Q: I just hired a developer for my small-budget site development project. Is there a Top 10 list of things I should insist on SEO-wise to be built into the site?

A: As we all know by now, SEO consists of several different endeavors:

• Technical SEO: ensuring a search-friendly and social-friendly site from a structural/technical standpoint
• Content/Editorial SEO: creating content that aligns with your target audience’s search behavior and keywords
• Link appeal and link-building

It’s obvious that your web developer’s work influences the technical side of SEO.  But structural issues and CMS capabilities will also have long-term effects on your ability to maximize your content/editorial SEO and link power.   Here are my top 10 developer requirements for SEO:

• Each page on the site must exist on a separate, unique, permanent URL that is indexable by search engine robots
• All pages on the site must be accessible by clicking standard HTML links, preferably no more than 3 clicks from the home page
• Text content on the site must be search-engine-indexable, standard, visible HTML text
• Search engine robots are like site visitors that do not accept cookies, do not fill out forms, do not log-in, and have limited javascript and CSS capabilities.  These robots should be able to read versions of each page that match as closely as possible what a human visitor would see.
• Every page on the site must have a unique, descriptive HTML title.   The CMS should allow the site owner to edit the HTML title separately from editing other elements of the page, such as the page heading.
• We recommend that every page on the site include a Facebook Like, Google +, and Tweet button.
• The CMS should allow the site owner to edit OG tags on each page.
• If there is any chance that identical pages will be seen via more than one URL (creating potential duplicate content in search engines), the CMS should allow the site owner to include/edit a canonical tag on each page.
• URLs should be meaningful, human-readable and include the page title or relevant keywords
• Images that are clickable should have ALT and TITLE tags that provide a text description of the destination page being clicked to.

Granted, every one of these won’t apply to every project, but for the majority of small budget jobs, this list will form a strong foundation on which you can build your SEO efforts.

And one last piece of advice: communicate like crazy and stay on ‘em.  If you don’t have an outside SEO vendor involved in the project, you will need to serve the role of SEO watchdog during development.

Q: I have an ecommerce site containing a useful library of product information that the manufacturer allows me to use on my site.  My site was hammered in Google’s Panda update, and I think it was because of this “duplicate” content.  What should I do now?  I don’t want to remove this library because it is useful for my customers.

A: Even though this library of content is genuinely helpful for your site visitors, it could be similar to the low-quality, “stub”, or content farm materials that were punished in Google’s Panda update.  To make matters worse, the product information library you’re describing is probably also present on many other sites as well.  These two factors are both likely to be viewed negatively in Google’s eyes.

To play it safe, the easiest thing you can do is to deindex all these pages using either the robots.txt file or a robots meta tag on the concerning pages.  This way, the materials can still help your website visitors, without putting your site at any risk for Panda issues.

If deindexing the content is not an option, then you should work on improving the content, with an eye toward improving the user engagement on these pages.  What can you do to make these pages more unique, more interesting, and more likely to be a satisfying experience for searchers who land on these pages?

Not interested in rewriting hundreds or thousands of pages? Here’s a hybrid approach you might try:

• Deindex any pages that have a 90% or higher bounce rate
• For pages that have better (lower) than 90% bounce rate, work on improving content.  Possible ways to improve content:
• manually add your own links to related materials elsewhere on your site.  Make them intriguing or attractive enough to encourage visitors to click on them; remember your goal is to engage visitors and prevent bounces.
• manually add commentary/analysis that makes these materials more useful.  Be sure this is unique and well written.
• Proofread.
• add a prominent Google +1, Facebook Like, and Tweet button
• In addition to these steps, you should also pursue other SEO efforts, especially link-building, in order to gain stature in the Post-Panda search world.

Like any SEO effort, approach your Panda recovery with an iterative mindset.  Make some changes, watch for results over a several-week period, and repeat.  And a final word of wisdom: Keep the user experience a priority, and you can’t go wrong.

People often ask us to write SEO checklists for them.  But SEO encompasses such varied efforts – from blog writing to technical site review – that squeezing it into a checklist can be difficult.  However, we always try to work with our clients’ processes, because we think that’s the most effective way to get SEO results.  Here, we share a basic robot-friendliness checklist.

ROBOT ACCESS

• All content on the site should be accessible by clicking on standard HTML links.
• Whenever possible, use a shallow site architecture that allows all pages on the site to be reached by under 5 clicks from the home page.
• It should not be expected that robots will perform searches or fill out forms on the site.  We recommend that you provide a robot-navigable path that does not require these actions.
• If there is content hidden behind a login or registration, search engine robots will not be able to see it.  We recommend that you create a “logged out” version of each page that shows teaser content that can be indexed by search engines.
• Use extreme caution with deindexing pages using the robots.txt file or the <robots> meta tag.

ROBOT READABILITY

• Search engine robots can be considered a special case of accessibility.   As a rule of thumb, how a page looks to a screen reader for the visually impaired is similar to how the page will look to a search engine robot.
• Ask: How does this page look to search engines?  Is the search engine view of the page an accurate representation of the human view of the page? You can use the tool at www.seo-browser.com to approximate the search engine robot view, or use “Fetch as Googlebot” in Google Webmaster Tools, or view the cached version of the page in Google by typing <cache:www.yoursite.com/url-of-page.html> into the search box.
• For interactive sites, search engine robots may not be able to replicate the human experience.  Is there a simplified version that can be shown to a search engine robot? For example, if an interactive experience requires that a person click through a series of steps before seeing text, consider presenting the text in robot readable format.
• Content in video and Flash are not easily indexable and require special SEO management.

This checklist would need to be used in conjunction with other SEO checklists, including editorial, social media,  technical,  video, and Flash specifications.

Readers, do you have anything to add to this simple robot-friendliness checklist?

WordPress is an excellent blog authoring tool and can also be used as an all-around content management system (CMS) for your site.  Best of all, it’s inherently search-engine-friendly.

People often ask us for tips on WordPress settings for SEO. Here are the bare-bones basics:

- In Settings > General Settings, choose a site title and tag line that contain keywords you might want to rank well for.  Of course, the site title should also be recognizable as the name of your blog!

- Under Settings > Permalinks, we recommend a custom structure for permalinks that includes the post name, as seen here:

/%postname%/

This will create permalink URLs containing the words in your post title,  for example, “this-is-my-best-post-ever.html.” If you would prefer to include the date or other elements, scroll down on this WordPress Codex page for a list of other available tags.  Here’s an example of a URL format that includes the current year as well as the post name:

- Under Settings > Writing, be sure that the update service is filled in. A respected updating service is the following:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

- Under Settings > Privacy be sure to select that you want your blog to be publicly available.

- We recommend including breadcrumbs on each post. We use a plugin called Breadcrumb NavXT to make ‘em.

- HTML titles are important for SEO. You can install a plugin called All in One SEO Pack to gain the capability to edit HTML titles on each post, and to set up a good default format for all posts.  Some examples of good default formats are the following:
“Post Title | Blog Name”
“Blog Name: Post Title”

This screenshot shows an example of All in One SEO Pack settings for a breaking news website:

With these basic settings in place, your site will be indexable in search engines, and have at least a minimum level of on-page optimization built-in.  We’re guessing that was a lot easier than you thought it would be!  Congratulations – aren’t you glad you chose WordPress?

Readers: do you have an WordPress SEO tips to share?

Many people come to us, discouraged and puzzled about why their site has fallen in the ranks even though their site is optimized for all the right keywords. Others reach out to us for help with keyword optimization of their site’s text, mistakenly convinced that this is the only thing their site needs to succeed. Here are five reasons that gaining ranks with standard ranking tactics is harder than it used to be for the average site owner:

Keyword Optimization Isn’t as Important

Identifying keywords and using them to optimize your text used to be two of the easiest SEO tasks for the layperson (as well as the not-so-technical SEO). If you were a halfway decent writer, and could figure out the right keywords to include in your text, you used to be able to make some headway in the ranks. However, where there used to be a relatively straight path from keyword optimization to improved ranks, there are now several complicating factors. Now your thoughtful keyword strategy is also vying with:

• Personalized search in Google, which causes a searcher’s past behavior to influence their search results
• Real-time results in Google, which sometimes give fresh content and tweets an edge over older pages
• Better contextualization: Type “corwin” into Google and you’ll get decent results for three very different Corwins: the publisher, the Animal Planet celebrity, and the town. Type “out of league” and Bing reasonably matches your query to results for the movie “She’s Out of My League.” The search engines have gotten much smarter about contextualization and phrase matching, and their ever-improving intelligence is becoming just as much of a rankings factor as your keyword optimization. (And, on a related note: remember when people used to optimize their sites for misspellings? The search engines make that irrelevant now.)

You’re Overloaded with Tools

You used to have only a few optimization tools to work with. Meta tags – go optimize ‘em! Links – go get ‘em! Thankfully, as SEO has gotten more complex, search engines are now giving you more tools and information to work with. But unfortunately, these tools and information can overwhelm and confuse. Canonical tags are extremely easy to use, and also very easy to mess up. Webmaster Tools give you tons of information, and at the same time lead many of us down the wrong path. (For example, with the data now available, you may be tempted to believe that a decline in site speed caused your ranks to plunge, but you’d probably be wrong.) With all of these elements to analyze and address, it’s difficult to identify what’s most important, which skills to brush up on (or outsource) and what’s worthy of your time and energy.

Web Technology has Outpaced SEO-Friendliness

E-commerce tools, blog publishing platforms and content management systems, AJAX, mobile devices, the proliferation of video…all of these technologies and more have made the web more exciting and dynamic! But in many cases, these features require specialized technical skills to prevent or remediate significant search engine indexing handicaps.

Everybody’s Doing It

After years of marginalization, SEO is finally on every website owner’s radar. SEO awareness has evolved to the point where most people are addressing keyword optimization and site indexing concerns when they build and maintain their sites. And I haven’t met a new client in years who isn’t already thinking through a link building strategy. Having an SEO-friendly site isn’t a competitive advantage for you any more; it’s a requirement. And, if my decade-plus in SEO has taught me anything, it’s this: when everybody is doing something, that thing becomes less powerful as a ranking factor. (See above – “Keyword Optimization Isn’t as Important”)

Rapid Evolution

“Hi, I’m Google, and I’ll be your search engine today. Our algorithm change du jour is the ‘Chef’s Surprise.’ Depending on your site, it will either be delicious or leave a foul taste in your mouth. You’ll be trying it whether you want it or not.” Yep, Google changes every day. I used to eschew algorithm-chasing, and refused to participate in obsessing over SEO gossip on a daily basis.  I knocked it as a pointless way of life, but these days I’m convinced that it’s important to embrace that mindset, at least a little bit. This is something that SEO specialists have built into their schedule, but it’s not as simple for the average site owner to find the time to keep up with latest developments in search.

***

It’s harder than it used to be to influence your site’s ranks using keyword optimization and link building tactics. So what should you do about it? Do what we do: Think big picture! Once you’ve nailed the basics: a search-friendly site, optimized text, and a well-targeted message, try something new to achieve a well-rounded online presence. Branch out into social media. Encourage positive reviews. Maybe shoot a little video if it’s a good fit for your audience.  And use the information you glean from your analytics to make real changes on your site, not just to gain better ranks, but to improve engagement for the visitors you have.

As of December 4, 2009, Google’s search results will never be the same. Seriously, they’ll never be the same, even from one computer to another.

In our previous post, we discussed how Google personalized search will affect your business. Now, we look at how a business can influence personalized results, and whether we think that’s a good idea.

Should Businesses Try to Influence Google Personalized Search Results?

Some blackhat SEOs will say “of course, businesses should game the system any way they can.” Others might say that trying to influence personalized search results in any way is unethical (but those people probably work for Google – which, last time we checked, is neither a non-profit organization nor a branch of government). Clearly, the techniques described above could be abused; for example, an unscrupulous SEO company could trick its clients into thinking their ranks are getting better and better, or into thinking the SEO company’s ranks are higher than they really are.

But working with the system is not necessarily abuse. We always advocate 100% ethical SEO, and we advise the following: go ahead and be smart about personalized results, but never use any tactics that you wouldn’t want your potential clients or customers to find out about. Your potential customers are the last people you want to alienate – and they don’t want to be tricked or manipulated.

Influencing Google Personalized Search Results

Here are a few ways that a company could influence personalized results:

• Create a promotion with an unique or unusual name, and build a page for it on your site, for example, “Bring on the PicklePal Pickles!”. Wait for your page to indexed in Google and check to see that you’re ranking #1 for this unusual phrase. (Don’t forget to opt out of personalized search before you check!)  (As we’ve said in our book, it’s easy to get a #1 Google ranking for a unique phrase. Now there’s a good reason to do so.) Then promote the Google search results page via Twitter, for example, “Free Pickles this Tuesday! Click on our link here:http://[point to the Google page, not your website.]]”
• If you’re absolutely certain you have very high ranks for a particular phrase, you could include links to your Google results for this phrase – rather than directly to your site – in email campaigns.
• Run print ads with a callout to a Google search rather than your website. (“Hey kids, Google ‘PicklePal Pickles Forever!’ to get your pickle fix!”)  Just be sure your site stays at the #1 spot for the phrase! You may have seen something like this on billboards for the movie 2012, which suggested searching for the term “2012.”
• Run an AdWords campaign that includes a call to action telling users to perform a Google search that returns your business’s website. Keep in mind that Google has strict editorial guidelines and this tactic may require some trial and error on your part.
• Seed forums and blog comments with a search call to action where relevant and appropriate. For example, in a forum thread about finding discount pickles, a business can post a reply saying: “We are currently running a discount pickle promotion at www.mysite.com – you can Google ‘discount PicklePal coupon’ [link to the Google search result for this term] and click on the link to see the coupon.”

Caution: We haven’t tried these tactics yet – and we may not recommend them to our clients. We’ll keep you posted as we embark on this new SEO journey.

Q: If I’m using a keyword such as “planet orbiter” or “planet orbiters”, do I need to focus on both words for meta searches, PPC, etc. or can I focus just on “planet orbiters” and trust that a good enough campaign will yield results for the singular “planet orbiter” search as well?

A: Since search engines recognize a difference between singular and plural words, we think it is best to represent your keyword in both singular and plural forms on your website.

Despite Google taking great pride in the fact that it returns meaningfully different results for “apple” and “apples” (people searching for the single word “apple” are more likely to be seeking the company and not the fruit), for the vast majority of searches, most people would agree that there isn’t a whole lot of meaning in the difference between singular and plural searches. If you think that your searchers could be querying both words, you should optimize for both too.

This is even more important when it comes to symbols such as apostrophes and dashes in words. Search engines provide different results for mockingbirds and mockingbird’s – as well they should. Be sure to do your research to determine which is the most popular form of your favorite keyword.

For pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, it’s usually a good idea to target all variations of a multiple-word keyword phrase (“mockingbird songs” “mockingbird song”, “mocking bird song”). In the rare instances when we sponsor single keywords, we usually only sponsor the singular version and make sure broad matching is enabled so that the plurals and other variations are represented. But if this is a critically important keyword for you, it’s probably worth your while to go ahead and sponsor individual variations. Again, though, it’s not always a great plan to sponsor single keywords, so make sure that you track carefully to make sure the traffic you pay for is converting at a reasonable rate.

You may also be interested in our previous “Ask the Experts” answer about targeting variations of multiple-word keyphrases.

Q: When generating your top 10 keyword list you say that one step is to combine your keywords. This confused me and I was hoping you could provide additional perspective.

On my top 10 list I have 3 phrases:

hamburger stands
great hamburger stands
best hamburger stands

Do you mean I should shrink this to 2 phrases (“great hamburger stands ” and “best hamburger stands”). If that’s the case, wouldn’t I be dropping out anyone who searches for “hamburger stands” which is a much broader (and very relevant) term for me? Won’t I miss a lot of people by doing this?

A: We do recommend combining keyword phrases when they contain the same keyword(s) in them. Let’s say your visible text contains 7 instances of the phrase “great hamburger stands.”  The search engines will know that your page is relevant to both “hamburger stands” and “great hamburger stands”, and you won’t “miss” your target audience. Technically, the keyword density (number of instances of the keyword phrase compared to the total number of words on the page) will be better for “great hamburger stands” vs. “hamburger stands,” but unless you’re in an extremely competitive situation, it’s still fine to combine the two on a given page.

Another very good reason to combine keywords is that it usually makes for much better writing. It’s important to avoid keyword-stuffed, repetitive sentences like this: “If you’re looking for hamburger stands, we’ll show you the best hamburger stands because we’re all about hamburger stands, especially the BEST hamburger stands.” And you want to avoid HTML title tags like: “ZappyCo: Hamburger Stands and Best Hamburger Stands,” because it’s not compelling to write that way!

And, most importantly, just because you’re combining the phrases doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t use just “hamburger stands” on your site – you should feel free to use it as needed! And you can also track your site’s performance for both variations of the terms.

We’re talking about organic (non-paid) optimization here. If you’re opening a pay-per-click account, as a rule it’s actually better to list all variations of your keyword phrases if you have the budget to do so.

Q: I recently set up a Google Adwords campaign, and it contains keywords that already have great organic rankings. Is it possible that the pay-per-click (PPC) ads might take away traffic from the organic results? Also, my conversion rate for PPC is about 4% while conversion for organic search is only about 1%. Can you explain this?

A: This is a question that is close to our hearts, since we primarily focus on organic SEO (or pay-per-click in conjunction with organic). Many providers only work with PPC, and there can sometimes be a rivalry between the two approaches.

We do think that PPC clicks take away from organic traffic in the particular case when you have a high organic ranking for the same term being sponsored. This is commonly called “cannibalization” and you can read some thoughts on it in this 2006 article by Gary Angel.

To quote from the article: “we found cases where half or even more of the paid traffic would likely have arrived from organic listings if the paid ads were not present. That means that the true cost of many of the keywords being purchased was far higher than the buyer realized.”

As the article mentions, and we concur: The easiest way to tell if the PPC clicks are cannibalizing organic listings is to turn off selected sponsorships for a period of, say, a week, and then watch the organic traffic for that term and see if it goes up.

Now, you also have the complicating fact that you’re getting a higher conversion rate on the PPC listings. Our guess is that your users are self-selecting: searchers who are more likely to convert are more likely to click on the PPC listing. We’re not aware of any research proving this, but we think it’s somewhat intuitive that people who are less likely to convert (information seekers, researchers, folks early in the purchase process, job-seekers or folks with other non- commercial goals) are going to lean more toward clicking on organic listings rather that PPC listings. In that case, naturally you’d find a higher conversion rate via PPC. In other words, your organic listings are casting a wider net, while PPC listings are “cherry picking.” It’s also possible that your PPC ads are written nicely enough to grab more targeted traffic – qualifying people before they click – and may be sending them to better landing pages. If that’s the case, congrats! It’s great news for your PPC ROI.

Choosing the best strategy really depends on your needs and preferences. If you are seeking to maximize total sales, maximize visibility (the sense of “blanketing” the search results), or maximize a conversion rate per visitor, then we see no reason not to continue the PPC campaigns. However, if a more efficient ROI is a top priority, or there is a budget cap regardless of ROI, then you might try to finesse your PPC campaigns, turning off certain “high cannibalization” terms and watching conversions to see how they are affected.

Our recommendation is to track both organic & PPC conversions keyword-by-keyword using the same analytics technique, and then do some experimentation with turning on & off terms until you reach an ideal combination of spending and conversions… We know this sounds easier said than done, but keep in mind that any PPC/SEO conversion studies that might exist are much less useful and meaningful than the real data on your specific business and audience that you can gain with your analytics program.

Q: We’re huge fans of your blog, but then, we’re kinda nerdy gals.  Who is your audience, and what is the purpose of your blog as you see it?

Avinash: Are you calling me a nerd? Or maybe a nerd magnet?  I am quite ok with that (note to self: go to amazon to place an order for pocket protectors).

When I started the blog in my mind the audience was for the most part practitioners of “web analytics” and the senior management of websites / companies.

The web is an awesome living breathing organism and it sucks that analytics is still stuck in the stone ages. I am passionate about leveraging the web to get really close to our customers, to merge the worlds of qualitative and quantitative data, and to make it the most responsive lowest cost channel for anything that a company can imagine (ecommerce, lead generation, support, advocacy etc). My hope through the blog is to share that passion with more people and to broaden minds about what “web analytics” really is and how to leverage the web as a learning platform.

I am finding that in reality the audience is very diverse. Vendors, consultants, people interested in investing, product managers and a whole host of web marketing people. I am even more surprised at how much international audience there is for the blog, around 30%.

Q: We know, and you know, that analytics is fun and addictive, But so many website owners don’t actually look at their traffic analysis data – there’s something overwhelming about taking that first step.  What’s the best way to get your feet wet in analytics if you’re not an experienced marketer?

Avinash: My standard quote to a marketer is: “Without exception the web can help you earn a higher bonus.” There are two components of a bonus, usually, either you bring in more (acquisition) or you convert more (revenue). If you are a marketer start with either of those.

If you own the site start with the simplest possible report, Visitors by Referring URLs. If you are running campaigns then start by identifying which campaigns are bringing in the traffic. Really simple. Where is the traffic coming from?

Now marry that up with outcomes. Revenue by referring URLs or campaign codes etc.

In 10 minutes you now know where people are coming from and what and how much they are buying. Now look for surprises. I am positive that even with this simple data you’ll be surprised at what you find. Marry up the data with your spending. So you poured $500k into search campaigns and you got less traffic and revenue than you hoped for (or less than what you are getting from blogs). You are now in business.

Notice I did not say anything about page views or path analysis or average time on site or all those traditional metrics. IMHO those tend to not get marketers anywhere because like the rest of us those metrics really don’t “connect” and actions are hard to figure out.

Q: The pay-per-click ad services make it easy to measure the success of a paid campaign, and I think that’s partly why PPC has enjoyed such rapid growth.  But in trying to measure the success of organic SEO efforts, there’s still a lot of guesswork, expense, and a learning curve involved. Do you think Google Analytics will bring the same level of accountability to organic SEO that PPC efforts currently have?

Avinash: As an aside could I just confide that most people don’t measure PPC well. It is easier to show that you spend $10 and made $11. But most people don’t measure that $9 of that you would have made any ways just with SEO or that just the budget spent on PPC was $10 not including your salary and your agency fees and all that. True measurement of PPC effectiveness has yet to arrive at the scene, but it will soon as more accountability is demanded.

An important disclaimer first: I have absolutely no knowledge of any sort about Google Analytics’s plans or road map. {editors Note: This interview was in 2006. Things have changed since then! -gc} Any thing I say is pure speculation on my part.

Google has brought a lot of transparency and data APIs and standards, etc. to the world of PPC simply because of the amount of money spent there and the pressure on Google’s customers to show clean ROI. I think that kind of pressure will be on Google in the near future as folks increasingly spend more money on SEO and realize three months later nothing much came of it.

SEO measurement is much more complex. The success metrics are “outside” the site: page rank, page strength, results for company key phrases, your landing page quality score etc. Success metrics for PPC are in the site: conversion, purchases etc.

Google Analytics (GA) is a great way to measure website metrics (so PPC), as would be omniture or webtrends or clicktracks. Google has provided API’s now into adwords that any vendor can plug into.

For SEO the challenge that the data is outside your site is a tough one. Most of the data is with the search engines. I think Google, and others, will evolve to give us automated feeds of our key SEO metrics in order to bring more accountability to the SEO business. If they do that they might first roll it out via GA, but given the dynamics of the marketplace every web analytics vendor will have access to the data.

Q: We know you work for a large business (Intuit).  We’re curious if you think there are any analytics strategies that cross over into small businesses.  Do you have any web analytics advice that you can give to those mom-n-pop businesses out there that are hoping to improve the performance of their websites?

Avinash: The strategies or tips or advice that I mention on my blog or in my speeches might be valuable for any size of business. The strategies and approaches stay the same usually, it is just the scale of them changes. So for example a frequent advice is absolutely positively immerse yourself in segmentation. This would apply in either case. The 10/90 rule applies specially well for the small business, don’t put a lot of money into a tool to get very good world class data.

I did a very special post just for small businesses. It has a lot of tips and specific reports a small business can start with and then become more complex with time.

If I had to summarize it in a few words: Get a free tool like Google Analytics or Clicktracks, start measuring search engine traffic and referrers, look at top pages on the site that lead to conversion, measure site bounce rate (especially if you do PPC), do SEO and use the site overlay report. Viola! You are a million dollars richer!!

Q: It seems that everyone is looking for a “silver bullet:” one measurement they can look at that will indicate the overall success of their website. We’ve heard a lot of people talking about bounce rate as being this silver bullet.  Can you define bounce rate for our readers, and do you agree that this an important web metric?

Avinash: Ahh great timing, I just mentioned it above. Let us get one thing out of the way: There is no silver bullet. No matter if I say that or your grandma says that. It is a lie. The web and business on the web is simply too complex (and that is why I love it).

There are many definitions of site bounce rate but the one I have found to be most insightful is:

In % terms Site Bounce Rate = (Site visitors who stay on the site for less than 10 seconds) divided by (Total number of site visitors).

Site bounce rate is a great entry level metric. It is fantastic at identifying all sorts of, shall we say, “bummers”. If you compute it, as defined above, it is a great way to know how much site traffic is engaging with the site as a whole.

Where it becomes fun, remember I am a geek, is when you segment it out. So find out what you are spending money on and then compute site bounce rate for that. If you spending a lot on PPC compute site bounce rate for each campaign, very quickly you will find out which campaigns are sending you wrong traffic. Or you are a small business and you have paid xyz search engine $500 to list you in their directory, compute bounce rate for that traffic, see if that money was worth it.

So this is a great metric to start with. It tells you a lot and identifies some “bummers” very quickly. But then you have to get deeper into understanding the why it is happening and what you can do and how to fix it etc and you’ll graduate to other more complex metrics. By then Site Bounce Rate would have more than paid you back for the investment you made in computing it.

Q: Many business owners have goals that they want their website visitors to complete offline – things like recommending their business to other people, making a phone call, or walking into a store.  Have you worked on measuring these kinds of goals, and if so, what advice can you give to these folks?

Avinash: Multi-channel is a big challenge and everyone is making progress, not as much as one would like. Without speaking about my employer I’ll give out some general tips.

Phone is the easiest one. Simply use a unique 800 number on your website. Getting a ton of phone numbers is a very small amount of cost and it is a awesome way to know which calls are coming from the web. Now there are companies that will run your campaigns (PPC or radio or otherwise) that will put in a dynamic 800 number on your website and route the call from their “switch” to your company and in the process capturing the online to offline call. If you are small you can just do the former, use a unique number and then count.

Store is much harder.

If you own the retail store do online coupons that people can being to the store and you know they found you on the web. And it does not have to be a lot of money, I have seen a promotions for just one single pack of post-it notes if I brought this online printout thingy! Or I am sure you have seen many stores like Best Buy or Circuit City partner with BizRate. You’ll see a small survey code on the receipt in exchange for a $25 raffle (talk about cheap!) you go online and fill out a survey and tell them where you did research (online).

If you don’t own a store and you sell online and via stores this is exponentially harder, because of the “missing link” between you, website, and the selling channel, retail store. In this case user market research studies or online website surveys (that ask for purchase channel preference) have been used effectively to gauge the impact of the online channel on the offline channel.

Q: In one of Gradiva’s favorite posts on your blog, you talk about giving names to certain types of  website visitors (the abandoner, the flirt, and so on).  Why is it helpful to think in terms of “personas” instead of stats?  Do you have any other “nicknames” like these that you use in your analytics work?

Avinash: We often forget that human beings visit our websites and not “shopper_id’s” or “visitors” or “cookie values”.  The post was rooted in my hope to bring the human back into our minds. Humans interact with our website, just kooky ones like me and smart ones like you. And we are not the same.

I could write all day about personas but the main reason I love them is because they help us all step outside the “sanitized” world of numbers and think of our customers as people, atleast groups of people. Personas bring reality to our minds and then when you think of your website or analyze the numbers you’ll do it very differently. You’ll be solving for “Susan Simple” or “Tony Advanced” or “Avinash Nerd” etc.

I find that this specially works wonders with non-analysts, our management or marketers etc.

Q: How are you enjoying being a blogger?  Is it more work than you expected?  And do you blog “on the clock” as a part of your work efforts, or is this more of a hobby?

Avinash: Let me take that in the reverse order……

The blog is not a part of my work effort, it is a personal blog. I don’t want to call it a hobby (if it were I might have given it up after a week ). This is a bit corny: the blog is very much a labor of love.

I don’t have books or consulting services to sell. I am following the path of my “virtual mentor” Guy Kawasaki (he does not know I exist but I take a great deal of inspiration from his blog). His advice is “Eat like a bird, and poop like an elephant.” I am trying to live that Japanese quote. 

Blogging is much more work than I expected. I only post twice a week (my posts are usually quite long) and yet my wife Jennie’s calculation is that I am putting around 15 hours into it each week. That would include thinking and drafting and writing posts and commenting and replying to email and all that. 15 hours a week is not what I expected when I started (and it is a lot with a full time job and two beautiful little children and a wife and family and travel).

I am enjoying it very much I have to admit. I am humbled by the kind words people say on the blog and I am amazed at the reach of my little blog (I am surprised and thrilled to be ranked around 12k in Technorati) and I have met so many wonderful people (you for example) that I would never have met before. I think I enjoy it most of all because is a outlet for something I am deeply passionate about and I like to think I am adding some value in our little ecosystem.

I wanted to thank you both so much for the opportunity to do this interview, I had a lot of fun.

The pleasure was all ours!!