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

By Mary O’Brien, Founder/Director, PPC Summit  

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend SES San Jose. I hadn’t been in a couple of years, and I was really curious to see what an SES conference looks like now, given the recessionary state of the marketing Industry.

The good news is – Search Engine Marketing is obviously alive and kicking with no chance of decline in the foreseeable future, so if you are thinking of learning a marketing skill to complement your resume and make your career recession proof, Pay-Per-Click, SEO and Social Media will definitely make you more marketable.

Although attendance was down a little bit the conference was still vibrant and focused as usual on the future and big picture of Search Engine Marketing. What was interesting this year was that attendees were actually paying attention, and using the conference to its best advantage. In years past when I attended SES it seemed like all anyone was focused on were the cool tchotchkys that were being given away at various booths. This year folks were actually attending sessions and networking with each other, with the intent of making themselves more interesting to future employers, or even better, going out on their own and getting clients.

Maybe it was the lack of a Google Dance that caused this shift.  In previous years it seemed like the Search Engines went out of their way to compete with each other on who could hold the biggest, craziest party, but this year, it was a much more focused event, totally in keeping with every Search Marketers need to do more with less budget.

So why does learning Search Engine Marketing make you more marketable as a marketer?

From SEMPO’s State of Search Engine Marketing Report and Survey, released in February 2009:
• The North American Search Engine Marketing industry grew from $9.4 billion in 2006 to $13.5 billion in 2008
• North American Search Engine Marketing spending is now projected to grow to $26.1 billion in 2013, up significantly from the $18.6 billion forecast in 2007.
• Pay-Per-Click captured 88.4 percent of 2008 spending, up 1% from 2007; organic SEO captured 10.6 percent
• Budgets are shifting to Pay-Per-Click. About a third of respondents said their funding for Pay-Per-Click came from a mix of new and existing marketing funds. Another third reported using entirely newly allocated budgets

Reuters also reported that while online advertising isn’t growing at the rate that print advertising is declining it IS still growing even as the economy all around us is shrinking. Basically, Search Engine Marketing is pretty recession proof. Advertising dollars are still available but they appear to be moving online, and over 85% percent of that is for Pay-Per-Click.

This is important for two reasons:
1. This will give more companies the incentive to advertise online in case their competitors beat them to the punch.
2. Those companies will need knowledgeable, talented and properly-trained people to execute a great Search Engine Marketing campaign.

When times are not so good, more businesses are willing to push budgets online. When times get better, do you think that is going to change?

The numbers from SEMPO show that nowadays a larger number of businesses get the importance of not only having a Web presence, but are working hard to maintain their visibility. Now that the economy is slow, budgets are being pulled from other sources and moved online.

What does that mean for the future of Search Engine Marketing?  Basically, as a marketer, a large percentage of your time should be focused on SEM. You should be doing it, researching it, learning it and staying current with all the nuances and changes.  You don’t necessarily have to be an expert at every part of it, but you should know who the experts are, the best tools to use and also how to get access to info when you have a question.

So even in a recession continue your Search Engine Marketing education. Go to conferences, training and seminars that can help you to learn, network and improve your marketability. You’ll meet amateur and professional Search Engine Marketers and business owners, create great peer relationships, and learn more skills. If your current company has cut their training budget, considering paying for training yourself.  That way you’ll truly make yourself recession proof along with Search Engine Marketing. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a huge expensive conference, as long as it meets your specific education needs. Go where you can learn the most about the skill that will make you the most marketable right now. This is a great time to invest some marketing dollars in yourself.

By Karen Waggoner, Director of Events, PPC Summit 

By now everyone with a keyboard or touch screen is aware that Yahoo and Microsoft chiseled a long sought after deal to combine their collective search forces.  This means Yahoo’s once-dominant search engine will be replaced by Microsoft’s newly branded Bing.  This certainly makes Bing, with 30% of the market, a force which cannot be ignored.

What Makes Bing Sing?
As defined by Microsoft, Bing is a decision engine, “a new approach to user experience and intuitive tools to help customers make better decisions, focusing initially on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition, or finding a local business.”

The Bing experience is definitely different.  Beyond the slick advertising, the customized results by category and product yield a different-looking output.  It seems reasonable that queries yielding results based on product and category are almost certain to produce more impressions – as searchers do not have to view a full advertisement – and can see the information packaged under multiple categories.  Bing claims that click through rates for items in their categorized results are higher than results in the normal organic listings. The new multi-threaded SERP design renders more pages that are closely associated with the primary keywords being searched, according to Tony Yamanaka, Natural Search Specialist of Apogee Search.  This is a good thing for advertisers and affiliates.

What Makes Bing Go?
Bing features include what they call Quick Tabs.  These are broad category links based on your query nicely ordered on the left margin as secondary listings. These broad categories may be useful for those in unique niches and also as a resource tool to identify broad keyword terms.  One more user-friendly feature is the Best Match option.  One result returned with high confidence is shown at the top of the page as the best match.  Eight links are added under this listing along with an internal search form.  To encourage selection as a “best match” company names contained in the URL and title tags appear to win out.  Local Listings include mini-reviews categorized by relevant keyword, a departure from MSN and Live Search days.  A new partnership with Yellow Pages Local Listings means paid sponsors will show above normal listings, per Anthony Edwards of Apogee Search, in a recent and highly informational blog post.

Bing also has a couple of new and unique offerings, BingTweets and a Cashback program.  Cashback is offered as a bonus to consumers who purchase eligible products and pitched as a way to “avoid extra expenses with a pay-per-click (PPC) bidding process that doesn’t require constant attention.”  Talk about a slick pitch.  Microsoft claims Cashback to be, “a low-risk advertising channel based on actual sales. You can remove risk when listing your products with Bing Cashback because it’s based on a CPA model. You don’t have to invest extra time or money in undesired fees traditionally associated with PPC campaigns. This also helps you avoid click fraud and click arbitrage.”
BingTweets is a partnership that promises deeper, real-time information about trending topics on Twitter by marrying Bing search results with the latest tweets.  You can search for anything in the BingTweets search box and see Bing search results alongside the most recent related tweets.  There’s a highly useful idea that Google didn’t come up with first.

What Does Bing Bring?
The good news for entry-level advertisers is there is one-less platform to manage, a shorter learning curve and less time overall is required to be successful in search. Internet marketers simply must pay attention to the Bing algorithm and optimize accordingly.  Fortunately the optimization process seems, on the surface, to be essentially the same as Google’s. 

Bing has earned praise for how it displays relevant search results.  It is all about how users think and use search.  As Tony Yamanaka, puts it, “Bing does not have to overthrow Google to be successful; it can succeed by taking a different approach.”  And Bing is definitely singing a different tune.

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Karen Waggoner, CMP is Director of Events for Alteract Marketing LLC, the parent company of PPC Summit and AdWords Advantage Online Summit.

By Alissa Ruehl, Manager of Website Effectiveness Consulting, Apogee Search

Now more than ever, marketers are hyper-focused on getting the most out of their online advertising investments.  Here are 7 strategies to give your current paid search (Pay Per Click) campaigns a boost and get the highest quality of visitors coming to your website.  These techniques can be implemented fairly easily, and are highly effective at maximizing your campaign ROI. 

1. Trim the fat on your PPC campaign
The hard work with PPC budget reduction is that you don’t want to just lower your daily budget on the search engines, lower bids across the board, or do other sweeping things that will also cut your lead flow by the same percentage that it reduces your spend.

Some campaigns are highly optimized, making fat trimming more difficult, but most campaigns are wasting a portion of spend on audiences that will never convert. Now is the time to refine your campaign to ensure that you pay only for relevant traffic.

2. Add negative keywords
Run Google search query reports to see what actual search terms are driving your traffic (and costing you money). If you are using broad match at all, chances are there will be some irrelevant terms in there. Add these irrelevant terms as negative keywords in both Google and Yahoo!

Are you seeing a lot of lines like “108 other unique search queries?” Most analytics programs will show you a list of the search queries that brought traffic to your site, and you can supplement Google’s data with these reports.
Don’t just focus on reducing unwanted clicks, also trim out irrelevant impressions. Why do this when you are only paying for clicks? Because it will actually reduce your costs. Google has put more and more emphasis on its quality score algorithm, and one major element of a keyword’s quality score is the click-through rate. If adding negative keywords removes 20% of your impressions on a keyword (those that were so irrelevant they weren’t generating any clicks), that would increase your click-through rate by 20%. The corresponding increase in quality score should increase your average position or decrease your cost per click.

3. Refine ad copy
Stop wasting money paying for clicks from people who will never fill out a lead form. Many companies default to exciting ad copy that is focused on grabbing attention and generating clicks. In a tighter economy, ads need to be targeted to attract only relevant traffic.

Make your ads specific, and make sure they accurately represent your company. Often it makes sense to use your ads to actively qualify prospects.

4. Add dayparting
Another good way to reduce spend without reducing overall performance is to daypart–turning your ads off entirely at times of the day that don’t deliver quality traffic. Google allows you to pause campaigns at certain times, and also to selectively lower bids. Turning your campaign off entirely on the weekends might be overkill, but automatically reducing bids 50% on weekends might give you a similar number of qualified leads with less cost.

5. Test all major changes to your website
Not all site changes increase conversion rates. Some companies redesign their sites to have a better look and feel, but then see a decrease in conversion rate despite positive feedback about the design. Even landing page best practices don’t work in every instance.

There are many great testing platforms out there, and some, like Google Website Optimizer, are even free. It is relatively simple and painless to test everything but minor changes to your site.

If you launch a new landing page, A/B test it against the one you were previously using. If you are making several individual changes to a landing page, home page, or any page on your site that affects your PPC campaign, consider using a multivariate test to see which variables have the most impact and which combination is the best.

A word of warning: these tests can quickly add up to dozens of possible combinations. If you have a low lead flow, these tests can take months to accumulate statistically significant data. Be sure to limit your variants to a level that your traffic can support, and consider sticking with A/B testing if you usually see less than 100 leads a month.

6. Track past online conversions
If you are not tracking your paid search campaigns all the way through to sale, you won’t know which keywords or even which campaigns or search engines are generating the leads that are turning into sales.

This data takes a while to accumulate, since you must wait until leads make it all the way through your sales cycle. If you have a long sales cycle or low lead volume, it can be many months before you have any statistically significant data.

Work now to integrate your PPC (and SEO) data into your CRM system so you can have solid ROI numbers for each of your online campaigns—before you need those numbers.

Once you get enough data, you can start optimizing your campaign toward activities that are generating revenue rather than leads that go nowhere.

7. Keep an eye on the competition
Stay aware of what your competitors are doing, but don’t imitate them. Your strategy, analysis, and data all might be stronger than theirs. When watching competitors, get an idea of their sophistication level by looking at their tracking system and tracking syntax, keyword coverage (on both relevant and irrelevant keywords), ad copy, and landing pages.

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Alissa Ruehl is the Manager of Website Effectiveness Consulting at Apogee Search. Prior to opening this new division, she managed the paid search department at Apogee for over three years, and during that time was personally involved in the management of paid search campaigns for over 100 companies.  In Apogee’s Website Effectiveness division, Alissa has supervised and delivered successful conversion consulting engagements for dozens of companies.  She consults on goal setting and metrics, analytics installation, integration and usage, overall website usability and conversion rate, as well as design and testing of paid search landing pages.

By Mike Nierengarten, Online Marketing Consultant, Anvil Media Inc

The MCC

MCC’s or My Client Centers were originally created for third party agencies with multiple clients to monitor client accounts from a central location.  Google has since recognized the value an MCC can hold and has since described an MCC as “ideal for large advertisers” in the What is My Client Center section of AdWords help (but apparently not enough to change the name to something that makes sense for advertisers).

Despite Google’s endorsement, the MCC remains an underutilized tool in most search marketers’ arsenal.

The power of the MCC is that it provides an extra level (or levels) of segmentation and makes large accounts much more manageable. 

The Power of the MCC

In any pay per click (PPC) account, account structure is exceptionally important.  Segmenting keywords into well-defined ad groups and ad groups into well-defined Campaigns allows marketers to better associate ad text with keywords, thereby creating more relevant ads.  A hierarchal account structure also allows marketers to better analyze subsets of the overall account by dissecting specific sections of the account.

Three levels of structure – Campaigns, ad groups, and keywords – works well for the average PPC account, but what do you do if you are selling 10,000 unique products in 500 unrelated categories geographically targeted by region?  The answer is to create a hierarchal structure more than three levels deep.

This is precisely the power of the MCC – the ability to add more levels to the PPC account structure.

Multi-Tiered MCC’s

For large-scale advertisers who target hundreds of thousands of keywords, a regular old MCC may not be enough.  Multi-tiered MCC’s may be the best solution.  Multi-tiered MCC’s are essentially master accounts of MCC’s and provide another level of depth. 

Using multi-tiered MCC’s, marketers can control the level of segmentation, adding new levels as necessary (hence, segmenting to the nth degree).  A multi-tiered MCC for a toy store, for example, could segment specific toys by current promotion, category, age group, and country where the toy ships and, using Google AdWords reports, can easily pull statistics for each level.

Avoiding Infection

Beyond simplifying account management and analysis, MCC’s also avoid cross-infection of Quality Score (QS).  A keyword’s or an ad’s Quality Score directly impacts other keywords within an account. Because the competitive nature of paid search varies from region to region and category to category, marketers may experience a wide range of Quality Score implications. 

For example, cost-per-click (CPC) in New Delhi is much cheaper than CPC in New York.  If a marketer were to create a Campaign that targets both India and the United States, Quality Score may suffer as marketers overbid for positioning in New Delhi but underbid for positioning in New York. 

Again, MCC’s and multi-tiered MCC’s can resolve this issue.

Summary
MCC’s and multi-tiered MCC’s provide marketers the opportunity for advanced segmentation.  Advanced segmentation allows for better analysis of subsets of ads and keywords, the ability to separate accounts based on geographic region, product category, promotion, etc., and avoid cross-contamination of poor-performing keywords.

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Mike Nierengarten is an Account Executive with Anvil Media Inc. in Portland.  Mike began work with Anvil in 2008 and has managed paid search accounts for a wide range of budgets and clients including an email marketing service provider, online school, and online psychic network.  Previously, Mike worked for Direct Entertainment Marketing, a lifestyle promotions company based in Las Vegas, where he managed social media and promotions for clients such as MGM Nightlife and Harrah’s.

By Heather Lutze, Founder Findability Group

As the recession continues, companies are scrambling for new and creative ways to continue marketing while keeping costs down.  That is why, as an Internet marketer, it is exciting to be able to offer Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising as a cost-effective alternative.

In traditional marketing, a business might put up a billboard on Main Avenue, expecting “x number” of people to see it, of that 5% to be in their target audience, and of that to get “x percentage” in leads.  In PPC advertising, businesses now have the option to only show their “billboard” (ad) to interested members of their target audience. It is a revolutionary new way to target, and can save businesses a large amount of capital, in addition to bringing them much higher-qualified leads.

Of course, in order to take advantage of the targeting potential in PPC, entrepreneurs must get in touch with how their target customer searches online.  More specifically, how their target customer searches online when they are ready to buy.

As the Internet continues to play a larger role in consumer’s lives, understanding the buying cycle online is critical to a successfully targeted PPC campaign. The importance of understanding the buying cycle is realizing that a “customer gathering data” and a “customer ready to buy” type in very different search strings.

For example, a person gathering basic information might search “TV” whereas a person serious about making a purchase would type something such as “Plasma, 32 inch televisions in Denver with free delivery.” In this example, the second consumer is a more qualified (and typically much cheaper) click to pay for. For most businesses, you must make a decision of where in the customer’s search process you believe they are ready to buy. Honestly, determining this ideal point in an internet search is the real art behind Internet marketing and PPC targeting. Fortunately, if you don’t have the budget to hire a PPC firm, there are a few tools available to help you get in touch with your ideal keywords:

Tool #1 : Word Tracker (www.wordtracker.com ) – Owned by a private company, Word Tracker generates keyword suggestions based on search volume. In addition, Word Tracker determines how many competing sites are using those keywords and can help businesses take advantage of untapped market niches.

Pros: Generates keywords suggestions and gives strategic recommendations of easy to penetrate online markets.
Cons: Paid service ($59/month).

Tool #2: Keyword Discovery (www.keyworddiscovery.com) – Operated by Trellian, Keyword Discovery also generates keyword suggestions based on search volume. However, Keyword Discovery also offers spelling mistake research, seasonal search trends and keyword density analysis, to help PPC advertisers to really hone in on creating a campaign which maximizes results.

Pros: Generates a very comprehensive list of keyword suggestions, including spelling and seasonal keywords.
Cons: Paid service ($69.95/month).

Tool #3: Google Wonder Wheel (under “show options” when you do a Google search) – If you are new to keyword research and a bit intimated by getting back lists of data in tools like Word Tracker or Keyword Discovery, the Wonder Wheel is a fantastic starting point. Launched in May of this year, the wheel helps advertisers understand the organization of how users search for their product. In addition, the wheel is much easier to grasp, as it uses an easy to read org-chart interface.

Pros: Free, easy to use and great for beginners.
Cons: Strips out a lot of data in order to maintain usability. The Wheel does not include search volume, competitive analysis, or more than a handful of keyword recommendations per “wheel.”

Tool # 4: SpyFu (www.spyfu.com) – Curious how much you are going to pay for each click you receive? It is important to build your keyword list with your budget in mind.  Fortunately, SpyFu offers free analysis on the bid range for keywords. In addition, SpyFu gives great competitive analysis on how many advertisers are competing for that keyword and the ad text they are using.

Pros: Free and gives a lot of great information in just one page.
Cons: The free version only offers limited information (typically only on keywords up to two words long).

Your ultimate goal is to connect with your target customer online and to make sure your paid ads are findable at the best point in that user’s search. Remember, even your ideal target searcher can’t become a customer unless they find you.

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Heather Lutze is the author of the newly released book, “The Findability Formula: The Simple and Non-Technical Approach to Search Engine Marketing” (Wiley and Sons). As a nationally recognized speaker and author, she has spent the last 10 years as CEO of Findability Group – a Search Engine Marketing firm that works with companies to attain maximum Internet exposure. Heather is also a lead speaker for Pay Per Click Summit, and previously spent two years speaking for Yahoo! Search Marketing. For more information, visit www.FindabilityGroup.com

By Bill Leake, CEO and founder of Apogee Search

Do you have a paid search campaign that is on its last legs?  Perhaps your spending has spiraled out of control and your conversions haven’t budged.  Or, like many of us, maybe your performance is fine but your budgets have been slashed, forcing you to produce the same results with less spend.  Before you scrap everything and start from scratch, take these three easy steps to save your paid search campaigns.

Step One: Eliminate Irrelevant Traffic
When you are paying per click, you only want relevant traffic.  Many campaigns are mired down in irrelevant traffic. Step one on the road to recovery – cut it out of the picture.

Do this by identifying and blocking negative keywords. This will ensure that your ad doesn’t come up in search results under irrelevant terms.  Find irrelevant search terms in Google’s Search Query report and use as negative keywords across all search engines.  Since every campaign is different, the best way to find negative keywords is to look at a search query report and get rid of anything that doesn’t belong.

“Free” is often a good negative keyword to start with. ”Cheap” and “Discount” are tricky, but could be relevant if your products are high end.  Also keep in mind that there is something “X-rated” out there for more keywords than you probably want to think about. If that is not your industry, add some negative keywords in that regard.

Testing different keyword match types is another way to trim down keywords that are inflating your impressions, dropping your click through rate and lowering your quality score. In Google, try testing multiple match types.  In Yahoo!, adjust advanced match settings.  If you are overwhelmed, you can try starting with just the keywords that have the most spend and those with the most impressions.

Also, see if your analytics program provides you with a query report.  That will fill in the gaps that the Google report leaves with, “108 other unique queries.”  If you have general terms on broad match, it is an uphill battle to weed out irrelevant traffic with negatives. That might be a battle you want to fight, but if not, consider switching your more general, lower converting terms to phrase match. Best idea – test different match types, with the more specific types often warranting higher bids.

Some people rush to delete keywords when dealing with out of control spend, but in fact, most keywords are salvageable. If possible, see how they work with refined match types and negative keywords.  In many cases, you can reduce irrelevant traffic by 50% or more with negative keywords and match type adjustments.

Step Two: Optimize Ad Copy

Are your ads responsive and coherent?  Do they truly represent your product or services?  Are they specific and precise?Sometimes we encounter ads that are too general to say anything about the company. The age-old advertising battle cry, “benefits, not features,” is a good rule of thumb.  However, with limited characters, make sure you don’t forget to properly identify the product or service.

In order to keep out unqualified traffic, you have to be specific.  If your target audience is companies with 50 employees or more, say so.  For e-commerce, consider listing prices.  Words like, “luxury” might weed out bargain shoppers.

“But shouldn’t I be trying to grab people’s attention?” you ask.  Of course, in some cases you should, but if you are suffering from low ROI, your problem might be that you are trying to grab everyone’s attention.  If the majority of your traffic is irrelevant, it doesn’t help you – it only costs you money.

Calls to action are an excellent tool, but only if they are specific.  We have performed plenty of testing, and we rarely see success with general calls to action like, “download free white paper,” or, “buy now.”  Create a specific, compelling call to action by preparing the searcher for the end conversion.  For example, “Sale on widgets – 20% off,” can be changed to, “Buy widgets today and save 20%.”  Similarly, “Free white paper on how to save your paid search campaign,” can be changed to, “Learn 3 easy steps to save your paid search campaign.”

Step Three: Improve Your Landing Pages
A good landing page can make all the difference in your campaign. After you clear out unnecessary spend with the prior two steps, take that budget and invest in proper landing page creation.

Look at your various keywords.  Are there phrases that searchers would use while they are in the research stage versus when they are in buying mode?  If so, create different landing pages for each group.  It might be a good idea to interview salespeople, or customers if possible, to find out which key points to focus on in landing pages.

Most importantly, have consistency between your ad and the landing page.  This is the simplest fix, and yet it is often overlooked. Make your shopping cart easy to use and goals easy to achieve.  You will begin to lose people after one or two steps, max.

Of course, don’t forget to test!   That means everything – all offers, calls to action, forms, design, landing pages, new ideas – everything.

Yes, your campaign can recover, and in some cases even be brought back from the dead, if you follow the Road to Recovery: reduce irrelevant impressions; reduce unqualified clicks; increase conversion rate.  In doing so, you are tackling all three levels of your paid search funnel.

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Bill Leake draws on a deep expertise in both business and marketing to help increase revenues for a wide range of clients. He has been involved in driving provable revenues through Internet marketing techniques since the early 1990s when, as part of the management team at Power Computing.  As CEO and founder of Apogee Search, he has guided the company from inception to its current position as the largest search engine marketing firm in the Southwest, one of the 20 largest in North America and one of the fastest growing companies on the Inc. 500 list. In addition to leading Apogee Search, Bill also serves as the president of the Austin Interactive Marketing Association, and as the chairman of the SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization) committee.

By Nate Sandford, Director of Search Marketing, Ionic Media and Mo Derakhshanian, PPC Manager, Ionic Media

Google has recently made significant changes to the AdWords interface, with the stated goals of improving the platform and the advertiser experience, by closely following three key principles:

1. Speed – Helping advertisers make adjustments to the accounts quicker with less time spent trying to navigate the interface
2. Clarity – Quick insight to account, campaign, ad group, and ad performance
3. Intuitiveness – Create a more logical structure for the AdWords interface.  Give advertisers the tools they need right where they need them

What more could a search marketer ask for?  Speed, Clarity, and Intuitiveness are laudable goals. Being able to quickly and clearly identify problems and opportunities, act on them immediately, and easily see the resulting changes is the dream of any search marketer.

Here at Ionic Media, we have been working with the beta version of the new interface.  We are already enjoying the new features, some of which include:
• Performance Summary Graphs
• In-line Editing
• Performance Filters
• Content Network Statistics and Placements
• Match Type Changes
• Fast Access to Search Query Reports

Let’s look at each of these in more detail:

Performance Summary Graphs
For those of us who are more visual, Google has now included performance graphs at every level of the account.   This gives you the opportunity to see trending at a glance rather than having to pull a report and charting what you need in Excel.  The performance graphs also allows you to select the metrics you want to graph and view them individually or select more than one and view them simultaneously.

In-Line Editing
Simply click on the item you would like to edit, it’s that easy! You can edit everything from bids and keywords to content placements.  The antiquated days of having to load a new page every time you need to make a simple change are long gone.

Performance Filters
The days of being able to sort only from high to low and alphabetical order are long gone.  With the new filter lists you can restrict your view to only the keywords, ads or placements that meet criteria you specify.  For example, look at just the keywords which have spent over $500 or have a click-through rate greater than 10%.  You can use multiple filters, and even filter by content network placements with conversion rates below 2% and spend greater than $100.

Content Network Statistics and Placements
If we could only use one new feature of the interface, it would be the Content Network Statistics and Placements.  As Google’s content network grows, so do your campaigns, and optimizing content placements is vital to the success of the campaign.  AdWords now allows you to optimize placements, bids, and domains all within the interface.  This is a quantum shift from the previous method of running placement reports, blocking placements and increasing placement bids, adding negative keywords, and changing ad group bids, all via Excel and AdWords Editor.   In the new interface, review your placement, exclude placements, and bid by placement all within the same view, removing the need to use multiple programs to complete the task.

Match Type Changes
This is yet another example of how campaign management is more intuitive in the new AdWords interface.   In the past, adding various match types to campaigns was not an easy task.  You had to set keyword match types using a free-form “Edit Keywords” box to set a keyword as phrase match or exact match.  Now, changing match types is as easy as clicking the keyword and selecting the new match type.

Search Query Reports
A Search Query Report can be a very helpful tool in optimizing and growing your account, but with the hassle of running and analyzing the report, these vital optimizations are sometimes overlooked.  With the new changes, the Search Query Report is no longer just another line in your report center.  Now, instead of running a search query report for an entire campaign or ad group, you can select the keywords you want to see in more detail.  Select the keywords and click “show query report” to load a report for just those keywords.  As if that is not great enough, the report is actionable now as well.  From within the report you can select a query and either add it as a keyword to your ad group, or add it as a negative keyword.

Speed, Clarity, and Intuitiveness – we think Google got it right.  Advertisers have made many suggestions over the years and it seems as if Google has been listening.  Being able to more quickly identify problems & opportunities, act on them, and clearly see the results of the changes make our jobs easier. The best part is, it’s still in beta, which means there should be even more improvements coming.

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Nate Sandford is the Director of Search Marketing at Ionic Media and has spent years managing millions of dollars in PPC campaigns. He has consulted for companies in Pay-Per-Click technology, fashion design, ecommerce retail, lead generation, publishing & literature, web analytics, and market research.  He has a BA in Marketing with an emphasis in Market Research & Statistical Analysis and a minor in Spanish from Western Washington University.

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Mo Derakhshanian is a seasoned PPC Manager with deep experience in blending traditional and search engine marketing.  Mo has direct experience managing retail, healthcare, insurance, finance, gaming and food & beverage PPC accounts.  Before joining Ionic Media, he was a manager at The Search Agency.  Mo has a B.S. in Marketing from Pepperdine, and an Associate Degree in Information Technology.

By Kelly Larsen, Director of Marketing PPC Summit

Advertisers continue to shine a bright light on Paid Search marketing. In fact, the Internet Advertising industry was recently named the only advertising medium that is expected to grow this year, according to Zenith Optimedia.

As more and more companies leverage the search engines and Paid Search to grow their business, it’s no surprise that Internet ad spend is expected to grow 10.1% globally this year, and Paid Search boasts an even stronger 20.0% growth projection*. Paid Search has literally stomped on the other advertising mediums, and has become the fastest growing advertising channel because it delivers more targeted traffic, greater budget control, more accountability and can generate immediate revenue–of course, when done right.

If you take a look at the Search Marketing industry advertising spend in the last 12 months, you’ll see advertisers are getting more creative with their Paid Search spending. The Marketing Sherpa chart below shows recent results for a search marketing ad spend study where nearly 70% of respondents use Google search ads, 32.6% use Google contextual ads, 27.6% use Yahoo search ads and Facebook advertising is now becoming a valid option with over 3% of advertisers now using it. The industry is now being fueled with advertising through new publishers and social sites that offer display ads on a CPM basis or Pay Per Click.

Zenith Optimedia reports the search advertising increases are attributed to Microsoft’s new Bing search engine, “…a welcome competition to Google and should spur further innovation in search.” Bing is worth watching and is surprisingly competitive with Google. The report also adds that new search technologies are reducing entry costs, providing a lot of new competition for established advertisers. The competition to attract search engine users–and your potential customers, will only get more intense. Savvy Marketers will spend their ad dollars on Search to ensure higher ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend).

Staying current on industry trends and innovations is a must in order to compete in the over maximized online advertising space. Even though there are many online resources that Internet Marketers can access (BtoB Online , MarketingProfs , Search Engine Watch , iMedia Connection , eMarketer , Marketing Experiments and Search Engine Land), many of us simply don’t have the time or resources it takes to do the necessary research.

If you don’t have enough time in the day, training may be a better option. And it can also be worth its weight in gold when you learn those little nuggets that turn under performing campaigns into profits. Whether it’s online or in-person training, justifying training costs becomes easier when it means the difference between successful or failing campaigns.

We’re getting ready for upcoming Pay Per Click Summit’s in Los Angeles and Chicago where Search Marketing’s brightest and most experienced will teach cutting-edge Search Advertising techniques that focus on how to do more with less.

We hope to see you there!

Kelly Larsen
Director of Marketing, PPC Summit

*Source: Zenith Optimedia, July  2009 Ad Spend Projections.

by Jon Rognerud, Entrepreneur.com

Why do you have a hard time getting (converting) web traffic when it’s *this* easy?

The lifeblood of all businesses online is traffic. I mean – targeted traffic that you can begin to test for conversions.

#1: Keyword Research
Keyword research should be #1 on your list – always. Try tools like Google Keyword Tool, SEO Book Keyword Tool, Market Samurai (free trial). Get more ideas using the search based tool. If running PPC (you should), look at PPC data and keyword portfolio overall that is most closely aligned to your market need: write and optimize for those terms. The most competitive should be in focus, but the higher converting term is most often not the most highly trafficked term. Discover how they search the web and target your terms accordingly. (Informational, Transactional or Navigational)? “Armani black leather jackets for women” is better than “leather jackets,” for example. Use search engine optimization (SEO) to create a set of themed pages to match your findings.

#2: Social Media & Link building
Most know and agree that the Google algorithm relies heavily on links for ranking, especially in competitive markets. Most of these tactics are low cost entry points. Offering quality, and something of value will create link opportunities by default, and should always be your goal. Spend more time thinking about this and submit to quality properties than the useless “300 directories for $49.99” approach.
a. Article Marketing - 400-600 words with real value. Think about the users and webmasters (who    may use the information) first. Make sure to include at least 2 links in the resources box. One could be the actual company name, another, an anchor text keyword. Think users, and then search engines. Make sure to submit to top article directories within your category and sub-category. You can use Yahoo directory and DMOZ to get a sense for activity and relevancy in your marketplace. Use EzineArticles to start.
b. Answering questions - Providing value to your community is always a good thing. See the top answer search engines and get started. I have used Yahoo Answers and Yedda, they are all pretty easy to use. Remember to not “pitch” your own business. Provide real, useful answers. Of course, you’ll get a link back to your site, but the “value” is more important long term. If one of the answers (example Yahoo) appears high and gets you more traffic, you can target additional ads on that page too. (Sponsored Results). If you cannot spend the time yourself, an expert author or an outsourced model works well for an hour a week to work on this.
c. Activate the social communities and start sharing your (quality) content
        a. Start with one of two at first. Look at what your competition might be doing. Then, check – Digg, Reddit, Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Youtube, Technorati, Stumbleupon. But – don’t forget to look at: Squidoo.com, Hubpages.com, Zimbio.com, Scribd.com, Docstoc.com, Slideshare.net, eHow & Wetpaint.com. For competitive terms you can get to first page ranking using these trusted web properties. It certainly can build your brand and company reputation much quicker. All this for free (outside of your time, of course)! Use socialmarker.com to bookmark your best content across multiple accounts easy and fast. However, do not spam – and try to keep the various content channels unique, not just duplicate content.
        b. Distribute your videos via tubemogul.com, and for a paid fee, try trafficgeyser.com.
        c. Use budurl.com to track your clicks and visitors from Twitter, and use ping.fm to distribute your “tweets” across multiple social platforms – in seconds! Remember! Creating your trust and authority using relevant link building is a “never-ending” task for you.

d. Blog Strategies
      a. A little more advanced topic, but creating PR or Traffic pumper sites with (WordPress) blogs that are relevant to your business, can work very well. Create newsworthy sites and promote them. Use an inter-linking strategy to feed traffic and PR juice to the destination sites of more “core” (money) sites that you own.
e. Directories
      a. Get Yahoo (paid), DMOZ (free) listings established. Look at goguides, gimpsy, skaffe and botw.org as well (not free). This strategy will yield more link/authority juice than 100’s of low quality directories.

#3: SEO
SEO – Search Engine Optimization is the art and science of crafting keyword rich copy and building search friendly websites to appear high in the rankings in the natural search results pages. Consider the power of blended search in all your doings where video, news, podcasts, images, maps all display into one “Universal Search,” as Google calls it.
     a. TAGS: TITLE, DESCRIPTION, H1, ALTs – Make sure to describe your page using keywords in these tags.
     b. LOCAL SEO: If you are a local business, make sure you get your listings into the big three search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing/Microsoft). You can use getlisted.org to check your listings, and ease the process of submission. Do NOT spam by faking multiple listings and phone numbers. See Google Local for more details, and the steps you can take. Make sure to read David Mihms Local ranking success factors.
    c. Google Webmaster Tools: Make sure to set up a free account here. Look at the diagnostics, links, what Googlebot sees, and terms that Google qualifies. Do they match your major topics and keywords? Tune accordingly and continue to build links, as mentioned.
    d. Analytics: Google Analytics, Getclicky (free/paid) – to make sure each page is getting the right keywords and traffic that you had planned for each topic and subtopic.

#4: Plan to Fail? Or…
…fail to plan. Be clear on your strategic plan for all online endeavors. Make sure you have short and long term goals in mind. A SWOT plan can really help you. Look at the competition using (free/paid) SpyFu.com, Compete.com and SEMrush.com tools. If you want a quick overview of your competition that includes social popularity and traffic measures, try quarkbase.com. However, it’s important not to over-obsess on the competition. And, think about conversions as your end goal, not rankings.

Summary
Using the above tactics – along with tracking your competition’s URL and keywords in your space via Google alerts (www.google.com/alerts) will get you ahead of your competition and the search engines. 
 
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Jon Rognerud is Entrepreneur.com’s SEO columnist, an SEO consultant and the author of The Ultimate Guide to Search Engine Optimization, in bookstores now. He has more than 20 years experience building software and marketing projects, including creating content and application solutions at Yahoo!/Overture. His SEO company provides search marketing solutions for small to midsize businesses.

by Kim Toomey, Anvil Media, Inc.

Social Media is More than a High School Reunion.

We all know we should be engaged with social media as companies try to communicate with customers and monitor what’s being said. Think of social media as bringing word of mouth marketing into a visible medium.  Never before have businesses had real time access to what is being said about their products and services, and all of this content is perfect for parsing out keywords to use in other search engine marketing (SEM) activities based on what your customers think of your brand.

People are going to search for the terms that they know and use when it comes to your company, so make sure you’re optimizing your site with those phrases.

Keyword research has never been a science, but most would agree that the wider variety of tools you can initially brainstorm with will result in a more targeted and successful keyword list. Google’s Keyword Tool, WordTracker and Keyword discovery have been some of the heavy hitters in the past. But with more social media sites popping up with elaborate search features, the flood gates have opened.

Use the Right Tools: There are plenty of tools out there to help you find conversations that are going to be beneficial to your research.

• TwitterSearch is Twitter’s own search engine, and with great advanced search options, is a great starting place. You can look for an exact phrase (your brand) in a certain location with a positive tone, and voila! You can see what your customer’s are saying about your brand.
• Collecta is a new real-time search engine that scours social media sites as well as blogs, news and Flickr for your search term.  You can filter your results if you don’t want to see pictures or news articles for example. Don’t expect these new breeds of search engines to take over the search marketplace anytime soon, but they can provide more helpful results than Google, Yahoo or Bing.

Sort through the Clutter: Once you begin searching for conversations about your company, what exactly is it that you’re looking for? Frequent misspellings are a good place to start. Do you have a store front located in a city that’s not easy to spell? How about variations of your brand name? Do your customers say Dr. Martens or Doc Martens? 

While you may not want to use these variations on your website for search engine optimization (SEO), you will want to use them for Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns. 

• Social media conversations are also great ways to determine what your customer base thinks your most popular product is. If you have a site with many different offerings this is great information to have so you can make an informed decision about what content belongs on your homepage.
• Don’t forget to consider seasonality and that the needs/wants of your customer will change, so make it a point to revise this at least every quarter.
• Lastly, look for the adjectives that are being used when describing your company or product. Do you have a “cozy restaurant,” “rugged backpack” or “time-saving software?” Chances are you’re already aware of some of these descriptors, but it is always important to check your perception of what you are offering with your customer’s perception.  Use these descriptions in all the usual places where you would put SEO effort on your site, because chances are that other people are looking for a “cozy restaurant” for dinner tonight.
• Beyond keyword research, this information can also be used in offline marketing materials when describing your company or products.

Keep up with the times
Now that you have some keyword ideas down, you should also verify your information against social media tools that pull top trending keywords. These are great resources for finding “now” keywords; topics that are mainstream right now. Twitter’s rising trends are also found in Twitter’s search tool, and show what topics are being most discussed in Twitter at that moment. TweetVolume is another Twitter tool that allows you to see how often a word appears in Twitter. You can enter up to five words at a time to compare traffic. This tool is particularly helpful if you’re trying to decide between variations or synonyms of a popular keyword phrase.

Facebook Lexicon is a similar tool that pulls top phrases being used on user’s walls. One of the more interesting aspects of Facebook’s tool is that it also provides demographic data for their keywords which may help you make a final decision on keywords based on your target audience. Select a keyword and Facebook will show you how many people are posting that word in their profile daily as well as the age and gender of these users (still in beta, so only a limited number of keywords are available for the demographic data). 

One last overlooked social media research tool is Delicious Tags. Delicious is a bookmarking service that has been around for quite a while and gets overlooked in the social media world because it’s not very flashy and exciting. Delicious has a “popular tags” list on the homepage. The great thing about Delicious keywords is that if you click on one, it gives you a list of related tags that are also popular. While Food is a popular tag, it also suggests recipes, cooking, health, restaurants and travel as related keywords.

There is no right or wrong way to build a keyword list for your website. As the Internet continues to evolve, be on the lookout for new ways to discover what is being said and searched for online. I recommend using social media keyword research to supplement traditional methods and tools for now. What your customers are saying about your company is important on many levels; thanks to the internet and social media all of their comments are now traceable and easily accessible.

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Kim Toomey works for the Portland-based SEM agency Anvil Media, Inc. She has expertise in all aspects of search engine marketing and specializes in social media strategies. Toomey has been responsible for the development and execution of dozens of search and social marketing campaigns during her time at Anvil.