Hey Mozzers -

First off, I am well aware of what CRO is, its benefits, and why it is essential for any inbound or performance marketing campaigns. However i am a total newbie at the actual planning and implementation of CRO, so any advice/feedback on the questions below are much appreciated!

• When planning a CRO experiment/test what is the best way to document it? Should i develop the full plan ahead of time laying out each element?
• If so, what elements should i include in this plan?
• What are the KPIs i should report on?
• What tools should i use for reporting (i was thinking a blend of Google and Clicktale)?
• Any lessons learned through out your campaigns?

Thank you all so much for your input!

Regards - Kyle

Use the anchor text tab with it set on "phrases" and "all pages on this root domain."

Once it loads - look for high volumes of exact anchor text. Specifically terms that are not branded or the websites domain/URL. This is a big identifier of spammy tactics.

Commonly searched phrases is just the beginning for PPC research. Difficulty and competition are measured on two completely different scales in regards to ranking. For paid search you can also targeted competitor brands and brand names when with SEO this is a much harder task.

You can also include the use of negative keywords. Although something like SEO maybe very high difficulty, with the proper negative keywords you can still get legitimate - cost effective traffic.

For as many similarities that paid and organic have there are just as many differences.

Keep in mind there is far more at play with Adwords than just simple keyword research. There is everything form account management, conversion tracking, to landing page optimization. Then in each one of those large categories there are sub-categories like account structure, ad scheduling, ad rotation, delivery, and networks.

I seriously suggestion reading over the fundamentals guide on adwords help center. Also don't confuse keyword research for SEO and PPC. Two totally different beasts.

Good Luck!

• Kyle

Thanks for the heads up Zeph!

Did Dr Pete publish anything on the blog about it? If so do you mind sharing the link?

Did anyone else get some really strange results in their weekly crawls this week with the campaign tool?

Either my ranks sky rocked across three different sites or the tools is busted. Something to the tune of having 4 pages ranking in the top 30 to now having 15-16 pages ranking in the top 30.

I'd love to find out it is just all the hard work paying off but i am worried it is the later.

Regards - Kyle

Shane - thank you for the insight and great spot on the ajax! I was so wrapped up with the .lbi that i didn't even realize the other elements.

Interesting...

When i view the page they have a section called press releases with a handful of content and links. In the browser it looks great. They have 3-4 releases intros listed out with links to the full article.

When i look at the source it looks like this:

Press releases

View press releases

When i look at seo-browser.com it looks like this:

Press releases View press releases <-- with this item being a link

Thank you for the insight on how the technology works, Shane!

I have used .dwt many of times in the past but never .lbi files. It sounds like it works like a client side include which normally means search engines cannot crawl any of that content.

Up until yesterday afternoon i had never heard of a .lbi file. It turns out it is a library file used by Adobe Dreamweaver. From what i can tell it works like a client side included but i am unsure of the technology behind it.

The issue:
When running through a recent SEO audit for a new client i found these .lbi files being used all over there site for site wide callouts and even navigation. When viewing this content through firebug or in the browser you can see the executed  HTML content but when viewing the source or the page in seo-browser.com the content is nowhere to be seen.

So my thought is this is not SEO friendly and is the same as displaying content in any client-side script like JavaScript or JQuery.

Any feedback or thoughts on this subject would be awesome, especially if anyone has used these previously. Unfortunately i cannot share the client site but i would be more than happy to answer any questions if more detail is needed.

Thanks in advance - Kyle

Shaun - Also, keep in mind over-optimization. There where over 50+ Google algorithm updates in March alone & a handful of them where related to spammy on-page content and freshness. So if you have a lot of keyword stuffing or haven't added new content in a while, this could play a role in the drop.

Which leads me to the question, did you see a drop across all organic or just Google?

Hope this helps, cheers!

Kyle Chandler

I agree the campaign tool is great... However there is a week long lag to get results. Sometimes you need it in a matter of minutes and the rank tracker tool did that perfectly, until now.

Is there any chance the lag time could be changed for ranking results?

Agreed, i get nothing but errors when trying to use it as well.

The funny thing is, i didn't find a solution nor did i mark this as anwsered...

It looks like someone on the SEOMoz staff thought it was done?

Brent - thank you for finding my post, i thought it was forever lost!

They had created a custom template, however i will still suggest them try the TAC plugin just incase. I will post the results once i get them.

Thanks again - Kyle

So this new project that i am working on is a redesigned CMS site using Wordpress (php based). Before i started on the project they made a few major updates that include:

• Changed from ID based URLS to SEO friendly URLS
• Added multiple languages in directories
  • www.domain.com/en
  • www.domain.com/fr
  • www.domain.com/de
  • etc...
• Due to the new languages they wanted to have the previous home page, www.domain.com, redirect to the proper language based on their IP address. Currently they are using a 301 redirect through a php header. So if i was visiting the site from my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio and i type www.domain.com into the browser. I would automatically redirect to www.domain.com/en and i would have the option to switch languages if needed.

The issue:

When i first added their site into SEOMoz the crawl returned a large amount of 302 redirects coming from their old homepage www.domain.com. So i took a look at the header calls using IE's webmaster tools and Firebug in Firefox. In both profilers it showed the same problem.

• Before the 301 header redirect there was a 302 redirect called first
• When viewing the response header it mentioned an x-pingback of some file that didn't even exist on the site: www.domain.com/xmlrpc.php

This is obviously a huge issue because any link value from the old homepage will be lost due to the 302 not passing the value. I have tried search the almighty Google for help but it has gotten me no where. I have a hunch it is something to do with Wordpress but that is based on nothing but my gut. Any help is greatly appreciated.

I got to get that 302 gone or changed to a 301

Regards - Kyle

Do you absolutely have to use an iframe?

Can you supply me with your competitors URL you are evaluating so i can review the OSE results?

So you are saying the zip & image files are being hosted by the competitor and fema.gov is displaying them via absolute links?

The easiest way to see if they are legitimate links is to check them out yourself. Use OSE to link through to the page, view the source, and then do a find for the competitors URL. From there you will be able to tell if it was actually a link or just a fluke.

Out of curiosity, what is your competitors domain?

Regards - Kyle

Agreed, i always check both singular and plural. Not only for traffic reasons but for difficulty as well!

Well i took a look at your site's link metrics using majestic seo and it looks like you have some pretty limited link metric's for your site currently. Chances are you aren't seeing an error with OSE or Google's PageRank, you just simply don't have enough back links yet. (No worries though, there is always room for improvement!)

Remember it takes OSE around 2-3 months at times to notice new links if they see it at all. I would suggest using someone like majestic or google's webmaster tools to measure the amount of links as you start off.

As for how to build your links, here is a great place to start: http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=link+building

Good luck - Kyle

Where are you receiving this error message? OSE, ranking reports, domain analysis? A little more info will help us answer your questions.

Thanks! - Kyle

First check to see if the site has been reindexed in Google's cache (this link can be found in the site preview box in the SERPs, it actually gives you the last crawl date). This will tell you if your updates have been reviewed by Google. If they still haven't, then its a waiting game. Rasmus does bring up a valid point with resubmitting an XML sitemap, i have seen that speed up the process as well.

Good Luck - Kyle

Google has published multiple times that running pay-per-click ads in no way influence your organic rank. I cannot imagine there is any difference with those ads if they show up in SERP's or on the content network. The only benefit i have seen with running pay-per-click ads in regards to organic is that your content gets re-indexed faster.

No problem! Glad i could help.

SInce i can remember the SEOMoz toolbar didn't display Google's PageRank, just DA and PA. However, as far as i know Google is still using this. If you are a pro member then you have access to the historic page rank tracker:

http://www.seomoz.org/toolbox/pagerank

Is the data being displayed in the title and meta description in the SERP content from the PDF?

If so, then yes, they are being indexed/crawled.

Regards,

Kyle

"The analysis of a websites ability to rank based completely on external linking factors with no consideration taken on content targeting or strategy."

This could include anything from a websites domain authority, page rank, compete rank, alexa rank, linking root domains, total external links, age of domain, etc. The trifecta tool use to pull alot of this together in one spot but it is no longer a supported tool. Normally a domain analysis is done initially or as presale because little information is need up front and there is little time involved. The reason i say this is because an SEO audit and a domain analysis are quite different.

Another item to note in my experiences: the legitimacy and correlation of compete and alexa rank are less than desired. I would really focus on the others mentioned above.

Simply from a front-end development perspective, why would you place a

inside of an <a>? If you are trying to force a block element style, why not simply apply it through the CSS sheet to the</a> <a>tag?

If you supply a URL i can give more specific coding advice

Thanks - Kyle</a>

I have seen and achieved this with many keywords. Normally the less competitive a keyword is the less strict google is with eclipsing multiple listings.

I did a major overall on all my sites to the new tracking in July 2011. However, I'm not sure when the new tracking was released. Definitely in 2011.

SEOMoz's offerings is SEO software, not consulting. If you need consulting our advice try and being more descriptive in your Q&A posts or visit the marketplace in regards to consultants for hire: http://www.seomoz.org/marketplace

Good luck! - Kyle

I always go with what Adwords says in regards to clicks. That number will be recorded no matter what user level settings are. In regards to when someone navigates to your site there are many softwares and browser settings that can be done to defer or disable analytics tracking.

Edit: disregard my post - i miss read and thought you where talking about Adwords vs Analytics results not Analytics vs AWStats. THB brought up a good point in regards to load time. A couple months ago analytics came out with a new tracking code that goes in the of the document as well that way it gets called first rather than last.

Good luck! - Kyle

I found that time to time there are caching issues with staying logged in to the pro app & OSE. Try clearing your cache/history and re-logging into your account and see if it still doesn't work.

Also try setting up a local business account with Google, Bing and Yahoo to get relevant local search. It won't increase your domains authority but it will help with traffic and reach.

• http://www.google.com/places
• http://listings.local.yahoo.com/
• http://www.bing.com/businessportal

Edit: create one for each location

I posted the same question to the latest blog post on the linkscape update and i got some great advice. Essentially, don't rely simply on one source (even though SEOMOz rocks) for reviewing backlinks and authority. Some referred me to Majestic SEO and so far it is extremely close to YSE and WT. Check it out:

https://www.majesticseo.com/

The free account will let you explorer basic backlink stats for any URL.

Good Luck - Kyle

That would be a great start. There was a recent WBF that gave some great ideas to build links with email marketing campaigns that is definitely worth a read:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/using-emails-to-build-links-whiteboard-friday

Also, try and get some links from your high authority pages across your domain pointing to these. That will definitely help pass some link juice along.

Good luck - Kyle

Using media selectors you do not need to have a separate mobile site on a different domain, nor do you have to use a redirect. Instead it resizes your corporate site based on the users screen resolution.

For example, here is my portfolio site (not anywhere close to being done). However, it uses HTML5 and CSS3 to resize based on the size of the browser screen. So try slowly resizing your browser when viewing it and you will see what i am talking about.

The SEO benefits of this are:

• No duplicate content since it uses the same page
• You link splitting since there are not multiple domains or subdomains of content

So instead of creating a new mobile site, you would make updates to your current corporate site.

edit: It is also important to mention that only current browsers can render CSS3 so anything before IE9 or early versions of Chrome or Firefox will simply display the website in its full version. Any newer browsers (especially smartphones) will render CSS3 hence giving the graceful degradation to the users!

Alan is spot on with the CSS3 reference to media selectors! Try to search around on "responsive design" there are some great articles on how to have your website respond to the user without having to create multiple site for each experience. This approach wil also benefit you since you won't have to have your mobile site on a different domain or sub-domain and you will have no worries with duplicate content.

It took a look at the page (machu picchu travel), agreed that your on-page is looking good and your domain authority is pretty solid as well to rank at that difficulty. However you only seem to have a total of 6 links going to this page, all internal links.

Continue working on building those internal links with the descriptive anchor text but more importantly try and get some external links to these pages. As you begin to get more external links you will build up your page's authority and in turn a higher rank.

I noticed that you had a few links form your blog, are those pages ranking at all?

Rand and iPullRank just did a great WBF on the topic:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-freshness-update-whiteboard-friday

The main negative is any inbound links to the previous URL will lose some link juice. However, after time search engines will no longer index the previous URL, just the one that you are redirecting too. If you want to speed the process up, try and submit a new XML sitemap to each search engines' webmaster tools.

I believe people are getting these types of listings by using Google's Merchant Center for selling their products.