adCenter Vs AdWords: Some unique functionality

To be honest, there isn’t much about adCenter that I like. Their UI is more ‘cool’ than functional. Their editor tool isn’t worth the space on my desktop, and their keyword research tools sometimes seem to be from the Stone Age. If I never had to login to adCenter again, it might be too soon. Throw on top of that the minimal search volume compared to adWords, and poor content network, and sometimes it seems like the stars are aligning so that you don’t even have to feel bad about neglecting the platform.

That being said, adCenter has some really neat features that Google hasn’t adopted, no matter how obvious they might be. Here’s how to use them to your advantage.

Search Partner Exclusion

Most of the new accounts I run across have search partners shut off (on both adCenter and AdWords). With AdWords, I can certainly see how that it’s an ‘all or nothing’ scenario. adCenter, on the hand, offers search partner exclusion, much in the way AdWords offers content partner exclusions.

Search partner exclusion is pretty simple. Within campaign settings, simply copy your list of search exclusions to ‘exclusions’ under advanced settings.

You may also apply search exclusions in bulk via the editor tool, or the UI’s “make bulk changes” feature.

In order to create your list, use the ‘publisher performance’ report in the ‘reports’ tab. Here you’ll get a list of the adCenter search partners, and you can determine which to make negatives.

Keep in mind this is still search traffic, so must of the time your performance on these sites should be pretty good; however, there are certainly a fair amount of borderline scam search partners operating with a fair amount of volume.

Ad-Group-Level Settings

All right, I admit it: most of the time, dealing with ad-group-level settings is incredibly ‘clunky.’ But there are some really cool use cases.

Ad rotation certainly stands out. I’m certainly in the minority, but with a fair degree of regularity I use AdWords ‘optimize for clicks’ or ‘optimize for conversions’ (usually the latter) rotation settings. As such, when I want to run a test in only one ad group, it creates a bit of a quandary, because I’m forced to switch everything to ‘rotate.’

Not so for adCenter, which offers ad rotation as an ad-group-level attribute.

While ad rotation is the setting that stands out the most, essentially every setting can be applied at the ad group level on adCenter. Outside of negatives, and the new ‘flexible reach’ options, AdWords doesn’t really offer unique ad-group-level customization.

Branded Search Terms

A few months ago our heralded CEO wrote about protecting brand terms. As you might expect, opinions were a bit divided – should only TM owners be able to bid on their own branded terms, or should it be an open auction system? I can see both sides of the coin, and apparently so can adCenter. The answer seems to Rich Ads in Search (RAIS).

With RAIS, bidders apply to have ‘rich ads’ for their branded queries. The result is guaranteed sole top position, and a bunch cool of add-ons and different formats. With this, competitor terms are relegated to the right rail, so if someone is searching for a brand term to find that brand’s competitors, they’ll find them off to the side.

If someone is searching for a brand term in order to end up on that brand’s website, they can’t miss the ad, and they won’t be distracted or tricked into clicking on a competitor’s.

Customer Service

It’s hard to argue that Google has poor customer service, but at the minimum I can say that it’s inconsistent. The same can be said for adCenter. If you’ve been given a ‘Microsoft’ rep, my condolences. However, if you’ve been given a Yahoo! Rep, take a moment to moment to give thanks. Yahoo! Reps crush AdWords reps time and time again.

Not only will Yahoo! do a great job on reactive issues – ‘billing,’ ‘disapprovals,’ etc. – but they’re more than willing to jump into the nitty gritty. Perhaps it’s a result of the product itself being pretty poor, but the reps are great at creating, editing, and adjusting campaigns for those who ask.

In addition to helping you manage your campaigns, they’ve got a lot of internal flexibilities. Our reps will help us create QBRs for clients, do research on the keywords competitors are buying, and provide share-of-voice information.

Best of all, Yahoo! reps aren’t salesmen. Google reps, on the other hand, certainly are. Certainly Yahoo! reps are there to help you grow your spend; at the minimum, they’ll take the time to understand your business objectives. Google extends no such curiosity, and their reps simply push around the latest buzzwords in order to help rack up your bill.

Pixel Length Variation

This is a huge problem with the AdWords pixel. AdWords pixels have 30-day cookie windows, and there are no other options available (though you can adjust the time frame for which they look for view-through conversions).

While certainly imperfect, the adCenter pixel lets users select from 7-, 15-, 30- or 45-day windows. Of course, a custom time frame would best, but at least adCenter offers some flexibility.

Conclusion

In an ideal word, adCenter and AdWords would be essentially mirrors of one another. It seems like adCenter finally has gotten the message by introducing site links, modified broad match, negative match-type options, and a multitude of other features that Google had previously rolled out.

As an advertiser, that’s a huge win. Not only does it improve our ability to manage across platforms, but it improves the likelihood that we can mirror structures across platforms without sacrificing optimization efficiency.

So far Google, for its part, has failed to take note of the areas where adCenter is winning – though I’d wager that Google will eventually decide to take notice and mirror the additional functionality that adCenter has created. This type of competition certainly benefits the end user, but it remains to be seen if Google will admit where they’ve been beaten to the punch – and do something about it.

The Author: Mike Nelson 
Source: http://searchengineland.com

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Know How B2B Marketers Should Use Twitter

The ever-growing world of Twitter has unlocked opportunities for every type of user; everyone from emerging artists, celebrities, big brands, news sources, and B2B marketers can find a Twitter niche.

Twitter offers users the chance to share, connect, converse, link, view, follow, search, engage, praise, and vent in 140 character tweets. B2B marketers, in particular, can use Twitter to attract prospects, interact and engage with clients, increase brand awareness, understand their audience, and more.

Here are 15 specific ways B2B marketers can be using Twitter:

1. Participate: Twitters allows your business to participate in conversations with prospects, customers, other businesses, and users in the B2B space. Your business can interact in one of three ways: one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many. Participating one-to-one is fairly self-explanatory; it’s a targeted conversation that is likely to get a response. One-to-many is a traditional advertising technique that sends out a promotional message to the masses. Many-to-many is a new approach that was formed via the social media network; it enables conversation with a large audience that may respond or may just listen.
2. Answer and Ask: Twitter is a network of asking and receiving.  For this reason, it’s important that your B2B Twitter account is available for others to ask questions that will receive a valuable response. Asking questions of one other is important too, even if it’s simply “Hey @b2bmarketer, will I be seeing you at Tuesday’s conference?”
3. Employee Accounts: B2B marketing companies should not limit themselves to just one account.  Instead, encourage your employees to create awork-based account where relevant information can be further shared and diverged across multiple accounts and reach a larger audience. Just make sure it’s clear who owns the account.
4. Face-to-Face: Once you have established the Twitter bond, why not reach out even further? A B2B marketer can use their Twitter community to build real life relationships that go beyond the computer screen.
5. Dive in: Join groups, keep up with #hashtag topics, and follow relevant accounts. By diving into Twitter spheres that are relevant to your business interest, expertise, and objectives, you build your social media presence.
6. Promote: Twitter is a great (and free!) way to promote your brand, services, products, events, and more. Advertising on Twitter is similar to PPC ads; it spreads your message to the immediate audience with the hope that it will get some re-tweets and shares.
7. Save Time: Tweets allow marketers to get ideas across and develop presence in 140 characters or fewer. After all, sending a quick tweet is less time consuming than writing a lengthy blog post.
8. Automated scheduling: Marketers have the option to schedule specific times of day to send out tweets to their Twitter communities. A schedule can, for instance, be based off user analytics that indicate the most optimal time of day for reaching a target audience. Bitly metrics cite the hours between 1 and 3pm as the best time of day for posting to Twitter.
9. Tweet Strategy: Consider a tweeting strategy that best portrays your B2B services and intentions. This could include how many tweets you post per day, the tweet tone, the number of re-tweets you make, and how/if to respond to questions and mentions.
10. Stay Current: Keep up with what others are doing, writing about, saying, and what’s #trending and try to avoid posting old news. What are people talking about and how does it relate to your business? Gather opinions, beliefs, thoughts, tendencies, likes, and dislikes of followers and following.
11. Store the positivity: Save tweets from others that compliment your business, service, work, etc. and use them for reference in future pieces.
12. Link It Up: Use your Twitter profile bio to link to your webpage or blog and be sure to include the URL. Link to other relevant pages with your tweets and help spread interesting, useful and practical information across the Twitter community and beyond.
13. Snap a Photo: Share photos of events, products, clients, office initiatives, puppies, animals dressed in funny costumes, etc. People want to know what you’re up to, but they tend to be more engaged if there’s a visual piece attached to whatever it is you’re sending out. Just remember to stay relevant (don’t go overboard with the small animals) to your marketing approach, business objectives, and personal presentation.
14. Everyone Loves a Laugh: Humor can be tough to pull off; not everyone has the gift of comedic timing. According to research from the “Who Gives a Tweet?” study, one in four participating users appreciates humor on Twitter. Make sure you know your audience and be sure to avoid crossing any lines that could get you into hot water with followers.
15. Beware of Spam: Unfortunately, spammers are everywhere, including Twitter. It’s important to make sure the users who follow you are legitimate; be cautious not to follow every account you come across. People will take you more seriously if there isn’t a huge numerical difference in the number of people you follow versus the number of people who follow you.

The way a B2B marketer uses Twitter says a lot about the person/business behind the tweets. When representing yourself and your company, be judicious in your tweets: Twitter users love to zero in on tweets containing misquotes, missing sources, bad grammar, politically incorrect statements, etc. For this reason, it’s important to make tweets valuable, intentional, interesting, and well-thought out, targeting content you know your audience will want to read.

Source: KoMarketing Associates » 

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DoubleClick AdPlanner is Renamed as Google Display Network Ad Planner

If you’ve been using DoubleClick AdPlanner to research anything other than sites on the Google Display Network, you’re about to be out of luck. Google this week has been sending out notices to AdPlanner users telling them of dramatic changes due to take effect September 5.

Folks in the digital marketing space have grown accustomed to using DoubleClick AdPlanner to research sites across the web (including their own), gathering information on everything from traffic, to household income, to demographics, to other sites frequented by the site’s visitors. The data may not have been exceptionally accurate, but the tool provided useful information, especially for sites too small to be measured by comScore.

Now, the tool will be renamed Google Display Network Ad Planner, and it will only provide information about sites (albeit 2 million of them) within the GDN. Surprisingly, one of the stats that will be eliminated entirely is Page Views, and there will be unspecified adjustments to Unique Users and Reach.

Additionally, even if a site is part of the GDN, users will no longer be able to retrieve some demographic information, such as household income and education, and they’ll no longer be able to see keywords searched for by the site’s audience, or videos also watched. Similar keyword data will still be available via Google Trends for Websites but not the demographic info.

Though it didn’t provide much of a rationale for the changes, Google told users in an email: “We are constantly evaluating our products to make sure we are focusing our efforts on tools that create the most value for our customers.” We have an inquiry out to Google and will update if we hear more about the reasoning behind this move.

On the Publisher side, the Publisher Center will be eliminated. It had allowed Publishers to claim their own sites and list relevant ad placement availability. In an email to publishers, Google said, “we have found that the current beta does not fit existing market needs of our partners.” The company recommends publishers create ad units within AdSense, and allow advertisers to buy their placements on a site-specific basis.

The Author: Pamela Parker
Source : http://MarketingLand.com

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100 Lessons Learned from 10 Years of SEO

This June marks my tenth year in SEO, which means that I’ve gone through dozens of different algorithm changes and implemented SEO techniques on hundreds of websites across various market verticals.

I’ve worked both in-house and at agencies, but all this experience doesn’t mean that I’ve got the final answer on what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to SEO.  In fact, I’ve made tons of mistakes along the way – and today, I wanted to share with you some of the lessons I’ve learned throughout my career.

The following lessons are all based on my own experiences and screw-ups.  They aren’t just related to SEO, but to my life, business and entrepreneurial pursuits in general as well.  I hope you find them useful when it comes to avoiding the same mistakes I’ve made in the past!

1. Don’t link-build too fast – When I first started in SEO, I built a site and started going gung-ho, not realizing that I should pace myself.  I’d built all the links I could, and then be totally inconsistent about my efforts in the following months.  As you might expect, my rankings shot up but, tumbled down just as fast – a situation I could have avoided by taking a steady, more sustainable approach.
2. Meta descriptions matter – Even if they don’t have any SEO value now, they’re still useful from a CTR standpoint.
3. Don’t obsess over rankings and traffic – Things move monthly; not daily or weekly.
4. There’s a fine line between being analytical and being obsessed – When I first started, I would watch my site’s rankings every day, every hour, thinking something would change.  As a result, I was wasting time obsessing over something I couldn’t change, when my time would have been better spent building extra links or writing extra blog posts.
5. There’s no replacement for a good product – I’ve done SEO for hundreds of sites, and I found the best SEO tactic is a great product – and that will never change.
6. There is a huge difference between optimizing ecommerce, lead generation sites, small sites and user generated sites – You need to understand not just the current situation of a website, but the type of website it is, as your whole strategy should revolve around the type of site you’re working with.
7. Tactics come and go, but creativity never dies – I hate seeing people blindly following the advice of other SEO experts, without even thinking about whether or not the techniques they’re using work well for their sites.  You can’t go wrong by putting the emphasis on providing value for your customers and finding creative ways to do it.
8. Age is just a number – The age of a domain and site definitely help a site rank, but don’t let your young site intimidate you.  There are plenty of other factors weighted in the ranking algorithms, which gives you plenty of other opportunities to beat your competition.
9. Big brands aren’t that hard to beat – In general, I’ve found that the bigger the brand, the bigger their budget – but the slower they are to move.  Just think about how much effort it takes to move a speed boat versus a cargo ship.
10. Diversify everything you do – Google devalues entire link types on a regular basis, so don’t get caught with your pants down!
11. SEO is evolving with marketing – Search engine optimization becomes more complex every day, which is why it’s incredibly important to stay up-to-date on industry news.
12. Write content to reach your audience – Yes, SEO is important, but if you don’t have something good waiting on your site for the visitors who find your company through the SERPs, there’s no reason to go to all the trouble of getting your site ranked well.
13. Every SEO needs to know programming languages – Your site’s code plays a big role in its optimization, so take the time to get familiar with what’s going on behind the scenes.
14. There’s no alternative to experience – With SEO, you can read all the books and blog posts in the world.  But there are so many moving parts that, unless you actually do it, you won’t know if that strategy or tactic is working.  I’ve been lucky enough to work on hundreds of different sites and have learned the hard way what works and what doesn’t.  Until you get penalized and fix that penalty, you’re never going to be 100% sure.
15. Cute animals are the worst – Whenever Google releases an animal-themed update (like the recent “Panda” and “Penguin”), you know it’s time to get worried!
16. It’s all relative (think “rel=canonical,” “rel=alternative” and “rel=author”) – There are several different rel tags out there, so it’s SEO 101 to keep track of them properly, as each option can help ensure the proper flow of PageRank and SEO value throughout your site.
17. Internet marketing never dies (whether that’s SEO, ASO, PPC, CRO, mobile, email or display marketing) – Every month or two, I read an article about how some different aspect of SEO is dying.  Here’s the thing…  SEO will never die.  It will evolve and the platform you optimize will change, but the theories and concepts will still there as long as people continue to run websites.
18. Keyword research is the only thing that matters – Do your keyword research wrong.  You have to nail this down right off the bat because, if you’re wrong, everything executed afterwards will be a wasted effort.
19. There’s no replacement for unique content – Stop trying to fool yourself that your spun articles represent any kind of value for your audience.
20. It’s always better to be natural than over-optimized – In my opinion, Penguin was only the first step in what’s going to be a long line of future over-optimization penalties.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you when your optimized-to-a-fault website gets dinged!
21. PageRank is just another number – There are plenty of other, more important numbers that you should be tracking – including outbound links on a page, external outbound links and inbound links – rather than focusing exclusively on toolbar PageRank.
22. You can measure authority and trust – If you aren’t paying attention to either metric, chances are you’re already being beat out by your competitors.
23. Bounce rate is very important – It’s a small factor in SEO, but a huge factor in ROI.  You should be working constantly to improve your bounce rate, as this gives your users better value and provides you with a better ROI.  If you can decrease your bounce rate by 25%, that’s 25% more visitors that can take action on your site.
24. Your SEO and product teams need to work together – Having good products is one of the best things you can do for your SEO.  For this reason, you need to work closely with your product team to make sure your sites are properly optimized.  Out-of-sync teams can waste time burning their tires just to catch up on optimizing the latest product releases.
25. Developers like to use big words – Don’t let this intimidate you!  Treat them with respect and try to speak to them on their level.  Working with technical minds doesn’t have to be as complicated as you think.
26. Long live the <title> tag!
27. Both 301 redirects and 404 pages matter – If you haven’t optimized these two site components, you’re missing out on a major opportunity to capture web visitors.
28. SEO is magic – After working on SEO for hundreds of sites, I find that there’s always a little unknown involved.  Often times it’s due to not fully understanding the situation, because of a lack of tools or information on a site’s history.  But there’s always a little bit of unknown evolved, so you should always be prepared for that.
29. There’s no replacement for relevancy – Whether in terms of content creation, on-page optimization or link building, relevancy matters and should be a top priority for your website.
30. Speed has been an issue since 1999 – The faster your website, the better (even though plenty of people seem to forget about this one).
31. “(not provided)” is not a problem – Even if you don’t have all the information you need, you can still move forward as long as you understand your product and customers.
32. Never try to screw over your competitors – It’s just good karma to avoid shady stuff.  Instead, use that energy to build an extra link or do more SEO for your site.  You don’t need to play defense until you’re at the top of the SERPs (and even then, the best defense is a strong offense).
33. Always try to learn from your competition – Don’t get frustrated about being outranked.  Instead, try to identify the strategies your Top 5 competitors are using to beat you, and then turn around employ them on your own site.
34. The only thing I miss about Yahoo is the Open Site Explorer– Seriously, talk about a company that’s behind the times…
35. Don’t pay for fancy SEO tools, build them – There are hundreds of great tools out there, but I find that my favorite toolsare usually the ones we built internally that help us speed up the simplest task
36. Money doesn’t buy rankings – It helps, but what you really need is a good strategy.
37. It’s better to be safe than sorry – This goes for all SEO tactics. Google is getting stricter and stricter, so avoid anything that might be construed as over-optimization at all costs.
38. Don’t build links, build customers – Google updates can’t destroy your business if it’s built on people, not SEO metrics.
39. Too much of anything is bad – Don’t focus on any one technique too much.  One year from now, your link building tactic could get you penalized, so if it feels wrong morally, don’t do it.
40. SEO can be applied to many aspects of your life
41. Always do amazing work – This is the only rule in my life that I’ve stuck to.  Because of it, I’ve had some amazing opportunities.  Doing good work will always help you – just try it and see!
42. Build an army – Our first hire at Single Grain was Ross Hudgens, and now, he’s one of our biggest evangelists.
43. Get some fresh air – There’s so much going on in the SEO industry that sometimes you just need a break.  Take a vacation, drink a beer and don’t forget that there’s a world beyond your computer.
44. Learn how to improve your CTR from billboards – Billboards have very little time to capture attention, so they’re masters of the quick sell.  When a billboard catches your eye, figure out what they’re doing and how they caught your attention.
45. Happy hour is the best place for ideas – Often, you’ll have your best ideas when you’re not directly thinking about work.  If you ever feel stuck, grab a beer and sleep on it.
46. Networking is the only thing that matters in the first five years of working – Start as a peon.  To get anywhere in life, you have to meet the right people so get out, get a good position and focus on listening to the knowledge of experts.  Success will come with time and, in fact, I can pinpoint key achievements in my career from the people I met in my first five years of working in SEO.
47. Give everything you know away – SEO is hard, which means that there are always opportunities to help others.  You don’t have to be secretive about what you do (heck, most of the time, when I give everything away, people don’t ever react on it).  It’s still good karma though, so give it away and good things will come.
48. Teach as many people as possible – You never know when the people you help out will return the favor with future business referrals.
49. There’s a difference between marketing, advertising and branding – If you don’t know the difference and have a strategy in place for each aspect of your business, you’re missing out.
50. There will always be ups and downs – Don’t take your “up” times for granted, and don’t let your “down” times cause you to give up.
51. Always go for sustainability – This is true whether you’re talking rankings, income, happiness or anything else in life.
52. Location matters – Living in an industry-concentrated city like San Francisco leaves me feeling motivated and inspired at the end of each day.
53. Take risks – Make them smart risks, but don’t allow yourself to get stuck in a rut.
54. Talking shit works – It isn’t necessary to burn bridges to do so, but don’t be afraid of rocking the boat every now and then.
55. You will always have to suck up – Whether you’re dealing with investors or clients, keep in mind that your livelihood and happiness often rest in other peoples’ hands.  Deal with the fact that this means you’ll have to suck up to them every so often.
56. Think scalability – Always have this idea at the top of your mind, as it’s the ultimate key to earning higher profits and making more money.
57. Always have a strategy – There are enough resources in the world that you shouldn’t ever feel like you’re approaching things aimlessly.
58. There’s an app for that – In this day and age, there’s an app available for just about every problem you have.  Whether it relates to SEO or life, it’s just a Google search away.
59. Lawyers suck – Whether they’re on your side (in the form of legal fees) or not (if you’re getting sued) they cost a lot and are best avoided at all costs.
60. Fire fast – Bad employees hurt the people around them much more than it’ll hurt to let them go.
61. Don’t optimize for social media, be social – You don’t have to try to “look natural” if you simply are natural in the first place.
62. Just f***ing do it!
63. Don’t rely on other people’s money – If you’re starting a business, don’t build it just to raise money.  Even if you’re running an SEO campaign, you can still do it with little to no money.
64. Read books – Fiction, non-fiction, whatever.  Reading helps improve your writing skills and exposes you to tons of new ideas.
65. Figure out the difference between fad and trend, both in SEO and life – Don’t jump on every bandwagon you come across if it doesn’t make sense in terms of your overall plan.
66. Avoid the SEO hangover – Just like having too much alcohol will leave you feeling poorly the next day, taking in too much SEO information can leave you feeling overwhelmed.  Avoid information overload by researching only the subject you need at any given time.
67. More isn’t always better – Practice tasteful SEO that’s in line with your overall goals and vision.
68. Don’t forget about your family and friends – If you let your relationships with your family and friends fall apart because you’re too busy with work, they won’t be there for you when you need them most.
69. Capitalize carefully – Don’t rush into accepting financing without a careful consideration of the impact on your business.  Trust yourself, and use this faith to stick to the business growth plan you’ve identified.
70. Fail fast – If something isn’t working, drop it to pursue other opportunities.
71. Focus on habits – Having goals is important, but it’s the habits you adopt that allow you to achieve these overall visions.
72. Validate your learning – Take time to assess what’s working in both your SEO campaigns and in your life.
73. Be prepared for the pressures of a public life – It’s not all bad, but there is a certain amount of pressure on public personalities to perform.  Don’t get into the world of web management if you aren’t comfortable being found online by strangers.
74. Don’t feed the trolls – Some people just suck, but don’t let them drag you down too.
75. You can’t have everything – Or, at least, you can’t everything all at once.
76. Avoid income inflation – If you’re successful in business, your income should go up, but be careful not to let your spending get out of hand.  Bad things happen to even the best of people, so don’t over-extend yourself.
77. Be grateful – Try finding at least one person every day to say “thank you” to.
78. Eat well and exercise regularly – I like good beer and rich foods as much as the next guy, but I also know that I’m more productive when I’m healthy.  Everything in moderation!
79. If you don’t need it, don’t buy it – Don’t chase after the newest, shiniest SEO tool or ebook.  Work with what you have and only invest in your business when you can afford to do so.
80. Give back to your community – Take time every year to help the less fortunate, out of recognition of everything you’ve been blessed with.
81. Pursue ideas thoughtfully – Even if you have dozens of great ideas, don’t rush into them all at once.  Wait for the right moment.
82. Learn to say “no” – Not every request you get will be a good fit for your business.  If an opportunity doesn’t fit with your long-range vision, take it off the table.
83. Don’t overextend yourself – Taking on more clients or projects than you can handle leads to stress and burnout (not to mention missed deadlines!).  Avoid it whenever possible.
84. Eliminate clutter – Clean desk = clean mind.
85. There aren’t any shortcuts, in SEO or in life – Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something.
86. Quit bitching and do the work – Don’t complain about how hard it is to find good links or to get to the top of the SERPs.  Reinvest that energy in actually doing the work and you’ll see much more success.
87. Conversion rates should be your top goal – SEO only matters if you’re seeing an improvement in your bottom line as the result of your efforts.
88. Pay attention to your ROI – Quantify your actions and be ruthless about eliminating any SEO techniques that don’t contribute a positive ROI to your website.
89. Baby steps make a difference – SEO can seem overwhelming, but doing as little as building one new link a day will make a difference over time.
90. Listen to Matt Cutts
91. Be wary of overselling – If you can’t do something, don’t tell your clients that you can.  Overselling is a quick way to ruin your reputation.
92. SEO is a race, not a sprint – Don’t get frustrated if you don’t see results right away.  SEO is something you’ve got to be in for the long haul.
93. SEO isn’t the “end all, be all” – There are tons of different ways to get traffic online.  If SEO isn’t the right fit for your company, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t dozens of other techniques you can use to build your web presence.
94. It’s easiest to secure backlinks by publishing great content – Building good content and getting people to share it is one of the easiest formulas out there for generating backlinks.
95. SEO is never “done”
96. Coffee is no substitute for good sleep – You can’t do good work if you’ve been up for three days in a row, so cut the crap and get a good night’s sleep.
97. There’s always something you can be doing better – Even SEO experts make continuing education part of their businesses, so make it a priority to always be looking for ways to improve.
98. Make monitoring industry updates a regular part of your routine – Every day, try to scan through SEO news site headlines (I use seo.alltop.com for this) so that you don’t miss out on major announcements.
99. Take regular digital sabbaticals – If it works for Bill Gates, it’ll probably work for you, so try to find at least a few days a year to regroup and tune out popular media.
100. You can’t outsmart Google – Google hires some of the top scientists, engineers and PhDs in the world every year.  The odds of some “sneaky trick” you’ve found on an SEO blog outsmarting this brain trust aren’t very good.

Conclusion

If there’s any one thing I’ve learned from my decade in the business, it’s that there’s no substitution for failure.  You’re going to make mistakes – and it’s going to suck – but if you can draw lessons from your experiences like I’ve done above, you’ll ultimately wind up more successful than if you blow off your mistakes.

With that in mind, what are some of your biggest mistakes and what lessons have you taken from these failures?

The author: Sujan Patel

Source: http://www.quicksprout.com/

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Does Multi-Touch Attribution & Conversion Matter?

When it comes to multi-touch attribution, I recently realized that most advertisers have pretty much the same questions:

1. How does one know whether it is worth digging into the conversion funnel?
2. What are common patterns from a multi-touch standpoint?
3. How can one actually leverage the conversion funnel?

Based on my conversations, here are some answers and insights.

Average Time Lag & Path Length From Impression/Click To Conversion

Before digging into cross-channel conversion funnels (or even campaign to campaign traffic) we need to know how many clicks on average are associated to a conversion as well the average amount of time from first click to conversion.

These two metrics are essential in evaluating what is the average buying cycle duration and how many impressions/clicks it takes for Web users to convert.

In Google Analytics, you can check out those two metrics in ‘Standard Reporting>Conversions> Multi-Channel Funnels’:

In Google AdWords, the time lag and path length can be found in ‘Tools & Analysis>Conversions>Search Funnels’:

What one should really care about is the percentage of conversions not occurring the same day as the impression or click. More specifically, the average time lag from impression/click to conversion can help marketers define was a relevant cookie window should be to optimize the entire buying cycle.

In the above example, 89% of all conversion occur within the same day of the first impression and roughly 94% of all conversions occur within the same week. A 7-day cookie window would cover 94% of all conversions and would seem adequate here.

As for the average path length, one should care about those conversions which do not occur after just one impression or click. This indicates whether it is worth spending more time and effort moving away from a traditional last-touch approach.

In the above example, the average path length is 1.31 clicks and – more specifically – 18.6% of all conversions occur after more than just one click. In other terms, you are not optimizing those 18.6% of conversions the right way if you only are looking at the last touch point.

Generally speaking, one should definitely look into what happened prior to the last touch point if the percentage of conversions occurring after more than one impression or click is greater than roughly 10%.

Now you should have a better idea of the average conversion cycle duration, as well as the percentage of conversions occurring after more than one impression/click. At this point, you should be able to tell whether or not digging into the conversion funnel is worth it.

Look Into The Top Conversion Paths

The next step is to understand what those touch points are, and what a common conversion path is.

In Google Analytics, you can click to ‘Standard Reporting>Conversions> Multi-Channel Funnels>Top Conversion Paths’, then you can pick a primary dimension such as ‘Basic Channel Grouping’:

In AdWords, those top transition paths show in ‘Tools & Analysis>Conversions>Search Funnels>Top Paths’, then you can select a primary dimension such as ‘Campaign Path’, Ad Group Path’, ‘Keyword Path’, or ‘Query Path’.

In both GA and AdWords, the bottom line is that you can now tell exactly what a typical transition path is from a channel to another or from a paid search keyword to another.

In the above example, the most common path is first ‘Paid Search’ click followed by a second and final ‘Paid Search’ click. This information emphasizes the need to investigate how different campaigns, ad groups and keywords are actually assisting others.

The second most common path here is a first ‘Paid Search’ click, then a final ‘Direct’ click; this means you might not be currently be allocating those 1,359 conversions back your paid search program, though that is where they originated from.

At that point, you should be able to tell what top transition paths are, and from a broad perspective what aspects of your marketing efforts should get more credit as well as those which should get less credit.

Attribute Conversions Back To All Touch Points

The next and final step is to effectively allocate conversions back to all touch points in order to determine the true CPA/ROAS by channel and/or by paid search campaign, ad group, or keyword.

This is definitely the tricky part mostly because neither AdWords nor Google Analytics provide that functionality (yet). So for the time being there is no automated way to do this – you’ll have to manually calculate the numbers. Based off the above example and assuming there are only 5 transition paths, you could run the numbers in Excel and apply custom percentages (by channel in this case).

In the example below, I’m applying three different models: last click attribution, even distribution, and 60% on the first click then even distribution on all other clicks. There are many different models out there but from my experience these three are widely used.

Then, you just need to reconcile these conversion numbers with the ad spend and you should be able to measure your true CPA/ROAS by channel.

A more sophisticated way to go about this is to leverage third-party tracking platforms which support multi-touchpoint attribution. There are a couple of them out there; however, I obviously am most familiar with my company’s solution. In this system, you can easily toggle between different revenue attribution models, and you can also build custom bidding strategies that take into account up to 5 touch points over the past couple of days, weeks, or even months. This type of technology has become essential when driving conversions through multiple online touch points.

The Author: Benjamin Vigneron
Source: http://SearchEngineLand.Com

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How To Write A Good Web Copy for Better Conversion ?

Anyone writing copy for web needs to understand how to write web copy. The reason is that copy writing for the web determines how and what of what your write actually gets read.  If you write to have your copy scanned, then you are writing good web copy!

Headlines

A page’s headline needs to interrupt and be relevant. It does not need to be descriptive, explain or introduce anything.  It just needs to stop people and get them to the Sub-Header.

Sub-Headers

A Sub-Header needs to engage a website visitor while expanding on the headline and its relevance to what the subject of the web content.

Image Captions

Following reading the headline and Sub-Header of a page, people will turn briefly to images and then read the image caption. This is why it is so important to write the best image captions possible, as this is what people are reading to determine if going further is going to be a waste of time or not.

Bullets

Write in bullet form;

• As much as possible.
• When appropriate.
• When a paragraph is going to be too large.
• When you want it read.

Paragraphs – short and start bold

Keep your paragraphs short.  I suggest 6 lines or less. It really helps to bold the first part of your paragraph (no more than 1/2 of it), and place the most “to the point” copy there.

Use your Colours

Use your website colours as the colours for your headline and Sub-Headers. You don’t have to use the exact colours, but doing this will help your copy stand out a little.

Calls to Action

Calls to Action (what you want people to click on to fill out a form, become a sale or go further in the sales or lead process) should not be copy unless it is also accompanied with button that repeats or expands on the text link.

Perfect Example

Just look at those image captions! This comes from www.eightbyeight.com , the website of an excellent eCommerce optimization company.  I have met Amy Africa who is a partner at Eight by Eight and knew I would find the best practices she and I both advocate.

Source : http://www.conversioniq.com

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Brainstorming Internet Strategy Checklist

This Internet Strategy checklist has been organized in the order of the most benefitial components to the  the least (generally, and in our experience).  There is A LOT behind this simple checklist, but just using it as an exercise to go through what a company could do for Internet Marketing is extremely valuable.

Here is a checklist to use when developing or reviewing your Internet Marketing Strategy. This was developed for the clients, and organizes the most common and potent Internet marketing components that make up a good Internet business strategy.

Later this can be transformed into a phased roadmap as well, as it has all the components that is in your typical roadmap as well, and makes sure something that needs to happen in a phase get covered while developing the roadmap / strategy.

• Website Optimization
  • Website Conversion Rate Optimization
  • Landing Pages
  • User Testing

• Data
• Listening
  • Feedback
  • Analytics
    • Web
    • Chat
    • Phone
    • Demographic
    • Social
    • CRM
• Email
• Chat
  • CRM Integration
• Leads
  • Life Cycle
  • Soft
  • Hard
  • Incoming Process
  • Accelerators
  • Stay in Touch Nurturing

• Search
  • SEO In-Site
  • Link Building
  • Paid
  • Local
  • Verticle
• Online Advertising
  • Banner
  • Contextual
  • Social
• Press Releases
• Events
• Publishing
  • Articles
  • Blog
• Video
• Social Media
  • Facebook
  • Book marking
  • Group Interactions (Forums)
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Niche Verticle.
  • Aggregation.
  • Answers (i.e. Yahoo! Answers).

• eCommerce
  • Drop Cart
  • Affiliate

Source :  eMarketing Matador

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Use Ad Extensions To Improve Your AdWords Campaign Performance

Most PPC managers know that ad extensions allow you to show additional information on your Google AdWords ads. But only a small minority of them actually use ad extensions to their full potential.

That’s a shame, because ad extensions can be powerful tools for a variety of effects, including increasing CTR, boosting conversion rate and decreasing CPA. What’s more, your cost per click isn’t changed by implementing them.

Using ad extensions, you can:

• Display a map with your business location(s)
• Show product images, titles and prices from your Google Merchant Center account
• Link to additional pages within your site
• List a click-to-call phone number
• Connect +1s from your Google Plus page to your ad (and vice-versa)
• Include your business’ seller ratings

Enabled ad extensions can be shown to searchers any time an ad with a high quality score displays in one of the top positions above the organic search results, and Google reports that using ad extensions can increase CTR by 30% on average. With results like that, it’s time to start including ad extensions in your SEM arsenal.

Read on and I’ll first take you through the basic processes of setting up and monitoring ad extensions. After that, I’ll give you a more detailed overview of each extension type. Finally, I’ll touch on implementation and describe an example of when you should use which extensions.

Setting Up and Monitoring Your Ad Extensions

Adding ad extensions to new campaigns

To add one or more ad extensions to a new campaign, start by clicking the “New campaign” button on the Campaigns tab of your AdWords dashboard as usual. On the “Select campaign settings” page that comes up, name your campaign and choose your settings.

Below the “Bidding and budget” section is where you’ll see the list of ad extensions:

Select the checkboxes there for any options you’d like to use. Google will prompt you to fill out the required information when you select an option. Note that any ad extensions you choose here, at the campaign level, will apply to all ad groups within that campaign.

As you can see in the image above, seller ratings are not represented in this list. That’s because all qualifying advertisers are automatically opted in for seller ratings, in addition to any other ad extensions you select. You can opt out of seller ratings if you like, but your average CTR is likely to increase by displaying them. Ratings come from the Google Product Search aggregated data for your business, and they won’t display if your average rating is under four out of five stars.

Enabling ad extensions for existing campaigns

Of course, you can also enable ad extensions for existing campaigns. To do that, click over to the “Ad extensions” tab, then click on the drop-down menu to select the type of extensions you’re looking for. (In the screenshot below, the option selected is “location extensions.”)

After that, click “New extension” and fill out the information as prompted.

Again, because you’re setting these extensions up at the campaign level, they will apply to all your ad groups within that campaign.

Monitoring performance

The Ad extensions tab pictured above also allows you to track the performance of all the ad extensions you’ve activated.

For more specific setup and usage tips, keep reading and I’ll take you through a more detailed look at ad extensions.

1. Location extensions: display a map with your business

Setup

There are three ways to set up your ads to display your business location(s). You can connect your Google Places account, manually add an address, or share a location ad extension from another AdWords campaign.

In the cases of the first two options, it’s quite straightforward to choose either one when creating a new campaign. But if you’re adding to an existing campaign, notice that there are two separate sub-headings. The “Addresses from Google Places” sub-heading option is expanded by default, so if you want to manually add an address, you’ll need to collapse the Google Places option and expand the “Manually entered Addresses” option.

You can manually enter up to 100,000 business locations, earning approximately 1,000 headaches in the process. To save on the cost of ibuprofen, you can use AdWords Editor or the AdWords API for large collections of addresses.

The third (and fastest) way to set up location ad extensions is to share them between campaigns. To choose an extension to share, simply select an existing extension after clicking the “New extension” button. But make sure you only do this when it’s relevant to do so--it would be easy to accidentally send potential customers to the wrong location if you aren’t careful.

Advanced features

• Location extensions can also include click-to-call functionality for mobile users. Just select that option when you set up the extension, provide the phone number and check your campaign’s Settings tab to make sure you’re displaying your ads to mobile users.
• One of the best features of location extensions is location insertion, which is similar in functionality to keyword insertion and works by dynamically updating your business’ location information (including phone number) to match the prospect’s query. For more information about using location insertion, review the detailed example of using location insertion here.
• You also have the option of setting up location extensions at the ad level, giving you more granular control over how they display. For more details, see these tips from Google.

2. Product extensions: show product images, titles and pricing

Setup

To use product extensions, you must have a Google Merchant Center account. After linking the two accounts, you will manage your products through the Google Merchant Center, while you continue to manage your ads through AdWords.

Adding product extensions to an AdWords campaign is quite simple once the accounts have been linked. When you create a new text ad that you’d like to add product information to, the default option is to allow all products in the account to be displayed. This is usually a good choice, as it will allow Google to serve up images and information about the most relevant products you carry when users search for those (or related) products.

Product listing ads

You may have heard of product listing ads, which are a separate ad format that sometimes shows up next to AdWords ads in the SERPs. A different beast altogether, product listing ads are dynamically generated and are only available to limited users at this time. For more information about product listing ads, check out Google’s Ad Innovations page about them.

3. Ad sitelinks: link to additional pages within your site

Setup

Following the basic instructions from the beginning of this post, setting up sitelinks is not a difficult process. Google will show up to six sitelinks, but it’s a good idea to fill out all ten slots in the setup process to allow for more relevant options depending on the search query.

Use

Remember that the basic functionality of sitelinks is that it gives users more options to click on. Therefore if there is only one specific landing page or action you’d like to direct people to, then sitelinks are probably not a good option. However, the larger footprint and variety of options afforded by sitelinks do create an attractive package, and the introduction of enhanced ad sitelinks make it even better.

Enhanced ad sitelinks

Announced recently on the AdWords blog, enhanced ad sitelinks are designed to flesh out your existing ad sitelinks with longer descriptions under each link.

These longer descriptions are pulled from other ads in the campaign, so that if your original sitelinks were set up as shown in the image above, and you have also set up these ads:

Then your ad with enhanced sitelinks might look like this:

For the time being, Google is automatically enabling enhanced sitelinks for some advertisers, when their campaigns already have sitelinks enabled and Google finds relevant content in their other ads.

4. Call extensions: list a click-to-call phone number

Setup and description

There are two ways to use call extensions in Google Adwords:

1. Put your actual business phone number on the ad; or
2. Enable Google forwarding numbers (US and UK only)

Putting your actual business number on the ad will allow it to display for users on mobile devices, where they can click on the number to call you directly (resulting in the same fee that a click on the ad headline would have).

Enabling forwarding numbers will not include your number, but instead a custom Google number set up to forward to your business number. This option will give you more reporting data (including for manually-dialed calls), and will allow your call extension to display not only for mobile users, but also for desktop users. Google forwarding numbers also allow you to set CPP (cost-per-phone call) bidding of $1 or more per call.

5. Social extensions: link +1s between your ads and Google Plus page

Setup

If your business has a verified Google Plus page, it’s very easy to link it to your AdWords campaign using the basic setup section from the beginning of this article.

Description

By default, Google serves up AdWords with a +1 button. Enabling the social extension simply links this +1 button to your business’ Google Plus page. This way, when users +1 the ad, it counts toward your Google Plus page, and when users +1 your Google Plus page, it counts toward your ad. These +1 clicks don’t count as an ad click, so they don’t cost you anything.

At this point, social extensions don’t directly influence your ads’ rankings. But if the social credence they lend to your ads results in higher click-through rates, that can increase their quality scores and indirectly boost your ads’ rankings. If your brand is already active on Google Plus, it’s not a bad idea to connect your Plus page with your AdWords campaigns.

6. Seller ratings: include your business ratings

Come on, stop skimming! I already told you: all qualifying advertisers are automatically opted in for seller ratings. Don’t worry, Google won’t show them if your business is rated under four stars.

Implementation

So, say you manage the AdWords campaign for a chain of bicycle stores in the Pacific Northwest. How do you know which ad extensions to use? You test. You create a campaign utilizing all applicable ad extensions. By the end of the testing period, you'll know which ad extension type has performed the best for your campaign. But be sure to monitor performance at the keyword and ad levels, too; you'll find that for some keywords, such as "bike stores Portland," location extensions will be great, while for "new mountain bike prices," better results might come with product extensions.

As always, perfecting your PPC strategy will be an iterative process. But in ad extensions, you have another powerful tool to increase your marketing’s effectiveness. And like I said, there’s no extra cost associated with trying them out. So give them a shot, or leave a comment if you’re already running them, and tell me how well they’re working for you.

By Zach Thompson, a partner and AdWords specialist at RYP Marketing, a Roanoke, VA based firm that focuses on ebusinesses.

Source : YouMoz | SEOmoz

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