Pure Visibility was recently selected to join the Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network. As part of the thorough application process we had to demonstrate our expertise in applying analytics data to online marketing campaigns.  Andy Chapelle of Crain’s Detroit Business interviewed Linda Girard in Crain’s Detroit Business to find out what this means for Pure Visibility and why this endorsement is so important.

Pure Visibility Inc. joins exclusive group of Web analytic service providers

We’re hiring!

We are looking for an enthusiastic Internet Search Analyst to join our team. The ideal candidate will have experience developing, launching, managing, and optimizing paid search, organic visibility, and social media campaigns for clients across multiple search engines. This position has a moderate level of client exposure ranging from providing timely and insightful analysis and reporting of online activities to conducting client training classes and coaching sessions. Google AdWords Certification is required. Google Analytics Individual Qualification is desired.

We are also searching for a dynamic Relationship Manager to serve as the main point of contact for many of our internet marketing campaigns. The ideal candidate will have excellent communication skills and a proven track record of delivering quality service across multiple client engagements. Project Management Professional (PMP) certification is desired. Industry experience preferred.

Follow this link for more details on the open Internet Search Analyst position.
Follow this link for more information on the open Relationship Manager position.

At small companies and even large ones, people perform tasks outside of their areas of training. This is a natural occurrence, happening when folks cover each others tasks during a vacation, because of a promotion, during special short-term projects, and for many other reasons. A lack of formal training is almost a condition of participating in certain emerging fields, such as, say, search engine marketing and social media. So, how does a professional ensure they’re current with the existing standards? By self-study – reading books and blogs, by setting goals and measuring yourself against your own high standards, and by participating in professional development activities – attending conferences and obtaining relevant professional certifications.

For search engine marketing, certifications are available from professional associations such as the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO Institute offers a certification) as well as the Search Engines themselves:

• Google Advertising Professional
• Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador
• Microsoft adExcellence certification

Anyone managing projects in this industry should consider Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from the Project Management Institute (PMI).

Relevant but non-certifying professional organizations include: the Usability Professionals Association. Read More

The most difficult part of diving into SEO is not any specific tactic. Instead, just making sense of the enormous amount of information online and off can be overwhelming. Have you ever wondered what the most important pieces of an SEO strategy are? If so, this post is for you.

Read More

Pure Visibility was well represented last week at the Internet User Experience 2009 conference. In addition to helping out behind the scenes, our Co-Founder and Visionary, Linda Girard, was a keynote speaker (“Bringing the Left Brain and Right Brain Together Online: Branding + Optimization”) and participated in a panel on Branding, Search Engine Optimization, and Usability.

The fifth year of the conference was bigger than ever. Attendance was up 50% – an impressive feat in the current economic climate! Beside the outstanding attendance this year, there were speakers from HFI, Adaptive Path, Organic, Enlighten, EA Games, UserCentric, Quicken Loans, Menlo Innovations, and a little-known company named Google. The talks were excellent and once again this conference has proven to be an excellent opportunity to learn about usability and online marketing.

A happy little note just arrived in my email box announcing the AdWords Urchin* fix. As described in the Google announcement:

This release is primarily aimed at addressing the problem of downloading very large CPC data files (up to 256 mb) from long-term or high-volume AdWords campaigns. It also fixes the 64-bit visitor-ID overflow problem, some proxy issues, and augments the uconf-manager.

It’s great to see our favorite tools playing well together! And when it comes to combined expertise with these tools, it’s worth noting that we’re the only dual certified Urchin and AdWords company in the Midwest. (In the map illustrating the locations of Urchin resellers below, you’ll see one other dot in Illinois for Stratigent, which specializes in web analytics.)

We love paid search, we love analytics, and we’d love to help figure out any tough question that you can throw at us!

* Urchin is an alternative version of Google Analytics, used by companies with specific requirements not met by the free Google Analytics service. Urchin costs $2,995 per server (more for hosting companies). Key features include: tracking of sites behind a firewall, the ability to keep your analytics data on local servers, and the ability to process log files on an ad-hoc basis.

A current college student asked me how I got into internet marketing, and what a typical day is like at my job. In case it would be useful to someone, I thought I’d post it here.

How did I get into internet marketing?

Unintentionally, but I’m sure happy I did.

I have a pretty funny career path so far, which you can see on my linkedin profile. I have a science doctorate, but I eventually found it kind of dry and unsatisfying, and I needed a more team-oriented work situation. After I left academia, I started as a technical writer for a science software firm. I became a project manager when I went to the owner of the company to discuss how a project I was on was foundering. He supported me learning more about project management (and other things). Since that time I moved very gradually from project management for software to web design and development to internet marketing. To round out my “on the job” experience, I pursued professional certification from the Project Management Institute, earning my Project Management Professional (PMP) certification in 2005.

My project management skills apply across fields, but I particularly like internet marketing because it is so quantitative and hypothesis-driven. It combines the science side of my brain with the people side of my brain. We can see the impact of implementing our recommendations relatively quickly, and iterate to make things even better. Software and web design projects take a long, long time. I suppose that I need quicker gratification and more data than I was getting in those two fields.

What is a typical day?

My daily schedule varies based on the day of the week and the time in the month. At our company, we do a fair bit of monthly reporting, so there is a monthly rhythm of analysis and reporting in the beginning of the month and implementing/following up later in the month. What this means is that the beginnings of my month focus on quality assurance for reports and having meetings with clients, and the ends of my months tend to center on coordinating next steps on approved items.

Our weekly schedule also has a rhythm. Monday mornings are internal time, where we as a company review the previous week and plan the coming one. We review budgets, deadlines, and projections.

As a project manager, I am involved superficially in many things. I answer client calls and emails, I coordinate with the team on deadlines and deliverables, I try to troubleshoot issues that emerge and clear a path so that the analysts can actually sit down and analyze things. I work with our calendars to schedule and move meetings (internal and with clients). I route and queue requests from clients and internal team members. I prioritize so that the team knows what must be done as opposed to what’s a nice to have. I have a lot of meetings and quick check-ins during the day. I also am on the phone a fair bit. I’m interrupted a lot. I suppose I also interrupt others a fair bit!

There are times when I moonlight as an analyst and jump into the data to answer a client question quickly. In those times, I like the focus and the numbers, but when I surface, I’m glad I work on a team who keep me honest, and whom I can help by keeping things straight.

And of course, I love my title, Director of Happiness .

Pure Visibility’s Jessica Hullman, author of many fine posts on this blog, has become the first guest poster on the Google Analytics Blog. Her post is titled Mastering Motion Charts – Trend Analysis.

New analysis tools and visualizations like Motion Charts are always exciting for Pure Visibility and we jumped at the chance to continue or work of helping others gain insight from them. Of course, we were also honored to be recognized by Google as a trusted source in explaining and promoting their tools.

Congratulations, Jessica!

We’re hiring!

Pure Visibility is looking for an enthusiastic, responsive individual to join our sales team. This part-time position will support our existing sales team by acting as a first contact for incoming sales leads, someone to help us qualify new opportunities and promote our product offerings.

Details on the open position can be found at: Sales Representative description

To apply please send your resume and cover letter before October 10, 2008 to: jobs@purevisibility.com

Most of my blog posts don’t get many hits. It’s not that surprising; I don’t really spend much time being thorough with the information I write about because I don’t have as much time as I’d like to write a post. I do try to be original, so I’m not repeating the same stuff everyone else is writing, but I just don’t explain every little thing and tend to glance over big topics. Well, I’m pretty bogged down with other things to do for work, so I’ve been keeping an eye out for pointers. Something light, fast, interesting; something to get me more hits than usual. What better place to look than a search engine for clues? So I was doing some work and snagged a snapshot of Yahoo’s home page from the olympics:

whaaa . . . Gangsta synchronized swimmers!!! DO elephants hold grudges . . . even long term grudges!?! OF COURSE I WANT TO SEE WORST DRESSED CELEBRITIES!!!!!!!!

Well there you go, it doesn’t get anymore compelling than that. It’s a slam dunk for Yahoo. So here I am, Steve L, your average Joe Blogger, how can I put to work the methodology of Yahoo! to generate traffic for my own blog post?

Well, I feel like I’m on the shoulders of giants now, and for this post, I’d like to share with you a very special, very secret Google document I found. Tucked away in Google’s “Webmaster Guidelines” section, there’s an article explaining how webmasters can get a number 1 page ranking on Google. Not only that, Google leaked a document detailing the formula behind the search engine.

And if that’s not enough, you can see former Google spokesperson, Vanessa Fox, nude.

And, finally, here’s a picture of me, worst hair in the internet marketing industry, probably the worst dressed as well, but it’s hard to tell from the photo: