Google AdWords advertisers who closely track their campaigns may have noticed traffic coming in for a wide variety of phrases that might seem like an odd fit for their campaigns. While bloggers have been speculating about problems with the AdWords Broad Match system since late summer, Mike Churchill at SEOClubHouse explains the system is working just as Google wants it to.

Since late August, many AdWords advertisers have noticed some odd queries showing up in their AdWords campaign reports. These queries often have no relation to the keywords being bid on through the campaign, leading many to speculate that Google's broad match system was "broken."

As it turns out, broad match isn't broken. The team at Google has just been trying something new. Mike explains:

Google is combining the search queries from two successive searches when serving up the PPC ads. If a Google visitor makes a search, then uses the search box on the first search?s results page, the original query AND the second query are BOTH used to determine the ad to display. My colleague Jim Gilbert refers to this as the "Google 1-2 Punch", and it can end up costing you money and leaving you confused if you don?t take steps to combat this new algorithm change.

Why is this a problem? Ads may be displayed for inappropriate searches, resulting in unnecessary expense for the advertiser.

A problem with the AdWords algorithm? Unlikely. Mike says he's spoken with some Google engineers about the issue and they responded:

"the search results [...] are the result intended behavior. When determining which ads to show on a Google search result page, the AdWords system evaluates the user?s previous search query as well as the current search query."

Want to see it in action?

Here's a screen shot I took of a Google search for "play kitchens." You'll note the expected search results at the top and down the right side of the screen.

Next I ran a search for the phrase "toy truck." You can see universal search at play in the images at the top center, but if you look through the AdWords ads down the right side of the screen, you'll see something surprising. The fourth ad down, outlined in red, is for "toy kitchens" at NexTag.

Note that "toy" is the highlighted word in the ad. Google served up the ad by taking my first query (play kitchen) and combining it with my second query (toy truck) to serve up an ad for "toy kitchen."

That may work this time around because I was looking for a toy kitchen and the ad may stand out on my second search as something I missed on the first. But it's certainly not a great idea for advertisers if Google doesn't let them opt out. It's important to note this "second round" match seems to be happening for all types of campaigns, not just for broad match campaigns.

The news isn't all bad.

Some advertisers are finding they get a decent conversion rate even on the second-run ad matches. Of course others are not happy with the lack of targeting going on and are seeing drops in conversion rates.

Mike offers a work around:

There is a partial defense: the traditional defense against expanded broad match is to use negatives in the campaign to explicitly request that your ad NOT be displayed when one of those related terms is searched for. Thus, if I were selling stainless steel knives, I might include "pots" and "pans" in my negative list to keep my ad from matching to searches for stainless steel pots.

With the Google 1-2 punch, it appears that using a negative exact match phrase in the adgroup may prevent the ad from being displayed ? even if that negated phrase is NOT the phrase being searched for in the second case!

The content of your website is your #1 sales tool. Pictures, tools, and other fun stuff can be important in making your site visibly and functionally appealing, but it is the content that sells. Well written and user focused content allows your visitors to "find out" more about your products and services, as well as how your company will be able to meet their needs.

Content weighs heavily both in terms of how users interact with your website as well as how visitors (both human and search spiders) are able to determine what you offer and what each page of your website is about. While solidly optimized content is important for search engine rankings, considering the usability of your content is of paramount importance for attaining good conversion rates.

Voice:

The content of your website should be written in consistent voice from page to page. This voice needs to be one that is relatively consistent with your industry and resonates with your target audience.

Active words:

Active words help the user engage with the content making them a participant rather than just a passive reader. The site's content should be full of active verbs that inspire visitors to take action.

Typographical errors:

Website should be free of all typographical errors. Both spelling and grammatical errors can be an indicator that you lack professionalism. They must be eliminated to maintain overall trustability.

Skimmable & scannable:

Visitors skim through and scan content to find what interests them before they actually read each word. As much as possible, use short paragraphs, headings, bullets and stick to a basic reading level.

Customer focus:

Present your content in a way that speaks to your visitor's overall wants and needs. Focus on them, not on you or your company.

Personality needs:

Content should use language that speaks to individual personalities of your visitors. Providing information that certain personalities "need" helps speak to those visitors more directly and move them through the conversion process.

Benefits vs. features:

Present the benefits your visitors will receive. Don't write exclusively in terms of what your product or service does, but what benefits your visitors will get from your product or service.

Spammy text:

Content should always read naturally and should never feel ?stuffed? with keywords. Never hide content on the page, but use it effectively as a sales tool.

Calls to action:

Each page should contain a close and one or more calls to action. Once you have effectively provided the necessary information, compel the visitor to take a desired action.

Bonus Tip:

Linking out:

Whenever possible and only where relevant, link your text out to other areas of the website as they are mentioned within the body copy. Selectively link out to external sources that reinforce the information you are providing.

All too often site owners want to sideline the content. They feel that pictures, tools and products are the only things that visitors want. Yes, these are an important part of the sales process, but so is the text. Properly developed text informs and persuades. It entices and encourages. It draws and drives. More than anything else, text sells.

Discuss this article in the Small Business Ideas forum.

(While there's no shortage of coverage on this issue, many small business owners are finding themselves a bit bewildered by the whole paid links debate. This series is designed to help them understand the issues at play so they can make their own decisions about how to move forward in regards to buying, selling and nofollowing links.)

In the first article in this series I outlined the history of the nofollow tag. In the second article, I took a look at some of the complex issues in the "are paid links ok or are they evil?" argument. In part three I explored the options Google has in dealing with this problem and why I disagree with the route they've chosen. Today, I'm going to look at why I'm opposed to putting nofollow in place, why "opinions" are fair game for marketing and what I think Google may be after with this whole crusade.

What's the Big Deal?

I've heard two points about this debate being tossed out time and time again by Google backers.

1.) You knew it was coming
2.) If you aren't selling PageRank, why don't you just nofollow your ad links?

I addressed the first point in part two of this series I also pointed out in part three that while those in the search industry may have known it was coming, the greatest majority of web site owners have no idea Google has a problem with them selling links that are not nofollowed.

When it comes to the second point, the answer is pretty simple. Why should I have to?

Google tells us time and time again not to do things specifically to impact our rank in their engine unless it also improves the value for the user. Descriptive title tags make sense for both search engines and users. Easy to follow navigation makes sense for search engine and users. Securing links from relevant sites makes sense for both search engines and users.

Implementing nofollow? Tell me again how this benefits my users?

Even apart from the fact that I shouldn't have to take the time to nofollow every ad on my pages, there's still the extremely important issue of webmasters who have no idea Google has laid down this decree.

Instead of announcing the new policy (refuse to nofollow paid links and risk being banished from our engine) on the official Google blog, they chose to let the word spread via an "unofficial" company blog and a leading industry site. Now, with all due respect to Matt Cutts and Danny Sullivan, how many site owners outside the industry actually know who they are and read them?

In other words, Google has not only decided to penalize site owners for something they have no idea they should be doing, but spread the word via two sites that aren't even officially related to Google.

It'd be sort of like the school bully beating you up after school every day until you find the ONE random kid in the playground who tells you the bully just wants you to high five him on your way in the door.

In fact the the more I think about it, the more I'm left asking myself if Google's crusade against the use of PageRank to value ad sales is out of line.

Opinions Have Been Used to Sell Things for Years

Personally, I've always come down on Google's side in thinking they have the right to restrict the flow of PageRank if their algorithm detects something they don't like. However, I've been doing some thinking on the issue in the last two weeks and I think I'm starting to change my opinion a bit.

While I do still believe Google has the full right to restrict the flow of PageRank to any site they choose, I'm starting to have more and more of a problem with their claim that they "own" PageRank and no one else can profit from it.

I was emailing with a blogging friend about the issue this week who is new to the world of search marketing. When she mentioned potential lawsuits, I tried to give her some background and insight into the Search King lawsuit that happened back in 2003. (Read background on the Search King lawsuit.) I explained the court had found PageRank to be a protected form of free speech which meant Google had every right to change it whenever they liked.

The more I thought about it though, it seemed like if Google had the right to change their opinion, other people had the right to capitalize on it. (Whatever "it" was at the moment.)

One of Google's primary arguments in the paid link war is that PageRank is "theirs" and no one has the right to profit from it. The problem with this assertion is that Google chooses to make PageRank public. Companies have been using opinions as a way to sell products (and advertising) for as long as opinions have existed.

Consumer Reports, Motor Trends and Zagat are just a few companies that spring to mind when I think of companies whose opinions are used to sell products. Think about it for a minute and see if you can recall how many television commercials or newspaper ads you've seen by Toyota touting the Camry as the "Motor Trends 2007 Car of the Year."

The same holds true with consumer opinions. Four out of five dentists use Crest. 9 out of 10 Geico customers would recommend them to their friends. This blog is ranked in the AdAge Power 150. Google has assigned a PageRank of 7 to Entrepreneur.

If Toyota can sell their car by citing their win as Motor Trends car of the year, or Search Engine Guide can promote ad sales by pointing out we're part of the AdAge Power 150, why is it so wrong for Entrepreneur (or any other site) to capitalize on that public PageRank to increase ad sales?

Google doesn't want anyone to sell ads based on Google's opinion of a site? Fine. Call up the relevant programmer and say "Take the friggin' green line out of the toolbar!" After all, the fastest and easiest way to put a damper on the practice of buying and selling links in the hopes of passing PageRank is to quit telling people what their PageRank is.

Of course if Google did that, how many site owners would either remove the Google toolbar, or simply stop using it? That wouldn't be very good for Google, now would it? Then again, with more and more people using personalized search, Google has plenty of other opportunities to gather data on users.

The solution seems so simple, but Google has chosen to push nofollow so hard. Honestly, it makes me wonder if there's another issue at play here.

Is NoFollow the Key to Making Google's Life Easier?

Part one of this article series covered the history of the nofollow tag and it's rapid progression from comment spam fighter to paid link qualifier. I have to wonder if paid link fighting is the final destination for nofollow or if Google has quite a bit more in mind for that simple little tag.

Search engine marketers began experimenting with using the nofollow tag to channel the flow of PageRank almost as soon as it was announced. Of course it's only been in the last few months that Google has not only acknowledged this practice, but began endorsing it.

In fact, Matt Cutts posted the following comment to Google Groups just this week:

What are some appropriate ways to use the nofollow tag? One good example is the home page of expedia.com. If you visit that page, you'll see that the "Sign in" link is nofollow'ed. That's a great use of the tag: Googlebot isn't going to know how to sign into expedia.com, so why waste that PageRank on a page that wouldn't benefit users or convert any new visitors? Likewise, the "My itineraries" link on expedia.com is nofollow'ed as well. That's another page that wouldn't really convert well or have any use except for signed in users, so the nofollow on Expedia's home page means that Google won't crawl those specific links.

I've seen some folks point to this quote and shout "hypocrite." After all, the team at Google is telling us we can't manipulate PageRank by buying or selling links, but they're also telling us it's just fine to manipulate PageRank by using nofollow within our own sites or to screen the link juice to sites we don't like. To many, these two points make it sound as if Google is talking out of both sides of their mouths.

I'll take it a step further.

Perhaps it's not that Google doesn't mind site owners trying to manipulate PageRank. Perhaps it's that they see nofollow as the perfect band aid to Google's algorithm problem.

Having trouble dealing with comment spam? Get all the major blog companies to join forces to make nofollow the standard link type for blog comments.

Paid links messing up the accuracy of your algorithm? Tell people they need to nofollow those links or you'll toss them out of the index.

The Internet getting big enough that indexing all those "useless" pages (TOS, logins, itineraries) are weighing your servers down? Convince webmasters to implement nofollow on all those pages to lighten your load.

We already know that site owners are tossing nofollow tags into links to sites they don't like. In fact, Scoble shouted his praise from the rooftop over the idea he could now link to a site without giving it a boost in the Google rankings.

Perhaps Google's next crusade will be to force all of us into nofollowing the links to those "useless" pages on our sites to make their lives easier?

Coming Up

In part five of this series, I'll wrap things up by taking a look at what's going to happen to the Internet if Google continues with their paid link crusade.

Ask's portion of the search market is a mere 4.3% (src. Hitwise) so it is understandable that optimizing for Ask is a low priority in the eyes of many webmasters. That said, despite the company's rather infamous advertising campaigns Ask has some incredible and unique features that I believe will slowly but surely steal search share from its more popular brethren. Consequently, it seems appropriate to provide some tips on how to optimize for Ask without sacrificing rankings on the other search engines. To that end the following instructions are supplementary to the recommendations provided in my "How to Optimize for Yahoo" article.

ASK OVERVIEW

Ask differs from the other search engines because it has fully rolled-out universal search. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this term universal search is the integration of results from a variety of sources (i.e. images, video, local information, news, blogs, etc.) into a single results page. Although Google has implemented universal search to some extent Ask is the first search engine to leap head-first into these complex waters and they have done a great job of it. Since universal search is slowly going to be rolled-out across Google, MSN and Yahoo, Ask is a great place to prepare for the competitive world of universal search. The areas I will cover are images, blogs and feeds, local search and mobile.

ASK IMAGE OPTIMIZATION

Just how do you get an image to show up within Ask.com's universal search results? The key is to remove any doubt of the image's relevance to the keyword you are trying to achieve rankings for.

1. Alt tags need to be created and must clearly represent the topic of the picture while utilizing the target keyword.


2. The content nearby the image should be relevant to the picture and for best results should include the keyword used to describe the picture in the Alt tag.


3. The filename of the picture should utilize the keyword.

ASK'S LOCAL SEARCH: ASKCITY

AskCity is Ask's local portal where various maps and locally themed content (such as event news, theatre tickets, etc.) can be readily found. AskCity was launched in December 2006 as a far superior upgrade over Ask Local and it remains a solid leader in the growing and highly competitive local search marketplace. Fortunately having a presence at AskCity only requires that your business is added to their database if it is not already there.

How to Submit Your Business to AskCity

Submit your business information to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it with the subject line "Ask City Feedback ? Business". Ensure the following information is added to the email:

• Business name and complete address
• Phone number
• The category your business best fits
• The website URL
• A contact person's email address

According to Ask the turnaround time is no more than 28 days.

Tip! You might notice that your business profile (once it is online) has a rating system attached to it; shown as a five star system. If you wish to influence your rating then I suggest sending your happy customers to CitySearch, Yelp.com, and Insiderpages where these results are drawn from. Once they are there have them find your listing and provide a positive review of your business.

MAXIMIZING VISIBILITY IN ASK BLOGS & FEEDS

Ask is the proud owner of Bloglines which is one of the foremost news aggregation tools on the web and happens to be the database behind Ask Blogs and Feeds. To ensure that your blogs and feeds are included in this system I suggest creating an account at Bloglines and be sure to include your feed within the profile.

In order to have any chance of influencing your position within Ask Blogs and Feeds you need to be aware of a couple things. First, the order of results within Ask's Blogs and Feeds is determined by a combination of Ask's ExpertRank algorithm (their intensive search engine algorithm) and Blogline's vast 12 million plus blog database. Ask uses this combination to create the first order of results which is dictated by relevance; not by date which is the most common first viewing at Ask's competitors. Consequently, it is important that you pay close attention to the relevance of the keyword density in your title, body and links within each post you write on your blog. By keeping your ideal keyword ranking in mind while writing your posts you will have a better chance of obtaining a ranking based on relevance.

Secondly, aside from ordering results by relevance and date (noted as "most recent"), Ask also offers a sorting by popularity. I can only postulate how this works but it makes good sense that a popularity ranking is derived from a mingling of Ask's monitoring of the stickiness of certain articles (how long users stayed at an article before returning) and how many times a feed and/or a post is accessed within the multitude of user accounts at Bloglines. Considering these factors it stands to reason that creating a sticky blog post is the clearest and most obvious first requirement. The second requirement would be to get active in the Bloglines community and try to spread the word about your quality blog(s) throughout your community. The more people that add your blog feed to their Bloglines profile and interact with it, the better chance you have of achieving a top spot when results are ordered by popularity.

ABOUT ASK MOBILE

Ask Mobile utilizes ExpertRank and appears to be based on Ask's standard website database. This may seem odd at first. After all, how can Ask provide mobile users with full size websites? The trick lies in their use of Skweezer technology that squeezes normally unwieldy websites into more digestible one column sites for mobile users. It may seem that there is nothing that can be done then to influence mobile rankings at Ask. Not true, the answer lies within the fact that Ask Mobile is focused on providing local results to cell users while they are on the go. With that in mind it makes sense that you improve your website's odds of being found by ensuring it has a comprehensive listing in AskCity.

Tip! If locally based results are extremely attractive to you then I also suggest adding your physical address information within the footer of every page so that Ask and other locally focused search engines have a better chance of associating your website with a region.

SITEMAPS ARE CRITICAL

Ask's spider is the least active of the big 4 search by far. When reviewing client spider reports I see Ask visiting websites 50% less or more than MSN, Yahoo and Google. In fact on many websites that have not yet added a sitemap or have less than ideal site structures Ask often does not even index pages deep within their website(s). As a result, submitting a sitemap to Ask is critical if you want your deep content to be properly indexed.

1. First create a sitemap. On StepForth's recommended SEO tools page we noted our favourite tool currently: Vigos Google Sitemap Generator. Download this free utility and have it spider your website. Once it is complete set whatever custom data you want (info is provided within the program) and then generate the sitemap.xml file. Place this file within the root of your website and move to step 2.
   


2. To submit your sitemap to Ask you have two options: add a link to the sitemap into your Robots.txt file or simply inject your sitemap.xml address into the following URL and then visit it:
   
   http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.the URL of your sitemap here.xml
   
   Of the two options I strongly recommend going the route of adding the sitemap auto discovery link to your robots.txt file because this is now an agreed method of submitting a sitemap amongst the major search engines. Just place the following code on its own line within your robots.txt file:
   
   SITEMAP: http://www.the URL of your sitemap here.xml

USING ASK AS A RESEARCH TOOL

Ask has a helpful resource included in its universal search layout called "narrow your search". Try typing in your keyphrase in Ask and then take a look at the narrow your search section of the page. There you will see popular searches that are relevant to your keyphrase. Record this information when conducting keyword research because it is a valuable glimpse into what Ask's ExpertRank algorithm considers closely relevant and it may also show what users are actually searching for.

OTHER INFORMATION

There are a few personality traits that you should be aware of when working with Ask that are quite unique:

1. Ask does not currently support the "nofollow" tag which could mean that any link leaving your website is considered a vote of confidence for the destination site.
   


2. Ask utilizes a site/content preview window for each listing it presents; represented by a binocular icon. Since users may use this tool to get a glimpse of your site before visiting it is more important than ever to ensure the content above the fold (that appears first without scrolling) is enticing to users and relevant to their search.

CONCLUSION

I am solidly impressed by the technology at Ask and its successful foray into the realms of universal search. In fact, my research for this article has moved Ask from a bystander in my set of daily search tools to the forefront. I highly recommend utilizing Ask for your search needs and to keep an eye out for future technology additions to this solid search engine. In my opinion Ask is cutting edge enough that we can expect many search engines will be copying their successful implementations in the future.

Now? if only Ask could get the positive attention it deserves. If I were them I would start by creating a stronger connection with webmasters to interact with them and build awareness. That would be far more effective than the ad campaigns they are currently flooding the airwaves with.

Are you an Ask fan? If so, what do you think they need to do to improve their visibility? Post your thoughts by commenting on this article and perhaps Jim Lanzone and his crew will get a helpful tip or two.

Discuss this article in the Small Business Ideas forum.

I recently made a mistake. I took on a client without first having fully vetted them and their prospects for success. Several months later, with a more accurate picture of the situation, things are not looking so bright.
Here's what happened. The client had a URL that had been up for some time but used for an altogether different purpose than what they were turning it into. The URL didn't have much history and almost no authority but we felt we'd get some mileage out of it. Boy were we wrong. We should have realized up front that what we were dealing with was essentially a brand new URL, despite it being online for a couple of years.

But that's not the bad part. After we took the account we realized that the client had no real plan for success. His site was a sell-everything-we-can-get-our-hands-on type site. Everything from auto accessories to baby stuff to electronics to swords. Essentially, they are competing with Amazon.com and Wal-Mart and every niche site in between.

To help provide focus to the SEO campaign we told the client that we would focus only on one particular area of the site for optimization for at least 12 months. We were hoping that this would give us enough of an advantage while knowing that we'd still be competing against some well-established sites in that particular area. But real the problem was they still had no UVP.

After several discussions with the client, the closest we got to a UVP was superior customer service. We were hoping we'd be able to work from that. Unfortunately, customer service is only a small draw when comparing against more established sites that also have decent customer service and the same products for the same price. It's not enough of a strategic advantage to work from.

We spent several months working with the client to help develop their site into one worthy of top search engine rankings. We recommended a blog, which the client put up, posted thrice and promptly left to die. We offered blogging support and writing service which the client declined, only to come to us for support when his design team didn't get the blog installed correctly the first time. We put forth ideas for video and other content development which the client seemed to like and may or may not implement.

But this isn't about the client. This is about my mistake. I took on a site I knew had an extremely big uphill battle. We always try to educate the client and provide accurate time frames, but sometimes you get it wrong. And sometimes you just don't know what kind of hills you have to climb until you really get in there. Which provides a few valuable lessons.

Lesson 1: Know the terrain
In any marketing campaign it's important to know what you're getting into before you really get into it. This is true both for the marketer and the client. Only bad things happen if you don't fully--or as fully as possible--understand the foundation with which you have to work from. An understanding of the terrain allows you to...

Lesson 2: Reinforce accurate expectations
First you gotta provide accurate expectations, but continue to reinforce that. Clients seem to forget early conversations and contracts about expected performance and time frames. You simply have to keep reiterating that time and time again. Don't sound defensive about it, just let them know from time to time what they can be expecting. Knowing the expectations makes it easier to...

Lesson 3: Get the client involved
No matter what clients want, good marketing cannot be done without the client's involvement. There are just too many aspects of creating a viable business for the client to dump all expectations onto the marketer. Clients need to be involved in blogging, link building, social media, and even site development issues. Getting them involved early helps them understand that the marketer is not solely responsible for their success. If they are not willing or able to get involved then...

Lesson 4: Know when to cut your losses
Sometimes you have to lose the battle if you want to win the war. You gotta know when to cut your losses and tell the client that despite all the efforts you're not going to be able to meet their expectations. If they want you in for the long haul, and know that it'll be a long haul, great, but if they continue to have unrealistic expectations there comes a time when you gotta say "I gotta go."

I don't like being in situations like these but sometimes they are inevitable. But the more you can do to prevent them the better off both you and the client will be better off in the long run. It's a difficult situation to be in but some things you just don't know until it's too late. Ultimately it's up to the client to know all this before they get involved in business but as a good marketer, you need to be able to spot a potentially losing situation before you get into it. Otherwise you leave yourself open for all the baggage that comes with a disgruntled client that is looking for a place to point the blame.