Are SEO’s and PPC experts more effective at driving referral traffic to a web site from Twitter than SMM specialists? That could be the conclusion based on data I’ve collected from a series of polls, so far.
A few weeks ago I started running some lists on this blog. My goal was to thank so many great contributors for posting relevant and useful information which would be useful to anyone engaged in online marketing. Some people are established, and well known. There were five lists SEO, PPC, SMM, Links, and Cross-Channel (meaning they fit in 2+ categories).
I’ve known many of these people for years, since before I started Eightfold Logic. I used a vote driven format, because I know polls always draw attention, but also because I thought their might be some interesting data to report. After a couple of system crashes, I’ve finally completed compiling the data and expect to begin publishing the results next week.
While I’ll publish the detailed lists later, I wanted to share out some interesting summary data in the meantime, and get your thoughts and input on a surprising result. Perhaps most interestingly to me: why is it that tweets by SMM specialists in support of the list of Social Marketers generated the lowest click through rates?
This first chart shows how many unique individuals posted, or reposted, a link on Twitter promoting each channel’s list. As you can see, the greatest volume of unique activity was for the Cross Channel and SEO lists. This total is not the number of tweets, but rather the number of unique individual who tweeted about the lists, and used Bit.ly for url shortening purposes. I selected just the bit.ly tweets as it’s simple to track.
This is where it gets interesting. Despite the unique activity levels for the SMM and PPC lists, the Social Marketer’s self-promotions drew the lowest average number of referrals per tweet. Could it be that SEO’s and PPC’s are the most effective Tweeters?
I’d love to hear your comments and thoughts as to why this is.
It’s been almost seven months since I last provided insight into the search engine market shares based on click through activity. After holding relatively steady for months, this latest update shows Bing has grown by 2.0%. Perhaps most interestingly, it’s no longer growing at the expense of Yahoo, which was previously the case.
Here’s the raw numbers:
Google
Yahoo
Bing
Other
September 7
78.68%
11.51%
6.80%
3.01%
September 14
78.35%
11.13%
6.50%
4.02%
September 21
77.43%
11.35%
7.11%
4.11%
September 28
77.65%
10.80%
7.27%
4.28%
October 4
77.78%
10.66%
7.23%
4.33%
October 12
77.78%
10.66%
7.21%
4.35%
October 18
77.89%
10.65%
7.29%
4.17%
October 25
77.83%
10.56%
7.56%
4.05%
November 1
77.75%
10.46%
7.66%
4.12%
November 8
77.96%
10.21%
7.75%
4.08%
November 15
77.60%
10.39%
7.59%
4.42%
November 22
77.59%
10.41%
7.67%
4.37%
December 22
78.43%
9.73%
7.86%
3.97%
Month of June 2010
75.93%
9.94%
9.82%
3.83%
Eightfold Logic collects data from a network of web sites distributed globally. The data used in this reports represents web sites distributed globally, accessed by searchers located in the U.S., and reflects click-through activity data.
Over the last four work days, I’ve been publishing lists of people, broken out by online marketing disciplines. These are individuals whose writings or commentaries I recommend that people should read to keep abreast of the industry. I’ve broken them into areas of expertise as I saw fit - SEO thought-leaders, PPC experts, and strategic and tactical SMM thinkers. I have two more groups I want to reference in this series: 1) Link-Building masters, and; 2) Cross-Channel contributors. Then I will start compiling the data for publication.
Today, it’s the link-builder’s turn. These are all people I’ve read, and whose work I recommend you look at for link-building advice. Some is tactical, some strategic, but it all has its place. Presuming you already look at some, I’d like to know which 5 are the ones you reference the most often?
If you haven’t looked at the earlier lists, I’d suggest you look at them now. For the Search Engine Optimization Experts list: SEO; For the list of PPC Experts, PPC; and for the list of top Social Media Marketers, SMM.
Yesterday, I started a series of posts to answer a question I keep getting asked by people who are entering the industry, attending conferences, or even veterans looking for new sources of information: Whose writings I have found useful, by discipline? Yesterday I posted about SEO writers
It’s easy for everyone to list off a few names, but there’s an incredible span of knowledge out there and experts in many different areas. Unless you read a good, broad sampling, and not just the few same ones every day, you’re not going to become truly proficient in any one domain. That’s because there’s always cross-over. If you think that you can succeed as an SEO without properly understanding the fundamentals of the other disciplines, good luck to you.
Everyday, there is great new content being published, but these lists are about who do you find provides the most useful information for putting skills into practice? The people whose contributions I find the most valuable may not publish daily or even weekly, but when they do, what they share is practical and either makes you consider something new, or provides you insights as to how to do something ever better! Some will mostly use Twitter to highlight other people’s articles of interest for their own readers [or polls ].
The list of people I know whose contributions I value is so large that I found that it was easier to create lists around themes, or concept groups. Some people are better known than others, but that doesn’t mean their writings are more helpful: The reality is, some people are incredibly knowledgeable, and while they don’t write a lot, or do so with flair, what they write matters.
If there’s someone you think I’ve missed, send me a comment - I’m trying to recognize people by discipline, and it’s possibly I see them more in one concept group than another. If you’re not on this list, perhaps you’ll be on one for another discipline, or perhaps your knowledge is so broad it’s hard to pin you into any one group! There’s also a few people who fit into two or more categories.
There is one person not on any of the lists on purpose: Danny Sullivan. I like him personally, and value and enjoy what he writes. But, let’s face it, he’s on everyone’s reading list.
Top 5 Results will be published at a later date.
And if you haven’t looked at the list of SEO’s I’ve regularly turned to, please do so.
This week, our weekly trend data of search engine market share as defined by click-through activity shows a Bing regaining its forward momentum, after a slight slip last week. However, looking at the last four weeks, it seems that Bing is hovering quite steadily around the 7.7% market share mark. Over the next few weeks we should be able to see if this is maintained as a normal position, or if Bing recovers its forward momentum.
It should be interesting to observe what happens this week. Each year we see a big drop in search referral traffic associated with the week of the American Thanksgiving Holiday. Will all the engines drop the same proportionate amount, or will Google’s traditional strength in the IT and student marketplace result in a larger drop in market share for the week? Next week I’ll try and put together a chart showing how search volume drops in the run-up to the Holiday, and also how it bounces back.
As always, we’re providing the data in weekly breakdowns to try and identify trends in very granular ways. This data reflects actual clickthrough activity, and not the number of queries run. Meaning if someone performs a search on Yahoo, but doesn’t click through to the results, we don’t track it. We only track searches which generated referrals.
The raw data for those who prefer the numbers, not the graphics:
Google
Yahoo
Bing
Other
September 7
78.68%
11.51%
6.80%
3.01%
September 14
78.35%
11.13%
6.50%
4.02%
September 21
77.43%
11.35%
7.11%
4.11%
September 28
77.65%
10.80%
7.27%
4.28%
October 4
77.78%
10.66%
7.23%
4.33%
October 12
77.78%
10.66%
7.21%
4.35%
October 18
77.89%
10.65%
7.29%
4.17%
October 25
77.83%
10.56%
7.56%
4.05%
November 1
77.75%
10.46%
7.66%
4.12%
November 8
77.96%
10.21%
7.75%
4.08%
November 15
77.60%
10.39%
7.59%
4.42%
November 22
77.59%
10.41%
7.67%
4.37%
Enquisite collects data from a network of web sites distributed globally. The data used in this reports represents web sites distributed globally, accessed by searchers located in the U.S., and reflects click-through activity data.
For the first time in months, our weekly trend data of search engine market share as defined by click-through activity shows a small drop in the growth trend on the part of Bing. However, Microsoft (MSFT) has still gained almost a full point of market share over the last two months. Yahoo’s share of search referrals rose a little this week.
As always, we’re providing the data in weekly breakdowns to try and identify trends in very granular ways. This data reflects actual clickthrough activity, and not the number of queries run. Meaning if someone performs a search on Yahoo, but doesn’t click through to the results, we don’t track it. We only track searches which generated referrals.
The raw data for those who prefer the numbers, not the graphics:
Google
Yahoo
Bing
Other
September 7
78.68%
11.51%
6.80%
3.01%
September 14
78.35%
11.13%
6.50%
4.02%
September 21
77.43%
11.35%
7.11%
4.11%
September 28
77.65%
10.80%
7.27%
4.28%
October 4
77.78%
10.66%
7.23%
4.33%
October 12
77.78%
10.66%
7.21%
4.35%
October 18
77.89%
10.65%
7.29%
4.17%
October 25
77.83%
10.56%
7.56%
4.05%
November 1
77.75%
10.46%
7.66%
4.12%
November 8
77.96%
10.21%
7.75%
4.08%
November 15
77.60%
10.39%
7.59%
4.42%
Enquisite collects data from a network of web sites distributed globally. The data used in this reports represents web sites distributed globally, accessed by searchers located in the U.S., and reflects click-through activity data.
A couple of weeks ago, I began publishing information about how the market shares for the search engine referral rates is changing. I’m attempting to update the information weekly. Once in a while, I’ll put up some other data, like the browser share data I posted a few weeks ago. In fact, it should be interesting to watch the numbers for iPhone v Android browser usage evolve once Verizon launches their “droid” line.
To highlight the trend, I’ll re-post the data from early September, but the graph below reflects trend information back to early August. You can review all the previous data in my earlier posts.
search engine referral reate trends to October 26 2009
Google
Yahoo
Bing
Others
September 7
78.68%
11.51%
6.80%
4.06%
September 14
78.35%
11.13%
6.50%
4.02%
September 21
77.43%
11.35%
7.11%
4.12%
September 28
77.65%
10.80%
7.27%
4.28%
October 4
77.78%
10.66%
7.23%
4.25%
October 12
77.78%
10.66%
7.21%
4.36%
October 18
77.89%
10.65%
7.29%
4.16%
October 26
77.83%
10.55%
7.56%
4.05%
Again, this data represents search engine clickthrough activity where the people initiating the searches are located in the U.S.
Last week I published information about how the market shares for the search engines have evolved over the last few months. I’m going to attempt to post updates almost every week, offset randomly by other interesting trends such as browser share numbers. This week, I’ve put together a weekly update, as quite a few people emailed me about the evolving trends.
To highlight the trend, I’ll re-post the data from early September.
search engine market shares for search engine usage based on searchers located in the US
Google
Yahoo
Bing
Others
September 7
78.68%
11.51%
6.80%
4.06%
September 14
78.35%
11.13%
6.50%
4.02%
September 21
77.43%
11.35%
7.11%
4.12%
September 28
77.65%
10.80%
7.27%
4.28%
October 4
77.78%
10.66%
7.23%
4.25%
October 12
77.78%
10.66%
7.21%
4.36%
October 18
77.89%
10.65%
7.29%
4.16%
Again, this data represents search engine click through activity where the people initiating the searches are located in the U.S. At some point I’ll present information on global search activity.
Whose Advice Works Best for Link Building?
July 27th, 2010 by Richard Zwicky
Over the last four work days, I’ve been publishing lists of people, broken out by online marketing disciplines. These are individuals whose writings or commentaries I recommend that people should read to keep abreast of the industry. I’ve broken them into areas of expertise as I saw fit - SEO thought-leaders, PPC experts, and strategic and tactical SMM thinkers. I have two more groups I want to reference in this series: 1) Link-Building masters, and; 2) Cross-Channel contributors. Then I will start compiling the data for publication.
Today, it’s the link-builder’s turn. These are all people I’ve read, and whose work I recommend you look at for link-building advice. Some is tactical, some strategic, but it all has its place. Presuming you already look at some, I’d like to know which 5 are the ones you reference the most often?
If you haven’t looked at the earlier lists, I’d suggest you look at them now. For the Search Engine Optimization Experts list: SEO; For the list of PPC Experts, PPC; and for the list of top Social Media Marketers, SMM.
Tags: business, link building, linking strategies, links, marketer, marketers, Marketing, search engine, search engine market, search engine strategies, Search Engines, search referrals, SEO Link Building, Social Link Building Marketplace
Posted in Commentary, Inbound Marketing, Link Strategies, SEO, SMM, Search Engines, link building, search marketing, social marketing | 3 Comments »