There is a buzz in the search engine world regarding the recent Google PageRank drops. I would like to clarify some things for the benefit of all the webmasters out there.
Fact 1:
The PageRank that is displayed in the toolbar is not the one Google uses for its internal purposes. The PageRank displayed in the tool bar is updated infrequently and may be several weeks old, whereas the one Google uses internally is updated throughout the day as Google finds/drops the links to a site constantly.
Fact 2:
PageRank is not in direct proportion to the search traffic referred by Google. We have seen reports that sites have recieved higher Google search traffic irrespective of their PageRank fluctuations.
Fact 3:
This move by Google is to discourage the sites selling the links. Since sites which buy links look at the PageRank of the selling site to decide the authority/popularity of the site, the drop in the PageRank will clearly drive those sites away from buying links from the site.
A couple of months before, Google added the paid link report tool to allow webmasters to inform Google about sites that are buying or selling links. Since then, we have been hearing warnings about Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank Or Rankings On Google. Yesterday, Google engineer Matt Cutts has confirmed, "The partial update to visible PageRank that went out a few days ago was primarily regarding PageRank selling and the forward links of sites. So paid links that pass PageRank would affect our opinion of a site."
Concluding Thoughts:
As a white-hat search engine optimization firm, our team at Digital Brand Expressions never recommends buying paid links. For our clients and many other webmasters who adhere to white-hat search engine optimization practices, Google's recent move will not have a negative effect.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Digital Outposts—A Framework for Web 2.0 Marketing
Until recently, many people viewed the Web as an expandable but somewhat one-dimensional space filled with millions of websites. The advent of Web 2.0 turned this idea on its head and, in the process, left many people scratching their heads. For those of you who may lack a framework for envisioning the world of Web 2.0, here’s an explanation that you may find useful:
Web 2.0 is expanding the cyber-universe like the Big Bang and in many ways operates like another dimension of the Web 1.0 world with which we have become familiar.
Web 1.0 tends to be a one-way world. The websites of organizations and individuals are primarily promotional planets—they tell the story from their point of view in one direction, which is out. Interaction between that world and its visitors tend to be monitored and screened before they are allowed to be “posted” on the planet, offering little in the way of opinion differing from that of the planet’s leadership.
On the other hand, while much is made of the interactivity and broadstream technologies of Web 2.0: blogs, wikis, videocasts, RSS feeds, webinars, and more, the real story of this vast new web world for marketers is in the way that they can now venture beyond the confines of their own “website/planet” into the vastness of cyberspace. Anyone can easily transport their thoughts and ideas to an expanding list of digital outposts. If you think of Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and any other place where you and/or your company can establish a profile to be viewed and linked to by others as a space station of sorts, you’ve got the idea.
From that digital outpost, you can travel further and further into cyberspace, and back again, via a network of connections (hypertext, RSS and other) that move your cyber-self into view for millions of others traveling to and from these digital realms. You can invite people back to your home planet (website) or you can continue to exist out in cyberspace via your profiles, posts, and wiki contributions.
Web 2.0: The final frontier (or, at least, the next frontier)
For savvy marketers, the Big Bang of social media and the expansion it’s causing in our universe is an opportunity but, just as traveling to distant worlds requires all sorts of customized life support equipment, venturing into social media systems requires some consideration of how you (and your company) will interact with and be viewed by the denizens of that environment.
Rather than jumping to post a profile that may be viewed by the inhabitants of Facebook as “not of their world,” spend some time exploring the environment so that you can draw the other residents “in” and not make your outpost a place they rope off as an unfriendly alien invasion. More often than not, you’ll find the environment conducive to networking and building your brand, provided you operate in a manner consistent with the rules its early settlers have established.
With SMO (social media optimization) a hot topic in our industry, DBE is helping our clients explore these new worlds and develop strategies that work to protect, fortify, and build their brands in relation to the search engines and how those worlds connect to the people living out in Web 2.0. It’s one small step for online marketing, but a giant leap for brand recognition and product sales.
And for More Info to Help You Think About Web 2.0:
For a great overview of Web 2.0 tools, see this article, written by Charles B. Kreitzberg of Cognetics for the July 18, 2007 issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper. Cognetics is an alliance partner of DBE, providing expert-driven usability recommendations for websites and other interactive media.
Web 2.0 is expanding the cyber-universe like the Big Bang and in many ways operates like another dimension of the Web 1.0 world with which we have become familiar.
Web 1.0 tends to be a one-way world. The websites of organizations and individuals are primarily promotional planets—they tell the story from their point of view in one direction, which is out. Interaction between that world and its visitors tend to be monitored and screened before they are allowed to be “posted” on the planet, offering little in the way of opinion differing from that of the planet’s leadership.
On the other hand, while much is made of the interactivity and broadstream technologies of Web 2.0: blogs, wikis, videocasts, RSS feeds, webinars, and more, the real story of this vast new web world for marketers is in the way that they can now venture beyond the confines of their own “website/planet” into the vastness of cyberspace. Anyone can easily transport their thoughts and ideas to an expanding list of digital outposts. If you think of Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and any other place where you and/or your company can establish a profile to be viewed and linked to by others as a space station of sorts, you’ve got the idea.
From that digital outpost, you can travel further and further into cyberspace, and back again, via a network of connections (hypertext, RSS and other) that move your cyber-self into view for millions of others traveling to and from these digital realms. You can invite people back to your home planet (website) or you can continue to exist out in cyberspace via your profiles, posts, and wiki contributions.
Web 2.0: The final frontier (or, at least, the next frontier)
For savvy marketers, the Big Bang of social media and the expansion it’s causing in our universe is an opportunity but, just as traveling to distant worlds requires all sorts of customized life support equipment, venturing into social media systems requires some consideration of how you (and your company) will interact with and be viewed by the denizens of that environment.
Rather than jumping to post a profile that may be viewed by the inhabitants of Facebook as “not of their world,” spend some time exploring the environment so that you can draw the other residents “in” and not make your outpost a place they rope off as an unfriendly alien invasion. More often than not, you’ll find the environment conducive to networking and building your brand, provided you operate in a manner consistent with the rules its early settlers have established.
With SMO (social media optimization) a hot topic in our industry, DBE is helping our clients explore these new worlds and develop strategies that work to protect, fortify, and build their brands in relation to the search engines and how those worlds connect to the people living out in Web 2.0. It’s one small step for online marketing, but a giant leap for brand recognition and product sales.
And for More Info to Help You Think About Web 2.0:
For a great overview of Web 2.0 tools, see this article, written by Charles B. Kreitzberg of Cognetics for the July 18, 2007 issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper. Cognetics is an alliance partner of DBE, providing expert-driven usability recommendations for websites and other interactive media.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Click-Through Rate is Overrated
Don’t get me wrong. Free of any other influences, Click-Through Rate (CTR) is a tremendously valuable metric for a Search Engine Advertising (SEA) campaign. In the real-world management of a campaign though, it needs to be analyzed and utilized in the proper context. Google, Yahoo, and MSN all factor CTR into the quality scores they use to determine ad placement and cost-per-click. (At least Yahoo has the caveat that they use CTR relative to ad position. Google and MSN don’t specify that as a factor.) This makes CTR a pretty important piece of the puzzle; more important than it should be.
The search engines’ basic logic makes sense for their revenue models. A higher percentage of people clicking on an ad means that ad appears to be more relevant to the searcher, and better from the search engine point-of-view, than other ads. Of course,”better” translates to “more money” for the search engine. My question is, should we manage for the highest percentage of people or the highest quantity of people? They’re not necessarily one and the same.
We have two keywords currently gaining clicks at the same CPC. One has a 3.27% CTR. The other is 1.80%. Which one is performing better for the client? I wouldn’t be writing this if it was the 3.27% ad, but thanks for playing along. That one only gained 8 clicks. The ad with the lower click through had 33.
When you consider that ads displayed in higher positions (driven by higher keyword bids) typically have higher CTRs, doing what’s best for the search engines can become very expensive for the client. My point is, within a realistic budgetary framework, the idea should be to use your money to drive the highest quantity of targeted unique visitors, not the highest CTR. Click-Through Rate measures the performance of a keyword and ad. It should measure clicks, not influence them.
The search engines’ basic logic makes sense for their revenue models. A higher percentage of people clicking on an ad means that ad appears to be more relevant to the searcher, and better from the search engine point-of-view, than other ads. Of course,”better” translates to “more money” for the search engine. My question is, should we manage for the highest percentage of people or the highest quantity of people? They’re not necessarily one and the same.
We have two keywords currently gaining clicks at the same CPC. One has a 3.27% CTR. The other is 1.80%. Which one is performing better for the client? I wouldn’t be writing this if it was the 3.27% ad, but thanks for playing along. That one only gained 8 clicks. The ad with the lower click through had 33.
When you consider that ads displayed in higher positions (driven by higher keyword bids) typically have higher CTRs, doing what’s best for the search engines can become very expensive for the client. My point is, within a realistic budgetary framework, the idea should be to use your money to drive the highest quantity of targeted unique visitors, not the highest CTR. Click-Through Rate measures the performance of a keyword and ad. It should measure clicks, not influence them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
