Q&A: Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz
Every two years, SEO consultancy and publisher SEOmoz publishes a Search Engine Ranking Factors report that details which ranking factors some of the world's top SEOs think are hot and not. The latest Search Engine Ranking Factors report was published in August.
I spoke with Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz, about the 2009 Ranking Factors report, the dilemma of paid links and how social media is changing SEO.
Subscriptions preferred over micropayments in the UK: report
What the future of news online looks like has a lot to do with payment models. As publishers push ahead with their plans to go from 'free' to 'paid', how consumers are asked to pay for news content will play a significant role in determining which publishers succeed and which fail.
Despite lots of talk about micropayments, a newly-released paidContent:UK/Harris Interactive poll found that over half (53%) of British consumers would prefer to purchase a subscription to their favorite news site.
New recipe for success: less intelligence and optimism, more grit and pessimism?
When you visualize the quintessential startup, you probably see intelligent and optimistic people working together to solve big challenges. After all, a group of individuals usually has to be somewhat smart to get a new business off the ground and the group probably has to be relatively optimistic to find the motivation to face big challenges and succeed.
But forget what you think you know about the characteristics it takes to succeed. They just might not be accurate.
Why you need to create video for the web
Advertising revenue is down, newspapers are struggling and as the economy takes a downturn production costs are up, at the same time online readership and revenue continue to rise. So what's the answer? Go where the eyes are.
Whether you are writing, taking pictures, shooting video or recording audio you can build communities with your content. But only if you take it online.
Google: Ad position does not affect conversion rates
Web surfers may be more likely to click on search results ranked higher on a web page, but purchase decisions are not so reliant on search positioning, according to Google.
In a post on Inside AdWords today, Google revealed that the position of key words doesn't affect conversion rates very much at all. If your company is spending time or money trying to get to the top of a page's search results. Don't bother.
Q&A: Web metrics magician Jim Sterne
It's unlikely anyone in digital marketing is unfamiliar with Jim Sterne. His career as a marketer, author, conference chair, speaker, and above all, web metrics guru has earned him international renown and respect. Jim will deliver one of three keynotes at Econsultancy's Peer Summit in New York in October, so we caught up with him to find out what he'll be sharing with the audience, and what's been on his mind lately in terms of how metrics can help build organizations.
Q: So, what are you going to be discussing at your Peer Summit keynote?
A: My favorite topic these days is using Web metrics to drive the business. What I mean by that is most people are using Web analytics as a benchmark: how did we do yesterday, and how are we doing today? Smart people are actually analyzing to optimize their website. The advanced people are using Web data to optimize all of their marketing. They're measuring what's happening on their website to inform the rest of their marketing. So when Best Buy does a television ad about Twitter, that's what I'm talking about. Really good companies - and I've only come across a couple of them - are actually using it to drive their business. In other words, watching behavior online to determine what new products or features or territories to move in to.
Wall Street Journal study throws stones at ad networks
Web publishers have a long, tangled history with ad networks. Many newspapers and magazines rely on them to sell off unsold advertising online, but at the same time, they resent the networks for dragging down the value of their overall inventory.
Today in the Wall Street Journal, the ad network slamming continues. In an article about a new study by the Online Publishers Association, the paper subheads their story with the following: "Proprietary Content Is Better Channel Than Portals or 'Ad Networks'."
The implication is that advertisers are better off buying online ads through publishers than through those lowly ad networks. It may be in the best interest of publishers (like the Wall Street Journal) to slam networks and encourage advertisers to purchase their ads directly. But it isn't an either or situation. Publishers are giving ad networks inventory they can't sell on their own. These "remnant" ads are by default cheaper ad content. And smart advertisers are buying both.
Does social media lead to better financial results for companies?
How valuable is social media to business? The answer probably depends more on your opinion of social media than it does hard facts.
But a new study makes a bold claim: "deep engagement with consumers through social media channels correlates to better financial performance".
Recession trend: more clicks, lower CPCs, higher ROI
When Google reported its Q2 earnings yesterday, it beat analyst expectations. But all the news wasn't good news, at least for Google.
In the area of paid clicks, Google experienced an unhealthy downward trend: total paid clicks declined 2% from Q1 and more importantly, the average cost-per-click (CPC) in the second quarter fell 13% year-over-year.
How fast is the blogosphere?
How fast are bloggers? According to researchers at Cornell University, it typically took bloggers two and a half hours during the 2008 US presidential campaign to pick up on stories that were broken by the mainstream media.
That conclusion was reached by using computers to analyze 1.6m websites between August and October 2008. All told, these websites published around 90m blog posts and articles.
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
