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Spotlight on Search - Interview with Eric T. Peterson

When you think of authorities on web analytics, one person that should be on your list is Eric T. Peterson. Eric is currently Vice President with the Visual Sciences division of web analytics firm, WebSideStory, is the author of several books on web measurement and moderates several popular discussion lists on analytics. He also manages an excellent site on web analytics called Web Analytics Demystified. He previously worked as an analyst with JupiterResearch and has been cited in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, Business 2.0 and others as an expert on the topic.
Eric will be speaking at a MIMA Interactive Marketing event tomorrow evening here in Minneapolis so I thought I would check in with him and do a little interview.

Please share a bit about your background

I’ve worked in the web analytics field since 1998 when I started at WebTrends as a webmaster. Since then I’ve worked mostly as an analyst (WebSideStory, JupiterResearch) and currently head up the Strategic Services group at Visual Sciences (a division of WebSideStory.) I’ve written three books on the subject of web analytics–Web Analytics Demystified (Celilo), Web Site Measurement Hacks (O’Reilly) and The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators (self-published in PDF format only)–and have founded a few web analytics “community” groups–the Web Analytics Forum at Yahoo! Groups and Web Analytics Wednesday. You can learn more about my activity in the web analytics community at www.webanalyticsdemystified.com.

What do you think are some of the most significant unrealized opportunities for companies regarding web analytics?

Most companies aren’t realizing the full benefit of their investment in web analytic technology because they’ve failed to assign proper/enough resources to the task of “improving the web site.” Measurement tools are a critical piece of the continual improvement process–basically working to improve your site incrementally rather than hoping that a massive redesign will solve your problems–but too few companies are leveraging this opportunity effectively.

What are some of the most common mistakes companies make regarding measuring web site performance?

Not taking the time to clearly define their business objectives and activities before they start generating “reports” that they push out to people. In my experience folks don’t need more reports, they need the “right” reports that speak directly to the business problems they’re trying to solve. The act of clearly defining value the web site is supposed to deliver and then mapping those goals to measurable clickstream helps clarify which data and reports are valuable at the strategic and tactical levels.

What are a few of the most important new trends companies should pay attention to regarding the future of web analytics?

At the recent Emetrics summit in Santa Barbara, one thing I was really impressed by was the fairly dramatic increase in the quality of questions people were asking from 2005 to 2006, which leads me to believe (at least in the microcosm) that the overall level of web analytics maturity is increasing. Given that there is already some pretty sophisticated technology out there, I think the most important trend that we should all watch for (and encourage) is how companies think about this type of technology and the impact it can have on their overall business.

Can you recommend educational resources for companies that want to improve their practical knowledge about web analytics?

Sure. I personally really like my site, www.webanalyticsdemystified.com which is about to get an overhaul and has links to tons of web analytics resources, jobs and community events like the Web Analytics Forum and Web Analytics Wednesday. Another good resource is the Web Analytics Association, our communities “professional association”.

You’ve written some excellent books on web analytics. (Web Analytics Demystified, Web Site Measurement Hacks, The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators) What are some resources you rely on for information on web analytics regarding best practices and up to date information?

Well, the Web Analytics Forum at Yahoo! Groups helps me keep my finger on the pulse of the larger community. I subscribe to a number of different RSS feeds written by “web analytics bloggers” like A. Clinton Ivy (Instant Cognition) and Minnesota’s own Mike Keyes (Ciceron). I read Jason Burby, Bryan Eisenberg and Neil Mason at Clickz and have a persistent Google search set up for the keywords “web analytics” which uncovers a bunch of interesting articles every week. Now that I’m at Visual Sciences, I also rely on our customers who, by and large, are a pretty sophisticated group of companies.

What are your favorite search engines?

Google. I pretty much only use Google.

Thanks Eric!

If you are in the Minneapolis - St. Paul area this week on Wednesday, be sure to come and see Eric speak at the MIMA (Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association) seminar, “Making Your Analytics Work. Hard.“. The event will be held on the 50th floor (Windows on Minnesota) of the IDS tower in downtown Minneapolis. More information is available at the MIMA events page.

Also, here’s a press release, “Get Smart About Web Analytics“.

Tags: web analytics, interactive marketing, web measurement

A question that often comes up when I talk to public and media relations professionals about optimizing press releases, is whether or not an “optimized” release can actually perform double duty as an effective communicication tool with journalists as well as search engines.

My response is that a really good writer can optimize a press release that does TRIPLE duty. What I mean by that is, a release can use keywords in the right places and frequency and form on a press release in a way that is engaging and effective for the journalists and bloggers that will receive them in their inbox or find them as they search for story ideas.

Optimized releases will also help news search engines such as Yahoo News, Google News and Topix.net as well as mainstream search engines like Google and Yahoo to categorize and rank the release in the search results.

The third function an optimized release can perform is as a direct to consumer communication tool, particularly through syndication via RSS. Whether folks like Steve Rubel buy into this or not is irrelevant. Wire services like PRWeb have engaged this aspect of press release distribution wholeheartedly with impressive results for their clients. In the end it is the behavior of end consumers that matters.

While news releases are meant to be a mechanism for announcing company news and/or financials to news media and journalists, the use of RSS to syndicate releases to news and blog websites places that content directly in front of consumers. This bypasses the media filters and search algorithms and allows companies to get their announcements directly to an intended audience.

Understanding all of the possible outcomes of a well written release can improve the productivity you get out of it. Make no mistake though, it takes an impressive level of creativity to write such a release. In many cases, a release’s purpose is designated to one of the three applications I mentioned above: for journalists, for search engines or for consumers. But if a release can serve all three, you’ve hit a home run.

Tags: press release optimization, seo press releases, online pr

Search marketers are increasingly using RSS for content syndication and communication tool. If you’re one of those marketers, you may interested in discovering RSS industry benchmark metrics and RSS marketing best practices.

The 2006 RSS Marketing Survey being conducted by MarketingStudies.net which will produce a report uncovering the uses, metrics and case studies from online marketers that are using RSS.

MarketingStudies.net is run by RSS Marketing guru, Rok Hrastnik, who is the author of “Unleashing the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS“. He also publishes a free report, “The Business Case for RSS“.

Rok and I did an interview in March 2005 on using integrated online PR, blogs and RSS for improved results in search engines.

If you’re in Chicago next week, you see Rok at the ACCM conference in a session called, “RSS What marketers need to know“. While you’re there, check out the “15 Sizzling Hot Search Ideas for Merchants” session where I’ll be presenting with Heather Lloyd-Martin, Patricia Hursh and Lisa Papageras.

You can take the 2006 RSS Marketing Survey here. Respondents will also be able to receive a copy of the overview report including RSS metrics and best practices.

At this year’s WebmasterWorld Pubcon conference in Boston, I had the opportunity to talk to Matt Cutts from Google a few times and when I posted my recollection of comments about Google and user or toolbar data for rankings he wanted to clarify. That presented an opportunity for a mini interview about Google’s position on toolbar data.

I started out by posing a few specific questions:

1. Does Google currently use toolbar data for rankings?
2. What do you see as the pros and cons of using such data for rankings?
3. Can you describe any scenario where information from a downloaded application from Google might be used in some way for ranking web pages?
4. If Google does not employ toolbar or other user data for rankings and another search engine does, could that provide the other search engine an advantage?

And Matt provided this reply:

Hey Lee, it was nice to meet you in person at Pubcon! I’ll answer this all in one chunk, if that’s okay. Personally, I think this issue is on SEO’s minds more because there was a speculative thread at
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/33769.htm where WMW folks discussed toolbar data.

I read the story at SearchNewz and saw your conclusion from our conversation that “Google does not use toolbar data for rankings” and wanted to clarify that answer a little bit. In general, when someone asks me the question “Do you use signal X in rankings?” a good way to answer that question is usually to say that while we don’t comment specifically on most of the factors that we use in ranking, it’s wise not to rule something out absolutely.

Let’s take the example in a different context. Meta tags got a bad rap in the early days of search engines because a few people abused them heavily. As a result Google doesn’t use meta tags much in ranking documents. But I’ve learned not to say “We would never use meta tags” because it’s not wise to preclude using any particular signal; in the future, someone might work out a way to use that signal.

So I’m not going to say definitively that Google doesn’t/won’t use toolbar data (or other signals) in ranking. I think what you were picking up on was my long list of “cons” in data like that.

For more insight from Google’s Matt Cutts, read the full post over at Online Marketing Blog.

At the 2006 WebmasterWorld Pubcon conference in Boston, the Blogs, RSS and Podcasts session was moderated by Anne Kennedy of Beyond Ink. First up is Amanda Watlington of Searching for Profit who talked about “The Art of the Feed”.

The “elegance” in RSS is in the distribution possibilities: Desktop reader, email addon, web browser and mobile devices.

The art of RSS is evident in blogs, sites, pdc, vblogs, rss search engines and web 2.0 applications. (press releases via PRWeb)

Build your RSS feeds right the first time. Considerations:
- What do you want to feed? (content sources)
- How many feeds?
- How much content is needed to keep the feed fresh?
- How much content should you include in each feed entry?
- What kind of content will the feed include? test, audio or video?
- How will you ping the feeds at first and then on each update?
- How to measure performance?

RSS is not just for blogs:
- Syndicating your content on other web sites
- Product announcements, tips, articles and customer communications
- Press room
- Jobs

How to optimize a blog and feed
- Optimize the blog
- Socialize your blog
- Submit you blog

Customize your templates
-Archive structure for shorter urls
- Tweak CSS for H1
- Titles so keywords are first
- Add a robots.txt
- Add a Favicon
- Validate code

Use plugins to increase functionality
WordPress
- Google sitempa
- related posts
- customize feed
- handle 301 redirects
- social bookmarks
- create tag clouds

MoveableType
Google and Yahoo maps, related entries based on keywords, anti spam filters, link checkers

Optimize the template once. Optimize the content on an ongoing basis.
Use basic search engine optimization tactics:
- Keywords
- Text markup
- Give each post a theme
- Link out to authority websites
- Breakup long posts

Socialize your blog
- Inbound links by with socializing other blogs.
- Cross link your blog and web site
- Notify other bloggers about your blog via email
- Reference other blogs in posts
- Become a link hub

Ram up your traffic
- Submit feeds
- Ping on each post
- Claim you feed at Technorati
- Subscribe to your own feeds at My Yahoo and My MSN (which will submit your blog to those readers)

Make subscriptions easy
- RSS Buttons
- Add bookmarking links
- Use auto discovery
- Each feed should have a keyword theme
- Use images for branding
- Make feeds available for syndication - feedroll.com
- Use media specific feeds for iTunes and Yahoo Media

Measuring Results
- Feedburner
- Feedcraft
- Simplefeed
- Nooked
- MeasureMap
- SiteMeter
- Technorati ratings

Next up is Daron Babin of Webmaster Radio.

Things you should be aware of if you want to get into Podcasting. Considerations and pitfalls.

1. Start small - Buy basic podcast recording hardware.

One thing you need to be prepared for is bandwidth consumption. Daron relates a story about how he hit 1 Terra byte of bandwidth per month. Need to consider content syndication networks that can handle the distribution. A CDN will push a file out on an on-demand basis, rather than connecting to your primary servers and eating up your bandwidth.

Compelling content is the one thing that will eat up your bandwidth.

2. Need to focus on high quality content. Be very aware of the techincal quality as well. Think about the branding of the program long term. When you name your programming you need to take that into consideration. Also take into account the episodic titles. This is akin to the site title. Also consider the description of the episode.

Also take into account the ID3 tags. Use a ID3 V2 editor. That will allow you to add all sorts of information (think keyword optimization) to the media file.

Optimize every aspect of your RSS feed. iTunes is like Lycos in 1999. It’s there for the taking.

Next up is Greg Hartnet from Best of the Web (botw.org)

How you can get the most out of the blogosphere? The more you put in, the more you get out. It’s not a minor undertaking, it’s a lot of work.

Your readers are going to judge you based on the quality of your writing. Consistent grammar errors will reduce your credibility.

Optimize for Performance
Titles, descriptions, rewrite with just post title in url, categorical archives, enable ping service

Get on the Map
Submit your blog to search engines and blog/RSS search engines - Monster Blog Directory list at www.toprankresults.com/blog-submit-list.htm

Get Social
Subscribe to other feeds. When you find good resources, be sure to blogroll them. Post about other bloggers to get their attention. Take advantage of the vanity characteristic of many bloggers.

Participate in the Conversation
Comment on other people’s blogs. It is very important what you say in other people’s comments. Witty, insightgful and compelling makes you (and your blog) stand out and can drive traffic. Make sure whatever you say contributes to the conversation. If you don’t have something intelligent to say, keep it to yourself (or put it on your own blog).

Community Sites:
gabbr.com
digg - Favors technically oriented posts. Graywolf blog has articles on digg.
del.icio.us
myspace.com - Referenced article by Roger Monti (martinibuster) about the myspace landgrab.
slashdot
craigslist

The Power of Pictures
Images convey an emotion and can be transmitted easily. Images are cross-cultural and

Flickr
Zoto

Nothing will attract eyeballs to your blog like video.
YouTube
Google Video
Can include your url in the video itself as part of the image, or in the description of the video.

Heavy Traffic
Once you get a lot of traffic, be sure to be prepared to handle it.

Q/A added Jeremy Zawodny and Matt Cutts

Q (David McInnis of PRWeb): How do you go about picking a Content Delivery Network
Daron: It’s a tough thing - pretty much by trial and error. Have a network engineer monitor and adjust. Ask what kind of back end reporting features there are. Spend time with them asking questions. Make sure there is a firm commitment to bandwidhth. Ask for a free month to see what bandwidth usage will really be.

Q: What’s the lowdown on search engine performance and blogs?
Matt: It’s interesting that there are still people who want to exclude blogs. For the most part, search engines do pretty well and indexing blogs.
Zawodny: Relates that digg membership want people to post actual stories and not to blog posts about a story.
Greg says something about “craptastic” blog posts, but I didn’t catch what he said.

Amanda: As more plugins are implemented, blogs will look less like blogs and more like web sites. How do you define a blog and how do you define a web site?

Q: The word “blog” doesn’t mean much. Has a web site with a news section, a forum and information pages on each city. Should I convert all that to a blog?
Greg: Don’t change your site to a blog, but add a blog.
Amanda: The blog lets you produce a different voice for your content. Your main web site might be focused on factual information and the blog would be less formal.
Matt: Don’t be thinking of the maximum you can do with the miniumum of content. Think about the user and don’t duplicate the exact same content.
Jeremy: Use the right tool for the job. Blogs are not for everything. Each type of function usually has a corresponding type of software. Ex: Forums, blogs, web site, etc.

Q: WordPress blog using FeedBurner. My FeedBurner feed url is showing up in the search engines before
Daron: Burn all feeds with your branding, your domain name as part of the feed url. Think about it from the beginning. Use a master feed and commit to it. Then if Feedburner tanks, you still have a url under your control.
Jeremy: Points out the auto discovery tag. Explains the issue of auto discovery showing one feed and a FeedBurner link as a link on the page causing dilution.
Greg: Recommends not using Feedburner so he maintains control.
Daron: Recommends putting subscription options in as a pulldown menu and not showing all the chicklets. It simplifies subscription options.
Matt: A lot of feed chicklets gets to be a lot. Keeps it simple with his own feed.

Q: XML feeds show up in search results. Is Google working on that or a directory of RSS feeds?
Matt: You can add a -.xml operator to your query (audience laugh). Yeah, you shouldn’t have to see that. He’ll pass feedback on the Google team.

Tags: blogs, rss, podcasting, pubcon, blog optimization

Most bloggers don’t know a thing about SEO. Many SEO’s don’t know a thing about blogging. Those who excel at both can be dangerously good and web marketing. Improving your web site rankings on search engines involves a large number of variables and the same goes for blogs. The difference is that there are unique linking opportunities with blogs that are not common with web sites.

Common blog linking tactics include:

• Trackbacks
• Comments
• Social book marks
• Tagging
• Blogrolls
• Guest writing on other blogs
• Blog, RSS directories

Methods to gain links commonly associated with web sites include:

• Backlink analysis on competing web sites or blogs
• Search engine directory submissions
• Profiles and bios
• Testimonials
• Job listings
• Interviews
• Contributions to non-profits
• Article marketing
• Social book marks
• Press releases
• Contributed articles to MSM web sites
• Media coverage
• Buying web sites
• Viral marketing - linkbait

Many bloggers miss out on the benefit of blogs being inherently search engine friendly by not taking advantage of web site linking tactics. In fact, blogs have an advantage over web sites without a RSS feed because they can easily be syndicated and they can be listed with blog and RSS search engines.

Here are some rankings on Google for Online Marketing Blog:

• “marketing blog” #1
• “blog marketing” #1

And on Yahoo:

• “marketing blog” #1
• “blog marketing” #2

These rankings are a result of good content AND inbound links. Each month more sites link to the blog without being asked. I call that “linking momentum”. In order to achieve linking momentum for a blog, you need to kickstart things by using linking tactics normally associated with web sites. Then you need to make sure you are creating linkable content.

Blog template optimization can only improve a blog’s rankings so much and many search engine optimization and blog marketing experts out there should pay more attention to blog linking. A steady stream of inbound links from a variety of relevant and authoritative sources can make a night and day difference for your blog’s search engine rankings.

TwisterMC has released a new Firefox extension called yExplore to right-click access the Yahoo Site Explorer tool which is very useful for checking the number of pages indexed and the number of inbound links to a particular URL.

In September 2005 Yahoo released their site explorer and it’s quite a handy little tool. However, we wanted quicker access to the tool so Thomas created the yExplore Firefox extension. It simply allows you to right click on any web page, select yExplore and it’ll open Yahoo Site Explorer in a background tab with the URL already submitted. A few more details are available at the yExplore Extension page or you can get yExplore from the Mozilla site.

About a month ago, Grant Crowell of Grantastic Designs posted an article at Search Engine Watch on SEO for podcasts, which pointed out how straightforward it would be.

Stephan Spencer also wrote up an informative list of Podcast SEO tips on his blog.

I would also like to point out a few things regarding how podcasts can support your online marketing efforts, particularly in conjuction with online PR.

The first is the very cool Podcast recording, production and hosting service offered by PRWeb Podcast. More details in this press release.

As an example, TopRank recently did a PRWeb Podcast in conjunction with Blogs, SEO and online PR press release recently for the upcoming WebmasterWorld Pubcon conference in Boston. David McInnis, the CEO and founder of PRWeb and I are speaking on the same panel about Public Relations.

My conference pals Amanda Watlington, Daron Babin and Brian Prince will be talking about RSS and podcasts at the Boston Pubcon conference along with Michael Levine from Yahoo, so be sure to check that out if you’re going.

We’re monitoring the effect of this service from a traffic perspective, but are rolling it out with all of our online PR clients. In fact, one of our Public Relations managers has had great success using podcasts in her pitching efforts to the media. Karen has posted about that over on her Media Relations Blog.

From an advertising perspective, this recent research from PQ Media shows that combined U.S. spending on blog, podcast and RSS advertising increased 198.4% to $20.4 million in 2005. This kind of advertising is expected to grow another 144.9% to $49.8 million in 2006. Those are some pretty impressive growth numbers.

So you can use SEO for more traffic to your podcasts, you can use podcasts to enhance your online public relations and you can advertise on podcasts. What else can you do with podcasts related to SEO?

You can stay on top of the happenings in the search engine industry as well as search engine optimization tactics by listening to the wide array of podcasts and live internet radio feeds over at WebmasterRadio.fm.

Danny Sullivan also posts a daily “SearchCast” from Search Engine Watch. Chris Pirillo did a series of podcast interviews at Search Engine Strategies NYC that are pretty interesting.

There are many others I’m sure, so post your favorites if you like.

There is a lot of discussion in the blogosphere about Yahoo! and AOL planning to use Goodmail and make marketers pay in order to get their emails through the spam filters.

According to this AP story:

“The fees, which would range from 1/4 cent to 1 cent per e-mail, are the latest attempts by the companies to weed out unsolicited ads, commonly called spam, and identity-theft scams. In exchange for paying, e-mail senders will be guaranteed their messages won’t be filtered and will bear a seal alerting recipients they’re legitimate.”

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In a previous post, I wrote about Google’s possible foray into radio advertising with the acquisition of dMarc. However, offline advertising with Google is already becoming a reality with the advent of Google’s new auction for print ads in some magazines.
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For one hour today between 4-5pm EST, Dotster.com will be offering domain names for only one dollar. There is a limit of 1 domain name per order, but you can make unlimited orders. Any .COM, .NET or .ORG domain can be registered.

For all those domainers out there, this should be quite an event. Some think domainers are making millions off of type in traffic. Domain name traffic monetization or domain parking is an interesting business.

Gooogle offers a program to monetize domain name parking which is worth checking out, called Google AdSense for domains.

Google recently purchased dMarc for $102 million. According to dMarc’s press release:

“dMarc connects advertisers directly to radio stations through its automated advertising platform. The platform simplifies the sales process, scheduling, delivery and reporting of radio advertising, enabling advertisers to more efficiently purchase and track their campaigns.”
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MSN is now sharing pay per click revenues with MSN Spaces bloggers under a new agreement with Kanoodle.

According to SearchEngineJournal:
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