Our regular readers here will know, that I very much enjoy/follow/put-up-on-a-pedestal the folks over at Chitika and their research into the search world, using their own index of millions of pages. (disclaimer – we do no biz with Chitika, nor do we have any mutual clients etc. etc. – I just like their research is all!)

Chitika, for those of you who may be newbies to same, is a data analytics company in the business of on-line advertising – “…through the application of data and innovative technology in the fields of mobile, local and search Chitika has developed a vast global network that maximizes yield for both publishers and advertisers…” is how they identify themselves and once again, I’m beholding to them!

Why? Well just  a few days ago, they released new data on their research into search engine habits – here’s how they put same -

“Chitika Insights has previously conducted a study to take an in depth look at the search habits we see on our extensive network and how they differentiate between search engines. Our new study is a follow-up to see if there have been any changes over the last months as it relates to habits across search engines. The goal of the study was to find the average number of words in a search query across the five most popular search engines in the US: Google, Bing Yahoo, Ask, and AOL. The study covered a sample of hundreds of millions of impressions, taken between January 9th and January 12th.  In order to determine the number of words per query we looked at the number of spaces in each search and then added one to simulate an actual query. The graph below shows the average number of words per query by search engine…”

As you can see, they looked at hundreds of millions of searches via their network and found the following to be true….that Ask.com has the most verbose user base with 4.81 words per query on average, mimicking the same trend in our previous study. As they mentioned before, the main reason for the longer queries of Ask users might be explained with the original designation of the search engine.

Think about that for a second….folks who use Ask.com appear to use long tail word counts more than anyone else for search queries…we’ve reported on this more than a year ago too – at least the number of words that a search query word count was used…and the number 3 was the sweet spot 18+ months ago. Looks like that’s changed, eh?

Why would be the question? Well, as Chitika notes over at Ask.com, maybe its’ their segmentation of being a “natural language” search engine that has appealed to the masses and that could be true. Maybe it’s the demographics of Ask.com users….comScore reports that “Ask.com is the 10th most trafficked site daily that accepts graphical advertisements and the number one brand for trusted answers on the web….” The demographics are interesting for Ask.com and worth a look/see too as in our mind, the main purpose of the Ask.com engine was to provide answers for queries in “natural language”. Most likely, Ask users still tend to write their queries in their longer, natural form.

And the surprise – at least to me? Well, look again at that chart….AOL users have the most succinct queries….AOL users…does that sound surprising? Is to me…and to you?

In the last few days, Rogers – one of the countryl largest ISP and Telecom firms, announced that they will be selling Yodle’s marketing products/services to Canadian SMBs. WooHOO!

Now that’s news that is plenty interesting  in that it sets up direct competition with Canada’s largest seller of advertising to SMBs, YPG/Yellow Media, as well as ReachLocal, which already operates in Canada.

Yodle US has had a paid search advertising product called Sponsored, which distributes ads on search engines including Google, Yahoo!, and Bing and across a local advertising network which includes directory, local, and Yellow Pages sites. Yodle’s paid search advertising product also includes a lead tracking platform called Yodle Live and call recording for local business clients. And what else does Yodle provide, SMB campaign wise?

Well, in early 2010 Yodle launched its second product, called Yodle Organic which utilizes a set of best practices to get websites to rank on search engines for relevant keywords. In addition, this product includes local business maps listings, content creation and syndication, and social media management. And then there’s Yodle Display: In 2011, Yodle launched its first display advertising product. The first release of Yodle Display is meant for Franchise and multi-location businesses. Yodle Display uses contextual targeting on sites that have content related to an advertiser’s services and also retargeting of individuals who previously visited an advertiser’s website. And lastly, Yodle offers website creation and hosting for local businesses that purchase Yodle Sponsored or Yodle Organic.

All fine. All in the US…till now! With over 28,000+ yankee SMB clients, Yodle is now coming to Canada – a la Rogers – to take on…umm…who? Well, the target in those cross-hairs is yup, our largest seller of adverts to SMBs  – our YPG/Yellow Media group! And why am I impressed with that? Rogers is already hiring too and that’s nice to see as well!

Simply put…..competition is great for SMBs and with both Rogers clout and Yodle’s know-how, that kind of competition will be great for clients. And I do mean great, eh!

And the best part….SMBs win! Now that’s something to celebrate for us Canadian SEO practitioners, eh!

Yup, it’s only Thursday evening and I’m tired of watching amateur cooks face off over hamburgers on the Food Channel  and with Friday being a full day down at our Innovation Factory for Mentor Committee intakes and meetings and then Cafe iF – I’m going to miss the chance to add a new post here to our blog. So….here’s our Fabulous Friday Infographic….and boy do we have a real winner to lead off with!

David Mihm, noted SEO practitioner from the Pacific NorthWest, is one of my own SEO personal role models. This man knows SEO. Period. And as he also runs the 30+ of us who help him with his Annual Local Search Ranking Factors Survey, he knows Google Maps/Places too. And then there’s the getListed.org online research group that he founded and runs – and did I mention the whole #localUniveristy group too? Okay, you get my drift…if there’s a guy to emulate, David would be dang close to the top of that list, eh!

Well, it appears that like most entrepreneurs who have a passion about what it is that gets them up and into the office before 7 am – David has added something totally new at least to me and it’s his infographic entitled “A Brief History of Google Places” that you can find here… - and what a read and study this is, eh!

 As David notes, we Canadian SEO types pay loads of attention to whatever comes out of Google on a daily basis – and those of us like my own practice, who work a majority of the time in the Local Search space we stay at the “bleeding edge” of the constant daily changes that Google puts out for their local Places/Maps algo! And I mean daily! Hourly even….and to stay ahead of the competition, we need to be studying and researching and testing and analyzing on a daily/hourly basis, eh!

Further as David notes in that posting – he and Mike Blumenthal and Matt McGee (surely the top three Local Search experts on the continent at least in my book!!!) contributed data and David has been hard at work compiling and working out the variations on the Google changes to the Local Search algo and as David points out, the interactive version of same MUST be a click you invest time in! DO IT! Go to that link and try the interactive link….and what you’ll find is one of the best tactical studies on the Google local algo that I’ve ever seen. Period.

David’s infographic covers from 2004 right up to 2011 and he has color-coded the details with respect to both the announcements of changes as the magnitude of same….and it’s so dang easy to follow the changes as they’ve occurred. For those of us who run an SEO practice in the Local Search space, we can (as I did with some glee and some regrets) match what’s noted with our client serps and find that “yup, got that one big time” and “oops…missed that totally” occurred throughout the 8 year reach of the study.

David, many many thanks from both myself, the whole SEO community – and yes, my clients too!

Muchly appreciated and I feel like I should be sending you some cash just to validate that you captured and publicized what I too found…used…and my clients gained some serp traction for same! #Kudos David…for an SEO job well done!

Over the past year, since Xmas actually in 2010 when I got an Apple iPad, I’ve been very much following the rollout of this new hardware, the personal tablet for use at work. Not, as many others do, I’m guessing to surf or watch movies or listen to your own music playlist, but to actually “do” something in the business world.

Look at presi’s maybe, or a Word .docx or an Excel ss…you know, stuff we all do all day long on our PC….but instead now do on a tablet. And just in December last, I got a brand new RIM PlayBook which I now love and use daily butI guess, I’m very much wanting more…but let me explain.

First the tablet universe size is somewhat “muddy” when it comes to real verifiable numbers of units sold. The Apple iPad and iPad2 are somewhere up around 40 million units sold, if you can believe the latest estimates. The whole android using market is second, it appears but I can find no real numbers to quote…and the RIM Playbook is much less even after the big sell-off at Xmas 2011 and the resulting huge drop in pricing too in the last few weeks.

There is a very recent study tho, but the folks that I’ve blogged about before, the PEW Internet firm here, that offers up some interesting info on the tablet ownership numbers…

“The share of adults in the United States who own tablet computers nearly doubled from 10% to 19% between mid-December and early January and the same surge in growth also applied to e-book readers, which also jumped from 10% to 19% over the same time period.

The number of Americans owning at least one of these digital reading devices jumped from 18% in December to 29% in January.

These findings are striking because they come after a period from mid-2011 into the autumn in which there was not much change in the ownership of tablets and e-book readers. However, as the holiday gift-giving season approached the marketplace for both devices dramatically shifted. In the tablet world, Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes and Noble’s Nook Tablet were introduced at considerably cheaper prices than other tablets. In the e-book reader world, some versions of the Kindle and Nook and other readers fell well below $100…”

Note that this chart outlines same but shows that marked increase dramatically too — and that the table and eBook reader numbers are so dang close too!

This is very interesting…in that mobile growth is surging, the number of mobile apps is a growing percentage of same and yes, as the prices fall, the market penetration grows too….and in my world, that’s a tell-tale sign that any startup who is looking for a “baileywick” to play in, just might consider the mobile app channel!

After being a part – however small – of the ongoing Innovation Night series of events for our Hamilton based Innovation Factory, it was no surprise that again this past Wednesday, myself and over two hundred other startup aficiandos attended the first 2012 gala event at the MIPs centre! And what an event it was!

Disclaimer: I am actively involved in the ‘behind-the-scenes’ marketing for Snappay, one of the evening’s contestants and I wanted to state that right up front. That said, what a wonderful boost to said marketing program, as Lorne Lantz, the founder of Snappay won the event with the judged Best Business Proposition Award and took home one of those brand new color Kobo readers! #kudos to Snappay….and signup here for more information!

But that’s not all the news, the evening itself was chock full of great startup pitches and I was enthused as usual, as I was one of the mentors who worked with all of the presenting founders to first craft and then hone their one minute elevator pitches that captured the real ‘essence’ of their concept that was presented to the judging panel. This panel was well versed in startups and included the following folks

• Carolynn Reid of Hamilton’s EcDev division
• Doug Osborne of Doug’s Unlimited
• Jennifer Bell of Intuit
• Peter Milne of Gowlings

And one of the nicest things was that the Master of Ceremonies, was Mike Saniga of Quant, Inc. – one of the Innovation Factory’s first ever clients, who are truly a success story locally as they’ve achieved some amazing traction, have gotten funded and yes, they too were Innovation Night contestants just a few short months ago too! So #kudos to Quant and Mike who did a spot-on job of MC-ing the whole evening!

As you most likely know, the Innovation Night is a series of events, key events really – that is for innovators and entrepreneurs to share and develop their ideas, practice and perfect their pitch and present to their peers and the local innovation community at large. And what a list and variety of ideas there were….too long to list here, but I did want to mention some of the ones that struck me as very interesting…

Alicai Di Lulio of Golden Girls is an artist – but instead of sculpting in stone or bronze, she uses sugar. Sugar? Yes sugar and her collection includes some of the most amazing high-heel stilletto womens shoes and placques and animals…..that it’s not enough to think about putting same on the mantel at home – but she is a baker and they are usually put on cakes or food displays…did I mention that they’re made out of sugar…and are yes – edible!!! #yum!

Mohamed El Mahallawy of NerVu, offered up a simple idea….that if a visitor to their website indicates what kind of brands (Levis or Swatch say) that they’re interested in, then NerVu will scour the web for the best deals and sales and SMS that simple note to your smartphone! You’d always find out when those sales/deals are before the general public and therefore never miss a deal again! I like that one!

And lastly today, Snappay and Lorne Lantz…whose idea is really IMHO a potential disruptor in both the retail/POS world. What Lorne has done is to create an app, a free app mind you, that a smartphone user (iPhone and Android users now, BB is under development) has to simply download and that will allow them in minutes to use their phone as a mobile POS system. Working a trade show say, selling jewellry and can’t afford the hundreds of dollars that the event company charges to hook up your booth with a dedicated phone line for your hardware intensive POS system? Use your phone, which simply scans the buyers’ credit card, sends the data encrypted to Paypal and the sale is completed. No fuss. No muss…and no risk for either the buyer or seller! Snappay does take a simple processing fee of course, but did I mention that the app is free? Frictionless signup process – PayPal protected & secure – easy to access and use – and the payments are yours instantly! NO WAITING for your cash…how’s that for an idea, eh?

And as the fellow who “ran” the demo by simply standing in front of the judges at the event, and showing how in less than 30 seconds, I made a purchase, scanned my credit card, waited for PayPal to process same and then got the “Transaction Successful” screen back…the judges loved it! No wonder IMHO, then that the winner of the Best Business Opportunity Award went to Lorne and Snappay….watch out world….POS systems are coming to the mobile world…and Snappay is at the forefront of same, eh!

Hence our screen for today.

For more information simply google for “SOPA blackout” and you’ll see what we’re talking about….and many many thanks to folks like Reddit.com and wikipedia.com for the leadership on this too!

SEO is  the power behind the throne, when it comes to the internet. Yup, the whole internet depends upon SEO - well at least in my world it does….want me to explain?

Okay, so here goes…

First, by SEO yes, of course as a regular reader here, you know that I mean “search engine optimization,” the strategy we use for our clients to help them gain traction and rise in the rankings for their chosen channels etc…to get them more traffic to convert from prospectives over to solid leads and then customer/client status. That’s what I’m referring to, and for our two dozen or so clients, it’s what we “do” for them. But what do I mean when I say that the SEO we do “is the power behind the throne?”

To explain that, please follow along here….in our mind, the various tactics and tricks, hypotheses and testings, analaysis and re-testing all add up to a succesful SEO Campaign that gets our client site’s ranked. But “behind the throne” is the real rationale that for us means that what we do is not seen by the website visitor, not known, not perceived nor for the most part not understood….a visitor finds a search engine result – clicks – and they’ve entered the lead funnel that we’ve created….and the conversion process then occurs.

For us, the Canadian SEO  firm, you’d have to then perceive that what we “do” is all done, where it can’t be seen. Oh sure anyone can drill down and look at the source for a website page, and yes, that’d mean that they can see some of the on-page optimization tools that we use for our clients…but that’s only a small percentage of what we “do” to get that page to rank highly on a search engine…what we do mostly can not be seen, not be looked at, not even be extrapolated for the most part…because what we do is “behind” the view of same….hence my  piece here today.

And what we do, all other SEO firms do. We’re not alone in other words, in this…we all work “behind the throne” and get client sites to rank better but what we do is hidden from view….sort of like the fellow who sharpened Wayne Gretzky’s skates or the technician who tuned Glenn Gould’s piano…we know exactly what to do. We do it to the best of our abilities…but it’s the throne- sitter – you and your site that is - that is where the action is….and we help you get there.

Agree with me here? Do you think too, that an SEO firm is always working “behind the throne” to enablle your own site to rank better…or???

Okay, you know your stuff. You’re either a leading edge (or not so much) web developer or you’re an SMB who keeps his/her ear to the tech ground listening (or not so much either) for the latest in how to build a site that converts leads into buyers. You’re aware of the best practices of all of that – and yet your site just isn’t performing as good as it could be. Sound familiar?

Well aside from testing for “operational” items like cross-browser layouts or loading speed, as I pointed out – testing for conversions is very important. Sure elements of any conversion process strategy would include things like call-to-action buttons and colours of same;  promotion offers and how they’re worded, styled and sized; your forms and how they’re laid out and located on the website page….all are important and all attach themselves to your conversion rates as they should.

According to the folks over at Monetate, it appears that companies who do testing are 40% more satisfied with their conversion rates that the companies who don’t. Think about that for a minute….why would the firm that does testing, be more satisfied? Maybe because by doing so, they understand what the various contributing factors were that impacted their conversion rates.

Is that you?

Do you look at your analytics package numbers and see what kind of conversions your site receives. You know, visitor to your site enters your sales funnel….analytics shows them using your call-to-action form for inbound marketing….and then you see which of those visitors turns into a conversion via once again, your anlaytics – a repository you soon realize of not only search engine keyword tactics but of actual customer behaviour. Now that is really a bonus, eh!

And of course, there are other viewpoints too…like the folks over at Kissmetrics who published this testing Infographic back last summer but it remains on our own listing of “spot-on” items to peruse when we’re working on conversion testing strategy too. They remind us too, that you must always test for maximum success and at every single point of customer interaction too!

And lastly, here’s a short list of items that they list that are great tips to remember…

Too many unrelated links within eyesight of your call to action can distract visitors and lead them away from your sales funnel.

• Some fonts are easier on the eyes than others, and experimenting with various sizes and styles can have a noticeable impact on the success of your sales funnel.
• Always A/B test your landing pages and easily view their performance with the best conversion funnels in the business.
• Fewer form fields don’t necessarily mean more sign ups. Sometimes, as in the case of lead generation, it’s beneficial to add extra form fields to extract more information.
• Try displaying your ads on a wide variety of websites and test the responsiveness of each site’s audience to build an optimized display network.

Ahh….Friday again…and as usual it’s been a heck of a week in SEO land! Many many small issues arise throughout a week of working on SEO Campaigns for clients and this past one was no exception. As many of you know, I visit about 200+ sites each and every morning that are news related, opinion related, blog posts, forums, bulletin boards and even still newsgroups looking for the latest “bleeding edge” SEO tactics and this weeks visits once again pointed out a few real winners!

First up today, is the great Infographic entitled “A Market for Lemons” from the terrific SEO firm Lumin Consulting…and I’m chuffed about this company! Their site is simple to look at and navigate, doesn’t “hard sell” their services yet somehow IMHO, climbs the depths of the SEO well to be right near the top for me.

The Infographic that I’m pointing you at is all about the premise that “a seller will take advantage of a buyer’s lack of knowledge…” in SEO land…and aint that the truth! Go to this amazingly spot-on graphic and read and learn what most of us real SEO practitioners already know…that the best client is an educated one!

Well worth the click, eh for SMBs to learn about Canadian SEO! I like these guys. I do and #Kudos to them for their great Infographics!

Forrester is one of those huge, multinationals that spans the globe with their research, stats, market studies and while I’m sure you too have heard of same, if you’re honestly like me, the cost of acquiring their reports is sometimes just too dang expensive. That said, I do keep an eye on what their latest releases are, and the recent launch of their report entitled “Social Media Adoption in 2011″may just mean that I’m gonna have to find the cash to get the full report! That report illustrates how consumers are using social media by applying Forrester’s Social Technographics® global classification system.

That Infographic illustrates this framework where they classify consumers into seven groups based on online activities, and consumers can fall into several different groups…and yes, a lot has changed in the world of social media. Social networking has morphed into a global phenomenon. Today, 86% of online US adults and 79% of European online adults engage with social media. And consumers in emerging markets are also on social media — not just catching up. In fact, they lead the world in social media usage and engagement. So #Kudos too to the Forrester folks….now, where can I find some extra cash this weekend, eh?

And lastly for today’s roundup is a great combo of an SEO blog post by Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz and the accompanying Infographic on a topic that should be near and dear to all SMB owners….as it’s on SEO firms and the pricing of an SEO Campaign, eh!

I couldn’t explain it any better than Rand himself on their blog page so here’s the raison d’etre -

“Near the end of December 2011, we ran a surveyon this blog asking consultants and agencies of all sizes and geographies to contribute their pricing models and cost structures. I’m pleased to share the results of that survey in the hopes that it will give everyone in the search industry a better idea of the range of fees and the services provided.

Obviously, this data is imperfect – SEOmoz is not a professional data surveying firm and our only tool was a basic list of questions on SurveyMonkey. That said, I’d be surprised if a professional surveyor found dramatically different data – there was enough participation to receive a trustworthy sample size and firms provided their personal/contact information (many of which I recognized while digging through the responses, but obviously will not be sharing identities publicly), which means we likely did not receive intentionally manipulative/misleading information. The data is provided below in three formats – first, some personal, high level takeaways from the survey, next an infographic from the great folks at AYTM Market Research…”

Your time will be well spent – just like your marketing budgets too, if you do click on those two links and go and read and learn about what this large survey shows concerning SEO practitioners in various countries and how our pricing models are similar and distinct too! So again, big big #Kudos to Rand and the folks over at SEOmoz for this….shows me right where “we” are in the larger scheme of all things SEO and lets me see how others do their own SEO Campaign pricings too! Cool…very cool Friday, eh?

Okay, Xmas and New Year’s are done…and it’s back to work and for my “2012 hello there” message, I wanted to point out an obvious foundation to your business intelligence strategy. The simple thought that if your competitors are doing well, i.e. their rankings are better than your own or your clients, it might pay to do an SEO Audit of their own sites. Makes sense, right? Well, in my world, it’s a solid part of any new client intake, and let me explain why.

A large part of any new client and their own channel – is trying to figure out who the competition actually “is!” Ask the client, and then sit back and listen to how they position their own firm and it’s offer of services or products and where they think their competitors are in that channel – and more importantly, listen to their rationale on who those competitors are.

That’s what we’ve found is the real “rub” of the issue. Too many SMBs and clients believe that they are in competition with other firms that to be totally honest are not even in the same arena. So listen, and then add your own list of competitors based on your own judgement, would be my first caution here….as too too often you overlook your competitors because in my mind, it’s the “forest for the trees” type of error…i.e. you are too close to seeing the bigger picture! So make sure that you pick the right competitors, eh!

Once you actually have that list tho…once you’ve vetted them by going to look at every single website for these clients…once you’ve validated same, in other words, it’s time to look at those competitors and their own SEO Campaigns via an audit of those sites. So…the next point would be – how do you “do” an audit?

Ah….that’s a great question, and for us, it’s been a real learning experience for same. There are of course, many online “free” apps that you can use for a “grading” of the site itself like we’ve reviewed here and here again. But a caution too, for those sites….you must always remember that they use their own proprietary formula to come up with a ranking number % that may – or may not – be accurate. Think about it for a second….you are using someone else’s math to come up with a value that you wish to improve on – sorta like that time in grade three when you looked over at another kid’s math test and saw an answer….and copied it down blindly without remembering that the person you’re copying from always does poorly. Not so smart. And not so ethical either…but that’s not appropos to this post. What I mean is that you need to think hard and long about those freebie website grading percentages and how they can or can not be of value. Run sites thru, that you KNOW are solid….SEO wise and see how they are scored. Then run sites thru that you know have little SEO optimization and see the results again…to try to gauge how valuable those rankings are in your world and your client’s channel. That’s the only way that these freebie audit sites will hold any kind of value to you, eh!

So, now you’ve got some numbers to look at. You’ve validated those scores based on your own gauge of the freebie sites themselves and you think that you know much about that list of competitors, right? …sigh… Wrong. You need now to really dig-in and discover as much more about those competitor sites as you can….

What those freebie audit sites gave you were simple formulas based on what they found in an on-page optimization scrutiny. What about off-page items, like say IBLs (in bound links) and social media, blog postings and comments and online reputation and local search reviews/citations etc etc etc. What about them….and as you suddenly realize that for each of those competitor listings you’ve just added days of work as you’ll need to check them all for all of those items to begin with…you need to dig deep…drill down on each of those items and try to determine just where the competitors are for each. Not an easy task. One that if often laden with issues – but one that if done right, can show your competitors stripped down to their undies! And that’s the real winner here….you get to see exactly what they’re up to…and by doing so, how you can defeat their own SEO Campaigns by using similar but better strategies and tactics to climb above them for your serp rankings!

Thought too, on this topic that I’d post a few links to others who’ve commented on this too….so here’s a quick look at how other SEO practitioners have approached the same topic, eh!

• Chad Pollit of Kuno Creative speaks directly on this topic here…
• Nick Stamoulis of Brick Marketing here…
• Analytics SEO of the UK here….
• ClickWorxMedia here…