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Archive for May, 2008

A Search Summit for the “Hidden” Experts

May 9th, 2008 by Gord Hotchkiss

In just over a week, I’ll be the emcee at my third Search Insider Summit, on beautiful Captiva Island in Florida. This time around, I also lent fellow Search Insider, David Berkowitz, a hand in putting the program together. We started by asking some past attendees what they liked and what they’d improve about the shows. With the search show calendar as jammed as it’s becoming, it’s important to find a niche that attendees find valuable.

In these conversations, the almost unanimous response was, “more conversations”! The size, scheduling, location and intimacy of the Summit are among its best features, in that they allow attendees to actually talk to each other. So this time around, we’ve allowed for more conversations than ever, but bringing attendees together for round table brainstorming breakouts on topics ranging from local and universal search to social media and cross channel optimization. Each table will be hosted by one or two experts in the area.

But, in search, shows are usually crawling with “hidden” experts who have just as much to add (maybe more) as the people presenting up on the panels. Often, these attendees lurk, remaining silent, and, if you’re extraordinarily lucky, you might sit next to one at the bar after the official show shuts down. This is when many attendee’s real education begins. These sessions are valuable because you can ask specific questions and get relevant and targeted answers. This was the value that our informal research uncovered.

At this Summit, we want to facilitate as many conversations as possible. Rather than vague generalities, we wanted to drill down to real life scenarios, involving the people that are executing within those scenarios on a day to day basis. We’ll have plenty of the high profile experts at the summit, the ones who speak at the big events, but I encourage you to seek out the hidden experts as well. Talk to the people who are executing large campaigns for some of the big brands. The sophistication is often amazing. Swap tales of tactics that have worked. Ask questions and generate discussions. This is what the Search Insider Summit is all about.

I’ve mentioned in the past that some of the best conversations I’ve ever had in this business happen at the Search Insider Summit. I’ve had great conversations with many who I’ve since stayed in contact with. I’ve been pretty involved with both the SMX and SES shows in the past, and I think both show organizers do a great job in providing packed tracks full of information. I’ve also presented at a few PubCons. But the size of these shows makes it difficult to facilitate conversations. They happen organically (most search marketers are not shy) but it can be tough to connect with people. I think the size and atmosphere of the Summit helps encourage that.

I hope I’ll see you there. I’m sure we’ll have some great conversations!

Originally published in Mediapost’s Search Insider, May 8, 2008

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Web Analytics: Wasting Your Time

May 6th, 2008 by Manoj Jasra

Web Analytics is not easy and can take up much of you time so it’s important to concentrate on the things which have the most benefit to your business. Below I have outlined the types of things you shouldn’t measure as well as some areas where you could potentially end up wasting time rather than focusing on tactics and metrics which will actually help your strategy to succeed.

Trying to Achieve 100% Accuracy

In a JavaScript and Cookie model, web analytics will never be 100% accurate. In a web analytics test performed last year by Stone Temple consulting where they implemented numerous analytics scripts on the same website, the results indicated up to a 10% fluctuation between analytics packages. I feel it’s important to test for accuracy but a waste of your time to try to balance your books using analytics.

Measuring only the Quantity of Leads

You launch a PPC campaign for your hot new service at 8 AM and by noon you have 1000 new leads, mission complete, pack it up and go home - I don’t think so. Yeah 1000 leads are wonderful until you find out that 50% of them are from a person who has the email test@test.com

Not Segmenting Your Data

Not segmenting your data is similar to closing your eyes and randomly throwing money at various advertising mediums. I can’t stress the importance of taking your leads, downloads, revenue and information requests and segmenting by Medium, Search Engines and keywords.

Keeping the Data to Yourself

Good or bad it’s important to share the data with Stakeholders in the company who need to make decisions with it. Long hours of Crunching number after number in order make the results appear in a certain way will only prolong the ability for the appropriate decision maker to take action.

Measuring Without Purpose

Before jumping head first into the data, Before creating a Dashboard make sure you sit down with your marketing team to figure out the goals of the appropriate project as well as what metrics they need to report on in order to do their job properly.

Original Post: Web Analytics World

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How to Move Your Site to a New Domain According to Google

May 1st, 2008 by Jody Nimetz

Anytime a client considers changing their site architecture or is planning a website redesign or decides to move their Website, we work with them to ensure that they do not experience an adverse effect on their rankings in the search results. Anytime you plan on moving your site, you should have a plan. The best case scenario is that the move should be transparent, at least to the search engines so that your site does not tank in the rankings.

When moving your site, you want to avoid the end result of 404 Errors popping up after the move. Not only with this have an impact on the user experience, but it could have a negative effect on your organic search rankings. A cool tool to check for broken links on your site is XENU which can be downloaded here. The best thing that you can do when preparing to move your site is to plan your move. The good folks over at Google Webmaster Tools put together some helpful tips, which we’ll recap here.

We should point out that these tips are for moving a site to a new domain and not for moving to a different IP address. The Webmaster Tools team has covered that previously as well with these five tips:

Moving a Site to a New IP Address

Change the TTL (Time To Live) value of your DNS configuration to something short, like five minutes (300 seconds). This will tell web browsers to re-check the IP address for your site every five minutes.
Copy your content to the new hosting environment, and make sure it is live on the new IP address.
Change your DNS settings so your hostname points to the new IP address.
Check your logs to see when Googlebot starts crawling your site on the new IP address. To make sure it’s really Googlebot who’s visiting, you can verify Googlebot by following these instructions. You can then log into Webmaster Tools and monitor any crawl errors. Once Googlebot is happily crawling on the new IP address, you should be all set as far as Google is concerned.
To make sure everyone got the message of your move, you may want to keep an eye out for visits to your old IP address before shutting it down.

How to Move a Website to a New Domain According to Google

Test the move first - Begin with one directory or sub-domain first.
Use a 301 Permanent Redirect to redirect old pages to the new site.
Monitor Google’s Index - Check to see that the pages on your new site are appearing in Google’s search results. When you’re satisfied that the move is working correctly, you can move your entire site. As the Google folks mention, "Don’t do a blanket redirect directing all traffic from your old site to your new home page. This will avoid 404 errors, but it’s not a good user experience. A page-to-page redirect (where each page on the old site gets redirected to the corresponding page on the new site) is more work, but gives your users a consistent and transparent experience." The Google Team goes on to suggest "If there won’t be a 1:1 match between pages on your old and new site, try to make sure that every page on your old site is at least redirected to a new page with similar content."
Use a Staged Approach - If your site is moving as part of a redesign, you’ll want to use a phased or staged approach. Begin with moving your site as the first stage. The second stage is to roll-out with the redesign. This can help troubleshoot any issues that may arise.
Pay Attention to Links - anytime you move a website you’ll want to pat attention to both your external and internal link inventories. Ideally, you should contact the webmaster of each site that links to yours and ask them to update the links to point to the page on your new domain. If this isn’t practical, make sure that all pages with incoming links are redirected to your new site. Again once everything is moved over, you’ll want to use a link checking tool (such as XENU that we mentioned above) to check for any broken links (404 errors).
Keep You Old Site Up - Redundancy is a good thing. After moving your site, it is a good idea to keep your old site up for six months according to Google.
Update Webmaster Tools Data - Add your new site to your Webmaster Tools account, and verify your ownership of it. Then create and submit a Sitemap listing the URLs on your new site. This tells Google that your content is now available on your new site, and that we should go and crawl it.
Monitor Both Site via Webmaster Tools - The Google Webmaster Team suggests that keep both your new and old site verified in Webmaster Tools, and review crawl errors regularly to make sure that the 301s from the old site are working properly, and that the new site isn’t showing unwanted 404 errors.

Anytime you decide to move or redesign your website, you run the risk of incurring a drop in search rankings. Careful planning and testing is critical in enduring a smooth and transparent transition.

Original Post at SEO-Space

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Thank God for Product-Centric Leaders

May 1st, 2008 by Gord Hotchkiss

All you who have Google stock, take a moment to thank Larry and Sergey. You who have fallen in lust with your iPhone, stop and say a silent prayer for Steve Jobs. And you parents who spent many a peaceful hour thanks to your kids being glued to a Disney movie, face towards Disneyland and bow to Walt himself, may he rest in peace (or a freezer, as rumor has it). Thank God for the product-centric leader, because they are few and far between.

Customer-Centricity: More than Just Words

I have spent many an hour in conference rooms listening to the new “religion” of customer-centricity that has suddenly taken hold of the mega-corporation X, Y or Z. The scripted lines are typically “We are here to serve our customer. We will find optimal strategies to maximize customer experience and revenue opportunities. We embrace good design”

It may sound good in the annual report, but it’s not that easy. When you talk about balance, I hear compromise. Somebody is losing, and it’s almost always your customer. Because as Sergey, Larry, Steve and Walt will tell you, there can only be one person driving this bus. Either it’s your sales manager, or it’s your customer. Come to any intersection and one will tell you to turn right and one will tell you to turn left. Who are you going to listen to?

Now, obviously, Apple, Google and Disney have been known to make a buck or two, so customer-centricity can be profitable. It depends on which route you want to take to get there. If you take the customer’s route, it means having the courage to say no to a lot of people inside your company (and out) along the way. And really, the only person who can say no and get away with it is the leader of the company.

The Product-Centric Leader

Here’s a shocker, coming from me. The more I think about it, the more I don’t believe customer-centricity is the key. It’s not a goal, it’s a by-product. It comes as part of the package (often unconsciously) with another principle that is a little more concrete: Product-centricity. Product-centric leaders, the ones that are obsessive about what gets shipped out the door, are customer-centric by nature. They understand the importance of that magical intersection between product and person, the sheer power of amazing experiences. The iPhone is amazing. Disney classics are amazing. My first search on Google was amazing. Steve, Walt, Larry and Sergey wouldn’t have it any other way. They focus attention on the importance of that experience, and know, somewhere deep down inside, that if they get it right, the revenue will take care of itself.

The other thing about the product-centric leader is that they don’t have to do extensive customer research. They may, and many do, but they already have a gut instinct for what their customers want, because they are their own customer. Larry and Sergey invented a new search engine because the old ones were fundamentally broken and they were fed up with them. Walt built Disneyland because he was tired of sleezy, grimy amusement parks. And Steve knew that some people need a lot more than a beige, generic box because he’s one of them. They have use-centricity baked into their core, because they’re building products they want to use. They don’t compromise in the drive to create a product that’s good enough for them. It’s a happy coincidence that there are lots of other people who also love the product. It’s an intuitive connection that 99.9% of corporate leaders can’t imagine, let alone do.

Managers are almost never Product-Centric

The typical corporate manager has no special bond to the product. Along the line, too many compromises have been made in the name of profitability. Whatever amazement the product may have once had has been sold off, bit by bit, along the way. The sales manager and the bean counters have taken over the steering wheel. They turn out bland, uninspiring products they wouldn’t use themselves. They are not product centric, they’re profit centric, and profit really doesn’t inspire anyone.

I’ve spent a lot of time wondering how so many companies can preach customer-centricity yet continually miss the mark by so much so often. Look at the ones who hit the bull’s eye regularly. It turns out that it’s not so much customer-centricity they’re aiming for, it’s delivering products the leaders are obsessed with because they can’t wait to use them themselves. That’s a key element Good to Great and Built to Last author Jim Collins missed in his Level 5 leadership. Steve Jobs would never be mistaken for Collin’s or Stephen Covey’s ideal leader, but if I were looking for someone who’s going to turn out a product that blows me away, Steve would be my guy.

Originally published in Mediapost’s Search Insider, May 1, 2008

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