SEM Rock Stars
by Greg Meyers @ SEM Geek
 You know, it's easy to provide good PPC Tactics to any client, but to be honest, the PPC Marketer must take a more passionate role in the client's business because if they want to move the "performance needle" they need to understand more than their basic products/services. Whether the PPC marketer inherits an existing account or initiates a new one, the discovery phase of the kickoff call must be more than just basic questions, they need to be more "in-depth" and almost downright personal. Most of the time, the client is very passionate about their business and expect the PPC guru to be just as involved with the business as they are. If there is a random drop in conversions, the PPC marketer better be in top of this and voice their concern to the client and vice versa for increased conversions.
Continue the Discovery Phase After The Kickoff Call:
Just because you already had the kickoff call, doesn't mean you do not need to ask more questions. In fact, the most intuitive questions and strategy shifts that makes the most difference happen during the first couple months of the relationship. If you have a scheduled weekly or monthly call, always have a handful of questions to keep the client's confidence in you that you are just not the same old PPC Agency.
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by Samyukta Markley @ PPC Hero
The exciting thing about search marketing is that people's search behaviors are always changing; this can depend on the time of year, trends or new developments in the industry. But how do you stay ahead of these changes and more importantly, what do you do to counteract any negative effects in your accounts? In this post, I'll focus on understanding traffic trends in your PPC accounts and in my follow-up post I will talk about how to effectively leverage your findings to benefit your account.
Digging-in To Your Account
There are many tools out there to help you understand traffic patterns for your campaigns. However, the first place you need to look is in your PPC account. Start out by running a campaign report for the last few years. Under settings choose "monthly" as your unit of time. Alternatively, set your time range and look at a graph for impressions and clicks in the interface. Either of these tools should give you insights into when traffic drops or spikes occurred. Are there any patterns in your data? Now start thinking about what events (good or bad) happened during those time periods:
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by Lee Oden @ TopRank Blog
Vanessa Fox works as Entrepreneur-in-residence with Ignition Partners but is especially well known in the Search Marketing world because of her past work as Google's search engine strategy spokesperson and creator of Google Webmaster Central. I've interviewed Vanessa several times on video in the past here, here, here and podcast here but nothing as substantial as what you're about to read.
Vanessa has a new book coming out called "Marketing in the Age of Google", which I've had the opportunity to preview and it reminds me of how important it is to draw attention to her exceptional insight. My kudos for the book:
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IQ Workforce Blog
by Corry Prohens
 Until recently, the only credentialing / certification that was available to web analytics professionals was through the vendors and was obviously product-specific.
The Web Analytics Association has been working on a community-wide certification program for a while. A few weeks ago they launched the Web Analyst Certification Program. The program is broken down into three components / areas of expertise:
1. Site Optimization:
- Persona development
- Visitor activity analysis
- On-Site Search
- Navigation and Site Analysis
- Content Analysis
- Site technology
- Optimizing for Conversion
- Tracking visitor behavior and value over time
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Recent Industry Buzz
WALTHAM, MA--(Marketwire - 05/24/10) - WHAT: Web Analytics for Today's Social Media Strategy ; featuring Deirdre Walsh, Community & Social Media Manager at National Instruments, and Akin Arikan, Interactive Marketing Evangelist, Unica Corporation (NASDAQ: UNCA - News ) WHEN: Tuesday, June 1, 2010; 1:00 pm Eastern Time WHY: Marketers and web analysts are still learning how different the social ...
SSL snuffs browser referral In adding SSL encryption to its primary search engine, Google isn't just protecting your traffic from anyone sniffing your network. It's also preventing third-party webmasters from tracking the search terms you used to find their sites. That may be a good thing for netizens intent on privacy lockdown. But for webmasters, it could be a bit of a problem.
LOS ALTOS, Calif., May 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Guardian Analytics, the innovator in predictive analytics-based fraud prevention software, today announced that it has raised $9 million in funding, led by Sutter Hill Ventures with participation by existing investor Foundation Capital.
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