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

In the world of SEM B2B lead generation, one word stands out above all others: communication.  While this might seem cliché, effective communication between lead qualification teams and the person (or persons) in charge of SEM is critical to driving sales.

Through CRM integration, click and call data can be leveraged as parts of a tight feedback loop – telling lead qualification what their leads care about and SEMs who to target.  This cannot happen if the two groups are not speaking to one another.

The first step in all of this is capturing pertinent information.  This can be done through a variety of ways – customized URL parameters or even direct integration into AdWords (eg: SFDC’s AdWords  App).  SEM’s can select pertinent campaign information and pass it to lead qualification as additional fields in a lead’s profile.  This valuable information can be captured passively (no additional forms) and reveal important information about the lead.

 This could include:

-          Keyword

-          Query

-          Campaign

-          Adgroup

-          Creative info (ID or theme)

Typically, these values are used by SEMs to measure performance and optimize bids but, when used by lead teams during the qualification process, they can reveal useful insights into users which can then be translated into actionable information. 

The use of a specific query can help measure a user’s sophistication and, most importantly, intent. (eg: “CRM best practice” vs. “CRM reviews”).    A good lead qualification rep can use this data to change the tone of the conversation and adjust their approach to the lead.  In addition, this can help a lead qualification rep pick out the best leads and get after them quickly.

 If lead qualification is not aware of this and not instructed to use this data, all leads will be treated the same and, in all likelihood, the program will fail.

Similarly, knowing what message drove the user is valuable to the lead qualification team’s follow-up process.  Ideally, the product you are trying to sell has many benefits.  Ad testing should revolve around the product’s different value propositions; specifically, how these values compare to your competitors.

As is always the case with SEM, your message will run alongside your competitors.  Strong, direct, competitive messaging can open doors for your lead qualification team. Sharing space with competitors that are both up and down market can be very challenging (especially for broader, head terms). 

If, for example, a cheap alternative pushes price as a differentiator (and you cannot compete), embrace their message and tell users there is more to this software than price.  Shutting out people looking for a low price alternative will save you on clicks and save your lead qualification team valuable time!

Messaging becomes increasingly important as leads turn into full-fledged opportunities.  Certain messages might have tremendous appeal at the lead level but yield no sales.  This may work for some companies willing to gamble; however, SEM is better suited to drive users that are already in the consideration phase.  User searches are loaded with intent and your campaigns should capitalize on this. 

The impact of a new ad message should be measured each step of the way.  Lead qualification teams should relay recurring themes of conversations and, feedback on your current positioning, along with emerging trends in the user base.  As users look for different things, your message should evolve to fill their needs.

Ultimately, communication breakdowns between sales and marketing are an old problem.  However, with more lead qualification teams falling under the umbrella of marketing, having conversations around lead quality and messaging should be standard to your lead generation program.  Reps should be shown how to interpret the keyword and creative info attached to a lead in the same way they review the content used to drive that lead. 

While the quality of the content offered (demo or whitepaper) can make or break your reps the first time they connect with a lead, ad messaging (the key concept of which should be expanded on your landing page) will dictate whether a user becomes a lead in the first place.  Closing the loop and using lead info to refine your message will lead to higher quality leads, better conversations and, undoubtedly, more sales.

Sean Marshall has over four years of online marketing experience – specializing in SEM since 2008. In this time, has worked with leading B2B and B2C clients to maximize ROI on their SEM campaigns (ExactTarget, Microsoft Store, Dickies, Mass Mutual and many more). Prior to working in SEM, Sean was a Program Manager at Tippit (now Focus.com), driving high quality leads for leading VoIP and IT security companies including Ironport, Nortel, and Avaya. Sean is a proud California Golden Bear (UC Berkeley) and avid sports fan.

Before targeting a new keyword vertical, it’s a good idea to evaluate the competitiveness of the market. This will give you a sense of how difficult it will be to rank for that term in organic search, and/or how costly it will be to bid on that term in your PPC campaigns.

This is done by analyzing keyword competition. By estimating how much time and effort it may take to achieve top rankings for particular keywords or search terms, search marketers can better gauge where to spend their time. So how do you judge keyword competition? What are the factors involved in competitive keyword analysis?

Here are five tips on evaluating keyword competition to get you started.

1. Check the age of competitive domains

One indication of how difficult it might be to rank highly for a keyword phrase is the age of the domains of sites that are already ranking at the top of the SERPs. WHOIS is a tool that allows you to look up domain registration info, so you can see how long the top 5 or 10 sites that rank for your chosen keyword have been around. Older domains tend to have a much longer tail of inbound links, and it can be difficult to compete with trusted domains that have been around for many years.

2. Use Google search operators

The search operators “allintitle” and “inanchor” can provide a good indication of how many pages are already being optimized for a particular search query. Google allintitle:”keyword” to find pages with the keyword in the title tag and inanchor:”keyword” to find incoming links that use the keyword in the anchor text. The more pages these searches return, the more competitive the keyword.

3. Check the top results for home pages

Are the results in the top 10 mostly home pages or deeper pages? For example, for a keyword like “running shoes” you might see mostly home pages on the first SERP (such as Nike’s and Reebok’s home pages), whereas for a keyword like “how to write a wedding toast” you might see deeper pages, forum threads, and blog posts. If the top results are mostly home pages, you’re probably looking at a very competitive keyword.

4. Run it through a keyword suggestion tool

Do a search on your keyword in a tool like WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool.

In general, the more keyword suggestions, variations, and related results the tool returns, the more competitive the keyword. The relative frequency, monthly search volume and competition columns in our tool provide further signals of the keyword’s competition (the latter two are only available in the paid version of the tool).

5. Gauge advertising interest

By looking at the sponsored ads for a given keyword, you can get a sense of the competition. If the advertising space is full on the first page of the SERPs and extends past the first page, and if the ads aren’t based on broad match (in other words, the ads are linked to targeted domains, not general ones like Target and Amazon), this is a strong indication of a competitive keyword.

These are some tips to give you an idea of where you stand when it comes to tackling a new keyword space. There are also plenty of tools devoted specifically to keyword research and analysis, some free and some paid. Competitive tools can make a nice complement to straight-up keyword suggestion tools. Give them a shot!

About the Author
Elisa Gabbert is the Content Development Manager at WordStream Inc., a provider of PPC management software and services as well as a new Keyword Research Suite. Elisa is a frequent contributor to the WordStream Internet Marketing Blog and you can follow he

If you have a local business, you surely have checked yourself out on Google, Yahoo & Bing, right? That means you have entered your company name (brand), your keywords and checked out how your competition is doing (if not, do it now).

When you register your website and business listings information on the website on Google for example, make sure you follow the visual local business guide that they provide.

This article is more about how to drive quality local traffic to your site rather than the administration of it. However, it should be clear that if you have not set up a website and organized your listings, the traffic will go to waste, so get your local search ranking steps done first.

From the web traffic generation solutions below, the best traffic is the visitors that lead to a conversion of some sort – a phone call, requesting a special report you have, watching a video with a call to action at the end, or asking more question via your contact form. You should always pursue this type of traffic. For example, 1,000 followers in a month on Twitter mean nothing by itself.

For this list – you can do some of these every week, only spending a couple of hours time. You can get some help too. (The list below is not ordered in priority).

#1 Press release

You should consider this when you have something to say. And, forget the high-priced press release sources. Use webwire.com for less than 20 bucks to start. (However, price is always an aspect to consider. Everything on the cheap, all the time – is not necessarily good either).

#2 Blog

Get a blog set up. If you cannot do it on your site, try for free on wordpress.com. Yes, you must have a blog, even if it’s only once a week post. Make sure it’s easy to share across social networks.

#3 Podcasting

Like to talk, and not big on writing? Try podcasting and push out to podcast directories. And, don’t forget iTunes.com. It’s easier than you think.

#4 Craigslist

Local ads, posts and classifieds can be good source of targeted traffic for you.

#5 Bookmarking

All content should be bookmarked, try socialmarker.com and Onlywire.com. This is easy to outsource to places like elance.com and odesk.com also.

#6 Guest Blogging

Begin with watching / researching your space. Find out who the top 20 bloggers are, add valuable comments. Search for “guest blogging” + your keywords. Don’t spam them. Try to help.

#7 Directories

Local directories will be very useful both for traffic and relevancy. Outside of the Internet yellow pages (Yellowpages, Superpages, Insiderpages, etc) – you can find them by typing your marketplace keywords into Google, combined with city or region. (Consider signing up for the free local webinar below to get them all). Make sure you get reviews for your local business. And, don’t forget to use getlisted.org to check your business listings.

#8 RSS

Submit to RSS directories. Look for directories in Google. Anything you publish, from your blog and across RSS-enabled platforms should be submitted.

#9 Document shares

Make sure you brand (add links and contact information) to your PDFs and Powerpoint slides. Then, upload them to Scribd and Slideshare

#10 Twitter

Twitter is debated on return from efforts at times. Can you get clients and get traffic from Twitter? You may see limited traffic or engagement at first, but it’s a network you should build out. Every market and social media strategy is different, but it will pay off over time. Go sign up now, and use Twitter search functions to see what your competition and market is up to.

#11 LinkedIn

LinkedIn is another ‘default’ social media network. Your company should be listed here. And join groups that are related to your marketplace. When you have content to share, do it within those groups. Great for events as well, and they are professionals just like you.

#12 Videos

Start with YouTube. Make a short video series of “thing you should know about X” (X is your market, profession or product). Make sure to add an attention-grabbing, keyword-focused title. Add your website address first in the description. To expand your videos across other networks, use Tubemogul to distribute. They also have paid option. Don’t make these videos too long (1-3 minutes), and provide good, useful information. Don’t try to sell too hard here. Consider buying a video channel that already receives traffic, and place your website address at the top.

#13 Facebook

Make to sign up with Facebook places and configure it for your local business. But don’t stop there.  Use Facebook to set up a profile and brand (fan) pages too. Consider Facebook local ad targeting and test traffic between your actual website and Facebook pages. And find out how big mobile is in your market, and make your website and pages mobile friendly.

So – as you’ve learned, it will take some work to get your network and online presence handled. However, it’s not hard. It just takes some dedicated time to complete. But, you must feed your baby every week, and it will grow. Final Tips: use Google.com/alerts to track activity for your marketplace, and check out cool 5-dollar job fiverr.com for simple tasks to complete.

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Jon Rognerud is an online marketing expert and published author with focus on helping small business entrepreneurs to grow and getting found online. This includes business consulting and planning for web success using PPC, SEO, Social Media and online/offline marketing tactics. Register for a free local webinar to learn more.

Everyone loves guarantees. Most companies are able to provide guarantees for their customers in the sense that, if it doesn’t work, they’ll replace it at no additional charge to the consumer.

This is true for new cars, flat-screen TVs, even major kitchen appliances. Guarantees give the consumer faith in the product. They know that the chances of their new computer not working are slim, but they have the reassurance that it can be fixed or replaced if something goes awry. But notice how all these guarantees are associated with a tangible product?

SEO is a Service

Yes, SEO can be seen as a product, but not in the same way a new pair of jeans is a product. SEO falls more into the services category. And the bottom line is that some services can never be fully guaranteed.

An SEO expert, just like an airline or hair dresser, is going to do the best they can for their clients. But there is no guarantee that your website is going to see the exact results you were hoping for, just like there is no guarantee your haircut won’t be a little bit shorter than you were expecting or bad weather won’t cancel your flight.

No One Can Force Google to Change Your Ranking

A good SEO provider is going to do everything in their power to improve your website, but they can’t force Google or Bing to change your site rank. They also can’t control what your competitors are doing or have done with their own SEO efforts.

There is a lot of competition for the top spots on a search results page and if your company is late to the SEO game there are a lot of factors working against your success. An SEO expert is going to do everything they can to best position your site to take on these external factors, but in the end they have no control over the search engines’ algorithms.

SEO Takes Time

When SEO is done correctly, a site should see an increase in traffic and related bump up in the search engines. But this is only going to happen over time. Any SEO company that guarantees your site will rank on the first page for your selected keywords in a month is feeding you a line.

Don’t fall for it. No company can guarantee exactly where your page will rank after X amount of time. Sites that work in a niche industry with little competition may rank extremely well very quickly, because they are the only ones trying to do so. Sites that operate in a larger market and are going after competitive keywords may have a much longer road ahead of them before they get the results they want.

Google itself stated that, when it comes to guarantees “No one can make that promise.”

Beware of Black Hats

Companies that tote SEO guarantees are often using black hat SEO techniques to artificially boost their clients’ sites. That site might rank extremely well for a few months, simply because it is being propped up by 10,000 irrelevant links. But search engine algorithms are designed to catch and penalize these sites. Not only does the site lose its position, it can be removed from the search engine entirely. The short-term success of black hat SEO can easily be spun to look like a fulfilled guarantee, but when that site is no longer a client of that SEO company, it’s not unexpected to see those links (and ranking) disappear, even if they did escape the search engines.

Some black hat SEO companies will guarantee their work by getting a site to rank first for a very obscure, long-tail keyword that no one is really searching for. But your site is ranked number one! Guarantee fulfilled.

It is the actions of these black hat SEO firms that have given the rest of the industry a bad reputation. Website owners get repeatedly burned by companies that are supposed to be helping them. This “once bit, twice shy” mentality affects their opinion of the industry as a whole. Good, white hat SEO professionals have to work that much harder to convince their clients that they really are doing their best for the site.

Beware False Promises by SEO Companies

The bottom line is that SEO guarantees don’t really exist, regardless of what the SEO company promises. While it may be frustrating to not have that assurance, website owners should now that a white hat SEO expert is going to help their site in the long run. You can expect good things to come when your SEO is handled by someone who knows that they are doing and does it in the search engine approved way. But no company can guarantee you’ll see specific results.

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Nick Stamoulis is the President and Founder of Brick Marketing a Boston SEO services firm and Internet marketing firm. With over 12 years of industry experience, Nick Stamoulis shares his knowledge by posting daily updates to his blog, the Search Engine Optimization Journal (or SEO Journal) and publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter that goes out to over 126,000 opt-in subscribers.

Whether I’m helping the first time PPC user or consulting an established advertiser, I often field questions about when it is appropriate to start a new campaign vs. starting a new ad group. I follow two main rules.

Rule #1: Begin with the end in mind. Ask yourself what is the objective of this particular effort? Are you trying to test different ad copy, a new batch of keywords, performance on different days of the week? Once you know the objective of your effort, move to the second rule.

Rule #2: K.I.S.S. The more complexity in your account, the harder it will be to manage. Every campaign, every ad group and every keyword has a cost. Not only the actual cost-per-click (CPC) but a cost in time and effort to create, manage, test & optimize. If in doubt or indifferent, choose the simplest answer.

To illustrate the two rules in action, consider these specific examples:

Situation 1: You have a successful campaign running across the United States, but feel that response is low on the West Coast. You would like to run different ad copy in California, Oregon and Washington.

Answer: New Campaign. Geo-targeting is a campaign-level setting. Create a new campaign targeted to just CA, OR & WA and copy paste the ad group(s) from the successful national campaign (use AdWords Editor and this is quick and easy). Then change the ad copy in the appropriate ad groups to begin testing your hypothesis that different ad copy will resonate better to West Coast customers. Also, don’t forget to change the settings on your national campaign to exclude CA, OR & WA.

Situation 2: You sell widgets and a newly released book by a prominent author advocates using widgets to stay healthy. You believe that people interested in this new book would be good prospects.

Answer: New Ad Group. This follows Rule #2. While we could accomplish the same goal with a new campaign, I recommend keeping things simple. A new ad group will allow you to advertise on keywords related to the new book, write highly relevant ad copy and direct prospects to a landing page that ties the book to your widgets.

Situation 3: You already have separate campaigns for Search and Display (congratulations) but you would like to test the performance of Google search against the performance of search partners to see which performs better.

Answer: Sorry, Google won’t let you do that. While you can turn off search partners in your current search-only campaign to see performance on just Google search, you can’t run ads just on search partners. I suspect this is to mask the poor performance of some search partners, but this is just one option you don’t have in AdWords.

As you can see, each situation needs to be judged individually, but most situations where you need a new campaign will involve campaign-level settings such as:

• Geo-targeting
• Different languages
• Networks (search, search partners & display)
• Devices (mobile, desktops, iPad)
• Day of week
• Time of day

Good luck with your new campaigns and/or ad groups and remember the two rules: Begin with the end in mind & K.I.S.S.

Last fall I made the big career move from in-house to agency, and last week I attended my first search conference, SEMpdx’s SearchFest, since crossing over to the other side.  Even if the subject matter is the same, the perspective is very different.  So, during the day’s sessions, I found myself thinking about how I might have done things differently at my last company.

I won’t lie – when I joined Anvil Media last fall, after a long tenure as an in-house online marketing manager, I was burnt out on working on the same website for four years, and frustrated that, after so much hard work, we hadn’t conquered the online world.

In particular, Marshall Simmonds and Dustin Woodward’s session, Implementing Your Search Marketing Strategy, gave me a lot of food for thought and helped me flesh out my top 5 things, if given the chance, I would have done differently:

1. Quit trying to reconcile data. We always had three sets of numbers: in-house tracking, Analytics and engine (AdWords, adCenter, affiliate program) data.  When I arrived, they were way off, and over time, they got a lot closer.  But I also spent an inordinate amount of time figuring out why they were off, and almost as much explaining to management how each number could be part right and part wrong.  Talking about implementing solid Analytics, Marshall referred to Omniture over-reporting, Webtrends under-reporting, and Analytics splitting the difference, and I realized: most of my clients now have conflicting numbers, depending on multiple reporting mechanisms and fine-tuning their Analytics over time.  Instead of trying to massage all those numbers to match up, pick the ones you trust, stick to them, and make them the ones that go in the reports.
2. Institute unified reporting. Along similar lines, different people in my organization requested different numbers.   Some were curious about traffic, some product performance, and some campaign metrics.  So, in an effort to give each exactly what he/she needed, and not overwhelm anyone with too much search engine geekery, I found myself providing one set of regular reports to the Director of Marketing, other one-off reports to the General Manager, and so on.  What would have saved me time, and more importantly, provided a much clearer picture of our online presence, would be to “present digestible, simplified, unified metrics across the organization.”
3. Don’t be afraid to engage an agency. Dustin Woodward’s presentation focused on the differing tactics, ammunition and roadblocks specific to each size of small business – different sized teams and budgets dictate different approaches to online marketing.  It struck me that almost every tier, from the one-man show to the well-funded, established business, included some kind of outside involvement.  My former company was never big enough to build a team under me to distribute the load of SEO, SEM, email, site content, and so on, but I’ll admit I bristled initially at the suggestion of bringing on an agency.  Engaging an agency, whether it’s shoestring help getting AdWords up & running, a one-time audit of existing efforts, or fully outsourced PPC management, allows you to leverage an entire team of search experts and frees you up to focus on the big picture needs of your business.
4. Avoid design by committee. As Woodward moved to bigger businesses with healthier budgets, he spoke of “paralysis by analysis” and the danger of “design by committee.”  Once you have the luxury of taking time to evaluate your website, suddenly everybody wants to be part of the redesign!   We went through usability testing, assembled an interdepartmental committee, had all sorts of executive discussions, and ended up with a new website that, well, looked and acted like it was designed in a conference room, far from the developers or marketers most qualified to drive the process!  Soliciting and incorporating input from around the company is extremely important, but you also need to make sure you don’t end up with too many cooks in the kitchen.
5. Pay closer attention to specific competitor tactics. My former company was in an extremely competitive space, so I spent a lot of time keeping an eye on the other guys – I knew who had a great website, who was spending tons on AdWords, and who had what reputation among our customers.  But, it was another SearchFest session, John Andrews and Todd Malicoat’s on Competitive Intelligence that got me thinking on a whole other level.  Andrews dug deep into ways to build competitive intelligence – analyzing habits on Twitter, chasing down AdSense placements, poring over source code.   SEM is very much a game of “keeping up with the Joneses,” where fortunately, the Joneses leave all sorts of clues.  Putting on my BizDev hat, I focused most of my competitive intelligence at a strategic level.  But, I would have been better off leaving on that schwaggy Google hat I got at the last search conference and analyzing our competitors on a more tactical level in order to “emulate their successes and exploit their weaknesses.”

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Andy Lohr joined Anvil Media as an Account Executive in November 2010, bringing with him almost a decade of in-house SEM, SEO and Web content experience.  Andy began his career in search at LookSmart.com, where he helped build one of the 1st generation Web directories and one of the first paid search inclusion programs.  He is thrilled to be a part of the Anvil Media team, and the opportunity to stay on the cutting edge of online marketing and to help great companies like gDiapers, Icebreaker, and Moonstruck.

It is very easy to get caught up in the day to day, you start your week off Monday morning with your coffee in hand and you even get into the office a little earlier than expected, then all of a sudden it is Friday afternoon and you haven’t done any new keyword research for your PPC campaigns. Is this an ideal scenario? No. Is this a realistic scenario? Yes. Is this hurting the performance of your SEM campaigns? Most likely!

When it comes to your SEM campaigns there are several 101-type action items you need to perform every single day of the week to ensure killer results. Unless you’re a dedicated PPC manager, there are probably some to-do’s that slip with your PPC campaigns like negative keyword research and keyword expansion. Here are some tips to help *semi-automate (*”semi” because a little bit of brain work is still required) and streamline those critical PPC tasks, making it easier to stay on top of your to-do list while improving your campaign’s performance.

1. Negative Keyword Research using the Search Query Report

Don’t spend your money on keywords that are not relevant to your business, not only are you wasting money but you may be hurting your brand image by having your ad displayed on unwanted search queries. Look to your Search Query Report to find the keywords visitors used that lead to a click-through on your ad. Now that AdWords has this report directly tied into the interface you can add negative keywords to your campaigns easier than ever. AdCenter also has a version of this report called the Search Query Performance. Since the AdCenter report can only be accessed through the reporting center and not the interface, schedule the report to be emailed to you once a week to make it hassle-free. It is important this task be executed on a weekly basis, if you left this as a monthly action item you could be losing hundreds of dollars.

2. Keyword Expansion using the Search Query Report (again!)

Not only is the Search Query Report helpful for negative keyword research, but the insights you gain can be invaluable for keyword expansion. If certain keywords start reoccurring in the report that are relevant to your business, let the testing begin! Why not build out new ad groups and start testing new keywords. This is an opportunity to learn about new trends and jargon your target audience is using and start capitalizing on them. Within a week you can determine if the expansion is successful and choose to build it out further or pause the expansion if it isn’t generating conversions.

If you start seeing several opportunities for testing, create a testing schedule and implement a few expansion opportunities at a time, budget allowing. Managing this on a weekly (if not daily) basis is a great way to gain ground over your competitors, be the first one to target new industry trends. Sometimes the physical task of building out the new ad groups for testing can monopolize your time, but Google has updated existing tools and released new ones to help you with keyword expansion.

3. Semi-Automated Keyword Expansion with the Opportunities Tab

There are two additional tools in AdWords, besides the Search Query Report, that will help you with keyword expansion and ad group creation.  The first is the Opportunities tab in the AdWords interface. In this tab you will find a list of bid and keyword suggestions based on three different goals: increase traffic, balance cost and traffic, and maintain or decrease cost. Upon your review of the suggestions you can choose to directly upload the keywords or bid changes to your ad groups. In the past a lot of these suggestions have been irrelevant to my account and it was more work to comb though the suggestions then to do the research on my own.

However, Google has added a rating system into the tool, so you can tell AdWords if the suggested term is irrelevant to the specific ad group or to your entire account.  If you identify a keyword as irrelevant, Google will learn this and not recommend the term in the future, which makes the tool more helpful and allows you to concentrate on only targeted ideas.  By using the Opportunities tab to identify new keywords to test, your job may not be automated, but Google is certainly putting the information and recommendations right at your fingertips.

4. Using the Contextual Targeting Tool to Streamline Keyword Expansion

The second tool, now available in all AdWords accounts, is the Contextual Targeting Tool. While the tool may be meant to help you create granular ad groups for the Display Network, who’s to say you can’t use it for the same purpose on the Search Network. If you haven’t already played around with this tool, you are going to love it! You can find this user-friendly tool under the Reporting and Tools tab in AdWords and all you have to do is type in your keyword suggestion(s) you are looking to target.

Next, the tool will automatically group similar terms into themed ad groups. You can choose to expand the ad group, making it more granular, by clicking on the “Expand” button to the right of the suggested ad group, shown in the below screenshot. The tool even incorporates max CPC recommendations for Search and Display and allows you to export in AdWords Editor format. Having tightly themed ad groups will allow you to do a better job of including your keywords in your ad text, in efforts to increase your CTR and improve quality score. The Contextual Targeting tool helps *semi-automate the process of grouping keywords into ad groups and significantly streamlines your management time.

AdWords is providing you with the tools to efficiently manage your SEM campaigns, the Search Query Report, the Opportunities tab and the Contextual Targeting Tool are just three on the list. While these tools help *semi-automate some of the most important PPC tasks like negative keyword research and keyword expansion your judgment is still needed.  Test these tools out (if you’re not already doing so) or use them in a new way and see how they streamline your daily management to allow you to tackle other items on your weekly to do list.

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Heather Schwartz has been working with Anvil Media, a Portland based SEM agency since 2008 specializing in B2C ecommerce clients such as lucy activewear and non-profit clients like The Nature Conservancy, developing SEO, Social Media and PPC campaigns to increase clients’ online visibility and ROI.

In the Dark Ages of internet advertising, bidding was done on a cost-per-mille (CPM) basis. “Hits” and “Page views” ruled the land. Soon however, a new day dawned. Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing was born and Google AdWords emerged as the advertisers’ knight in shining armor. You only paid for actual visitors to your site and you controlled your position by simply increasing or decreasing your keyword bids. Alas, the simplicity didn’t last and Google AdWords bidding is now much more complex.

The 4 Types of Bids

Google AdWords offers four different options for bidding; manual bidding, automated bidding, CPM bidding and CPA bidding. Each of these methods has both strengths and weaknesses that should be considered.

1. Manual Bidding – This is the classic, auction-style bidding we grew to love when AdWords was first launched. You set a default bid at the ad group level that applies to all keywords in the ad group. You then have the option of setting a custom bid for every keyword if you wish.Manual bidding offers the greatest control of your cost-per-click (CPC) and allows you to see how changes in bids affect position, CTR and even conversions. However, this control comes at a price. Manual bid management can be very time consuming, hence the abundance of 3^rd party bid management tools on the market.
2. Automatic Bidding – This is Google’s attempt to make bidding easy for even the newest AdWords advertiser. The user sets a daily budget and then Google tries to get as many clicks as possible with the given budget.While this option requires virtually no effort to manage, you also have virtually no control over what time your ads are being shown, what search queries are triggering your ads or the position of your ad. Unless you trust Google 100% with your money, I don’t recommend this option.
3. CPM Bidding – This is the oldest method of bidding. You tell Google how much you’re willing to pay for 1,000 impressions and they start showing your ad. While some would view this as a step backward in internet advertising, if an advertiser has proven ad copy that delivers a high CTR, this can actually deliver clicks cheaper than PPC, especially for brand terms.
4. CPA Bidding – Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) bidding is the newest addition to Google AdWords bidding. Another name for the feature is Conversion Optimizer. With this feature you must first install conversion tracking (which you already have installed right?) and have at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days. Then all you have to do is go to the campaign settings and under “Bidding and budget” select the “Edit” link for bidding options. There you select the “Focus on conversion” radio button and set your desired CPA.

The benefit here is that Google is able to use all its available data to obtain conversions at the desired CPA. Google can alter position or time of day, try more broad search queries or different geographies. You relinquish a lot of control, but you can see phenomenal results.

As you can see just choosing your bid type is quite a decision. However, you should also consider the other factors that Google considers along with your actual bid. These factors are rolled up into the mysterious Quality Score (QS).

Enter Quality Score

Perhaps the least understood metric in the otherwise robust reporting of AdWords is Quality Score. It affects where your ad will appear and more importantly, how much you will pay for a click! There are many factors that influence QS. Google lists the following:

• Historical clickthrough rate (CTR) of the keyword/ad pair on Google
• Overall account history
• Historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group
• Quality of your landing page
• Relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group
• Relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search query
• Your account’s performance in the geographic area where the ad will be shown
• Other relevance factors

As you can see, QS is very complex and constantly changing as Google adds and subtracts “other relevance factors.” Google has also had issues with incorrectly reported QS, though they assured advertisers that it was only an error in reporting, not in actual calculations.

Golden Era Over?

Though simplicity is long gone from the realm of Google AdWords bidding, PPC is still a smart investment of marketing dollars and provides performance metrics that are second to none.

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Robert Brady is the owner and head PPC wizard at Righteous Marketing, a Google AdWords Certified Partner for PPC management. He has worked for 6+ years in PPC with a variety of companies ranging from a small grass-fed beef grower in Idaho to a large B2B data storage provider.

Although Internet technology does not yet allow web pages to produce smells, there is a form of scent at work on websites. When someone clicks on a search result, paid or organic, and lands on a website, the site owner can reasonably assume this visitor has an interest in whatever was the subject of that search. Marketing guru and bestselling author Bryan Eisenberg describes this interest in terms of a scent trail. The visitor is following the scent of something that interests them. The site owner has an opportunity to exploit that interest by maintaining the scent trail.

A good landing page lets visitors to a website know that they have come to the right place. Given that aromas are beyond the limits of current technology, that knowledge is typically conveyed visually, using words and images that reflect the message that prompted the click that brought the visitor to the site. Clicking on a paid search ad that displays “15% Off All HP Printers” to people searching for HP printers should lead to a page where that same offer is clearly visible.

In my experience, conversion rates and other key metrics are consistently higher when scent is maintained by aligning page content with traffic acquisition campaigns. There are several ways to do this, including campaign-specific landing pages and micro-sites. Another approach is to enable all of your pages to display conditional content, which is content that varies based on what you know about the visitor, including what brought them to the page. This “universal landing page” approach is particularly valuable when social media sends traffic to your site.

Consider what happens to the scent trail if someone on a social network pastes a link to a product page on your site into a tweet or status update. The good news is that you are getting traffic that you didn’t have to pay for, and the scent trail is, to some degree, taking care of itself. The visitor’s interest in the product has landed them on the product page. But now it’s up to you to amplify the scent, capture the interest, and convert it. If you have a system in place to display conditional content on all your site’s pages–effectively giving any page the potential to act like a landing page–there are numerous conversion strategies that can prove effective; here are four of them:

1. Make them welcome: Use what you know about the visitor to make them feel special, starting with whether they’re a new or returning visitor. New visitors are best met with assurances that your site is the best place to purchase the item in which interest has been expressed. Also highlight information about logistics such as shipping options and return policies. Returning visitors require less information and assurance so use that space to welcome them back, possibly leveraging CRM data about past browsing and purchasing behavior.

2. Make them feel at home: Many visitors respond positively to local content, which you can derive from their physical location as determined by IP address look-up. One pet food website produced a big jump in orders simply by displaying location-specific messaging such that a visitor from Seattle saw: “Seattle’s best source for pet food at discount prices.”

3. Engage them: When someone clicks through to your site from a tweet or status update, you have a chance to engage them by leveraging their interest in the subject of the link. Show them links to similar or related items. Consider a lightbox to ask for their email address with a hook such as: “Want up-to-the-minute news and offers on great products like this? Sign up for our free newsletter.

4. Accommodate them: Your web server knows a lot about the devices people are using to visit your site. If the server detects a widescreen display consider a fly-out box on the right of the page to deliver more above-the-fold information. If the visitor is using a smartphone adjust content accordingly.

One reason for the marketing buzz around social media is the very scenario discussed here: Some number of people are arriving at websites from social media links that cost nothing, attracted by the scent of something that interests them, and some percentage of those people make purchases. Applied with the right amount of marketing flair the four strategies I have described can substantially increase the probability that the social media visitor is converted into a website customer.

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A prolific blogger and content marketing pioneer, Stephen Cobb has enabled several hi-tech startups to achieve successful outcomes by educating the marketing for their technologies. Stephen is currently an Evangelist at Monetate, the Philadelphia-based marketing optimization company. He resides in Upstate New York.

The mark of the New Year often times allows companies and individuals to really start over with a clean slate. It is a time where you can leave older bad habits behind and embark on a journey of new initiatives for success. With the quickly changing landscape of search engine marketing there are many online efforts that a vast majority of business have decided to leave out of their marketing arsenal this past year. For one reason or another whether they were busy or under resourced and the New Year offers a new, fresh approach for any online marketing campaign.

Here are some areas that a business should focus on for the New Year in order to really strengthen their approach online:

Increased Company Blogging: I still bump into company websites that have such low frequency of blog posts that it is almost sad to look at. The way you approach your blog often times adds credibility to your company. Try increasing the frequency to at least twice per week, and really give your posts some thought and personality.

Beef up That Facebook Fan Page: Facebook fan pages now have a vast variety of additional plugins a company can ad in order to increase the user experience. Facebook fan pages bring a variety of branding and credibility efforts to the table. Give your immediate fans or audience a reason to want to become a part of your community.

Start Tweeting More: Twitter is no longer just a little fad.  It is a real business tool that can be used to increase awareness, business and overall website traffic. Are you still skeptical about using Twitter to help grow your business? There are a variety of case studies that show a staggering number of large and small businesses in the U.S that have been successful in significantly growing their businesses using this amazing communication tool.

Think Community: You might think your website is just a website but it is more than that. Online entities are increasingly attempting to grow their business by keeping the word “community” in their mind. Picture it like a small army of loyal fans that listen to what you have to say about your business or industry. Community rich online brands reap the rewards of referrals, increased chatter and word of mouth marketing that you simply can’t put a price tag on.

Allow SEO To Be Your Friend: I speak with so many potential clients that really harp on the search engine optimization process. The reality is that if you simply give it some time and be patient with it things will work out but you can’t rely on your business growth entirely from search engine rankings. The search area is vast and wide and if you corner yourself thinking that SEO is the end all be all you will drive yourself nuts.  Take an integrated approach to your SEO, and if you don’t have the time to do it yourself, hire a white hat SEO services company to help you.

Think About the Fun Stuff: Get your team together and think about some fun promotions and contests you can start with your business in order to really get some viral power brewing in your industry. All it takes is one great promotion and your community of bloggers and writers could quickly start generating some great little stories surrounding your effort. I don’t think I have to tell you what a great search engine optimization benefit this would be for your organization.

Fine Tune Your Website: Your website is probably your most powerful selling tool you have. Most people will land on your site before they decide to communicate with your company. Your website could be what causes your phone to ring, so take the time this year to really clean it up if you haven’t already. Having a website from 2001 is not going to help you grow your business in anyway. Sometimes all you need is just a little bit of fine tuning which doesn’t have to break the bank.

The New Year is a great time for all of us to really approach everything we do with a clean slate, a fresh start with new intentions on how to grow yourself as a business in your community. Change is a great thing and there is no better time to do it than for the beginning of a new year.
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Nick Stamoulis is a search engine optimization and search engine marketing veteran and President and Founder of the SEM firm Brick Marketing.  Nick Stamoulis also writes in his SEO blog, the Search Engine Optimization Journal.