Business Management Consultant - Stuntdubl Search and Marketing Consulting

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More on Competitive Analysis Using Keyword Opposition to Benefit Score

Filed under: Competitive Webmastering by Stuntdubl SEO at 2:23 pm, 1/31/2011

Last week I got some great feedback on the post about Using KOB Analysis to plan SEO Campaigns. Here’s a few more links - a mini-interview with Todd Mintz about the upcoming presentation on KOB Analysis at SEMPDX. In addition, I did a video with the world-renowned Mike McDonald on KOB Analysis and Market Motive Internet Marketing Certification at Pubcon Vegas. I’ll be speaking more on competitive analysis and KOB score at the upcoming Pubcon Austin as well. Video is embedded below.


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Competitive Intelligence: Using KOB Analysis for Planning SEO Campaigns

Filed under: Competitive Webmastering by Stuntdubl SEO at 4:17 pm, 1/26/2011

KOB Analysis stands for Keyword Opposition to Benefit Analysis. It’s the process I’ve used for the past several years to determine which projects have the most opportunity. It helps to determine which keywords to target so that resources will be used most efficiently for maximum benefit. KOB analysis is essentially a way of creating a cost benefit analysis on a specific keyword (or set of keywords). It is designed to answer the most important questions in any search marketing campaign:

–What is the opposition?
(how strong is the SERP competition?)

–What is the benefit?
(how much new business can we generate?)

Teaching at MarketMotive has forced me to take a look at how I conducted my research in several years as a search marketing consultant, and document a formal process that could be taught to someone.  It made me realize that to effectively judge the potential of a SEO campaign – you really have to do your keyword research and competitive analysis in unison.

The idea of KOB Analysis originally started in the form of a morphing powerpoint and outline, the way I often suss out my ideas these days. (Which is very similar to Rand’s process).  KOB Analysis stands for Keyword Opposition to Benefit Analysis (or ratio).  This ratio provides us with the “sweet spot" for conducting an SEO campaign based on the allocated resources (labor, existing links, budget, etc.).

It’s certainly not an exact science, but the tools to evaluate the value and opposition of specific keyword results are evolving quickly. (As a quick aside, if you are developing competitive analysis tools, I will gladly give you my algorithm and methodology for "The KOB Tool" in return for a link and credit for the term - drop me a line)

The “low hanging fruit”

spacer SEO folks have always looked for the mythical “low hanging fruit”, It seems the barrier to entry in most industries and keyword sets is rising by the day, and the fruit is growing much higher on the trees these days.  Fortunately, our tools for establishing the best opportunities are improving as well. The KOB tool will exist shortly from someone - and some variation is no doubt available in some of the high end agency toolsets.

KOB analysis allows you to find the best opportunities for conducting an SEO campaign, and thus allocate your resources in an efficient manner.  Aaron has a somewhat similar idea built into his competitive analysis tool (one of my VERY favorite tools of all time), which he deems “upside potential” that helps you to choose which keywords potentially offer the most return for the least amount of effort.  Upside potential doesn’t take into account opposition score, but it does look at the opportunity posed by marginal improvements in existing ranking. 

 

So how do we calculate KOB Analysis?

spacer Keyword opposition refers to the competition level of a search result.  In the past, wordtracker had used KEI (or keyword effectiveness index) as a similar metric to KOB, but it was flawed by the way the opposition levels are calculated (by number of competing pages).  Rand talks about the flaws in their opposition score here, and how it’s being changed. The number of pages doesn’t matter nearly as much as the overall strength of the sites in the top 10 spots (where you need to be to receive the valuable search traffic).

Opposition can be calculated with a few factors:

  1. Age
  2. Anchor text
  3. Onpage optimization (several sub factors)
  4. Global link popularity
  5. Local Set links
  6. Unique linking domains
  7. Exact match bonus
  8. Social signals

In very rudimentary fashion – we can assign a 1-10 score to each of these areas, and weight them to come up with an opposition score similar to what SEOMoz provides with their keyword difficulty tool (based on some different factors). This could be done much more scientifically with the right program and algorithm (again - tool providers please ping me).

Benefit is much more simple to calculate.  Instead of just using search volume, we are able to get a more meaningful figure for benefit by multiplying search volume times benefit.  While this figure for benefit is not always completely accurate based on adwords projections – it does give us some better insights into which terms have the highest volume AND commercial value. 

High cost per click search queries are currently the best predictive indicator of the commercial intent (and therefore transaction value) of a potential customer arriving from search.  Therefore, combining cost per click and search volume gives us a more meaningful number for the overall benefit to a company’s bottom line revenues.  Taking this idea a bit further - You can easily see how specifically targeting relevant messages to these beneficial visitors arriving from organic search with referral targeting would likely be a very good idea as well.

SEO (campaign planning) is a Moving Target

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Creating SEO projections is like shooting at a moving target (in a hurricane). I’ve almost never found projections of anyone with the exception of a select few in house experts to be even remotely reasonable.  Despite the flaws, Projections and budgeting are mandatory for acquiring corporate budgets for actually doing the work. Perhaps this helps to explain the disconnect in PPC and SEO spending.

KOB analysis assists in these projections, and helps to set more reasonable expectations.  As any good SEO consultant will tell you – the key to successful client relationships all starts with setting these reasonable expectations (the same can be said for the success of your career if you’re working as an in-house SEO person). The tools for calculating TRUE benefit (and overall value) of organic search traffic are still just evolving (SEMRush and Spyfu lead the charge). The best tool at this point is an understanding of concepts used to create projections.

KOB Analysis in some form is always the foundation for any successful SEO campaign. Unfortunately, SEO is not conducted in a vacuum. There are lots of moving parts involved, and your best competitors are always improving as well. They are learning about how to attract links better. They understand linkbaiting, creating infographics, hiring link ninjas, and they’ve been buying links under the radar for years. They had their onpage optimization tweaked over 5 years ago. They live on the bleeding edge just like you do. They’ll have many more links and a lot more content in 6 months. You need to consider the timeline and moving parts when creating your projections. In some keyword sets it’s just not realistic to expect you will EVER compete in the top 3. Regardless of your mega-budget - the return will not justify the spend for your one-word vanity phrase (why not spend it on some longer tail phrases that offer more benefit?).

When you determine the resources that you need to rank for a given term, you also have to consider the timeline involved. If you’re shooting at a target 3 months, 6 months, or a year out, you have to budget for your competitors growth as well. If you don’t, you’re going to be very disappointed when you reach some of your link goals and still fall on your face with your ranking and traffic goals. BE CONSERVATIVE with your projections, and always focus on managing expectations when you’re dealing with lots of unknown variables. You’ll be able to better understand your competitors growth patterns with tools like Majestic SEO that show historical data on their link graph growth over time. Don’t underestimate the competition - UNDERSTAND them with KOB and you’ll have better understanding and more respect for the folks you compete with, and more realistic expectations to set for the people around you.

 I think many search marketing folks use similar process for conducting cost benefit analysis for their campaigns, but I haven’t really seen much common language used to describe it.  If you know of any great competitive analysis tools, or similar methodologies to run cost/benefit analysis for organic search, I would definitely be interested in checking them out. Want to see examples in action? Well, we have that available over at Market Motive. I’ll also be presenting on KOB analysis (including a case study) on a competitive analysis panel with John Andrews at SEMPDX on Feb. 23rd.

Some other competitive analysis resources and tools:

Learn more about KOB Analysis at Market Motive

Tools

  • SEOBook Competitive Research Tool **
  • SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty tool **
  • SpyFu**
  • SEMRush **
  • Compete.com **
  • SpyFu Videos on Competitive Analysis
  • SEO Competitor Checklist - Raven SEO Tools
  • Majestic SEO
  • KeywordSpy.com
  • iSpionage.com
  • Hitwise.com (must be mentioned but VERY pricy:)

**My personal favorites

Resources

  • Ultimate guide to keyword competition (35 experts) from wordstream
  • Guide to competitive backlink analysis at seomoz
  • Using twitter to boost your google rankings (social signals)
  • Potential social signals from Rand
  • SEO Warfare - oldie but goodie at stuntdubl.com
  • Marketing Warfare book review (highly inspirational!)
  • Analyzing SERP Dominators by Garret French of Ontolo.com
  • Competitive Intelligence Presentations From Andy Beal
  • Competitive Analysis using raventools by Taylor Pratt
  • WellonTop Competitive Analysis Survey (looking forward to the results)
  • Competitor backlink analysis using Open Site Explorer by Fabio Ricotta
  • Outspoken Media Comp Analysis coverage at SMX
  • Top 20 Social Media Monitoring Companies for Business
  • Monitoring Competitor Traffic by Sam Crocker
  • Aaron’s reviews of keyword and CR tools
  • Competitive Intelligence: Purpose and Proceess by Joanna Lord
  • More old competitive analysis tools and info
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Q3 2010 Master Certification Classes Start July 19th

Filed under: SEO Training by Stuntdubl SEO at 1:46 pm, 7/13/2010

Enrollment is now open for you and your team to join our Q2 Master Certification courses in SEO, Social Media, PPC , Landing Page Conversion or Web Analytics at MarketMotive.com

Master one internet marketing discipline in 90 days by training online with the bestselling authors, authorities, and top speakers in each discipline. You will:

* Master one internet marketing discipline
* Boost your value to your organization
* Empower your marketing team
* Make authoritative marketing decisions
* Get the industry recognition you deserve

Select from individual or group courses in SEO, Social Media, PPC, Landing Page Conversion or Web Analytics that are 100% online* and include:

* Graded projects and assignments
* Final dissertation defense for certification
* On-demand streaming video lessons
* Weekly interactive training webinars
* Direct, anytime Q&A with the faculty

Enroll now and take control of your online marketing.
Choose Your Online Course Now >>

* Courses are 100% online, with regular instructor interaction. Login 24×7 to master the latest techniques in internet marketing from the convenience of your own desk.

Here’s a list of my favorite topics for your previewing pleasure:

  • 12 Link Types and How to Get Them
  • 17 Top Local Search Ranking Factors - Todd Malicoat & David Mihm
  • 18 Top Search Engine Ranking Factors - Todd Malicoat & Rand Fishkin
  • Competitive Research and KOB Analysis - Todd Malicoat
  • Dueling Toolboxes with Todd Malicoat and Bryan Eisenberg
  • A Guide to Getting Links: Part 1
  • A Guide to Getting Links: Part 2
  • A Guide to Getting Links: Part 3
  • 20 Things You Can Teach a HIPPO to Make Your Website Better: Part 1
  • 20 Things You Can Teach a HIPPO to Make Your Website Better: Part 2
  • A Brief History of SEO
  • A Guide to SEOMoz Tools - Todd Malicoat
  • A Guided Tour Of Free SEO Tools
  • SEO Fundamentals & Best Practices
  • Information Architecture for SEO - Part 1
  • Information Architecture for SEO - Part 2
  • Cracking the Google Algorithm with Todd Malicoat and Ted Ulle
  • Duplicate Content: Understanding & Fixing the Problem - Todd Malicoat
  • How to Sell Social Media Marketing for In House SEOs - Todd Malicoat
  • 7 Steps to Linkbaiting Success: The Linkbaiting Playbook - Todd Malicoat
  • Introduction to Local Search - Todd Malicoat & David Mihm
  • A Brief History of SEO, Part 1 - Todd Malicoat, Greg Boser, & Marshall Simmonds
  • A Brief History of SEO, Part 2 - Todd Malicoat, Greg Boser, & Marshall Simmonds
  • SEO for CEOs - Todd Malicoat
  • SEO for CXOs - Todd Malicoat
  • International SEO
  • Site Architecture and Taxonomy - Todd Malicoat
  • Tips and Tools from Majestic SEO, Part 1

More information about SEO Master Certification, as well as the signup form

Checkout the SEO Curriculum here

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Website Valuation and Domain Appraisal Myths: A Cautionary Tale for Domainers

Filed under: General by Stuntdubl SEO at 12:22 pm, 4/7/2010

Firstly, I think domainers are geniuses. They are the only group of people that I know that can work as little as they do, and make as much as they do. Top level domainers are the TRUE optimizers, and saw the biggest gapping hole in the economics of the web ever created, and are now driving trucks of money through it. The true pioneers and geniuses within the community have started to develop an appreciation of what it takes to create successful online properties instead of just making money from parked landing pages. Unfortunately there is still a lot of laziness and blindness to some of the myths their community has helped to perpetuate. The thoughts below are from nearly a decade purchasing ~500 domain names of which I think only 10% at best hold very strong value. The rest are stinkers that I should probably not pay the $6 a year hosting if I was more dilligent with my accounting and renewal tracking.

I have been a lurker in domain and affiliate communities for years. I think it’s time to point out some of the domainer myths as the world’s of SEO’s and domainers start to collide, and the best domainers realize they need to actually develop their properties to continue to reap the rewards of their investments. Seeing "potential" through to fruition is both rewarding and extremely challenging (for a bit of credibility at this point, I invested, helped develop, and ultimately exited from CollegeDegree.com just over 3 years ago to help fund future projects.)

A perfect storm is brewing from the climate of need from marketers needing top domains and domainers needing marketing talent. It takes a lot to build a great site - so you might as well do it on a domain that people will remember when you finally put it in front of them. Landing page revenues are decreasing, and users are a bit more saavy, so many of the smart domainers are doing their best to at least develop sites on their domains to hedge their bets on big ticket domain valuations with some base level website monetization. It will definitely only continue to be more difficult to capture the "free traffic" of organic search, only as the myth that it should have ever been "free" in the first place is finally being dispelled.

We are FINALLY seeing tools to project the value of a site’s organic search traffic (like SEMRush, SpyFu, and Aaron’s awesome competitive analysis tool) to properly quantify at least a ball park range of the value of "free organic traffic", and make projections of bottom line revenue based on these projections accordingly. The really sharp domainers, have been reaching out to folks in the SEO community, and have been attempting to learn about development and driving more traffic. To properly understand the myths, I think we must first take a look at how I appraise potential domain names (primarily for the intention of development).

1. Search term value (cost per click)
2. Exact match search term volume
3. Overall query diversity (is there longtail from the exact match that is valuable?)
4. Brand-ability (how easy is it to remember and type in)
5. Domain top level extension (.net/.orgs are still a great deal worth 10 - 20% of .com value - everything else is 2nd tier)
6. Potential type in traffic (only for very top level keyword.coms in select verticals, and really mainly good for branding)
7. Ease of future development (How easy is it to realize the "potential" of a brandable domain creating content, software, etc?)
8. Ease of monetization (is the market liquid, or does it have a high barrier to entry?)

There’s probably some others to add, but these 8 factors pretty much sum up most of the important areas up for consideration when looking at if you can earn a return from purchasing a domain name. For a more in depth guide to website valuation as a whole, you can see my older post on the subject - How to appraise a website - Website Value 101.

Bargain domains has a good handle on what is important using cpc, volume, competition, ease of monetization. Doing business development for a site that does not have existing affiliate programs is among the most difficult barriers to entry for creating a successful site in a given space, and where a lot of errors from the below myths comes into play. I think a lot of domainers are discounting a lot of their domains - with little or no clue why, other than trying to cover costs. I’ve definitely snagged my fair share of nice ones in what seems to be a pretty good buyer’s market in the right places. I’ve also got a lot of garbage from mistakes like domaining after drinking;) To make the right buys, you definitely can’t fall for the top 11 myths domainers find themselves falling victim to:

1. Myth of the Type in.

Type in traffic occurs at a very small level that is constantly diminishing. I make no argument that some percentage of people type in Cameras.com when thinking about purchasing a digital camera. However, the impact of this type of traffic, overall is quite minimal. Type in traffic comes through google, bing, yahoo, and your Internet Service Provider. If your ISP decides to serve a 404 page for the domain or country code it will render to their landing page. Richard Kershaw has more about the dangers of the type in traffic myth based on some data he dug up from Sedo, so I’ll defer to his better post to explain this one further:

"… 0.001% of domains parked with Sedo get double digit per day traffic. Or to put it another way, 99.999% of domains parked with Sedo don’t hit double digits daily."

Even Kevin Ham’s genius .CM wildcard tld strategy isn’t really working in most places anymore. What really perpetuates this myth is repeat visitors and DIRECT NAVIGATION. Direct navigation is much different from type in traffic. Direct navigation can easily come from other media sources and many times very easily owe it’s true attribution to a specific campaign or general "brand equity" which will likely always remain a somewhat vague metric for analysis and accountability.

2. Myth of the 1 Word .com

Just because it’s generic, doesn’t mean it’s good Crap.com is still crap. Yes, you can make an argument, that it is "brandable", but so is Suudl.com or some other random character string of constants and vowels. There’s dozens of startups in Silicon Valley trying to build an awesome product on a garbage domain. Sometimes it actually works (Yoodle to go on and be better things.) Do you know how much money it costs to BUILD a true brand that people actually recognize?

Sharp entrepreneurs like domainshane.com have some solid 4 and 5 letter domains for web 2.0 startups, but there’s a difference between selling a few domains for 3 figures, and creating a full blown startup company. I will say that I do think any 4 and 5 letter .com value will only continue to rise. There are only a limited number of these and they will often be held by large corporations. A good four letter .com is HIGHLY brandable since it takes up less space for more traditional advertising (print/ radio/ tv).

The biggest myth with EVERY entrepreneur falls victim to is that it’s easy to build a company. Murphy’s law definitely applies to you, even though you think you’re the exception. You always hear the success stories of Mint.com and the like, but you miss the other 9 startups for every 1 that actually even gets a 2nd round of funding (as well as the thousands that failed to get to that point). You also miss the decades of misery endured by the executives and founders. I can count on less than two hands the number of successful entrepreneurs I know that have maintained their integrity. Any idea how hard it is to get the first round? 3 words: Tech Bubble, Recession

Having 20 or 30 single word domains may prove to be more of a blessing than a curse to either sell or develop when you look at how much money a startup has to raise to take a company to the next level past several rounds of venture funding, or the difficulty of creating a company that will sustain through a public offering.

3. Myth of the "Category Killer"

The underestimation of what it actually takes to build a real site that delivers value to real end users, and makes real revenue will be the common thread in most of these points. It’s real easy to say that you understand how to do it, and that you can do it. Even if you did it as a consultant, doesn’t mean you can do it all yourself and successfully pull it off (believe me, I fell victim to this myth for quite some time.)

Banca.com was a steal in a recent auction, but just because you own Bank.org, doesn’t mean you can build or run one and actualize the potential of such a domain.

4. Myth of "Revshare"

This begins with the fallacy that you’ll attract good people by offering them a revenue share of the project. Unfortunately, smart people realize it’s very difficult to craft these agreements, and setting expectations on the same page is a rare commodity. As a consultant, I’ve had lots of "rev-share" offers. Normally, building a long term working relationship works in a handful of ways through smaller projects.

The person who builds the house isn’t always happy to lease the land it’s built on, even if they get to share in the profits. Normally, they’d prefer to buy some less expensive land, and maintain complete control of the project, until they can be the master developer.

There are ultimately a few questions that get asked from both sides:

Domainer:

We would like to develop a site that makes millions from my genius idea of buying high quality domains in 1994.

Consultant: Did you live in Vancouver or nearby?

D: No, but I have been to some conferences around that area.

C: Cool - the domainer community fascinates me, and I’m a lurker there. I do a bit of domaining myself for myself as well.

So tell me about your site.

D: Elaborate beautiful description of properties and potential. Insert unrealistic expectations of marketing miracles.

C: screenshare examples of success.

D: More qualification of websites awesomeness.

C: More examples of wins, and answers to questions.

D: Sounds awesome, we’ll be in touch.

C: Okay cool. Have a good one.

The conversations sometimes go a few phone calls longer. The truth is, the cost of creating an amicable agreement, or in building the trust takes so much efforts, that both sides generally fall flat. The trust needed for such an arragement is generally too big of a gap to bridge in a few phone calls. The domainer opts for the cheap work with less than impressive results, and the consultant continues to consult and develop sites. Generally the domainers learn from the conversation and realize they should continue to further their search and social media marketing understanding.

A few examples:

Example #1www.namecake.com/venture-partners/
Some of our names experience a large volume of natural daily traffic. Couple this with their brandability and you have a powerful combination to immediately compete in your chosen field. All that’s needed to turn these domains into successful online destinations is a strong partner with the right resources.

…our ideal partners will likely have the resources to execute an entire business plan around developing the domain property. All aspects of the business will be the responsibility of the partner. While the preferred relationship is to partner with experienced companies/individuals on these projects, an outright sale of the domain name will also be considered.

A strong project manage

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