November
16, 2005
In This Issue:
1. Success is Not High Rankings
2. In the News - Google Base & Analytics,
Monday shoppers
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - Photography and privacy
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Success is Not High Rankings
The SEO/SEM industry continues to buzz with discussion
of Google's "Jagger" update (which we
discussed briefly in Net Gains last week). People
are analyzing SERPs, trying to find the takeaway
from this latest update -- what did Google change?,
how are the SERPs different?, what factors are
weighed more heavily or less heavily?, and so
forth. And there is, of course, a lot of "My
site dropped from No. 1 to No. 50!" complaining.
All of which led me to have to remind myself of
this: a high ranking in Google or any search engine
is not the end goal. The end goal is increasing
your revenue, adding to your membership base,
providing customer service, or whatever else your
web site's purpose is. Search engine rankings
are just one way to help achieve that goal. And
ultimately, if your site isn't an effective tool
for serving that goal, all the No. 1 positions
in Google or Yahoo won't make a difference.
So be concerned about your search rankings, keep
an eye on how you're doing there, but rather than
spend a lot of time wondering why your site dropped
from No. 2 to No. 200, spend as much or more time
wondering why only 2 out of 200 visitors were
able to figure out how to make a purchase. Because
no matter how much traffic your site gets, conversion,
in the end, is what it's all about. It's better
to get 100 visitors per day and convert 25% into
customers than it is to get 200 customers per
day and convert only 2%.
_________________
In The News
Google Base
Just in before this newsletter gets sent out comes
the formal launch of Google Base, which we first
brought up back in Net Gains #77. I haven't had
time to even look at it, much less use it, so
here are a couple links to others with thoughts
on Google Base.
SEW Blog: Poking
at Google Base
John Battelle: All
Your Base are Google, the Launch
Google Analytics
This week's Hot Topic is Google Analytics, a new
service from Google that measures traffic to your
web site. It's free and reportedly easy -- just
paste a Javascript snippet into your web site
-- and you can't argue with that combination.
But you can argue with the idea of letting a search
engine (which makes money by selling ads related
to your web pages) see all the data about your
web site. The data about which pages are visited
most on your site, how long people stay on certain
pages, what keywords they searched to find your
site, etc. -- all of that is incredibly valuable
information that should remain private. People
are analyzing the Terms of Service for Google
Analytics, analyzing Google's privacy policy,
and so forth, and ultimately, it appears Google
reserves the right to share data about your web
site (at least in the aggregate) with its business
partners. As Andrew Goodman at Traffick.com said,
"Giving Google your private business data?
Priceless... to Google that is. Buyer (freeloader)
beware."
Google
Analytics
"I DO Like Mondays"
The Boomtown Rats weren't singing about holiday
online shopping when they sang "I Don't Like
Mondays." According to one recent study,
Mondays are the busiest days of the week for shopping
during the holiday season. The reason? Shoppers
"tend to follow up their weekend store visits
by researching comparative pricing and purchasing
on Mondays." So if you're a store owner hoping
to do big business this holiday season, maybe
do a little PPC advertising on Mondays and see
what happens.
News.com: Study: Mondays
key for Web holiday shopping
_________________
More News Headlines
Here are a few news headlines worth your time
to read. These are just some of the headlines
we've posted to OWTweb.com in recent days.
The
Flickrization of Yahoo
November 14, 2005 - Business 2.0
Ignorance
isn't bliss in SEO
November 14, 2005 - ClickZ.com
Good marketing to increase product awareness provides
excellent, quality linkage. And a greater understanding
of search engine technology helps prevent others
from turning that linkage against you.
Google
personalized search leaves Google labs
November 10, 2005 - Search Engine Watch
Google's personalized search reorders search results
based on your history of past searches, giving
more weight to topics that interest you.
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
This Week's Q&A
Hi Matt,
Is it okay to use photos of a person's home on
our web site without asking permission? We have
some content pages that won't make much sense
without photos that show what we're talking about.
We found a couple homes that have what we need
and would be a great fit for this web page on
our site. We took the photos while standing on
the street. We didn't go onto private property
to get these pictures.
David
Hi David,
I'm not a lawyer, so I have no idea what the legal
answer to your question. (Any lawyers reading
this? Want to help without giving legal advice?
Please email.)
That said, if I saw my home on some web site,
I'd probably be upset. If you can ask permission,
I would. If you end up using these photos anyway,
without getting permission, I'd think you'll want
to make sure there's nothing identifiable about
the house -- no street sign/name showing, no address,
no people, etc. But again, I don't know if that
has any legal weight.
By the way, have you considered using stock photography?
(Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
That's it for this week. I hope business is treating
you well. Please send in any questions we can
help with - the email address is above!
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
The OWT Newsletter is a weekly service
offered free to anyone interested in learning
more about web development, search engine optimization/marketing,
and just about anything else related to running
a business web site. You don't need to be an OWT
client to subscribe to our newsletter!
Subscribing and unsubscribing can
be done online at OWTweb.com. You may share this
newsletter with others as long as the newsletter
is shared in its entirety.
Private replies to emails will
be written if we have time, but we don't provide
web site critiques or consulting services for
free. You can learn more about our web development
and search engine marketing services online at
www.owtweb.com. |
