As part of the continued series "Getting Back To Search Engine Optimization Basics", Andy Beal turns his attention to the much talked about Title and Meta Tags (while a Title Tag isn't really a Meta tag the two are commonly discussed as such). This week he takes a closer look at the Title tag.
When I decided a few weeks ago to write a series of articles for those new to search engine marketing (SEM), I considered whether there truly was a need to discuss the topic of Meta Tags. After all, this topic has been so heavily discussed that anyone remotely interested in search engine marketing would already have grasped this basic of techniques. My decision was justified just a few days ago when I was asked by the American Marketing Association to provide a workshop on how to create Meta Tags and discuss their benefits. It was at this point that I recalled starting out on my own quest for search engine marketing knowledge many years ago and researching the basic topics that today seem so fundamental. So for the next few parts of this series, I hope to enlighten those of you who are discovering SEM for the first time and maybe refresh the knowledge of those more seasoned marketers.
Meta Tags - an analogy
I don't recall ever reading the following description of Meta Tags anywhere else (although have been using it for years) so hopefully the following analogy will be new to you. When considering the function of Meta Tags, it helps to compare a website to an old fashion book (remember those paper things that we all used to read before the Internet). The first part of any Meta Tag is the "Title" tag. The Title tag is very similar to the title of a book, it gives a visitor the first hint as to the theme of the website. The next section of any Meta Tag is the "Description" tag. The Description tag is comparable to the summary found on the back of a book, providing a brief guide to the content of your website. The last part of any Meta Tag is the "Keywords" tag. The Keywords are similar to the index of a book, allowing anyone to clearly see if the website contains the information they are seeking. If you compare a search engine to a bricks-and-mortar library, with millions of books you'll hopefully have a good understanding as to relevance of Meta Tags for your website.
In this guide, I wish to focus on what many believe is the most important part of any Meta Tag, the Title tag. Now before we continue and discuss suggestions for the best format for your Title tag, lets stop and consider exactly how it looks in your website's HTML code.
- <"head>
- <"title>Title of Your Webpage Here<"/title> (bolded for emphasis)
- <"meta name="description" content="Brief description of the contents of the page">
- <"meta name="keywords" content="keyword phrases that describe your webpage">
- <"/head>
As you can see, the format is pretty straightforward. You will also notice that your Meta tags should be placed within the "head" area of your website as opposed to the "body" area.
Ok, now we have the basic idea of what Title tags are and we've taken a look at the standard structure, lets turn our attention to ideas for optimizing the content to ensure a successful search engine marketing campaign.
The Best Use of a Title Tag
While many people have differing opinions as to the benefits of the Description and Keywords tag, most all are in agreement that the Title tag is extremely important for any SEM campaign. The Title tag is used by pretty much every search engine that uses spiders to crawl your website. That list includes Google, AOL, Yahoo, AlltheWeb, AltaVista, ExactSeek.com and more. The Title tag is pretty much the most effective Meta Tag and is used for conveying the theme of your Webpage to the search engines. Not only is the structure and content of the Title tag used by the search engines when calculating your webpage's relevance, but it is also displayed in most search engine results pages (SERP). It therefore needs to be carefully constructed in such a way that it influences your website's position in the SERP, but is also attractive enough to encourage a surfer to click on your link.
Long gone are the days when cramming dozens of words into a Title tag would result in better search engine positioning. These days the search engines, Google in particular, prefer to see shorter Title tags that are succinct in describing the content on the page. In fact, it appears that stuffing more words into your Title tag will do more harm than good, especially when targeting very competitive search phrases.
So how should a good Title tag look? That, my friend, is one of the many questions that us marketers strive to answer. Each of us have our own ideas of what constitutes a good Title tag and the format for one page, might be totally inappropriate for another. However, I understand that to not provide an example would be a complete omission, so here goes:
- <"title>Desktop computers and computer supplies<"/title> or;
- <"title>Desktop computers and computer supplies at 123Computers<"/title>
As you can see, there are really only two identifiable phrases that make up the above Title tag, but they provide for many different keyword combinations such as "desktop computer supplies" or "desktop computer". Equally important is the fact that they focus on just one theme. Many times, I'll see websites that will try and target two or more very competitive keywords that do not follow the same theme e.g. "desktop computers and digital cameras".
You'll also notice two different formats depending on whether you wish to include your company name or not. In an ideal world of search engine marketing, webpages would not include the company name at all. Unless you're Dell or IBM, the name of your company really doesn't make much difference to the user at this stage. They are more interested in knowing the theme of your page and whether it is relevant to the search query they entered. Likewise, the Title tag is a valuable thing and adding the name of your company might reduce the relevancy of your page in the eyes of the search engines and reduce valuable space that could be used by an extra keyword. That being said, more than 80% of website owners prefer to see their company name listed somewhere in the Title tag. If that is the case for you, it is my advice to place the company name at the end of the Title tag, allowing the search engine spiders and surfers to read the keywords first and determine the relevance to the search query before seeing the name of the company.
In most cases, less is definitely more when constructing optimized Title tags for your website. Keeping to fewer keywords will help to demonstrate to the search engines and their users that the webpage is both highly relevant and solely focused on a particular product or service. In the same way, ensuring that each page has its own unique Title tag will ensure a greater chance your site will be positioned higher on the SERP.
In Summary
In finishing, I'll leave you with three things you should never do when constructing your Title tag.
1. Leave "Untitled" as your Title tag (don't get me started).
2. Use "Homepage" as your Title tag (only slightly better than "untitled").
3. Use only your company name as your Title tag. Unless your company name is searched thousands of times each month, add keywords.
The above advice should keep you busy for the next few days. The next topic in the series will cover the ideas and formats to use for your Description tag. We'll go through, step-by-step the purpose of the Description tag which search engines use it, as well as techniques for getting better positioning.
(By Andy Beal,from searchengineguide.com)
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Search Engine Optimization Basics Part 2 - Title Tags
Monday, May 7, 2007
Selecting and Evaluating Keyphrases for Search Engine Marketing
Many businesses recognize that search engines can bring volumes of highly targeted prospects to their website, typically at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing. Unfortunately, these same companies often overlook the most important part of their search engine marketing campaigns, which is keyphrase selection and evaluation. Keyphrases (those phrases that potential customers are using to find products or services on search engines) are the building block of any search engine marketing strategy. It is essential that they are chosen carefully, or else the remainder of the campaign, no matter how effective the implementation, will likely be in vain. What follows is a three-step process that goes over the process of compiling, selecting, and evaluating the ongoing performance of keyphrases for search engines.
Many businesses recognize that search engines can bring volumes of highly targeted prospects to their website, typically at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing. Unfortunately, these same companies often overlook the most important part of their search engine marketing campaigns, which is keyphrase selection and evaluation. Keyphrases (those phrases that potential customers are using to find products or services on search engines) are the building block of any search engine marketing strategy. It is essential that they are chosen carefully, or else the remainder of the campaign, no matter how effective the implementation, will likely be in vain. What follows is a three-step process that goes over the process of compiling, selecting, and evaluating the ongoing performance of keyphrases for search engines.
1. Compiling a keyphrase list:
Usually, companies are sure that they already know their ideal keyphrases. Often, they are wrong. This is typically because it is very hard to separate oneself from a business and look at it from the perspective of a potential customer (rather than an insider). Compiling a keyphrase list should not be, despite common practice, a strictly internal process. Rather, it is best to ask everyone outside of your company for their input, especially your customers. People are often very surprised at the keyphrase suggestions they get- and sometimes dismayed to realize that an average customer doesn�t speak the same language that they do. Only after you have put together a list of likely phrases from external sources do you add your own. As a last step, try to add variations, plurals, and derivatives of the phrases on your list.
2. Evaluating keyphrases:
Once you have compiled a master keyphrase list, it is time to evaluate each phrase to hone your list down to those most likely to bring you the highest amount of quality traffic. Although many individuals will base their assessment of keyphrase value based only on popularity figures, there are really three vitally important aspects of each phrase to consider.
Popularity
By far the easiest of the three to judge is popularity, since it is not subjective. Software like WordTracker gives popularity figures of search phrases based upon actual search engine activity (it also gives additional keyphrase suggestions and variations). Such tools allow you to assign a concrete popularity number to each phrase to use when comparing them. Obviously, the higher the number, the more traffic that can be expected (assuming you are able to obtain good search engine positions). However, this number alone is not good enough reason to pursue any particular keyphrase, although keyphrase analysis too often stops here.
Specificity
This is more abstract than the sheer popularity number, but equally important. For example, let�s assume that you were able to obtain great rankings for the keyphrase "insurance companies" (a daunting prospect). Let�s also assume that you only deal with auto insurance. Although "insurance companies" might have a much higher popularity figure than "auto insurance companies", the first keyphrase would also be comprised of people looking for life insurance, health insurance, and home insurance. It is very likely that someone searching for a particular type of insurance will refine their search after seeing the disparate results returned from the phrase "insurance companies". In the second, longer keyphrase, you can be reasonably sure that a much higher percentage of visitors will be looking for what you offer- and the addition of the word "auto" will make it much easier to attain higher rankings, since the longer term will be less competitive.
Motivation of User
This factor, even more abstract than specificity, calls for an attempt to understand the motivation of a search engine user by simply analyzing his or her search phrase. Assume, for example, that you were a real estate agent in Atlanta. Two of the keyphrases you are evaluating are "Atlanta real estate listings" and "Atlanta real estate agents". Both phrases have very similar popularity numbers. They are also each fairly specific, and your services are very relevant to each. So which phrase is better? If you look into the likely motivation of the user, you will probably conclude that the second is superior. While both phrases target people looking for real estate in Atlanta, you can infer from the second phrase that the searcher has moved beyond the point where they are browsing local homes or checking out prices in their neighborhood- they are looking for an agent, which implies that they are ready to act. Often, subtle distinctions between terms can make a large difference on the quality of the traffic they attract.
3. Evaluating Keyphrase Performance:
Until recently, judging the performance of individual keyphrases was a dicey proposition. Although it is possible to tell from your log traffic analysis how many visitors are getting to your site from each keyphrase (valuable information, but unfortunately not enough to do much with), it was very hard to decipher which phrases were bringing you the most quality traffic. Recently, however, some sophisticated but affordable tools have been developed that allow you to judge the performance of each individual keyphrase based upon visitor behavior. This new software makes it possible to periodically analyze which keyphrases are bringing your site the most valuable visitors- those who buy your products, fill out your contact form, download your demo, etc. This type of data, rather than the sheer number of visitors from each search phrase alone, is invaluable when you are refining your search engine marketing campaigns, since you can discard and replace non-performing keyphrases and put increased effort toward the phrases that are delivering visitors that become customers. This kind of ongoing analysis is the final piece of the keyphrase puzzle, and allows you to continually target the most important phrases for your industry, even if they change over time.
Conclusion:
Keyphrase compilation, evaluation, and performance are all vitally important to any search engine marketing campaign. While high rankings in search engines are an admirable goal, high rankings for poor keyphrases will consistently deliver poor results. Integration of this keyphrase process into your overall search engine marketing strategy can dramatically improve your website performance (and thus your bottom line).
(By Scott Buresh, from searchengineguide.com)
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Search Engine Optimization Basics Part 1 - Keywords
As highlighted a couple of weeks ago, I have decided that with the growth of the search engine optimization (SEO) industry, it is important to ensure that we don�t forget the many newcomers. With many new business owners and webmasters exploring SEO for the first time, this series of articles looks to assist with the basic information needed to start a search engine marketing campaign.
In the first part of the series, I wish to ensure we discuss the importance of a solid foundation. When starting any SEO campaign it is tempting to leap straight in and start tweaking meta tags and changing text. However, like any successful marketing strategy, it is vital to ensure that you know whom your audience is and how to reach them. In the same way traditional advertising agencies survey their demographic audience, search engine marketers must ensure that their SEO campaign targets the correct keywords or search phrases. Target the wrong search phrase and you could end up with great search engine rankings for keywords that have no search requests. A few hours now spent ensuring that the correct search phrases are targeted, can save months of useless optimization.
Brainstorm
When you started your company or developed your products, you no doubt sat down with your friends, relatives and business partners and discussed the needs of your target audience. You would have been foolish to stubbornly press ahead with your products without first testing the market to see if there was a demand. Likewise, when you start out on your SEO campaign it is important to brainstorm search phrases that are likely to bring qualified visitors to your website. Sit down with your co-workers and business partners and discuss which keywords are relevant to the products and services you offer. Compile an initial list of 5-10 search phrases that you feel best represent your company and which you believe people would type into a search engine when trying to find you. Consider the following factors when brainstorming:
* Is your audience likely to search for industry standard terms or simple layman phrases?
* Which of your products are in stock? There is no point targeting search phrases that are popular if you don�t actually stock that item.
* Which products have the highest profit margin? If you had just a $0.20 mark-up on a very popular product, could you sell enough online to make a profit? A product that is less searched but has a higher profit margin would be easier to obtain a search engine ranking and would yield higher revenues.
* Identify your biggest competitors. View competitor websites and see which products they appear to target; which search phrases do they have rankings for?
Make use of any PPC data
Chances are, your decision to begin a SEO campaign is fueled by your desire to reduce costly pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. While reliance on PPC will be reduced with a good SEO campaign, you can make use of your current PPC efforts when researching your search phrases to target. Analyze your PPC keywords and look to see which of them have brought the highest traffic levels, best click through rates and greater sales conversions. It is likely a search phrase that brought successful results through a PPC campaign will be very relevant in your quest to obtain top search engine positioning.
Expanding your Keyword list
Once you have completed your brainstorming and have compiled your list of 5-10 core keywords, it�s time to move on and expand that list. A list of 5-10 search phrases will not, as I am sure you will know, bring the amount of search engine traffic needed to make your website successful. However, that list will be a vital tool when determining which phrases to add to the mix. At this point, you need to turn to the search engines themselves and research which search phrases are actually being typed into Google, Yahoo, MSN et al. While few search engines will openly tell you which search phrases are the most often searched, there are a couple of very useful tools you can use to expand your list.
The first and most well known, is the Overture Search Suggestion Tool. This great little research tool is primarily for the use of Overture PPC users and if you have ever endeavored on a PPC campaign with Overture, you will no doubt have come across it. Take any of your main search phrases and enter them into the suggestion tool. Overture will then spit out all other popular search terms that contain that phrase. In addition, Overture will place the search phrases in order of popularity and give you an idea of the number of searches per month for each phrase across their network.
While this tool can be very useful, especially as it is free to use, it does have some key drawbacks. First, it does not differentiate between singular and plural search phrases. Consequently, "desktop computer" and "desktop computers" are combined together, leaving you to use your own judgment as to which variation is the most popular. For many search phrases, you can take an educated guess as to which one is likely to be the most searched, but often you will be left without a clue as to whether to target the singular or plural. Secondly, the Overture Suggestion Tool does not handle punctuation very well, preferring to ignore it completely. Thus "kid�s toys", "kid�s toys", "kid- toys", "kid�s toy" would all be shown as "kid toy". Again, this never used to be a big problem, but go to Google and search for each of these phrases and you will see different results for each one.
If you are serious about your SEO campaign, you will consider a subscription to WordTracker to be a worthwhile investment. Starting at just $7 a day, with discounts all the way up to one year of service, WordTracker offers a similar type of research tool as Overture but with many more bells and whistles. The biggest advantage with WordTracker is that is uses Meta-Crawlers when sourcing search phrase frequencies. This eliminates inflated search phrase frequencies from Overture users checking their own rankings and thus artificially increasing the popularity of certain phrases. In addition WordTracker offers the following advantages:
* Offers a "thesaurus" and "lateral" search. Allowing you to view search phrases that are related to your main search term, but not necessarily containing that term.
* Shows search frequencies for both singular and plural phrases; allowing you to determine which is the most popular.
* Identifies which form of punctuation is the most popular.
* Allows you to place your targeted keywords into a "shopping basket" so that you can analyze all of your phrases together.
* Has an exclusive KEI analyzer that allows you to compare the popularity of the search phrase with the number of websites competing for that keyword.
Determining Competition
Once you have identified possible additions to your search phrase list, you must research further to determine if there is a good chance you will achieve your prized top search engine ranking or if the competition for that phrase is already saturated. While it can be tempting to target only search phrases that are very popular and searched hundreds of thousands of times in a single month, you must also consider the likelihood of you being able to obtain a ranking higher enough to capitalize on all of that great traffic. Many, many search terms are so saturated by competitors that it would be highly unlikely that you would achieve a high enough ranking to reward your efforts. Therefore, it is often worthwhile considering those search phrases that may not have quite the same level searches each month, but likewise do not have as many websites targeting that term.
WordTracker�s KEI (keyword effectiveness index) allows it�s users to analyze their chosen search phrases to determine the level of competition for that phrase. WordTracker has a great explanation on their website as to how to use this index, but in summary it provides a numerical scale for identifying the popularity of a keyword compared to the number of competitors targeting that phrase.
For those of you on a strict budget and opting to use Overture for keyword research, there is an alternative answer. Enter each identified search phrase at Google, using quotations around the phrase (e.g. "discount computers"). Google will then display the search results for all pages that target that phrase exactly as entered. View the top right, blue navigation bar and you will see the number of results Google matched. This number represents the total number of web pages that Google has identified as targeting that exact search phrase. This number represents your competition or your very own KEI. Make a note of this number for each of your identified search phrases and pretty soon you will be able to see which of your search phrases have the most competition and which have less competitors and therefore a better chance of obtaining top ranking.
Selecting Your Keywords
By now, you should have an expanded list of search phrases to target, taken from either Overture or WordTracker. In addition, you should also have a good idea as to the competition for each of those keywords, whether you used the KEI or Google format. Now is the time to start selecting the search phrases that will form the foundation for a successful SEO campaign. Ok, deep breath, we�re almost there.
When selecting the keywords to target, there are many factors you must take into consideration. You will no doubt have your own unique considerations, but you must also take into account the following:
* Is the search phrase relevant to your website and the page that you are optimizing?
* Is there a page within your website that would be particularly suitable for targeting the selected search phrase?
* How many other websites/web pages would you be competing against?
* Do you offer competitive pricing for the product or service that relates to the keyword?
* Will top search engine ranking for the search phrase generate enough revenue for your company?
Arranging Keywords into Themes
Once you have asked yourself the above questions, it will become easy to narrow down your list to the main search phrases that you wish to target. When doing so, remember that you should not try and target every selected search term on your index page. Your index page is the most important page of your website and likely to have the best positioning on the search engines, therefore choose 5-10 search phrases to target here and ensure that they are all closely related. Trying to target "desktop computers" and "dvd players" on your index page will get you top rankings for neither. Instead, identify the pages within your website that target those particular keywords and use those instead. The key to selecting keywords to target for each page is to think of "themes". Each page should ideally target just one theme. This will assist you in making sure that the targeted page is relevant to the selected search phrase. In turn, this will not only increase your chances of obtaining top rankings, but also increase your customer sales conversions by bringing the visitor to the most relevant page.
In summary
When researching search phrases and targeting keywords for your SEO campaign, it is important to follow the steps above. Research your industry, talk to your potential customers and make use of the themes within your website. In addition, consider these final tips:
* Determine the intent of the visitor. Thoroughly research all search terms to ensure that the searcher intended to find your product or service. E.g. reconsider targeting the keyword "DVD" if you store only sells blank DVD discs, the chances are the searcher intended to find DVD movies rather than blank media.
* Don�t always rely on the numbers. Both Overture and WordTracker use historical data when displaying search phrase frequencies and neither archive more than two months back. Therefore you must know your industry and account for any seasonal or other trends. E.g. the search phrase "red roses" will be more popular for Valentines than at Christmas.
* Look for opportunities. Identify the search phrases that have been untapped by your competitors. Some search terms may have slightly fewer searches, but may have dramatically fewer competitors.
* Target the right pages. This cannot be stressed enough. Do not try and target every keyword on every page. Identify themes within your website and group relevant search phrases around those pages. You will see much better results
I hope you have found the above useful. This series is designed to help the beginner, but I hope a few experienced SEO marketers will find something fresh to consider. In the next installment of this series, we will look at the use of Meta Tags. These once champions of SEO have recently taken a battering, but are still extremely important for the success of any campaign. We�ll look at how they are used, how to construct them and why they can help achieve top search engine rankings. In the meantime, you should have enough information to assist you in your search phrase research and build the foundation for a successful search engine optimization campaign.
(By Andy Beal , from searchengineguide.com)
Friday, May 4, 2007
Good Content: The Key To Search Engine Ranking
What drives visitors to your website and keeps them there? Good content.
Content is Key
Good content is key to website promotion success. All the bells and whistles in the world will not hold an audience like compelling information. Ask yourself: Why would a visitor stay at my website? What are they looking for? What do I have that they need? What holds them there once I've got them visiting? You have to tell your story
Know Your Audience
So how do you get your visitors to stay on your site, and to return to it? First, you need to understand your audience. Who are you trying to reach? Create your pages with them in mind. Do you want to reach a narrow audience, or will you try to reach all levels of readers? Buzz words may make sense to you in your business, but will they reach your target audience? If you are a high-powered underwater basketweaving consultant, focused only on serious underwater basketweavers, you can keep the discussion on your site fairly technical. If, however, you really want to spread the joy of underwater basketweaving to a wider audience, you may want to keep the tone more general, giving newcomers to underwater basketweaving the information they need to become as enthralled by basketweaving as you are.
Get Your Visitors Involved
So what kind of content do you need to provide for your visitors? If you have a site selling gardening books, you will have lists of the titles you have for sale, an order form, and contact information. Everybody else selling gardening books will have these pages too. How do you rise above the crowd? How do you stand out as the definitive gardening book website?
Write Articles
One technique that you can use to good effect is that of writing articles pertaining to your site's topic. After all, who knows more about gardening and gardening books than you? Not only does this give your visitors yet another reason to keep coming back to your site, but it also allows you to reach out beyond your site. There are many other websites out there looking for authoritative information on your topic. Find those sites and submit your articles to them. This creates a "win-win" situation: the other web site gains the benefit of your knowledge, while you are further recognized as an authority in the field. Getting a link from that site back to yours brings more visitors to your site, and increases your site's link popularity.
Keeping an archive of articles on your website builds your knowledge base. You can refer visitors to your articles when answering their questions. People searching for information on the topics you have written about will find your articles listed in their search results. Once they arrive at your site, maybe they will buy something from you: if you know so much about planting bulbs, maybe your site is the place I should buy my bulb- planting books.
Other Offerings
What else can you add to this mix? Think about adding professional gardening book reviews, a gardening book club, FAQ's about gardening, gardening articles, a rating system for books, audience book reviews, and other gardening-related topics. Adding this type of information gives your visitors more reasons to keep coming back to your site. Offer free tools, create a forum. Set up a newsletter for your audience with your topic, adding in a discount for your product for newsletter readers. Give your audience a reason to come back to your website.
What Results Can I Expect: Google PageRank
A primary example of how this works is Google's PageRank. One of the most important aspects of ranking for Google and other search engines is good content. Google wants their search engine users to find what they are looking for, a successful search experience for their users. The keywords included in your site are important; after all, those are the terms your potential visitors are searching for. Now not only do you have your catalog pages and ordering information, but you also have a more in-depth treatment of the topics you have addressed in your articles, book reviews, and other materials. More keywords in more places means you have a better chance of matching a potential visitor's search.
So how can you "rise above" the other online gardening bookstores out there in the search engine listings? Link popularity can be the next important piece that allows you to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack. All other things being equal, search engines that pay attention to link popularity will list your site higher in their results if you have more links coming back from other sites which have a focus related to yours. In other words, if your gardening bookstore has a number of backlinks pointing to it from the websites of gardening clubs, nurseries, and so forth, your site will be seen as more authoritative. The more authoritative a website looks to Google through link popularity, the higher that site will rank. After all, if all these other gardening- related sites point to your site, they are demonstrating that you have something important to say. That is another reason why it is important to have your material published on other websites.
Conclusion
Maintaining good content is a stepping-stone for your visitors to delve in deeper to your website. Taking the time to build your content and provide for your audience will pay off in good search engine ranking and returning visitors.
Daria Goetsch
Thursday, May 3, 2007
How to Maximize Paid Search Results
If you face pay-per-click marketing challenges, before you decide to drop the program, try these proven strategies to get it producing your desired results.
Discover These Proven Strategies to Produce Quick Results.
Keyword-Level Tracking
Track your pay-per-click marketing at the keyword-level – referred to as the “root”. For pay-per-click marketing, it is essential that you know your “per click” results from the money you have spent.
For example, if you have 1,000 keywords active in your pay-per-click marketing program and you spend a total of $3,000 a month – do you know which of the 1,000 keywords produce the best results?
What if 80% of your sales stem from 20% of your keywords? Moreover, what if this 20% accounted for just a small percentage of your $3,000 monthly cost? If you do not have keyword-level tracking you will not be able to make these financially beneficial assessments. Time-tested experience shows that the 80/20 rule applies to pay-per-click marketing.
Does the 80/20 rule apply to your pay-per-click marketing? Get keyword-level tracking.
But Beware of Matching Options!
Although matching options (i.e. broad, advanced, exact, phrase and so on) offered by Google Adwords, Overture and other pay-per-click search engines provide “convenience” they unfortunately skew your keyword performance results.
If you setup a “broad-match” for the keyword “real estate”, you will attract visitors who have entered any possible variation of the term “real estate” including geographically specific “real estate” keywords that may have absolutely no relevance to your product or service.
Here is a scenario where matching options skew your results…
You generate $1,000 in revenue from the broad-match keyword, “real estate” yet the total click cost for it exceeds revenue and because of the keyword’s negative return, you label it as a poor performing keyword.
What if the majority of the click cost originated from irrelevant, broad-match keyword variations like “ Louisiana real estate” - while one variation, “real estate strategy” generated all of the revenue? By identifying this keyword (hard to do in a broad-match environment so rely on your web stats program), taking this one keyword and isolating it as an exact term you will reduce your total click cost while continuing to generate the same revenues.
How are your broad-match keywords performing? Isolate keywords to save click costs and to regulate individual keyword performance.
Landing Page Development
Pay-per-click marketing is unique compared to other mainstream forms of online marketing. In part because marketers have the opportunity to select specific keywords, write specific ads and direct the click-through to a specific web page. This “connect-the-dots” structure creates the need to develop consistency among the visitor’s expectation from the keyword they enter to the ad that draws their attention and down to the web page, they “land-on”. Relevancy and consistency are essential for an effective pay-per-click marketing program.
One of the reportedly major reasons why pay-per-click marketing programs fall short of their intended goal is because businesses direct all of their click-throughs to their home page. Since most businesses’ home pages are designed to serve mutliple audiences (i.e. media relations, investors, current clients, potential prospects, customer services, etc.) they do not provide the level of relevancy and consistency expected from the visitor to get them to act confidently.
What in the Virtual World are Landing Pages?
Landing pages are simply web pages designed specifically for a keyword or related group of keywords. They are highly relevant to the keyword searched and consistent with the ad’s claim. They immediately focus a visitor’s attention to a primary call-to-action (most wanted response). In essence – landing pages ask your visitors to take an action.
If your pay-per-click marketing is not living up to your expectations, consider which web pages you are sending visitors to. Are they relevant and consistent with your pay-per-click ads and keywords? Do they offer too many calls-to-action? Do they “fit” the expectations of the visitor searching on the particular keyword?
For example, are you sending a visitor searching on the keyword “Sony LCD TV” to a web page with twenty varieties of electronic products? An effectively designed landing page would present the visitor a “Sony LCD TV” with customer benefit oriented copy, an immediate “buy now” call to action and all applicable guarantee, shipping, customer service and return policies.
Make it Easy for Your Visitors and they will Reward You with Sales.
Keyword Selection
Keyword selection is important. The keywords you select provide access to “pools” of visitors at different stages in their buying cycle. By selecting the right keywords for your products or services, you can open a completely new market of ready-to-buy visitors.
Make sure that you thoroughly canvass your marketplace using strategies such as:
Your competitors’ websites
Your website’s copy
Third-party tools – Overture’s Suggestion Tool, WordTracker, and others
Your website metrics program (look for “natural search engine” keyword phrases)
Search engines like Ask Jeeves or Alta Vista (who suggest keyword variations)
Most importantly, “THINK” about your potential customers and what direct or indirect keywords they may use to find your products or services. Never give up searching for new keywords to setup and test. Both seasonal and even weekday keyword performance fluctuations should be analyzed and studied in addition to potential associations people make to find your products and services.
What about you - have you selected the right keywords?
Bidding Strategies
All pay-per-click search engines possess unique bidding nuances. However, for the two largest, Google Adwords and Overture do not become fixated on the top bid position. Test how each keyword performs against your website’s sales or lead conversion metrics up to the seventh bid position.
Depending on your product or service, you may be amazed how bid position six attracts less click-throughs but produces greater sales or lead conversion on your website. Or maybe position four generates better conversion. Regardless - test, test and test – the outcome may mean lower costs and higher sales conversions for you.
Consider this New Update in Your Bid Strategy.
Are you aware that recently Overture’s top partners, MSN and Yahoo, opened their results to up to eight “sponsor results” or paid ads on the first page? In some cases, the fourth and fifth or fifth and sixth positions will show at the bottom of the first results page and again at the top, right margin of the first results page – in essence two ads for the price of one.
Do not be lured into competing for the first place position instead keep an eye on your keyword performance (via your keyword-level tracking) and occupy whichever position provides the best sales or lead conversion.
Writing Effective Ads
Finally, always test different ads by interchanging words in the title and description. For Google Adwords, try split-testing two different titles and descriptions and add a unique tracking code to each one so you can identify which one causes the best sales conversion increase. Notice that I did not state, “the best “click-through rate increase”. Why? Because “a lot of nothing” (i.e. a lot of traffic without sales or lead conversion) is not a financially effective strategy. Consider that even a single word change on your ad can create a significant jump to your sales or lead conversion rate.
Follow these strategies to boost your pay-per-click marketing results today. Good Producing!
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Optimizing Paid For Inclusion Search Engines
A quick look back at history shows that paid for inclusion was one of the first pay per click mechanisms that was available to a marketer. Pioneered most visibly by Inktomi, and then soon followed by engines such as AltaVista and FAST the PFI market really took off providing a welcome manageability to getting your site listed quickly and efficiently. The paid for inclusion market has not changed much since then, with the exception of submission method maybe, but the biggest challenge to a user is how best do I use it?
Whilst paid for placement (Overture, Google AdWords, FindWhat etc) offer simple procedures to getting a site listed, part of the ever increasing strength of the PFP market, the processes that are necessary for optimizing PFI are different. With no guarantee of a high placement and reliance on relevant submitted content, i.e. does Inktomi feel this is 100% relevant to a search or 1%, the challenge to the marketer is much greater. In order to demonstrate that the challenge is not as unfathomable as it may seem here are some guidelines on how to optimize your content.
1. Understand where paid inclusion data appears within the search network - The usual place for paid for inclusion data is within the 'web pages' results. These are pages that appear when the search term has either a) limited coverage within paid for placement or directory listings or b) exhausted all of the paid for placement or directory listings and appears there after! Here is a simple example to further explain this - If you search for 'credit cards online' on MSN you'll be presented with MSN's own paid for placement mechanism 'Featured Sites', then Overture's top 3 listings 'Sponsored Sites', then 100+ listings from LookSmart 'Directory Listings' and then once they are exhausted 'Web Pages' which are Inktomi.2. Understand what you are submitting - Following on from Point 1, if the listings that appear in paid for inclusion are so low in the pecking order you must be careful of which words, phrases, listings to submit. In the example above creating a PFI listing for 'credit cards online' wouldn't make a whole lot of sense, however, 'online credit card service' would have you appear on page 1 in 15th spot as all other sources were exhausted much sooner. But what is the catch? The simple answer is volume; the number of searches for 'online credit card service' is 5% of the number of searches for 'credit card online'. Your advantage is relevancy, those 5% of searches are going to traditionally have more relevant searchers as they've really pre qualified themselves with a longer more considered search term.
3. Don't submit too little - If the volume of traffic is lower then why should you bother going to all of the effort of submitting sites to PFI? The answer is volume again. The best content to submit to a PFI engine is large bulk amounts taken from sites with lots of data on their site. This lends itself extremely well to catalogue retailers (such as BestBuy or Amazon) or publishers (such as Consumer Reports or McGraw Hill). In many instances the effort needed for one listing in PFI is the same effort as 10,000 listings. The more listings you submit the less of an issue the smaller search volume becomes as you'll get a larger percentage of the more specific searches with a larger number of listings.
4. Understand 'how' to submit - There are many ways to submit to PFI engines, many of them will help you with the whole procedure, others will recommend third parties to assist you with it. The most important variable to understand here is relevancy. You listings are not guaranteed number 1 spot, even on the 'Web Pages' or equivalent section of the site. You must ensure that if you are submitting a listings for 'Sony 28" Widescreen TV Model' the entirety of your submission, title, description, supporting text, url, all contain the same information otherwise the engine will bump your listing down for being too vague. Understand the variables of PFI too, for example, Inktomi won't allow anything but a 1to1 listing to unique URL ratio. This further lends itself to bulk submissions from a catalogue or large listing site.
5. Don't submit too much - PFI have variable rate cards per industry and vertical. As with PFP the price is often dependant upon demand for the content for example, finance and legal services are more expensive than reference or computing. For this reason it is important to do research before you submit your content. Be sure that if you are considering putting your entire catalogue of products online that each and every product if sold justifies the cost per click. In many instances the best course of action is to skim the feed your are submitting to PFI up to the point where the AOV of the catalogue products or CPA of the online lead you are listings justifies your costs. NOTE: having a good tracking tool and understanding both your direct and deferred conversion rates really helps here.
6. Creative Management - A PFI listings, as with any other, appears within the search network with countless others. Make sure you don't neglect these listings by relying on the title and description from your catalogue or website listing. In many instances normal procedure to substitute the title that appears in the engine with the title that appears on the site. Include calls to action; add your unique selling proposition and if you have a strong brand name be sure to include it.
PFI management is an integral part of an overall search marketing campaign and if your industry lends itself to this form of submission then it is a must. Optimizing your site for spiders may work well for single submissions to PFI but ensuring that your website content is visible in the easiest possible way is the overall strength of this pay per click mechanism.