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Friday, May 21, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Google Keyword Click Data by Search Ranking Position | SEO Book.com
Generally I have not been a huge fan of registering all your websites with Google (profiling risks, etc.), but they keep using the carrot nicely to lead me astray. :D ... So much so that I want to find a Googler and give them a hug.
Google recently decided to share some more data in their webmaster tools. And for many webmasters the data is enough to make it worth registering (at least 1 website)!
AOL Click Data
When speaking of keyword search volume beakdown data people have typically shared information from the leaked AOL search data.
The big problem with that data is it is in aggregate. It is a nice free tool, and a good starting point, but it is fuzzy.
Types of Searches
There are 3 well known search classifications: navigational, transactional, and informational. Each type of query has a different traffic breakdown profile.
- In general, for navigational searches people click the top result more often than they would on an informational search.
- In general, for informational searches people tend to click throughout the full set of search results at a more even distribution than they would for navigational or transactional searches.
- The only solid recently-shared publicly data on those breakdowns is from Dogpile [PDF], a meta search engine. But given how polluted meta search services tend to be (with ads mixed in their search results) those numbers were quite a bit off from what one might expect. And once more, they are aggregate numbers.
Other Stuff in the Search Results
Further, anecdotal evidence suggests that the appearance of vertical / universal results within the search results set can impact search click distribution. Google shows maps on 1 in 13 search results, and they have many other verticals they are pushing - video, updates, news, product search, etc. And then there are AdWords ads - which many searchers confuse as being the organic search results.
Pretty solid looking estimates can get pretty rough pretty fast. ;)
The Value of Data
If there is one critical piece of marketing worth learning above all others it is that context is important.
My suggestions as to what works, another person's opinions or advice on what you should do, and empirical truth collected by a marketer who likes to use numbers to prove his point ... well all 3 data sets fall flat on their face when compared against the data and insights and interactions that come from running your own business. As teachers and marketers we try to share tips to guide people toward success, but your data is one of the most valuable things you own.
A Hack to Collect Search Volume Data & Estimated CTR Data
In their Excel plug-in Microsoft shares the same search data they use internally, but its not certain that when they integrate the Yahoo! Search deal that Microsoft will keep sharing as much data as they do now.
Google offers numerous keyword research tools, but getting them to agree with each other can be quite a challenge.
There have been some hacks to collect organic search clickthrough rate data on Google. One of the more popular strategies was to run an AdWords ad for the exact match version of a keyword and bid low onto the first page of results. Keep the ad running for a while and then run an AdWords impression share report. With that data in hand you can estimate how many actual searches there were, and then compare your organic search clicks against that to get an effective clickthrough rate.
The New Solution
Given search personalization and localization and the ever-changing result sets with all the test Google runs, even the above can be rough. So what is a webmaster to do?
Well Google upgraded the data they share inside their webmaster tools, which includes (on a per keyword level)
- keyword clickthrough rank
- clickthrough rate at various ranking positions
- URL that was clicked onto
Trophy Keywords vs Brand Keywords
Even if your site is rather well known going after some of the big keywords can be a bit self-defeating in terms of the value delivered. Imagine ranking #6 or #7 for SEO. Wouldn't that send a lot of search traffic? Nope.
When you back away the ego searches, the rank checkers, etc. it turns out that there isn't a ton of search volume to be had ranking on page 1 of Google for SEO.
With only a 2% CTR the core keyword SEO is driving less than 1/2 the traffic driven by our 2 most common brand search keywords. Our brand might not seem like it is getting lots of traffic with only a few thousand searches a month, but when you have a > 70% CTR that can still add up to a lot of traffic. More importantly, that is the kind of traffic which is more likely to buy from you than someone searching for a broad discovery or curiosity type of keyword.
The lessons for SEOs in that data?
- Core keywords & raw mechanical SEO are both quite frequently heavily over-rated in terms of value.
- Rather than sweating trying to rank well for the hardest keywords first focus on more niche keywords that are easy to rank for.
- If you have little rank and little work to do then there is lots of time to focus ongiving people reasons to talk about you and reference you.
- Work on building up brand & relationships. This not only gives your link profile more karma, but it sends you a steady stream of leads for if/when you fall out of favor a bit with the search engines.
Those who perceive you well will seek you out and buy from you. But it is much harder to sell to someone who sees you as just another choice amongst many results.
Search is becoming the default navigational tool for the web. People go to Google and then type in "yahoo." If you don't have a branded keyword as one of your top keywords that might indicate long-term risk to your business. If a competitor can clone most of what you are doing and then bake in a viral component you are toast.
Going After the Wrong Brand Keywords
Arbitraging 3rd party brands is an easy way to build up distribution quickly. This is why there are 4,982 Britney Spears fan blogs (well 2 people are actually fans, but the other 4,980 are marketers).
But if you want to pull in traffic you have to go after a keyword that is an extension of the brand. Ranking for "eBay" probably won't send you much traffic (as their clickthrough rate on their first result is probably even higher than the 70% I had above). Though if you have tips on how to buy or sell on eBay those kinds of keywords might pull in a much higher clickthrough rate for you.
To confirm the above I grabbed data for a couple SEO tool brands we rank well for. A number 3 ranking (behind a double listing) and virtually no traffic!
Different keyword, same result
Informational Keywords
Link building is still a bit of a discovery keyword, but I think it is perhaps a bit later staged than just the acronym "SEO." Here the click volume distribution is much flatter / less consolidated than it was on the above brand-oriented examples.
If when Google lowers your rank you still pull in a fairly high CTR that might be a signal to them that your site should rank a bit higher.
For a Look at Why We Need to Beef Up Our Broadband, Head Down Under
The government of Australia has committed AUS$43 billion ($38.9 billion) to build out a national fiber-to-the-home network that will serve 93 percent of its citizens, with those in rural areas guaranteed satellite or wireless service of up to 12 Mbps. The government’s plans also include opening the network to commercial providers that might want to offer access as well as services through the pipe, creating a communications network that might resemble Google’s proposed fiber network, but on a much larger scale.
It’s not a cheap effort, and Australian ISPs have both derided and fought against the project, arguing that the network will compete against theirs and that the government has no business running a broadband network anyway. But as Nate Anderson at Ars Technica notes, the fiber-to-the-home network has been validated in an independent report issued by KPMG and McKinsey. Anderson breaks it down for people in an analysis that everyone in the U.S. who cares about broadband should read.
He notes that the two countries are different, with most of Australia’s population living at the perimeter of the continent, and points out that the effort will require 250,000 kilometers of fiber and 5,000 visits per day to customers’ homes over a period of eight years in order to get fiber to that 93 percent of residents. But the McKinsey and KPMG report ultimately estimates that the cost to the consumers will be the equivalent of $27-$32 a month for 20 Mbps voice and broadband access. I pay much more for much less.
The key will be the open network, which the McKinsey report says will create a “fundamentally different industry structure…This change will accelerate the evolution of the industry. At times this may be smooth; at other times it will be uneven. New business models and companies will emerge.”
Unfortunately, opening up existing networks wouldn’t work in the U.S. (some with ties to the current telecommunications industry argue the entire Australian model wouldn’t work), as the U.S. telephone and communications network has been built by private companies. Forcing ISPs to open their networks isn’t an option that will sit well with ISPs, their shareholders and even many in the government. However, the answer to the lack of competition isn’t data, as the National Broadband Plan proposes, nor is it wireless, which can never deliver the kinds of speeds a fiber-to-the-home connection can.
The answer to the lack of competition is…well, competition. We see it in places where Verizon has rolled out its fiber-to-the-home offering and the cable companies are forced to compete; we see in areas where municipalities have managed to deploy their own fiber networks; and perhaps we’ll see it in whatever lucky town gets Google’s experimental network. So while forcing open access here isn’t an option, and it’s unlikely that the feds will greenlight what could cost up to $350 billion for a fiber-to-the-home network, we only need to look to Australia to see how valuable they can be.
Facebook vs. Zynga: The Turf War
Zynga and Facebook have had an extremely symbiotic and mutually lucrative relationship to date, but after the social network tried to use its weight to hold its leading social gaming application maker captive, Zynga looks to be mad as hell.
Let’s quickly recap how, up until this recent turn of events, co-dependent Zynga and Facebook have been:
Zynga’s FarmVille and other social games have given many users a reason to join and spend enormous amounts of time on Facebook;
By dedicating nearly 100 percent of its energy to building Facebook games, Zynga got tremendous traction that built on itself and through viral channels;
Zynga’s ad buys have accounted for a significant portion of Facebook’s revenue for the last couple of years;
Zynga was able to monetize and grow to a formidable status in the social gaming market in an incredibly short time (it was recently estimated to be worth $5 billion);
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus himself was an early Facebook investor and Zynga, like Facebook, has significant investment from Facebook investor Digital Sky Technologies.
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus
But the social network and the social game builder have hit a rough patch. Zynga is by all reports not going to take it any more. Facebook wants to unite payments across its platform with Facebook Credits, from which it takes a hearty 30 percent cut. Zynga and other social game developers feel that’s usurious. And this was after Facebook altered its messaging channels,directly impacting Zynga’s ability to connect with its users and recruit new ones.
After negotiations with Facebook over credits and a firmer long-term relationship turned ugly, Zynga is now moving forward with plans to become a gaming platform of its own, reports TechCrunch, which published this email from an anonymous source:
Pincus announced at a 5pm meeting yesterday at Zynga that Zynga was going to launch a social game network called Zynga Live. The Zynga Live initiative was a social gaming network. Facebook and Zynga has been negotiating on Facebook Credits and the talks turned for the worst. In the negotiation process, Facebook shut off Zynga’s feeds and threatened to shut down games. Zynga in the process threatened to completely leave Facebook and prepared to do so in the previous upcoming weeks.
If you want to know what Zynga’s gaming network might look like, check out our story onPincus’ keynote from the Inside Social Apps conference a couple weeks ago, a call to arms for app developers to preserve the integrity of their “app economy.”
Pincus said he thinks a proper application economy will require tools that create a consistent social gaming experience as users move between applications on the web. First, an “app bar,” would follow users around, enticing them to navigate back to their games — like the one from Meebo (which is tying up with other social web services through XAuth), the “social games bar”launched today by Heyzap, or the one expected to be launched by Facebook soon. Pincus said such efforts have the added benefit of increased engagement and revenues for publishers and networks who use the bar.
Second, apps need properly tuned user communication channels, Pincus said. These should be open enough to allow apps to grow through reaching out to their users, but closed enough to prevent obtrusive and annoying communication.
Third, an app economy would require universal social feeds that follow users around the web. This would allow users to connect feeds between destinations and activities, for instance sending activity in one game to a narrowcasted group of their friends on a certain network. When Zynga tested narrowcasting, or enabling users to share updates with a certain group of their friends, sharing increased 400 percent, Pincus said.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
Pincus’ rallying cry for the app economy can be directly contrasted with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcements at his company’s f8 conference the day after. Zuckerberg hardly paid lip service to on-Facebook applications at f8 — he instead laid out Facebook’s plans to colonize the rest of the web. I talked to one app developer in the parking lot who noted that there wasn’t a single session directly relevant to him throughout the whole day.
Zuckerberg’s new focus was also completely off-topic for Zynga’s interests. It seemed as if Facebook used Zynga to get to its current scale — remember, before the Facebook platform launch in 2007, the network had only 24 million active users! — and now has little reason to give it favorable treatment. But even so, Zynga is not going to go independent anytime soon. Dropping Facebook would be dropping its whole business. This is about diversifying.
Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my bio.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
4 Killer Gmail Features You Might Not Know About
I’m sure Gmail is the most popular email tool among Google Tutor readers. And we’vewritten about it a lot. We’ve also talked about some nice stuff like Gmail add-ons to make you more productive.
Having said that, there’s just so much more to Gmail that you could glance at it for a few moments and come up with a new article idea. Seriously, in spite of using it for years, I continue to get surprised.
This post talks about four such features which are little known. I can bet most of you would find at least one feature out of these 4 which you are yet to discover. Check them out.
1. Mute Conversations
Did you know Gmail has a mute conversation feature that lets you ignore irritating message threads? It lets those messages skip the inbox so that they don’t bother you.
Example – I was subscribed to an email thread in a forum and I kept getting endless email messages. Since I just couldn’t find the unsubscribe option, I decided to mute the thread. Simple.
2. Forward All
One of the good things about the conversation format in Gmail is that you could easily forward an entire conversation thread to someone who’s just joined the discussion. It forwards the entire conversation which contains emails sent and received, neatly organized in a single email.
3. Bookmark Emails
Another brilliant feature. Each email in Gmail has a specific url that could be bookmarked just like you do with a webpage. So if there’s an important email you need to refer often, bookmarking would definitely be the fastest way to get to it (it would require you to login to Gmail, of course).
4. Search Options
This is something you might have overlooked for a long time. It’s not prominent in the interface to be honest. A small search options link beside the Gmail search bar. When you click on it, you get a number of options which could make searching Gmail so much more easier.
So, tell me honestly, how many of those you didn’t know? And what are the features you think you know and someone else probably doesn’t? Do share them in the comments.
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