The Work Media Internet Marketing Blog

We have been involved in a project that is very different from the way we typically work with our clients. Rather than funding their own paid search accounts and then paying us a management fee (generally figured as a percentage of the ad spend), our client arranged for a special affiliate program that pays us a certain amount for each lead. We normally don't agree to such arrangements, but we have done enough work for this client in the past with good results that we thought we already had a good feel for what to do. We expected to make more money this way.

You just don't know how something is going to work out until you try it. Even though the site and service we are promoting is very similar to what we have done in the past for this client...something is different. We are driving traffic, but that traffic is not converting into leads. No one is filling out our client's form. We are on our third different landing page design, and still no luck. People just don't seem to trust our client.

If you are in this situation (spending money to drive traffic to your site that is not converting), you need to take a hard look at your situation. Do people trust you based on your web site? It may be helpful to get one of those Better Business Bureau logos for your site. Are there certifications in your industry (and corresponding logos) you can get that can prove your level of expertise? Do you have a phone number placed prominently on your landing pages?

Speaking of phone numbers, it is also useful for you to get a separate number specifically associated with the paid search campaign. This way you will know exactly what calls resulted from your paid search ads.

All you can do is test, test, test. It is impossible to predict what will work, and every situation is different. Based on our experience with a similar campaign, we thought we had a good idea of what would work for this particular client. But we were wrong. The lesson? You can never stop testing. Never.

The negative aspect of this is that it will likely cost you some money to do adequate testing before you start making any money. But paid search is much more cost effective than any other type of marketing, and it gives immediate feedback. It can provide you with critical data that can be carried over to other forms of marketing.

So...generating leads via paid search ain't easy, even for experienced Internet marketers like us. But if you are patient, systematic, and willing to absorb some losses in the short-term, you can make it work.

If you could use some help with your pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: copywriting, internet marketing, landing page, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, web site marketing

Google has a new feature in beta testing that is very cool. It places a button on your web site that lets visitors instantly connect to you on the phone, without showing your phone number. Calls are routed through an online interface and you have the option of answering it or letting your voice mail catch the call. You can even prevent specific numbers from calling you. The feature is called WebCall, and it's actually made available through a service called GrandCentral.

GrandCentral is a service that was recently acquired by Google. It promotes itself as "the new way to use your phones." It provides you with one phone number that rings all your phones and one voicemail box that can store all your messages. It also lets you record calls on the fly. This could be a very useful feature for recording audio testimonials for a web site.

Currently, only select people are being allowed to use the service. Select people, that is, and users of Blogger. We've stated before that we think there may be an advantage to using Google's own blogging platform, and this is another one: preferential treatment from Google with regard to new tools and gadgets.

We will be trying out the new call button. Why not? It may turn out that users who would not otherwise have contacted us will do so just because of the convenience. It is definitely worth trying. You never know what little extra convenience will cause the phones to start ringing.
If you don't blog, start. If you do blog, use Blogger.

If you could use some help with your company's content or blogging strategy, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, blogging, blogging advice, blogging service, content, content creation, google, internet marketing

Wanna see a real time example of theft? Do this:

Go to http://GoDaddy.com

Search for a made-up domain name, something very unlikely to already be registered. If your first choice is already taken, try again. Repeat until you find one that is available, but do not actually register it. Then close the site.

Now go to http://NetworkSolutions.com and search for the same domain name. It should say that it is available.

Now go back to http://godaddy.com and search for the same domain name again. As you will see, the domain name is no longer available even though you have not registered it.

What happened? Network Solutions registered your domain name. If you want to buy it now, you will have to buy it from Network Solutions for $34.99, much higher than the normal price of $9.

Network Solutions claims this is a protection for you against a practice called "frontrunning", which is registering a domain name that someone just searched for so that you can re-sell it to them at a higher price. Funny the way Network Solutions is doing exactly the same thing they claim they are protecting you from.

Look, we have dealt with Network Solutions on many occasions in the past, and our opinion has always been the same - that it is a terrible company to do business with. They are difficult to work with and they over-charge for their services. But as far as we're concerned, this domain name issue goes beyond poor service. In our opinion, it is theft.

So...don't do business with Network Solutions. You can get exactly the same services at a lower price from GoDaddy or any of dozens of other companies.

If you need help choosing a registrar and getting your online business off the ground, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net. We're here to help.

Labels: business advice, domain names, domain registration, frontrunning, internet marketing, Network Solutions

Well, well...here we are...200 blog posts. Please excuse us while we give ourselves a pat on the back...[pat, pat, pat]...

We thought we would use this occasion to give some of our very best tips for promoting your web site:

• Pick one keyword for which to optimize the front page of your site. Make that keyword the first words in your title. Use it twice in the copy, once in a header, and once in bold. Use it in the alt attribute of the first image on the page. Use it in the text of every link throughout your site that links to your home page. And, if possible, use it in the text of links on other web sites that point to your site. Speaking of links...
• Get lots of external links pointing to your home page. I don't care what some "experts" say - we have seen time and time again that linking still works as an SEO technique.
• Write articles. This may be the single best way to acquire one-way, keyword-rich links to your site. Do it often. If you do one a week, in a year's time you will have a TON of links. If you can't write, there are companies you can hire to do it for you. Or hire a smart local high school kid to do it.
• Publish a blog. Search engines love content that changes often. That's exactly what a blog is - content that you update often. But you need to post at least twice per week.
• Use paid search. Sure, it delivers targeted traffic to your web site. But possibly even more importantly, it generates mission critical data. It will tell you things like what keywords generate the most traffic, what keywords generate customers, what web page copy converts at the best rate, etc.
• Use your analytics. You need to have a strong understanding of what is going on on your web site. For example, are your visitors using a particular screen resolution that doesn't work well with your site? Is there a particular location where a lot of your visitors come from? Is there a particular page on your site where most visitors leave? Google Analytics can answer all these questions for you, and it's free.
• Never stop trying to do better. Using the data from paid search and your analytics, you should constantly be looking for clues as to what changes to make to improve the performance of your site.

If you do these things, you will be successful. But is it work? Of course. That's why we're able to be in business. Because it takes time to implement a search marketing campaign and get a feel for what the data means. So if you could use some help with your search engine optimization or pay per click management, call us today at 888-299-4837 or email us at Info@WorkMedia.net.

See ya in blog post number 201!

Labels: article marketing, blog, internet marketing, pay per click, pay per click management, ppc, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, sem, seo, web site marketing

Think before you spend. That is today's lesson. We're talking about spending with regard to what you spend on advertising, especially online advertising. We have a large client who inquired about advertising on the front page of Yahoo!. Before we even looked into what it would cost, we knew this was a bad idea.

Yahoo! has massive reach. The home page gets nearly 2 billion impressions PER DAY. That is a lot of eyeballs. It's fairly analogous to advertising during the Super Bowl, both in terms of reach and expense. So yes, advertising on the front page of Yahoo! would give you an incredible amount of exposure and probably drive a lot of traffic to your web site.

But even if you are a big enough company to afford Yahoo!, is it the best use of your money? Probably not. For a fraction of the cost, you could run ads on dozens or hundreds of web sites much more closely aligned with your target market. For instance, if you are a financial services company, you could run your ad on many financial-related web sites, where people are already interested in your type of service, for pennies on the dollar of what the Yahoo! ad would cost.

You should apply this kind of thinking to all of your marketing. Ask yourself: am I spending my money on an advertising forum that will expose my message to the maximum number of people who are good prospects for my service at the best price? If you have lots of money to spend on marketing, we still think you should apply this kind of thinking. Spend your money on targeted advertising first, and then if there are funds left over, you can use those funds on a more broad, branding-oriented campaign.

If you could use some guidance with your pay per click management or search engine optimization, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: advertising, business advice, internet marketing, marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay per click management, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, Yahoo

Work Media has begun doing a podcast. This is definitely a new area for us. We blog all the time (obviously), but to me, it is more difficult to smoothly convey a message with spoken words, rather than printed words. In print, I have all the time I need to compose my thoughts and structure the copy the way I want it. In audio, even if you have what you want to say written out, you can't just read - you have to talk. It needs to sound conversational. So we're still working out how to best do the podcast, but we expect to get better the more we do it.

We have found a couple of podcasting resources that may be helpful to you if you decide to get into podcasting:

http://www.podcastblaster.com The most useful feature of this site is that it has a form you can use to automatically create a podcast RSS file. You just provide the details of the podcast and each individual epidose. The PodcastBlaster creates the file you need to supply to podcasting directories.

http://www.podcasting-tools.com This is a pretty useful site that provides lots of information about how to podcast. It also has a nice list of podcasting directories where you can submit your podcast.

http://www.podsubmitter.com A tool that will let you submit your podcast to multiple podcast directories at once. This could save you a lot of time. The caveat is that they require a link to the podsubmitter web site to use the service.

We are still working on a page for our site dedicated to the podcast. In the meantime, there are links to our first two episodes on our home page.

If you need some help implementing a content strategy for your site, including blogging and podcasting, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, blogging, content, content creation, internet marketing, internet marketing podcast, podcasting, podcasting advice

You probably don't realize it, but you have the ultimate tool for business success right in front of you. Assuming you sell a reasonably high quality product or service, all you have to do to be successful is get people to your web site and then use the words on your site to convince your visitors to do business with you. Fortunately, there is a marketing technique that can accomplish both of these objectives:

Pay per Click!

Or, as we usually refer to it, paid search marketing. With paid search, you can find the marketing copy that turns visitors into customers. You can run multiple ads for sets of keywords (ad groups), with each ad linking to a different landing page. You can then use the landing pages to test different copy. Make sure you set your ad groups to display the ads an even number of times (turn optimization off). After a few days or weeks (however long it takes to generate a few hundred clicks), you will have some very solid data showing which landing pages (and which copy) generate the most sales or leads.

Once you have figured out what copy converts visitors into customers or clients, it is time to get more aggressive with your campaign. Direct all your traffic to the best landing page. Increase your budget. Increase your bids (although keep an eye on your return on ad spend - you don't want to bid too high).

One critical component of making this technique work is to make sure you have conversion tracking in place. This is very easy. All you have to do is place a snippet of code supplied by the search engine on your conversion confirmation page. This will allow you to make the connection between specific keywords, ads, landing pages, and conversions.

Many times in life, the things that work seem too simple to believe. Success is not about carrying out some complicated plan - it's about doing the simple things very well. Create a plan for your business based on the technique discussed in this article, and you are guaranteed to succeed. Just don't rush the process. Be patient, and make sure you have enough data to analyze before making any big decisions.

If you could use some help implementing a data-based pay per click management plan, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: ad writing, advertising, copywriting, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, web site marketing

Article writing continues to be one of the most effective search engine marketing techniques in existence. It has two major benefits: it is a good branding move because it makes you appear like an expert in your field; and it generates one-way links to your web site which often contain specific keywords in the link text. If you write articles regularly, you will do yourself a lot of good. But there's good...and then there's GOOD.

So how do you write a GOOD article?

We're not really talking about good in the sense of writing that is compelling and interesting. I mean, if you can do that, then that is a huge bonus. We're really talking more about writing that will improve your search engine rankings and close business.

First off, you should have a specific keyword in mind when writing the article for which you would like to improve your search engine rankings. If you don't already have a specific keyword in mind, you might want to visit http://Nichebot.com or a similar service to look for keywords that get a lot (or at least some) traffic that are relevant to your business. It doesn't do you nearly as much good to write an article focused on a keyword that nobody ever uses.

Once you have decided on a keyword, then you need to try and use the keyword in the title (if it makes sense), the article body, and most importantly, in the author's box. The author's box is where you can actually make a hyperlink out of a keyword. If you can insert a hyperlink in the body text, that's even better, but that is often frowned upon.

As far as the content for the article, one easy way to create content is to pull it from your blog (you do blog, don't you?). For example, I just authored an article based on two blog posts. Each blog post discussed a real life example of poor web site marketing at the local level. So I combined the blog posts, re-wrote some sections of it, and titled it "Two Examples of the Damage Done by Poor Local Web Site Marketing".

Now I'm going give you a power tip, so pay attention. When conducting online research for an article, I use Google Notebook to collect snippets of information into a single page where I can view it all. Basically, I'm creating notes on the fly from different sites that I can use as the basis for my article. This technique could save you a lot of time.

When writing your article, use proper grammar and spelling. You can write the article in a conversational tone (which is good), but you don't want to appear ignorant. Remember, there is a branding component at work here. You want to come off as a true professional in your industry.

Once the article is written, it needs to be distributed to article directories. You can do this manually, one at a time, or you can use a directory submission service. The manual way is best, but it takes oh so long to do. You will probably want to use some kind of automation to get your article out to as many places as you can.

If you see the power of article marketing but just don't want to do it yourself, Work Media offers an article writing service. Call us at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: article directories, article distribution, article marketing, article writing, articles, copywriting, internet marketing, search engine marketing, seo

Yes, after all these months, we are still trying to finish the Google AdWords management application. Some time in late November, I decided that it was just going to take me too long to finish and stabilize the program myself. So I decided it was time to seek some help. The vehicle for finding that help is http://elance.com.

Elance.com, if you don't know, is an online resource for finding developers, writers, and other skilled individuals for hire on a project-by-project basis. We don't really need a full-time programmer right now, and don't want to deal with an I.T. staffing firm, so finding an off-site resource on our own is the best option.

Using elance, is pretty easy. You just create an account and then describe what you are looking for. You can also upload documents for prospects to get more detail about the project. I think that's a critical part of the process - making sure you have created documentation that thoroughly details what you are trying to accomplish. I spent a few weeks working on a Word document that contained specs for the project. My specs are probably not up to par with what a real developer expects, so I also created a static HTML mockup of the site. This allows potential hires to get a better idea of how the application should work, beyond trying to interpret my specs.

We have been contacted by a number of developers since posting on elance. Bids are all over the place. One of the bids is so low that we don't believe the bidder understands what we are doing. But there are a couple of bids that are very much in the ballpark of what we were looking to spend, and those developer seem to have a good understanding of what we need. So we are very confident that we will be able to hire a quality developer within our budget (which ain't much).

We also posted on http://craigslist.com, but did not receive much of a response to that. We did get contacted by one local developer who was between gigs. That would have been perfect, but he really didn't have the skillset we needed.

If this project goes well, I have a feeling we will be using elance for more projects in the near future, to get things done quicker and free us from having to do them ourselves.

If you need help with your search engine optimization or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: application development, elance, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, pay per click, search engine marketing, web site marketing

We have recently begun being more aggressive promoting our own web site. We have very strong rankings for search engine marketing related keywords that contain the word "Nashville", which is generally where we advise businesses with a brick-and-mortar location to begin. It is often very difficult to achieve high search engine rankings for broad, non-geographically targeted keywords. So generating rankings for keywords specific to your home market is a great way to begin driving traffic to your site that consists of very strong prospects for your service. It has definitely been beneficial to Work Media to be near the top of the rankings in Google for search terms like "Nashville search engine marketing firm". In fact, just out of curiosity, I just typed exactly that search term into Google and we have the top-ranked natural listing and the number one paid search listing. Now that's good shelfspace.

Anyway, we've decided it's time to start promoting our site for more broad terms, not specifically related to Nashville. We have a ton of content on our site and the site is reasonably well optimized, so the main thing we're concentrating on is off-site optimization (i.e., getting links pointing to our site). We've been working on it for a few weeks and have already begun seeing results. But one odd thing happened which we have seen happen a lot. So we thought we would tell you about it so if it happens to you, you don't freak out.

There is one keyword in particular we are keen on ranking for, so it is the main one we have concentrated on in our linking campaign. When we started, we ranked a little past 100 for the keyword. A few weeks after beginning our new efforts to rank for this keyword, we disappeared altogether from the Google results. But we were not worried - we've seen this before.

Sure enough, after a few days, we were back in Google's results for the keyword, this time ranked in the 60's. Nowhere near where we hope to be, but a real nice jump from where we started.

When a web page suddendly begins to have lots of new links pointing to it, that page tends to disappear from the rankings, only to reappear later, higher ranked. Our theory is that when Google picks up on a lot of new rankings for a page, it temporarily removes it from the rankings in order to do some additional analysis on the page. This analysis probably includes Google asking questions like: Are the links relevant to the site? Is the site strong in content? What do we know about the site?

Since our site is very strong in content, well-aged, and has been indexed for a long time, we think Google performed the analysis and made the determination that we were not trying to spam our way into its index. It then re-ranked our site accordingly, taking into account the new links we have.

This is all just a theory, really. But we've never been ones to stress out over trying to figure out exactly how Google's algorithm works. We just follow the basics...and it works every time. So if you undertake a linking campaign and find your site suddenly disappearing from the rankings, don't worry about it. Unless your site is junk, in which case it may not make it out of limbo. So make sure your site is strong on content.

If you need some help with your own site's search engine optimization or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, internet marketing, linking, linking campaign, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search engine rankings, search marketing, seo, web site marketing

We are in discussions to provide search engine marketing services to a company with a very significant presence in numerous Latin American countries. One of their primary competitors has been making extensive use of Google's content network to distribute its marketing message to the same countries, so our potential client wants to do the same thing. In the course of a conversation yesterday, we discussed something which may be something you should think about for your own search engine marketing. And that is:

Should you go wide or go deep?

Here's what we mean. We don't want to launch an all-out marketing blitz in all of this company's market countries at once. We want to start on a fairly small scale, generate some data, and then start expanding. But is the best approach to take a single country and saturate it with search and content ads (going deep), or should we pick just a few target content sites and run ads on those sites in many countries (going wide)?

Each approach has its advantages. The deep approach will generate a lot of country-specific data related to lots of different sites and search queries. Chances are pretty good that what works with one country will work with another. So if we can generate enough data, we can probably create somewhat of a template that could be applied to the search marketing campaigns in the other target countries.

The wide approach makes sense if the advertiser already has a very good idea about what specific sites are effective for its marketing message. Our prospective client believes it knows at least one site that will be very effective, although we won't know for sure until we run ads and see if they result in converting customers.

Ultimately, like everything else to do with Internet marketing, it just comes down to testing. We don't know which strategy is best until we try some different things to see what works. Our suggestion in this case is to do both. By aggressively marketing in a single country AND marketing cross-country via a few select sites, we will learn very quickly which approach is best and can start doing more of it.

So ask yourself...should you go deep or go wide? The only way to find out may be to do some testing on your own.

If you could use some help with your pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: ad networks, advertising, internet marketing, local search marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, sponsored search, web site marketing

I read over the weekend that Microsoft is trying to buy Yahoo!. They are willing to pay a nice premium over where the stock is at right now (having been beaten down by disappointing earnings), so it would represent a nice profit for Yahoo! stockholders. Will the deal go through? Who knows.

As search marketers, we would like to see the deal go through. We have tried to use Microsoft's search network and marketing platform (and continue to try) but Microsoft just doesn't have enough traffic yet, and its ad serving platform sometimes just doesn't seem to work very well. There are some features of Microsoft's ad center control panel that we really like, and some that we don't like.

The same with Yahoo! There are some features of its control panel we like, and some we don't. If the merger does happen, we would hope Microsoft would combine the best features of the two platforms into something really useful. The keyword inventory of the combined companies would also come closer to rivaling Google, and would exceed Google worldwide.

Frankly, we would just rather have to only deal with two major search marketing platforms than three. We like a lot of the things Microsoft has tried to do. Combining Microsoft's technology with Yahoo!'s Web positioning would create something new that could really be a boon to search engine advertisers. It would also set up an even more competitive situation between Google and the combined company, which should result in an increased pace in innovation and a better situation for advertisers. It seems counter-intuitive to think that a decrease in competitors from three to two would result in more competition, but it would. Microsoft just does not have the search engine traffic to be a real threat to Google or Yahoo!. But the new merged Microsoft/Yahoo! would be able to give Google a real run for its money. And that would be good for all of us.

If you could use some help with your pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

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