Where did he came from?
What search phrase he used?
Where did he land on your web site?

The free questions above are the key of understanding your traffic. I lots of cases you will have to drill down further and answer questions like:

Where geographically is your web site visitor from?
What was your rank in the SERP for the phrase he was searching for?
How was your site represented in the SERP for the search phrase he was searching for?
Where did he go on your site?
Where did he go next?
How long was he on the site?

We all know that Google Analytics is the most used online web site log analyzer today. It is free, and Google is ingesting a lot in improving it constantly. But anyone who used it knows very well that although it is probably the best overall service it still lacks the capability to answer half of the questions listed above.

The result is that if you really want to understand your visitors you will have to use multiple web log analyzers. Especially if you have an active site where the content is dynamic and ever changing you will require a real time display of the activity on your web site to understand what do people actually read, when and why. The same article published in the different times of the day will not attract the same numbers of visitors. That and number of similar situations is where you are 100% helpless with just Google Analytics since it’s data is really far from real time, and is not even intended for such use (it is best used as an overview of the historical data).

There are number of tools that can help you to work with the real time data. You can analyse your raw log files yourself with software packages like WebTrends, or you can use the online services. There is a long list of them and each has a number of nice features so your choice will depend on what exactly are you looking for. The online web site visitors tracking services are usually free to begin with and then paid for when your traffic grows.

The ones I can recommend are StatCounter and the one with interesting features for bloggers is FEEDJIT.

I read somewhere a comparison of the search engine optimization and a weight loss:

Search engine optimization as a weight loss takes time. No quick fixes available.

You need to make changes to your site and to your diet. No changes made, and sometimes drastically changes, no (rank) gain or (weight) loss.

You must be in it for a long term.

‘One size fits all’ product does not exist. As our bodies are different, our habits (how much do you eservice each day?), the web sites are different. The web sites compete in the different markets, where some are crowded and some are there to be taken easily. The search engine optimization packages like Bronze, Silver & Gold will do no good to the 95% of the web sites. It will do no harm, but also you will not see any measurable improvement in your revenue after investing in those once of ‘Perfect Fit’ search engine optimization packages.

Understanding is the key to success. What you eat and how much of it, and how much do you exercise is the basics of any weight loss program that will deliver a result. Having a proper content on the site correctly ‘presented’ to the search engine, with the correct amount of links to your site from the ‘important’ sites to your market is the key to success. The rest is just marketing and packaging of eh search engine optimization service. The rest is a vocabulary of the sales man.

People use different words when they search for your products online. Use these ‘keywords’ in your website copy and people will find your site when they search.

Sounds simple this Keyword Analysis, doesn’t it?

But in the reality this is it. You need to use the words you want to be found for on your own web site. Google is the Indexing Service in its essence. It reads web pages and answers the users searches based on the search phrases. Yahoo, MSN or any other search engine is the same.

So what is and how to do Keywords Analysis?

Keyword Analysis is the process of finding the keywords you should use on your site. There are number of tools that can help you expand your original list. The list can actually start from the one word. For example let’s say that this site is about ‘SEO’. The aim is that people who are looking for SEO in the search engines find this site. The most obvious way to do it is to use the keyword SEO a lot around a site. But not everyone will just type SEO in the search engine. People might type a search phrase like ‘SEO Ireland’, or ‘SEO Dublin’. Someone else will type ‘Best SEO’ or ‘SEO Company’. Someone will type ‘Search Engine Optimisation’. There are numerous ways one cal search for the topic, or something in particular about that topic. This is where Keyword Analysis comes in. Use the tools to suggest you the lists of keywords related to yours. Then put the synonyms in the tools and request suggestions for those as well. Include in your list of keywords ALL the ones related to your original term.

Keywords Analysis will give a list of thousand or more keywords. If you repeat the steps above multiple times, you will end up with a number of thousands. It is good. But what is the value of each keyword?

The value of a keyword is defined by the number of web sites competing for it (the less the better since it is more likely your site can get on top) and the volume of the searches performed for it. The more searches are made each day for that keyword the more traffic the keyword brings to the top ranked sites. Use this Keyword Value calculation to determine what are the most important keywords and take a special attention to those. Those are the keywords you will want to use a lot on your site, and most likely create a separate page dedicated to each one of them. That page will be used as a Landing Page for the search traffic for that keyword.

Design a custom report to display the dimensions and metrics you want to analyze. For example, you can build custom reports to help answer questions like:
• How are my keywords performing in different countries?
• Should I target my site to Spanish users?

There is also a short video from Google:

Google Analytics Custom Reporting

Yahoo has a bit strange ‘Go To Market’ strategy in letting only a limited number of users to it. Their message printed between the lines is that if you become an advertiser with the Yahoo Search Marketing – ‘apt’.

And this is where Yahoo got it all wrong and missed a huge opportunity. Yahoo is here just chasing the direct revenue, with giving a free Yahoo Web Analytics to those who pay for advertising in their channel. What they should have done instead is to use the same carrot on the stick approach and give it free to the publishers of their ads. It would widen their ads network and made it more interesting to the advertisers.

But then again, Google with its the largest online advertising channel AdWords, is giving Google Analytics for free to anyone? Yahoo should have a much better product to create a compelling reason to switch.

If you are good professional SEO expert sooner rather then later an upfront description of the work you will perform for the client, will not be as it was in the start when it sounded like:

- I’ll get you on the first page of Google!

Than as you learned more about the SEO yourself (on the clients web sites!):

- I’ll get you on the first page in Google for many relevant phrases!

If you are a good SEO Guru, you will start taking larger and larger SEO projects. The bigger the budget the more paperwork is involved so SEO Proposal will have to evolve with the budget increases as well.

The general rule of thumb is the following:

1. No SEO Proposal should be shorter than one page. Write about yourself If you have nothing else to put in it.
2. In general, a two page SEO Proposal should be your starting size and from then on…
3. Your SEO Proposal should contain half of the page for each average monthly salary in your country.
4. Corporate clients expect a corporate communication and branding style so your SEO Proposal will start with a lot of your own branding, and end up with your accreditations and customer references.

Remember that sending the inappropriate type of a SEO Proposal to the wrong type of the recipient will most likely be a waste of your time. You simply need to understand what to send whom to. A start up where the managing director is also answering the phone, sill not have time to read your 25 page brochure-ware proposal. He has no time for that. He needs to know just- How much, and what do we get? Sending a short two pager to a global corporate will result in them asking for more and that only if they are really interested about you. They are used to their corporate way of communications, and will expect your SEO Proposal almost as the proper full blown tender.

I only got the short sample but an interesting chart in it already about the Irish PPC market. It is the breakdown of the industries that people are using PPC most (Does it give you an idea what your next AdSense rich Blog should be about?). If you have the full copy of the whitepaper, I would not mind reading more about the PPC, so send it on!

Ireland Search Engine Marketing Report 2008
April, 2008

The research has been supported by the Irish Direct Marketing Association (IDMA) and the Irish Internet Association (IIA).

Table of Contents

1. About E-consultancy 4
2. About research sponsors 4
2.1 About ICAN 4
2.2 About Cybercom 5
2.3 About Interactive Return 5
2.4 About RingJohn 5
3. Executive Summary and Highlights 6
4. Introduction 8
4.1 Introduction by ICAN 8
4.2 Methodology and Sample 9
4.2.1 Methodology 9
4.2.2 Turnover 10
4.2.3 Business Sector 10
4.2.4 Is search done in-house or by an agency? 11
5. Survey Results 12
5.1 Budgets 12
5.1.1 Percentage of total marketing budget spent online 12
5.1.2 Breakdown of online marketing budget by digital channel 13
5.1.3 Search engine marketing budget split 14
5.1.4 Do you expect budgets to increase or decrease? 15
5.1.5 Search engine marketing spend 16
5.1.6 How much are search budgets going up? 17
5.1.7 Allocation of paid search spending 18
5.2 Objectives and effectiveness 19
5.2.1 Primary objectives from search engine marketing 19
5.2.2 Relative importance of paid search and SEO on brand 20
5.2.3 How digital channels rate for return on investment 21
5.2.4 Return on investment (ROI) from Search 22
5.2.5 Tracking return on investment from Search 23
5.2.6 Effectiveness of ROI tracking 24
5.2.7 Use of web analytics tools 24
5.2.8 Rising click costs (CPC) 25
5.3 Search Engines 26
5.3.1 Search engines used for PPC 26
5.3.2 Best search engines for ROI 27
5.3.3 Is dominance of Google a threat? 28
5.4 Search problems and issues 29
5.4.1 Paid Search problems 29
5.4.2 SEO problems 30
5.4.3 Availability of training 31
6. Market overview 32
6.1 Market valuation and growth 32
6.1.1 Key sectors 33
6.2 Market trends 34
6.2.1 Advertisers seize opportunities as market matures 34
6.2.2 Search advertisers get more savvy as competition increases 35
6.2.3 Polarisation between sophisticated and unsophisticated 37
6.2.4 Google dominates as other search engines fail to step up 38
6.3 Barriers to digital marketing growth 41
6.3.1 Slow uptake of broadband 41
6.3.2 Traditional mindset of marketers 41
6.3.3 Skills gap and lack of understanding 41
6.3.4 Lack of transparency in market 42
6.3.5 Other barriers 42

Why is SEO ’so important’?
Well the SEO staff have a job to make sure that the IT and Marketing excel in what they do without clashing into each other’s territory.

What makes a good SEO professional?

The term Team Player describes well what a SEO staff need to be good at. Unfortunately this is completely incompatible with one of the most important skills required for the perfect SEO person and it is entrepreneurship. SEO is changing and evolving rapidly. The SEO person needs to be a serious ‘forward thinker’. Again, being a visionary and the analytical is again extremely rare in the same person. Statistical Analysis is the base and the start of any SEO. There is a high level of leadership skills required to get the web developers and marketing staff involved constructively into the common project, and make them byte in to it. Vendor management skills, and negotiation skills in general is certainly required to manage the external SEO and PPC vendors, partners and consultants.

Let’s just list the skills described above in a simple list:

Team Player vs. Entrepreneur (Soloist, Leader)
Statistical Analysis (Detail Oriented) vs. Creative Forward Thinker
Negotiator vs. Charismatic
Management Experience
Results Driven (doesn’t it sound so much like ‘Black Hat’)
….

The more you define your SEO staff requirements the more complex it gets. It actually gets to the utopia stage, since there as a so many so conflicting skills required. Perhaps hiring the SEO staff in house doesn’t sound as that good idea anymore?

Is there money to be made by posting links of other websites on your own website? Do you need a middle man to accomplish something like this? How can you find out the going rates?

And my LinkedIn Answer:

Google will not like you really much if they find out that you are selling or renting links from your web site. So do not display the advertisement for such a service on your front page, since Google will not send you much traffic, and we all know that the vast majority of the web sites have the majority of their traffic directly from Google.

How to find the rates?

Rates depend on the traffic volume, traffic quality, geographical market, industry, or niche and if your traffic is from Google – what keywords is your web site found for.

The easiest way to find out what is the going rate is to ask a large number of similar sites to yours – in the same market, industry, and with the similar number of the Google PR and Alexa ranking – what would they charge to link to your site (or a fictitious site). Or even better, send them an email and say, I offer €XXX for the link to our site on your front page. From their responses you will quickly establish what would they agree to sell it for – and that is what the going price is.

The majority of this link trading is done by the third party companies, that try to do it all ‘under the radar’ for Google not to notice. Google on the other hand encourages the webmasters to report paid links. Unfortunately they do not offer any of their cash as a reward.

Other third parties like Google AdSense and Text Ads,… offer a far smaller revenue then the direct link sales.

For more of my LinkedIN Answers in the Internet Marketing visit: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanstojanovic.

It took about 6 months from the web site launch to get it to the first position in Google for ‘pages in Ireland’.