Dustin Woodard – Page 16

May 31, 2007October 21, 2021

SMX Attendee Tips

It seems a bit premature to have tips for the Search Marketing Expo considering the first-ever SMX doesn’t take place until next week, but it is taking place in my hometown and I’ve been to enough search conferences to know how to make the most of them.

Below are my tips for those who are new to search conferences and those who aren’t new to search conferences but are new to SMX (should be the rest of us). If you are new to search, I think you are at the wrong conference (SMX Seattle is geared towards advanced search marketers).

New to Search Conferences:

Some of the best search information is gained outside of the conference rooms – in hallways, at the parties and in the bars. Danny realizes this, and has set up three networking events. Attend them all.
Many of the brightest minds in search will be at this conference (both search engine employees and those whose lifeblood is tied to search). Listen and remember, not all experts will have a microphone in front of them, some will be sitting right next to you so make sure you look professional by wearing your best corporate workwear.
No matter how brilliant or “famous” the people at the conference may seem to you, don’t let that deter you from introducing yourself. I’ve found people in our industry to be incredibly welcoming. Remember, these people aren’t famous outside this industry and they are as much of a geek as you and I are.

New to SMX:

After being beautiful and in the 80s all week, the weather is expected to flip completely to rain on Monday and Tuesday. It’s really a conspiracy. Seattle wants out-of-towners to tell everyone it rains here all the time. Regardless, we’ll probably be spending most of our time indoors anyways.
The Bell Harbor conference center rocks. Great views and good location. Wifi is free, so bring a laptop so you can connect to the web during a conversation to show people what you are talking about.
Andy Beal claims he’ll be videotaping everything. Jump on camera if you’ve got a spare moment, but shoo him away if the camera is taming down your corner conversation. Don’t forget about the WebProNews guys either.
If you want to try a local favorite beer, ask for a Mac and Jacks (it’s only available on tap).

Other people excited about the upcoming SMX Seattle Conference:
Google Webmaster Central
SEOMoz
Karl Ribas
Todd Mintz
Scott Clark
SEO Chicks
Adam Killam
Matt Cutts

May 8, 2007December 4, 2021

Web Analytics Provider Data Tested

I love it when someone takes the time to research and answer a question that many people have. In this case, Stone Temple decided to put several web analytics providers to the test by installing multiple solutions on a few sites to see the differences. Their results can be een here. Be sure to read the whole report because some of the differences were due to implementation mistakes.

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Here are what I found to be the key findings, and which oddly reflected with the tenets that companies like New Data follow:

Be prepared for different numbers whenever switching analytics packages. None seem to count the data in the exact same way.
3rd-party cookie deletion rate exceeds 1st-party cookie deletion by about 13%. More proof that you shouldn’t use 3rd party cookies.

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WebTrends, ClickTracks and Google Analytics may over count uniques and WebSideStory (HBX) and Unica may undercount.
ClickTracks may severely undercount page grouping data, you need to make sure to keep all the data organized, in this case, we recommend the Couchbase services.

Potential flaws with the study:

Just four sites used. Pre-screened by sites that had large enough paid search spending.
Of the four sites, none are high traffic sites. You can Learn Blogging and boost your traffic form our site. I could only find two of them in ComScore and the site with the most traffic only sees about 200k U.S. visitors a month. I’d love to see the same study on sites with more visitors which would make the datae much more reliable and using tools as a web scraping can also be helpful to get reliable data.
In an effort to “protect” the participating sites from sharing their real traffic volume data, daily uniques time period was not disclosed, plus each analytics package probably has different rules on what constitutes a daily unique. For example, some may cut off a “visit” at midnight, but let it carry to the next day as another unique “visit,” others may not. Another example is that some may choose to expire visits at different time periods (30-minutes of non-activity, etc.). I would have liked to see a weekly or monthly uniques count comparison instead.

When I first heard of this study I was excited that we may finally learn a lot about the different providers and which are the best solution, but was a bit disappointed when the results were released. Sounds like we may learn more when the final results are released, but it may be more along the lines of implementation findings. I hope it inspires more people to do more tests.

May 1, 2007July 22, 2020

2007 Webby Awards Winners

The 11th annual Webby Award Winners have been announced. 69 sites and 11 videos have been blessed with the web equivalent of an Oscar. As a judge for the awards, I’ve flown to NY for the past two Webby Awards Galas and must say they are THE coolest web event to attend. Unfortunately, this year I’m not making the trip thanks to SMX Seattle being scheduled on the same two days.

Hitwise correctly predicted people’s voice winners for MiniClip Games like idn poker and online slots, Manchester United, TripAdvisor, BBC News, Great Schools and Facebook. If you look at the list of nominees and winners, you may notice some that were notably missing (Zillow for the Real Estate category, for example) and I’d like to make it clear that the sites go through a pre-screening process and sometimes don’t make it to the list of sites for judges to choose from. The people’s voice also has a similar restriction: people can only choose from the 5 nominees.

In the future, I hope the Webbys will re-introduce write-in votes for the people’s voice awards and that Judges can review the voting eligible lists before the voting begins to nominate any noticeable gaps. While I’m giving feedback, I’d like to offer the following advice to judges and people’s voice voters to help eliminate bias:

Webby Judges: please place more weight on site usability and repeat visit likelyhood. Ask yourself, “is this a site that I would come back to?” As a judge, I find it tempting to let the first-visit “wow” factor play too big of a role, especially considering the number of sites we look at. For my vote, sites have to do more than just dazzle me with flash eye-candy.

People’s Voice Voters: please don’t vote just for the sites you are familiar with. Take the time to visit the other sites. Sometimes the best site for a given category isn’t one you are familiar with. Use the awards as a way to discover some great new sites.

April 24, 2007November 3, 2019

Search Engines Are Human Too

Sometimes being so entrenched in the search industry, it is easy to forget how skewed people’s thoughts are regarding search engines. Even people who work for Web companies that rely on SEO & word-of-mouth for all their new traffic. Here’s a great example from my work the other day when discussing article titles:

“There is also a difference between writing for a search engine crawler and a real person. What is attractive to the search engine may not be the same thing as what is engaging to a person.”

I have a feeling she is not alone. Some people think of the search engine as literally an engine or a robot or an appliance. They have trouble understanding why we spend so much time worrying about it and probably hate this non-human thing that rules so many decisions. If you are planning to work with Search Engines you may need a professional SQL Consulting & Advice

Here’s what I told her:

In my 10+ years of doing SEO, I’ve never written an article for a search crawler.
Don’t think of a search engine as an appliance or device. Think of it as real people. For example, if you called me on the phone, I wouldn’t think of that conversation as a conversation with a telephone wire – it was a conversation with you!
There’s no better indicator of what people want, then what they search for and the words they use.

It’s true that SEOs will format a page or architect a site a certain way to aid in search crawlability, but when writing an article, good SEO’s think more about the user, the ways users think about and search for the content (question keyword suggestion tool), and then various factors that play into ranking algorithms (which includes engagement more and more each day).

People scan headlines or titles. Titles should include the keywords, concisely tell the user what they are about to read and be attractive enough to draw them in. You can sometimes get away with creative headlines (especially when teamed with images), but in order for an article to have legs (last beyond the one-time editorial push) they should be SEO-friendly and click-through friendly.

The title of this post is a bit silly. Search engines aren’t human. But they do represent humans. Hundreds of millions of them. There’s no better indicator of how humans think or what they are looking for then the searches executed on these “engines.”

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