Tina Rawlins .com

http://www.popuri.us/ - Domain Details
http://web.archive.org/collections/web/advanced.html - History of Any URL
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html - Keyword Research
http://whois.domaintools.com/ - Great to find out who owns a domain or if you subscribe, then to find out what other domains they may own with a reverse ip lookup.
http://www.marketleap.com/ - Another look at comparing link popularity among multiple domains.
http://www.compete.com - Look at assessment of data indicating traffic levels and comparing among selected sites.

twitter me your favorite online tools for SEO. twitter: GoogleGirl

Google has made two major changes to the AdWords algorithm to improve the quality of the calculation and render it “fairer.”

Review from: http://www.marketingvox.com/google-updates-quality-score-criteria-for-paid-search-listings-041832/?camp=newsletter&src=mv&type=textlink

The changes were outlined last week in a brief blog post:

1. Quality score calculation improvement. The updated algorithm now takes into account ad position when calculating an ad’s click-through rate (CTR), thus resulting in a more accurate quality score. The quality score ensures that ads compete fairly for position based on their quality and bid, thus putting “high-quality” advertisers in a better ad position and showing the most relevant ads to searchers.
2. Change in criteria for top paid search listings. Previously, an ad in a lower position could not “jump over” another in a higher position to be featured in the “paid listings,” or the top yellow bar on the search results page. In other words, if an ad meets the quality threshold, it can be shown in a prominent position, regardless of overall rank. When asked what specifically is weighted, Google’s Nick Fox told Search Engine Land that CTR and quality is rated much higher than the bid price in the promotion algorithm, while the ad rank algorithm weighs bid and quality about evenly. He confirmed that the change only applies to search, not the content network.

Below, finer points gathered from the phone call:

CTR Normalization

Google no longer normalizes the click-through rate data by testing lower placed ads in higher ad positions in a “what-if” scenario. Instead, they are using a statistical formula to normalize the CTR data based on the position of the ad, as to when it is shown to a searcher.

Price Discrepancy for URLs

Because searchers click based on the URL and they aren’t able to see the landing pages until after they click, there may be price discrepancies on the same keyword on the same landing page when the URLs are different. CTR is a large part of quality ratings, so that can play a role as to why the prices are different, assuming everything else is equal.

Historical CTR for Display URL

Google gets as granular as possible, said Fox, so if it can take into account the historical CTR of an ad, it will - which will affect the real time quality score. However, if Google does not have that level of granularity, they will move up to a higher level, such as account level or overall system wide level.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.san&s=92747&Nid=48386&p=909697

A Search Marketing Maturity Model
by Scott Brinker, Thursday, Oct 16, 2008 7:32 AM ET

How good is your organization at search marketing? How good should it be? And what do you need to do to get there? These questions seem to call out for a “maturity model” for the search industry.
Maturity models categorize the level of sophistication an organization has achieved in a particular discipline, such as software development or IT networking. These models typically have four or five stages, ranging from “ad hoc” (we have no idea what we’re doing) to “optimized” (we’re humming along as a best-in-class, high-efficiency, profit-making machine).

The benefit of a well-defined maturity model is that it gives practitioners a common framework by which to assess their organization, benchmark it against others, and develop a plan for improvement. Often, there is not just one achievement associated with a particular level, but rather a series of capabilities across several dimensions.

Given the many different skills and processes that go into good search marketing, and the wide disparity in how adept organizations are at them, it seems that a maturity model for the search industry could be quite useful.

Therefore, I’d like to propose the following draft of a Search Marketing Maturity Model, primarily focused on paid search marketing, and solicit your feedback and suggestions.

Level 1: Ad Hoc

• No management structure or executive participation

• Sparse, intermittent management attention

• No official budget

• No performance metrics

• Web analytics = page views

• Very small keyword universe

• Beginner keyword management

• No coordinated landing page initiatives

• Organization is non-reactive to opportunities/threats

• Conversion rates in bottom quartile

Level 2: Engaged

• Executive awareness, but little formal management

• Monthly to weekly management attention

• Budget obtained through discretionary funds

• Performance metrics: clicks, CPC

• Web analytics = keywords, bounce rates

• Beginner to intermediate keyword/bid management (e.g., dayparting, geo-targeting)

• A small number of one-off landing pages

• Limited experimentation with landing page optimization testing

• Audience segmentation analyzed post-hoc, after conversion

• Organization is very slow to react to opportunities/threats

• Below-average conversion rates

Level 3: Structured

• Executive sponsorship, official management responsibility

• Weekly to daily management attention

• Committed line item(s), headcount in budget

• Performance metric: conversion rate

• Conversion funnel Web analytics

• Large keyword universe

• Keywords organized by products, campaigns

• Extracurricular tools to manage keywords

• Established process for creating, coordinating landing pages

• Landing pages matched to ads at campaign level

• Regular A/B testing of landing pages

• Organization still takes weeks to respond to opportunities/threats

• Competitive research part of search program

• Average conversion rates or better

Level 4: Managed

• Active executive participation, centralized search leadership

• Daily management attention

• Significant committed budget/headcount

• Performance metric: CPA (cost per action/conversion)

• Segmented Web analytics, multiple conversion funnels

• Very large keyword universe

• Keywords organized more finely (e.g., segment, sales cycle)

• Professional bid management, keyword research, landing page software

• Pre-click and post-click segmentation of respondents

• Landing pages matched to ads at ad group level

• Strategic (hypothesis-driven) landing page testing

• Two-way coordination between ads and landing pages

• Fast reaction speed (days) to opportunities/threats

• Competitive benchmarking

• Above-average conversion rates

Level 5: Optimized

• Strategic executive participation

• Centralized search leadership integrated with rest of organization

• Continuous management attention

• Significant committed budget/headcount, dynamically allocated

• Performance metric: ROI (overall return on investment)

• Integrated multichannel Web analytics

• Very large, dynamic keyword universe

• Keywords organized for Long Tail opportunities, ROI-optimized

• Professional and automated management tools

• Micro-segmentation of audiences

• Dynamic deployment of Long Tail landing pages

• Segmented, hypothesis-driven landing page testing

• Ads and landing pages highly synchronized

• Very fast reaction speed for opportunities/threats

• Best-in-class on all competitive benchmarks

• Top quartile conversion rates

Brinker is the president and CTO of ion interactive, a provider of post-click marketing software and services. He is also one of the editors of the post-click marketing blog. You can reach him at sbrinker@ioninteractive.com.

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Sunday Night October 19th
- Bring a jacket if it gets chilly. We’ll move inside once we
7pm
La Brea Bakery

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Originally published at Internet.com

Now that you’ve got your viewers searching for videos, find out what they’re searching for. On Thursday, Truveo began offering free reporting tools that allow site operators using Truveo search to analyze viewer’s search requests and find out what they’re watching.

Back in September, 2006, Truveo began offering APIs that allowed Web sites to add video search to their own pages for free. See Brightcove for an example of how it works. Now Truveo, which is owned by AOL, has released new APIs that allow sites to analyze the results of those searches.

Video search functionality is now a lot more useful, as site operators can get a better idea of what their viewers enjoy. Anyone with XML knowledge can use and customize the APIs, and the search functionality can be limited to just those videos located on your own site.

According to Dr. Pete Kocks, the Chief Architect of AOL Video, free account users can send up to 10,000 search queries each day, which makes it a great deal for most sites. He also says that the new reporting tools lets users gather the following information: * Basic Stats
You can see the number of video search queries run each day, how long it took to return results to the viewer, and whether or not people watched a video after running a search.

* Top Queries
View the top searches by day, week, or month. Discover what your viewers want to see.

* Channel Redirects
If you’re letting viewers search for videos with Truveo’s full database, see where you’re most often sending those viewers when they click on a video.

To download the developer APIs or see other examples of Truveo search, look to Truveo’s Video Search Developer Center.