So, as time goes by I've found myself drawn to web analytics. I've worked with WebTrends, Omniture, Google Analytics and more.

What I've quickly realized is that while good SEO is important, driving visitors to your site will only accomplish one thing, more visitors to your site.

What's really important is what they do when they get there. Are they the right people? If your website sells snow shovels, attracting a lot of Australian visitors to your website due to some great SEO work is probably not the most effective use of your time.

Web Analytics will allow you to identify that many of the visitors to your site are coming from Australia, and then leaving without buying a single shovel. Darn them! Your site stats show lots of visitors, but a high bounce rate and no additional sales conversions.

I, as a professional, am now moving beyond Web Analytics to Web Intelligence. This is the theory of combining web analytics (what's happening on your website), voice of customer and customer experience management data (why and how), along with business intelligence data (really well defined who).

The "who" factor is critical for sophisticated marketing efforts. If you find that snow shovels actually sell very well to Australian who are 19-25 and have an interest in snow boarding, you can target marketing spend in a much more effective way by using media and message that speaks directly to them.

Web Intelligence, in theory, can link your web analytics to your other sources of data for far deeper insight into who your potential customers are and what they want.

It's not easy, but it's not impossible. It will require the work of web analysts, BI, IT and business stakeholders to make it work. Yes it will also likely require alterations to, or a brand new data warehouse that's linked to your web analytics and your CRM or ERP.

The marketing power you'll obtain will be well worth it though. As I move more into this field and away from SEO, this site will receive less periodic updates. Please follow me though into this emerging field at Web Intelligence Insight - Web Analytics meets Business Intelligence. You can join in on the discussions, learn more about cutting edge web intelligence and see how effective combining data can be.

Thanks for visiting Get Clicked SEO and please join me at Web Intelligence Insight for more posts!

Labels: BI, business intelligence, CRM, customer experience management, ERP, voice of customer, web analytics, web intelligence

So you're website has great presence on the search engine and is getting lots of hits. You're conversion ratios are pretty good and your tracking everything using a web analytics program. How do you improve on something that's already pretty darn good?

Establish a Continuous Improvement Process (CIP). It's very easy to complete a search engine optimization program, or establish web analytics tracking for your site. If you don't do anything with the information though, you've just wasted a lot of time and effort.

While it is the tendency for major websites to undergo massive full site redesigns, oftentimes these redesigns are based on instincts rather than facts. In addition to the risk that the instincts might be wrong, there is also no way to identify what particular aspects of the redesign were positive and which were negative.

Changes should be made in small stages and KPI's that could be affected should be watched closely. This evolution will allow you and your web analyst to determine which changes are effective, and which are not. By following this process repeatedly, your websites performance will improve over time with little or no risk.

By following a CIP, every change or new feature can be analyzed and compared to it's previous state to determine it's impact. Did a new feature add value? Did a change to your order page make it better or worse? Did the change contribute positively towards the business goals of your website?

It is only through establishing this type of process that web analytics can measure success or failure as your website changes. By improving successes and eliminating failures, your website will constantly improve and contribute more strongly to your companies bottom line.

Ok, I have spent a lot of time creating the content for this website myself. None of it is copied from other sources, it's written by me. The topics I cover, including search engine optimization, Internet marketing, web analytics and search engine marketing are all areas of my experience. When I write an article, it comes from my experience, through my brain and then onto my computer at home in Calgary.

As an SEO specialist, I of course try to optimize my own website as much as I can, and as much as time allows, for certain keyword phrases, like Calgary SEO. I'm from Calgary, I live in Calgary, and I provide search engine consulting to companies in Calgary...and well sometimes Vancouver.

Also, as you might expect, I watch my competition in the search engine results pages fairly closely. If you've read my articles then you'll also know that the best way to gain presence in search engines is to create lots of high quality content. Of course, those articles are the bulk of my own content.

Yes, this is leading up to something....

I recently noticed a certain not-to-be-named company (because I don't want to help THEIR search rankings) appear for calgary seo. After looking at their site, a lot of the content as it related to Calgary seemed oddly familiar. A lot of my background is in hotels and hospitality so not surprisingly when I used Copyscape to check to see if any of their content had been ripped off from other websites, it came as no big shock to me to see that yes, in fact, their content as it related to Calgary came DIRECTLY (like copy and paste kind of directly) from Tourism Calgary's website.

And go figure, the company is based in Montreal.

I am all for fair game in search engine optimization, but stealing content is just plain bad form. It's also REALLY bad SEO as it can sometimes (although apparently not this time) result in a duplicate content penalty. I won't mention the name of the company, but if you're dying to know, go to Copyscape and type in www.tourismcalgary.com. The number one bad guy on the list.....

In case you're wondering, I use Copyscape to make sure no one is taking MY content and using it for themselves. Copying content is plagiarism, and if Tourism Calgary was paying more attention, or cared, they could easily go after these websites.

That raises a whole other question. Once someone steals your content, what do you do? Well, you can send them a nasty email, or you can try to take them to court. Be prepared to be able to prove the content is yours, which is much more difficult than it seems. Webserver logs are one of the few ways, but as those can be pretty easily faked it also becomes tough to use these to make your point.

Hopefully Google will catch up with this and be a bit more aggressive in penalties. Until then, please don't copy me! Better yet, ask permission to copy. A link and proper acknowledgement will got a long way!

Labels: calgary, Internet Marketing, search engine optimization, SEO

Labels: web analytics

It's been a long summer. So much time on the beach, so little time to blog. In any case, I've recently moved more deeply into the realm of Web Analytics. Think of it like Big Brother for the Internet. Someone is watching what you do, and in the case of a big communications company here in Calgary, that someone is me.

Don't worry, it's not as 1984 as it sounds. The website I manage now gets about a billion page views a year, so the I'm not too concerned about individual users. (All kidding aside, the only thing Web Analytics can see about you is your IP address, which can't narrow your location down much below the city level).

If you're looking for some basic information on how to get started with Web Analytics, check out my introductory article here. There's also a good overview look with my Executives Guide to Web Analytics. As I delve deeper into this mysterious world though, I'll share some insights here on my blog.

The one thing about analytics is that if done well, it can help executives make decisions that can have significant impact on the bottom line. My elevator pitch these days is "I help companies improve how their website works, making it easier for consumers to buy from them, thereby making the company way more money".

Tall order? Not as tall as you might think. Most bigger websites aren't tracked all that efficiently. If they are tracked at all, it's all about page views. Yes Mr. President, our website views are up 10%. An astute president will say.. so what, what does that mean to my business?

The reality is that Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) need to be chosen in such a way that REAL decisions can be made from them. What is more useful? How many page views your website got? Or what percentage of your email campaign recipients bought something versus the last campaign? How about if there is a glitch in your order form that is stopping people from buying? Analytics can tell you all these things, and much more but deciding what is useful, actionable information and what isn't will be your key to success.

So how do you choose a good KPI? Work backwards. What are your companies overall revenue and growth projections? How is the website contributing to them? Once you have those questions answered, you can delve into the specific parts of your website and use analytics to determine your best bet for KPI's. There are no perfect KPI's, it's simply a matter of what relates to your company.

Some of the more common advanced KPI's include share of wallet, homepage bounce rate, average depth of visit (how many pages did a visitor look at), revenue per visitor and the list goes on.


I'll post some more experiences soon as I go through the process of identifying qualitative KPI's for the billion page view per year site that I'm working with. Stay tuned for more!

Labels: google analytics, web analytics

I recently read this column about the terms Search Engine Specialist versus Search Engine Generalist. The main idea of the article was that Search Engine Generalists are often Web Designers or Web Usability Professionals who understand search engine optimization. A Specialist on the other hand was often a copywriter who often doesn't know how to code but understand how to use words to get the attention of search engines.

I feel completely left out. I'm not either one.

I started in marketing. The regular kind of marketing, back before there was much of an Internet. I designed brochures, made newsletters, did PowerPoint presentations, did a television commercial, media buys, that kind of thing. My job was to get people to buy a product, in whatever way I could. That was the early 90's.

How things change. The Internet then took over. I was forced to move into the digital realm. I proudly report I owned not only the first, but the first AND second laptop ever bought by a large medical manufacturer in Montreal that I worked for in 1996. I proceeded to teach myself HTML and web design. Then I started online advertising and learning everything I could about search engine optimization and Internet marketing. It became a natural extension of what I was doing. When you're a one man marketing department like I was, you have to do it all yourself. So I guess I'm kind of a Search Engine Generalist, but I certainly didn't get my start in marketing by building websites. I did it by making pamphlets and giving product demonstrations to big audiences.

So what am I then? My job is to not only get websites listed higher in Google, but to get people from the search engines, onto your site, and then get them to convert into customers. A high rank means nothing if people don't actually buy what you're selling. Usability changes them from a bounce statistic into a client. (Then I can also design the brochure that they'll be able to download from your site too!)

I need a title. I've always gone with Search Engine Optimization Specialist, but now I'm not sure that totally covers it. My old boss called me an Internet Guru, but I always thought that was a bit cheesy for a professional resume and makes no reference to my traditional marketing background.

Here's some I've already knocked off the list:

Spock of Search - Too Star Trek (although I am a closet Trekker)

Superfantastic Search Engine Everthing Expert - Too Disney I think, or maybe too Japanese Anime, not sure yet.

Marketing Marvel - I am not a super hero to anyone but my dog, although it is kind of catchy. (I sure don't look good in tights though.)

Any thoughts? Help me find a new title! Feel free to leave a comment. I'd love to hear your ideas.

Labels: Fun, Internet Marketing, search engine optimization

I have some questions and since I am clearly crazy (see below), and this make take some thinking. Usually I'm the one answering questions, but in this case maybe knowing the questions will be enough to start that thinking. Buying links in directories and portal sites has been a common practice for years. It seems though that Google is increasing their efforts to stomp this practice out as it sees it as an attempt to manipulate rankings.

The general public can now report paid link sites directly to Google for them to investigate here.

Google has yet to be completely clear about the issue though. In this
recent post, they say this form should be used to report "sites buying and selling links for purposes of search engine manipulation".

For those thousands of legitimate websites who sell links as part of a business model, Google suggests this: "If you are selling links for advertising purposes, here are many ways you can designate this, including:
* Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the href tag
* Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file"

Ok, so how do you verify whether a site has charged for a link or not. What if they do both? A paid link site might have a blog with unpaid links. This situation could get even more interesting as Yahoo allows paid links in both their directory AND their search results.

What if you pay a blogging company to write and link to you? This is also now quite common practice. What if I buy my buddy a beer (a good Canadian beer, not that watered down stuff) and he puts a link on his site to me? Good luck finding that out.

There are a whole lot of questions here. If you search around the web, there are also a lot of people with a lot of answers, or at least opinions. So what's my 2 cents worth? Glad you asked! Here it is:

Google needs to put less or zero emphasis in it's algorithm on links.

Yes, I'm quite clearly crazy.

The search engine systems have been designed from the beginning to provide relevant results. Systems can of course be manipulated. If I get enough links pointing at my page that all say "sexiest man on earth" in the text, this site will rank for that search. Hey...... anyone want to link to me?

Interesting, but not relevant, result. So what's Google to do? Apparently they want people to tattle on paid link sites. Interesting. I know Google is one of the most sophisticated and technologically advanced companies in the world but I don't think
even they could come up with a beer detection algorithm.

But if they didn't put weight on links, then what would Google judge sites on?

Content. (Did I mention I'm nuts?) In fact in my opinion link strength should be measured on the relevancy of the two sites to each other, but I don't work at Google.

So what should you do? As always, listen to what Google says then do it. Don't buy links, and if you have paid links on your site, use the nofollow tag. It's not worth it. If you run a site that makes money solely on selling PageRank, look into a new career, I hear search engine optimization experts do ok. In the meantime, I'm going
to work on my beer detection.

Labels: Google, Links, search engine optimization