1. These guys track their top search phrases, and they haven’t dropped much in rank for any of those.
2. The total number of searches per month Google reports for those phrases have increased moderately.
3. But traffic from search engines is down for this site.

There are a bunch of things that can imply, but to me, this says that they’re probably getting fewer “long tail” searchers in to the site.  Looking at the number of visits you’re getting from long tail searchers is a little tricky, but Analytics gives us a way.  Click to ‘Traffic Sources’, then ‘Search Engines’, then the one you’re interested in.  Select the right date range, and click the leftmost column to show ‘Landing Page’.  Scroll to the bottom and see how many Landing Pages are listed in the “1-10 of 12,345” to the right.

For the site I’m working on, # of unique Landing Pages is down about 30% for December 2009 vs. December 2008.  We also see it in that there are about half as many unique search phrases in Dec. 2009 as in Dec. 2008.  (Select ‘Keyword’ in the leftmost column of Analytics and scroll down to get this info.)

So we have a pretty clear indexation problem.  Many fewer landing pages, many fewer unique phrases.  There are a lot of potential causes, but one interesting idea came up in a quick site review.

Google spiders tend to “follow a link IN to the site, click around a bit, and leave.”  So to increase indexation, we want lateral linking to a diverse but relevant set of pages from deep landing pages.

Right now on the site, we’re linking to “related articles”, and it works by looking at category overlap and article freshness.  That’s a great start, but has some unintended side-effects.  This causes us to weight newer articles more heavily and link to them from many of our top landing pages.  For example, an old article from 2008 links to 5 articles from today and yesterday.  So whatever pages were linked to from that page back in 2008 aren’t getting any link respect now, and that’s lowering their odds of being in the index.

What if instead, we looked at category overlap and weighted articles with similar dates?  So old articles might have lateral links to other older articles.  That might be too extreme, and might starve our newer content of link respect.  So a middle ground where we factor both in, or add a new “Other Archive Articles” box for similarly-old content might help.

This will be an ongoing process of making sure lateral links are done right, but this isn’t the first site I’ve worked on with this kind of category+date lateral linkage, so I thought the above might be useful for others fighting with indexation problems.

Getting the data smoothed was one of the hardest things, and I’m still very much not happy with the results.

To use this, upload the following PHP to a web server, put a linkscape.csv file in the same folder, and run the PHP.  You should see two charts like these:

Links per DmT, rounded to whole DmT values

Links per DmT, rounded to one decimal

Here’s the PHP code.  If you add to it, email me a copy at glenn@netmud.com and I’ll post an update.  I know the code is awful, it’s just a quick hack to play with CSVs and Google Charts.

For our first year, our budget looked like this:

$32.17    Shirts & Iron-Ons
$38.90    Markers, paper, folders
$70.81    LEGO Crazy Action Contraptions
$49.00    Activity Pack (new version)
$102.60    JrFLL Base Kit (roughly this)
$25.00    Team Registration

The Activity Pack is now $89 and there’s a second one for $49.  Highly recommended, and if you want to look at my copy of last year’s, you’re welcome to.

Our 2009-2010 budget is:

$25.00    Team Registration
$111.96    WeDo kit (either the JrFLL recommended one or the Homeschool WeDo set, which I think ends up cheaper)
$129.95    WeDo Activity Pack
$49.95    Advancing with Simple & Motorized Mechanisms (Note: the activities are kinda lame.  It also really wants to go with the W779686 set, which is new this year and has the build instructions needed for the “Advancing…” pack.  So, not a good fit for the JrFLL set from LAST year at all.  The CD does come with the build instructions, but I’ll have to print them out.)
$14.99    15″x15″ Base Plate
$19.13    Shipping
$50.00    Tackle Boxes for storage (Plano 1364, 1374?. Smaller soft-sided tackle box was annoying & not big enough.)
$25.00    LEGO Crazy Action Contraptions
$35.00    Team Shirts

So the main things we’re adding are WeDo and the Activity Pack for it.  Our kids are 8 and 9 now, so I think that’s going to be a really good fit.  For a younger team, the JrFLL Base Kit and the Activity Pack might be an easier start.

Who’s coaching again this year?

Any new teams around?

I’m hoping we can get another JrFLL event/competition to happen in the spring.

I see on this page http://www.kcfirst.org/FLL-Ages_9-14.html that there are a few FLL Rumbles and meets:

• December 5, 2009 FLL Rumble
  Summit Lakes Middle School
  1:00 pm – 4:00 pm
• January ?, 2010 FLL Rumble
  TBD
• February 27, 2010 FLL Tournament – Kansas and Western Missouri
  Summit Lakes Middle School
  8:00 am to 4:30 pm
• March 5&6, 2010 FLL Exhibition at FRC
  Hale Arena
  9:00 am to Noon
• March 20, 2010 Team Share
  TBD

I’ll try to get my team to a couple of these, and make sure they know about the events in case they want to attend on their own.

I haven’t seen it yet, but the show “Gearing Up” looks pretty cool:
http://www.gearingupproject.org/
Kansas City KCPTDT2 11/4/2009 2:00 PM CT
Kansas City KCPTDT2 11/4/2009 8:00 PM CT
Kansas City KCPTDT2 11/4/2009 9:00 AM CT
Kansas City KCPTDT2 11/5/2009 2:00 AM CT

The Cow Town Throw Down practice competition is this weekend: http://cttd-robotics.com/

I see the following teams so far:

• Trailwood Turbines (Overland Park)
• Rogue Squadron (Overland Park)
• Cyclones (my team, Valley Park Elementary, Overland Park)
• St. Agnes Jr. Rams (St. Agnes, Roeland Park)
• Mindstorm Masters Secret Agents (Kansas City)
• Astromechs (Parkville)

So I found a great article about converting SVG to PNG with ColdFusion using the Batik Java library. It took a lot of wrangling to finally get it working on the client’s aging ColdFusion 6 server. Here’s a little snippet that essentially caches the converted file and outputs and <img> tag. Works like a champ:

<!— Invoke as <cfmodule template=”/Products/showSVG.cfm” svgFile=”/Assets/SubcategoryGroups/20600.svg” width=”600″> —>
<cfparam name=”attributes.svgFile” type=”string” default=”">
<cfparam name=”attributes.width” type=”string” default=”"> <!— You can specify both width & height, just one, or none. —>
<cfparam name=”attributes.height” type=”string” default=”">
<cfparam name=”attributes.alt” type=”string” default=”">

<cftry>
<cfif attributes.svgFile EQ “”>
<!— Do nothing —>
<cfoutput>No SVG file specified</cfoutput>
<cfelse>
<!— Make sure the source SVG exists: —>
<cfset svgPath = “#attributes.svgFile#” />
<cfset pngPath = replace(”#svgPath#”, “.svg”, “.png”) />
<cfset svgFile = expandPath(svgPath) />
<cfset pngFile = expandPath(pngPath) />

<cfif FileExists(svgFile)>
<!— Figure out the best way to display this svg. —>

<!— For Firefox and friends, we could output the SVG directly. —>

<!— For IE and many other browsers, we convert to a PNG: —>
<cfif NOT FileExists(pngFile)>
<!— PNG doesn’t exist yet.  Generate it: —>
<cfset t = createObject(”java”, “org.apache.batik.transcoder.image.PNGTranscoder”).init() />
<cfset svgURI = createObject(”java”, “java.io.File”).init(svgFile).toURL().toString() />
<cfset input = createObject(”java”, “org.apache.batik.transcoder.TranscoderInput”).init(svgURI) />
<cfset ostream = createObject(”java”, “java.io.FileOutputStream”).init(pngFile) />
<cfset output = createObject(”java”, “org.apache.batik.transcoder.TranscoderOutput”).init(ostream) />
<cfset t.transcode(input, output) />
<cfset ostream.flush() />
<cfset ostream.close() />
</cfif>

<cfoutput>
<!— <embed src=”#svgPath#” width=”613″ height=”343″ type=”image/svg+xml” /> —>
<img src=”#pngPath#” width=”#attributes.width#” height=”#attributes.height#” alt=”#attributes.alt#” />
</cfoutput>
<cfelse>
<!— SVG doesn’t exist. —>
<cfoutput>File #svgPath# not found.</cfoutput>
</cfif>
</cfif>
<cfcatch type=”any”>
<cfoutput>Error outputting SVG #attributes.svgFile#</cfoutput>
</cfcatch>
</cftry>

Beta Features

The beta as launched shows just two things, both intended to get you more traffic (and Google more money):

• Budget ideas like “Change budget to $20.44 to capture missed links”
• Keyword ideas: New keywords for Ad Groups

Naturally, Google never tells us to “Lower budget to $15″ or “Remove these unrelated keywords from your Ad Group”.

Planned Features

Later on, the Opportunities tab will show more of the features from the Campaign Optimizer.  It will be more useful than Campaign Optimizer, since the ideas will span your account’s campaigns and ad groups. Hopefully, there will be some degree of sorting, so we can find low hanging fruit easily.

Eventually, the Tools tab’s features will migrate into the Opportunities tab.  This should include:

• Keyword tool (and the Search-based Keyword Tool)
• Conversion tracking
• Ads diagnostic tool
• Ad preview tool
• Campaign optimizer
• and a bunch more

Some of these could be more useful with the Opportunities tab’s broader view of suggestions across all campaigns and ad groups.

Features we ACTUALLY Need

Creating an AdWords account usually works best like this:

• Create ads for as many pages on our site as reasonable
• Use as many keywords as make sense for those pages
• Write multiple ads, so we’re testing ad performance

I think the Search-based Keyword Tool makes this task a lot easier than it once was, though I continue to be amazed that AdWords doesn’t give us the features I put into my “Missing Link” tool. The ability to manage bids and match types in bulk as you create a new campaign seems basic to me. Maybe someday!

Managing an AdWords account usually means:

• Finding new keywords over time
• Promoting broad matches to phrase match, phrase match to exact match (which Google’s keyword tab makes much easier now, by showing us actual search phrases that matched our keywords)
• Pausing bad ads and writing new ones
• Lowering bids as much as possible

So to perform these tasks, what I’d love the Opportunities tab to show me would be things like:

• Pause Bad Ad Text:  Identify ad texts that have “lost” the copmetition against the other Active ads in a given Ad Group, and point out which ones need to be paused and replaced with a fresh ad.
• Update Match Type:  Find phrase and broad match keywords that have a significant number of matching searches.  So if I have “red dog collars” as a phrase match, but no exact match, and 80% of searches that show the ad are exactly [red dog collars], it’s time to “promote” the phrase.  Same for broad match promoting to phrase match
• Missing Page:  Using Webmaster Tools’ perspective on the site (or the Search Based Keyword Tool), point out pages on the site that don’t have ads and perhaps should.
• Missing Keyword: AdWords and Analytics are growing together more, so I’m hopeful we might get this one. Find organic keywords not in my ad groups and suggest them for AdWords. (This is like the Search-based keyword tool, but based on actual inbound traffic instead of page analysis.)
• Broken Page:  Point out 404s and other broken pages on ads.  This can be a real problem when the folks managing the ads aren’t the same folks who manage the rest of the web site.
• Low Quality Score: Point out outlier keywords with low quality scores that should perhaps be pruned to bring ad groups into better focus.
• Update Keyword Bid: Point out extreme average positions, either always #1 or extremely low.
• Low CTR: Point out keywords (or ad texts) with extremely low CTR but reasonable numbers of impressions.  Maybe that broad match keyword that seemed like such a good idea is dragging down the rest of your campaign.
• Bouncy Keyword: Find keywords with high bounce rates (using Analytics data) and suggest we pause or update them.

Of course, many of these are things that an AdWords manager checks for frequently when managing a campaign. But the point is that Google could be doing a better job of helping ad managers, all in automated ways using data Google already has.

This approach would especially help small business advertisers, who don’t have big enough budgets to hire an AdWords pro to manage their campaigns. But Google has always been shy about the complexities of managing ads. They’d like us to think “It’s easy to get ads for your business running!” and that’s true. But getting your ads to help your own bottom line instead of Google’s requires information and tools Google isn’t providing.

This was a big reason I wrote AdWords Evolved, and continue to build tools like “Missing Link” to lower the bar for small advertisers. Managing AdWords well for your own business requires keeping an eye on the above elements, not just what Google considers “Opportunities”.

Great stuff, though they have to jump through some hoops at the end that my Missing Link tool (part of AdWords Evolved) makes much faster and more powerful.

Last year was my first, and it wasn’t that hard to run.  I’m sure other homeschool folks would be interested, and I think there was a homeschool team at last year’s Kansas City JrFLL competition.  Not sure who the coach was, though.

Our practices were 1.5 hours at my home on Saturdays over the winter, and we mostly did the experiments from the LEGO Education kit (note that the kit and the teacher’s guide may be separate).  These were fun and interesting, and let the kids find their own roles in the group over time.  The Klutz LEGO book & pieces is excellent as well, and I’d suggest getting one per team member.

Links:

http://www.legoeducation.com/store/detail.aspx?CategoryID=186&by=9&ID=1667&c=1&t=0&l=0
(I’d buy one.  There are building activities for 2 students, but 6 can be kept busy prepping and performing the experiments.)

http://www.legoeducation.com/store/detail.aspx?ID=1672
(I’d buy one.  Otherwise, the kit above is very hard to figure out.)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591743419?ie=UTF8&tag=netmud
(I’d buy one for each team member.  This kit is crazy fun.  Seriously.  I’m tempted to abandon this post and go build something from it right now.)

[30 minutes elapse, while Glenn builds something from the Klutz book]

I think there are some new kits this year, including the WeDo sets, that might be encouraged by JrFLL.  Looks like this might be the best one, but I haven’t looked at it much yet:

http://www.legoeducation.com/store/detail.aspx?KeyWords=wedo&by=20&ID=1736&c=0&t=0&l=0

I charged the parents $40 each for the season, and should have made it $100 to cover all the expenses, but it was well worth the time and money.  I think we’ll have all 6 kids back this coming year, and a second team at our elementary is starting up for the same grade our son is in.

Last year’s topic was climate, so we also talked a lot about climate issues, and the kids got interested in tornadoes and did their project on that.  Worked out really well.  I focused on making the kids do all of the work, and they really rose to that.

In terms of forming a team, just decide to, recruit kids you want on your team, and register with JrFLL when it’s open (in 5 weeks, I expect).  I decided to have 3 boys and 3 girls, which made for an interesting mix, usually in good ways.

Coaching-wise, I’d suggest finding a second (non-spouse) coach to help fill the gaps, and then just plan out your practices one at a time.  Don’t worry about the challenge at first, just focus on kids having fun with LEGO and covering a bit about the topic.  Then work in more and more of it over time and nudge the kids toward doing things that they’ll need for the competition.

Our team of 6 ended up with 4 distinct models in the competition, each of which played a part of our story about tornado safety.  The models all connected story-wise but not “brick-wise”.  And that was fine.  Other teams had one giant model that was their entry.  And that was fine.

In my view, the main thing is to act as a shepherd guiding the kids toward working together on learning and building.  That makes for a fun time for them, and a productive time for the team.

Good luck, and as you can see, other coaches are happy to help you out as you get started!

Keeping Your Finger on the Pulse with Analytics

Once you have Analytics set up, go ahead and configure it to email you weekly with stats about site performance. Here’s the easiest way to get started:

1. Log in to Analytics
2. Go to the “Dashboard” view
3. Click the date range at the top right
4. Find last week on the calendar
5. Click the grey half-circle to the left of last week
6. Click the checkbox next to Compare to past
7. Click Apply.

Now what you see is last week’s data (probably empty if you just set up Analytics), compared with the previous week. This is a great start for watching your site. Now, let’s automate Analytics so it will email you this report every Monday:

1. Click the Email link at the top of the report
2. Click the Schedule tab
3. If you want to send it to anyone else, enter their email address in the top box
4. Leave Send to me checked
5. Enter a subject and description, like:
   • Subject: Last week’s traffic for www.mysite.com
   • Description: Here’s last week as compared with the previous week.
6. Select whatever format you like. PDF is a good place to start.
7. For Date Range/Schedule, select weekly
8. Be sure to leave Include date comparison checked, so each email will include the right comparison data
9. Click Schedule

That’s it! Now every week, Analytics will email you a PDF showing how last week compared with the one before that. This is a great reminder to check into what’s going on with your site. We set this up for every site we work on.  If weekly is too much, set it up monthly instead.

(This is a section from AdWords Evolved.  Most of the book is about AdWords, but setting up Analytics correctly is critical to AdWords success, so it’s covered as well.)

Click over to:

http://www.google.com/sktool/

Click ‘Sign in’ and sign in to your AdWords account.  (Screen shots below show a random site I’m not associated with.)

You’ll see your existing sites listed in the pulldown next to Website. Pick the one you want to start with and click ‘Find keywords’. If you’re just starting out with AdWords, your site may not be in the pulldown, so just type it into the Website box. Next, SKTool searches Google’s databases, looking at these things:

• Your existing AdWords campaigns
• Google’s knowledge of what phrases are on your pages
• How often those phrases are searched for
• What typical bids are for each keyword

Immediately, you will see a list of perhaps hundreds of phrases that are NOT in your AdWords campaign already, sorted by ‘Monthly searches’. I’ll have a tool available for bulk loading next week, but for now you’re stuck with manual entry.

If you don’t see a lot of phrases on your site, you probably have a Search Engine Optimization problem.

You’ll also see:

• How many others advertise on the phrase (the Competition column).
• A suggested bid to get in the top three ads for this phrase.
• The title of your web page where Google finds this phrase.

Next, look through the phrases for ones that really match what you’re selling. Look for phrases with low Competition and high Monthly Searches. Those are the most likely to be pay dirt for you. If you know the typical bids for your marketplace, you can also sort by Suggested bid and see which are cheaper than your usual rate.

At this point, you can manually add these phrases if you have appropriate ad groups, or set up new groups and campaigns as appropriate.

Have you started using SKTool yet?  Noticed any neat tricks or have any topics I should cover?  I’d love to hear your thoughts!