WebConnoisseur

The WSJ reports that CD sales for the first three months this year are 20% down from last year. Though digital music purchases are up about 50% Y/Y, overall music industry revenues are said to be down about 25% Y/Y. It appears the RIAA’s lawsuit bully tactics are having a reverse effect on sales. From the Journal:

The sharp slide in sales of CDs, which still account for more than 85% of music sold, has far eclipsed the growth in sales of digital downloads, which were supposed to have been the industry’s salvation… In recent weeks, the music industry has posted some of the weakest sales it has ever recorded. This year has already seen the two lowest-selling No. 1 albums since… 1991.

Whether the music industry likes it or not, things are only going to get worse. The good news is that people still like music—maybe more than ever. What’s really changing here is that those who had control over distribution are losing control. More and more, the middlemen can be cut out and small bands (much like small businesses on the Web) can reach a worldwide audience without incurring much in the way of costs.

The movie industry has just started feeling the sting of a digital world. As it becomes clearer and clearer that Hollywood’s monopoly over movie distribution lessens, Hollywood will be tempted to take control of the inevitable movement towards new distribution models. Hollywood would be smart to learn from RIAA’s mistakes and take a more participatory role in giving people movies the way they want them, at fair prices. $20 New Release DVDs and $10 movie theater tickets may sell for now, but I don’t see that lasting long.

Far too often I hear people quoting Alexa data. Even last week, at the 2007 Omniture Summit I witnessed Tim O’Reilly using Alexa charts to prove Web 2.0 success in front of 1,000 smart web analytics professionals. I know I couldn’t have been the only person in the crowd to notice. For Tim’s benefit, and anyone else who uses Alexa Data, please take note:

ALEXA DATA IS TREMENDOUSLY FLAWED

I touched on this in a competitive intelligence metrics post back in October, showing that Alexa’s data is less accurate to determining true site traffic then the # of characters the domain name, but now I’d like to really illustrate how far off Alexa’s data is.

Many people have pointed out Alexa’s data is biased towards a certain crowd and can be manipulated (see the links at the bottom of this post), but none have illustrated the margin of error that I’m about to. Below I take a look at two very different sites with very different traffic stats.

Site 1: Allrecipes - Allrecipes is a leading food site - as you might expect, Allrecipes users are similar to what you might see on the Internet as a whole, though slightly more female.

Site 2: SEOMoz - SEOMoz is a site that caters to the SEO and online marketing community - a crowd more likely to install the Alexa toolbar.

Using Alexa, you might conclude that SEOMoz receives more traffic than Allrecipes:

Alexa Reach Chart:

Alexa Rank Chart:

Both sites are very popular within their target audience, but despite what Alexa may show, Allrecipes has much more traffic. Let’s face it, more people cook food, then perform SEO! In fact, if you were to populate the above charts with actual data, SEOMoz would be a flat sliver near the x-axis. Here’s some real data from Dec. ‘06:

Allrecipes Unique Visitors: 11,023,187
SEOMoz Unique Visitors: 102,523

If you were to use Alexa charts to draw conclusions about either site based off real numbers for one site, your traffic estimates would be off by approximately 11,842%. Numbers that big are often difficult to grasp, so I like to put it in perspective. A mistake of that magnitude is the equivalent of:

• The CIA mixing up the population of Ohio for China.
• Your accountant saying you owe $1,000 to the IRS, when you really owe $119,417.
• A cop pulling you over for doing 60 in a 30, when you were really going half-a-mile-per-hour.
• Telling your spouse you’ll be home in three hours, then showing up 15 days later.

These are mistakes that none of us could get away with, so why should we let Alexa?

I’m not the first to prove Alexa data is flawed. Here are links to other Alexa skeptics:
Peter Norvig, Paul Stamatiou, Josh Pigford, Matt Cutts, Rand Fishkin (thanks for the data!), Greg Linden, Bruce Stewart, Alex Iskold, John Chow, and Markus Frind.

Long-time search engine optimizers have seen meta tags go from extremely important, in the early days of SEO, to unimportant (and a handy litmus test of an SEO who doesn’t know what they are talking about). Meta keywords still remain fairly unimportant, but the meta description tag has made an impressive comeback. If you haven’t been keeping up with recent changes at the engines, you are missing out on a very large opportunity.

Time to Revisit Your Meta Descriptions
Sites that have been around a long time have been forced to live with their ODP descriptions (Open Directory Project, editor-written site descriptions that were full of flaws) or their Yahoo Directory descriptions (another editor-written directory that was terribly neglected). Thanks to years of site owner complaints, on July 13th, 2006 Google introduced the NO ODP tag. Then on Feb. 28th, 2007 Yahoo introduced the No Yahoo Directory tag. These two tags allow you to control many of your search listings.

Here’s what you should do right now:

• Add the NOODP and NOYDIR tags to pages you are willing to write unique descriptions for.
• Write descriptions with your marketing hat on. This is your chance to draw visitors in. Remember to stay on topic for the page your are writing the description for.
• Don’t lie to your potential visitors to lure them in. The search engines have methods, and will continue to develop more, to know whether or not a user was satisfied after clicking on your listing.
• Related to the last point: though swapping out ODP or YDIR descriptions won’t change your rank immediately, I believe it can change your rank over time based on whether or not the searcher decides to click on your listing and if they are satisfied with your site.
• Be conscious of character limits. It’s okay to let your description run over, but it is not okay for your to leave the important info out.

Revisiting and rewriting your meta descriptions may be one of the most important SEO techniques of 2007. A better listing will bring a higher volume of site visitors and strengthen your long-term rank. And the best part: the changes can happen almost overnight.

March is here and I’m seeing New Year’s resolutions fade left and right. Offline, fitness centers worldwide are emptying out as people give up on their New Year’s resolutions. Online, blogs go empty and stale as their sites are forgotten by their most important user: the blog administrator.

Sadly, I must rope myself into this group. I started 2007 strong, even with posts that actually grabbed the attention of my industry peers (tough to do with a newer blog), but by mid-February, I had failed myself. I didn’t post anything for weeks. I have my excuses: I’ve been terribly busy - which is true, but I can’t let myself off that easy. Why blog if you aren’t committed to at least bi-weekly updates?

So, consider this post my wake-up call and maybe yours, if you’ve fallen to the same trap! I’m at my busiest point of the entire year and will be on the road for the next two weeks, but I’m commited to continue adding my voice to the topics I have chosen to cover (more on my blogging strategy in the next post).