The market for your products or services among those who speak Spanish is potentially massive. And chances are very good that you are completely missing out on that market. This is somewhat of a complex subject, but I am going to give you a bare-bones strategy for promoting your business to the Hispanic market.

1. It goes without saying, but if you are going to promote your business in Spanish, you need to be prepared to speak to someone in that language. So you are going to need someone on your staff who can do that.

2. Use Google's external keyword research tool to perform keyword research, but set the language preference to Spanish. The seed keywords should also be in Spanish:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

3. Create content for your web site, or create a new web site altogether, written in Spanish and optimized for the keywords from step 2. However, you should avoid any kind of automated translation software or web site. You need to hire a real human being to do the translation work. If you're going to do it, do it right.

4. Generate keyword links to your Spanish language pages just like you would your English pages.

That's it! Easy, right?...

Well, not really. English language SEO is time consuming and has many moving parts. But doing it in a language that you are not familiar with adds a whole 'nother level of difficulty. If you are already fluent in Spanish, then you've got a big advantage over the rest of us.

Another consideration is whether you are promoting to a broad, global Spanish-speaking market or to markets in particular countries or to specific groups of people. There are many variations of the Spanish language, and what works and is acceptable language to one group may not be understood or considered rude by another group. In general, the best strategy is probably to take a high level, global perspective and try to avoid using language that is specific to any particular group.

So preparing yourself to do business with Spanish-speaking people will require some effort and resources, but it will open you up to a whole new market.

Labels: internet marketing, ppc search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, spanish, spanish seo

There are many things about Google that I dislike. I dislike many of the things about the Google AdWords program, such as the change recently preventing advertisers from split-testing different domain names in their ads within an ad group. I dislike the way Google constantly throws out new technology, and then provides little in the way of support for it (for example, sometimes Blogger will publish to an external web server, and sometimes it won't, yet Google has shown very little interest in dealing with the problem or providing any guidance).

But the fact is, despite the many things I dislike about Google, I pound on the Google search ,engine non-stop. It is a fantastic research tool. There are a couple of Google search options that I recently started using that aid in the research process. If you write articles or use Google as a marketing tool (and you probably wouldn't be reading this if you didn't), then you should try these out.

To start, do any search in Google. The search I am using as an example while I type this out is "law firm internet marketing." Hey, there's my law firm internet marketing site at number six, and the Amazon.com page for our book on the subject at number nine. Neat. Anyway, now click the Show options link next to the plus sign at the top left above where the search results start.

Now you should see lots of links along the left-hand side of the screen. Some of them let you focus in on specific types of search results, such as images or blogs or whatever. But the two that I want to discuss here are Related searches and Wonder wheel.

Clicking the Related searches link shows a number of other searches that are, obviously, related to your first search. I think it is safe to assume that these are search queries that people have actually used because some of them are way too specific to just be synonyms or whatever. Clicking on one of those related search query links brings up a new page of search results, just as if you had types that keyword into the search box. Doing this process repeatedly will expose you to all kinds of search terms that you may not have thought of that might be applicable to your business. If you are purely engaging in the process for research purposes, it may lead you to some web sites or resources you would not have found by using your own search terms.

The Wonder wheel option is similar to related terms but more dynamic. Clicking that option displays a circle (or "wheel") with your keyword in the middle and spokes coming out that point at related search terms. Clicking on one of the outside search terms draws another wheel with the second search term with a long spoke that connects to the first wheel, as well as its own set of spokes pointing to a new set of keywords. Really, this tool does the same thing that the Related searches link does, but it presents the information in a "mind mapping" kind of way and lets you see the path you followed to arrive at a search term.

Gain an edge on your competition by putting these tools to use today in your research and online marketing activities.

Labels: google, internet marketing, keyword research, research, search, search engine optimization

Here is something most people reading this probably don't know because it doesn't make a lick of sense: Google treats duplicate keywords as separate if they have different capitalization. For example:

PPC

ppc

These two words would be considered different keywords even if they were both in the same ad group. So you might say…what's the big deal? Here's the problem. It has been our experience that there are times when Google seems to greatly favor keywords that are all lower case. It would not be unusual for the first keyword above to have a quality score of 5 while the lower case version had a quality score of 10.

Given that you don't really know which keyword will trigger your ad, it is best to always use the version which might give you an advantage in ad positioning. So even if you decide to experiment to see what happens with capitalized versions, always test the lower case version as well.

Another problem with having keywords in your ad groups that are the same except for capitalization is that it aids in making your account more unwieldy and difficult to manage. Accounts that are fine-tuned to the best (and smallest) set of keywords are much easier to manage, so we suggest only using lower case keywords, but have each in your account as both exact and broad match.

This is just one example of how something that seems very insignificant can have an impact on your overall paid search account performance. It is important to pay attention to the details.

Got questions about search engine marketing? Feel free to contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keywords, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, sem

If you've read much of our blog (or our articles, books, etc.), then you know that we are HUGE advocates of using content distribution as a primary search engine marketing strategy. It has many benefits: it establishes your credibility as an expert, it gets your name in front of a lot of people, it generates many keyword links to your web site, and it drives direct traffic. However, coming from the perspective of someone who has to write many articles on all different subjects on behalf of our clients, I can honestly say that it can be a grind. Sometimes it is hard to find the research material you need to write an article, especially with all the garbage that you find in a typical Google search. However, we've discovered that Amazon.com can be an excellent research tool to help you write your content.

The way this works is by using Amazon's Look Inside feature. This feature allows you to view and read passages from books for sale on Amazon that contain specific keywords. Amazon, shrewd business people that they are, only allows you to use this feature if you are a registered user on the site and have actually ordered something. So sign up for an account and buy yourself a good book to read. Then you'll be good to go.

To use this as a research tool, you will search books by whatever keyword you are researching. Then, scroll through the list of returned results and find a book that has the "Click to LOOK INSIDE" logo on top of the book cover image. Click on that book cover.

On the next screen, you will see a search box labeled "Search Inside This Book." This is the search box that allows you to specifically search in the book, so type your keyword in that box and perform another search. You will now be returned a list of links to passages in the book that contain the keyword. If you are a registered user with an order history, then clicking on the link will show you that passage. Otherwise, Amazon will tell you Sorry, you gotta order something first.

Searching through a book like this will provide you with all kinds of information about a keyword from a real book written by a real expert. This can be a richer mine of information than other types of online searches, such as searching article directories.

Anyone can be a successful writer of online content for distribution if he takes the time to do his research. This process can be tedious, but using the best sources of information will make the process a whole lot easier.

Labels: article marketing, article writing, articles, blog, blogging, content, content creation, content distribution, internet marketing

Well, yes, I am still writing 30 minutes every day per my New Year's challenge to myself. Then where the heck all our your blog updates then (you might ask)? Lately I've been devoting all my time to finishing up our next book, titled something like:

Be the Magnet
(How to Use Social Media and Content Distribution to Attract Customers and Business Opportunities)

The book is about using social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Squidoo.com, in conjunction with a content distribution campaign (articles, blogs, etc.) to spread your brand, generate visibility, and drive traffic to your web site. The book is being finished up, I'm working on artwork, and am about ready to set up the review copy that we will order from our publisher.

So we're excited and believe it will be something a lot of people will want to check out. So that's why no blog updates lately...just too busy finishing up something bigger!

Labels: internet marketing, social media

When you set up your Google AdWords campaigns, you should create multiple ads for each ad group, in order to try and find the ad copy that is most effective. You have two options for how to rotate your ads.

Google AdWords has a feature called ad optimization, which Google defines as follows:

Optimize (default): The system will favor ads that have a combination of a high click-through rate (CTR) and Quality Score. These ads will enter the ad auction more often.

The alternative to optimization is a standard rotation in which all ads for an ad group will be displayed roughly the same number of times.

Of the two, intuitively it seems that you would always want to use ad optimization. It just makes sense to let Google automatically display the ads with the highest click-through rate ("CTR").

But here's the problem. If you are trying to fine tune your campaign ad groups for maximum performance, YOU yourself should judge which ads are most effective, based on an analysis of historical data. Google's ad optimization kicks in quick. Ads that have a higher initial CTR will garner massively more impressions. So ads that could actually turn out to be the best performing over the long-run might be squeezed out of the picture early on.

Do your own optimization. Run all ads an even number of times. Give each ad a fair number of impressions. How many impressions will be different from situation to situation. If your are competing in a hot market with high click rates, then you might be able to tell after only a couple hundred impressions. But in most cases, you will need to give it more than that. Maybe a thousand impressions, maybe even more than that if click rates in your industry are low across the board.

If you do not have time to actively manage your search engine marketing campaigns, then you might still be better off using the optimization feature. It is better to use early optimization than to let poor performing ads run too long, dragging down your ad group performance.

But if you have time…do it right and take care of it yourself.

Or better yet…let us do it for you! Contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net to find out how we can make your life a whole lot easier.

Labels: ad optimization, ad writing, AdWords, google, Google Adwords, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing

Write thirty minutes every day. That is one of the challenges to myself at the start of 2010. Day three (not counting the 1st, which was a football watching, beer drinking, chilling out kind of day; the 2nd, which was a Saturday devoted to catching up on chores; and Sunday the 3rd, which was a church and family day), this is day three of my New Year's writing challenge. Assuming I end up typing for in the neighborhood of thirty minutes, I can check off three consecutive days.

So what's the point?

When I am finished with this piece, I will have three new blog posts or articles, all dealing with my industry, and all containing keywords and keyword links to my main web sites.

If you do that…if you create a new piece of content every single day that gets posted on a blog, or posted to one or a hundred article directories, or to any one of dozens of high quality social media sites…all with keyword links back to your web site…you will accomplish several things:

You will get your name in front of a lot of people.

You will establish your credibility as an expert in your industry.

You will improve your web site's search engine rankings.

You will drive traffic to your web site.

That is an impressive list of benefits. In the general scheme of things, thirty minutes doesn't seem like much, but I can attest (and I'm sure many of you will agree) there are many days when you just can't find a half hour to do nothing but write. So maybe you do it early in the morning. Or maybe you do it at night (it's 10:34PM Central at the time of this writing). Or maybe you just pay somebody else to do it. It's worth the effort.

Normally I write something a bit more technical or specific to some aspect of search engine marketing (see the way I linked the keyword "search engine marketing" to my company's main web site?). My brain is fried from debugging .NET code all day (.NET programming definitely does not fall under the domain of search engine marketing; however, one of the things that Work Media takes pride in is being able to do WHATEVER our clients need us to do to keep selling), so this is what you get.

I'm at 37 minutes…with a couple of lapses to watch a few minutes of reruns of the Office…so I can call this one done.

Labels: article marketing, article writing, blog, blogging, internet marketing, search engine marketing, writing