I’m hoping one of our readers can clarify an issue for both myself and the rest of the SEER team. One of the tools that we often use for our keyword research is Google’s Keyword Tool. Recently, we noticed that this tool says the phrase “snowboarding equipment” has much higher search volume than the phrase “snowboarding gear”:
This trend holds for all 3 match types (broad, phrase, and exact).
However, when I look at either Google Trends or Google Insights, I see a different trend – the lines for “snowboarding gear” are higher than “snowboarding equipment”:
So the question is – which tool is correct? Which phrase – “snowboarding gear” or “snowboarding equipment” – has more search volume? I’ve personally spent a lot of time reading the Help for Trends and Insights, and I do understand that the graphs in Trends and Insights do not show actual volumes. I understand that the data has instead been normalized and scaled. However, I am not comfortable concluding that the discrepancy is due to normalization and scaling after looking at another example provided by Google itself.
In a 2008 blog post about Google Trends, the Google team talks about using trends to compare two phrases, “vanilla ice cream” and “chocolate ice cream”:
Quote: “As the numbers on the top of the graph indicate, vanilla ice cream has about 30 percent less search traffic than chocolate ice cream.”
After reading this statement, I started thinking that Google is saying it is OK to use Trends or Insights to make inferences about relative search volumes. However, this is what Google’s Keyword tool says about the volumes for “vanilla ice cream” and “chocolate ice cream”:
Here, “vanilla ice cream” seems to have higher search volume than “chocolate ice cream”. Again, this general trend holds for all 3 match types. If you were making decisions for your business, would you believe Google Trends and assume that “chocolate ice cream” is more popular than “vanilla ice cream” or would you believe the Keyword Tool and assume that “vanilla ice cream” is more popular?
Has anyone else noticed these types of discrepancies? Which tool do you (or would you) trust to make inferences about search volumes? Does anyone have any explanations for how several tools from Google can suggest conflicting conclusions?
Im hoping one of our readers can clarify an issue for both myself and the rest of the SEER team. One of the tools that we often use for our keyword research is Googles Keyword Tool. Recently, we noticed that this tool says the phrase snowboarding equipment has much higher search volume than the phrase snowboarding gear:
This trend holds for all 3 match types (broad, phrase, and exact).
However, when I look at either Google Trends or Google Insights, I see a different trend the lines for snowboarding gear are higher than snowboarding equipment:
So the question is which tool is correct? Which phrase snowboarding gear or snowboarding equipment has more search volume? Ive personally spent a lot of time reading the Help for Trends and Insights, and I do understand that the graphs in Trends and Insights do not show actual volumes. I understand that the data has instead been normalized and scaled. However, I am not comfortable concluding that the discrepancy is due to normalization and scaling after looking at another example provided by Google itself.
In a 2008 blog post about Google Trends, the Google team talks about using trends to compare two phrases, vanilla ice cream and chocolate ice cream:
Quote: As the numbers on the top of the graph indicate, vanilla ice cream has about 30 percent less search traffic than chocolate ice cream.
After reading this statement, I started thinking that Google is saying it is OK to use Trends or Insights to make inferences about relative search volumes. However, this is what Googles Keyword tool says about the volumes for vanilla ice cream and chocolate ice cream:
Here, vanilla ice cream seems to have higher search volume than chocolate ice cream. Again, this general trend holds for all 3 match types. If you were making decisions for your business, would you believe Google Trends and assume that “chocolate ice cream” is more popular than “vanilla ice cream” or would you believe the Keyword Tool and assume that “vanilla ice cream” is more popular?
Has anyone else noticed these types of discrepancies? Which tool do you (or would you) trust to make inferences about search volumes? Does anyone have any explanations for how several tools from Google can suggest conflicting conclusions?
A few months ago, we tested YouTube promote videos for one of our clients through their Google Adwords campaign. Promoted video is a good medium to test for them because they have published video content and maintain a branded YouTube channel.
To evaluate the impact of promoted videos, there is some information we can pull directly from the Adwords interface, including how many clicks to the YouTube channel our ads receive, total clicks and potential conversions ( if the videos are using the call to action overlay)
Beyond these metrics, YouTube Insight provides additional useful information that are not available in the Adwords interface. The information from YouTube Insight can definitely supplement our Adwords data and help us see the value our promoted videos campaign is providing beyond just conversions
Below is how to get started with YouTube Insights:
Login to your YouTube account
Click My Videos from the drop down
Click on YouTube Insight
Once you are in YouTube Insight, you will see the summary page of our videos. There are 4 major metrics: Views, My videos, Demographics and Popularity. You can select the desired time frame and location.
1.General reports (for all videos).These reports are at the top level, a summary for all of the videos.
a.Views report. By clicking on the Views link, you can look at the number of views your videos received.
You can choose different time frames to look at the video views (daily basis, monthly basis, etc.) by scrolling the bar below the graph
This information can be helpful to understand the trend of our video views and make a decision accordingly. For instance, this client has a limited test budget and based on your observation views drop on the weekends. Thus, we can set up ad scheduling for this test campaign.
b.Popularity Report. We can see on the chart which states/countries view our video the most. You can simply download the report and see top traffic driving states.
I did a little experiment by comparing the results of YouTube Views Report by state vs. Adwords Geographic Report. For the YouTube Report, I sorted the information by Views and Unique users and as for Adwords Geo report; I sorted out by impressions and clicks. Below is the result:
As we can see, the top 3 states are identical. However, for rank 4- 10, we can see a slight discrepancy. Like I said earlier, these reports can supplement each other and help us make a decision to set geo targeting for our campaign.
c.On the demographics section, we can see our viewers by gender and age group. I pulled two reports and this is what my report comparisons look like:
Male viewers proved to be more dominant than female viewers based on both reports. As for the Demographic reports, the results are not the same but both reports did include 18-24 age groups as the top 2 viewers. Keeping in mind that these results are at the summary level not at the individual video. Although this information is not identical, we can still use it to evaluate our target market and revisit our marketing efforts and PPC strategy.
The difference here may attributed to the fact that YouTube users tend to be younger than the average Google Searcher. This information is helpful to know if your client is looking to hit a younger demographic YouTube Promoted Videos may be a great supplement to your current Adwords campaign.
2.Individual reports (for each video). The first reports help us to look at a general feel of all of our videos. However, to further analyze, we need to dig deeper by looking at each video. We can do that by clicking on Video A under the My Video section on the summary page.
a.Using the discovery tab, we can see how viewers get to our video. There are many sources that can bring viewers to our video. You can check out YouTube overview on Insight Discovery Tab (Page is currently not available).
i.Viral: This means that 45% of your video was shared with friends via email or IM. With this information, we can select other places to post our videos, such as Facebook, etc.
ii.Embedded player: It means that 30% of your video was discovered through embedded player that was not in YouTube.com. We can look further by clicking on the link and see different sources. If the sources listed are not on your placement list (if you have managed placement and if they are available for targeting as placement), you may want to review the site and see whether it is appropriate for your campaign.
iii.Mobile Devices. This means that 3.5% of traffic came from a mobile device. Although the percentage in this example is low. This may be something to consider for our PPC campaign as we can expand to other search mediums.
iv.External Links: Sites that are bringing viewers to see your video. Just like the Embedded Player, these potential sites can be added to your placement list (again, if you have managed placement and they are available for targeting as Placements).
v.YouTube search. We can look keywords that trigger our Video Ads by clicking on YouTube Search. This may be a good source for KW expansion.
b.Hot spots. According to YouTube help (Page is currently not available), Hot spots helps you evaluate which scenes in your videos are the hottest and keep your audience interested. On the other hand, a cold spots is when viewers are fast forwarding to another part of the video or discarding the video entirely.
This insightful information can definitely be passed on to our client with the goal to optimize current video ads or as a guideline to create new video ads.
c.Call-to-Action. This metrics lets us know the impressions and clicks for this particular video ad for a given period of time. We can use this information to evaluate our ad copy effectiveness. To learn more about call-to-action, check out this blog: Use Call-to-Action to drive traffic to off-YouTube web pages. It gives you a nice info on the feature and step-by-step on how to add this to your video.
And there you have it! YouTube Insight is a great way to see how the users are interacting with your brand and a great supplement to your Adwords reports. The only thing that is lacking is the ability to see the Discovery and Call-to-Action features on the top level. We have to go to individual video to get this information. Overall, I really enjoy the experience, I hope you will too.
Today SEO Blackhat actually showed yet another threat to the traffic you get from your top rankings – Google answering queries that are in the form of questions in Google suggest – meaning for those of us that get “what is XYZ” queries driving traffic might see less traffic coming from those terms.
Being a good SEO I had to try this myself this time I used the question “what is a short sale” which showed the following:
I would imagine that the sites Google pulls in are for the most part “quality sites” that have passed some kind of algorithmic sniff test. This lends value to creating glossaries for even the most niche content. Not only are there HIGH Qualitysites to submit glossaries to but they are also starting to show up all over Google properties. Take the example below of buying guides showing up in Google Product Search.
Take notice to the “view more buying guides link” on this page when clicked it showed a pretty average looking review page that fell into the “more results” (see thumb below) instead of the top 3. Google is definitely seeming to in this example reward sites with good images (buying guides with images likely attract more links, versus snowboard buying guides like this, over time I’ll be doing more research on this to see how links and other things could be impacting rankings.
Either way guys and girls, at the end of the day, creating guides, glossaries, etc (yes, just good useful content) seems to be a content development strategy that Google is rewarding, so get on your horse. Don’t allow yourself to be lazy and say “there’s already several how to buying guides or glossaries in my space”, which is likely true, just get more deep, hit a niche of a niche, but start writing. Your rankings & traffic may depend on it.
Today SEO Blackhat actually showed yet another threat to the traffic you get from your top rankings Google answering queries that are in the form of questions in Google suggest meaning for those of us that get “what is XYZ” queries driving traffic might see less traffic coming from those terms.
Being a good SEO I had to try this myself this time I used the question “what is a short sale” which showed the following:
I would imagine that the sites Google pulls in are for the most part “quality sites” that have passed some kind of algorithmic sniff test. This lends value to creating glossaries for even the most niche content. Not only are there HIGH Qualitysites to submit glossaries to but they are also starting to show up all over Google properties. Take the example below of buying guides showing up in Google Product Search.
Take notice to the “view more buying guides link” on this page when clicked it showed a pretty average looking review page that fell into the “more results” (see thumb below) instead of the top 3. Google is definitely seeming to in this example reward sites with good images (buying guides with images likely attract more links, versus snowboard buying guides like this, over time I’ll be doing more research on this to see how links and other things could be impacting rankings.
Either way guys and girls, at the end of the day, creating guides, glossaries, etc (yes, just good useful content) seems to be a content development strategy that Google is rewarding, so get on your horse. Don’t allow yourself to be lazy and say “theres already several how to buying guides or glossaries in my space”, which is likely true, just get more deep, hit a niche of a niche, but start writing. Your rankings & traffic may depend on it.
Weve all been in situations where a client asks us to implement a strategy that, in our opinion, is not in their best interest when it comes down to their bottom line. This is a precarious position to be in because we want our clients to be happy with our work but even more importantly, we want to drive positive results.
Here is a simple and quite common example: Lets say that one of my clients just added product X to his inventory, which is a hot new product on the market. X will sell for $35 and the profit margin is 10%. This means that for each individual sale, the client makes only $3.50. If after doing some preliminary research, the average CPC for keywords likely to drive sales is $1.00, chances are that launching a new campaign for this product is going to result in a net loss. Of course, there are lots of different factors that could spin this scenario in the other direction maybe the client wants to launch the product to acquire new customers, in which case incurring a net loss in the short term may be a viable strategy. Or, maybe the client plans to sell ancillary products in the future to those customers that purchase product X (think cheap printer, expensive ink cartridges) again, a viable strategy.
The scenario above is pretty cut and dry, so pushing back a bit to understand what the client is trying to accomplish is a no-brainer. If there is no counterargument to support profit potential, the data speaks for itself. Unfortunately, most of the time its just not that simple. Consider the episode of Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia when Charlie develops a new product to pitch to the gang called Kitten Mittons:
For more complicated situations such as the one that arises with Kitten Mittons, Smashing Magazine has written a great article about how to communicate hesitation to clients.
1. First and foremost, ask yourself if the client really is wrong! Make sure that your reasoning for suggesting against a strategy is rooted in data or experience. In this case, you can present alternate solutions that may have more potential to succeed. Otherwise, it may just be that you disagree from a purely subjective perspective. In situations like this its good to remember that your client knows more about their business than you do. End of discussion. 2. Speak the clients language; that is, relate the strategy back to the bottom line. In the situation above where the client wants to launch a campaign for a low margin product, if the goal is to acquire a new kind of customer, the idea is legit. In this case, youll want to develop KPIs to measure the success, given the goal of the campaign (gaining X new customers, for example). This way, assuming the client has a basic understanding of the average lifetime value of a new customer, youll know when a net loss becomes too large to sustain. 3. Establish yourself as the expert. If youve worked on projects for clients with a high level of brand recognition, mention this to the client in order to establish credibility (in a way that doesnt come across as being arrogant, of course!). Theyll appreciate your input more if youve done similar work for brands they know and respect. If namedropping isnt an option, simply being professional at all times goes a long way in establishing trust. 4. Back up recommendations with evidence. There is nothing more powerful than data!! If I say to my client if one of every three visitors (a whopping 75% conversion rate) does not make a purchase, you are going to lose money, they may be more inclined to rethink launching the campaign. 5. Sometimes, being direct works. In certain scenarios, it may be appropriate to bluntly say no and explain your reasoning. And sometimes youll have to suck it up and execute a strategy that you dont agree with. Cest la vie! 6. Know when and how to accept defeat. If you do end up moving forward with a strategy that does not appear to be solid, recommend implementing an A/B test or monitoring analytics closely for the duration of the project.
Check out the other articles Smashing recommends on effective client communication for more advice on how to drive the best results for clients when you find yourself in a gray area!
Among the many exciting exciting announcements Google in the past 24 hours (Google Goggles, favorite places, Chrome for Mac, extensions for Chrome), the one that has people all a-twitter is Google Real Time Search. And now we can all see it live.
To see Google Real Time Search results, go to http://www.google.com/trends and select one of the Hot Topics. The image below is for the search “winter storm.”
The second result on the page incorporates blog posts, news bulletins, and Twitter updates. All are shown based on relevancy to the search term. Interestingly, it looks like the full URL is displayed in the search results for Twitter posts, rather than the shortened URL. The real time results can be paused.
The link at the top of the live search results points to this page. From here, you can swap out the search term to see what the real time search results would be for nearly any term. Try seo:
One question we’ve already heard today is, “How can I make sure I show up in these search results?” So far, it seems to be a combination of relevancy and authority. There’s still so much to learn about these new developments. For the time being, if you put up a blog post or tweet about a topic, why not make sure you include good keywords?
