Archive for May, 2009
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
I decided today that summer is almost here and I’m not in shape for when I go down the shore. I started searching for “bodybuilding supplements”, but before I could get past “bodybui” a link came up.
I started searching around for some supplements like Whey Protein, Muscle Milk, NO Xplode and others that might bring back links in the Google Suggest box, but no other links were coming back. I started searching for some other websites like bestbuy, webmd, 1800contacts and these all brought back links in the Google Suggest dropdown.
So What?
This is being tested by Google and is not rolled out for all searchers. It may go away and this post could be a meaningless piece of search history, BUT if it becomes a regular part of Google Suggest it WILL impact PPC & SEO.
In the example above, bodybuilding.com showed up before the word “bodybuilding” was finished being typed. This can create a problem if you are targeting keywords that have monster sites using that keyword. Any type of keyword around bodybuilding, bodybuilding supplements, bodybuilding products, etc could be impacted by seeing bodybuilding.com show up before the keyword is finished being typed.
Side note – this could significantly impact the number of longtail searches.
The same scenario happens when searching for “Panasonic digital camera”. Before you get to the “digital camera” part of the keyword, Panasonic.com shows up. I need a Motorola Bluetooth Headset, but before I can type in “bluetooth headset”, Motorola.com shows up. If a user clicks on the link in Google Suggest, they’ll never see a site you worked on hard to get onto the first page. Hellomoto, Amazon, momandpopheadsetshop all get the pass.
Maybe you’re on the PPC side & have a client that sells Adidas products. Shoes, soccer balls, apparel, everything Adidas. Any keyword starting with the brand name you’re targeting in PPC just lost visits because an Adidas.com link showing up in Google Suggest when you type in “Adidas”. Some people may type fast enough to bypass this link, but Google Suggest will take away traffic from Zappos, ShoeMall & mom & pop shops by landing users right on the brand’s site.
One point to make, once you’re off the Google homepage and on a results page, Suggest does not link anymore. As with everything else above, this could change.
Ultimately, Google will make the decision based on if they feel users found better results through this addition to Google Suggest. Keep an eye on this as it could go away or roll out for all searchers.
Posted in SEO | 4 Comments »
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
I decided today that summer is almost here and I’m not in shape for when I go down the shore. I started searching for “bodybuilding supplements”, but before I could get past “bodybui” a link came up.
I started searching around for some supplements like Whey Protein, Muscle Milk, NO Xplode and others that might bring back links in the Google Suggest box, but no other links were coming back. I started searching for some other websites like bestbuy, webmd, 1800contacts and these all brought back links in the Google Suggest dropdown.
So What?
This is being tested by Google and is not rolled out for all searchers. It may go away and this post could be a meaningless piece of search history, BUT if it becomes a regular part of Google Suggest it WILL impact PPC & SEO.
In the example above, bodybuilding.com showed up before the word “bodybuilding” was finished being typed. This can create a problem if you are targeting keywords that have monster sites using that keyword. Any type of keyword around bodybuilding, bodybuilding supplements, bodybuilding products, etc could be impacted by seeing bodybuilding.com show up before the keyword is finished being typed.
Side note – this could significantly impact the number of longtail searches.
The same scenario happens when searching for “Panasonic digital camera”. Before you get to the “digital camera” part of the keyword, Panasonic.com shows up. I need a Motorola Bluetooth Headset, but before I can type in “bluetooth headset”, Motorola.com shows up. If a user clicks on the link in Google Suggest, they’ll never see a site you worked on hard to get onto the first page. Hellomoto, Amazon, momandpopheadsetshop all get the pass.
Maybe you’re on the PPC side & have a client that sells Adidas products. Shoes, soccer balls, apparel, everything Adidas. Any keyword starting with the brand name you’re targeting in PPC just lost visits because an Adidas.com link showing up in Google Suggest when you type in “Adidas”. Some people may type fast enough to bypass this link, but Google Suggest will take away traffic from Zappos, ShoeMall & mom & pop shops by landing users right on the brand’s site.
One point to make, once you’re off the Google homepage and on a results page, Suggest does not link anymore. As with everything else above, this could change.
Ultimately, Google will make the decision based on if they feel users found better results through this addition to Google Suggest. Keep an eye on this as it could go away or roll out for all searchers.
Posted in SEO | 4 Comments »
Monday, May 18th, 2009
There’s often mumbles heard around PPC offices that “Yahoo !@#$%” (fill in the blank with whatever terms of endearment you’d like), followed by a “I wish it was like Google.” These are not harsh, unearned accusations toward Yahoo; They are simply the words of frustrations from kick !*@ PPC Managers who truly want to kill for their clients and who are wishing they could turn out ridiculous campaign metrics on Yahoo as they do on Google, and most importantly with the same ease.
The PPC Team at SEER is no different. The Yahoo-woos are often heard, and often heard multiple times a day around the office. In the past the SEER PPC team has mentioned Yahoo Search Query reports on our blog. Back then my colleague, Bonnie, was the only privileged PPC Manager at SEER to get her hands on those reports. However, recently SEER landed a Yahoo Agency rep, who has truly been fantastic. One of the things she’s been able to do for us is to FINALLY provide all of our clients with the Search Query reports, on a monthly basis. (It seems that there are also other agencies out there that are finally gaining access to these reports as well according to a recent post on the PPC Hero blog).
However, along with the pure excitement of getting our hands on these top secret reports, unfortunately the SEER team also came to realize that the great privilege to receiving these report also brings along a dark cloud.
Why you ask? Let me tell youâ¦.
1. No matter how much you wish upon a star you cannot exclude “NOISE” words, Not EVER, No WAY!
What are “noise” words you ask? Well unless you specifically reach out to Yahoo regarding one of these terms, this is also kept top secret by our beloved Yahoo. “Noise” Terms are terms that are more commonly thought of as “articles.” This list includes the following terms:
A
About
All
An
And
Are
At
Be
Do
For
How
http
is
me
my
of
on
or
out
the
to
was
what
with
you
your
How does this hurt your campaign performance you ask? Well, just to name a few:
a. If you are offering a service, let’s say, “hair styling”, you obviously don’t want queries triggering your ad of users in a “learning stage,” such as “how to style hair,” “about hair styling,” etc. However, based on the list of terms above, both “how” and “what” are actually “noise” words, and you can’t stop your ads from showing? Absurd, I know!
b. How about if your company name is something like “Wisdom Tree Landscaping.” After receiving the almighty Search Query report, you realize you are showing up for “Tree of Wisdom.” Obviously not relevant, AT ALL. However, since “of” is a “noise” word, guess what, you cannot exclude this query!
Blood boiling yet? Let me give you one more piece of infoâ¦
2. Now, Yahoo’s “Standard” Match is to be similar to Google’s “Exact” Match type. Yahoo defines their Standard Match Type as:
The Standard match type displays your ads when a user searches for something online and you have already bid on the same keyword phrase. The Standard match type accounts for singular/plural variations and common misspellings.
Sounds great right, Yahoo will catch all the one-offs you can’t think of off the top of your head.
Actually, it’s not so great.
Yahoo’s matching technology is certainly not up to par with Google’s. After receiving the Search Query report, it’s heart breaking to see how many queries trigger your Standard Terms.
Here’s a great example; for a client of mine I bid on a 2 term phrase, on Standard Match and it’s one of our highest converting terms. However, I found through Search Query reports, that I am actually being matched to a 12 term query, that does NOT relate to my term. The kicker?
Because this term is on Standard Match, I CANNOT add the 12 term query as a negative. Yup, you heard right. On Yahoo Negative terms are not applied to campaigns/ad groups set to Standard Match.
So, now not only are your forced to show up for terms that include “Noise” terms, but also for any term Yahoo deems is a misspelling or singular/plural variation of your term.
The only “quick” fix you can implement if you see your Standard Match terms being matched to a TON of irrelevant queries is to change it to Advanced Match and then add the irrelevant queries. This then does open a whole other issue, as now your terms will be matched to all terms you were being matched to via Standard Match but now also queries that include pieces of your terms, your terms in different order, etc. (Here is more detail on Yahoo Advanced Match.
No wonder Yahoo keeps the Search Query reports a secret! Even if you see the terms that you are being matched to that are not driving relevant traffic, in some instances, there is nothing that you can do about it! Can you imagine what would happen if EVERY single Yahoo Advertiser was privy to these reports? Yahoo would receive a flood of angry emails!!!
Posted in PPC | 8 Comments »
Friday, May 15th, 2009
Recently, one of our clients asked us to see which dog breed was searched for more by women. The reason behind this request was that our client was working with a creative agency for a new service they were launching that would target the female population. They thought about adding a dog into the Marketing Material and wanted to see which dog breed was most popular for the female demographic before spending 1,000′s of dollars developing creatives. Dina, my colleague at SEER, used dog registration statistics from the American Kennel Club so that the data would not be skewed by searches revolving around “dog” events and then researched demographic information with the msn ad center plugin on the most popular breeds to see where a female skew lies. She was able to determine that women prefer small dogs, and chihuahuas, malteses, pugs, and shih tzus were the most popular. Dina also determined that the most popular large dog among women searchers was the golden retriever.
The above example is only a small example of how keyword research could be used to develop a branding strategy, but this exercise really got the SEER team thinking about how search behavior can provide invaluable insight in developing a marketing strategy and could potentially save a company $1,000′s if not millions of dollars on a marketing campaign that would have otherwise ended up as failure.
SemGeek.com posted the blog post: 5 Ways to Persuade Your Clients to Spend More PPC Dollars, which highlighted this concept of how SEM can help in the research and development phase of a marketing strategy.
The paragraph that really stood out to me in the above post is below:
“III: More Affordable Testing:
In most cases, search marketers promote landing page A/B testing and Ad/Creative testing and that is a good thing. However, there are many other ways to use PPC as a testing vehicle not only for the website, but for the entire company and its offline ad initiatives. Let’s explain…
For example, making the case to use paid search to determine which Ad Messaging works more effectively before the Ad campaign hits the airwaves and cable stations is a very valuable tactic. Over the years, many millions of Ad dollars were spent on messaging that did not entirely make a good impression on the companies. With PPC, it’s a cost effective “pre-campaign” strategy to test the market before spending $100,000′s of dollars on TV, Radio and Print.”
This concept is truly insightful. Think of how much time, effort and money a company might spend thinking and developing the perfect messaging to resonate with their audience. Think of the time, effort and money spent developing the creative. I have never worked in the offline advertising world, but I can only imagine the hours of back and forth bantering it takes to develop a concept that you “think” will work. Being able to A/B test different messaging in a PPC Ad or on the landing page, instead of just guessing what may work and spending millions developing this messaging is an invaluable way to use paid search. I know best practices in online advertising often fail and that all the experience in the world can not ensure you an ad or a landing page will win over another. I am sure this is the same in the offline world as well.
This idea of testing Ad messaging before it is launched can be taken one step further to product development. Again, I have never worked as a product developer, but I can only imagine the time, effort and money it takes determining the best price point, the best packaging or the best way to sell the new idea. These elements can all be tested in a landing page to see what motivates individuals to sign up for product updates before a single dollar has been spent actually creating the product. This can help your team assess if there is actual demand for your new concept before you waste money creating a product that no one will want.
Now, this idea is a great theory, but how can it be accomplished in reality. This comes down to truly integrating your online/offline marketing strategy. Many times, you may have different agencies handling the different elements of your marketing mix, which is actually extremely smart, as you want to have “the best” in all aspects and finding one agency that is the “best” in everything may be impossible. While finding one agency may be impossible, integrating your strategy is not. All it takes is cooperation between the different agencies and making sure the online team is involved in the process before any ideas are finalized. Your online team can then create a paid search campaign designed to test the different ideas.
Being able to gather statistically significant data on which concepts work better than others enable paid search to be so much more valuable than just the web visit, the CPA or the conversion. Using paid search in the testing phase or the research and development phase, as SEMGeek’s post highlights, could potentially save millions.
Posted in SEO | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
Long tail searches continue to increase as users want the most relevant results and try to be as specific as possible. According to Hitwise, longer search queries, averaging five or more words in length has increased 10% overall the past year; search queries that are eight or more words are up 22%, making keyword research and constant content development to hit the long tail even more important than ever.
Long tail keywords are simply longer and more targeted phrases that people type into the search engines. Not only is it easier to achieve higher rankings in the search engines with long tail keywords, but the traffic they bring in is much more targeted as well. The longer the tail, the more targeted the traffic will be. You are bringing people to your site that have a specific interest and therefore are more likely to convert. You will also be taking advantage of the buying cycle. Searchers using long tail phrases are past the interest and research searching. They are ready to purchase.
Thorough keyword research is essential to successfully target the long tail. One long tail keyword may only attract small amounts of traffic compared to broader and more competitive keywords, but as you add additional long tails to your keyword list, the traffic will grow. Long tail phrases also build the foundation for the highly competitive terms. Going after the category killer is not always the best approach, but if you aim for the tail, sooner or later you’ll reach the head. If you are optimizing your site for Philadelphia car insurance quote, car insurance is also included in that phrase.
Once you have your keyword list built, the way to hit the long tail is by frequently developing quality content. How something is written has a huge impact on search position and conversions. Good content is naturally keyword rich and keyword rich content helps your pages rank well for high volume search terms and for long tail search terms. It also attracts links, good links from authority sites because quality writing leads to quality links. People will link to your site if you offer something valuable that visitors will benefit from and you gain authority. Added bonus – It’s also a good way to connect with your customers.
Posted in SEO | No Comments »
Thursday, May 7th, 2009
How often do you search for your trademarked terms? This is something the PPC team at SEER is compulsive about. And we get angry when we see other advertisers using our clients’ trademarked terms.
The usual suspects are advertisers like eBay, Amazon.com, who seem to have recklessly dumped every word in the English language into an AdWords account, set them to broad match and paired them with a generic ad using dynamic keyword insertion.
Check out this query for the French dancewear company, Repetto.
Now, Repetto is not the best example because they do not actually sell shoes on their website. If they did, however, they would be foolish to allow retailers like Anthropoligie and Saks to capitalize on brand equity being built since the 1940′s.
If you’re going to advertise online, one of the first things you should do is protect your brand. Here is how it’s done:
Google
Google doesn’t require you to wait until you catch someone using your trademarked term in their ad copy to file a complaint. All you have to do is register your trademark by filling out the Google AdWords Trademark Complaint Form. Just fill in your trademark details and indicate in the Clarifications Section that you do not want to allow other advertisers to use your trademarked terms in their ad copy. Viola!
It’s no big surprise that Yahoo, MSN and Ask do not have a simple and comprehensive one step process like Google’s. With these engines, you must report each violation separately, which means that you have to monitor your brand in order to find any violations to report. One tool that may make this process a bit easier is BrandVerity, which will monitor Google, Yahoo and MSN and alert you whenever your trademarked term appears in a sponsored listing.
Yahoo
In order to file a trademark complaint with Yahoo, you need the following information:
1. The search term which triggered the ad you are reporting
2. Trademarked term(s)
3. Trademark registration number
4. Description of evidence a violation occurred (sending a screenshot should suffice)
5. The status of your correspondence with the advertiser committing the violation, assuming you have contacted them.
You can submit this information via snail mail or e-mail them. More details here.
MSN
Reporting a trademark violation on MSN is similar to Yahoo’s process but the form is a bit more complicated. You’ll need to include the ad title, description and display URL of the advertiser using your trademarked term. And each individual violation must be filed separately. More details here.
Ask
Ask provides a Word doc that you must fill out and send back via snail mail or fax. You will need to enter much of the same details required by Yahoo and MSN. Everything you need to know can be found here.
In addition to ensuring that you are able to maintain control over brand messaging delivered to consumers, there are many more benefits to protecting and monitoring your brand in sponsored search listings. Just to name a few, being the only advertiser allowed to display your trademarked terms in ad copy should improve CTR and improve quality score, helping to lower CPCs. But the bottom line is that you’ve worked hard to develop your brand and you shouldn’t allow your competitors to benefit from brand equity you have worked hard to build!
Posted in SEO | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
So, one of the CORE pillars of the newest direction we are building links is by asking clients a LOT of questions that we know attach to legitimate link building opps. What I continue to tell all people is to think of what kind of questions can you ask your clients that when they answer them will give you opportunities to get high quality long term value links.
You can see my presentation slides here on how we are changing our linkbuilding process:
Recently we found that one of our clients was twittering from their dog’s perspective. The opportunist in me kicked in when Rachael one of our SEO’s mentioned this to our team and asked for further ideas on how we could turn this into a link building opportunity.
So I fired up my good old Google search engine and started by searching for
twitter dogs
dogs who twitter
twittering dogs
twittering pets
pets who twitter
twitter pets
etc
For starters I found bloggers talking about pets who twitter, giving us an opportunity to contact those bloggers to make sure they see our client’s dog twittering. It also presents an opportunity to comment (ben pei talked about the value of commenting here) â a comment from the dog would probably be most amusing and give us a chance to get our client written about in a later or updated blog post as bloggers talk about dogs who twitter.
Some blogs we found, who could link to the dogs twitter profile:
Petlvr.com
Dogsaccessories
Dogs Who Twitter 1
Dogs Who Twitter 2
Cats who Twitter
Being a good dog on Twitter
Heck I even found a Flickr group w/ 80 people posting pics of pets in the office, I’ll leave the ideas to those who kill it on using Flickr for link building opportunities like Lisa Barone.
Here’s the NYTimes talking about twittering pets with some links.
That author had to do some research before writing the piece and I wouldn’t be surprised if the research included searching on Google, finding bloggers, reading their blogs and comments on a topic (this is part of the reason why commenting is helpful), and some of that research might have wound up ended up as links in the piece.
So, now I see some bloggers talking about this topic and linking to Twitter profiles, which could be a good thing for our client, right? By leaving comments on these blogs we just might end up in the next long list of dogs who blog.
Some of you may be thinkingâ¦these are LOW value links to my twitter profile, not my web site, so will that help in SEO? That is a legit question.
Well in my opinion the future of link building is being everywhere, who cares that the link isn’t back to your site directly, your twitter profile links over to your site right? Its no-followed, but who cares, journalists and bloggers don’t care about no-follows when researching topics and looking for quality posts and comments that may end up in their “followed” blogs.
Part II – The brainstorm continues
I started searching for the words “dog friendly” which brought back a site that showed me dog friendly companies! Ha! Cha-ching!
So now I am seeking out dog friendly company listings and found a bunch of opportunities:
All things Dog friendly – (yeah I know links are redirected and framed â you can advertise here though)
Dog Friendly job search engine
Take your dog to work – sponsorship opportunity for take your dog to work day)
Dog friendly companies – (another framed site which might minimize link value a bit)
Part III – On my continued trek I entered the following searches in Google Blogsearch (blogsearch.Google.com)
Pet friendly companies
Dog friendly workplaces
Look what came back:
The value of being dog friendly
USA today piece on dogs in the office
Workplaces with dogs
I may have found a couple, which then got me thinking, what about family friendly companies or kid friendly companies, are there lists out there we could index and potentially submit our clients to??? Oh the list could go on and on, but the moral of the blog post is go looking under EVERY stone you may spark new ideas, and find new ways to get links.
Now sure is it very time consuming? Absolutely! But won’t the highest value links be the ones that take some time to figure an angle or pitch to get? They won’t be so easy to attain because they are the high value ones, we should be seeking in addition to the easier to attain links.
As I have mentioned multiple times, if you index sites in delicious while you are working them, now you may end up with 5-6 strong link opportunities that can be re-used. So the next client you get you can ask them if they are pet friendly. If that answer is yes, you already have some sites that might make sense to target.
One very important note is that contacting the same blogger over and over again with link requests (even if they are high value can be a pain, so be careful and don’t use the same e-mail over and over again).
Asking the RIGHT questions of your clients will uncover high quality link opportunities, its not easy and you may spend 10 hours just getting 10 links, but if the subject is broad enough, like pet friendly offices, you’ll be able to apply that across the board.
TIP: Keep in mind this type of linkbuilding takes time, as such you should be supporting this with regular basic link building efforts, however you have to get that internal spidey sense when you just feel like you are wasting time, trust me we’ve wasted a lot of time trying to go after links like these, but that is part of the learning process right?
Oh and here’s a pic of my pup – Coltrane, she visits the office from time to time.
Posted in SEO | 14 Comments »
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