Monday, December 13, 2010
PPC ? Geographic Targeting
Monday, November 29, 2010
10 Things from 2010 that May Shape Your 2011
It’s that time of year again, where people are in full swing of 2011 planning so I thought what better time to share a few of the takeaways from 2010 news and views that may well rock your 2011 world.
I normally write a more typical search business column, but this time around as I’ve been in 2010 review and 2011 planning mode recently, I thought I’d pull together a quick and random compendium of industry-level tid bits that give those trend munchers and stat lovers their daily fix.
So for instance, did you know that Internet World Stats states that of the 82.5% internet penetration in the UK – almost a 3% increase in a year?! Bigger than that for ecommerce though is that a touch over 67% of the UK population is now thought to be persistent buying goods online. Anyway, with such a great deal of this growth being driven by social, let’s kick things off there shall we…
Social Consumption
The consumption of social media is on the rise, we all know that, but did you know it now dominates 25% of time spent online according to Nielsen?
The consumption of social media is on the rise
Interestingly, Hitwise suggests 13% growth in retailer’s traffic from social media year on year highlighting the importance of word-of-mouth and the optimisation of search and social media assets with such purpose.
Increasing monetisation of social media such as Twitter is also an area to keep an eye on, knowing the interest of clients in this area.
Businesses need to be aware of how forms of social media communication are informing business communications too…
The Bingoo Search Alliance
The Yabinghoo search alliance will deliver an aggregated 154 searchers in the USA alone! The UK will not see anywhere near this sort of scale of searching with less than 6.5% market share of search volume being seen consistently across 2010 – even with Bing’s above-the-line presence…
The Bingoo Search Alliance
Beyond Bing powering Yahoo’s search results and Site Explorer changes, there is little more that can affect SEOs in the UK but it’s more apparent changes are likely to be seen across PPC. Regardless, it’s certainly one to watch – maybe two search minds will be better than one…?
Real-time, social Google and personalisation
It’s not too clear how Google is going to be pulling more real time functionality in to its search result, but it’s very likely. Eric Schmidt has already admitted to adding more social media layers to its search results as opposed to all out social media platform creation and promotion – focussing mostly on search quality through social personalisation. An example of Bing doing something similar can be seen in the strategic partnership with Facebook.
Mobile Search
The increasing impact and growth of smart phones is naturally hugely important for those online marketers that work with mobile search, and a 96% growth in smartphone purchases isn’t to be smirked at. And with Google absolutely kicking competitor’s proverbial behinds at mobile search (with an incredible 98%) it gives us good cause to watch that little bit of digital space flourish over the coming months and years. The UK is leading the adoption of mobile search with 70% growth.
Mobile Search
Mobile Search
Growth of mobile search is at such a rate, than retailers are believed to be struggling to keep up!
Interestingly too, the mobile app economy, is in part, being driven in part by word-of-mouth – at almost 40% – reminding us of the importance of conversation driving so much demand online.
Mobile Search
Online Video
More increase is seen across video too, with ComScore reporting a 37% increase year on year. And with YouTube holding a dominant share in visibility can we safely say that we’ll see this continue into 2011?
Online Video
And with UKOM/Nielsen reporting that of the 17.4m users in May, the average time spent on the site over month was 53 minutes, or 1 hour in the USA – far short of the 7 hours on Facebook:
Online Video
Increasing Infiltration of The Google
With the ever growing reach of Google through the Google OS and Google TV are we going to see Google extend its advertising reach beyond more traditional forms of search? Google quite clearly is working towards dominating those channels that influence such a large part of our media consumption.
Advertising
It’s great to see the online advertising sector performing so well as transparent return on investment and increasing time being spent on online properties.
The growth in display year-on-year is in part recovery but also due to an increasing sophistication, now seeing 34% growth since 2009 forQ3 – with Facebook drawing the most impressions of course.
Content paywalls
You could quite easily regard the decision of The Times and The Sunday Times to put up a paywall around their content as a flop, but maybe they are the trail blazers in attributing value to content. For me it’s not a business model that is working well for them in the short-term but who knows what the world wide web’s trends and New International have in store to make or break this idea.
Maturing SEO Tools
Highlighting a few tools isn’t a logical step in this post but I just wanted to do it in order to give a nod to those companies where there have been such impressive steps in their maturity. Increasing investment in tools that act as a window to indicative / sample data should be encouraged, so here’s a hat tip to Majestic SEO, Linkscape, Eight Fold Logic, SEM Rush and Dart Natural Search.
Economic Buoyancy
We’re in turbulent economic times, so keeping an eye on economic news might help you to feel more at ease with how things at a macro level and search industry level are shaping up.
Online as a research tool – the finance sector is often used as a benchmark for economic activity and with an estimated 10 million UK consumers seeking financial services / products online, with 15 minutes on average being spent on each site – a huge feat!
The Wrap Up
I think this just about does it. In all honesty this list is kind of endless, but hopefully it reminds you of a couple of developments in the industry and how things are shaping up for 2011.
Google Adwords Cost
It is important that you understand that you need to start thinking of AdWords like you do with affiliate marketing with a focus on measurement, testing everything, conversions and campaign ROI not just total impressions or clicks. It is important to know that what might be working for a competitor or a client in a similar industry may not always perform as well in another campaign so measure, test and record everything to examine later.
Bid Management Theory?
One of the theories I wanted to test was about using Google AdWords inbuilt bidding engine focusing on clicks versus focusing on conversions instead of a bid management package. There had been some interesting feedback about the improvements to the platform to use automatic bidding to try and maximise clicks & conversions within your target budget but would it offer suitable ROI?
Read more: http://ping.fm/RCbgy
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Just for SEOs ? How to Find and Keep a Great Copywriter
The world has thousands and thousands of copywriters. Sifting through the masses to find a talented, affordable, and likeable copywriter is not always an easy task. But after some time, I’ve managed to find and keep a few great ones. Here’s how I’ve done it.
How to Find Good Copywriters
There are a lot of places to look for copywriters, but these are some of my favorites:
1. AssociatedContent.com – If you need a writer for a specific subject area, Associated Content is a great place to look. Not only are there thousands of writers to choose from, but you get to review samples of their work before you decide to contact them.
2. Blogs about Writing – Good copywriters are constantly honing their craft, which means they often comment on and contribute to popular writing blogs. MichelleRafter.com, for example, holds a massive annual writing contest that attracts numerous high-quality bloggers and writers…each of whom offers a series of contributions on their personal or business website. These contests are a great way to identify talent.
3. Craigslist – If you don’t mind pouring over dozens of emails and attached writing samples, Craigslist can be a great way to find good copywriters (especially local copywriters).
Some favor sites like Elance.com or Guru.com, but I’ve found they can be hit or miss. While you can definitely find someone that offers great quality and value, I’ve found that many of the people actively bidding on copywriting projects are halfway across the globe. When you’re working with a copywriter, it’s essential that both of you can pick up the phone and talk about your project. If your copywriter is 12 time zones away, that becomes much more difficult. As a result, these sites are low on my list.
Six Tips for Keeping Great Copywriters
Once you’ve found someone who can create the writing you need, it’s essential that you cultivate a relationship with them. Great copywriters have plenty of opportunities to work (good writing, like SEO, is an in-demand skill), and as a result copywriters are as much evaluating you as a client as you are evaluating them. Here are some tips for building a great relationship:
1. Find out what they like to write. Some copywriters salivate at the prospect of writing 500 words about mortgage refinance. Other copywriters would rather have sharp pieces of bamboo shoved under the fingernails than write about anything financial.
Before starting a project with a new copywriter, take a few minutes to discover what they enjoy writing about so that you can match them up with projects they’ll like. When you can match a copywriter with an enjoyable topic, the result is a well-researched and top quality product…not to mention a copywriter who always looks forward to working with you.
2. Open communication is essential. Many experienced copywriters have a standard questionnaire that each of their clients must complete before starting a project. These questionnaires help a copywriter learn about your project’s marketing goals, you or your client’s preferred writing style, etc. If the copywriter you’re working with doesn’t have a questionnaire, help them develop one.
3. Recognize that writing is a process. It’s not realistic to expect a copywriter to generate exactly what you need in their first draft. Copywriting is a creative process. It’s expected that you and/or your client will give feedback and ask for revisions.
4. Don’t ask for it right away unless you need it right away. One of the easiest ways to turn off a copywriter is to demand quick turn-around on all of your projects. First of all, most copywriters have dozens of clients – it’s simply not fair to demand they drop everything to complete your project right away.
Second, if you ask for something ASAP and then don’t respond to your copywriter immediately with feedback or revisions, you’ve made yourself look bad. At best, they’ll ignore your next “emergency” request. At worst, they’ll never work with you again.
5. Remember that writing is not a commodity. I can’t tell you how many web designers, developers, and SEOs I’ve talked to who view copywriting as some sort of machined commodity. Instead of recognizing that copywriting is both art and skill, these people ask how many 400+ word articles they can have written for $50.
If you don’t value copywriting as a skill, that’s your own business. However, no self-respecting copywriter would choose to work with someone who doesn’t respect their skills. If you want to keep a great copywriter, you must respect what they do.
6. Most Copywriters need SEO guidance. I’ve yet to talk to a writer who doesn’t claim to “get” SEO, but a lot of times the copy still comes back with keyword-less headlines, no bold or emphasized keywords, no integration of skimmable items like lists and sub-headers, or poorly chosen anchor text. This is to be expected – most web copywriters were educated to write as a journalist or novelist, so optimizing content for search isn’t necessarily a natural mindset.
In order to minimize revisions, I have a short SEO copywriting checklist that contains all the SEO elements I want from my copy. I send that checklist to my new copywriters and give them SEO tips during the revision process too. Over time, we develop an understanding of what I’m looking for.
Great copywriting is the backbone of many powerful websites, and successful SEOs understand the importance of well-written content. Considering that one simple article or blog post can spontaneously generate links, leads, and/or sales for you or your client, it’s essential to get the best possible writing you can afford.
Great copywriters may be hard to find, but the reward is substantial. Take the time to find writers that know what they’re doing, remember that writing is a process, and respect the skills. The reward will be strong relationships with people whose work will make you look better in your client’s eyes.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
http://www.submitwagon.com/seonews/2010/10/27/3-things-link-building-has-taught-me-about-life-vice-versa/
If you always do what you’ve always done you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten
The quote is attributed to Tony Robins, one of the world’s most well-known motivational speakers. He uses it to inspire people to change their thoughts and behaviors so they can break out of a mediocre existence. In life we often find ourselves in holding patterns, living with a complacency that resembles happiness just enough to suffice. But to live the lives we truly want, we not only have to embrace change as it comes, but initiate it on our own. Even when it seems like changing is the hardest thing in the world to do. This applies in link building to help explain why a website is not attracting links on its own and needs to change direction.
If you think you have everything you need for your website to get links, consider this: how many natural links have you picked up this month? Natural. Links you didn’t have to ask for, or look for or even think about, links that were like a happy Christmas morning surprise. If that number is low or non-existent, then the sad truth is that you don’t have everything you need. Something has to change. You need a new strategy, a new approach. Re-inventing the wheel may not be practical if you work in tire manufacturing. But in order to succeed online, you not only need to come up with a new wheel, you need to re-discover fire, re-create tools, and re-define yourself. If you’re not evolving and if you only do what you’ve always done, well…you know.
Dream big, but live in reality
Kind of along the same lines, it’s really easy to delude ourselves into believing something is true, when all the hard evidence says it’s not. We spend a lot of our lives in denial about the way things are, using expressions like “it’s just a phase†or “it’s not as bad as it seemsâ€. Well, technically everything in life is “just a phase†and nothing is ever as bad as it seems. But when we use these cliché’s to protect ourselves from the truth it’s no longer a coping mechanism, it’s unhealthy. And it’s just as unhealthy for a link building campaign.
We need to accept the reality of our online situations. That means acknowledging when certain methods or approaches aren’t working. It means facing your market honestly and using consumer behaviors to drive your actions rather than stubbornly insisting that you know what people want.
We delude ourselves into believing all kinds of things that fit neatly into our version of reality. Deciding social media is unnecessary when there is clearly a conversation about your business going on, is short sighted. Insisting on targeting the keywords you want people to use to find you and ignoring the words they actually are searching, shows total disregard for the facts. Building links that don’t work or refusing to do what it takes to get the ones that do is just unfortunate. In all of these cases it’s a simple matter of facing reality and dealing with the circumstances you have instead of the ones you want.
We have to remain adaptable and be willing to face failure. It’s ok to admit something doesn’t work, but it’s not okay to do nothing about it. We need to be in a constant state of evaluation where our eyes are open to what’s really going on. It’s important to always stay passionate and never lose sight of our dreams and aspirations. But we’re never going to get to where we want to be if we can’t get past how we think the world should be and work with it the way that it is.
You get what you put in
Life is only as good as we make it. If we are bored tired and uninspired only we can climb out of our self-made ruts. The same is true of link building. If we take short cuts, and look for the easiest answer or the band-aid fix for a growing disease then we’ll eventually have to pay for choosing the path of least resistance. Only when we are willing to put forth the requisite amount of effort can we benefit from our work. That means forming relationships, putting in the manual hours of link building, and taking the time to create content worth linking to. It also means doing research, choosing smart targets, trying different methods, hiring quality link builders, testing new theories and the having patience to wait for results to build. If you’re willing to lay the foundation for long-term success, you’ll build a much sounder structure over all.
There’s a lot more that I’ve learned in my years of link building. I’ve learned that we should always keep good people around. None of us are ever a strong alone as we are by incorporating the perspective of others into our process. It’s just as important to surround ourselves with good, quality, hard earned links. I’ve learned that communication is vital to every relationship.
It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about friends and loved ones, or SEO’s and clients or link builders and their link targets. Without effective communication, every relationship is bound to fail. But most importantly, I’ve learned that we need to love what we do. That means everyone, from link builder to business owner. When the love is there it shows in all of our work and it makes us willing to take risks for what we love. And above all, love makes the hard times easier to endure. From a linking dry spell to a full-on, whole-life, crash and burn, as long as your heart is intent on moving forward, the future holds nothing but potential
Sunday, August 1, 2010
5 Things You Need to Know to Succeed With Bing
Dynamic Text Insertion: Most advertisers are familiar with Google’s dynamic keyword insertion function that allows an advertiser to take the search query and dynamically insert it into ad text. Bing takes this feature to a whole new level. Not only can you dynamically insert the search query into the ad but you can also conditionally insert other pieces of text into the ad or display url. For example, if the search query is red roses you could insert the word red rose into the ad text but could also make a condition that shows a price of $24.99 when the search query is red roses but $19.99 if the search query is yellow roses. Proper use of this should improve relevance which will help improve CTR and/or conversion rates.
Scheduled Bid Adjustments: On both a campaign and ad group level advertisers can both increase or decrease their bid levels based on geography (by city, metro,. state/province, country/region), demographics (age and gender), day of week, user device (mobile or desktop/laptop) and time of day. This requires marketers to really understand their underlying core business metrics but the marketers that know their metrics and understand these features can heavily skew the Bing search landscape in their favor.
Bing Uses Quality Score Metric: While this doesn’t come as a surprise to many it is important to note that Bing also uses a similar metric to Google’s Quality Score and Yahoo’s Quality Index (they call their metric Quality Score Unfortunately this is one area that is pretty crappy in Bing. At this stage Bing doesn’t display quality score that ties to a keyword, ad, or account. However, there have been some instances we’ve heard of that in order to establish high quality scores bids have been increased by 2x which have driven bids down in the mid to long term. Note that everything we’re hearing is that Bing is in alpha or beta of rolling out Quality Score for advertisers.
Search Management Tools: Microsoft’s adCenter has a tool similar to Google’s desktop tool (Adwords Editor) that resides on an advertiser’s local machine. The name of the tool isn’t the most original – Microsoft adCenter Desktop but the tool has some great functionality
Extract keywords for your ad group based on a URL or MSN’s keyword tools
Ad distribution (search vs. content) and geo-targeting and add ad group-level negative keywords
Similar functionality to the excel plug-in described below.
On top of their desktop application adCenter also offers an excel plug-in feature with features that provide deep keyword research insights.
Screenshot of Microsoft Advertising Intelligence
Dedicated Time and Resources: Once Bing is powering the organic and paid search results for Yahoo there reach will be extended and their resources will be more heavily focused on improving their advertising tools to allow them to increase monetization per query. The advertisers who will win in the land grab for search real estate are those who are willing to dedicate their time and resources to test and optimize Bing early and often.
It’s going to be rocky at first and there are lots of things that adCenter needs to fix such as exposing their quality index, improving their reporting interface, and many more items but with nearly 30% market share (Yahoo+Bing combined) we can’t afford to ignore Bing any longer. Check for more information about Bing in the upcoming weeks.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
5 Dirty Words in Link Building
There are a lot of bad words people use when talking about link building and link builders. Many of them involve expletives, and only the really creative ones are worth remembering. But the worst ones seem harmless, or even good. Some of these seemingly innocuous words make me feel like washing my own mouth out with soap. Don’t let their innocent little vowels and consonants fool you, because when the topic is link building, these words can be seriously misleading.
“Hundreds”
I don’t have an issue with numbers in general; I just think that the word hundreds, when used in conjunction with the word links, needs to be taken very carefully. When something is big news, or goes viral or there is a major, logical event that attracts a load of links all at once, there’s nothing wrong with that, that’s cool, that’s a party. But that’s also usually the result of plenty of time spent, researching creating and executing some sort of marketing plan that culminated in the news, launch or mega-viral super hit.
But if you’re talking about getting hundreds of links all at once by, say, buying them or signing up for a few hundred links on “book marking” sites or whatever other nonsense people are pushing, that’s weird. That’s not normal. Even if you’re getting singular, one-off links, you’d have to have one heck of a link army to get hundreds of links in a matter of weeks.
Every site is different, which means the circumstances and variables which could or might raise red flags will be different for everyone. A site with millions of links can probably acquire a couple of hundred without it being a blip on the giant radar. But, in most cases, there are 2 pretty standard truths about the mass influx of links. A. The sudden increase looks suspicious if the links aren’t natural. And B. Links you can get en masse tend to be of dubious value or strength. So, even a spike in back links can end in a rankings flat line.
“Exchange”
Let me clarify, I don’t hate reciprocal links. I think there’s nothing wrong with reciprocal linking, when it happens because two related websites recognize one another via links. There are plenty of intentional and accidental reciprocal linking situations which make perfect sense. What makes “exchange” a bad word, is the act that it implies. When two websites, actively agree to exchange links, it’s usually an unholy alliance. Especially when there is a links page” involved. I know that to most people, saying this is like announcing that Eli Whitney just mastered the Cotton Gin. But seeing as I still get a link exchange request from some automated program at least once a week, it still bears repeating. It’s also worth hammering home the distinction between “reciprocal links” and a “link exchange”. One is a sign of symbiotic respect the other is a sign of someone trying to cheat the system using a laughably out-dated methodology.
“Worthless”
This entry seems completely contrary to my building cynicism. I know. But in spite of condemning certain kinds of links that I believe carry little value; I don’t think that any link is completely worthless. Even the most seemingly inane, low-value links could, in some small way, serve a purpose.
I had a grandmother, who collected everything, sugar packets, plastic utensils; you name it, because she believed she might need it someday. Being a pack rat of things usually ends with a house full of stuff you will never use. Being a link pack rat means collecting some links, directories or article submissions maybe, that at first seem as valuable as empty Styrofoam cups. But someday those obscure little links might actually send you a visitor or two.
However, this is not a green light to surround yourself with garbage links like your name is Oscar and you live in a can. It’s still a bad idea to waste your link budget on marginal value or whatever easy links you can get your hands on. There are smart, highly effective ways to invest your time and money in link building, and there are cheap and deceptive ones. The good ones carry the most value and the most impact. I’m just saying never hate on the runt of the litter; because sometimes the weak, dormant links you wrote off yesterday, will surprise you tomorrow.
“Perfect”
Taking another 180 degree turn, try not to get dizzy, there’s no such thing as a perfect link. This is a notion I first had a long time ago, when I was still just learning about the entire scope of link building and had yet to really see their full power. Even after a few more years and a lot more perspective, I’m still convinced that nothing is ever perfect. There are great links I mean GREAT, cash bonus, do-a-little-dance worthy links. But are they perfect? Probably not. We could usually wish for a little more.
A few more page back links, a little better anchor text, it’s always easy to attach the words “I wish” to a link. Anyone who promises “perfect” links is perfectly full of crap. Good, better, strong, and useful are all totally reasonable words to describe the kinds of links that someone can get you. But perfect? I seriously doubt it. Half the time, the links you think are going to make an impact don’t even show up in your top back links in Yahoo!. Meanwhile that “worthless” blog comment you made, brings you traffic once a month. Simply put, there’s just no such thing as “perfect” in the link game.
“Guarantee”
For the same reason I take issue with the word “perfect” I’m wary of “guarantee”. There are really only a few kinds of links that can be “guaranteed” and some of those are scary. Getting good links, real, strong links is pretty difficult to guarantee. Yes, it can be done but the question is; at what cost? See, I’ve seen monthly quotas hit consistently, I’ve seen the “guaranteed” number of links delivered. I’ve also seen short-cuts, cut corners and quality sacrificed in order to meet those demands.
But my biggest problem with the word “guarantee” regarding link building is when links are “guaranteed” to work. Making that kind of guarantee is like promising to cause an earthquake. No one can make that promise, just like no one can promise rankings or even traffic as a result of links. That darn secret algorithm along with pesky free will makes those kinds of assurances misleading. And when those promises are broken, as they most often are, it does nothing but disparage the name of SEO in general and the good hard work of many honest link builders.
Just Put a Nickel in the Swear Jar
It’s not that none of these words should ever be used, but they should be handled with wisdom and care. Approach guarantees and perfection with skepticism, never underestimate the worthless and tell hundreds of would be exchangers to save their breath.
It’s not that no one should ever use dirty words, when you shoot yourself with a staple gun; the use of certain words is unavoidable. But, just like F-bombs should be dropped out of the earshot of little ones, some link building terms should be spoken with equal care and only in the right context
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Google News Becomes More Personal and Social
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
submitwagon providing manual directory submission
if you have any queries about seo please mail at submitwagon@gmail.com