Here at Distilled we have just had much merriment writing a poem to go on the Christmas (e) card we have just sent out to our clients.

Given the recent upgrade to our reputation monitoring tool we wanted to tie the poem into that. After much hilarity the following was what we came up with.

With mince pies, mulled wine, laughs and good times,
Distilled are celebrating with short Christmas rhymes.
So easy on the brandy to avoid heart palpitations,
And be sure to monitor your online reputations.

There were many failed attempts at SEO related gags, which are now all on the cutting room floor (so to speak). You are of course welcome to steal and reproduce any of these gems and (please) take full credit for them.

SEO Flavoured Christmas Poems

When the wood has been chopped and the fire is smoking
We hope Matt Cutts doesn’t spot you’ve been cloaking.

We hope your Mum doesn’t get you too dodgy a sweater,
And we hope that your search engine rankings get better.

We are all looking forward to a Christmas of snow
and whilst we are at it, for our bounce rate to stay low.

We hope you get all the presents you want, and more
and we hope that Google gives you a great quality score.

Enjoy your Christmas, the tinsel and glitter
Spend time with your family and stay off twitter

If you’ve finished the brandy and played all the games
Why not teach your Gran how to buy great domains

There’s now no excuse if your gran is a n00b
Even the Queen puts her speech on YouTube

Fun and laughter aside, everyone at Distilled wishes you all very happy Christmas.

So, with the bar well and truly lowered its your turn. Please do your worst in the comments.

I recently installed the new Adwords Editor 7.0 and thought I’d share my thoughts and first experiences of it with you. Although there is plenty to like about the upgrade, there is also one big problem that you need to keep your eye on. First the pros;

First page bid estimates: AdWords Editor now uses first page bid estimates for your keywords. Minimum cost-per-click (CPC) bids are no longer used.

Keyword Quality Score: The Keywords tab now displays the Quality Score for your keywords.

Keyword Opportunities locale: Tailor your keyword suggestions to a particular language and location by changing your Keyword Opportunities locale.

Campaign targeting in the data view: You can view your targeting settings in the new ‘Language’ and ‘Location’ columns on the Campaigns tab. These columns are hidden by default, but you can select them with the column chooser.

All of these are useful additions and being able to see quality score and minimum first page bids in particular will be very helpful.

Now the problem, the auto backup does not work! I learned this the hard way – most of my accounts were posted to Adwords so were safe and sound. However I was also working on one new account that had not got to a state where it was ready to be posted. So when I installed the new version of Adwords editor, choosing to backup when prompted, I was surprised to find that the account was now empty. Ok, no problem I thought, I just need to find the backup file and import it. However when I found the file it was empty. I was disappointed to find that all the work had been irretrievably lost (N.B. - this sentence might be laced with understatement).

If you are going to install the update (which I would recommend as the new functions look very useful) just make sure you backup fully and avoid the frustration of seeing hours of hard work evaporate.

I have been experimenting with some advanced features in Google Analytics over the last couple of days. I was inspired by some very clever insights from Search Laboratory (sphinn it here) that we have found very useful.

I wanted to be able to use Google Analytics to find referrals from the second (and greater) pages of Google search results (details at the end on how to do this for Yahoo! and Live). We find this data hugely useful during SEO projects because if you are ever getting decent traffic from page 2 (or any traffic from pages 3+) that indicates a huge opportunity for increased traffic. Sometimes this can be done just with on-page changes, sometimes it needs some more links, but it’s almost always worth it. Up till now, we have had to gather this data with additional third-party tools or log file analysis, but since the vast majority of our clients use GA, it is worth the effort to work out how to do it.

So enough fluff. How do you do it?

Start by creating a new profile for the site:

Note that Google Analytics profiles do not dynamically apply to previously-collected data, unlike segments which make an appearance later in this technique, so you need to do this in advance of needing the data.

Once you have a new profile, edit it and add a filter:

Set that filter up exactly as this image shows:

The text in the Field A –> Extract A box is (\?|&)(start)=([^&]*)

This is a regular expression which extracts the parameter called ’start’ from the referring URL. Google uses this to determine which page of results to display (page 2 is start=10, page 3 is start=20 etc. for anyone with the default settings of 10 search results / page). If you want to set this up for Yahoo!, they use a parameter called ‘b’ and b=11 is page 2, b=21 is page 3 etc. Live uses the same numbering scheme with a parameter called ‘first’. So replace ’start’ with ‘b’ for Yahoo! and ‘first’ for Live (and remember that you need a different segmentation below).

Once you have your filter defined, that includes the output into the User-Defined field (that is what $A3 means in the Output To text box). When you go into your reports, you can now see data broken down by this. That isn’t quite what we want though - we want to see referring keywords that come from specific pages of search results. To do this, we need the new feature in GA called ’segments’:

Click on the drop-down and add a new segment:

Set it up as shown above (user-defined value is under the ‘Visitors’ dimension). If you want 2nd page referrals from Google, you want matches exactly = 10 (I find it useful to have a segment for that and another for pages 3-5). If you are setting up a segment for Yahoo! or Live, and set the filter up appropriately for them above, then you will need 11 / 21 / 31 etc.

Once you have this segment, you can apply it to any report you like:

Apply it to your organic keywords report, and you’re good to go!

On another subject entirely…

For those of you not just interested in learning about Google Analytics, I published a post earlier today called SEO agency for sale? (just before disappearing off for 3 weeks’ holiday). If that headline isn’t enticing….

Late update

Joast’s site has just published this post which gives a nice addition to the method that includes the referring page in the keyword data.

I haven’t written much recently about the inner workings of Distilled as a company, but it’s obviously something I spend a lot of time thinking about. I love reading others’ posts on similar subjects though, so, in tribute to one of my favourite blog posts of all time (and lots of openness since from our friends at SEOmoz) I thought that now would be a good time to write about some stuff that Duncan and I have been thinking about a lot this year. If you are going to comment, bear in mind that I am writing this just before I jet off on honeymoon for 3 weeks in New Zealand (whoa! 3 weeks? What happens to you when you are offline that long?). I’ll drop back in here to reply when I get back!

To dive straight into the main point of the post, we’ve had a number of people approach us this year who were interested in buying Distilled. To tell you our answer straight away would over-simplify the thought process…

The approaches have fallen into three categories:

1. New integrated agency (with or without funding) looking to bring us in
2. Larger player in our industry with technology (not SEOmoz!)
3. Larger player in related industry wanting to build technology

Obviously it is always flattering to have people think that you are doing good things and looking to buy your company is an extreme example of this. So we loved that… But then we had to work out what we wanted to say in answer.

A framework for a decision

Before trying to work out the answer to a specific question (“can we buy you?”), we tried to work out a framework for making these decisions - essentially trying to work out what is important to us. It’s probably not an exhaustive list, but our initial brainstorm came up with a list something like the following:

• Fun (for us and our team)
• Control
• Money (obviously!)
• What happens to our brand

At some point in a negotiation, a lot of things come back to money, but early on, it’s surprising how few things do.

Control was probably the most important one (at least partly because it leads to us being able to make the decisions about the fun and the brand). Our connection to our brand is at least partly irrational. We have never done this before. We’ve never built and run a business and so it’s emotionally important to us in a way that I imagine second or third companies might not be. But there is also a very real way in which it’s important; if people are interested in the people and technologies enough right now to be interested in paying for them, but they aren’t interested in the brand, then we’re pretty confident we can improve our prospects by making the brand an indispensable part of the package.

So once we’d realised control was so important, we broke that out further:

• Control over our personal day-to-day roles
• Control over the direction of the business (clients, rates, services, staff etc.)
• Control over the branding
• Control over the owning entity (i.e. board seats etc.)

We started to think we had it nailed at this point - that if an offer crossed a threshold of keeping enough control, then we might consider it (below that point, it would effectively just be hiring the team). However, as we thought about it some more, we realised that actually, we might not really be for sale in any meaningful way right now.

If you ignore personal cashflow concerns, the basis of the decision comes down to whether you think you can do more in conjunction with another party than you can do on your own (scaled by the % ownership you have of the joint thing).

We started to think about the kinds of thing we can / could build / do with extra cash (obviously a larger parent company isn’t the only way to get access to cash - once you start thinking down this route, funding is also an option). It’s not the first time we’ve wondered “what could we do with an extra £100k, £500k…..?”.

The rapid development nature of what we do means that in pretty much all cases, we could, with a modest investment (of the order that we can just afford) get to a point where either the project would be self-sustaining or at least would be a much juicier investment prospect. That of course means putting our money where our mouth is (our mouths are?) and investing pretty heavily in growth. So that’s what we’re doing.

Now, the groups of people we met who were interested in our business were great people - we could actually see ourselves going through with some of the possibilities in many ways - but ultimately, we started this business ourselves to see where we could go, to challenge ourselves and to build something meaningful. One thing that is already a very visible outcome for me is that employing people is one of the most rewarding things there is. We are working at the moment on ways to give our guys a share of the pie and we owe it to them to make that pie as valuable as we can.

So what are we doing?

Well, I’ve been quite quiet writing here on our own blog - partly because I’ve been putting most of my good ideas into writing for the SEOmoz blog. The contacts (and contracts) we have got through that have been pretty special and there has been a lot of cool work being done quietly at Distilled HQ recently.

We are going to be shouting much more about Reputation Monitor, our buzz and brand monitoring tool. It has just had a facelift and some new features added (Duncan is going to be writing a post about the technical stuff and benefits, and there are loads more cool things on the way). A few high-profile individuals and some great brands are now using Distilled technology to keep track of what is said about them on the internet.

Working on a new version of Reputation Monitor has needed additional development resource and we are now at 14 staff. The team has grown and matured hugely since this time last year when I think there were 6 of us. I have certainly learnt a lot this year and I think everyone else has too. Much of the new resource is development resource - working not only on Reputation Monitor but also on our new equity-stake-venture (the first time we have worked for an equity stake - more details to come soon, no doubt) and also to work on some new, to be confirmed (sorry, I mean secret!) stuff.

One outcome of this is that we only just fit into our new (and, we thought at the time, huge) office. I think we’ve missed announcing at least some of our new hires here, but it almost goes without saying that we are very excited to be growing (and, as always, a healthy amount nervous).

What about the credit crunch?

One obvious question to ask is whether this is a good time to be doing all of this as the financial world crashes down around our ears?

Well, our last few months have been our best ever (each improving on the last since August) and with some definite cashflow tied up around the equity project and more cash in the bank than ever before, we are confident that this is a perfect time to be investing in ourselves and our colleagues and technology. We are intending to continue to grow. I hope our clients and partners will join us in bucking the wider trend.

As Seth Godin said as the credit crunch hit

If I wasn’t already running my own business, today is the day I’d start one.

Inexperience

Having said all of that, we have never run a business through a downturn before and we are well aware that hubris would be an incredibly easy mistake. So we are taking advice from all areas we can and looking into creating a trusted board of advisors to help steer us through.

I am incredibly proud of what the team has achieved and amazed that this little company started just over 3.5 years ago in Duncan’s front room is going so well. I’m also pleased that it’s doing well enough for me to leave it for 3 weeks. I don’t think I could have done that this time last year.

So on that note, merry Christmas, happy holidays and enjoy your New Year parties and I’ll be back in January (after one last technical post so it’s not all about the business - stay tuned for one of the most useful tips I have discovered recently for helping your SEO campaigns).

This video that included a (brief) interview I did at the Courvoisier Future 500 party last week intrigued me because it mentioned that Courvoisier spent over £1m in the first year on this whole social / online / offline / PR strategy. An interesting number. I wonder what results they have seen?

It was good to see Walid from TrustedPlaces having his say…

There have been a couple of interesting developments in paid search in the last week. The first was that Google are planning to run their own ads linking to Google search results for a variety of high value keywords such as credit cards – and they are going to run them on the content network. They will only be advertising on head keywords rather than long tail but I have some misgivings about this move. Although I can believe that this could be a useful source of traffic, I certainly don’t think that it would be as productive as regular search. I doubt very much whether the traffic would be of as high a quality as someone who was initially resolved to look for the high value item under their own head of steam so I would be concerned about paying regular search CPC for these less intent-driven searchers.

I would be very surprised if the clicks converted at levels on a par with regular search. I suspect that conversion rates would be only marginally better than the regular content network – but of course the key to this is whether we will know. After recently writing about the new transparency of seeing Search partners separated out from Search only data, this feels like a step backwards with another level of traffic being added to search. If we can see this traffic separated out and opt in and out as we see fit then I welcome the move. Any potential source of extra traffic is welcome as long as it can be measured, evaluated and selected. If Google believes that this is a valuable source of traffic for us then they need to show their faith in it and show us the figures to back it up.

The second news story, from out-law.com, is that Interflora is suing M&S and Flowers Direct Online for bidding on their brand name. Brand bidding was introduced by Google to the UK in April and this is the first real test of its legitimacy. Is brand bidding, as Interflora claim, a “free-ride upon the fame of the Trademarks, thus conferring upon themselves and/or their goods or services an unfair advantage over the Claimants and/or other traders, and/or members of the public” or is it a valid tactic, albeit annoying if you are a major brand, that companies should accept and get wise to? Looking at the laws under which they are bringing the claim I can see how you could rule either way but it does seem that it is no different to setting up advertising next to the competitor’s store. As long as there is no use of a trademarked term I think most people would agree that, when moved to the real world, this is perfectly legitimate. The increased proximity of the advertising online pushes this to its furthest point and for some people this feels wrong. I don’t think that it is but then that’s just my layman’s opinion. From a PPC management perspective I have found brand bidding to be a mixed bag in terms of results but always very hard to maintain. As you cannot use the keyword in the ad text or on your landing page, quality scores will often be very low and decent clickthroughs hard to achieve. If brand bidding was banned I would certainly lose a source of useful traffic but I’d lose a few headaches at the same time. I look forward to seeing how the case unfolds.

As those loyal readers will know yesterday saw the Observer print a supplement entitled Generation Next which profiled 500 of the up and coming talents in the UK across a range of disciplines (and yes, I was in it, which is why I’m blogging about it ).

Unfortunately the online implementation seems to have stumbled a little. As part of the award all members get access to an online networking site where we can presumably all chat and market heavily to each other, cool! The only problem is that we haven’t yet got access to this online network. This, coupled with the fact that my previous blog post ranked quite well for related terms meant that it became the place to hang out and chat - leading to over 23 comments so far.

Then when I got into the office this morning I twittered about it and ran a few twitter searches to see if anyone else who’d become a member this year was on twitter. Turns out there’s loads of us on twitter!!

The Twitter 500

So, without further ado, here’s a quick list of twitter accounts for winners that I’ve been able to find:

• @aeioux
• @willharris
• @wigadoo
• @ralvin
• @dancingwombat
• @peteashton
• @johnxela (wow, I’m a big fan of Xela and Helios!)
• @trustedplaces (a client as well as it happens, hi Sokratis!)
• @rajanand (looks like we have a thing or two in common - we should talk!)
• @AndyCockburn
• @willcritchlow (technically in last years but I’ll make an exception since he’s my bro)
• @gandy
• @wikijob
• @iansanders

And of course the list wouldn’t be complete without my twitter account!

@tomcritchlow

If you find any more people on twitter please let me know and I’ll add them into the list! I look forward to meeting you all on Thursday

We have been working recently with some of our long-term clients to expand their online advertising from PPC into PPC + online display. For some reason, it seems to be something that quite a lot of prospects have been more interested in recently when I have been out and about meeting people. I can only speculate that this is because of the increased visibility of online advertising as all the media talks about online as resistant to the downturn.

The combination of search and display is something that fascinates me - I have written about trying to measure it before over at SEOmoz.

So I was interested to read Nick Drew’s piece on research Microsoft have done with comScore to measure the uplift in traffic to a site when display advertising was combined with search. The results are pretty dramatic as you can see in the chart above (hope they don’t mind me nicking the chart - I’m assuming they want to spread the word far and wide!).

The comments on that post are worth reading because there is a bit more insight into the methodology. While it is never possible to guarantee results in this kind of study without doing extensive double blind work advertising new brands that do nothing else, it is nonetheless interesting data.

The biggest question it creates in my mind is about the mechanics of the effect and the relationship with natural search. Presumably most of the search traffic that display advertising drives is branded queries - and most brands rank for their brands, so the mechanic of why PPC is causing such a large uplift when combined with display is still not entirely clear to me.

Anyone got any ideas about that?

But is it NoNoFo ?

As time progresses and technology adds to the way we live our lives, new words and phrases emerge. Some stay for a while, some become a part of everyday conversation, and some turn out to be no more than a passing fad.

Often, the creation and subsequent adoption of new words is driven by a lack of any word to describe an intangible concept.

Within our industry, Search Marketers have been forced to find new ways to understand and explain many of the concepts we deal with, that didn’t exist 5 or 10 years ago. Some were not even a concern to us the week before last.

When Google foisted the concept of nofollow-ed links upon us, the name instantly became an everyday part of the Search Marketers vocabulary. Of course, what we are generally interested in are the ‘links which do not have nofollow applied to them’ - a phrase said almost often enough that a term was bound to emerge sooner or later.

And indeed it did, in a Distilled Skype conversation sometime in July 2008. When we started talking about links with nofollow on as nofo links, then the obvious next step was to refer to their link-juice passing cousins as nonofo links

New Media, New Language

There are other phrases that have crept into our language because of technology and the internet that wouldn’t make sense a decade ago:

• “I get 100 free minutes a month.” - Is that all? How busy are you?
• “I have a lot of friends in the blogosphere” - We have Bill Quick to thank for that one.
• “lol” - You’ve not truly embarrassed yourself until you’ve accidental said this as an aside in a real-life conversation
• “Rob keeps sending me spam” - maybe he thinks you look underfed?

So, today’s topic for discussion: Do you have any favourite terms that fell out of favour or don’t get used anymore? (and don’t you dare say nonofo )

NoNoFo Squirl photo by richardlowkes.

This is just a short post to say that anyone who thinks about international SEO should read this post from the clearly very clever Daphne Dembo at Google. Wow. Even though I have spent a lot of time thinking about the challenges of international, there were still some things in there that blew my mind with their complexity.

I’m glad I don’t run a search engine!

On a separate note, I’m going to hijack my own post to say that if you are in London, you should really head along to the Online Information show next week because you can see:

• Me talking about monitoring and measuring social media at 13.15 on Tuesday
• Shortly afterwards, Judith on the dark side of social media (she says she’ll have chocolate)
• The next morning, Ciaran on social media marketing

Even better, I understand the seminars are free (though I think you need to buy a ticket in advance - £15 on the door). Register now