What’s the ROI on SEO? Hint: SEO Experts Are Underpaid, Opportunity Abounds!

Update: Check out this “How to forecast SEO ROI” article if calculating the ROI on SEO is the info you want. What follows is an editorial / research article showing that SEO is valuable – but not explaining how to calculate it. I was asked what the ROI on SEO is a few times at a recent business event, …

SEO FAQ: Can Overusing Internal Link Building Cause A Penalty?

Jimmy writes, “I saw someone write to be careful or use the ilb in moderation to avoid getting penalized or something like that. What are your thoughts on best practices?” I think penalization due to overuse of my WordPress plugin, Internal Link Building (ILB) is a mis-expression of a user design concern. The consequences of overusing ILB is …

Robots.txt: What it is, Why it’s Used and How to Write it

Q: I’ve heard that I should have robots.txt on my website. What is robots.txt and why should I use it on my site? And if I really do need it, how do I go about writing and implementing robots.txt? A: Robots.txt is a text file that tells search engine spiders (what are search engine spiders?), also known as search engine …

Phillip Klien of BT Buckets & Site Apps Gives Me Segmentation & CRO Tips!

I recently had a great chat with Phillip Klien, a conversion expert using software to first segment (or “bucket”) traffic and then personalize visitors’ experience. In fact, he co-founded BTBuckets.com, a behavioral targeting (BT) tool that enables exactly this kind of personalization, and SiteApps.com, a marketplace for related CRO and BT tools. 1) How did you come up with …

Social Media Analytics: How to Measure and Track Social Media Activity

Social media is one of the most difficult things to justify in terms of ROI because current analytics aren’t well suited to measure its data. Here’s my proposal for social media analytics and tracking. This is an approach to use as a foundation for creating social media analytics tools, not a tool. 27/05/2011 – Update on Social Media …

How To Exclude Brand Search Terms & Keywords In Google Analytics’ Traffic Sources Reports

Recently a client came to me with a question about where to prioritize their content-writing efforts for the site redesign, and I offered her an answer based on Google Analytics’ keyword data. The problem is that if you just export your top keywords, you’re going to see brand search terms near the top. What can …