Ponderings and Wanderings » Dan Katz

Major news in SEO and Analytics

Dan Katz — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 13:02:03 +0000

Google has made an announcement that is going to have massive impact on website analytics and SEO. This announcement is that Google is no longer going to by default pass to sites the search terms people have found your site. This is going to be restricted from those users logged into a Google product and not delivered unless you have a Google Adwords account and campaign in progress.

The impact of such a move by Google to current analytical and SEO practices should not be overlooked. The reality is that Google is the only search engine that delivers a solid steady volume of valued visitors. We know this because we can (not I should say could have – past tense) see the keywords used in Google to reach and travel through to conversions by every Google referral. Now, without an Adwords account and campaign, this data is only partial and will not entirely reflect the valued data from visitors who find the site from Google.

How important is this? Massive! The measure of such keywords in often the primary KPI (key performance indicator) of activities to ensure the site is not only found, but clicked through in search results. Then, there is the discovery use. We use these terms to identify those phrases that we are associated by the visitors to strength or reduce the association. Without this data we lose some of the most powerful analytics in our tool chest.

Is this good for me and my clients? No. It restricts my practices and in the short term is going to alienate me from Google. Is this good for Google? No, this is GREAT for Google. This means that they are going to see an enormous growth in the use of Adwords simply so that sites can obtain this data. I image also that the newly announced commercially supported Google Analytics service probably will have this data available as well.

Here are a couple of good articles on this subject. I am sure lots more will be published soon.

Solving the WordPress IIS 500 Error for Image Display

Dan Katz — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 13:38:44 +0000

For quite some time we had an issue where on an IIS server there was a WordPress 500 server error anytime we use the media Library to upload images. We set the permissions on the parent directory of the uploads folder but this would not resolve the issue.

It took a long time to figure out the issue and finally I found these posts that provided the immediate solutio – set the PHP/Windows temp directory to be accessible by the IUSR account. Instant fix. Thank you to all those who have provided the solution.

Now the request to the WordPress development team – include this in the notes or setup for Windows installations.

Where to Post Job Openings for PHP Developers – Drupal and WordPress

Dan Katz — Wed, 11 May 2011 12:24:43 +0000

My firm (www.repequity.com) has some openings for sharp PHP developers. I am thinking we should post these jobs to places other than the routine of posting to the major jobs boards such as Dice, HotJobs, Monster and Craigslist. We of course post the openings on our Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn accounts. I then found these sites that seem to be those that PHP developers reference. What do you think of these or other sites? Are there others we should post openings and freelance work?

Thanks to Finding WordPress Jobs and need a Drupal Expert for inspiration on getting this list started.

How to go about selecting a CMS

Dan Katz — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 17:36:47 +0000

A client has come to us for analytics and other consulting. We then found that they manage their rather large and complex site entirely via manual HTML edits. They know they need a better way and are considering content management systems. Chatting with them I see they have not outlined in a formal manager the business requirements for the management of not just their website, but their entire digital framework. A good short list of needs that the team agrees upon should be the basis of evaluation and selection. Here are some questions the business requirements should consider.

What is the product road map of the CMS and how is it supported? Does this match your corporate culture and comfort level.
How big is the site and what are particular feature and functional requirements? Can the CMS package support these items that you currently utilize but also those that may be needed in the future? For example, every site should expect to have a mobile and location-based requirement even if you do not have the current need.
What is the analytics package you will utilize? Is this supported with tools to customize the metrics and settings within the CMS?
What technologies is your IT staff comfortable managing? For that matter, do you have an IT staff or will this need to be managed by a partner?
How many people will need to manage the website? Where will they be located? Do you need a workflow for data entry, review and approval?
What tools that are in place will need to link to the CMS? Email marketing, CRM, SEO, SEM, social media monitoring and engagement and others should all be able to integrate with the CMS. Existing partnerships, modules or other linkages will enable a more immediate and cost-effective hook up.
Will this be rolled out buy an internal team, external tam, partner or others and with what level of expertise? This needs to be taken into consideration for the training and service options available?
What is the budget range for the initial phase and the eventual enterprise roll out? This is key as there is a wealth of options but many can be priced right out of the budget.

Here are some other good reads regarding CMS Selection.

http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_evaluate/index.html How to evaluate a content management system
http://www.eimagazine.com/xq/asp/sid.0/articleid.2B3C1E09-EA4B-4281-B655-BBB4206C96EE/qx/display.htm Recommended steps when outlining a CMS strategy
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/defining-cms-content-requirements/1051942 Defining CMS content requirements

This is just my short list of items? What else should be added to this list of considerations?

White House Use of Twitter

Dan Katz — Wed, 12 May 2010 14:16:33 +0000

This NY Times article is a good highlight of the White House policy changes in light of the recent BP oil rig disaster. An interesting note is the following.

The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, announced the proposed changes in the mineral agency Tuesday morning over Twitter.

Two points of interest.

The White House used Twitter as the official release point. Not the press pool, not a release, nor any other channel. Twitter was the first official news channel.
More importantly, the NY Times is nonchalant about the use of the Twitter channel as the release point. This is written as if this is no big deal and a common method for news distribution.

Overall this carries forth such major implications I am stunned that no one else is highlighting this point. Imagine, if the media did not monitor the WH Twitter feed then they would hear about the announcement second hand. Basically, the be a Washington insider this says you must be a Twitter user. It also says that the mainstream media is fully acceptant of this as a channel as this and other stories are again complexly nonchalant about news being released over Twitter before it is ever released over a wire.

Aside: And where are the traditional news wires in all of this – absent. PR Newswire and Businesswire have not integrated Twitter or other delivery other than RSS and email into their distribution models. It looks as if journalists are uninterested in Twitter feeds of releases from these services. Wire distribution now lags so far behind Twitter and other SM channels in the speed of distribution that the relevancy of these services to reach interested parties in an immediate manner is lagging.

Constant Contact Replacement Recommendation: What is Your Favorite Email Marketing Application?

Dan Katz — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:34:10 +0000

I have used Constant Contact as my preferred email service for medium to small scale mailings for several years. Throughout this time, Constant Contact has served me well with is basic feature set. However, the product development has not kept pace with the changes of Internet communications and I am investigating alternative solutions.

The items Constant Contact lacks that are present in most competitive packages are:

Multiple levels of list views and segmentation. Constant Contact provides for a simple set of email lists without any segmentation or cross list management capabilities. This is the largest issue in that this requires numerous lists instead of one list with multiple parameters in a recipient profile.
A varying range of metrics beyond the simple sent, open, click thru and bounce rates.
A set of comparative trend charts and other metrics for presenting performance comparatively across campaigns. No such metrics are available from Constant Contact.
Easy removal of the vendor brand. The Constant Contact logo must be requested to be removed from each email and is discouraged.
Automated click thru tracking of links in email. (Constant Contact requires manual coding to track links in custom HTML emails).
Ability to create your own email templates. Constant Contact charges a fee and must create such templates themselves.
Integrated A/B testing of email subject lines and bodies.
Built-in preview of email layout in email clients. A simple HTML preview is all that is available in Constant Contact.
Unified billing. Constant Contact charges come to a credit card with little if any detail.
Cobranded interface. We do not take advantage of the Constant Contact co-branding opportunity because it is cumbersome to setup and manage this brand.
Google Analytics integration. Constant Contact offers no integration into Google analytics or other statistical packages,
Free archive and image hosting. Constant Contact charges for the live archive of images and emails. Other packages do not.
Unlimited custom fields. Constant Contact has a limit of four custom fields.
Forms integration. Constant Contact offers no form builder or any service to easily create payment gateways for items such as donations.
Spam filter testing. Constant Contact does not offer an easy test system to check if the emails will violate spam filters.
CMS integration is unavailable or limited. Constant Contact does not offer or manage plug-ins to common CMS. The few that are available come from third parties.
API restricted to list management. The Constant Contact API is solely for list import and export.
Integration with third party tools such as WuFoo for forms, payment gateways, CRM and other technologies without API involvement on the user side.

For a replacement I reviewed numerous packages and selected the following for side-by-side comparisons. (HTML | PDF)

Constant Contact
mailChimp
Campaign Monitor
Benchmark Email
Fusemail
Mad Mimi
Bronto
Vertical Response
Stream Send
Myemma
Campaigner
iContact
sendloop

Click on the links (HTML | PDF) to see a product comparison table that includes the following vendors. Right now, I am favoring mailChimp and Campaign Monitor. Let me know what you think of these or other vendors. And Constant Contact folks, when you find this, I am by all means open to your suggestions as well.

What is a SPLOG and why would someone create or want one?

Dan Katz — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:51:23 +0000

A SPLOG is a spam-blog. It is easily created and simply reposts articles from another blog or site via an automated import of the items from an RSS feed. The result is that items from one or more site are reposted without adding any utility. Why do people do this? First, to be jerks. Second, folks can make money.

Making money with a SPLOG

Most folks find content in splogs via search engines. In fact, some splogs come up higher in search than the originating site. People then think they are legitimate sites and click around the content and see ads. Folks then click through these ads and the site owner makes some money.

These ads are automated displays from things such as Google Adwords. These are easily setup in bulk with no effort. I do wish that Google and other ad networks could shut down this loophole that provides this opportunity. However, it would simply be too large an effort to police the millions of people who sign up to display the ads.

Monitoring Implications

Splogs are most evident when monitoring the blogosphere. Splogs show up in Google Reader and other tools. Many services try to block these sites but can never keep up with the volume. The result is that splogs add many hours to monitoring efforts as someone has to manually delete the bad content from the monitoring feed and block the sites from inclusion in the future.

How easy is it to setup a splog?

It can take less than 10 minutes to setup the initial splog and then adding new splogs can take just a minute or two. Here is how they do it.

Note: I am writing this post to show people how easy it is for folks to create spam blogs (SPLOGS). I do not advocate the practice and think it is a shady and disruptive practice. I am also not providing any secrets or making this easier for anyone to setup a splog. This information is readily available to those idiots out there who want to spam all of us.

Find a cheap host – There are thousands that offer hosting at less than ten dollars a month.
Install WordPress MU- This is technology to allow you to host an unlimited set of blogs and setup new ones in under a minute each.
Install an Autoblog plug-in – This enables you to enter one or more RSS feeds for automated posts to a blog.
Install an Ad Network plug-in – This activates the display of ads to make the owner money.
Create blogs with RSS feeds using the installed items.

Let me know what you think and if you want to know more.

Best Practice: Website Ownership and Asset Control

Dan Katz — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:49:14 +0000

I am a big fan of The Bivings Report. This is a great blog that demonstrates how an Interactive PR agency can use a blog to create a useful collection of both thought leadership and down-and-dirty practical items. A recent post, Buying a Website. The Seven Costly Questions That Are Often Overlooked, directly addresses a lot of client hosting concerns that are often not voiced.

What Gary Bivings notes in his post matches to what I have frequently experienced. Clients need to take a bit more ownership and responsibiltiy for the details behind campaign projects. By all means I relish in being a trusted advisor. However, clients must always think ahead as to the ownership of their materials.

Here are some additional items to the Bivings post to consider:

Always keep it work for hire. Be sure that you own 100% of the content, design, code and other materials. Not just the end result. If I am paying for materials, I believe the materials along the way have been paid for as well. This means that the design files that make up the Web site should be delivered to me as well as the final Web site.

Example, I recommend any design contract call for the delivery of all Adobe Flash and Adobe Photoshop source files be delivered as part o the site launch.

Know the permitted uses of image and media files. We almost always purchase royalty free or restricted rights images for design efforts. These are purchased for use in the Web site and then are usually not permitted for reuse in other projects. Be sure that if you plan to adapt your Web imagery to other online or offline projects that you obtain the details on the permitted uses of these images. And, that you obtain the images themselves and the details of where they were purchased. By obtaining these details you can edit the image if needed and purchase the additional rights as well.

Have hosting under your control. Almost every agency provides some sort of level of hosting. I recommend against this as a packaged service. Instead I feel clients should contract with the hosting vendor (via the agency is fine) or provide the hosting. The agency can then be provided the appropriate access and contracted for support as needed. The key is that you retain administrative access to and control over the home for your materials. You then will never have to migrate the materials should you sever your relationship with the agency.

Own the domain names. Be sure that when your agency registers domain names that your company is listed as the administrator. The agency can be the technical and even billing contact. However, if you are not the administrator then you are tied to the agency to turn the domain over to you. Eliminate future transfer hassles by owning the domain and the agency acting as your technical contact.

Manage your content. When working with agencies it is still best if you take the lead to manage the content. It is almost never cost-effective for your agency to enter, adjust and tweak content. You are best off in the long run to learn at least the basics of the CMS and perform content entry and edits yourself. It is also advisable that you learn how to perform general maintenance tasks such as user management.