This feature was originally released as a limited beta in UK and Canada. As most paid search advertisers, I was very excited about this new targeting feature; it could potentially cut back on negative keyword research and search query report craziness (which may give you minor heart attacks when you see the absurd term that Google “thinks is relevant”).

In the announcement and in the AdWords help center they are very adamant on pointing out that using broad match terms that only contain the modifier will have a significant negative impact on your campaign volume (if currently using broad match). If you are looking to decrease volume due to trending over budget and want to reduce spend than switching to modified broad match may be a good option

Google recommends keeping existing broad match keywords active, adding new modified broad match keywords, and adjusting bids to achieve your target ROI based on observed performance. They recommend that you set the bids higher for the modified keywords to start.

I implemented some modified broad match terms using the recommendations that Google gave. Below is the test I did along with the results that came from such test.

For the test I took one of my best performing campaigns and used the top performing broad match terms for this campaign- added a new ad group using these terms with the modifier. For the sake of the experiment we are only looking at these terms specifically. Here is an example of how I used the modifier (keywords were changed to keep client anonymous):

• pets store (+pets store)
• pet stores (+pet stores)
• pet store (+pet store)

First- I looked at the search terms for the time period that the test has been live. I pulled two reports, one showing the broad terms and the other showing the modified terms for the same time period.

The first report showed the broad terms generated impressions from search queries around similar terms but none of the terms match the keywords specifically. A majority of the search queries did not include either of the words I was bidding on and some were completely irrelevant.

In the second report every term was matched to a query that included the term that contained the modifier. There were very few irrelevant queries that these were matched to.

When only looking at the search terms we can confirm that the broad match modifier does a better job at matching your keyword to relevant search traffic.

Now, let’s look at numbers!!

First we will compare broad vs. modified broad:

• Impressions 8% higher than modified terms
• Clicks 17% lower than modified terms
• CTR 31% lower than modified terms
• CPC 29% lower than modified terms
• Cost 40% lower than modified terms
• Conversions were the same
• CPA 40% lower than modified terms
• Conversion rate 20% higher than modified terms

When comparing the match types it is hard to determine which the “better” option is. If we are only looking at CPA and conversion rate, in this case Broad match would be the better option. But if you’re thinking in terms of quality score you definitely want to keep CTR in mind (which overtime may decrease our cpc and possibly our cost and CPA in the future). The CTR for the modified terms is higher than the broad match terms. As Google says- match type doesn’t directly affect your QS but it can help improve your CTR. Hmmm…

My take from this is not that broad match is necessarily better, but rather the importance of keeping both match types, which is illustrated even more greatly by the table below

So let’s compare the keyword metrics from when we ran the test to the previous 30 days (again we are only looking at the above mentioned keywords performance specifically)

• Impressions decreased by 8%
• Clicks increased by 5%
• CTR increased by 16%
• CPC increased by 3%
• Cost increased by 8%
• Conversions increased by 300%
• CPA decreased by 73%
• Conversion rate increased by 280%

These numbers show that adding modified broad keywords in addition to the broad terms significantly increased performance across the board. Most notably CTR, conversions and conversion rate all increased and CPA decreased by 73%.

According to Google Adwords Blog:

“Adding modified broad match keywords to your campaign can help you get more clicks and conversions at an attractive ROI, especially if you mainly use exact and phrase match keywords today.”

After conducting this test we can confirm that indeed adding modified broad match keyword increased clicks (by 5%) and conversions (300%) and an attractive ROI or CPA (-280%).

Some things to remember when using the modifier:

• Make sure that you are using the modifier properly

• If the old ad group has all broad match, then set a higher CPC for these new match types

• Google recommends that you keep existing broad match keywords active, add new modified broad match keywords, and adjusting bids to achieve your target ROI based on observed performance.

• If the old ad group has all exact and phrase match, then set a lower CPC for these new match types

• Let the ad group run and collect some data then run the search query report examining these two ad groups and their variations

• Don’t forget to add negatives and pull search query reports! Modified eliminates a lot of unwanted traffic but negatives keywords are the only way to ensure that you are not showing up for terms that are irrelevant.

I definitely recommend testing modified broad match for all current and future campaigns- but as with all match types make sure that use the match types that work best for you or your client.

What are Google Tags?

Below is an example of a Philadelphia Laser Hair Removal Center’s use of Google Tags.

As you can see in the example below, the addition of the Google tags helps Med Spa’s listing stand out from the competition.

If I click on the tag I am taken to the Coupon Page, screen shot below:

These tags also show up on Google Maps. When scrolled over on the map the details are shown as seen below:

How to Get Started With Google Tags:

To get started with Google Tags a business will need to set up a free Google Places Account

Once you login into your Google Places account, look for the create a tag link. Tag types available are based on the information you have available in your listing. The full list of tags includes:

• Photos
• Videos
• Posts about your business
• Link to your website
• Reservations
• Menus
• Coupons

If you don’t see one of these tag types it means you will have to add the type of information to your listing. For example if you have not added video to your listing then you will need to add videos in order for this tag to be available.

Once you select the tag type you can proceed to billing and activate your listing. Your tag should show up on Google within a few hours.

Why Should I Test Google Tags?

The tags will not help your listings rank, but will help your listing stand out from competitors. You will also be able to track the effectiveness of your tags in the local business dashboard and modify your tags as necessary. This is a great way to promote coupons, offers and reviews.

Now that Google is offering a free trial of this feature, any local business owner should test local tags before your competitors do to see if this is something worth running in the future for the $25/month flat fee. If these tags help you get even one new customer a month and your profit on that customer is more than $25 than running Google Tags is no brainer.

Google has some great videos and additional details on how to get started

Happy Tagging!

First let’s check the traffic we are currently recording as twitter traffic, from the GA dashboard:

• Open the Traffic Sources Report
• Open the Referring Sites Report
• Filter the source to include “twitter.com”

This should be all of my twitter referrals right? Nope! A Majority of twitter referrals will show up as Direct Traffic in Google Analytics!

Well how can this be?

Most twitter users do not use twitter.com itself; they use applications such as Tweetdeck. When a user clicks on a link in one of these 3rd party apps since they are not in a browser they do not send any referring information. When Google Analytics doesn’t receive any referral information it puts all of these visits (your twitter referrals) into direct traffic.

Below is an advanced segment which shows this in action:

You can clearly see that a small increase in twitter referrals can actually correspond to a much larger increase in direct traffic!

Fortunately there is a very easy way to fix this! Before you shorten the URL in twitter add the parameter “utm_source=twitter”, being careful to include the “&” or “?” as necessary to mark this addition to the URL as a parameter. Now whenever anyone clicks on a link in a 3rd party app, the Google Analytics will record the visit as coming from twitter instead of as a direct visit.

Want more information than that? You can add another parameter such as “utm_campaign=CAMPAIGNNAME” switching out CAMPAIGNNAME for the name of the twitter campaign you are currently running. Now not only are you correctly tracking your twitter traffic but you are following Avinash’s Rule “Segment or Die!”. This is particularly useful if you run more than one twitter campaign at once and need to be able to tell which of the campaigns is the most effective.

Have you launched any twitter campaigns recently? Did you tag the URLs correctly? Look back through your Google Analytics data and see if you get any spikes in direct traffic the same time you get spikes in twitter referrals. If so you may have under-estimated the value of your twitter campaign!

However, as with any process, there are times when we need to step outside the proverbial box and alter our strategies for a particular client.  Whether it’s because of their own site limitations, the competitiveness in the industry, or our perceived change in the algorithms – we often need to adjust our efforts to achieve success.

In this post I am going to outline a (relatively) quick way to analyze the competition to help you determine if you need to adjust your process.  This will be the first part in a series of posts that will feature simple checks you can perform to help isolate the areas where your competition has a leg-up, and where you need to focus.

Disclaimer – The following analysis uses Open Site Explorer, and is therefore limited in two ways.

First, you will need to be registered as a PRO member to perform the full export of 10k links.  If you do not have a PRO account, you will be limited to up to 1k links.

Secondly, this export will be limited to 10k links.  So if you are analyzing a competitor who has a significant number of links, please keep in mind that the analysis performed below will only apply to the 10k most valuable links, as determined by OSE.

Ok, now that the disclaimers are out of the way we can dive into the analysis.  Given that this is the first tip in the series, I wanted to make sure that it provided significant value – which is why we’ll be looking at how your competitors are (or are not) beating you with anchor text targeted links.

Hypothetical – Let’s say you were a search agency located in the great city of Philadelphia…naturally you’d probably want to rank for a term like ‘philadelphia seo company’ right?  Maybe you’d also consider going after a much broader term like ‘seo company’ too.  Now let’s also assume that you are new to the space, and aren’t quite sure what your competitors are doing.  One of the first things we do here at SEER is to analyze how the top 10 SERP competitors are performing with targeted anchor text links – and here is one way to do it.

First, run a search for your targeted KW – for this example I will use ‘seo company’.

Next, catalog the top 10 SERPs and run each of them in Open Site Explorer.  Be sure that you are only exporting followed links, from external sites.  If you are out of the top 10, don’t forget to run your site as an additional export.

Once you have the data, the next step will be to copy all of the sheets into one workbook to allow you to view the data together.  This is probably the most time consuming part of the process, but it is a good way to keep your research organized – especially if you plan on running this type of analysis for multiple KWs where the SERPs vary.  I organize the different sheets by naming them in order of appearance in the SERPs.

Now that you have all ten (or eleven) data exports in one workbook, your next step will be to calculate the number of exact and phrase match links that each site has.  To do this, simply create a summary worksheet at the beginning of the workbook and paste the following functions to find the number of exact and phrase-match KWs your competitors have. (Note: The figures calculated will only represent the matching links in the first 1k or 10k links, depending on your access level in OSE).

Exact: =COUNTIF(‘SheetName’!C:C, “keyword”)

Phrase: =COUNTIF(‘SheetName’!C:C, “*keyword*”)

Next, I recommend that you plot the results in a graph to give you a good visual representation of where you stand in comparison.  This will help you determine if this is an area where you are particularly strong or weak, and it can also help you understand the relationship between exact and phrase match anchor text, and how these impact rankings.

…and just like that you have gained significant insight into your competition, and more importantly, determined if anchor text is an area where you are leading (less project time), on par (falls within standard ‘process’), or below average (need to adjust process!).  This type of understanding will help you develop the right approach for each client or site you are working on and will hopefully give you some insight into the impact anchor links have on rankings (amongst hundreds of other factors).  This was the first time I’ve looked at the data for ’seo company’ – and already it looks like if you do not have the KW in your URL, targeted anchor text is likely a key factor for ranking (www.promodo.com looks like an outlier in this set).  Time to get at it I suppose

To make things a bit easier I have uploaded a sample excel document that will calculate all of this for you!  All you need to do is swap out the data for your keyword and be sure to take the data from OSE and paste it correctly in the appropriate sheets – the numbers and graph will update automatically!

To download the excel file, please follow this link.

Note: You can also combine this spreadsheet with the link profile sheet posted on the SEOMoz blog.  This sheet takes the same OSE data and analyzes the quality of inbound links based on Page Authority – giving you you two powerful data sets to play with.

Another note: While we now tap into the SEOMoz API and look at this data programmatically (huuuge thanks to @andrewburke86) this type of excel work proved to be invaluable when analyzing the competitive landscape and our project plan.  In the next posts I will outline more ways to manipulate this data to drive strategy.

If you have any questions, excel tips, or another way to pull this info – feel free to drop a line in the comments section below!

1. Your ad is in the first position above the search results

2. Your ad has a substantially higher CTR than any other ad on the page

3. Your ad site links URL direct users to pages that are part of your main site

As with any other new ad feature, tool, beta, mechanism, etc. we couldn’t help but conduct our own analysis to find out the true effect of this new Sitelinks phenomenon.  We know that Google promised an increase in CTR, but as professional online marketers, we couldn’t ignore sitelink’s impact on conversions, CPA, and overall cost.  Even though CTR does hold a strong place in our hearts, every marketer knows that clients would rather see an increase in conversions than CTR.

So, we dove right in.  Here at SEER, we launched Sitelinks for eight of our clients branded campaigns over the past year.  After letting the campaigns run for several months, we pulled reports for each campaign to uncover any apparent advantages or disadvantages of Sitelinks.  The success of the Sitelinks has been measured by each campaigns CTR, conversions, total cost, and CPA before and after the addition of Sitelinks.

Findings

CTR and Conversions

As shown in the table above, Sitelinks has proven to be most effective in improving CTR of each branded campaign.  After adding Sitelinks, all campaigns except Clients 2 and 8, showed an increase in CTR ranging from anywhere from a 15.91% to an 84.22% increase.  Client 6 maintained their CTR of 7.82% after the addition of Sitelinks.   After the implementation of Sitelinks, many of the campaigns experienced an increase in conversions; Client 1 saw a 300% increase.  Three out of the eight campaigns experienced a decrease in conversions.  While no one prefers to see any decrease in conversions, Client 6 only experienced a slight decrease of 5.87%.  Below you will see a graph of Client 1’s CTR vs. Conversions on a steady upward trend:

Cost and CPA

The addition of Sitelinks has triggered an unpredictable pattern in total cost.  About half of the campaigns experienced an increase in cost, regardless of change in CTR.  All clients except for clients 5 and 6 experienced a decrease in CPA after the development of Sitelinks.  The increase in CPA for these clients can be traced to their decrease in conversions.  For example, Client 8 experiences a 38% increase in conversions, and a resulting 14% decrease in CPA.

Analysis

After careful analysis in Adwords and Excel, it is evident that, once again, Google is correct! The implementation of Sitelinks has been most successful in increasing the CTR of branded campaigns across the majority of our clients.

But, why?

From a marketer’s perspective, Sitelinks epitomizes the two features desired most by customers:  control and efficiency.  The strong improvement in CTR suggests that users are more likely to click on ads when multiple landing page options are available. By utilizing Sitelinks, the user has more control over their landing page destination and can decrease navigation time through the desired website.  They know that if a Sitelinks says “about the product,” they will land on a page that tells them “about the product.”  Sitelinks improves efficiency of internet research and shopping, which the distracted consumer craves.

While it was exciting to see an increase in CTR for most of our clients, we couldn’t ignore the demise of other important metrics. Unfortunately, the increase in CTR did not correlate to an increase in conversions for all of the campaigns.  Even though three of our clients experienced an increase or maintained their CTR, they saw a decrease in conversions.  This decrease in conversions, however, does not necessarily indicate a lack of success in the campaign.  For example, even though one campaign experienced a drop in conversions after Sitelinks was added, both CTR and conversion rate remained constant.  Overall, users converted as frequently, but there were fewer clicks on advertisements.

Of course, when analyzing any search campaign, we cannot ignore outside or external factors. As professional marketers, we constantly tweak ad copy, battle sudden changes in budget, and adapt to landing page edits, etc.  Because of this, it is hard to blame a decrease in conversions on the addition of Sitelinks, or just one factor in general. The decrease in conversions experienced by those three campaigns can be attributed to a variety of reasons.  A few we’ve thought of specific to our test campaigns follow:

Appearance

We can’t lie – the ads with Sitelinks look a lot sweeter.  They’re larger and place at the top of the page,  generally an unbeatable combination for search success.  Because the ad incorporates different landing page options, it appears more similar to the organic searches – a possible reason as to why more users may initially be drawn to the site.  User’s who do not normally click on sponsored search ads may find this appearance more inviting and legitimate and click on these links more frequently than sponsored ads without Sitelinks. Unfortunately, while the ad does look cooler, it may be attracting more unqualified clicks mainly because it is overpowering, not necessarily because its product or service is more relevant.

Purchase Cycle and Decisions

Sometimes, a drop metrics really isn’t your fault. When analyzing metrics it is important to follow the news and note the purchase cycle and type of product or service offered.  Users searching for branded terms may only be in the research phase of the purchase cycle.  Additionally, depending on the type of product or service, cost, and commitment level, it may take the user a longer time to convert.  For example, Clients 5 and 6, located in the financial and education verticals, offer services which often require a lot of research and consideration before conversion.  Therefore, the user already may be looking for more general information about the brand, and not necessarily ready to convert right away.  Below you will see Client 5’s trend with an increase in CTR and decrease in Conversions:

Product/Service

Problems that may arise with the marketed product or service have the ability to negatively impact sales even with a successful PPC campaign.  As a marketer, our main job is to highlight the benefits of a client’s product or service in order to (hopefully) drive sales.  We have no control over the product features, the manufacturing, or regulations surrounding the product; all of which have the ability to positively or negatively affect sales.  For example, Client 7, located in the eCommerce vertical, relies on multiple manufacturers to consistently stock their supplies which they sell through the web.  Sometimes we must pause ads and ad groups due to delays in re-stock, which can obviously contribute to a decrease in sales.  Below you can see a graph of Client 7’s Conversions vs. CTR.  There are a few dips in conversions after the addition of sitelinks in November, which correlate to product/manufacturing issues:

Seasonality

Seasonality of a company’s products or services may have affected the decrease in conversions, especially for one of our clients.   Client 6, located in the educational vertical, added Sitelinks in December 2009, and saw a decrease in conversions through June.  This decline may relate more to the season and cycle of school applications rather than the addition of Sitelinks itself.  Check out a Google Insights search for the term “online colleges.” You can see the trend here follows a similar pattern – spiking in January, trending down toward summer, and re-spiking in August.  Below in a graph of Client 6’s CTR vs. Conversions, you will see a dip in conversions during the winter and spring months:

Branded Campaigns

Because this analysis was conducted online on branded campaigns, it is hard to evaluate the true impact of Sitelinks as we are working with an audience base that is already aware of the client and likely to know what it is they “need” on their website.

Like many Adword’s features, Google has revamped Site links. Sitelinks are now available across all campaigns.

So, the question arises – do we test this?

With the addition of Sitelinks, most of our client’s sites received the promised increase in CTR, although conversions did not necessarily improve as a direct result. Of course, various outside factors may have also played a role in all metrics. Overall, there did not appear to be any blatant disadvantages in enabling Sitelinks for branded campaigns. The key is to start off small, evaluate the strategy and if it works for you – expand it for greater success!

Would you be able to detect the attack and stop it before it caused any damage? Or would you be stuck trying to cleanup after the attack was finished?

Recently at SEER interactive while examining some unusual traffic to a client’s website, we discovered that Google Analytics was picking up an attack against the site as legitimate traffic. With a little digging we found several key indicators which can help you determine if the traffic to your site is actually traffic, or if some of it is an attack against your site. Also included in this post, is a recommendation on how to handle an attack once discovered, and the end of this post is an Alert you can setup in Google Analytics that should email you if someone starts to launch attacks against your site.

The site we were examining recently had a dramatic increase in direct traffic without an outside event to explain the increase such as a newsletter, TV appearance or marketing campaign. Since direct traffic gives us very little information, the best place to start is the Visitor report. Once inside the Visitor report, we can take a look at the map overlay, drilling down to the city level to see which cities are responsible for sending the most traffic to your site.

Carefully examine the top cities in this report, do the top cities seem appropriate to be your top cities? Does the amount of traffic from these seem to be much greater compared to the rest of cities sending you traffic? This is the first sign that you are suffering from an attack, as these top cities can be the launching point for these attacks.

You will often see a sudden sharp increase in traffic, starting on the day the attack was launched.

Hmmm… Does this graph look strange? It should!

Simply seeing an increase in traffic from a city is not in itself enough evidence to say that you’re site is being attacked. If you drill down into the city report itself there may be a couple more indications that you’re site is being attacked. These factors are also useful if the attack has been sustained for a long period of time you and there is no sudden sharp increase of traffic to alert you of the attack.

• Pages / Visit will be closer to 0 than site average.
• Time on Site will be closer to 0 seconds than site average.
• % Of New Visitors will be closer to 100% than site average.
• Bounce Rate for your site will be closer to 100% than site average.

Why do these numbers indicate that your site is suffering from some kind of an attack?

Most Bots do maintain sessions.

Since bots do not maintain sessions, each time the bot queries your site it appears as a new visitor, who immediately leaves, resulting in a bounced visit. This is also why the attack shows up as direct traffic in your reports. If you receive a significant number of these visits your numbers will be skewed to look like the results listed above.

It’s important to note that depending on the amount of traffic your site gets, and the nature of your site, you may not see all of these trends. However if you see a significant difference in these stats compared to other referring cities there is a good chance that your site is being attacked.

What Next?

You have determined that you’re site is suffering from an attack, or you suspect that it might be what are your next steps?

Since Google Analytics is just a reporting system, and it cannot collect the IP addresses of visitors, Google Analytics cannot do anything besides alert you that your site is suffering from an attack.

Since you can’t use Google Analytics for this, the best idea is to contact your hosting company. If you give your hosting company the cities from which you believe the attack is originating from they should be able to determine what IP addresses the attacks are coming from and block them, thus ending the attack.

Google Analytics Alert

If you would like to setup an Alert in Google Intelligence to email you if any of this behavior is detected follow these steps:

• Login to the Google Analytics profile you wish to setup the alert on.
• Select “Intelligence” (beta) from the left navigation.
• Select “Create Custom Alert”.
• Enter an Alert name such as “Hacking Monitor”.
• Select Period -> Day
• Check Receive Email Alert

Now for the fun part, the alert itself! Do not include quotes when entering these values in Google Analytics.

• Select this applies to -> “City”
• Select Condition -> “Matches Regular Expression”
• Enter Value -> “.*”
• Select Alert me when -> “Visits”
• Condition -> “% Increases by More than”

Example Alert:

The final two values of this alert will depend on your preferences and your website. If your website doesn’t receive much traffic you are probably safe putting a high value here (500%+ increase) as any attack will likely result in this increase in percentage. However if you run a larger website, you’ll need to decrease this number, since the attack will be a smaller percentage of traffic from that city. The last value is if you want to compare to the previous day, or to the same day the previous week, this will depend on the traffic patterns of your website.

The end result of this alert will be Whenever any city sends you a dramatic increase in traffic, the primary indicator of an attack on your site, send an email alert.

The last thing to keep in mind is that this alert will only let you know of hacking attacks that run Javascript. If the attacks do not run Javascript then the Google Analytics code snippet will not trigger and the attack will not be recorded as a visit.

Have you noticed this kind of activity on your site before? Do you make use of any other Google Analytics alerts to protect against foul play?

Comments and Questions welcome!

I got such great answers that I have taken the top 17 and made my 17 commandments of setting SEO expectations, then at the end of this piece I link over to the question and answer format for all of their answers. Thank you to Rhea Drysdale, Lee Odden, Rand Fishkin, Scott Skurnick, Melanie Nathan, Lindsay Wassell and Garrett French.

Here are the questions I asked:

1 – Can you give me a time when you didn’t set a clients expectation properly and it came back to bite you, and more importantly how did you recover from it / what processes have you put in place to keep that from happening again?

2 – I have found that one of the hardest conversations to have with prospective clients is the “you don’t deserve to rank #1 for that keyword” conversation, do you ever have to have those conversations, and if you do, how do you handle them in a way that helps the client realize you are trying to help them.

3 – When a client asks you to estimate ROI on an SEO project or asks where do you expect us to be in 12 months how do you handle those types of questions.

4 – When someone says something to you like, I read a report that shows that 60% of the clicks go to the first 3 listings, so I must be in the top 3 spots – it makes all of us cringe, how do you address that logical concern?

5 – How do you set expectations about the number of links / quality of links you are going to be able to procure for your clients?

6 – How do you handle the situation when a prospective client comes to you and has the budget, but they have few linkable assets, doesn’t have time to create content, weak PR, etc, etc?

7 – Any recommendations on questions to ask a prospective client before you take on a project to sniff out if they have the resources to create GOOD linkable assets?

Based on those questions here are the responses I got and the commandments I developed: (here’s the PDF to print out!)

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Can you give me a time when you didn’t set a clients expectation properly and it came back to bite you, and more importantly how did you recover from it / what processes have you put in place to keep that from happening again?
———————————————————————————————————————-

Rhea
Outspoken Media is a small agency, which means we physically do the work ourselves. As COO and a worker, I often have to re-evaluate the time I spend communicating with clients about work and time I spend actually getting the work done. I always want to address a client’s concerns and questions, but I’ve had to learn the hard way that it isn’t rude to explain to a client that the more they need reassurance, the less time I’m going to have to get the job done and demonstrate ROI. In contracts we now clearly state how often we will be available for calls and that if a client needs more time from us, they will be billed x amount per hour beyond their current services. It’s the only way we can ensure a happy balance between communication and work.

COMMANDMENT #1: Thou shall explain the balance between time spent talking about SEO and time spent doing SEO.

Lee
Early on when I was with another agency doing web development projects and web marketing, we’d take on a variety of projects that would involve new territory for us. That kind of scenario creates expectations issues and recovery deals mostly with owning up to capabilities and timeframes. However, with the agency I’ve had the past 10 years, we pretty much stick to what we’re best at, knowing our capabilities and limits. Processes are essential for expectations management with everything to how you market your company, public and media relations efforts designed to build influence and credibility all the way to hiring, training and implementation. Reporting makes a big difference as well and including mutually agreed upon objectives front and center of every program performance report keeps everyone on the same page.

COMMANDMENT #2: Thou shall stick only to what thou REALLY knows to avoid unforeseen client expectations creeping up.

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I have found that one of the hardest conversations to have with prospective clients is the “you don’t deserve to rank #1 for that keyword” conversation, do you ever have to have those conversations, and if you do, how do you handle them in a way that helps the client realize you are trying to help them.
———————————————————————————————————————-

Rhea
We’re often brutally honest with our clients, which they usually love. Of course there are times when I do have to explain that their services/products/content just aren’t up to par and in some cases, it might simply be a matter of them not meeting user intent for a particular keyword. I’ve found that it’s easier to explain the situation to a client by letting the competition or search results speak for themselves. Instead of us voicing an “opinion” that the client needs to do x, we give them examples what strategy the competition is using to earn their placement.

COMMANDMENT #3: Thous shall be Brutally Honest! Use the current SERPS to explain what is/isn’t attainable.

Scott
Absolutely. When we were relaunching the Edmunds site a number of years ago there was a desire to rank highly for “Make” terms such as Ford or GM. Due to the competitive nature of these terms I didn’t think we would be able to achieve this even though our site is authoritative in nature. The easiest way to support your argument is by showing examples. When you can show people that the results are dominated by sites which you won’t be able to displace because they are either official OEM sites or Wikipedia it goes a long way in helping your cause. The other argument that can be made as that the quality of traffic going to such general terms won’t help your revenue goals.

COMMANDMENT #4: Thou shall stay focused on revenue primarily, not rankings, links, or traffic.

Lee
A prospective client once asked about pursuing the word “brain” using a new web site. It’s a pretty straightforward thing to share a few datapoints about the search marketplace for any given topic as well as a few specifics for the sites that are already in the top spots. Sharing the resource allocation necessary for uber competitive and broad topics in the context of the prospects online resources vs going after topics that better reflect an intent to buy is pretty useful. But the conversation isn’t effective unless you share alternatives that show how the company can reach their goals. Spend huge resources chasing a unicorn or spend moderate resources going after hundreds or thousands of catchable fairies. (Bad metaphor) but we get it Lee.

COMMANDMENT #5: Take a resource allocation approach – articulate the expected time and resources required to target broad words, which may never rank even with extreme effort.

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When a client asks you to estimate ROI on an SEO project or asks where do you expect us to be in 12 months how do you handle those types of questions.
———————————————————————————————————————-

Lindsay
These are REALLY tough to answer and I doubt my answer is going to be very helpful. At SEOmoz we came across this question very infrequently. Most of our clients had already experienced success in SEO and were contracting us to take them to the next level. They already understood the ROI from experience.

Perhaps more helpful is my experience starting out as an in-house SEO. I had to work extremely hard to get my projects into the development schedule. 80% of my job at the time was education and communication. I eventually won over the executive team by convincing them to make an investment in a ‘pilot project’. I was sure it would make a big difference, but I couldn’t exactly pinpoint how much of a difference. I got my pilot project and achieved more than 400% SE traffic growth in 6 months. That paved the way and I could always reference that case study as an example of the potential ROI.

COMMANDMENT #6: Thou shall have results that speak for themselves, even if you start with a small project.

Scott
Luckily I haven’t had to deal with a ROI discussion in a while. Once you are able to prove yourself as an in-house SEO, the doubters become few and far between. I have been very fortunate that I have had the support of upper management over most of my tenure at Edmunds. Regarding a 12 month outlook, I always do my best to give an honest estimate. Some projects are riskier than others and I make sure that is known upfront. I am also very clear that I will not make any guarantees and that every project has the potential to fail. If I think I can give a ballpark estimate I will, if I don’t think it is possible I explain why. As an in-house SEO I think we have much greater liberties when it comes to these types of questions vs. agency SEO’s.

COMMANDMENT #7: Thou shall prove thyself early, and always be honest about limitations.

Melanie
Firstly, I never estimate an actual dollar amount (cuz that’s impossible). Instead, I try to focus on what the SEO project will potentially do for their exposure and their website’s usability, which in turn can lead to more signups or conversions. I also offer a list of past clients, the results achieved and an invite to contact any of them in regards to their project.

In every case though, it’s better to promise little and produce huge than to promise huge and produce little.

COMMANDMENT #8: Thou shall always underpromise and overdeliver!

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When someone says something to you like, I read a report that shows that 60% of the clicks go to the first 3 listings, so I must be in the top 3 spots – it makes all of us cringe, how do you address that or other logical concerns?
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Rhea
We usually don’t cringe, it makes sense. However, is the keyword right? Before we start with a client, we need to see their conversion reports if they’re doing PPC and we need access to their analytics. We want to know what’s driving visitors to convert for them and we prioritize which keywords we go after from there. If a client is starting from scratch we do our homework and make educated decisions on which keywords we will target. Based on performance of those keywords we’ll tweak our strategy over time. When we’re billing a client for so many hours, it simply doesn’t make sense for us or them to go after keywords that won’t convert and we tell them that.

COMMANDMENT #9: Thou shall be practical and consider the other person’s point of view, they don’t know what you know so take time to educate and explain.

COMMANDMENT #10: Thou shall not make ROI judgments without conversion data.

Scott
Funny enough I haven’t had to deal with these kinds of comments. I have avoided using rankings as a success metric for a number of years now. For us it is all about driving unique visitors to the site, giving them the best user experience possible and then getting them to convert. It is much easier to optimize your conversion rate than search rankings because conversion is 100% within your control. Obviously good rankings and traffic are highly correlated but we drive so much traffic via long tail terms that it is nearly impossible to accurately track rankings. Luckily we do rank in the top 3 for many of our core terms but even a slight drop or increase in these rankings doesn’t have a large affect on our overall traffic.

COMMANDMENT #11: Thou shall always optimize conversion rates because that is 100% within your control.

Lindsay
I work really hard to steer clients away from keyword and rank focus and towards overall search referral traffic growth. That said, I have to agree that top three placement is the only place to be. Even the traffic difference between second and first position is substantial. Most of my clients obtain traffic from 10s or 100s of thousands of unique keywords every month. Looking at rank for individual terms isn’t real common amongst these folks. They are (thankfully) more interested in top level figures like the SE traffic volume overall.

COMMANDMENT #12: Thou shall never focus on only one individual keyword.

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How do you set expectations about the number of links / quality of links you are going to be able to procure for your clients?
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Rhea
Clients that have prior experience with paid links, sponsored posts or article syndication often expect a large sum of links with exact match anchor text. In those cases we again have to be brutally honest about the fact that it is going to take more time for a natural link development strategy to gain competitive rankings, but they will have built a defensible brand. We tell them that they are going to see less links, but better quality and there isn’t the risk of being smacked with a penalty or worse. We don’t require six or twelve month contracts with our clients, but we explain from the start that for us to demonstrate return, they need to stick with us for six to nine months. Of course time depends on the industry, so highly competitive terms will take longer than less competitive longtails or smaller industries.

COMMANDMENT #13: Thou shall create a DEFENSIBLE brand that any human could review and approve of.

Lee
We’ll work with companies that are focused on outcomes from marketing. Links are measured, no doubt. But the emphasis is on moving the conversion needle. Some programs call for simple linking programs and others are more like media relations engagements. It depends on the nature of the program, industry and audience we’re trying to reach. All that said, goals are important and they must be set in order to achieve efficiency so past performance tempered with the level of competition in an industry become useful for link quantity/quality expectations management.

COMMANDMENT #14: Thou shall articulate that different goals require different effort. Start with goals THEN develop your linking plan.

Rand
My take on link quantities and quality is generally based on the types of queries the client is seeking to rank for and the competition in those search results. As you know, we do lots of work here at SEOmoz to build a web crawl and metrics about links that can be leveraged to make competitive SEO more of a scientific process.

When we look at a given set of search results or a site’s position amongst a field of competitors, we can look at a number of metrics around quantity of links and linking root domains, raw importance (metrics like PageRank or mozRank), quality of links (via proxies like mozTrust & Domain Authority) and anchor text distribution. This helps inform us of where the missing pieces lie and what we need to do to catch up (or stay ahead).

I did a WB Friday on this topic.

COMMANDMENT #15: Analyze competitors linking before setting expectations on your linking efforts.

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How do you handle the situation when a prospective client comes to you and has the budget, but they have few linkable assets, doesn’t have time to create content, weak PR, etc, etc?
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Lindsay
Don’t use poor content as an excuse to fail. If their content stinks, be sure to include content creation in the scope of work.

COMMANDMENT #16: Thou shall include content creation in the scope of work!

Rhea
To be honest, we probably wouldn’t take them on. We’re in the business of building high quality, natural links. We need something to work with to do that. If there’s absolutely nothing available to us and no room for improvement, we’re being setup for failure. You can’t tie our hands and expect aggressive results.

COMMANDMENT #17: Thou shall set expectations on what is possible based on what you have been given to work with.

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Oh and here’s a special part: a ton of questions you can ask clients before taking on projects:
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Rhea (wow, thanks Rhea, these are awesome):
Do you have a media plan? If yes, we’ll need to see it.
Do you have a newsletter? If yes, how do you determine topics? If you have a calendar, we’ll need to see it.
Do you have any videos (interviews, commercials, how-to’s, etc)?
Do you have photos or graphics? If yes, how are those created?
Do you have a blog or podcast?
Who currently writes content for the site/blog or runs the podcast?
Do they have an editorial calendar? If yes, we’ll need to see it.
Do you speak at conferences or other industry events?
Will you be exhibiting at any conferences or industry events?
Do you donate to non-profits/charities or are you a sponsor of an organization?
Have you run or do you have plans to run a contest or giveaway?
Have you sent out or do you plan to send out any press releases?
Who is your target demographic? What questions do they typically have about your company/products/service?
Do you have client testimonials or reviews?
How do you manage customer service online?
Do you manage any social profiles? If yes, what is your approach with those?

Garrett
I like starting with: “what’s working for you now?” …in terms of both link building and of larger markteting initiatives.

We spoke with a link building prospect recently with not much content on site. We asked how they generated prospects currently and they off-handedly mentioned their 10k+ email list that they’d been building over the past 10-15 years. They estimated that 10% or so of the list were active, industry-facing publishers (bloggers/site owners etc). We recommended they begin engaging the list, publishing conversations (with permission) and start leveraging the conversations for links.

We’ve found that it’s usually easier to build from what’s working already in some way than to generate something brand new. Another important aspect though is how well positioned in the company is your immediate contact… If they have networked well internally you will have better success, whereas if they’re new or not well trusted or respected yet you will have trouble getting to the appropriate resources.

Lastly, it’s vital to have a sense of what’s actually linkable in their market space. You can look at what assets have been proven to attract links on competitors’ sites, as well as industry-facing publishers’ sites.

Melanie
What unique value does your web site offer? What needs does it satisfy better than your competitors?

Are they part of any groups or associations? Are they acquainted with owners of any related businesses? Do they volunteer for or contribute to any charities? You’d be surprised at how many link opportunities most sites are already sitting on yet they simply don’t realize it.

A question I sometimes have my clients ponder: “Who are the specific group of site owners that directly benefit when they link to my site?”

Lee
If their resources are online, it’s pretty easy to find those. Otherwise, ask what public relations, advertising or interactive marketing they’re doing. Inventory digital assets and find out what the marketing plan is for the next 6-12 months. If a company isn’t doing any of those things, maybe they’re not a good fit for SEO.

Huge Thank yous again to:
Melanie Nathan – “Canadian SEO” | @melanienathan
Rhea Drysdale – outspoken media (I endorse for reputation management) | @rhea
Rand Fishkin – SEOmoz.org – Go check out their link analysis tools | @randfish
Garret French – Go read the link building book, I got a ton of good tips | @garrettfrench
Lee Odden – Toprankblog.com @leeodden
Lindsay Perkin Wassell – Keyphraseology.com | @lindzie
Scott Skurnick – Edmunds.com | @sskurnick

The old webmaster tools lacked in link data, error reporting, & really letting you know the valuable pages on your site/those linking to your site. The new Bing webmaster tools are lacking. Below is a hot list of changes:

1. You have to install Microsoft Silverlight or you can’t view the data.

When your webmaster tools are bad to begin with, why make everyone download Silverlight & create another hassle for users? Below is the data you’ll see if you don’t download Silverlight:

You can add urls you want Bing to crawl, add a sitemap, view pages in Bing’s index, & alerts if you’ve received a message from Bing.

So to see your actual data, you’ve now downloaded Silverlight. What next?

2. Reporting % Changes Day to Day

Priority can be set to your websites through alerting you of daily changes in % of clicks, % of impressions, pages indexed, pages crawled. This is one semi-useful change I’m seeing so far. When we log into our account and see dozens of clients, we’re able to quickly see which ones Bing hated or showed the love. This defaults to day vs previous day rating, so it’s not going to be helpful when comparing low volume days like weekends vs weekdays depending on the industry.

3. History of Crawled Pages

You’re now able to see 6 months worth of data for pages crawled & pages indexed. While they are only showing back to June 3 right now, if it’s rolled out this data will be useful in troubleshooting or helpful when launching a site.

Fingers crossed we’ll be able to view more than one month at a time, something you’re not able to do right now.

4. History of Pages Indexed

Slightly different from crawled pages, where the bots could visit a single page numerous times during the day, indexed pages refers to the number of unique pages Bing has indexed. Unlike the history of crawled pages, indexed pages does not state that a certain time period will be available. Current history goes as far back as June 3.

5. THERE IS ZERO BACKLINK DATA

Biggest shocker is the lack of any backlink data WHATSOEVER.

Dashboard, Crawl, Index, & Traffic show ZERO backlink data points. I thought I had gone through it too fast & missed the backlink tab. Nope, there’s nothing about the number of links, trending number of links over time (more important to me than number of pages crawled daily), quality of sites linking to your site, quality of sites your site is linking to, etc.

Forget my complaints about the vagueness of the green bars in my previous post. I’d take the green bars back compared to no data at all.

While Yahoo has a better backlink analysis, Bing needs to use that or come up with a 2.0 release of their webmaster tools with link data. Without it, Bing Webmaster Tools remains obsolete compared to GA.

When & how do Seller Rating Extensions appear? The Seller Rating Extension will automatically append a store’s rating from Google Product Search if you meet the minimum requirements of a 4-star rating and 30+ reviews. There is no need to sync your account with Google Product Search, as the ratings are pulled based on the display URL.

If your ad has an extremely high quality score and shows in the top panel (above natural results), the extension will also display the number of qualified reviews next to the rating. Note: New reviews can take up to 10 days to appear in product search.

Currently, the ratings will only show to English speakers in the US. It is our understanding that the ads will NOT show with other extensions (i.e. product extensions or SiteLinks).

Where do the ratings & reviews come from? Google Product Search ratings are compiled from a variety of sources including (but not restricted to) Epinions, Google Checkout, Reseller Ratings, Bizrate & PriceGrabber.

How much do they cost? There is no additional charge if a user clicks on an ad featuring a Seller Rating Extension, and there is no cost if a user clicks through just to read reviews.

How can I take advantage? Assuming you’re already registered for Google Product Search (it’s free!) the most important thing you can do is to keep serving your customers well and encouraging them to rate your store. The ratings will show automatically for all eligible queries unless you explicitly opt out here.

Are seller rating extensions a good thing? That’s for you to decide. There are a number of huge advantages to the new extensions, but you will never know if they are truly helping your business until you test. To help decide if the extensions will help or hurt you, SEER has outlined a few pro’s and con’s/potential pitfalls below.

Pros

• The extensions put a new emphasis on online customer service. We always knew that your reputation can have a huge influence on your store. Seller Rating Extensions only increases the influence by putting the ratings front and center.
• Assuming you have a great customer service rating, you can stand out from competitors who may have had a few issues from time to time.
• Having a 5-star rating show for a challenging non-brand term can enhance your visibility & help you stand out from the competition.

Potential Pitfalls

• While you don’t pay for clicks to the review site (and Google claims the review links receive less clicks), these clicks take the user away from your AdWords landing pages and your planned conversion funnel.
• If you have a new or small business, you may be trumped by a store with more reviews or simply may not be eligible.
• The ratings extensions appear (based on preliminary testing) to be trumped by other extensions. If you have SiteLinks, Location Listings, or Product Listing Extensions, the Seller Ratings Extensions will not be shown.
• The Seller Ratings Extensions could punish those who aren’t registered for Google Product Search (or other Comparison Shopping Engines).
  • While Google Product Search is free, it does require a certain amount of maintenance to make sure your product feed is up to date.
  • Other CSE’s that provide Google with reviews (PriceGrabber, BizRate) aren’t cheap and may not be right for your business.

The Seller Rating Extension is certainly a very compelling new AdWords feature; perhaps even more compelling is that Google rolled it out automatically and with almost no notice. Whether or not you are eligible for ratings extensions they provide an always welcomed reminder as to how important customer service is, especially in the E-Commerce space.

SEER will always recommend that you test, test, test to find out what works for your business; Seller Ratings Extensions are no exception! So what do you think – are Seller Ratings Extensions a 5-star feature??