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div class=field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hiddendiv class=field-itemsdiv class=field-item evenpimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/raven-intvw-1-12.jpg alt=Raven SEO Interview. //p
pHere is the audio if you’d prefer to listen :) /p
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strongEric: All right, this is Eric over here at SEO Book and today I’m fortunate enough to be joined by Taylor Pratt and Jon Henshaw from Raven SEO Tools, thanks for joining us today guys./strong/p
pTaylor Pratt: Yeah, thanks for having us./p
pJon Henshaw: Yeah, good to see ya!/p
pstrongEric: All right, so we just have some questions here that I think our readers will appreciate and some of our members have been interested to know about as well./strong/p
pstrongSo, without further ado I’ll jump right in here./strong/p
pObviously you guys are essentially the creators of an all-in-one SEO tool set which has kind of morphed into a Web marketing tool set now with all of the different things that you’ve added and certainly have a vested interest in being on the right side of forecasting the future of what will be important to search marketers here in the short and long-term and certainly there’s a lot of changes going on at the moment especially in the social area./p
pSo, I’d just like to get your thoughts on where you guys see search going with respect to what’s going to be important for us as search marketers to track, study and report on the clients; things like rankings, analytics, social signals?/p
pJon Henshaw: Yeah, I mean I think I’ll go first. This is Jon and as you said we kind of started out with just SEO and over time we have become more of that full-fledged internet marketing suite. And I would say that that was actually one of the first steps in sort of forecasting where things are going in the industry./p
pAnd at first while that was like our main focus what we started to see was sort of the merging of all of these different practices under one roof and so you saw a lot of people who just did SEO’s, a lot of people who just did paid and they started to do both. And then social kind of came into that mix, that’s the most recent thing, and so now you’re seeing a lot of agencies doing all three and on top of that they’re doing email marketing and that type of thing and so that was sort of our first step in saying SEO is not going to be enough; what we think is going to happen is most of these companies doing these sort of individual components of marketing are going to be doing them all./p
pSo then the second thing which is really what we’re dealing with now is so where is it going now? What is it that people need and I would say we’re just sticking to how we approached it all along which is we’re basically talking to the people who are doing the work out there. We’re talking to the agencies, the individuals, the experts and we’re asking them, what are your problems? Like, what are the problems that are still not being solved even just on the most practical level?/p
pAnd so we take that information and we look at what we built and we go, okay, so how can we solve that problem with Raven? And that contributes a whole lot to at least our own roadmap. Taylor might want to talk more about sort of the future of things./p
pTaylor Pratt:Yeah and building off of what Jon’s saying, when it comes to figuring out what I should be studying or reporting on I think we’re seeing, especially like Jon said with social getting more into search, people having to turn to pay-for-click to get more data, having to study all disciplines of online marketing you can’t just make the right call just by looking at what you can see in your analytics from an SEO perspective./p
pAnd so I think what we’re seeing with people are that they’re realizing, hey, I could be doing a lot better if I don’t just look at my own stuff. I want to see what keywords are performing at the highest level on the pay-per-click side. I want to see what our audience is talking about on our fan page and on our Twitter account so that I know what topics I should be writing about that’s going to get the most engagement./p
pAnd so I think we’re moving towards a full landscape of online marketing and services and it’s forcing SEO’s to try and become more knowledgeable in those others fields as well./p
pAnd, as a result, you know, that’s really what we were trying to do with Raven which was bringing together all that data so that you can be looking at it easily. Maybe I don’t actually have to do the work when it comes to pay-per-click but I need to understand it and I need to know what I can take from that to improve my own SEO campaign./p
pAnd so really when it comes to reporting and actually managing that process we need people to be a lot more versatile in their skills, they can’t just be focused on one niche anymore./p
pstrongEric: Those are all great points. I think too you guys must run into stuff like I think you could probably take ten people who are knowledgeable or successful with SEO that have been doing it for a while and they probably get four or five different opinions on what exactly SEO is. Is it…does it stop at rankings or does it stop at, you know, rankings plus traffic plus conversions plus leveraging all of the other data that you talked about. So that must be quite at challenge because I’m sure you guys have experience in the industry obviously and talking with some of the folks that you talk about, you must get a lot of different opinions on what exactly SEO is./strong/p
pJon Henshaw: Definitely. And you mentioned ranking which has been traditionally sort of a core component of what people think of when they’re doing SEO and what they’re actually reporting on to their clients./p
pAnd the thing is, is that what ranking was a few years ago, it’s not the same as it is today. And I think we know why which is the search engines, particularly Google, it just depends on who you are, if you’re logged in with your account, where you are, now obviously who you’re connected with with G+ and because of all of those things who knows what results you’re going to – who knows what the results are going to be that you’re going to get./p
pAnd so what’s happening in sort of the rank checking world is it’s getting really just unpredictable. I mean, you don’t know what you’re going to get. You have people at one end, and one of the biggest frustrations that I know rank checkers have, and I know this because we used to check them ourselves and now we, of course, use Authority Labs but I think all of them have the difficulty of that customer saying, well, this isn’t what I’m seeing!/p
pAnd so I think it’s going to get worse and worse. And so I think what’s changed with ranking is that ranking has become, or should be becoming, less important of a metric. And, instead the focus should be on organic referrals because that’s really the most reliable thing that you can look at and report on./p
pSo, in other words, if I were an agency or just even an individual SEO guy who was doing work for a customer I would make the metric be, am I increasing your organic traffic instead of where do I rank for your pet term? You know, and I think that’s the biggest change. That’s what I’ve seen over the past few years. There’s still a lot of resistance to that just because they don’t want it to be true but I think the reality is, is that rank checking is still going to be important because it still gives you an indication of health and gives you some idea of sort of how you’re performing even if it’s going to get to a point where it could never be 100% accurate./p
pSo it’ll still play a role and we’re still going to keep having that data in our system but the big, big factor is going to be actually what Google Analytics is providing and whatever stacks package you use./p
pAnd to be able to say that we increased your organic traffic by 100% and on top of that your conversions went up. I think that’s becoming more important. /p
pstrongEric: Right, yeah. Do you guys have any plans to integrate that stuff? You do work with Authority Labs. Do they do a lot of stuff with their incorporating universal results that you guys might be able to do because I know some of the software tools do that? That could be helpful/strong/p
pI think especially on the agency side of things you find that people tend to lead their value add with rankings, right? I mean, you can but that’s a big mistake. If anything, if you’re going to have conversations about rankings you have to attach an element of conversion optimization to that too you can’t just leave it at the door. /p
pJon Henshaw: Yeah, and that’s something that we’re talking to Authority Labs with right now and they actually do provide universal results with the data and they’re trying to update the API that we’re using so we can actually present that. /p
pSo as soon as we can present that we’re going to and then on top of that as far as where we’re taking things in the future, we’re going to be supporting the ability to edit your ranking results, the ability to import ranking results from other third parties. So, yeah, so we’re working on that, it’s not available right now, but that is something that we know people have been asking for, for quite a while. /p
pstrongEric: Okay. So, we talked about all of these things with how the sort of element of ranking being less and less of a flagship sort of metric to report, at least on client sites or even on sites that SEO’s might run themselves, affiliate sites, or sites where revenue is driven by AdSense or something to that affect. /strong/p
pBut I think what a lot of people would be interested to know, and I love getting opinions on this from a bunch of people all across the industry, that if you were starting in an SEO company today how would you approach the key elements of the business, you know, what are the core competencies that you think not only that are effective, but I think there’s something a disconnect between what is actually or what should be a core competency for an SEO firm, you know, link outreach, all of these things, but some of those things are hard to quantify to a client./p
pYou know, we’ve reached out to 400 sites and we obtained two links. Well, that can be a bit difficult to report on but with things like link outreach or just good old fashioned PR, social development, community building, rankings, conversions, all of those things, what would you promote to your clients as the value add that your agency or your company would bring to the table?/p
pTaylor Pratt: You know, if it were me back in my agency days what we tried to focus on was… we all say that we want to focus on conversions but I think getting even more specific than that, having specific interaction goals for different aspects of your organic traffic. So what I’d probably do is talk about how we look at both branded and non-branded traffic and we separate them. I want to have specific goals for my branded traffic that I expect them to be able to complete if they came to us organically./p
pAnd then from a non-branded standpoint, I want to be able to do the exact same things. And building off of what we talked about earlier I think going into those meetings now and telling them, hey, you know, looking at releases like when Google announced the whole not provided thing, as an agency I need to be prepared to say to my client, well, you know what, we have a work around for that. We have a pay-per-click campaign that’s going so we can still get the traffic insight behind each keyword so we know which ones we should be focusing on the most./p
pAnd I think presenting it to the client as you being able to adapt to the changing market and you not focusing just on one individual aspect is really going to be what shows them that they should be going with you over somebody else./p
pstrongEric: Right, yeah, and I think those are good points. Because I see it too, sometimes people are starting an agency, they look for things that they can…you know, like rankings are still such a big thing and I know there was some press last year about how rankings are dead. I know Jon wrote a post kind of countering that and I did as well. I don’t think that’s the case either but I think it seems like people are still, or in some cases, leading with rankings. But the problem is it takes X amount of months to get there for some terms and then you find out that the traffic isn’t there in the first place really if you’re relying on keyword tools./strong/p
pSo, that’s interesting because I think right now we have a lot of people that read this blog and in the community that sort of run their own sites a little bit and then you’ve got people who are doing some client work. Are you seeing more of an increase in folks who maybe in the past where just sort of individual SEO’s that are now filtering over to taking on some more client stuff?/p
pTaylor Pratt: Yeah, you know, I can speak for myself personally. I’m starting to take over Raven’s pay-per-click work and going into it I knew enough just pretty much what any SEO would know, pretty much what any SEO would know about pay-per-click./p
pI wouldn’t know enough to run a campaign from start to finish so starting to ramp up on that. And it’s interesting that over the last couple of months, really since not provided or at least have seen, a lot more articles around pay-per-click showing up on industry blogs. It’s starting to get a lot more coverage and I think people are starting to realize that, hey, I could pretty much get more concrete results out of my SEO program if I would just focus a little bit more time in these other areas./p
pBecause, like you said around figuring out that, hey, if I’m targeting one keyword and a couple of months down the line once I start ranking for it, I’m not getting the traffic I expected, well, we could have identified that if we just ran a traditional test just to see./p
pI mean, you can run pay-per-click tests without even getting clicks. I just want to see how many impressions I can get so I can estimate how much traffic I could potentially get if I was ranking for that keyword./p
pSo trying to get a better fit or a better feel for those numbers, there’s a lot that you could be doing with that./p
p Eric: Yeah, absolutely. The pay-per-click is absolutely the best keyword keyword research tool. So when you think of all of the time you spend digging through the AdWords keywords tool and then digging through like Wordtracker or other competitive research tools, if you took a few hundred bucks and threw it at PPC just for accidental clicks right and you threw a pay-per-click campaign up with all the keywords that you’re looking at you’d be much better off./p
pJon Henshaw: And, I was going to throw out that of course Google has done an excellent job of positioning it as one of your best options./p
pstrongEric: Yeah, yeah (laugh). And they’re certainly not shy about throwing out those coupons either./strong/p
pTaylor Pratt: No, they play me like a fiddle, that’s for sure!/p
pstrongEric: Yeah. I think the big thing, you know, in addition to on the SEO side of things with all of the stuff that Google’s been doing and continues to do especially with the Plus 1 sort of approach, is the evolution of link building where a lot of times it’s just been basic. Where we have all of these sort of tactics that have been working for a long time that I think it can be effective but I think if you’re looking mid to long-term on trying to build out, if you run your own sites or even clients that you need to see that it is almost evolving into like a sales and PR type of role./strong/p
pDo you think it’s become a little bit less about pure link metrics like page rank or some of the other stuff that’s out there like the (MAS) rank, (MAS) trust follow versus no follow or somewhere in the middle but I think it’s definitely evolved towards being more of a relationship type of approach and a PR type of approach. I’d be interested to hear what you have to say about that. /p
pJon Henshaw: Yeah, I totally agree. If you look back on even the very early days of link building it was basically build a link anywhere you can get it. I mean, it didn’t even matter what site it was, it didn’t matter where it was on the page, then as that evolved Google evolved with that. It ended up becoming, well, you may not want it on the footer or you may want it in a different place or you might want to have it on a relevant page. There’s still many industries, many site types that I would say even up to today, because I still hear stories from some pretty hardcore people out there that are like, oh yeah, footer links are still well alive for my particular thing. /p
pBut I think for the most part, for most people, you hit the nail on the head with it’s about relationships. And so that’s basically where we talk about predicting where things are going, well, we’re seeing it as it’s already there and it’s only going to increase as far as what’s important in link building is going to be building relationships with site owners, with editors, it will also be extremely important to build relationships socially so that you’re connected with people who have some degree of influence socially. And so with that one of the things that you said is, is it important to care about (MAS) rank or page rank or any of these other things? And I think it still is important. So – and the way I approach it, which I think is a fairly practical way, is it’s important to have as many pieces of data and metrics as possible. /p
pIt’s the same reason why I think that rank checking will remain important to some extent. I think the same is true with these different metrics. It’s not going to be, nor should it be, the main thing that you focus on. The main thing that you should focus on, in my opinion, are relationships with people who are relevant to what you’re trying to market. /p
pAnd that’s where what you just mentioned a second ago, that’s where PR comes in. It’s very PR-like. So that’s where I think it’s going and that’s what we’re going to be focusing on but we’re going to continue to include those other metrics just because I think they help you see the full picture so that, for example, when you’re doing research, trying to find sites or people that you want to connect with, that data really kind of helps round out your decision like, okay, this is all of the things that kind of get in here and even what I’m just looking at and making a judgment on, looks pretty good. I think I’m going to contact this person./p
pstrongEric: Like when I look for people that I might want to bring on board to do some link building for some sites it’s almost like you ignore, to a degree, SEO experience and what you’re focusing on is, is this person salesy? Are they good at PR? I mean, those are – where before it was more of a like hunker down and look for – I’ll reverse engineer this and that and pull this report, which is all still important certainly /strong/p
pJon Henshaw: Right./p
pstrongEric: But for those really premium type links that I think competition can’t get you really ought to have folks like that going forward./strong/p
pJon Henshaw: And I think content should be thrown out there too which is..and I don’t mean as if you write good content you will rank type of thing but more along the lines of one of the best link building outreach methods is guest blogging. And if you can present yourself in a way that is one that’s not too salesy, but, two, can really, really benefit that site meaning you better have a good writer on staff or somebody hired on a contract basis, the – it’s ultraistic in the sense that I can get you something really good./p
pIn fact, I’m going to go out of my way and I’m going to spend over $15 dollars on something. I might spend $100 or $200 buck to have a really good article put on somebody else’s site with the idea that I’m going to have a decent link to my site. It’ll be on a relevant site. So that to me is a pretty important component and that’s something that we focused on too and we’re going to continue to focus on. So, for example, we’ve automated some of that which is – you can go through Textbroker on Raven or you can have your own writers on staff or through contract and then they can log in and they can save the articles that they write and our content manager./p
pstrongEric: Yeah, definitely – content, yeah absolutely. That’s a great feature of Raven too. The example that I give sometimes in the forums when people ask about creating…how do we create a piece of content that’s time tested. Like, I always give the example of David Mihm who creates the local search ranking sites. You can do something like that for your industry, I mean, just think of things like that. Most industries you can come up with something that the competition isn’t doing and then you just – you almost don’t have to significantly promote it after the first couple of times. People just naturally look for it. So, yeah, that’s definitely a big piece there. /strong/p
pAnd I think, you know, like I said before, we have a lot of folks inside the forums and that read the blog that are – it’s such a hybrid of people who market their own sites and they monetize it in different ways. They’ve got clients and all of these other things. We always talk about how creating your own product, ultimately, you know, it typically ends up being the most rewarding in the long run, certainly other methods can significantly increase your companies revenue or an individual Web masters revenue. But, when we talk about long-term things and not relying on affiliate networks or AdSense serving or things like that we talk about products and I think, you know, Raven is a great case study in identifying a particular market, the need of a market, creating the product and then just marketing it./p
pBecause, I think, sometimes people miss that. It’s such a multi-step approach, it’s not just find a market and exploit it with a great product. It’s, you have to – there’s another piece to it which is the marketing which I think Raven does an excellent job on. So, what I would like to hear from you guys is, can you give us some insight into how you sort of went from thinking about Raven to developing it to marketing it and keep improving on it because that’s the other piece too. It’s not just create a product and dump it in the market and hope people buy it and never touch it again. You know, just some of the biggest hurdles you face, pitfalls and best practices./p
pJon Henshaw: Sure, I can talk from a marketing standpoint of Raven since that’s what my role is here. I joined Raven about two years ago and we had a pretty good idea with how we wanted to actually end up marketing the product and the first year that I was here, what we wanted to focus on was really cementing ourselves as a tool in the SEO industry. We wanted to let everyone know that these were powerful tools, they were things that they could rely on and we wanted to be known as an authority in that market. And last year what we really spent our time doing was focusing on becoming more of a workflow and collaboration tool. While we had these features before we needed to make it known that, hey, if you work with a team, if you want to collaborate on products with your clients or if you have a couple of contractors that you’re outsourcing stuff to, this is a tool that will make that easier and so that’s really our 2011 messaging was really focusing heavily on that./p
pBut now what we run into is, Raven does more than just SEO. We have social media tools, pay-per-click tools, email is integrated into there so how do we now market to everyone and convince them that we’re not just Raven SEO tools, we’re Raven internet marketing tools? And I think that’s really what our focus is going to be in 2012 is showing them that, one, you need to have a toolset that is flexible in all of those different areas and, two, that Raven actually fits those needs, we’re not just SEO tools anymore./p
pJon Henshaw: I think from a product standpoint we really started off working with other agencies and, in fact, we launched it and took it back offline, in a sense into like a very private beta for about six to nine months and we worked just side-by-side with several agencies; some in the US and some in the UK and they really helped us refine how the link manager should work and the types of things that need to be reported on. And then from there it was….br /strongEric:I think we lost him./strong/p
pTaylor Pratt:Oh no./p
pstrongEric: Just wait for him to sign back on here. Just to continue talking about the marketing side of things a little bit, do you find that once you’ve – when you start the marketing initially it seems like that’s a good bit of work but it also seems like on the other end it’s almost just as much work after you sort of establish yourself in the industry you’ve got to keep, you know, pushing and going to all of these different events and all of these other things./strong/p
pJon Henshaw: (completely unaware of the drop off :D ): I won’t say because there are some secrets, you know. And so, you know, while Taylor and the marketing team, it’s there job to really let people understand what the product does. It’s our job, at least on the product side, to figure out is the product solving the problems that need to be solved in the market? And so if we’re trying to approach SEO and social and (PBS) and other areas, are we making – you know, they use our software, are we making it harder for them or are we making it easier for them? And of course we want to make it so that it’s a no-brainer. It’s, by then, simply using it and putting their team members on there they’re saving money./p
pNot only are they saving money they’re managing their data better and they’re able to report the information easier to themselves or to their client and so that’s sort of a high-level example without a whole lot of details. But, that’s really what we’re focused on is how can we make this easier, at the same time how can we make it more robust and do all of the things that people need it to do, how can we solve problems that are not being solved by anybody on the market right now? And that’s really what we’re focused on. And, of course, all of that includes trying to absorb all of the different feature requests which also gives us an idea of what people really need. It’s not just – we don’t have to just sit there and guess or dream up something on our own in a bubble. The feature requests are something that’s extremely helpful and we have a lot of them. We have people who use the system intensely and everyday and they come up with some pretty amazing ideas./p
pstrongEric: I think we cut out there a little bit after the beta discussion. But I think the gist of it is when people talk about creating products it’s so much more involved than just develop, market and sell, right? I mean it’s – and I think we’re aware of that but I think when people hear the six to nine months that you took in beta and you were working with these other agencies, I think sometimes that’s the point that gets missed. Because you look at Raven and it’s like such a – the interface is so clean, it’s so easy to use that people think, wow, that’s pretty simple right? I mean, that’s the whole – I think its (basic) competitors have been thinking for such a long time. It’s so simple and easy, I could do that, right? /strong/p
pJon Henshaw: I would say our biggest problem and the one that we’re looking to solve this year is while you are somebody who knows exactly what you’re doing, you know and when you get in there you know how to use the system, ah, that’s simple. This does – I understand the terminology and what’s going on here. It’s not for the novice and so it’s funny because there’s that weird dichotomy there. And so you have somebody else that comes in and says this is the most complicated thing I’ve ever seen in my life. /p
pI mean, and that’s some of the cancellation messages that we get. It was like, what are you trying to do? And so our big – one of our big initiatives this year is to put education in place for those people and also for teams. We have a lot of agencies that are wanting the ability to say, hey, I really love what you’re doing here, I get it. /p
pI want my team to be on here but I need training. And so those are things that we’re working on and then the other thing, on the product side, is incorporating more contextual help and so we’ve started to slowly roll out what we’re calling the help box and so it’s the first time that we’ve ever been to a tool in the system. You actually see this help box that pushes down everything else and that gives you a brief description, it gives you a really quick screen cast of what the tool does and then it also links you out to the knowledge base. So, those are things that as we grow and we sit back and kind of go, okay, where are we loosing people? Where are they getting confused? We know that that’s something that we really have to work on./p
pTaylor Pratt: And there’s an overlap with that with marketing too. I mean, we need to be teaching people how to use the tools. We’re trying to do that more on the blog. You know, we also have that stance that we’re not going to tell you how to do your job but we need to show you the benefits of using Raven when you are doing your job. And so like Jon said, that education, I think, is really going to be helpful for users who are still trying to figure out, all right, well, what’s the logic behind this? Why is it important that these two tools are working together and we’re trying to show that both within the tool itself but then outside too. So if you are just trying to evaluate it or you are looking for a tool and you’re not sure if Raven does that, hopefully we’ll be able to demonstrate that through our blog posts, our training Webinars what have you./p
pstrongEric: So, for 2012 are there any – you know, I’m sure no competitors are listening so feel free to just lay it all out there. What – 2012, any product teases we can get? Anything you think that people might be interested in?/strong/p
pJon Henshaw: Yeah, I’ll tell you a few things that I’ve publicly talked about and then I’ll hint towards one thing and then there are still several big things that I will not give a clue to that we’re working on./p
pstrongEric: Fair enough :) /strong/p
pJon Henshaw: And I will say also, if you go to our blog I think maybe in January or December I wrote an open letter to Raven customers and there’s a really good rundown of all of the things that we did in 2011 and it’s huge. I was actually shocked when I wrote it. I was like, I had no idea that we did all of this. It was a good year!br /strongEric: Yeah. /strong/p
pJon Henshaw: But the things that we’re going to be doing in 2012 I’m very confident is going to be a bigger year than 2011. And the other thing that makes me confident about that is we’ve been ramping up on developers. We are truly a software company now and we, I think, (this year) we’ve just had two developers start yesterday, I haven’t even seen them yet, but it’s something that we’re getting even more aggressive on so I’m excited about that. The things that I can easily tell you about that we’re going to be working on releasing soon is we have another major social update coming down the pipeline so when we launched our social stream, real time social streams, social monitoring, it didn’t have everything I wanted but we did want to release it by (unintelligible) 32.19 so we had sort of finishing up some really awesome features that didn’t quite make it in November will be coming out pretty soon./p
pWe are actively working on the Chrome toolbar, that got delayed for several months but that is back on schedule. But you’re going to see a lot of improvements in the social area particularly with Facebook and Twitter and the (stream). We’re going to be doing more improvements on our AdWords management tool, so you’ll see a lot of nice new things coming down there. We should be adding G+ and LinkedIn this year, probably first half of the year and we’re also working on the ranking result importing which I mentioned earlier in the end of the year./p
pSo, those are things that are more public. The one hint, the on thing that I will throw out there, just because it’s really relevant to the conversation we’ve been having is we are focusing on relationships in a way that we haven’t done in the system before. So there’s going to be something exciting coming down the pipeline in regards to that as far as helping people who do link building outreach and other areas. So that’s coming. I expect it in the first half of this year and that’s something I’m really excited about./p
pstrongEric: Yeah, that definitely sounds interesting, I’ll be watching for that. Well, it sounds like you’ve got a lot to do so I won’t keep you much longer. I just wanted to take a moment to thank you guys for hoping on today. I’m going to get this up on the blog here. We’ll put it in mp3 format so people can listen to it whenever they want, we’ll get all of the text up there. For all of you listening out there, certainly give Raven a shot. I think you guys are still running 30-day trials, right?/strong/p
pTaylor Pratt: Oh yeah. /p
pstrongstrongEric: Definitely work with it a little bit. I personally have gone back and forth. I think a lot of folks maybe who are used to using software and things like that it might take an adjustment or two but I can personally let folks listening know that I’m going to put a lot more of my stuff in there. I just think it really just cuts down on a lot of the manual work; these crazy spreadsheets and my Dropbox is exploding and it’s insane but definitely work with it and give it a shot. /strong/strong/p
pIt’s going to be new especially to folks I think that do a lot of stuff that I might be doing with the software and stuff but it’ll make your life a lot easier and the reporting is unreal. So, certainly give it a shot and, again, thanks to Jon and Taylor for hopping on with us today! /p
pTaylor Pratt:Thanks for having us. /p
pJon Henshaw: Thanks for having us./p
pstrongEric: All right guys, take care. /strong/p
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div class=field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hiddendiv class=field-itemsdiv class=field-item evenpGoogle announced they rolled out a href=http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement.htmltheir anti-overly-aggressive-ads algorithm/a. They a href=http://searchengineland.com/too-many-ads-above-the-fold-now-penalized-by-googles-page-layout-algo-108613didn’t give a specific %/a on how much of the above the fold content can be ads, but suggest a href=http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/using their browser preview tool/a. Using that tool a href=http://www.seobook.com/images/instantsearch/adwords-love.jpgon Google.com’s search results/a would of course score it as a spam site, but for some small AdSense webmasters that avoided Panda, Google may have drew first blood. /p
h2Much Quicker Updates/h2
pWith a limited number of recoveries nearly a year after Panda, the first bite might seem like a big concern, however the too many ads algorithm updates far more frequently than Panda does:/p
blockquotepIf you decide to update your page layout, the page layout algorithm will automatically reflect the changes as we re-crawl and process enough pages from your site to assess the changes. How long that takes will depend on several factors, including the number of pages on your site and how efficiently Googlebot can crawl the content. On a typical website, it can take several weeks for Googlebot to crawl and process enough pages to reflect layout changes on the site./p/blockquote
pAnd for those who got hit by Panda then tried to make up for those lower ad revenues with more AdSense ad units, they probably just got served round #2 of Panda Express. ;) /p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/pandaxpress.jpg //p
h2Is it Screen Layout, or Something Else?/h2
pIn the past Google a href=http://andrewhansen.name/affiliate-marketing/google-checkmates-me-but-reveals-internal-secrets/suggested to a nuked AdWords advertiser/a that more of his above-the-fold real estate should be content than ads. /p
pHowever Google has such a rich data set with AdSense that I don’t think they would just look at layout. If I were them I would factor in all sorts of metrics like/p
ulliAdSense CTR
/liliaverage page views per visitor
/lilirepeat visits amp; brand searches
/lilibounce rate
/liliclickstream data from Chrome amp; the Google toolbar (so even if you are using other ad networks, they can still sample the data)/li/ulpSome sites are primarily driven off of mobile views while other sites might be seen on large monitors. When Google sees every page load amp; measures the CTRs, tacking actual user response is better than guestimating it./p
pThey could come up with some pretty good metrics from those amp; then for any high traffic/high earning site they could manually review them to see if they deserve to get hit or not amp; adjust + refine the algorithm until those edge cases disappeared. Google’s lack of credible competition in contextual amp; display ads means they can negotiate pretty tough terms with publishers that they feel are not adding enough value to the ecosystem./p
h2It’s Not Just Algorithms Cleaning Up AdSense/h2
pIn addition to these sorts of algorithms, over the past year they have manually hit networks of sites with a href=http://www.seobook.com/redefining-doorway-pagesthe doorway pages label/a amp; disabled ad serving on sites or entire accounts where they felt there was a bit too much arbitrage. One of our SEO Book members pointed me to a href=http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense/thread?tid=6dfde33304de1376amp;hl=enthis thread where a lot of Pakistani AdSense accounts got torched/a last October amp; another sent me a sample termination email from Google a href=http://www.alltipsandtricks.com/i-lost-my-adsense-account-should-i-buy-another-one-as-seen-in-google-adwords-ads/similar to this one/a:/p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/adsense-screw-off.png //p
pNotice that in the above:/p
ulliThere was no claim of click fraud, copyright issues, or anything like that.
/liliThere was no claim of advertiser complaints.
/liliGoogle offers no customer support phone number, no you might want to work on this advice, doesn’t list which of the sites in the account they felt could be improved, and RETROACTIVELY nuked past earnings … depending on where it is in the schedule that can amount to anywhere from 30 to 50+ days (I remember Teeceo mentioned how they waited until the day before the AdSense payday to smoke his stuff way back in the day to have maximum impact!)/li/ulpOn a href=http://investor.google.com/earnings/2011/Q4_google_earnings.htmlGoogle’s latest quarterly earnings call/a they highlighted how year on year Google’s revenues were up 25% but the network revenues only grew at 15%. They also explained the slower network revenue growth as being associated with improved search quality amp; algorithm updates like Panda. /p
pLeft unsaid in such a statement was that until those algorithms rolled out, Google admitted they funded spam. ;) The whole AdSense amp; content farm problem was created through a href=http://www.seobook.com/learn-seo/collateral-damage.phpincentive structures with unintended consequences/a. /p
h2Is the Garbage Disappearing, or Just Moving to a New Landfill?/h2
pIf you track what is going on with the Google+ over-promotion (long overdue post coming on that front shortly!) or how a href=http://www.seobook.com/follow-the-moneyGoogle is still pre-paying Demand Media to upload video content to Youtube/a, Google still may be funding the same model, but doing so while gaining a tighter control of relevancy so they can better sort good stuff from crap (when you host content amp; track user response you have all the metrics in the world to determine how relatively good you think it is). If they over-promote these sites then in the short run they create the same skewed business model problem./p
pSure hosting the user experience makes it easier to sort the wheat from the chaff, but the other big risk here is the impact on the rest of the publishing ecosystem. There will be lots of thin spam from popular people on Google+ (anyone launched a celebrity-focused Pay-Per-Plus site yet?) amp; in-depth editorial content might not be economically feasible in certain categories where there literally is no organic SERP above the fold.br /img src=http://www.seobook.com/images/ads-ads-ads.gif //p
pI will complement them on their efforts to clean up some of the worst offenses (from the prior generation of bad incentives). If you were hit by it, Panda was every bit as big/brutal as the famous Florida update. If this update is anything near as significant as the Panda update (in how it impacts smaller independent webmasters) then it is going to force more of them/us to move up the value chain. /p
pThat may mean pain in the short run, but (for those who take it as a wake up call to develop brand amp; organic non-search traffic streams) far more rewards in the longrun for those who remain after the herd is thinned. /p
h2Working for The Company/h2
pLarry Page’s view on a href=http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/01/19/best-companies-google-larry-page/working for emthe company/em:/a/p
blockquotepMy grandfather was an autoworker, and I have a weapon he manufactured to protect himself from the company that he would carry to work. It’s a big iron pipe with a hunk of lead on the head. I think about how far we’ve come as companies from those days, where workers had to protect themselves from the company. /p/blockquote
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/google-site-review.jpg //p
pI think for many SEOs the idea of starting over is painful, but the best SEOs often enjoy the forced evolution amp; the game of it all. They don’t roll over amp; play dead or a href=http://www.seobook.com/forget-seoemforget SEO/em/a. And if Google didn’t put hard resets in every once in a while, then the big hedge funds would be mopping up the SERPs and cleaning our clocks with the help of Helicopter Ben. /p
h2Areas For Improvement/h2
pOf course this could be taken as a positive post toward Google (and it mostly is), but I don’t want to come across as a fanboi, so I thought I should do a shout out to a couple things they still need to fix in order to be consistent:/p
ulliIf Google is going to tell people that thick deep content is needed to gain sustainable exposure then they shouldn’t be ranking thin + pages in the SERPs just because it is a Google product. Even people who have *always* given Google the benefit of the doubt (full on fanbois) found the Google+ placement in the SERPs distasteful.
/liliGoogle’s AdSense is still sending out some of those automated you are leaving money on the table styled emails reminding publishers to use 3 ad units. If such behavior may lead to a smoke job, then the recommendation shouldn’t be offered in the first place. Right below the use 3 ad units there needs to be a proceed with caution styled link (in red) that links to the recent too many ads post.
/liliOld case studies that are no longer in line with best practices in the current market should have some sort of notice/notification added to them so new webmasters don’t get the wrong idea.
/liliSome of a href=https://support.google.com/adsense/bin/answer.py?hl=enamp;answer=187653amp;topic=29880amp;ctx=topicthe AdSense heatmaps/a are roadmaps to penalization. These should have been fixed before yesterday’s announcement, but if they are still up there next week then Google is willfully amp; intentionally trying to destroy any small business owner that follows that best practice advice.br /img src=http://www.seobook.com/images/suggested-adsense.png //li/ulh2Your Feedback Needed/h2
pSince this update impacted far fewer sites than the Panda update, there are fewer sample/example sites. Did any of your websites get hit? If so, how would you describe …/p
ulliyour ad layout
/liliyour ad CTR
/liliyou mode of monetization (AdSense, other, both)
/lilithe level of impact on your site from the update/li/ul/div/div/divdiv class=field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-4 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-abovediv class=field-labelCategories:nbsp;/divdiv class=field-itemsdiv class=field-item evena href=http://www.seobook.com/archives/cat_contextual_advertising.shtmlcontextual advertising/a/div/div/div

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div class=field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hiddendiv class=field-itemsdiv class=field-item evenpa href=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5ba3465c-3f8c-11e1-ad6a-00144feab49a.html#ixzz1joIJeNtNThis/a is an interesting play:/p
blockquotepBBVA, Spain’s second-largest bank by assets, is teaming up with Google to use its search engine results to provide advanced forecasts of hotel and tourism demand in the country, part of a plan to market real-time economic indicators to its clients./p
pThe bank and internet group will announce on Monday a scheme called the “BBVA-Google tourism activity in Spain indicator”. The first pilot project has focused on measuring advance demand for hotel stays and tourism interest in Spain by using search engine data./p/blockquote
pPrivate investors get to see that search data before anyone else does. If you have a retirement plan invested in stocks, then you are at an asymmetrical information disadvantage because Google is providing an in-depth look at that search data to competing investors who can trade on the information before it is public. /p
pIs search traffic a big deal? Is there enough signal there to matter? Yes. And yes./p
pI read an investment report earlier today about a company where the hedge fund’s rating amp; valuation was largely based on / justified by the SEO strategy of the underlying company amp; their current Google rankings…the report even had keyword ranking charts in it!/p
pWas Google paid for giving BBVA access to the above data? Or was it thrown in as a freebie in exchange for a href=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16486796getting over 100,000 BBVA workers to switch to the cloud amp; emgo Google/em on the enterprise software front/a? /p
pIf Google has over 90% search marketshare in many EU countries amp; is willing to leverage proprietary search data to win contracts in other fields, how does anyone compete against that emdata bundling/em?/p
pFurther, think of all the damage hedge funds amp; huge banks have done a href=http://notthetreasuryview.blogspot.com/2012/01/recessions-and-recoveries-historical.htmlto societies the globe over/a this past decade amp; now Google is directly helping the bad guys./p
pThat is Google’s approach to their proprietary information: if you invest in their ecosystem and use their analytics tools you can’t get your own analytics data (a href=http://www.seobook.com/false-privacy-claimsas they have to protect user privacy/a), but they will gladly strongsell that same data off to someone else/strong. /p
pIf there is no public outrage at this test then the data units will start getting more granular. Rather than measuring categories Google may sell data on a per-site or per-company basis. Looking at how Google has consistently disintermediated partners everywhere else, if Google is feeling bold they may suggest that selling the data to others also permits Google to trade on the data as well. /p
pWhat’s far scarier than an angry search engineer looking at your large paid link buy or a href=http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_osm_vandalism.phpa rogue Google contractor hacking up your site/a? A Google hedge fund with a substantial short position on your stock. :D /p
pRecall that Eric Schmidt has stated:/p
blockquotepOne day we had a conversation where we figured we could just try and predict the stock market… Eric Schmidt continues, and then strongwe decided it was illegal/strong. So we stopped doing that./p/blockquote
pBased on Mr. Schmidt’s above comment, is it reasonable that Google now profits off leveraging their data for securities analysis? What made the above clearly illegal amp; what is going on now above board? What’s the difference between them? a href=http://www.seobook.com/google-caught-sting-operation-kenyaPerhaps a contractor layer/a?/p
pAt the same time a href=http://adage.com/article/digital/google-stocks-print-outdoor-ads-privacy-focused-campaign/232133/Google runs sweeping ad campaigns reminding people how Google protects them online/a, while hosting banking data in the cloud amp; making themselves a juicier hacking target. /p
pGoogle a href=http://www.ncew.org/index.php?src=newsamp;srctype=detailamp;category=Conventionamp;refno=224warns publishers against using paywalls embecause it is a poor user experience/em/a while a href=http://mertsahinoglu.com/google-changes-short-term-loan-market-overnight/wiping out competing lead aggreagtors with new guidelines that are likely impossible to comply with/a. Sites like Highbeam Research get smoked by algorithms like Panda amp; the Google works with the folks who already have the legislature in their pocket to get them more data. The lesson here from Google is to provide a clean front end user experience and then sell the data back out the other end./p
pa href=http://www.adbusters.org/content/everything-fine-keep-shoppingEverything is fine. Keep shopping/a (on Google.com + your Android phone)…Google will ensure the data is monetized to its full potential./p
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div class=field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hiddendiv class=field-itemsdiv class=field-item evenpWow…this is pretty…um…a href=http://www.seobook.com/transparencytransparent/a./p
pAccording to a href=http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-thinking/this post/a, Google was caught scraping Mocality, calling the listed businesses, soliciting that they move to Google Get Your Business Online, disparaged the directory they were scraping in the client call, and then lied about having the permission of the directory they were scraping to try to con businesses into working with Google. /p
pA few select quotes:/p
blockquotepThere are absolutely no costs, and this will be agreed on before it’s put on… No one will come and tell you like Mocality used to do, someone tells you it’s free and then they come to ask for money. You know that Google doesn’t fool around here.br /
…br /
Mocality used to charge people and many of the people who used to be in Mocality we have taken them and transferred them here. Didn’t we also find you on Mocality?br /
…br /
Ai…they used to…but some people didn’t used to pay. They [Mocality] used to go and ask people to pay them around Ksh. 20,000 and people refused. It was things like that.)/p/blockquote
pGoogle’s business model *is* buying or building things that are free and then later pulling back features and/or sneaking costs in on them. Whether it be clubbing Android carriers with compatibility, saying search ads are evil then placing them everywhere, Google Maps API terms changes, terms changes on the Google AdWords API, Google hotel place listings with endless price ads, or emkeyword (not provided)/em in web analytics while trying to force you to register in Google Webmaster Tools to get any keyword data at all! /p
pAs if that wasn’t bad enough, when the fake business asked Google if Mokality was ok with this, this was the exchange:/p
blockquotepMy question is does Mocality know that you’re getting their con…our contacts from their directory?br /
~~~br /
Yah. They know. They know that very well. They have agreed with Google when they were on that thing./p/blockquote
pI have long stated that the difference between spam and quality content is who is spamming. With the recent widely criticized over-promotion of Google+ in the search results and this sort of scrape, lie amp; disintermediate the source Google’s true character is shining through. /p
pFacebook amp; Twitter are smart not to leave the barn door open for Google. /p
pAll information wants to be free and wrapped in Google’s ads. Or so the saying goes…until they can be trusted it won’t be. And they have done A LOT of brand damage to themselves in the past couple months. /p
pstrongUpdate:/strong Google was mortified emthat they got caught/em doing this:/p
blockquotepWe were mortified to learn that a team of people working on a Google project improperly used Mocality’s data and misrepresented our relationship with Mocality to encourage customers to create new websites. We’ve already unreservedly apologised to Mocality. We’re still investigating exactly how this happened, and as soon as we have all the facts, we’ll be taking the appropriate action with the people involved./p/blockquote
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div class=field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hiddendiv class=field-itemsdiv class=field-item evenpimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/link-outreach-boomerang.jpg width=375 height=267 //p
pSometimes it’s the little things in life….Boomerang for Gmail (and Outlook) is an incredibly useful, lightweight, powerful link outreach app./p
pLink building has a special place in the SEO industry. Beyond being one of the harder skill-sets to master and acquire, link building is likely the most important element of an SEO campaign./p
pLink building can also be the most difficult job to:/p
ulliScale internally and externally/li
liTrain someone to do efficiently/li
liOutsource/li
liHire someone for/li
/ulpHow to hire link builders and how to train them are certainly worthy of their own (upcoming) blog posts but this post is going to sing the praises of a Gmail and Outlook plugin that is essential for my link building workflow./p
h2Boomerang for Gmail (and Outlook)/h2
pOutside of the really cool name this plugin makes my workflow much more streamlined and efficient./p
pI don’t use Outlook so I’ll be focusing on the Gmail plug-in here. The Outlook plugin has most of the functionality of the Gmail edition (minus the Send On options) and you can check out the Outlook version a href=http://www.baydin.com/boomerang/index.htmlhere/a./p
pThe key benefits to using Boomerang (referencing the Gmail app going forward) are:/p
ulliSchedule emails to be sent at a later date/time/li
liSet reminders on emails so they pop back up at a specified time/li
liSet email reminders from your smartphone/li
/ulh2Send Emails Later/h2
pYou can install Boomerang for Gmail a href=http://www.boomerangGmail.com/here/a. You can use this for Gmail and Google apps and you’ll need to use Firefox or Chrome./p
pYou’ll manage Boomerang in two places; you can get to it in your Gmail toolbar:/p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/boomerang-top-toolbar.png width=339 height=133 //p
pFrom here you can access your scheduled messages to make any changes and access various help and how-to’s./p
pThe other area where you access Boomerang is in the email dialogue box. When you go to compose a new message or click to reply to one you’ll see the Boomerang button and see all the options available for sending the message:/p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/boomerang-send-later-compose.png width=444 height=415 //p
pIf you click on anything other than the specific time option at the bottom, the message is scheduled straight away./p
pIf you need to access your Boomerang-ed messages, just go back to the top Gmail toolbar, click Boomerang, and click access Scheduled messages./p
pThe other cool option when composing a new message is listed right below the subject line. From here you can have Boomerang return the message to your Inbox if no one replies or even if they do (marked as unread, starred, etc; these options can be changed in the access scheduled messages option on the top Gmail/Boomerang toolbar option):/p
pimg src=http://www.seobook.com/images/boomerang-below-subject-line.png width=621 height=351 //p
pYou have the exact same option when replying to messages as well./p
pThis is incredibly useful for a variety of link building actions such as:/p
ulliTracking the effectiveness of email pitches/li
liScheduling a bunch of pitches to line up with various promotions and outreach campaigns, in one shot/li
liUsing in conjunction with Gmail’s canned responses for scalable link outreach and management/li
liNever forget about a link prospect/li
liMake Gmail a self-contained link outreach system for staff members/li
liAvoid awkward time zone issues on email deliveries if you have staff outside your targeted market’s location/li
/ulh2Email Reminders/h2
pWhile the Send On features are the most useful for link outreach, the Reminder functions can be useful as well./p
pBoomerang has Gmail-like functionality in the way it auto-offers a solution. Here you can see I’ve got a Staples coupon that expires on January 16th. Boomerang is asking me if I’d like to return this to my inbox on that date:/p
p img src=http://www.seobook.com/images/boomerang-staples.png width=600 height=272 //p
pOutside of that functionality you can click the Boomerang reminder icon in the toolbar to get the reminder options available to you:/p
p img src=http://www.seobook.com/images/boomerang-reminder-emails.png width=485 height=431 //p
p So rather than setting something in your calendar or in your task management application, you can use Boomerang to re-populate the email when needed./p
pYou can add a condition to this and say that you only want to be reminded of the message at the selected time IF no one responds, simply by checking that option above. Otherwise, it will come back whether someone responds or not./p
p You can also use your iPhone, Blackberry, or Android to set up a message for yourself to arrive in your inbox at a certain time with their a href=http://www.boomerangGmail.com/mobile.htmlmobile option/a./p
h2Privacy Concerns/h2
pLetting an app access your data on mail.google.com shouldn’t be taken lightly. Here is what they say about privacy:/p
blockquotep
Why does Boomerang for Gmail need access to my email account?/p
pLike most other Gmail plugins, we need access to the full email data to be able to move and send messages. In our queries, we only store the headers of the message (subject, sender, time) so that we can uniquely ID the message you want to schedule. We don’t store any message text.br /
Does it mean you have my Gmail password?/p
pNo, we don’t have access to your Gmail password. You are authorizing through Google’s official OpenID system./p/blockquote
h2Sign Up for Boomerang/h2
p You can get a full-featured pro account trial for free, for 30 days a href=http://www.boomeranggmail.com/here/a. I am anxious for them to release the open/click tracking for even deeper link outreach analysis./p
p If you are looking for a more enterprise level solution, with team-wide tracking and monitoring, please check out our reviews of a href=http://www.seobook.com/comprehensive-review-buzzstreamBuzzstream/a and a href=http://www.seobook.com/raven-seo-tools-reviewRaven Tools/a./p
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