Reading The Information's piece on Facebook's reported re-introduction of the Atlas ad-serving technology , I wondered – Does the market really need six or more full stack adtech solutions? Google is the undisputed leader in the field – it's spent…
Major talking points this week involved the continued uncertainty around the transition to a viewability standard, the absolute certainty around the growth in spending expected across the programmatic landscape, and what publishers are going to have to be ready for to be successful going forward.
Posted by Cyrus-Shepard
The folks at Groupon surprised us earlier this summer when they reported the results of an experiment that showed that up to 60% of direct traffic is organic.
In order to accomplish this, Groupon de-indexed their site, effectively removing themselves from Google search results. That's crazy talk!
Of course, we knew we had to try this ourselves.
We rolled up our sleeves and chose to de-index Followerwonk, both for its consistent Google traffic and its good analytics setup—that way we could properly measure everything. We were also confident we could quickly bring the site back into Google's results, which minimized the business risks.
(We discussed de-indexing our main site moz.com, but... no soup for you!)
We wanted to measure and test several things:
Here's what happened.
The fastest, simplest, and most direct method to completely remove an entire site from Google search results is by using the URL removal tool.
CAUTION: Removing any URLs from a search index is potentially very dangerous, and should be taken very seriously. Do not try this at home; you will not pass go, and will not collect $200!
After submitting the request, Followerwonk URLs started disappearing from Google search results in 2-3 hours.
The information needs to propagate across different data centers across the globe, so the effect can be delayed in areas. In fact, for the entire duration of the test, organic Google traffic continued to trickle in and never dropped to zero.
In the Groupon experiment, they found that when they lost organic traffic, they actually lost a bunch of direct traffic as well. The Groupon conclusion was that a large amount of their direct traffic was actually organic—up to 60% on "long URLs".
At first glance, the overall amount of direct traffic to Followerwonk didn't change significantly, even when organic traffic dropped.
In fact, we could find no discrepancy in direct traffic outside the expected range.
I ran this by our contacts at Groupon, who said this wasn't totally unexpected. You see, in their experiment they saw the biggest drop in direct traffic on long URLs, defined as a URL that is at least as long enough to be in a subfolder, like http://followerwonk.com/bio/?q=content+marketer.
For Followerwonk, the vast majority of traffic goes to the homepage and a handful of other URLs. This means we didn't have a statistically significant sample size of long URLs to judge the effect. For the long URLs we were able to measure, the results were nebulous.
Conclusion: While we can't confirm the Groupon results with our outcome, we can't discount them either.
It's quite likely that a portion of your organic traffic is attributed as direct. This is because of different browsers, operating systems and user privacy settings can potentially block referral information from reaching your website.
After waiting 2 hours, we deleted the request. Within a few hours all traffic returned to normal. Whew!
If the time period is short enough, and you used the URL removal tool, apparently not.
In the case of Followerwonk, Google removed over 300,000 URLs from its search results, and made them all reappear in mere hours. This suggests that the domain wasn't completely removed from Google's index, but only "masked" from appearing for a short period of time.
In both the Groupon and Followerwonk experiments, the sites were only de-indexed for a short period of time, and bounced back quickly.
We wanted to find out what would happen if you de-indexed a site for a longer period, like two and a half days?
I couldn't convince the team to remove any of our sites from Google search results for a few days, so I choose a smaller personal site that I often subject to merciless SEO experiments.
In this case, I de-indexed the site and didn't remove the request until three days later. Even with this longer period, all URLs returned within just a few hours of cancelling the URL removal request.
In the chart below, we revoked the URL removal request on Friday the 25th. The next two days were Saturday and Sunday, both lower traffic days.
Likely, the URLs were still in Google's index, so we didn't have to wait for them to be recrawled.
Here's another shot of organic traffic before and after the second experiment.
For longer removal periods, a few weeks for example, I speculate Google might drop these semi-permanently from the index and re-inclusion would comprise a much longer time period.
Moz community member Adina Toma wrote an excellent YouMoz post on the re-inclusion process using the same technique, with some excellent tips for other, more extreme situations.
Big thanks to Peter Bray for volunteering Followerwonk for testing. You are a brave man!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
Posted by anthonycoraggio
PPC and SEO go better together. By playing both sides of the coin, it's possible to make more connections and achieve greater success in your online marketing than with either alone.
That the data found in search query reporting within AdWords can be a valuable source of information in keyword research is well known. Managing the interaction effects of sharing the SERPs and capturing reinforcing real estate on the page is of course important. Smart marketers will use paid search to test landing pages and drive traffic to support experiments on the site itself. Harmony between paid and organic search is a defining feature of well executed search engine marketing.
Unfortunately, that's where the game all too often stops, leaving a world of possibilities for research and synergy waiting beyond the SERPs on the Google Display Network. Today I want to give you a couple techniques to kick your paid/organic collaboration back into gear and get more mileage from combining efforts across the disciplines.
If you're not familiar with it already, the GDN is essentially the other side of AdSense, offering the ability to run banner, rich media, and even video ads across the network from AdWords or Doubleclick. There are two overarching methods of targeting these ads: by context/content, and by using remarketing lists. Regardless of your chosen method, ads here are about as cheap as you can find (often under a $1 CPC), making them a prime tool for exploratory research and supporting actions.
Contextual and content-based targeting offers some simple and intuitive ways to extend existing methods of PPC and SEO interaction. By selecting relevant topics, key phrases, or even particular sites, you can place ads in the wild to test the real world resonance of taglines and imagery with people consuming content relevant to yours.
You can also take a more coordinated approach during a content marketing campaign using the same type of targeting. Enter a unique phrase from any placements you earn on pages using AdSense as a keyword target, and you can back up any article or blog post with a powerful piece of screen real estate and a call to action that is fully under your control. This approach mirrors the tactic of using paid search ads to better control organic results, and offers a direct route to conversion that usually would not otherwise exist in this environment.
Remarketing on AdWords is a powerful tool to drive conversions, but it also produces some very interesting and frequently neglected data in the proces: Your reports will tell you which other sites and pages your targeted audience visits once your ads display there. You will, of course, be restricted here to sites running AdSense or DoubleClick inventory, but this still adds up to over 2 million potential pages!
If your firm is already running remarketing, you'll be able to draw some insights from your existing data, but if you have a specific audience in mind, you may want to create a new list anyway. While it is possible to create basic remarketing lists natively in AdWords, I recommend using Google Analytics to take advantage of the advanced segmentation capabilities of the platform. Before beginning, you'll need to ensure that your AdWords account is linked and your tracking code is updated.
First, define who exactly the users you're interested in are. You're going to have to operationalize this definition based on the information available in GA/UA, so be concrete about it. We might, for example, want to look after users who have made multiple visits within the past two weeks to peruse our resources without completing any transactions. Where else are they bouncing off to instead of closing the deal with us?
If you've never built a remarketing list before, pop into the creation interface in GA through Admin > Remarketing > Audiences. Hit the big red '+ Audience' button to get started. You're first presented with a selection of list types:
The first three options are the simplest and least customizable, so they won't be able to parse out our theoretical non-transactors, but can be handy for this application nonetheless. The Smart List option is a relatively new and interesting option. Essentially, this will create a list based on Google's best algorithmic guess at which of your users are most likely to convert upon return to your site. The 'black box' element to Smart Lists makes it less precise as a tool here, but it's simple to test and see what it turns up.
The next three are relatively self explanatory; you can gather all users, all users to a given page, or all that have completed a conversion goal. Where it gets truly interesting is when you create your own list using segments. All the might of GA opens up here for you to apply criteria for demographics, technology/source, behavior, and even advanced conditions and sequences. Very handily, you can also import any existing segments you've created for other purposes.
In this figure, we're simply translating the example from above into some criteria that should fairly accurately pick out the individuals in which we are interested.
When you've put your list together, simply save it and hop back over to AdWords. Once it counts at least 100 users in its target audience, Google will let you show ads using it as targeting criteria. To set up the ad group, there are a few key considerations to bear in mind:
To check on the list size and status, you can find it in Shared Library > Audiences or back in GA. Once everything is in place, set your ads live and start pulling in some data!
You won't get your numbers back overnight, but over time you will collect a list of the websites your remarketed ads show on: all the pages across the vast Google Display Network that your users visit. To find it, enter AdWords and select the ad group you set up. Click the "Display Network" and "Placements" tabs:
You'll see a grid showing the domain level placements your remarketing lists have shown on, with the opportunity to customize the columns of data included. You can sift through the data on a more granular level by clicking "see details;" this will provide you with page level data for the listed domains. You're likely to see a chunk of anonymized visits; there is a workaround to track down the pages in here, but be advised it will take a fair amount of extra effort.
Tada! There you are—a lovely cross section of your target segment's online activities. Bear in mind you can use this approach with contextual, topic, or interest targeting that produces automatic placements as well.
Depending on your needs, there are of course myriad ways to make use of display advertising tools in sync with organic marketing. Have you come up with any creative methods or intriguing results? Let us know in the comments!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” - Henry Ford
The general public – also known as “people” – isn't always the best source of business advice or tips. This is something that the likes of Henry Ford or Steve Jobs understood long before the world had ever seen their flagship creations.
People thought that what those guys wanted to achieve couldn't be done. When horsepower was the main means of transportation, Ford introduced mechanical horsepower. When the world was crazy about going small as the main trend in cellphone design, Jobs decided to screw it and went large. They just didn't care about “common knowledge” and knew that there's much misconception floating around.
But let's go back to the 21st century and discuss online business, since it's what interests us the most.
Asking for advice is a dangerous game to play, even though it doesn't seem like it at first. For example, if you ask the right person, you will get some great guidance that will help you succeed quicker. But if you ask the wrong person, you will only get sidetracked and lose valuable months going the wrong way.
“Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there's a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction.” – Sam Walton
So just to help you stay on your toes, here's a list of seven common lies or misconceptions about starting an online business. Treat it as a warning sign to help you get through the clutter and on the right path.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mobilestreetlife/4300532112
In every market there's competition. You will always come across people who have been there for longer than you, who have more connections than you, who are more creative than you, who have more money to invest than you, and so on and so forth. This is only natural.
But a very big lie, or should I say excuse that people use to explain why they've decided to quit a given project, is that you need to be better than all those people to succeed.
On the contrary, you just need to bring in something unique about what you're offering. Don't compete with people at their game – the game that they are already better than you at. Introduce a new angle and own it.
Just work with what you have and be different rather than better.
“There is always going to be someone out there that knows they have to compensate for maybe having less talent with harder work and preparation.” – Mark Cuban
The concept of being the first person on the field sounds very attractive, doesn't it?
But there's on big flaw here. Being first will only pay off as long as the field you've chosen has the potential to become popular. If it won't, you will be just standing there with your business wondering why nobody's coming to buy your stuff.
Joining a niche that already has some players in it, on the other hand, gives you a lot better chance of building something significant.
When you think about it, the fact that a niche is popular means only one thing – that there's money in it. So join an existing niche and get your piece of the pie.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29233640@N07/9590785264
Sorry to break this to you, but business plans are a thing of the past.
And you don't have to take my word for it. Here's what Neil Patel of QuickSprout and KISSmetrics has to say about it:
“If you think having a business plan is going to increase your odds of success, it won't. There are no stats proving that writing a business plan is going to help you succeed. So, do yourself a favor, and save your time.”
Basically, business plans are flawed because they assume way too many things and give you a false impression that you're on top of everything, and that you're ready for every possible scenario that can happen in the future. This clearly isn't true.
So just focus on what you have today and take care of these two elements:
Oh the great internet, all you need is a domain, a website, and you can rule the world. Sounds about right, doesn't it?
Let's break this down on a timeline: (1) getting a domain – 5 minutes, (2) getting a Squarespace account, setting up the site and launching it to the world – 10 minutes. Total = 15 minutes.
At that point, all you have to do is sit patiently and wait for people to come in and buy whatever you're offering, right?
Well, I'd love for it to be this simple! Too bad it isn't.
My first personal experience with this issue was back when my mom had her first go at online business four or five years ago. She had a website built (online English course for Polish people), she rented the content, set up some simple e-learning environment, and … crickets. Nobody signed up for months. Months!
It was when I learned that on the web, nothing goes far without promotion.
And this is hugely unlike any other type of offline business. For instance, if you open a cafe in a popular area of the city, you will have people stumbling through the door naturally. On the web, not so much.
In a nutshell, you really need some money set aside for marketing if you want to get your project off the ground.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonny2love/4482942978
With all the social media sites we have these days, all the messenger apps, platforms like Feedly and so on, email is still the most effective way to reach your audience and get them back to visit your site.
It's been reported that every dollar spent on email marketing brings $40 back on average, and not only that, but also the people who come to a website via email marketing, shop more and spend more than those who visit you through other channels (including social media).
The funny thing is that email still manages to perform that well in spite of the amount of spam that's circulating around.
So, there can be only one conclusion here, just get started today. If you're not offering any kind of email newsletter on your site right now, put it on your to-do list and fix it right away.
Companies such as Sendinblue or MailChimp offer free email newsletter software that will allow you to manage your contacts, send out newsletters, and even track the results every message is generating.
Back in the day, having such a tool at your disposal wasn't possible without a sizeable budget or at least some serious web development or programming skills.
“Don't spend so much time trying to choose the perfect opportunity, that you miss the right opportunity.” – Michael Dell
I think Michael Dell puts it very well.
Building a business, especially in the online is a road filled with many unknowns, guessing, taking risks and trying out things that are as far from “standard business practice” as possible. You will naturally find a lot of failure along your way until you come across that one approach that works.
There's a kind of “chicken and egg” problem with waiting for the perfect idea. Basically, how do you know that an idea is perfect before you test it out in the real world? Well, you don't.
So instead of procrastinating, just get started with a basic, minimum viable idea, and then expand over time once you have some real feedback from customers/audience. Don't be picky. Just take action on the idea you have, whatever it might be.
Which brings me to:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brickpimp/8450761155
Being this one inventor who locks himself in a hut somewhere in the mountains, works on a new creation, gets no outside contact or insight, and then releases something awesome to the world a year later is a pure fairytale.
In today's world, everything is a remix. Every online business idea has been built on top of a set of other ideas, taking bits and pieces and remixing them into something new.
It seems that the secret isn't to try figuring out everything on your own, but to look at what other people are doing – look at their ideas – and then try giving them your own spin. It's way too easy getting caught up in the process and spending too much time thinking about what to do, instead of just taking action on the information you already have and releasing something as soon as possible.
If you want an extreme example, let's not forget about Bill Gates and Microsoft. What is regarded as their biggest innovation – presenting things inside windows – wasn't an original idea. It's believed that Microsoft borrowed the core of the design and the way it behaved from the early products of Apple – Lisa and Macintosh computers.
Finding confidence when building an online business isn't always an easy thing. Not every bit of advice turns out accurate, and it's rather hard to pick the sources you can trust.
In the end, probably one of the best possible approaches is to:
“The follow-your-gut mentality of the entrepreneur has the potential to take you anywhere you want to go or run you right out of business – but it's a whole lot more fun, don't you think?” – Bill Rancic
The post 7 lies about starting an online business that society has us believe appeared first on Technorati.
Get Social