If one of Google's most significant challenges is to clear the cesspool of content spam, the temptation to use analytics data must be stronger than ever.

There is already evidence that Google is factoring in domain age and the presence of legitimacy indicators on site pages. There's even talk of giving more credibility to well branded sites or certain types of sites. But one of the more significant factors mentioned in one of Google's patents is "time spent on the document".

Longer time on the… Continue reading

Yahoo! Web Analytics has started a staged roll out giving access to some Yahoo! Store owners, Yahoo! Developers and Yahoo! Head Advertisers.

According to an earlier post from Dennis Mortensen,

"Yahoo! currently intends to provide the IndexTools Web Analytics service FREE of charge to clients and partners who accept the standard Yahoo! agreement."

This is great news for Yahoo-ites since the power of the underlying Index Tools came closer to true segmentation as any tool out there (save for my faithful ClickTracks).

Congratulations to Dennis and the Yahoo! gang for… Continue reading

I just taught email marketing and Universal Search techniques at a small business marketing conference.

A well intended friend asked me why I "wasted time speaking at a small business marketing conference." He went on to suggest that I only target major conferences that attract 'bigger' clients.

At the conference, I was joined by some excellent speakers who also regularly serve large clients. But I suspect that's not why they were there. It's certainly not why I was there.

In online marketing, small businesses run circles around corporate America. Unburdened by red tape, they test, fail, innovate, fail, try one more time and succeed. It's inspiring. It's educational. And it's really fun.

In the email marketing session, at least 80% of the Continue reading

We wrapped up another SES conference by dragging everyone down to my house in Santa Cruz and feeding them pizza, pulled pork and wine. I did some of the cooking myself as you can see, and we also had help from a Santa Cruz Catering company named Life Style Culinary, who I rate very highly. Seems like people had fun, which is all that matters.

 

More pictures (taken by my friend Brad Haakenson) Continue reading

Sure, we teach search marketing online, but I assert that Search Engine Strategies is a must-attend conference for any internet marketer who can travel to the event.

We'll be making some announcements at the conference and all active faculty and associates are presenting . Come by the booth and say hello to Market Motive founders and faculty.

Dream Team member Todd Malicoat and others are hosting a special party on Monday night where all proceeds go to charity. Some of the biggest names in search will be present and there'll be… Continue reading

Trust seals such as the ubiquitous Better Business Bureau or the online equivalents such as Hacker Safe are designed to put the consumer at ease when doing business with a stranger. A website displaying Hacker Safe should yield better conversion rates since the consumer has confidence their credit card data cannot be stolen by hackers.

In line with the recent focus on teaching best practices for testing, we recommended to a Market Motive subscriber that instead of assuming Hacker Safe improves conversion rates they actually test it. Subscribing to Hacker Safe is not cheap and it must be justified through ROI.… Continue reading

If you own a website I'll bet some marketing ding-dong already told you about the importance of the mobile web. In fact I'll bet someone beat you over the head with it. Perhaps someone showed you WAP in 2001 and told you it was the wave of the future. This [WAP] is [WAP] going [WAP] to [WAP] change [WAP] everything [DUCK]. Enough with the [WAP]!! It hurts my head. WAP died and nobody mourns it.… Continue reading

How many people do you pay to touch your web presence? Nowadays, anyone who changes your site or outbound communication has the potential to derail your hard-earned search marketing progress.

Sure, your staff and consultants are smart - and well intended. But this isn't enough today. Anyone with access must now have a basic knowledge of search marketing. If you have a large staff, I'll bet you're starting to get the picture.

Are you already familiar with some of the following mistakes? Perhaps your:

• Writers didn't include your top keywords in the main copy
• Design team

Did you know that your web analytics system can be applied to your search engine optimization strategy? The keywords your visitors used to get to your site are prime candidates for optimization. But don't just look at visit counts for each keyword, because that's only a small part of the story.

To take advantage of this process, you will need three things in place:

1. You must reveal the goal of your site to your web analytics tool. For example, your "Thank you" page, or your email-sign-up-page might be a goal. If you have an e-commerce site, your order confirmation page is usually

Most of the Market Motive Faculty attended and/or spoke at the recent Search Engine Strategies New York. I believe this is the first full SES conference without Danny Sullivan. Though he is missed, the Incisive management team put on an excellent conference attended by over 8,000 folks looking to learn about online marketing. Market Motive did a co-promotion with Incisive, so while I try to avoid shipping booths & staff cross country, we took a space on the show floor. Honestly, I'm glad we did. I jot down notes on each day's experiences at these events, so here… Continue reading