Web Marketing Strategies, SEO, Web 2.0, Social Media, Trends & Tips

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Search Engine Marketing (PPC) Tips to Minimize Cost & Maximize Conversions: October 2007

• Bullseye keywords cost the most
• Long tail keywords cost the least and produce the best results
• Ads should be direct and to the point
• Point out what your product is (the obvious)
• Include a benefit statement and call to action
• SEM (search engine marketing) has become the industry term for PPC (pay per click advertising Go after the right keywords)
• Landing pages are critical!
• The landing page is the ad 
• Strong headline is a MUST
• Synchronize headlines with the ad
• Use multiple landing pages for multiple ads
• Test, measure, and revise
• Keep testing, measuring and revising as needed
• Track conversions
• A conversion in lead gen is a lead Give people a reason to convert
• Use a short form with a call to action
• Consider other creative call to actions
• Remind people what they get when they convert
• Use visuals in the call to action if possible
• Don’t ask for the conversion too soon, but
• Don’t give people too many options or distract them
• Test, measure, revise…

Download or click the play button above to listen to this podcast.  You can also subscribe in iTunes in the right side navigation.  Below are the Podcast show notes:

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Internet Marketing - Oct. 2007

Not understanding the difference between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
SEO is dependent on your website’s architecture and on a lot of text based content and on links.
SEM is paid advertising also known as Pay-per-Click (PPC) advertising.
Don’t consider a webmaster just a techie.

Evaluate website developer’s understanding of search engine friendly website design.
Don’t pick the keywords for your Internet marketing strategy without doing keyword research.
For example: “billing legal software” has 8.5M listings in Google.
But “legal software” has 604M listing which is 71 times more competitive.

Optimizing for many relevant keywords is important and some will be more competitive than others.

Win the battles you can win and take a long term view on some other keywords.
Overlooking the importance of links! Links are critical for SEO success.
The purpose of your content (in search engines) is to attract links from other websites.
Links are the measure of the popularity of your content.
Links must be one way to be of value. Turn down offers for two way links.

Ways to produce links:
Press releases.
Articles which are syndicated on the web
Directories with links anchored from a desirable keyword phrase.
Web 2.0 sites such as blogs and social networks.
SEO results change frequently. Don’t assume a good ranking will last.
Search engines track links from multiple sources including social networking sites.

Competition can move up which can push your ranking down.
You’re never “done” with Internet marketing. It’s an ongoing effort

The evolution of search marketing is similar to the evolution of television. In the beginning, only a few big players could afford to advertise on TV. Eventually, advertising opportunities for small advertisers came into play. This is the same pattern we are seeing with search marketing now.

We know that organic search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search network advertising are proven effective search marketing strategies. At least this holds true for 1st tier search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. However, since search engine algorithms are constantly updating, we need to be aware of other available search marketing options that can affect the way we utilize organic SEO and paid search network advertising in the not so distant future (sooner than you may think).

Below are 3 other options that you should keep on your company’s radar.
1.  Content Options
     -News & PR – always optimize news and press releases with hyperlinked URLs to your website
     -Social Media – this can have a positive effect as an SEO strategy in that ‘social networking’ can provide valuable links
     -Local Search – likely to be the next “big thing” for search marketing; relevant for small companies, even some localized large companies
    -Feed Based Search Marketing – allows direct dialog with search engines (i.e. Yahoo Web paid inclusion)

2.  Ad Options
     -2nd Tier Alternative Search Engines – gives a company the advertising ability to expand beyond Google and Yahoo; however, traffic quality and quality of leads can be lower (e.g. 7search, etc.)
    -Content Network Ads – ads distributed to online content sites; usually not as effective as search network ads
    -Ad Exchanges – auction style exchanges to facilitate transactions between advertisers and media buyers

3.  Platform Options
      -Video – search engines can read meta tags and embedded URLs in titles and inserts within the videos
      -Podcasts – increasingly getting picked up in search results; can optimize ID3 tags; place podcasts on your website or blog; create rich content on your podcasts and submit to RSS feeds
      -Mobile – mobile search is in its very early stages; just keep it on your radar for now

The point is to be aware of all the different search marketing channel options.  Not all of them may fit your business’ strategy. However, they need to be on your company’s radar as potential search marketing opportunities in the future.

When you hear the term ‘social networking,’ what first comes to mind? If you are like me, the first thing that comes to mind is MySpace and Facebook.  

Besides this point, there really is no good industry definition for ‘social networking’ yet. However, a good definition could be “web properties where people can build relationships, collaborate or exchange information with like minded people.”  

‘Social networking’ online is the same as ‘social networking’ in the physical world, except it’s on the web.  

There are 3 types of social networking sites:·        
- Shared web pages (MySpace, Facebook, MyWeb, etc.)        
- Tag engines (Technorati, blog lines, etc.)  
- Collaborative directories (Wikipedia, etc.)  

One neat thing to know is that search engines observe us as we are searching online – meaning they observe our click patterns, popular URLs viewed, etc. – which helps to modify their algorithms. So, the search engines are watching our every move as we socialize on ‘social networking’ sites. In fact, social search is already impacting algorithmic results as we begin to see more and more ‘social networking’ links in search engines.  Google and Yahoo are said to be moving slowly on embracing social sites within the SEM industry. That being said, ‘social networking’ sites are becoming increasingly more popular with time. Most ‘social networking’ sites today are not specific to an industry. But, we expect to see entrepreneurs launch industry specific social search sites in the near future.     

So, you may be asking yourself, what is the point in creating a company profile on ‘social networking’ sites? Well, ‘social networking’ sites themselves may not drive business your way.  However, they can be used to build links, which in turn, can increase traffic to your website. Therefore, where ‘social networking’ sites will benefit the most (and the most important detail to walk away with from this blog post) is in helping to produce more links to your website over time, thus increasing website traffic by becoming more visible in search engines. 

“The launch of Google Universal Search (GUS) has dramatically changed the search landscape. It’s now become important to include videos, images, news articles and other content that search engines may want to crawl, and marketers must revamp both their SEO and SEM efforts in order to rule the Google search engine results pages (SERPs). Basically, marketers need to be as creative as possible when adding elements to Web sites.”

Read the full article from DM News here.

By now, Web 2.0 is common vocabulary to the masses.  But, what does Web 2.0 mean to a small or medium size business who sells to other businesses?  Why should such businesses care about twenty-somethings with MySpace profiles?

In short, if you ignore Web 2.0 you may regret it.  Your competition probably isn’t ignoring it.  Here’s why you should care.

Web 2.0 properties include Blogs, social networking sites and distribution of content through podcasts.  The two common denominators of a Web 2.0 application are 1) people subscribe to it through an RSS feed, 2) those who use any Web 2.0 application belong to a community around a topic or theme or cause. 
 
There are three basic drivers fueling the growth of Web 2.0 and therefore it should not be ignored by any business. 
1. Technology – the engine behind Web 2.0 applications is RSS, which is driven by XML technology.  RSS feeds allow us to stay current on any Web 2.0 application we choose by subscribing to a feedreeder such as www.google.com/reader, http://www.bloglines.com/ or http://www.feedburner.com/.
2. Broadband proliferation – the availability of Wi-Fi and other forms of high speed Internet access makes it realistic for most of us to stay connected to the Web 2.0 applications we want.
3. Social Culture for Online Communication – (this is a huge factor) the growing population of young professionals who grew up with Instant Messaging and have published profiles on MySpace and Facebook expect to use Web 2.0 products in their workday.  Web 2.0 is the norm for this group and this group is the new wave of our workforce.  This social culture is quickly spreading across age barriers in our online eco system.  And, these people are our employees, customers, vendors, partners and competitors.  In short, they’re everywhere, even in your industry. 

For any business who doesn’t know where to start in Web 2.0, the answer is simple.  Begin by blogging.  Become an active blogger in your industry.  Seek out blogs on relevant industry topics.  Visit these blogs.  Read the comments and contribute your own comments. 

After spending time blogging, you may feel ready to put up a blog of your own.  Begin with an objective and a strategy.  One such strategy (but not the only one) is a blog which allows your employees to post meaningful comments about industry or product issues.  But, it’s very important to learn “blog etiquette.”  As a blogger, your purpose is to engage in conversation, not in self promotion.  Keep this simple cliché in mind when blogging: “it’s better to give than to get.”  If you give information that your community finds useful, interesting, meaningful, etc., your blog will be well attended and the word will spread to others with similar interests. 

Blogging is a good place to dip your toes in the Web 2.0 waters.  Next on your list should be social networking sites…More on that in another post.

I just attended the Optimization Summit in San Francisco.  There are several “take-aways” from this event to share… 

First, I’ll state the obvious.  We do search engine optimization or pay per click advertising to drive traffic to our websites so that visitors will take action (convert). Duh!

The biggest take away from this conference is that optimizing for conversion should NOT be a guessing game.  In fact, there was much story telling at this conference about seasoned execs (at some large companies) whose opinions about which page design/copy, call to action, etc. would yield the best conversions on their websites.  And, they were mostly wrong after testing results came in! 

The theme of the conference was multivariate optimization (MVO).  It involves testing several variables on a webpage.  They can include headlines, copy, layout, button names, navigation style (radio buttons vs. pull downs) and of course call to action.

MVO involves taking the emotion (opinion) out of optimization through testing.  It involves defining your objective, e.g., lead generation from a form submission, selecting the pages to test, defining the variables to test, running the tests and measuring the results. 

I’m providing an intentionally simplified explanation of MVO.  The idea is to optimize the conversion potential of a website (or landing pages).  In short multivariate testing takes a quantitative and analytical approach to optimizing conversion rates.  The testing numbers are telling, especially when they point to tangible ROI through improved conversion rates.

That said the software and services to do MVO is not cheap.  But, if the lift in conversions is dramatic, the ROI can make it worthwhile.
 

So, you are ready to launch your Google Adwords PPC campaign(s). And then, just when you thought it was such a simple thing to do, you get to the keywords section.

How many keywords do I need? Which keyword variations are best? What if my keywords do not convert? What if the bid rates will cost me too much?

Here are some keyword details to consider for your PPC campaign(s): 
• First, start with a few keywords (25-50) and then gradually expand your number of keywords per campaign. 
• Think of keywords as investment portfolios. With our investment portfolios, some of our chosen options are winners and some are losers. We always need to rebalance our investment portfolios from time to time so that we maintain exposure and achieve business goals. We can view the keywords we use in the same way. 
• Always maintain bids for those keywords that convert (respond to your call to action) and reduce or eliminate bid rates for non-performing keywords. 
• Most of the time, ‘Exact’ and ‘Phrase’ keywords variations produce better results compared to ‘Broad’ variations. 
• Do not micromanage or obsess over every single keyword and/or bids.  Instead, focus on your opportunities and your bottom line. 
• Remove keywords that draw clicks yet produce few conversions. However, do not eliminate keywords that are not directly converting but are providing an assist for a future conversion (a “bulls-eye” keyword). In some industries, visitors will research your products before converting. And, they may convert by going to your website instead of your PPC campaign(s).
 
Keyword management is a very important component of effective pay-per-click advertising.