I know this is way overdue, but I actually have to work sometimes. So apologies.I already wrote a general overview of SphinnCon Israel. The next four posts will cover the sessions, and the information that I thought was most interesting and useful.

Barry Schwartz from Rusty Brick and Search Engine Roundtable kicked off the event with an introductory presentation. He explained that he was here for his nephew’s bar mitzvah, and the event was planned around that. So a big thanks to his nephew for being born 13 years ago. Also, as I mentioned in my previous post on SphinnCon Israel, he is hoping to hold a much bigger event, on the scale of SMX, in Tel Aviv.

Here is a summary of Barry’s introduction. Scroll down to see it in video:

Google’s secret for good SEO: good content

As I mentioned in my previous post, an Israeli Google representative in Dublin sent a little video to us to wish us luck at the conference. He gave us the official Google “secret” for getting good search engine results

• Good content
• Use Google Webmaster Tools to make sure your site is running properly.

The people on the panels seemed to think there’s a bit more one can do to rank better in the SERPs.

Paid Text Links

Matt Cutts went on record for the first time in September 2005 saying that he doesn’t like text links. In October 2006, he warned about a possible penalty for text links. The penalty came in Oct. 2007, when many bloggers and sites saw their PageRank drop.

Google PageRank

Barry said that the Google toolbar shows a different page rank than Google actually uses in their algorithms. So it’s possible that you see a public PageRank of 4, but in fact your value according to Google may be higher or lower. So in fact, we could just ignore PageRank, and go along doing our best to build up our sites with good content.

PPC and Adwords

PPC is seeing steady inflation. The cost per keyword increased 25% over the past six months. Why?

• Click fraud, which is increasing. Click fraud in content networks is higher.
• More competition, which means more people don’t know what they’re doing and are bidding too high.
• General economic factors - things cost more.
• New PPC algorithms

Virality

Barry spoke a bit about things going viral, and said that the first ever viral success was the The Hamster Dance, a little video of dancing hamsters that was sent around via email. This brought to mind the most watched video on YouTube: The Evolution of Dance, which currently has been viewed over 74 million times. I think these two examples of what humans are attracted to is an interesting (worrying?) commentary on human nature.

That’s all for now. I hope I’ll get the next part up next week. Here are the videos:

Part 1

Part 2

And…The Evolution of Dance (I couldn’t resist)

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Social media is hot. It’s what VCs are investing in, and bright entrepreneurs are looking for investment in.

It seems to me like there are three groups involved in this brave new world of media:

1. The new New Media companies that are popping up every minute, each hoping to be the next MySpace or the latest hottie, Facebook.
2. The people who use existing platforms to create and lead a community: the bloggers, the Ning community builders, the forum managers, etc.
3. The audience: those who join the communities, forums, etc. and enjoy the ease with which they can publish online.

Group 1 wants to make money. Group 2 also wants to make money, although there are many out there who create communities around blogs or other media for casual purposes. Group 3 wants to have fun.

So how are Group 1 and Group 2 planning on making money? 99% of them are betting on ad revenues. I am continuously exposed to business plans as well as existing sites that, once they finish telling you all the brilliant ways they will create a community, break the news that they are depending on ads for their revenue.

I don’t know why this doesn’t make more people nervous. Here are my concerns:

1. With more and more people building communities, the potential for ad revenue is decreasing. Even with the growing numbers of web users in developing countries like China and India, if you consider the ridiculous number of new blogs being launched every day, and the fact that people in China probably prefer Chinese sites, you’ve got too many sites for too few visitors (unless your site is in Chinese, I guess). In short, most new communities will not build up a large enough user-base to generate significant ad revenues.
2. Why can’t these companies come up with a more creative way to make money? Why is everybody going for the community building-ad revenue model? If they’re so creative with the way they build their community, why does their creativity stop there? Can’t they actually sell something? It just seems so…”me too.”
3. Has anyone taken a look at whether any rising stars are reaching stellar levels lately? Today’s big guys got into the business five/ten years ago: Google, FeedBurner, Facebook, MySpace, TechCrunch, Technorati, Read/Write Web, Boing Boing.
   Update: Mark from TechCrunch stopped by to comment that TechCrunch is 2+ years old, and Facebook is less than five. He says: “these established players may not be all that old - which is probably why others think they can achieve glory quickly as well.” So perhaps there is hope for a new star…I’d better get to work.
   

New media is fun - group 3 has got it right. But while I am no expert investor, this has all the signs of a bubble to me. A lot of excitement over a quickly shrinking space with diminishing potential.

One thing’s for sure: with everyone betting on ad revenues, it’s clear who’s going to emerge a sure winner in this social media trend…

Google Adwords and Adsense! Google is king of the world.

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Small businesses have small marketing budgets. In a previous post, I listed 5 low-cost ways to market your business. Two of the methods mentioned were advertising on Google Adwords and Dapei Zahav. Since bootstrapping businesses need to ensure that every advertising dollar is justified, I decided to conduct an unofficial study comparing Google Adwords and Dapei Zahav (the Israeli version of the Yellow Pages).

The winner with no holds-barred: Google Adwords.

Here is a comparison of the features of both advertisers:

Dapei Zahav:

• For a relatively low monthly fee, you can have your business appear on their site at the top of the classification of your choice. I put illuminea at the top of the copywriter classification, and wrote a blurb in Hebrew about what we do.
• The features of the package that I selected included the option to add an image, and provide a discount coupon for those who order via Dapei Zahav. The salesperson was very unclear about many things, such as selling me the option to add a button which links to my site. What I didn’t understand is that there is no need for such a button, since a link to the site appears under the blurb.
• They offer you other additions, like a map of where you are and a contact form. A map is mostly useless since if someone wants to come to your office, they can either look up your address or call and get directions, and if they want to contact you, they can send you an email to your listed email address or call you.
• Your listing can appear under other classifications too.
• I also was given a listing in the print edition of the Tel Aviv directory.

The Results: Not one phone call or email from my Dapei Zahav listing, even with all its prominence. No one even tried to use the coupon to get a discount. I got better results when I had a tiny free listing on Dapei Zahav.

Google Adwords:

• You can choose as many search words and phrases under which your ad will appear. You can also select the countries in which your ad will appear. This is a good way for Israeli advertisers to save on advertising costs.
• You only pay when someone clicks. If you are selective with your keywords, this means that only people who are interested in your type of services are clicking. Even if they don’t order, this increases exposure of your site and business to the right people.
• You can set the maximum you are willing to pay for clicks on different keywords. This is also a good way to manage your budget.

The Results: Many phone calls and emails from interested prospects, and quite a few orders that more than made up for my investment.

Apparently, when my clients in Israel are searching for service providers, they use Google. Maybe it’s because they are more web-savvy, while businesses in other sectors could benefit from a Yellow Pages ad. I don’t know.

Once I realized how innefective my Dapei Zahav ad was, I called to cancel my order and reduce my listing to a minimum. It turns out that they were also not clear at all when I ordered, and when they said I could reduce my listing after four months, they were only referring to certain parts of it. So now I’m stuck paying for it until the end of the year, and I can’t even find my own listing there anymore!

When I told the Dapei Zahav saleswoman that I was cancelling because I had recieved no orders from them, and many from Google Adwords, she said to me “But we’re working very hard on raising our rankings in Google!” I asked her why I would advertise with them if all they were trying to do is use Google to get better results - why not just pay Google directly?

So, if you are looking for a low-cost and effective way to advertise your business - Google Adwords is the way to go!

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