This week’s interview is with Yahoo’s Dennis Mortensen. This is the first time I have a chance to really sit down with him since IndexTools was acquired by Yahoo, of for that matter, since his election to the board of directors of the WAA.
What Are You Going To Do Today?
10/20/2008 by Leave a Comment
One thing to keep in mind when digging into your analytics data is whether or not your research has the possibility of causing you to do something. Many pundits like to refer to this as making it actionable. I think this is a pretty good way of expressing it.
I happen to prefer a slight different phraseology. Will it change what you are doing today? If you found out that your bounce rate was up by 10%, would you act on that? If your return on ad spend (ROAS) in your PPC campaign drops by 25% will you act on that? If the web site that is referring you traffic suddenly slows to a trickle, would you act on that? Probably for all 3 of these examples.
If you found out that your blue widgets sold better in Virginia than Florida, would you act on that? Maybe you would, but it will depend a bit on your site and business structure. You may not be able to act on such data. Businesses with more robust web sites and capabilities would love to have that kind of data. Businesses without the ability to react to such data won’t care.
This is one reason why analytics is so individual to each given business. One of the most difficult things to do in analytice is to figure out what data matters to you, and why. It’s a complex process, and you best be prepared for lots of experimentation to get the best results.
Brief Chat with Guy Kawasaki
10/19/2008 by Leave a Comment
After a long hiatus from publishing interviews, I am back at it. We have a nice stream of interviews upcoming, so stay tuned. Not too long ago I had a chance to get Guy Kawasaki to answer a few quick questions. Check it out, and next week we will give you an update on Yahoo Web Analytics in our discussion with Dennis Mortensen.
Link Algorithm Changes
10/1/2008 by 11 Comments
Long ago and far away, I wrote a post about the Problems with Anchor Text as a Ranking Signal (well OK, it was about a year ago). In that post I wrote:
The weighting of anchor text is one of the biggest factors that drives the paid links business. When you pay somebody for a link, you naturally expect that you will be able to control the anchor text. So here the search engines truly hurt their own cause. Want to put a dent in the paid links industry? Reduce the importance of anchor text.
In recent weeks it seems that Google has done just that. Emphasis has appeard to shift towards the content of the page providing the link. If so, this is a major improvement in the algorithm. Links on irrelvant pages just should not count for as much, regardless of the anchor text. And, since link buying is largely about manipulating anchor text, this should reduce the impact of such link buying.
It’s also interested to see that there appear to have been multiple PageRank updates. I have seen sites dropped one level, and then a few weeks later get dropped yet another level in toolbar PageRank score. This may be the result of changes in link filtering of some sort. For example, perhaps reciprocal links have been subject to further discounting, particularly if they appear to be barter.
One thing that is clear, is that there is some serious work being done on the link algorithms by Google. This is likely to continue.
That noted, don’t expect the overall importance of links to decline anytime soon. They still are a huge factor, both in terms of calculating a link score (PageRank) and for their anchor text benefits (less than before, but still a factor).
Bottom line here is that the need to focus on natural link building is greater than ever. This depends on building a superior resource that people want to link to, and letting them know about it. It’s a function not dissimilar to PR, except it has the twist of being focused on getting a link.
The link builder of the future will be a master of masterminding content plans and link campaigns in an integrated fashion. If you have already been doing that, you are just beginning to reap some of the rewards of your efforts.
