Infographics are the in thing at the moment and its not hard to see why. They summarise a process or complex data in a fun, more meaningful and attractive way than your standard graph or graphic. Like many new internet related things they have become extremely popular in the SEO field. In this post i thought i would share some of the infographics that help explain the SEO process.

SEO vs PPC

Which will provide the most value or should you in fact be exploiting both channels.

source: DIY SEO

SEO Overview

A guide to SEO FAQ’s. An extremely popular infographic.

source: Data Dial

Keyword Research

A vital step in any SEO campaign. There are 3 infographics for this process. Follow the link for the others.

source: Elliance

Link Building

A core part of any SEO campaign. Probably my favourite one.

source: Vertical Measures

Google Analytics

A slightly sinister view of Google Analytics.

source: Smashing Crunch

ROI from SEO

Its all about return on investment.

source: DIY SEO

Ok, so there’s a few steps missing but im sure you will agree that they are pretty cool infographics. If you come across or have created any other SEO related infographics let us know through the comments section.

[View with PicLens]

for the more detailed images checkout my Flickr set:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/markmayne/sets/72157623833066505/

Like most website owners i get a fair few emails each week from companies trying to sell me SEO services. These emails usually go straight into the trash but this one that i received today stunned me. I thought it deserved a bit of attention so im going to share it with you.

SEO Services

All of our processes use the most ethical “white hat” Search Engine Optimization techniques that will not get your website banned or penalized.
Please reply and I would be happy to send you a proposal

There are so many things wrong with this but let me start by stating that im not being kind by not mentioning the company name. They simply didn’t give one. Not sure how they would expect someone to buy services from a company they didn’t know the name of. Odd…

The first thing that is apparent from the email is that it is a generic email that has been sent out to a database of email addresses. I suspect it is probably a paid one too. Personalising an approach by email is essential and these guys have made no attempt what so ever.

Moving to the detail…

I guess my main problem with the content is that so little thought has been put into it. It doesn’t give any information on what they would like to do for you and the mention of penalisation puts a negative slant on things. Theres no real need to mention this. A better approach might be to show where improvements could be made to the site and highlight what benefits they will try and bring to your business.

The most telling thing about the whole approach is that they have not even bothered to check the recipients site. If they had they would know it is already being optimised by someone.

They are not the only company out there who use such approaches but the frustration is that these people give our industry a bad name.

Rant over….

Its just over a month away and some great speakers have been lined up for the event including:

Fantomaster
Joost De Valk
Jon Myers
Tom Critchlow
Bas Van Den Beld

There are too many to mention but it really is an impressive set of people.

Event details:

Date: 28th of April 2010

Venue: The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

Early Bird Tickets: £225 + VAT
Early Bird SEMPO / Manchester Digital Member Tickets: £195 + VAT

So if you have not got your ticket check out the official SAScon ticket page:
http://www.sascon.co.uk/conference/registration/

So far I have managed to attend all three Think Visibility events and this year was without doubt one of the best. I don’t get to go to many conferences but of the ones I do go to this is probably the one I enjoy the most. This year featured some really great speakers and I was particularly excited to see that Tom Critchlow would be making an appearance.

There have already been some great roundups of the event so I won’t try to emulate those posts. In this post I wanted to share with you some of the point that I found most interesting about the event.

Tom Critchlow on Local Search

So I think we have all played with and succeeded with Google local to some degree but Tom was able to bring a level of detail to it that I had not seen before. He started by discussing the core elements of ranking well in Google local listings before delving into more detail on reviews and citations. These are becoming more and more crucial in ranking and he was able to highlight some great places to get reviews and citations.

What impressed me most were the comparisons he drew between the companies that ranked well for certain keyterms. He was able to draw up tables comparing the number of reviews and citations in comparison to where companies ranked for certain terms. Of course companies with good reviews and good numbers of citations ranked well. He went on to say that his methods had shown that numbers do matter in terms of reviews and citations.

In all he was a great speaker and reminded me about the bulk upload options for large businesses. This was handy as we recently started working with a fairly major brand. The best practices he outlined were a handy refresher for when tackling the submission task this week.

Patrick Moogan on Link Building

I had not really come across much of Patricks work before but someone in the office had been following him on Twitter and said he was pretty well clued up. He wasn’t wrong and delivered an excellent talk on link building.

In his presentation Patrick talked briefly about the way in which agencies work and maximizing your link building time. I could relate to a lot of what he was saying as he talked about making the best use of limited time. For example on clients who pay for one day a month where can your time be best spent. He in fact showed a chart, which suggested the types of links you should go for depending on the amount of time you had.

The biggest thing I took away from his talk was the need to have a list of central resources and organize your link building efforts more effectively. He suggested listing all the ways in which you could generate links and include possible sources for those links. It’s straightforward but with the mad rush we often forget or don’t get time to do such basic tasks.

Presentation Link: http://www.pindigital.com/blog/post/2010/03/15/Think-Visibility-e28093-13th-March-2010.aspx

In all it was a great event and a good day out. I was able to learn a few things and it was nice to meet some new faces. I still think the first one was the best and of course SAScon is just around the corner. It should be interesting to see how it compares.

Blue Daniel
Probably one of the best examples i have come across. The moving train and sliding elements add real depth to it.

24-7 Media
This one grabs the users attention really well and i love the fly. Shame it doesn’t provide you with any navigational options though.

South Park
Come across this one a few times and it never seems to grow old.

Agens
The creative in this particular example is superb. Love the background.

B3ta
I love the fact that they provide endless changing examples of humerous pictures on there 404 page.

My New 404 Page
Its no where near as fancy as the others but i was playing around with it and thought i would share it with you guys.

There are many great examples out there but these are some of my favourite. Please feel free to share yours in the comments section.

Its a tool set i have been looking at for a while now and came across it during a presentation by Dave Naylor. A great presentation as always and i was completely captivated by the possibilities of the tool set. It could be summed up as an analytics tool kit for search engine marketer but it is so much more than this. It goes well beyond anything else that is out there. Whats even more exciting is that they have just joined forces with Majestic SEO, who of course have some great tools of their own.

Ok so like most decent tools in the market place Raven SEO Tools is a paid service, with prices starting from $79 a month for a pro package. Agency packages are also available and include a 6 user license. The agency account will set you back $199 a month with an additional $14 required for each extra user. Before committing to the service you can sign up for a 30 day trail which gives you full access. This is very much recommended.

The Tool Set

The Raven SEO Tool set is split into five main section and includes research, links, content manager, analytics, reports and admin. I will go on to explain each section in a minute but i wanted to quickly highlight the great Firefox plugin that they have made available. This plugin lets you access various parts of the tool set quick and easily. Anyway so on to the tools themselves.

Research:
As the title suggests the research section contains all the tools you will need to find out about your chosen market place. In this section users are provided with keyword research tools such as Word Tracker and SEMRush. Other tools include quality and design analysis. It essentially gives you the core background information about your site and provides you with the tools you will need to help decide on your keywords.

I personally like the SEMRush tool in this section. It gives me some really valuable information about my competitors and stores them all in one quick and easy place.

Links:
Link manager is arguably one of the best tools on here. Its sorting capabilities are incredible and gives you a great overview of your link building campaign. It lets you record basic information such as URL’s, anchor text, link type, etc. But it then goes much further by letting you record the status of the link. You can record whether it is paid for, declined or even inactive. Its just one of those things that makes life so much easier.

The other great tool in this section in contacts. I think this is ideal for some of the article marketing tactics i use. When i publish an article i like to track who re-syndicates it. I can then approach them with a unique follow up article. Being able to track these in the links contact section is perfect. I can record all of them, make the contact and then delete any that want no further participation. Then whenever i have a great article i can contact relevent and interested parties quickly using this list.

Content:
Its an area that i have not really used yet but i can see that it has a lot of potential. It contains a content manager and a blog manager. I would probably use the content manager for articles and new page copy. Makes sense as i could give a client access and we could both edit content from one location. Stops me having to save multiple versions and sending them back and forth.

The blog manager gives you a central location to add new content to your blogs. I think the concept is great however i think you would still need to login to Wordpress or blogger to be able to tweak the plugin and tag settings.

SERP Tracker:
I have been using Rank Tracker up until now for tracking keywords. Its much better than what i was using previously however the keyword tool tracker in Raven seems to be even better. I like the fact that it provides easy options to track competitors and gives you estimated traffic volumes next to your actual rankings.

Analytics:
I personally don’t like this feature. I can see why Raven would want to include it but its just not as intuitive or as flexible as the Google Analytics interface. Having said that it does give you all the basic data that Google Analytics does.

Admin:
The admin section of Raven lets you add new users and even has an option for white labeling. Could be useful for agencies. Not an area that needs using all that often but you should take the time to set the right permission rights.

Conclusions

After using the Raven SEO tool set for over a couple of weeks now i am convinced it is one of the best tool out there. What i like most is that it provides a central location to store all your essential items for every campaign. Another key benefit is you can give clients access to certain sections of it. This will give them an insight into just how much works goes in to an SEO campaign and what is involved. If like me you had been storing much of your data in spreadsheets it is difficult to not only keep them up to date but also share with clients.

There are parts of Raven tool set which i just wouldn’t use however the recent partnership with Majestic SEO should bring some fantastic additions. I would love to see the link back link discovery tool in there.

Why not give it a go!
http://raven-seo-tools.com

Ann Smarty, an influential search and social media specialist has released, in my mind one of this years most exciting tools. Its called My Blog Guest and is a community where link builders, content creators, bloggers and entrepreneurs can come together to help achieve their goals. This is usually in the form of guest blogging.

I find the concept particularly exciting because it enables SEO’s and webmasters to not only save a great deal of time but also build new networks and target new audiences. When we look at guest blogging we often have to invest a serious amount of time looking for potential targets and then making the approach. The difficulty sometimes is that you find the perfect target blog but they are unwilling to accept guest posts. My Blog Guest gets rid of all this as members of it are either looking for guest posts or looking to make them.

I think Ann sums up the tool perfectly in her guest post over at sem-group.net:

No-Money: It’s completely free

Win Win Situation: Both the blogger and guest writer benefit from the exchange

Relevency: Bloggers can target blogs directly in their niche or in a neighboring niche

Quality: Both the blogger and guest writer will want to make the most of the activity and it therefore makes sense for them to create quality content.

The My Blog Guest site is still in its infancy and is at present dominated by people in the SEO community. This is ideal for me but in time i hope people with blogs from all sectors will start to use it. I guess its a matter of promotion and continuing to develop the platform.

One of the things i love about the site is that it is clearly split in to two sections. One for blog owners looking for guest posts and another for guest post writers. The search function and good use of tagging means that people can quickly and easily locate potential targets. Other nice features include encouraging the reporting of none responders. The aim is to make sure that everyone who is part of the community is active. This again saves time and they go one step further to suggest following each other on Twitter.

I hope the Ann can take the site to the next level and i look forward to using it in further over the next few months.

Every so often i like to re-assess how i setup my Google Analytics dashboard and what information i should be concentrating on. After all analytics can be a mind-grenade at times!!

It should be noted i setup and track differently depending on the client and sector but in almost all cases there are levels or types of common information i want to know. For example every campaign has a focus on achieving an ROI or conversions for clients but what do we know about those conversions. Surely there would be a great deal of value in having a deeper understanding of your clients conversions and having quick access to it.

The dashboard in analytics is great because it allows you to add reports that you use regularly to it. Adding the right reports at the right detail can save you a great deal of energy and time. This is why i recently went back and looked at what i had on my dashboards and looked again at how i segmented conversions. I came up with some ideas but some of the more basic conversion segmentation approaches are well highlighted in the Art of SEO. Thats a book by the way and well worth the read. You can get it from my affiliate link below, wink wink. In there book they looked at segmenting conversions in the following ways:

Conversion By Keyword:
Pretty logical. This is something that i look at regularly and is crucial to every seo campaign. This is because you want to see whether the terms you are targeting are bringing any value (conversions).

Conversion By Web Page:
This is going to be more valuable with certain types of sites. The information gained from this might highlight the need for some split testing or a design change.

Conversion By Referrer:
You might want to see which referrer is generating the most conversions. This might be a link on a particular page or an advertisement. If its converting well you might want to consider more coverage or target similar sites. It also gives you a deeper insight into the value of your link building campaigns.

Conversions By Landing Page and keyword:
Ok so this is going into even more detail. You will know which keyword for which page is converting best. If a keyword that is performing the best is at the end of your title tag on a page you might want to try moving it to the front. This might give you an increase in rankings for that term.

Conversions By Initial Entry Page:
Every user most go through a process to achieve a conversion. Whether this is read an informational page and then proceed to a signup page or going from a product page to a shopping cart. The level of conversion can be effected significantly by the approach and language used on that page. You have to appeal to the individual user and persuade them to move on to the next step. If you are finding one entry page is working better than the other look at the language and layout of that page.

Ok, so these are pretty obvious ones that we probably all use to some degree or another but there are plenty of others too. It’s sometimes nice however to go back and look at the basics and understand why we do things. Of course once you have this information at hand you can start looking at how to improve conversions.

The complexity and sheer level of data presented by analytics packages can often cause confusion and lead to mistakes. These mistakes are usually the result of misinterpretations and a lack clear goals. Before beginning any SEO campaigns it is important to set out some clear goals or KPI’s and have a defined plan of action. You need to know what you are measuring and what you are trying to achieve. Without this knowledge you will often get little from your analytics data.

Of course there are a couple of packages out there to track your websites performance, with Google analytics being the most popular. Yahoo’s offering has also started to get some attention while some higher end packages such as Omniture exist.

Some of the most common analytics mistakes can be found below:

Making Decisions Based On An Unrealistic Sample Size
Treat it like a scientific experiment. You wouldn’t base your conclusions on a sample size of two people would you? This would not give you nearly enough data to base a decision on. For example if you see that a keyword has 4 visits and converted 3 times you couldn’t make realistically make drastic changes to your campaign based on this sample set. You need to give it time.

I think Google Optimizer is particularly good at highlighting this point. In the reports section of Google Optimiser it will give you feedback about your testing. For example it will tell you that it is too early to make a decision if you have online had 30 visits. It will also provide you with recommendations on sample sizes. Worth a look.

Using Biased Data
There are many ways in which data bias can occur. Seasonal trending can be a factor, especially if you base your plans on data from high performing months. You can use Google insights to look for probable spikes and dips in traffic for certain keywords.

IP Exclusion Filters
David Whitehouse highlights in his post on analytics mistakes that many users forget to exclude their IP addresses from profiles. As a developer or SEO you are likely to visit the site many times. However the data recorded from your visits are likely to skew results slightly as you are not a genuine visitor. You can exclude your IP address in profile settings of Google Analytics.

Goal Conversion Setup
In order to track those goals and KPI’s effectively we often setup goals. These create a record of any visitor that performs a specific action. These often include making a purchase or enquiry. Although they are often quite straight forward to setup many fall into the trap of recording a goal step in the funnel twice. This is because people will add the goal page in to the funnel. This is not needed as you have set the destination page at the beginning of the setup process. That part is already recorded. The guys at ROI Revolution discuss it further.

Not Recognising That You Have Enough Data
We live in a fast changing environment and acting at the right moment can be crucial. Say for example you are planning for your christmas campaign and testing some keyword ranking techniques. You need to not only gather enough information to base your decision on but also implement it at the right time.

There are of course many more intricate mistakes we can make when using such packages. The data provided by such packages can be a little overwhelming. Your best option is find what you want to achieve and how you want to track that. Then add these essential items to the dashboard.

For some great advice on Google analytics you might want to check out the Advanced Web Metrics blog. Full of great info. Also if you think there are any things i should add to my list drop me a comment. : )