International Ranking Factors: URL Best Practices Part 2

By Nathan Janitz, Natural Search Supervisor, Content Solutions

Originally Appeared on Intellect Interactive

I have a saying that I find holds true a great deal of time: “What ‘should’ happen and ‘does’ happen are usually two different things.” A while ago I posted about International URL best practices, and since then several people have come to me asking for other options because well…..what should and does happen are two different things. You know what you are “suppose” to do, but business reason, recourses, politics, etc. dictate that you cannot follow the “best” practices. So, what is one to do? Don’t worry….here is plan B & C.

International SEO Options without CC TLD’s: Plan B

Country Code Top Level Domain (CC TLD) is the best way to ensure that your company’s content is ranked within the countries’ preferred search engines. However, business needs may not always accommodate this strategy. Whether it is due to company structure, global CMS systems, or simply just cost savings, it is ok if you cannot implement the CC LTD’s. There are two other ways to properly search engine optimize (SEO) your URLs for international search results.

Basics are Still the Basics

Just because a company cannot purchase and manage a plethora of CC TLD’s does not mean that the best practices of language settings and Directory Taxonomy are not still valid. In fact, the following two methods of URL optimization require that a company follows those two rules even closer. The CC TLD’s are considered an automatic default for certain content (i.e. if you send mail to a Chicago address, then you would assume that the mail is going to the USA). Given that the presence of the CC TLD is not there, a company has to make sure that it is sending the proper singles to the search engines through proper use of the directory taxonomy and language settings. (See Blog Post: International URL Best Practices for rules on language settings and directory taxonomy.)

Country as a Sub-Domain/ Language as Sub-Directory

The first method is to setup each country as a sub-domain.

Brazil’s Primary URL: br.yourcompany.com/pt/

Engines tend to rank the level of importance of content based on how far from the domain directory. As a best practice, it is recommended that content should not reside more than 3 levels (example: yourcompany.com/level-1/ level-2/ level-3/). This method allows you to have used one less sub-directory, thus showing a higher level of importance for company’s content.

The downside to this method is that it tends to be a little harder to explain to international counterparts. It also tends to be more taxing on CMS systems and IT resources (as compared to the last of the two methods).

Country & Language as a Sub-Directory

The second method is to place each country and language in its own sub-directories. See example below.

Brazil’s Primary URL: www.yourcompany.com/br/pt/

This method is simple to understand, explain and implement. The first directory is always the country and the second URL is always the language. Each directory thus signals to the engine the content is specific that country and language. The added bonus is that most engines will consolidate link popularity to the sub-domain. So, if all directories are on one domain, then it is possible that the PR and advertising that a company does in each country can actually help it rank better in another country.

The downside of this method is that you place one more directory in front of the most important content. Again, best practice state that you should not have content more than three levels from the domain (example: yourcompany.com /level-1/ level-2/ level-3/). This method already forces the most important content to the 3^rd level.

Region Settings within Webmaster Tools

Google specifically recommends setting region-specific URLs within a standard .com top level domain (TLD) within Google Webmaster Tools. This provides the engines with another signal of international origin and relevance.

Regional Non-Country Specific: Plan C

Business reasons may dictate that a certain country or region has to be lumped into one area. This presents a problem when it comes to giving the proper signals to the search engines as to the nature of the content. For instance, a company is starting to enter the Latin American markets and has deemed a small set of countries as top priorities. However, the company does not want to ignore the other countries because it still has the ability to service those customers. In this case, the company has dedicated its efforts to those high priority countries and needs a stop gap for the rest of the region.

Region Structure & Taxonomy

All rules apply as laid out in previous options (see above Plan B above & “Best Practices” on the other post); however, the directories or sub-domains will be broken out into region instead of country. Since the engines do not recognize regions, it is important to spell out the region by universally accepted names and in the main region’s language (if possible). For instance, the main language of Latin America is Spanish. See example below.

www.yourcompany.com/america-latina/es/

In the cases where a specific language cannot be specified, such as in the EU, it is critical to include as many of the languages as business resources dictate. Like Latin America, the EU is comprised of several countries and thus will not have a TLD recognized by search engines. Each major language should be created in different directories.

EU English: www.yourcompany.com/european-union /en/
EU Spanish: www.yourcompany.com/european-union /es/
EU French: www.yourcompany.com/european-union /fr/
EU German: www.yourcompany.com/european-union /de/

Make sure to include the language html setting mentioned above. The importance of these two steps is critical in making sure that the engines understand that this content is specific to that region and language, making the content seam relevant to the consumer’s query.

Optimize Yourself

By Mike Kowieski, Paid Search Specialist

A friend of mine from college recently contacted me with a uniquely modern problem. She just graduated from law school and was busy interviewing with different firms, and in two separate interviews a question came up about some articles she had written for her college newspaper. Apparently, she had written a few reviews of bars on campus, and the picture that accompanied her byline showed her chugging from a wine bottle, fully stretched out on a sofa with empty beer cans strewn around her. What seemed funny in college was now causing a serious problem – prospective law firms didn’t get the joke and assumed she was a raging alcoholic. Even worse, the newspaper refused to take down the posts.

With everyone from prospective girlfriends to HR departments Googling your name to get a better picture of who you are, personal online reputation management is becoming increasingly important. Fortunately, there’s a number of common sense steps you can take to help take control of the results page for your name.

Check Your Social Network Privacy Settings

Unless your name is Megan Fox or Brad Pitt, chances are your Facebook and Twitter profiles are right up near the top of the results page. With Facebook’s recent privacy settings change, people you’re not friends with may be able to see old photos, view your status updates, and more. This New York Times article goes in-depth on exactly what settings you need to review to make sure those pictures from freshman year of you taking a two-story beer bong remain private. Similarly, if you’ve got some sensitive tweets, make sure your profile is locked so only your followers can see them – otherwise, the entire world can. And if you’re not on Facebook or Twitter, its time to join the 21^st century and sign up. These two sites will almost certainly help drive down any negative results for your name by ranking ahead of them.

Create, Create, Create
Search engine optimization is a real estate battle – and the first page is where its at. Your goal should be to own the entire first results page for your name. Any negative or embarrassing links will be pushed down the rankings, and the chances of it being discovered are far less the further down they go. If its available, buy your name as a domain name and set your name as the title tag. You don’t have to update your site every day, but at the very least put up some plain text and link to your other social networking pages. Then, go out and create profiles on LinkedIn, Delicious, MySpace, Naymz, Digg, and any other social networking sites you can think of. Set up blogs associated with your name (either in the URL or on-page) on Tumblr, Blogger, and LiveJournal to start. Once you’ve got these established, try to update them at least once a week – even if its just a few sentences.

Make Your Voice Heard

I’m willing to bet there’s a few blogs you read with a comments section. Now’s the time to make your voice heard – start posting comments with your name as the username. You’ll reap the benefit of having your name appear on a page with a good deal of link juice, and those comments will begin being indexed by the search engine spiders.

These are just the basics when it comes to personal online reputation management, but they’re a great place to start. I welcome any additional suggestions and ideas. Just remember to be patient – search engine results pages don’t change overnight, so don’t get discouraged and keep up the fight.

Measuring Twitter

By Al Kao, Natural Search Supervisor, Content Solutions

A lot has been made of Twitter for the past 2-3 years and the growth of Twitter has been astounding. Marketers were quick to find ways to leverage (exploit?) Twitter.

Despite all of the desires of marketers, Twitter as a marketing platform has not turned out to be the next magic bullet. What Twitter has turned out to be, however, is a valuable channel for PR.Twitter is also, increasingly, a source for "live news". The news of Michael Jackson's death first spread on Twitter before major news agencies confirmed and broadcast the story. The news of Twitter spreading the Jackson story before the news agencies became news itself. Twitter has become so influential that search engines have started to create "real time search" results based heavily on Twitter tweets.

Yet for all the growth and buzz on Twitter, only one metric remains top of mind for measuring "success" in Twitter: number of followers.

Perhaps it's how the website itself is set up that causes people to gravitate towards comparing how many followers a Tweeter has compared to how many tweets he/she has made.

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Or perhaps people really believe that followers really does mean true audience. Or perhaps it's the popularity or celebrity factor such as Ashton Kutcher's famous challenge CNN to see who could capture 1 million followers on Twitter. Kutcher won.

Whatever the case is, collecting followers seems to be the most coveted metric to gauge Twitter success. But a recent report found that the average Twitter account has 300 followers and follows 173 accounts.

Now let's factor in some reality mixed with ideal assumptions and crunch some numbers.

According to a 2005 survey from Microsoft, the average US worker receives 56 emails daily. This is all just reading and not responding. If the worker responds to emails then more time is spent just on emails. It's a good bet that the emails received don't get 100% reading or opening rate.

But, assuming that workers read every single email per day, at 56 received emails, following 173 Twitter accounts and assuming one tweet per day would be equal to reading 3x the amount of daily email! Are people really THAT passive to soak up everyone else's tweets?

Let's look at another bit of research data. A recent survey found that 40% of tweets are "pointless babble" and 38% are conversational. If 38% of the tweets are conversational, let's assume that the tweet conversations are 1:1, that is, one tweet to a follower, one tweet back. Let's also take the average of 173 active follows (we're using this number because it is the active follow, the rate at which a Twitter account actively followers other Tweeters). At that average rate, if 38% are conversational and thus engaging, the REAL follow rate is not 173 followers but 65.

But we are making some very very basic assumptions here. The reality is that most Tweeters tweet more than once a day. Another survey suggested that 22 tweets per day may be the sweet spot between maximum output messaging and maximum followers. Still, another survey found that nearly 92% of Twitter users tweet once or twice a day. If the average Twitter account actively follows 173 accounts but tweet once or twice, how can you gauge reach or engagement?

This really begs the question - does the number of followers REALLY matter?

Additional Flaws in "Followers" as Metric

As a metric, if we are only concerned about popularity, then the number of followers is the natural measure of success on Twitter. But the number of followers on a Twitter account can be inflated!

There are already commercial services for increasing Twitter followers. These services help increase followers but many of those followers also drop off. If these followers drop off and are gained through "artificial" means, is it a reliable metric? What is to prevent people from creating several ghost accounts to inflate followers? Twitter tries to be vigilant to prevent this by suspending accounts with "suspicious" activities.

Yet all of these issues, for marketers, begs the question - what is the true value of "followers"?

Better Metrics to Measure Twitter

For marketers and any company or person looking to gain real value from Twitter, having a captive audience is more important. But how do you gain a captive audience and more importantly, how do you measure that audience?

There are two main metrics that reflect how much audience your tweeting has captured.

Audience Capture Metric #1: Retweets and Mentions

Retweets (RT) are tweets from other Twitter users that copy and echo what you previously tweeted. Mentions (@Twitteruser) are "shout outs" from one Tweeter to another, usually in response to a previous tweet or tweet conversation.

Why are retweets and mentions important as metrics? These two metrics show and demonstrate an active, engaged audience. Only a Tweeter who has taken time to read your tweets will respond with a retweet or a mention.

A retweet, however, is better than a mention because the retweet essentially repeats what you wrote. When someone retweets, Twitter or the Twitter app being used automatically mentions your Twitter account.

For example, a retweet looks like this:

RT@twitterRM: Worker bees can leave. Even drones can fly away. The Queen is their slave.

While a mention looks like this:

@twitterRM you just got that from a movie!

A mention may not include your original tweet whereas a retweet typically includes the original tweet along with commentary, if there is enough character space.

There are tools that measure the number of retweets that each tweet receives. Retweet.com is one website that measures the number of retweets that a particular tweet has. It also is easily interfaced with Twitter and offers an easy-to-use "retweet" button to place on content pages.

Audience Capture Metric #2: URLs Tweeted

Another measure of Twitter audience capture is the click-through on tweeted links. Because of the 140 character limit on Twitter, it is important to shorten web URLs. A number of URL shortening services exist. TinyURL, Bit.ly, Ow.ly, and many others all product different shortened URLs.

Tools like Retweet.com is useful for measuring the number of retweets. But Tweeters don't always retweet and often, using different URL shortening services break up the count of retweets. If you relied on only one metric for measuring your tweets' reach, you would lose a lot of information.

But if you measure how many times Tweeters tweet about your destination URL, regardless of the URL shortening service, you can measure the CTR rate to your landing page.

Twittur(ly) is one service that measures the destination landing page rather than tweets, mentions or retweets. This is particularly useful to measure the actual "impressions" your landing page has on Twitter and compare it to the actual number of visits to that landing page.

Summary

For marketers, measuring how many retweets and mentions our tweets have, is a powerful gauge of how much engagement our Twitter campaign has. Coupled with the ability to measure landing page "impressions" on Twitter through how often our landing pages are tweeted through various URL services, we get a far clearer picture of our campaign. When you look at both of these tools and use them together, you get a far more complete image of the reach and audience of your tweets and your Twitter campaign. These are far better and far more useful than comparing how many followers your Twitter account has.

Be sure read this post and follow Resolution Media @ http://twitter.com/ResolutionMedia.

Tweet and retweet this post (we'll be watching)!

The Benefits of Sticking With Your Search Agency

By Jeff Campbell, Vice President
Originally Appeared on imediaconnection.com

Article Highlights:

• Working exclusively with Google means you're missing 35 percent of the search market
• Search engines with access to your records can increase the price of keywords based on their value to you
• Publishers often advise you to spend more on unnecessary or irrelevant keywords

One tenet taught at most business schools and exemplified by successful corporations such as Wal-Mart is "to gain efficiencies, eliminate the middle man." Your paid search agency is a true middle man between you and search engine media providers, so are there benefits going straight to the proverbial well? With the need for efficiencies in online marketing, should you outsource campaign management directly to major media players such as Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft?

Over the years, I've seen clients leave agencies to be managed by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, and I've also personally taken over clients who had previously been managed by Google and the others. Is publisher-managed media a smart move? Is it worth the cost savings? Is this a future trend threatening the agency world? Clearly, being from the SEM agency side, I'm a bit biased, but I think the true costs of going publisher-direct far outweigh the dollars saved.

As I see it, the pros and cons in this debate can be grouped into four categories:

• Cost
• Data privacy and integration
• Single-publisher focus
• Conflicts of interest

Cost
Let's start with the major benefit of working directly with a publisher: You don't have to pay agency fees. Yes, if you are large enough, Google and others will manage your campaign(s) with their vertical or regional teams for free. That's a 10 to 15 percent instant savings. However, I'd argue that the overall ROI from working with an agency will be higher, even after factoring in management fees. Now this is not the case with just any agency, but the good ones will find ways to add value through campaign optimizations and insights to fuel other marketing activities that, when measured and aggregated, well exceed the cost of their services.

Data privacy and integration
There is major concern in Washington, D.C., these days about online data collection practices and general search engine data privacy. At the same time, there's also a belief that integrating data (and the models placed on top of data) is the future of marketing. I suspect Google is working to build an integration portal into Google Analytics that includes a central repository to meet client needs and potentially provide media mix modeling and improved attribution, but it's not available yet. Further, with Google venturing into other advertising media (TV, mobile, ad exchanges), it will have a direct pipeline to feed other forms of media into a data warehouse.

Between media companies or agencies, who do you trust with performance data such as product margins, low performing markets, and future marketing plans? Who can share cross-media performance (i.e., high performing natural search keywords to add to the paid search stable, or DMAs where radio has a high ROI on offline sales)? If you were a media company and knew the value of a commercial or keyword placement was worth double to the advertiser, would you be tempted to raise the price? When a company makes more money with increased competition, can "diamond in the rough" keywords be kept proprietary?

Single-publisher focus
Google's share of the search industry is approximately 65 percent, according to comScore research. Obviously, a Google-run SEM campaign will be focused on Google properties. So what about the remaining 35 percent of internet searches? Bing is growing, and Yahoo is upgrading its technology. What about internet yellow pages, shopping comparison engines, etc.? If you're a global advertiser, Google's 65 percent share doesn't hold up in every country -- just look at Yandex in Russia and Baidu in China. To think search engine marketing and consumer behavior revolves around only Google is quite narrow-minded. As I like to say, paid search is not a one-horse town.

Now, I have not heard of Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft managing paid search outside of their individual respective properties, but what if they added that service? This solves the non-Google targeting question, but I certainly would have a concern with a publisher seeing my performance and media costs across their competitors, as there is potential for it to raise bids (under the shroud of mystery that is Quality Score) where it is more efficient than market averages.

Second, the Bing/Yahoo model is different from Google AdWords (from match types to geo- and demo targeting), so would it be possible for Google account managers to become best of breed on their competitors' tools and vice versa? Sure, you could outsource to all of the engines individually, but that adds complexity and requires manpower on the client's end to centralize communications and reporting.

Conflicts of interest
Many agencies are paid the big bucks for their business strategy, creativity, and innovation. Due to conflicts of interest and exclusivity, agencies are limited to work with one auto original equipment manufacturer, one home improvement retailer, one quick-service restaurant, etc. Agency talent is laser focused to give a single company a competitive advantage to make it the industry leader. Without agencies, would Volvo equal safety, would iTunes dominate online music sales, or would you know which candy melts in your mouth and not your hand?

I'll argue that the search engines also have some of the best and brightest minds in the business world today. But unlike agencies, publishers work with every company in a category, and many times they are managed under the same office roof. While separation is hopefully maintained at the day-to-day level, at some point, management oversees teams working on competing brands. Do these firewalls stop the flow of sensitive information? The situation reminds me of the industry adage of "managing two competing brands is a conflict, but three is a specialty." I'd want to keep my strategy and data far away from my competitors.

Above all, as an advertiser, I'd be most concerned with a publisher's self-interest. I've seen multiple examples of mismanagement in the accounts that I've personally taken over from a publisher-direct model. For one account, we removed the keyword "free music," which was costing the client $100,000 a week and was completely irrelevant to its business of selling electronics.

Additionally, I've rarely seen a recommendation from an engine that didn't involve spending more money (adding keywords, raising bids, expanding match types, etc.). I've also seen keyword lists that are not as focused as they should be, advising appliance companies to bid on the keyword "white," or "Lil' Wayne," and "kid from dentist office" for keyword ads on a video search engine "because that's how to get in front of people there."

Finally, I've seen general keywords like "laptop" with extremely high bids, greatly over-inflating the industry costs. Dropping laptop's target position from first to third saved close to $20 per click, and we were still able to maintain the top position due to a high Quality Score.

Conclusion
The decision to outsource paid search to search engine publishers is not a simple matter of saving some coin. Data privacy/integration, a single-publisher focus, and conflicts of interest are just a few of the areas to assess when considering working directly with a media partner.

At the end of the day, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft continue to be great partners for clients and agencies because there are checks and balances in place. An agency is simply an agent acting on behalf of a company (with that company's best interest in mind), and media companies cannot replace this. When it comes to paid search, there is a value in the middle man, so think twice before eliminating him.

New YouTube Layout

By Matt Ballek, Supervisor, Natural Search
Originally Appeared on VidiSEO.com

The folks at YouTube must have set some insane new years resolutions. January isn't even over yet and they've already unleashed subscription enhancements, HTML5 support, video rentals, and a slick music feature called Disco. Well, YouTube is keeping the productivity train rolling and busting out a complete redesign of the watch page and search functionality. Check it out :

The Old Watch Page

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The NEW Watch Page

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What's New ?

Overall Cleaner Look And Feel

Almost all unnecessary text has been removed keeping the focus on the video itself. The video description has been moved underneath the video, comments and video responses are listed below that, and related videos run along the right rail.

Look Ma, No Stars

YouTube has been talking about the effectiveness of the 5 star rating system for some time now, and it looks like it didn't make the cut. Instead you get the option to either 'like' a video or give it a 'thumbs down'. Works for me!

HD You Can Understand

No more guessing what the quality of your video playback is. YouTube now allows you to select what type of p-ness you'd like to watch your video in :)

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Smart Related Videos

The related videos on the right side of the watch page now change based on context. For example, if you come to a video through the search function, you will see additional search results on the right hand side for you to watch afterwards.

Find All Videos Uploaded by a User

I like this new feature a lot. The video uploader's user name (located directly above the video) now has an expand button to show all videos uploaded:

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Watch While You Search

Perhaps the coolest new feature is the ability to search for new videos to watch without interrupting the video you are currently watching. When you hit search, the video you are currently watching will shrink into the upper left hand corner of the screen making room for the search results:

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Want to Try it Out?

Click here to try out the NEW YouTube layout and be sure to let me know what you think !

Real Time Search Still Needs an Original Source

Originally Appeared on EatenByGiants.com
By Dave McAnally, Associate Director, Content Solutions

Matt Cutts had a post a couple Thursdays back talking about the efficiency of Google's real time search in reporting and reacting to events of the Bay Area earthquake. Within 2 minutes of the earthquake, Google's real time search box was triggered and reporting events right away.

This is all well and good, and certainly a testament to the effectiveness of whatever triggers are used by Google to show real-time activity.

The one thing that struck me here was thus: If it's such hot stuff that Google can show real-time activity within 2 minutes, what does that say about the origin of the query? What I mean is that when we're talking about delivering late breaking news, Google is still only able to enter the information game at the point of query. In other words, somebody has to be actively searching on Bay Area earthquake or a variation thereof in order for this functionality to be useful. Don't get me wrong that's not a bad thing, but I feel like the information and capability Google has is restrained because it's dependent on a query in order to be activated.

The challenge I see now for Google is to find a way to deliver pertinent real time activity (notice I'm not using the phrase 'search result') to their users BEFORE the point of query. In other words, they should be able to be telling people who would want to know (and let's be honest, Google knows enough about its users to know who would want to know) about this event before they hear about it somewhere else and go trolling Google to find news about it. If you can track a trend that quickly, why then should your ability to disseminate information be dependent on people already having some inkling of what's going on and hitting up Google to learn more?

Potential opportunities:

• Forced News Alerts: This could be viewed as interruptive, and as thus, a hard sell
• Geo/demo-specific real-time results that scroll on the Google Homepage independent of a query: May be a hard sell cos Google loves the whitespace
• Perhaps an entirely new product for real time search is in order

Google's ability to deliver ads based around real time events could force advertisers to stay on their toes more, but without a doubt, Google could drive a huge revenue stream from driving ads to people about news before they even think to go performing queries about it.

What's to Come for Paid Search in 2010

By Brian Donohoe, Account Supervisor

After a roller coaster ride of economics, politics and in our world, media budgets, it (knock on wood) looks as if things have calmed down moving into 2010. Companies have been able to cut their losses and look forward on how to grow again. Although Paid Search saw its fair share of cuts last year, in many cases it was one of the media channels advertisers had the most faith and confidence in, given its well known efficiency and trackability. As a result, many CMOs and CEOs have most likely been able to put a closer eye on Search, which may give way for further development in their Paid Search program. Here are several high-level predictions I have for 2010.

Paid Search will become fully integrated with Digital and overall marketing campaigns.

Instead of Paid Search being thought of as a default media channel or just an easy way to get traffic to your site at a low cost, clients are understanding the intricate strategies behind search and it’s not just a matter of dumping some keywords over to Google. Search plans will become bigger and more detailed, and advertiser expectations will rise. Even though Search has been taken more seriously over the past three years, it will officially take its seat in overall marketing plans.

CPCs will continue to rise.

As clients start to pay more attention and invest more in search, bid strategies will become more aggressive and CPCs will shoot up. I saw it big time over the course of the summer with some of my pharmaceutical accounts. Competition laid it on thick in terms of bids, and we hit them right back. The result was a bidding war on high volume terms that lasted throughout the end of the year and is still going. CPCs increased significantly and physically changed the marketplace for several pharma verticals. The value has been seen in consumers in the search market and now it’s a matter of getting them.

Mobile…is this finally the year?

We’ve been saying it for years but this year mobile might become the big deal it’s always considered itself. In 2010 one can make the argument that’s it’s against the norm to not have a smart phone. Everyone has given in and service providers have really started to advertise heavily and compete on who has the better 3G network. We will see the effect in clients wanting to test mobile. Especially on the local side where it is almost a given. Mobile products and programs will advance and advertisers will be more curious than ever before.

Web Analytics will no longer be a “nice to have”

As more is invested in the digital markets, advertisers will want to know what else happens post-click. Not just isolated actions—they will want real insight on how consumers are behaving on their site. This will in turn put more emphasis on web development and site enhancement. Advertisers will put more value in unbranded terms that may not convert but result in multiple page views and solid time on site. Digital online behavior will become more clear.

So keep a watchful eye on these trends and don’t say I didn’t warn you. We all know I’m right on this.