As the Raven Senior Web Analyst, this is my favorite time of year.

Search Zeitgeists are revealed, blogs make vague predictions for the coming year (that never get reviewed later) and, new for 2010, we discover the most retweeted tweets.

As a proud member of the Colbert Nation, I’d like to send a hearty congratulations to South Carolina’s other favorite son, Rev. Sir Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, D.F.A.

If you haven’t yet, I urge you to compile an Internal Search Zeitgeist for 2010 for your company. It’s a quick snapshot of what your clients or potential clients want to find first on your website. An Internal Search Zeitgeist can help you discover if users are able to perform the most basic goals of your website, even uncover usability issues. I consulted with one company whose internal searches revealed that many of their users were confusing the Search box with the Log in box.

Need a quick win at the end of the year, i.e., during budget season? An Internal Search Zeitgeist is the way to go. Presented correctly, this information can have an enormous impact on company strategy — most C-levels can’t ignore it. When the CMO says, “The website is supposed to do this,” you can say (and prove), “Right, but the users of the website are looking for this.”

Nate’s Favorite Erroneous Keywords Awards 2010

One of my very favorite year-end pieces of data is keyword referral data. Not the keywords we’re targeting, but the one-off keywords with low traffic and high bounce rates that make me ask, “How in the world did they end up on our site?”

For a Web Analyst, this is comedy gold. It’s like an Excel-based version of YouTube as I try to figure out how the visitor showed up on the Raven website and how our website was indexed for these search queries. It’s also an interesting look at how the search engines are interpreting synonyms and making predictions for users.

I hereby present my Favorite Erroneous Keywords Awards 2010:

Most Likely To Be Mistaken for Ray Lewis

raven defense

Most Hilarious with an Accent

raymons tools marketing web design

It’s Internet marketing brought to you by Ricardo Montalban.

Most Liberal Use of Expanded Match

crow foot wrench sets metric

Biggest Stretch Even for Expanded Match

competition go karts lawrenceburg track layout

Biggest What The…

delhi is famous for main central markets which are situated to connaught place, lajpat nagar, south-ex. all these locations are encircled with an approximate distance of 10-15 kms form one another. these markets are famous and well known for delhi’s heritage factors as well as because of commercial concerns.

Proof of Awesomeness, or, What Arienne Wants to Kill Only Gets Stronger

• ninja awesomeness
• ninja words
• Marketing Ninjas
• epicninja

This officially makes us epic ninjas, Arienne. I hope you’re happy.

Best (Mis) Uses of Our Names

• nate griffin artist
  It’s about time I got recognized as such. And now that it’s on the Internet it’s true. This is going on my business cards.
• holdren collider
  It’s not unlikely that our lead engineer Scott Holdren has been dabbling in particle acceleration, actually.
• looking for internet marketeers in holland
  Arienne Holland was once a big fan of the Mouseketeers and likes tulips, if that counts.

• alien gloves

  

  or… Alison Groves?

  

  Now, I love harassing Alison by replacing the lyrics of the Gin Blossom’s smash hit “Alison Road” with her name, but this is glorious. I would pay good money to turn Alien Gloves into a thing.

  And speaking of our Raven hotties . . .

Keyword Most Likely To Be a Double Entendre

put the firmware in itunes
As in: “Alien Gloves can put the firmware in iTunes.”

Best Potential Domain Name

Evil Genius CSS
(How do we not own this yet?)

Best Matt Cutts Revenge

• army balls
• fark squirrel

This is what we get for giving away stuffed squirrels and stress balls at conferences. You can look these up on your own.

Saddest

i am error

Largest Britches

don’t tell people what to do

I Fear for Humanity

twitter antoine dodson

I couldn’t make this up. I wouldn’t even want to make this up. I hate that I’m extending his remaining 15 minutes of fame, but I feel a new company slogan coming on. Raven Internet Marketing Tools: You can run and tell that, homeboy!