So much is happening on the Internet these days that it's just hard for an old soul like me to keep up.  Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo,  just as billionaire Bill seemed set for the pearly gates.  The price of Google's shares have plummeted and it seems no great surprise because why would anyone invest in a company with a name like "Google," "Froogle" or Boogle Boogle. It seems like the inaudible utterances of a Kalahari bushman in an old cartoon. I'm just saying!  So, what do music, American pop-culture and the Internet have in common?  

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"With broad match, the Google AdWords system automatically runs your ads on relevant variations of your keywords, even if these terms aren't in your keyword lists. Keyword variations can include synonyms, singular/plural forms, relevant variants of your keywords, and phrases containing your keywords."

Just about everyone running a google adwords account has broad keywords inside their adgroups. This is mostly because this is the default match type. What most people don't realize is that bidding broad is like giving Google permission to waste your money on any terms its "expanded keyword matching technology" decides are "relevant". In many cases the terms can be far from relevant.

So how do we find out what we are actually bidding on?

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If you haven't already turned on Google Analytics Benchmarking (Beta) inside your account you may want to. At the very minimum it is interesting to see how your site stacks up against sites similar in size or across similar/different categories. The comparisons are limited but it is a good first step. As I played around with it this morning I was reminded of why Google is doing so well in the analytics space. They really understand that most people don't know how to use these tools yet and they are trying to help you understand what will make a difference to your site's performance.

Google is teaching through comparison, showing you how you are doing against a category and then prompting you with a "Also see the All Traffic Sources report for additional analysis of this metric."

So let's have a quick look at the All Traffic Sources report to see what we can learn. Unfortunately there is no valuable Benchmarking data in there. The All Traffic Sources report shows you how your traffic breaks down by volume and by other metrics. Try comparing how each segment of your traffic interacts with your site but comparing conversion rates (click the ecommerce or goal tabs). Is your Yahoo PPC traffic converting at a much higher rate than your Google PPC traffic? Maybe but the secret to optimizing your site's revenue stream is asking these types of questions and then trying to figure out why?

Here's a free tip: find out what segment of your traffic makes you the most money. Then map the path on a piece of paper that each visitor normally takes from that source (landing page, product page, checkout etc). Now compare that segment of your traffic to another big traffic source. Are there differences? I bet there are, and if you can figure out why one source converts higher than another, your becoming an analyst and you're about to impress somebody (probably your boss).

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.

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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?

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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.