Search Marketing InsiderPay Per Click, Social Media and SEO Strategies – An Internet Marketing Institute Publication

When you manage a large AdWords pay-per-click account with tens of thousands of keywords, you learn to appreciate anything that can save you time.  When you make a strategic decision, like to cut budget or work to improve CTR for better account quality scores, you want to do it quickly. Get in, get out, get on with your day.  Thankfully, AdWords has developed a lot of functionality to do just that – and many of its features revolve around slicing and dicing data, aka Filters.

I often use third party tools for campaign and bid management (and I won’t give away all the ingredients in my secret sauce), but here are a few of my favorite filters available to all advertisers through AdWords.

AdWords Editor (AWE) Advanced Search

AdWords Editor has been making our lives as pay-per-click marketers easier for years now, and one of my favorite tools is Advanced Search.  You can save searches that help you quickly drill down to campaign elements that you might want change, pause, increase/decrease bids, or use as a starting point for expansion. At the top of AdWords Editor next to the search box is a link to Advanced Search.

This is an example saved Advanced search looking for keywords with zero clicks.  Name it, save it for re-use, then you can select it as your View in AWE any time. You can use this view across tabs:  keywords, placements, ads, ad groups, etc. and across AdWords accounts.  Other Advanced Search views that I use are:

• Zero Conversions
• 1+ Clicks
• QS <=4
• GDN Campaigns
• CTR <1.0, Imp>500
• Avg Position>5
• Disapproved

You’re mostly only limited by your own creativity. Most common metrics are available as criteria and it’s fun to select multiple criteria to see what floats to the top (or in the case of poor performers, what sinks to the bottom.) Note: you can only save up to 8 custom advanced searches to re-use in AWE views, so choose the ones you use most often or can use as a base to fine tune with column sorts.

AdWords UI – Keyword Filters

You don’t need to be in AdWords Editor to use Filters to work your PPC magic.  In the Keywords tab in the AdWords web UI, you can create and save lots of different filters that can help optimize or improve an account.  Just go to the Keywords tab and open Filters.

Below are just a few of the many ways you can set up keyword filters. (Personally, I would never have all of these criteria in just one saved filter; this is just to show some possibilities for filters you might find helpful.)

_After your filters are set up and saved, you can adjust the date range and optimize from there.  Quick changes can be made right in the UI, or for more involved edits you can download selected items, make your changes in Excel, and then upload into AdWords Editor (or into your third party management tool).

Now that you’ve got your keyword filters set up and saved just the way you like them, you can go to the Ads tab and do the same thing.

AdWords UI – New Home Dashboard

Recently AdWords launched a new version of the Home dashboard that allows you to use Google-created Modules or customize your own Modules based on your Saved Filters. (Don’t worry – if you love the previous version of the dashboard you can still toggle between the old and new versions, at least for now.) For the example below, I created a saved filter for keywords with quality scores of 4 or lower. Then I can select that Saved Filter to display on my Home tab dashboard every time I log in.

Once you have custom modules set up, you can click “View Saved Filter” for each module from the Home tab, and go directly to the appropriate Campaign, Ad group, Keyword or Ad filter, and do what you need to do to get the job done in just a few clicks.  Pretty smart, pretty efficient.

While much of data analysis in pay-per-click marketing is science and statistics, there’s definitely an art to setting up and using filters for your AdWords account.  There’s also an art to how you name campaigns or ad groups so you can set up useful filters. Also, filters can be VERY account specific.  A reasonable filter for one advertiser might be ridiculous or just irrelevant for another. With experience, you’ll definitely get a feel for the filters that work on most campaigns and then can mold them for your account’s unique needs.

Spending a little time testing some filters out and playing around in Editor and the AdWords UI can save you tons of hours in the long run. Trust me. The less time I have to spend downloading CSVs and then manipulating columns in Excel, the better.

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Lisa is a data driven online marketing enthusiast and Senior Client Manager at Point It, one of the Pacific Northwest’s largest search marketing agencies. Lisa leads a team of account managers on a large global brand account.  Lisa has a deep background of online retail marketing, traditional advertising and market research experience, for large and small b2c and b2g growth companies.

An industry best practice for structuring a paid search campaign is the implementation of highly targeted and relevant ad groups. This is a part of the ‘before the click’ process that can easily be controlled and maintained. If this is not happening you have bigger issues than what the rest of this discussion is about. That being said, separated out into its own stop along the entire value stream, the paid search campaign is a relatively easy thing to manage and manage well. However, as we will see, the paid search campaign is in the middle of the value stream and can only sustain long lasting success if the upstream and downstream processes are completely aligned to serve the customer with the best user experience.

Upstream From the Paid Search Campaign

Before a paid search campaign can take form and become effective a search team needs to have certain basic information from the client who is further upstream in the process than the paid search team is. The following are key points about how to be most effective and what to avoid further upstream from paid search.

1. Goals and KeyPerformance Indicator’s (KPI’s) - To begin, clients should have a good idea as to why they are getting into the paid search game or how they’d like to grow their current paid search program. Clients should know the goals they want to achieve, their KPI’s, and their tolerance/risk for testing in order to learn. Paid search experts can help set expectations and guide clients in understanding what the potential may be for reaching certain goals, however, the initial goal setting should come from further upstream. Since both parties are working toward the same end results, ideally these are collaborative goals agreed upon by the expanded team before implementation or optimization happens.

2. Messaging Information- If the paid search program has already been implemented or is in the process of being developed, one of the most critical components of a paid search campaign is the text ad. And it’s just not the relevance of the text ad for Quality Score or how targeted it is, but more so in what the text ad messaging offers. Is there a generic call to action or is there some amazing discount or benefit that only your client can offer potential customers?

In some cases differentiated messaging can be found on a client website that can be worked into the ad creative copy. In many cases, on large e-commerce sites where there are hundreds of vendors and thousands of products, hunting and pecking for sales, discounts, and offers is not an efficient use of time. These offers, sales, and discounts should be made available to the paid search team in the form of a merchandising calendar so pro-active planning can occur.

3. Internal Communication- At times there are internal communication issues outside the paid search team that occur farther upstream that can have a significant negative impact on the success of paid search. Whether it’s an in-house paid search team or an agency there can be multiple layers of people and departments involved. If those parties farther upstream fail to communicate effectively, the lack of communication can trickle farther downstream and limit the effectiveness of the paid search team. This not only adds stress to the relationship between the paid search team and the departments farther upstream, but in effect, when the lack of communication and alignment reaches the paid search team and they are left to work with limited information this will have a negative impact on potential customers – the people you are trying to convert.

The impact of upstream goals, information or lack of information can vary but can mostly be managed to a certain level of success. If upstream processes are not fully aligned with everyone involved, the sustainability of long term growth may be at risk.

Downstream From the Paid Search Campaign

As part of the development, implementation, and continuous improvement of a paid search initiative, there are a couple of ‘post-click’ components that occur on the website that have an even greater significance on the success and growth of the account than those farther upstream in the process.

1. Does the Website Work/Are the Landing Pages Valid – This downstream process is the most critical in the mix because this one comes closest to customers you are trying to convert. First and foremost your website should work 100% of the time. Beyond that it should be user friendly providing the best experience possible for customers. Once customers have decided that your paid search ad matches closest with what they want to buy or it provides a solution to their questions, you are on the way to providing a high level of satisfaction for customers.

Not only should the website work and that its usability and navigation be at its prime, but the landing pages selected must be functioning and relevant. In reference to the large paid search program above, if you tag keywords and/or ad creatives with destination URLs it is critical to have open communication (from farther upstream) as to when those URLs change due to inventory levels or other website structure changes. If the landing page has been updated or the product no longer exists and there is not a redirect in place until the paid search URL can be updated, customers landing on error pages or some other random page is never a good thing. This not only impacts customers’ experiences, but also can have Quality Score implications.

2. Proper Implementation of Web Analytics Tracking & Tags – We all know paid search and all other online marketing channels are usually inaccurate within an acceptable range. That’s just the nature of this industry. For some reason website analytics tagging is the search industries bane of existence and inevitably problems occur when web analytics site tagging is not implemented correctly the first time. The other problem is when URL tagging parameters are not used correctly and used as a temporary work-around to fix a problem farther upstream instead of fixing the root cause of the problem. These types of downstream problems create additional challenges in reporting and decision making farther upstream in the process.

Regardless of upstream or downstream from paid search, the entire value stream should be considered as a total system.  When all of these processes are aligned there is a greater opportunity for success of the paid search account. The alignment of the entire value stream also builds trust between all those involved creating a more productive team for long term sustainability.

Let us know what you think — fee free to add your comments, ideas… below!

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Matt LeVeque is the Founder & President of SEM Science Consulting, LLC and Senior Member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ).

Google AdWords can have numerous benefits if planned, executed, and monitored properly. There are also pitfalls to be avoided. This article will cover important things to avoid as well as effective steps for implementing an effective AdWords campaign.

Step 1: Define attainable goals

A team seeking to maximize the use of AdWords will identify and articulate realistic goals, which might include:

1)    Increasing donation volume

2)    Recruiting more volunteers

3)    Raising brand awareness

Step 2: Appeal to the relevant geographic and/or demographic targets.

An effective campaign should speak to a defined market. For tracking purposes, duplicating or moving around keywords once “up and running” should be avoided. A feature called Ad Scheduler can be set up using either Accelerated or Standard Delivery (evenly delivered ads throughout the day).

Step 3: Develop tightly-themed Ad Groups

The more relevant the ad text, the higher the CTR (click through rate), the Quality Score and the Page Rank that will be achieved. As for Ad Text Optimization, place catchy calls to action and inter- capitalize your display URL.  For instance, instead of having www.marketingbydeepak.com show http://www.marketingbydeepak.com/.  In addition, rotate various ads and you can track individual performance.

Step 4: Research keywords

This requires serious consideration; an organization can benefit from using the Google Suggest Tool to find relevant keywords.  Trying to think like the target demographic may result in coming up with keywords from the User’s perspective.  Be sure to look at all match types – broad, phrase and exact.

Step 5: Landing Page Optimization.

Most people have shared the frustrating experience of clicking on an ad only to be led to page that has nothing to do with the product/service searched for.  There are numerous resources available on Landing Page Designs online.

The bottom line is that the marketer can have great goals, campaigns, ad groups and keywords; however, if these cannot be converted to close the sale, the effort has been fruitless.

AdWords Campaign Cautions and Pitfalls
Earlier, it was mentioned that there are pitfalls to be avoided. Chief among these is: Google AdWords cannot be done alone.  AdWords is only one aspect of Social Media, which is a marketing tactic.  Any business or organization seeking to leverage the social media tools, at a minimum, will establish a presence on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook and show up in organic search results in addition to running AdWords.

Statistics indicate that, when people do searches, 75% of the time they click on the organic content found within the search engine results page (SERP).  Only 25% click what they see on the sponsored links section.   Users tend to trust the organic content more because of the independent review.  An organization that shows up in both areas has a great deal in its favor!

Branding should not be underestimated.  An organization that is well-branded and enjoys good press is more likely to perform better than an up-and-comer.

Remember to use Keyword Research, the Google Suggestion Tool, and to brainstorm with your Team or others to generate novel ideas.  Even funny-sounding search terms can yield surprising results!

Campaigns that are up and running can benefit from the reporting features and Google Analytics to monitor and track campaign performance.  Every so often, adjust a campaign by eliminating low performers, refining keywords, and ads themselves.  Repeat this process often.

As with other aspects of your ad campaign, budget how much to spend on AdWords.  Calculate enough allowance for your industry.  Competitors may jump in and bid up the price for keywords.  Determine a realistic ROI. Team members should take the time to read your reports and work with AdWords as seriously as they would a direct mail campaign.

What are the challenges you face with your AdWords campaigns? Please add your comments below.

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Deepak Gupta is VP of Marketing for Help My Resume, a Florida-based non-profit and is the Principal of Marketing By Deepak Consulting Group. Prior to jumping into the inbound marketing world, Deepak worked in database marketing and analytics where he developed marketing initiatives for brands like the Auto Club, State Farm, UPS, Hooked On Phonics, Comcast, AT&T, World Wrestling Entertainment, ESPN, Nickelodeon and other related brands.

The countdown to Christmas is on and the holiday shopping season is now in full swing, with Cyber Monday just barely in the rear view mirror. The good news is that there is still a lot that can be done to take advantage of the increase in consumer spending this month, whether you started planning in July or are just now thinking about how to grow sales this holiday. Here are 5 tips and tricks that any Pay Per Click (PPC) advertiser should consider when maximizing AdWords for the holiday sales rush.

1.       Budget Wisely. For many online retailers, traffic and sales volume can go through the roof come holiday time. This is because more people are searching and more of those searchers have the intent to buy. Don’t let your ‘regular’ budgets limit your profits. If you are obtaining or exceeding your ROI goals, there is no reason to keep your campaign budgets capped! This is one of the easiest ways to increase your PPC profits this time of year.  Review your campaign budgets and ROI and where it makes financial sense increase those daily campaign budgets to levels that ensure your ads aren’t missing out on impressions.

 In AdWords, you can look to the metric called “Lost IS (budget)” (“IS” stands for “Impression Share”) to tell you how much traffic you might be missing out on. In the AdWords interface, edit the columns of data you are viewing and select this metric. If your “Lost IS (budget)” is 25%, then that means that you could be receiving 25% more impressions if your budgets were 25% higher.

2.       Plan Your Promotions, Have Ads at the Ready. Make the management of your holiday PPC efforts effortless – by having all of your promotions laid out for the holiday season, you can also ensure that you have PPC ads ready to support those promotions. By creating ads ahead of time and including the ads in your campaigns on “Paused” status before the promotion is live you allow time for the ads to be approved by editorial and limit the risk of any lack of visibility when your promotion goes live. I generally recommend adding new ads a week in advance just to be sure there aren’t any editorial issues. Then when it comes time to promote your sale or special offer all you have to do is switch your old ads off and flip your new ads on.

 3.       Know Your Competitor’s Deals. Holiday shoppers are a fickle bunch – always looking for the best deal. This is why it’s so critical to make sure your promotions are just as attractive as your competitors. Be sure to consider the total price of the transaction, including shipping. A comparable “30% off regular price” will not be as enticing if your standard shipping is $10 and your competitor is offering reduced or free shipping on top of the 30% off price tag. Monitor your competitor’s ads and websites and have the flexibility to adjust your promotions accordingly.

 4.       Leverage Sitelinks. Many retailers have a lot of different promotions, offers and sales taking place this time of year – and with only a very limited amount of space in the typical PPC ad, it can be difficult or impossible to make sure searchers are fully informed. The AdWords ad extension called “Sitelinks” can add up to 140 additional extra characters to your text ad space. Add up to ten Sitelinks per campaign that call out, for example, your Free Shipping offer, Clearance Sale, New Products, lowered prices on specific products in your inventory, or Gift Guides. AdWords will display up to four Sitelinks in an ad at a time. Sitelinks will not only help to make your promotions visible, but your ads themselves are often more visible and can generate high click-through-rates.

 In this example, Moonstruck Chocolates is using Sitelinks to merchandise a variety of holiday-related product offerings. A range of price-points are included in order to speak to a range of shopper’s budgets.

5.       Plan for Promotions After December 25^th. This is something that retailers often forget about – some of the biggest shopping days of the year are actually AFTER Christmas. This is driven by gifts that shoppers received such as gift cards, cash or products such as a Wii that will require the purchase of additional games and accessories. Post-Christmas shopping is also driven by deal-seekers heading out in droves to take advantage of all of the clearance sales that traditionally take place at this time. Be sure to promote your post-holiday sales in PPC; don’t just revert to your ‘regular’ ad messaging. Make your website’s Clearance or Sale section extra prominent, but be sure to keep tabs on inventory – if pickings are slim, then users can get frustrated and leave the site without making a purchase.

Even though the holiday shopping season is quickly counting down, PPC advertisers still have time to grow sales and profits. Make it a happy holiday for your PPC campaigns by implementing any or all of these five easy tips.

Let us know what is working or not for your holiday AdWords campaigns. Feel free to comment!

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Leisa Hall is an Account Director at Anvil Media, Inc. – a search engine marketing agency in Portland, Oregon. Leisa directs Search Engine Marketing strategy primarily for B2C clients ranging in size from start-up to Fortune 500.

When creating a pay per click campaign, marketers commonly focus on things like keywords, match types, cost per click bids, organizing the campaign into ad groups, target cost per acquisition, and other mechanics of PPC campaigns. But in concentrating on the setup and execution of their pay per click campaigns, too many marketers don’t spend enough time thinking about their PPC landing pages – some don’t even setup customized landing pages at all!

So here are the top landing page mistakes to avoid when creating pages for your pay per click campaigns:

1) Not having a landing page. I know I already mentioned this, but this is the single biggest mistake you can make. Many marketers who are first getting into PPC advertising think it’s adequate to drive traffic to their website. Get people to your home page, and they’ll know what to do, right?

Wrong. When people are typing a search into Google, Bing, or another search engine, they are looking for an immediate answer to a specific query. If they click on your ad, they’re expecting a question to the answer they asked – now. They’re not going to dig through your website to find what they’re looking for. Customized landing pages answer the question the searcher was asking quickly and directly.

2) Not having CUSTOMIZED landing pages. If you’re running a large pay per click campaign or multiple PPC campaigns, chances are you are covering a multitude of keywords and have numerous ads. If possible and appropriate, you should be setting up customized landing pages with different offers that are aligned with the ads and keywords used in individual ad groups and campaigns.

This can help improve your quality scores for Google AdWords, which, in turn, can help bring down your cost per click. By ensuring your landing page offer and wording are closely aligned with your ads, you should also improve your conversion rate.

3) Not having a conversion goal. Too many marketers do setup landing pages, but fail to setup a conversion goal. What is a conversion? Simply put, a conversion is when a visitor to your landing page takes the action you want them to take.

This could be downloading an ebook or white paper, signing up for a newsletter, registering for a webinar, and so on. If there isn’t an action you’re trying to get visitors to take, why are you paying to get them to your website? Tracking conversions lets you know how effective your PPC campaigns are. Make sure you define what your conversion is and setup conversion code on your landing pages to track when visitors complete your defined goal.

4) Not tracking return on investment. While establishing a dollar value for conversions can sometimes seem arbitrary, doing so can help you manage your PPC campaigns and determine whether or not they are cost effective. While the dollar value of some conversions might be easy to calculate (buying a product, registering for a paid webinar), others can be more difficult (signing up for a newsletter or downloading a free white paper).

Do your best to realistically calculate the value of your conversions and use this to compute ROI on pay per click campaigns.

5) Not testing, testing, testing. Another major mistake many online marketers make is failing to constantly test and improve the effectiveness of their PPC campaigns. There are many landing page optimization tools out there to help you do this.

If you’re not continually testing and optimizing your landing pages, you’re letting potential customers get away and leaving money on the table. Testing different offers, landing page designs, copy, and images can help you improve the conversion rate on your pay per click campaigns.

Everybody has been new to Internet marketing at some point, but that doesn’t mean you have to repeat the same mistakes as everyone else. Instead, learn from the common pay per click landing page mistakes explained here.

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Jason Mikula works as a freelance search engine marketing and social media marketing consultant.  Jason has experience working with pay per click, search engine optimization, and email and web marketing.

Online marketing today is not quite what it used to be. Just a couple of years ago, the combination of SEO with PPC seemed to be the final word in serious online marketing. With Social Media gaining ground in recent years, more and more channels and communities are accessible to users where they prefer to ‘hang out.’

Users are researching blogsphere & community websites for checking out reviews of products they want to buy, find solutions to their problems, or just share their views on subjects that would interest most marketers in reaching out to them. Most users feel that peer groups tend to offer a more unbiased and genuine reviews about products.

Facebook’s traffic alone is inching close to Google’s traffic and is growing at a much faster rate than Google’s traffic. Twitter’s traffic is in the vicinity of Yahoo’s & Bing’s traffic put together. Smart marketers need to put their content in front of these potential buyers, right where they hang out.

The increase of Social Media usage, as against traditional marketing channels like SEO & PPC, is also throwing up several uneasy questions –

• Is SEO losing its effectiveness, becoming obsolete or already dead?
• Will PPC become more expensive? Will it continue to serve its original purpose?
• Will companies divert part of their PPC budgets into SEO & Social Media Marketing?
• Is Social Media just a fad? Can Social Media really serve as a serious marketing vehicle? Should one have a defined and serious Social Media Marketing strategy?
• Will Social Media continue to grow at the same pace or is it reaching its saturation?
• What will happen if search engines like Google make more radical changes to their algorithms?
• Should one have a common or a complimentary marketing message across SEO, PPC & Social Media?
• How should SEO, PPC and SMM dovetail into your online marketing strategy? What role should each play? What kind of performance can one expect from each of these marketing vehicles?
• How does one decide how much budget one should allocate to each media?

Today’s marketers need to take a fresh look at their marketing strategies when they plan their media mix of SEO, PPC, Social Media and other vehicles to deliver their marketing message. Conventional promotion techniques and approaches need to be innovated to get powerful results and fight competition.

One can no longer think of SEO, PPC, and Social Media Marketing in isolation. You need to have a holistic approach in planning the media mix, keeping in mind the power as well as limitations of each media. The role of each media should be deployed in such a way that they fill gaps of the other. One needs to use each medium for what it is best suited to individually accomplish, given its distinct advantages. Ideally, SEO, PPC, and Social Media should together serve your common business goals.

Online Marketing Objectives

Before you can go about planning how each marketing medium should be used, it is important to first outline your specific short-term & long-term marketing objectives. Getting clarity on your marketing objectives is key to setting a roadmap for your resource deployment and budget allocation to SEO, PPC and Social Media. SEO usually works well to serve your long-term objectives, while PPC and Social Media Marketing can be used to achieve both short-term and long term marketing objectives.

For example, SEO can be deployed to steadily build website traffic for your main key phrases but may require considerable time and resources to get good results. However, SEO can achieve quicker results for your long-tail keywords with minimal efforts. It is also cost effective to promote ‘non-commercial’ product-relevant keywords, which may not boost instant sales on your website, but is good to get potential buyers interested in your product and may eventually convert into sales.

PPC is ideal for promoting special offers, seasonal sales, geo-targeting, new product launches, direct website sales, lead generation, website page content A|B split testing and getting traffic for your ‘head’ or competitive keyword phrases that result in conversions. Essentially, it is best to invest in PPC where time is of essence and the results can be commercially measurable.

Social media promotion can play an effective role in building customer relationships, interactivity, providing customer support services at reduced cost, get direct customer feedback on your products, your services and your website. It allows you to build communities, positively influence existing communities and steer a positive peer review of your products.  Social media also works well in affiliate development, engaging new marketing partners, hiring key people, channel development, brand image building, creating brand visibility, online reputation management, and lead the users to useful online resources, information and reference material on your website.

Of the three stages of the buying process –

a) research stage where the customer is researching on the possible products or solutions

b) when the buyer firms up his buying decision and

c) when he is ready to make the purchase

- SEO and Social media can work cheaper to serve the first two stages, while PPC can serve as a ‘go-getter’ to grab the buyer in the third stage.

In this multi-part article, I shall evaluate several of the aspects listed above. We will try to understand the unique advantages of SEO, PPC and Social Media Marketing and how each of these marketing vehicles can work in coordination to deliver maximum mileage for your marketing dollar. A well planned marketing strategy based on clearly laid out objectives not only enables you to measure the success of your campaign but also secures your investment for a long term and helps you remain ahead of the competition.

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Atul Gupta is the Co-Founder & CEO of RedAlkemi.com, a company specializing in Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing. Atul is a thought-leader in Online Marketing industry and has been working in this field since 1996. His company has helped over a thousand clients succeed in their online businesses. Atul is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and has published several articles about SEM industry.

Finding new customers is a critical objective for any business. No matter what kind of marketing a business uses to meet that objective, from business cards to web sites, success requires understanding a couple of marketing fundamentals for building an effective Search Marketing strategy.

Where are your customers?

Where do your customers look for information to help them make a purchase? If it’s a simple purchase, one with no big perceived risk, a phone book might be the only place a customer looks. If those are your customers, then your business needs a phone and a listed number. If you focus your marketing attention on giving your customers the best possible service by phone, you are on your way to successfully meeting their needs and winning their business.

For a more complex sale, there can be many touch points along the way from early consideration to final sale. Not only that, but each individual marketing medium can offer several different touch points during the course of a sale, with messaging tailored for different stages of the buying process, as well as the different people within the buying audience.

Do your customers read newspapers? Do they watch TV? Do they spend time on social networking sites, and which ones? In other words, where do they congregate and how can you be there with them?

The important thing to remember as a marketer is that you need to get the right message in front of the right person at the right time. To do that, you have to understand who your customers are, where they go for information, and what they do next.

How do they decide to buy?

Buyers commonly do research online to learn more about solutions, products and vendors, as well as find information on pricing, reviews from customers, instructional videos and more. Business-to-business purchases also routinely involve several people. You might think of them as categorized into three main types: doers, buyers, and bosses.

The “doers” are the people on the frontline, and they are often where the need for a purchase is first recognized. They are the people who will likely be working with your product or service on a regular basis, and as such their influence can be keenly felt at the beginning of a purchase cycle.

The “buyers” typically enter the purchase cycle a little later on. They have different needs than the “doers” who will be using the product. The buyer wants to know about pricing, guarantees, support, and the vendor’s credibility. In other words, their job is to mitigate the risk associated with a purchase and protect the company from making a costly error.

The third type of person that can be involved in a complex sale is the “boss”. The Boss can enter the picture at any stage, and they will look at a transaction from a different perspective again.  Their considerations might include stockholders, company directors, and longer term information that other company members don’t have access to. Combine all three types of people into a purchase decision and it’s easy to see how complex a complex sale can really be.

Search is a common denominator

With all the different variable behaviors that your customers may engage in, one thing that’s clear is that online search has become a mainstream source of information for everyone. Need a part number for a piece of machinery? Google it. Want to see what people are saying about a product? Look at Twitter. Do you want to see a product demonstration? Look it up on YouTube. Need to see pictures of a product in use? Search images on Bing. The list goes on and on.

The key point for marketing is that when customers are searching online, they’ve got to be able to find you there. Depending on the nature of your business and clientele, here are three basic steps to consider in building your online search strategy:

1. Optimize your company web site to be search engine friendly.
2. Start (and maintain) a company blog. Search engines will reward your site, and new and existing customers can find a good blog a valuable source of information that will help establish your company’s reputation as a leader.
3. If your company web site is not showing up in the search engines for important search terms that are relevant to your business, consider a paid search campaign to increase your online visibility.

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Karl Hourigan is a Digital Marketing Strategist with Mediative. Mediative is one of North America’s largest integrated digital marketing companies. Their results-oriented marketing network is supported by industry thought leaders and a data-driven platform.

Have you ever had the sinking feeling of checking your favorite search term one day to see if your site has climbed a spot or two, only to find a complete disaster has occurred? I think the reasons sites suddenly plummet within organic search results fit into three classifications—the “Oops,” the “Duh,” and the “Dang, Got Caught.”

Most mistakes can be completely avoided by paying more attention to two things: SEO technical best practices and the search engine “rules.” The search engines do a great job of providing most of the tools needed to resubmit an adversely affected site, sub-domain or directory level.

1. Typically the quickest fixes are as a result of “Oops” mistakes.
2. “Duh” mistakes can be a little more severe, and take additional time to fix both internally and in terms of regaining trust within the algorithms.
3.      “Dang, Got Caught” mistakes can take a long time to recover from — to the point where the domain should perhaps be written off as a business loss.

Oops And Duh

Accidents can happen with redesigning a site, and may have a negative effect on search engine results. For example, redirects may be improperly mapped, resulting in negative user and search engine experience, including a large increase in 404 error responses. Many developers like to employ a temporary redirect to an error page and serve a 302 to a 200. In English (LOL), this tells a search engine that the page is only temporarily moved, and then serves an error page which claims it is OK. I have seen Sitelinks (the extra links below a branded search result) lead to 404 pages for weeks and longer in some engines.

Other “Oops” and “Duh” mistakes include (among dozens) improper use of the robots.txt file and setting up long server downtimes without properly informing the search engines. A friend once told me that the robots.txt file is like a ninja sword, and thus must be handled very carefully. Long server downtime can cause the site to be removed from the index. If you have accidentally blocked your entire site or even some major directories from being indexed, this can be a relatively painless fix (measured in days to weeks) by resubmission within search-engine-provided toolsets such as Google Webmaster Tools. Without being set up and verified in these toolsets at Google and Bing, you take great risk in your ability to mitigate.

Dang, Got Caught

Unscrupulous SEO practitioners and high-risk-taking marketers are the most likely to be victim to the sometime severe backhand of the algorithms. There is not much to say in this area other than a number of clichés having to do with playing with fire. If you participate in tactics such as same color text as background or buying thousands of links at a time from unrelated domains, you will be caught. Large brands may be able to win their way back relatively quickly, but for others, it can take months or years of reinclusion requests. Search engine toolsets can help with this too. Rules, like laws, are open to interpretation. One last thing to always keep in mind is that search engine crawlers can’t see, but rather rely on what they can understand from the code as being presented on the page. If automated text readers can clearly understand your content, and it doesn’t differ from what is on the page, you are probably safe.

There are many free toolsets available on the Internet to see how search engines see your site, and the redirects and response codes they are given. Being prepared and knowing your site’s performance is the only way to keep yourself truly safe from disaster.

What are your experiences in seo mistakes and how have you overcome them? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Chris Boggs of Rosetta is a specialist in search engine optimization and paid search advertising. Chris joined Brulant in 2007 as the Manager of the SEO team, and Rosetta acquired Brulant in 2008.  He is a frequent contributor to Search Marketing Standard magazine.

Google makes it really easy to start running PPC campaigns on AdWords. Running a well-optimized campaign, however, is another story altogether. Without knowledge of the nuances of AdWords, a novice can end up losing a ton of money very quickly on their SEM campaigns.

Here are five things you can do immediately to your AdWords account to save you a lot of money in just a few minutes.

1. Don’t Heed Google’s “recommended settings”. Google wants to run your ads as broadly as possible. They want you to run on Google, Google’s search partners, Google Display Network, and on mobile phones. When you launch a campaign, you are opted-in to all these areas. While there is value to running on all of these different areas of the Google AdWords system, you don’t want to run them all from the same campaign – doing that usually results in getting you lots of over-priced clicks from lower-quality parts of the network (usually content and mobile) and not enough right-priced clicks on AdWords. My advice is to start by targeting Google only, or at most, Google and Search Partners. Google has comprehensive help resources that explain how to properly set your campaign settings.
2. Move away from broad match as quickly as possible. Google has four match-types – broad, broad modified, phrase, and exact. Broad match means that Google can (and often will) match your keyword to other words that are semantically similar – or that Google’s algorithm just thinks are related. For example, I have a client that bought the keyword “electronic signature” and got match on “sign language” and “e coli.” Go figure. The easiest way to avoid this sort of bad broad matching is to place all of your keywords on one of the other match types. Again, if you search Google’s help guide you’ll find detailed explanations of the various match types.
3. Add lots of negative keywords. Negative keywords are the opposite of a normal keyword. For example, if you added the negative keyword “complaint” if someone typed in “Nikon camera” and you purchased this word on broad match, your ad would show up, but if they typed in “Nikon camera complaint” you would not. The point here is to exclude words or phrases that indicate that a user does not have “purchase intent” for whatever you are selling. You can discover negative keywords by looking at your “search query” report in Google, or by just brainstorming words that are unlikely to result in conversions.
4. Set up tracking. You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Google offers very easy and useful conversion tracking – anyone with basic knowledge of HTML should be able to install this on your site. Tracking will help you determine which keywords, ad text, and landing pages work for you, and which you should either bid down or exclude. Don’t bid on keywords because intuition tells you they ‘should’ work or because the boss wants to show up #1 so he can brag to his friends. Bidding should be done scientifically – gather the data from the conversion tracking and adjust bids based on actual performance.
5. Check your geographic targeting. Do you sell your product or service across the entire world, or perhaps just the U.S., or perhaps just within a five mile radius of your office? Google will default you to the U.S. and Canada (if you are based in the U.S. at any rate) when your campaign begins. If you are a local business such as a law firm or a dentist, you are unlikely to be able to fulfill requests from clients across the continent. Similarly, if you primarily sell overseas, you don’t want your ads showing up in the U.S. Adjust your geographic settings to attract the right customers. Read the help guide to learn about all the different targeting options you have in AdWords.

I admit that I wrote the headline of this article as an attempt at “link bait” – i.e., to pique peoples’ interest and hopefully get some good links/tweets from the blogosphere – but the truth is that simple optimizations like those I described above can really save you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars based on the size of your AdWords account! The difference between success and failure on Google is often one of little tweaks here and there, so start tweaking today!

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David Rodnitzky is Founder of PPC Associates, a leading SEM agency in San Francisco. To learn more about full service AdWords management from PPC Associates, contact David at david@ppcassociates.com.

Google AdWords recently fully launched a reporting feature called Search Funnels. For advertisers that utilize AdWords Conversion Tracking, Search Funnels reports are now available to provide critical insights in to the search ‘funnel’ that searchers travel down before ultimately performing a conversion action. This is a huge win for marketers, who will now have more insight in to the attribution of their paid search campaigns.

The Issue of Attribution

Attribution is the measurement of the marketing touch-points which have influenced or resulted in an end action. Marketers can use this measure to then attribute value from that end action across touch points. To illustrate, a consumer might see a TV commercial for a product, be reminded of that product by an online banner ad, and then finally perform a search on Google clicking on an AdWords ad before buying the product that is being marketed. So should the last touch – the click on the AdWords ad – get all of the credit? No, in a perfect world some of that credit is also due to the TV commercial and banner ad. Unfortunately for marketers, attribution is famously difficult to accurately track.

Paid Search measurement comes with its own host of attribution dilemmas – users typically perform multiple searches in the process of researching and narrowing down to an end purchase. For example, Betty knows she wants a new washing machine – she searches “washing machine”. After researching based on those results, she narrows her search down to “front-loading washing machine”. Then after researching even further narrows it down to a “red Kenmore Elite front-loading washing machine” – Betty searches, finds the best price, and buys online (home delivery? Yes please.). Betty’s last click was on “red Kenmore Elite front-loading washing machine”. As in the first example, just because the last click immediately preceded the sale, it doesn’t mean that there’s no value in the previous searches Betty performed.

This is an important concept for AdWords advertisers because in many industries, the very general terms related to our industries (“washing machine”) are relatively expensive and we don’t see them convert well enough to justify the cost of bidding on them. But we’re not seeing the whole picture – if we’re generating awareness for our brand and products via those general terms, this can result in a sale via a longer-tail or branded query. With Search Funnels, we can now see this via the keyword funnel that the searcher traveled down before ultimately converting. And, AdWords factors both impressions and clicks in to Search Funnel reporting! Meaning, if Betty searched on “washing machine” and your ad showed, but Betty didn’t click on it, it would still appear in the Search Funnel report if she later clicked on your ad for “red Kenmore Elite front-loading washing machine” and made a purchase. Such information can help us to lend more value to terms that would have otherwise gone un-credited, allowing us to justify spending on that visibility because we know it is driving sales.

The Basics of Search Funnel Reporting

Search Funnels can be found in your AdWords account if you are currently using AdWords Conversion Tracking. In the Reporting & Tools tab, navigate to Conversions and then Search Funnels.

The new Search Funnels reporting interface consists of seven reports including Assisted Conversions, First and Last Click Analysis, Time Lag, and Path Length. The Assisted Conversions report is one report which shows the keyword funnel, but also allows segmentation by campaign or ad group

For companies with stronger brands, note the potential impact for your branded keyword campaigns versus non-branded in the Assisted Conversion report– frequently the last search is on a branded term, which is why ROI on branded typically looks so phenomenal. This, as you’ll see, can often mean that a user knows about your brand because they found out it via a more general non-branded search first.

Path Length and Time Lag provide insights in to how many searches and how long it takes from first search to ultimately drive a conversion. One way to leverage the Time Lag information would be to understand the cycle of budgets, spend and sales. For example, if you double your spend in October to drive more sales, and know that there is typically a 30 day lag in conversion, you would know not to start judging the merits of that increased spend on day 2 of the campaign, but instead waiting until the time lag has closed.

For any AdWords advertiser, Search Funnels can become a new integral element in your campaign performance reporting. Start sifting through the data now to become comfortable with the meaning it has for your business. Then use it all you can! By applying learnings from Search Funnels, we can begin to close the gap on the challenge that is attribution and even increase the success of our AdWords campaigns along the way.

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Leisa Hall is an Account Director at Anvil Media, Inc., a search engine marketing agency located in sunny Portland, Oregon. Leisa directs paid media strategy for the agency and works with primarily B2C/ecommerce clients ranging in size from start-up to Fortune 500.