May 08, 2008

Pay-per-click advertising for books

By Kai Blum

Pay-per-click ads on Google or Yahoo are an effective and affordable way to market non-fiction books to people who are actively looking for specific information. This is ideal for small publishers and self-published authors but also works for big publishers and university presses.

A well written pay-per-click ad will let search engine users know that your book exists and lead them to your website or blog. If your landing page content is convincing, you may easily convert them into buyers.

You can start with a very small budget, even as little as one dollar per day, and experiment with different ad texts and keywords. Linking from your landing page to Amazon.com or BN.com via their affiliate programs will allow you to keep track of your average advertising cost per book.

The key to a high conversion rate and maximum ROI is to match ad text, search terms and book content as closely as possible and make the landing page extremely informative.

An example: Let’s say your book is about the body language of dogs. According to Google’s keyword tool, there’s noticeable search volume for keyword phrases such as “dog body language” and “reading dog body language”. However, currently there are no pay-per-click ads for these search phrases. Therefore, if you have written or published a book about the body language of dogs, you can easily reach thousands of potential book buyers through pay-per-click ads and significantly increase sales.

Contact me if you have questions about pay-per-click advertising for books.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 04:42 PM
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April 21, 2008

8 redesign mistakes that can ruin your Google rank

By Kai Blum

Any of the following redesign mistakes can negatively impact your Google rank:

1. Change page URLs and other file names (images, pdfs)
2. Use different page titles and descriptions
3. Replace HTML-based headlines and texts with graphics or Flash
4. Make page text changes (content, formatting)
5. Change your internal link structure
6. Make changes to link anchor texts
7. Make changes to alt tags of navigational elements and images
8. Change links to external pages

In other words: Stay away from a complete redesign, if your web site is already ranked No. 1 on Google for your most important keywords phrases — unless you have an unbeatable number of quality inbound links. Even then, be very careful not to make any of the mistakes listed above, because on-page optimization is the foundation of search engine marketing success!

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 04:15 PM
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April 14, 2008

How choosing a physical location can influence Google rank

By Kai Blum

Seventy-four percent of U.S. consumers use search engines to look for local business information, according to Nielsen.

When they use a specific keyword, let’s say “massage” and combine it with a city name, for example “Ann Arbor,” Google will not only display the organic search results and the pay-per-click ads, but also ten “Local Business Results” near the top of the page and “number” them A-J.

The businesses with the most central physical address are usually listed first. I say “usually,” because there’s always a stray.

Google explains:

“As with all other Google search results, Local listings ranks results based on relevance. Distance is one factor that goes into our relevancy ranking, but there are many factors as well. Sometimes our search technology will decide that a business that's farther away is more likely to have what you're looking for than a business that's closer.”

There’s no doubt in my mind that distance is the most important factor and therefore you should not only use the right keywords when naming your small business, but also choose a central mailing address.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 09:48 AM
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December 18, 2007

Think about SEO when you name your new product

By Kai Blum

I’ve already written about how conducting keyword research before naming a web site and naming a small business can help achieve excellent search engine rankings. It is also best practice to do SEO keyword research before naming a new product.

An excellent article in the November issue of electronic Retailer magazine urges businesses to think of the web first. The writer emphasizes that a domain name that matches the product name is a major advantage, because it will help with search engine rankings for the product name and make it easier for consumers to find your web site.

Businesses are therefore well advised to research the availability of matching domain names before they name a new product and to consider choosing a different product name if the domain name is already taken. Otherwise they may realize too late that it will be very expensive to reach top search engine rankings if they choose a product name that is already someone else’s domain name. The example given in the article is a hearing-aid device called ListenUp. That domain name was already taken and the company had to use BuyListenUp.com instead and spend money on sponsored links.

I can’t say this often enough: If the web is an important part of your marketing strategy and if you don’t want to waste money, you are well advised to think about the appropriate keywords and your SEO strategy right from the start!

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 01:45 PM
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October 29, 2007

Search engines are top resource for local information

By Kai Blum

Search engines are the number one resource for finding local business information, according to a survey by WebVisible and Nielsen.

Here's how U.S. consumers look for local business information:

• Search engines: 74%
  
• Print yellow pages: 65%
  
• Internet yellow pages: 50%
  
• Traditional newspapers: 44%
  
• Print white pages: 33%
  
• Television: 29%
  
• Consumer review web sites: 18 %

Anyone who owns a local business and has a website is well advised to follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, to “help Google find, index, and rank your site.” Paying attention to these guidelines will also lay the foundation for good rankings on all the other search engines.

Achieving top listings across all major search engines through implementing SEO best practices, such as paying attention to the search terms that potential customers may use, writing good page titles and descriptions, and providing quality content, can make a huge difference for a local small business.

Anyone starting a business should also read my advice on naming a small business.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 01:24 PM
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October 22, 2007

The value of micro communities

By Kai Blum

The most important change in the message board landscape over the last four or five years is certainly the rise of micro communities – online forums that are focused on one particular topic or product. Micro communities usually rank extremely high on search engines and no organization can afford to ignore them.

Let’s say a consumer is interested in buying a Saturn Sky roadster. A Google search on “Saturn Sky” brings up a micro community, Saturn Sky Forum, among the first five search results! Members freely discuss the pros and cons of their vehicles, and potential buyers will certainly be influenced in their purchasing decision by what they read there. Do a Google search for any vehicle and you will most likely find a micro community of vehicle owners listed in the top search results.

These online communities also provide organizations with valuable feedback on their products and their customer service and can serve as an early warning system if there are any problems. Furthermore, they can provide some up-to-date intelligence about competitors’ products.

In the field of online marketing, micro communities are a great opportunity to spread the word about new products. This can be done either by placing advertisements, such as Google ads, or by creating a dialogue with community members, such as responding to complaints, questions, and suggestions. Micro communities can become great allies if they are treated with respect and in an honest and open manner.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 02:44 PM
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September 12, 2007

Important advice for everyone naming a small business

By Kai Blum

Thinking about starting and naming a small business? Want people to find your business online? Then make sure that your business name includes words that people type into search engines to find services like yours.

Here’s why: Most web sites linking to your site will use your business name as link anchor text. Having your desired keywords in your business name and therefore in the link anchor text will help you rank significantly higher for those keywords, since this is an important factor in search engine algorithms.

Here’s an example: You’d like to open a massage therapy business in Chicago. According to Google’s keyword tool, most potential clients would use keywords like “massage” or “massage therapists” in connection with the search term “Chicago”.

Therefore, don’t simply name your business “Busy Hands” or something like that, because people don’t use “busy hands” as search terms. Make sure to include “massage” and “Chicago” in your business name, if you want to rank for these keywords.

On how to select the right keywords and website/business name, read my earlier blog post, “Nomen est omen” for search traffic.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 02:23 PM
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July 17, 2007

Google Plans “unavailable_after” Tag

By Kai Blum

Search engine marketing expert Jill Whalen summarized on her blog a presentation by Dan Crow, director of crawl systems at Google, at the Search Engine Marketing New England conference. There’s lots of valuable advice in her blog entry, but one piece of information is particularly interesting:

Google is coming out with a new tag called “unavailable_after” which will allow people to tell Google when a particular page will no longer be available for crawling. For instance, if you have a special offer on your site that expires on a particular date, you might want to use the unavailable_after tag to let Google know when to stop indexing it.

Anyone who publishes seasonal pages and online promotions that expire on a certain date as well as pages that announce specific events should include this tag, because it will prevent search engine user frustration that comes along with too much clutter in organic search results and with accessing expired information.

This new tag makes so much sense that it’s surprising that it wasn’t introduced years ago.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 09:27 AM
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May 21, 2007

Google Cracks Down on “Made For AdSense” sites

By Kai Blum

There have been reports on WebmasterWorld over the weekend that Google is cracking down on people who use the AdWords/AdSense system to make money by setting up low quality web sites full of Google ads and by applying a technique called arbitrage. Apparently, Google notified them by e-mail that their AdSense accounts will be terminated June 1.

It is surprising to me that Google hasn’t done this earlier. Did it really take them that long to catch up with this practice? Or did they finally have to do something, because of news that click fraud represents 10-15% of advertisers' billed traffic. These numbers may or may not be accurate, but potential click fraud is certainly one of the reasons why I advise our clients to run ads only on the Search Network and not on the Content Network. (Low-quality clicks on the Content Network may also be triggered by boredom, curiosity, and the intention by some visitors to do the site/blog owner a favor by randomly clicking on some ads.) Ads on the Search Network, on the other hand, often cost significantly more per click, but – and this is the big difference - search engine users are actively looking for specific information and the chance to turn them into customers are much higher and worth the extra cost.

Whatever the reason for this crackdown, the result will make the user experience better by delivering more relevant information. Isn’t that what Google is all about and what made them so successful?

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 03:24 PM
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May 11, 2007

“Nomen est omen” for search traffic

By Kai Blum

The Romans already knew that “name is destiny,” and when it comes to search engine rankings and traffic, this is so obvious that I almost don’t want to write about it. But I still come across cases where web site owners are complaining about the lack of traffic they receive through search engines, without realizing that their misfortune already began when they misnamed their site.

Without proper keyword research you may just as well not put up a web site at all. You can bet that at least some of your competitors did their SEO homework, and they will outrank you forever if you don’t do the same.

So, do yourself a favor and:

• Create a list of keyword phrases that search engine users will most likely use to find your content.
  
• Use Google’s keyword tool and check for variations of your keyword phrases and for their search volume.
  
• Create a new list that contains the keyword phrases with the most search volume.
  
• Check out your competition: Who is top-ranked for the keyword phrases on your list? What have they done to optimize their pages for the particular keyword phrase? Could you do better? Who is linking to them? Could you get more and better links?

When you use a tool like Backlinkwatch, you will notice that the link text for each link is listed. You will also notice that often the keywords, for which the particular site is top-ranked in Google, are used to link to that site. But how do you make sure that sites that you want to link to your site use your keywords in their link text? Simple: Give your site a name that contains your desired keyword phrase!

Let me summarize: Select the right keyword phrase, name your site accordingly, follow basic on-page optimization rules, do the proper link building… your site will be top-ranked in Google.

Contact us if you need advice.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 02:46 PM
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April 05, 2007

Presidential Campaigns and Pay-Per-Click Advertising

By Kai Blum

Pay-Per-Click advertising is an extremely efficient and highly customizable way to directly target potential voters. Ads are triggered by certain keywords – in this case primarily the names of the contenders - and the advertiser pays only if a user clicks on the ad. Ads can be targeted geographically, by state, county, city as well as by language (English/Spanish). Changes can be made within minutes.

The three leading Republicans are all running Google ads, bidding on their own names as well as on the names of their competitors. On the Democratic side, John Edwards and Barack Obama seem to bid only on their own names. That seems like a waste of money to me, especially if your campaign website is on top of the organic search results anyway. Why waste your money if you can have those clicks for free? Hillary Clinton’s campaign seems to realize that. They currently don’t run Google ads at all, at least here in Michigan.

It will be interesting to see if the political Pay-Per-Click ad campaigns will become more aggressive in tone and in bidding strategies as we come closer to the primaries and the presidential election. I also wonder if any campaign will take advantage of Google’s and Yahoo’s rotating ad features to quickly and efficiently test different slogans and messages before applying them to the entire presidential campaign.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 04:52 PM
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April 02, 2007

Here are 5 reasons to use Google ads as personal ads

By Kai Blum

Has anyone tried to use Google ads as personal ads yet? I don’t know, but it would make a lot of sense, because they are very similar in format to printed personals. Now, add some advantages:

1. By choosing the right keywords to trigger your ads, you can easily find people with the same interests.
2. You can target a very specific geographic area.
3. You can target people who speak your language.
4. You only pay, if someone clicks on your ad.
5. You can set up an awesome landing page with lots of information about yourself that potential mates can access immediately.

Let me know if you tried this after reading my post, and invite me to the wedding.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 02:08 PM
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March 26, 2007

Google AdWords tests CPC Site Targeting and Pay-Per-Action

By Kai Blum

Google is taking steps to let advertisers better utilize the AdWords content network. Cost-per-click (CPC) site-targeting will finally eliminate the unpredictability that comes along with site targeted bids on a cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) basis. Google is currently beta testing this long-overdue feature, but I have no doubt that it will be available to all soon.

I’m not so sure about another feature that Google is beta testing these days: Pay-Per-Action, “a new pricing model that allows you to pay only for completed actions that you define, such as a lead, a sale, or a pageview, after a user has clicked on your ad on a publisher's site.” This is good for advertisers, because it would make it easier to track ROI. But I don’t think that many web publishers will embrace this model, because with Pay-Per-Action they wouldn’t get paid for most clicks.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 05:10 PM
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March 02, 2007

Optimize blog posts for search engines in seven easy steps

By Kai Blum

It is not difficult to optimize blogs for search engines such as Google. Simply follow these steps any time you write a blog post in order to improve search engine ranking:

1. Identify the keyword phrase that you believe people will most likely use to search for content related to your blog post.
2. Put this keyword phrase into your post’s title.
3. Use the keyword phrase and other closely related keywords in the first or second sentence and then a few more times throughout your post.
4. Use your keywords to name image files, separated by hyphen.
5. Put your keywords in the image alt tags.
6. Use your keywords as link text when you link to related pages or sites.
7. Put your keywords in bold tags at the beginning of paragraphs or in heading tags by creating subheadlines for long blog posts.

These search engine optimization guidelines for blog content should become second nature when you write blog posts and if you want to increase blog traffic through great search engine rankings.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 12:37 PM
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February 15, 2007

Google improves Quality Score algorithm

By Kai Blum

Google is currently making changes to its AdWords Quality Score algorithm in order to improve the relevance of displayed ads. According to Google, these changes “should make it easier for high quality ads to enter the auction while also discouraging low quality ads.” This will finally make life more difficult for AdWords spammers who bid on thousands of keywords, because Google will now set higher minimum bids for keywords that have nothing to do with the ad text and the content of the landing page.

I'm glad that Google is taking these steps that will reward advertisers who choose keywords that are actually related to the products or services that are being offered. Advertisers who bid on countless keywords that are unrelated to their products have been driving up prices for everyone for far too long. The new Quality Score algorithm will hopefully force them to change their practices.

Posted by Alicia Dorset at 05:18 PM
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February 06, 2007

Don’t look for customers — let them find you!

By Kai Blum

The results of a recent ad:tech/MarketingSherpa survey reflected what common sense has already told us for a while: E-mail spam and banner ads don’t work all that well, but paid search ads and search engine optimization are the smartest ways to reach customers online. Why? Because customers are not responsive to the large number of ads and blind emails that pour in every day, but they seek out what you and your competitors have to offer by typing certain keywords into a search engine. All you have to do is make certain that their search connects them to you.

How do you do that? First of all, optimize your site for certain keyword phrases and avoid design elements that hurt your site’s search engine friendliness, such as Flash-only pages and graphics-based text. Provide unique content and content-specific page titles and stay away from any “Black hat” methods to improve search engine rankings. These methods will backfire and hurt your ranking for months. Therefore, don’t believe anyone who promises you fast results in search engine optimization. It takes months to improve search engine rankings in a significant and lasting way.

In the meantime, take advantage of pay-per-click advertising to let customers find you. Have experienced professionals set up, manage and optimize your Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Engine Marketing campaigns to make the most of your advertising dollars. Remember, you only pay if a user clicks on your keyword-triggered ad. Make sure that your landing page is convincing and informative to achieve a high conversion rate.

In the long-term, a combination of great organic/free search results and targeted paid search engine ads that lead the user to an easy-to-navigate web site will ensure optimal results in customer acquisition.

Posted by staff at 03:18 PM
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January 23, 2007

Don’t neglect your “free Google ads”

By Kai Blum

Pay-Per-Click advertising, if done by experienced professionals, can yield high conversion rates and substantially increase profits. But don’t neglect the other major component of search engine marketing: organic search result listings. They’re free and users generally look at them first. Optimizing them leads to a higher number of visitors and potential conversions.

Organic search result listings are essentially free ads and site owners need to put as much effort into writing them as they do with their paid search results. Writing attention-getting titles and compelling descriptions for each page of the site will lead to a higher click-through-rate and can also improve search engine rankings if done right.

Most important is the selection of a keyword phrase for which a page should be optimized. These keyword phrases need to be included in the page title and the page description (both are placed in the appropriate meta tags of the page’s source code), in the headline of the page copy, two to three times in the first 100 words of the page text and a few more times later in the text. The challenge is to write something that appeals to search engines and users alike.

I cannot stress enough the importance of paying attention to every page of your site. Even if you don’t have a top-ranked site in the major search engines, it is possible to get a lot of visitors through individual pages, if they are optimized for specific keywords and users are looking for related information. But users will only click on the search result if the title and text are inviting. Keep in mind that paid search results which contain a call to action and speak directly to the user tend to have a higher click-through-rate. The same should be applied to organic search results.

There are other important factors that determine page rank (such as the number and quality of inbound links), but putting some effort into writing good page titles and descriptions as well as consistently adding high quality content will already make a noticeable difference and increase your number of visitors.

Posted by staff at 10:56 AM
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December 18, 2006

Forget focus groups

Test your marketing slogans with Pay-Per-Click advertising

By Kai Blum

Pay-Per-Click advertising is an extremely efficient and highly customizable way to directly target potential customers. Ads are triggered by certain keywords and the advertiser pays only if a customer clicks on the ad.

Both Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing let advertisers assign numerous ad variations to the same set of keywords. These ads can be displayed in rotation and it quickly becomes clear which ads generate the highest clickthrough rate. As a result, the low performing ads can be eliminated and successful ads can be refined through the introduction and rotation of subtle variations. This method will lead to the most effective tagline and ad text for the Pay-Per-Click advertising campaign.

But how many marketing professionals are aware that they can use Google’s and Yahoo’s rotating ad features to quickly and efficiently test different taglines, ad texts and incentives for their clients’ entire marketing campaigns? In my opinion, search engine users are the best focus group that marketing professionals can find in an instant, because they represent a random sample of potentially interested consumers and they are completely unaware that they are part of a test group.

The clickthrough rate for the ad variations will indicate which ad message resonates most with the public. The most successful tagline/text on Google or Yahoo! could then also be incorporated into print campaigns, press releases, etc.

I highly recommend that agencies test their clients’ potential taglines and ad texts through Pay-Per-Click advertising — pending client approval, of course — before they finalize all other forms of planned marketing. Needless to say, the test ads should direct users to a meaningful landing page on the clients’ web sites.

Posted by staff at 05:05 PM
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