Unscrambling the Online Marketing Statistics

I like the numbers to work out. So I tried this exercise. Here are some real numbers from one of my websites.  Any ideas on why this stats don't make sense.

UnScramble
Take the term unscramble.

When you type "Unscramble" into Google, my site is 10th. I'm only looking at organic rankings and traffic in this article).
When I look at my analytics traffic over the last 30 days, I see that I have received 2,072 visitors who arrived using some search term containing  the word "unscramble".
When I look at the Google Adwords tool to get a sense of the traffic on this term in the last 30 days, it reports 301,000 searches.  So, it appears that I got around 0.7% of the traffic.  This makes some sense to me. I'm 10th and get less than 1%....could be true.


Sound-alikes.  My site is first or second for this term (Meaning: Same sounding English words but with different meanings and spellings).
Analytics reports 18 visitors whereas Adwords reports 3,600 searches for the past 30 days. So 0.5% came to my site.  This does not make sense to me. I'm the first or second term, how come I'm getting less than 1% of the searches.

I think the first example makes some sense but the second one doesn't. I would think that as the first, second, or third in the rankings, a site should harvest between 4-25% of  the searches.  Unfortunately, I have far more examples where the numbers don't make sense than where they do.  Any ideas? Anybody have any experience trying to reconcile different pieces of Google-based data?

One possibility is that that the adwords tool is showing not just the searches but all the  impressions that would be created if an advertisement was created to be run against the word Unscramble.  

Communication Skills, Comic Strips

Building a website or a business online is always about communication. I'm often amused how programmers put up wording on sites that makes perfect sense to them but to all the likely users, it's just Greek.

Recent examples that I've seen on my sites are when programmers, thinking they are simplifying but helping people find info, put a link to filters. Can non-technical people make any sense of why there is a link to filters?


The cartoon below in in the same vein. It made me laugh. The site that it is from (XKCD.com) says it's OK to use it so long as its properly referenced.

The xkcd site cracks me up. Even the forum topics were witty and dry. http://forums.xkcd.com/
For instance:
Serious Business
For the serious discussion of weighty matters and worldly issues. No off-topic posts allowed
Mathematics
For the discussion of math. Duh. 


I have often wondered why I don't hire some comic strip writers to jazz up my social media. Anyone know any social media-aware cartoonists who want to make killer cartoons for me for not all that much money?

Google Analytics, Derivatives of my Name, Useless Data!

Here's my pet peeve about analytics which I wish they would fix. I'm ranting again because I just read that Google has extended Analytics into social media tracking (generally, a great idea!) but have not fixed this basic but important item.  Grrrrr.

I like to look at the percent of my traffic that comes from natural search vs say direct.   Natural search suggests that they use some keyphrase but then up on my site (bless them).

But over half of the "natural seach" that Google reports is people entering some derivative of my domain name into the search bar as a lazy-mans way of getting to my site.  So the data becomes meaningless until I manually massage it.

 I'd like Google to help me out here but dedicating a little programming resources to having an automated way that I can select variations of my name and henceforth see them in the direct data, not the natural search area.

While this is not so intellectually exciting as analytics for social media, it would be useful!

Love Hate Google Plus

I've heard that Google plus is starting off huge so I went thru my emails, found a google plus invite, and joined. I', ten minutes into it and I already love and hate Google Plus. Henceforth known a Gplus.

What do I love? Its about time somebody gave me some control over my information so that I can have one set of messages for my work colleagues, another for my soccer buddies, and a third for my family.  This seems so obvious to me but Facebook somehow seems stuck in an everyone-sees-or-nobody-sees mode.  Yea Google. Thanks Google.

What do I hate?  Its not really that I hate it but the question of how to organize my friends and contacts is non-trival.  I started with "current colleagues" and "old colleagues". Then I divide it into "colleagues that I trust" and "work contacts."  Now I'm sitting here staring at the possibilities and trying to figure out what to do. So many possibilities, so little experience on whats going to be useful and streamlined...

And now I've found a blog post with some useful suggestions: http://www.virante.com/blog/2011/07/18/four-things-every-google-plus-n/

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Learning Online Marketing

Two people in one day have asked me for info to get them started on online marketing. One is a training partner at my dojo, the other is one of my engineers who is trying to learn about SEO.

So I thought I'd write up a general response to the question of how someone learns about online marketing so they can get started.

My first reaction is that its a great career move for people to learn about (actually, maybe not for engineers who might do better as programmers than marketers). But for most people, it's a good career area so learning about is seems worthwhile. The flip side is that learning it can take make years and is never fully finished. There's a lot to learn and things keep changing.  And there are rapidly emerging courses and even degrees in this area. But they still tend to lag state of the art.

Where does one start?  First, you should think about how broad the concept of online marketing is.   What are the areas within online marketing?

Social media - Learn how Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkedin, endless forums, Ning Groups, Yahoo groups, blogs, even YouTube, and so one can be marketing tools.
Email/Newsletter Writing and Management
SEO - Search engine optimization. The art of trying to get your website to appear in a good position in natural (ie non paid) search results.
PPC - Paid advertising in which you pay for each person who clicks on your advertisement. Google's adsense is the biggest program.
Affiliate Marketing or PPA - Advertising in which you pay per action (usually signup) of the visitors. People offer their programs and the publishers pick which ones to put on their site. Big ones are CJ, Ebay, Amazon, AffiliateFuel, etc.
Sales funnel - A part of a website designed to convert interested visitors into paid customers.
Network marketing - A type of online advertising.
Google Analytics
Google Webmaster Tools
Google Optimizer
Web design

One thing that I should mention is that trying to "learn online marketing" is a Heruclean task. I have taken it on since I felt it was key to my career and future but most people prefer to think of their business as soemthing else and just to pay others to do the online marketing.  I instead think of marketing as everything I do. Like as they say in the film: "everything is kung fu!"  This one of my types of analogies.

One you can read through this blog, take a course, or otherwise go reading about the web.  You can also just start giving it all a try. Locally, you can join groups and go to their meetings listening to the speakers. I did a lot of this for years. There are meetup groups on SEO and online marketing and social media.  Locally, there is SFIMA and the Interactive Direct Marketing Group and other local groups.

Here's a hint. Try doing things.  For instance, if you are reading this post, write a comment.  Summarize the one thing that you learned, or would have liked to learn, from this post. It'll help you retain and process what you've learned. And you will have started to be active online!

Here's a  free ebooks on online marketing. It's a Hubspot marketing piece but as agencies and services go, they are topnotch.  (no, they did not pay me to say that although I'd appreciate a little link-love from them).

There are some good newsletters (websites) to read current and back issues such as:
http://www.mequoda.com
http://searchengineland.com
http://www.hubspot.com

Note to self. It would be fun to build a online marketing term game on VSC.

Another interesting point about marketing is the advantage of being a little controversial. I fear that this is one of the problems with the Common Core, too many people just like to talk about it to foster controversy.

Best Use of Idle Domains?

What do you think is the best use of idle domains. Lets say for instance that I had a site called TimeForLearning. Does it make sense to get sites like http://www.time4math.com ,http://www.time4reading.com, and http://www.learningtime.com  and save them for future diversifications? I would think so. But what should I do with them?
- Park them for cash?
- 301 redirect them?
- Fill them up with blogs and content?
-Leave them idle?

Flash on an iPad: isifter

I showed everyone in my office a magic trick. I showed them the flash games of spellingcity running on an iPad!

My wife, not the CTO or other geniuses that I work with, figured it out. First, you download isifter from the app store. Then, you load isifter and enter spellingcity.com and you're off and running.

It's a browser with some flash-like player built-in. It only works on the iPad (not the iPhone) and only in landscape mode. While it worked for 14 games, it didn't work on one (LetterFall).

Pretty cool & confusing!

Google Plus One - What do we think?

I got this email from Google this week:

Hi John,

Thanks for getting back to me. To give you some context, my call was
regarding Google +1, a product which Google launched yesterday. Adding +1
buttons to your pages is a great way to help your content stand out in
Google search. By giving your visitors more chances to +1 your pages, your
search results and search ads could show up with +1 annotations more
often, helping users see when your pages are most likely to be useful.
Here are a few important links which can help you:

Start Up Guide: http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/
Example Website:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kung_fu_panda_the_kaboom_of_doom/
Technical Background: https://code.google.com/apis/+1button/
More Information:
http://adsense.blogspot.com/2011/06/add-1-to-help-your-site-stand-out.html

All the best with trying out this great feature which will help your
content stand out on Google Search and let me know if you need any help!

Best,

(name removed)

Google Partner Development

1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy
Mountain View, CA 94040

Webmaster tools - is it accurate?

I have been puzzling over the data in webmaster tools and I'm now wondering if the data makes any sense. Here's the case that has me doubting its basic accuracy.

There are a lot of searches on my site's name which is a term that I created. There are dozens of searches on variations of the site name. Here are a few for example from the top ten terms for my site listed in Webmaster tools.

The site is SpellingCity.com. There are searches for:

spellingcity
spelling city
spelling city.com
www.spellingcity.com
etc etc etc

Here's an actual piece of data from Google Webmaster Tools with monthly data regarding the key phrase search query: ""www.spellingcity.com""

Impressions 140,000
Visits 22,000
Click thru rate. 16%
Average position. 3.2

Questions.

1. As far as I can tell, my site is always first on google when you search on "www.spellingcity.com". I'm also 2nd -5th (with different pages from the website). Why would they think that on average I'm around 3rd?  Are they averaging all the different pages on my website or just averaging the first time that my website appears for this search?

If people typed my actual URL into the search box, aren't they looking for my site? I mean if someone actually searched on "www.spellingcity.com", I would assume that they are trying to get to my site but are using the search bar instead of the address bar. I assume that they use the searchbox instead of address box is a sort of lazyman's way to not having to typed it accurately or completely.

Here's the questions: Where are the other 84% clicking through to?  Did they change their mind and not come to my site?  Why? Google has pages from my site as the first five results so I would just assume people would come to my site. Are they saying that 84% didn't go to the first instance of my site?

 There is of course the paid search possibility.There are some people placing paid ads next to this search.  For instance:

Spelling City Games - Get Spelling City Games | ask.com

Search for Spelling City Games 
www.ask.com

Spelling City Games 

Search for Spelling City Games
Find out more on Yahoo!



My conclusion: the data is just way wrong or I'm totally misinterpreting it. Or maybe ASK and Yahoo have unlimited budgets to snatch my users on the way into my site.  


Any ideas?


John, aka the Confused Mayor of  SpellingCity.com

www.yahoo.com

Are they really getting 84% of the clicks of people who put my site's URL into the search box?  THAT's ANNOYING.  But frankly, I just don't believe it.   It just makes no sense to me.

SEO Directories, Honey Pots, & Google - Are they smarter than the local cops?

I was jsut on a well-trafficked directory where scads of people are talking about how important it is to get listed in directories for seo purposes.  It makes no sense to me since directories, created for seo purposes, are probably of NO value. Here's how I think think about.

Wouldn't Google monitor the lists of directories created for SEO purposes and demote the value of their links to zero. Or, if they are asking people to buy links for seo purposes, to actually have them count negative?

Put yourself in the shoes of Google, why wouldn't you maintain a list of directories that only exist for seo purposes and NOT consider those links?

 Better yet, create you own directory for seo purposes, keep track of who submits to them, then consider those sites as potentially spammy sites. Your local cops create these honeypots by leaving purses in parked cars with videotapes to catch would-be thieves.  Isn't google at least that smart?

Blogging and social media

When I first started to blog, blogging was the hot social media. The old ones were yahoo groups and forums.  Today, the discussion of relationships between social media and blogs could be endlessly long. My point for today is just a simple one about the ease of integrating social media in blogs.

First, adding "gadgets" to blogs has gotten really easy. This blog is done with Blogger, it's just as easy with WordPress: Click Design and you'll get to click to pick a new gadget.  

By default, you are in the Basics menu.  The social media icons are not today considered basic.

I clicked on Featured and found some more commercial gadgets such as the the Amazon deals. Scroll down and you find two social media selections.  

One, the one that i picked for this blog, is a share icon for Facebook and a Tweet This for Twitter.

   There was also an "add this" for doing a larger number and trackable implementation of social media.  Layal readers will know that I'm a big Add This fan although I think their stats are underwhelming.

That's todays show folks. If I had a blog about blogging I might quote or paraphrase this post there.


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Viral Lift Calculation from Addthis

I'm unimpressed, or at least confused, by Addthis' analytics. I'm new to Addthis.com and generally, I like the breakdown by service, some of the ability to look at timeframe , and the overall presentation.

But the table about effectiveness should, in this user's humble opinion, provide this: 
- why not allow people to pick a specific time period so they can compare March vs February?  Or March 2015 vs March 2014?
- overall statistics including: number of page views, number of shares, percentage of people who shared on each page
- the value of these shares which is what they call the viral uplift

I would think that the columns information that I'd like to get are:
- page impressions of the addthis.com gadget
- number of shares - total or by service
- the percent of shares
- number of click throughs from the shares by other users
- the percent

Instead, there's just this viral lift concept which I think is just the last point. I think.
I'll go ask this question on their forum and see what they say....
I've posted it but, I'm not sure that I did the signature right. Probably, I'll be banned now...sigh.
http://www.addthis.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=2

Note - I can't find my post and haven't tried logging in again.
Generally, our sites took over direct management of our social media icons ourselves.
We lost the viral uplift calculation but we never figured out how to use it anyway.

Add this.com viral lift

I've started using addthis.com on VSC and I'mconfused by the concept of viral lift. And i quote:

Viral lift is the percentage increase in traffic due to shares and clicks. Essentially, viral lift shows you how viral your content is – if your shares are getting a lot of clicks, your viral lift percentage will be high.

The AddThis Analytic’s viral lift feature is a valuable tool in making editorial decisions and tailoring future content.  It allows you, as a publisher, to see what shares are sending the most traffic back to your site. If you head into your analytics dashboard, you will see that we flag a page as viral if it’s generating more clicks than shares. Then head into the Content tab, sort by clicks and you can easily see what content is really resonating.

End quote. I'm confused in that I feel that if content has a high share to visit ratio, it's already worth flagging it as having some viral potential. In fact, if people are sharing it, its a GREAT thing. A second question is whether the shares generate cliks. This could be driven by the quality of your page title, image , and meta description which is what shows up on a Facebook share.

Add this!

When you run a website, there's so much to do.  Actually, if you run a website, you can do as little or as much as you want. Let me tell you about my experience running websites. First of all, I don't run them by myself. We are no up to 30 people working on these sites.

There's also so much to do. Our priorities:
1. Customer service. Answer the phones. Well! And find out what issues our users are having and resolve them.
2.  Build great new content and services.
3.  Maintain our advertising and SEO efforts.
4.  Try to be current with all the cool new stuff like social media, social bookmarking etc etc. You'll notice that this blog still pops up some outdated icons at the bottom of each post (I often delete them). I see a blank form, technorati, delicious.  We finally, on one of our major sites; VocabularySpellingCity.com, put up an Addthis.com on every page on the site. Addthis give some pretty cool stats and should be easy to update in case Twitter and Facebook don't remain the big dogs. Hard to imagine but then, they just arrived in the last three to four years so we'll see.

So pop over to some of our pages on VocabularySpellingCity and share or tweet the pages, would you? thanks.

Word Lists

Capitonyms - New!
Compound Words
Contractions
Dolch - Sight Words
Geography Lists
Homophones, Homonyms, etc.
Literature Based Word Lists
Math Vocabulary - New!
Monthly Holiday Lists
Phonics & Sight Word Curriculum 
Possessive Nouns 

Sequential Spelling Program

Sound Alike Words
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Facebook like this page, FB like your FB page, Facebook Share

I think I finally understand this. The icons here are from a typical page on the Time4Learning website: http://www.time4learning.com/education/third_grade.shtml .

The F icon there is a "share this page" icon. It will place on the user's Facebook home page some info about this page from our website. Specifically, it'll put up a user comment, the page meta title, the page metadescription, and an image from the page. This is different than the following two cases:

Facebook Like this page. Many websites have FB likes that have the user "liking" that specific page of the website.   If you click on them, you've liked the specific page (or post in this case since we're in a forum).

Facebook Like set up to Like their Facebook Page.  This is how the likes are set up on the home page of the Time4Learning website. A person who likes any of the Facebook Like icons on these page becomes a friend of ours on Facebook. It's very different than liking the page. For instance, they get updates on their Facebook page from our Facebook page.  Visually, I don't think there's a way to know the different between the two.