Here are my full notes from the conference…

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SMX Search Analytics Keynote Address – Vanessa Fox

Search marketing not only brings in targeted customers, it provides an abundance of metrics – about your customers, your potential customers, your entire market. So much data is available that it’s easy to get overwhelmed. In her keynote, Vanessa Fox covers the importance of focusing on the actionable data. You don’t need every metric; you just need the right metrics for your business.

Find Vanessa Fox on the web at Nine By Blue and on Twitter.

* Old data acquisition models
o Pain to impliment
o The type of data we get online would be impossible to get offline
* How is the mountains of data we can collect actionable for the client? So what?
o How to sort through all the data?
* At the end of the day, the important factor for analytics is conversion. -How do you define a conversion?
* Analyzing Data
o Rankings reports are dead
o Key is to figure out what to be measuring
o If not actionable, it can only be of limited help
o Realize what assumptions go into computing data – can be “deadly important”.
* Critical to a lot time to collect, analyze, and act on data.
* Stages of data
o Market Research – Keyword Research – Searcher Behavior
o Industry Research – Competitive Landscape – Revenue Potential
o Conversion – Search Results Conversion – Page Conversion
* Social Media Media Metrics Greasmonkey Plugin

Analyzing & Converting Organic Search Traffic
Your management has invested in SEO, or they need to be convinced that SEO is worth investing in. Regardless, people finding your site from the natural listings in search engines are visiting your site. Search analytics can tell you who found you through organic search results and what they are doing when they get to your site.

Alan K’necht, President/Founder, K’nechtology Inc. – Analytics Segmentation – What’s a click worth?
* Corporate
o Analytics
* Brand
o Searching on product name, sku numbers.
o Traffic from other marketing efforts/brand awareness or returning visitors
o Good candidate for AB Segmentation
o Look at what pages visitors are landing on
* General Terms
o Traffic generally a result of users need for something
o Concentration of analytics effort
o 2, 3 word combinations
o KPI should be focused on non-monetary
o “email this” links good for people who browse at work, and then buy at home

Joshua Dreller, Director, Media Technology & Analytics, Fuor Digital – Analyzing and Converting Organic Search Traffic using Conversion Attribution
* Tracking Everything
o Natural, paid, display, email, affiliate, sponsorships, video links
o Takes times, resources
Cookie session deletion
* Weighting systems development
o Splitting out event paths
o Aggregate weighting system

Chris Silver Smith, Director of Optimization Strategies, KeyRelevance – How to use analytics for SEO effectively.
* Larger sites/higher traffic easier to track real changes, filtering out random fluxuation
* Importance of keyword rankings
o Important to measure, but overall the metric to pay attention to is if referral visits are ranking.
o General keyword ranking isn’t that important – longtail is more effective and valuable.
o Suggests Caphyon’s Advanced Web Ranking
o Google does not suggest using programs like AWR, but Google does provide a small amount of ranking information in Webmaster Tools
* Mature SEO programs should shift to Conversion Monitoring
o Traffic without conversion is of limited value
o Traffic should be qualified, but don’t discount unqualified too much
* Combating the law of diminishing returns
* Metrics for additional SEO
o Clickstream analysis

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Up Close with Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a powerful search analytics package, and even better, itʼs free. Come learn how to get the most from this tool.

Craig Hordlow, Chief Strategist, Red Bricks Media
* GA- The perfect match
o Gap of advanced features available for free is closing with the paid companites
* Setting up profiles
o Set up profiles to eliminate drill downs
o Should set up a different profile for every channel
* Google Analytics Profiles
* Click drop after #1 ranking – hyperbolic drop profile from #1 listing
* Black Hat Google Analytics
o Buy a flash ad on the homepage of a site, and embed google analytics in the flash ad. In effect, you have your own peek into the traffic and visitors of a website.
o Only way to technically prevent/detect it is packet sniffing

Michael Jensen, Co-Founder, SoloSEO.com – Event Tracking and Email Campaigns
* Event Tracking useful for Ajax, Flash, Videos, Downloads, Outbound Links, IntraPage Links
* Event Tracking Model – Category, Action, Label, Value
* Email campaigns
o With google analytics, you can creat a link with a variable string in the link, for event tracking. – Able to even track individual links within a newsletter
* Use url shortening service to make the actual urls shorter

Chris Silver Smith, Director of Optimization Strategies, KeyRelevance – Using google analytics for optimizing locally oriented sites.
* Content targeting local users

Frederick Vallaeys, AdWords Evangelist, Google
* Lots of data is available – trick is how to narrow it down and use it
* Organic Search to find new keywords
o Useful for discovering how people are finding iste
o Useful tool – search query report
o Search based keyword tool – looks at organic listing, and lets you know where keywords are missing
* Regional targeting
o Insight into how to split campaigns based on geo conversion rates
* Website optimizer – AB Testing and multivariate testing

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Top Ten Customized Search Analytics Reports
A marketer can choke on all the data generated by web visits. Even the lowest-end analytics software and services offer hundreds of canned reports, but only a few of these are relevant for search marketers. No matter what vendor you use, these reports should be customized to increase their value to your business. This session looks at the reports most useful to search marketers and how they can be tuned to your personal needs.

Craig Hordlow, Chief Strategist, Red Bricks Media
* Top Ten Reports
o Keyword Level ROI
o Money Left on the Table
* True Click through rate
* Understanding visitors motives is key to optimizing reporting structure and format to provide them with the most relevant information.

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Successful Testing For Improved Search Marketing ROI
Improving conversions is often a trial-and-error proposition. Continuous testing and tuning is crucial for improving results and ROI in search marketing campaigns. Youʼll leave this session knowing what elements of a search marketing campaign you should test, the best practices for testing and to document and communicate the results to others in the organization.

Chris Goward, Co-Founder and CEO, WiderFunnel Marketing – Optimizing conversion rate
* Important to be able to ask the right questions.
* Six Foot legibility test – if you can’t see the call to action from six feet away, it’s too small.

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Traffic Segmentation & Why It Matters

Each of your visitors is unique, and your site should accommodate their needs. Search analytics allows you to segment your traffic by location, demographic characteristics, psychographics and other dimensions. This session looks at audience segmentation and how to do it right.

Scott Brinker, President & Chief Technology Officer, ion interactive – Why traffic segmentation matters.
* Segmentation granularity as strategy- as a business becomes more segmented, key is to define which segments are the most valuable.
* Optimizing keywords requires build-out of multiple landing pages, not just one. Amount of landing pages comes from ROI analysis.
o With multiple landing pages and behavioral choices up front, visitors segment themselves before having a chance to bounce. Active Segmentation
* Landing pages – site-wide navigation is generally not advisable.

Carrie Hill, SEO Team Leader, Blizzard Internet Marketing
* Showing demographics by URL or keyword Phrase – http://kl.am/msndemographictool
* When asking form questions, people will tend to fill out a form if “optional” is not used.
* Email marketing – next frontier for optimized online marketing
* PPC – Easy way to geographically target

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Search Analytics & Competitive Intelligence
Your competitors are smart and aggressive. Knowing their search marketing strategy allows you to validate your own, and to outflank them with innovative tactics. Search analytics is the answer. This session shows you how to implement and profit from a comprehensive competitive intelligence campaign.

Helen Overland, Director of SEM, non linear creations
* Using analytics to view traffic and clicks based on network name and location
* Ability to track individual competitors and their PPC campaigns based on advanced filtering in Google Analytics to narrow down to specific company/network.

Dharmesh Shah, Chief Software Architect and Founder, HubSpot – Competitive Intelligence in Social Media
* Social media matters – lots of traffic, activity. Companies should care because the demographs are changing and diversifying.
* Social media integration with search marketing – Facebook seach box is within the top 10 search engines in the world for raw search volume!
* Twitter Grader
o Measures social media authority and reach

Ian Strain-Seymour, Director of Product Strategy & Development, ApogeeSearch
* Outcome you’re trying to get to will tell you a lot about what type of competitive research to focus on
* Competiors to consider for research
o Direct Competitors
* Industry stragglers?
o Semantic Competitors
o Parallel business models