Sweat the PPC Details!

 

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Pay per Click Advertising, aka, SEM, PPC. 

PPC results are displayed along the top and right side.  The results are paid results.  

Target audience for this podcast is for marketers who are spending $1,000 to $10,000 per month in paid search advertising.

Measuring for conversions, not clicks.
Paid search is not the answer to all Internet marketing goals.
Paid search not good for Brand promotion unless you have a big budget.
Paid search is all about lead generation or direct sales on the Internet.
Know the difference between Search and Content networks.

Search network is primary Google and select other search engines fed by Google, e.g., Business.com.

Content networks are comprised of any website which chooses to display Google ads.
Results can vary greatly between Search and Content networks.
Be selective in the use of keywords.
Mix it up between competitive keywords and long tail keywords.
Do your research to identify long tail keywords.
Long tail keywords increase your probability of winning in paid search marketing.

Use Campaigns to distinguish themes.
E.g., product families
Break down campaigns by using ad groups to distinguish products within a campaign.
E.g., individual products
Set up a limited number of ads in each ad group.
3 to 5 ads per group.

Set up a reasonable number of keywords per ad.
Make sure they are relevant to the ad group or you’ll compete with other ad groups.
Test keyword variations: broad, phrase and exact.
Don’t display all your keywords as broad keyword variation.
You can use broad version, phrase version and exact version of keywords.  Test each version to see which variation can produce the lowest cost conversions.

Use dedicated landing pages!!!  Good landing pages can make a PPC campaign.
Generate dynamic landing pages with headlines that match the ad.
Design landing pages which are,
Uncluttered
Supported with a strong headline
Has a strong call to action
Use graphics sparingly (don’t distract)

Track conversions
Tracking impressions and click through rates don’t mean anything.  Track conversions.
Use conversion tracking (Adwords) to measure results.
Test, measure, revise and repeat.
Test variables which are measurable.

Geo target if appropriate.  Display your ads in the geographic regions that you want to sell to.

Stretch your budget using the ad scheduler.
Review results often, print reports, study them, get input from others.

Sweat the PPC details for improved conversions.
 

Tags: , conversions, Google, keywords, landing pages, pay per click advertising, PPC, SEM

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SEO: The Perfect Storm

I often talk with marketers about the difference between SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay per click advertising).   I remind myself that, unlike me and my team at Find and Convert (and others in our business), most marketers don’t spend their days thinking about Internet marketing strategies as we do.

So, when we look at the difference between SEO and PPC, it goes beyond the costs.  After all, most marketers understand that PPC can cost a lot more than SEO.  But, for so many marketers PPC (also known as SEM) is the path of least resistance. 

Many marketers believe they can measure results from PPC easier than from SEO strategies.  But, let’s examine some of the facts.

We spend a lot of our time producing reports for clients.  These reports summarize (usually in painstaking detail) many statistics.  For the sake of this blog post I’ll hone in on the most telling stats which really point to the advantages of SEO over PPC. 

Time and again we see that visitors to our client’s websites which come from organic searches spend more time on the website, visit more pages and have lower bounce rates than paid search traffic.  The first two stats mentioned here should be self evident.  A bounce rate refers to someone who visits a web page on your site and does not visit another page, essentially “bouncing” off your site.

Moreover, when we provide reports on our PPC plans for clients, we track the cost of conversion (the desired action for the client).  Such conversion costs are tracked for the ads and for the keywords.  The most telling conversion cost is for the keywords we track.  This metric really tells us the cost to produce a lead for the most desirable keywords.

All too often we see marketers show the most interest in the most competitive keywords.  They wind up paying dearly for these keywords simply because they are competitive.

In SEO strategies, we are able to (with a lot of hard work) build optimization strategies for select keywords which are less competitive (long tail keywords).  For example, we work hard for a client to rank on page one for “project accounting software.”  But, the software client we represent has a product that runs only on Oracle.  So, when someone searches for “oracle project accounting software,” we hit a home run in ranking and in a qualified website visitor.

So, the message in this post is to think long term with SEO strategies.  Do the hard work which will require ongoing care and feeding, but can have long lasting and cost effective sales results through organic search traffic.  And, don’t be afraid to target lower searched, less competitive and long-tail keywords. 

I’ve always said I’d rather be found by the 10 people who are a perfect fit, than targeting 1000 people who may be a fit but are harder to reach and therefore a higher risk search strategy. 

Tags: long tail keywords, pay per click advertising, PPC, search engine optimization, SEO, SEO strategies

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Measuring Web 2.0 Buzz

At Find and Convert we’re all about measuring.   We provide our SEO clients detailed metrics.  You know, the usual stuff including unique visits, page-views, time on site, conversions, bounce rates, keywords, referral sources, yada, yada, yada.  I’m not trivializing it by any means.  The metrics we track for SEO and PPC are very important.

But, as more of our clients enter the brave new Web 2.0 world the question is how do we measure results?  Great question!  Not a simple answer….But, there are ways to measure results from your Web 2.0 campaigns.

If you’re blogging, you can measure RSS subscriptions.  You can measure how many others link to your blog.  Who are they?

You can measure how many social bookmarks you receive from popular sites like DIGG and StumbleUpon and how easily your social media content is found in Technorati and Del.icio.us.

You can certainly monitor and measure the comments on your blog.  You can see the tone of comments and the trends in the comments.  In fact, you may find comments to be invaluable “research.” 

Don’t overlook your web stats reports.  You can track referral sources from social media sites.  When you see social media referrals increase, that’s a trend to watch.  If you run campaigns in social media sites, track your web stats carefully to observe traffic from these sites and time spent on your site.  Make sure to have conversion strategies in place for these referral strategies so you can track them easily.

Don’t overlook tools such as Google Alerts and Yahoo Alerts.  In Google Webmaster you can track links from social sites. 

If you manage a large brand, or multiple brands there are more advance social media tracking tools.  Some of them include Andiamo, Website-Watcher, WathThatPage and Visual Sciences.

Internet Marketing strategies require planning, measuring and revising.  The methods and tools used to measure Web 2.0 results vary somewhat from measuring SEO and PPC, but not drastically.  The web analytics field is evolving.  Keep up to date and profit from the results you can measure.

Tags: , Blogging, DIGG, Internet Marketing strategies, PPC, RSS subscriptions, SEO, social media, Technorati, Web 2.0, web stats

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The Importance of Measuring Bounce Rates

A bounce rate refers to the rate at which people “reject” a page on which they have landed in your website.  Website analytics tools consider a visitor a bounce if they only see one page and leave your site.  Some tools use time spent on a landing page as a bounce rate criteria, e.g., 10 or 15 seconds. 

Analytics tools provide bounce rate information at several levels.  I’ll use Google Analytics (G.A.) as the reference.  G.A. provides an average bounce rate across your entire website, plus bounce rates for each page.  My favorite bounce rate metric is for keywords. 

Measuring bounce rates for keywords is a very meaningful metric because you can see how well your website visitors are  consuming your content based on keywords delivering traffic to your website.

If you are getting traffic to your website for your top 10 keywords, and one of your top 3 keywords has a high bounce rate, you need to examine the content.  It’s possible your content is not adequately feeding your website visitors what they want.  Perhaps the content doesn’t do a strong enough job of conveying the main thing about this keyword.

Sometimes, content revisions for keywords with high bounce rates can make a big difference in conversions. 
Do the math.  If your bounce rate improves by 10% the conversion rate impact can be substantial on leads or sales.

There are other factors which contribute to bounce rates, including where they came from.  Generally, we pay closest attention to the bounce rates for keywords coming from search engines.  The premise is that someone searched on a keyword phrase and landed on your website.  We like to say, “this person is looking for you.”  So, when they find you, did you do a good job of connecting with the visitor?  Of course, not all visitors will be relevant or qualified.  But, we’re talking about statistics.  So, we like to maximize the statistical probability of delivering a good match between keyword searches and landing page content.

Any search engine optimization or pay-per-click strategy requires paying very close attention to bounce rates.  Studying bounce rates as indicators of the connection between visitor’s searches and your content can play a big role in successful internet marketing practices. 

Tags: bounce rates, Google Analytics, internet marketing, Pay per Click, PPC, search engine optimization

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