Although we prefer granular SERP Tracking, like the kind Raven provides, there's another way to determine search engine result pages without having to ever visit Google. It's called passive SERP tracking, and it utilizes the information that's passed through from the referring search engine result page. Using that information, it's relatively easy to determine the following details:
- Search Engine
- Keywords
- Page
The last item is the key piece of data. Knowing that the referral came from the first page of Google is helpful information. It doesn't tell you where the result was ranked on the page — was is number one or number seven? — but it does provide a high level view. Knowing that a referral came from page one, two or ten, is much better than not knowing at all.
Passive SERP Tracker Pepper for Mint
We created a proof of concept for passive SERP tracking by making a pepper (an add-on) for Shaun Inman's amazing stats package, Mint. The SERP Pepper allows you to easily track search engine referrals, and report on which page they're coming from. Download the SERP Pepper for free.
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In January I wrote an entry on the services being offered by Internet Marketing Ninjas and Market Motive. At the end of the entry I wrote:
It should be noted that this article was not a true "review" of each service, it was a comparison of their publicly available offerings. I've never had full access to either service. Of course, if any of these services wants to give me free access, I will gladly write an in depth review about my experience.
Well, Market Motive took me up on that offer and gave me free access to their service for a full month. During that month, I was able to interact with with their experts (they call them faculty), watch several instructional videos, participate on their private forum and call in on one of their many monthly conference calls.
Before I get started, I wanted to make one thing very clear, this is NOT a paid review and I don't have any relationships with anyone associated or affiliated with Market Motive. Ahhh, I'm glad I got that off my chest. Quite frankly, I felt like I needed to say that, not because of the dreaded "don't pay for or publish paid reviews — Google imposed Internet law," but because this review is overwhelmingly positive. As you'll discover while reading this review, Market Motive is one of the best and most useful Internet marketing resources I've ever used.
What is Market Motive?
Market Motive was founded by Michael Stebbins, John Marshall and Avinash Kaushik. They wanted to provide a new and efficient way to get Internet marketing knowledge from industry leaders to people who practice Internet marketing for a living. They accomplished this through providing access to industry experts via a private forum, live (and recorded) conference calls and instructional videos. Their content covers the following key areas of Internet marketing:
- Web Analytics
- PPC & Paid Search
- SEO
- Social Media
- Conversion Optimization
- Online Publicity
They've built a team of Internet marketing consultants that cover each area:
Getting Started with the Forum
After you sign up, you'll receive a welcome message encouraging you to introduce yourself to the other members and the "faculty." Clicking on the button that says "Post an introduction here" takes you straight to their forum. At first glance, it didn't look like the forum was heavily used. However, after reading several of the threads, many of the posts were questions that were specific to the member's website. It was nice to see that every question was addressed by one or more of the Market Motive faculty members, which included specialists in my field of Internet marketing (SEO), like Todd Malicoat (aka stuntdubl). It was also nice to see that all users are bound to a strict non-disclosure agreement (NDA), which helps encourage open discussions about personal projects.
I wrote an introductory post, which is encouraged for all new members. That was promptly replied to by one of the faculty members and included a ton of helpful links to get me started. I then perused the forum for interesting discussions and was able to engage with a few members. Although the forum wasn't incredibly active — most likely due to not having a large number of users yet — it still seemed helpful. In most instances, if a discussion wasn't picked up by any of the other members, the faculty still participated.
Internet Marketing Conference Calls
Market Motive offers live conference calls with the faculty. You can leave questions on the forum to be asked during the conference call, and then the moderater(s) will address it.
I chose to participate in the Web Analytics Call with Avinash Kaushik. I asked him about tracking external links that my visitors click on and how I could track them in Google Analytics. The cool thing was that I didn't even have to wait until the conference call. If questions can be easily or quickly answered before the conference call, they'll be answered in the forum (otherwise, they get tabled for the call). Within 15 minutes, Avinash left me a detailed answer to my question, including links to online resources to help me set things up correctly.
When I briefly called in for the Web Analytics conference call, I was surprised to find out how many people participated in it. During the call, members were encouraged to remain on mute until it was their turn to participate.
One of the best things about the conference calls is that they're all recorded and then shared with every member. That ensures that you never miss out on anything, and if you're new to Market Motive, you can go back and listen to any of the previous conference calls. Also, since the questions are posted ahead of time in the forum, if you stumble upon a question that interests you, and the conference has already taken place, you can simply click on it to hear it.
Internet Marketing Videos
Another core feature of Market Motive is video, specifically instructional videos. Similar to what I previously reported, Market Motive's videos are created in presentation format with voiceovers. The videos are similar to a well structured presentation that you would find at any industry conference.
I watched several videos and all of them provided expert advice in a format that was easy to follow and learn from. They have many videos available right now and they appear to add new videos each month, which helps keep the content current and fresh.
Conclusion
When I originally saw the price — $299/month or $2,999 per year — I had a hard time stomaching the price. I was really curious to know how they were going to justify it. However, after I got into the system and started using it, I quickly started to ask myself how they could be charging so little. You basically get access to an ever expanding library of videos, conference calls and private discussion threads and get to interact directly with the faculty on a regular basis. Since it would typically cost $299 for 1-2 hours of consulting, I quickly started to realize what a great deal their service was.
So what's the catch? I don't think there really is a catch, other than to also promote their consultants' "consulting" services. I think they're banking on the fact that their members will eventually need more — more time, more attention to a big project, etc... In which case, they've made it easy to contact and hire one of the Internet marketing consultants for more in depth and private consulting. Makes sense to me.
Another important question is, "who is this service right for?" I think it will fit the needs of the following people:
- Solo Internet marketers (beginner, intermediate and experts that aren't experts in every area)
- Small to medium-sized businesses needing Internet marketing assistance and training
- Businesses with in-house Internet marketing staff
- Anyone who wants to stay on top of the industry, but can't attend the industry conferences
You can learn more about Market Motive at http://marketmotive.com/.
While Facebook and LinkedIn duke it out to be your main profile on the Internet, a new player, bigsight.org, is creeping into their space with a completely different approach. Unlike the closed off nature of Facebook and LinkedIn, bigsight.org keeps all user information completely public and does it with style. All profiles use an attractive minimalist design that keeps your focus on what's important, the user's data.
Having a good design is nice, but what's really important is how the bigsight.org profiles perform on search engines. The last few months have shown a giant leap in search engine performance for bigsight.org. In many cases, bigsight.org profiles are surpassing almost every other social network in the SERPs, including LinkedIn profiles. So, while Facebook may be the closed off service that let's you control your identity in the social network world, bigsight.org is quickly becoming the service to control your identity on Google.
A case in point is my own vanity search. Doing a Google Search for Jon Henshaw (as of this writing) will return my personal website first, my company's website second and then bigsight.org — bigsight.org surpassed both MyBlogLog and LinkedIn. I highly recommend that everyone stop by bigsight.org to setup their profile. If you're busy (or lazy) like me, then you'll be pleasantly surprised to know that they have a Facebook Profile Importer that will do all of the heavy lifting for you!
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Excessively long Internet links (URLs) have been with us since the onset of the Internet. College websites are notorious for having long URLs to their content — especially URLs that are difficult to remember or type. Search engines have also played a part in promoting long URLs. For example, search engines like Google reward Web pages that use descriptive URLs — URLs that include related keywords.
For the most part, the "hyperlink" nature of the Internet makes long URLs a nonissue. However, it can quickly become a problem when you decide to email a long URL or publish a long URL on paper. Long URLs that are emailed often break the link and send people to "404 Page Not Found" pages. Also, if you print a long URL in a newsletter, it can be difficult and time consuming to enter into a browser.
Fortunately, there is a solution to this dilemma. It's called the "URL shortener." The need to shorten URLs — and to build a better URL shortener — has created a massive amount of Web services that do just that. One of the oldest and most widely used URL shorteners is TinyURL, but as I just stated, there are many more.
I've compiled the ultimate list of URL shorteners. Keep in mind that URL shortening services use redirects and that using them doesn't guarantee that they'll always work. In fact, many of these services come and go, because of excessive abuse by spammers.
Favorite URL Shortener
Ultimate List of URL Shortener Services
URL shortening isn't the only type of URL redirect service out there. OffTo.net provides what they call a "link cloaker" for affiliates. DecentURL attempts to make URLs, well, decent. While HugeURL takes a tongue-in-cheek approach and creates a gigantic URL — just because they can.
Please leave a comment and list any URL shorteners that I've missed. I'll continue to keep this list up-to-date, so feel free to also bookmark this page.
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Features 
A well thought out information architecture (IA) is crucial for search engine optimization (SEO), in the same way that semantic structure and high quality content is. However, good design can play its part too.
