Pear Analytics

If you’re trying to rank higher on search engines, it’s probably a good idea to not overload your site with Flash.  While there have been strides by the search engines to parse Flash files and grab the readable text, unless you set this up properly, chances are the Flash will end up hurting your rankings.

When to use Flash

Flash is a great tool if you have a complicated product that needs more explanation or if you need entertainment value on the website.  Secondly, with the increase in mobile internet use, Flash is still not visible on the latest iPhone and Blackberry, so it’s likely those visitors will be bouncing.  At Pear, we’re getting about 20% of our visitors from mobile devices, so you could be losing out on those visitors with a Flash landing page.

Alternative solutions to Flash

But now we can use AJAX and other javascript techniques, like sliders and expanders, to uniquely display content without bombarding the visitor with content, and yet it’s all still readable by the search engine.  Check out how ServerBeach, a dedicated hosting company, uses javascript sliders instead of Flash to nicely organize lots of information.

Setting up proper use of Flash

If you or your developer still insist on using Flash, there are some ways that you can set up your code to optimize it for SEO, and it has to do with accessibility programming.  This blog post by Jonathan Hochman is a great overview of the multiple ways you can set this up using SWFObject 2.0, or even SIFR in some cases, although I understand SIFR is more used for typography enhancements, where you would like to use a non-standard web font, but get credit for the text in an H1 tag for example.

The SWFObject method provides a way to include alternate HTML content on the page which is visible in your source code, and all it uses is a tiny javascript file.  This stems from the Web Accessibility Initiative which says all multimedia content should have an alternative way of accessing the content.

3 Comments »Tags: flash seo, SEO

On Tuesday, Google released their SEO Report Card where they did an extensive evaluation of themselves in terms of search engine optimization. The result? Well, not so good. Even Business Insider agrees that Google fails to eat their own dog food by noting that only 10% of their own product pages conform to the proper title tag protocol. Even if you type in “search engine” into Google, they come up as the 5th result, and it’s not even google.com, but a different beta product. I wonder if that’s on purpose.

So if Google sucks at SEO, why do their other products rank #1 for so many search terms? Is Google using their own algorithm on their products, or are they overriding it when it’s convenient?

Search for “apps.” Google Apps is the top listing, not Apple.

Search for “documents.” Google Docs is the top listing, beating out several government related sites.

Search for “video.” The number one position? Google Video. Who the hell uses that anymore? And where is the Google-owned YouTube? Maybe again, this is on purpose.

So, is it possible that Google is purposely not listing themselves on keywords such as “search engine” and “video” to deter attention, and then quietly ranking themselves number one for all of their other products? Sure it is. The search giant, according to HitsLink who publishes search engine market share data, is still commanding an 86% market share for search, and are clearly using the “freemium” model to get high adoption rates on their free products so you’ll eventually buy their advertising – their cash cow. Compare that to Bing’s 3.4% market share despite the millions they’ve been spending in advertising. Nobody seemed to switch overnight from Google to Bing.

Nevertheless, the Google SEO Report Card gives insight into what the search engine thinks is important. Here are a few highlights:

1. Google does not consider the meta description for rankings. It is purely for humans to read what the page is about, so you should write those to grab attention, not to rank higher. (Although, we still see the search keyword highlighted in SERP, so we’re not totally convinced it’s worthless).

2. Google finally says how site links are determined. Ever notice those listings that have links to the site under the title and description? They say that using a hierarchial site structure, descriptive anchor text and avoiding deep nesting of content behind many sub-directories will get you there.

3. Clearly, duplicate content is an issue. In the report, they stress the importance of using the rel=”canonical” attribute to determine the preferred page. They prefer that you consolidate your non-canonical versions and 301 direct them to the canonical version. Of course, that screws up your tracking in Analytics if you are creating multiple instances of a page for marketing – it won’t track visitors on a page before the 301 redirect.

No Comments »Tags: google, SEO

Keyword research is one of the most important steps for good SEO of your site.  First let’s start with understanding what keyword research is. Essentially keyword research is understanding which keywords you want to target (for each page in your site) and which search terms you want to be found for on search engines.For example if you are a php consultant in California you probably want to be found for the terms ‘php consultant’ and ‘php consultant California’.

So why use a keyword research tool in the first place? A keyword research tool will give you more information about the words you want to target and also ideas of which words you could target. So assuming you are a php consultant then the keyword tool will tell you how many times people search for the keyword you want to be found for. For example the term ‘php consultant’ gets 590 searches a month approximately. This way you don’t target terms which have very low search volumes.

Typically comparing numbers between keyword research tools is similar to comparing numbers between different analytics tools. There will always be a frustrating difference. When comparing different keyword tools, there is usually a minimum difference between numbers in the range of 10-30%.

For example, lets compare numbers for the keyword ‘buy domain‘ in three of the most popular keyword tools:

1. Google Search Based Keyword Tool shows monthly volume as 8200

2. Google Adwords External Keyword Tool shows a 6600 monthly volume for the same keyword.

3. Keyword Spy shows a monthly search volume of 135,000! This huge difference is probably because they are showing ‘broad search’ numbers as opposed to the exact search numbers.

So what should you do? Here are my recommendations:

1. Use one tool and stick to it’s numbers:  There will always be a difference in numbers between tools because of the way they collect data, whether it’s a broad search or exact search. I wouldn’t recommend using two different tools and reconciling data between tools. The three tools metnioned above are pretty good and I personally mostly use the Google Search Based keyword tool  because it gives me valuable information about how competitive  a keyword is. Keyword Spy is useful to understand what keywords your competitors are bidding for in Adwords . Google Adwords tool is useful when you are out of ideas for keywords because of the number of suggestions it generates. The important thing is to never mix data from two tools and make inferences.
2. Use keyword research data as data points relative to each other :For instance if the keyword ‘buy domain’  gets 8200 searches per month and another keyword ‘buy web domain’ gets 440, instead of focusing purely on the absolute numbers the takeaway should be that ‘buy domain’ gets approximately 20 times the search volume as  ‘buy web domain’
3. Never make assumptions: Always tie in SEO with the numbers on your Analytics tool. You may rank for a competitive term on the first page of Google and assume (falsely) that it may be driving in lots of traffic. Check your analytics reports to see how much traffic it drives. More importantly create custom reports to find how many ‘Goal conversions’ resulted from that keyword search on your site. That is the metric you want to ultimately track to measure the true success of a keyword.

Lastly,  never be bogged down by the difference in numbers.Good luck with your keyword research!

1 Comment »

The answer is probably “yes.”  The search marketing business is already incredibly large and growing fast, and because of how lucrative it is, it’s attracting all types of “snake oil” salespeople.  According to a Forrester Research study done in July 2009, the search marketing industry is expected to grow to a $31 billion dollar industry by 2014, with 21% of that total on advertisement spending like Google AdWords.  This most certainly is related to the fact that over 85% of all products purchased started with an online search.

It’s also amazing how such a large industry is still very much in its infancy.  Google launched their first version of a search engine in 1998, so the industry is really only 12 years old; yet what’s fascinating is that what you knew back then almost certainly doesn’t apply now.  For instance, in the early days you used to have to “submit” your site to Google in order to let them know you existed.  Today all of that is done automatically through “crawling.”

The other fascinating thing, at least in the SEO world, is how disparate the expert opinions can get.  One says keyword density is a myth, the other says it’s important.  One says the h1 tag matter the most, the other one says it’s the title tag.  It’s enough to make a skeptic out of anyone.  Who should you believe?  And why do they charge so vastly different for their services?  One SEO consultant will charge $400 per month, and another one won’t take you unless you spend $5,000 per month.  How are you supposed to evaluate the differences between costs and expertise to make sure you get a “bang for your buck?”

Let’s look at a few basics that you should understand from your SEO:

1.  Does the SEO himself rank in the search engines?

You’ll have to take this one with a grain of salt since you might not readily know what terms the SEO is actually trying to rank for.  They should at least rank for their own name and some moderately competitive terms related to their field.  You can ask them what terms or phrases they are trying to rank for.  Maybe you got to them via a Google search anyway, but you’d be surprised.  I remember responding to an RFP where one of the other respondents was not even following their own advice on their website.

2.  Does the SEO tend to talk about or use old practices?

When evaluating the SEO, ask he or she what kinds of techniques they will use to help rank your website higher.  Beware of words or phrases that involve “keyword density”, “buying links” “one-way reciprocal links” or similar.  Developing inbound links is probably the most daunting task in any SEO workplan, yet can be the most rewarding.  Links are meant to look and feel “natural”, not purchased or manufactured.  Google is smart enough these days to pick up on footprints from link farms and other tricks.  It simply does not work anymore.  We once saw an SEO who built web pages for a client by creating them over 3000 pixels wide so that you had to scroll all the way to the right to see hidden content.  Folks, there are better ways to do this now.

3.  What was the last search marketing event the SEO has attended?

With an industry that can literally change overnight, it is important that the SEO keep abreast of the changes within the industry.  Ask them questions about how Google Caffeine will affect search, or semantically related words.  Or how is real-time search going to affect SEO?  If they don’t have explanations for these kinds of issues, then it’s likely that they don’t get out much or read some of the top search marketing blogs.  Beware of this person.  A good SEO will invest in the time and expense to travel to big cities, which is where all of these events are.

4.  Does the SEO speak at events?

For an SEO to speak at events, particularly search marketing events, it’s likely that this SEO is regarded as a highly knowledgeable and trusted colleague in their field.  They will probably have to present new technology or techniques that are new the field, which means they are more than up-to-speed with what’s going on.

5.  Does the SEO tend to talk over your head showing off their technical prowess?

Beware of these people.  Yes, technical prowess is good, but for most of your audience, they won’t be web developers or IT experts.  A good SEO is able to water down the explanation of what they are doing and why into “Fisher-Price” language so that you can understand it.  If the SEO is talking over your head, it could mean they are trying to over-impress you, and if they know that no one in the room can challenge them, they are probably embellishing most of what they are saying.  An SEO who openly admits for not knowing something is probably worth more and speaks volumes to their character.

6 Comments »Tags: forrester research, SEO

The following editorial is actually a thesis written by Josh Lavine, a student at Princeton University who’s task was to interview a start-up company, preferably in the hi-tech area for an Entrepreneurship class.  It is quite long, but describes how Pear Analytics was started and where we are going, the challenges we face, and more.  I’ve also left out the Appendix due to length, which you may see notated throughout the report.  This is Josh’s final thesis, and frankly I was impressed by how much he learned about our business and industry in the mere 4 or 5 hours he interviewed me.  I also plan to implement several of his suggestions for improvement which he notes at the end of his report.  Josh is personally invited by me to come join our team at Pear any time. Enjoy!

It is December 23, 2009, noontime. I smooth my shirt and try to lick the tomato sauce stain off my sleeve, then open the door to the office of Pear Analytics. What I saw surprised me.

The office, located in San Antonio, TX is quaint, but strangely chic. It is only one big room with no walled-in spaces, except for the two small conference rooms in back. Large neon green and blue balls are rolling around the floor (I would later find out that instead of buying expensive chairs, the team realized they could just sit on cheap, cool colored exercise balls). Ryan Kelly, founder and CEO of Pear Analytics is presently standing (towering, really—he’s must be 6’6”) at one end of the room, watching one of his office mates from BrandStack, the company he shares office space with, play tennis on the Nintendo Wii on an enormous flat-screen TV—probably the most expensive piece of equipment in the room. If Kelly turned his gaze down and to the right, he would see Romy Misra, his senior analyst, writing equations in dry erase marker on a large glass table. She records her calculations on her laptop. Kelly’s other employees—just three web developers—were out for the day. I follow Kelly into one of the back conference rooms. We sit down and start talking.

Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment »Tags: josh levine, morris miller, pat condon, pear analytics, san antonio startups

New data is out to show that visitors want sites to load in 2 seconds or less, and Google says fast sites may get slight preference in rankings.

A new study by Akamai confirms that Internet users are as fickle as ever.  Their new study released in September this year shows that 47% of consumers expect an e-commerce website to load in 2 seconds or less.  While the study focuses on e-commerce, I can’t imagine the behavior is much different on a non-e-commerce website.

You might remember the study we did several months ago where we took the Akamai study from 2006 and developed a visitor loss curve from 0 to 30 seconds using some fancy math.  We use this data in our SiteJuice product to tell site owners how much potential visitors they could be losing based on how long their page is taking to load.  If you’re not using SiteJuice, sign up for free.  Our curve is based on a visitor patience of up to 4 seconds.

How this affects your Google rankings

Google search engineer, Matt Cutts, has mentioned twice now that Google may be giving a slight advantage to pages that load quickly, while slow loaders won’t receive a penalty on their rankings.  Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz writes about in their blog post yesterday, where “web page load times can positively influence rankings.“

No Comments »Tags: google rankings, page load times, SEO

The Pear Analytics Website Analyzer tool has analyzed nearly 5,000 unique websites since we launched it in March this year.  We’ve helped many website owners make changes themselves with our “Fisher-Price” instructions to get their site more search engine friendly.

Now we’ve kicked it up a notch.  Now we’re offering to fix parts of the site for you – and for cheap.  A good portion of your searchability issues are going to be related to the technical side of your website – a place where many avoid due to the complexity and fear of breaking something.

There are 2 options for you too – we will fix the problem and you install the changes, or for a bit more, we will fix and install the changes for you.  If you want us to install it, we will simply send you an invitation to allow us to briefly access your computer while we work our magic.

Give it a shot and start the process by analyzing your website.

I’d love to know what you think.

1 Comment »Tags: SEO, seo tools, website analyzer

What exactly is anchor text?

Well, anchor text is a common term we use in SEO to refer to the text links on a webpage.  These links are highly valuable in helping you rank for the search terms you desire.

The concept is fairly simple: make a list of the terms you would like to rank well for in Google or other search engines, and create links to your webpages with that as the linking text.  For example, if I want to rank well for “free SEO analysis”, then I would try to put that as linkable text on as many high authority and trusted websites as I could.  This is why if you were to copy the script for our free customizable widget for the Website Analyzer, you will see a link like this on the widget: a free SEO analysis by Pear Analytics.  The link brings the user to the page I want, and has the proper text in the link.  It is important that the copy on the page has to do with the anchor text as well.  Try to have the words in the link on the page somewhere, preferably in the title tag as well.  If you do any Google AdWords campaigns, you would be familiar with this methodology since this is the same general concept around the Quality Score (the ad has to be relevant to the page it is pointing to).

It works, and we proved it

Last week, my friend Nan Palmero wanted to know how he could rank high for the term “blackberry power user”.  If you know Nan, then you know that he really is the ultimate user of the BB.  At the time, he ranked somewhere on the third page of Google for this search term.  He frequently blogs for some big sites with lots of trust, like blackberrycool.com, mysa.com and others.  I found out that he was linking his name to his blog, so I asked him to go back to all of his old blog posts and change the anchor text from “Nan Palmero” to Nan Palmero, Blackberry Power User.  The next day he was on the first page of Google.

Try it, and let me know how it worked out for you.

2 Comments »Tags: anchor text, SEO

Have you ever been to a website that takes forever to load?  What do you do?

We’ve taken some past research and developed a way to determine how many visitors you could potentially be losing based on how long your website takes to load from 0-30 seconds.  This was not easy – only a couple of studies have actually been done, and not only are they “aging”, but they have also been controversial and only up to around the first 4 seconds of load time data.  Obviously, there are many factors involved in determining how long you are willing to wait for a page to load, but with tabbed browsing, faster connections speeds, and more, maybe this is why a real study has not been done since 2006.

Here are some key takeaway points from the research we were able to come up with:

- Zona research said in 1999 that you could lose up to 33% of your visitors if you page took more than 8 seconds to load.
- Akamai said in 2006 that you could lose up to 33% of your visitors if your page took more than 4 seconds to load on a broadband connection.
- Tests done at Amazon in 2007 revealed that for every 100ms increase in load time, sales would decrease 1%.
- Tests done at Google in 2006 revealed that going from 10 to 30 results per page increased load time by a mere 0.5 seconds, but resulted in a 20% drop in traffic.

Wow.  A half of a second?  Is that even enough time to take a breath? Yet, when browsing, most people will lose patience and leave your website before they even have time to breathe.   How this relates to e-commerce sites is pretty important. If your website is selling a fairly generic item, your site had better load pretty damn fast or you just lost your sale to some other guy. At Christmas, when every parent is looking for this seasons must have toy, better hope your website loads in under 2 seconds. When a husband forgets his anniversary and is quickly looking for a flower delivery place while the boss isn’t looking, your pictures better not be too big and take forever to load.

So how long does your webpage take to load? Check out Pingdom.com/Tools, and then come back here and approximate your potential visitor loss:

If you prefer to “geek out” and read our entire white paper, you can download it here.  (I will warn you that it does mention words like “mathematical model”, “radioactive first oder decay” and “non-linear regression”.)

10 Comments »Tags: ecommerce, page load times, visitor loss

Right now we are working on developing a premium version of the Website Analyzer, our free SEO tool. The tool is scheduled to be launched at the SMX conference in New York City from October 5-7 (the same conference where Microsoft Bing was launched last year).

We are still going to give the detailed and non-techie reports on the free Website Analyzer just like you get today. However, the premium version is going to help you automate and monitor your SEO efforts in a lot more detail.  We will be sharing some features and how they work in the near future.

We are really excited to get an opportunity to showcase our tool at SMX and getting feedback from the search community.  Look forward to seeing you there!

No Comments »Tags: premium website analyzer, SEO, SMX