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

Learn How to Develop Smart Ad Text and Landing Pages to Quickly Increase Qualified Leads.

By: Jon Rognerud, Entrepreneur.com’s SEO columnist and Founder Chaos Map

To begin, think for a moment about these real-life Pay Per Click (PPC) business scenarios:

1. A large budget, #1 position bidding, random click streams, poor keyword matching, low CTR’s, low conversions

2. A limited budget, competitive positioning, targeted clicks, phrase and exact keyword matching, high CTR’s, excellent conversions

Which one would you rather see in your results? Personally, I’d use smart bidding, ad copy development and testing strategies, and scale up from the second option. However, to succeed, a PPC manager of the latter should also spend creative time thinking about how to reach out, and into the psyche of their users and marketplace.

Start with the end goal in mind; and know who your users are. What is their persona? Audience checker is an interesting tool to help kick start your thinking. Make sure you understand the difference between an influencer and a real buyer (the person with the credit card). Also, think about how the ad and message fits within the purchasing stages; awareness, research, compare and buy. The messages will and must vary.

I ask the analytical minds out there to stretch a bit here. You need to get more creative and learn to develop connection points with your customers early on. The notion of the discovery and results of pre/post-clicks must be included in your strategy. Relevancy is super important, and throughout the user navigational experience. Most everybody has heard of and some experienced the Google Slap. I’ll share some techniques and a simple formula that can help you prepare for a better outcome, and not simply waste dollars and time doing A/B testing at will.

At the end of this post, ask yourself this question: “How much time do I spend on ad and landing page strategy”? If the answer is “10-15 minutes”, you need to start over.

The Best Ad Example – Ever?

The well documented and trusted “AIDA” (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action) formula is used by many copywriters. See how this story and example fits that structure.

You may not be familiar with Ernest Schakleton. He was a bold adventurer who took 20+ men on a virtually impossible trip to the South Pole and back in the early 1900’s. To start his campaign, and solicit his men, he allegedly wrote this ad, and placed it in a London newspaper:

“Men Wanted (headline): For hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful – honor and recognition in case of success”.

Think about the message here. Extremely direct, action oriented and with a clear benefit statement. The ‘landing page’ was his address. He supposedly received thousands of applications from this ad.

While he did not have to conform to Ad standards per se, and with short text ads constraints like Google Adwords, it’s important to know what Google offers as your canvas for creatives. You have 4 lines with an optional Geo-target to work with:

• Head: The all important headline (Draw, Create Attention, Keywords)  (25)

• Line1: A clear benefit statement (Build Interest)   (35)

• Line2: Decision statement (Click, But Why?) (35)

• Display URL: Action page (Now Do it: Click!) – keyword rich (35) • (optional) Geo Targeting: Example: California You’ll have to narrow your copy down to fit these guidelines.

Demographics

Do you know if your audience is targeted, qualified, and who they are? You must know who you are writing to, and then present them with the information.  When writing, keep this knowledge in mind, and try a more personal approach, versus a (boring) business approach. People buy from people! You might run a survey and special polls in your blog, for example – to see what needs your customers are having. Microsoft asks: What is their (commercial) intent? Get your research done, and compare messages from your competitive landscape. Use Google search, type your keywords – and review the ads, while you also add tools like Spy Fu to discover more details about them.

Setup

Just like in the movies, you start with a setup, work your plot and finish with a killer punch line. You need to do your research (Google Keyword Tool, Google Trends). Your goal must be to ensure a match of what they are looking for, what they want to hear – and not what you think.

If your CEO or VP doesn’t like the ad copy, politely explain that you are researching, and that you will be testing against many. One way to begin this process is by writing a longer paragraph, and narrowing it down from there. You will feel too constricted by editing your ad directly within the platform. Write it down on paper. For fun, try to have a customer, friend or vendor read the ad copy. At least read it out loud for yourself. Much like text on a landing page, your ad copy should be clear and make you want to take action.

Inform

Are you helping to enforce the pain established and by educating them further? Make sure that you are speaking their language, and match with keywords in the headline to begin. Continue to test and tweak, and track it. Read up on advertiser guidelines from Google and Yahoo. A simple exercise to help develop a finer ad copy edge is to listen, observe, be curious, ask questions, problem solve and make connections. These drivers along with competitive analysis, even outside of your niche – can really help!

The Sizzle

When they (scan) read through the copy or ad, make sure it’s not only personal, but do stimulate with special offers and emotional ties. Make sure to include benefits, and use questions in headline and within body. Try numbers and different symbols to make it stand out. Draw them to the most desired action.

The Most Desired Action!

The call to action should be strong, clear and direct. Think of the outcome desired, and reflect that both on the ad and the landing page. Do not introduce many options, make it easy. Action statements are: Learn more, Buy now, Click now, Download now, Free shipping (if you act now), etc. Build more landing pages and test those, keeping relevancy in focus. Do the same with the ads. Adding an extra / keyword parameter in the Display URL can help. Building out multiple, custom domains should also be tested, including sub-domains. Continue to test, don’t stop!

On the Adwords side, create smaller keyword sets in tighter buckets, and use phrase and exact matches to related landing pages with an eye on SEO page copy development. You’ll have created optimum leverage, and a nicely integrated system to test with.

Conclusion

Begin to apply these tactics to shift to a more creative side, whilst maintaining top performance across all your campaigns. Yeah, and purchase this book right now – it’s a perfect fit for your ad copy development: “Tested Advertising Methods” (J. Caples).

And, finally – in the words of Napoleon Hill, the author of Think and Grow Rich: “Whatever Your Mind Can Conceive & Believe, It Can Achieve”. These are inspiring words to start making a change in your behavior and approach for ad copy development and more.

P.S. Make sure to check the load speed of your landing pages, and always test ads and landing pages against your best performing ones. Google Adwords can do this for you at the ad level (A/B testing ads) and Google Web optimizer at the landing page level.  For more advanced users, try the Duration Calculator to find out how long to test a page when using multiple elements.

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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 in Los Angeles provides search marketing solutions for midsize businesses, and focuses

By Elisa Gabbert, Content Development Manager, WordStream

It’s crucial to find and use negative keywords if you want to maximize the value of your pay-per-click campaigns. Setting negative keywords ensures that you don’t waste advertising budget on impressions for search queries that aren’t really relevant to your ad. Those useless impressions will quickly drag down your click-through rate and Quality Score, driving PPC costs up.

So how do you develop a list of negative keywords for your PPC campaigns? You can sit around and brainstorm for possibilities, but this is inefficient, and there’s no way you’ll dream up every negative keyword that your ad might match for.

Here are four simple ways to discover negative keywords, and some tips on how to implement them.

1. Generic negative keyword lists
Pre-assembled lists of negative keywords are available for a number of industries. For instance, if you’re selling a B2B product, you might want to include “free” as a negative, or you might want to create a list of adult terms you don’t want your ads to match on. These can be a decent way to get started on building your list. However, the downside is there in the name: these are generic negative keywords, and they may not all apply to your specific business niche. In addition, many potential negative keywords may be missing from these lists.

2. Through keyword research
 You can find negative keywords while you’re conducting regular keyword research; just keep your eyes open for keyword suggestions that aren’t relevant to your business. For example, one of the top keyword suggestions for “monitor” (as shown in the results from WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool below) is “heart monitor.” It’s a good bet that a number of those thousands of suggestions are similarly irrelevant to your computer supply business.

Start to create a list of negative keyword possibilities through your research, in much the same way as you would a list of keywords you want to target.

3. Search query reports
A third way to find negative keywords is to look at your search query reports in AdWords (or pay-per-click platform of choice). This report shows you the actual search queries that are triggering your text ads (as well as the match type, number of impressions, number of clicks, CTR and other relevant information). Accordingly it’s a good idea to comb through these regularly and eliminate any irrelevant keywords from your ad groups. This method of negative keyword discovery is more thorough than the above options, because it’s based on real data from your own PPC account.

4. Your organic search (SEO) log files or analytics
Perhaps the best method of all these four options, your own log files or analytics are an excellent source of potential negative keywords. These files keep a record of every phrase that drives a visitor from a search engine to your site. There’s one main advantage to this method of negative keyword discovery over search query reports: You can catch negative keywords before they trigger your ads. (And as a best practice, you should eliminate irrelevant keywords from your organic keyword research as well.)

Implementing Negative Keywords in Your PPC Campaigns

Those are some basic ways to expand your negative keyword research. But what do you do with the list once you’ve found them? You probably know about the various match types for keywords (broad match, phrase match and exact match). These match types also apply to negative keywords.

For example, you can use the broad match option (-heart monitor) to prevent your ad from showing for any search query that includes both “heart” and “monitor,” such as “heart rate monitor”; phrase match (-”heart monitor”) for any search query that contains “heart monitor” in that order, such as “holter heart monitor”; or exact match (-[heart monitor]) to eliminate only searches for “heart monitor” verbatim.

Experiment with these negative match options and monitor your campaign to see which is the most effective and cost-efficient for each negative keyword.

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Elisa Gabbert is the Content Development Manager at WordStream, Inc. You can get in touch with Elisa by sending her an Email at egabbert (at) WordSteam dot com, by following her on Twitter, or by reading the WordStream Internet Marketing Blog, where she is a frequent contributor.

By Kelly Larsen, Director of Marketing at PPC Summit

Is your landing page working FOR or AGAINST you? Landing pages that don’t convert are a common complaint from PPC marketers–we hear this over and over at our PPC Summit training events. PPC advertisers spend so much time and money to get the click through, but somehow they lose the potential customer in a split second after landing on their web page. We conclude that PPC marketers spend so much time perfecting their pay per click ads that the landing page becomes an afterthought. This is a huge pay per click marketing mistake!

Now is the perfect time to fine-tune your landing pages so that you can gain more customers and put more dollars back in your pocket–especially with the busy holiday season coming up! Following are three things you can do to make your landing pages convert better.

Top 3 Tips to Convert Customers with Effective Landing Pages 
1. Use Effective Calls-to-Action: A rule of thumb in pay per click marketing is to direct potential customers to what you promised them in your ad–the landing page should mirror your ad. If the ad says ‘SAVE 50%’, then it should be on the landing page too. To help entice the visitor to buy your product now, always include a
Call-to-Action like: Order Now & Save 50%, Offer Expires in 24 hrs, Buy One, Get One Free. And make sure you give the potential customer clear direction and tell them how to act in one or two simple steps.

Most search engine marketers use the call of action they’re comfortable with, but you have to understand your customer needs and wants. What it boils down to is putting yourself in your customers’ shoes and finding out which Call-to-Action method works best.

There are a couple of ways to do determine which Call-to-Action works best with your customers: 
    a. You can run a PPC split test campaign. This will give you some concrete data to comb through.
    b. The easiest way is to just ask, ie, put a poll on your site. With free polling software, you can have a poll up and going in minutes and gain invaluable feedback directly from your customers!

2. Ask for a Little; Get a Lot: Don’t require visitors to give a lot of information in order to take advantage of any offer you may be running. In fact, you want to ask for as little info – initially – as possible. Consumers are very wary about giving out personal information. Once you gain their trust over time, you can do more progressive information gathering. This is why you’ll see so many pay per click campaign offers that only request an email address to “Get the free, downloadable report instantly”.

3. Create Customized Landing Pages: Many pay per click marketers use one landing page and let it do all of their selling/converting traffic. But, each landing page should have its own set of keyword phrases and be customized for the particular promotion at hand. Again, this goes back to putting yourself in your customer’s shoes.

While it may be more expedient to use one standard landing page, your customers don’t care about that. It’s important to take the time to create custom landing pages to connect with the buyer looking for the specific product/service in your ad. And creating more than one landing page is most effective in reaching ALL customers, those who may be early on in the buying cycle and those who are ready to buy now. 

Giving your customers what they need–when they need it–is a sure-fire way to higher conversions. This is why it’s important to test, test and test some more in pay per click marketing.

We’d love to hear your landing page success stories, email us at marketing@ppcsummit.com. We’ll try to include a few of your stories in our future newsletters.

Results of our recent PPC Summit Internet Marketing Education Survey revealed:

• Respondents prefer a mix of online and in-person training
• One or two day in-person educational meetings with multiple tracks/multiple presentations won out
• Networking is an important component of in-person events for most of you
• Relevant vendors add value for 70+% of attendees
• Facebook is the most used social media site amongst those who responded, closely followed by LinkedIn, and over 80% of you are using social media
• Many of you are looking for more advanced strategies for both Pay-Per-Click and SEO

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Congratulations to Jenna, Doug and Ronald who won $60 iTunes Gift Cards for completing the survey. 

If you would like to be included in future survey, sign up for our newsletter now. 

Speaking of the newsletter, Mark from California let us know, “I run two hotels and manage my own PPC programs. I was heading towards a $250,000 spend for 2009 until I picked up a simple tip from a PPCSummit.com email newsletter: “turn off broad match.”  I checked search terms  that were triggering my keywords and found that about 35% of my clicks were not targeted and irrelevant to my adds. (The search engine supposedly had ‘“broadened” its broad match parameters.)  I believe that this “ONE TIP” will save me $80,000-$100,000 over the next year.”

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.

Book Review by Mary O’Brien, Founder/Director of PPC Summits

Tim does a great job in this book not only covering “What” Landing Page Optimization is but also “Why” you should do it.

His book provides you with excellent guidance for analyzing your current website and determining how to make it easier for the visitor to use and do what you need them to do.

Tim has spoken for us several times at our PPC Summits and his sessions are always very interactive and well received by attendees. In the book he has a section called “Why your site is not perfect.” In person he addresses that head on in a presentation called “Why Your Baby is Ugly.”

Both the chapter and the training session provide excellent information on how to uncover the hidden problems in your site that your users are experiencing even though you may have overlooked them. Users don’t usually navigate your site the way you expect or the way you want them to, so rather than trying to drive them down your path, watch how they navigate and build your site and landing pages to meet their needs.

The book provides an extensive focus on personas, and why users behave the way they do on the web. It also explains basic concepts such as A-B split testing, ROI, and gives some examples with marketing formulas you can apply to your sites.

Tim covers testing landing pages comprehensively from an analytics perspective. No matter how pretty your website is, unless it performs and meets the needs of your audience it is practically worthless.  Tim also tells you honestly the limitations of different testing methods so that you can decide what will work best for you.

There are some good examples of sites with poor landing pages and sites with effective pages so you can get a better idea of what works and what doesn’t.  He also provides important background about the psychology and the math of testing that most people are not even aware of. This may get a little complicated for those who are newer to search marketing, but the concepts are those that every marketer needs to grasp and practice, so it provides a good grounding in some really essential stuff.

As Tim would tell you himself there is no “one size fits all” answer when it comes to landing pages. What works for one site won’t work at all for another, so you have to test and test again until you truly create a page that resonates with your audience. Of course the proof of that is whether the page is generating sales or leads, but the book also does a great job covering the metrics that allow you to discover whether the page is successful or not.

 There are parts of the book that may come across as a little “Salesy” or promotional in nature, but anyone who knows Tim, also knows that this is a just part of his persona. He is a passionate advocate of testing and tuning landing pages to get better results, and he has built a very successful business out of that philosophy and also made lots of money for his clients in the process.

If you are looking for a quick fix, this book is not for you. But if you want a deep understanding of all issues that are critical for landing page testing success, then you should definitely read this, and give it a prominent place on your marketing bookshelf as an ongoing research tool.

by Heather Schwartz, Account Executive at Anvil Media, Inc.

It’s never too early to start getting ready for the holidays whether it’s shopping if you’re a customer or prepping your strategy if you’re a marketer.  Here are some things to start thinking about the upcoming 2009 holiday season for your online marketing efforts, specifically for Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.  First let’s look into last year’s holiday season and expectations for this year to get a good understanding of the 2009 holiday landscape.

Holiday Season 2008
According to comScore, e-shopping sales in 2008 were over $130 million, a 6% increase in sales from the 2007 holiday season, and among the top 500 internet retailer’s sales in 2008 increased 12%.  From this we can conclude that more people were shopping online in 2008 compared to 2007 and that larger retailer sales are growing at a faster rate.  In a study done by Coremetrics, department stores and gifting sites saw an increase in conversion rate over the 2008 holiday season, while luxury goods retailers saw a decrease in conversion rate.  Why you ask?  Because the department stores and gifting sites adapted to the economy, they offered early discounting, they changed their merchandising to feature value items at lower prices and they added buying incentives for customers, like free shipping.   The retailers who continue to change and adapt to their customers needs and wants (within reason) are the ones that will prosper.

2009 Holiday Forecast
In order to properly prepare for this year’s holiday season, some research needs to be done first.  Below are Coremetrics’ forecasts for the 2009 holiday season:
• Shoppers will be shopping earlier this year and buying value orientated, incentive driven items.
• Potential for increase in cost/order, because customers will be shopping in more sessions therefore clicking on more marketing programs.
• Targeted email and display ads will play a bigger role this holiday season.

So, here is your friendly reminder – get ready for the 2009 holiday season, consider offering more promotions, like free shipping and feature products that aren’t necessarily the most expensive on your site.  (Keep in mind you don’t want these promotions to negatively affect your bottom line, be smart about your offerings.)  Also if you’re already running PPC on the Search Network, consider running on the Content Network on sites that directly target your customers.  So, how should you get started for the holiday season?

PPC Ad Text for Holiday 2009
1. Look at your campaign history.  If you included holiday messaging in your campaigns last year, what types of ads had the highest CTR and conversion rates? For those top performing ads can you translate the messaging for this year?
2. Continually test ad text.  There are several options when it comes to A/B testing ad copy.  For the holidays, test what type of promotion increases CTR or conversion rate.  Test the headline on your ad, for example, one that includes pricing v. one that doesn’t.  Once you have collected enough data, pause the non-performing ad, copy the ad that performed better and slightly tweak the messaging to continue testing.
3. Competitive research.  Don’t forget to do some holiday recon, look at what your direct competitors are saying in their ad text.  What type of offers/promotions are your competitors offering?
4. Create a schedule for the launch of your new ads, paying close attention to the following dates:
      a. Black Friday, November 27th – only 28 shopping days until Christmas this year.  Last year’s holiday season was the start of the shorter time period between Black Friday and Christmas Day.  In 2007, this period was 32 days, which is over a 12% decrease in the number of shopping days from 2007 to 2009.  This decrease in the shopping period is influencing customer’s buying behaviors to start shopping earlier.
     b. Cyber Monday, November 30th – this day continues to be a bigger day each year, with more people shopping online.
     c. Christmas Day, December 25th – continues to be a big shopping day for people doing returns or exchanges, customers buying complementary goods, using their gift cards, buying additional gifts online and buying products that were forgotten.

PPC Keywords for Holiday 2009
1. What keywords performed well last holiday season?  Instead of setting bidding strategies based on last month’s performance, take some time to review last year’s performance and make decisions based on last year’s holiday season.  Was there a specific keyword category that did particularly well in terms of sales, will this be the same for this year?  Look to popular trends to help determine “top sellers” and manage budget accordingly. 

2.  Revisit your negative keyword list.  Are there any particular holiday related negative keywords you could consider adding to your campaigns?

3.  If you are bidding on holiday related keywords, keep an extra close eye on the CPA and ROI at the keyword level, often times these keywords are expensive and don’t show goal return.

PPC Landing Pages for Holiday 2009
1.  If your ad text has holiday messaging be sure this gets translated to your landing page.  Same goes for promotions.
2.  Imagery.  Update any relevant images on your landing page with holiday related imagery.
3.  Revisit the conversion funnel on your site; make sure the appropriate merchandising is holiday related for cross selling and recommendation opportunities.  Do you have any gifting options on your site?  Also, make sure your internal search engine delivers gifting related results to relevant inquiries.

In summary, today is not too early to start planning your PPC campaigns for the holiday season.  Before it’s too late, determine your key benchmarks and goals for the holidays.  Start testing different verbiage or promotions now so you have a leg up on the competition before the holidays hit, and if something is working in one medium try to translate that across all your marketing efforts if applicable.

I hope the above takeaways regarding ad text, keywords and landing pages get you excited for the 2009 Holiday Season and jumpstart your PPC strategy.

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Heather Schwartz is an Account Executive at Anvil Media, Inc.  Heather  graduated from the University of Oregon with a BS in Marketing and a minor in Communication studies.  Heather has been working with Anvil Media in Portland since 2008 specializing in B2C ecommerce clients such as lucy activewear, Tea Collection and Ellington Leather, developing SEO, Social Media and PPC campaigns to increase clients online visibility and ROI.

By Dane Christensen, Search Engine Marketing Manager at Lyris, Inc

Countless articles have been written about the importance of focusing on long-tail keywords for both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.  It’s generally agreed that long-tail keywords produce higher quality traffic at a lower cost. 

It’s a great theory.  But there is the small matter of generating the massive number of long-tail keywords needed to build a significant amount of traffic.   By its very nature, long-tail keyword traffic is scattered across a very wide landscape. 

Using the Lyris HQ demo website “Top 5 Flicks” (www.top5flicks.com) as an example, a very small list of possible long-tail keywords could be:

• ”action flick starring orlando bloom”
• ”horror movie without blood”
• ”buy romantic comedy movie”
• ”war movie about macarther in Japan”
•  “directed by martin scorsese”

When you factor in all the possible movie genres, subjects, settings, actors, directors, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, etc. can you imagine how many possible permutations of long-tail phrases there could be?  Oh, and then there are misspellings (yes, I spelled “macarther” wrong on purpose above) meaning that keyword phrases could easily go into the millions.  Some of those keywords will get a handful of searches each month; many of them will just get a single random search here and there.   But that’s the long-tail.  Individually, the keywords probably aren’t worth the effort of researching and plugging them in to your system.   But collectively it can account for a significant amount of high-quality traffic. 

To go after the lucrative long-tail, you must have an effective way to harness massive numbers of keywords. 

Following are five techniques that will allow you to do just that:
Website Content Mining
You know all of those websites that marketers have been working hard to optimize for years?  They can serve as a great source of valuable long-tail keywords.  But how do you scoop up the keywords that are just floating out there amongst all those websites?  Some people have created screen scraper bots—applications that scour the web extracting keywords from websites. 

But this method has been rendered obsolete by Google’s (relatively) new Search-based Keyword Tool .   Using the SK Tool, you can specify a particular website address and it will instantly produce a list of keywords found on that site.  Click on any of those words to go straight to a search results page where you can find other websites to enter into the tool.  In no time you’ll find a plethora of long-tail keywords. 

The tool also provides a way for you to organize these keywords into categories.  If you have an AdWords account you’ll also have the ability to store keyword sets so you can build lists over time.  Once you’ve got a big enough list you can easily export the list for import back into Google or any other search engine.  It’s a great tool.  And it’s completely free.

Search Engine Query Analysis
While the above method focuses on pulling keywords from content, this method involves analyzing what people are actually searching for in the search engines.   While there is undoubtedly a great deal of overlap between these two sources, analyzing what people are looking for may be a way of getting the jump on all those websites that have not yet picked up on the latest trends.

The Keyword Discovery tool in Lyris HQ mines query data from over 200 search engines world-wide, compiling nearly 38 billion searches.  When used with the Lyris HQ Search Marketing tool, researched keywords can be automatically dropped into your PPC campaigns with no export/import required.   The Keyword Discovery tool is included in the Lyris HQ fee structure, allowing Lyris HQ users the ability to easily tap into the most extensive database of keyword data on the planet.

PPC Competitive Intelligence
Competitive intelligence tools take yet another approach to keyword research, focusing on the keywords on which PPC advertisers are bidding.   The idea here is that if companies are actually spending money on these keywords, they must be the most important keywords.  Two such “spying” tools are Keyword Spy and Spy Fu, with service fees ranging from $59 to $139 per month.

These services allow you to input the domain of your competitors’ websites, and it will return a list of all the keywords on which they are bidding.  In addition to the keywords, there is information such as how many searches are done on the keywords, how many companies are bidding on them, and what the cost is for the top bid position.   This allows you to easily focus on the least competitive keywords.

Permutation
If you want to bid on the keywords that no one else has even thought of, the tool for that job is permutation.  Permutation means assembling words together in various combinations form different sets of words.  Using the “Top 5 Flicks” example, our permutation may look like the three lists below:

List 1                List 2                   List 3  
movie              starring              keanu reeves
dvd                  featuring            russell crowe
flick                    with                   harrison ford

These three small lists can be combined into 27 (3x3x3) different keywords such as:
* movie featuring harrison ford
* dvd with russell crowe
* flick starring keanu reaves
* Etc.

Add just one more three-item list like genres (e.g. action, comedy, drama) and you’re talking about 81 long-tail phrases (e.g. “comedy flick with harrison ford”).  Adding more items to each list can grow the list to massive proportions very rapidly.

The key here is to save the energy of researching what people are bidding on, searching on, or putting on their website and just pump out the keywords programmatically.  Using this method you’re bound to generate a lot of phrases that nobody every searches on, but you’ll also catch a lot of those very low-volume searches that are missed with the previous methods–or even those that haven’t even been searched on yet.  

Unless you have unlimited time and patience, you’ll need a tool to pull this off.  The leader in the field is Boxer Software’s “The Permutator,” an installed software that cost about $50.

Web Analytics
If permutation is like casting a very wide net in order to scoop up all the stragglers, using your web analytics data is more like using a fishing pole with the perfect bait to catch exactly the right keywords.  Any respectable web analytics application has some form of keyword report that will show you what keywords visitors searched on in order to reach your site.  That is your prime list. 

Some keyword reports are more sophisticated than others.  The keyword report in Lyris HQ allows you to segment visitors and the keywords they searched on using a wide range of criteria, allowing you to focus on the highest value keywords. 

You can even take it a step further and capture the data from a search form on your own website.  This way you not only know what people searched on to reach your site, but what they are searching for after they reach your site.  Now that is targeted!

Summary
Implement all five of these techniques and you won’t miss any high-value long-tail keywords.  And you may actually find that you have no more use for the big-head keywords at all.

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Dane Christensen is the Search Engine Marketing Manager at Lyris, Inc. where he uses the company’s integrated online marketing suite to manage a six digit monthly marketing budget over seven different search engines.  He has been involved in the Internet industry as a trainer, web developer, webmaster, online marketer, web analytics specialist, product manager, and entrepreneur since 1994.

Article 2 of 3: Drive Best-in-Class Results by Integrating Your Pay Per Click (PPC) with Other Online Marketing Channels

By Mary Huffman, Executive Vice President, Ionic Media

In the first article in this series, we reviewed the workhorses of online advertising:
* Pay-Per-Click search marketing (PPC)
* Search engine optimization (SEO)
* Display advertising (e.g., banners)
* Email (to house list)

Each marketing channel has a sweet spot for the type of product or situation in which it performs best.  The same is true for the six marketing channels we are exploring in this article:
* Mobile 
* Online PR
* Blogging
* Viral /social media
* Email (to rented list)
* Affiliate marketing

In this article, we will explore relatively new media options along with tested media vehicles like email to rented lists and affiliate marketing.  At this time, the new marketing choices are riskier than the ones we reviewed last time, but there are some stand-out results that cannot be ignored (especially among the adventurers out there).

First, let’s review how the six marketing vehicles we are focusing on perform on the “Branding” vs Direct Response” two-by-two matrix.

The six marketing vehicles we are reviewing in this paper are spread out across the branding vs direct response spectrum.  Now let’s review the summary and then we can dig into the detail on each of these more newly-minted marketing vehicles.

Now let’s look at each of these marketing vehicles in more detail.

Mobile Marketing:
The mobile marketing umbrella includes a number of different marketing vehicles.  Let’s look at each one individually.

Banner/Text Ads On Phones:
* Using a mobile ad network, marketers can place display or text ads on websites viewed with phones or on content sent to mobile phones (like daily weather updates)
* Allows you to reach a young, tech savvy audience
* Also allows you to reach older audiences, though at lower volume
* High response rates currently (likely because the technology is newer)
* As mobile coupon technology improves, this will be a great way to push coupons to users who are in-store and more likely to purchase

SMS Messaging Campaigns:
* Using a mobile service provider who furnishes a short code, you can entice people to “Text sweepstakes to 22456 for a chance to win a new car.”  It is the beginning of a mobile or email communication that must be managed carefully
* Most mobile service providers have a relatively high monthly minimum cost so it is not easy to test these types of campaigns unless you go through an agency (like Ionic Media)
* While the largest population using messaging is younger, don’t count out the 30-54 year olds, as they are the fastest growing segment for mobile messaging

Mobile Search:
* Using existing search engine ad interfaces as well as those from new companies, a marketer can choose to display a paid listing within the results when mobile users make a search
* Costs little but often delivers few leads

Mobile Applications:
* This can involve either developing a custom application, or sponsoring an existing application
* The trick is aligning the brand with an application that addresses what users care about and want to do while mobile

Mobile Website:
* Note that for many of these campaigns, you need a mobile website
* Some smartphones (e.g., iPhone, G1, Blackberry Storm) can render “regular” websites pretty well
* But most phones require a scaled-down mobile site

Online PR:
* Online PR is an easy and effective way to drive more buzz about your company
* Existing press releases can be uploaded to syndication sites that drive the story across online press sites
* Each time you upload a press release, the syndication site charges a fee (up to $200 depending on the site and the package)
* This can be an effective way to drive authority for your site (lots of relatively good inbound links) which helps with organic ranking

Blogging:
* Using easy-to-install blogging software, a marketer can create an on-site or off-site blog where one or more people can chronicle their thoughts and opinions
* A good blog with lots of followers can drive organic ranking and therefore organic traffic
* To ensure good pickup, blog often and reach out to potential readers to become loyal followers
* This marketing vehicle takes a commitment to the activity.  Blogs should be updated at least once a week and better to be updated every other day or even everyday.  That takes a high level of commitment

Viral Marketing:
* Viral marketing is a catchy name for an ill-defined group of marketing tactics.  For example, all of the following would be considered viral marketing:
     * An on-line widget that lets you upload photos to turn your friends into dancing elves a la Chorus Line
     * A video of claymation bunnies frolicking in New York City to advertise the Sony Bravia television
     * An email message you send to a friend with Bob Dylan holding up cue cards that display your message and which    ends with a plug for his latest album
     * A video of preppy white boys doing a rap about throwing a tea party (to advertise Smirnoff)
     * A widget with a man dressed in a chicken suit who performs whatever action you command him to (Burger King’s Subservient Chicken)
     *  These are all wildly popular examples of viral campaigns.  There are 2,356,744 other campaigns that companies tried to make popular but did not, in the end, “go viral.”  Note: That number is approximate and might be off by a lot
     * MarketingSherpa reports that the most experienced viral marketers report that only 50% of viral campaigns break even and only 1 in 80 are home runs
     *  So, the message when you are starting a viral campaign is to be creative, turn to the experts and run 80 campaigns at a time so you can get one home run (that would work, right?).  Actually, just be thoughtful when you are planning your viral campaigns and watch your costs as most do not deliver on the hype

Email to Rented Lists
* Historically this medium has delivered poor performance to marketers
* It can be used effectively to drive awareness and action if you carefully select the list provider of the leads

* When looking for a rented list to email with your message, check for the following:
* How was the list assembled?  Did they scrape websites or did people sign up for a special offer for information one individual at a time?
* Is the list single or double opt-in?  Double opt-in is the gold standard.  If it is opt-in, what do the people think they opted in for (information from a certain vendor, information for a series of vendors in a category or a chance to win a long-past sweepstakes)?
* How old are the names on the list?  If everyone opted-in to the list within the last 30 days, you should be willing to pay more than if the list was built over 5 years ago
* How often do they mail to this list and what are the response/opt-out rates?
* Consider a co-branded email campaign with another, more established brand.  Use that brand’s email list and send a dedicated email that has an implied endorsement from that brand

Affiliate Marketing:
* Affiliate marketing includes the broad reach of affiliate networks such as Commission Junction as well as working closely with a small number of “super affiliates” who carefully drive leads and sales to your business
* Working with affiliate networks such as Commission Junction and ShareASale makes affiliate recruitment easier (as they have hundreds of thousands of members) but you have less control over the quality of the affiliates and the messages they are putting out to your target market in your name
* Creating super-affiliate relationships with a handful of sites is more work but can deliver a better end result in terms of volume and quality of leads/sales
* And the bounty is often a key driver here.  If you are willing to pay more per lead or sale, more affiliates are going to give you more attention and drive more volume

While these six marketing vehicles are not the online marketing staples from the first article in this series, there is a lot to be said for testing these media.  Each medium listed above requires either time or money to make it happen.  For any given company only two are likely to be a strong fit with the target market of that particular product.

In the last in our series on the online marketing landscape, we will be looking at how to intelligently integrate your PPC marketing with other online vehicles for maximum effect.

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Mary Kingsley Huffman is a co-founder and Executive Vice President at Ionic Media, a firm with deep experience driving bottom-line results for clients using search and online marketing. Previously, she was Director of Marketing at Overture Services where she was responsible for the acquisition marketing and communication departments, leading all advertiser acquisition efforts and customer communications. Prior to Overture, Mary was an Engagement Manager in the London office of McKinsey & Company, specializing in marketing solutions. Mary has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA from UCLA.