The Work Media Internet Marketing Blog

It took us a while to really get into blogging. Considering that our blog is not just personal musings on random topics but is instead meant to be an educational resource on the subject of Internet marketing, it took some discipline to get into the habit of thinking of a topic every day (or almost every day) and composing a halfway readable blog post. This whole thing has sort-of been our own personal experiment. You see, we're from an SEO/PPC background - doing things like tweaking code and copy to emphasize certain keywords, and doing what we could to get links pointing to our clients' sites. Or just outright paying for traffic. But a few months back we decided to shift to a more content-oriented strategy. So we set up out blog and re-worked our site to feed our own blog material into our main web pages. Now every time we update our blog our whole site gets updated. And then we started blogging, without doing anything else other than pinging some blog directories and Technorati.com. That's it.

Interesting things have begun to happen. We're getting top search engine rankings for, and traffic from, search phrases we never even thought of just because they happen to be in the title or in the copy of our blog posts. Most of these are Internet marketing-related, such as "target keyword density". We never would have thought to try and specifically optimize a page for that keyword, and it probably would not have been worth it. But we picked up a little traffic from the phrase because we discussed it in a blog post.

Here's one that is out of this world: www.gibsonguitars.com. We used this web address as an example in one of our blog posts, yet now we have TWO listings on page one of a Google search for this phrase. We wouldn't even know about it except that someone actually clicked through to our site, so we saw it in our analytics.

So start blogging. Seriously. Become an information hub for your industry by creating original new content almost every day. It will take some time and it may be months before you really see the effect, but eventually you will start getting free traffic from completely unlikely sources.

If you would like help implementing your own blogging strategy, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, internet marketing

We have been spending a fair amount of time lately exploring the new Yahoo Search Marketing interface, and we've come upon one new feature that we are very excited about. It's the Alternate Text option for your keywords. This option lets you place a specific word or phrase in a particular location in the ad associated with the keyword. For this to work, the copy for the ad must contain the placeholder {KEYWORD:default_text} in the ad body or title. If alternate text is specified, then the ad will contain the alternate text. However, if the alternate text causes the ad to exceed the maximum character limitation, then the default text will be used.

Here is an example:

Let's say you sell shoes on your website. Let's also say you sell a line of shoes called "Hudsons", so you have an ad group set up for keywords related to Hudsons. Let's say the Hudsons come in three colors: red, yellow, and blue. You might have the following keywords in the ad group:

Hudsons
red Hudsons
yellow Hudsons
blue Hudsons

Your ad could be written like so: Find the {KEYWORD:default_text} you are looking for here!

The default text would be "Hudson", so the "Hudsons" keyword would use the default text.

The "red Hudsons" keyword could be set with the Alternate Text property "red Hudsons", so when the ad was displayed for that keyword, it would read: Find the red Hudsons you are looking for here!

The same would be done for the yellow and blue Hudsons keywords so that depending on which keyword had triggered the ad, it would be customized to match the exact search phrase.

This is an extremely powerful feature because it splits the different between using a single ad for every single keyword and using an ad for lots of keywords. The more personalized the ad copy seems, and the more tightly coupled with the user's search phrase, the more likely it will generate a click.

For help managing your Yahoo Search Marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, sponsored search, Yahoo, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Marketing

An "API" is an Application Programming Interface that allows you to hook into another computer system to exchange information with it. For example, Google and Yahoo both have search API's that allow you to extract search data from their systems for display in your own applications or web pages, formatted however you want. This data is generally in XML format and exchanged via a protocol called SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). If you're not going to be doing any programming, you really don't need to worry about this stuff. But the reason I bring it up is just to give a little bit of technical background for the remainder of our discussion, which is about using pay-per-click applications that use the search engine API's to get data.

In our opinion, it only makes sense for the search engines to provide open access to their API's and to provide plenty of information for advertisers to run effective ad campaigns. But the trend seems to be going in reverse.

Last year, Google announced that it would begin charging a fee of $.25 per 1,000 operations. This doesn't instinctively feel like a lot, but it is. Performing a single action in a pay-per-click management program generally involves several operations. And these programs, by their very nature, are intended to be used to make several or even dozens of bid changes for ads every day, for every keyword or keyword group associated with each ad. So this adds up to potentially many, many thousands of actions every day, adding substantial costs on top of the expense of paying for the ads in the first place.

A backlash has already started, as some companies are moving toward using cheap labor to manage their ads, rather than this expensive technology. Given that the easier it is for advertisers to manage their campaigns, the more money Google will make, we don't see how this benefits anyone.

Yahoo, with the release of its new ad management system, has also made a change to its API. Though Yahoo is not charging like Google, it has placed a much greater bandwidth restriction on the data returned from its API. What this means is that bid management programs will have to make fewer changes to bids to stay within limits. Again...why would Yahoo make it more difficult for advertisers to use manage their accounts? We know that constantly pinging search engine servers to make changes to sponsored search bids are a drain on their servers, but these companies make billions of dollars a year, and their profit should easily pay for enough servers to handle it.

As for MSN, except for invited parties, they have not yet released their API for general consumption (we wish they would get on with it), but we have a feeling that Microsoft will be much more open with its API, at least initially, since it is still playing catchup in the search arena.

The net effect of these changes to API's is that it just won't be as cost effective to use bid management software as it once was. With Google, you will be paying an expensive tax on top of your bids, and with Yahoo, you will have much less control. At Work Media, we are still experimenting with different ways to manage campaigns. We actually still do most of our campaign management manually and will probably continue to do so. Especially now that the search engines are making it so difficult to use their API's.

If you need help managing your sponsored search marketing campaigns, please call us at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, sponsored search, Yahoo, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Marketing

Yesterday we began our discussion of the dual disciplines of successful Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing with an explanation of the mathematician side. Today we continue that discussion by looking at the artist side - the part of the process that involves creative writing. It's not really so much "creative" writing as it is direct marketing style writing. The PPC ad writer has very limited space in which to persuade the reader of the ad to click and visit the advertiser's web site. Writing the ad is actually the very opposite from a sales letter situation, where the top copywriters often flourish. The long-form sales letter is a forum that great copywriters love because they have all the room they want to draw the reader in, list lots of benefits (not features!), tell stories, and do everything they can to convince readers of the letter to visit. However, long-form copywriting experience comes in very handy when writing the copy for the destination web page. If they've clicked your ad link, then they have expressed some interest in what you have, so the destination web page is where you can use copywriting to convince the visitor to do business with you.

But as far as the ad itself, how do you use such limited space and so few words to compel the reader to click the ad? We've touched on PPC ad writing strategies in previous posts, but following is a summary of some of our tips to get you started:

• Use the search terms in your ad.
• Use a call to action.
• Write from the reader's perspective.
• Use buzz words like "free" and "guaranteed".
  

The first tip above is the most basic but perhaps the most important. You have to find the line between keyword/ad granularity and having a manageable number of ads. The more separate ads you have with few keywords for each ad, the more effective your campaign will be because the ads will more closely match the search terms. If you can use the exact search terms, or nearly exact, in the ad body, or even better in the head, then the more closely the ad will match what the person was looking for.

The second tip is a basic copywriting rule. Tell the reader what to do! The search engines may not allow you to use the words "Click here", but you still need to use some similar kind of phrase to tell the reader that he needs to take some specific action: "Visit now", "Buy now", "Come see", etc.

The third tip means that you use the word "you" and focus on the benefit to the user, as opposed to some kind of list of features. People do not buy features, they buy what those features will do for them - the benefits. Using the word "you" focuses the ad on the reader, so he knows that the ad is talking to him.

The fourth tip really gets into the "artist" area because this is where good writing really comes into play. There are certain words that get people's attention, and "free" and "guaranteed" are high on the list. Two huge tools in the copywriter's toolbox are giving away freebies - free reports, free samples, free memberships, etc. - and reversing the prospect's risk. Risk reversal means that you guarantee your product or service so that the customer knows he can get his money back with no trouble - you take on the risk, not the customer.

Much of this discussion is based on copywriting principles that have been around for years, tweaked to apply to the online world of writing for a very small ad space. We cannot recommend enough studying copywriting from some of the masters, such as:

• Dan Kennedy
• Brian Keith Voiles
• Jay Abraham
• David Ogilvy

There are many more fine copywriters, but if you look into the work of the above men, it will set you on the road to learning what you need to learn to be a strong copywriter. And that's how you tackle the "artist" side of the Pay-Per-Click equation.

If you need some help managing your Pay-Per-Click campaign, please call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.

Labels: Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, sponsored search, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Marketing

Pay-Per-Click, or Sponsored Search, marketing is an interesting field because of the duality of skills necessary to be successful in it. On one hand, you have to understand the numbers - you have to know what a customer is worth to you, how many visitors to your site you can reasonably expect to become customers, how much you can afford to pay for a single visitor, etc. On the other hand, you have to be able to write convincing, compelling ad copy, and the destination web copy has to also be well-written. So to be successful in Pay-Per-Click, you have to be both a mathematician and an artist.

The Mathematician

The Mathematician really needs to understand the goals of the Pay-Per-Click campaign. You need to know how many customers you want to try to gain and how much you can afford to pay to acquire each new customer. If you don't know what a new customer is worth, then that is something you really need to find out. Otherwise, you're shooting in the dark.

As a professional PPC marketer, I have clients asking me to generate x sales per day or per month while spending y dollars. This is often a difficult situation because it often means I need to get clicks as cheaply as possible while maintaining a certain level of conversions. The thing that makes this a difficult situation is that as click bids go down, often conversion rates go down as well. One reason is that to generate low cost traffic, you have to use content networks as well as search results, which are much less targeted.

Nonetheless, to even tackle the problem I need to understand the numbers. Here is a very simple formula to calculate how much you can spend per click on your PPC campaign:

Cost Per Click = Amount You Can Afford to Pay Per Customer * Conversion Rate

OR

Cost Per Click = Average Sale * Profit Margin * Conversion Rate

For example, if you generate $50 revenue per customer, on average, with a 50% profit margin, then you can afford to pay up to $25 to acquire a new customer. You would only break even at that rate, but at least you would gain a new customer and would have the opportunity to sell more products or services to that customer in the future. Assuming a conversion rate of 1%, then the numbers work out like this:

Cost Per Click = $25.00 * .01 = $.25

OR

Cost Per Click = $50.00 * .50 * .01 = $.25

So you now know that you can afford to pay a quarter per click. If you can double your conversion rate (which falls on the Artist side), then you can double your profit or double your bids.

As you watch your PPC campaign, you might find that certain products sell much better on-line that others. If this is the case, then you might want to re-work your numbers to emphasize the products that are selling. For example, let's say you have the following products, which are selling via PPC in the following proportions:

Product A - $25 profit per sale - 50%
Product B - $10 profit per sale - 10%
Product C - $40 profit per sale - 40%

Then your average profit per sale via PPC is as follows:
($25 * .50) + ($10 * .10) + ($40 * .40) = $12.50 + $1 + $16 = $29.50

Based on these numbers, you now know that you can raise your bid to about $.30.

As eluded to above, it may even be worth taking a loss on the first sale just to get the customer. If you know the lifetime value of your customers, then you can make this call. If you generally only do business with your customers a single time, then that is another area of your business you need to investigate - how to sell more to people who have already done business with you. This is where you should use vehicles like email, newsletters, blogs, etc. to create a community of customers who come to rely on you for information. It all comes down to creating a holistic, integrated marketing plan, and it all starts with knowing your numbers.

Tomorrow we will look at the other PPC discipline - the Artist.

If you would like some help managing your own effective, powerful Pay-Per-Click marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.

Labels: Google Adwords, internet marketing, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, sponsored search, web marketing, web site marketing, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Marketing

We are currently managing a pay-per-click campaign for a client that is going well in terms of driving traffic to his site, but poorly in terms of conversions. The problem is that our client's web site does not look as professional as his competitors. This got me thinking about how a search marketing campaign, whether natural search or paid search, has a branding component that needs to be considered.

It is very often the case that an individual will not do business with a company upon the first visit to its web site. Comparison shopping is easy on-line, and not just for products, but for services as well. Someone looking for a particular service that you offer is probably going to visit your web site and the sites of your competitors. If you don't measure up, you're not going to get the sale.

What this means for you is that you need to have a clean, well-designed, professional looking web site. If you don't, no matter how much traffic you drive to it, you are going to have few conversions. Quality web site design is not the place to skimp. You have to have your presentation polished and ready to go before people arrive at your site. In the real world, you probably wouldn't show up to a sales meeting wearing a stained t-shirt and shorts (at least in most industries you wouldn't). It works the same way on-line - your web site is your salesman. If it looks professional and provides the visitor with the information he needs to do business with you, then you have a good chance at getting the business. If it is poorly designed and is not pursuasive, then you won't get the business. Plain and simple.

One caveat is that if you hire a web site designer, he or she needs to be aware of search engine optimization principles. The designer needs to design the site in such a way that code is minimized and content is maximized. How can you know if a designer is knowledgable about SEO? Just ask. You should be able to tell if the person knows what he is talking about. If you're still unsure, it is HIGHLY recommended that you consult with someone with an Internet marketing background to take a look at some code samples from the designer and talk with the designer.

So remember...a search marketing campaign is not simply about driving traffic to your web site in hopes of making an immediate sale. You need to prepare for sales that take more than one visit - sales where your prospects are comparing you to your competitors - by making sure your web site is polished and professional.

If you need some help implementing an aggressive Internet marketing campaign for your business, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.

Labels: brand, branding, internet marketing, online branding, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, sem, seo

When setting up keywords for our PPC campaigns, it is generally a better strategy to set up keywords and ads with as much granularity as possible - in other words, use lots of ads for small sets of related keywords, rather than have a single ad running for lots of keywords. It is also better to use an exact match strategy, if this strategy generates enough clicks. If you cannot generate enough clicks using exact match, then you can switch to broad or phrase match (there are Google terms) ads, which will result in your ad being displayed more often. The reason you want to use exact mach whenever possible is twofold: 1. The ads will be more targeted, since your ads will only be shown to people searching for the exact phrases you specify; and 2. You will save some money on click costs because exact match ads are always shown above broad or phrase match ads.

Since we are arguing that you needs lots of ads representing lots of exact keywords, then you are going to need to generate a lot of relevant keywords. We highly recommend using a tool called NicheBot: http://nichebot.com.

Nichebot will show you a list of similar keywords for any keyword you type in, along with traffic and competition data for the keywords. For each keyword, it will show you how many people searched for the term during some period of time, the number of competing sites (sites that are specifically optimized for the phrase), and the KEI, or Keyword Effectiveness Index. This data will allow you to rank keywords so you can decide which are the best keywords to target for your web site.

The search engine tools section at http://seobook.com also has a nice keyword tool that uses data pulled from Yahoo's search inventory. The data also shows the number of searches for each keyword, along with other data such as bid rates.

Here a few more sources of possible keywords:

• product names
• competitor names or competing product names
• URL's
• names of people associated with your industry
• synonyms

Don't just rely on keyword tools to show you lists of related keywords. Think of anything and everything that people who have a need for your product or service might search for and use it as a keyword in your campaign. The wonderful thing about Pay-Per-Click marketing is that if you select a keyword that does not generate any traffic, you haven't lost anything. So you have nothing to lose and lots to gain by experimenting with different keywords, even if they seem wacky.

For help managing your Pay-Per-Click campaign, call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.

Labels: Google Adwords, internet marketing, MSN, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sponsored search, web site marketing, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Marketing

Man, it is hard coming up with something original to write about almost every single day. With that in mind, we thought today we would just point out a few blogs we have been checking out that we really like:

http://www.copyblogger.com/
I think "copyblogger" is a take on the word "copywriter", which is an interesting thought. Blogging is sort-of like the 21st century version of copywriting. The major difference is copywriting is done specifically for the purpose of influencing the reader to take an action, whereas blog writing can be done for any purpose, although in a business setting it is meant to influence the reader in a more roundabout way. It's a very soft sell. Anyway, the point of the site is to give copywriting tips for bloggers to more successfully use their blogs as marketing vehicles. It's a very good read.

http://blogmoneymakingmachine.blogspot.com/
The purpose of this site is to give advice on how to make money with your blog. While that is not really what we're trying to do (and may not be what you are trying to do), you can't make money without driving a fair amount of traffic to your blog. So that's what this blog really comes down to - how to get people to your blog. There is a lot of good advice here.

http://www.netpreneurnow.com/wordpress/
This blog has lots of short posts that discuss various resources you can get for free or for cheap that will give you an edge in your Internet marketing. It's definitely worth a look, and you may even discover some products you'd like to resell yourself.

If there is anything we can do to help you be more successful in your Internet marketing, please call us at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, internet marketing

When engaging in on-site optimization (i.e., changing the code and text of your web page to rank highly in the search engines), one of the primary criteria you should use is "keyword density".

Keyword density is the number of times a keyword or phrase appears in an area of a web page divided by the total number of words in that area. For instance, if the word “investment” appears three times in the body section of a web page, and there are a total of 200 words, then the keyword density would 1.5% (3 / 200).

Keyword density must be measured carefully. If it is too low, you will lose out on relevancy for the search phrase. If it is too high, the search engines might think you are trying to spam your way into their indexes, and you will be penalized. A good target to shoot for might be 3 – 5%. We recommend not going much above 5%. 10% is probably too high. For a more accurate analysis of what your keyword density should be, you should compare the keyword density in the body (and other sections) of your web pages to web pages that already rank high for a particular search phrase. This is a good strategy in general – mimic, and then improve upon, what sites are doing that already rank highly for your desired search phrases.

You should measure your keyword density separately in different parts of your web page – the body, the title, header tags, alt tags, etc. Each of these will be considered separately in ranking your site. You can calculate keyword density manually by counting the words, or you can use any number of software or online tools. Your target keyword density for your page title and other "short" elements, such as headers, will be different from the body copy. In your title, try to maximize keyword density without repeating the keywords. For example, if your target keyword is "Los Angeles Real Estate", then that exact phrase would make a good title, which would give you a keyword density of 100% for that phrase.

Here is a good free tool to use that calculates keyword density as well as other information about your site:

http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html

Any good search engine optimization suite of tools will have a keyword density checker. If you need help implementing a successful search engine optimization campaign for your business, call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email us at info@workmedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keword density, search engine marketing, search marketing, seo

You put a lot of work into getting people to your web site - search engine optimization, pay-per-click, content creation - but it doesn't mean much if you are not able to convert traffic into customers. Following are a few tips for improving your conversions.

Make it easy for the visitor to convert

Make it very easy to do whatever it is you want your web site visitor to do. If you want her to fill out a form, make the form easy to find and don’t ask for too much information. This is another area where testing can help you find the best way to do things. For example, you could create two different landing pages with different forms, and then use pay-per-click ads to drive traffic to those two pages. Your analytics (discussed later) will then tell you which one converted better. You will then know with great confidence which of the two forms works better.

Get the visitor involved

You want to draw visitor into your web site and get him involved. Get them clicking, selecting and typing. Devices such as text boxes, radio buttons, check boxes and dropdown lists cause your visitors to interact with your web site. The more they interact, the more likely they are to engage in some kind of conversion event. Even if it's simply getting their email address, that is far, far better than their leaving with no conversion event at all.

Tell the visitor exactly what to do

Don’t assume anything! Give your visitors specific instructions on how to go about ordering, subscribing, contacting you, or whatever action you want them to perform. If they need to click the big red button, tell them to click the big red button. And despite what you may have heard, there is nothing wrong with a link that says “Click here”. Research has shown that those types of links actually have higher click-through rates. Don’t worry about insulting your visitors’ intelligence. You won’t. It is much safer to design for the lowest common denominator – those with little web surfing experience who need specific, step-by-step instructions.

If you need some help converting your web site visitors into customers, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.

Labels: content, content creation, conversion strategy, internet marketing, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, seo, sponsored search, web marketing, web site marketing

A San Fransisco-based company called Eyetools has just released a new report based on eye tracking research involving people performing searches on Google. The URL to read about the research is:

http://www.eyetools.com/inpage/research_google_eyetracking_heatmap.htm

The research reveals that searchers' eyes scan the search results page in an a triangle pattern beginning in the upper left-hand corner, with another hot, smaller triangle of eye activity in the right-hand side.

The report's results are not really surprising, as it verifies what earlier similar research had indicated, as well as what you would expect based on an American's reading pattern of left-to-right. It supports the idea that you will receive the most search engine traffic if you have your site listed as near the top as possible. However, the report does not take into consideration economic factors such as return on investment and search inventory. Search inventory means the total number of searches performed for a particular search phrase. For most search phrases, there is plenty of search inventory to generate traffic without being at the top of the page, and you can generate clicks for a much lower rate than clicks at the top of the page will likely cost.

You should try to get as close to the top as possible while keeping pay-per-click bids as low as possible. Obviously, for natural search results, you just want to get as close to the top as possible.

For help maximizing your Pay-Per-Click or natural search marketing campaigns, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, sem, seo

We've spent the last couple of blog posts discussing the MSN AdCenter Labs beta tools and how you might use them for marketing purposes. Today we are going to finalize that discussion by looking at one more of the tools, the Online Commercial Intention Director. This tool gives a value for a search query or a web site from 0 to 1 that is an indication of the degree of the visitor's intention to purchase products or acquire information. For queries, it returns a single value. For URL's, it returns three values for three different OCI (Online Commercial Intent) types: NonCommercial, Commercial-Informational, and Commercial-Transactional.

There is little information about how this tool works, but it's an interesting idea that could be a valuable research tool. For instance, you could type in different search terms and use the result (the Probability for Commercial Query) to get an indication of how strong each search term is in terms of intent to make a purchase.

For example, let's say you sell wool clothing on your web site, such as sweaters. Typing in "wool" returns a Probability for Commercial Query of .65227. Buy typing in "wool sweaters" returns a Probability for Commercial Query of .79378. So the wool sweaters search indicates a greater chance that the person performing the search will engage in a transaction.

In testing the tool for URL's, I tried my own web site: http://workmedia.net, and got the following results:

Probabilities for Each OCI Type:
NonCommercial: 0.82111
Commercial-Informational: 0.1572
Commercial-Transactional: 2.1683e-002

Our site is a commercial site since we use it to represent our business and services, but it is also very information-heavy, which perhaps is why it ranks so high for "NonCommercial". When I ran the test with the URL "walmart.com", it still only showed a Commercial-Transactional value of 0.32238. So the tool doesn't seem to be all that accurate yet at guaging the commercial intent of web sites, as opposed to search queries.

For help implementing a state-of-the-art search engine marketing campaign for your web site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, keywords, MSN, MSN Labs, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, sem, seo, sponsored search

Yesterday we began our discussion of MSN AdCenter Labs beta tools for Internet marketing purposes. Today we continue that discussion by looking at a couple more of the tools, the Keyword Forecast tool and Demographics Prediction tool.

Here is the URL: http://adlab.msn.com/demo.aspx

The Keyword Forecast tool is interesting because it shows the past traffic for a particular keyword as well as expected traffic for the next couple of months (although, the forecast time period is actually in the last couple of months, which I assume is related to the age of the data). You can also chart more than one keyword at a time and view them on the same chart. In addition to past and forecast traffic, the tools shows age and gender distribution for each search term.

For instance, I ran a chart using the terms "internet marketing", "search engine marketing", and "search marketing". Based on the chart created by the Keyword Forecast tool, the term "internet marketing" is used far more often than the other two terms and is expected to continue rising in popularity. Traffic for the term "search marketing" is flat and not expected to see any significant increase.

Looking at the demographics, all of the search terms are used heaviest by people over the age of 50. In addition, the term "search engine marketing" is used much more often by men than women. And in general, it looks like men perform about 50% more Internet marketing-related searches than women. One thing you have to keep in mind, however, is that the data is likely skewed based on the particular demographics of MSN.com.

The Demographics Prediction tool predicts your customer's age, gender, and other demographic information based on a URL of keyword. For example, I ran the tool with the search term "internet marketing", and it returned the following information:

• Male: 63%
• Female: 37%
• Age: 25 - 34

Interestingly, the Keyword Forecast tool indicated that the greatest number of people using this search term were over 50, but the Demographics Prediction tool indicates they are between the ages of 25 and 34. So you will definitely need to use some judgement when trying to use these tools to determine demographic data for your prospective customers.

If you would like some help implementing your own Internet marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, marketing, MSN, MSN Labs, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, sem, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

As an aggressive Internet marketer, you need to use every tool at your disposal that might give you an edge on your competition. One such set of tools that my brother and I (this is Jerry) have been looking into is Microsoft AdCenter Labs. Here is the URL:

http://adlab.msn.com/demo.aspx

The tools are divided into four categories:

• Paid Search
• Contextual Advertising
• Behavioral Targeting
• Emerging Markets

We're going to start by looking at the Paid Search tools. Some of the tools are fairly conventional in nature, such as the Keyword Group Detection tool, which is basically just a keyword tool (although a good one), and the Keyword Mutation Detection tool, which helps you discover alternate or misspellings of keywords from search logs.

But one tool that's really interesting is the Search Funnel tool, which helps you visualize and analyze search behaviors. You type in a search phrase related to your product or service, and the tool will show you a funnell representing either the search phrases that had been used before arriving at your search phrase, or search phrases that were used after using your search phrase.

For example, I typed in the search phrase"Gibson Guitars", and it showed me a funnel with the following 5 search phrases (because I had set it to a filter of only showing the top 5):

• guitars
• www.gibsonguitars.com
• ebay
• fender guitars
• gibson

So those are the top 5 search phrases that were used before conducting a search for "Gibson Guitars" (based on the data that MSN has compiled - I would assume based on on MSN.com searches). You can do the same thing to find searches conducted after our test phrase. That results in the following list:

• fender guitars
• ebay
• martin guitars
• epiphone guitars
• guitars

This is very interesting data. If you have a really good idea of the searches people are conducting to arrive at your or your competitors' web sites, then that should give you all kinds of ideas for search phrases to target for SEO, PPC, articles to write, etc. etc. etc. Think about it.

If you need help with your search marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, marketing, MSN, MSN Labs, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, sem, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

Last Thursday I (Jerry) participated in the Nashville Technology Council's Search Engine Marketing Roundtable. Along with two other Nashville Internet marketing professionals, I answered a number of questions posed by a moderator as well as from the crowd. Word was we had broken a record for pre-registration for an NTC event, and the room was packed, so I take this as a strong sign that there is growing interest in search engine marketing.

At the end of the event, we looked at a couple of web sites of people in the audience. Based on what I saw from those sites, as well as the questions asked by many members of the audience, it is my opinion that people in general really don't understand a very primary rule of search engine marketing:

Your web site should have lots of well-written, keyword-rich content, and that content should be packaged in web pages with as little else as possible.

Two sites we looked at represented opposite ends of the spectrum of web site design, and they both missed the mark from an optimization perspective. The first site was a very slick, dynamic site developed in Flash. The problem with the design, as good as it looked, is that it had little text content for search engines to spider. My advice regarding the site, beyond redesign (and the company had just launched the new design, so that was not a good option) was to make sure that titles and any available HTML elements were optimized, and to engage in an aggressive link swapping campaign. The way to overcome weak on-site optimization is with lots and lots of relevant linking.

The second site was much more bare bones and had much more content, but it was constructed from a clunky, table-heavy design. My advice to this site owner would be to have the site redesigned using div layers to minimize the amount of HTML and maximize the content. Do that, and pay close attention to the page titles and optimization of other HTML elements, and the site would have a good chance of success, especially if done while engaging in a linking campaign.

So remember: it's all about content and clean design (from an HTML perspective). Concentrate on those two things and you can have a very nicely optimized web site.

For help engaging in your own search engine optimization campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net

Labels: internet marketing, marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search marketing, sem, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

There is a technique that we are playing around with that we believe is an excellent way to explode the number of links reported to your site in Google and other search engines. This technique really only applies if your site has been up for a while and actually has links pointing to it. We noticed that, despite having strong visibility in Google for Internet marketing searches related to Nashville, Google shows few links pointing back to our site. The other major search engines, Yahoo and MSN, show many more results.

If you are in a similar situation, here is how to let Google know about all the links it is missing:

1. Do a search for "link:" followed by your domain name in whatever search engines have a considerable amount of links recorded for your site.
2. Copy the URL for that page of search engine results.
   
3. Visit the Google Add URL page: http://www.google.com/addurl/
4. In the URL text box on that page, paste in the URL from step 2.
5. Click Add URL.

Hopefully, Google will now spider that page, visit the links on it, and find the links pointing back to your web site, which will build up your backlink catalog with Google.

As you know, it can take Google a LONG time to visit a web page added directly (which is why we advise our clients not to submit their site directly to Google), so you will have to be patient while waiting for the pages to be spidered. But if you have few links to start with, you aren't any worse off, and in a few weeks or months you could be much better off.

This process will work for whatever other search engines are missing backlinks for you. And it doesn't just have to be applied with search engine results pages. You can use this technique to inform Google about any web page you think it should know about, as long as it's not on your own site.

Contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net if you need help implementing your own search engine marketing campaign.

Labels: backlinks, internet marketing, linking, linking campaign, search engine marketing, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

Link Bait is content on your web site so interesting and compelling that others want to link to it and discuss it. Examples of different kinds of link bait include free books, free tools or downloads, and contests. To give you a better idea of what link bait looks like, I thought I would highlight a couple of examples that I like:

http://tools.seobook.com This site is intended to market a book about search engine optimization. But what's great about the site is that it provides a ton of free information about SEO as well as providing free access to a very useful set of SEO tools. The design is very clean and easy to navigate, so this is a good site to study all around.

http://www.deanguitars.com This is a very dynamic, exciting site that caters to a very specific market - primarily young men who like to rock out. The site has lots of original content about music artists, new models of guitars, contests, sexy women - everything boys like.

http://tools.marketleap.com/publinkpop Another site with free SEO tools. This particular one, the Link Popularity Checker, lets you check the number of links for the major search engines pointing back to your site all at once.

Now think about your business. What tool or content could you give away for free that would be of great value to your prospective customers? If you can think of the idea, you can probably get the item created for cheap by posting the project on elance.com. Or if it's a book and you have some writing skill, you can easily do it yourself.

However, just creating the item or content is not enough. You have to tell the world about it. Make sure you ping the blog directories with your blog update about it. Contact web site owners or bloggers who might be interested in it. Do an online press release. These things will get the word out and hopefully cause an avalanche of exposure and new links pointing to your site.

For help creating link bait for your web site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, internet marketing, link bait, search engine marketing, search engine optimization

For our first post of 2007, we thought we would step back for a moment and talk about the differences between Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing, and which is best to concentrate on.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of optimizing your web pages/site to increase search engine visibility. This includes things like web page title optimization, keyword density analysis, stragic use of headers and bold text, etc.

Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, can be defined in two ways. Often, it refers to general marketing methods of increasing search engine visibility, increasing traffic, sales, etc. This may include pay-per-click, blogging, newsletters, message boards, and other techniques. The term "Search Engine Marketing" can also apply specifically to marketing via sponsored search results.

For purposes of our discussion, we are going to go with the more narrow definition of SEM to apply specifically to pay-per-click, or sponsored search, marketing.

So the question then really becomes: which is better, and which should you concentrate on: natural search or sponsored search.

All else being equal, a natural search result is probably better than a sponsored search result. However, it could take you a long time to generate that natural search result, and you have no control over how your site listing will appear. Hopefully your web page result has a strong title which will be displayed on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), but you are at the mercy of the search engine. With SEM, you have control over where your ad will appear in the results, when it will appear, and what information will be displayed.

Sponsored search results cost money. Natural search results are free. But to get that natural search result, you are either going to have to put a lot of time into optimizing and promoting your web site or hire an outside firm to do it. So although the actual listing is free, the amount of effort required to get there is not.

So which is better, and which should you concentrate your efforts on? Both.

You can use sponsored search ads to generate immediate traffic to your site, which will generate not only traffic, but information that can be used for purposes of natural optimization. For instance, you can analyze the data from your sponsored search campaign to know what search phrases convert the best. You can then optimize some of your web pages specifically for those phrases. Long-term, if you can achieve high natural search rankings and then combine that with sponsored search listings, you will own more "shelf space" for relevant search queries. The term shelf space refers to the amount of space on a SERP occupied by your business. If you have two natural search listings and a sponsored search listing on a SERP, then you have a lot of visibility on that page and a good chance of getting someone to click through to your web site.

Contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net if you need some help implementing your own Internet marketing plan.

Labels: google, internet marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, sem, seo, sponsored search, web marketing, web site marketing, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Marketing