Business Management Consultant - Stuntdubl Search and Marketing Consulting

I’ve spent a lot of time recently catching up on webmasterradio.fm podcasts, and was lucky enough to catch Jeremy (aka shoemoney) talking with Lee Dodd on Net Income. I hadn’t come accross much of Lee’s stuff in the past, unfortunately, but he seems like a very intelligent guy, and certainly has a lot of insight into running an online community. During the show they talk about many of the different ways to promote and monetize a forum or social network, which can be a difficult thing to do without overly “pimping” the community. It makes for a nice listen if you have the time, and you can be certain I’ll be checking out more of Lee’s work in the future.

Lee is currently opening a new forum dubbed the EarnersForum.com that seems like a great place to get together and talk with other people who enjoy making money online. He’s running a contest giving away $1,000, a developed niche site, one hour consultation, a 1 year link, and an interview on my podcast to 5 winners getting the entire package.

I know he already has some great “earners” associated with the forum, and is planning to have some private areas for discussion. It sounds like a pretty good idea, and I wish Lee all the best with it.

Aaron at SEOBuzzbox does some pretty cool interviews with some notable folks in the SEO/SEM industry. I’m honored to now be one of them. Check out the interview if you get a chance.

“…the meaning of a link has been transformed from a reference to a vote.” - Bill Slawski, from his interview with Aaron.

THIS is how Google has, and continues to change the face of the web. Thanks for putting it into simple context for us Bill.

Be sure to read the rest of this great interview. Bill is one of the few SEO’s with the superhuman ability to translate patents and whitepapers into language the rest of us can understand.

Fun commentary, but technology sometimes sucks…Graywolf and I talked with Greg about click stream analysis and its’ potential impact on search engine results positions. Most people that talk about search engine rankings sometimes forget to realize that there are 100’s if not 1000’s variables to tweak in the search algorithms. Disclaimer: generally when I ramble on the radio, it is nearly all pure speculation.

Grab the podcast download of the show at Webmasterradio.fm

There are at minimum a good 100 + prominent variables or more for influence and rankings.

Qualifying for search click stream validation:
I think there may be the potential need to pass certain variable threshholds in order to validate the findings that a site should be in the top 10,20,50, etc.
Variables I would validate with toolbar data:

Top 8 Ideas for tracking Clickstream to Validate Quality Indicators
What I would do if I search relevancy was my goal:
-track clickthroughs on serps
-link clickthrough
-bookmarks
-history
-user data
-freshness
-community data
-social trend data

Graywolf, GoodROI, and I talked on the implications of click data in the mp3 download here for GoodKarma.

From threadwatch - clickstreams are dirty

Google patent

Rand on the historical patent

Notes:
Clickstream data is used to validate quality indicators
Example: influx of links from 10k sites clickstream data must validate that x% of the links are clicked on by users

Top most likely uses of toolbar data
1· Validation that links are for users (monitoring clickthrough)
2· Validation of site size to detect cloaking page filesize etc.
3· Understanding different types of sites different verticals have different behavior
4· Users will spend more time on a reviews site and visit periodically vs. less time on a directory type site
5· Number of times results are clicked

1 - history data relevant to:
2 -

• The “number of times that a document is selected from a set of search results
• The “amount of time one or more users spend accessing the document”
• The relative “amount of time” compared to an average that users spend on a particular site/page

Statdubl says…stat I missed in the radio show.
MSN messenger is the MS community data at 26 - 28 min. range.

Dumbest thing out of my mouth: “it’s always gettin’ tougher and tougher…”.

Sources Cited:
Google historical data patent
Roger on community loyalty

What I learned…
MG is much smarter than I am.

Thanks for a great discussion guys.

Download the new free beta Performancing Metrics here.

I really like stats and most other webmasters and SEO’s do as well. Stable positive stats over time is one of the nicest things we can hope for. While Performancing Metrics is geared more strictly towards bloggers, the need for reliable, granular data is the same.

Nick Wilson agreed to answer a few questions for me in regard to their new offering.

Firstly, Nick, what it is the differentiation factor of your stats packages versus others for blog performance software?

Well, we thought we’d miss out on the usual web2.0 hype of releasing something half baked via invite only and simply release a professional grade application specifically designed for pro bloggers that simply worked, and was available to all.

One of the main differences, is the fact that users can track as many blogs as they wish, and even track entire blog networks, or start a blog network using the system. The actual aggregated view of blog networks is not in the system yet, but it’s coming, hopefully in a week or two.

How important is statistics tracking to a professional blogger?

For some pro bloggers it’s extremely important. Being able to see how different blogs perform and how advertising performs on a blog is essential to managing a successfull income via blogging.

Having said that though, for some pro bloggers, it will simply something to help them understand how readers are finding them, and how different types of posts work in terms of participation (comments).

There’s something for most types of pro blogger, but equally we’re not a one size fits all — we’re geared toward high traffic commercial blogs, not small private blogs. There are other packages available that are better suited to some types of blogger.

What is your favorite feature thus far?

The search engine details page. I’m learning a lot, I dont like log analysers as it just seems like too much work, but looking at a web page with a whole bunch of SE info is cool.

The service has seemed to scale well, with well over 500 users in the first day of launch. What is the platform of the system?

The platform is LAMP, with some serious customization. The server setup was designed specifically for the purpose of serving thousands of blogs without slowdown to page load on the user side.

I think this is a good time to mention that you guys put the tracking code very last part of the page. This showed great forward thinking, as this way if there ever ARE slowdowns, you are not taking the user’s site down as well. I know there have been some recent issues with G analytics because they place their tracking code in the head tag which has created some downtime issues for some when the Google tracking service timed out.

I’m sure they’ll work that out, they’re a fairly clever bunch over
there.

Are there any upgrades coming in the relative future that you’d like to comment on, or rather, what are your pet peeves that you really hope the developers work on soon?

Tons of stuff. Mostly little things that are starting to show now we have a larger user base giving feedback. Many of them have now been fixed and we’ll be rolling out an update later today, but what I’m really waiting for is the public viewing options, and full blog network
functionality.

What is some of the future opportunity in the blog marketing metrics space that you’re hoping to do business and do business with others?

We’ve always been headed toward some kind of advertising solution for bloggers, and we hope to have that spec’d out shortly as the next stage in the companys development. As per our core philosophy, we’ll build the base, and our community will help shape the final product.

Can you tell us how you plan to use any of the data gathered from the
tool, or sum up the privacy policy briefly (for us tin foil hat types)?

The privacy policy will be online later today, but essentially it says “you cant sue us, but it’s cool, cos’ we ain’t gonna do nuffin bad anyway ok?”.

Okay, but I know you’re a tin-foil conspiracy theorist about data collection and storage sometimes as well (along with many of your current and former readers at TW) - Personally, I’d be much more likely to not worry about Performancing dipping into my niches, than I would be of the larger players scooping up the traffic in a large percentage of a vertical market, but the question remains - Why should I (or others for that matter) trust you with our important metrics data?

You shouldn’t. This service isn’t aimed at seo’s. Any SEO that thinks Performancing Metrics will help her do her job needs to go back and start all over again.

If you’re an SEO, or a webmaster working with Ecommerce sites, spend the money on a high end log analysis package, not a free blog orientated stats service.

Thanks as always Nick for your extreme candor and insights. Congrats on a successful beta-launch, and I look forward to sustainable, solid, valid metrics. I hope that many others will take advantage of this great service you’re offering.

Thanks Todd, always nice to speak with you!

You can get your copy of Performancing Metrics here.

Other discussions on Performancing Metrics:

• Lowdown on Performancing Metrics at Top Rank Blog
• Search Engine Journal
• Problogger.net

…I came up with the title in a hurry after watchin’ too much E channel, pop news, and reality TV garbage while working on my laptop being too lazy to pick up the remote and turn the channel. G-dub was also inspirational with his, “no one wants to be fat or poor”.

So I’m talking links with another Todd from E-marketing Talk Show tomorrow on the topic of too many links. Could you really ever have enough? 4PM PST time. I believe the below links should get you to the feed once it’s live.

The show archives are now live:

The History of Links and Their Importance to SEO Learn why links are important and how you should value them.

The Art of Link Solicitation Tips and tricks on obtaining good links.

Balancing the SEO Equation Identify the delicate balance between content and link development strategies.

Greg Niland and I sat down and talked links, SEO, karma, and many things internet marketing. I also noticed that sometime today he demonstrates in Webmasterworld supporters forum why it’s good pay attention to what good smart people are saying with his recent - How a one person operation can build a team of workers

Being the dolt I am, I forgot to post about the show before we did it, but lucky for us, they’ve got a mp3 podcast download. Greg and I get down to business discussing link strategy and ideas for attracting and obtaining better links. Goodroi Greg is a smart guy with a new blog and a contest to go to Boston.