Today, Yahoo announced a new tool named Yahoo Clues. Yahoo Clues basically gives you insight into the types of people searching for specific keyword phrases and shows related terms based on those searches and searchers. The tool allows you to plug in one or two keyword phrases and it then plots the search trends of those keywords on the page. It shows you keyword popularity over time, searches by age and gender, income level, geographic location, "search flow" and related searches. Let me take you through each metric for a comparison of iphone vs android on Yahoo Clues. Here you can [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | SEM Tools: Keyword Research | Top News | Yahoo: Search

In my "how to choose a URL shortener" article last year, I warned that the country domain that a shortener used might be an issue to consider. A year later, that's even more so, as a Libyan .ly domain used for an adult content shortener has been closed. Libyan Registrar Takes Back Domain Earlier this week, Nic.ly -- a domain registrar in Libya that handles Libyans domains -- took back the vb.ly domain from its American owners, after it was in use for a year. Reason? The owners, Ben Metcalfe and noted sex blogger Violet Blue, were told the domain was violated Nic.ly's terms as it was being [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | SEM Tools: URL Shorteners | Top News

Just what the world needs, another URL shortener, right? Google seems to think so, and it's now making its own Goo.gl service widely available to anyone -- complete with tracking and statistics -- for free. Below, more about the new entry, how it compares to the more established Bit.ly plus a look at Twitter's "wrapping" service. Dashboard To View What You've Shortened Google began offering its own shortening service last December, saying it was something they especially thought Google Toolbar users and those using its Feedburner service would want. Now it's being offered to anyone [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Google: URL Shortener | SEM Tools: URL Shorteners | Top News

Billing itself as one of the "best kept secrets in Silicon Valley," Adchemy is a technology provider that promises to help search marketers "dynamically" create more relevant ad copy and landing pages at scale. The company recently released its WordMap application, which is intended for very large campaigns with millions of keywords but where the ad copy and landing pages are more general and thus unable to reflect the variety and nuance of the more specific associated keywords. Adchemy says that it can "dynamically generate tens of thousands of paid-search ads directly related to intent [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search Marketing: General | Search Marketing: Landing Pages | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | Search Marketing: Search Term Research | SEM Tools: Keyword Research

Many search marketers have experimented with call tracking and measurement as a way to capture online-to-offline consumer activity and determine which ads and campaigns are generating calls. But there has also been debate about whether unique phone numbers required by call tracking harms SEO especially for local advertisers. Some new developments in the field make a compelling argument for call tracking and analytics, at the very least among enterprises or large advertisers trying to generate calls to call centers. Search marketing platform Kenshoo earlier this summer introduced what it cal [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Google: AdWords | Search Marketing: General | Search Marketing: Landing Pages | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | SEM Tools: Keyword Research | SEM Tools: Web Analytics | SEO: Local

Yahoo published their very own Yahoo Style Guide this week. We took a look at the SEO basics section of the style guide and noticed Yahoo has a list of keyword research tools. In that list, Yahoo recommends everyone from their competitor, Google to 3rd party tools from WordTracker and Keyword Discovery. Many of you probably remember that Yahoo was the king of keyword research tools. Everyone used the Overture keyword tool, which lived at http://inventory.overture.com/. Yahoo, after acquiring Overture, slowly been killing this popular tool and finally laid it to rest two years ago today. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Microsoft & Yahoo Search Deal | SEM Tools: Keyword Research | Top News | Yahoo: Search | Yahoo: Search Ads

If you’re a marketer and you’re currently tied up with other initiatives (campaigns, new site launch, etc.), or a search professional bogged down with doing keyword research, a technical audit, or staying up with the latest trends, remember to come up for air every now and then (at least once a month if not more) to take a look at what your competition is doing. Here’s some tips on how to effectively go about this. To start, take a look at your existing keyword landscape and identify your "Top 10" Keywords. These are terms that you have deemed business critical to have a top ranking p [...]

Related Topics: All Things SEO | Channel: SEO | How To: SEO | SEM Tools

The team behind Link Diagnosis has announced a list of updates to their popular link analysis/SEO tool. Two of the updates, in particular, provide a fix for a pair of disappointing features that I wrote about last year when Link Diagnosis completed a major relaunch. First, the result sets have been expanded from 100 to 1,000 pages. At its relaunch last September, the tool only analyzed the top 101 indexed pages from a domain. Second, Link Diagnosis now shows all inbound links from a single site. The September relaunch limited site owners to seeing only one inbound link from each domain. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Building: General | SEM Tools: Links

One of the most important online marketing tools is the referrer string. Little known to most web surfers, this is effectively the Caller ID of the internet. It allows web site owners and marketers to know where visitors came from. It's crucial marketing data, and data that might be going away. What's The Referrer? When you visit a web page, by default, every major browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome...) reports the last page that you viewed before clicking over to the current page you're viewing. IE, what page "referred" you to the current page. This information is known as the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Features: Analysis | Firefox | Legal: Privacy | SEM Tools: Web Analytics | Top News

If you try to access Google's external keyword tool, you may notice that you are sent to the new keyword tool Google began offering in September 2009. A Google spokesperson told me that they are now encouraging users to use the new tool over the old tool and have decided to direct a portion of those users to the new tool. I asked Google if they plan on phasing out the old tool. Google told me that the old tool is still available from the new tool via a link at the top right that reads, "previous interface." Google told me they do plan on phasing out the old tool for the new tool, but wou [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | SEM Tools: Keyword Research | Top News

Because we are still in the research phase of PPC development, it’s important to get a very clear understanding of the advertiser’s business online and how that will affect the way we build and manage the account. Last week, I introduced the concept of the keyword landscape, the set of keywords, ads and competitors that are relevant to your advertiser. This week, I’ll dive even deeper into the keyword landscape using advanced tools that can tell us a lot more than what last week’s quick glance revealed. Having a solid keyword monitoring tool in your SEM toolbox is absolutely cruci [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | PPC Academy | SEM Tools: Keyword Research

In a previous post, I discussed the importance of using behavioral targeting to increase your conversion rates. I also wrote about how to use Google Analytics to understand personas of the users who visit your site. This post will present a fast and easy way to get your behavioral targeting (BT) process up and running. Although any discussion of BT can sometimes turn into a PhD-level conversation, it is really important to pluck some low-hanging fruit to convince executives that it is a worthwhile journey. If you do, your path will likely be paved with gold. Recently, BTBuckets, a free [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Google: Analytics | Google: Website Optimizer | How To: Analytics | SEM Tools: Web Analytics

SEOmoz has launched Open Site Explorer, a new tool that joins the already crowded field of link analysis tools. In choosing that name, SEOmoz is somewhat blatantly positioning it as a competitor, and perhaps eventual replacement, for Yahoo's popular Site Explorer tool. Open Site Explorer provides a number of data points pulled from SEOmoz's Linkscape tool and its index of the web. It shows stats such as overall link counts and a count of domains that link to a URL, along with anchor text distribution and more. A helpful feature is the ability to compare two domains side by side. Alth [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Building: General | SEM Tools: Links | Yahoo: Site Explorer

Following my last post on behavioral targeting, which was an overview of the field, I will provide a more hands-on approach in this post. To briefly recap, behavioral targeting involves creating multiple "personas" that represent multiple users of your site, and using analytics to create a unique experience for each persona group based on observed and predicted behavior. The first step to a successful behavioral targeting process is finding the right targets. It is not always obvious which users should be "bucketed" together. Creating effective buckets requires knowledge about the site and [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Google: Analytics | How To: Analytics | Search Ads: Behavioral Targeting | SEM Tools: Web Analytics

Behavioral targeting (BT) has been the buzzword of the year for the last two years in the web analytics field. But is BT really all that important and valuable to the companies making use of it? The answer is usually yes. And does it take a team of PhDs to implement BT for a website? The answer is usually no. In this and a following post I will explain the value that behavioral targeting offers, and show how a marketer can make use of BT to make the website experience richer for users, and increase conversion rates. According to Wikipedia, there are two principal types of behavioral target [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Features: Analysis | Search Ads: Behavioral Targeting | SEM Tools: Web Analytics

Two rockstars have emerged in the web analytics field to date. We all know who they are: Eric Peterson has demystified analytics for us, while Avinash Kaushik has helped us take it one day, or dare I say, "an hour a day," at a time. And one of them says web analytics is easy while the other one says web analytics is very hard. So who is right? Why web analytics is easy Yes, it's true. Web analytics is easy, according to Avinash Kaushik. It's actually incredibly easy. Assuming that the desired outcomes of web analytics are changes that will positively impact your site and your bottom lin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Analytics | SEM Tools: Web Analytics

At SMX East today, Linkdex is introducing its new SearchDNA tool -- a link analysis tool that the company says goes deeper than the already crowded field that it's competing against. While some link tools only show up to 1,000 links (think Yahoo Site Explorer), Linkdex says SearchDNA has a database of about one trillion links. It gets that data via a partnership with Majestic SEO, which also offers its own link analysis tools. So, what makes SearchDNA different if they're using the same data? According to Linkdex CEO John Straw, SearchDNA goes beyond compiling a list of links and doe [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: General | Link Building: General | SEM Tools: Links

I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable this morning that Google has a beta version of a new keyword tool available in the AdWords console. To get to it, login to adwords.google.com, go to a campaign, click on opportunities (if you have that tab), then on the left bar, click on keyword tool. A "beta" link should be available for you to click on in the top paragraph. If you don't see it, below is a big screen shot of the tool. The keyword tool integrates some of the other tools that Google has been releasing. It links to the Google Insights for Search tool and it brings in data from i [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | SEM Tools | Top News

Search marketers can learn a lot from scientists. Scientists spend their life testing things, one after the other, incessantly trying to discover new interactions between atoms, molecules, viruses, bacteria, etc. One of the greatest scientists of all time, Albert Einstein, said, "A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. An experiment is something everybody believes, except the person who made it." Want everyone to believe in your website? "Experiment" with it—in other words, test it and tune it for optimal performance. Websites are laboratories, not sculpt [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | How To: Analytics | Search Marketing: Landing Pages | SEM Tools: Web Analytics

Link Diagnosis, one of the most well-known link analysis tools around, has new owners, a new look, and some fairly substantial changes under the hood. But are all the changes an improvement? Well, after testing a beta version for a few days, and now using the new site that launched today, my answer is ... yes and no. Some of the changes add value to what Link Diagnosis offers, but others may leave you wanting to use the old version again. (And you can; more on that below.) What's New Obviously, the look and feel is the first change you'll notice. The new Link Diagnosis sports a more mod [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Features: Analysis | Link Building: General | SEM Tools: Links