From the monthly archives:

September 2008

Google Search-Tips and Tricks for Power Users

by Fred on September 29, 2008

Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is a continuation on the topic of Search. If you?’ve been following this podcast for the last couple of weeks, than you’re already aware that we?’ve been covering the topic from a2z. To that end, it occurred to me that also including a few Google Search Tips and Tricks from a user perspective could prove useful. Time is money as you know and I?’d like to give a shout out to the PCWizKid on YouTube for contributing top today?’s podcast.

Check out the six minute podcast on the WOW Technology Minute website.

Today’s podcast is sponsored by the Web Builder 2.0 Conference taking place October 13-15, 2008 at the Mirage, Las Vegas. Web Builder 2.0 is the technical conference for professionals building the next-generation of richly-interactive Web sites.

Check out all of the great resources and links on the WOW Technology Minute website.

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Eye On Google and Many Others

by Fred on September 25, 2008

Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is a continuation on the topic of Search. Unless you?’ve been living in a cave for awhile then it will come as no surprise to you that Google dominates the Search market.

What may surprise you is that:

•Google draws the biggest Web audience followed closely by Microsoft
•People spent more time on AOL and Yahoo
•Despite Stereotypes, the heaviest Internet users are people age 35-49, not youth

According to Nielsen/Net Rating of last quarters results:

Check out other stats on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today’s podcast is sponsored by the An Event Apart Conference taking place in Chicago in October.

The Event Apart Conference is a the design conference for people who make websites, announces a special discount exclusively for WOW members.

Join Eric Meyer, Jeffrey Zeldman, and their guests on October 13-14, 2008 at the Sheraton Chicago for two jam-packed 9.5-hour-long days of learning and inspiration!

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Search Around the World Interview (2-2) with Anne Anne Kennedy

by Fred on September 22, 2008

Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is the second in a series on the topic of “Search Around the World” with Anne Kennedy, Managing Partner at Beyond Ink a consulting service based in Maine.

Anne Kennedy is a veteran Web professional with years of experience on this topic and I had the pleasure of continuing the conversation about internationalization and Search. Anne welcome back. In addition to asking Anne about her perspective regarding international language issues as it relates to Search.

I also asked Anne to comment on the current status of the overall market place from a company investment perspective in the Web as well.

Check out the four minute podcast on the WOW Technology Minute website.

Today’s podcast is sponsored by the Web Builder 2.0 Conference taking place October 13-15, 2008 at the Mirage, Las Vegas. Web Builder 2.0 is the technical conference for professionals building the next-generation of richly-interactive Web sites.

Check out all of the great resources and links on the WOW Technology Minute website.

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Search Around the World-Interview (1 of 2) with Anne Kennedy

by Fred on September 18, 2008

Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is a continuation on the topic of Search a2z. To help us to better understand Search Best Practices from an international perspective, I placed a call to Anne Kennedy,Managing Partner at Beyond Ink a consulting service based in Maine.

With three decades of experience in marketing communications, Anne moderated a panel at the Search Conference entitled “Search Around the World”. I?’m delighted to be sharing the first in a series of interviews covering the countries of Asia, Latin America and the EU.

Check out the five minute interview on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today’s podcast is sponsored by the An Event Apart Conference taking place in Chicago in October.

The Event Apart Conference is a the design conference for people who make websites, announces a special discount exclusively for WOW members.

Join Eric Meyer, Jeffrey Zeldman, and their guests on October 13-14, 2008 at the Sheraton Chicago for two jam-packed 9.5-hour-long days of learning and inspiration!

Transcript of Around the World interview with Anne Kennedy

BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. Today?’s podcast is a continuation on the topic of Search a2z. To help us to better understand Best Practices from an international perspective, I?’m on the phone with Anne Kennedy, Managing Partner at Beyond Ink, a consulting service based in Maine.

With three decades of experience in marketing communications, Anne recently moderated a panel on the topic of “Search Around the World” at the Search Strategies Conference in San Jose, California. And I?’m delighted to have her on the phone with the first in a series of interviews.

Anne, can you provide the listeners of this podcast with an overview of the session and can you also provide us with some insights that we can use today?

ANNE KENNEDY: We had three panelists, one covering Spanish-speaking, one Asia and one sort of an “everything else around the world.” I?’ll start with [indecipherable] with Asia and particularly Japan, there are several things to know if you are marketing into that market. One is that the penetration of mobile devices is far greater than in the US or Europe so websites need to be available on mobile devices, whether they are actually produced in a mobile format or just by their design work well on mobile. That?’s one take-a-way that?’s very important in that market.

Another one that?’s very important in Japan is understanding that there are as many as four different character sets for the Japanese language. So when you are doing keyword research it becomes a quadruple effort because you have to approach it on all different keyword sets.

One of the overall points that comes up at every “Search Around the World” that we?’ve done is that it?’s really important to have local country nationals providing content for you and whatever else you are looking for, link strategies, because the cultural differences, apart from the language differences the cultural differences are quite extreme and working simply with translation is not going to convey all of the tactics that you need for, or convey all the information that you need for success. So while you need to have a centralized, coordinated approach from wherever your website headquarters is, to work in different countries you really need to depend on country nationals. And all of the international players who I know who are successful do just that, they have people in each country. And that?’s not just Asia, that?’s everywhere.

So we move on to what [indecipherable] has to say about Spanish speaking. She talked a lot about the US in addition to Latin America and in the US one of the things that becomes clear is that there is a great deal more, I want to say it?’s a larger market than had been previously suspected and also there?’s a great deal more spending power in that market, in the US Hispanic market, Latino market. So the opportunities are very great there. When we start talking about Latin America we have to remember that a variety of different, 16 different countries, 16 different cultures, you can?’t market just to one and say it one way. Again, you need to depend on local, in-country input to what you?’re doing and understand a variety of different things including how things are paid for.

And as we move over to Europe that is also true. Even though there?’s an EU, there?’s not one European culture. There?’s not one single way of reaching people and obviously not one language and somehow it seems to me, I spend a lot of time in Europe and it seems to me that the existence of the EU has made each individual country even more interested in putting forth its own language and culture, if you know what I mean.

BILL: Sure, I do.

ANNE: So here again it?’s really important to have country nationals who are guiding your search marketing efforts.

BILL: And how would you propose to address those very complex issues? How would you recommend SEO or those interested in marketing their sites in those countries, address those complex cultural and language issues?

ANNE: Well the first thing is while I know a lot of , heard that a lot of people in the EU are still dot com snobs, and they prefer to deal with a dot com, it is still true that what is going to be…Google for instance is going to, by default, put a searcher in the Google that is in their country, like the Goolge.sr. And I?’ve found that true, even on other sites, travel sites, like kayak for instance, if I?’m in the UK it?’s very difficult for me to get on to kayak.com, it?’s always kayak.co.uk, which gives me prices in certain languages, not what I want. But what I?’m saying is the technology is always sending people back those sites, so to operate in a variety of countries it?’s very important if we want to rank well in the search engines to have the extensions of those countries.

Secondly, to have the site in the native language. And even with English that becomes a problem because we speak, like you say, we?’re divided by a common language. My favorite example is what we call soccer shoes in this country in England are called football boots.

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Link Building Techniques-Interview with Daria Goetsch

by Fred on September 16, 2008

Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is a continuation on the topic of Search a2z. If you?’ve been following this series than your already aware that we?’re reaching out to those that specialize in Search to better understand best practices of the day for both organic and paid search methodologies and for those that work for the enterprise and small business.

To assist us in better understanding this topic from a small business SEO perspective, I placed a call to interview Daria Goetsch, Principle at Search Innovation.com from Northern California.

Daria recently published an article entitled “Creative Link Building Techniques and whether you?’ve been in this space for a while or just starting out, Daria provides some outstanding tips on Creative Link Building Techniques that you can use today.

Check out the four minute interview on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by WebProtraining.org, offering a complete solution for all your Web professional training needs including WOW certification options. Check it out at Web Professional Training website

Transcript of Link Building with Daria Goetsch
Length – 5:19

BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.
Today?’s podcast is a continuation on the topic of Search a2z. If you?’ve been following this series than you?’re already aware that we?’re reaching out to those that specialize in Search to better understand best practices of the day for both organic and paid search methodologies and for those that work for the enterprise and small business.

To assist us in better understanding this topic from a small business SEO perspective, I?’m on the phone with Daria Goetsch. She?’s the principle at Search Innovation.com. Good afternoon and thanks for agreeing to this interview.

DARIA GOETSCH: Oh, thanks Bill. I?’m happy to talk to you.

BILL: You recently published an article entitled “Creative Link Building Techniques.” Can you provide us with a summary of that article and can you also provide us with a couple of walk-away tips that we can use today?

DARIA: Sure. Basically, we work with small businesses in particular and since small businesses a lot of times have a limited budget we do have to get creative on how you link build. I think link building is probably the hardest thing to do, in search engine marketing, beyond pay per click, beyond optimization, and to do it well. So my article basically goes through some steps that you can take to do quality link building but take your time. In other words, look for really good sites that are going to benefit you. Sometimes it?’s easy to get the concept of “I?’m just going to reciprocal link with everybody and that will fit my link problem.” That?’s not necessarily the best way to go about it.

So my technique is one-way linking, which can involve business profiles, places like [indecipherable], LinkedIn.com, where you?’re really publicizing your business and you?’re also getting a few links in there. You carefully look at these type of sites and say, “OK I can join the community. I can get involved. I can put up some information about my business and I can also obtain a few links.” That way you?’re doing a couple of different things at the same time.

Business directories are a great way to look at maybe joining an association. We have a business owner that he sells chocolate and so I would look for a confectionary directory of the United States, that type of thing. Then you just make sure that the membership has a directory online that you can add a link to in your membership information, your business information.

Other ways to go about links are Flickr, a photo tool that you can upload product photos and you also have a profile and you can add some information in there. Now the other thing with Flickr is besides having the photos there on Flickr those are picked up by Yahoo search engine. So if you search for your business and you added your photos to Flickr then you can search in Yahoo for your business name and photo and you can find a link that will take you to Yahoo search engine to show you those photos. So you?’re doing a couple of things at the same time. Again, you?’re promoting your site with a profile, you?’ve got pictures of your product, which is always enticing to somebody. With this particular customer a lot of people click through on those links and go to the product site, so they?’re looking at the candies that are available to buy. So that?’s a good way to do things.

Something that I think is a very important tool to use is Google Analytics and Google webmaster tools. When you sign up for those tools in Google webmaster tools there is a section about links and in that link section are the external links that show up from your link building. If you just search straight in Google for “link” and your domain name, your url of your website, you?’re going to get a very limited number of what the true backlinks or links pointing back to the webpages, are. So when you sign up for this free analytics program you can see, you can have a better idea of the actual links that are showing up in Google webmaster tools.

Once you start link building then you can keep track of how many links are coming in. Typically if I start link building, even for our business or anybody else?’s business, a keep a word doc, or you can use an excel spreadsheet, and you can keep track of every link. You can track that through your analytic program and see how many of those links are showing up. And that gives you a much better idea of how you?’re link building is working.

I?’d say the most important thing is to think of quality not quantity. There are a lot of free opportunities out there and then you also have to look at, “OK, maybe it?’s worth paying for being listed in a human-edited directory like Yahoo because Google likes that link.” Google also likes links from Open Directory Project, which is free.

Then from that point you can look at your competitors?’ links, through Yahoo Site Explorer, you can search from links and from there you may be able to find some other links that you can look at and see the quality of the site, which I think is very important. Quality of the site means there needs to be some very good content on the site. A lot of times you can tell when the site is generated automatically and there?’s not much to it. So think in terms of quality and content when you want to link.

BILL: Excellent summary Daria, I certainly appreciate your time. Great stuff.

DARIA: You’re welcome.

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Click Fraud-"Beyond IP Blacklisting"-Interview with Ken Miller

by Fred on September 14, 2008

Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

For today’s podcast I have the pleasure to be interviewing Ken Miller, Anchor Intelligence CEO. Anchor Intelligence is a solution provider for Click Fraud.

Click fraud as you know is the dark side of online advertising and 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 the subject of some controversy and increasing litigation due to the advertising networks being a key beneficiary of the fraud”.

Ken’s shares his thoughts on the size and scope of the Click Fraud problem, the issues and best practices to address these issues.

Check out the four minute interview on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today’s podcast is sponsored by the An Event Apart Conference taking place in Chicago in October.

The Event Apart Conference is a the design conference for people who make websites, announces a special discount exclusively for WOW members.

Save $200 off An Event Apart Chicago with discount code AEAWOW when you order through September 15, 2008.

Join Eric Meyer, Jeffrey Zeldman, and their guests on October 13-14, 2008 at the Sheraton Chicago for two jam-packed 9.5-hour-long days of learning and inspiration!

Transcript of Beyond IP Blacklisting interview with Ken Miller

BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. Today?’s podcast is a continuation on the topic of search. For today?’s podcast I have the pleasure to be interviewing Ken Miller, CEO of Anchor Intelligence, a solution provider for Click Fraud.

Click fraud as you know is the dark side of online advertising and according to Wikipedia, “Click fraud is a type of internet crime that occurs in a pay per click online advertising environment 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 ad?’s link. Click fraud is the subject of some controversy and increasing litigation due to advertising networks being a key beneficiary of the fraud according to some, and I don?’t think you should have a conversation about search without having a conversation about the potential fraud.

On that note, good afternoon Ken and thanks for agreeing to the call.

KEN MILLER: You bet Bill, happy to, appreciate the time.

BILL: Ken, how prevalent is click fraud today?

KEN: Yeah, sure. It?’s a significant issue and the interesting thing is as it becomes a bigger issue and more work is done to stop the bad guys what you?’re finding is that the bad actors out there are getting more sophisticated and more aggressive in their techniques and so click fraud is actually following in a similar path to the early days of spam and ID theft and virus protection.

BILL: Interesting. Has anyone quantified the numbers that we?’re talking about?

KEN: It?’s a challenge to do that, for a couple of reasons. One, even if you release an industry-wide number, what does the recipient do with that number? Because often click fraud is targeted more towards, can be targeted towards certain advertisers or certain ad networks or can be targeted towards high keyword bids, things like that.

BILL: Would it be fair to say that it?’s a potential barrier for entry for those considering online advertising?

KEN: It potentially could be, because if you?’re an ad network, a new ad network or just going in starting off as an ad network, if you don?’t have the proper systems in place to identify and detect this you?’re not going to gain the trust of your advertisers and so it?’s going to be difficult to build a business off of that.

BILL: What are the issues?

KEN: The issue really sort of comes down to intent and what is the intent of the publisher. Sort of its most extreme or malicious intent is publishers who are serving ads on their site with the sole purpose of trying to gain money from that. And those clicks back to the advertisers are never actually going to turn into any useful event or conversion. The publishers can be very blatant in what they?’re doing and they can actually just sit and click on their own ads; we actually see that happen. Or they can get very sophisticated where they?’re using computer scripts to fake clicks to generate a lot of clicks in a short period of time or to even stretch them out over a longer period so they kind of come in under the radar, but they can set that to run and generate clicks while they?’re out having lunch or doing other things. It?’s very lucrative.

BILL: So what are currently some of the best practices to address these issues?

KEN: Yeah, sure. So there?’s a few different things that folks can do. A lot of times it really comes down to really understanding where there ads are showing up and are they showing up on publishers?’ sites that are consistent with the type of ads they?’re running? Are they going to see traffic from those sites that won?’t match up with the sorts of folks they would like to visit their site? There?’s things that advertising and ad networks can do to look into their own data and try to identify abnormalities and where the traffic?’s coming from, certainly you can do that by geography. So if you?’re selling auto insurance in Colorado and you?’re getting a lot of clicks from India or China that might not make sense.

BILL: Fair enough. The bad guys have work-arounds for that too, right?

KEN: That?’s absolutely the case, you could not be more right on there. So beyond the basic things that somebody might do to address this, that?’s where somebody, like our organization, where a third party comes in who has the benefit of seeing what these guys are doing from month to month, day to day and even across different networks so if there?’s a fraud ring going on at network number one we can help at network number two, be prepared for that.

BILL: OK, thank you very much for that. Where do we go to get more information?

KEN: Yeah, sure. So our website is www.anchorintelligence.com.

BILL: Ken, excellent overview. I appreciate that. Thank you so much for your time today.

KEN: Thank you very much and good afternoon.

BILL: Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by An Event Apart Chicago. Join Eric Meyer, Jeffrey Zeldman and their guests on October 13-14, 2008 at the Sheraton Chicago for two jam-packed, 9.5 hour-long days of learning and inspiration. Check out all the great links on the WOW Technology Minute website.

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Understanding Search-Interview with Toni Carreiro, Independent Web Designer

by Fred on September 10, 2008

Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is a continuation on the topic of Search. In earlier podcast on this topic, I covered the Search Engine Strategies Conference that took place in San Jose late last month. Candidly, I was reluctant to make the trek to the bay area since it?’s been my experience that much of what takes place at conferences has a tendency to repeat itself year after year. With all of the marketing hype at most conferences, for example it?’s a challenge to cut through the hype and report the relevant stuff. All of that said, I am glad that I made the trip.

It?’s clear that as an industry we?’ve matured from the early days of optimizing sites and the manipulation of text for search engines back in the mid nineties. Thanks in part to an improvement in Search technology toady?’s Web professionals can benefit from the quality of our design and development. In short, by creating easy to read, easy to navigate, consistent layout and design that meets today?’s Web standards our efforts will result in optimal environments for search engine results.

What?’s also clear is that best practices moves rapidly and beyond the clean code, great design and content relevance staying abreast of Search a2z can help you succeed in this profession as the generalist Webmaster and it will help your organization succeed as well. Truth is, there?’s plenty to learn and stay on top of. In fact, and as we predicted, plenty of job opportunities exist with Search as a full time specialty. Both options have merit in my opinion and if you?’re like me, then you have a host of responsibilities beyond search and as a result I?’ll make every effort to report on the high level and more relevant stuff with links off to additional detail should you find an interest in more depth resources.

For example, for today?’s podcast, I was fortunate enough to bump into and interview Toni Carreiro, a Web Designer from San Rafael, CA with a decade of experience and I sense that her comments are representative of the types of questions that many of us have regarding Search.

In future podcast, I?’ll be reaching out to others in the Search specialist field to help you get the most out of:

•Organic Search and Search Marketing techniques, new and improved link strategies, key word research and page optimization strategies that are proven over time to work
•I?’ll also span the globe for best practices in paid search, ad words, the available tools and the best practices and the things that you need to know
•We?’ll cover Web Analytics a2z and how to get the best bang from your busy schedule
•We also intend to cover the latest trends in the area of international search and how you can leverage best practices in this area as well

Check out the four minute interview on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today’s podcast is sponsored by the Webmaster Survival Guide. Check out all of the great resources and links on the Webmaster Survival Guide website.

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Google 10 Year Anniversary-A Web Professional Prospective

by Fred on September 7, 2008

Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is a continuation on the topic of Search. As you may recall, I made the trek to San Jose last month to attend the Search Strategies Conference for a better understanding of the topic and to conduct a number of interviews regarding everything search related. My journey including attending the annual Google party and stopping by to visit for lunch the next day for a better understanding of the goings on at Google.

Today?’s podcast happens to coincide with Google?’s ten year anniversary late last week and to assist me in better understanding, communicating and celebrating the last ten years and beyond from a Web professionals perspective, I connected up with Brent Norris, veteran Web professional from the Aloha state for and interview of his perspective and to help us better understand the value that this titan of industry provides the Web profession.

Check out today?’s four minute podcast on WOW Technology Minute website.

Today’s WOW Technology Minute is sponsored by Adobe Systems and their series of MAX conferences for 2008/2009

MAX is an experience unlike any other — an opportunity to connect with thousands of designers, developers, partners, executives, and Adobe staff for education, inspiration, and community. MAX 2008/2009 will be held in San Francisco, Milan, and Tokyo. Be sure to mark your calendar for this important global event.

MAX is an experience unlike any other — an opportunity to connect with thousands of designers, developers, partners, executives, and Adobe staff for education, inspiration, and community. MAX 2008/2009 will be held in San Francisco, Milan, and Tokyo. Be sure to mark your calendar for this important global event.

Register today on the Adobe Max website!

Transcript:

Thanks Bill for the call.

This is another big day for the web and especially for Google. At times I’ve been Google’s biggest fan and critical when things don’t go well for their users.

Looking backwards and forwards, I think history will and should be very kind to Google for their efforts in so many areas.

Google has successfully provided advertisers with the tools and metrics they’ve needed to be successful. This has in turn fueled our digital economies. They’ve provided everyone online with a service that has effectively organized the world’s information.

We now live in a world where any idea can be researched and developed into online reality. Google has had a large part in manifesting new potential in the web after the dot-com crash of 2001.

They haven’t stopped with search. They’ve also provided webmasters with tools to help us help our clients like the Google Website Optimizer and Google Webmaster Tools. Serge and Larry set out to improve the world and in the process have changed the entire landscape of the web.

Google forces the issues we’ve been wanting for a long time. Unlike traditional corporations, Google has never waited for market saturation before progressing the industry. As the first notable Web 2.0 corporation, Google has increased transparency and ethics in our profession while leveling the playing field for professionals and do-it-yourselfers.

Google has in my opinion, kept open source alive. Not just open source software like their new Chrome browser but also open-source business business models and we can’t forget their efforts to bring about free local wi-fi for everyone. While more bandwidth does mean more ads for their business model, they continue to show a willingness to try new things because they are the right things to do. One of the lastest initiatives to do this is TV Whitespaces. Google is trying to get us all to “Free the Airwaves” or at least the slice of bandwidth that is coming up for auction. In my opinion, this is the most important movement that Google has supported to date.

For example, if we can set a large chunk of bandwidth free for public use we will instantly increase access to the Internet for everyone. Currently, there’s a few large players that are trying to license all of the available bandwidth so they can use it to make money for their investors.

I would encourage everyone to search google for TV Whitespaces for more information.

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Search Best Practices-Interview with Christine Churchill. President, Key Relevance

by Fred on September 4, 2008

Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is continued coverage of the Search Strategies 08 Conference that took place in San Jose, CA late last month.

In addition to personally attending a couple of keynotes sessions, I sat in on a few of the more relevant presenter oriented sessions and walked the conference halls in search of relevant topics to podcast about for Web professionals. To that end, I literally bumped into and had the pleasure of interviewing Christine Churchill. President, Key Relevance, a recognized expert in the field of Search Engine Marketing.

Christine is a veteran Web professional and offers some great advice regarding search best practices and key word relevance for newbie?’s as well as those practicing within the enterprise.

Check out the four minute podcast on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today’s podcast is sponsored by the Web Builder 2.0 Conference taking place October 13-15, 2008 at the Mirage, Las Vegas. Web Builder 2.0 is the technical conference for professionals building the next-generation of richly-interactive Web sites.

Check out all of the great resources and links on the WOW Technology Minute website.

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Marketing Attribution-Why Does Search Get Credit for Everything?

by Fred on September 2, 2008

Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is continued coverage of the Search Strategies 08 Conference that took place in San Jose, CA late last month.

In addition to personally attending a couple of keynotes sessions, I sat in on a few of the more relevant presenter oriented sessions and walked the conference halls in search of relevant topics to podcast about for Web professionals.

One of the keynotes that I found particularly interesting was the panel discussion entitled, “Marketing Attribution-Why Does Search Get Credit for Everything”? This panel promised to focus exclusively on gaining a better understanding of how, when, and where to attribute revenue gains and they delivered.

Whether you?’re managing a multi-million dollar marketing campaign for enterprise level corporations, or helping small business clients or companies get more bang for ad or e-mail marketing campaign ROI, then you owe it to yourself and to your clients to listen to the interview with Mikel Chertudi, Sr. Director, Online & Demand Marketing at Omniture, an online optimization company.

Mikel provides us with an excellent summary of the panel discussion complete with a few “walk a way?’s” that you should keep in mind.

Check out today?’s four minute podcast on WOW Technology Minute website.

A complete transcription of today’s podcast will be available in twenty-four hours.

Today’s WOW Technology Minute is sponsored by Adobe Systems and their series of MAX conferences for 2008/2009

MAX is an experience unlike any other — an opportunity to connect with thousands of designers, developers, partners, executives, and Adobe staff for education, inspiration, and community. MAX 2008/2009 will be held in San Francisco, Milan, and Tokyo. Be sure to mark your calendar for this important global event.

MAX is an experience unlike any other — an opportunity to connect with thousands of designers, developers, partners, executives, and Adobe staff for education, inspiration, and community. MAX 2008/2009 will be held in San Francisco, Milan, and Tokyo. Be sure to mark your calendar for this important global event.

Register today on the Adobe Max website!

Transcript of Marketing Attribution-Why Does Search Get Credit for Everything?

BILL CULLIFER: Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute here at Search Strategies 2008 in San Jose, CA. I have the pleasure to be interviewing and discussing and conversing with Mikel, Chertudi.

BILL: You?’re the Senior Director of Demand Generation at Omniture. Omniture is a great company, it?’s been around for a number of years. Today you were on a keynote, you?’re presenting here and I?’m curios to know if you could summarize for the subscribers of this podcast, many of whom work at the enterprise level of professional organizations a to z, many are small business and many teach these individuals, both within a community college or university setting, for those audiences could you summarize this conference or your presence here? And can you also provide a couple of walk-aways for those audiences?

MIKEL: Yes, absolutely. This morning specifically we were addressing the issue of marketing attribution. And specifically for this conference, which is heavily ladened for search marketers, we were talking about ‘why does search get credit for everything??’ or ‘why does search appear to have attribution that may be unfair?’. So what we did is we attempted to uncover the issues related to that. And what happens is when companies attribute too much or too little success to a particular channel such as search engine marketing, whether it be SEO or SEM paid search or display or print or TV, whatever it is, companies are either under investing or over investing in those specific areas because they don?’t understand their attribution models and the cookie settings about how the tracking works for those initiatives. The other thing that happens is companies often are spending dollars in the wrong areas and not understanding where they should be investing both people and dollars.

And then thirdly what happens is it creates this unhealthy tension among the marketing teams especially in the enterprise where you have people that are responsible for search, people responsible for display, people responsible for email, people responsible for TV and there?’s a bit of a contention because they?’re all saying, “Well we all took credit for all of the 400 million dollars that we generated last year,” when in essence there was a daisy chain or a hand-off point among all of them. So the key issues that we?’re addressing today is how do you best find out how to deal with these issues.

Some of the best practices that we walked away with were number one, make sure that you?’re standardizing on one tracking platform for all of your reporting analytics and make sure once you?’ve done that if you?’re integrating and ad serving and email service providers and other types of bit management or whatever the marketing applications are, that they?’re all tying into one common Web analytics foundation so that you?’re not double counting.

Secondly, make sure that you understand on a cookie basis if there are two or three chains in the sequence of a purchase, so if someone first clicks on display, then they click on an email and then they lastly click on a search keyword, come to your site, register or purchase, understand how each of those three previous — email, display, paid search — interplay with each other. Understand the cookie settings so if display was the first in the chain that if your cookie settings are set to expire after 30 days and then they click on the email at day 31 the display advertising is not going to get any credit for that. So the best practice is to measure all of those views and to set your cookies for a duration that?’s appropriate for your sell cycles.

Then I think the last piece of advice that I would give is focus on making sure you?’re tracking initiatives separately. So what?’s driving people to your site is tracked separately than what?’s converting them once they?’re on your site verses what is working when you?’re remarketing. Making sure that those three initiatives and the tracking of those three initiatives aren?’t overriding each other or erasing each other because most of the time the cost data is associated to what brought them to your site. If you override it with a non-type promotion you can never do ROI analysis.

So those are some of the general issues to be aware of.

BILL: Great summary and great walk-aways. I really appreciate that. Excellent job today in the keynote and the roundtables.

MIKEL: Thank you.

BILL: Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute here at Search Engine Strategies 2008. Mikel thank you so much for your time.

MIKEL: You?’re welcome.

BILL: Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is sponsored by the Adobe Systems Corporation and their series of MAX Conferences for 2008 and 2009. MAX is an experience unlike any other, an opportunity to connect with thousands of designer, developers, partners, executives and Adobe staff for education, inspiration and community. MAX 2008-9 will be held in San Francisco, Milan and Tokyo. Be sure to mark your calendar for this important global event and check out their great links on the Wow Technology Minute website.

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