SEO, PPC, Web Analytics Trends in 2012

For a B2C website, search engine marketing (PPC/SEO) is about acquiring targeted search engine traffic (potential website users) to the site and making sure a portion of this search engine traffic converts into sales. Search engine marketing involves:

Search Engine Optimization Role

SEOMoz has this Venn diagram: The SEO role stands at the center of technologist, statistician and marketer, and needs to possess partial skills of an analytics consultant, a PPC specialist and a social media marketer.

    SEO Role - Center of Technologist, Statistician and Marketer

The gurus in the roles of SEO, PPC, and web analytics:

Product Management Role

While SEO and PPC have taken care of search engine traffic acquisition, creating/managing a B2C site falls onto the operations of product management / product development. Creating a website involves improving the site’s:

  • Conversion rate
  • User friendliness and user engagement

Mind the Product provides the definition and the Venn diagram of a product manager.

    Product Management is the center of UX, Tech, Business

In the modern days, a product manager lies in the middle of user experience design (UX), technology and business. This SlideShare document shows you 7 things that a product manager must know. Product managers must understand technology and user experience design:

2011′s SEO and Web Analytics Reviews by Search Engine Watch

Search Engine Watch offers this Biggest Search Events of 2011:

  • Google’s Panda update
  • SSL search
  • Social signals and integration
  • Yahoo Site Explorer shuts down
  • Google’s freshness algorithm update
  • Microsoft-Yahoo Search Alliance

Search Engine Watch has this Web Analytics Year in Review 2011:

  • Online and offline data integration
  • Social media analytics
  • Omniture Site Catalyst launches
  • Super “cookies”
  • Mobile analytics
  • Google Analytics Real-time
  • Google encrypts search data
  • Google chrome passes Mozillia Firefox

Web/Social Analytics Metrics for 2012 by Avinash Kaushik

Avinash Kaushik explains the best KPI metrics for small, medium and large websites. Different sets of web analytics metrics should be measured by small, medium, and large-sized websites.

Web Metrics for Small-sized Business Websites:

  • Acquisition: Cost per acquisition
  • Behavior: Bounce rate, checkout abandonment rate
  • Outcomes: Macro conversion rate

Web Metrics for Medium-sized Business Websites:

  • Acquisition: Cost per acquisition, click-through rate
  • Behavior: Bounce rate, checkout abandonment rate, page depth, loyalty (count of visits)
  • Outcomes: Macro conversion rate, micro conversion rate, per visit goal value

Web Metrics for Large-sized Business Websites:

  • Acquisition: Cost per acquisition, click-through rate, % new visits
  • Behavior: Bounce rate, checkout abandonment rate, page depth, loyalty (count of visits), events/visit
  • Outcomes: Macro conversion rate, micro conversion rate, per visit goal value, days to conversion (or time lags for content sites), assisted conversions

Avinash Kaushik defines the best social media metrics with conversation, amplification, applause, and economic value. Know what social metrics to measure and how to measure the social metrics.

Conversation Rate:

  • Conversation Rate = Number of Audience Comments (or Replies) Per Post

Amplification Rate:

  • Twitter: Amplification = Number of Retweets Per Tweet
  • Facebook: Amplification = Number of Shares Per Post
  • Blogs/YouTube: Number of Share Clicks Per Post (or Video)

Applause Rate:

  • Twitter: Applause Rate = Number of Favorite Clicks Per Post
  • Facebook: Applause Rate = Number of Likes Per Post
  • Google+: Applause Rate = Number of +1s Per Post
  • Blogs/YouTube: Applause Rate = Number of +1s and Likes Per Post (or video)

Economic Value:

  • Economic Value = Sum of Short and Long Term Revenue and Cost Savings

Japan, Korea and China Reviews by Clickz Asia

Clickz Asia has this SEO Matures in North Asia, Key Trends for 2012 which refers to social signals, mobile app market and mobile SEO in Japan and Korea.

  • Social signals in SEO have resulted in Facebook pages to rank in Google Japan for competitive terms and Korea’s Naver blog platform (Cafe) having pages appeared in the main search listing on Naver’s top pages.
  • The rise in adoption of smartphones in Japan and Korea will lead to an increased focus on mobile SEO as Japan has 14 million smartphone population (or 11%) and Korea has over 20 million smartphone population (or 40%). The mobile app market is the second most popular activity on mobile after search.
  • SEO will be the increased focus on optimizing for local search. In Japan, search queries on Google Places in 2011 has more than doubled as people have increased their on-the-go search. With Korea’s Naver, the search query volume of Naver Map, the premier map and local search platform has also doubled in 2011, coinciding with the surge in mobile usage in Korea.

A Starter’s Guide to Search in Korea briefly explains the landscape of search engines in Korea:

  • Naver vs Daum – Korea’s 2 largest search engines are dominating search market share.
  • SEM in Korea – SEM models in Korea include cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-time (CPT).

Chinese search engine Baidu is definitely on the way to:

2012′s SEM Predictions by Business2Community

Business2Community offers 2012′s Search Engine Marketing Predictions:

  • PPC advertising will become more interactive and engaging as non-search options increase viability, and will become bigger in Youtube and social media.
  • Websites will shift marketing budgets to directly converting leads into sales (from only generating leads) when more websites are using conversion tools and SEM automation systems to automate their conversion optimization process.
  • Social’s integration into search engines continues to increase as social signals and sharing will have an even greater impact on search engine rankings. Companies will focus increasingly on Social Media Analytics, as the importance of measuring the ROI on social media campaigns continues to increase.

2011′s SEM and Analytics Events by Gordon Choi’s Blog

Gordon Choi’s Blog mentioned year 2011′s events related to search engines, web analytics and social networks.

Search Engine Optimization:

Search Engine Marketing and Tools:

Web Analytics, SEO Analytics, Social Analytics:

Google+ / Social Networks:

Search Engine Conferences:

Comments

3 Responses to “SEO, PPC, Web Analytics Trends in 2012”

  1. Andre Morris on January 10th, 2012 5:09 am

    So very true about social integration into the search engines. With Google leaning heavily on signals from Google+, Bing seems to be digging even deeper into integration with Facebook. This is going to be a very interesting year for internet marketing!

  2. Lipu on January 10th, 2012 6:05 am

    Thanks for sharing. I love this article “Best Web Metrics / KPIs for a Small, Medium or Large Sized Business”

  3. KAI on January 16th, 2012 1:58 am

    Thanks for sharing.I enjoyed reading your blog and I really appreciate your blog.

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