide a full explanation to support your claim
- Include your account details (do not include your password or payment information)
- State the exact keyword, ad and campaign where you suspect click fraud has occurred
- State the exact time, date and IP address of each instance of suspected click fraud. This data can be gleaned from your server logs or 3rd party tracking tool
- Finally, state whether you are requesting a refund, credit or investigation
If you were using any software tools, such as those highlighted earlier, to help you track and report click fraud then include any reports generated by these in your claim.
Lowering the risk of Click Fraud happening to you!
Always bear in mind that your PPC objective is to get conversions and not just clicks.
The more you have researched the demographics of your intended client base the better your chance of avoiding click fraud. Are your clients from a specific country or location? When are they likely to search for your product or service? What are the key search-terms they are using?
With demographic data in-hand you can target your ad campaigns more effectively and lower your risk of click fraud.
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February 14th, 2007
I had some time for the Did-it/SEO isn’t rocket science/is dead argument being argued in the online marketing arena over the last couple of weeks, in no small part due to Dave Pasternack’s recent article, however Mark Simon’s (Did-it’s Vice President of industry relations - Crisis Manager perhaps) recent foray into the domain, only serves to enflame the situation and highlight every aspect they are trying to argue against. I will however state that the response of the SEO community as a whole hasn’t been that well handled, and if the industry is to be as well respected as more traditional sectors such as Offline then really such character assassinations should be very few and far between.
Mark Simon’s recent post on Mediapost merely served to highlight why Did-its recent campaign is nothing more than a PR stunt, and in my personal opinion merely highlighting the changing trends of online marketing from merely search engine focussed to offerings including Online PR & Social Media.
To read the Mark Simons article click here
And the fuss it`s caused - http://www.threadwatch.org/node/11507
However his post did raise a couple of interesting and valid points most notably
“That doesn’t mean that it’s curtains for SEO firms. They’ll still be in high demand as experts on information architecture and site usability. They’ll help clients build sites that their searchers are really looking for, and that their searchers can use. They’ll cease to have value in reverse-engineering the engine algorithms, but they’ll still have value in helping clients create truly relevant Web sites. “
I can’t help but agree to certain parts of that comment, however whilst the algorithm is still manipulatable, the services for “optimisers” will still be required, and until search engines can factor in something that is not in any way open to “abuse” or the general public change the way they use the web, the market will always be “buoyant”
The overriding factor that will determine whether or not the benefit outweighs the investment. Whilst traffic from search engines such as Google remain the primary source of traffic and the ROI from organic search high, the value an SEO’er will remain at a premium.
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February 13th, 2007
Looking at Google Webmaster Tools, there appears to be a new function added to the system providing us search engine optimisation specialists, with not only a new plaything but a useful tool in order to analyse inbound external linkage to a website.The post on Google Webmaster Central, highlighted that “Unlike the link: operator, this data is much more comprehensive and can be classified, filtered, and downloaded. All you need to do is verify site ownership to see this information.”
When in this summary view, click the linked number and go to the detailed list of links to that page.
When in the detailed view, you’ll see the list of all the pages that link to specific page on your site, and the time we last crawled that link. Since you are on the External Links tab on the left, this list is the external pages that point to the page.”
Whilst it still doesnt give a totally comprehensive figure to work of (when comparing it to Yahoo Site Explorer and link:) it does at least present useful analysis over the effect/structure of inbound link activity something all us search engine optimisation experts find useful
To read the full post click here
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February 6th, 2007
Matt Cutts has a very good post on his blog about PPC tracking and the discrepancies that can arise as a result of third party web log analysis. In particular with reference to a document by Shuman Ghosemajumder (links as follows):
In the article Shuman says:
“Here`s the problem: web logs, whether generated by an advertisers, or by third-party code on an advertiser`s site, cannot directly track ad clicks. Instead, they track visits to a special landing page URL on the advertiser`s site (e.g. http://example.com/?adwords ) as a proxy for how many ad clicks occurred. The assumption they`re relying upon is that each visit to that URL corresponds to a unique click, and vice versa. But in practice this is not the case. Once a user visits that page, they often browse through the site, navigating through sub pages, and then return to the original landing page by hitting the back button. When the landing page is reloaded in the browser, it appears in the web log as though additional ad clicks are occurring. Google can count ad clicks reliably as a click on a Google ad will cause the web browser to contact Google and then we redirect it to the advertiser`s landing page. A reload of the advertiser`s landing does not contact Google again. In addition, the referrer URL which is passed by the browser when users hit the back button is actually the original referrer URL (which says the page came from an ad click) which gets cached, so there is no analysis which can be done based on logs alone which can resolve this. This is where the fictitious clicks come from.
So is there a solution to this? Yes. Third-party analytics (not click fraud) firms have been aware of the page reload issue for many years, and generally use redirects (rather than web log based tracking) to avoid it. If one is tied to using web site logs (or landing page code generating logs) however, the only solution is to use the AdWords auto-tagging feature. Auto-tagging has been available since 2005, and is a feature which appends a unique ID to the landing page URL for every click, so that the cases of (a) multiple clicks and (b) multiple reloads of the landing page can be easily distinguished.”
However having hyper-analysed the performance of one of our major clients, a debt management company here in the UK, I have to question some of the points made. At some points today, the click:impressions ratio was 2:1 in the clicks favour, all chargeable by Google. Surely this is something that could be very easily sorted by a quick cookie reference prior to forwarding to the site, instead of recharging the advertiser.
This is something that Google really should be looking at, whilst no other online medium flexibility that PPC on the whole does, no other channel online is as easily manipulated as PPC, not just Google (we have had even worse problems with the current Yahoo platform on certain terms.
To see Matt Cutts full blog post, click here
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February 5th, 2007
