Rob’s Blog

Carousel Gallery Template for Picasa

Well again I am amazed at the some of the free photo gallery templates available on the web. This Picasa Carousel Template was created by Paul van Roekel with some help on the flash applet from Saverio Caminiti. I have never met either of these individuals but am blown away by the Carousel Gallery that they have created.
For details on the development of this template I suggest that you contact Paul as it is way over my head. And for the installation which is dead easy you can find instructions on his website.
What I can tell you is that it took me no longer than 5 minutes to install and export this gallery. I just grabbed a few photos from a recent trip to Cleveland and exported and I was finished.

Check out the Carousel Gallery here.

Ottawa Based Business Websites, Who gets the most traffic? Part 2

In order to further validate the busiest website in Ottawa I decided to check another sources, Alexa. Alexa provides similar data as Compete but as you will see below produces slightly different results.

According to these results, the rank is first gc.ca, corel.com and third canadapost.ca. I did to run the reports for all of the other Ottawa based business that I ran on Compete on the assumption that the magnitude of these sites is still much higher than the others in Ottawa.

From the looks of the Alexa data the gc.ca site is by far a winner but the trend for the site is definitely not positive. But I will say in Corel’s defense, there are some other sites not included here such as Ulead.com, Intervideo.com, WordPerfect.com, Designer.com, and many of the international websites.

Ottawa Based Business Websites, Who gets the most traffic?

Tonight I was wondering which Ottawa based business’ get the most traffic in comparison to each other. With companies like Corel, Nortel, Cognos, Canada Post and others we should have some good competition. So using the Site Analytics service from Compete Inc I decided to put the business listed on this Ottawa based companies list from Wikipedia to the test. I am not saying that this is a definitive list but it is definitely a start.

After reviewing the online traffic for many different websites it turns out that Corel.com and the Government of Canada Website are very close. With an honorable mention, third place finish going to Canada Post. Feel free to comment if you think that I have omitted a serious contender or if you think there is a flaw in the method.

Congratulations Corel, you have the busiest website in Ottawa according to the data provided by Compete.com

Holiday Merchandising, Black Friday, Cyber Monday

According to the Best Practices and Tips for a Successful Holiday in 2006 report from Shop.org each year consumers are starting their holiday shopping earlier and earlier in the season. If you have not seen this report I urge you to read it as it highlights which tactics are the most useful and most used based on survey results from a variety of retailers. I have highlighted some of key areas of the report below:

• Free Shipping - 79% of retailers will offer free shipping with conditions during the holiday period. Conditions will most likely come in the form of minimum order value.
• Email Marketing - Is viewed by the retailers surveyed as the number 1 tactic used to drive online sales with paid search following closely.
• Site Features and Shopping Tools - Buy online and pickup at the store and product customization are tied for first in this category.
• Catalog Mailings - This tactic is ahead of the rest by a good margin for those retailers with offline catalogs.
• Start of Holiday Shopping - Many online retailers said that shopping started earlier in 2005 than in 2004.
• Biggest Day of the Season - 20% of online retailers cited Dec 12th as the biggest shopping day of 2005.

So by now you are starting to see that the biggest online shopping day for this weekend is “Cyber Monday”, the first Monday after Thanksgiving. With potentially an even bigger shopping day expected on December 10th. At least this is what the Shop.org research says.

I urge you to read this report as well as any others and to comment on this post if you have any ideas, opinions on the topic of holiday shopping or online marketing for this holiday season.

Becoming Google Adwords Certified…

Its been a while now since I became one of the first 100 Certified Google Adwords Professionals in the world. It’s funny, I really thought that it would count for something more than simply a box of Google freebies and a small certificate, but that was it. According to WhoisGAP.com there are about 807 individuals and about 315 so many have passed the test and met the criteria since me.

In order to become a Certified Google Adwords Professionals you must…
1. Sign up for the program successfully and be in good standing. This means that you’ve accepted the Rules of Use and aren’t in violation of them.
2. Manage at least one AdWords account (yours or someone else’s) in My Client Center for 90 days.
3. Build and maintain at least US$1,000 (or your local currency equivalent) total spend for your or your team’s My Client Center account during the 90-day period.
4. Pass the Google Advertising Professional Exam. We suggest that you take the exam after you meet the above requirements. However, you can take the exam at any time.

You can check out all the details on the requirements on the Certified Google Adwords Professional Website.

Overall, I think the concept of certification from Google is a good one, it adds credibility to indibiduals and companies who have managed campaigns with some budget behind them even though I think it has been lowered since it was first launched. By passing the Google test, which is, in my opinion medium difficulty but especially hard if you are new to the interface.

I think that Google should consider allowing individuals to reach higher levels of certification so that managers running campaigns over 1M dollars can get some credit, perhaps the exam could involve more questions about theory, budget management and now incorporate some of the more advanced tools such as using Google Analytics, Website Optimizer, Pay Per Call, Webmaster Tools or any of the other new features as they are released.

But, really, does someone managing pay per click budget of over a million dollars need certification, not really because at this point you have a team that is certified or are working with an agency filled with certified Adwords Professionals. All it really does is prove that you know the system and that you are serious about driving revenue through Google.

Cleveland Brown’s Game, Oct 14, 2007

Compete.com, New Search Analytics

I spent some time this AM reviewing the new Search Analytics service from Compete.com and have the following insight.

The Search Analytics service provides marketers with the following capabilities:

• Keyword Referrals tool allows you identify what sites are getting traffic from certain keywords of interest.
• Site Referrals tool allows you to identify what keywords are leading to specific websites or categories of websites.

The Keyword Referrals tool will help you understand what sites are benefiting most from specific keyword phrases. For example: Using the search term “stephen harper” you will see that the gc.ca website gets 19.5% of the total referrals for this keyword phrase. This is of course not too surprising considering he is the Prime Minister of Canada and the resulting site is the Government of Canada website. See the sample report below.

From this same report you will see the value of the site search data, which shows you how much of a websites traffic comes from a given keyword or keyword phrase. In this example, conservative.ca gets just over 28% of its traffic from the keyword phrase, “Stephen Harper” again not surprising as Mr. Harper is the leader of the conservative party.

The second component of the Search Analytics solution is the Site Referrals service which allows you to start your search with a website and gain insight into which keywords are driving traffic to the site and what percentage each keyword or keyword phrase contributes to the overall traffic for the site. Again, using the Government of Canada website as my example, see the chart below.

From this report you will see that Compete.com provides users with a view that starts with the keyword and shows site share, combined with keyword engagement and keyword effectiveness. The keyword engagement is a time metric that shows the average amount of time a user stays on a website for a given keyword. While the keyword effectiveness metric combines the total number of people referred by a search term and the amount of time those people spent on the site giving you a view of totals rather than averages.

So hopefully you are starting to see how this information can be useful. I am looking at building some of these metrics into my regular reporting so that I can measure how effective my site and my marketing programs are at owning more and more share of each keyword and keyword phrase I am targeting. For more information visit the Search Analytics page at Compete.com.

Quest Funnel Web Profiler, Great Keyword Density Visualization Tool

Funnel Web Profiler from Quest is a great way to visualize the structure and density of your website. Although this software is not being updated anymore it is still one of the best tools out there for website layout visualization and keyword density visualization.

I recently found myself trying to explain to a friend the virtues of a silo based content structure as well as tried to articulate the idea of keyword mountains and found it difficult because unless you have seen a website from a topographical perspective it is hard to grasp.

For your reference I have created the following two examples of content structure and keyword density. The first from BruceClay.com, a pioneer in natural search engine optimization and the second from a training and development company owned by the friend mentioned above. By viewing the thumbnails below you will clearly understand the difference in content structure and keyword density.

First up is my friends company, the example….
Content Structure Visualization

Keyword Density Map

Next an example from Bruce Clay…
Content Structure Visualization

Keyword Density Map

When comparing the content structure of each you can see very clearly using this tool that Bruce Clay has a silo content structure, guiding the search engines deep into very relevant, content rich folders. When you look closely at the example website you see a more flat structure that makes for a diluted density.

When comparing the keyword density maps you see that Bruce Clay has specific, separate mountains of content as compared to the example website, while it may have some dense keyword areas the mountains or islands of content is still very interconnected. In an optimal design you would see towering keyword density in separate more distant islands.

Anyhow, food for thought and discussion as always.

Google Analytics, Perfect for any business.

So after being a product manager for Buystream Merchant and Buystream Architect and an avid user of Omniture’s Site Catalyst I can’t get over Google Analytics. There is really no excuse these days for anyone with a business website who can’t tell you how much traffic they get.

Recently, I have deployed Google Analytics to a couple of small business’, most definitely easy to deploy.

All it takes is a couple lines of code put on every page of your website, generally placed in the footer it should take no longer than 5 minutes, if anyone tells you longer they are lying or your site is not built correctly.

Google analytics can tell you almost anything about your website visitors and traffic patters and will help you get a better idea of how effective your marketing activities really are.

If you are interested in getting up and running on Google Analytics let me know and I can assist.

Trained on Natural Search Engine Optimization with Bruce Clay

Since the tactic of search engine optimization Bruce Clay has been at the forefront of the industry and continues to increase search engine visibility for all his client websites. I had the opportunity to spend a few days training with Bruce and his team at Bruce Clay Inc in Moorpark, CA.