The Work Media Internet Marketing Blog: February 2007

Internet Marketing Copywriting - Connect the Dots for the Reader

When writing copy for your web site (or any other marketing piece), don't assume that the reader will understand why he should do business with you. Don't overestimate the intelligence of the reader. Write in such a way that a person who doesn't know anything about your industry will understand what you are saying. Don't worry about insulting anyone's intelligence.

In addition to producing more sales, a detailed letter written for a wide audience will be easier to read. It will flow. The reason is that reading on a computer screen is more difficult than reading on paper. It's hard on the eyes. So short sentences and short paragraphs, along with bullet points and other visual effects, are easier to follow.

Use stories, anecdotes, facts and figures to make it crystal clear to the reader why she must do business with you. You probably won't accomplish this by listing the details of what you do or sell. You must convert those features (of the product or service) into benefits (to the customer). Provide an inventory of all the benefits that will accrue to the customer. One after another. This is no time to be modest.

Give proof that what you say is true. If you have specific training, education, or certifications in your industry that are evidences of your status, then tell about it. If you have specific experience and have accomplished certain results, then tell about it. You will do this after discussing the benefits. In essence, you are trying to entice the reader into purchasing from you, and then using concrete evidence to reduce skepticism.

The final dot that needs to be connected is what action the reader needs to take. Again, don't assume that it will be obvious to the reader what he should do. Tell him what phone number to call, when to call, what email to use, when to email, what web site to go to, etc. etc. etc. Using the ideas of scarcity ("supplies are limited") or time constraints ("Offer ends this Friday") are ways to prod the reader into action. People naturally procrastinate, so you have to do something to force action.

If you would like some help writing sales copy for your web site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: ad writing, advertising, content, content creation, conversion strategy, copywriting, internet marketing, marketing

Monday, February 26, 2007

Beating Yahoo's New Quality Index

Yahoo has gotten overly strict in its attempt to only allow relevant sponsored search ads. We are finding that a lot of terms that are not directly related to the specific product or service are being automatically denied. We think this is short-sighted, because it eliminates the possibility of displaying your ads to those who would be strong candidates, but performing searches on other related topics. For example, if you sell diamond engagement rings, you may not be able to run ads for searches related to weddings.

We also have to admit that we're fairly perplexed by Yahoo Search Marketing's new Quality Index score that is applied to sponsored search ads. But here is a strategy to help deal with that particular issue:

Bid high at the start of the Yahoo campaign to generate as high a click-through ratio as possible. It seems that generating a high click-through ratio has a positive influence on the Quality score. Once you have established a Quality score, you can back off of your bids if you need to in order to maximize your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).

Another strategy is to pursue a tight coupling between keywords and ads. Yahoo allows you to dynamically insert keywords, but it may still be helpful to write lots of specific ads that are highly related to their keywords.

We like the new Yahoo interface, but we're definitely not crazy about their new rules. But as we develop effective techniques for dealing with Yahoo (and the other search engines), we will be sure to share them with you here.

For help managing your Yahoo pay-per-click 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, search marketing, sem, sponsored search, Yahoo, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Marketing

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Applying Direct Marketing Concepts to Your Online Marketing - Your USP and Advertising Copy

Yesterday's post got us into that direct marketing kind of mode. The weather in Nashville was beautiful so I (Jerry) spent some time in the afternoon sitting outside reading a Dan Kennedy book, No B.S. Wealth Creation for Entrepreneurs. Highly recommended, as are all of Kennedy's books. Anyway, in keeping with the theme of applying direct marketing concepts to your online marketing, I thought I would spend a little more time talking about headlines.

Following is a short list of classic, proven headlines that you can modify to your own situation:

How a New Kind of Clay Improved my Complexion in 30 Days

How I Improved my Memory in One Evening

6 Types of Investors - Which Group Are You In?

A Little Mistake that Cost a Farmer $3,000 a Year

Advice to Wives Whose Husbands Don't Save Money

Are You Ever Tongue-Tied at a Party?

Discover the Fortune that Lies Hidden in Your Salary

Who Much is a Little Leak Costing Your Company?

One thing these ads all have in common is that they pique the curiosity of the reader without giving away too much detail. Each one is a little bit of a mystery. The point is to make the reader want to read more to find out the detail. Each play on a concern or problem that the prospect has, and implies that reading more will reveal the solution to the problem.

The headlines should also be tied to your "USP" - your Unique Selling Proposition. This is the thing that separates you from others in your industry, and the reason someone should do business with you. Jay Abraham has a technique for creating a USP that is very simple but does a great job in helping you discover the USP for your business. Here is what you do:

1. Get a couple of sheets of paper and a pen.
2. At the top of one sheet, write "You know how..."
3. At the top of the other, write "Well, what we do is..."
4. Then just fill in the blanks.

For example, if you are a stock broker, you might say:

"You know how some stock brokers don't ever call you to let you know how your portfolio is doing?"

and then respond with:

"Well, what we do is call all of our clients every Friday afternoon with a report about how their portfolio did that week."

You could then build your USP around the idea that you provide superior customer service by calling all of your clients weekly to discuss their portfolio. This could then be tied into a headline such as "Does Your Stock Broker Ever Leave You Wondering What's Going on With Your Account?" Your headline then feeds into your marketing content where you explain about the extra effort your firm puts into maintaining communication with your clients.

So start with your USP, and then use it to create a powerful, provocative headline which leads into benefit-packed advertising copy. Do this on your web site, your emails, and all other forms on online marketing.

If you would like help implementing an effective online marketing campaign for your business, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: ad writing, advertising, content, content creation, conversion strategy, copywriting, internet marketing, web marketing, web site marketing

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

A.I.D.: Using a Classic Copywriting Formula to Strengthen Your Internet Marketing

A.I.D.

Attention, interest, desire.

This is a classic direct marketing formula that, if you apply it to your online marketing, will make you much more successful. Today's blog is a lesson in applying this formula to your Internet marketing.

The "Attention" in A.I.D. means that you use some kind of immediate, attention-grabbing start to your marketing. Typically, this is accomplished with a headline. Just like traditional advertising, your Internet marketing - a web page, an email, a press release, or whatever - needs to have a headline that sparks the curiosity of the reader.

Here are a couple of examples of classic headline formulas that have worked for years:

They laughed when I [did something] but not when I [did something else unexpected]

How to [do something] 236% better.

The first formula plays off of the human desire to do something, or to do it better. The original use of the headline was for instructional material about playing the piano. It implied that the product would teach anyone how to play the piano. The second example demonstrates the use of some kind of very specific, proven result. It may seem odd to use a percentage like 236% rather than some rounded number, but that kind of specificity lends credibility to the headline. The point is to try and craft some kind of headline that compels the reader to read more. The headline is the ad for the ad.

Once you've got the reader past the headline, it's time to tell him all the reasons he should do business with you. This is the "Interest" part of the formula. The copy should focus on the reader and what she gains. This is where you tell all the benefits of your product or service. Benefits are not features. Features are the technical details of what you do or sell. It is things like size, color, and services that will be performed. You should not assume that the reader understands why the features are desirable. You should specifically tell him why the features are good. Translate every feature into a benefit to the prospect and focus your copy on that. Discuss features AFTER discussing benefits. The interest section is also where you can discuss your credentials and other things that set you apart from your competition.

The "Desire" part of the formula is where you convince the reader that he will benefit greatly if he does business with you right now, but will lose out if he delays. You create a feeling of desire by offering free bonuses if the prospect acts immediately, or a discount price. Or by placing a time limit on the offer, so that if action is not taken by some date, then the product or service will no longer be available.

The copy should close with a call to action - tell the reader exactly what to do. Make it EASY to do business with you.

It is possible that strict adherence to the A.I.D. formula isn't quite appropriate for your business. But you need to keep it in the back of your mind when writing copy for your web site or other purposes. Provide the reader with valuable information, but don't forget - ultimately, your goal is to turn a prospect into a customer.

For help writing convincing copy for your web site, contact Work Media at Info@WorkMedia.net or 888-299-4837.

Labels: ad writing, content creation, copywriting, internet marketing, marketing, online branding, web marketing, web site marketing

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Pay-Per-Click Ad Keyword Tracking: Just Do It!

Keyword tracking is very important to the success of a pay-per-click advertising campaign. If you have a conversion event page on your site, such as a thank you page or order confirmation page, you can measure your exact return on investment (ROI) or return on ad spend (ROAS) for each keyword.

Even if you are not able to specify some kind of converting event on your site (for example, if you sell services rather than products), you can still use keyword tracking to learn which keywords generate traffic that spends time on your site. This information will help you determine what keywords attract the most interested users.

To track your keywords, each keyword ad needs its own URL with a parameter that contains the keyword. For example: www.yourwebsite.com?keyword=whatever

The search engines have historically made it as hard as possible to track your ads at the keyword level, but things are getting better. With the release of the latest update to the Google AdCenter interface, it became possible to set a separate URL for each keyword.

You can also set up a separate URL for each keyword in Yahoo, although you have to go back and do it after setting your ads up.

MSN makes it simple. In Microsoft adCenter, you can attach a dynamic variable to the URL for a group of ads that will automatically add the keyword.

It takes more time to set up a separate URL for each keyword in your campaign, but it is definitely worth the time.

Contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net for help setting up your PPC campaigns.

Labels: Google Adwords, internet marketing, Microsoft adCenter, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, sem, web site marketing, Yahoo Search Marketing

Monday, February 19, 2007

Microsoft adCenter Keyword Research Tool: Generating Demographic Data Useful to Your Search Engine Marketing

We have been doing a lot of pay-per-click campaign management that spans all three major search engines: Google, Yahoo, and MSN. We've always done Google, but with the newness of the Yahoo and MSN ad interfaces, it has given us the opportunity to learn some new things. Of the three, MSN has the nicest interface. You're probably going to be shocked to hear this, but it has some bugs (WHAT? Microsoft release something with some bugs?), but they are fairly minor.

One feature of Microsoft adCenter we really like is its keyword research tool. To access it, after logging in to adCenter, just click the Research tab on the main menu. You can then have Microsoft generate a list of keywords based on a single keyword, or based on a URL. The returned keywords are sorted by the number of searches performed for each keyword in the previous month. You can generate keywords that contain the specified keyword, or that are similar to the specified keyword.

But what really sets the MSN keyword generation tool apart from other similar tools is its ability to generate a demographic profile for a set of keywords.

Here is an example:

Let's say you are in the business of copywriting. Typing "copywriting service" in the search box returns the following results (in the "Contains Term" box) in order of previous month's searches:

seo copywriting service
copywriting service
website copywriting service
copywriting service web
complete copywriting service

This in itself is interesting data, because we can see that more people are searching on MSN for copywriting services related to search engine optimization than anything else.

If we select each of the keywords and then click "View Profile", MSN generates a tabbed box of charts, divided into five sections:

Traffic Trends
Age and Gender
Geography
Wealth Index
Lifestyle

Below is a screenshot of the chart displayed if we click the Geography tab.

Very interesting. We would have expected cities like New York and Chicago to appear high on the list, but they are nowhere to be found. By far, the number one geographical location for MSN searchers searching for copywriting services is London. So what does this mean? Well, you don't want to draw any wild conclusions, but it looks like if you could get your marketing message to web sites and forums based in or focusing on the U.K., you might find yourself a very active market. This information is also useful in targeting specific cities with your pay-per-click ads.

The above demonstration is just a simple example, but we suggest that you give it a try and see what insites you can glean about your target market.

For help running an effective pay-per-click campaign for your business, contact Work Media at 888-299-4827 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, keywords, Microsoft adCenter, MSN, MSN Labs, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Pay-Per-Click Advertising Keyword Research Tips

Keyword research is a very important part of the process of running a successful pay-per-click campaign. If you only run ads for broad, heavily searched phrases related to your business, you will likely be competing against lots of other businesses, and bids may be quite high. But if you expand your view and seek more "long-tail" terms, you will face less competition, and clicks to your site will cost less.

"Long-tail" terms are less-trafficked search phrases that are more specific than broad, general phrases. In addition to being less competitive, and thus less expensive to bid on, they have another bid advantage. Often, they indicate a searcher who is farther along in the buying process. For example, the keyword "tennis shoes" indicates that the user is searching for information on tennis shoes, but may not have any particular brand in mind. However, the keyword "Nike Air Max 360" is an indication of a user who searching for a specific brand of shoes. The searcher using the more specific keyword is likely further along in the buying process.

Our favorite tool for finding keywords is Nichebot.com. You provide the tool with a keyword and it returns a list of related keywords, along with traffic and competition information for each one. Clicking on a keyword in the list of returned results will generate a new list of keywords similar to the one you clicked. You can use it to drill down through keywords and come up with lots of keywords you may not have thought of. But to use the tool to its maximum effectiveness, you need to come up with unique keywords to start with.

Think of all the different ways someone might search for information related to your products or services. For example, if you sell wedding dresses, you might want to research keywords related to tuxedos, limousine services, wedding and engagement rings, locations for weddings, how to conduct a wedding, etc. And of course keywords related to specific brands and products in your inventory. Running all of those kinds of keywords through a keyword tool like Nichebot will reveal many more keywords you can use in your PPC campaign.

If you would like some help conducting keyword research for your pay-per-click campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, keywords, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, search marketing, sem, sponsored search, web marketing, web site marketing

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Pay-Per-Click Marketing: Expand Your Horizons

The American pay-per-click market is getting crowded. You can still keep costs down by taking a "long-tail" approach (looking for lots of little used by highly targeted search phrases for which to run ads), but with growth in paid search revenue for 2007 estimated at 27% by Merrill Lynch, it is going to get increasingly more difficult to get a leg up on your competition.

So perhaps the time is nearing when you want to take a more global approach to your PPC (if it's relevant to your business, of course). Click prices for PPC campaigns in other countries are generally much lower than in the U.S. Yet the U.S. accounts for only 21% of the worldwide Web population. For those of you not that good in math, that leaves another 79% of the entire World Wide Web for you to market to.

One important key to being successful using paid search worldwide is segmentation. For one thing, you don't want your ads and bids for other countries mixed in with your U.S. ads and bids. You may end up bidding more than you need to. And ads for other countries need to be written for each country specifically. So each country in which you market your services via PPC should be set up with its own campaign.

It will take some work to figure out how to write your ads for other countries. You might want to start slow with countries that are not that different from the U.S. - Canada, Australia, the U.K., etc. A next logical step might be Spanish-speaking countries, such as Mexico and Spain. Of course, when you enter the domain of advertising in foreign language markets, you will either need to be fluent in the language or able to hire someone who is.

And as with all PPC campaigns, you will want to create landing pages tailor-made for each country. Your landing page design and offer should also reflect the culture of the country.

Will it be a lot of work? Yes. But you will open yourself to 5x more prospects, to whom you can advertise for cheaper than in the U.S.

Please contact Work Media today at 888-299-4837 or info@WorkMedia.net if you need assistance planning or managing a pay-per-click campaign for your business.

Labels: bid management, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, sponsored search, web marketing, web site marketing

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

MSN Advertising: Taking Advantage of Dynamic Text Options, Part 2

Yesterday we began our discussion of dynamic text options when setting up pay-per-click ads to run on MSN, focusing mostly on the option to dynamically add the keyword into the title or ad copy. If you recall, there are four dynamic variables you can use in your ads:

Insert Keyword Destination URL {param1}
Insert Dynamic Text {param2}
Insert Dynamic Text {param3}
Insert {keyword}

Today we're going to continue our discussion of MSN's dynamic text options by looking primarily at the Insert Dynamic Text option. The two available dynamic text variables can be set for each individual keyword when setting up keywords for an ad. After adding keywords to the keywords list, you will see two links directy above the list: Match Options and Dynamic Text. Match options, obviously, are the match options for the keywords that determine how strictly a search must match your keywords before triggering your ads. We'll look at that another time. The Dynamic Text option lets you set dynamic text variables for each keyword.

Clicking the Dynamic Text link gives you three options to set for each keyword: Show Keyword Destination URL, which lets you set a separate URL for each keyword; and Show Dynamic Text {param2} and Show Dynamic Text {param3}, which let you set two dynamic variables for each keyword. Your ads can then be written in such a way that the dynamic variables you set for each keyword will appear in the ad.

To have your dynamic variables appear in your ad, on the screen to add or edit your ads, place your cursor where you want the variable to appear, and click the Dynamic text link beneath the text boxes for the ad title or ad text. Then select Insert dynamic text {param2} or Insert dynamic text {param3}, depending on which variable you want to insert at that particular location.

Now when the ad appears in search results, it will display with the dynamic text you set up for the keyword that triggered the ad. This is a fantastic way to personalize your ads while cutting down on the number of separate ads you have to write.

If you wanna get really fancy, you could place one of the dynamic variables into the URL (or use the Keyword Destination URL variable) to send a keyword parameter to the destination URL. Your destination page could then take the parameter and dynamically place it into the text of your page. This would create a tightly coupled ad and destination, which should help improve conversion rates.

For help using running MSN ads to promote your web site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, Microsoft adCenter, MSN, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, sponsored search, web marketing, web site marketing

Monday, February 12, 2007

MSN Advertising; Taking Advantage of Dynamic Text Options

The Microsoft AdCenter console used to manage sponsored search ads on MSN has some very interesting dynamic text features that let you leverage your time and effort.

When setting up an MSN ad, you enter text into four fields: Ad Title, Ad Text, Display URL, and Destination URL. When typing in any of those four text boxes, you will notice a link beneath the text box labeled "Dynamic text". When you click the Dynamic text link, you will see four options:

Insert Keyword Destination URL {param1}
Insert Dynamic Text {param2}
Insert Dynamic Text {param3}
Insert {keyword}

The option we have used most often is the last option, which automatically inserts the search term used in place of the dynamic text placeholder. For example, if you sell electronics, you set the title of the ad to use the dynamic Insert keyword function, so that is someone is searching for "Sanyo LCD TV", then the title of your ad will be "Sanyo LCD TV".

Research has shown that using the search terms in the ad (either the header or body) improves click-through rates. So Insert keyword function automates that for you. One caveat is that if the dynamic keyword causes the title or body of the ad to exceed the maximum character limitations, the ad will be declined for that keyword. For example, if Work Media had an ad for the following two keywords:

internet marketing
internet marketing consultant

and we had used the Insert keyword function for the title, the second ad would be denied because the title would be too long. One way to avoid this is to set up specific keyword parameters for each keyword.

We will talk about using the other dynamic parameters tomorrow (unless we think of something else really interesting to talk about).

If you need help setting up an effective pay-per-click campaign for your business, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, Microsoft adCenter, MSN, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, sponsored search, web marketing, web site marketing

Friday, February 09, 2007

Pay-Per-Click Marketing Analysis: Another Look at the Numbers

When preparing to begin a pay-per-click (ppc), or sponsored search, campaign, it really helps to go into the situation with an idea of what the numbers look like. By "the numbers", we mean what kind of return on your investment you can expect assuming different bid levels and different conversion rates. Following is a chart that is an example of one we might create when beginning a ppc campaign to give the client and ourselves an idea of what he might expect his return on ad spend (ROAS) to be. It also helps us establish a benchmark average bid.

These numbers are reflective of a company selling a fairly high priced item. We have used a range of conversion rates from .10% (1 in 1,000) to 2% (2 in 100). For a high priced item, we would expect a low conversion rate for online sales, possibly 0.25% (1 in 400). Assuming a 0.25% conversion rate, the $.50 bid makes more sense than the $.75 bid because it generates a ROAS of 548% (or $5.48 in revenue for every $1 spend), versus 416% for the $.75 bid.

However, at the $.50 level, you are going to receive fewer clicks to your site. If the ROAS at the $.75 level is acceptable, you may want to use the higher bid to generate more total revenue. In this example, the $.75 bid generates $42 thousand in revenue, versus $31 thousand for the $.5o bid.

The question of how much to bid may also be determined by your budget for the campaign. At higher bids, you are going to burn through your budget quicker. If there is so much keyword inventory related to your business that you are able to use up all of your budget regardless of what you bid, then it makes sense to bid lower...if ROAS is your main consideration.

If there is a branding component to your online marketing, then you may want to bid higher for higher positioning on the page. Another consideration is that not all sales are made immediately. If you position yourself as the leader in your category (high on the page), you generate more immediate traffic and more potential future business from prospects who visit your page but don't immediately do business with you. This branding component is not reflected in the kind of analysis we displayed above.

An analysis like the one above can easily be prepared using a spreadsheet, and we highly advise you perform this kind of analysis to get a feel for your numbers. Use the sponsored search control panel for whatever search engine you want to use to get an idea of what bids for keywords in your industry look like, along with how many clicks you can expect to generate at different bid levels. Using this information, you can estimate how much revenue you could generate assuming different conversion levels. Then you can calculate ROAS at different conversion levels. Doing this for each of the major search engines will also help you determine the best place to spend you money.

If you would like some help preparing to begin your own paid search marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

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

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Warnings on PPC Bid Management Software

Bid management software for managing pay-per-click campaigns seem like a great idea. You tell the software what you want your campaign to accomplish, set up the ads, and let the software do the work of changing bids many times a day to accomplish your goals.

But it ain't all it's cracked up to be. And it ain't what it used to be.

For one thing, the search engines, while making their API (application programming interface)'s more robust, are making access to them more difficult. Yahoo has placed restrictions on the number of calls that can be made to an API. What that means is that if you have lots of keywords in your Yahoo search marketing campaign, there is going to be a tight limit on the number of times that bids for those keywords can be updated in any given day. That's the whole point of bid management software - to change bids.

Google, by contrast, has not such bandwidth limitation, but it charges for use of its API. We like to call it the Google tax. The current rate is a quarter for every 1,000 calls to its API. $.25 may not sound like much, but consider this: updating a single bid will likely require several calls to the API. If you have thousands of keywords that are all being updated 10 or 20 times day, that is many, many thousands of calls to the Google API. Over a month's time, it definitely adds up.

But on top of the problems using the search engine API's is the fact that bid management software generally works by making constant updates to bids to try and achieve some kind of specific metric, such as return on investment (ROI). If you guess about what the target metric needs to be, you could end up with bids that are way off. If you target an ROI that is too high, you may force the software into setting bids too low, which could end up cutting way back on the amount of traffic you generate. Likewise, if you target an ROI that is too low, you could end up paying more for your clicks than you need to.

The way to find out how you need to use your bid management software is by manually running the campaign for a while, doing lots of testing, and generating data. Once you have an idea of what your typical conversion rate is and what your profit is on a typical conversion, then you can determine what your bids need to be and what you can expect in terms of ROI. This kind of information is extremely valuable in figuring out how to configure your bid management software.

If you would like some profesisonal help in managing your pay-per-click marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

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

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Myriad Search: Another Tool for the Internet Marketer's Toolbox

Myriad Search (myriadsearch.com) is an interesting search engine research tool created by the guy who runs seobook.com. It lets you run a search query and generate a list of results that are a combination of rankings in four major search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask. So the tool has several uses:

Competitive research. Who are your competitors that rank highly across the board for desireable search phrases?
Link partner research. Sites that come up highly in the composite rankings for keywords related to your industry may be very valuable sources of links.
To find out your own standing. If you rank highly here, then you likely have strong visibility in the search engines.
General research. A site that ranks highly in the composite rankings is likely a strong source of information related to your search query.

One unique aspect of the tool is that it allows you emphasize or de-emphasize search engines (using a control called "bias"), and results can be weighted based on total number of results. For instance, if you specify to run the query based on 50 results, then a number one ranking has less weight than a query based on 10 results. These different ways of running queries allow you to take into consideration factors such as:

Particular search engines being more relevant than others for some searches.
Some searches being less sensitive to having a top-10 or top-20 ranking than others.
Some search engines allowing duplicate results, which would tend to skew results.

The tool also allows you to download a .CSV file of your research data.

Myriad Search is a very interesting tool that gives you a unique perspective on search data related to your business. We recommend you give it a try.

For help conducting search engine research for your business, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, keywords, search engine optimization, seo, web marketing, web site marketing

Monday, February 05, 2007

Google Site-Targeted Search Engine Campaigns: Another Internet Marketing Weapon

You already know about pay-per-click. If not, you haven't been paying attention. Give us a call.

But did you know that Google has an alternate ad distribution method called "site-targeted"? This is different than using the content network. Standard content network ads are still keyword-based, pay-per-click ads. Site-targeted ads, on the other hand, appear on specific content-focused web sites that you specify, and they are priced on a cost-per-thousand (CPM) model.

When you set up a site-targeted ad campaign, you have several options with which to choose the sites to target:

Browse categories. This option lets you browse through categories and sub-categories to look for sites that are categorized a specific way. Similar to adding keywords, the site selection screen provides you with a list of possiblities, and you click the ones you want to add to your selected sites.
Describe topics. This option lets you type in words related to your business and Google will show you a list of sites that match those topics.
List URLs. With this option, you type in specific web addresses where you would like to advertise and Google tells you if those sites are available to run ads.
Select demographics. This option lets you select certain demographic options and Google will show you a list of sites whose audience matches those demographics. Possible demographics are gender, age, annual household income, ethnicity and whether or not the audience has children.

Regardless of what option you choose, a list of matching sites will display at the bottom of the screen for your selection.

After you have selected the sites you want to target, you enter a maximum daily budget and your maximum CPM.

The cost-per-thousand pricing model requires you to know and work your numbers in a slightly different way. Click-through rates are probably going to be much lower than search ads. But you really won't know what your CTR might be until you run start running some ads and see what happens. But if things work out, your net cost-per-click could end up being lower or about the same as standard PPC ads.

For example, if you pay $1.00 CPM and your click-through rate is .25% (1 in 400), then your cost-per-click is $.25. If your CTR falls to .1% (1 in 1,000), then your CPC rises to $1.00.

If you are careful in your selection of web sites you target and manage your CPM wisely, then you can do quite well using site-targeted ads in Google.

For help implementing a site-targeted search engine marketing campaign for your business, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or info@workmedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sponsored search, web marketing, web site marketing

Friday, February 02, 2007

Getting Started Distributing Articles to Promote Your Web Site

Today we thought we would talk a little bit about where to distribute articles for Internet marketing purposes. If you've read much of our blog, then you know we are huge proponents of article distribution as a way to drive traffic to your web site. The key word there is DISTRIBUTION. You need to get it out there.

Here are some article directories to get you started:

http://ezinearticles.com
http://articledashboard.com
http://easyarticles.com
http://buzzle.com
http://article99.com
http://articlealley.com
http://articleexpress.com
http://articledash.com
http://articlenexus.com

All of the above sites require membership with the site to post articles. There is software that claims to distribute your article to lots of these kinds of sites at once. It's probably worth investing in, although the surest way to get it done is manually.

One other article site we really like is http://isnare.com. It has a feature whereby you can have your article distributed to dozens of other sites that are part of its network, so that is a good, low-cost, high percentage way to leverage your efforts and reasonably sure that your article is getting distributed.

If you can write and distribute one article per week, it will have a profound impact on your web site - even more so if you combine article writing with blogging.

For help implementing a content distribution plan for your web site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net.

Labels: article directories, article distribution, articles, content creation, internet marketing

The Work Media Internet Marketing Blog

Tuesday, February 27, 2007