vineri, 20 martie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Evolution of Taxes: Italy Taxes "Shadows", Tax on Breathing Next?

Posted: 20 Mar 2015 08:12 PM PDT

Zero Hedge had an interesting article today called In Italy, They're Now Taxing Shadows.

This is one of those stories where you expect the headline to be a bit of an exaggeration. It wasn't.
As Italian newspaper Leggo reports, store owners in Conegliano are now faced with the unfortunate (albeit comically absurd) proposition of paying taxes on shadows.

The rationale appears to go something like this: an awning casts a shadow on public property and therefore you must pay to use that property.
Tax on Breathing Next?

I pinged that article off Pater Tenebrarum at Acting Man. He lives in Austria. Pater responded ...
They actually got that idea from Austria, where we have the so-called (put down the coffee) "air tax". No, it's not a tax on breathing just yet. But if you have a shop sign that "occupies airspace", you must pay a tax for it!

In Vienna this is garnished additionally with the "subway levy", which has to be paid regardless of whether one uses the subway or not. In fact, I think there is no government on the planet more inventive with regard to taxes, levies and imposts of all sorts.
Illinois Tax Proposals

Earlier today I noted Proposed Illinois Tax Hikes: Financial Transactions, Millionaires, Guns, Sweetened Beverages, Satellite Providers, Fireworks, Progressive Income


Additional tax-hike proposals are being thrown around without any idea of how much they might raise. State Rep. Rita Mayfield, D-Waukegan, proposed a 3.75% tax on guns and gun parts.

When asked how much revenue it would raise, she said she didn't know but thought "if we can get a good million or so, I'll take it.

State Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, recently said that "creative lawmakers can come up with many options for new revenue." 
Creative Options

Let's hope Lou Lang does not look at what's happening in Italy or Austria, or proposed tax on shadows or even breathing will soon be on the way.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Yield Curve, Futures, Suggest No Rate Hike Until December; GDP Forecast Halved Again to 0.3%

Posted: 20 Mar 2015 12:42 PM PDT

Curve Watcher's Anonymous is investigating the yield curve following Janet Yellen's exceptionally dovish FOMC announcement on Wednesday.

Yield Curve 2-yr, 3-yr, 5-yr, 10-yr, 30-yr



click on chart for sharper image

  • 30-year in black and red
  • 10-year in orange
  • 5-year in blue
  • 3-year in green
  • 2-year in purple

Change From Year Ago



Above rate table from Bloomberg.

Futures Suggest No Rate Hike Until December

Please consider Yellen Sends Odds of Any Rate Increase Below 50% Until December

"The likelihood that policy makers will lift their benchmark rate from near zero in September fell to 39 percent from 55 percent on Tuesday, according to calculations by Bloomberg using federal fund futures contracts. Futures traders have wiped out the chance of an increase in June, assigning it an 11 percent probability."

Door Open

On Wednesday, Bloomberg took the stance Fed Drops Patient Stance, Opening Door to June Rate Increase.

I found that rather amusing and responded Fed Drops Word "Patient"; Door Open, But For What?

Although the Fed removed the word "patient", the rest of Yellen's yap could not possibly have been any more dovish.

The panel said it will be appropriate to tighten "when it has seen further improvement in the labor market and is reasonably confident that inflation will move back to its 2 percent objective over the medium term."

That statement can mean virtually anything, prompting me to ask "How much more improvement does the Fed want? Or does the Fed not believe all these glowing labor reports either?"

And of course no one has any clues about the true meaning of "medium term".

Weak Data

For four months nearly all data except lagging jobs data has been weak.


That's just a sampling. Nearly every economic report except for jobs has been weaker than expected.

GDP Forecast Halved Again

On March 13 I noted Atlanta Fed Halves GDP Forecast to 0.6%; Blue Chip Consensus Eight Miles High

Today we see the Atlanta Fed's GDPNow Forecast has been halved again.



The forecast for GDP growth is now down to 0.3%.

I doubt the Fed will hike in a recession, and I do think a recession is on the way. If the Fed does hike, it will be to prick the asset bubble in stocks.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Proposed Illinois Tax Hikes: Financial Transactions, Millionaires, Guns, Sweetened Beverages, Satellite Providers, Fireworks, Progressive Income

Posted: 20 Mar 2015 11:22 AM PDT

Illinois pension plans are in extremely dire shape even with the huge stock market returns over the past few years. Illinois Spendaholics have proposed a huge array of tax hikes to make up the shortfall.

Ben VanMetre at the Illinois Policy Institute explains in this guest post.

Illinois politicians propose $100B in tax hikes over next 5 years

More than $100 billion in tax hikes over five years may sound like a joke. But to many Illinois lawmakers, it sounds like a solution.

State Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, recently said that "creative lawmakers can come up with many options for new revenue." Unfortunately, Illinois lawmakers have outdone themselves in the creativity department this year.

The array of six tax hikes proposed by Illinois lawmakers this legislative session adds up to more than $100 billion over the next five years. That's more than the state's total projected general-fund spending in fiscal years 2016, 2017 and 2018 – combined.



And the tax-hike proposals don't stop there.

Additional tax-hike proposals are being thrown around without any idea of how much they might raise. State Rep. Rita Mayfield, D-Waukegan, proposed a 3.75% tax on guns and gun parts. When asked how much revenue it would raise, she said she didn't know but thought "if we can get a good million or so, I'll take it."

Enough is enough. How can taxpayers take their legislators seriously when they've put more than $100 billion in tax hikes on the table in a state that is on the brink of financial and economic collapse?

Rather than trying to build a "creative" revenue plan based on how much lawmakers want to spend over the next few years, they should instead focus on building a spending plan based on the amount of revenue the state will have under its current tax structure.

Ben VanMetre
Director of Pension Reform

Tax Madness

Had Pat Quinn won reelection, most or all of those proposals would have passed. And more people would have fled the state in response.

I have a far better set of ideas.

  1. Immediately switch from a defined benefit system to a contribution system.
  2. Allow municipalities to go bankrupt so they can shed pension obligations
  3. Allow municipalities to create their own pension systems instead of setting everything at the state level.
  4. Enact a progressive tax on pension benefits.
  5. Tax at a 90% rate, all benefits above a certain level.

The one tax worth instituting is a progressive tax on pension benefits, big enough to make the state system solvent. Let those who want a "progressive tax" have it. Just put it on something that makes sense.

Should the Illinois Supreme Court strike down a tax on pension benefits, I would take the case to the US Supreme court where I would expect it to win.

For a look at the sorry state of affairs of the Illinois pension system, please see Illinois Pension Plans 39% Funded; Taxpayers On the Hook for $105 Billion in Liabilities; It Will Get Worse!

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Bitcoin vs. Uber: Bitcoin Lovers Respond to Mish

Posted: 20 Mar 2015 12:39 AM PDT

I recently commented that it would not surprise me if bitcoin plunged to $1.00. That was not a prediction, it was a comment.

Still, I still feel a collapse in bitcoin is likely.

For discussion, please see Cash Dinosaur: France Limits Cash Transactions to €1,000, Puts Restrictions on Gold; Bitcoin End Coming?

In response, reader Creighton writes ...
Hello Mish

While I'm not going to argue the point about the possibility that Bitcoin drops to $1, or less, (that could happen yet, but not for the reasons you propose) I felt it necessary to point out something you seem to have overlooked.

While it's likely that the US government watching Bitcoin in order to get some pointers about releasing it's own version of the US$, they would also have noticed that Canada attempted to do that exact thing two years ago.

It went nowhere. And it went nowhere for the same reason that the US, or China, or any other nation, couldn't expect to succeed in the same market.

Bitcoin was first to market in the, previously non-existent, field of non-state Internet currencies. Precious metals don't work, because there has to be a vault somewhere. The Liberty Dollar & Egold both tried that, and both got raided.  There is a real market for a working non-state currency, that can't be screwed with by state actors.  Bitcoin isn't perfect, as I have stated before, but if it's going to zero, it will be because one of the many start--up cryptocurrencies that have arrived since Bitcoin turns out to be substantially better at doing the same things.

I understand that you are not a crypto-geek like myself, and that I'm biased because I understand how Bitcoin actually does what it does, but I can honestly say that it does some things in completely novel ways; and has features that no fiat currency, digital or otherwise, has been able to do internally.  There are entire financial institutions in the finance industry founded upon solving many transaction problems that Bitcoin handles just fine internally, for the cost of about a nickel per transaction. Bitcoin is actually capable of taking over all the functions of notary publics & most of the functions of county clerks, everywhere.

Western Union's cash transfer business model is walking dead. Keep an open mind, because there is a fair chance that you will eventually use Bitcoin, or its successor, in some capacity within a decade.  Perhaps only as a cash transfer method, with the intent of switching back to cash immediately, but that day shall come.

Governments can no longer just suppress these new crypto-currencies and expect them to go away. The last chance to crush Bitcoin was several years ago, before the hashing rate (the cryptographic support of its security model) shot past the capability of the largest non-classified supercomputer on Earth.

Today (I just checked bitcoinwatch.com) it is over 4 million petaflops. The largest (unclassified) supercomputer on Earth is only 33 petaflops.  It would cost more than the market capitalization of all of Bitcoin to build a computer cluster capable of matching that, and it would take years; by which time it would take still much more.

Someday, you too will be a convert, if never a fan.
Mish Response to Creighton

Hello Creighton. I fully understand that bitcoin is innovative and disruptive. Yet, all it takes is government action to make it illegal.

It does not even take action by the US to do bitcoin in. China could do it in given that 80% of bitcoin transactions are from China, most likely fraudulent as I have pointed out.

Bitcoin vs. Uber  

The car service Uber survives even though it has been banned nearly everywhere.

I started accumulating all sorts of links many months ago. I collected well over 20. Here are a few of them.


In spite of the fact Uber is banned nearly everywhere, the company survives!

Why?

Because Uber is what the masses want.

Uber Cars Outnumber Yellow Taxis in New York City

Please consider Uber Cars Outnumber Yellow Taxis in New York City.
For the first time, there are more black Uber cars on the streets of New York City than traditional yellow taxis, figures have revealed.

The New York Taxi and Limousine Commission said there were 14,088 registered Uber cars compared with 13,587 yellow cabs.

However, the number of trips taken in yellow cabs far outpaces Uber rides. That is because many Uber drivers work part-time, whereas taxis often operate all day.
Do the Masses Want Bitcoin?

I do not believe the masses want bitcoin. Heck, do the masses even know what bitcoin is?

Bitcoin has a legitimate model. Yet, it is not a model the masses care about. As such, it is heavily dependent on the graces of governments and alternative models.

Governments can easily create (and demand usage of their own digital currencies). Governments cannot easily disrupt Uber.

Question of Sentiment

If I am wrong, then bitcoin will survive (just as Uber has survived numerous bans everywhere). In the end, it all boils down to sentiment.

I question whether or not public sentiment on bitcoin will be sufficient to overcome government restrictions.

In contrast, Uber has fared phenomenally in spite of governmental attacks everywhere.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.
Publicat de 1 la 23:21 0 comentarii

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics

Meet Albert The Feline With A Bitchface That Rivals Grumpy Cat

Posted: 20 Mar 2015 04:02 PM PDT

Move over Grumpy Cat, Albert is here to take over your reign of terror.






















via instagram

Awesome And Funny Things People Found In Grand Theft Auto V

Posted: 20 Mar 2015 10:58 AM PDT

Video games are known to have easter eggs hidden in them and sometimes even the glitches are just as cool as the game itself. Over time fans have discovered quite a few not so obvious things about "Grand Theft Auto V" that they want everyone to know about.

















Bizarre Things Washed Ashore

Posted: 20 Mar 2015 10:27 AM PDT

There were a lot of questions about these bizarre things washed ashore.



















Publicat de 1 la 19:23 0 comentarii

Headline Writing and Title Tag SEO in a Clickbait World - Whiteboard Friday - Moz Blog

Headline Writing and Title Tag SEO in a Clickbait World - Whiteboard Friday

Posted on: Friday 20 March 2015 — 01:17

Posted by randfish

When writing headlines and title tags, we're often conflicted in what we're trying to say and (more to the point) how we're trying to say it. Do we want it to help the page rank in SERPs? Do we want people to be intrigued enough to click through? Or are we trying to best satisfy the searcher's intent? We'd like all three, but a headline that achieves them all is incredibly difficult to write.

In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand illustrates just how small the intersection of those goals is, and offers a process you can use to find the best way forward.

For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard!

title tag whiteboard

Video transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about writing titles and headlines, both for SEO and in this new click-bait, Facebook social world. This is kind of a challenge, because I think many folks are seeing and observing that a lot of the ranking signals that can help a page perform well are often preceded or well correlated with social activity, which would kind of bias us towards saying, "Hey, how can I do these click-baity, link-baity sorts of social viral pieces," versus we're also a challenge with, "Gosh, those things aren't as traditionally well performing in search results from a perhaps click-through rate and certainly from a search conversion perspective. So how do we balance out these two and make them work together for us based on our marketing goals?" So I want to try and help with that.

Let's look at a search query for Viking battles, in Google. These are the top two results. One is from Wikipedia. It's a category page -- Battles Involving the Vikings. That's pretty darn straightforward. But then our second result -- actually this might be a third result, I think there's a indented second Wikipedia result -- is the seven most bad ass last stands in the history of battles. It turns out that there happen to be a number of Viking related battles in there, and you can see that in the meta description that Google pulls. This one's from Crack.com.

These are pretty representative of the two different kinds of results or of content pieces that I'm talking about. One is very, very viral, very social focused, clearly designed to sort of do well in the Facebook world. One is much more classic search focused, clearly designed to help answer the user query -- here's a list of Viking battles and their prominence and importance in history, and structure, and all those kinds of things.

Okay. Here's another query -- Viking jewelry. Going to stick with my Viking theme, because why not? We can see a website from Viking jewelry. This one's on JellDragon.com. It's an eCommerce site. They're selling sterling silver and bronze Viking jewelry. They've actually done very classic SEO focus. Not only do they have Viking jewelry mentioned twice, in the second instance of Viking jewelry, I think they've intentionally -- I hope it was intentionally -- misspelled the word "jewelry" to hopefully catch misspellings. That's some old-school SEO. I would actually not recommend this for any purpose.

But I thought it was interesting to highlight versus in this search result it takes until page three until I could really find a viral, social, targeted, more link-baity, click-baity type of article, this one from io9 -- 1,000 Year-old Viking Jewelry Found On Danish Farm. You know what the interesting part is? In this case, both of these are on powerful domains. They both have quite a few links to them from many external sources. They're pretty well SEO'd pages.

In this case, the first two pages of results are all kind of small jewelry website stores and a few results from like Etsy and Amazon, more powerful authoritative domains. But it really takes a long time before you get these, what I'd consider, very powerful, very strong attempts at ranking for Viking jewelry from more of your click-bait, social, headline, viral sites. io9 certainly, I would kind of expect them to perform higher, except that this doesn't serve the searcher intent.

I think Google knows that when people look for Viking jewelry, they're not looking for the history of Viking jewelry or where recent archeological finds of Viking jewelry happened. They're looking specifically for eCommerce sites. They're trying to transact and buy, or at least view and see what Viking jewelry looks like. So they're looking for photo heavy, visual heavy, potentially places where they might buy stuff. Maybe it's some people looking for artifacts as well, to view the images of those, but less of the click-bait focus kind of stuff.

This one I think it's very likely that this does indeed perform well for this search query, and lots of people do click on that as a positive result for what they're looking for from Viking battles, because they'd like to see, "Okay, what were the coolest, most amazing Viking battles that happened in history?"

You can kind of see what's happened here with two things. One is with Hummingbird and Google's focus on topic modeling, and the other with searcher intent and how Google has gotten so incredibly good at pattern matching to serve user intent. This is really important from an SEO perspective to understand as well, and I like how these two examples highlight it. One is saying, "Hey, just because you have the most links, the strongest domain, the best keyword targeting, doesn't necessarily mean you'll rank if you're not serving searcher intent."

Now, when we think about doing this for ourselves, that click-bait versus searched optimized experience for our content, what is it about? It's really about choosing. It's about choosing searcher intent, our website and marketing goals, or click-bait types of goals. I've visualized the intersection here with a Venn diagram. So these in pink here, the click-bait pieces that are going to resonate in social media -- Facebook, Twitter, etc. Blue is the intent of searchers, and purple is your marketing goals, what you want to achieve when visitors get to your site, the reason you're trying to attract this traffic in the first place.

This intersection, as you will notice, is super, uber tiny. It is miniscule. It is molecule sized, and it's a very, very hard intersection to hit. In fact, for the vast majority of content pieces, I'm going to say that it's going to be close to, not always, but close to impossible to get that perfect mix of click-bait, intent of searchers, and your marketing goals. The times when it works best is really when you're trying to educate your audience or provide them with informational value, and that's also something that's going to resonate in the social web and something searchers are going to be looking for. It works pretty well in B2B types of things, particularly in spaces where there's lots of influencers and amplifiers who also care about educating their followers. It doesn't work so well when you're trying to target Viking battles or Viking jewelry. What can I say, the historians of the Viking world simply aren't that huge on Twitter yet. I hope they will be one day.

This is kind of the process that I would use to think about the structure of these and how to choose between them. First off, I think you need to ask, "Should I create a single piece of content to target all of these, or should I instead be thinking about individual pieces that hit one or two at a time?"

So it could be the case that maybe you've got an intersection of intent for searchers and your marketing goals. This happens quite a bit, and oftentimes for these folks, for the Jell Dragon Viking Jewelry, the intent of searchers and what they're trying to accomplish on their site, perfectly in harmony, but definitely not with click-bait pieces that are going to resonate on the web. More challenging for io9 with this kind of a thing, because searchers just aren't looking for that around Viking jewelry. They might instead be thinking about, "Hey, we're trying to target the specific news item. We want anyone who looks for Viking jewelry in Danish farm, or Viking jewelry found, or those kind of things to be finding our site."

Then, I would ask, "How can I best serve my own marketing goals, the marketing goals of my website through the pages that are targeted at search or social?" Sometimes that's going to be very direct, like it is over here with JellDagon.com trying to convert folks and folks looking for Viking jewelry to buy.

Sometimes it's going to be indirect,. A Moz Whiteboard Friday, for example, is a very indirect example. We're trying to serve the intent of searchers and in the long term eventually, maybe sometime in the future some folks who watch this video might be interested in Moz' tools or going to MozCon or signing up for an email list, or whatever it is. But our marketing goals are secondary and they're further in the future. You could also think about that happening at the very end of a funnel, coming in if someone searches for say Moz versus Searchmetrics and maybe Searchmetrics has a great page comparing what's better about their service versus Moz' service and those types of things, and getting right in at the end of the funnel. So that should be a consideration as well. Same thing with social.

Then lastly, where are you going to focus that keyword targeting and the content foci efforts? What kind of content are you going to build? How are you going to keyword target them best to achieve this, and how much you interlink between those pages?

I'll give you a quick example over here, but this can be expanded upon. So for my conversion page, I may try and target the same keywords or a slightly more commercial variation on the search terms I'm targeting with my more informational style content versus entertainment social style content. Then, conversion page might be separate, depending on how I'm structuring things and what the intent of searchers is. My click-bait piece may be not very keyword focused at all. I might write that headline and say, "I don't care about the keywords at all. I don't need to rank here. I'm trying to go viral on social media. I'm trying to achieve my click-bait goals. My goal is to drive traffic, get some links, get some topical authority around this subject matter, and later hopefully rank with this page or maybe even this page in search engines." That's a viable goal as well.

When you do that, what you want to do then is have a link structure that optimizes around this. So your click-bait piece, a lot of times with click-bait pieces they're going to perform worse if you go over and try and link directly to your conversion page, because it looks like you're trying to sell people something. That's not what plays on Facebook, on Twitter, on social media in general. What plays is, "Hey, this is just entertainment, and I can just visit this piece and it's fun and funny and interesting."

What plays well in search, however, is something that let's someone accomplish their tasks. So it's fine to have information and then a call to action, and that call to action can point to the conversion page. The click-bait pieces content can do a great job of helping to send link equity, ranking signals, and maybe some visitor traffic who's interested in truly learning more over to the informational page that you want ranking for search. This is kind of a beautiful way to think about the interaction between the three of these when you have these different levels of foci, when you have these different searcher versus click-bait intents, and how to bring them all together.

All right everyone, hope to see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com


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Publicat de 1 la 06:00 0 comentarii

#SEONOW2015: What does SEO reporting look like in 2015?

#SEONOW2015: What does SEO reporting look like in 2015?

Link to White.net » Blog

#SEONOW2015: What does SEO reporting look like in 2015?

Posted: 19 Mar 2015 01:30 AM PDT

At the start of the year I was asked to participate in Linkdex’s annual SEO Now ebook, alongside a number of industry experts from around the world. The theme for the eBook was around Reporting in 2015, and my section is below.

SEO Now 2015 eBook Authors

WHAT DOES SEO REPORTING LOOK LIKE IN 2015?

In 2015, brands will move further towards an online marketing target, with each channel playing their part in that goal.

With SEO changing dramatically over the last few years, our reports have to reflect that. These changes have resulted in a move away from ranking positions and the number of links that we have built, to a more content-focussed approach.

This has led to agency and in-house teams providing training to key stakeholders within businesses, who prefer to see clear deliverables and results which links and rankings provide.

Although there will be a move to a more integrated marketing report, there has always been a constant in each report: how your activity compares to the KPIs that you have been set.

Daniel 3

Which on-site metrics should really matter to brands? Why?

The on-site metrics that matter most to your brand are generally individual and should be reverse engineered based on the targets you have been set.

The metrics that you need to use will differ depending on the campaign that you are running. A campaign that is aimed at generating brand awareness (content marketing) is going to have different metrics to a campaign aimed at the conversion end of the funnel.

With that said, there will always be some metrics that need to be used across any campaign, with the majority leading back to content performance and device.

Looking at it from an SEO point of view, landing page performance is crucial. What content is generating the most visits from search engines? What is the conversion rate of those pages, or how many of those pages play a part in the conversion funnel?

If these pages are not playing a part, why not? Are they pages that have the biggest exit percentages, do they have limited time on-page, is the bounce rate too high? By reporting on these figures you will be able to determine how effective these pages are, and whether a campaign needs to be based on improving these pages.

If there is an off-page element to your campaign, then you need to track brand mentions, whilst cross-referencing any citations/links to your referral traffic. This will provide you with a good understanding of whether the placements that you have generated are working and worth further investment.

As mentioned above, we are moving to a more mobile-focussed environment, which needs to be reflected in your report. Therefore understanding what each device category is contributing to your campaign, can often provide great insight and determine how further campaigns are crafted.

Which off-site metrics should really matter to brands? Why?

Reporting on the number of links that you have generated is gone! You should no longer be building quantity of links but instead generating quality links, and this should be reflected in your report.

If through your campaign, you have generated coverage within high-quality publications, then you should report it. This also needs to be supported by referral figures that the link/coverage has generated to support the cost of activity.

Alongside referral traffic from your campagin, you should monitor brand mentions. This is important as it could lead to an increase in direct or social traffic.

Reporting on the number of links that you have generated is gone! You should no longer be building quantity of links but instead generating quality links, and this should be reflected in your report.

How to tell the right story?

Each report that you create needs to be focussed on the KPIs that you have been given. Whether it is an individual campaign that will contribute or on-going work, how does it effect your target?

The story that you tell will be determined by the campaign you are running. Choosing the right metrics will allow you to bring the campaign alive, by showing the successes and failures of campaign.

An important factor when telling your story is being honest. If your campaign has not worked, then do not cover it up with meaningless metrics. Explain what happened, the learnings that you have taken away from it and how they will be implemented into the next campaign.

Daniel 1

When creating your report, make it visual, easy to understand and straight to the point. Creating complicated reports to tell the story will not only confuse those that are reading it, but will likely bring further questions.

Finally, more than anything else, make sure that it always relates back to the KPIs.

—

If you are interested in reading the full eBook, you can download it from the Linkdex wesbite. I’d be interested in your thoughts on how reporting has changed, and what represents a good SEO report in the comments below or over on twiter @danielbianchini.

The post #SEONOW2015: What does SEO reporting look like in 2015? appeared first on White.net.

Consider Ad Copy As A Group of Swappable Elements

Posted: 17 Mar 2015 01:00 AM PDT

So, we’re well on our way into 2015 and it’s time to look back on what we’ve achieved so far this year. New digital strategy, check… New programmatic targeting methods, check… Account expansion, check… Reviewed ad copy and variant tested…..no?

More often than not we find ourselves jumping into and testing new features released by the leading platforms but end up neglecting the foundations of our accounts.

What better time to re-visit our ad copy?

We know that the ad copy we write depends on many things, for example, the ad group keywords and the intent of the user we’re targeting. Writing compelling ad copy initially was great and we’ve seen the fantastic results they’re delivering, but, how do we know that we couldn’t write better ads? That we couldn’t push CTR up just that little bit more?

Re-writing our ad copy is one of simplest changes we can make in an account and a sure-fire way to improve performance, but we typically concentrate on every other aspect of the account and overlook ad copy.

There are numerous ways to improve ad copy. It can take time to craft excellent ads from scratch, but it's well worth noting that creating variants of our top performing ads can deliver the effects we desire.

Here’s an ad that’s performing well:

Alaska Holiday 2015
Experience True Wilderness
Plan Your Alaska Adventure Today!
www.ExampleAgent.com/Alaska-Trip

 

We know that the ad performs well, so we’re not looking to write entirely new copy. Instead, let’s break the ad down into its headline, description-one, description-two and display-URL.

  • We could exchange the headline 'Alaska Holiday 2015' for 'Alaskan Holidays 2015' or ‘Holidays In Alaska – 2015′ while preserving meaning.
  • We could switch desc1, 'Experience True Wilderness’, for a close alternative (such as 'Experience Alaskan Wilderness', 'Experience Authentic Wilderness'), or for a different phrase (for example, 'Stunning Scenery, Guided By Experts' or 'Personal service – expert advice').
  • The call-to-action in desc2, 'Plan Your Alaska Adventure Today!', could be switched for a different one (such as 'Plan Your Alaska Holiday Today!', 'Call & Book Your Alaska Trip Now!' or 'Call Us for Your Tailormade Tour ‘)
  • The display URL could be replaced by ‘Exmaple.com/Alaska-Holidays’ or ‘Alaska.Example.com’
  • Also, in this instance, the desc1 and desc2 lines could be exchanged with one-another, or two dissimilar descriptions could be used instead of a description and CTA.

We can then take these elements, and group them by function:

Headlines:

Alaska Holiday 2015
Alaskan Holidays 2015
Holidays In Alaska – 2015

Descriptions:

Experience True Wilderness
Experience Alaskan Wilderness
Experience Authentic Wilderness
Stunning Scenery, Guided By Experts
Personal service – expert advice

CTAs:

Plan Your Alaska Adventure Today!
Plan Your Alaska Holiday Today!
Call & Book Your Alaska Trip Now!
Call Us for Your Tailormade Tour

Display URLs:

www.ExampleAgency.com/Alaska-Trip
Example.com/Alaska-Holidays
Alaska.Example.com

These can be arranged in three ways:

Headline – Description – Call to Action – Display URL
Headline – Call to Action – Description – Display URL
Headline – Description – Description – Display URL

 

Just from these suggestions there are 312 combinations of the original ad possible. Testing all of these would be extremely impractical.

Starting with a smaller selection of variables and then manually changing them takes time, and there are difficulties keeping track of ad testing at scale; as different campaigns get different amounts of traffic, tests would vary in length and different campaigns would be at different stages testing different elements.

Scripting could be used to automate the process, making it simpler and more efficient.

The testing process would be:

  1. Organise the elements into groups so that they can be combined
  2. Start with a selection of ads
  3. Run the ads for long enough to make statistical conclusions
  4. Rank the ads according to results (ties are allowed where performance is not significantly different).
  5. When an ad outranks another, look at which elements were different. The element in the losing ad(s) gets a negative score; the winning ad(s) gets a positive score (each element has a record of its scores in a Google Doc the script can access).
  6. Start a new test with the winners and new ads (automatically generated from the list of elements, giving preference to elements which are untested or have previously won).

There are multiple options for the way to generate new ads:

  • Choose a 'slot' to test (headline, description line 1, description line 2, display URL, or the arrangement). Take the winning ads and vary the elements in that slot.
  • Take the winning ads and create variants by switching an element in each 'slot'. (This has the problem that it would be harder to compare the performance of each element on its own).
  • Take the winning ads and create variants by switching an element in each 'slot'. From this determine which slot makes the most difference, and in the next round test ads that vary only in that slot.

When enough data has built up, it may be possible to look at the performance of pairs of elements as well as individual elements.

As an alternative, a genetic algorithm could be used:

  1. Start with a set of completely different ads
  2. Test the ads
  3. Drop the losers
  4. Generate a new generation of ads from the winners – combine the winners' elements (crossover), and randomly change a few elements (mutation)
  5. Repeat from stage 2 with the new generation of ads

Identifying your ‘champion’ ad copy and generating variations for testing is one of the lowest hanging fruits. In any account there is opportunity to try out new ad variants, no two ad groups perform the same and ad copy performance will vary between each. By following the simple methods above we can ensure that we are constantly mining for the best of the best ad copy.

Have you tried this already? What lifts (or perhaps drops) in performance have you seen? Or maybe you’re testing your copy in a different way? I’d love to hear from you. Leave your comments below.

The post Consider Ad Copy As A Group of Swappable Elements appeared first on White.net.
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