An “advanced” link building tactic frequently discussed is the concept of second tier link building – that is, building links to pages that link to you. These concepts are generally used in spammier instances – such as “link wheels” or other less than favorable examples where links can easily be pushed at authoritative domains – with the hope that the benefit passed back to our site is superior to what will have been gained if the link had been pointed direct. Or, in the case of many websites, this “second tier” phantom link building is used as a coverup to leverage spammy tools for benefit without truly putting sites at risk.

All of these factors combine for an idea, that when put into practice, is mostly done with malicious intent. This does not always have to be the case – actually, the power of second tier link building to drive traffic, conversions and further links can be an extremely strong one.

In your Analytics, you undoubtedly (hopefully) have a strong list of referrers back to your site. Some sites drive more visits than others – from different pages, sources and events. However, for any legitimate business, there’s a good chance that a solid few referrers directly drive conversions – consistently – for your business. These “high profile” referring links are the ones we drool over – the holy grail. They pass SEO value, referring traffic, make us money – hopefully creating a circular chain that makes Bill Gates eventually jealous of our bank accounts.

It is standard practice to think of these sites – and the traffic they drive, in isolation – simply as things that are. We can position a link or make a webmaster request to hopefully improve clickthrough rate, but beyond that, we are at the whim of the webmaster linking to us, and we likely leave that domain to grow, stabilize, or drop in traffic all on its own. We may utilize a “second tier link” to push additional value into these sites, but beyond the pure authority and semantic connection they might imbue, they are relatively ignored on a more advanced level.

This, whether clear to us before or not, is a ridiculous failure. The potential for massive ROI gain with second tier link building is very possible – and likely – when we look a little deeper.

Blog Post Dominated Queries As Superior Conversion Mechanisms

Sometimes, outside blog posts are huge conversion generators for businesses – and in many cases, it would be preferred that these external blog posts rank for a top tier term over the website itself – because of the pure “trust signal” a review from a trusted domain imbues. In example, let us look to the query [social media management tools].

Here, Top Rank and Mashable are seemingly neck and neck for the top spot, where they each list a solid rundown of great tools to use for social management. What if you were a company that was listed on Mashable’s post, and not Top Rank? What if you were listed on both? Wouldn’t you prefer to have the page ranking 1st that doesn’t have you thusly compared to 21 other businesses? Yes, of course you would. Because that page would get more views, your business would get more clicks, and you would get more conversions. But if you had simply stood pat and totally ignored the ability to move the Mashable post to number one, you’d miss out on a wealth of beautiful traffic that can convert amazingly well.

And what’s more, you can also gain the SEO benefit that comes from pushing links to the domain that will undoubtedly dribble some link juice out to an external site – your business. In the perfect storm where these blog posts offer a single “social media management tool” review or any other related concept - the value is even greater.

These kinds of blog post dominated queries are the perfect storm – because they are frequently the easiest to move, and they lack the competitiveness and SEO sophistication of other terms. All they require is a little effort and some nice exact match anchors and wahla – you’ve got additional referrers that are estatic to be visiting your business. However, this is not to say that this can’t be done with other, more competitive terms. Sometimes it is not in our best interests to build out and rank a page or domain specifically for long tail term  (such as for the improved conversion an exterior site might allow) – or perhaps, sometimes it is simply easy for us to send an extra link or two to these pages in our link building efforts  - such as using the page as a secondary resource when broken link building  - see my example in this post.

If you are a content driven business, I guarantee that there are referring pages out there like this for your company that only need a slight “push” to improve traffic 30% or more – which means the potential for 30% more amazing, conversion-generating users viewing and clicking your link.

Identifying Referring Search Terms For External Sites

The easiest way to identify the top terms driving referring traffic to your site is directly asking the webmaster. You can establish a real rapport with them if you let them know that you plan on building links in the hope to help you both – which might just be an easy way to get you better link placement, citations on more pages, and more. Sometimes, the webmasters won’t be as sophisticated or responsive to your inquiries, so you may have to go about it yourself.

Hopefully, you know the basics of on-site SEO – look at the title tags, URL string, and then connect the dots back to the Google Adwords tool to find the highest volume terms with the strongest relevance to your business. Competitive research tools like Spyfu can also help reveal the top referring search terms for the domain, although they may not be helpful for determining the specific referrers for a page. If you want to get super, super creative (and borderline crazy genius), it’s even possible that you could utilize pushing up a top-tier third link in the search engines – such as an amazing CNN or Wikipedia link to that second tier page, identified with tools like Open Site Explorer – to increase referrers to the second tier page so you can get additional referrers back to your page through the second tier funnel.

And if you want to get really really really crazy creative – well – go get a life, cause this is all you really need to dominate with this tactic. SEO – and inbound marketing in general – really isn’t that hard.

From the Harvard Business Review, Peter Drucker describes a methodology for improving oneself – or otherwise, improving by choosing where to best use our efforts at education for the aim of getting better.

Comparing your expectations with your results also indicates what not to do. We all have a vast number of areas in which we have no talent or skill and little chance of becoming even mediocre. In those areas a person – and especially a knowledge worker – should not take on work, jobs, and assignments. One should waste as little effort as possible improving areas of low competence. It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence. And yet most people – especially most teachers and most organizations – concentrate on making incompetent performers into mediocre ones. Energy, resources, and time should go instead to make a competent person into a star performer.

It is a common thought process in SEO that one should learn to code. Codecademy has taken fire in the space as of late, and the push for this knowledge acquisition in computer science has reached a critical mass. The thought process Drucker describes is cogent for us – the SEOs – to assess in our decision making when learning, or not learning how to code. Is this something we can become great at? Will it make us great SEOs, or simply good SEOs with a mediocre coding ability? This thought process, explained by Drucker, should be the one we undertake when deciding how to proceed. The answer is not as cut and dry as many public voices may lead you to think.

It is my belief that knowing how to code is not a requirement of a great SEO. Constantly getting better, however, is. Coding is just one way of doing that – and there are many other paths on the road.

I work in lead generation, so one of the things that frequently catches my eye is the conversion rate optimization (CRO) efficiencies of a page. It’s natural. Getting users to convert while maintaining SEO best practices is something that is a vital part of my job, so when I run into great examples of CRO anywhere on the web, I get pumped. I love seeing great work, cause it inspires me, and it should for you, too.

Today, I found the best call to action on an SEO company website I’ve ever seen. It made me run fill out their form and I don’t even need their services! The company is Australian-based Dejan SEO. In an effort to not take their pageviews, I suggest you mosey on over there and be impressed. The CRO is impeccable. Dejan’s CEO reported a 700% increase in conversion rate over their old version using this new form! That’s an incredible improvement.

That’s not to say that implementing the form instantly means you’ll win millions of leads. Dejan also noted that their competitor, Web Marketing Experts, spotted their CTA and began using it as well. Although Web Marketing Expert’s design is still better than most, it is of my opinion that the overall framing/CRO on-page for Dejan SEO is superior. This is based on more trustworthy/natural “trust signals” in the form of their press clippings, and also the slightly less cluttered design. Of course, I can’t see the stats of either site, but that’s my gut instinct on having run and observed hundreds of A/B tests for sites built out just like this.

Nice work Dejan SEO!

“Great content” is palpable. Easy to understand, identifiable instantly by the trained eye, and communicatable with a refreshing consistency when engaging with clients and upper management alike. But the idea is not congruent, necessarily, with obtaining links, and often times the intersection of “great” and “link magnet” is not nearly as harmonious as we might hope.

Surely, the correlation is there. Great content correlates with a bundle of links – but it does not create them. When we understand this, we comprehend it, and we move to act upon it, we can begin creating great content that creates lots of links – and not just something we’re okay with having hosted on our websites.

Linkable Asset Classes

Linkable assets, for the sophisticated link builders who know better, are not as simple as their normally characterized definition implies. There are clear delimiters that make each linkable asset different, making some more attractive for obtaining links than others, beyond the pure “greatness” we often characterize as the only true differentiable quality. For the purposes of this exercise, we will define the most important, differentiating “class” as a zero sum environment where pain points occur. Right below that, is the asset class of non-zero sum environments where pain points exist, and the worst – but still potentially potent, asset class, is a non-zero sum environment where no pain point exists at all.

• Non Zero-Sum Environments
• Non Zero-Sum Environments Where No Pain Point Exists
• Non Zero-Sum Environments Where Pain Points Exist
• Zero-Sum Environments with Pain Points

Link Building in Zero-Sum Environments

The most important characteristics of these classes are the two main conditions – zero-sum and non zero-sum. A zero-sum environment has a winner and a loser. The players at work take a portion of the pie, and the superior competitor ends up taking the lion’s share of the spoils.

A superior linkable asset comes strongly into play – and wins – in such environments. The less potent linkable asset classes are those that aim for non-zero-sum solutions, providing “greatness” in areas where greatness simply isn’t needed. This is because there are not people actively looking for those solutions, and when they are, their attention is divided, providing less benefit to each individual solution.

In the zero-sum linkable asset arena, there is a specific pain point that a great solution aims to fill. Zero sum conditions also mean that the solution is singular – we often only need one service to fill that need, and because of it, being a 2^nd place – even slightly worse solution – means that you often end up with 0% of the benefit.

If we imagine this in a way we care – obtaining links back to our website – it means that every time a webmaster has a potential linking opportunity, it is likely the referring party will point to the 1^st solution, and the 1^st solution only – because they only need one rank checker, or one way to add links to their backlink profile – or one solution for something that fills the need for a niche-benefit solution.

Conditions That Support Zero-Sum Environments

Few environments where linkable assets compete against each other are truly zero-sum, as they are waging war in non-even playing fields, such as luck of the draw outreach, marketing power, random discovery, and the personality of the people linking. However, certain realities lean towards zero-sum conditions being a large player in how links are partitioned, that we can remember and leverage when thinking about ways to create assets that succeed in our own competitive environments.

Psychological Conditioning and Event Priming

The way our situation is framed often creates or does not create a zero-sum condition. In certain events where a webmaster or person capable of citation can pick a winner or a loser or multiple winners, they move towards a pure winner rather than multiple victors. Some examples of these are:

• Pain point framing by inquiring parties – When someone asks you “where should I start as a beginning SEO?” – that sentence will mean, to many people, that you want a singular asset. Here, we clearly point to the Beginning Guide to SEO, because it is the “winner” in that asset category. In a second scenario, the beginner asks “give me some resources to read, I’m just starting out”. The request is plural, and thus the linking environment becomes splintered. For webmasters, if we are creating a post for beginning whatever, it is likely we will point to multiple resources. However, if the article instead is all over the place, such as this one – the random citation will create a singular winner (the SEOMoz Beginner’s Guide).
• Environments that create resource constraints – On Twitter, we are limited to 140 characters. Because of this and the need to not appear spammy, we often lean towards brevity, which will cause 1A, 1B, 1C solutions to very frequently be narrowed down to only one. As this spirals out to other webmasters who control the ability to cite with a hyperlink, the reward will be left to the solely mentioned party.
• Personality characteristics – Some people simply link out tons. Others do not link out at all, or place their weight deeply on resources within certain sector. This causes the link graph to sliver downwards, leaving the benefit of being first immensely greater than coming up second.

Linkable Assets Where Numbers Solve Problems

Numbers are deeply rooted in most things, but for those where their implementation is more obvious, our minds as hyperlinkers tend to weigh more strongly on creating a win-lose environment – because a “calculator” can only create one answer — or so we imagine — so these kinds of implementations mean we sometimes only need one solution to write our canvas. These can be things like Retirement Calculators, rank checkers, keyword volume tools, or keyword difficulty webapps.

Here, the benefit of coming up first is titanic, because we identify with linkable assets just as we do most mathematical equations – there is only one answer. So, the marginal benefit of being one half-bit better than the second place solution, whether in marketing or content offerings, is immense.

Search Engines as a Barometer for Links

Although being number one is the ultimate goal for our money keywords, being number one for secondary keywords that fulfill pain points can be even more valuable. This entrenchment where there is a clear division of the spoils (first gets the majority of the traffic), creates a reality where users, when searching for specific areas of pain (e.g. [CRM software]), will frequently end up linking to the first resource on the list, whether or not it is the superior provision. However, since Google has done an increasingly good job of separating the wheat from the chaff, this is very often the case.

Using Pain Points as a Success Multiplier in Zero-Sum Environments

Many linkable assets are created for entertainment purposes, and not purely to solve a problem. Because of this, they are inherently weighted towards temporary success, because they often exist only in moments in time, do not get repeat use, and are not frequently cited or evoked by other interested parties.

With linkable assets that are pain points, the issue is often reoccurring, and the pain point is often so immense that is willing to be paid for – such as for an application – or in the purposes of SEOs benefit, linked to, in spots where there is not a monetary transaction to be had. This differs from entertainment, non zero sum content, where we can see how the constant reward of these assets, extremely temporal (and fleeting) in nature, means that the impact is often felt temporarily, and because of the reality that long-term ability to be linked to creates a favor over short-term ability, there is an inherent strength and built-in superiority to the linkable assets that solve pain points.

It is possible for zero-sum environments to not exist for linkable assets where pain points do. This occurs with knowledge acquisition – often the concepts are broad and not definitive, so the answers are spread across many blogs and resource centers. This also diverges links, creating few conditions where any zero-sum parables are applicable. The pain point is still real, but since there is not a definitive winner, the links tend to spread out, and do not converge universally on the best asset.

So, to create links in droves, we must create linkable assets that are the best possible solution for a pain point where zero sum conditions exist.

Putting Theory to Practice

It’s quite possible that a few of you are still lost in the application of this concept. So, let me offer a few examples of how many of the characteristics apply, and highly influence where links go.

To use an example we’re all familiar with, I can point to SEOMoz. Here, they have built out several great linkable assets. Because of their promotion push, almost all receive links, and when analyzing them from a design perspective, most are comparable in what went into their implementation and promotion. However, the links they received were not equatable. Although it is not to say they shouldn’t have been made, these examples offer clarity where the clear pain point and zero sum implementation shows impact on the linkjuice bottom line.

Remember, this is not a test that holds up to mathematical rigor, as obviously temporal and other miscellaneous factors could have created a line between success and failure. However, the gap between external links of each asset should be a potentially influencing nod towards the theories explained in this post.

Dr. Pete recently put up a history of Google updates on SEOMoz. It’s a great piece of content. Helpful, informative. However, its use is basically entertainment. Yeah, maybe we can historically look at Analytics for some little informational tidbit, but mostly, it’s there as a history book – which isn’t really a pain point, and which really doesn’t make it applicable to a zero sum environment – even though it’s clearly the best asset in its class, it just doesn’t apply in this instance.

Compare this to the Beginner’s Guide to SEO and Search Engine Ranking Factors, which are definitely pain points, and have more zero-sum parables than other knowledge assets. Although knowledge based, the concept of “beginner’s knowledge” is more finite, and many SEOs would agree that most of it can be encapsulated somewhere like this. These have been refreshed and have been around a lot longer than the Google update guide, but the differential in links should make the points obvious.

If one would like a less-refreshed SEOMoz asset, or one with less marketing push than the rankings guide with tons of contributors, we can point to the Web Developer’s SEO Cheat Sheet. Although not as gargantuan (or leveraging a mass of other marketers like the search ranking factors) as the other SEOMoz assets, it is still a pain point, and is by far the best asset of its class, so for anyone who has seen it, it is often cited. These verbal citations also frequently turn into links.

Examples from the SERPs

In the competitive ether, it’s easy to find applications where a number one who exists within these conditions, solves a pain point, and is the purely best solution destroys the competition. Since the previously mentioned random marketing conditions (such as having an entrenched, long term position at #1 in the SERPs, or having a pre-built marketing engine) can skew results, I use examples where clear applications show how this can apply. Here are just a few search results to wrap your brain around to apply how being 1st – whether imagined or through competitive advantages like marketing power and entrenchment in the SERPs – creates a large divide between one and two, and more importantly, a huge number of links to that page and domain. You will need SEOMoz’s SERP overlay to get a true picture, and I suggest you look at linking root domains as the definitive metric for evaluation. In not every case is the number one result the clear winner, either, at least from the perspective of driving pure linkjuice back to the domain.

• CRM Software
• Life expectancy calculator
• Death clock
• Retirement calculator
• Calculator

A Concept To Practice – Not A Golden Ticket To Dominance

If you start errantly looking to the SERPs or link profiles for backup of these concepts, you may be dismayed. It’s not as black as white as simply being the best asset, or simply existing in a correct asset class. Marketing and duration of existence play heavy factors as well, which is why it is often helpful to look at inward marketing success of different assets to truly tell the story of where and how these theories created success multipliers on top of other efforts. Even then it can be a bit confusing, as it is definitely possible – or even likely, that you have many linkable assets in the non-zero sum, non-pain point area as the most successful linkable assets for your domain. This concept is not the golden ticket for your link building, and shouldn’t be imagined as such.

There are superior linkable asset classes, ones that will drive more links over time as compared to others, especially if conditionally framed in a vacuum. We should weigh the ability for certain linkable asset classes to drive more links based on said classes when deciding when and where to spend our efforts. When we do this, we can improve our decision making, skills and return when building assets for our websites, and then effectively dominate over time.

Broken link building is a bit of a recent fad – you correct broken links, add value to the webmaster by doing so, and therefore increase the likelihood you get a link back to your website. That’s true, but what is lost in this transaction is not that you are truly aiming to solely solve broken links, your goal is to add value back to the webmaster. Correcting broken links is not the only way to do this. A second and third “mistake” we can solve comes in the form of correcting spelling and/or grammar errors for webmasters, which can be checked just as quickly.

Firefox has a quick and effective add-on for spell checking. You can find it here - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/spell-checker/.

There is a need for a combined spell check/grammar check combined add-on, particularly for Chrome. With that, we have a complete “value add” equation to help maximize potential webmaster errors to reciprocate the value equation to get links built when we combine it with the super-fast Chrome broken link builder add-on.

If you know of any other add-ons that check web documents for grammar and/or spelling mistakes, please leave a comment.

Otherwise, the SEO community could use a tool such as this to improve our link building efforts. Who wants to step up and get it done?

Yesterday Google rolled out an algorithm shift that impacts 35% of searches. SEOs have posited various opinions, as far as to say it doesn’t feel like a “major update”. But what does that mean? What makes something a “major update”? Doesn’t 35% of searches signify a large update? I’d say yes – but I’d also say pay attention.

What makes Panda so Earth shaking and the “freshness” update so insignificant? Well – the differential in search type and the impetuous of the phrases impacted. For these “fresh” searches, the impact isn’t yet felt, and many of the searches will be unique because of the conditional nature of their semantic intent. Similarly, this condition means that few pocketbooks were hit (now) – meaning that a lack of being “major”, here,  is only a reflection of a lack of impact on immediate cashflow and traffic.

“Panda” was unique because the queries hit were those static, evergreen searches that drove the dollars, and held and created jobs. On the other hand, these “fresh” queries are the ad driven, erratic instances that may incrementally help bottom lines, but were also conditional, bounce-rate driven “spikes” for those websites that lucked into the search volume for news-driven events.

Here, no (or little) money was lost. Previously, non-commercial sites had webmasters who smiled at the erratic queries and/or events that landed people on their site, but no (or little) money was pocketed. Pointless tweets were sent. Friends were told. Web visitors left.

Ad-driven sites aim to benefit from this change, but it’ll be hard to say or clearly mark the changes, because each new event will be random, and the impacts, not as clear cut on an analytics graph. But they will be there. What’ll be different is that the “bounce rate” driven events will plummet. For SEOs, for marketers, these are events where our traffic simply can’t convert. This is where Google undoubtedly saw room for improvement – because it is these bounce rates that imply inefficient search results.

When people show up on your site for “chicken scratch monkey flying”, this is what this algorithm change is meant to impact – to an extreme degree. Despite its strength, despite its massive “impacted searches” number,  this algo update will go off without a whimper because nobody’s bottom line will be hurt (strongly). Because it will mostly be bounce-rate driven traffic that will be concussed – and/or traffic that would have converted, but was a burst in and out of the dark that will now never be seen.

(Note: This was posted previously but is being reposted as the job position has been modified/ there is a new urgency to the hiring process.)

Full Beaker is hiring an SEO Analyst, whose primary role will be link building. We are located in Bellevue, WA (next to Seattle) and offer diverse challenges that few other SEO positions have, blending the feeling of client work (dozens of properties/lots of creative possibilities) with the excitement, creativity and free-reign of in-house (developers on staff, ability to move and ship new content same-day). The mission statement of Full Beaker is to become a world changer, one whose properties you will see in a significant portion of the commercial search results you browse. And we have every ability to do it. Our CEO is by one of Seattle’s premiere VCs, and our growth and scope is only limited by our ability to put the proper numbers against a potential business idea.

There are big goals here, and if you’re interested in applying, you have the ability to get in close to the ground floor. You can work for Amazon, Paypal or elsewhere and just be a small cog in a big wheel, and have the business be largely the same in five years without ever making a business-changing impact. Or you can work for red widgets in-house and have limited resources and have your ceiling be ranking 1st for a term with 10,000 monthly searches. Or you can work for a service agency with properties you don’t have any attachment to, no creative impact on, and are intensely boring to develop. Or, you can work for Full Beaker, and get in early with a company that has aims at world domination – while having a hell of a lot of fun while doing it – fueled intensely by the SEO you know and love.

For more details on the position, visit our careers page. We are looking for an entry-level analyst. SEO experience isn’t necessary, but if you’re reading this blog post, I’m guessing you have some of it. If you can combine internet savvy with the drive to build something massive through hard work – and not I-will-punch-the-clock hard work – I want to talk to you.

What’s BMW’s market share of the auto market?  Does anyone know?  Well, it’s less than 2%, but no one cares.  Why?  Because either you drive a BMW or you stare at the new one driving by.  If we do our job, we’ll make products that people lust after, and no one will care about our market share.

Apple is a start-up.  Granted, it’s a startup with $6B in revenue, but that can and will go in an instant.  If you are here for a cushy 9-to-5 job, then that’s OK, but you should go.  We’re going to make sure everyone has stock options, and that they are oriented towards the long term.  If you need a big salary and bonus, then that’s OK, but you should go.  This isn’t going to be that place.  There are plenty of companies like that in the Valley.  This is going to be hard work, possibly the hardest you’ve ever done.  But if we do it right, it’s going to be worth it.

-Steve Jobs, on public criticisms about Apple market share.

For anyone who was witness to the outpouring of deserved admiration for Steve Jobs in the Twitter stream last night, one of the most jarring sub-plots of the event were the unfortunate barrage of scheduled tweets from those who couldn’t have possibly accounted for such an occurrence. In many instances this simply made the parties look bad and actually offered a bit of a PR blow to many Tweeters’ reputations.

For a few people I was already non-convinced about the value of, I was actually triggered to finally unfollow after seeing a few strange scheduled tweets after news of Jobs’ death had broke. I found the dissonance between the event-stream and their off-topic tweets to be almost offensive, and because of that, it crossed the line. However, my feelings independent of what obviously is a valuable and useful tool for many people (scheduling tweets), this “crisis event” brought light to a feature that is currently interestingly missing from all tweet schedulers – crisis-event accountability and the mass-eject-functionality of a “big red button”.

In light of Steve Jobs death, these tweet schedulers could have easily paused tweets for their mass of users (now embarassed), if some obvious unique conditions were getting triggered. First, they could have instantly stopped the tweets based on a “big red button” any administrator could hit, or a variable event button that could be flagged by an abnormal volume of user scheduled tweet pauses in a set timeframe.

Of course, pausing scheduled tweets would often be a power invasion that would cause user blowback, but would also be useful for the power-user who trusts that it would only been used in apocalypse like conditions such as this, Osama Bin Laden dying, or any other “Twitter earthquakes” which make any off-topic tweet damning to the party who releases the 140 characters to the world.

Our ethos about “robotic tweets” aside, the ability to remove as much “robot” from these events as possible does the best for the tweeter – and the person who views the tweet – in dissolving the negative resonance that can occur when we realize we are being subjected to non-sophisticated gamification – especially when connected to a very, very serious event.

Hootsuite, Futuretweets, Socialoomph, CoTweet, et all – care to schedule that in?

Steve Jobs died last night. With his passing came what may have been one of the biggest swarms of visitors to tech news websites in the history of the web, as the inhabitants of the internet that Jobs structured his devices around gathered to learn and read of his passing. If the event had occurred earlier in the day, I’m positive each news site would see record numbers of interested parties – since it happened later, it’s likely that wasn’t the case.

However, despite this, the event brought light to a phenomenon that is unique in such a situation – an environment where pageviews skyrocket, but the number of actually-converting users can plummet, and almost certainly bring advertising conditions to a breakeven or even net-loss situation, depending on the advertising agreement.

In an advertiser-friendly environment, users come to a site casually, and based off a historical belief in solid content hosted on that website. Because of this, they are in browse mode. They don’t know what they are looking for – only that they are looking. Here, eyes wander, and attention is sparse. Even on sites they love, they can quickly lose interest, which leads to a bleeding off into spaces advertisers enjoy – their hosted adverts – whether in the sidebar, mid-story, or post-editorial.

In a Steve-Jobs-death situation, user focus is hyper-real. We know exactly what we’re looking for, and our emotional radars are locked. Every article likely has a death-grip on our attention, so we read it, and we are likely not parsed from its grip. We view more. We see all the content. But we are looking for it, and our emotional grip means we will stay with it.

Because of the reality of this grip and the emotional attachment to the subject at hand, we thirst for more stories like it, and browse and are swept up quickly by others of the same mold, driving pageviews on each of these news sites through the roof. However, as far as it comes to user-value-per-impression, our worth to the advertiser is at an all time low.

If I, the advertiser, am not based on a per month ad model, and instead agree to a variable CPM model, our total bill shoots through the roof, but the value and the true attention we gain from the CPMs is not nearly as valuable or drool inducing as the Analytics numbers might imbue.

In fact, it’s even possible that, in rare occasions such as this one, where our target market (tech people) is committed to this state of heightened attention for the subject (Steve Jobs death) – the net worth of that total traffic actually dips below pre-event numbers, as it is near-impossible for any target user to parse their attention back to our products because of the attention grab of such an event.

Display advertising is a wicked, increasingly difficult beast – but it becomes even more disappointing when we realize the conditional realities of events we should “hope for” – abnormally high impressions – may even result in a net value that is below standard market conditions for our advertisements.