Alex Cohen interviews Dennis R. Mortensen on SEO and Analytics (+3 SEO Tips)

This being the third low priority post in a row, turning it from hello magazine for nerds, into a Danielle Steele miniseries and now into an Interview Saga... I did an interview with Alex Cohen over at Search Marketing Gurus on the matters of SEO and Analytics the other day; Titled (funny enough): SEO, Analytics and Dennis Mortensen.

If you do not have the time to click through, find my three SEO measurement and optimization tips from the interview below:



SEO Tips:

1.
Optimize towards true company objectives, whether that be Revenue, Profit, Customer Lifetime Value etc. Don’t do the #visit optimization, as that will very likely do more harm than good.

2.
Coordinate your SEO and SEM efforts and look at a combined ROI – as they are highly intertwined.

3.
Optimize beyond your own controlled site content, optimize on uncontrolled off site content as well. Essentially help good customer advocates rank better. This is a dangerous activity, but for those brand and service confident enough, it is a powerful activity.

dennis :-)

Rand Fishkin interviews Dennis R. Mortensen on Tracking Traffic Spikes using Analytics

My second low priority post in a row - (..I am almost on my way into a Danielle Steel mini-series) – Rand Fishkin caught me on the floor while at SMX in Santa Clara and invited me into his wildly popular whiteboard Friday show - and this one filmed on-location. I tried to illustrate and bring up the fact that a traffic spike "woo-hoo" moment might actually be a "boo-hoo" moment.

Cheers
Dennis

Jim Hedger talks with Dennis R. Mortensen about the importance of web analytics

Low priority post! (..or Hello magazine for nerds if you want) - While I attended SMX in Santa Clara I ran into Jim Hedger (as always) and he invited me over for 10 min. on the couch. We chatted openly about Analytics and the importance it plays in today’s online marketing disciplines. If you are in the target group - my mom, my daughters and randomly flawed Google traffic :-) .... check it out.

Or the MP3 file:
The-Importance-of-Web-Analytics-Dennis-Mortensen.mp3

Cheers
Dennis

10 Cool things you can do with Web Analytics

I had the pleasure of being invited to sit down with Eric Enge from StoneTemple, as part of their 2007 Web Analytics shoot out, talking about 10 cool things you could do with the IndexTools Analytics tool package. As I understand it, he will do a couple of other articles in this “series” – so that you get to hear about NetInsight, HBX and Clicktracks as well. But here are the two articles Eric have done so far:

• 10 Cool Things you can do with IndexTools
• 10 Cool Things you can do with Google Analytics

...And staying on the fun subject, Adam from Mashable had an entertaining article this Monday about: 50+ Ways to Track Website Traffic – that you should scroll through just for the fun of it. Even though I personally do not think that there is no more than some 10ish Web Analytics Vendors out there - and 5 of them are listed above :-)

Disrupting Web Analytics

I was recently quoted over at the Alarm Clock (inside new technology ventures) – and I absolutely love their blog post title of “Disrupting Web Analytics From Budapest” – there is NO DOUBT that I am going to “steal” that phrase and re-use it over and over and over till Omniture or one of the other “big four” send a check - to make me quiet.. and that just for a while :-)

Another great (for ME) quote was their comment on our official press releases: “Accompanied by the ballsy move of listing four of its competitors, Webtrends, WebSideStory, Omniture and CoreMetrics, in all its press releases”

For a second there, I felt just like Janus and Niklas! Ha ha..

Digital Marketing Event 2007 (DME) – Amsterdam

I just returned from another trip to Amsterdam, this time participating and exhibiting at the event: Digital Marketing Event 2007 (DME) - and I must say that I am once again stunned by the level of local knowledge!

I was speaking both days on the subject:

“Web Reporting vs. Web Analysis - Getting to understand that reporting on any metric at pure face value within a very limited context is unsound and should not be confused with actionable insight from analysis”.

But more about this in another post.

Tv4b interviewed me as well. It’s actually more like an infomercial when I see it again.. ha ha. But do go have a look :-)

Link: http://www.tv4b.com/index.php?page=watch&f_videoid=253
Length: 4.07 min.

N.B.
I think the VIDEO is only live and streamable for a week - so do let me know if it does not work anymore!

Interview with Dennis R. Mortensen, COO of IndexTools – by Lars

Lars is somehow the de-facto European president of the WAA – or at least the one European WAA voice I hear the most :-) .. nevertheless; he has done some tremendous work in setting up Web Analytics Wednesdays in Stockholm (I attended a Web Analytics Wednesday in Stockholm – which had a whooping 70 something attendees)

I did an interview over at his blog the other day and you can find it here:
Interview with Dennis R. Mortensen, COO of IndexTools

About the following subjects:

• What makes IndexTools unique?
• Do you think the new release of Google Analytics increases your need to be innovative? If so, how?
• What share of your clients are located in Europe?
• If IndexTools didn’t exist, which tool would you use and why?
• What is your biggest challenge in 2007 and how will you overcome it?

And I think I conclude it perfectly and to an absolute A – answering: “Finally, we are really a bunch of exceptionally nice people” – I love the fact that we do not have five full time communication "experts" on board, that would delete comments like that... ha ha.

Comments from Search Engine Strategies New York 2007

Just finishing up and closing down after four great days at Search Engine Strategies – New York ... Waiting to go to the Airport in Newark (how did I end up there?).

I think my one (actually two) takeaways from this show would be that:

• Use of Analytics to perform in a very competitive Affiliate Marketing market is crucial!
• Use of affiliated advertising on a web property should not begin before after hitting the 1000 unique visitors a day

I could not agree more and I am happy to see this confirmed by a super affiliate like Jeremy Schoemaker a.k.a “ShoeMoney” – especially his strong emphasis on the use of Analytics – which also verify the need of a blog like this; with a subject: “Dennis R. Mortensen's blog about how to increase publisher revenue through analytics!” :-)

Bryan Eisenberg’s did his always exciting Webmaster Radio Blog Buzz show, live at SES. I participated with this group of sharp analytics focused people that Bryan introduced as the "guru's of the space":

• Avinash Kaushik
• Gary Angel
• Marshall Sponder
• Dennis R. Mortensen
  

DOWNLOAD/PLAY: Blog Buzz SES NY (MP3)

Duration: 10.28 min. File size: 10MB

...And I am thrilled that I got to tell Gary Angel that there indeed is people (ME to begin with) that read his bright posts in detail – however long and advanced they are. They are a perfect fit for my one hour commute. :-)

Equally nice to meet up with Marshall Sponder in person, after reading I do not know how many hundreds of his posts.

Back to Budapest and off to Emetrics in Düsseldorf.

Emetrics London Video Interview: Dennis R. Mortensen

I had the chance to sit down with David White from weboptimiser and comment on Emetrics and the Web Analytics industry general.

David’s comments:
“Dennis from IndexTools explains why you should visit the next Emetrics Summit, He tells us what is in it for him, what is in it for you, why visitors enjoy the event and gives us one or two of his famous top tips.”

Length: 3.42 min.
Link: Dennis from Indextools (Google Video)
Entertainment level: high :-)



I think David has done some fantastic editing...

Podcast: Web Analytics and Click Fraud - Dennis R. Mortensen interviewed by industry expert Eric Enge

Eric interviewed me a good week back on the subject Web Analytics and Click Fraud for a Podcast.

The summary of the podcast:

• Reports based analytics approaches vs. metrics based analytics approaches?
• The Report surfing sin
• The web analysts persons role in a successful analytics strategy
• Click fraud and comments on measurements
• Challenges facing the web analytics industry in 2007 and beyond

If you find that as intriguing as I do :-) here we go:

DOWNLOAD/PLAY: Dennis R. Mortensen Podcast (MP3)
File Size: 6.0 MB, Duration: 26.0 minutes

Find the following Cool Podcasts over at StoneTemple Consulting:

• Dennis R. Mortensen – Mar 9,2007
• John Marshall - Mar 8, 2007
• Jim Sterne - Feb 22, 2007
• Avinash Kaushik - Feb 9, 2007

..And what a fantastic group of people I am associated with here. If I am not mistaken, we will all meet up in a week’s time at Jim’s E-metrics summit.

N.B.
Eric blogged about it over at SearchEngineWatch.com as well, under the title: Click Fraud is between 2% and 4%! :-)

Cheers.

Q. Name an example of when analytics can increase an affiliates revenue

I was recently asked whether I wanted to answer a set of questions in line with the topic of my blog – which I am of course delighted to do. The first question goes like this:

Q. Ingrid:
“Kindly give us an example of when analytics could increase an affiliates revenue drastically – indicating why analytics was important and how it was used”

A. Dennis:
No problem Ingrid. First, let me point out that I think there is multiple Analytics Strategies that an Affiliate (on any level) can use to increase revenue, but to answer your question on a very actionable level, I will use one of my favourite affiliate metrics as an example; The “Conversion Participation Metric”. (I talked a bit about conversion funnels on my blog last month, and this is what I described as a “Non-Linear Path towards conversion”).
Most affiliates (or Publisher as some call it) write valuable content that are aligned with their keyword strategy and use these pages as part of their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy. However; ranking well and driving in organic traffic on a specific set of keywords, based on a well optimized content page, is not the same as concluding that this is the page that contributes the most towards conversion.

Conversion of course being a bit tricky when you are an affiliate (I briefly touched the subject in my outline of conversion tracking for affiliates post). Complicated because you typically do not convert the visitor on your own site, this is done on the retailers site. But let’s just conclude for the sake of the example that conversion is a “On Click conversion” (clicking the retailers banner). As an example, let’s imagine an affiliate website with the following pages:

• CarPage01.html
• CarPage02.html
• CarPage03.html
• CarPage04.html
• ...
• CarPage99.html

Best performing affiliate programs for this imaginary website is:

• TradeDoubler’s “AVIS Car Rental”
• TradeDoubler’s “Hertz Car Rental”

The content pages all drive relevant incoming traffic for wanted keywords, BUT given the question on how to optimize your content to increase “Car Rental” conversion (clicks on banners) – we simply do not know which of our pages contributes the most towards this conversion. So we would not be able to conclude where to optimize. This is where the Web Analytics Conversion Participation Metrics comes in handy. Running a report on the pages that contributed the most towards the “Car Rental” conversions, we would be able to find out that it is in fact e.g. CarPage37.html and 5 other pages that contributes the most when talking about these conversions (Remember we might even find pages here that do NOT have the AVIS or Hertz banners). This conclusion gives us a clear actionable insight of where to optimize for even better conversions in the future, it might even enlighten us on what behaviour drives “Car Rental” conversion.

I hope this straight forward example gives you and your readers an indication of how powerful analytics can be. :-)

Go see the original post here: http://www.rabbitblog.hu/2007/03/13/webanalitika-novekvo-bevetel (Hungarian)

Search Engine Strategies London 2007 (+Bonus Interview)

I recently returned from Search Engine Strategies (SES) in London. And I think most people would agree that an event / forum like this is successful if you return with ONE advice/input on how to optimize and improve your business. I of course, as an exhibitor, was there for the leads! :-)

Two of our really smart partners demib.com and SEOmoz.org were both part of the advanced track panel: “Organic Listings Forum” – where the following simple but powerful advice where presented and debated:

SEO Advice: “If one are to start a new web project – do NOT register a new domain, instead Google your industry keywords and start looking from 'page 5' for old mismanaged domains. Acquiring such a domain will give you a very valuable head start in your SEO efforts."


NB:
I had the pleasure of being able to add my comments on the Analytics industry in general - at the last London SES. So here goes a 5 min Interview With Dennis R. Mortensen (me!)

Interview of IndexTools' Dennis R. Mortensen

I was recently interviewed by Eric Enge - Eric is the President of Stone Temple Consulting and writes for Search Engine Watch. We talked about a lot of stuff, amongst others:

• Metrics based approaches versus report based approaches
• Key challenges facing the analytics industry in 2007 and beyond
• key questions businesses should be asking, when they are deciding upon analytics solutions

The interview is long and I recommend, should you find the time to read it one day, that you print and bring it on your tram ride as I did :-)

Link: http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-dennis-mortensen.shtml

He have done a set of interviews with some really cool guys (and yes - you can discount me.. ha ha) – which till date counts:

• John Marshall - Feb. 28, 2007
• Avinash Kaushik - Feb. 25, 2007 (Avinash's analytics blog)
• Mark Lucovsky - Feb. 18, 2007
• Eric Peterson - Feb. 11, 2007 (Eric's analytics blog)
• Jim Sterne - Jan. 17, 2007
• IndexTool's Dennis Mortensen - Jan. 8, 2007 (my analytics blog)
• Google's Brett Crosby - Jan. 3, 2007 (google's analytics blog)
• Yahoo's Tim Mayer - Dec. 4, 2006
• Eurekster's Grant Ryan - Nov. 11, 2006
• Google's Shashi Seth - Oct. 24, 2006

I will be doing a PodCast with Eric one of these days and will post the result / link here as well.