While I found most of the devices to be soooooo cool and I want them, I have difficulty actually imagining people from most industries, let alone the construction industry, investing in the number of gadgets per employee that Mike had the good fortune to use in his daily routine.

Okay, okay, it was not the point that everything is so affordable that the video was trying to make.  The point it was trying to make was how easy it wuld be to join together all of one's gizmos and gadgets, from computing on your laptop, desktop, or mobile device to managing your home security and Global Positioning System.  In fact, another YouTube video I checked out showed some of the business applications (and more way cool equipment) that the new Windows 7 software can join together.

So after looking at these YouTube videos of Windows 7, is anyone still wondering how Microsoft is planning on taking on the lion's share of search as well?  It would be my observation that if operating systems are moving toward production level work on the equipment with profiles and working documents all saved online, and with a built-in search functionality sitting everywhere, it wouldn't take too long to become the more popular search choice by mere convenience.  This would also fulfill the Bill Gates statement I referred to in my last post where Bill says that they have a strategy for competing in the search space that Google currently dominates today, and that they'll pursue what they had before they made the Yahoo offer, and that joining with Yahoo would have merely accelerated their plans.  It all involves breakthrough engineering.

I wonder what kind of patches will come with such a Windows project!  I also wonder what evolution will transpire in the overall world of search, and by it's very virtue, the world of Paid Search!

Let me know what you think!  The vids are a touch hokey, but the application sand gadgets are pretty cool.  (Hey Jeff, you need some more of these things for your office!)

Cheers!

The Doug

aka Doug Gebhardt

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Does the future of Windows spell the doom of Google?

For fun, I'm going to take a real release that we recently did and answer each of the questions that was raised.

(Full disclosure, this is a client of ours and he agreed to share these numbers)

Here's what we did

We had recently launched a Blog for a client and decided to give it a little boost by sending out a press release. The product is very environmentally friendly so we wanted to make sure that we got additional coverage in the client's own state plus those states that are pro environment (like California).

Of course, we followed the basic PR Optimization best practices like making sure that the title was catchy (but contained a keyword) and that the piece included a link back to the client. We used PRWeb for our distribution (we really like the $200 option).

What to Measure?

1) In the original post I used Headline Impressions as the main comparison metric.

In this example the release generated 61,468 headline impressions. Given that the release was focused across a few states, I would consider this number to be pretty good.

2) Links Built is the most obvious metric from an SEO perspective. Our press release generated 173 links.

But of course quality is more important than quantity. Many of the links generated from online press releases are of little to no value. They were from off topic, spammy scrapper sites.

But some of these links were fantastic!

The piece made it to both Google News, Yahoo News and Business.com which provided the client with tremendous additional exposure. Plus it got picked up by local news sites, environmental news sites, and industry specific sites.

So far we're off to a good start. But as PRWeb commented (in my previous post), the metrics that are most meaningful are those from your own operations.

3) Increases in site traffic Site traffic was up 87% over the previous month. Most of this was the result of a big spike in referral traffic. This referral traffic was coming from sites that picked up the press release.

Of particular interest, this referral traffic was quality traffic. They spent an average of 4 minutes on the site, had 4.34 pages per visit and a low bounce rate.

4) Increases in Off line inquiries from both media and prospects. It's not unusual for media releases to lead to other media opportunities.

We got in through the back door. Traditional PR companies go through the front door and "pitch" ideas to the media. With online PR you happen to be at the right place at the right time when reporters are researching a story.

This particular press release lead to an inquiry from the Governor's office and a nomination for an Environmental Award!

5) Increase in conversions (e.g. sales). There was one sale that definitely came as a result of the press release (the visitor came from one of the referral sites that picked the release up).

Due to other marketing initiatives (both online and off line) it's not possible to definitively measure whether the press release drove a marked increased sales. But empirical evidence (customers saying that they had seen the release on local news sites) suggests yes.

6) Increased ranking for the strategic keywords used in the release.

The release is currently showing on spots 6, 8 an 14 (through powerful sites that picked up the release) and the client's site itself is in spot 18.

It's been a few weeks since the release and we are searching for their keyword phrase not a branded term.

These results can be attributed entirely to the release itself

To make this a true test we picked a release that was targeting a new product. We have not otherwise targeted this keyword before with any link building or on-page optimization efforts – all of the above metrics can be entirely attributed to the release itself.

So was there any value to the online press release beyond traditional link building? The client sure thinks so!!!!

What do I think? Like anything else, it's all about the content. Online PR created for link building purposes only will probably only build you links. Online PR that is quality content will lead to quality metrics.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Online PR – Is there any value beyond the links?

Courtesy www.technovelgy.com

Lets look at it objectively.  Using infra-red sensors to measure the breathing patterns, heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, etc of an employee can provide valuable information to an employer who is unaware that they are putting too much pressure on their staff or alert others on a project team that someone is struggling with their requirement, or even provide warnings of possible health issues arising due to stress or illness.

Courtesy www.drugs.com

On the darker side of this coin, its just a little bit too much like so many corny science fiction movies where people are forced into previously established and possibly antiquated compliance policies and identified and dealt with before they are able to provide "Better" options which might upset the sensibilities of the executive body.

Courtesy www.Franzone.com

In any case, besides being a host of legal issues to hurtle upon implementation of such a system, I don't see many employees readily jumping into the "Pick Me" line to be monitored and tracked in such a way anytime soon.  That being said, there will also be those places to work that have such a high reputation as "The Coolest Place To Work" where people won't think twice about jumping on board with the monitoring just to be able to work there.

Thoughts?

Doug Gebhardt

aka The Doug

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Microsoft User Monitoring System – Workplace Assistant or Terminator?

I recently found that in addition to being cool for the above reasons, Stumble has a fantastic third use… cheap fast Market Research. I know, if you have ever done market research before I'm sure you're shocked that I just used cheap and fast in the same sentence <grin>

I came upon this discovery by accident.

A client had just launched a new website and they wanted us to drive traffic to it. SEO for the long term and PPC, Social Media, online PR, in the short term.

Keep in mind, this was (is) a really snazzy site. The client (who wishes to remain anonymous), invested a huge chunk of dough into the site and it looked WAY COOL. The whole team was REALLY excited to be a part of such a cool project.

We put a lot of time into planning for the site launch and did our usual stuff, reaching out to online influencers, setting up paid search campaigns, etc. Except our tactics (which are usually pretty successful) didn't pan out this time. We drove a moderate amount of traffic to the site but it didn't take off like other efforts had. This was a bit of a puzzle.

Stumble helped us to figure it out. We stumbled the site and got enough Stumbleupon traffic to make the problem abundantly evident. This really cool, hugely aesthetic site was getting a number of thumbs down!!!

Looking at the site analytics for the stumble traffic we saw that these visitors were spending a lot of time on the home page (an average of 2 min 23 seconds) and had a very low bounce rate – 26%. We couldn't discount the experience of this traffic as being low quality, these visitors were clearly engaged and interested. So why weren't they converting? (in this case a conversion was going to a specific page and filling out a brief form)

Based on the Stumbleupon metrics, we hypothesized that although the site looked really cool, it wasn't very user friendly. Keep in mind that Stumbleupon traffic comes to the site not knowing beforehand, what it's all about. They arrive at the site knowing that it is related to their selected interests, and that others found the site intriguing. Period. No other cues such as where they came from, text links, keywords searched, etc.

Clearly in this case, the stumble traffic was confused. There were too few cues on the homepage as to what the site was about. To make matters worse, there was no navigation on the homepage just an enter here button. The button was below the fold so most people didn't see it. The homepage was really interactive so they had fun playing with it initially, but in the end they got frustrated and left.

Based on our Stumbleupon hypothesis, some pretty direct Stumbleupon comments, we recommended a number of changes designed to improve the usability of the site. Grudgingly(they were afraid it would take away from the cool factor), the client moved the Enter Here button, they added an informative title, and made it a lot easier to go in and look around.

Immediately after the changes were implemented the site metrics went up (considerably).

These were all learning's that we could have achieved through a focus group even before the site was launched. But in reality, where budget is limited and the project is usually behind schedule, who has the time or the money to do so?

Stumbleupon provided the critical feedback that the client needed. We just had to listen.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Stumbleupon – for Market Research???

Here is what I saw…

A friend submitted the Digg article. It got a few Diggs however I didn't really pay too much attention. I knew that it was really good content but I didn't want to get my hopes up.

1:00 The next day I logon and check Digg, OMG it's JUST gone HOT! (23 hrs and 18 minutes after the submission). We're at 116 Diggs and 2,500 visits to the site.

1:40 p.m. – I check both Digg and the site traffic again. Wow! In 40 minutes it's gotten 127 more Diggs and 1,415 more visits. I am truly amazed at how quickly this is taking off. It is at this time that I realize that we have a unique Learning Opportunity here.

We have access to the site's analytics and happen to be around when it took off! I decided to set up a test to monitor the number of Diggs and resulting traffic. I decided on 20 minute intervals and faithfully recorded the # of Diggs, the site traffic and the position on Digg i.e. #1 on the First Page, #8 on the First Page, #5 on the Second Page, etc.

The site ended up getting just under 1,000 Diggs. This resulted in 17,212 Unique Visitors in 2 days. On top of this, the story got 73 Comments on Digg and there were 6 Blog Postings from the Story Source.

Findings:
First let me just give the usual disclaimer "this is based on a limited sample set and additional data may impact the results" (people can be so touchy about these things).

I was expecting the vast majority of the Digg traffic to come from the United States (and it did). What surprised me though, was the amount of traffic that came from other countries, 114 countries in total. Here is a graph of the top 5 countries

Another interesting thing that I noticed was that for every person who dug the piece, there were about 15 people who just read it. This was REALLY cool to me because I've often wondered just how much traffic Diggs generate. Of course this is just a Ball Park of what to expect and many factors can impact it.

The story averaged more than 3 Diggs per minute (the pulse of the story baby) when it first went HOT. Two hours later, although it was still hot (lukewarm maybe???) 1st page positioning began to drop and so did the Diggs per minute. The piece stayed on the 1st page for 3 hrs. We noticed that when it moved to page two the pulse slowed quite a bit. By this point it was gaining fewer than 1 Digg per minute and slowing considerably.

In the end, the site ended up getting additional residual Diggs (and traffic) for about 2 days. In any case, I felt really fortunate to be a part of this experience. I will definitely be looking for further opportunities to utilize Digg.

Footnote: I did get permission from the site owner to share this information with all of you !

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Diggs per minute…a Digg Virgin's online diary

research. In fact 98% of journalists go online daily

Hint: if it's not newsworthy it's not newsworthy, optimizing it isn't going to mysteriously drive droves of traffic and links (end of rant).

We recently came across a unique opportunity to test the various levels of PR Web Services. A client was running a contest with many unique prizes and wanted help with proliferation. We decided that optimized press releases (amongst other tactics) were definitely a good fit for our client's main objective of creating exposure for the contest.

We had the opportunity to send out 11 similar press releases all within the same timeframe. Wow! What an opportunity for testing! (Yes I admit I'm a marketing person who's not afraid of numbers)

Our MethodologyWe wrote the 11 press releases first taking PR Optimization best practices into consideration. We did our keyword research first and made sure that we got appropriate keywords into the headings and with the proper density (no keyword stuffing hereJ). We wrote the pieces, paying careful attention to craft catchy headlines and got client sign off. Then we randomly selected which releases we would use with each of the PR Web levels of service: Standard Visibility ($80), Social Media Visibility ($120) and SEO Visibility ($200). We had a tight budget, but at the last minute we decided to test the Media Visibility ($360) option too but we only tested this option with one press release.

Typically we use the $200 service because we like the reporting functionality but quite frankly, we wanted to find out if we were wasting our money. Maybe free was just fine? So we also send out one of the releases using a free service as well.

The Results The free service was pretty difficult to measure because it offered no tracking. We put out a Google alert for the headlines and regularly checked the search engines but found no evidence of it being picked up by any sites. The free PR pieces also did not get indexed by Google. If you take our time into consideration, this option ended up costing us money.   On average the $80 option yielded 40,424 headline impressions. In comparison, the $120 option averaged 69,362 headline impressions. Therefore for an extra 50% spend, 72% more headline impressions were generated. Not bad. The most interesting result though was the $200 option.

Keeping in mind that only one piece was released using this option; to our surprise it generated a total of 168,882 headline impressions in sharp contrast to the most expensive $360 option that yielded only 84,498 headline impressions.

The Conclusion PR Optimization is a great tactic for driving impressions and brand awareness. And let's face it; the links are kinda nice too. But you have to choose a package that meets your objectives and budget. If you have many releases to send out and budget is a concern then the $80 package will give you results. If reporting is also a consideration then I really like the additional capability that the $120 package provides. But if traffic and eyeballs are your biggest driving force then you should definitely consider the $200 option. Keep in mind, free isn't always free and paying more doesn't always pay off!

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Online Press Release Service Comparison – Which is Best?

Now, we can all imagine the power of such a tool in terms of aiding us with making better decisions … it almost goes without saying. More people = more perspectives = better predictions (maybe?). So, lets look at this from a different perspective, and try to find the potential of such a tool from a marketing perspective. How can I (as a business owner) utilize this tool to help increase site traffic and/or sales and/or profitability?

Actually, there are a number of benefits, and in particular:
a) the link in your profile is DoFollow (yeah!)
b) the links in the 'Social News' section are DoFollow
c) its an opportunity for further social networking
d) when strategically done, you can generate some interest in your own site/blog or at the very least position yourself to be noticed by certain others.

Let me illustrate point d with an example in action. I think we'll all agree that ShoeMoney and John Chow are big names in our space. Many of you will also know that ShoeMoney and John Chow have a competition (see here and here) raging for the month of October; whoever gains the most RSS subscribers in the month, gets bragging rights and a link on the other's site (ShoeMoney … its looks like John has a slight lead at the moment … 502 vs 380 at the moment).

So, lets post the competition on ZiiTrends and see what happens. I know John Chow was asking for odds.

At the current time, the site hasn't reached the critical mass necessary for any statistically significant predictions, but its an interesting twist, and one I'm sure will gain momentum over time. Go see for yourself and cast your votes.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

ZiiTrend – The Social Prediction Community & John Chow vs Shoemoney