25th June 2008
by Manoj Jasra
ClickTale has just launched a new analytics product called Form Analytics. Form Analytics reveals how visitors interact with online forms and provides recommendations that can increase form completion rates and shopping cart conversions. Form Analytics exposes the friction points inside your forms that can cause visitors to become frustrated and leave by identifying:
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Which fields take the longest to complete
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Which fields are left blank and may be superfluous
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How often errors occur that force visitors to refill a field
This beta release of Form Analytics includes three reports: Time, Blanks, and Refills; additional reports will be coming out soon. The Beta version of Form Analytics is Free! ClickTale also uploaded two new movies to their site which explains some of their other web analytics tools:
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Sign up and try ClickTale for free and start enjoying the benefits of Form Analytics today.
Blanks Report
The Blanks Report displays a chart of how frequently visitors leave fields empty when submitting the form
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25th June 2008
by Jennifer Laycock
A round-up of interesting posts, resources and articles from around the web today. From a common marketing missteps to the paid search content network to a fantastically creative post on Twitter, find out what stories I thought were interesting enough to share with you today.
- I’m a sucker for a good, interactive presentation. I’m an even bigger sucker for one that translates from in-person to online. That’s why if you only read one link from today’s Puppy’s Picks, you should check out Chris Winfield’s fantastically creative Twitter presentation from SES Toronto. Chris thought the best way to teach about Twitter was to let Twitter do the talking for him. Very creatively done and very informative.
- Whether it’s search marketing, social media marketing or blogging, we all fall prey to marketing miscues now and then. After all, when we’re going a million miles at once, it’s easy to lose your way. Amber Cadabra has a great pair of posts over at The Brand Box outlining ten common marketing miscues and the steps you need to take to correct them. Read, refocus and remember the value of getting back to the basics.
- I’m always telling small business owners that lack of creativity (not lack of dollars) is the biggest stumbling block to good small business marketing. Yes, you could go read some Seth Godin books to get a reminder of what creativity can create, or you could head over to MarketingProf and read about the creativity driving product development and marketing for TerraCycle. We use “worm poop” on our garden, so I couldn’t resist linking this one.
- If you’re a small business owner running paid search campaigns, chances are high you’ve turned off the content network. (Maybe even because someone like me told you too.) While that’s generally a good rule, there’s something to be said for using the content network if you understand how the system works. That’s what Eric Enge tackles today in a column over at Search Engine Land recapping David Szetela’s presentation from SMX Advanced. Check out David’s suggestion of creating a new campaign and targeting your keywords more closely.
- I don’t generally link to random industry news about who is working where and who left what job, but I didn’t want to skip mention of the fact Flickr co-founders Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield have left the company. I’ve always admired the way they grew Flickr by handing control over to the community. In fact, I wrote a post on Flickr called “How to Grow a Community by Leaving it Alone last May. You can learn a lot by looking at how Flickr was managed.
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25th June 2008
by Jennifer Laycock
When it comes to building links and generating coverage of your web site and products online, there’s a skill that often gets overlooked. Relationship building gets a lot of lip service these days, but I sometimes wonder how many small businesses really, truly understand how much work goes into it. Relationships go beyond reading a single blog post or scanning a Facebook page…it means investing time in someone.
With so much focus these days on link baiting, the idea of taking the time to make a personal connection to secure a link has been tossed aside. After all, who wants to invest time and energy in people when you can make up a fake news story and generate thousands of links in a weekend?
The problem here is that building your business is about more than building a ton of links. Sure, link baiting tactics can generate links and can lead to a boost in your search rankings, but you still have to balance the true value of a link. Is the value only in the potential search ranking impact, or is it in the chance for new customers and high conversion rates? What about the potential for future links from the same sources down the road?
Aiming for quantity of links over quality of links is exactly what got sites in trouble back in the days of link farms and reciprocal linking schemes. People found an “easy” way to build links and they went after it like gang busters. Over time, the techniques got overused. It became clear the links weren’t built based on value or credibility. Soon enough, search engines began to devalue those links. Is a day coming when search engines begin to devalue all links created by link baiting? Probably not, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
I think it’s more likely the tactic will start to wear on people and lose it’s effectiveness. I also think it’s more likely that site owners will begin to realize that all those links aren’t sending much in the way of engaged traffic and potential customers.
It’s Easy to Get Attention, It’s Hard to Keep It
Anyone who has spent time in college or raising children knows how easy it is to get attention. You make a scene, pitch a fit, dance on a table or do any number of things designed to shock or surprise. You’ll get plenty of attention. When it comes to link bait, you’ll also get plenty of links. But there’s a problem with this method.
How many times can someone take off their shirt and dance on a table before it starts to get kind of pathetic? How many times can a child throw a tantrum before you simply ignore them or send them to their room? Not very many. Easily won attention is fleeting, it doesn’t last for long.
I’ve seen this happen with links and link baiting. I have a client site that hit the front page of Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us and a slew of other social media sites. The traffic generated was staggering. It showed up in a wild fury and then vanished just as quickly. When I look through my logs, I can see how little time this traffic spent on the site, most vanished with shorter page view times than it would have taken to read even a portion of the content. Almost none of this traffic resulted in a conversion and there was no residual linking effect from the traffic.
On the other hand, that same content (not even designed to be link bait) generated quite a few links from bloggers and web sites in the same vertical. Many of those links came from people who had exchanged emails and blog comments with the client for months. Other links came from completely new sites, but led to email conversations when the client made contact to thank them for the links.
Here’s the interesting thing…
The traffic from these links was highly engaged, often spending 3-6 minutes reading multiple pages of the site. This same traffic also showed a purchase rate of 2.5%, as high a conversion rate as some of the traffic from popular keyword phrases. These links…the ones built because of relationships and trust carried far more value than the ones that popped up because the content reached “story of the day status.”
Even better, once the traffic from the social bookmarking sites and the sites outside the vertical died down…it was done. No residual effect. On the other hand, the sites that linked from within the vertical continued linking to future stories. The stream of traffic continued over time and the traffic remained high quality and likely to convert.
More Links or Better Links?
As I see it, small business owners have a choice. They can use their limited time trying to concoct crazy stories, gigantic lists and fancy Flash games, or they can use their time networking with other bloggers and site owners and building relationships with other businesses that compliment their own. Honestly, it takes about the same amount of work either way.
The first option will deliver links, there’s no doubt about it. Do it right and it will deliver boatloads of links. But as a small business owner with limited time and budget, you have to ask yourself what the true value of those links are. Is the potential impact on your search rankings alone worth the effort? Or is your time better spent building the contacts that will help you drive targeted traffic that’s likely to stick around and turn into customers?
Building links is essential to having an online business, but search engine rankings are not what defines the success of your business.
Photo Credits: Flickr users Jidnet, Zen, Jemsweb, Annie&John and Oooh.oooh
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25th June 2008
by Sage Lewis
Sage highlights the Harvard Business Review blog, Conversation Starter. The post “How to Be a Social Media Change Agent” features an interview with Josh Bernoff, author of The Groundswell Effect. The book provides case studies of what people are doing in the business world with social media. As one of the leading business publications in the world, the Harvard Business Review adds legitimacy to social media and internet industries as a whole by its coverage both online and in its print publication.
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25th June 2008
by Stoney deGeyter
Many years ago I put my site through a re-design. I worked hard to make sure everything was done just right, including the images and navigation. But one thing I failed to consider was internal linking, separate from the navigational elements. It wasn’t until much later that I realized how much traffic I was losing because my internal linking was (or lack thereof wasn’t) benefiting my visitors.
In-site link implementation can make a considerable difference in how effective your optimization campaign is. Or isn’t. While your site’s primary and secondary navigation is extremely important, you shouldn’t make that the only way for visitors to get around your website.
There are some stores that I’m OK finding stuff on my own. I don’t need to be guided because I know right where things typically are. But when I walk into a RadioShack, instead of looking around, the first thing I do is ask someone if they can direct me to the product I’m looking for. Usually the helpful associate will walk me over to the wall of accessories and find exactly what I was looking for. I certainly could have found it on my own, but it would have taken me much longer. The personalized service I get at RadioShack keeps bringing me back time and time again.
Think of your navigation as a map that shows where various products or information is throughout your site. Anybody can walk up to the map and figure where they want to go. But good contextual linking is like guiding your visitors to the products or information they want, as they want it.
Good site navigation isn’t jut about providing the map, it’s about giving the personalized touch to guide your visitors to information they want and/or will be helpful to them. Here are some inter-site linking strategies that will help your visitors while also assist with your search engine optimization efforts.
Anchor text
Anybody who has done any kind of link building knows the value of good anchor text for external links pointed into the site. But anchor text is just as important within internal links pointing to other pages within your site. Take a look at these two images and see if you can figure out which one uses better anchor text.
Ok, so I biased you with the red and green circles, but you can clearly see the difference between the anchor text in these images. One clearly uses descriptive keywords in the link. This wasn’t done because the page was being “optimized”, but rather just because it made sense to link this way. In the second example, both the links “click here” and “read more” are great calls to action, but provide very little in the way of telling the search engines (or the visitor) what the linked page is all about.
Search engines place a great deal of weight in determining what a page is about simply by looking at the text of the links pointing to the page. But even more importantly, so do people! Did you know that a good majority of skimmers and scanners do little more than read the link text on a page. For busy people like me, the links tell me where I need to go to find the information I’m looking for. “Click here” and “read more” do little to provide me direction. They tell me what to do, but not why I want to do that.
There are several options when deciding on what to do with your link text. The most important thing to remember is that your link anchor text should accurately reflect the information on the destination page. Here are some examples of what you do and don’t want to do:
Click here to learn more about preparing personal tax returns.Learn more about preparing personal tax returns.Click here to learn more about preparing personal tax returns.Click here to learn more about preparing personal tax returns.
So now, which is the correct way to use anchor text?
Ok, so that was a bit of a trick question. There is more than one right answer. In fact, the only wrong answer is the first one. The other three are all decent solutions to both using great anchor text and having the call to action for usability. I’m not certain there is any best way, it all just depends on your site. My preference is number four, but only if your text isn’t already loaded down with links. Having two links instead of one can possibly clutter your page if you have a lot going on already. I would also nofollow the “click here”, but more on that next.
Nofollow strategies
I won’t go into the history of the nofollow or argue it’s merits here. If you don’t know much about the nofollow then I suggest that you go read Jennifer Laycock’s article about nofollow here. (Notice the anchortext? I got my call to action, “read” and the keywords “nofollow” and “Jennifer Laycock” in there. Read that all by itself and you know exactly what to expect when you click that link.)
There is also argument about the merits of using the nofollow attribute to sculpt PageRank on your site. I’m not recommending any aggressive link sculpting strategies here, unless you really know what you are doing, but there are several ways you can implement nofollow tags that will be to your advantage.
Let’s start with a brief explanation of the nofollow. In theory, the nofollow attribute tells the search engines not to follow that link. In practice it tells the search engines not to pass any link value from that page to the page being linked to. The search engines may still follow the link and the page being linked to can still get link juice from other sources, just not from yours.
Here how the nofollow attribute is added to a link:
<a rel=”nofollow” href=”blocked.htm”>Blocked link.</a>
One excellent use of the nofollow attribute is to block link juice being passed from certain anchor texts. Remember our link examples above? I suggested nofollowing the “click here” text. Here is how I would implement the nofollow:
Click here to learn more about preparing personal tax returns.
The “click here” is a good action link but we don’t want that passing any link juice to the next page. After all, the next page isn’t about clicking anywhere, it’s about preparing personal tax returns. That’s the link we want to make sure gets the juice.
To use another example from above, the baby products have two links to the product page, the product title and the price.
I highlighted the nofollowed links on this page in pink. Since we already have the product name in the anchor text, there is no reason to dilute that by linking to the same page using irrelevant anchor text.
Related products
One of the best ways to provide additional internal links to other pages is by cross linking related products. Not only do you get the additional links but this is a perfect opportunity to create additional sales by providing shoppers with additional information on things that they are most likely to want to purchase as well.
Here is one of my favorite examples. A year or so ago I was searching for the newest season of Battlestar Galactica on DVD. When I got to the product page I was treated to some additional DVDs that the store thought I would be interested in.
They were right.
Linking to other products doesn’t have to be as complicated as Amazon, where they look at your purchase history as well as the history of others who have made similar purchases. It can be as easy as just deciding which products should be “related”. If someone buys a jumper cables, they might also be interested in a jack and lug wrench. If someone purchases a crib they might also be interested in bedding. If someone is interested in a three-screen monitor splitter they might also be interested in purchasing a couple of additional monitors as well.
Paying attention to your internal linking strategies can pay dividends when it comes to both search engine optimization and generating additional sales. Creating smart keyword rich contextual links, nofollowing non-relevant textual links and cross linking products is a win-win-win scenario. It’s great for search engines, helpful to your visitors, and helps you generate more sales as a result.
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ClickTale has just launched a new analytics product called Form Analytics. Form Analytics reveals how visitors interact with online forms and provides recommendations that can increase form completion rates and shopping cart conversions. Form Analytics exposes the friction points inside your forms that can cause visitors to become frustrated and leave by identifying: 
