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The Gazette ... Issue: 203 (09-02-2003)
Have You Seen Me Lately ?Last week (August 18-24), The Search Engine Strategies Conference (SES) was held in San Jose, CA, at The Doubletree Hotel. Nearly 2000 attendees made the trek to Silicon Valley to dance with Google, soak in the sun, suck in the drinks; and network their rear-ends off. Oh, there were tons of very educational presentations as well… Read on. |
| Johnny's Ramblings |
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I consider myself somewhat of an Internet Conference Veteran, having attended seven different events, as well as being involved as a speaker on several occasions in The Internet Marketing Conferences, http://www.internetmarketingconference.com, (IMC) produced by JimGuide Lennart Svanberg. By and large, conferences such as SES and IMC follow a similar formula, a barrage of speakers armed with PowerPoint presentations, brief periods of Q & A, and a few hours of planned networking time at lunch and dinner. Typically, all of the smokers tend to find one another and conduct a bunch of side deals (Smoking may be bad for your health, but it's great for business), and the drinkers tend to do the same (Although for some reason, their deals seem to be distant memories by morning...).
Each conference has its own "feel." IMC is very much a professional event, very much geared towards educating you during every waking hour. Lennart does a great job of lining up a dizzying array of speakers who both entertain and educate. SES, on the other hand, had just as many presentations (many simply rehashed information from other sessions, but a few were extremely interesting), but the true value of the conference was the opportunity to network at the many sponsored parties and events. As not so subtly stated on the PubCon Web site (http://www.webmasterworld.com/conference/) "the real 'pro' work done at SEO conferences is done at the bar after the seminars let out...," and SES was certainly no exception. I'll let you in on a few tidbits and insights I picked up over the course of four days hanging out with the search engines and their minions:
Complete SES coverage from JimGuide Andy Beal: Day 1: http://www.searchengineguide.com/beal/2003/0819_ab1.html Day 2: http://www.searchengineguide.com/beal/2003/0820_ab1.html Day 3: http://www.searchengineguide.com/beal/2003/0821_ab1.html Day 4: http://www.searchengineguide.com/beal/2003/0822_ab1.html |
| In the Crosshairs |
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Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) is a new professional organization (nonprofit) who states its mission is "to fill the gaps in awareness and understanding of SEM, including educating marketing managers worldwide about what SEM is and how properly implemented SEM programs can provide some of the highest returns on investment possible in the marketing world today." Not stated in its mission, but made clear in their inaugural meeting at SES Day 4, is that they're also a lobby group, with the secondary intention of attempting to inflict some influence on the search engines, based on their clout and influence.
I've always been leery of "professional organizations." Typically, (and SEMPO is appears to be no exception) these organizations are made up of people with a lot of money and notoriety, who profess their desire to enlighten the world, empower the masses, and make life better for everyone. In my experience I've been involved in the Kiwanis, the Rotary, countless database/developer organizations, and even a union (one and only once) the only people served by the organization are the people inside, and more specifically, at the top of the organization. They're able to take advantage of the "bully pulpit" and the "big stick" to further their own agendas, and fuel their own businesses, while the grunts get little benefit beyond the window sticker and a tax write-off for their dues. The jury is still out on this one. We'll be keeping a close eye on SEMPO as it develops, and as it grows. I sincerely hope that they remain true to their goals, and that they serve the people that they claim to. We've worked hard as SEOs/SEMs to achieve even the current (modest) levels of acceptance that this industry now enjoys. It would be a shame for an organization with good intentions to undo what we've worked so hard to achieve. For more information, visit the SEMPO Web site at: http://www.sempo.org |
| A Word from Our Sponsor |
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Just how cool is ClickTracks? Cool enough that after a week of using it, I did a complete redesign of the JimWorld.com home page. Everyone should, by now, know the importance of studying your Web logs. Your logs can provide you with an unbelievable array of information about your Web site's traffic: How many visitors you have, where they're coming from, how they're finding you, what time of day they get there, and so forth. What your logs don't tell you is what your visitors actually *do* once they get to your Web site.
Enter ClickTracks. ClickTracks processes your logs, intelligently, so that you don't have to study raw text files or decipher fancy bar graphs. ClickTracks features your Web site in an internal browser and superimposes detailed information about the activity on the pages you're looking at. The stats include information like: how many visitors saw each page, how much time people spend on each page, how they get to the page, and most important, what page they visit next. Each "link" on your page is shown in a special way within the ClickTracks viewer so that you can see what percentage of visitors clicked on each link. We used it to analyze JimWorld and immediately saw that users were bypassing the links on our home page that we wanted them to follow (the articles), and were heading down to other links. Because of ClickTracks, I realized that our home page was really just a bunch of links into the main parts of JimWorld, and was not set up to make it easy for visitors to find the specific parts of JimWorld that they were looking for. So, I divided the home page into sections that are targeted at specific types of visitors (Designers, SEOs, Programmers, Marketers), and provided each of them with the links that were relevant to them. Guess what? Our traffic levels haven't changed, but I've found that visitors to our home page are now seeing an average of 5 to10 additional pages when they visit JimWorld. ClickTracks allows you to use this option to drill deep into your Web site so that you can track the paths of specific visitors. For example, what's the typical click activity of a person from the UK that searches for "free templates" at Google going to do at JimWorld? The ability to know more about your visitors' activities and being able to tailor your Web site to suit them is what makes ClickTracks. It is, quite simply, the best (and coolest) log analysis system we've tested, and we highly recommended it. Click Tracks Home Page: http://www.clicktracks.com/index.php?jimworld Web Log Forums: http://www.jimworld.com/apps/webmaster.forums/action::topiclist/forum::web-logs/ |
| Forum Watch |
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It's been a few weeks since we announced a massive round of changes to the forums, and things are going very well. Traffic is increasing at a rapid speed and shows no signs of slowing down. Conversations and debates are being sparked by new members and JimGuides alike. We'd love to hear your thoughts about the JimGuide idea, and we're always open to suggestions about other changes that might be worthwhile. You can share your feedback and ideas with us by dropping us a line at the JimWorld Feedback Forum: http://www.jimworld.com/apps/searchengine.forums/action::topiclist/forum::gazette/
You may have also noticed that not all of the forums currently have JimGuides associated with them. We still have over a dozen spots open, and we'd like to encourage our members and Gazette readers to apply for the positions. The basic requirements are: * A history of posts in the forums that demonstrate knowledge of the forum topic * A history of posts in the forum that demonstrates an ability to spark conversation * The ability to play well with others in the forums * The willingness to write an article on your topic once every two months To apply for a JimGuide position, send an email message to Jennifer Laycock explaining which position you are applying for, and containing links to existing threads in the forums that you feel demonstrate your qualifications for the position. In the next issue of the Gazette, I'll be explaining an interesting new feature that John is in the process of finishing up for the forums. Jennifer Laycock (thejenn) http://www.jimworld.com/apps/webmaster.forums |
| Coders Corner |
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Pull up a seat, boys and girls... this one's worth the price of admission.
We're going to work this week on a cool tool that uses the GoogleAPI. My intent here is to show you just how easy it is to use, and how you can do something cool, if you just think outside the box a bit. This code sample was done in PHP, but can be easily replicated in Perl, or any other language that has simple opject access protocol (SOAP) support. The relevant libraries that you need are listed at the end of this article. Note that in most cases, your ISP's installation of Perl or PHP will not include the SOAP extensions by default, so you'll have to ask that they be installed for you. If you run your own machine, you should be able to install the necessary core libraries by yourself in just a few minutes. The "SOAP_Google" class listed below, which is the basis for this article, is free for your use by visiting the author's Web site. You can install it into the same directory as your GoogleAPI scripts. Ok, here we go... One of the things essential to any SEO, and really, to anyone who operates a Web site, is to know where they rank at Google for a given search term or phrase. Using the GoogleAPI, we can very easily find out where a site ranks, without having to visit Google.com and going dizzy reading the results. The source code for "test.php" follows, and is commented so that you can follow the logic. Happy position checking!
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