SEO can be a tedious and time intensive process, so anything that will make that job a bit easier is a true godsend. Luckily Firefox has a plethora of tools to do just that.

Not acquainted with Firefox yet? It's time to head over to Mozilla and download what may very well become you best online friend. It's secure, it's customizable, it's free and it will run on Windows, Linux or Mac. So you really can't go wrong.

Ok, without further ado, here is the list.

[More]

If I had a dollar for every great quote that came from a Kevin Costner movie I would have....a dollar. When I talk about this quote for SEO purposes, I'm talking about building out the content on your website. Many site owners make the mistake of letting their website sit unchanged and collect dust while they wait for their link campaign to start driving traffic. Don't let this happen to you and start writing pages that your visitors will find useful.

By regularly adding content, you are giving your visitors a wider range of information to choose from. This can help you retain the people that do come to the site and make it less likely they will leave to find another resource on the subject. Show people that you're an authority in the area. Provide quality content to your consumers and you should see them returning more often.

Is what's good for the visitor also good for the search engines? In this case the answer is definitely yes. Google and Yahoo will eat up this new content and spit you out some long tailed results while they're at it. One of the best reasons for building out content is that you can start ranking for plenty of small keyword phrases. Use article writing as an opportunity to target smaller terms and expand the reach of your site. It is important to remember that long tail terms can represent a large portion of your traffic.

Building out articles on a monthly basis may take time but the end result will be well worth it. Great quality content will allow you to generate more traffic and keep visitors coming back for more.

I attended Omniture's annual summit last week in Salt Lake City, and I have to say that it was an amazing event. Not only did they pull off a top-notch conference for 2000 people, but they also topped it off with some great new product announcements.

SiteCatalyst Version 14 was announced as well as Search Center version 3 and they both received a great reception from the crowd. There were new tools added to both products, as well as some tremendous (and overdue) usability upgrades made to the interface.

The High lights: SiteCatalyst Version 14 New improved user interface with greatly improved usability (in my opinion this was long overdue) making it easier to find and create the reports that you need Integration of their recent acquisition of Offermatica and touch clarity into the Test and Target area Improved video/rich media tracking that allows for very detailed metrics to be created regarding video consumption A brilliant quick search feature to help find report, tools and help information More options chart types to choose from for improved information communication Share and distribute reports more easily and quickly new API upgraded and improved ExcelClient ...plus more

Search Center Version 3 Portfolio optimization and campaign modeling. The new Search Center will allow you to model how your performance would change should you increase of decrease your daily budget. It will now optimize your bids base on your 'portfolio' of keywords based on your budget and your business rules, and not just individual keywords based on business rules such as Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

Last week's Omniture announcements along with this week's Google Analytics announcements are great news for the web analytics community. The new features will allow companies to get more insight into how their businesses are performing with less effort. As far as Omniture needing to worry that the Google Analytics product is developing at light speed, I don't think that is really the case. Google Analytics has been making major improvements to their tool very rapidly at light speed perhaps, but Omniture has continued to update and improve their 'optimization platform' at warp speed (I'm assuming that warp speed is faster than light speed)

At the Omniture Summit in Salt Lake City last week, Zaaz was one of the Gold Level sponsors and the sponsor of the networking lunch.

They are really thinking ahead (and having fun) with their website. At a time when the employment market place has more demand than supply for talented internet marketing people, they have gotten very creative with their recruiting.

Zaaz figures that if someone from a competing firm is visiting their site that they must be looking for a job, so they redirect the visit from their home page to their careers section.

They do this by identifying the IP addresses of the offices of their top 50 competitors and then redirect the visit if it comes from one of those addresses.

So, if you are wondering if Zaaz considers you to be one of their top 50 competitors, try visiting their site from your office to see if you go to their home page or their careers page.

I think this is an incredibly clever way to recruit top talent for your firm and take it away from your competitors.

It's important for businesses to start taking advantage of internet marketing and Yahoo! did a great job of stressing this at Yahoo's Search Day in Vancouver.

It was interesting to see some of the statistics at Yahoo's Search Day. Three out of four Canadians are now connected to the internet with 85 million searches happening on a daily basis. Many Canadian businesses are not tapping into this market and are missing out on producing extra revenue. Even more interesting was the statistic from Yahoo's presentation (based on research - I think they used JC Penny as one of their examples) that claimed for every $1 spent online the mortar and brick businesses saw additional $6 revenue in store, I thought this 1 to 6 ratio was very impressive and should have been an eye opener to those at the conference not yet fully implementing internet marketing into their business structure.

Bill Barnes Enquiro Search Solutions Co Founder and Executive Vice President went over some interesting material on how people click in the search results and your website. Though most of it was fairly what I expected with the top 3 results getting the most followed up by the top right result. Interestingly enough the pattern was broken (From highest to lowest) when the next most clicked spot was at the fold (The part of the search results where you need to scroll to see more). TIP -- Those using positioning preference in google adwords may want to try ranking for the spot on the fold for cheaper clicks with high CTR's.

Overall the day was a success and I got to meet and speak to some great people. All the speakers did an amazing job and kept the whole conference entertaining and engaging. During lunch I got to briefly speak to Martin Byrne Yahoo's Search Marketing Director. I asked him if Yahoo was planning to release a google adwords editor equivalent tool for Yahoo Panama (MSN just launched theirs - Alpha Stage) and though he didn't say if they were or weren't he did let me know that Yahoo Panama is going to get a brand new UI and update in about Q3 of this year.

If you're a Digger, then there's a good chance that you're probably among the majority who have never seen one of their submissions hit the first page, let alone the top 10. If you have seen your submissions made popular, then you can probably relate to that giddy little sense of excitement you feel when your story's Digg count explodes after reaching the first page. My latest submission to be made popular didn't just hit the front page, it hit the top 10, shot to the top and stayed there for most of the first 12 hours it was popular.

So why did my submission get so popular so quickly?

[More]

Google launched a new report set in GA yesterday - Google Benchmarking. Now you can compare your site's statistical information with aggregated data from other sites in your industry or even other industries.

In order to participate you'll need to share your own data with Google so they can aggregate it for your competitors - so remove your Google tin foil hat before proceeding.

What is the benchmarking service?
"Benchmarking is an optional Google Analytics service that shows how your website's statistics compare against other industry verticals. In the beta version of this service, you are able to compare your site’s Visits, Pageviews, Pages per Visit, Bounce Rate, Average Time on Site, and New Visits data against benchmark data from categories of other participating websites. You can use this data to gain broader context for your site so you can identify additional opportunities to improve your site's metrics."

How does Google know which industry your in and who your competitors are?
"Google crawls the websites in the account then categorizes them by vertical and the amount of visits. The data is then made anonymous through aggregation."

Why you should sign up?
Because you need to take advantage of every opportunity and every piece of data out there. Success on the web is about getting the right information, using the right tools and testing, testing, testing (optimization).

The more you know about how you stand in comparison to other players, the better off you are. It's a big ocean with lots of food, you might think your kicking butt when in fact your getting your butt kicked.

Here's an example of why benchmarking matters
Your newspaper site gets 1000 visits/day, so do your competitors sites. Your site gets 1300 pageviews/day, your competitors sites get 3000+. You can look at this a couple of ways, maybe your visitors find what they are looking for in fewer clicks, but more likely your site is missing something. If your revenue is ad based your competitors are generating more than twice the money you are one the same volume of users. Now you see why knowing is a lot more powerful than not knowing.

I can't wait to see what happens when Google starts aggregating conversion data.

The speed at which Google is pushing forward new features is amazing. You look at Google's major analytics competitor "Omniture" and you have to wonder if they can keep up. The timing of this news is surprising as well - smack dab in the middle of Omnitures Summit Conference in Utah. Don't get me wrong, Omniture is rolling out some pretty cool tools, but GA is cruising at light speed.

Search engines spiders use sitemaps to find and index the content of websites. Basically, sitemap is a guide that show search engines a list of pages available for indexing. It is important to understand that a sitemap is just a guide for search engines, and not a list of commands. The sitemap XML format is supported by many search engines including Google, Yahoo, and MSN. You can find a description of the XML schema for the sitemaps protocol on sitemaps.org.

Here is an example of an XML sitemap.

You can find descriptions of XML tags on sitemaps.org.

I just want to focus on two optional tags:

changefreq - This tag tells search engines how often you usually update the page. Please note that you just provide information about update frequency. It does not mean that search engines will index the page with the same frequency.

priority - This tag shows spiders priority of the page relative to other pages on the website. Basically, you tell search engines that pages with higher priority have more important information. It helps search engines prioritize the indexing process. Giving high priority to all pages will not help because all pages will have the same priority. And you should understand that the priority tag does not affect ranking position in search engine results pages.

Steps below describe how to create and submit XML sitemap.

1. Create XML sitemap. You can use different automated tools listed on page http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html.
My personal choice is free sitemap generator on auditmypc.com.
Please note that different subdomains should have their own sitemaps located in these subdomains.

2. Put new XML sitemap on your website. Usually, it is located in the root of the website like http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml.
Sitemaps for subdomains are usually located in subdomains like http://subdomain.example.com/subdomain_sitemap.xml

3. Submit XML sitemap to Google in Google Webmaster Tools - http://google.com/webmasters/tools/siteoverview.
Please note that you need a Google Account to provide this submission.

4. Submit XML sitemap to Yahoo Site Explorer - http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/.
Please note that you need a Yahoo ID to provide this submission.

5. Submit XML sitemap to MSN using http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
(please change www.example.com to your website)

6. Update (or create) robots.txt file to include reference to XML sitemap.
Basically, you have to add just one line in the robots.txt file like

XML sitemaps provides valuable information to search engine spiders and should be used for successful search engine optimization.

There has been a lot of talk these days about the importance of setting goals and measuring outcomes in PPC. Many professionals discuss these ideas abstractly as - sales, leads, visitors, and branding or identity goals. Although the words sound clear, in truth, they probably mean nothing at all to most people. So how do we go from sales to measurable results in PPC? Perhaps the answer occurs with some basic steps:

Sales
Have a sale on a particular product or service
Differentiate your product with increased levels of service
Take phone calls specific to that sale item - Hotline! Live Support, Dedicated 1-800 Number.

Leads
Make additional product information, tips and guides available to customers.
Use questionnaires to get feedback about your customers' interests and things that they like to do.

Visitors
Hold contests to provide customers with rewards for the things that they enjoy
Think of an advertising budget as a percentage of sales.
Dedicate a percentage of sales to gaining customers as they explore the sales cycle since customers may buy later following broad searches.

Branding & Identity
Clearly explain the nature of your business, and why you are in business, and how you can help customers to solve a problem.
Support causes that mean something to your customers and your business.
Make your company logo visible online, using images that communicate your message, and broadcast those images throughout the website.

In the PPC campaign, the plan might unfold as follows:

Step 1

1. Build a time limited campaign specific to the product or service that you want to promote
2. Create a targeted landing page
3. Write targeted ads
4. Use a dedicated phone number and email so everyone at your company knows that the items are hot and a top priority.
5. Measure phone calls, clicks, sales, emails.

Step 2

1. Write additional product information, tips and guides and make them available to customers
2. Record email, phone and address data using it to gain insights into your customers.
3. Use 2 types of questionnaires: 1 for buyers and 1 for browsers to find out what brought them to your website, what makes them different, and what they like to do.
4. Measure qualitative results and use it to formulate an Action Plan (or contest) below

Step 3

1. Hold contests that provide the rewards related to the things that your customers like to do.
2. Make the contests avaialble to buyers and to visitors who dig deep to reach internal pages.
3. Continue to monitor sales and commit to raising the budget proportionally to sales increases.
4. Write targeted ads.

Step 4

1. Do a lot of work on your Frequently Asked Questions and About Us pages by asking staff about all the odd questions that they have been asked over the years.
2. Invite visitors to ask questions.
3. Spend a lot of time on your About Us pages because customers who are not familar with your business tend to visit those pages.
4. Build your brand by celebrating various causes - whales, pets, culture, women, environment -- and make your site present by raising funds, donations, or pages dedicated to supporting various charities and organizations.
5. Write targeted ads
6. Measure the number of visitors to the About Us pages, number of visitors to social cause pages, and the number of Frequently Asked Questions.

If this simple email helped you to think about your business a little differently, then I'd love to hear from you.

Key Takeaways
We visited each of the top 500 Internet Retailers websites and observed the following:

• 37% use Google Analytics
• 32% use Omniture
• 30.2% use more than one application

When you consider the following research, you may be left wondering how far Google can reach. They already know almost everything about us as visitors and it appears like they are learning a lot about us as customers as well.

---This is the process that was used to conduct the research---

Observation
An increasing number of large companies' websites are using multiple analytics applications. More often than not, one of the applications is Google Analytics.

Hypothesis
Since Google started offering a "free" analytics application, it has garnered a lot of attention, even from larger web properties. It was hypothesized that many of these larger web sites are using Google Analytics in conjunction with their current analytics application to determine whether or not Google Analytics alone can satisfy their analytics needs. As a result of this hypothesis, it is expected that Google Analytics is being run on many of the same web sites that also run "enterprise level" analytics applications.

Methodology
From February 1st through February 15th, VKI Studios visited all of the Internet Retailer's top 500 websites. When visiting the web sites, Stephane Hamel’s WASP browser plug-in was used to report what analytics applications were installed on each site. This data was captured and analyzed to confirm or deny the hypothesis.

Results
Below is a summary of the results after visiting the Internet Retailer's top 500.

*WASP was not able to determine what analytics application was being used on 87 of the sites that we visited. Possible reasons are that the site was in FLASH, the site didn't have analytics implemented, or the site was down when it was visited.

For sites that had more than one analytics application implemented, the most popular combinations were:

The table below indicates the % of web sites using each vendor. Since some websites have more than one vendor's application implemented, the numbers will sum to more than 100%.

For Internet Retailer 500 websites using only one analytics application, the table below indicates the percentage using each specified vendor as their only application.

*Urchin software can only be detected when the UTM module is being used. Many more properties may be using Urchin for their log files without the UTM Module.

Other Insights

• Over 12% of the sites that we were able to collect data on were using DoubleClick
• 1% web sites that we visited were running Google Website Optimizer tests on their home pages
• 0.4% sites have Tacoda’s behavioral targeting code implemented on their home pages

Conclusion
With more than 37% of the Internet Retailer 500 websites having either Google Analytics (either the ga.ms or urchin.js) or Urchin Software (a Google product) implemented on their sites, it seems that the analytics landscape is changing dramatically. With 13% of the sites reviewed running a Google Analytics product at the same time as another analytics vendor’s product, it appears that there is validity to my hypothesis: many large websites are experimenting with Google Analytics to see if it will satisfy their needs. .

This report is a snapshot at a given point in time, and it does not give us any insight with respect to how the landscape of analytics implementations is changing. We are planning a follow up test using the same methodology to determine how the analytics vendor landscape is changing.

References, Sources, and Tools
Internet Retailer 500 - http://www.internetretailer.com/top500/list.asp

ClickTracks http://www.clicktracks.com/
CoreMetrics http://www.coremetrics.com/
DoubleClick http://www.doubleclick.com/
FireClick http://www.fireclick.com/
Google Analytics http://www.google.com/analytics/
Google Website Optimizer http://services.google.com/websiteoptimizer/
HitsLink http://www.hitslink.com/
Insite http://insiteanalytics.net/
Omniture (SiteCatalyst and HBX) http://www.omniture.com
OneStat http://www.onestat.com/
Quantcast http://www.quantcast.com/
Tacoda http://www.tacoda.com/
Unica http://www.unica.com/
Web Analytics Solution Profiler (WASP) http://wasp.immeria.net/index2.htm
Urchin http://www.google.com/urchin/index.html
Webtrends http://www.webtrends.com/
Xiti http://www.xiti.com/

Research by VKI Studios http://www.vkistudios.com