Any search engine marketer worth his or her salt is obsessed with web analytics, i.e. all the data generated through server web logs:

“Who has visited my site? How many? When? Why? What pages do they look at? How long do they stay? From which pages do they leave?” Well, you know the drill.

Like any decent group of experts and want-to-become-experts they have their own conference series. X Change is one of them, and the next X Change conference will be on September 20th and 21st, 2007 in the heart of California’s Napa’s Wine Country.

The conference does cover search engine marketing relevant topics like:

• Analyzing and Optimizing Internal Search
• Optimizing Marketing Campaigns
• Social Network Analysis
• Executive Reporting – Modeling Value and Cost for True ROI
• Executive KPIs
• Conducting a KPI Workshop – Gathering Web Reporting Requirements
• Optimizing for Universal Search
• Measuring Search Engine Marketing with Web Analytics
• Measuring AJAX – Creating a Framework for Analysis
• Mass Media Measurement and Testing Using Web Analytics
• Effective Testing Strategies
• Understanding Customer Behavior on the Web
• Measurement for Total Marketing Efforts

X Change tells us that the Conference is unusual in that it consists of many small discussion groups (”Huddles”) hosted by facilitator experts in specific topic areas:

“During the intimate setting, conference participants will be able to share experiences, exchange ideas and brainstorm new approaches with experts, as well as with each other in a structured environment.”

Eric T. Peterson of Web Analytics Demystified, the noted web analytics author, consultant and speaker will be keynote speaker, and also serve as one of the expert facilitators

Among the expert facilitators for X Change we find Anil Batra, Director of Analytics and Strategy of ZeroDash1, Clint Ivy, Enterprise Technology Consultant for Visual Sciences, Judah Phillips of Director of Web Analytics for Reed Business Information (Reed), Eric Peterson of WebAnalyticsDemystified, Duff Anderson of iPerceptions, Gary Angel, June Dershewitz and Paul Legutko of Semphonic, Matt Belkin of Omniture, Paul Bruemmer of RedDoor Interactive, Joseph Carrabis of NextStage Evolution, Terry Cohen and Matt Jacobs of Digitas, Aaron Gray of WebTrends, Manoj Jasra of Enquiro, Phil Kemelor of CMS Watch and Semphonic, John Quarto-vonTivadar of FutureNow, Marshall Sponder of IBM and Webmetricsguru, and Jaques Warren of WAO Marketing.

For more info on the conference visit Semphonic

Besides myself, speakers were Jim Boykin and Todd Malicoat of We Build Pages, Ken Jurina of Epiar and Bill Hartzer of Intec. In case you missed the show, below is a description of the latest tools that can help you work smarter, categorized by function.

If you have any favorites that we missed, please send them to me for review and inclusion in a future article.

Website History

As you might already know, the age of a website can affect your optimization efforts, especially if the site is brand new. New sites typically have not had the time or longevity to acquire good anchor text links, a factor Google uses in its algorithms for ranking relevance. Here is a tool to help you find the age of a website, which can be helpful when assessing an SEO plan for a client or company. Web Rank Info’s free Server Header Checker tool allows you to check the HTTP status returned by a server. This is useful during the site review process before you start optimizing the site.

It’s always most important to make sure the site communicates well with robots before you get started; otherwise, what’s the point of optimizing? URLTrends allows you to view trend reports of your current and previous Google PageRank, Alexa Rank and incoming links for your website as well as DMOZ status. This can be very helpful during the pre-campaign analysis.

Alexa collects online data about websites regarding their reach, rank, pageviews, incoming links and similar sites. I find this information helpful when researching prospects and their competitors. Hoovers is an excellent source for company and industry information as well as competitor data. This helps when compiling information for a client competitor analysis, which is essential in keeping yourself ahead of the competition.

Linking

Links are a huge topic of discussion in search engine optimization. Backlink Anchor Text Analyzer is a tool that lists the backlinks to your website. It also reports the anchor text used in the link going back to your site. Hub Finder is another link analysis tool, and it’s free. This tool provides a good way to find backlink neighborhoods. Class C IP Address Checker is a site that gives you a breakdown of websites on the same IP block, which is useful when investigating the quality of links to a website.

Optilink’s free Link Analysis Tool analyzes top-ranked websites on 10 major search engines. It gives you link popularity, the number of outgoing links, optimizes your internal links and finds relevant sites to request links from. Expansion packs are available at $49, and the full version is US$149 for this offline tool. OptiSpider is a site linking analyzer that spiders your site, runs a keyword count on all pages, compares link text to page topic and title tag, and discovers which link text or page title needs improvement. Cost is $98 for this offline tool.

Keyword Analysis

Google Sets is a very cool tool to help you create keyword sets in the same family. It is easy to use, helpful for finding related keywords and is also free. Go Rank’s Ontology Finder lets you find words that Google considers related to your keywords. It is always important to keep relevance in mind as you optimize your website for search engines.

MarketLeap’s Search Engine Marketing Tools are free and easy to use for checking link popularity, researching search engine saturation and keyword verification. The Keyword Combination Tool allows you to combine two keyword lists into one and expands the list, this is useful for developing a keyword strategy.

The Keyword Density Tool measures keyword density which some people say can be helpful when you compare two pages for keyword density. The Keyword Helper Tool helps you find more keywords, which is always useful when designing an organic SEO program.

Position Reporting

Poodle Predictor shows how a site listing appears in the search engine results pages (SERPs). It also tells you how ‘search engine friendly’ the site is by letting you know if the engine will spider the site easily. If so, the site will have a better chance at acquiring good rankings.

Web CEO’s Website Ranking Checker is another tool that lets you track search engine rankings, it also compares website performance to your competitors website and allows exporting to clients. This tool has free basic services with add-ons up to $400+.

RankingManager is an excellent tool, and my first choice for reporting the position of various keywords on search engines. It’s easy to use and provides numerous options for reporting the data to clients.

Web Analytics

ClickTracks is a web analytics tool for path tracking and collecting PPC information. It has a great interface with excellent visitor click stream tagging options. There is a free version with upgrades to $10K.

LiveStats is another good web analytics tool; it has good reporting options, is easy to understand and has great export options. Cost runs from $195/month to $1,795/month.

Miscellaneous Tools

GoogSpy tells you what terms your competitors are bidding on at AdWords, this can be helpful in planning your own AdWords campaign. Copyscape lets you search for copies of your pages on the Web. This is particularly useful for preventing competitors from outperforming you in search engines and allows you to protect your content and prevent page-jacking.

RoboForm Password Manager is a simple tool used for remembering all your passwords; it fills in fields when campaigning a website and includes profiles. There is a free version and a pro version for $29.95. Print Screen Deluxe is great for capturing screen shots from your desktop. This is particularly useful during SEO work when you want to show someone else what you have found in the engines or document log reports etc.

Website Resources for SEO/SEM Tools

SEO Company Tool Page is a resource list of 115 SEO tools, including free tools and new tools. Webmaster Free Tools from Digital Point includes a good Keyword Suggestion Tool that lets you quickly see what phrases are searched most often for your key terms. SEO Tools offers a selection of search engine optimization tools, including a keyword typo generator and a Google Dance tool. Many of these tools are free. SEO Tool Set offers top of the line essential tools for search engine optimization; some are free and others have a 30-day free trial.

I realize we may not have covered all aspects of an SEO campaign and the tools required to perform a complete search engine optimization program; however, I hope you find this compilation of tools useful. I certainly wish you the best in your journey for more traffic and top rankings in the search engines.

Again, a special thanks to Jim Boykin and Todd Malicoat of We Build Pages, Ken Jurina of Epiar and Bill Hartzer of Intec, and of course to Danny Sullivan for putting the MyTool session together for SES San Jose 2005.

Verizon announced its new Pay For Calls system at Search Engine Strategies 2005 Conference & Expo in San Jose, California, which runs August 8 through August 11. They say the product offering is so innovative that it requires patent protection. “Our pay-for-performance technology and unique ad placement algorithm are so advanced that we’ve applied for a patent,” said SuperPages.com President Scott Laver.

On the Heels of PPC

Pay-per-call is the performance-driven search marketing strategy that mimics the pay-per-click (PPC) phenomenon of paid search. As such, it hopes to capture some of the PPC market share.

Kelsey Group’s Greg Sterling suggests this is possible for a number of reasons, such as the proliferation of broadband and the increase in local searches. Additionally, click fraud is a big problem in PPC advertising. There have been lawsuits over click fraud, creating some doubt as to the integrity of the clicks. Then there’s the fact that many small businesses prefer telephone to online leads because they’re better able to engage the prospect and close the sale. Customers also like to pick up the phone when they need local products and services. Sterling believes these factors can drive PPCall adoption.

PPCall’s Track Record

Last month, I wrote about the development of a PPCall search marketing strategy by Miva and telephone-technology firm Ingenio. These PPCall search listings are displayed on Miva’s distribution partner sites as well as Internet service provider AOL and mobile phone content provider Go2.

Ingenio/Miva sell PPCall listings by auction-type bidding with a minimum bid price of $2 per phone call. Bids are based on business categories rather than keywords (as in PPC). Ingenio reports that calls averaged $6 to $7 two months after launch, and in some cases went as high as $30.

The Power of Online-Offline Integration

We all know that the telephone is a powerful business tool and that marketers are always looking for ways to integrate online and offline technologies. What better way than to drive phone calls with search marketing?

Search is the killer app with revenues increasing at a faster rate than any other marketing strategy. Since paid search (PPC advertising) gets the larger share of search marketing dollars, it’s time to clone the business model.

PPCall generates phone calls rather than clicks. These phone-call leads are from prospects in a later stage of the buying cycle than the click leads, making them easier to convert. While there are some similarities and differences, PPCall is a logical extension of PPC.

Untapped Target Market

Small businesses, and especially local businesses, are the target market for PPCall. The local market consists of service-based businesses such as attorneys, real estate agents, mortgage brokers, restaurants, beauty shops, tax accountants, plumbers and other professionals and independent entrepreneurs. Many of these businesses don’t have websites.

There are about 14 million small to medium sized companies in the U.S. without websites. These business owners are under pressure to go online as the Web becomes indispensable for consumer shopping.

Yahoo! saw the opportunity early on and started improving its local search database and providing free websites to U.S. small businesses. Verizon also provides a web presence at no cost to any business listing in the U.S. This is a win-win because integrating these listings into the engine’s local search database gives its users a better search experience. At the same time, it gives the merchants more marketing power with PPCall and PPC.

How Does Verizon PPCall Work?

A dedicated toll-free or local telephone number will appear in your SuperPages Pay For Calls ad which rings through to your regular phone line. Pay For Calls ads are integrated with and appear on the same search results page as SuperPages.com Pay Per Click ads.

The minimum bids range from $2 to $6 per call, depending on the business category. Calls are tracked and billed on a proven platform already in operation.

An additional value of Pay For Calls on SuperPages is the ability to leverage ads in local Verizon yellow pages directories.

Will It Fly?

The Kelsey Group estimated that by 2009, PPCall could generate between $1.4 billion and $4 billion in gross revenues. Jupiter estimated that search marketing would generate $16 billion in 2009. So if it takes off, PPCall could take one-quarter of the market.

Kelsey Group also reports that U.S. businesses spend $90 billion annually on local advertising. So it’s worth going after a piece of the market. As with any new business model, there are always challenges.

With the business model barely underway, vendors are offering different products and pricing options; therefore, there is room for standardization. Some calls are sold at a flat rate and others are sold through auction-type bidding. It’s anybody’s guess whether PPCall will seriously challenge pay-per-click, and only time will tell. If phone leads are good for your business, it’s worth a try.

Thousands of commercial web sites and blogs publish content summaries in an RSS feed, but there are billions of web pages on the Internet.

RSS makes it easy to publish content without using HTML, enabling it to be updated and aggregated in real time. It gives users the opportunity to opt-in for information, accessing it through an RSS reader (also referred to as a news aggregator or newsreader).

Each item in an RSS feed has a title (headline), a brief article summary and link to the online article, making the info quickly scanable.

As RSS gains wider acceptance, it will impact the way companies communicate online and the way users get information. RSS not only provides benefits for publishers and users, it also enhances Search Engine Marketing programs.

• RSS enables publishers to reach niche markets
• Facilitates corporate communications without spam filters
• Shelters users from email spam
• Saves time and facilitates data retrieval
• Drives more qualified traffic to sites with SEM programs
• Provides more inbound links to sites with SEM programs

What Is RSS?

RSS, an acronym for Really Simple Syndication, is an XML-based format for content distribution (source CNET). The RSS code creates an XML file describing the content of your RSS feed (website content or other communications).

A new breed of Internet search crawlers, also known as aggregators, stop by to visit and read your RSS feed periodically.

When you provide new information, the aggregator retrieves the new data and sends it to opt-in users worldwide. Information about your site’s content, such as articles or press releases, can be syndicated or publicized to a potentially large audience.

How many people are using RSS?

The Pew Internet and American Life Project reports that 6 million Americans have RSS readers. RSS is growing at a similar rate as web pages about ten years ago.

Feeds are estimated to be in the millions now, whereas they were only in the thousands a couple years ago.

Communication Tool for Publishers

The beauty of RSS is that it provides a non-intrusive way for site owners to draw attention to new articles and content, as well as other communications like press releases, customer notifications and event announcements.

Information in the RSS feed is easily syndicated, increasing content distribution and reach, giving publishers more exposure in niche markets. It allows publishers to communicate with targeted user groups, reaching potential customers through a new communication channel. RSS automates content delivery.

Today, many people rely on the web, at work and at home. Organizing your computer and the data within it can be a challenge because so much information is available from different sources.

A lot of people have gone to newsreader applications like Pluck to manage their online information. Visits between browsers, email, search engines, and now RSS readers, enable people to control their own information center.

Since the launch of such tools to manage online activities, RSS has become fashionable, resulting in quite a large audience for RSS feeds containing your syndicated content.

RSS simplifies communication between publishers and users. Now that it’s gaining popularity, marketers are using RSS feeds to deliver content. RSS readers aggregate multiple feeds, making it easy to quickly scan data within each feed. The feeds also have themes, so you can opt-in by topic of interest.

A significant benefit of RSS is its opt-in feature, which gives users control over the information they receive.

RSS could eventually rival email as a communication tool for two major reasons: (1) the technology is appealing because of its simplicity and (2) because content is delivered based on user choice, it can eliminate publisher burdens such as maintaining email lists, avoiding spam filters and establishing privacy policies.

Timesaving Tool for Users

Users can quickly scan article titles to read information of interest. Because the feed data is centralized, users can review a lot of information quickly or click for more. Users choose the information they want without spam anxiety. If the content is disappointing, just remove it from your reader.

A major advantage of RSS feed data over search engine data is its timeliness. The XML documents used in RSS can be indexed from millions of sources several times per hour, providing updated posts to existing content.

The HTML documents used in traditional search engines are also indexed quickly, but they can’t deliver the same depth of information or provide immediate updates to existing content.

RSS readers provide easy navigation for classifying and categorizing data. This maximizes your time and facilitates later retrieval. The readers constantly update your feeds and indicate unread feeds. In fact, a reader functions much like an email client.

Next to Pluck, FeedDemon is user friendly and also allows for quick scanning and indexing of topics while viewing content in a split-screen web browser.

To find topic-specific feeds, search Feedster, the RSS search engine that indexes XML feeds. You can conduct a search and also retrieve and submit feeds. Feedster has “a fresh index across over 6 million feeds several times per hour, adding millions of new documents daily.”

Cool Tool for Search Engine Marketing

I can see two major benefits of RSS syndication for search engine marketing: (1) you can significantly increase qualified traffic to your site, and (2) this syndication tool can result in obtaining quality inbound links. Many webmasters will add RSS content and corresponding links to their website if they find the content to be fresh and of interest to their audience.

You can get links directly to your RSS feed the same way you get links to your traditional web pages. The RSS feed provides an additional component that is linkable.

Create Your Own RSS Feed

Using RSS, publishers can create keyword-rich content, establish trust and reputation, and generate ongoing communication with prospective customers and target groups.

The Yellowstonepark.com site owners are journalists and have traditionally published many content-rich articles offline. Once I suggested RSS, the offline articles were shifted online via RSS feed.

These articles now have broad distribution to niche users seeking the latest information on Yellowstone National Park. To see the XML icon and Archive News link on Yellowstone Park’s main News page, click here and look in the bottom left-hand corner.

You don’t have to be a techie to publish your RSS feed. For more information on how to create an RSS feed, I found the tutorial by Stephen Downes to be the best and certainly the most entertaining. Another excellent RSS resource can be found in a blog at Harvard Law.

A good resource for RSS information, including an RSS Feed Creation Tool, is RSS Specifications, listing over 50 sites for submitting RSS feeds.

Google employee Thomas Korte provides a tool that submits your feed to 15 feed aggregators including Daypop, Technorati, Google and Yahoo Search. For premium RSS submission services, try Nooked or Simplefeed.

It’s a Win-Win

RSS is a valuable marketing tool that is effective for reaching niche customers and prospects. You’ll also catch the eye of the journalists monitoring these feeds, as well as your business partners, affiliates and investors.

Users will love its timesaving, information-centralizing and spam-free quality. Websites will enjoy the extra traffic and inbound links. RSS will impact many aspects of the Internet space.

Secondly, Jupiter Research predicts $13.1 billion dollars in online sales for November-December, a figure that’s 17 percent higher than last year’s holiday sales. And a figure that represents 32 percent of online spending for the entire year!

The Jupiter report also suggested shoppers will start spending early this year, up to four weeks before Thanksgiving. So the time to ensure search engine visibility is now — to take advantage of the holiday selling season.

Shoppers Use Search Engines

Studies of online buying patterns consistently reveal that the online sale begins with a search engine listing. Jupiter found that 55 percent of e-commerce transactions originated from a search engine link. The 10th GVU User Survey reported 84.8 percent of users find Web pages through search engines, and 85.7 percent of these are searching with intent to buy.

How good are your search engine listings? If you need better visibility, here’s what you can do to ensure being found by online shoppers during the holiday season.

Fast Track to Search Engine Visibility

There are two ways to achieve good search engine visibility, one is through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and the other is through search engine optimization (SEO) editorial listings. If you need to jump-start your campaign, buy some paid listings for quick exposure.

PPC Advertising

You’ll get instant traffic, but it can prove costly, depending on the popularity of your keywords. PPC campaigns also require copywriting expertise, constant tracking, and tweaking to ensure a decent ROI. Here’s how to get started with a PPC campaign.

Keyword Research. Always start off with keyword analysis. You must be aware of what terms your audience uses to find you, then use these keywords in your text ad. You can perform keyword research on any search engine. The best source might be your Web logs. Don’t neglect keyword research tools like WordTracker or the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool to help you brainstorm for profitable keywords. WordTracker offers a free trial.

Bidding. Keyword bidding usually starts at US$ 0.05 per click with a $50 minimum. Create an account online, write your ad, and voila — you’re listed. You only pay when people click. Sounds easy, right? But that’s only half the battle You must have a good offer on the landing page to close the sale.

Copywriting. When writing your ad, editorial rules vary for acceptance. Google allows 25 characters in the title and 35 characters each in two lines of description. Overture limits the number of characters in the title to 40 and in the description to 190.

There are copywriting guidelines as well. Google doesn’t like a generic call-to-action like “click here,” so be specific. Overture likes to see the search term in the title and description, but doesn’t like superlatives, exclamation points, and unnecessary caps. Both Overture and Google want your landing page to be relevant to the terms in your ad.

Testing. You must refine your ads by testing multiple ads simultaneously. You’ll quickly learn which ads result in more clicks and drop poor performers. Testing should continue throughout your campaign to achieve your best CTR.

Budgeting. You can set a fixed monthly budget for your PPC campaign. If you exceed your budget before month end, your listings will drop and reappear next month. Compare revenues with and without PPC to see if additional expenditures are warranted.

SEO Editorial Listings

These listings take longer to appear, but are the most cost-effective and longer-lasting approach to search engine visibility. You can speed up your campaign with paid inclusion and trusted feed programs (some guarantee listing in 48 hours), as well as directory submissions.

Keyword Research. As stated above, it’s important to identify the words that your target audience uses to find you. Be aware that most people use 2 to 5 words in a search query so be imaginative in your keyword analysis.

Copywriting. Use your strategic keyword phrases several times in your Web page copy, but don’t overdo it and don’t repeat the same word consecutively. Your most important text is that in your title tags and in the visible text at the top of each page. This is the first thing your audience reads so it must be compelling for customers and keyword-optimized for search engines.

Site Design Tips. Ensure that your site is legible with good navigation and consistency in layout. It should load quickly and permit users to find information easily. Navigation is particularly important for both customers and search engines. Search engine spiders can benefit from a site map (a list of links to all the important sections of your site). In sum, search engine spiders like keyword-rich text, navigation that’s easy to crawl, and quality content that attracts in-bound links.

Directory Submissions. Submit first to the directories, namely Yahoo! and ODP (Open Directory Project). This is advantageous because search engine spiders crawl the Web to index sites from directory databases. Now that Yahoo! is displaying Google results, it might be possible to forgo a Yahoo! listing if you rank well in Google. LookSmart is also an option, but it has PPC pricing.

Paid Inclusion. Take advantage of paid inclusion programs to speed up visibility. You can submit pages selectively (those you want found), and you can remove and enter new pages as you see fit. Another advantage is 48-hour refreshes to reflect site changes, so you can monitor the impact on traffic and conversions as you update your site. Popular paid inclusion programs are offered by AllTheWeb, AltaVista, AskJeeves, Inktomi, and Lycos.

For example, Inktomi offers Search Submit for an annual fixed-fee depending on number of pages submitted. This provides good reach with partners like Overture, MSN, HotBot, LookSmart, About, Lycos and others. Inktomi also provides good reporting, with keyword and click-through data from sources like MSN.

Larger sites might consider trusted feeds (AltaVista, Inktomi, FAST, Lycos, etc.) rather than bidding for keyword position. Benefits include fixed pricing, consistent traffic, and low-involvement for the advertiser.

Manual Submissions. Submit manually to major search engines like AllTheWeb, AltaVista, AOL Search (through ODP), AskJeeves, Google, Lycos (through Fast) and MSN (through Inktomi or LookSmart). Each engine has its guidelines, which should be followed closely. Maintain a record of the dates and details of your submissions.

Verification. Monitor your listings, which should start appearing in four to six weeks. If you’re not listed in six weeks, re-submit and check monthly until you can verify your listings.

Link Popularity. It’s important to have a number of quality sites linked to yours. This is accomplished a lot easier if your site is well designed and displays relevant content. Seek links from sites offering information of interest to your target audience.

Track and Tweak Your Campaign

Track your costs for PPC and SEO editorial listings. As your campaign progresses, you’ll find that many of your “free” listings will reduce the need for PPC listings. You might find that an Overture or Google PPC listing appears in addition to a regular editorial listing. So cancel the PPC ad, you don’t need to appear twice. Once in place, the editorial listing can last forever. That’s the advantage of SEO over PPC. It takes longer to establish, but is worth more over time.