Understanding SEO Tools: Adwords, Wordtracker, Keyword Research, Alexa, Link Analysers

Search Engine Optimization

There are many products in the SEO area that help webmasters and marketing departments in making changes to web sites and pages so that they are ranked higher in search results. This blog post gets under the skin of some of these to explore what makes them tick.

Keyword Research

1. Tools to find search frequency of keywords

Google Adwords Keyword Tool
Google provides an interface to find frequency of searches made on a particular keyword and related keyword terms. Google can provide such a tool because what keywords are used for searches is already known to the search engine. This tool has been provided as part of the Adwords package which allows advertisers to display their PPC ads in google. But it can be used by anyone.

WordTracker
WordTracker associates with the dogpile / metacrawler meta-search-engines (i.e. those which combine the results from google + yahoo + bing etc.). It collects search terms people use to find the latest keywords being used. It counts the number of times each individual word or phrase is used and uses this information as a basis for each keyword’s traffic. Using this, users can build lists of promising keywords for their sites.

2. Tools to find useful keywords

Webmaster Toolkit: Keyword Research Tool
This tool finds keywords related to the word or phrase you supply. It asks for the selection of a search engine and returns a list of alternate or related terms. It seems to do this by executing the search on the selected search engine and then parsing the meta tags of the results to provide a list of alternate keywords. Since it does this for the top matches, it is likely to come up with a good set of related keywords.

Keyword Analysis

Most of the popular tools in this category accept a url and identify all the unique, non-common words and key phrases on the page and display a frequency table for them. The advantage of this tool is that it shows what the search engine sees and helps modify the copy for the web page so that it has a richer set of keywords.

Search Engine Submission

The tools in this category have some manual steps involved. Typically, this is due to the captcha element on the page. Most tools work with specific search engines and will navigate the user to the submission page and from that point on the submission process is manual. In the case of certain search engines, the submission process can be completely automated.

Site Popularity Ratings

Alexa
A browser toolbar was made available to internet users which kept suggested related sites and at the same time sent site browsing information to a server which collected data about user browsing habits. This system provides site popularity ratings based on the data collected.

Link Partners

Inbound Link Analysers
I'm not sure how these work, but they must be working on the assumption of reciprocal links and links from directories.

Link Popularity Analysers
These mainly look to make sure that the existing incoming links to the site are not broken.

Site Directory Submissions
These are again like search engine submission tools. Where possible, they will automate the process. Otherwise, they will navigate the user to each directory where the submission can be done manually.

Long Tail of Casting Aspiring Actors, Singers

The Long Tail

The long tail phenomenon denotes the idea that there are a few "hits" and a disproportionately large number of non-hits. This had first been pointed out in music sales - conventional thinking states that 80% of sales come from 20% of the albums. But for an online vendor it was noticed that almost half of the sales came from a very large number of non-hits.

Entertainment Talent

Entertainment talent has an identical pattern. There are a minuscule number of "super stars" who are loaded with offers, followed by a few B-grade stars and then there is a huge number of artistes who are essentially unrecognized - from minor supporting roles to completely fresh aspirants looking for a break.

The plight of the unrecognized aspirants is very similar to the plight of a music CD published by an unknown band. They are both invisible. The CD is invisible because no music store wants to store it because of its low sale potential. And the unrecognized artist is invisible for the same reason - she has no way to project her visibility to those who matter.

Presently, the only way for an actor to be noticed by the casting people is to follow the long winded route of connections which may or may not result in a break. In fact, for most people, a huge effort is expended in getting the break which finally doesnt pay off.

An Inefficient Market

This happens because there is no convenient marketplace in which to trade the acting potential of the artistes. There is no convenient way for a casting director to review all the talent available and pick the ones he likes. Also there is no convenient mechanism for an aspiring artiste to know what opportunities exist. And the only way is through middlemen who bridge this gap between those who want talent and those who have it.

The Online Market

The internet provides an opportunity for a marketplace for entertainment talent. Consider a web site that allows unrecognized artistes to register themselves as members (like on facebook) and upload their portfolios. Models could upload photographs representing their portfolios; actors could upload video clips; and music artistes could upload soundtracks or videos. Scriptwriters could put up some of their script outlines; camera workers could put up samples of their work and so on.

There is no limit on how much content is uploaded. So, every artiste gets a chance to showcase himself or herself. The internet and all the current digital technologies provide a convenient medium for this market.

The Challenges

Having said that, the problem is not completely solved. In fact a new problem arises due to the showcasing of this vast pool of talent. There is so much information, that it is difficult to sift and sort through the pool and find the right artistes.

For example, if 3000 artistes meet the criteria of female aged between 21 and 26 years, it is going to be difficult to go through all the portfolios and come up with the right choice. But that is the situation.

The Solutions

The first solution is a high quality search function. A search function that will be able to go through the background of each artiste and find relevant experience. For example, if the role is that of a young female TV journalist, the relevant experience may be that of a journalist, or that of a fighter for a social cause, etc. It would eliminate those who have played parts in soap operas or those in comic roles. This should reduce the search to a few relevant artistes from which the calls for auditions can be made.

Another solution is user ratings. If the people who employ the talents of an artiste are persuaded to give their ratings for artistes, then these become recommendations and help selectors to make their choice. Those artistes with lots of good recommendations get better offers and generally make their way up in life. But there are many selectors who are willing to work with fresh and cheap talent, so opportunities exist for the entire spectrum.

Other Benefits

Apart from cast selectors being able to find talent easily, there are other benefits and new markets. There is scope for an acting academy to promote their services and for actors with experience to teach in such academies.

This platform provides the potential for making new contacts in the same field; for exchanging notes; forming groups and exchanging views on common topics of interest, to pick up new techniques and share one's own expertise with others.

Making Money Online - Where is the Catch

Introduction

There are hundreds if not thousands of sites that are screaming "make money online" and they offer a simple way to do this. And you end up wondering "where is the catch?". To answer this question, one needs to back up a little and reach a higher altitude where you get a look at the bigger picture.

Demographic Shift

What is happening in the world today is a change in demographic behavior. A very significant number of people are spending more time on the internet than ever before. And this number is very significant to businesses that want to sell products to consumers. Which means soft drink companies, fast food companies, stationery companies, pet food companies, you name it.

Marketing Democratization

With the shift of demographic behavior has come another change: the democratization of marketing. Traditionally, marketing has been one of the most expensive activities of many businesses, especially the ones that deal directly with consumers. Global annual marketing spending is in the range of $150 - $200 billion. Businesses spent over $2 billion on advertising during the FIFA world cup in the span of a few weeks. The point being that only the very, very rich companies can really reach out to people very effectively.

Correction: that was before the demographic shift. Now, with people all over the internet, there is a shift in the balance. It is now possible to reach a small number of people very cheaply via the internet. This is the democratization of marketing.

Affiliates

One innovation makes use of the demographic shift very effectively. Let us say that I have something that I want to sell: maybe I'm making mousetraps and I have built one that works really well. I'm a not rich and cant advertise the mousetrap on TV.

Is there no hope for me? This is where the internet comes to the rescue. Here is what I do: I make a proposition to others on the web - "advertise my mousetrap on your site and I will pay you a commission if the mousetrap is sold from your site".

Suppose you have a presence on the internet in the form or a blog, or twitter, or you have a web site. And you take me up on my proposition, then you become an affiliate for me. You need to embed a link to my product page on your blog or site. So, if a user visits your blog and visits my link and buys my product, I give you a commission on the sale.

There is NO Catch

So, what has happened as a result of the demographic shift is that a market has opened up for small businesses to promote their products and services. And the advertising revenue that used to go to TV channels is now going to individuals as small payments.

A blog writer (of a popular blog) is a micro- TV channel. And he gets advertising revenue if he chooses to advertise products on his blog. All he needs is viewership - which means that he writes what people want to read.

And that's it. Just wait for the advertising revenue to start pouring in.

Scope of Internet Marketing

July 2010

In general we tend to use things without looking beyond the obvious; particularly, we use the internet without thinking about what is going on behind the scenes. Recently, I read "The Long Tail" by Chris Anderson and I was so fascinated by the fundamental changes taking place that I read more about the internet. And that led me to the field of Internet Marketing. Also known as Marketing 2.0.

What this blog post will try to do is put a context around terms like Search Engine Optimization, Blog Marketing, Link Building, Pay per Click (PPC) and the like.


Background

The core function of any business is selling. What fuel is to a car, money is to business - it makes the business run. And selling is what produces the money. Selling takes place when there is demand. And advertising creates demand.

Advertising is all about getting the message for a product or service in front of the largest possible audience. And so far, that message was best conveyed by television and supported by print media and outdoor advertising.

But recently (since 2006 or so), it has been observed that a significant part of the audience has changed their habits and have started spending more time on the internet rather than in front of the TV. Which necessitates businesses to spread the message about their products or services via this new medium in addition to broadcasts.


The Problem with the Internet

The question of how to get your message to your audience through the internet is a tricky one. The internet is a very different medium from the media we are generally accustomed to. What we are accustomed to is a broadcast medium - TV, newspapers, magazines etc.

These media have content ( like TV programs and news and articles) that the audience wants to consume. And riding on top of this content are the messages that advertisers want to push to the audience. And if you can have the message ride on the most popular content, then the largest number of people get to see it.

But the internet is not like that: it is not a broadcast medium. It is defined by a "pull" model. Each member of the "audience" decides what content he or she wants to consume (i.e. pull). So, how does an advertiser get the message about the product to the scattered audience?

A number of options have evolved over the last ten or so years.


Web Sites

Almost all companies now have a presence on the internet in the form of a web site. In fact, most large selling products have their own dedicated web sites too. And this is a very powerful medium for getting the advertising message across to the audience. The web site is the advertiser's content. Once a member of the audience visits the site, it is like having him in the company store. All the products, all the messages are right there.

The problem for a business is to get the audience to their site. There is obviously no reason that the general audience is going to flock to a company web site like they would to watch a blockbuster movie. However, a potential buyer of the business' product is a likely visitor to the web site.

So there are really two problems to be solved. The larger problem is that of getting the message out to the general audience in order to create demand. The smaller (but equally significant) problem is related to getting a potential buyer to visit a company web site - this second problem is addressed by search engine optimization techniques described next.


Search Engine Optimization


On the internet, the way a user navigates to web sites is through search engines, mainly google although other search engines are also getting popular (see now-relevant for example). But google is by far the most widely used. The user types in a phrase that conveys the essence of what is of interest and the search engine responds with a list of web sites that match the criteria.

The user typically visits the top few sites from the list of search results before moving on to other things (typically via another search). So, it is imperative that the business' web site comes up in the top few entries in the list for the relevant search criteria. For example, a carpet cleaning service in Redington, WY should come up in the top few sites when a user specifies a search criteria of "carpet cleaners Redington".

Making this happen is called search engine optimization. It involves understanding the basis that search engines use to match results to search criteria and then making your web site comply with that basis. It includes techniques like link building, keyword management and others. There are specialist internet marketing professionals (and businesses) who perform search engine optimization for web sites.


Banner Ads

We now come to the point of addressing the larger problem of getting an advertiser's message out to the general audience on the internet. Banner ads was the earliest form of advertising on the internet. And it followed the familiar model from the TV and print media.

The basic proposition was (from the advertiser to the web site owner): since your site has so many visitors in a month, I will pay you X dollars to display my ad to N visitors on your site.

The most prominent location for the ad on a web page is the top banner on the web site's home page. There are other locations on the home page and other pages in the web site and correspondingly the terms of the proposition change. But the model is identical to the conventional one.


Ad Servers

The problem of putting banner ads on web sites is not a simple one to solve. Lets say you have a business that rents cars in a local area like a town. You want to advertise this on the web and you identify certain web sites that are related to your town like cultural web sites, web sites advertising other services, travel web sites and so on.

How do you get your ad on the web sites you selected? Getting the ad out there means that the HTML of the web site has to be changed. Every time you want to add a new service or feature, you need to change the ad and therefore the web site.

The solution to this problem is provided by a technology called Ad Servers. An ad server is a computer server that stores advertisements and delivers them to website visitors. The web master for the web site makes certain changes (on a one-time basis) to accommodate the ad server. Now, whenever a visitor navigates to the web site, the web site makes a request for an ad from the ad server.

So the visitor sees the content provided by the web site and the banner and other placeholders are filled in by the ad server.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

The banner ad model worked well enough but google came up with a brilliant invention which made advertising on the internet extremely attractive to advertisers. Since google is in the search engine business, they know what a user is looking for and their proposal to advertisers was "I will display a link to your web site whenever the user enters an advertiser-specified set of terms in the search criteria". Google displays these links separately from the search results. But google sweetened the proposal by saying "I will only charge you if a visitor clicks on the link". This was the origin of the pay per click model. It worked like magic for google.

This model was now extended to other web sites. Just as you have banner ads, you have pay per click ads on web sites. These are also served by ad servers. The only difference is that the PPC ads are tracked by the ad server. So if a visitor clicks on a PPC ad, the ad server is notified before the visitor navigates to the advertiser's web site. The ad server collects information as to which ads were clicked on on each web site it serves to and that forms the basis of the advertising payout.

To increase exposure of the ad, there are web sites that use the inducement of micropayments (1 cent per click) to invite users to click through the ads thereby increasing the exposure to the advertiser's message.


Blogs

Although advertising is a very effective way of getting the message about the product to the audience, there has traditionally been another channel for the same purpose - PR or public relations. In the broadcast medium, this involves working with a journalist who has to be convinced that the product has "news" value and who then writes up a message about the product. This has had a downside too - the journalist may or may not print exactly what you have in mind and may pursue external sources which may say something negative about your product too.

Blogs extend this channel to the internet with the same positives and negatives. And of course, there are no journalists here. The starting point is to create a blog about your product and it has to contain something novel. Plus you have to offer something "free" like a promotion. And you have to get the blog to show up on search engine results (via search engine optimization techniques).

Once this is done, depending on the novelty of the offering, blog posts start appearing which reference your product through your original blog. These blog posts by other people form the function of public relations in broadcast media.

Of course, an advertiser can (and should) write large number of blogs about the product, each trying to explain different dimensions of the benefits of the product.