Monthly Archives: July 2007

The Search Engine Optimisers Tool Box

Posted by on July 29, 2007 1 comment

I have done these sessions couple of times at the SES, both in London and Sweden and beside doing the site clinic session it’s one of my favourite sitting at conferences and workshops like the SES and Ad-Tech. It´s unbelievable how fast thinks change and the number of tools being developed to help people maximising their search engine marketing efforts.
Check out the My SEO SEM Toolbox, Internet Marketing Tools at the Nordic eMarketing web site I wrote it to follow up my PPT doc on the same topic.

EU Internet Distribution

Posted by on July 29, 2007 No comments

According to by Carl H. Marcussen, PhD, Senior Researcher, Centre for Regional and Tourism Research, Denmark and his report updated 31st of May 2005 Online Sales in tourism has increased by as much as 40% from 2003 to 2004.

His summary is as follows:

“Online travel sales increased by as much as 40% from 2003 to 2004 and reached EUR 17.7 billion in the European market in 2004 – or 7.4% of the market (up from EUR 12.6 bn. or 5.3% in 2003). A further increase of about 26% during 2005 to about EUR 22.2 billion may be expected (9.1% of the market). The European online travel market could reach EUR 27.0 bn. or 10.8% of the market by 2006. The UK accounted for 37% of the European online travel market in 2004, with Germany in second place at 20%. The ten new EU member countries have been included in the European online travel market and contributed a little under 2% to the total in 2004, after growing quickly during 2004. The direct sellers accounted for 67% of online sales in the European market in 2004, more than ever before. In 2004 the breakdown of the market by type of service was as follows (with 2003 in brackets): Airtravel: 57.9% (58.0%); Hotels 15.2% (16.4%); Package tours 16.0% (15.8%); Rail 9.0% (7.9%); Rental cars 2.0% (2.0%). Concentration in the European online travel market has increased, following several acquisitions.”

More information on his online sales report here

10 great way’s of using my favourite Web Analytics tool

Posted by on July 28, 2007 4 comments

While searching (what else?) for some fun (yes analytics can be fun) I found a great aritcle on web belonging to a company called StoneTemple Consulting ( I know a band called StoneTemple Pilots) under the title “10 Cool Things you can do with IndexTools“.

I did with my former co-worker spend some time looking at web analytic tools, Webtrends was to complicated, Omniture to expencive and Urchin to primitive and from our point of view we struck gold when we found IndexTools, we had three main criteria that the tool needed to fullfill so we would want to look at it.

1. Manageable pricing
2. “Marketing department” friendly
3. As close to 100% deep drillable data and trend reporting

That and being a tool in constant development was our main criteria, Indextools had it all and is even getting stronger, when we reviewed it it was at version 8.5 and now they are bringing out version 10 – release date is in Q3 2007.

The new improved will contain among other Lifetime visitor-level metrics, External data source framework, Interactive visualization and Custom metrics.

Ad-Tech London

Posted by on July 27, 2007 No comments

Live is all fun and games!! As I have writen before I have been invited by the lovely people of Ad-Tech London to be a facilitator on Social Search, topic that is very dear to me. This will be a workshop on Social Search and how people will be getting more and more control over the material presented to them by the search engines. For me this is a great excuse to dig deeper into the world of online social media and the impact of Web 2.0. Looking forward to it I can tell you that!

Is the Jargon driving you crazy?

Posted by on July 27, 2007 No comments

I am always talking to people about all kinds of Internet related stuff because of my work :-) hmmm of course and when I start talking about SEM, SEO, ROI, eROI, KPI, ASP, PHP, JSP, CPL, PPC, CMS, WCMS, CPA and ……. Their eye’s role backwards and they turn red or blue. So for those looking for information on such phrase abbreviat’s Google them or go to Wikipedia – Here is one such page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_Per_Impression.

SMX Sweden draws closer

Posted by on July 27, 2007 2 comments

The SES that I was a part of in 2005 did not impress me and I have never seen such a small expo for such a well known event in my life. I am hoping that Scandinavians will flock to the SMX this year, at least to show Chris Sherman and friends support because of their efforts to try again and of course to learn from it.

The conferences will be conducted by US search engine marketing (SEM) experts Chris Sherman and Danny Sullivan and if I know them a team of international experts on search marketing. I know I will be there and look forward visiting again one of the most beutifull cities in Europe, Stockholm. You can find more about the SMX and other Search Engine related confrences at www.emarketing.is.

The 20, 40, 40 rule

Posted by on July 27, 2007 2 comments

I am often asked how we can take the technology aspect away from Internet Marketing. From my point of view the simplest way of explaining how it works is the 20 – 40 – 40 rule. I am not sure who came up with first but it’s a simple way of explaining the factors that influence marketing on the Internet. 20 stands for that technology has 20% impact on success, 40 stands for that on-site stuff has 40% effect and finally that off-site stuff such as link popularity and bookmarking has the final 40%. So if we have the 20%, the foundation ok, the tech part is out of the way and we can focus on the rest.

Here is a good link in regards of this – Holistic Internet Marketing Approach

Music on the Internet

Posted by on July 27, 2007 No comments

The impact that the internet has had on the music industry is huge, both good and bad. One of the good impacts are the distribution possibilities of small bands with little to none budget for marketing. Especially when using sites like MySpace and we have heard of bands being signed up after agents have heard them through the Internet.

Another sample is close to us, the www.icelandicmusic.is – a one stop resource on music from Iceland, such as Björk, Ampop, Sigur Rós and Mum to mention few. I am going to have a close eye on that site being a guitar player myself.

Power to the People; are we moving beyond Page Rank?

Posted by on July 27, 2007 No comments

“A social search engine is a type of search engine that determines the relevance of search results by considering the interactions or contributions of users. Example forms of user input include social bookmarking or direct interaction with the search results such as promoting or demoting results the user feels are more or less relevant to their query.”

Not so long ago Google’s Page Rank changed the face of Internet search as we knew it, the likes of Yahoo, Ask and AltaVista all lost out as the age of Google began. But now that we’ve just got to grips with page rank, the basic principles of Social Search threaten to undermine and change our online marketing strategies.  But is it really that simple? And what is Google besides a social search engine when it relies on the collective opinions of webmasters and editors who judge other sites?The idea behind social search, also referred to as community search or behavioural targeted search, is that online communities and users enter data into search results which then directly affect them, thus changing search as we know it and shifting the power to the people.

I have few basic questions on this matter

What are the pros and cons of social search, such as the potential increased importance of search results, the problems of search and link spam and the possibility of a drop in importance of long-tail searches?

Can this potential ‘revolution’ in search change the Internet forever? How can marketeers start identifying audiences according to online behaviour and target specific groups directly using Social search? And finally will the search engine landscape change overnight and ask ourselves how worried we really need to be!

Web 2.0 – The Internet is evolving, ain’t it?

Posted by on July 27, 2007 No comments

I am not sure we can say that the latest Jargon in the world of the Internet is ”Web 2.0″, because it’s getting to be old news, but here are my basic thoughts on the topic. While every evolution of software seams to have a evolving number the Internet has stayed the same. Windows Office has gone from 95 to 2003 (2006) and my favored videogame has gone through at least five stages. So why has the Internet not?

Well some say it has and some say it’s still evolving and has not left 1.0, is at most around 1.005. But those who do say it has evolved say it’s now at version 2.0. So what is different? Though this is more based on subjectivity than anything else, it might be worth thinking about, is the Internet evolving and how?