>> 3 Ways to Get Out of Your Email Rut, Page 38
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MARCH 2014
THE PULSE OF
’NET ADVERTISING Inside This Issue...
>> Search-Friendly Design in Focus
>> Principles of Video Optimization
>> A Day of E-Commerce Retargeting
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Cover Story
The Pulse of
‘Net Advertising
The pulse of the online advertising industry is strong and incredibly vibrant. Discover just how healthy the channel is, how you can meet your own advertising objectives by aligning them with the many available opportunities, and pick up tips and resources to move toward greater Web wellness.
Explore the Website Magazine
Departments
30
32
When Not to Test
34
There's a better way to measure the profitability of the affiliate channel.
12
Small Business Lab: Hiring Designers and Developers
14
50 Top: Web Hosting Providers
16
Mastering Search: Optimizing Video Assets
18
Design & Development Digest: Designing for Search Engines
Express: 20 E-Commerce Retargeting Insights
36
Tracking Social
40 Commentary: Protesting the Link Economy
They Paid What?
Social media can be resource intensive, but you can start tracking it like a boss with these tips.
The benefits of marketing automation are clear, but these experts say it can get costly.
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Check out Website Magazine’s email newsletters covering e-commerce, search, SoLoMo, design and more at wsm.co/webscoop.
The Email Rut Get out of your digital comfort zone with these three email marketing tips.
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Enterprise Ready: Accelerating Load Time
Affiliate Skepticism
Testing is not always the quickest or most effective path to higher conversions.
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MARCH 2014
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F R O M T H E E D I TO R
With Peter Prestipino
Checking the Ad Industry’s Pulse Internet advertising is far from anemic or unhealthy. Its digital pulse is more consistent and stronger than ever before. Despite some criticism, if there was ever a time to advertise online, it’s today.
Visit Website Magazine at these upcoming Internet tradeshows:
SMX March 11-13 San Jose, CA Conversion Conference March 17-19 San Francisco, CA Next Generation Customer Experience March 18-20 San Diego, CA PubCon March 18-20 New Orleans, LA LeadsCon March 25-26 Las Vegas, NV AdTech West March 26-27 San Francisco, CA Digital Travel Summit April 1-3 Las Vegas, NV
Access the March 2014 issue online at wsm.co/wmmarch14 or by scanning the QR code below.
Providers in the space are adapting to consumers’ changing habits and concerns, finding ways to prevent waste and fraud, and leveraging everything we know about customers and the digital marketing mix to help brands like yours offer more engaging and effective advertising — while overcoming some inherent industry problems. What ’Net professionals need are unbiased resources and tips to align their companies with the many available advertising opportunities available today, in order to truly move their Internet enterprises toward complete Web wellness. You will find just that in this month’s feature, “The Pulse of ’Net Advertising,” which provides much of what Web workers need to know about the industry’s current and long-term viability. This edition of Website Magazine also includes a rather impressive look at website performance issues from our Associate Editor Allison Howen, as well as in-depth guidance on what it takes to optimize videos to be found in the search engine result pages and to be consumed (and liked) by viewers. Additionally, Managing Editor Amberly Dressler threw out some digital bait in her “Day of Retargeting” article, which examines retargeting best practices, providers and obstacles for e-commerce merchants. Website Magazine’s March 2014 issue offers additional advice for Internet retailers when it comes to getting out of their email marketing ruts and how digital marketers can start tracking social media “like a boss,” or in other words, get a bigger picture of their efforts on the channel. Website Magazine editors also reached out to several Internet executives to understand the true costs of marketing automation software, as well as how to select the right Web design and development partner for your specific needs and budget. Please enjoy the March 2014 issue of Website Magazine and make sure to visit us at WebsiteMagazine.com for our daily coverage of all the news that matters to your Web success. We also encourage you to follow us on Twitter @WebsiteMagazine and share your thoughts about what you’ve read in these pages. Best Web Wishes,
The Magazine for Website Success Reaching the largest audience of Web professionals of any Internet industry publication 999 E. Touhy Ave., Des Plaines, IL 60018 Toll Free: 1.800.817.1518 International: 1-773-628-2779 Fax: 1-773-272-0920
PUBLISHER: Susan Whitehurst susan@websitemagazine.com EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Peter Prestipino peter@websitemagazine.com GENERAL MANAGER: David Ruiz druiz@websitemagazine.com MANAGING EDITOR: Amberly Dressler adressler@websitemagazine.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Allison Howen ahowen@websitemagazine.com *CONTRIBUTORS: Tim Ash Michelle Wicmandy Jamie Birch ART DIRECTOR: Janet Crouch www.grafikadesign.net GRAPHIC DESIGNERS: Jesse Erbach jesse@websitemagazine.com Shannon Rickson shannon@websitemagazine.com ADVERTISING: Kelly Springer kspringer@websitemagazine.com Brian Wallace brian@websitemagazine.com Bill Scothorn bscothorn@websitemagazine Barry Cohen bcohen@websitemagazine.com SUBSCRIPTIONS: Sandra Woods sandra@websitemagazine.com
Peter Prestipino — Editor-in-Chief, Website Magazine Peter@WebsiteMagazine.com
ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS: • Michelle Wicmandy shares how to select a Web design partner, p. 12 • Tim Ash dispels the “test” everything approach and advises when not to test, p. 30 • Jamie Birch shares a new way of measuring profitability of affiliate marketing, p. 32
Website Magazine, Volume 9, Issue 6, March 2014, (ISSN# 1942-0633) is published 4 times per year in February, May, August and November with 8 special issues (January, March, April, June, July, September, October and December) by Website Services, Inc., 999 E. Touhy Ave., Des Plaines, IL 60018. Periodicals Postage Paid at Des Plaines, IL and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Website Magazine, 999 E. Touhy Ave., Des Plaines, IL 60018. Canada Post: Please send undeliverable items to: 2835 Kew Drive, Windsor ON, N8T 3B7 Copyright 2014 by Website Magazine. All rights reserved. Materials may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission. For reprints of any article, contact the editor.
*The opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of Website Magazine.
www.WebsiteMagazine.com
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MARCH 2014
A SNEAK PEEK AT WHAT’S COMING UP IN
WEBSITE MAGAZINE Newsletter
Topic E-Edition/ Print/iPad
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
E-Commerce Express
Mastering Search
Social, Local, Mobile
Design & Development
Hot Trends
Feature
E-Commerce
Mastering Search
Design & Development
Top 50
Stat Watch
Enterprise Ready
Small Biz
April
Web Design Trends to Watch
Product Page Design
Content Optimization
Innovative Navigation Techniques
Affiliate Networks to Know
May
Performance Matters
Retail Reviews in Focus
Emerging SERP Trends
Frameworks to Know
June
Essential ‘Net Tech
Hosting for Merchants
SEO Software to Know
July
Local Web Biz Guide
Check-In Services
August
E-Commerce Growth Tactics
September
Ad Deadlines
Experience
Growing Global Quick
Saving Money in the Cloud
3/10
Digital Customer Service
Affiliates
Ensuring Digital Quality
User Experience Evaluation
4/4
App Builders in Focus
Essential ‘Net Tech
Hosting
Customer Service Exposed
Big Data for Small Brands
5/8
Earning Citations, Building Links
Product Page Design Challenges
Local Web Biz Guide
Local
Mastering the CRM
Marketing Automation in Focus
6/6
E-Commerce in 2024
Big Brand SEO Strategy
Educating Developers
E-Commerce Growth Tactics
E-Commerce
Optimizing the Digital Experience
Advanced Networking Tactics
7/3
Mobile Web Strategies
Merchants Go Mobile
Mobile Optimization Tips
Analytics for the UX
Mobile Web Strategies
Mobile
Fostering Creativity
Real Mobile Barriers
8/6
October
Insights on Analytics
Essential Retail KPIs
Technical SEO Matters
Social Media Design Strategy
Insights on Analytics
Analytics
Choosing an Enterprise CMS
Generating More Business
9/6
November
Managing the Social World
Social Shopping
Key Metrics in Optimization
Tools for Every Digital Designers
Social Media Management
Social
Website Security Issues Top of Mind
Building Niche Influence
10/6
December
The New Rules of Email
Merchant Email Design
SEO in 2015
Emerging Design Trends
Email Service Providers
Paying the Price for Innovation
Better Email Management
11/6
Download Website Magazine’s 2014 Media Kit at wsm.co/mediakit2014 Contact 773.628.2779 info@websitemagazine.com
m o b i l e a p p wa tc h
It might be difficult to remember life without it, but Facebook just turned 10 years old. The social
Check out the design-related apps below and find five more to improve your skills at wsm.co/5desapps. Quark DesignPad
network celebrated the occasion in February by creating one-minute “look back” videos for its 1.23 billion monthly active members (and 757 million daily active users). The social network also recently released a new “Trending” feature, which helps keep its members informed on topics of interest by displaying a section of personalized and popular (clickable, too) conversations
Create layout concepts for anything from a poster to a newsletter with the Quark DesignPad app. After a design concept is created, it can be printed, shared to social media and through email, as well as further developed in QuarkXPress.
currently being shared in their newsfeeds. FontBook FontBook is like a typography encyclopedia, providing more than 730,000 typeface samples. The app enables users to filter fonts in a variety of ways, including by class, foundry, designer, year or name. The app’s iPad version even allows users to compile lists of their favorite fonts, as well as compare typefaces.
ColoRotate
In order to gain more insight into why some consumers aren’t clicking online ads, Google is now delivering surveys in its display units. The surveys appear only after a consumer decides to “mute” an ad, a feature Google launched last year to give the public more control over the ads they see. With the survey data, Google hopes to identify poor-performing
Designers can leverage the ColoRotate app to create color palettes, as well as use the app to extract colors and blend hues. The app can be used alone or connected to Photoshop CS5, CS6 and CC.
publishers and improve its ad targeting capabilities.
The Super “Social” Bowl
Despite the big game being a total blowout, the Super Bowl was considered a “social” success. Twitter revealed that its social network saw more than 24.9
More ’Net News Is guest blogging dead? Matt Cutts might think so, but the rest of the ’Net seems to disagree — wsm.co/blogcutts
million tweets about the game and halftime show, an increase from last year’s 24.1 million tweets. And while much of the social conversation revolved around big plays and the halftime performance, it wouldn’t be the Super Bowl without commercials. In fact, more brands took steps to increase the social chatter around their ads this year, with Twitter reporting that 58 percent of the national ads featured a hashtag, up from last year’s 50 percent.
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Bring on the GIFs! Find out which social network now supports this fun image format — wsm.co/getgiffy LinkedIn looks to connect nonprofits with volunteers — wsm.co/volunteerli
S TAT
W AT C H
Spring Forward Call it job security for writers, but don’t call it a fad; content marketing is in-demand and is not going away anytime soon. The practice of creating content to distribute to an audience with the goal of engaging them and driving profits is nowhere near a new practice, but it certainly has reached a near-epic
65%
The U.S. Consumer Device Preference Report by Movable Ink reveals that 65 percent of emails were opened on a smartphone or tablet in the fourth quarter of 2013 (up from 61 percent in the previous quarter), while desktop opens slowed to a new low of 35 percent (down from 39 percent in the previous quarter).
level of adoption. In fact, 93 percent of B2B marketers are using
>> Read more at wsm.co/sf-emobile
content marketing in 2014, according to new data from the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, and more marketers think they’re effective at the practice (42 percent) compared to the previous year (36 percent), likely due to more documented strategies on the whole. The joint survey found that “brand aware-
45%
Nearly half of Millennial Moms (45 percent), a rapidly growing segment of the U.S. population, feel like marketing campaigns aren’t geared toward them and feel overlooked by retailers, according to PunchTab’s research on the untapped opportunity of loyalty programs and Millennial Moms.
ness” continues to be the top goal for B2B content marketing (82 percent) and brands are
>> Read more at wsm.co/sf-moms
using an average of 13 different tactics to meet their objectives. Social media remains the most widely used channel for content marketing (87 percent), with website articles (81 percent) and e-newsletters (80 percent), falling slightly behind. Despite those figures, B2B marketers are most confident with the effectiveness of in-person events (70 percent), case studies (65 percent) and videos (63 percent).
70%
Seventy percent of consumers say the quality of photography and design of tablet sites influence their decisions on whether to purchase items, according to a 2014 survey by Usablenet. This coincides with some of the top use-cases for tablets, which include researching products before buying online (66 percent), checking prices and looking up store information (63 percent), and watching videos and browsing photos (63 percent).
“It’s exciting to see how quickly content, and the ability to distribute that content to audiences
>> Read more at wsm.co/sf-tablets
via social channels, has grown in significance for B2B marketers,” said Steve Rotter, vice president of marketing at Brightcove about the findings. “Content marketing, and particularly video, helps brands to drive more demand, increase conversion rates and generate a higher return on their marketing investments.”
Find more useful data at WebsiteMagazine.com or by scanning the QR code.
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ENTERPRISE
Don’t Be Late to the Loading Party By Allison Howen, Associate Editor
In life, we all have acquaintances that pride themselves on being early for events. Although their promptness may be a bit irritating to, say, a party host, it is a far better alternative to the people who are always late.
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In general, society takes timeliness very seriously: If you’re late to an interview, you probably won’t get the job offer; if you’re tardy to a school play, your daughter will never let you live it down; and if you don’t make it to the airport on time, you better be ready to shell out cash for a new ticket. Timeliness is equally important in the digital world. Site visitors aren’t very forgiving when it comes to website loading speed, for example. Once they arrive at a site, they expect to see it in its entirety — not to wait for it to load element by element. In fact, visitors will often abandon a “tardy” site for a different Web property altogether. This can have a severe impact on a brand’s bottom line, as the Aberdeen Group found that a one-second delay in website performance results in a 7 percent loss in conversions, an 11 percent decrease in page views and a 16 percent decrease in customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, the root of a slow site can vary — from large image sizes to clunky third-party plugins. Luckily, performance-testing platforms like Google’s PageSpeed Insights or Pingdom’s Website Speed Test can help enterprises determine the root causes quickly (for others, see sidebar). But how can you keep a site from arriving late to the loading
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MARCH 2014
party and avoid irritating visitors in the first place? These three time-saving tips should help. Front-End Optimization Optimizing the front end of a website is a surefire way to improve its performance and there are solutions to help. SiteSpect’s AMPS product, for instance, speeds up websites by using more than 30 front-end optimization (FEO) techniques, such as JavaScript minification, image compression and streamlining inline requests. Take minification as an example, this acceleration technique speeds up load times by automatically removing the white space and comments from source code. According to SiteSpect AMPS Product Manager Iwo Kadziela, this makes the source code easier for browsers to process so that the site loads faster. It is also important to note that by combining AMPS acceleration techniques with SiteSpect’s testing capabilities, enterprises can target specific accelerations to specific browsers or devices. Plus, enterprises can measure the impact of accelerations with real user measurement (RUM). This enables teams to correlate performance optimization with speed measurement and key performance indicators (KPIs) like conversion rate.
Tag Management Third-party extensions are often the main cause of slow load speeds. These extra bells and whistles increase page weight and typically load in a synchronous manner. Loading synchronously means that Web pages wait for one tag to load before moving onto the next, which can be a timeconsuming process depending on the number of third-party tags incorporated into a site. Tag management systems like Tealium, however, not only reduce page weight by replacing multiple vendor tags with a single tag, but also load tags asynchronously, which means that the browser loads numerous tags at the same time, resulting in faster load speeds. Moreover, Tealium offers “Conditional Tag Loading.� This enables enterprises to set up load rules to reduce the number of times a tag is loaded on a page. The Tealium platform also features “Slow Tag Killing,� which enterprises can leverage to dismiss slow-loading tags automatically, based on pre-defined criteria. Both of these features can have a positive impact on a site’s overall performance. Load Testing An influx of traffic could cause your site to load slowly, or even worse, crash. To prevent this type
of disaster, enterprises should conduct load testing to analyze how their site performs during an influx in traffic. Keynote’s load testing offerings, for example, enable development teams to test sites with realworld traffic from multiple Internet backbones and countries. Oftentimes load testing is a hot subject leading up to the winter holidays, as this is the time when sites are most likely to see the most traffic. However, Aaron Rudger, senior manager of monitoring at Keynote, recommends that enterprises conduct load tests prior to any event that can lead to higher amounts of traffic, such as marketing promotions. “Part of our service is that we sit down with customers and help them truly understand the dynamics of their traffic — what are their patterns and how those patterns of demand impact their infrastructure,� said Rudger. “Then we come up with a strategy that best suits their business needs.�
WebsiteMagazine.com
5 Tools to Measure Website Response Time See more at wsm.co/responsetime.
Time is of the Essence There is no time to waste when it comes to fixing website performance issues, as an extra second of loading time can result in an enormous loss of conversions. Time is truly of the essence, and the longer your enterprise waits to fix its performance issues, the more customers and revenue it stands to lose.
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M A R CH 2014
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WEBSITE MAGAZINE’S
SMALL BUSINESS LAB
Selecting the Right
DESIGN/DEVELOPMENT PARTNER By Michelle Wicmandy
Many small businesses outsource their Web design and development functions to agencies, so they can focus on their core competencies. Faced with the complexities of the various technical offerings and the wide range of pricing, however, it can be difficult to select a service provider that can make the greatest impact on a company’s bottom line. With some general guidance from those who have gone before them, small business owners can weigh their options and reap the potential rewards of picking the right Web design and development partner. In-House versus Outsourcing Small business owners have various concerns when deciding on how to handle their Web development and design projects effectively and cost efficiently. Essentially, entrepreneurs can choose from one of three options. They can (1) provide the functions in-house, (2) hire an agency or (3) outsource projects to freelancers on a project-by-project basis. Each of these options comes with benefits as well as drawbacks. s ie c n e According to Robin Tooms, vice president g a l a nation Local and n e of strategy for Savage Brands, a digital marh w t s the te are put to keting agency, “The benefits of hiring ine th s u give their clients ternal staff include the intimacy one t op a inside sco develops with the company’s products ncytales e g /a o and internal stakeholders, which an .c wsm outside agency is unlikely to achieve.
ales T y c Agen
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Additionally, an in-house team is more inclined to pursue ‘continuous improvement’ efforts since presumably they are also maintaining the site and know immediately what is or is not working.” Furthermore, explains Jennifer Billings, marketing director of the American Marketing Association, “Small businesses may prefer to hire internal staff to reduce costs, maintain greater control and have greater accessibility to staff, leading to a faster turn-around.” Conversely, Billings adds that agencies can offer greater creative flexibility, experience and objectivity, as they have the advantage of working on multiple, diverse projects. Tooms also believes that agencies can provide the breadth and depth of talent that may be impossible for an in-house staff. Finding the Right Agency Partner When scouting for a Web design and development firm, enterprises should first compile a list of needs and consider the expertise required to accomplish those objectives. Then, perform extensive research on agencies that claim to specialize in those services. Ed Schipul, founder and CEO of Tendenci, an open source CMS for nonprofits, advises that a small business owner looks for a solutions partner with a solid reputation, case studies to demonstrate competency and a diverse team that will work with him or her to overcome individual challenges. Communicating with an agency’s designers and past clients is important, but small business owners should not overlook the importance of a firm’s own website. “The technology developments that have occurred over the past two years have raised the bar for
FREELANCERS IN FOCUS
designers,” explains Schipul. “When hiring an agency, be certain the firm develops sites that are responsive across multiple devices. Furthermore, be sure the site is functional. Although winning awards is impressive, many functional sites such as amazon.com, the premiere e-commerce site, is not a Picasso.” An agency’s own website is a good indicator of the quality of work they create, but it’s not the only consideration to make. Marlena Jayatilake is a small business owner of LoveThatSpice.com who has first-hand experience hiring a Web development firm. For her fellow small business owners, she suggests choosing an agency that specializes in serving start-ups or enterprises of a similar size. She finds these boutique firms, which tend to be small businesses themselves, to be more accommodating, understanding and willing to work with modest budgets than full-service agencies that handle larger accounts. She also recommends selecting a provider with a competitive mid-range proposal, not the highest nor the lowest bidder. “You get what you pay for,” she explains. “When hiring the cheapest bidder, the quality or service may be sacrificed. Furthermore, the lowest bid may be missing crucial parts of the job that will incur additional fees later. Be sure to review proposals closely and ask questions.” How much can a small business owner expect to pay? Providing a price range for Web services is difficult since so much rests upon the business’s specific needs. Individuals may also be unaware of the amount of services necessary to develop their website such as professional photography, video production, shopping cart integration, SSL certifications and more that can impact the final cost of Web design and development. Warning Signs Finding the right partner, the perfect fit for your business, takes time and effort. Invest the necessary resources in the beginning to avoid frustrations later. Some warning signs that may suggest the need to move on to the next name on the list include an agency with high turnover, poor communication skills, personality clashes, conflicts of interest, disagreements on design/strategy and inability of the firm to integrate Web services with other marketing
If the budget for Web design and development is less than $10,000, consider seeking out freelancers. Business owners can use websites like 99designs, AIGA job bank, Elance.com or Freelancer.com, as well as asking their marketing friends for referrals. Many experienced professionals with full-time jobs are open to using their skills for side projects to not only build their portfolios, but also to earn extra cash. Whether interviewing an agency or a freelancer, the following are sample questions that can help get the conversation started: ■ How long have you been in business? ■ How many clients have you served with similar needs? ■ What industry(ies) do you work with? ■ Do you have a portfolio or work samples for review? ■ Do you have case studies you can share? ■ Do you have a list of references within my industry that I may contact? ■ What professional certifications do you hold? initiatives. According to Tooms of Savage Brands, be wary of a design team that makes recommendations that do not fit within the budget, provides unclear payment terms or demands full payment upfront and seems unwilling to adjust a recommendation based on your feedback and can’t communicate why. Final Words of Advice Small business owners with no previous website experience can (and likely should) experiment with open source systems (e.g. WordPress, Magento) and do-ityourself (DIY) site-building solutions offered through services such as 1&1, GoDaddy, Web.com and others to gain a basic understanding of Web functionality. This experience exposes the small business owner to the capabilities and limitations of the Web and prepares them for the next step. Once the small business owner is armed with this information, they are better equipped to ask the right questions and find the right third-party partner to develop a permanent site. According to Schipul of Tendenci, they can then have realistic expectations and understand the fees and time requirements to perform the Web design and development job correctly.
Michelle Wicmandy is a regular contributor to Website Magazine, a lecturer at the University of Houston Downtown and an executive-level marketing and business development professional.
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Web Hosting Providers As an Internet professional, you have many choices —choices about where marketing and advertising dollars are spent, how the time of personnel involved with social media is invested, and which Web hosting solution is appropriate for your enterprise’s digital initiatives. There are well over 180 million active websites on the ’Net today — and every single one of their owners have to make decisions about the role of Web hosting, and how content is served and information is delivered to a digital audience. The good news for Internet professionals is that there is no shortage of willing and capable providers. Savvy Web workers, however, know the importance of choosing wisely and what to look for in Web hosting. It’s not general availability that today’s enterprises need to address and be concerned with alone, it’s also speed and the consistency of experience. Companies won’t meet consumers’ high expectations with a third-tier hosting provider any longer — they need the best and that is just what can be found in this month’s list of 50 top Web hosting providers. The “best” however is, of course, dependent on the type of enterprise being operated. For example, is it a SaaS service that needs to run in the cloud with exceedingly high performance globally? Or is it a five-page brochure style website catering to a niche audience in a small geographic area? Not one of the 180 million active websites is the same; each requires a different hosting solution. Choosing incorrectly in either direction will render your website (and its corresponding digital initiatives) overpowered and wasteful or underpowered and lacking. Web hosting is arguably one of the most important variables in the success of online efforts, but what is appropriate for your enterprise? Well, 50 of the top vendors listed here are some of the most popular names in the hosting space, not to mention incredibly capable, but they are far from the only ones. See how these companies (and 50 more) stack up in terms of general availability, features, support, price and more, in Website Magazine’s HOSTING 100 MATRIX available on the Net at wsm.co/hostingmatrix14.
Scan the QR code to read Website Magazine's "Hosting 100 Matrix."
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WEBSITEMAGAZINE.COM
mastering
search
By Peter Prestipino, Editor-In-Chief
RICH CONTENT INTENT & the Principles of Video Optimization Today’s search engine experience
Google search result pages include websites (pages), data from the knowledge graph, images and of course, videos (with inner SEO circles as rich content. a preponderance of that content from its YouTube property). Internet profesWhy “rich content” you ask? Well sionals are responsible for providing an it can enrich your traffic and unique array of content formats for user consumption, which, if you are like many visitor count, of course! others, doesn’t include as much video as it likely should. Lucky for everyone; the principles that drive Web page optimization are the same for video (for the most part). That’s good news because website visitors are more likely to purchase products online after watching videos, not to mention that the format is exceptional in terms of its ability to drive awareness and loyalty for brands. But isn’t optimization of this content format as challenging as Web page optimization? Not when you know what can be optimized. Video SEO is about maintaining an additional layer of information around the content asset(s) and the channel(s) supporting it. When optimized intelligently, videos provide effective ways to show up in more search result queries and attract new customers to your website as a result. And you never know, you could generate a few conversions too. In order to optimize strategically, it is important to start by understanding the influencing factors and how major indices might rank videos. Those factors, although locked away securely in a black box, likely include onpage elements (title, description, tags), retention (total time watched, average view duration), engagement (likes, comments, ratings, shares), authority of the is full of what is referred to within
WebsiteMagazine.com Video’s Big Three Discover the three optimization elements your videos must include at wsm.co/3vidopt.
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channel itself, as well as the total number of views. What’s unique about optimization of video is that unlike text, search engines can’t actually “see” the video content as humans do, which means the elements that can be optimized are surprisingly straightforward, diverse and useful to users.
Titles: Perhaps the most important element in video optimization, the title does double duty in that the words and phrases used influence user interaction (a click from the search result) and the ultimate viewing of the video, as well as the search engine’s determination of the relevancy of a video to a user’s query. When creating titles, marketers should choose descriptive and relevant keywords and keep branding and episode information toward the end. Ideally, titles will be concise and reinforced by the thumbnail chosen (see thumbnail section on the next page). Description: The number of elements that can be optimized for a video is limited, so make the most of those that enable you to provide information to the prospective viewer — like the description. Each of the networks where a video is distributed will have different description lengths they support, so do yourself and your brand a favor and keep the most important information at the top. Keep in mind that it’s important to make descriptions as compelling as possible so don’t be shy — add in “experience-enhancing” links such as subscription links or suggestions for related videos, even playlists in the first few lines of the description field. Look at the example in images A and B. WatchMojo links directly to its website in the description field, bypassing the requirement of users to expand to view additional information about the video/channel/producer. Tags: Titles and descriptions are important to indicating what a video is about, but tags provide a way to add a greater diversity of information; keywords and phrases that may not fit so neatly into other optimization elements. When applying tags to a par-
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ticular video, make sure they come in two types — video-specific and channel-specific — those which define the contents of the video and those which explain more about the channel where the video is included. Avoid keyword stuffing in the available tag areas (as it dilutes the relevancy value), but do include some keywords found in your title. In the case of YouTube specifically, make sure to use quotation marks (e.g. “video game glitches”) to indicate multi-word tags.
Thumbnails: The Web is a visual place and the better quality the image assets, the more attention can potentially be gained for the video assets being optimized. When thumbnails are appealing, as well as both memorable and informative, video views will increase dramatically (which in turn can increase social shares). When developing thumbnails, make sure to use bright, high-contrast images that look reasonable at multiple resolutions (a 640 pixel x 360 pixel minimum with a 16:9 aspect ratio is ideal), and always make a concerted effort to take individual shots for the intention of using them as thumbnails (close-ups of faces work particularly well).
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Annotations: Specific to YouTube (as far we know), annotations provide a powerful way to optimize videos for the user experience. While the verdict is out on whether annotations by themselves influence placement on the search results of popular engines like Google or Bing, they do provide another highly useful layer of information that could be used to determine relevancy in the future, particularly for long-tail, multi-word queries. YouTube’s annotation features provide publishers with control over the text, the placement, the timing and the link URLs, so take advantage of the opportunity and get creative. For example, why not place secret “Easter eggs” in videos? Musician Rob Scallon used annotations within a video that directed viewers to other videos he created, creating a scavenger hunt of sorts for his 41,000 followers on YouTube (image C). What’s Your Video Intent? Videos are quickly proving to be an essential component in the content marketing mix and we’ve only touched on some of the essential elements of
optimization. Join Website Magazine online for part two where the discussion turns to more complex matters of video optimization including the use of Schema Markup for video, video sitemaps, channel optimization and more at wsm.co/videoseo2.
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de s i g n & de v e l o pment
digest
By Allison Howen, Associate Editor
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
SEARCH-FRIENDLY DESIGN When it comes to Google and Bing, however, it can be difficult to deteris an idiom that most businesses mine who the “customer” actually is. Is it the advertisers and merchants live by, and search engines who pay to appear atop the search reare no different. sults, placing bids to showcase relevant inventory for a search query? No, search engines’ true customers are the end-users/consumers, because without them, the majority of Google and Bing’s other product offerings would be insignificant. In order to satisfy search engine users (and keep them from using alternatives, like social networks), Google and Bing look at a whole lot more than just links and keywords to determine rankings. In fact, search engine algorithms may also analyze website performance data. Metrics like bounce rate and site speed are good indicators of whether a Web page should be in the results, meaning that sites delivering good user experiences are more likely to rank higher in the search engine result pages (SERPs) and for more valuable search terms and phrases. Keep your site in the good graces of the search engines by checking out these four design tips that can increase placement in the SERPs and bring your business closer to its customers.
engagement, it is important that the site’s design be easy for visitors to consume. The best way to do this is by creating a proper visual hierarchy. According to Russell, designers must ensure that important content, like calls-to-action, are the most visually dominant items on the page, which can be done by creating variations in the size of font and images. In addition to making the site’s content easier to consume, creating a visual hierarchy can also lead visitors through the conversion funnel, which benefits those influential metrics that may lead to higher search placement.
1. Lose the Clutter It can be tempting to add every new and great feature to your site, but too many options can overwhelm visitors and cause them to abandon their sessions. Assuming that a high bounce rate negatively impacts organic search ranking, limiting the bells and whistles can actually improve visibility in addition to conversion rates. According to Marvin Russell, CEO of boutique digital marketing firm The Ocean Agency, designers shouldn’t overlook the power of white space when deciding to de-clutter a website. While many people think white space represents lost opportunities, its actual purpose is to emphasize the content that it surrounds, like a virtual picture frame.
4. Be Responsive SEO isn’t only important on the traditional Web, but the mobile Web too. Fortunately, Google has been clear as to what it expects from mobile sites thus far: speed and accuracy. Google also recommends the responsive design option as it is easier for the search engine to crawl and index a single URL (rather than separate mobile properties). Plus, responsive sites are typically a better option for site visitors because they ensure the user experience is visually consistent across devices.
“The customer is always right”
2. Create a Visual Hierarchy To influence metrics that search engines may take into consideration for ranking, like time-on-site and depth of
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3. Speed It Up Site visitors don’t like slow sites and neither do the search engines. In fact, slow load times lead to both high bounce rates and low conversion numbers — a bad combination by any measurement. In fact, customers expect a website to load in about three seconds or less. Forty percent of website visitors will leave the site if it takes any longer, according to KISSmetrics. There is a long list of potential culprits responsible for slow websites, so make your Web development team aware of the problem and encourage them to use tools to determine the root of performance issues. For tools and tips to speed up your site, be sure to visit page 10.
“The Customer is Always Right” Like in traditional businesses, the customer is also always right on the Web. This is because optimizing a site for better usability is not only beneficial to site visitors, but also to a site’s placement in search rankings, which is a win-win for your business’s bottom line.
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express
By Amberly Dressler, Managing Editor
DIGITAL BAIT
A DAY OF RETARGETING Imagine investing your time Unfortunately, most Internet retailers are getting this return from their e-commerce sites — a 1-3 percent conversion rate — that only works 1-3 percent which is why they are turning to retargeting of the time. Most of us would in droves. In fact, a recent study by Chango stop pouring our resources and Digiday revealed that brand marketers strongly believe (3.98 on a scale of 5.0) that into said product and look retargeting is so standard that it is budgeted for better options. for regularly. Most Website Magazine readers are familiar with the concept of retargeting, but Ted Schuster, director of advertising at Resolution Media, describes it as using display and search campaigns to “target the 97 out of 100 visitors who came to a site but didn’t convert.” Like in all digital initiatives, however, there are best practices to leverage, players to know and obstacles to avoid. In order to get some real-world examples of retargeting in action, and see what went right and wrong, I spent a good part of a Friday trying to bait companies to follow me around the Web. Here are the A companies who bit, along with some strategies advertisers should throw back.
and money into a product
Using TellApart, Nordstrom.com is able to marry past viewing behavior and current intent with real-time incentives.
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Nordstrom via TellApart Online shopping isn’t typically how I start my workday (really), but in the name of research, I decided to visit Nordstrom.com. Once there, I added a pair of wedges into my shopping cart. I ultimately left the site, went about my Website Magazine business, and within minutes was presented with the ad in Image A, which includes the shoes I had just shown interest in, but ultimately didn’t purchase, as well as a pair of boots I viewed several months ago and also didn’t purchase. Using TellApart, Nordstrom was able to marry my past viewing behavior and current intent with real-time incentives (the boots in the ad were now 50
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percent off) to deliver a highly personalized advertisement. There is little risk for merchants who are looking to do the same. TellApart does not charge upfront costs and is only paid when shoppers click on retargeted ads and go on to make purchases. Retailers who are on the fence about retargeting can start simple by focusing on shoppers who have abandoned their shopping carts and then expand their retargeting campaigns as they feel more comfortable or learn more about the practice. Additionally, merchants who are already familiar with paid search, can leverage the Google Display Network, according to Katie Johnson, associate director at Resolution Media, and do textbased ads, kind of like retargeting training wheels. Alex and Ani via AdRoll After my Nordstrom experiment, I received a case study on Kenshoo’s Facebook advertising successes with Alex and Ani, an eco-friendly jewelry retailer, which prompted me to visit AlexandAni.com for the very first time. I was later retargeted by them (Image B). More impressively, when I clicked through the ad, AdRoll sent me to a near-identical landing page (certainly a best practice many merchants are aware of from their experience in display advertising) featuring one of the two products shown in the ad (Image C). Exceedingly more notable, however, is that later, when I logged onto Twitter on my smartphone (all other activity was on my work desktop), Alex and Ani promoted a Tweet to me even though I was on a different device and had never interacted with the brand prior to the aforementioned website visit. Turns out, in Dec. 2013, AdRoll announced support for retargeting on Twitter and Alex and Ani (along with business-to-business companies New Relic and Salesforce), were “alpha test” participants. These companies saw engagement increase by as much as 170 percent and
B Using AdRoll, Alex and Ani is able to retarget me after visiting their site for the first time.
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acquisition costs decrease by up to 74 percent. As early adopters, AdRoll’s Twitter retargeting allows Alex and Ani to have broader reach to high-value customers by using customer intent data and re-engaging site visitors on Twitter, desktop and mobile, using a Promoted Account or 140-chararacter Promoted Tweet (Image D). Users don’t stay on one device all the time, neither should retargeting efforts. As for costs, AdRoll’s retargeting campaigns have a CPM range of $1-$2.50, which it states is the industry’s lowest. Volkswagen via Google’s Display Network After unsuccessfully trying to get high-end luxury vehicle companies like Bentley and Porsche to retarget to me (basically to try and prove a point that not all browsers are buyers and not everyone should be retargeted), Volkswagen, using Google’s Display Network, picked up my auto-buying intent, as well as my location. The ad in Image E is a good example of the proper use of geotargeting (showing a Chicago dealership to someone in a Chicago suburb). Additionally, once I clicked through, the landing page showed the sameexact creative, providing a consistent experience. As I showed more intent (clicking through the original ad), VW increased the frequency of my ads, but not everyone thinks this is always a good thing. Schuster of Resolution Media, actually says that one of the concerns/misconceptions that retailers have about retargeting, is that they are going to bother consumers too much. For them, Schuster recommends “frequency capping” to not send out quite so many ads. A retailer can say, for instance, “I only want to show this ad five times a day or five times a week.” While these retargeting examples displayed many best practices, I saw a few notable mistakes in my day of retargeting. For instance, Comcast delivered an ad to me with an incentive to purchase services I already have, making me ineligible for the promotion. Both
A digital best practice, Alex and Ani sends me to a landing page with the same bracelet displayed in the original ad.
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Impressively, Alex and Ani retargets me on Twitter, even though I've switched devices.
Volkswagen appropriately uses geotargeting to send me an ad for a local dealership.
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Johnson and Ben Plomion, VP of Marketing at Chango, recommend using an exclusion pixel to avoid targeting people who have already converted on products, especially those with long purchase cycles, like cable and Internet. Wrong or mismatched creative and incorrect geo-targeting also top the list of retargeting mishaps, according to Plomion who recommends retailers hire the right people, put the right processes in place, and make sure that vendors are accountable and working 100 percent on their behalf.
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THE PULSE OF
‘NET ADVERTISING There is no better indicator of the health of the digital industry than advertising. By Peter Prestipino, Editor-In-Chief
Every time you turn your virtual head, another report touting advertising’s exceptional growth, bright future and positive impact on the broader world economy is made available. Advertising, in many ways, makes the ecosystem function and for that reason, it is essential for Web professionals to know all they can about its current health and long-term outlook. Digital advertising has its problems of course (name a channel that doesn’t — we’re looking at you social media), but for all intents and purposes, the pulse of the online advertising industry is strong and incredibly vibrant. Much like an annual checkup with a doctor, in this edition of Website Magazine, readers will discover just how strong the industry really is, how they can meet their objectives by aligning them with the many available opportunities and learn to identify the greatest challenges in the way of their complete Web wellness. More importantly, readers will discover tips and resources to make their brand’s advertising more meaningful, more engaging, and yes, more effective too.
The Signs of Success Medical professionals ask patients how things are going during the start of a routine visit in order to gain a quick understanding of what they’re dealing with in that moment. Physicians then use verbal and non-verbal clues and past benchmarks to make a diagnosis to determine when further appointments or tests are needed or, hopefully, to give a clean bill of health. In our particular case, Internet professionals don’t need to look very far to conclude that advertising is healthier than it was last year and passes nearly every checkup criteria. Search marketing firm Covario, for example, recently issued its Global Paid Search Spend Analysis for the fourth quarter of
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2013 and found that spending on pay-per-click ads by its own global technology, consumer electronics and retail clients rose 13 percent from the third quarter and 7 percent year-over year. Covario’s findings were typical of the record-breaking 2013 holiday season. It’s not all perfect in the world of search-based advertising of course; Covario also indicated that the average cost-perclick increased 10 percent versus the same period one year ago. According to the report’s author, Alex Funk, director of global paid media strategy at Covario, “CPC pricing has been fluctuating over the past few quarters, something not surprising after the platform overhaul that Google AdWords went through at the midway point of 2013.” Search-based advertising is doing quite well obviously (despite the near-constant rate of change), but display advertising has also made a comeback and it’s quickly becoming bigger than ever. Nielsen’s quarterly evaluation of the global advertising market shows that Internet display advertising grew by more than 32 percent in the first three quarters of 2013. Overall advertising, in comparison, grew just 3.2 percent across all media to hit $243.5 billion at the end of Q3 2013 (still dominated by television). What these data points illustrate is that despite the immense amount of activity and pace of development in the digital advertising space, there’s not much in the way of uncertainty
Ads Get Emotional — wsm.co/emotionalads BehaviorMatrix, an applied behavior analytics company, has been granted a patent that essentially covers a method for detecting and measuring emotional signals within digital content, which could prove very useful in the online advertising and social CRM verticals.
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on the part of enterprises who are apparently more than willing to keep spending to acquire awareness, new users and stay ahead of the competition.
Pervasive Privacy Concerns Clearly, companies are on board with digital advertising’s potential, but perhaps the greatest threat to the successful continuance of digital advertising is not from companies, but from the greater demand for privacy among users. With reports of NSA snooping and “big data” reaching buzzword status within the modern enterprise, in many ways, the Web will go where privacy advocates take it — and its sights are set on the practice of remarketing. Google recently agreed to several concessions after Canada’s Office of the Privacy Commissioner (which two years ago issued guidelines around online behavioral advertising) found the company was in violation of Canada’s privacy rights for the use of sensitive health history in remarketing campaigns. Ad targeting based on health and financial information, for example, are considered “sensitive” and are thus off limits. Google, whose privacy policy explicitly states that it “will not associate sensitive interest categories with your cookies (such as those based on race, religion, sexual orientation, health or sensitive financial categories) and will not use these categories when showing you interest-based ads,” actually ended up blaming its advertisers for not following the policies, stating that remarketing criteria and user lists are determined by the advertiser and that their system wasn’t responsible. It’s not just Google, of course. Canada’s Interim Privacy Commissioner Chantal Bernier said they also had concerns about whether other ad networks are in compliance with the Canadian privacy law. The question is how advertisers will react. Will consumer distaste of personalization impact advertising budgets? What happens when ad blockers become as common with consumers as smartphones? Only time will tell; but privacy should be top of mind with today’s digital advertisers.
Waste and Fraud Privacy presents a genuine challenge for brands looking to understand as much as they can about their users and prospects, but for many advertisers there’s an even more insidious threat — the waste and fraud that is caused by bots and rogue publishers. Solve Media released data in late Jan. 2014, which showed that some 59 percent of agency media buyers surveyed see bot traffic negatively impacting campaign performance (41 percent of corporate brand marketers said the same). Based on
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current levels of bot traffic, the global display advertising industry is expected to waste up to $11.6 billion in 2014 advertising to bots (a 22 percent projected increase from 2013). “While bot traffic is frightening from an ROI perspective it can be stopped,” said Ari Jacoby, CEO of Solve Media, in a statement. “We are starting to see marketers and publishers taking the necessary preventative action in response to billions of advertising dollars being wasted. In the year ahead I expect we’ll also see more brand safety roles crop up at agencies and brands alike. Data-driven security measures that ensure human audiences, like those that Solve Media provides free to publishers, are a key component to increasing effectiveness in the digital advertising market.” The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is also hoping to curtail what some perceive as rampant abuse of the ecosystem. The IAB’s Traffic of Good Intent Task Force released a best practices guide (Traffic Fraud: Reducing Risk to Exposure), which explains and analyzes robotic traffic and other forms of fraud that can derail campaigns by producing illegitimate impressions, skewing audience data. “When robotic traffic is counted alongside that of real potential consumers, it becomes tremendously difficult for publishers and ad networks to produce accurate reports and for marketers to reach people with their carefully targeted messages — decreasing the value of legitimate advertising inventory,” said Steve Sullivan, vice president of advertising technology at IAB. The IAB provides several suggestions about reducing risk, including implementing policies and procedures to eliminate low-level fraud (comparing impression volumes to audience sizes reported by third-party measurement services), and setting clear objectives for campaigns that focus on measurement of real return on investment (ROI) and measurements such as click-through rate (CTR), completion rate or last-touch attribution, which can be easily faked. Fraud and privacy are some of the most significant issues facing digital advertisers, but with time, these issues should be mitigated (if only slightly), opening up a world of possibility for those seeking to leave their digital mark on the Web. What will it take to get there?
Greater Collaboration Required In order to be a good steward for digital advertising health, collaboration between networks will prove to be of the utmost importance — particularly as the age of programmatic trading has now fully enveloped the marketing ecosystem. Fortunately, companies like Google, Microsoft and others (from Flurry to Millenial Media) are joining forces to improve
’’
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AdWords Benchmarking — wsm.co/adbenchmarks Search marketing software and services provider WordStream recently introduced a new version of its popular AdWords Performance Grader tool, which provides advertisers with user reports on their AdWords PPC accounts, checking performance in several key areas and providing actionable tips for improvement.
transparency and make programmatic transactions more efficient (likely agreeing on technical standards to ensure interoperability across platforms). Collaboration and integrations are simply part and parcel of the digital ecosystem. Yahoo, for example, announced the expansion of its new programmatic advertising capabilities for display inventory, welcoming MediaMath, DoubleClick Bid Manager and The Trade Desk as new partners on its demand side platform (read more: wsm.co/yahooprog). The integrations will help advertising buyers access inventory on Yahoo properties directly (self-serve). That means ad buyers will benefit from greater transparency into available inventory, predictable delivery of ads and even gain the ability to optimize their campaigns.
Perpetual Development In order to provide digital advertisers with ever better products, platforms must engage in a perpetual state of development — out maneuvering each other with each new feature release. Bing for example announced several new updates available in the Bing Ads UI (user interface) including the introduction of new conversion fields, which will provide advertisers with the ability to engage in campaign ROI monitoring, segment performance data and different metrics including the bid match type or device operating system, as well as a new enhanced change history report. These are just a few of the developments released by Bing since the last issue of Website Magazine was published; there are many others that warrant the attention and exploration of serious digital advertisers. And it certainly doesn’t stop with Bing. Website Magazine’s ’Net Advertising channel (wsm.co/DigitalAdChannel) can shed light on the speed at which advertising technology is evolving. The point here is that advertising technology is in a constant state, a near perpetual state, of development, and the “healthiest” advertisers make an effort to stay aware of systemic changes in the channel.
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Omnichannel & Real-Time Click Even with privacy advocates having their way with the tin-foil hat set, nothing seems to slow the roll of advertising platforms looking to totally overhaul the industry, providing solutions that aim to help companies reach individuals on a personal basis in real-time — and in whatever channel or device they may be visiting or employing. Remarketing company SeeWhy believes that its new realtime cross-channel SaaS solution will be the one that helps retailers and commerce companies maximize their conversions. The product creates behavioral profiles of shoppers that span multiple website visits, triggering one-to-one, real-time personalized campaigns by automating the combination of message, channel, media and budget based on each visitor’s real-time value, intent and point on their path to purchase. “Most ad retargeting is unsophisticated, leveraging a single channel and based on relatively little knowledge about the individual,” said SeeWhy Chief Strategy Officer Charles Nicholls. “Ad Manager is leaps ahead by executing optimal campaigns for individual website visitors in real-time across channels, generating the highest return on ad spend. Our behavioral profile capability enables allocation of budget in real-time to those who present the best ROI. Targeting shoppers cross-channel right after a website visit, versus a non-real-time approach, leads to 300 percent to 500 percent increases in revenue.” What advertisers are realizing is the amount of value in their user data. Marin Software, whose Marin Connect offering provides marketers a platform through which they can integrate disparate sources of data (cost, contextual, revenue and audience data) into a unified interface, recently introduced Marin Audience Connect and announced a partnership with BlueKai where advertisers will be able to incorporate and bid on search-based audience segments — combining BlueKai audience data with Marin’s bidding algorithm. “While keywords have served digital marketing well as a proxy for consumer purchase intent, keywords alone tell an incomplete story,” said Matt Ackley, chief marketing officer at Marin Software. “By combining keywords with detailed audience data, marketers gain unprecedented insights that allow them to identify and target customers with the highest lifetime value.”
Everyone Wants to Talk Mobile Mobile is a hot topic among digital advertisers and it is seen quite clearly in Google’s Q4 performance. In its recently released 2013 Google E-Commerce study, PPC management firm
Quite a Year for PLAs — wsm.co/plaperform Research from digital marketing firm IgnitionOne indicates that the click-through rate for PLAs durCPC Strategy found some fairly significant growth for mobile product listing ad traffic, orders and revenue. CPC Strategy’s report revealed that traffic was up 326 percent year over year (YoY), revenue was up 102 percent YoY, orders were up 259 percent and conversion rates even rose slightly (not an easy feat) from 2.02 percent to 2.26 percent. What is most surprising is that Google’s mobile product listing ads (PLAs) accounted for 13.45 percent of overall store mobile traffic for its advertisers in the fourth quarter of 2013. Google’s mobile product listing ads (PLAs) suggested advertisers monitor mobile PLA traffic carefully, and optimize mobile bids for specific ad groups, because conversion rates are often lower than those originating from the desktop.
have six times the click-through rate of average Facebook ads from initial pilot results. This is consistent with what industry analysts are reporting.” Of course, you can pretty much count on Facebook, Twitter and Google getting in on SoLoMo in a big way in the future. In many respects, they already have.
SoLoMo Ads at the Street Level
Demanding Different Creative
Another trend that seems to dominate the Internet business landscape is that of the intersection of social, local and mobile; and there’s no shortage of players looking to put their own unique spin on the age-old digital problem. MomentFeed, for example, recently announced a unique capability to execute national advertising campaigns that dynamically localize creative into hundreds or thousands of locally relevant ads with specific targeting for each store location — the places where consumers ultimately become customers. Campaign performance can then be optimized and measured at the store level or in the aggregate at the regional and national level. “The explosion of smartphones has fundamentally changed marketing,” said Rob Reed, MomentFeed’s founder in a statement. “When a marketing message is literally held in the palm of your hand, you expect it to be authentic and relevant. With our new campaign management capabilities, marketers no longer have to choose between the scale of reaching large audiences and the authenticity of local messages. They can now have the best of both worlds — national reach with local relevance.” Through MomentFeed, ad creative for each location is dynamically generated based on unique data such as the neighborhood name, cross streets, as well as photos of the store and even its employees. The targeting can be tailored to each location through its unique addressable service area, a set of ZIP codes, demographic profiles, and/or custom audiences from both first- and third-party data sources. This capability is initially supported for Facebook with other platforms to follow. “Authentic, locally relevant marketing at scale drives business results,” said MomentFeed CEO, Robert Blatt. “Our existing customers have found this new type of advertising to
Display advertising is also ripe for disruption, with just one in 1,000 visitors actually clicking an online ad. Technology innovators have latched on to the problem and are finding some rather unique approaches to how creative assets can be evolved. Adnimation, for example, launched a new ad network recently that combines animated clips with standard ads. The rich media units incorporate engaging cartoon characters that appear to jump out of a publisher’s page to capture the attention of consumers before delivering the advertiser’s message. “The motivation for creating Adnimation is the lack of clicks in a multi-billion dollar market,” said Tomer Treves, CEO and founder of Adnimation. “Most ad networks report having more ads sold than placed, and most websites report a dwindling volume of clicks and earnings. Adnimation wanted an advertising method that solves both problems with added value to users who prefer the fun ads and give them real attention before clicking. With Adnimation, advertisers and publishers of all sizes can tap into our rich media capabilities.” Consumers (end-users) are expecting more, and the healthiest enterprises (those who will live to a ripe old digital age), will be those who do more with the creative opportunities they are afforded.
ing the year was upward of 47 percent higher than the click-through rate for text-based pay-perclick ads on the network.
Check Your Pulse Despite the countless reports, surveys and chatter about the growth, opportunities and overall strength of online advertising, Internet professionals must commit to taking their own brand’s pulse to determine how to leverage the many capabilities available to them and move toward greater Web wellness with meaningful, engaging and effective advertising.
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CONVERSION
CONNECTION
Conversion Optimization:
When Not to Test By Tim Ash
As an Internet professional, you’ve probably gotten your fill of testing advice. Almost every tip you come across likely includes the caveat “you should test to see what works best for your situation.” Between that advice and the proliferation of low-cost testing tools available, it’s no wonder that testing has become the latest digital marketing craze.
It may come as a surprise then, that testing is not always the quickest or most effective path to higher conversions. Here are some situations in which testing can lead to inaccurate conclusions or very slow improvements.
When your traffic is unstable Under ideal conditions, your landing page should be the only thing that changes during your test. Otherwise, it is difficult to attribute any outcome to specific variables being tested. And one of the biggest external factors muddying up the testing waters can be traffic instability. In most cases, you will combine a number of traffic sources for your test. The assumption behind this approach is that the combined population of people visiting your website behaves consistently, and that by testing you can find an alternative landing page design to which they will respond more favorably. So, you have to be careful that the composition of your audience doesn’t change dramatically during the test. Otherwise, you may optimize for one population and then try to apply the results to a different one. There are so many possible events that could affect your traffic, such as (1) increasing or decreasing spending on particular campaigns; (2) significantly changing the mix of pay-per-click keywords and positions you are bidding on; (3) changes in search engine algorithms; or (4) launching new offline advertising channels or changing the message of offline advertising.
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Some of these events you will be able to predict or control, and others you will not. Your goal is to run your test during a time period when you expect traffic to be very typical of your “normal” traffic patterns — both in terms of volume and source (what directed visitors to your site). If you can’t prevent events that might bias your test, you will need to have some method of detecting anomalies and modifying your analysis to compensate for the effects. If there are significant changes to your traffic mix while you are running a test, you may have to restart your data collection since your conclusions will be highly suspect.
When you don’t have enough conversions to get statistical significance Testing is based on statistics and probability. Let’s assume that you have a constant flow of visitors to your landing page from a steady and unchanging traffic source. You decide to test two versions of your page design, and split your traffic evenly and randomly between them. You have two landing page experiences, each with its own random variables (the visitors) and its own measurable events (the conversion, or failure to convert). The true probability of conversion for each page is not known, but must be between zero and one. From the law of large numbers, you know that as you sample a very large number of visitors, the measured conver-
sion rate will approach the true probability of conversion. From the Central Limit Theorem you also know that the chances of the actual value falling within three standard deviations of your observed mean are very high (99.7 percent), and that the width of the normal distribution will continue to narrow (depending only on the amount of data that you have collected). In short, you’ll need to measure not only enough visits, but also enough conversions to feel certain that the conversion rate you have measured is an accurate predictor of the outcome you can expect over time. Here’s a simple translation: When you flip a coin you have two possible outcomes — heads or tails — each of which has an equal likelihood of coming up. So the theoretical ratio is 1:1. But suppose you flipped a coin four times and got three heads. You would inaccurately conclude that the ratio of outcomes was 3:1. The more times you flip the coin the more that ratio will level out, eventually coming extremely close to 1:1. Now apply this thinking to your landing page test. Instead of heads and tails, your two possible outcomes are conversion and no conversion. If you have too few conversions it would be nearly impossible to observe enough experiments to see the actual ratio of outcomes converge on the theoretical ratio of outcomes. Without that, you just won’t get accurate results. You may be tempted to think that you could simply run the test long enough to get the numbers you need, dragging your test out over weeks or months. The hazard with this approach is it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid polluting your data with other variables, such as seasonal traffic spikes, changes in the competitive landscape or other external factors that could affect your conversion rate. The longer your test runs, the more polluted the data may become, which could easily lead you to inaccurate conclusions.
When your website is a hot mess If you have serious problems with your website design, if your checkout flow is cumbersome, or your architecture is confusing and non-intuitive, testing won’t do you much good. Testing works well for optimizing individual pages and elements, but without taking a more holistic approach to fixing your site, you run the risk of morphing it into an unusable Frankenstein-like mess. The different pieces won’t mesh together well, causing visitors to feel confused and creating a chaotic, unpredictable user experience.
If you’ve been testing, changing things and retesting but aren’t seeing results, consider stepping back from testing and re-evaluating your overall site through the eyes of your customer. • Is your messaging and terminology consistent with what will resonate with your target audience? • Does your website give users a clear path to accomplish their desired task? • Does your design reflect professionalism and inspire trust? • Do you have too many navigational choices, or confusing categories of information? Are your navigation labels intuitive and informative? • Are your photography and other graphic images of high quality? • Are your calls-to-action clear and appropriately placed? • Are your fonts clear and easy to read, and is there a logical visual hierarchy that helps visitors understand the relative importance of different pieces of content? • Is your copywriting developed specifically for an online audience, or did you simply recycle text from your written materials?
Once you have a usable and well-designed site with a steady flow of traffic, then you can begin the ongoing process of testing, fine-tuning and continually optimizing for greater success.
If your website is failing in these areas, tweaking one variable at a time with A/B testing will be a long, slow process. Your time and money would be better spent conducting usability tests and then redesigning your site and its information architecture based on that feedback combined with best practices in usercentered design and conversion optimization. Then, once your new site is launched you can begin the process of identifying individual sections or variables to test for further improvement. There’s no question that website testing is an important element of conversion rate optimization, but it isn’t the only element. If your site has very low conversions it may be a result of significant fundamental flaws that should be corrected before testing is considered. Once you have a usable and well-designed site with a steady flow of traffic, then you can begin the ongoing process of testing, fine-tuning and continually optimizing for greater success. Tim Ash is the CEO of SiteTuners, Chair of Conversion Conference, bestselling author of Landing Page Optimization, and a computer and cognitive scientist by education.
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A F F I L I AT E
INSIDER
Beyond Cost & Revenue
Measuring the Profitability of the Affiliate Channel The age of simply subtracting costs from top-line revenue to determine the level of profitability of an affiliate marketing initiative is over.
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Many online advertisers are second-guessing their affiliate marketing decisions. Advertisers are increasingly skeptical of how many orders, customers and/or sales they would have received without their existing affiliate partners and are growing tired of dealing with fraud, cookie stuffing, BHOs (Browser Helper Objects) stealing sales, one affiliate overwriting another affiliate’s cookies and more. Those issues aside, there are two things affecting their impressions of affiliate channel sales more than anything else. First, sales reported from the network don’t match the sales in their analytics software and, second, they see conflict between specific orders credited through the last-click attribution of affiliate networks and their other channels, specifically display, email and search. Last year, Widgets-R-Us, for example, reported $100,000 in sales for one month through their affiliate network, but their Coremetrics dashboard only showed $86,000 attributed to the affiliate channel. Not only that, but when they started digging deeper they saw that there was a 15 percent overlap of specific orders reported through the affiliate channel
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By Jamie Birch
and orders reported in other online campaigns. Looking at it from this perspective, it’s easy to see why they began questioning if they were truly profiting from their affiliate initiatives or if they were simply increasing their costs by adding affiliate commissions. Nine times out of ten, they aren’t, but “revenue-cost” simply won’t show them that. Advertisers looking to determine their true profitability, identify partners that are truly successful and demonstrate their affiliate channel’s superior performance within their organizations, need to go beyond cost and revenue.
New Customer Acquisition: Many advertisers look at the number of new customers they acquired through a given channel and compare the cost-pernew customer acquired across all of their channels to determine which ones are productive and profitable. Advertisers measure this differently, but there should be consistency within each organization. For example, what constitutes a new customer? What if a person has purchased items from a retailer before, but then has no activity for 24 months, are they a
E-commerce advertisers will probably face a lot of heat when a sale is registering in the search channel AND the affiliate channel, so they need to have a good handle on the path to purchase to determine “incrementality.” new or an existing customer? Or, is a new customer only one that has never, under any circumstances, shopped with a merchant before?
Lifetime Value: Advertisers should always strive to place a monetary value on customers’ life span with their organizations, as it is useful to compare those values across partners and channels. How many times does a typical customer purchase in a year, in two years, in a lifetime? Many acquisition channels are known to only break even on the customer’s first order; is your affiliate channel measured that way? Are affiliate customers purchasing twice as often after that initial sale? Do they spend 75 percent more when they come through the affiliate channel? You may find that these values are higher/lower through the affiliate channel, as you may spend more or less to acquire them initially, thus each customer is worth more in the end.
Incremental Sales: This one is a little trickier to determine, but generally, advertisers are trying to understand how many affiliate channel sales would have only happened with the affiliate being involved in the transaction. E-commerce advertisers will probably face a lot of heat when a sale is registering in the search channel AND the affiliate channel, so they need to have a good handle on the path to purchase to determine “incrementality.” Why did the user end up purchasing? Was it because of the first search ad? The offer the affiliate had? Did they know they would receive a rebate through an affiliate site? Do they only shop through the affiliate site, so advertisers wouldn’t have seen the sale if they didn’t participate? It’s a calculation based on assumptions. There is no right or wrong answer, but at the very least, advertisers want to explore this information.
Channel Attribution: Many affiliate managers and affiliates fail to understand attribution and how it affects profitability measurements. Each advertiser
has many channels — search, email, catalog, brickand-mortar stores, display/retargeting, social, etc. As a user travels from intent to confirmation, or path to purchase, they will most likely interact with each of these channels in several different ways. Understanding this channel behavior will go a long way in determining which partners are vital and which ones are not. Again, assumptions must be made, but good data can help you fill in the gaps. This is the “creative” portion of marketing — and there are as many right answers as there are marketing managers. The first step, however, is to collect data. It is important that an enterprise quickly becomes big advocates of leveraging data at the customer level. In the end, they are attempting to determine the value of that customer in relation to the channel so they need to spend some time determining what data is available before they determine how to incorporate it within the concepts outlined here. Advertisers with Business Intelligence (BI) teams, should get to know those professionals better. They’ll need to know customer behavior by channel, the corporate profitability formula for a customer, how many channels a customer touches on his or her path to purchase and the average order values across channels. It’s imperative to work closely with other channel managers and learn how they are determining profitability. Once advertisers have that data, and the other channels’ ith w p profitability formulas, they can begin to g U es n utilize these advanced concepts to comi t ep pare, contrast and measure their affiliate Ke ffilia channel success. A follow must- ery 9 1 r ve ev Disco accounts r iliate e t f it a Tw nd f a r e Jamie Birch is the CEO of JEBCommerce.com, is t t adver ld follow a r an award-winning performance marketing u o itte sh /19tw o agency. Birch has been running marketing proc . wsm grams for Fortune 500 companies for more than 15 years.
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INSIGHTS
O N A N A LY T I C S
Social Media Tracking (Like a Boss)
By Peter Prestipino, Editor-In-Chief
On the Importance of Conversions & the New Role of Threaded Conversations in the Modern Social Enterprise
Marketers are becoming increasingly interested in metrics that reveal the true success of digital campaigns — at least that is the case for sophisticated ‘Net professionals and online enterprises. To date, the metrics most often used to prove the worth of social media campaigns have focused on satisfying clients and fellow Internet executives’ egos, who for years have believed “bigger is better” in the realm of Facebook and Twitter. Fortunately, it’s time to say goodbye to raw fan counts and follower numbers; but don’t worry — you won’t miss them. More reliable indicators of social media performance exist and they can be used to drive future marketing strategy on an incredibly refined level. The best part is you are already familiar with them. The problem is that marketers often fail to think in a “big picture” way (like a boss), opting instead for the few relevant-sounding and impressive-looking metrics rather than exploring the data points that reveal true campaign performance on a broad and meaningful scale across the enterprise; namely, conversion (in whatever form they may come like sign-ups, actual purchases) and consumer engagement, which, of course, leads to greater and more valuable conversions. Converting to Conversion-Centric Measurement
When digital marketers decide to align specific social media efforts to an end-result like conversions, they will be acting like a boss, validating the worth of the entire channel, and making the most of their investments. Conversions are the way that Web workers must track their social media initiatives today (and how they will likely measure the channel’s long-term worth in the future). The problem is that the many software tools available to ’Net professionals’ (namely those developed for scheduling and managing) have just not provided a means to do that up to this point. Fortunately, that’s beginning to change. Buffer (which now offers a subscription-based business-class version of its software solution with service tiers ranging from $50 to $250), for example, recently added several new features including an integration with Google Analytics. The feature will enable Buffer users to monitor their Buffer-based social media performance alongside their other marketing
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campaigns, giving them the ability to not just create and track specific social campaigns within the platform but also understand performance within the context of all conversion metrics driven across channels. It’s a big step in the maturation of social media. Even if your organization doesn’t leverage Buffer, or any of the social media management apps that integrate with analytics or CRM providers (review several popular social media management solutions at wsm.co/socialbiglist) that reveal this important conversion-centric information, there is another metric that marketers can and should start exploring as it carries great influence and impacts the bottom line. Threaded Conversations: The Ultimate New Social Metric
Once social media driven conversion benchmarks have been established, an enterprise can begin to look at the individual tactics responsible for keeping costs low and earnings high. Raw social follower numbers, again, prove insufficient as a metric to determine channel effectiveness on social networks and, as such, another new metric should find its way into your monthly reports — threaded conversations. In a recent analyst call, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo reported a decrease in “timeline views” (Twitter’s own version of pageviews). That might have worried some social media mavens but impressions on the network are actually increasing in quality, meaning users were more engaged with tweets, replying, “favoriting” and retweeting their exchanges with brands in sometimes multi-device, multi-channel threaded conversations. If your company is on Twitter (or any social media outlet where multi-message communications are present) it must adopt metrics that measures the frequency and volume of this manner of conversation. The good news is that threaded conversations are clear signs of your brand’s ability to engage its audience. And as you know, the more engaged an audience, the more likely they are to convert. Rethinking how social media is measured is now of paramount importance. It might require a little data hacking, but when conversions are top of mind, and engagement the aim, marketers and the enterprises that employ them will quickly find the investment of time in the channel to be worth it.
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S O F T WA R E E V E RY W H E R E
By Amberly Dressler, Managing Editor
Experts Speak:
The True Costs of Marketing Automation Software Providing a meaningful, relevant and seamless user experience is the only way to achieve success on the Web today. The difference between top digital destinations like Adobe and Zappos and the rest of us, however, is in their execution, not just their ideals. Enter marketing automation software. Marketing automation software can help bridge the large gap between small startups and big brands — and nearly every company in between. When it comes to pulling the trigger on marketing automation software though, lack of resources (time and money) is a barrier for most. Website Magazine interviewed three Internet executives who are using marketing automation to discover how much they paid, what they were paying for and any return on investment they received from the software to help readers like you determine the risk-reward of some of the most popular software solutions on the market.
Katie Hollar Marketing Manager at Capterra Software Used: Pardot
(A Salesforce Company) Cost: $1,000 monthly Used for: 2 Years
What led to the decision to purchase marketing automation software? We had a small, two-person marketing team, and with our limited resources, we were spending too much time manually segmenting lists and testing email copy using an email marketing system we had outgrown. We decided that to target messaging and send the appropriate emails from our corresponding sales representatives, we needed a more sophisticated tool, which we could benefit from the lead scoring, nurturing, landing page creation and other functionality that marketing automation software provided instead of just upgrading to another email marketing system.
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What marketing objectives did this product meet for your organization or fail to meet for your organization? Pardot helped us generate more leads for our sales team, nurture our existing customers with educational content offers, drive more traffic to our website and blog, capture more data about our prospects (such as the referring source of each lead and whether they had visited our site before) and better score/evaluate our leads so that our sales team could prioritize follow-up.
Did you get a return on investment? Absolutely, we actually quadrupled our lead qualification rate in the first year, and thereby boosted our lead sales by four times. We also were able to grow the number of advertising customers on our site by offering promotions to our highest scoring prospects, thereby resulting in double-digit revenue growth for the company.
Would you recommend marketing automation software to other businesses? I would recommend marketing automation to companies once they have a marketing strategy in place, and it helps to also have a stockpile of content that they’ve created (blog posts, white papers, ebooks, video, etc.). Also, marketers considering marketing automation software should have a good understanding of what makes a sales qualified lead and how they intend to generate those leads and ultimately, nurture them into customers. Without the answers to those questions, the software is a waste of money because you’ll be paying for functionality you can’t use until you figure out your plans. Additionally, I think you’d probably need at least 2-3 people on your marketing team before you could make full use of marketing automation software, because it can be a full-time job. Plus, there aren’t many strong marketing
automation vendors for business-to-consumer companies, so it makes more sense if you are business-tobusiness provider and your customers have a long sales cycle that requires multiple marketing touchpoints and interactions.
Anything else you’d like to add about the costs of marketing automation software or your experience with it? I think one of the hidden costs of marketing automation software is the technology/IT department’s involvement and time needed to implement the software. Marketing automation implementation often involves integrating the software with other systems and installing tracking codes on your website, and that can take some time to pencil in since tech departments often have many other priorities. Also, several of the marketing automation software vendors we considered vastly underestimated the time and resources it would take for us to be fully up-and-running on the software. Most said it would take a marketing department a couple weeks, maybe a month, but in our experience, it was more like six months before we were making the most of the software, and that’s been true of other companies we’ve helped find marketing automation software for, as well. Lastly, some of the market leaders charge training costs on top of the monthly or annual cost of the software (fortunately, Pardot did not, which is one of the reasons we decided on that system). If you have a number of sales and marketing users who need training, that can easily add thousands of dollars to your quote.
Mike May President of Spear One Software Used: Genius, Marketo
and Pardot Cost: $4,000 - $12,000 Used for: 5 Years
What was your experience with marketing automation software? With marketing automation, most companies overlook a large, hidden cost. It’s the internal headcount requirement to care and feed the system. Most marketers assess the content creation costs of the email marketing and possibly new landing pages. Each software platform has varying degrees of power and complexity for email triggers, forms, progressive profiling, lead scoring and reporting. With the lower cost of simpler marketing automation platforms (like Genius and Pardot, for us), a company should expect to dedicate half of a full-time equivalent employee (FTE) to marketing automation
support. For the more powerful, richer systems that have many more options (like Marketo or Eloqua), a company should dedicate a minimum of one full-time employee to marketing automation administration. In a larger enterprise organization, the care and feeding of marketing automation could require 3-5 employees.
Jonathan Herrick CSO & CMO of Hatchbuck Software Used: Pardot and
Hatchbuck Cost: $2,000 a month (Pardot),
$99 a month (Hatchbuck) Used for: 4+ Years
What led to the decision to purchase marketing automation software? At our previous SaaS company, we needed a way to manage our sales and marketing processes and nurture leads instead of pushing generic messaging to prospects who may or may not have been ready to buy. Investing in marketing automation was crucial to engaging with prospects in all stages of the sales funnel and delivering the hottest leads to our sales team.
What marketing objectives did this product meet for your organization or fail to meet for your organization? Pardot allowed us to segment our database effectively so that we could deliver relevant content to our prospects, track our contacts’ activity on our website, score leads and deliver hot prospects to our sales team. The drawbacks were that Pardot required ramp up time to implement, continual training was needed, building emails and campaigns required extensive knowledge and it was quite expensive.
Did you get a return on investment? We’ve seen great ROI with marketing automation. The big payoff is integrating CRM and email marketing into one system in order to segment, target and increase relevance, thus elevating engagement rates.
Would you recommend marketing automation software to other businesses? Marketing automation can add tremendous value to business owners, marketers and sales leaders by automating administrative work, freeing up time to focus on activities that impact revenue and delivering relevant messaging to prospects. Thus, increasing engagement with your company, as well as providing customer and prospect data that improves decisionmaking, and filling the sales funnel so that prospects who are ready to buy can be easily identified and engaged with, while those who aren’t ready to buy can be nurtured until their need arises.
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EXPERIENCE
By Allison Howen, Associate Editor
RETAILERS:
GET OUT OF YOUR EMAIL RUT When it comes to digital marketing strategies, email is a retailer’s faithful friend.
Not only is this channel a dependable communication method, but it also consistently provides a positive return on investment (ROI) for marketers –— with the Direct Marketing Association reporting that for every $1 marketers spend on email, the average ROI is $40. The problem with faithful friends, however, is that it is easy to become too comfortable. In email’s case, retailers are inclined to become satisfied with their technology and content strategies, making it easy for them to ignore emerging trends that have the potential to boost this channel’s performance. Let’s challenge the status quo with three modern ways to get out of an email rut.
1. Design for the Small Screen Google reports that 82 percent of people use mobile phones to check their emails, yet an eConsultancy study found that just 25 percent of marketers actually optimize their email messages for mobile. This poses a big marketing performance dilemma for retailers who have neglected optimizing their messages for the small screen thus far. Especially since GetResponse found that 42 percent of subscribers will delete emails that don’t display correctly on their mobile device. Luckily, the ’Net is full of platforms and technologies that offer mobile-friendly email solutions. GetResponse, for example, offers more than 500 templates that are responsive as well as a “Mobile Email Preview” tool that enables marketers to view how messages appear on the small screen during the design process. Popular email marketing service MailChimp also offers responsive templates, along with a couple of other handy features, such as its “Inbox Inspector” tool that can be leveraged to test campaigns across a variety of mobile email clients.
in Sandals ? the Snow
Discover how to use the weather for better email relevancy at wsm.co/eforecast
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tomers who have abandoned their shopping carts. Retailers, however, should consider newer, more contemporary approaches. Email Aptitude, for instance, offers a technology that delivers messages based on engagement behavior. Dubbed Frequency IQ, this feature looks at the actual engagement of contacts in the email channel to determine how often individual subscribers should receive messages throughout the week. According to Email Aptitude Co-Founder Forest Bronzan, this creates a very relevant user experience because it allows merchants to cater to customers based on their actual behaviors. Moreover, the tool is automated and can be set up to recalculate subscribers’ behaviors once a week, which means subscribers who are interacting with emails on a regular basis will be moved to a new group that receives messages more frequently, and vice versa.
3. Be Visual We live in a busy, hyper-connected world where imagebased content tends to resonate better with consumers across all channels. Previously, however, email marketers were told to avoid using images because subscribers were required to click on the “display image” links in order to view them. Google changed this, however, when it announced at the end of 2013 that it would automatically display images within Gmail inboxes. Marketers now have a better chance of having their visual content seen by subscribers the way it was intended, which could influence both click-through and conversion rates. Be cautious though, because other email providers have not yet followed suit. That said, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see some follow in Google’s footsteps sooner rather than later.
2. Capitalize on Data Thanks to the combination of modern technology and the amount of available data, retailers are presented with countless ways to tailor messages to individual subscribers. This doesn’t mean retailers should throw out the strategies that have been favorable to their bottom lines through the years, such as segmenting based on interests and leveraging retargeting cus-
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Getting Out Retailers have a lot on their plates, which can make it very easy to become complacent with everyday tasks like email marketing. But in order to keep the spark alive between your shop and its customers, it is important to intertwine some new strategies with the old — it will keep both your business and its customers on their virtual toes.
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QUOTED
POPULAR ARTICLES ON THE WEB
Forest Bronzan, Co-Founder of Email Aptitude
Website Magazine’s print edition is only the beginning of our coverage on emerging trends, best practices and news that impacts your Web success. Here are five popular articles you might have missed at WebsiteMagazine.com.
Aaron Rudger, Senior Manager of Monitoring at Keynote Ari Jacoby, CEO of Solve Media Ben Plomion, VP of Marketing at Chango Charles Nicholls, Chief Strategy Officer at SeeWhy Ed Schipul, Founder and CEO of Tendenci Iwo Kadziela, AMPS Product Manager at SiteSpect Jennifer Billings, Marketing Director of the American Marketing Assoc. Jonathan Herrick, CSO & CMO of Hatchbuck Katie Hollar, Marketing Manager at Capterra Katie Johnson, Associate Director at Resolution Media Marlena Jayatilake, Owner of LovethatSpice.com Marvin Russell, CEO of The Ocean Agency Matt Ackley, Chief Marketing Officer at Marin Software Mike May, President of Spear One Rob Reed, Founder of MomentFeed Robert Blatt, CEO of MomentFeed Robin Tooms, Vice President of Strategy for Savage Brands Steve Rotter, Vice President of Marketing at Brightcove Steve Sullivan, Vice President, Advertising Technology at IAB Ted Schuster, Director of Advertising at Resolution Media Tomer Treves, CEO and Founder of Adnimation
How YOU Can Be Popular in Search Forever In a matter of weeks, Bing and Google both dropped major digital bombshells on an already confusing practice - making white hat wearing SEOs wondering what’s left to do. The answer is simple - just aim for a different target: being popular. See more at wsm.co/popularityseo.
5 Video Strategies for E-Commerce Merchants Showcase products, engage shoppers, and increase visibility and conversions with these five video strategies for e-commerce merchants at wsm.co/5video2014.
10 Overnight Website Improvements Internet professionals burning the midnight oil can work smarter not harder with these 10 quick website improvements that can be made overnight at wsm.co/10quicktips.
SEO in 2014: Fact, Fiction and Sensationalism
NOTED 1&1
GetResponse
Millenial Media
99designs
GoDaddy
Movable Ink
Aberdeen Group
New Relic
AdRoll
Hatchbuck
Pardot
AIGA job bank
IgnitionOne
Pingdom
BehaviorMatrix
Interactive Advertising
PunchTab
Bing
Bureau
Salesforce
Buffer
JEBCommerce
SiteSpect
Content Marketing
Kenshoo
SiteTuners
Keynote
Tealium
Covario
TellApart
Elance.com
MailChimp
The Trade Desk
Email Aptitude
Marin Software
MarketingProfs
Usablenet
Flurry
Marketo
Web.com
Freelancer.com
MediaMath
WordStream
Genius
Microsoft
YouTube
Institute
Discover 11 actionable SEO tips that still work in 2014 and that dispel the many sensationalized claims making the headlines today at wsm.co/seoin2014.
The gTLD Wait is Over (Kind Of) If you’ve been on the edge of your digital seat waiting for the impending arrival of the new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), you’ll be happy to know the wait is over (kind of). Read more at wsm.co/gtldwait.
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M A R C H 2014
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W E B C O M M E N TA R Y
By Peter Prestipino, Editor-In-Chief
PROTESTING THE LINK ECONOMY I don’t know about you, but I’ve had just about enough of search engines and their ongoing issues with the practice of optimization. In addition, and more importantly perhaps, I’ve also had just about enough from the SEO community as a whole who seem to perpetually whine, moan and bellyache over the wrongs done to them by the search engines.
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So who’s really to blame for this current digital state and what can we white hat Web workers do about the whole situation? The problem — at least as I see it — is that as search engines have become increasingly reliant on advertising revenue, they have less motivation to support those websites that seek organic traffic. As a result, the practice of search engine optimization has been seen in an increasingly more negative light (as the complexities surrounding the practice mount); actually, it was never really seen in a good light, but I digress. The long list of acceptable practices leveraged by search marketers looking to secure top placement on the organic listings of popular search engines has dwindled. In fact, you’ll be hard pressed to find any SEO who can name more than a few that still work, or at least work with any confidence. Buying links, submitting content to article directories, directory submissions, forum posting and blog commenting — these tactics just aren’t as useful as they once were. But why? The reason, my fellow Internet professional is simple. A segment of the Web workers’ population ruined these approaches for everyone else. They don’t just buy one link from a high-traffic website, they buy hundreds (and don’t often adjust the anchor text) on the cheap. They don’t write engaging and thought-provoking articles for the readers of other blogs, they set up numerous
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blogs and interlink (dubbed linkwheeling), autochurn some copy, fill the site with ads and hope that they will somehow magically rank for highly competitive search terms and phrases in the pharmaceutical (Viagra and Oxycontin), fashion (Coach purses) and adult verticals. I’ve spent a good portion of my professional career (who am I kidding, I’ve spent all of my professional career) monitoring the tactics and techniques employed by both the white hat and the black hat search engine optimizers. As such, I can, with immense confidence, tell you that the way to gain awareness of your brand and its products (on or off the Web) and ultimately acquire the links that search engines have for so long downplayed as the key to higher rankings, is this: be unique and different, more so than every single one of your competitors. Should your message not compel others to provide your website with a citation (link) you’re doing it wrong. You will have no one to blame but yourself — not Google or Bing, not the competition, but your brand, your company, your enterprise. Let this serve as a wakeup call. Google and Bing (or any search engine that may emerge in the future) owes the community of Internet professionals nothing when it comes to organic rankings. Their responsibility is to provide the best possible and most engaging experience for users — and that should be the same when it comes to your SEO campaigns.
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