Vince Samios - Internet Entrepreneur

Google knows our CTR’s

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A fairly recent update to Google webmaster tools allows us to see click through rates for our pages. This seemed to excite the SEO community in that it’s the first data available that gives us Googles real CTR figures for the top 10 results.

The past CTR figures came from AOL search data from 2006, not even Google. The top position got something like 42% of all clicks, and the second position receiving about 11%…

Regardless of what CTR figures Google is giving us, it doesn’t matter. In December 2009 I wrote an SEO guide for 2010, and in it I wrote about “user experience as an SEO metric” – One thing I did neglect to cover was organic results click through rates effecting SEO.

Since Google knows what your click through rates are, do you think they might decide this info is relevant to SEO rankings?

Google struggles to provide the best SEO results based on mechanical metrics – SEO’s have historically enjoyed exploiting these technical aspects of SEO to great gain. It makes complete sense that Google listens to its searchers.

It stands to reason that a person who searched for phrase X and clicked on site Y made a conscious assessment of the results and decided site Y was the most relevant for phrase X.

The only real way to meddle with this metric (other than page titles and meta descriptions) is mass, automated, searching and clicking. Not impossible, but a new kind of spam maybe?

Google also recently said Meta Descriptions don’t really factor into the SEO metrics Google uses to rank sites, and instead suggested you use these to sell the click – putting two and two together, no a meta description might no longer be a technical SEO metric, but it modifies user experience and hence, potentially also your rankings.

Why has the SEO community focused so hard on the data, and not the implications? SEO is still far too much about ego, and not about logic.

Tags: AOL Search CTR, Click Through Rate, CTR SEO, CTR's, google, Meta Descriptions, Organic CTR, Organic Search CTR, Search CTR, SEO, SEO CTR, SEO Guide, SEO Metrics

Conservative Liberal Democrats Coalition – An Aussies Perspective

British politics – what an intolerable faf! And the result is “The Apples and Oranges Coalition…”

My understanding of politics is limited and always has been – In Australia, where voting is compulsory, I never registered to vote and escaped the bother of walking to the poll booth a few hundred meters up the road. It’s only since I married a Brit that I’ve been exposed to British politics, and it’s only due to the ridiculousness of it all that I’m perking up and paying attention.

Apparently I could have voted, as a commonwealth citizen resident in the UK, but only discovered this on election day – a little bit late.

For the sake of my own understanding, I’ve dissected the names of the parties joined in coalition to garner a greater understanding of their general views and disparities.

Conservativism: “is a political and social philosophy that says that traditional institutions work best and society should avoid radical change” – I loath and detest conservatives. Women’s rights, gay rights, racial equality, etc… all hindered by conservatives.

Liberalism: “The belief of the importance of liberty and equality” – In Australia the Liberals are essentially the right wing conservatives, so it’s a bit of a mental exercise to give the Lib Dem’s a chance as a relatively left wing party. Interestingly enough, Liberalism is pro-equality, whereas conservatives are against change, including equality…

Democratic: “rule of the people or rule by many” – Considering Britain is apparently a democracy this ingredient is slightly mute. “We are all democrats” they would say…

One thing which has always done my head in about American politics is how left wing voters need to compromise in order to minimize damage – needing to vote for the best of the worst, the lesser of two evils.

On the 1st of November in 2004 Michael Moore wrote a letter to his list titled “One Day Left”. In the 2004 election left wing voters favoured Ralph Nader, but because everybody wanted Bush out so badly, even Nader’s own party told people to vote for Kerry.

“Ralph’s own party, the Green Party, would not endorse his run this year. That’s because those of us who want to build a third party in this country know that the only way to do this is to build bridges with those who believe in the issues Nader believes in. But not one of those people will sacrifice the chance to remove George W. Bush from the White House on Tuesday. The choice here is clear: do we join with our friends, or do we piss on them?”

The implication here is that by voting for Nader it reduces the chance to elect the lesser of two evils. Something is wrong in an electoral system where you have to vote for someone other than your primary choice for fear of undermining your “lesser of two evils”.

Just days prior to the general election, the Labour party in some constituencies was urging its voters to vote Liberal Democrats… to reduce the chance that the conservatives would win those seats. This sounds very similar to circumstances in the US.

Something is also wrong in an electoral system where a party can gain 23% of the total votes, but only 8.7% of seats in parliament – This doesn’t represent the publics choices.

Further, had Labour and the Lib Dems formed a coalition, with 52% of the total vote they still wouldn’t (according to British politics) hold a majority. Odd!

Something is also very wrong when just two parties get 99.01% of the total vote! This was the situation in the US in 2004, and there was no opportunity for a third party to join the fray. While this isn’t the case in the UK, simply due to the fact that you vote for your local candidate rather than a head figure, the inherent problems remain.

The fair and logical solution is preferential voting – “a type of ballot structure used in several electoral systems in which voters rank a list or group of candidates in order of preference”

And this is how it works: “First, all the number ‘1’ votes are counted for each candidate. If a candidate gets more than 50% of the formal first preference votes then they are immediately elected.

If still no candidate has an absolute majority, again the remaining candidate with the fewest votes is excluded and these votes are transferred. This process will continue until one candidate has more than half the total votes cast and is declared ‘elected’.”

The benefit here is that voters can vote for their primary choice, and then vote for their “lesser of two evils” with their second preference. Smaller parties and independent candidates now get a really honest chance to be elected, and voters don’t concede their need and right to both vote for their first choice, but also to cover their backs with a solid second choice.

Liberal Democrats voters are more likely to preference the labour party than they are conservatives, and if just the liberal democrats votes had been preferences, labour would have had the victory.

If labours votes in losing electorates were preferenced, the liberal democrats would have won twice as many seats.

The moronic british national party are more likely to preference the conservatives, but they get so few (ignorant) voters, they really aren’t worth considering.

As an example – in Dudley South where the conservatives won with 43.1% of the vote, labour scored 33% and the liberal democrats took 15.7% - It’s fair to guess the lib dem voters would rather Labour remain in power than the conservatives take the seat, and would more than likely preference labour – giving labour 48.7% of the votes. Split the 8.2% of UKIP votes down the middle, and Labour wins that seat!

This isn’t an isolated example, in fact it was the first conservatives seat I looked at. A more interesting seat is the Bridgwater & West Somerset constituency – where preferential voting would yield much much closer figures.

But moving on from electoral process – Liberal Democrats voters have been quite disappointed with their choice of coalition, but I think they’ve done something rather sneaky. They’ve turned their 57 seats into disproportionate power in government. Forcing a deal with the conservatives that is far less conservative than the English peoples would have had to put up with otherwise.

Would a lib-dem-labour coalition have been more appropriate? Their policies are more equal, but I think Nick Clegg simply used his bargaining position between the two parties to get the best deal for his and his parties voters.

Nick Clegg at question time will be interesting, answering questions from a lib dem perspective on behalf of the Apples and Oranges Coalition.

Its bizarre, its interesting, it British politics.

Tags: British National Party, conservatives, david cameron, general election, John Kerry, labour, liberal democrats, michael moore, nick clegg, politics, Ralph Nadar

Google Traffic Over-Estimation

Keyword research is an absolutely critical pre-requisite before attempting to tackle a market online. There is a lot of work involved with starting an new online business, and it would be a real pity to do all this work only to discover the market you worked so hard to capture, is dead.

Many people are discovering just that…

The traffic figures provided by Google’s keyword tool are a massive over-estimation of the traffic volume you could ever expect to receive. A common misconception is that you may get about 40% of that traffic if you rank in the first position for that keyword – but having achieved many of these #1 rankings, I’ve noticed just how grossly over-estimated this can be.

Broad Match is the first way you can massively over-estimate potential. In my experience the broad match traffic numbers for a top level keyword represent every single search within the entire market, including related terms. You may have noticed similar terms report exactly the same traffic figures, even when logic suggests the search volumes would be very different.

And this is why I’ve started checking traffic potential using only exact match.
Here is a broad match result….

And here is the exact match result… 6% of the traffic numbers listed above…

But if you are experienced and you only check exact match traffic figures, you will know that even then, traffic figures are still over-estimated.

In my experience, more often than not, a #1 listing will only get 5-10% of the exact match traffic reported by the Keyword tool.

Potentially this means you could be over-estimating the size of a market by 100x… that’s quite a big deal!

Also explain this one – the SKTool shows different traffic figures to the Keyword Tool…..

Keyword Tool:

SKTool:

In theory the SKTool should show higher search volume than an exact match on the Keyword Tool - but the Keyword Tool is showing twice as many searches!!!

Where does the over-estimation come from, and what about the inconsistencies? I mean, this is Google, and Google has complete access to the exact accurate figures…

I’ve got a speculative theory that is based only on logic and nothing more…

Potentially the Keyword Tool, which is targeted at Adwords Advertisers, shows both search traffic as well as traffic to… wait for it… websites which contain Adsense, as well as searches on search partners…

Now doesn’t that just make a lot more sense?

And all this, is why I’ll tackle hundreds of keywords at a time rather than worry about trying to rank for a few “high traffic” keywords. Not only do you avoid disappointment, but you also build a much more stable and sustainable traffic source.

Tags: Adwords Traffic, Broad Match, Estimate Traffic, Exact Match, Keyword Research, Keyword Tool, SEO, SEO Traffic, SKTool

Does NLP Work? Dr Manipulator comments…

This is the best comment I’ve ever had on my blog - it seriously made me giggle. I’m re-posting it as a dedicated blog post to give it the exposure it deserves. Many folk in Internet Marketing profess to exercise NLP in their copy writing etc… good luck to them, but in my opinion they aren’t doing their intelligence, conversions or reputation any favours.

The comment was posted on an article I wrote 7 Months ago called NLP is Fart - needless to say I think NLP is Bullshit… Does NLP Work? I say no…

Commenter “Dr Manipulator” seems to agree - just with the added bonus being from an educated stand point of professional perspective…

I’m not going to write any more - I’m just trying to steal Dr Manipulators limelight…

Enjoy!

Hello all,

I have a hard time with NLP and I have TRIED my best to keep my mind open. Now it’s closed… NLP is for those who want to follow others, and cannot lead their own life, they can not think of things outside of what others are telling them is cool. They are manipulated.

The best point that Vince has made, that rates NLP up into the Fullest Extend of Bullshit Law, is that it uses bullshit words to describe what they are describing. Look at this…

Neuro = brain processing information - information from sub consciousness, feeling, desires, fears.

Linguistic = Communicating that information through words

Programming = means to manipulate something, change it

By name NLP means I can change my sub conscious, my feelings, and my fears, by speaking different words.
Ok so here is the problem. This is the same as suppressing my feeling, fears, desires. I am not expressing them, so I must just be pushing them down further. So I am basically creating neurosis in myself by just ignoring my real feelings and desires etc etc.

So then next – what in the hell does nuero linguistic programming (i.e. Self Inflected Neurosis, SIN? Haha) have to do with mirroring another person’s non-verbal behavior. It means that you are so busy looking for my movements that you are not really listening to what I am saying.

So you suck as a coach if you can’t even truly hear what I am saying I need help with. You’re trying to make me feel that you are connected to me…but you are not because you are not understanding me, because your too busy looking at my tits…or my eyes…or whatever.

And calling Vince out on his ability to do web marketing is bullshit also. He is expressing an opinion, he has good points, it’s confusing. Even the damn creators are confused on what it is. I read their first book, it’s a little confusing….refers to basic psychology, then everything after that was spread out over many people’s opinions. Like a bunch of dogs jumping on a pile of catfish…whatever that means.

Anyone who believes NLP is helping them, needs to keep an open mind to the possibility that this is just a manipulation tactic that people are over using, over claiming, and being over confident in.

I am a Licensed Psychologist, I would never manipulate someone to ignore their feelings, and if you look at NLP closer than you are, you will see that is what it does.

NLP IS 125% BULLSHIT, the 25% is for all you claiming it’s real.

Tags: does nlp work, NLP, nlp scam