Dec
07
2007
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Around the Industry in 50 Posts |
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Friday, 07 December 2007 |
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The year is coming to a close and it's time for "best of 2007" lists to start popping up in your feed reader. While there are some great ones out there, I wanted to make sure to draw your attention to Evan Carmichael's "Top 50 SEO Posts of the Year." Evan has put together one of the most comprehensive lists of great posts you'll see this year. In fact, he's done it without any writer overlap. That means he's offering up fifty articles from fifty different writers.
To read about the biggest controversy of the year you'll want to start with Matt Cutt's hysteria inducing "How to Report Paid Links" along with responses from writers like Danny Sullivan and myself.
For great "just getting started" articles, try the listings from Kevin Newcomb and Debra Mastaler.
Tired of all the talk about links? Check out the best posts about topics like Google's supplemental index, press releases, Wikipedia and local search.
You'll also find super valuable resource posts from the likes of Andy Beal, Todd Malicoat, Andy Hagans
This list is not for the faint of heart, but is is for the person looking to get a fantastic overview of the changes in the search engine marketing world over the past year. Even better, it's a wonderful way to get exposure to dozens of writers, many of whom you may have never heard of.
So grab your energy-inducing beverage of choice, fire up your browser and prepare to grow the number of search feeds in your RSS reader.  |
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Dec
06
2007
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Using Paid Search For Branding |
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Friday, 07 December 2007 |
Admittedly, I never looked at paid search as a tool to give your brand more exposure. I simply looked at it like many others - clicks and conversions. But, over the last few years, I've come to realize that PPC can be about branding. Here is an actual conversation with a trade show attendee at a recent show:
(Attendee approaches booth and engages us in conversation)
Attendee: I see your ads all the time and thought I?d stop by and see your products.
Me (digging for info): Thank you! Do you mind me asking where you see our ads?
Attendee: I?m a fairly new IT Manager setting up a new network and I?m constantly searching on Google and Yahoo for data networking info. I always seem to see your ads. You guys seem to have just about everything I need.
Me: Can you speak a little louder into the microphone? My review is coming around.
Yes, I did say that and no, he didn?t laugh. Maybe he didn?t quite understand that I live for hearing one of my paid search (PPC) target audience members utter the words that he thinks we have everything he needs because he sees our ads at the right time and in the right place. Although the joke bombed, he stuck around and we got a decent lead.
Where paid search is concerned, I divide my audience into two groups - those that have been touched by our brand and those that have not.
Don?t Know our Brand
I have sets of ads that are focused on keywords that are brand indifferent. These searchers want answers and they?re willing to hear from multiple companies. I?m not as concerned with pushing the qualities of our brand here. I want these people to get to our site so my ads are filled with industry buzzwords that they need to hear in order to feel confident that we can provide the answers for which they?re looking. Some of our brand attributes might persuade them, but I think advertisers get a little quick on the trigger to promote brands to these searchers. Once to our site, our brand messaging plays more of a prominent role.
Know our Brand
I?ve seen some debate among paid search advertisers about the need to bid on trademark or branding keywords such as a company name or company product name. Put me in the camp that you absolutely should be advertising on these terms. Typically, these terms cost less and the amount of advertisers on the search engine results page (SERP) are less. I feel this is where you have a big opportunity to push brand attributes. You can further instill confidence with the searcher by building your brand. They already know you?now you can let them know why they should buy from you.
Don?t underestimate the branding power within paid search advertising! Repetitive exposure to brand messaging through your PPC ads can go a long way in building brand confidence in your customers.
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Dec
04
2007
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Craig Newmark of Craig's List at Pubcon - Webmaster World |
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Tuesday, 04 December 2007 |
Craig Newmark of Craig's List started out before'95 at Charles Schwabb evangelizing the internet. In high school he
was the true "geek".
Craig, started this email list in Pine to his friends about what was going on at diners and restaurants in San Francisco. It exploded, soon people were asking for events and even listing apartments. People passed this list around and then ask to be added, soon list was up 240 email addresses and Pine cannot handle anymore. His friend helped him upgrade, but he also needed a name - his friend's already called it "Craig's List". His first venture into branding, and it grew even more. Denise Caruso suggested that he start putting tags such as "Event" on the emails so they all knew what was going on in the emails. Eventually he remembered he was a programmer and took his emails and turned them into web pages.
This again, is all happening back in 1995. Now he hasn't programmed since 1999, now he does have programmers doing it - he jokes that they deny him root access now. But up until '99 he was doing software programming consulting, such as Bank of America. In 1997, Craig's List site hit a million page views a month. MS also approached him for their sidewalk product to put on banner ads. At that time he decided that that did not feel right, to slow, then that's when he decided no banner ads or pop ups.
Also at the end of 1997 people approached him about making it a volunteer organization and charging to post job postings. 1998 began that venture, but that didn't work out, mostly because he didn't really provide leadership, it started to fall apart. In early 1999 he took control back, and realized that this hobby was becoming a real job.
He did realize that his management skills, as he stated "major suckage". He hired Jim Buckmaster to manage. At 1999 he also rewrote the code for the site, and someone else tacked on the billing software. Technical staff is now directed to give him new gadgetry, to keep him out of the programming. Eventually they added more cities, such as NY. NY didn't really take off until 9/11. Soon after they introduced annonymous relay, got some complaints, so withing 2 days they pulled the programmers together and came up with the choice to post anonymously or with your email.
In 2000 he got feedback OK to charge for job postings and real estate ads. In NYC they actually ask to charge for the real estate ads. Apartment brokers made the need for this. They have a passionate volunteer who hates abuse. Craig also drops in on occasion to these apartment brokers - reaction goes from disbelief, to panic then photography.
Craig's List is still running Linux apache and MySQL. They run their own caching system which they hope to open as open source soon, but need more help. 120 cheap linux machines run the sites. Majority of their laptops and desktops are Linux. The usual email tool - Pine - still. Big lesson, there's fancy stuff, but somtimes you want something simple. In 1995 he had the opportunity to go fancy but wanted to keep it simple. Someone said once the Craig's list site has the visual appeal of a pipe wrench - he takes that as a compliment.
They are considered the "first movers" since this started in 1995. Have offers that are very high, but are not interested in selling. They are charging for less than 1/2 the use of the site right now and want to keep it that way. If you see an ad on their site you can flag for removal, if others vote for it too, it will be removed. It can be gamed, but they are working on that.
The internet is everyone's printing press these days. But how do you get people to pay attention to your stuff?
Something big is happening right now, ordinary people (moderates) are getting together and changing things on a massive scale. Howard Dean campaign to highlight that. Barrack Obama's campaign is really utilizing the internet and opening up a great deal. Sunlight foundation is shining the light on lobbyist giving money to congressman and senators. Electronic Frontier Foundation, fighting for the moderates - taking on the big telecoms, they are doing the heavy lifting and defying the "big guys". The theme here is that the moderates are getting together and changing things. |
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Dec
03
2007
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A Slippery Slope: Google Owns a Search Engine Optimization Company |
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Tuesday, 04 December 2007 |
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If you own or work with a search engine optimization company, or even if you're just hoping to better your search engine placement, then you are probably aware of the recent acquisition frenzy that took hold among the major search engines. Google paid $3.1 billion for DoubleClick, Microsoft paid $6 billion for Aquantive, and Yahoo paid $680 million for the 80 percent of Right Media that it did not already own and another $300 million for BlueLithium. The companies purchased are all intended to help widen the advertising range of each of the engines in question, and to take advantage of increasingly sophisticated behavioral-based ad-serving technologies that the acquired companies owned.
What many people failed to realize was that when Google purchased DoubleClick, it now was also the owner of a very large search engine optimization company called Performics, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of DoubleClick.
This fact is of course raising some eyebrows in the industry. Google has consistently maintained that there is no way that people can pay for better search engine placement in the organic index, a stance that the company still claims applies despite this recent purchase. In fact, a portion of Google's published guidelines about SEO says, "While Google doesn't have relationships with any SEOs and doesn't offer recommendations?" In another portion, Google says "While Google never sells better ranking in our search results?" However, anyone who hires search engine optimization company Performics is of course now paying Google for better search engine placement. It seems like a pretty black and white issue, but Google would obviously prefer that it was kept delightfully blurry.
A Serious Conflict of Interest
One would think that Google, aware of the controversy that would come from the fact that it now owned a search engine optimization company, would be eager to spin Performics off quickly in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety and of selling search engine placement. Not so, says the official Google/Doubleclick acquisition FAQ:
Q. What will Google do with Performics?
A. Performics is part of DoubleClick, and we are acquiring it as part of the transaction. We have no plans to dispose of it at this time.[1]
All right, so Google owns a search engine optimization company and seems prepared to hold onto it for a little while at least. Yes, there seems to be a huge conflict of interest. Yes, there appears to be a large double standard. Yes, Google appears to have abandoned its long-standing principles regarding organic search engine placement in the interests of profit. But surely, the search engine optimization company that it bought will quickly be forced to follow the guidelines that Google has published for companies that are looking for a search engine optimization company. Right? Well, no.
Here is a verbatim quote from the guidelines that Google provides to people thinking about hiring a search engine optimization company:
Make sure you're protected legally.
For your own safety, you should insist on a full and unconditional money-back guarantee. Don't be afraid to request a refund if you're unsatisfied for any reason?[2]
On the surface, this advice seems solid enough, but as an owner of a search engine optimization company, I can tell you how impractical it is. What would prevent a company that achieved fantastic search engine placement using my service from asking for its money back, claiming that it is unsatisfied? "For any reason" is a very slippery slope, and apparently Google agrees ? Performics does not offer a guarantee of any kind. How do I know? Simple -- one of my employees called and asked. We also have it in writing from an email we received from one of their sales reps.
What Are Google's Options?
Let's be charitable and assume that in the heat of the acquisition Google has forgotten to update the page of advice that it has created for website owners. This leaves only four things that can happen:
Status Quo: Google keeps this advice up on the page and Performics continues to offer no guarantee regarding search engine placement. We'll call this the "hypocritical" scenario.
Performics gets in line: Google leaves the advice up as is and forces Performics to offer an unconditional money-back guarantee. We'll call this the "free SEO from Performics" scenario.
Guidelines change: Performics maintains zero guarantees for search engine placement but Google modifies the advice to remove the inconsistencies pointed out in this article from its advice section. We'll call this the "shareholder's delight moneygrubber special" scenario.
Google spins off Performics and removes itself from the search engine optimization industry. We'll call this the "sanity over dollars" scenario.
I'm not betting on which of these scenarios is most likely. Some time back I would have picked #4, but as I pointed out in a recent article, Google has already crossed an invisible line by offering free advice about organic search engine placement to its biggest pay-per-click spenders.
Google owning a search engine optimization company -- a slippery slope, indeed. What does this mean for those hiring other companies and looking for great search engine placement? We will just have to wait and see.
[1] http://www.searchenginejournal.com/what-will-google-do-with-performics/4720/
[2] http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291  |
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Dec
03
2007
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12 Product Page Conversion Strategies That Shant Be Ignored |
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Monday, 03 December 2007 |
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Product pages maintain considerable strategic importance for ecommerce websites. Your visitors enter your product pages not only with an intention to buy something (the most desired end action) but to also learn, research and compare what you have against a competitor. In addition to this, product pages also serve to help buyers find relevant pricing information, delivery costs, warranty and/or return policies and a whole lot more.
To be effective, your website must implement product pages that are able to satisfy each of your visitor's needs. But information isn't enough either. While providing necessary information, these pages must be convincing enough to entice your visitors to move through the purchase process -- on your site rather than on a competitor's website.
This is a tall order for pages that typically have very little content. But it's not impossible. Here are 12 things that will help your product pages convert visitors more effectively.
Calls to action
Every product page absolutely must have at least one, if not more, calls to action. The most important action a user can take is to "buy now" but other actions such as "purchase," "add to cart," "save for later," "add to wish list," etc, can be equally effective at capturing a sale.
Contact information
Not all shoppers are comfortable using web forms or wish to purchase online. Others have questions they need answered before completing their purchase. For these shoppers you should have a visible phone number or email address as well as additional contact information and purchase options available.
Consistent layout
Product pages must be consistent from page to page (product to product). Don?t confuse visitors by changing the location of information from one product to the next. Keep information consistently located on all product pages.
Overview information
Each product should contain a product summary, overview or short description. This information is best provided as high up on the page ("above the fold") as possible. Additional information such as features, specifications, etc. should be secondary.
Detail information
Leave room on the page for necessary information and details. You can also provide links to additional pages of content if necessary, but the less you force visitors to click away from the main page, the better.
Product comparisons
Allowing side-by-side product comparisons can enhance the shoppers experience. Comparisons help shoppers find the product(s) that best fits their needs and help them make the best purchase decision.
Printer-friendly option
Not every shopper will be ready to buy now and may need time to mull over their purchase. Product and comparison pages should contain printer-friendly links that allow shoppers to print the information for later reference. Once printed, this also provides them a reminder of where to come back to in order to make the purchase.
Pricing
Unless products are custom priced, pricing information must clearly be presented on the product page. If specific pricing information cannot be added to the page you should include price ranges or "starting at" pricing.
International options
If you sell products to international destinations include pricing information in different currencies. If you support a wide range of international destinations, provide a link to a currency conversion site allowing your shoppers to make the conversions easily on their own.
Quality images
Image quality plays a significant role in the mental process of making the decision to purchase. All images should be of the highest quality possible. Poor images convey poor products.
Enhanced Image views
Add additional alternate images whenever possible. Enhanced image views such as larger pictures, zoomed in and multi-angle views and even video can provide additional benefit to shoppers. This benefit enhances trust in the products shown.
The role of your product page is to inform and sell. It needs to do both. The better informed shoppers are, the more likely they will be not only to purchase from you, but to make the right purchase. A sale that later turns into a headache due to lack of information is a profit loss. On the other hand, giving visitors the information they need will steer them to the right product and help them make a informed purchase that creates profit not just from one sale, but repeat purchases for years to come.
There is a lot more that can be added to this, however much of that will be addressed when I talk specifically about shopping carts in the next installment.
Discuss this article in the Small Business Ideas forum.  |
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