What’s New With Google AdWords?

Google’s been busy with AdWords this summer, launching a number of new features. Here’s a wrap-up of six of those features as well as Google’s new advertising news website.

* AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE)

This tool, which is currently in beta, lets you test and measure changes to your keywords, your AdWords bidding, ad groups and placements. Basically you run your existing campaign alongside an experimental campaign.

You choose what percentage of auctions you’d like each campaign to participate in, and then watch what happens. If your experimental campaign is significantly more successful than your original campaign, you can decide to apply the changes to all of your auctions.

* Analyze Competition Feature

Google has added a new tool to the AdWords Opportunities tab that allows you to see how your campaign performance compares to the average performance of other advertisers. Google measures such indicators as click-through rate, average position, and impressions.

It shows these metrics for each of the different categories that represent your offerings. It can help you identify which aspects of your campaign are inferior to your competition, and then prompt you to improve those aspects accordingly.

* Ad Sitelinks

Ad Sitelinks let you add additional links to pages within your site in your ads, provided your ads appear at the top of search results. The idea is that more people will click through to your site if you offer them more options. The feature was introduced in November, though this summer Google add a couple of new characteristics.

One new characteristic is that additional links can be condensed into one line of text (previously the only option was two lines). The other change is that advertisers no longer need Google’s approval to set up Ad Sitelinks for their campaigns. You can set up Ad Sitelinks in the Campaign Settings tab.

* Keyword Diagnosis Tool

This new tool lets you see which of your pay-per-click keywords are currently prompting your ads to show, and why the other keywords aren’t spurring ads. You can access it from the More Actions drop-down menu within the Keyword tab.

If you want you can limit your diagnosis to a particular country and/or language. If you are seeing that certain keywords are not resulting in ads because of Quality Score issues, you might decide to resolve those issues. Or you might choose to increase your bids to get your ads shown.

* Broad Match Modifier

This new AdWords management feature lets you create keywords that are more targeted than broad match and have a greater reach than phrase or exact match. To implement this feature, you put a plus sign (+) in front of one or more words in a broad match keyword. Each word following a (+) sign must appear in the user’s query exactly or as a close variation.

The words that are not preceded by a (+) sign will prompt ads on more significant query variations. This feature will likely drive more traffic for those switching from broad match, and attract more qualified traffic for those switching from phrase or exact match.

* Reports Moving to Campaigns Tab

The AdWords Report Center is slowly being phased out as performance reports are moved onto the Campaigns tab. According to Google, it’s best to put performance information on the same page where you manage your campaign.

Reports include campaign reports, ad group reports, and account-level reports. They will specifically be stored in a new part of the Campaigns tab called the Control panel and library.

* Google Ad News

In June Google unveiled Google Ad News, a website that aggregates advertising news, including news related to AdWords. The site is organized into advertising categories, including search advertising; mobile advertising; and TV, radio and print.

For advertisers and advertising professionals with little time to sift through the categories, a top advertising news category provides Google’s most valued advertising-related articles. Articles come from such publications as The Detroit News, Business Week, and The Guardian.

Source : searchenginejournal.com

 

Make Your Landing Page Working – Provider

If you have ever tried to make good landing pages, know that you need to test and retest your pages to make sure they convert. One of the best ways to make great landing pages is to look at what the internet marketers are doing online and follow them. Also women’s magazines are a great place to look for what good copy writers write for good landing pages. Some women’s magazines have the very best writers on staff so it’s a great place to look for ideas when you go to write headlines.

A smashing heading and some good copy and you’re on your way to making a great landing page that can convert your customers into buyers. Nothing is more frustrating than having a lot of web traffic visiting a site but getting very few leads or sign-ups. If you can put together a simple web page that customer will land on and fill it with some good pictures and have a good clean design you can make a great landing page.Great colorful pictures and pretty borders and great at keeping a readers attention on a landing page and you have either paid traffic of free traffic.

You also want to keep you speech very simple so all readers can understand your copy. Landing pages are not a good place to impress your readers with your extensive vocabulary. You want to use simple words and simple sentence structure. Making your heading lines bold so reader can scan the page quickly you’re your offer. Bullet points are a great way to list if you’re trying to explain some benefits or features of your offer. They are easy to read and make your copy easy to scan. The close of your copy should invoke a deep interest from your reader to ask for additional information or collect an email address or newsletter sign-up.

My system to make a landing page is like this:

•    Bold Headline
•    Some eye catching copy
•    Bullet point of some benefits
•    Closing copy
•    Offer
•    Test conversions and make changes
•    Retest pages

We have put together a collection of landing pages and you can download for free. With them you change the copy to your own and upload them to your web site. If you have ever tried to make a good landing pages to know that you need to test and retest your pages to make sure they convert. One of the best ways to make great landing pages is to look at what the internet marketers are doing online and follow them. Also women’s magazines are a great place to look for what good copy writers write for good landing pages.

Some women’s magazines have the very best writers on staff so it’s a great place to look for ideas when you go to write headlines. A smashing heading and some good copy and you’re on your way to making a great landing page that can convert your customers into buyers. Nothing is more frustrating than having a lot of web traffic visiting a site but getting very few leads or sign-ups. If you can put together a simple web page that customer will land on and fill it with some good pictures and have a good clean design you can make a great landing page.

Source : website-marketing-pros.com

 

Five tips for B2B social media marketing

What do B2B services really need to concentrate on if they want to have a viable social media presence? Let’s examine the value of social media from a B2B point of view.

While social media has all the engagement buzz right now, the majority of studies are still dealing strictly with the B2C industry, so much so that there’s a serious question mark over the value of B2Bs utilizing SM streams at all.

Of course, LinkedIn has its place, but what do B2B services really need to concentrate on if they want to have a viable social media presence? In no particular order, let’s take a look at the value of social media from a B2B point of view.

1. Cut out the chat.

Businesses care about product and price just like B2C customers. Unlike B2C’s, they don’t want to be friends; they want to be colleagues who get on well, so forget the usual rules for Twitter or Facebook. You don’t need to “add personality”. You need to tell them in plain English what it is you offer, what it’s for and how it benefits their business model.

“So, that’ll be traditional marketing then?”

Well…not quite.

One of the best things about social media is its lack of tolerance for hyperbole. Think of your presence as a nice way to increase web traffic with a newsdesk function, but make sure you quickly step on any copy containing sentences like “seamlessly synergizes your multistream strategic presence”. Instead, go with “allows you to easily manage multiple accounts”.

In other words: SM cuts out the bulls**t.

2.Provide a great sales experience.

Whatever industry you’re in, one of the biggest consumer and business bugbears is poor customer service.

You can provide a great product, sell it at a competitive price and offer free service if something goes wrong. But I guarantee that if you don’t have a direct point of contact to facilitate that service, you’ll fail miserably.

Social media is a great way to ensure that your teams know what is happening with each other, and to make sure the people you do business with can contact the right person directly. You can also quickly join up any gaps between sales and development by making sure your reps have a decent knowledge of your product.

This sounds like common sense (because it is), but there’s a difference between knowing all the features of a product and knowing when and how it’s useful, so utilise the training and internal communication possibilities SM streams provide.

3. Level of contact.

There’s a certain view in B2B that unlike individual customers, businesses don’t spend a lot of time hanging out on Facebook. They also get enough email as it is, so you need to be careful about what you tell them and when. Businesses generally want less communication from you, so don’t sign them up to a newsletter. Instead concentrate on genuinely meaningful interactions.

If you have lunch twice a year to discuss a specific project then you are accomplishing far more than blurting updates about version 12.6 of your latest widget. If they need it, they’ll ask. Any business that knows what its doing will also know when to ask for specialist help with complex issues.

This, of course, is ridiculous.

OK, so they do their own research, but where are they getting that data?

Your customers say they want ‘limited, meaningful interaction’ from you. But do you honestly think they’ll ignore free advice or a one-up on the competition?

Follow the SM rulebook: participate and contribute extra value. Use SM to raise your company’s profile and respect levels. Of course you should have guidelines in place, but it’s far more useful to have an engagement rate based on your actual usefulness as a supplier rather than strictly dictated by a calendar.

You can also balance your customer interaction in the B2B market by researching your clients and keeping detailed reports. Conduct regualar appraisals of previous clients and think about their stated needs, and see if you genuinely think their actual requirements have changed.

If you have a strong case then contact them, make sure you have a clear and consistent strategy for outreach based on needs and your own potential for continued business/profit.

If you feel you have a genuine service to offer an existing or potential customer, doesn’t it make more sense to send them a tentative tweet rather than wait 3 months for the next scheduled meeting?

4. Regulating an unlimited buying cycle.

In the data age there’s no such thing as a seasonal buying cycle, so allowing potential clients multiple points of contact is always a good idea.

Your clients will be determining their own contact times, and they’ll already have done their own research. They come across a problem and decide on the tools they need to tackle it before they contact you, and when they do they don’t necessarily require your sales spiel.

They want singular pieces of product information so that they can utilize it for specific reasons. Fortunately that’s information you can provide quickly and easily via SM by detailing upgrades, modifications, and new services.

You’ll remove the need for customers to constantly visit your main site and dispense with the need to send out overlong email reminders.

5. Opinion monitoring

Recommendations from independent online services carry a lot of heft with buyers, certainly more so than information directly from you, so having an outreach team for social media is invaluable.

By creating a regular buzz report and becoming more active on forums, you can engage and create a lot of positive commentary around your service, exactly as B2C’s have done.

While the tone of voice you use may be different, ultimately social media has the potential to bridge the gaps between B2C and B2B marketing, creating better value from pooled research, and as such B2Bs ignore or under-utilize the medium at their peril.

Source : econsultancy.com

 

Keeping an Eye on Your Competitors with SEJ Tools

I shared once a tip on how to track (and compare) competitors’ rankings with SEJ Tools. Today I am looking further at the feature that allows to watch your competitors grow to timely learn what they are doing.

There’s one nifty feature inside SEJ Tools called Competitor Manager. It allows to easily compare your site with your competitors and offers a few other handy options.

The tool can be found when you hover over DASHBOARD menu tab:

The first thing to do is to add your competitors to the list which is very easy: just click “Add Competitor” link and copy paste the domains of all your competitors (one per line).

You can also allow SERPs tracking for all of those you add in bulk. This means that after you add your competitors, you can track his rankings at SERPs tracker:

After you add your competitors, give the tool some time to collect the data. After it’s done, you will see the following SEO-relevant info in the table (that will allow you to compare all the domains against yours at a glance to see how well you are doing):

• The quality score of each domain (based on the Quality Analyzer);
• The Google PageRank of the home page;
• The pages in Google and Yahoo indices (based on Google’s and Yahoo’s public SITE: operator);
• The backlinks to the the home page (based on Google’s and Yahoo’s public LINK: operator).

From there, the competitors can be easily added or removed from the SERP Tracker. Additionally, clicking on the Research link for any competitor will take you to a domain result in the Research Assistant.

You can also export your competitors to a CSV file or remove them from the table:

Clicking on a competitor will take you to its related website record in the Website Directory:

Competitors can be tagged to better organize and filter them (to tag your competitor, click tiny tag link next to its domain in the table).

Source : http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-keep-an-eye-on-your-competitors-with-sej-tools/20336/

 

Different Types Of ‘HATS’ In ‘SEO’

The other day in the office we were joking around about the different “hat colors” for SEOs (search engine optimizers)–you know, black hat, white hat and so on, for the efforts people make to get pages to rank highly on Google and other engines. I mentioned it to my buddy Arch Carey, who is a talented iPhone sketch artist. (He’s the guy behind OM-NOM-NOMNITURE.)

We got to thinking, what would the various SEO hats actually look like? Here’s what we came up with, thanks to great suggestions from the rest of The Daily Green team:

Black Hat SEO

The dark ninjas of the net, black hat SEOs try to trick search engines into ranking their sites higher by any means necessary. They often hawk scams and dubious products, and engage in such Google-banned practices as link farming, page hijacking, cloaking, keyword stuffing, link buying, spamming and other evil arts that clog up the Intertubes and give legit SEOs a bad name.

White Hat SEO

White hats worship at the altar of Google, and follow the TOCs (terms of service) of search engines to the letter. Unconcerned with “gaming” rankings, instead they focus on trying to lay out everything as clearly and transparently as possible.

Gray Hat SEO

Gray Hats avoid the activities that are expressly banned by search engines and by the Internet community. But they aren’t above trying to aggressively outrank the competition through link building, use of social media, smart use of RSS and building partnerships with other sites.

Pirate Hat SEO

Those “bloggers” who engage in egregious linkjacking, or who Shangai other people’s content in other ways. And those who post anything on Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Top Hat SEO

Those who achieve the coveted first place ranking in search engines.

Bacon Hat SEO

Net denizens who are obsessed with bacon, burgers as big as Volkswagens and Turducken, and building sites around these clickbait themes. Example: The Bacon Queen

Cat Hat SEO

Not to be confused with Dr. Seuss, cat hats are all about exploiting the Internet’s obsession with keyboard-playing cats, sneezing pandas and maybe even skateboarding dogs. Don’t let the cuddly cuteness fool you, they’re pure evil incarnate.

Beret Hat SEO

Les optimization de chercher.

Hipster Hat SEO

Wearing a trucker hat or fedora, these guys move slowly because they’ve got no place to go, man. And they’re unhappy.

Newsboy Hat SEO

No such thing. Newspapers don’t know how to do SEO. (Well, except maybe Colonel Tribune.)

Dunce Hat SEO

What’s SEO?

Brain Hat SEO

Watch out, zombies!!!

Source : www.thedailygreen.com

 

SEO and Branding: Which Is More Important?

It’s not often you’ll hear SEO experts admit that search engine optimisation is of less than central importance to a site. Partly this comes from the tendency for businesses to completely ignore their SEO. Partly it comes from the intense focus the SEO industry has. It is true, however, that SEO shouldn’t be the first and last thing you consider for your site.

In truth, search engine optimisation can both be assisted by and assist other aspects of your site’s marketing. If done well, search engine optimisation should have a positive effect on your site well beyond the search engines. To have this affect, though, optimisation has to look beyond the basic optimisation techniques. A good SEO company won’t just stick keywords all over your pages and consider the job done. Good SEO involves tactics that improve the site overall. You can talk to us about this at SEO Consult. One of the things that should be considered is your business branding.

The origins of brands

Branding has been the traditional realm of the marketer, and the move online hasn’t changed anything. Businesses still go to their marketing departments for their brand ideas, and approach SEO experts only when the marketing side has been sorted out. Some separation between SEO and regular marketing is only natural, but SEO shouldn’t be left out of the loop entirely. The choices you make for your brand have a big affect on your SEO and, more importantly, your SEO could have a big effect on your brand.

Find the balance

Just as your site and SEO cannot operate in isolation from each other, it’s not wise for your brand and your SEO to be completely separate. It’s a mistake to allow your brand to be the central guiding factor of your SEO, but it’s a mistake to go in the opposite extreme as well. If incorporated properly, your SEO and your existing brand presence can work together to promote each other. In areas where your brand is already known, tying it to your SEO can boost site rankings. In areas where off-page SEO is being used to promote inbound links, your brand can also be mentioned.

Brands in the future

Branding may well take on greater importance in coming years. In late 2008, Google CEO Eric Schmidt warned the publishing industry that without proper efforts in branding at that stage, their news services could take dive-bomb in future rankings. The reason, Schmidt said, was that the internet is increasingly starting to resemble a ‘cesspit’ of information. Branding may well be the only way to identify reliable information in the future, if only because it automatically attributes a source for the information which can be tracked down.

Brands already play an important part in modern culture. Market studies have consistently shown that people will pay more for a brand, and in the case of information, will pay for a brand when they can get the generic version for free. Basically, a well-established brand can sell itself. Allow your SEO to help your brand.

Source : seoconsult.co.uk

 

Diagnosing SEO Technical Critical Issues

I always pick the technical panels because I think you guys will find them most interesting… but I forget that I am not a technical SEO so trying to decipher the slides is often like performing brain surgery… on a rock.

A very sick Vanessa Fox is moderating speakers Adam Audette, Patrick Bennett, Gabe Gayhart, and Brian Ussery.  I spent ten minutes chatting with Vanessa and I can already feel the germs congregating in the back of my throat to ruin my day.  I’ll be starting the #blamevanessa hashtag tomorrow when I wake up sick and unable to move. Things to look forward to!

Okay, we’re starting. Let’s go. Vanessa really sounds like death.  She needs a stretcher. Or a hot towel. Or to maybe stop traveling so damn much.  [yeah, Vanessa, I said it.]

First up is Adam Audette.

Site audits and diagnosing technical stuff is a never ending process. Our sites are never perfect. It’s a continual process of going through the site, looking at it and fixing things.  He approaches SEO audits by looking for patterns, using his experience, and being a good problem solver. The basics can be easily taught but it does take time to perfect.  Collaboration helps.

Technical SEO is:

Part Art: Follow your nose. It takes diligence to dive in and find out what the problems are. It requires trust. The company has to trust you to find their issues.

Part Science: It’s very calculated in the processes. They’re always looking at a set number of factors and we’re documenting everything.  Project management of diagnosing SEO audits is really important. He uses Basecamp. It requires documentation and collaboration.

A Framework for SEO Audits

* On-Page
* Domains
* Navigations
* Sections & Categories
* Pages Media

Off-Page

* Backlinks
* Social Media Signals
* Cache Dates, crawl frequency, indexed pages
* Toolbar PageRank

The Big 4 Factors

* URLs
* Site Architecture & Navigation
* Deep pages (PageRank Dispersion)
* Site Latency – speed of your site. This has gotten a lot of play lately.

Some Cool Tools

* SEM Rush: look at a site and find the natural keywords that the site is already ranking for.
* Use Google Searches: site: + inurl: /intitle:
* Lynxlet/SEO-Browser.com
* Charles/YSlow
* Various Toolbars: Web Developer’s Toolbar, Wave Toolbar, SEOBook Toolbar

Using the command line is a great way to diagnose problems.  He mentions using Wget and there’s lots of code on the screen that I don’t understand.  My brain is suddenly yelling at me.  Adam also mentions that he uses SEOmoz’s Page Analysis Tool and LinkScape.  Because he’s super rad he wrote a post offering a free log file parsing script, that you may want to check out.

Next up is Gage Gayhart.

He starts off talking about his team structure but flips through the slides quicker than a person blinks. I barely saw them, let alone blogged them.

Crawling:

* Full Crawl: Perform a full crawl of a site to ID each page on the site.
* SE Simulation: Run consecutive crawls to simulate each engine.
* Browser Crawl: View how a site is being rendered in the browser.

Goals:

* ID indexation gaps and issues.
* ID crawler behavior.
* ID opportunities to trim the fat.

Infrastructure Issues

* Template Coding: If templates aren’t bot friendly or flexible for change.
* Directory Structure: Everything from parameters being added to dynamic URLs or nonexistent structure.
* File Naming Conventions: Granted this isn’t the end all/be all but it’s yet another opportunity to establish theme.
* Code Base: Some CMS’ generate a bunch of unnecessary code.

Performance Issues

* Images, Flash, AJAX
* Flash Alternatives
* Semantic HTML
* Frames
* Image Maps
* Tables
* Page file size – he calls this the ‘big 2010 thing’ people will start to worry about, again it’s tied to load time.

Redirect issues:

* Expiring products or content. This would include expired special offer pages or season promotions.
* Internal 302 redirects or multiple redirects.
* Internal JavaScript/page-based redirects

When prioritizing what to do, you have to consider impact. How will this recommendation impact our client’s business? What about ease? How easy can a client implement it? Readiness – how quickly can they implement it?  If you have an inhouse SEO team, you probably have a better sense of what types of resources you’ll need and how to allocate them.

He ties in a case study for Ford Motor Company. They had a very Flash-heavy site. They had to do a site migration and deal with CMS troubles. They went in and collaborated with content strategy teams. They rolled out additional content and created a content migration plan.  They made sure the Flash was crawlable. Once all those things occurred they were able to up visitors by 66 percent.

Common Issues

* Duplicate Content from canonical issues, mirror sites, staging sites, load balancing, pagination, non-localized international content, session IS.
* Navigation Components: Maintaining the user experience. Robots.txt, XML Site maps, HTML Site maps.
* Rich media & Content Accessibility

Brian Ussery is next.

Technical SEO: Images

* Use detailed file names
* Use keyword-relevant anchor text
* Use Alt Text: Used to determine relevancy, by screen readers, people on cell phones, etc.
* Place images near relevant text
* Don’t place text in images
* Provide info about images without spamming
* Don’t block images
* Use a license via CC
* Use quality photos – bigger the better
* Use direct names that describe your photos
* Place images above the fold.
* Specify width and height.

Provide as much meta data as you can about your images. Use tags, labeling, location info, etc.

Image Speed

Use the appropriate optimized image format

* JPEG photos
* Crush PNG for graphics
* Optimized gifs for small and animated images
* Don’t scale images in (X)HTML
* Specify dimensions
* Use a favicon with expiration to avoid 404s

It’s very difficult for the engines to extract images from Flash. Adobe doesn’t even rank top for [adobe logo] in Google Image Search. From Twitter: Use Flash like you would use cilantro – sparingly and for a single high-impact effect. Nobody wants to eat a whole bowl of cilantro. Heh.

Next up is Patrick Bennett.

He loves that on the Internet you can make up your own words. He’s using Crawlability and Indexability today and isn’t sure if they’re real. Eh, who cares.  At least they have vowels.

Developers are SEOs.  You have a responsibility in avoiding issues so don’t be afraid to speak up. Be forward-thinking with new marketing initiatives and an asset to your marketing team. Hurrah!

Crawlability Intro

Spiders have limited resources. You control how easy your site is to spider. How important is crawl-rate for your Web business? TechCrunch and Mashable are crawled by the second.  Once they published an article it already ranks.  If you didn’t hear, Mashable is the new Wikipedia. Think users first, spiders second. Spiders love to crash parties. They’ll come back as much as you want them to.

Are all of your pages created equal? You control which pages are indexed.

Crawlability/Indexabilty Checklist

1. Convince spiders to visit often: Create static URLs that are updated frequently with the latest content and point links to them. Show the latest products that have been added. Do the same with your category pages.   Add a blog that is updated DAILY.
2. Show spiders where to go: Use consistent navigation that points your users and spiders to most important areas. Use breadcrumbs. ID pages that change frequently and link them directly from your top landing pages. Follow Web standards. Think of getting the user to various spots with a couple of clicks.
3. Block Spiders from less important content: Use Google Webmaster tools to create your robots.txt file. Don’t allow spiders to use their resources on pages that don’t need to rank.
4. Give the spider a map to your site: XML and user sitemaps provide a list of all URLs on your site. Just another way to help the spider around.
5. Feed the spider as quickly as possible: Implement server-side caching to reduce real-time database calls. Use a CDN server to increase the amount of parallel requests. GZIP the output of all text files. Limit the amount of code surrounding the content by leveraging external CSS and JS files. MINIFY the output of VSS and JS files. Use CSS sprites wherever possible.  You can use YSlow or Page Speed to see how well you’re doing.
6. Don’t make the spider think too hard: Since the spider is only going to allocate a certain number of resources on your site, don’t create any bottlenecks. Some common pitfalls: broken links resulting in 404s, long URLs w/ multiple parameters or session IDs, duplicate content, duplicate title/Meta tags, excessive code surround the important content, base use of Title, Meta and H1 tags.

Source
Diagnosing SEO Technical Critical Issues