The discussion was heavy last week on our sister site, Sphinn, with three stories in particular leading to a lot of conversation.
No story generated more comments than our “Discussion of the Week,” which currently has 30 comments and is still going strong. In it, we asked, Should SEOs Provide Ranking Reports To Clients? Aside from a few replies, most users said there’s still value in providing ranking reports — but with the caveat that clients should be educated on metrics that really matter. Our favorite comment came from Sphinn member Mary Bowling of Optimized!, who put it this way:
What clients really care about is getting more customers and making more money. If all you want them to judge your work by is rankings, then they are probably not going to stick around for long. It’s easy enough to give them ranking reports if they ask for them, but showing them how you are helping them to get more phone calls, walk-ins and sales is what will really make them happy.
Meanwhile, a story discussing the value of bounce rate to help save money in Google AdWords was the most popular story last week among Twitter users.
Read on for the full recap of last week’s Sphinn activity.
Most Comments
- Discussion: Should SEOs Provide Ranking Reports To Clients? – Businesses of all sizes love to see their websites ranking high on Google and Bing. For years, SEO consultants have been providing ranking reports to clients to show the success of the SEO work. But some SEOs have stopped providing ranking reports, saying it's not a true measure of success. In our "Discussion of the Week," we want to know what your stance is on ranking reports. Should SEOs be providing this data to clients, or is that time better spent on other reports/projects? This could go in a few different directions, so feel free to take the discussion where you want. The floor is open!
- How to Pimp Your Google+ Profile Design – Well – one week in and the world of Social Networking is going nuts for Google+Of you've just got your account – find out how to pimp out the About page of your provile with this step by step guide and Photoshop Template
- My Google Panda Damage Report – It wasn’t too long ago that the Google Panda algorithmic update was announced (I blogged about Panda recently), and it is probably the biggest topic in the SEO industry right now. Mostly because a lot of people got mortally wounded by it. This is how it affected me, as far as I can see.
- How To Implement Rel=Author – Google is starting to use rel="author" on search results. Here are specific directions on how to get rel=”author” up and running on your own site or blog.
Most Tweeted (not already listed above)
- Adwords Management – Why Bounce Rate Can Save You Money – A hugely important stat that is often ignored by Adwords management agencies is bounce rate. It makes or breaks new campaigns and can save you big…
- 7 Google Plus Data Points That Could Change SEO – Good stuff from Brian Chappell: "Google+ is going to be a treasure trove of data for Google and its advertisers. The data that they will be exposed to will certainly be game changing from an SEO standpoint."
- Google Webmaster Notifications For Bad Links Pointing At Your Site – So Google finally admits that it owes victims of negative SEO, er… link 'spamming' webmasters, a hint at least.
- Structuring an SEO Project: Moving Away from the Retainer Model – Writing for State of Search, Sam Crocker tells us why, as SEOs, we should move away from the retainer model and grow up.
Hot On Sphinn: July 4 to July 10, 2011
- Don't Be This Person (What Not to Do On Twitter) – A look at how you can use Twitter in conjunction with your business blog – and the common mistakes that businesses make straight out of the gate.
- 12 Flavors of Content To Attract Your Audience – Here are 12 NEW content flavors to help you attract your audience. How can you work them into what you’re already doing?
- The Number One Least Asked Question in Social Media…Why? – Brian Solis does it again, offering up some great insight on the consumer's perspective and why that's the most important thing to consider when crafting a corporate social media strategy.
- Creative Tips For Link Building On A Shoestring Budget – Julie Joyce shares some great tips on how to build links for sites that have even the smallest of budgets.
- Google As a Social Search Engine: Aardvark Answers & Circle Posts in Google Search Results? – Now it appears that Aardvark-type social answers may become answers that appear in Google Search results, as seen in a Google patent application from May. It’s also possible that, given Google’s latest foray into social networking, that a question and answer service based upon Aardvark might play a larger role in Google’s social networking applications. Ask a question in Google+ and get the answer on the SERPs?
- You Can’t Buy More Conversions – Arguing that "overmanagement" of PPC accounts can hurt your ROI.
- Using Google Analytics to Monitor Your Brand – This post and video will take you through different methods that you can use to monitor interaction with your brand through Google Analytics.
- The Challenges & Benefits Of Attributing Incremental Value – Using sports examples to talk about different PPC attribution models.
- Top 15 Free Things Every E-Commerce Website Should Do After Launching – Here is a list of the top 15 things every e-commerce owner/marketer should do after launching their new site. I am not including anything like keyword research, competitive analysis, on-site SEO, creating unique/keyword rich content, or anything else that is generally done before a site is launched.
- An SEO Wishlist for Content Management Systems – What good to a search-engine-optimization professional is a site full of unique content with no way to optimize it? Not much, unless that professional enjoys nagging web developers to make minor edits. A strong content management system enables marketing teams and SEO professionals to work more independently of developers, reducing friction and increasing efficiency for both teams.
This is the latest in a weekly look at the stories that were “hot” on Sphinn in the past week. We’ll post these recaps every week.
Related Topics: Channel: Other | Features: General | Sphinn
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