Purple Squirrl

SEO - Update on Metrics

As SEO matures it’s interesting to see that the value and sort of metrics is also changing. Stephan Spencer over at Marketing Profs writes an article about some of the metrics now being tracked for SEO.

Here are the metrics Spencer mentions -

1) Brand-to-Nonbrand Ratio
2) Unique Pages
3) Page Yield
4) Keyword Yield
5) Visitors per Keyword
6) Index-to-Crawl Ratio
7) Engine Yield

Numbers are interesting, they can certainly tell a story but only if sliced & diced the right way do they tell the accurate story.

Glam Media - pros & cons

The biggest issue when starting a website is traffic. Of course the business needs to make money but all web business models rely on web traffic. One way to get that traffic is to partner with a company like Glam Media. They have created a network where a partner site can post ads within the network at a share of revenue.

This is how they explain their deal -

” Here’s how it works. Our flagship site, Glam.com is the heart—helping drive traffic back and forth among the Glam Publisher Network, in an integrated way, and our publishers are the veins.

* Daily content feeds from sites in the Glam Publisher Network are featured on Glam.com’s homepage via headlines and direct links

* Content from corresponding publishers are highlighted across Glam Media channels on fashion, beauty, lifestyle, wellness, and others and via our network directories

* Glam Publisher banner ads embedded with rotating story and site links go out across the entire network, allowing all our publishers to enjoy the same integrated advertising exposure that Glam so adeptly provides for brand advertisers.

So one of the tactics I would like you to consider is participating in some community networks. One of the biggest and most effective is the Glam.com network.

After growing through their agreement here it is in a nutshell …

The good: In exchange for them selling ad space on your site they give you 50% and help drive awareness of your site.

1. you allocate some ad space to them and they sell ads on your site and it’s a 50% / 50% revenue share on the ads that are served on your site.

2. They then also allow you to put ads out on the network which is thousands of sites.

3. They also agree to promote your site from time to time.

4. You can put advertising from other networks like adsense so you are not limited to one advertising source.

The bad:

1. The ask you to sign on for a 2 year term.

2. They want you to put their ads above the fold

3. If in the 2 years someone wants to buy the site they have 1stt right of refusal at the same price as the other offer.

4. Because you join their ad network. They want credit for the traffic to your site.

Google’s Analytics Evangelist

Robert Scoble from Work Fast TV on Fast Company.TV interviews Avinash Kaushik, a Web Analytics expert who is Analytics Evangelist for Google. He is the author of “Web Analytics an Hour a Day”. He gives some good info on keywords selection.

Google Analytics Tutorials

I use Google Analytics for all my web analytics. They offer an amazing service. The drawback of course is that you’re giving Google more data so that they can make their ads even more profitable. So in an indirect way you’re helping them. But if you’re fine with that then use them - they are excellent.

On Veoh.com today I found some great tutorials from Conversation Marketing, there are five in total:

Tutorial 1: Setup

Tutorial 2: Essential Stats

Tutorial 3: Digging Deeper

Tutorial 4: Goals

Tutorial 5: Search Analytics

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• Analyze Your Web Traffic With Google Analytics: Video Tutorial

Online Media Measurement Framework

Stephan Pretorius over at Adotas.com has a great article about online metrics so that decisions can be made on metrics and tied directly to ROI. He talks about setting up a Media Measurement Framework - these are the five attributes that make up the framework:

1 - Track everything
2 – Integrate the data
3 – Compare apples with apples
4 – De-duplicate conversions
5 – Make your metrics relevant to your business

Analytics are really the most important part of any program you put in place. But typically it is the thing that is overlooked due to lack of time or simply not placing enough importance on it. Then after the program has been running for a few months and it’s time to check in with how it’s performing from an ROI perspective it’s practically impossible to determine how successful it is in relation to other programs.

I suggest read Stephan Pretorius article and make analytics an important part of your planning.

Source: Why CFOs Don’t Believe in Online Advertising [Adotas.com]