Posts made in July, 2009

SEO Testing Grounds

Posted on Jul 25, 2009

In order to compare search engine ranking factors, one must choose a seo testing grounds environment.  These different seo testing grounds vary greatly and the ability to attribute change to a ranking factor’s level of significance also has a spread of reliabilities.  This post was inspired by choosing your seo testing grounds, and it my variation of what the search engine testing ground models currently are.  These seo testing ground models can briefly be summarized as the following:

1. The “real” testing ground: This is the serps for a key phrase or key phrases that is actually searched for by people; webmasters are constantly doing promotion work on the websites that rank for these search terms.  There is a lot of noise and competition within this testing ground and attributing change to a seo ranking factor has a low level of reliability.
2. The “semi-real” testing ground: This is the serps for the search terms that contain real words with meaning, but all of the terms are rarely, if ever, combined (ex. red coconut technology).  This seo testing grounds provides an environment of real websites to rank against.  These real websites do provide the link addition and search history parameters that replicate the “real” testing ground to a point.
3. The “semi-virgin” testing ground: This is the serps for nonsense key phrases that are no longer optimized for.  Old seo contests are perfect candidates for this realm, such as seraphim proudleduck or nigritude ultramarine.  These testing grounds are quite useful, but they do not provide the semantic relevance or other algorithm parameters that define real serps.
4. The “virgin” testing ground: This is the serps of a keyword that has no results in any search engine serps prior to the test.  New or existing websites are used in this tests and different factors can easily be compared in this environment.  The seo expert performing the test completely controls this testing ground and the parameters of each website involved.  This is the furthest from the “real” testing ground as one can get as link addition, semantic relevance, and search history do not exist.

These are the variety of seo testing grounds that exist.  Each of these testing environments has their benefits and disadvantages.  The level of noise and competition within this testing grounds clearly has an effect upon the reliabilities of the results.  Before engaging in search engine optimization testing, pick your testing ground carefully and acknowledge the live and controlled factors within each environment.

CPM Ad Rates Drop in Q1 2009

Posted on Jul 1, 2009

According to the Rubicon Project, CPM ad rates significantly dropped from the fourth quarter of 2008 to the first quarter of 2009.  This drop was expected because seasonal pressures, post-holiday budget adjustments generally result in a 20-30% drop in CPM ad rates.  Additionally, the global economic crisis has had a clear impact on the advertising industry.  CPM ad rates alone can not determine the health of the advertising industry though, one must compare overall revenue and traffic performance as well.  When same site and all site comparisons were examined for this quarter , it was found that there was significant growth in traffic and overall revenue amidst the lower CPM ad rates.  As CPM ad rates have continued to drop, the online advertising industry has been remodeling and expanding.  At the beginning of 2008, there were approximately 300 networks in existence, and now there are over 400 advertising networks.  Also, these ad networks have been attempting to improve their efficiency and performance in order to bet out the competition.  There has been a shift to a more performance oriented focus.  By improving their efficiency, these ad networks have been able to better optimize ads, so that they are more likely to reach the target audience, which result in better performance for the advertisers and the publishers.  Although, CPM ad rates have continued their decline, advertising revenue has increased for publishers and there are more opportunities for advertisers.