Last week, I gave a 45-minute presentation at eMetrics London on a variety of analytics for SEO topics. The presentation slide deck is embedded below:
Metrics for SEO by Rand Fishkin (eMetrics London 2010)
The presentation went into more depth in person, but topics included:
Some basics:
- Measuring traffic against macro query growth
- Measuring against search market share
- Measuring against temporal trends
- Keyword selection based on traffic quantity, quality and difficulty of ranking
- Choosing keyword messaging to optimize conversion rate
- Tracking CTRs on search results
- Identifying crawl errors using a variety of tools
- Tracking rankings - when, where and why it's useful
A handful of intermediate level tactics:
- Getting beyond "last-click" attribution
- Evaluating indexation for SEO
- Tracking vertical search results using filters
And some more advanced items:
- Evaluating metrics for predicting search results ordering and valuing links/content
- Applying metrics to improve your SEO
- Valuing social media together with search
- Discussing the relative impacts (both primary and second-order effects) that social has on rankings
Happy weekend everyone!
We need to get audio for these bad boys!
I agree...at least a voiceover ;~0
Technically, it's possible to add a recording with PPT. I've traditionally put up these presentations to help folks who want to access them from the conference and to tease folks who are interested to come to events like eMetrics/SMX :-)
However, I could start putting together some voice+PPT recordings and make those available. I wonder if Scribd can effectively host those - will check.
Yes Rand, thanks for thinking about the possibilty... maybe we all could look for a tool like that.
I understand that thes posts are somehow a repository for the attendees of your intervention at conferences (and this is very nice from you) and a "hey guy, you gotta attend these events!" stimulation.
But it can be a little bit frustrating (at least for me) when actually someone would love to but cannot actually attend all the events he would like because of distance, of their costs or something else. Even more frustrating when you know that in your country (Italy or Spain in my case, for instance no SMX Madrid this year) those kind of events are such a rare gem that you have forcely to look for planning trips and create an "event-attending-fund" (pass + travel + accomodation + extras).
I'm working on my schedule in order to be able to attend some of these events in the future, but events like PubCon or others that are held almost only in the USA are something I will have to follow through tweets (yours, the Joanna Lord's or Jennita's or Suzzicks' ones are great in this sense), posts, reportages and - yes - if it comes the opportunity to have PPT + Audio... wow! I would be the happiest SEO.
I agree...
Its difficult to get to a lot of these events, especially when some are pretty expensive. I understand the value but getting the boss to dig out his credit card is not easy!
To get the audio, listen to the ppt then action the ideas may help to show the value in getting to these events in person.
That would be incredible! Us paupers can't afford to go to these conferences or are at least a bit too busy!!!
It would be really convenient!
An SEOmoz podcast perhaps!
Or in lieu of audio, can we get video of Rand miming the entire slide deck?
Seriously, great stuff here.
Hi Rand,
Thanks for sharing you presentation!
In your slide #18 you mention about using GG /xhtml version to track personalized results or using pws=0. Both ways do not work very well. In the XHTML version I've noticed that GG provides some different results in comparison to GG normal version (www.google.com). And when we talk about the pws=0 it only works if you delete all cookies.
One question: do you have any ideas on how to track clicks from those "verticals" (sidebar) in new Google's Interface?
Fabio - technically, I'd say nothing works perfectly. For many reasons, search results simply aren't consistent anywhere. However, I'd say that using xhtml and pws=0 are better than nothing, and since inconsistency appears to be the norm, nothing is going to be perfect.
Re: tracking the vertical search usage, I believe some custom GG analytics filters would do the job. I'll see if Joanna would possibly post about that next time :-)
Rand,
A great back-to-basics post that is not all basic! What is mean by "attribution" (first touch, last click, full life cycle)? I couldn't tell, but would like to know. Of course, slides without commentary just aren't the same, someone should have filmed you!
And thank you for "ignoring the site: command." I wish you would build a true indexation checker!
About PageRank, my latest thinking: Google keeps it in the Toolbar for the same reason it gives us all the other crappy data (think site:, link:, "inanchor...): to mess with our SEO minds and to frustrate the living daylights out of us! This data doesn't help us much at all, but wouldn't we all feel a bit lost without it?
I think SEOmoz is uniquely positioned to provide SEO metrics that will be better than and potentially replace those provided by Google. What do you say?
Re: attribution - check out Will's presentation on the subject.
Re: site: - see this post on exactly that topic
Re: PageRank + better metrics - we've got a post on that, too!
Hi Rand,
why the site command is so bad?..are we going to forget it checking indexation? I saw that numbers dont match in your slides..any other reason anyway?
tks
Site: works fine for small sites and and can be wildly misleading when it comes to large sites, not to mention very large ones.
thank you Philip, so to get the indexation (righ one) we need to use GA and Google Webmaster Tool as Rand slides tell us?
Thanks for the pointers, Rand! Seliously, you need an in-depth post on the "advanced Google operators." I.e. what they are still good for, what they are no longer good for, etc. That would be a much needed posy and tremendous linkbait for you too. Not to mention that I would be grateful. :)
Rand,
All of the requests for audio are a reflection of the quality of the content. I get most of the content from the slides alone and it's great stuff. However, there is always that one or two slides where I think, "what's he getting at here" and I really want to know because it's great stuff.
Full audio would be awesome.
OR
Webinar's would be great too.
OR
A quick sentence or two of notes for each slide would help or lot.
OR
I can just be grateful that you are posting the slidedecks, which are helpful by themselves.
I think all of the above apply.
-Derek
Hi Rand, PPT looks absolutely great with informative stuff. But I have to agree with others here. I really miss a video/audio description here.
Actually, some of the things that you mentioned are sometimes the things that long-time SEOs fail to remember.
This can help SEOs recall every part of the SEO process.
I wish I can attend these conferences too. Please hold one here in the Philippines Rand! lol
I'm seeing some sort of error when I try watching the presentation. Is there some sort of problem with the video or is it an issue I have to fix on my computer? I'm trying to improve on the SEO of my site, would really appreciate tips. Thanks.
< echo>Some of these slides need a little more explanations, how about some voice over?</ echo>
I always appreciate your openness Rand, but I have to agree with those above that mentioned how difficult it was to parse actionable info from the slide deck alone.
That said, I also totally understand that those that paid the $$$ to attend the event are the ones entitled to the whole ball o' wax.
Sitting on the sidelines here, not having paid a farthing, I'm happy for anything and everything that comes out of a conference I didn't attend.
Very often, it's possible to get a really clear picture from following the live blogging of SEO events. For example, last year at the SMX Advanced, between Richard Baxter, Lisa Barone and the Bruce Clay team, I was able to get a ton of useful info. Without having spent a thing!
Granted I missed a lot that didn't make it into the blogs, not to mention one of the biggest attractions of live events; the networking/friend building aspect.
Great stuff, Rand, but what about the audio?! :)
guys, this slide show is making little sense without the audio !! ;(
If Rand started putting full audio on these slides I don't think the organisers of these events would be too happy in the long run, because if a few other key speakers followed suit then there'd be less of a reason for people to attend in the first place. I don't know who owns the IP rights, but either way it could be counter-productuve long term.
Not that you missed anything by not going to London SMX this year, the general standard of presentations and usefulness to the professional SEO was poor in my opinion. Unless you like listening to presenters endulge in self-promotion and mutal back-slapping about how wonderful they all are.
I agree that presenting a full rendition of a conference presentation might be taking it a bit too far... I've posted full recaps of things I've done at seminars before, and although some shows make presenters' posts available after the fact, I guess there has to be a threshold of how much should be kept for paying attendees. a4u Munich posted presentations online (that conference was on at the same time as SMX and was of a really high quality). However, as the comments here show, it takes the input of the speaker for many of the slides to make sense.
Edit: Case in point: there is one comment on my presentation on Slideshare. It makes the observation that the presentation is "short". Due to discussion, the 15 or so slides took an hour to get through. The visual prop alone doesn't do a session justice.
I also asked for Q&A to take place througout, so lots of people put their hands up... that's obviously in no way represented by the online slide show. I tend to think that can be a more informative format than an hour of someone rattling on anyway.
Sad to hear that SMX was heavy on the self-promotional side. Like I said, I wasn't there this year, but I would have hoped people were aware that an hour-long sales pitch and in-joking doesn't impress an online marketing audience :\
I'd like to stress that regards to my opinions on SMX, they are just that, my opinions alone as an individual. I'd also like to point out that there were a few excellent presenters and presentations there, some from people I knew (by which I mean I have heard of within the industry) and some I did not previously know. For example, I thought Charlie Osmand gave an excellent presentation.
I do however think it is fair to say the reaction to the overall conference from attendees was "mixed". From speaking to my colleague who went to eMetrics, I have heard much better things from this side of the conference.
Although I seem to have started this audio thing off, I do agree with you that people are paying for this and therefore why should we get it also?
But like gfiorelli1 said not everyone can attend and as you have said its not quite the same when your not there yourself with Q&A and of course all the other presenters.
Maybe audio from the actual conference is a bit far but an audio run down of each slide would be a good idea or have the full audio for pro members only?
Some sort of comprimise like that would seem inherently sensible to me.
Maybe a solution could be a SEOmoz webinar... but I know that it could be a no-solution for the not PRO members.
This balance has always been tough on the Web, right? Aaron Wall often points out that at some point, a person needs to pay for good content, but we're trying to find where that point is, I suppose.
If these industry events were really on the ball, we could pay for live streaming or downloadable content from the events. At a level of detail less than the benefit of attending live but still worthwhile information worth paying for.
So for example you could pay to watch the presentations, or a selection of presnetations from a certain track but obviously you don't get the networking and maybe the Q&A without actually being there.
It depends if we want to be a single global community of industry peers, or carry on as the have and have-nots, isolating those excellent SEOs who for one reason or another don't or cannot attend these events. In my most humble personal opinion, we should also not lose sight of the fact that just because someone is speaking at an event, does not necessarily make them an authority on the matter. (This is not directed at anyone here, it is a general observation).
This is way off topic now, but I think it is an interesting debate to be having, I hope people don't mind.
It's a good discussion and one that's far more on-topic than some comment threads end up being!
The location of many conference is obviously a pain for lots of people: If I lived in my native New Zealand, I'd not have had the choice of going to either SMX London or Munich - those destinations took the better part of two days to get to! Events take place in New Zealand and Australia (Barry Smyth's team at Search Engine Bootcamp makes sure of this), but not to the extent that we get to enjoy in Europe or North America.
I've got to think someone has offered a paid option for streaming conferences before, but I've not heard of it in our industry. That's a bit sad since we're meant to be such high-tech individuals :)
Mmm... maybe it's a topic, but noone is finally less techie passionate than the techie themselves... maybe it's a question of being miopic.
Well - we don't stream, but we try to do the next best thing, which is to sell DVDs of the conference 4-6 months after they happen. The delay means there's value in coming to the show itself (and networking of course, too), but the information presented is always available to those who can't make the trip.
You are right... ojalá others would do what you do with your SEOmoz Events.
Infact in my fund I found the budget in order to buy the SEOmoz DVD collection.
Anyway... have you ever thought about some special Podcast series? Just brainstorming.
We've also got the two monthly webinars for PRO members and you can download recorded versions of those a week after they've happened via https://www.seomoz.org/dp/pro-webinars.
I know that, being a pro member, and that's why in a previous comment i suggested a webinar in the future to exploit better these slides. I really like the webinar as they are really a great occasion to learn and ask realtime.
I'd have to agree with many others on here that the value of this would be a lot stronger if there was video. A lot of conferences provide videos after as not everyone can attend due to business obligations etc. I believe a lot of people would be willing to pay for this if the value of the content provided was high (which it is lol)
your blog is nice and has good commnets also. thanks for posting good articles.