Central Perk

luni, 18 noiembrie 2013

Stop Thinking Keywords, Think Topics

Posted: 17 Nov 2013 03:16 PM PST

We have hired a few new people at Distilledâ€"we're always growingâ€"but as I was explaining the Keyword Planner to our new hires I realized that we are all thinking the wrong way for the future of online marketing.

One of my colleagues, Tom Anthony, has a very scientific way of explaining it: The new query according to Google. He comes to the same conclusion I did: "We need to stop looking at keywords and starting looking at queries." In short, we need to be focusing on what the user is looking for rather than specifically all of the ways they can phrase it.

I am not going to try to convince you of this. We are here. This is the world we live in, so rather than adapting the old way of thinking to the new search order (NSO?), it's time to change our thinking.

What does this really mean to us as practitioners on a day-to-day basis?

We have to stop using the term "keyword" as much as we can. It will never go away, don't get me wrong, but our focus has to change. This means speaking differently, reporting differently, and changing the conversation with our clients about their goals.

You are going to get asked for a keyword research report or a keyword ranking report soon. We as search professionals have provided them in the past, so it's normal for your boss or clients to expect a certain type of data or report. However, with the changes over the last few years, it's time to modify what we report to align better with the data we can get and the data that is best for our goals.

Start by defining your goals

We've said this time and time again: You have to define what you want as a business before you can really get to doing your job in the best way. Your company goals could be:

to be a thought leader in your space
to grow the business
to launch a new product
to increase your company's share of voice in the market

These goals should be set by the company collectively, not just you. Your goals are based off of this. Your goals should be something measurable and impact the company's goals. Let's say that the company wants to grow their business's revenue by 50% next year, website performance can help that with conversions, new visitors, and overall more traffic. Therefore your goals might look like:

Increase overall website traffic by 25%
Increase new visitor percentage from 25% to 40%
Increase conversion rate from the website from 45% to 70%

Notice that keyword ranking and traffic based on keywords are not in here. It's doubtful they ever have been part of your defined goals, but knowing your goals and the company's goals helps change the conversation.

Now, what do you want to accomplish?

Time to start the hard conversations. You should be reporting on your goals from above and what actions you are taking to affect those numbers. At some point your boss or client will ask for a keyword or ranking report. When they do, ask what they want to accomplish with that information. It'll give you more insight into what they are looking for and how best to report that to them.

Most likely it's so they know what your efforts are focused on, and that's understandable.

Start by explaining your goals and how they impact the bigger company goals.
Then, explain the changes to the information that is sent to analytics, and that reporting on the keyword level is next to impossible.
Finally, talk about how you want to stay dedicated to things that can be measured, and provide results to the company's bottom line.

But... we have to RANK!

If they then say that the keyword is the most important thing for you to report on, ask why again. The answer is usually because that's how you tell if your site is ranking for a term, or if your "SEO is working."

Rankings happen for many reasons; the keyword or query is just the initiator of the process. You optimize a page to be the strongest it can be after you've made it the best page for a specific need or topic. There are multiple variations of keywords for any one topic, and therefore your focus should be on the page and the topic, not just one or two of potentially hundreds of keywords.

The two major factors in ranking that you can have an effect on are related to the target page. Having relevant content and strengthening the page are what you should be focused on as a search marketer. Look at the highest correlated factors to ranking from the 2013 Ranking Factors Survey. All of the top factors are page-related.

Your next question should be: If I stop thinking about keywords, how do I know what content to develop to rank?

That depends on the user. We as a profession have really lost sight of talking to the users of our websites. Think about any number of keyword research presentations in the past few years (I've done and seen a number of them) and you'll see that many of them spoke to the Google Keyword Tool's numbers being wrong and getting inspiration in other places, mainly where your target market hangs out.

If you want to know what content to write to "rank" for terms, ask the people who are searching for that topic what they are looking for and write that. This changes how we do research but I think for the better.

Changing reporting

I am going to leave you with how I have started reporting on page level changes and how "SEO is doing." You should again be reporting on the metrics you defined in your goals, but you'll need to replace keyword-specific reports. I'm referring to reports like the number of keywords sending traffic (RIP; that was a favorite of mine), branded vs. non-branded keyword traffic, and ranking reports.

Step 1: Define all search landing pages

This should be all pages on your site technically except those noindexed, but we almost all have an idea of what pages get traffic from search engines. If you are a larger e-commerce site with thousands or millions of pages, you can group these into categories or by page type. Whatever works for you.

Step 2: Prioritize the top landing pages

Remember the terms you always had to report ranking on? What were the pages that needed to rank? Identify those and make a prioritized list just like you would have with keywords.

Step 3: Pull monthly traffic over the last year for those pages

You can automate this of course, but if you have a small number of pages it can be done by hand as well. Traffic is what you want to know about, and you want it to be going up. If traffic goes down to that page, that is your sign that something changed, either the SERPs or demand for that content. Just like if rankings went down, you'd investigate why after seeing that drop.

Step 4: Pull related data per page based on your goals

For the goals we defined above, I'd also report on the percentage of new visitors and conversions. You could report on bounce rate or time on page as well. Below is something that I recently sent to a client (modified to be able to share with a wider audience, of course).

I then investigated the pages that lost traffic and they are on my list to watch next month. This is just how I decided to do it for this client and I am interested to hear how you are having to change your reporting to deal with the changes in our world.

Please share your thoughts below, and have a great week!

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Seth's Blog : Extinguishing the tantrum cycle

Extinguishing the tantrum cycle

Tantrums are frightening. Whether it's an employee, a customer or a dog out of control, tantrum behavior is so visceral, self-defeating and unpredictable, rational participants want nothing more than to make it go away.

And so the customer service rep or boss works to placate the tantrum thrower, which does nothing but reinforce the behavior, setting the stage for ever more tantrums.

Consider three ideas:

Listen to the person, not the tantrum
Tantrums want to deal with tantrums
Create systems to avoid it in the first place

When an employee calls you up, furious, in mid-tantrum, it's tempting to placate or to argue back. That's the tantrum pressing your buttons. Instead, ask him to write down every thing that's bothering him, along with what he hopes you'll do, and then call you back. Or even better, meet with you tomorrow.

Email tantrums are similar. If someone sends you an email tantrum, don't respond, point by point, proving that you are correct. Instead, consider ways to de-escalate, not by giving in to the argument, but by refusing to have the argument.

Engaging in the middle of a tantrum does two things: it rewards the tantrum by giving it your attention, and it makes it likely that you'll get caught up, and say or do something that, in the mind of the tantrum-thrower, justifies the tantrum. That's the fuel the tantrum is looking for--we throw tantrums, hoping people will throw them back.

When you have valuable employees or customers (or kids) who throw tantrums, that might be a sign that there's something wrong with your systems. The most basic way to decrease tantrums is to find the trigger moments and catch the tantrum before it starts. By creating a way for people to raise their hand, send a note, light a signal flare or otherwise highlight the problem (internal or external) before it leads to a tantrum, you can shortcircuit the meltdown without rewarding it.

If your dog is going crazy, straining at the leash and barking, it turns out that yelling, "sit," is going to do no good at all, no matter how loudly you yell. No, the secret is to not take your dog to this park, not at this time of day, at least not until you figure out how to create more positive cycles for him. Eliminate the trigger, you start to eliminate the tantrum.

Unfortunately, just about all big customer service organizations do this precisely backward. They don't escalate to a supervisor or roll out the kindness carpet until after someone has gone to Defcon 4. They decide that it's too expensive to be flexible, to listen or to treat people fairly, and they wait until the costs to both sides are really high, and then they give an empowered person a chance to solve the problem. There's huge waste here, as the problem costs more to solve at this point, and the unseen challenge is that they've established a cycle in which umbrage is the rewarded behavior.

And the last (but essential) thing to keep in mind is this: tantrums are really expensive, and if you can't extinguish the ongoing problem, fire it. Fire the customer, fire the employee. Establish a standard that says that people around here don't act like that. Expose the tantrum for what it is, and if necessary, do it in front of the tantrum-thrower's peers. It will free up your resources for those that are able to earn them.

When the cost of throwing a tantrum is high and when the systems are in place to eliminate the triggers, tantrum behavior goes down.

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duminică, 17 noiembrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

France Tax Revenues €5.5 Billion Lower than Expected; Poll Shows 92% Do Not Believe Hollande's Tax Promises

Posted: 17 Nov 2013 03:07 PM PST

In spite of massive hikes in taxes on the wealthy and an increase in the VAT and other taxes revenue estimates missed their targets badly. Reader Lionel writes ...

Hi Mish,

As you were expecting, France did not manage to get as much tax revenue as expected by the government. Total revenues were €5.5 billion less than expected, split as follow:

€500 million less in income tax
€1 billion less in VAT
€4 billion less in business tax (tax on business profits).

Moreover, if you compare it to the initial forecast, it's €11 billion less than expected! And of course expenses have increased €3 billion.

It reminds me your past articles about Spain.

Lionel

Let's take a look at some of the links Lionel sent.

Budget Minister Admits Revenue Shortfall

Via translation, Budget Minister Admits Revenue Shortfall of €5.5 Billion

The Minister for the Budget Bernard Cazeneuve admitted Sunday that the revenue of the State in 2013 would be lower than expected, the order of € 5.5 billion, due to the poor economy, he said.

"According to our calculations, there is a shift to VAT of about one billion, and corporate tax of about four billion," said Cazeneuve.

The income tax shortfall was around 500 million euros.

Spending Up €3.3 Billion

Translation from Le Figaro shows 3 billion in additional spending for 2013.

In these times of fiscal discontent and protests by Brussels, the expected improvement of public accounts in France in 2014 and 2015, the government had to be reassuring about the traditional collective fiscal year-end synopsis presented on Wednesday.

Forecasts deemed "plausible" by the High Council of Public Finance, however warned of "a significant gap" between the structural deficit in 2013 (excluding cyclical effects) to 2.6% of GDP, higher than the 1.6% estimate anticipated at the end of 2012.

Overspending give rise to 3.2 billion in new funding, including $ 2.1 billion for the general budget and the balance for the EU budget.

Five days after the downgrade of France by Standard & Poor's, a ministerial meeting was called to control of public expenditure from 2015 to 2017. After an effort of 15 billion compared to the upward trend in spending in 2014, "the next year budget will extend this action," said Matignon. To target deficits of 3.6% of GDP in 2014 and 2.8% in 2015, without increasing the tax burden, government must cut expenses by 16 billion.

Brussels Does Not Believe Budget Promises

Unsurprisingly, Brussels does not believe the promises made by Hollande.

While Paris was planning to back below 3% in two years (2.9% to be exact), Brussels predicts it ... 3.7%! Only slightly less than the year before.

The European Commission reasoning "constant policy" (that is to say without further corrective action), so she informed the French government has no chance of meeting its target back below 3% in 2015 without implementing further structural reforms.

French Do Not Believe Spending Cut Promises, Tax Promises, Growth Promises

Brussels does not believe Hollande, and neither do French citizens. Via translation from Le Fiagra, please consider Budget 2014: the French do not believe.

SURVEY The survey Way Opinion for Le Figaro Magazine are clear: the French want to reduce public spending, but do not believe in the government's promises to do so.

In September, the economy minister, Pierre Moscovici , had referred to the "ras-le-bol tax" of French and Hollande himself had spoken of the need for a "tax break" in 2014. Wham, just two months later, came the environmental tax, taxes on saving products like ELP or PEA 15.5%, and a new tax on their gross operating profits of corporation.

These examples illustrate the discrepancy between government speech and deeds! So much so that today, the French do not trust their government. This is what emerges from the study conducted by Opinion for Le Figaro Magazine: 92% of French people do not trust the government to lower taxes, 82% do not believe government will lower spending and 80% do not believe growth targets!

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Seth's Blog : Belief is more powerful than proof

Belief is more powerful than proof

In fact, the only use of proof is to have a shot at creating belief.

It's not the only way, though, and it's not always the best one either.

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sâmbătă, 16 noiembrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

U.S. Crushes 6 Tons of Ivory, Some of it Exquisitely Carved, to "Send Message" to Poachers; Does This Make Sense?

Posted: 16 Nov 2013 03:10 PM PST

Here's an interesting video of the US taking 6 tons of confiscated ivory to Africa to crush it. The purpose was to "send a message" to poachers.

The entire worldwide elephant population is 500,000. They are vanishing at a rate of 50,000 per year, just for their ivory.

A couple of people sent me this video, Reader Michael was first.

Link if video does not play: U.S. crushes 6 tons of confiscated ivory to send message to poachers

Africa's elephants are being slaughtered at a record pace by poachers who hope to get rich by selling their ivory tusks.

The U.S. has been trying to stop it. And today the feds sent a powerful message -- by gathering all the ivory they have seized in the past quarter-century and bringing it to a wildlife refuge in Colorado.

Where millions once roamed free across Africa, the numbers of elephants have plummeted because of poaching to about 500,000.

Poaching was the source of six tons of illegal ivory confiscated by U.S. officials, from raw tusks to exquisitely carved statues.

Robert Ruggiero, who runs the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's anti-poaching effort in Africa, says the poachers will stop at nothing to get the ivory tusks. "Even poachers who are killed are readily replaced. There's an endless supply of people willing to take those risks," Ruggiero said.

The soaring demand comes mostly from newly rich Chinese, who see ivory as a status symbol. A pound of ivory now sells for more than $1,000 on the streets of Beijing.

The Math

1 ton = 2,000 pounds
6 tons destroyed
Street price = $1,000 pound
6 * 2,000 * $1,000 = $12,000,000

$12 million dollars is not a lot to the U.S. But it is a lot to Kenya.

Carved Ivory

Carved ivory is surely worth a lot more than raw ivory. 10 times more? I don't know.

Unfortunately there was no breakdown of how much carved ivory was crushed, but the video showed rooms of it being boxed for destruction. For the sake of argument, let's just assume the entire lot could have fetched $50 million at auction.

I have a simple question: What if instead of crushing that ivory, the US auctioned the ivory with all proceeds going to African nations for anti-poaching efforts?

How many people could Kenya have hired for $50 million? Wouldn't that have done more for the elephants than crushing it?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Taking Control of America’s Energy Future

Featured

Weekly Address: Taking Control of America’s Energy Future

In his weekly address, President Obama discusses progress in American energy and highlights that we are now producing more oil at home than we buy from other countries for the first time in nearly two decades. We reached this milestone in part not only because we’re producing more energy, but because we’re wasting less energy, and as a result, we are also reducing our carbon emissions while growing the economy.

Click here to watch this week's Weekly Address.

Seth's Blog : Salmagundi on offer is not the shortcut it appears to be

Salmagundi on offer is not the shortcut it appears to be

If you could eat the kitchen sink, that's what you'd get when you order Salmagundi. "Salmagundi is a salad dish, originating in the early 17th century in England, comprising cooked meats, seafood, vegetables, fruit, leaves, nuts and flowers and dressed with oil, vinegar and spices."

Here's the thing: there are very few people willing to cross the street, spread the word or pay extra for "all of the above."

Better to pick just one thing you can be proud of, rather than offering just about everything in an attempt to please just about everyone (and thus no one).

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luni, 18 noiembrie 2013

Stop Thinking Keywords, Think Topics

Stop Thinking Keywords, Think Topics

What does this really mean to us as practitioners on a day-to-day basis?

Start by defining your goals

Now, what do you want to accomplish?

But... we have to RANK!

Changing reporting

Step 1: Define all search landing pages

Step 2: Prioritize the top landing pages

Step 3: Pull monthly traffic over the last year for those pages

Step 4: Pull related data per page based on your goals

Seth's Blog : Extinguishing the tantrum cycle

Extinguishing the tantrum cycle

More Recent Articles

duminică, 17 noiembrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Seth's Blog : Belief is more powerful than proof

Belief is more powerful than proof

More Recent Articles

sâmbătă, 16 noiembrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Taking Control of America’s Energy Future

Seth's Blog : Salmagundi on offer is not the shortcut it appears to be

Salmagundi on offer is not the shortcut it appears to be

More Recent Articles

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

luni, 18 noiembrie 2013

What does this really mean to us as practitioners on a day-to-day basis?

Start by defining your goals

Now, what do you want to accomplish?

But... we have to RANK!

Changing reporting

Step 1: Define all search landing pages

Step 2: Prioritize the top landing pages

Step 3: Pull monthly traffic over the last year for those pages

Step 4: Pull related data per page based on your goals

More Recent Articles

duminică, 17 noiembrie 2013

More Recent Articles

sâmbătă, 16 noiembrie 2013

More Recent Articles

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

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