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Matt Cutts of Google Inc. has been producing daily videos that are answering questions from the SEO community. It is very interesting to see him with his expressions. (A true webmaster). Matt Cutt’s videos has very good information on all level of SEO.

Matt Cutt’s latest video is on “over on-page optimization” where Matt answers the seo question “Is over optimization bad for a website?”

GorForIt… All there to explore Matt Cutt’s latest video.

Advertising Agencies definitely have overtly aggressive methodologies to approach/pursue the new customers. Agencies present lot of commitments and genuinely deliver what they promise to their customers when it comes to traditional and time tested media marketing. But the scenario is quite unfortunate when agencies it comes to deliverables with online marketing, as they intend to forget the most popular medium - Search Engine’s Natural Results.

Advertising agencies are not very keen to take up natural (organic) search engine results seriously. Nor they seem to be inclined or demonstrate the interest to build SEO expertise under their gamut of marketing services. What could be the reason or the deterrents for advertising agencies?

Reasons for advertising agencies not offering SEO as a service to their customers whilst covering every other creative conceptualization for the websites could be inherently these:

Reason 1: SEO does not assure 15% Agency commissions.
The search engines deliver natural results on the left hand side for a related search engine query and do not in anyway promise to keep up a site in the search engine page results with any financial commitment. As a result the advertising agencies used to confirming slots and positions are trapped in a hapless situation. Coupled to this they are unable to pre-determine the cost for SEO services.

Reason 2: SEO is an organic process
An advertising agency cannot determine the time frame for SEO activities and also their inability to predict how much time it will take for results to show up on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

Reason 3: No Reliable Source for SEO Consultancy. Very less SEO expertise available
It is very hard to find experienced SEO professionals with proven results. This too is a daunting challenge for agencies, to find SEO professionals having a refined blending of knowledge pertaining to SEO technology, online marketing trends and ROI metrics.

Reason 4: Search Engine doesn’t offer SEO services? :)
Tier I (One) Search Engine’s like Google, Yahoo and MSN do not offer SEO services. Search Engines do not house even a single resource that can offer SEO services, nor are they keen to develop a SEO driven business model. On assurance of anonymity, one of the search engine company India Manager agreed that they do not have any SEO professionals.

Reason 5: SEO is not event based.
It is accepted norm that SEO offers remotely miniscule chances of driving a SEO campaigns on any given event within a short duration. Nevertheless there are great possibilities to make it happen. All you need do is “Ask the SEO Expert:)

Reason 6: SEO is an amalgamation of research, technology - Part Art and part Science.
It is very rare to find amalgamation of technology and marketing research in the advertising agencies predominant in the pursuit of creative excellence. The result being, the inability to create waves with digital marketing space, especially with SEO.

This gave opportunities to other SEO companies to directly enter the SEO business and speak to the client. But the advertising agencies that have great rapport with the clients need to align themselves to create the SEO services portfolio and outsource it to the SEO companies or have a strategic partnership tie-up inclusive of knowledge transfer.

Website Analytics tool has become an important service over the internet. Every publisher or advertiser is looking for a state-of-art website analytics tool for their website. Website Analytics tools can be classified as:

  1. Website Analytics Hosted Service
  2. Website Analytics Software Service
  3. Real Time Website Analytics Service

The most preferred of the aforementioned is the hosted services, followed by software services. The only reason to be cited is “Time”. In hosted service, the website analytics company takes care of hosting the website traffic data and resources,  thus helping the client save time and make data available almost immediately for analysis.

Most of the analytic tools guarantee to authentically capture all the traffic data. But the underlying fact is an approximate deviation of 10% is preferentially considered as the difference in the actual and reported traffic data. A website analytics expert is likely to bank on the 90% data accuracy provided by analytics tool.

Comparison of analytics tools:

Analytics
Tool
Google Analytics WebTrends Omniture ClickTracks
Features
Quick Implementation Yes No No No
Traffic Comparison Yes No Yes No
Traffic Timestamps No No No No
Paid Search Tracking Yes Yes Yes Yes
eCommerce Tracking Yes Yes Yes Yes
GeoTargeting Yes Yes Yes Yes
Map Overlay Yes Yes Yes Yes
Funnel Tracking Yes Yes Yes Yes
Custom Reports Yes Yes Yes Yes
Email Reports Yes No No No
Guaranteed Accuracy 85% 90% 85% 85%
Real-Time Data No No No No

Real Time Traffic Capture & Traffic Timestamp analysis is of utmost importance for micro-managing, immediate campaign adjustments and tweaks. The data’s is utilized and analyzed by a marketer in the field of Search Engine Marketing to optimize the campaign by adjusting daily budget and cpc (cost per click).

Most of the Search Engine Marketing companies prefer to have their own Analytics tool to measure Real Time Traffic, Data and Timestamps to achieve their campaign ROI.

Enumerated resources I would recommend:

List of Online Traffic Analytic Tools
http://mashable.com/2009/01/12/track-online-traffic/

Web Data Resource & Vendor Comparison by Brian Clifton
http://www.advanced-web-metrics.com/docs/web-data-sources.pdf