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Women of Internet Marketing Wednesdays Part 25

By Li Evans

This Wednesday's edition marks a rather exciting milestone for the Women in Internet Marketing series.  This edition is the 25th, and closing in on 50 women interviewed.  When I first started this series, never did I imagine this series going on for as long as it has, nor could I imagine the popularity!  Thank you to all of you, you're continued readership and suggestions for women to interview is really what keeps this series going.

Today's edition I'm really excited to present as it has one women who I'm rather envious of, my love of the Japanese culture held my interest since I was young, and this women owns her own Japanese search marketing firm!  The second women I'm interviewing tonight is in a very peculariar business at the moment, that of paid links, so finding out her take on what has been happening as of late is of key interest to not only myself, but probably a lot of you as well.  Let me introduce you to Motoko Hunt and Eleni Ireland.

Google's NoFollow & Small Business Websites

By Li Evans

What gets me about this whole "nofollow", Paid Links & Google nonsense is the fact that not anywhere is it stated in Google's TOS or Google's Webmaster Guidelines about "nofollow".  So, let me ask you - how is a Mom & Pop type of small business just starting out on the web, suppose to know what the bleeping heck a "nofollow" is or what it means, if it isn't easily found on Google's own pages?    If Google hasn't even defined nofollow in their TOS, TOS highlights or their Guidelines, how in the world can anyone who's not an SEO understand what in heck they did wrong or why all of a sudden their rankings dropped? 

I remember sitting in the front row of a session at one of the SES's when both Yahoo and Google reps introduced NoFollow.  NoFollow was about TRUST.  It was suppose to help deter blog & forum spam links that webmasters could not "vouch" for and didn't want to give credit to.  NoFollow was not about ads or paid links or all the rest of this nonsense. 

Women of Internet Marketing Wednesdays Part 24

By Li Evans

We're up to edition 24 in the weekly series of highlighting the extraordinary women in the online marketing industry.  Thanks for coming back each week, you're interest in learning about all these different women from all reaches of our industry, actually helps to keep the articles coming!

This week, I've got the pleasure of interviewing two really interesting women.  Both women were at SES in San Jose this past August and one is a speaker at the conference, the other works in a greatest tourist destination in the world.  Both of these women have some great experiences and unique perspectives on our industry, so this week let me introduce you to Cindy Krum of Blue Moon Works and Scarlet Lento of LasVegas.com

My First "Sphinn" Submission. Was it a Success?

By Karl Ribas

Like most of you I’m sure, I decided it was time for me to give Sphinn a try. Earlier this month, I opened an account, created a profile, and began participating in the social voting, commenting, and submitting that is this Digg-like property.

At first, I was content with just using the platform as a means for further search marketing research… going from story to story without so much as even glancing at the “sphinner” – that little wheel that sits beside each story. However, it wasn’t that long after that I began to fall victim to the social experience of it all. I found myself wanting to give some kind of recognition for the better stories that were submitted, in hopes of helping them attain “Hot Topics” or better yet “Greatest Hits” status. So, with my pointer armed and ready, I began “spinning” my favorite reads.

I was having fun, and at the same time I was contributing to the betterment of my “search marketing” self. A true win-win situation. I was certain that “sphinning” stories was going to be the absolute extent to the level of my participation, but I was wrong.

About a week ago, I came across a great post written by Michael Jensen titled “5 Ways to Capitalize on Long Tail Keywords”. I was on Michael’s blog, but decided that I would mosey on over to Sphinn and show some love for his post – I mean it was a well written article and I figured that the community would have already found it, submitted it, and voted on it a couple of times. I was mistaken. Nobody had, and therefore I was compelled to submit the story myself.

I was a little nervous at first. I wanted to make a great first impression by the Sphinn community and really provide them something of value… which in my opinion I was (the number of spins would later prove otherwise). I was very careful when writing my title and description, and was certain that others in the community would enjoy the read as I had.

I monitored the activity on my submission very closely. Within the first few hours I found that it had received 3 additional spins. I was psyched. I wasn’t sure if what I was seeing was an adequate number of votes giving the exact time-frame, but I was just happy knowing that others were interacting with the story. However, on the downside, within those same few hours I had noticed that many new submissions had taken stage, and were actually pushing mine farther down on the first page of the “What’s New” section. I knew then that if I my submission hadn’t received an abundance of spins and quickly (I’m guessing something in the neighborhood of 20 – 25 spins), that I would never make the “What’s Hot Section” and thus be buried in “Sphinn-Hell”. Those votes never came, and it wasn’t all that long before I found myself at the bottom of the page 1 and eventually page 2, 3, and so on.

In the end, my submission received only 5 spins. Was it a total loss? That’s hard for me to say. If I gauge the success of this piece by the sheer number of spins (remember that isn’t a clear representation of its popularity – rather the approval of those who’ve read it) than I would be inclined to say yes, it was a complete loss. However, if I were to gauge the success of this piece based on the generalized standards of any social medium, that is to contribute to the community and invoke participation, than no, it wasn’t a loss at all.

How about you… what do you think? How would you gauge the overall success of a Sphinn submission?

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Update: After reading some of the comments below, a few additional thoughts came to mind. I published a short follow-up post over on my blog for anyone that is interested.

eMetrics: Beyond Reporting: Using Excel and other everyday tools to explore data by Chris Gemignani, Juice Analytics

By Alex Cohen

Chris Gemignani of Juice Analytics wrapped up my tour of eMetrics with some great, in the dirt tactics to "juice" your use of Excel in web analysis.  Chris focused his presentation on ways to maximize each aspect of the analytics triangle - reporting, exploration and presentation. 

Can You Repeat (Function) That?
If you're a fan of the "over/under" charts in Google Analytics, you can mimic the visualization with the Repeat function.  The syntax goes like this, REPT(characters, # of times), e.g. REPT(“x”,5) -> “XXXXX”

• To make bars = REPT(“|”, F3/10)
• Bar and text, REPT(“|”,5)&TEXT

eMetrics: Web Analytics 2.0 with Eric Peterson

By Alex Cohen

Anyone in the analytics community knows Eric Peterson.  He's an author, blogger, consultant and general advocate for the community as a whole.  Having recently struck out as a consultant, Eric is now vendor relationship free and spreading the gospel about web analytics process and, at this particular session of eMetrics, Web Analytics 2.0. 

There was a time when the complications of an analyst were centered around more finite challenges like cookie deletion.  But in a world of user generated content, an entire web experience inside one "page view", automated agents executing JavaScript, content distribution through XML and RSS feeds, and non traditional browsers like iPhone and Blackberry, you can see how the analyst's life has become a bit more complex.  Eric notes that the markers of web analytics 2.0 are quantitative & qualitative, it captures multiple browsing sessions, measures content distribution, complex event tracking, data from multiple sources, focused on data analysis & optimization, and visitors are persistent as individual indefinitely.  This isn't simple page or logfile analysis, it's a "website optimization ecosystem".

Echo Boomers Generation Invading Search

By Account Deleted

In another post on SEM Geek.com, I focus on the new generation of Searchers infiltrating the web. As we know, to be successful in search, we have to adapt and tailor our plans, strategies and tactics  to the mass audiences and do our best to accommodate their intentions, interests and behaviors. With that said, I came across an interesting segment on CBS's 60 minutes episode "Children of the  Baby Boomers" which talks about the "Echo Boom Generation" and it really caught my attention because everything that was said has a strong direct influence in all of our search marketing efforts. For example, if you do a quick Google search for "echo boomers" you will see a plethora of organic listing talking about this very topic....

Continue Reading about the The "Echo Boomers" Generation in Search Marketing

Micro-Communities: Utilizing Social Media to Market to Qualified Audiences

By Li Evans

SMX Social:  Micro-Communities - Marketing To Your Qualified Online Audience

On the second day of SMX Social, I had the privilege of being on a panel that spoke about micro-communities.  The panel included Rand Fishkin and myself while Danny Sullivan moderated.  Several of my colleagues were a little confused with the title of the panel, just as probably a few in the SMG audience are right now. So just what are micro communities?

First, before I explain that, let me start off by saying - the concept of Social Media is not new.  That's right, the concept of what exactly social media is not new.  The fancy term that has been coined "Social Media" and the new "Web 2.0" looks are what's new to this rather old advertising medium (old in terms of the internet that is).  Social Media has been around since the inception of the internet.  Think I'm a little nuts in stating that?  Stop and reflect a moment, some of the most powerful social media outlets for your clients, services and products have been around a very long time - Forums and Message Boards.

Forums and Message Boards are chalk full of relevant very honed content around particular subjects.  Whether its subject is about collecting comics, fan fiction writing, or making crafts most forums have a lot of "power" when it comes to value and optimization of your website (think age of domains, relevant content, etc.).  They also offer traffic from very qualified resources, and these are resources that really would be more interested in what you have to say.

So now, maybe you are getting an idea of what micro-communities are?  Micro-Communities are specific communities built around niches.  When it comes to social media it can encompass a wide variety of social media types from specific social news sites (BallyHype, Sk*rt), bloggers blogging about very finite subjects, specific communities (WebMD, Corkd), to fourms/message boards (Cre8asite, Rotten Tomatoes).  All of these social media types provide user generated content created by people interested in one particular niche.

Tips on Salesforce.com and Adwords Client Center APIs

By Account Deleted

In a recent post on my SemGeek Blog, I talk about a recent tip that I got from Google on how to deal with having multiple MCC (My Client Center) access from 2 totally different sources. In this case, Salesforce.com and our agencies MCC.

Here's a preview of the article... One of our clients uses Salesforce.com, which in general,  dynamically extrapolates form data (customer info) directly into SalesForce's database using Google's Adwords API. For this to happen, Salesforce.com requires API access from your Google Adwords Account. However, agencies and companies also need API access for MCC and other related API Access.

To read the entire post, Tips on Salesforce.com and Adwords Client Center APIs

eMetrics: Do You See What I Hear? How The Voice Of The Customer Impacts Customer Experience At Dell by Annette Priest

By Alex Cohen

Wednesday's keynote address by Annette Priest of Dell reinforced the theme that traditional web analytics data (clickstream) is a only one tool in a suite of approaches that you should be using to listen to your customers.  You have to "move from data to empathy" if you want to optimize your site and your bottom line.

Design and content impact prospects and customers at every stage of the customer journey: learning, buying and using your product.  Consider the typical browsing experience: customers poke around for information when interested in a topic and often rely on the sources of information they know and trust, such as ratings and reviews.  As a brand, conversations are occurring all about you.  First, you have to be aware of those conversations.  Second, you have to participate in them.  Dell launched their own blog, but it was largely pushing content instead of having a conversation.  Realizing their error, they relaunched it as IdeaStorm - a place for users to voice their ideas.  The response was immediate, including an overwhelming number of requests for Dell systems with Linux.  The result?  Dell used this feedback to develop new products.