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

There is a client we have worked with for a long time who has a Google AdWords campaign that has not performed as well for parts of this year as it has in the past. In general, 2009 was somewhat of a difficult year due to increased competition for paid search traffic and poor economic conditions. In other words, there have been more advertisers chasing fewer customers. And this particular client definitely experienced the effects of that.

After trying many different strategies (account keyword expansion, keyword contraction, higher ad positioning, ad split-testing, etc.) we've finally stripped the account down to the barebones.

We're now only bidding on four keywords. I'm really not a big fan of bidding on so few keywords. It's the whole "eggs in one basket" thing. But in this case, looking backward, I can see that if we had concentrated our client's budget on that very small set of keywords, our performance over the last year would have been substantially better. We bid on many, many more than just four keywords. Throughout the year, we bid on fewer and fewer. And finally, this month, we're down to the final four contestants.

Should we go down to a single keyword? In theory, if you place all of your budget on the number one performing keyword, then all else equal, you will maximize the performance of your paid search account, up to the point where you run out of traffic. So there's one problem with this strategy. It is best employed in a limited budget situation.

If you have $10 thousand to spend, but bidding on a single or very few keywords only soaks up $1 thousand of your budget, there are likely many more opportunities you could be exploiting by spreading your budget around. But if you only have $1 thousand to start with, then spending the entire $1 thousand on a single keyword makes sense if it provides the best return on your investment.

Another problem is that keyword performance does tend to fluctuate. If you're all in on a single keyword, then if conditions change and that keyword's performance declines, your overall account performance will decline right along with it. So in our case, I don't see us dropping to a single keyword. We will stick with the four keyword basket, but you better believe if we start to see a trend of declining performance, we will open up some other keywords.

I guess the core lesson here is the importance of allocating your budget so that more of your budget is consumed by keywords that provide the best return for your advertising dollars. The only way to do that is by carefully examining your historical keyword performance. One caveat is that keyword performance can be affected by where your ads are positioned, so your analysis will be most accurate if your ad positioning is relatively steady across keywords.

Paid search management sometimes requires some imagination, and it definitely requires a watchful eye. Work Media have a lot of experience doing this stuff, and we're pretty dang good at it. We would welcome the opportunity to work with you on your search engine marketing. Contact us at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.

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

2010 is upon us, and we at Work Media are very excited for the future of our company and the search engine marketing industry. This has been an up and down year as we sort-of rode the same economic waves that rocked the rest of our country, but the last couple of months have been very good and momentum is high going into the new year. We've got the gist of our business plan for the new year written up on a whiteboard so everyone in the office will see it, and we had set very specific goals for the new year. I hope you have done the same.

Have a great New Year's!