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miercuri, 7 decembrie 2011

"In America, We Are Greater Together"

Your Daily Snapshot for
Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2011

"In America, We Are Greater Together"

Yesterday, a little more than a century after Teddy Roosevelt outlined a vision for a "New Nationalism" in Osawatomie, Kansas, President Obama visited the same community. The President spoke about what he called a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and laid out his view for the country:

It is a view that says in America we are greater together -- when everyone engages in fair play and everybody gets a fair shot and everybody does their fair share.

Watch the video and see the full speech.

Photo of the Day

President Barack Obama waves to people gathered along the motorcade route from Osawatomie High School to Osawatomie-Paola Municipal Airport in Osawatomie, Kan., Dec. 6, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

SEOptimise

Conversion Conference London: The First 58 Takeaways

Posted: 06 Dec 2011 06:31 AM PST

There were many great tips at Conversion Conference London last week – too many to fit into one blog post. Here are the first 58 takeaways from the first day. More to come soon!

Mobile and Real Time Optimisation

The conference started with Amy Africa, CEO of Eight By Eight, packing many tips for mobile conversion optimisation into her forty-five minute keynote.

Three things matter for mobile:

You have to have some mobile presence (even if it's not a full mobile site)
Optimise speed. A page should have a size around 50k.
Navigation.

Mobile has a half to a third the number of conversions of a traditional site.
You have to concentrate on only one goal.
Get users' email addresses or phone numbers so you can profile them.
Pay attention to the user's context, and use diversions to show them appropriate content.

Where have they entered the site from? Different sources convert differently, or will want different information. Twitter converts well on the phone. People from shopping sites will want prices. Concentrate on your top referring sources.
Where are they? You may want to show them a different page if they are looking at your site while in your store.

Apps are not mobile sites. Concentrate on your mobile site rather than on making an app, unless you have a very good idea for the app.
Treat users on tablets separately to those on mobile.

Tablet traffic convert around twice as much as desktop.
Mobile traffic convert a third or less.

Navigation: Mobilise, don't miniaturise.

Streamline your navigation, and make sure it is intuitive.
Only have five to eight choices.
Top navigation is better than bottom navigation.
Use breadcrumbs, sorts and jump links.
Use big buttons. Colour doesn't matter, but size does.
Have a big search box at the top, and use auto-suggest.

Change forms and checkouts.

Fields need to be bigger so people make fewer mistakes.
Make it easy to spot and correct errors.
Have only three to five choices in drop-down menus.
Be clear on the length of the process, for example by saying "step 1 of 7".

Over 92% of time is spent on the first view, above the fold.

Limit your message to one page and have the important stuff at the top.
Don't waste space on adverts for other people's brands.

Don't use Flash.
The best way to get conversions is to have a click to call. Have your phone number everywhere.
Graphical icons can help, but make sure to test as the wrong icons can bomb.
Have images big but not too big.
Only people on 4G will watch videos.
Always have an option to email, so people can send a page to themselves.
Abandon programs are key – find out how to convert abandoners on other channels.
If a user shares something on social media, they won't come back to your site. Give them options to share after they have converted.
Always give the option to view the full website.
Get something that's good at tracking mobile, like Bango.

Turbo-Charging PPC & Display Landing Pages

First to speak in the session was Kai Radanitsch, from eBusinessLab, who talked about different sorts of searches and landing pages.

Work out user intent from the search term – is it informational, navigational or transactional?
Transactional searches have on average 1.5 words, while informational have 3.7.
The highest quantities of transactional searches are between 11am and 4pm.
When creating an ad for a keyword, use the keyword in the ad headline.
Expand the keyword with a benefit

For instance, if the keyword is 'London Hotel', the headline could be 'London Hotel from £44'.

Ads are more attractive if there is a customer rating

Get ratings displayed by getting 30 four or five star reviews on Google Product Search.

Use sitelinks – they may not be clicked on, but they broaden the offerings you can show in an ad.
Homepages do not make the best landing pages. You need something on them to grab visitors and get them to your offerings.
Article landing pages can have calls to action like newsletter signups.
Rapid conversion landing page are good for things like insurance. They don't give too much info, and make conversion quick.
You could have a page which asks for a priority code that was in the advert, and prefill the code.
From the search, get a mental hook to the landing page.
Repeat the ad's language on the landing page.

The second speaker was Guy Levine, CEO of Return On Digital.

Don't just think about keywords and landing pages, think about people and personas.
PPC testing needs a good campaign setup. Get a good setup with 'peel and stick'

Your first go at campaign structure is a stab in the dark.
When campaigns are running, find keywords that work
Peel the keywords out of their current ad groups
Stick them in new ad groups on their own, so tracking their performance is easier.

Keep a tight correlation between keyword and ad copy.
Track conversions

You want specific conversion actions, not pageviews and time on site.
Use phone tracking (like AdInsight).

Multivariate testing versus A/B testing:

Multivariate testing needs a lot of people to come to the site, or will take ages with low traffic.
A/B testing is quicker as there are only two variants being tested.
Use A/B testing first, then use multivariate testing on smaller details.

You want at least 100 conversions for each variant being tested before making decisions.
Testing is about overcoming objections.
The worst mistake is losing context. People get perplexed if a specific long tail search goes to a less specific landing page.
Having PayPal is good for B2C.
If you want to test alternative sources – like testing traffic from PPC rather than all traffic – then you need separate landing pages.
The Call To Action button is the biggest priority for buying pages, while more elements are important for lead gen.
Click Tale can tell you which form fields people don't fill in (even if they abandon the form).
Tell people

We are experts
This is what you should buy
Please buy it from us

SEO and SEM versus CRO – Tactics for Optimising Both Search & Conversion

The first speaker was Richard Baxter, Founder and Director of SEOgadget. His slides are available on Slide Share.

There are many types of search:

Query Deserves Freshness
Image search
Video search
Rich snippets (eg movie ratings and show times)
Google Places
Social – if you've shared something on Google+ friends see it in the SERPs

Understand user intent.

People searching for 'Chicago pizza' have a longer dwell time on local results than people searching for 'pizza'.
People searching for 'how to make pizza' look at the videos.
People looking for 'pizza cutter' look at the images.

Can you influence CTR in the organic SERPs?

Tested with SERP Turkey
Informational searches get better CTR with informational meta-descriptions.
Transactional searches get better CTR with meta-descriptions emphasising the price and other transactional information.
The CTR was even higher for a transactional search when the transactional meta-description had a customer rating rich snippet.

Can you change the description depending on the query intent?

Tip from SharkSEO – if you have a long meta description then Google will show the parts that are most relevant to the query.
If you have two descriptions the more relevant one will be used.

Patrick Altoft, Director of Search at Branded3. His slides are available here.

There are many reasons why people don't convert.

Some people may return later.
Some may not find what they're after (traffic can't be as targeted as with PPC).

To increase conversion rates

Increase keyword relevancy
Get more visits to convert
Attract users at multiple points of the buying cycle

Keyword research

Everyone uses the Google Keyword Tool so the top results are very competitive.
You can look at keywords from PPC and organic search, and use the conversion data on them to work out the opportunity for each keyword.
But even then you will have thousands of keywords, and you can't concentrate on them all.

Approach keyword research from a landing page perspective.

Work out the potential revenue per keyword per landing page
Use a pivot table to sum over landing pages to calculate the potential revenue per landing page.
Build links for the landing pages with the highest potential.

Don't build all links with the same anchor text

Vary anchor text with the top keywords for the landing page.
Add 'noise' and brand to some links, so it looks natural and adds long tail terms.

Use the same landing page for PPC and for SEO – there's more incentive to spend money to improve PPC landing pages.
Optimise pages for short tail searches, then research and optimise for long tail.
To get low competition long tail keyword ideas:

Put the page's URL into the Google Keyword Tool
Check the "Only show ideas closely related to my search terms" box
Filter to show only keywords with fewer than 1000 monthly searches.

This was just the first morning of the two days. More takeaways to come.

What’s Been the Most Significant Change in Search During 2011?

Posted: 06 Dec 2011 06:16 AM PST

Last week I setup a Facebook poll to ask people what they considered to be the most significant change in search during 2011. This has received a great response, so here are the results so far (you can still take part on the SEOptimise fan page):

To recap on what these changes were:

Google Panda (37 votes) – if you haven’t heard of Google Panda, I’m not sure where you’ve been. Myself and Daniel Bianchini presented at A4UExpo earlier in the year which may help to explain about the impact of Google Panda.
SSL Search (17 Votes) – as mentioned in the comments, if there was a poll for the most annoying change this would have won hands down – with Google deciding to take away a portion of keyword data from logged-in search for privacy reasons.
Social signals and integration (9 votes) – still debatable over social media’s current impact to search this year, but with the recent Google freshness algorithm update and the launch/continued push of Google+ it’s clearly something which should be high on the agenda for 2012.
Google+ (2 votes) – Google’s most successful attempt at social media to date, Google+.
Siri (1 vote) – thanks Nichola! If anyone else saw the keynote at Pubcon, they’d realise that Google is dead and the future is Siri. I certainly won’t be making any predictions like that myself any time soon!
Removal of Yahoo! Site Explorer (1 vote) – this is big news for SEOs, as many of us have relied on Yahoo! in the past to provide accurate link analysis. Now none of the search engines provide full link data, leaving us to decide which link analysis tool to use?
Roll out of Bing/Yahoo search alliance (0 votes) - of course, the increase in market share by combining Bing/Yahoo was announced last year, but the roll out of this has been in motion (or slow motion?) this year.

So which change do you think will have the biggest impact to search? The poll is still open too, so please take part…

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Seth's Blog : "I am here"

"I am here"

Showing up matters more than ever, particularly if you promised you would.

Not just showing up in person, but showing up emotionally, or with support, or with a resource that was inconvenient for you to produce.

We're no longer judging you by what sort of widgets your factory makes. We're judging you by what we can expect from you in the future.

• Email to a friend •

marți, 6 decembrie 2011

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

12 of 26 Economists in Financial Times Survey See Probability of Eurozone Breakup at 20 to 30 Percent; What are the True Odds?
ECB Ready to Push Boundaries on Interest Rates and Bond Purchases; One Size Fits Italy
Eurozone Treaty Changes to be Finalized in March, Then a Vote in May, Then Country-Specific Referendums, Then?

12 of 26 Economists in Financial Times Survey See Probability of Eurozone Breakup at 20 to 30 Percent; What are the True Odds?

Posted: 06 Dec 2011 11:47 AM PST

Financial Times Deutschland says the key to whether or not the Eurozone holds together depends on Bundesbank president Jens Weidmann.

Will he or won't he go along with ECB president Mario Draghi's hint that the ECB is about to purchase more sovereign debt.

Via Google Translate, please consider Everyone looks at Weidmann

Twelve of 26 economists see the probability of a breakup of the euro zone at 20 to 30 percent. From the perspective of ten economists, the risk is ten percent. Anna Grimaldi, the Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo sees a 40 percent chance and John Greenwood of Invesco investment company rates the probability at 70 percent.

At the other extreme are Anders Matzen at Swedish Nordea Bank, which estimates the probability of survival of monetary union to 95 percent, and Ulrich Kater from Deka Bank who sets the value at 99 percent.

Most economists indicated that they were convinced that the position of Weidmann will be crucial in deciding whether the ECB more than at present to save the euro is taking. "The attitude of the Bundesbank to the program for the purchase of government bonds is more important than their normal attitude to monetary policy, since the program moved to the edge of the contractual mandate," said Torge Middendorf from WestLB.

Not So Simple

Certainly a huge feud between Weidmann and Draghi will not help. However, that is not the only issue. The German supreme court can step in at anytime and demand a voter referendum.

The UK can and probably will single-handily torpedo the treaty changes proposed by Merkel and Sarkozy.

According to the Washington Post, British Prime Minister David Cameron said he did not intend to "pass any powers from Britain to Brussels." He noted that if the treaty changes suggested by Sarkozy and Merkel require such a transfer, he would have to call a national referendum to approve them.

Will UK voters pass that referendum? I see a zero percent chance of that. Then what?

Please see Eurozone Treaty Changes to be Finalized in March, Then a Vote in May, Then Country-Specific Referendums, Then? for further discussion.

Ireland, Germany, or Finland may also torpedo the agreement.

Moreover, voters in Spain, Portugal, or Greece may eventually (and correctly) say to hell with all this austerity just to pay back French and German banks.

To repeat what I have said several times:

Eventually, there will come a time when a populist office-seeker will stand before the voters, hold up a copy of the EU treaty and (correctly) declare all the "bail out" debt foisted on their country to be null and void. That person will be elected.

What are the True Odds?

A few months ago, economists would have pegged the probability close to zero percent. The shift of 14 economists to 20% or greater probability is a significant shift in the right direction.

It's important to remember that economists are a perpetually optimistic lot. Ironically, a breakup is likely before economists agree it will happen.

Taking everything into consideration, the probability the Eurozone stays intact is arguably 15 percent at best.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

ECB Ready to Push Boundaries on Interest Rates and Bond Purchases; One Size Fits Italy

Posted: 06 Dec 2011 10:28 AM PST

Get ready for record low interest rates in Europe as ECB ready to push boundaries of crisis role

A Reuters survey of 73 analysts showed a 60-percent chance the ECB will cut rates by 25 basis points to a record low of 1.0 percent -- a floor it previously reached during the financial crisis in 2009. It cut rates by a similar amount in November.

New ECB President Mario Draghi reinforced expectations for a rate cut last week when he said the bank had a responsibility to ensure inflation did not undershoot its target of just below 2 percent, not just to stop it exceeding it.

Markets have taken it to heart. Three-month Euribor futures -- one of the main gauges of market expectations -- point to rates being be cut this month and then even further.

The case for a cut is supported by the euro zone economy teetering on the brink of recession. With the ECB increasingly concerned about falling consumer prices, further cuts may be in the offing even if the ECB has never cut rates below 1 percent before -- not even after the collapse of Lehman.

Draghi made his comments a day after the world's major central banks took emergency joint action to provide cheaper dollar funding for starved European banks.

This was the latest in a slew of actions aimed at propping up European banks, which are struggling with the fallout from the debt crisis, such as higher capital requirements and rising tension in the interbank money market.

Banks are increasingly turning to the ECB and the recent jump in overnight deposits at the ECB has highlighted the freeze in interbank lending markets.

Sources have told Reuters that the ECB is looking at extending the term of loans it offers banks to 2 or even 3 years to try to prevent the euro zone crisis precipitating a credit crunch that chokes the bloc's economy.

One Size Fits Italy

Under ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet, ECB actions were best described as "One Size Fits Germany and France". Under Draghi, ECB policy has morphed into "One Size Fits Italy".

Central banks say and do what they want when they want. Eurozone inflation remains at 3 percent, for 3 consecutive months. So where did this concern for falling prices come from?

It certainly did not come from Eurozone price data. Rather it came from the desire of Draghi to help Italian bonds. That also explains Draghi's comments to the European Parliament last week, that the ECB could take stronger action to fight the crisis if European leaders agree on tighter budget controls.

Tighter budget controls will not be realistic of course, but the illusion will give Draghi the cover he wants to buy more Italian bonds.

The can-kicking exercise continues. So does the ticking of the clock before the market once and for all decides it has enough of proposals that do nothing.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Eurozone Treaty Changes to be Finalized in March, Then a Vote in May, Then Country-Specific Referendums, Then?

Posted: 06 Dec 2011 12:54 AM PST

On December 8 Merkel and Sarkozy will have reached a 6-point agreement requiring ratification of a new treaty.

However, details will not be finalized until March. At that time, if all goes to plan (and it won't), a vote by all 27 EU nations will take place. If that fails (and hopefully the UK torpedoes it), various aspects of the treaty might still be ratified by (and apply only to) the 17-member Eurozone nations.

However, fiscal rules will still require individual referendums in Ireland and in my opinion Germany. Got that?

Eurointelligence writes That „comprehensive agreement" in full

Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy essentially agreed on the German position. These should be embedded in a New Treaty, and they have asked Herman van Rompuy to put those proposals formally on the agenda for the Dec 8 and 9. Here is a summary of the six most important decisions taken. As so often, the newspapers cover only a short subset.

Automatic sanctions. In case of non-compliance with the deficit rule, countries are subject to automatic sanctions, which will require a majority of 85% to overturn.

Golden Rule: All EU member states, but in particular the eurozone, should subject themselves to uniform debt limits. The ECJ will adjudicate in case of a dispute, and should have the right to declare national budgets illegal.

Private Sector Participation will follow the rules of the IMF. The PSI agreement on Greece remains valid, but is a unique case that should not be repeated;

Germany and France want the ESM to start end-2012.

The heads of state and government meet once a month as the eurozone's economic government.

There shall be no eurobonds.

These proposals indeed require substantial treaty change, but we are surprised that this could be concluded so quickly, given the necessary procedures, and their own implantation record. A change in the EU treaties would require a convention, unless the European Parliament were to decide to wave its rights in this respect.

Given that these proposals entail a transfer of sovereignty, national referendums in Ireland and possibly other countries may be required. While there are possibilities for the eurozone to adopt its own set of policies, points 1 and 2 (which are the main element of the fiscal agreement) require a full treaty change, to be ratified by all 27 members (even if the provisions are only implemented in respect of the eurozone).

We suspect therefore that Sarkozy agreed to these measure in the full knowledge that this will never be implemented. If you subtract the treaty change proposals, one is left with a shallow agenda.

Also, newspapers reported that Merkel gave up PSI. That is not true. The position is now that the IMF rules will be applied, which are not all that different. CACs will also remain in the ESM treaty.

Shallow Agenda or No Agenda at All?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard weighs in with Zilch again from Merkozy

No fiscal union, no Eurobonds, no ECB as lender of last resort – yet. Just the usual blather and a revamped Stability Pact (Fiskalunion).

Yawn.

Merkel seems to have backed off on demands that budget breaches will be justiciable before the European Court, so the Treaty chatter is mostly Quatsch, bêtises, and eyewash.

This Merkel climb-down makes it less likely that she will give in on real rescue measures, so why the market exuberance in Italy? Beats me.

Private investors will not have to face further haircuts after Greece (if you believe anything they say on this subject) but that was already the case. Nothing further to add at this stage.

Will 27 Nations Sign on the Dotted Line?

Those treaty changes may sound good on paper, but what is the likelihood these treaty changes pass? The Washington Post chimes in with Sarkozy, Merkel call for new E.U. treaty to address debt crisis

Under growing pressure from nervous financial markets, the leaders of France and Germany reached a difficult compromise agreement Monday to seek mandatory limits on budget deficits among debt-laden European governments.

If adopted by other nations in the union, the deal would mean drastic cuts in European budgets. It would also spell the end of three decades of overspending that helped finance a cozy social protection system envied by much of the world.

Although France and Germany represent the core of the European Union, it is far from certain that the rest of the group's 27 nations will go along at a crucial European summit scheduled for Thursday in Brussels. The deal could face significant opposition from those reluctant to surrender national sovereignty over fiscal policy.

"This package of measures is a proof of our absolute determination to guarantee a stable euro," Merkel said at a joint news conference with Sarkozy in Paris.

The Franco-German accord is to be outlined in a letter to E.U. leaders Wednesday and voted on at the special summit conference the next day, making this a make-or-break week for the ideal of European unity. Sarkozy said the hope is that all 27 E.U. nations will adhere to the plan. But he said it could also move forward with consensus from only the 17 countries that have adopted the euro as their common currency.

The swift schedule for the treaty change is unheard of in the history of the European Union, which is notorious for slow-moving bureaucracy and endless bickering among governments at all-night conferences at the union's Brussels headquarters.

The deficit limits — a "golden rule" of 3 percent of gross domestic product — would be enforced by elected leaders of the European Community acting with a supermajority of 85 percent, according to explanations provided by Sarkozy and Merkel at the news conference. The E.U. leaders would rule on any government cited as overspending by the European Court of Justice, they added.

In a suggestion of the debate still to come, British Prime Minister David Cameron said he did not intend to "pass any powers from Britain to Brussels." He noted that if the treaty changes suggested by Sarkozy and Merkel require such a transfer, he would have to call a national referendum to approve them.

Would the UK voters agree to this in a referendum? Ireland? Germany? Austria? Netherlands?

I think the answer is no. So what is left in this much ballyhooed great compromise between Merkel and Sarkozy?

Here is the compromise in case you missed it.

Merkel gets the "no eurobond" position she wants
Sarkozy gets the "no bondholder haircuts except Greece" position he wants.

This proposal solves absolutely nothing. For some reason the market seems to love "nothing" these days. Don't expect that to last.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

[Fast Blog Finder] Can NoFollow links hurt you?

And should you comment on NoFollow blogs? I'm sure like other Fast Blog Finder users you asked yourself these questions more than once.

To help you decide, I did a case study to see if NoFollow links are counted and if it's worth your efforts to post comments on NoFollow blogs.

The case study was updated and it's still topical.

Click this link to read about my case study:

http://www.fastblogfinder.com/can-nofollow-links-hurt-you/

And did you know that you can load your own list of blogs in Fast Blog Finder Gold edition, determine the blog type and post comments on those blogs?

Julia Gulevich
G-Lock Software
julia@glocksoft.com

P.S From my next email you'll learn what traps are waiting for you on DoFollow blogs and why you should be careful when commenting on them.

Company info:

G-Lock Software, Level 5, 369 Queen Street, Auckland, NZ.

You can modify/cancel your subscription via the link below:
http://glockdb.com/u?xemail=ZTBuc3RhcjEuYmxvZ0BnbWFpbC5jb20

miercuri, 7 decembrie 2011

"In America, We Are Greater Together"

SEOptimise

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Seth's Blog : "I am here"

"I am here"

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marți, 6 decembrie 2011

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

[Fast Blog Finder] Can NoFollow links hurt you?

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Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

miercuri, 7 decembrie 2011

More Recent Articles

marți, 6 decembrie 2011

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