Tuesday, March 30th, 2010
AWeber.com helps create email marketing software for small businesses, automates followup emails and delivers email newsletters. With over 75,000 clients, AWeber is a leader in email marketing & autoresponders.
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
SEER is stoked to work with Eternal Snow, a skateboard and snowboarding gear retailer, on their SEO campaign.
Friday, March 19th, 2010
Account optimization is something that PPC professionals are always striving to achieve. It is an ongoing process. One of the ways we optimize our accounts is by constantly refining ad groups and create more targeted ad copy. Higher relevance generally translates into higher CTR andQuality Score. A while back, I wrote a blog post on how to refine ad copy using The 1K impression rule (Page currently not available). Another helpful tool is Googles Wonder Wheel; the center ring can be treated as an ad group while the spoke is viewed as related terms that can be placed in the ad group.
The tactics mentioned above are just a few examples of how to optimize campaigns. The tactics mentioned above are more or less universal and can be applied to most campaigns when optimizing. Competitor campaigns, however, are a little trickier. For example, optimizing competitor campaign ad copy is much more difficult because trademarked terms cannot be used in ad copy, which is a best practice. As a result, competitor campaigns often have poor quality score and relatively costly CPCs.
To illustrate, I did some research on some leaders in the baby diaper space, Pampers and Huggies and Luvs. I looked at their competitive space to see if their PPC strategies match what the customers are looking for. For starters, Pampers and Huggies are direct competitors and offer many products that are basically identical. Luvs, on the other hand, is the underdog in the diaper space, positioning itself as the more affordable option.
A few days ago I stumbled upon Clicks Equations blog and really liked how they classified different branded terms. Thus, Im going to use their terminology when taking a look at how Luvs, Pampers and Huggies treat competitor brand terms and ad copy:
1. Pure Brand and Navigational Brand Keywords
For the terms: Huggies, www Huggies and www. Huggies.com:
For Pampers related terms (Pampers, Pampers.com & www.Pampers.com): no Huggies or Luvs ad copy
For Luvs related terms (Luvs, Luvsdiapers.com & www.Luvsdiapers.com): no Huggies or Pampers ad copy.
Although Pampers and Huggies are long time nemeses , Huggies doesnt seem to be bidding on Pampers branded terms. Luvs showcases its unique offering as the affordable diaper, which is a good way to catch customers eye. Pampers is bidding on Huggies branded terms, but their ad copy is not necessarily the most relevant because customers might be looking for diapers not training pants. They could use this ad copy instead (their ad copy for the terms: Pampers, Pampers.com & www.Pampers.com):
2. Brand related terms. These are phrases that may are connected with the brand, but tend to be tail terms. In this example, I searched for ‘coupon’ qualified brand related terms.
For the terms: Huggies coupons and Huggies diaper coupon
For the terms: Pampers coupons and Pampers diaper coupons
For the terms: Luvs coupons and Luvs diaper coupons
Luvs is doing a good job by dominating the diaper coupon search result page and running a tailored ad copy, again catching customers attention. They do seem to bid more on Huggies terms vs. Pampers. Pampers is still running the Easy Up ad copy. This is the first time Im seeing Huggies to bid on the competitor term and, to their credit, they are running targeted ad copy.
3. Brand plus Keywords. These include brand names and specific products:
a. Training pants terms
For the terms: Pull Ups and Huggies Pull Ups:
For Easy Ups and Pampers Easy Ups: No Huggies and Luvs ad copy.
Pampers ad copy is finally right on target, running the direct product against Huggies Pull Ups. From my knowledge, Luvs is not offering training pants; however, they still feature their unique position as the most affordable option. Huggies is not bidding on Easy Up related terms, which is one of Pampers most famous products. They can use this ad copy instead (their ad copy for the terms: Pull Ups and Huggies Pull Ups):
b. Wipes terms
For the term Huggies wipes:
For the term Pampers wipes: No Huggies or Luvs ad copy
For the terms: Luvs wipes, Luvs baby wipes
Pampers ad copy for Huggies wipe is their standard Easy Up, while for Luvs wipes terms they actually have very targeted ad copy. Luvs is actually running wipe ad copy but they dont run that ad copy for Huggies wipes related terms:
In summary:
Pampers
Huggies
Luvs
One strategy that can be used to create more targeted competitor campaigns, which would be beneficial to the diaper brands we’ve just evaluated, is to create one ad group for every competitor product category. If you think that its too tedious, you can focus on top converting ad groups. Doing this would allow ads to be increasingly relevant, which should lead to a higher CTR, improved quality score, and lower CPCs.
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
I posted over a year ago about how to save your company some extra bucks. With many things still equal in our economy, I thought an updated list of seo tips and general money saving tips would be worthwhile.
Spend Your Time on Actionable Items
We have numerous processes and documents delivered to clients across twelve months. Every so often we sit down and review what we’re delivering. Really asking ourselves what kind of action can be taken from a specific document helps determine its value.
If only SEER can take action on it, do we need to flash it to the client? If both of us can’t take action, what are we trying to get across?
Removing non-actionable documents could save hours a month. Time that could be spent improving more processes, getting better results for existing clients, or taking on a new client.
Trade in Your Old Printer Cartridges
I said this post was for any business and it definitely is. You can recycle cartridges or refill them for half the cost. At SEER, we bring our old cartridges to Staples whenever we’re forced to go there. $3 credited to our account for every cartridge, big or small. If you work in a larger office and go through ten a month, that’s $360/year in free supplies you could be getting.
Find the Right Group of Copywriters
SEER will hire multiple copywriters for projects requiring a lot of posts or pages rewritten. By hiring multiple ones, you’ll be able to find out how much work you get for the hourly rate. A writer with a higher hourly rate might actually be better because they knock out more work in less time. Test a few out and it saves in the long run.
Bargain for Links
If you’re sponsoring an event and you can get a valuable link for $40, see if you can get a multiple sponsor discount. TONS of events, non-profits, school clubs & even fraternities/sororities are strapped for cash, so make them an offer than can’t refuse and keep reeling in links.
Use Your Big Words (longtail)
There’s a small part of my heart that loves the unoptimized metal stamping industry. When searching for Metal Stamping, you’ll see www.lyons.com/ show up as the second result. Metal Stamping has an estimated 15,000 exact searches each month. Search for Metal Stamping Service or Metal Stamping Companies and find Lyons again. They’re lurking on the second page for “Companies” and they aren’t on the first three pages for “Service.”
While this is a site that has not been fully optimized, just a few small changes could probably get them ranked on the first page for these two terms. Just these two could add significant traffic & conversions. What words are you ranking well for that could help piggyback longtail keywords onto the first page?
Avoid Clients with the Wrong Questions
Give some serious consideration about taking on clients who ask one or all of the following questions:
1. How many links have you gotten this month?
2. Why haven’t you gotten me in dmoz yet?
3. Why is my Pagerank still low?
4. What rank can you get me for this keyword?
5. How does my Adwords account impact my SEO rankings?
Answering these once is one thing, but many times the person asking these questions is more worried about aspects other than traffic & conversions. Unrealistic expectations and wanting to quantify all aspects of SEO are flags at the beginning of meetings that should warn you of a potential issue & potential waste of time. Even if the client is pleased with results, you may waste over an hour every 1-2 week detailing why dmoz really doesn’t matter or why delivering a specified number of links each month is a poor metric of linkbuilding success.
Non-Profit Linking
Non-profit linking was mentioned above, but one reason these links are even more valuable is because you can write off many of these donations. Finding non-profit sites that link out to their donors is just another step in getting the most mileage out of your link spend.
Don’t Be a Shady Company
We already spoke about recycling. There are several websites where you can report businesses that do not recycle. There are numerous counties that allow you to report places that don’t recycle. While this may go hand in hand with treating your employees respectfully, knowing you just recycled 100+ small bottles & cans each week makes us feel good here.
Now for the really shady part; be on the up and up with your taxes. If you’re under-reporting or trying to be sneaky, it may be worth it for an underpaid employee to blow the whistle on your business. The IRS will pay out 15% of the amount they collect up to $10 million. That’s a whole lot of zeros.
Spend Your Time with High Level Data
It’s probably not worth your time to go out and get directory links. Same goes for sending out link request emails, keyword ranking fluctuations, finding what terms dropped over 25% over a specific time period, or gathering as much data as possible about your clients without going crazy.
Automate as much as possible and when you can’t automate any further, hire an intern or outsource a lot of the grunt work. Paying an intern $10/hour to churn through lower level tasks or to filter through linking opportunities will get you in front of data that may need some high level analysis or recommendations.
Hope some of these can help if things are down or make good situations even better. Add to the list if you’ve got them.
Monday, March 8th, 2010
In a recent blog post, the Google Search team announced that 540 quality search improvements were made to the ranking algorithm in 2009 alone, an average of 1.5 improvements per day. In an industry that literally changes on a daily basis, it is vitally important for SEOs to constantly question our tactics, and subsequently adjust our strategies accordingly.
Its human nature to return to a strategy that has worked in the past. But consider the caveman enjoying a hearty potato after a long day of club-carrying and grunting. How many years were ancient cavemen and cavewomen munching down on raw potatoes before they realized that by dropping them in some boiling water or rolling them in some prehistoric tin foil and dropping them in a fire made them infinitely more desirable? Clearly this is an exaggerated example, but the fact remains that its not uncommon to become complacent with a strategy or a process that has worked in the past, and SEO is no exception. That brings us to the moral of todays story: ADAPT.
Always Ask Why
Why? is perhaps the oldest question in our arsenal. As kids, it was why do I have to go to bed?! As adolescents, it was why does the world hate me? But as SEOs, Why is probably our most powerful weapon, provided its wielded properly. First off, I must make it clear that there is an important distinction between questioning your strategies and processes, and second guessing yourself or your peers; the latter of which can be very damaging to a team atmosphere. Im not calling for everyone to walk up to your co-worker and interrogate his or her linking strategies, keyword selection, or competitive analysis far from it. What Im calling for here is an internal register that determines what the real value is to any strategy. Think about the last recommendation you made to a client and ask yourself: Why should they dedicate their precious and finite time and resources to this? This sort of forward thinking benefits us in two ways; first, it allows us to better understand our clients, their needs, and their concerns. If we know what is important to them and can accurately and correctly explain the rationale behind our thought processes, it builds their faith in us while at the same time reinforcing that they made the right investment in us. On the other hand, by asking Why internally, you are able to see what aspects of your strategies can be improved; you must have faith in your processes, but at the same time maintain a healthy understanding that there may be a better way to do things.
Finally, we cannot talk about Why without touching on Whys ugly stepsister: Why Not. You should be able to tell a client why not to buy links (and Because Matt Cutts Said So is not an appropriate answer). You should be able to explain why not to include white text on a white background and why a company that sells fax machines should not be targeting Purple Giraffe on a Pogo Stick as their primary keyword. These examples may seem a bit outrageous, but the sentiment rings true; by asking Why you do what you do (and Why Not), it allows you to a) prepare for client questions and b) provide the most comprehensive consulting possible.
Dont Rest on Your Laurels
Hooray, weve made it to page one! Now what? Time to call it a day and go out and celebrate, right? WRONG! Complacency has always been the enemy of innovation, and SEO is no exception. Until youve done everything you can to achieve top rankings, capture all relevant local listings, create a robust GoogleBase feed (for eCommerce clients) and leverage relevant Universal results, your work is not fully finished. Again, I want to be clear here that anything short of top rankings across the board does not necessarily indicate failure; on the contrary, Im simply cautioning against growing complacent with success when there is room to improve. Work constantly to improve your strategies, using past accomplishments as a springboard for continued success. Run an eCommerce website? Try conducting a brand audit to target specific products that may be underperforming. Manage a blog? Try running a contest for your readers. Stuck with a linkbuilding writers block? Digg up some new ideas. What separates the good from the great is a constant drive to be the best, so put yourself in a position to be the best by learning not only from your failures, but also your success.
Adjust
Adjusting strategies doesnt necessarily mean changing how you approach SEO best practices; it could mean something as simple as making sure youre delivering the most complete portfolio possible. The recent launch of Open Site Explorer, for example, has forced us to re-evaluate how we look at link data. The information pulled into this database is not new information, but rather an improved medium through which to view the information. In any industry, a refusal to adjust to changing times is a surefire way to pigeonhole yourself into a menial desk job with no prospect at advancing. However, in the world of SEO, a refusal to adjust to advances in the industry wont even secure that menial desk job. Consider a telephone company that refuses to sell anything but rotary phones how long before that business model implodes? We are in a very unique space where we must constantly adjust to changing times, whether due to updates in the search algorithms, the merger of two search giants, or the introduction of new features such as Personalized Search. While the social implications are certainly different, Bob Dylans words still ring true: As the present now will later be past, the order is rapidly fadin. And the first one now will later be last, for the times they are a-changin.
Proactively Seek Information
I was an avid procrastinator for the vast majority of my life up through and including college, and I got along fairly well. However, the SEO industry is not one where you can sit back and wait for someone to clue you in. Wait, Yahoo! and MSN are doing what?!? is not a statement thats going to instill a lot of faith in your clients when they ask what the implications the impending merger has on their SEO and PPC efforts. And the strategy of proactively seeking information is not one that requires much preparation on your part, just a thirst to learn. Google Reader, Twitter, Delicious, Digg, and heck, just talking to friends and colleagues are some very simple ways to stay on top of trends and changes in the industry. The trick, however, is knowing how to parse this information, how to separate the wheat from the chaff. Read multiple opinions on the same topic to put yourself in a position to form an educated opinion. The value of the nofollow tag, for example, is one that has caused the best of friends to glare menacingly at one another across the proverbial battlefield. If there was a black-and-white handbook for SEO, wed all be out of the job. Our true value lies in our inherent need to proactively seek out information and, furthermore, to take this information and
Test, Test, Test!
You can spend 4 hours of day reading the latest blog posts from SEO gurus across the country, but there has never been (nor ever will be, in my opinion) an adequate substitute for testing. In fact, the experts in our field gained their well-deserved renown from constantly questioning, testing, and re-testing theories until they found what works. Anyone holding out for that miraculous day when Google just tells us how to achieve page one rankings will be blue in the face for a very long time. Successful SEOs know how to take their questions, their successes, and their failures and transform them into something that can truly be revolutionary in our field. And remember what Thomas Edison said when attempting to invent the lightbulb: I have not failed. Ive just found 10,000 ways that wont work.
So there you have it: Always Ask Why, Dont Rest on your Laurels, Adjust, Proactively Seek Information, and Test, Test, Test! Five relatively simple strategies that allow SEOs young and old to ADAPT for success in the constantly changing world of SEO.
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
Nothing (other than flying) scares me more than seeing a massive drop (whether immediate or over a 6 month period) in traffic and conversions for a client from unbranded natural search. Sometimes this can be explained by great PR / appearances on TV that caused a spike for a few days, but when that is NOT the case I get worried.
All of us have been there, we dig in and start troubleshooting, looking backwards, checking for things like:
1 – Did the client undo something? No.
2 Is there less search volume for the keyword? No.
3 Is Google caching the wrong page? No.
4 – Did a bunch of competitors do something to boost their sites? No.
5 – Did the client site get hacked with some kind of PHP injection cloaking scheme? No.
6 are we in some kind of bad link neighborhood and got penalized? No.
UNIVERSAL SEARCH MONSTER gobbling up rankings?
Then you realize sometimes it is the UNIVERSAL SEARCH MONSTER gobbling up your rankings and leaving your #5, #8 or #10 ranking as a lifeless, useless, shadow of its former self.
The issue with universal search is that Google is changing it up all the time, for instance here is an SEO roundtable post on Google removing local results for SEO queries for the last 18 month or so that wasnt the case.
Suddenly our same ranking for local queries has more value. the local results were gone.
Once Google incorporated local search results for words like Philadelphia SEO company, it immediately devalued our top ranking for that term because the 5 local results were above us (even though one of them was a Korean Man, 4 of the results were companies doing SEO). Depending on the day wed be up there sometimes in the local and sometimes not.
The question you should be thinking, is how can I know when universal search changes are made and how do I determine the impact that that those changes had on rankings, clicks, and conversions?
You can use Raven or any SERP tracker that captures a copy of the Google/Yahoo/Bing results page to triangulate the data points and take a good educated guess. Heres how.
STEP 1
Set up your analytics tool to alert you anytime conversions from a keyword drop by more than 25% over a 1 month period, this is quite easy with Google Analytics Intelligence (Beta)
I would recommend using no more than 20 or so keywords, at least in the beginning. You want to select only some of your top traffic driving keywords or youll end up with too many alerts sometimes for a word that drove 4 conversions last month and drove 3 this month which if you have a site that has hundreds or thousands of conversions per month youll flood your own inbox. Rendering this kind of intelligence useless.
Note: use your own % decrease I just like 25% as a starter, in the same way 20 might not be the ideal number of keywords, but they are good places to start.
STEP 2
Once the alert catches a keyword that is not performing as well as it once did (in terms of driving traffic) do your regular checks as mentioned above, for changes the client didnt tell you about, decreases in search volume, hacks, etc. If none of them are the culprit then move on to step 3.
STEP 3
You got a keyword that fits the criteria no one; this is where your SERP tracker that captures images of the actual results page becomes a critical feature in your reverse engineering of what happened. I would start looking back historically at the previous SERPS. This hopefully will illustrate if universal search has become more prevalent over time, which could cause your same ranking to not drive the traffic and sales it once did, even though the ranking is the same. This is precisely why analyzing rankings is sooo 2002. The ranking NEVER moves, the impact that ranking had just fell through the floor.
If you are only analyzing rankings you’ll never catch this.
One very important thing to keep in mind in this analysis is to use top converting keywords, not top traffic driving keywords. Why? Simple, take the word motorcycle, which is a HUGE universal search result.
If you had the #5 result a year ago you are probably on page 2 now, which will hurt traffic tremendously.
Should you go out and create a ton of new content, shoot videos, develop link bait strategies, etc to get back on page 1 for the word motorcycle? Probably not, if that keyword didnt convert well for you. That is the big IF.
So be smart with it, don’t go out wasting your time, but when universal starts impacting rankings, traffic, and conversions you’ll need to get crackin’ and hopefully I’ve just given you some ways to battle the universal search monster.
Monday, March 1st, 2010
The recent press release of the US DOJ and European Commission clearing the Yahoo/MSN Search Alliance has left a twinkle in my eye as a PPC Account Manager. In case you missed it, here are the highlights of the deal:
Yahoo and MSN partnering in paid search is super exciting because, to be frank, both of the current interfaces and reporting capabilities leave much to be desired. For example, according to an email I received from Yahoo explaining the deal, one of the featured benefits will be having one interface in order to help achieve a better ROI, which leads me to item #1 in my wish list!
Wish #1: Revenue Tracking
I would like to know exactly how I will be able to achieve a better ROI when I’m now working with a platform that does not support revenue tracking (i.e. does not support ROI reporting)?
The Yahoo paid search interface reports quite nicely on Revenue and ROAS metrics:
The MSN Interface, however, does not report on neither revenue nor ROAS:
Unless MSN and Yahoo get their acts together and support e-commerce KPIs, we will have to pull revenue data from both Yahoo and MSN via Google Analytics. This makes our job harder, not easier. See below the three step process we will not have to repeat over and over again to measure revenue metrics.
Wish #2: Increased Capacity for Negative Keywords in Multiple Match Types.
According to the MSN adCenter learning center, the following restrictions are placed on using negative keywords:
My main beef with the list above is the character limit. For example, I have a B2B client that offers a GIS and demographic mapping service. Here is an example of why a high volume of negative keywords is vital for this account:
Wish #3: Reporting by Day of Week
Google, Yahoo and MSN were all kind enough to allow us marketers to adjust our bids by hour and day of the week. While you may have a suspicion as to when your audience is searching the most, you’ll never know that for sure unless you harvest some data and really dive deep yourself. Google wraps this up in a beautiful little package by offering Day of Week reporting in the AdWords interface.
Superb! In just a few minutes, I’ve discovered that Mondays are my most expensive days and have the poorest conversion rates, while Wednesdays perform best and deserve the bulk of the budget. Now I just have to check on my MSN/Yahoo account to optimize! Day of week reporting is a simple enough feature. I mean, every engine definitely has it….right?
Wrong. Sorry folks. If you want to see which day of the week performed better on MSN/Bing/Yahoo in the future, you’ll have to do it the good old fashioned way. Pull the report by day, use Excel’s Weekday formula to change all of the dates to a number, find-replace that number to the correct day of the week, subtotal and pit those numbers against Revenue and ROAS numbers (see Wish #1).
Wish #4: Multiple Browser Capability
Microsoft never taught AdCenter how to play well with others. As I’m sure many of you have found, the AdCenter interface doesn’t work with Firefox. Or Chrome. Or Opera. Or Safari.
According to the W3schools’ January browser usage figures, IE only has a 36.2% market share. I would venture to guess IE usage hovers around 2% among search professionals. That means every time you want to login to your adCenter account, you must revert to a browser that you more than likely abandoned in November 2004.
Wish #5: Keyword Cost & Traffic Estimator Tool for Yahoo Search Marketing
Two of my favorite tools offered by Google are the Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator. While these tools are not perfect (check out this experiment I did a few months back to test the accuracy of the Traffic Estimator), they are invaluable when launching a new account, since more often than not clients have budget restrictions that limit the volume and type of keywords they can target via PPC.
Let’s say, for example, that a client selling Repetto ballet flats wants to launch PPC accounts across Google, Yahoo and MSN with a monthly budget cap of $5,000. The Google Keyword Tool provides keyword suggestions that are most likely to drive relevant traffic for this client, based on historical Google search data:
Now I have a list to work with that will help me begin building the account. Once I have the list of keywords I’d like to target and I can use the Traffic Estimator to pull cost and traffic estimates.
This particular set of keywords can be expected to spend somewhere between $12 and $20/day. With a monthly cost estimate of between $360 and $600, these are feasible target keywords given the $5,000 monthly budget cap.
MSN offers the Microsoft adCenter Intelligence Excel Plugin, which provides similar data.
But, since this hypothetical client also wants to advertise on Yahoo, I basically have to cross my fingers and hope that these keywords will drive relevant traffic at a cost that fits in the budget. Since queries tend to differ across Google, Yahoo and MSN, this is clearly not an ideal strategy.
Wish #6: Search Query Reports that Include Conversion Data
Below is a look at the data available in the MSN adCenter Search query performance report. Simply put, MSN can do a lot better. A great start would be to add conversion data, which would make the data already in these reports much more actionable.
Wish #7: A More Accessible MSN adCenter Agency Interface
The Google AdWords Agency MCC makes switching back and forth between accounts seamless, which is a huge advantage when managing multiple accounts in terms of convenience.
In order to qualify for a MSN adCenter Agency Interface, SEER would have to pay the engine directly and invoice each individual client for their monthly spend. Because SEER does not work this way, we must log into each account manually. This is an inconvenience in general, not to mention that keeping updated lists of dozens and dozens of login/password credentials can become tedious. Another repercussion of having our clients pay the engines directly for their advertising spend is that our accounts do not qualify for premium service.
Wish #8: Support of Multiple Conversion Types
MSN adCenter only supports one conversion code per account. This is a major drawback when clients want to target and track multiple conversion actions because there is limited transparency into which keywords drive which types of conversions.
For example, let say that a hypothetical B2B client offers a marketing automation solution and wants to target and track the following conversion actions:
With MSN, the same code would need to be installed on all of the confirmation URLs for the actions above, which doesn’t provide a whole lot of insight into which actions are the most successful.
Google, however, does support multiple conversion action tracking and provides corresponding conversion data down to the keyword level.
Wish #9: A (much) More Flexible Interface
The adCenter Interface leaves a lot to be desired in general. For example, maybe I just want to take a quick look at the top spending keywords in the account over the past 7 days. Not possible. I have to click through to each individual Campaign and Ad Group to see keywords – no account wide view is made available, forcing me to run a report, which is both tedious and time consuming.
As one of my coworkers put it: “Basically, please copy AdWords”. I couldn’t agree more, Crystal!
Wish #10: Superior Agency Support
Since SEER is an AdWords Qualified Company, we work with a team of dedicated account reps at Google. The nice thing about all of the Account Managers at SEER working with the same Google reps is that we are all on the same page with product updates, betas, and other general information that is passed along to us by our Google team.
With MSN, on the other hand, we work with various different reps for our PPC accounts, creating a disconnect in the information flow from MSN to SEER as an agency.
Do you have any particular improvements that you would like to see follow the Yahoo/MSN Search Alliance? Post them here!