Archive for the 'Webmaster News' Category
Typically most SEO’s will begin with a new website by optimizing the home page because that is usually your best starting page in terms of current search engine visibility but many beginners neglect the power of inner page conversions. Inner pages can be so valuable because often the traffic that you send there is laser targeted and will therefore convert at a very high rate. I have found it common to see inner pages with bounce rate and/or conversion rates that are 5-10 times higher better than home pages.
Here are a few results I pulled from a client that has been with us for the past two years and it can give you a good idea on the growth potential of inner pages.
The moral of this post is that you should always make sure the search professional that is working for you has a holistic approach to your search engine success. Focusing solely on the home page will leave a lot of visitors and money on the table.
I started 2011 off by getting two strikes on my first two bowling balls of the year, so that should mean a stellar year for me personally?! Here are some of my thoughts and predictions for this year.
In Search
- Google will face some more heavy anti-trust lawsuits and will start to back-off on their greed factor. Google has now pushed organic (natural) listings down past the fold, squeezing out online directories and information providers (weather and sports score sites) and have implemented ads right inside emails.
They are so aggressive in their quest to earn another few billion that soon, everyday folks will start realizing that they might not be the best search alternative. The big question is, can a new search engine or one of the older ones step-up and do something that will help the mainstream searchers switch over? I predict that besides the rough ride Google might have with anti-trust issues they will remain dominant and retain most of their market share.
In Tech
- Apple will come out with an iPad Lite or iPad Jr. – iPads have been very popular but they sure are big! I think Apple will have an option for a smaller more compact iPad this year. My guess is the new version will have a 7.7 inch screen so it will be roughly 20% smaller.
Other Stuff
- A terrorist attack in the USA will succeed on a much smaller scale than 9/11. I predict something like a bombing in the downtown core of a major US city in CA or NY. My guess is that many plots over the last few years have been foiled but the crazy, sick terrorists will continue trying.
- The US government will announce increased rebates for purchasers of electric cars. The current rebate of $7,500 will be increased to at least $8,000 and maybe as high as $10,000. The USA and in fact all of North America needs to start ending its love affair with fossil fuels and electric cars are a big part of this solution.
- Similar to the above I predict a breakthrough this year in electric car batteries that will allow for a 25% increase in travel distances and a similar decrease in charging times.
Long Term Prediction
- This one might come across as more science fiction than science but I predict by the year 2050 we will be utilizing solar and lightning power for 90% of the worlds energy needs.
This has been going on for months on my local Craigslist and I can’t figure out for the life of me why they would not put a stop to it. It is so blatant and occurs on a daily basis that it makes them look really bad. Every day it is a battle of the spammers as to who will heave up the most crap.
Sometimes I come across the most interesting pages. Things were so different a decade ago when I was first getting into online marketing. Something like this was a common sight *http://www.mvdn.com/exit.htm* (sorry, but please cut and paste, I don’t have the willpower to make this link live) and it actually worked!! I notice the page rank bar on this page has a 3, I wonder if after a certain amount of time Google still allows juice to flow from a page like this? Maybe the logic is that if it has lasted online for this long it is somewhat legitimate?
Let’s just hope it really doesn’t pass on any authority, but even if it does I guess it is watered down between the 200 or so outgoing links on the page. Oh to be an SEO in another decade, would be so easy!
It seems like Google is no longer happy with just pushing the organic listings down further on the page, they seem to have gotten rid of them all together. Many local searches are showing 7 Google Places listings and that is it!
Actually many of my test searches have been getting an interesting page like below:
Now that is a what I call stealth results! But seriously, how are they going to decide who is in the 7 Google Places spots? With those being the only listings on the first page, how long till they are selling these for $1000′s a month. When is a new search engine going to step up and show organic results again? I understand the concept of a ‘level playing field’ but dropping a nuclear bomb on the land to level it, is not really fair in my opinion.
As a follow-up to my last post about the cost effectiveness of FaceBook advertising I thought I would take a look at a relatevely identical ad on LinkedIn, ouch!
I have my CPM bid set to .35 on FaceBook and in actual fact isi it coming in much lower at only .08 and LinkedIn won’t even let me run my ad unless I bid a minimum of $3.10!! The quality of LinkedIn impressions might be higher but I don’t think they are eight times more valuable, maybe twice or even three times – my effective CPM on FB is .08 so my actual CPM might be 35x higher on LinkedIn. The trail won’t be that painful because of the $100 credit coupon LinkedIn sent me to try their ad network but if they intend me to keep on advertising they are going to have to lower their prices or I am going to have to see some crazy, spectacular results!!
FaceBook Ads
LinkedIn Ads
Want to advertise your brand on the cheap to a specific qualified demographic? Sure, don’t we all!! Here is a peek behind the scenes of my newest Facebook advertising campaign and the bang-for-the-buck is spectacular! I thought the one million impression mark was a good time to sit down and figure out the value of this test project.
As you can see we got over 1 million impressions for less than $100 and I was able to laser target many of these. You might notice that the clickthru rate is not that high but that is not really the purpose of these campaigns. In my judgment any click was cream on top of the great brand promotion I got for the amount of money invested. Truth is that one conversion could equal $200-$300 profit so this campaign has not only increased the reach of my clients brand but likely made them some decent coin as well! We even put our phone number in the ads so we don’t need to always depend on a click to get a conversion.
Bottom line is that Facebook advertising right now is in the ‘sweet-spot’, lots of potential customers and we are able to reach them and expand our local brand at a low-price.
I remember the good old days when a bunch of us on the photography web forums would join our purchasing power together to get 20% off a 1 meg memory stick from the local camera shop. Things have come a long way since then and now the hottest niche on the net seems to be group buying sites and/or deal of the day sites that take advantage of group buying power to get retailers to heavily discount products and services. I mean who can resist corn removal at 85% off?
Groupon has decided to take this whole group buying phenom to a new level and then even a bit further! come up with a novel approach to building the next generation of customers: Breed them. Today the company launched Grouspawn.com, first to connect like-minded couples though a dating service, and second, to reward those couples who used a Groupon on their first date (proof required) and went on (not necessarily that evening) to make a baby. The incentive? A $60,000 college scholarship for up to two qualifying babies a year.
So I have been happy to report over the past couple of years that Canada, in particular my neck of these woods, Ontario has been catching up to the UK and USA by offering good starting salary for valuable Search Engine professionals. But a quick look at Craislist today makes me wonder what is going on. Not only have good paying SEO jobs been a rare occurrence the past few months, there are some really jokers offering peanuts and I can’t image what kind of specialist or professionals they are expecting to get. Just a few weeks ago I saw an ad for an experienced link builder starting at $60k per year plus benefits – then today:
looking for a hard working (very very hard working) individual to help promote our business with twitter, facebook (various social media sites), SEO etc. Compensation: $24,000 per year + stock options
Yikes! And this one:
In-House, Full Time PPC Specialist Position!
You must have knowledge and experience of managing and running multiple PPC campaigns ( AdWords, Yahoo Sponsored Search & Microsoft Ad Center) , have client oriented approach, ability to manage numerous and changing project priorities, excellent organizational skills, team player, ability to analyze and make recommendations for client up-sells (SEO packages, PPC campaigns, web design, and more).
Compensation: $30-$40K pluse commissions based on performance
Crazy experience and high level duties for $15 an hour? Data entry people at my office make that much!!
I still have faith that Canada is catching up and today’s posts are just a brief setback. Hope everyone is having a great summer!
Does the text color of your link matter? According to a Google patent granted a little while back it just might! You can view the document yourself here.
But let’s spend a little time with claim 18,
The one or more server devices of claim 16, where the data associated with the features of the one of the links includes at least two of: the font size of anchor text associated with the link, the position of the link within a source document, the position of the link in a list, the font color associated with the link, the attributes of the link, the number of words in the anchor text associated with the link, the actual words in the anchor text associated with the link, the determination of commerciality of the anchor text associated with the link, the type of the link, the context of words before or after the link, the topical cluster with which the anchor text of the link is associated, whether the link leads to a target document on a same host or domain, or whether an address associated with the link embeds another address.
This claim gives us a lot of good information on how text links might be valued but by color? It might have something to do with detecting hidden text (for instance if the color of text matches the background color a flag is raised or the link is discounted), but I would bet some serious money it is just a matter of time till we see some quack SEO’s offering Bill and Jimmy’s Rainbow Color Link Building Service, claiming that they will garner you hundreds of blue, green and yellow links for $xxx a month. Guaranteed to get you to the number one spot or your choice of a full refund or a case of multi-colored lollipops!
