This session was fun because it was all Q&A, but you could only get your questions answered by using a certain Twitter hashtag. This sucked for me because the WiFi at the conference is terrible and I wanted to save my phone battery for my walk home (I live in NYC and it looks different at night. Trust me, you’d save your phone battery too).
BUT… I ended up using my phone to post a hashtag tweet. I admit it, I wanted to see my face on the screen – I carry mace so I’m OK.
Overall, some of the questions/answers were somewhat beneficial.
Question from audience: If you have a client that won’t share their tracking information with you, what would you do to prove your ROI?
Answer from panel: Fire the client. In this industry and this day and age if you’re working on SEO, you don’t want to get yourself into a situation where you can’t win. Work on the value upfront and develop benchmarks together.
Question from audience: YES! They answered my question…kinda. “@MolliMegasko What are the best free tools one can use when tracking SEO metrics for small business? #sesny3 #sesny”
Answers from panel:
- http Header Check (I have not heard of this one but I’m definitely going to check it out. Anyone use this?)
- Compete.com (We’ve talked about this before. It’s free online measurements of your site and shows how well you’re doing.)
- Google Analytics (Free and comprehensive. GA collects all the data in one place.)
- All social media sites (YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter each have their own measuring sources.)
- Google Search “Search Base Keyword Tool”? (The guy had too much of an accent for me to hear what this was actually called. Anyone have input on this one?)
Paid examples:
- Majestic SEO (Not free but encouraged to check it out. Has anyone ever used this before?)
- Omniture (An advanced program that combines all your information into one place while grading you and giving you suggestions for greater SEO.)
Question from audience: I’m having a problem with revenue attribution, what can I do?
Answer from panel: Put an attribution model in place and figure out what type of model you want. If you want something that works, don’t use a free program. This is not a simple fix, but you can experiment with your own metrics and assign a weight to clicks and views.