Every year I dread the New Year’s Holiday. Just the thought of making pledges to eat better or start working out gives me chills. I dutifully pledge to give up this or give up that and fail miserably on January 1st at about 9:40 a.m. This year I thought I would take a different approach; focus on my passion for Search Marketing to set me up for success and allow me to leave my personal life out of it!
How about making PPC Management Resolutions for 2013?
If you are like a lot of PPC Managers, you’ll likely have inherited an AdWords account. Clients typically want to get up and running and see results ASAP. This usually forces us to keep them up and start working on the re-structuring of the account as we go. Most of the time, there are common mistakes that have put the account into your hands that must be fixed before you start seeing some traction.
Resist the urge to keep campaigns set up the same way as you inherited them; even for a short period of time. Make your account assessment and hit the biggest areas of opportunity first. Taking a little time upfront and re-organizing the account’s structure will give you the click-thrus and not send them to your competition. These are all things we know and typically do as PPC professionals–so if nothing else it’s a reminder for me to Here is my top 3 list for 2013:
1. Where possible; split out larger Ad Groups:
Assess your client’s Ad Groups. Most of the time, you can make them smaller and more targeted. By doing this, you can decrease the number of keywords in your ad group which will allow you to be as specific as possible to your searchers intent with your ads. You can be far more relevant and send the searcher to the appropriate Landing Page. Once they are taken to the highly relevant page, they are more likely to convert for your client with higher CTR’s, higher Quality Scores and lower Cost per Clicks. Sometimes, the issue really is with the client’s web site and whether they have highly effective Landing pages for each of your Ad Groups. Hopefully you can convince them that changes they make will benefit their business.
2. Don’t rely on Google Optimization for my A/B Ad Testing.
I’m going to utilize Google’s ‘Rotate indefinitely’ Option which will show lower performing ads more evenly with higher performing ads to give me a better understanding of what’s happening without the automatic optimizing rotation. Then I’m going to be tougher and delete (not pause!) the ads that are not performing…what’s the point of keeping them in the ad group if they’re not converting?
3. I pledge to utilize Excel more than I do.
It’s a love-hate thing I know for most of us but once we get down and dirty with it, what a fantastic tool we have to drill down on the data we have available to make the wisest decisions for our accounts. 2013 is the year I fall back in love with pivot tables!
As I was working on this, I asked my colleagues here at Apogee Results what their PPC Resolutions would be and they had some excellent ones:
Ryan is going to focus on maximizing Ad Extensions to increase his CTR on his account ads. Hopefully Google will get cracking and improve the tracking capabilities for them as well.
Cori is going to (not listen to Ryan, ha ha – Just kidding) try and stay on top of Google’s Changes which is a pretty hefty goal. She gave a solid example regarding Google’s Conversion Optimizer Requirements:
Your campaign uses AdWords Conversion Tracking or is importing data from Google Analytics.
The campaign has received at least 15 conversions on the Search Network and 30 conversions on the Display Network in the last 30 days. This conversion history enables the system to make accurate predictions about your future conversion rate. So, the more data we have, the more accurate we can be.
The campaign must have been receiving conversions at a similar rate for at least a few days.
Kaolhi wants to get more in-depth on Google Analytics and all the ins & outs and dig into the reporting it has available.
This blog post presents some great ideas on how to approach video SEO beyond the basics of using rich snippets and getting links. It is more of a strategy session than a tutorial. The ideas discussed include: self hosting a video rather than hosting on YouTube if the goal is traffic and conversions, using different types of videos to fit your different goals, and if possible, creating videos with some SEO in mind instead of trying to optimize after a video is already created.
This is an excellent and comprehensive post on link building in the current, post-penguin environment. Not only does it discuss different types of links and how to get them (with a list of useful link-finding tools), but it also delves into an overall strategy for building a link profile. This includes how to decide if and when to remove links, tracking the progress of a link profile, and looking at what the future might bring in terms of updates.
Google has begun to show detail about medicine in the search results similar to how a famous person’s biography might show up in a SERP when their name is searched. Data from various authorities on medicine are part of Google’s knowledge graph, which attempts to contextualize words by making connections between words that the algorithm deems to be semantically related. This development will be particularly useful for any business in the medical field.
MDG advertising created this large Infographic with a lot of statistics about online holiday shopping trends. While there isn’t a lot of explanation about what these numbers mean, it’s a good visual that makes it easy to realize some powerful trends. Tablets are becoming a huge factor in that more and more people are using tablets to shop as well as shopping for tablets. Online holiday shopping also seems to be starting earlier and ending later in the year, beginning in October and going past Christmas.
A company trying to decide whether to do SEO or PPC should realize that the most successful campaign will likely implement both at some level and have a hand in numerous other marketing outlets. This article gives 10 good reasons why your company should do PPC, and specifically Google AdWords, while responsibly prefacing that AdWords should probably not be used as a replacement for SEO. Some of the best reasons are probably the first four given, which are that it is scalable, measurable, flexible, and faster than SEO.
While it was once a powerful indicator for how highly a webpage would appear in a Google search results page, Google Toolbar’s PageRank (PR) has become somewhat of a relic in the SEO world. Ten years ago, an SEO who found the green bar to be empty, showing a PR of 0 for their site, might be devastated. Today, a PR of 0 can be waved off as Google neglecting to update its PageRank tool.
So what changed? To answer this question, we should first know how PR is determined. While there are a number of factors, not all of which Google has made public information, a major factor is the quantity of inbound links to the given page. A page with high PR would give more value when linking than one with a low PR would. In the days of keyword stuffing and shady link schemes, the measure of the quantity of links could easily be taken advantage of by purchasing or automating a large number of links.
In 2003, the Florida update began to set a precedent for penalizing spammy content and rewarding quality content. This meant that it became harder to get a large number of links (legitimate or otherwise), and consequently PageRank started to matter less. This isn’t to say that it didn’t matter in terms of ranking high in Google’s SERPs, but because it was becoming more difficult to manipulate, SEO’s began to focus on it less. Alongside this, Google started to update the PR less often, causing numbers to not necessarily be current or accurate.
What seemed to be the final nail in the PR coffin was a statement from a Google employee, claiming that due to a number of hacking attempts on the PageRank data, “the PageRank that is displayed in Google toolbar is for entertainment purposes only,” and “on average, the PR that is displayed in the Google toolbar is several months old.” This means that relatively new pages that have a decent PR could show a PR of 0 for months.
Does this mean that PageRank is now a completely useless tool that should be ignored altogether? Many SEOs think so, and would prefer PR to be removed from the toolbar, so as not to misrepresent the value of a page to those unaware of PageRank’s history. Although PR numbers are potentially misleading, they need not be ignored completely. The statement made by the Google employee did not say that PR is obsolete. In fact, the statement explains that the ranks are still updated occasionally. It should also be noted that this not an official stance from Google, but simply one Google employee’s response to a question on a forum regarding PageRank. Since the “entertainment purposes only” comment surfaced, it seems to have been widely treated as an official statement from Google, but in reality, it is likely that Google still uses PageRank as a variable of at least some significance in its SERP algorithm.
So should we take PageRank into account or not? The answer probably depends on what you’re using it for and whether or not you’re supplementing it. If you’re using it as a number for a weekly report, you’re asking for trouble. If you’re using other tools like MozRank and trying to get a feel for how your page is doing, a comparison between PR and the numbers you’re getting from other tools could give you some extra insight into what’s going right and what’s going wrong with a given page.
Today is the 9th annual Innotech Austin Conference & Expo and Apogee’s own Bill Leake and Alan LaFrance had a session on how to embrace and utilize video in order to help marketing efforts, “Video Killed The Radio Star (But Not Your Marketing)”. Here is a recap.
The presentation began with a few impressive statistics as to why it’s a good idea to invest in video marketing:
People that watch a product video are 60 – 85% more likely to buy (IR et al)
Over 800 Million unique users visit YouTube monthly (YouTube)
Over 1 trillion video views in 2011 (YouTube)
Video improved add-to-cart by 144% for a Retailer (Internet Retailer)
Videos are the fastest growing ad format in 2012 with 55% growth (eMarketer)
Next Alan talked about how to make an effective video and the example he used was the popular Blendtec YouTube series “Will it Blend?” Here are the main points of the segment:
Research and identify a topic and purpose – when you’re thinking of video content, do your research. Go into making your video with a relevant topic and purpose.
Plan out the video content – have a plan before you start video production. Create a storyboard/wireframe of your idea to effectively execute your video.
Use quality equipment – don’t use subpar equipment (i.e. Smartphone camera) to produce a video. Even on YouTube, people don’t want to see low quality videos.
Spend equal time publicizing as you do producing – don’t just spend all your time and money producing a video and no effort with promotion. With no promotion no one will be aware of your video and in turn you wont get results.
Listen – listen to what your viewers are saying about your video. Read the comments, you might be surprised by the insights you can gather. There might be information there that can help you better cater to your audience with your next video. People will tell you what they want to see and what they’re interested in.
Don’t be afraid to destroy stuff – don’t be afraid to take a risk.
Following these points we saw a great example of a company using video to successfully sale a product, Stacks & Stacks dog door. They might not have the cleanest website but they’ve implemented videos that show just how easy it is to install a pet screen doggie door, sizes available, and many other product insights. According to Internet Retailer, Stacks & Stacks improved their “Add-to-Cart” metric by 144% with this video alone.
Bill presented the next portion of the presentation and he quickly touched on 4 main points:
How are online videos online found?
The importance of YouTube
Posted vs. Hosted
YouTube Optimization
As far as how users discover videos online, there were some interesting statistics presented:
44% – discover videos randomly
43% – discover videos via sharing
43% – discover videos via video websites
39% – discover videos via search engines
27% – discover videos via marketing email
4% – discover videos via RSS & MRSS feeds
Since the launch of blended search, videos are becoming more prevalent in Google’s universal search,”58% of users who search Google were served video in universal search engine results pages”.
So you know the benefits of developing videos for marketing and where people discover them, but what are the placement options? - Well when thinking about videos, you have 2 basic options. You can post or host the video. Posting means that the video content is uploaded to video sharing sites, social media, etc. Hosting means that the video content is on your website.
The benefits of posted video SEO:
Existing Traffic – existing video website have a critical mass of traffic and users, which makes it easier to go viral
There is a better ability to rank on universal search (Google) and other search engines
Potential to dominate the traditional SERPs with “carpet bombing” by submitting to multiple video sites, which is due to weak duplicate content filtering at present
You don’t need your own website
There are also some benefits to hosted video SEO:
Control – you have control over related on-page text, encoded metadata, user experience, etc.
You have control over monetization/advertising
Generate traffic to your website
Note: While you can currently dominate the SERPs with “carpet bombing” with posted strategies, this may go away with duplicate content filtering in the future.
Following this, we looked at the power of YouTube and how much it’s grown in the past year with some interesting stats:
YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine
Third most visited website (800 million uniques, only 50 million less than Facebook)
60 hours of video is uploaded EVERY minute (was 48 hours in 2011 and 20 hours in 2009)
Over 4 BILLION videos are viewed each day (was 3 billion in 2011)
One of the best takeaways from the presentation was how to increase your chances to rank your videos / properly optimize them for SEO:
The amazing people at PPC Hero researched and compiled a list of the 25 most influential PPC experts in the digital marketing industry today. Congratulations to all the people that made the list!! Check out the infographic below:
Online Marketing Fail #32: Failing to Properly Optimize Social Media
We’ve all seen epic social media fails (and wins). From employees accidentally posting to a corporate Twitter account rather than their personal account, to companies not having a social media presence at all, social media is rife with fails of all kinds. As bad as accidental posts can be, the biggest fail of of all is not properly optimizing your social media presence. Take a look at our latest white paper, and learn what you can do to avoid making the biggest social media fail of all.
Online marketing is littered with fails; from the small business that fails to claim their Google+ Places page to the Enterprise level B2B that thinks social media isn’t worth the time, it’s easy to fail at social media marketing. Optimizing social media goes far beyond keyword research, search engine optimization and backlinks–rather, it encompasses all of those things and more. Join us for a lively webinar discussing common social media fails–and how you can avoid common social media optimization fails.
If you’re an ecomm marketer, odds are you’ve been thinking about this year’s holiday marketing campaigns for months. You probably have everything lined up and ready to go–or pretty darned close to it. You know what you’re going to put on sale when, what your sales goals are, and what this year’s Hot Must-Have Item will be. You’ve got this. But just in case you’re looking for some last minute things you can do to help your holiday marketing campaigns, we’re here to help.
1. Tidy up your social media presence. Does your Facebook Timeline cover photo represent your holiday campaign(s)? Do you have several different photos ready to go to correspond with various sales and campaigns? Also, don’t forget to take a look at the newly introduced Facebook Gifts feature–Christmas IS a gift-giving holiday, afterall. Do you have an active and attractive Pinterest presence? Look into ways to drive sales via Pinterest, such as Pin It to Win It contests, pinning coupons, exclusive sale items and more. If you’re a clothing, shoe or accessory retailer,make sure you have a presence on Polyvore, too.
2. Have a contest. Sure, holiday marketing campaigns are all about driving sales, but as many a good marketer knows, having a contest can also help drive sales. Why not combine a contest with your holiday marketing? Country Outfitter recently ran a great Facebook contest, where fans of their Facebook page voted on their favorite pair of cowgirl boots. The five pairs receiving the most votes where then voted on by Country Outfitter’s staff and Facebook fans, until a winner was decided. One fan–who had also liked and shared the winning pair of cowgirl boots–one that pair of boots. Everyone who participated received a coupon for $10 off a purchase of $50 or more. I have no idea how many sales were generated as a result of the contest, but my guess is that getting people on their website that many times, browsing through their boot selection and “liking” their favorites and then offering a $10 off coupon just for entering probably resulted in a decent amount of sales they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.
3. Use non-branded keywords for paid media efforts. By now, you should probably already have a good idea as to what kinds of paid media ads you’ll run during the holidays. You know what the must-have items are, you know what you’re trying to move the most of, and you also expect a decent amount of branded search. Be sure to think outside of the box, though. If you’re a website that sells exquisite, handmade soap for women, think about going after keywords such as “women’s gifts” and “handmade gifts” rather than just targeting “soap.”
4. Make sure your email list is good and scrubbed. Nothing is more frustrating than sending out a fantastic email and getting a super high bounce rate. Unfortunately, scrubbing our email lists is a necessary evil; yes, it’s boring, but it must be done. Making sure your email list is scrubbed and properly segmented, though, can save you lots of headaches during a very busy, stressful holiday season.
5. Make sure your company accepts mobile coupons. Whether they’re through Passbook or simply by someone pulling up their email on their smartphone, make sure your company accepts mobile coupons. Budget-conscious shoppers won’t leave home without their coupons, but being able to virtually carry them with you makes life so much easier. Anecdotally, I know I’m more likely to spend money somewhere–sometimes spontaneously–if I have a decent coupon in my inbox that I know can be used at the cash register. I’m a budget-conscious shopper (and honestly never buy anything full price), so having that ability makes me much more likely to spend when I otherwise wouldn’t have. My guess is that I’m not the only woman in the world like that. *g*
6. Check out competitors’ social media profiles. What are your primary competitors doing? Are they having contests, offering coupons? With a still-flagging economy, shoppers are still holding on to their hard-earned dollars, making your job as a marketer just a little more difficult. Knowing what your competition is doing and one-upping them could give you the edge during an ultra-competitive holiday shopping season.
7. Make sure customers know how to connect with you. Make it easy. In the past week I’ve gone to several websites of various clothing retailers, and they only have links to their Facebook and Twitter accounts. However, when I went to their Facebook page, I noticed they were encouraging fans to connect with them on Pinterest. I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated with this–just give me one page I can click from, and I’m happy. Besides, odds are, if I’m following you on Facebook and Pinterest, I’m going to buy something from you at some point in the future. Why not make it as easy for people as possible to find you, connect with you and learn about your products? It just makes sense.
What steps have you taken to prepare your holiday marketing campaigns?
Online marketing is littered with fails; from the small business that fails to claim their Google+ Places page to the Enterprise level B2B that thinks social media isn’t worth the time, it’s easy to fail at social media marketing. Optimizing social media goes far beyond keyword research, search engine optimization and backlinks–rather, it encompasses all of those things and more. Join us for a lively webinar discussing common social media fails–and how you can avoid common social media optimization fails.
Online marketing is littered with fails; from the small business that fails to claim their Google+ Places page to the Enterprise level B2B that thinks social media isn’t worth the time, it’s easy to fail at social media marketing. Optimizing social media goes far beyond keyword research, search engine optimization and backlinks–rather, it encompasses all of those things and more. Join us for a lively webinar discussing common social media fails–and how you can avoid common social media optimization fails.
2. Have a contest. Sure, holiday marketing campaigns are all about driving sales, but as many a good marketer knows, having a contest can also help drive sales. Why not combine a contest with your holiday marketing? Country Outfitter recently ran a 
