The Work Media Internet Marketing Blog

Work Media will be closing shop for Thanksgiving, although Chris may be putting in a little time on Friday from his home office. He'll be checking the office phone periodically if you need us.

We hope you and your family have a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you are able to truly be thankful for everything you have. These are tough times, and in times like these it's more important than ever that family stick together, and that friends hold each other up.

Everybody be careful and drive safe!

Jerry, Chris, Corey, and the rest of the gang at Work Media.

You should consider building a new web site separate from your main site that functions as an information hub for your industry. You can use RSS feeds to dynamically create much of the content for the site, which will save you the effort of trying to manually updating it with new links or articles. So why would you want to take the time to do such a thing?

There are a few good reasons, but the one we are most interested in is this: to have a means to guide search engine spiders to other web sites that rank to your main site, without linking directly to them from your main site.

The reason you would want to guide search engine spiders in this way is so that you do not end up with nothing but two-way links, but you also want to make sure that other web pages that contain links to your site are found. There is certainly a good chance that Google (or whoever) will find all those links on its own, but why not make it easy and point right to them?

To really take this strategy to the next level, you should give your new site, the information hub, its own IP address so that there is nothing tying the sites together. But even if you don't do that, it is still a good strategy because it eliminates cross-linking between other sites and your site.

Another big advantage is that the information hub gives you another opportunity to get your marketing message across. But avoid the temptation to make it just an extension of your web site for purposes of selling your services. It needs to stand on its own as a valuable source of impartial information.

Here are a couple of links with more link building strategies:

http://link-building-strategies.tumblr.com/post/56579067/link-building-strategies-that-really-work

http://www.zimbio.com/link-building-strategies/articles/2/Link+Building+Strategies+Work

Labels: internet marketing, link building, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Google has a new AdWords feature that is available as a beta trial to certain advertisers. It will probably be rolled out to all users within the next few weeks. The feature is called automatic matching.

Automatic matching is intended to help you capture relevant traffic that you may have missed based on your campaign keyword lists. When it is activated, Google analyzes your account and begins showing your ads for search queries that you have not specified as keywords.

The feature is not supposed to effect any of your existing keywords. In other words, keywords you have set up in your account should not get robbed of traffic in order for the system to automatically display your ads for other keywords. The point is to display your ads for alternate keywords whenever you have budget left over.

This is obviously a good thing for Google because it keeps your ads online for more keywords, which means more clicks and more revenue for them.

But is it good for advertisers?

Maybe, maybe not. You don't really want to relinquish control of your account to Google. That's asking for disaster. BUT...if you have budget left over every month and would rather have your ads running than not max out your budget, then this is a way to make that happen.
If you have the feature available, and you are currently not spending all of your budget, then you may want to give it a try. BUT...

Watch your numbers, especially your cost per conversion. If your cost per conversion rises to an unacceptable level because of extra money being consumed by automatic matching ads, then you should turn the feature off immediately.

Here are a couple of web pages that contain good information about pay per click placement:

http://placingppcads.wordpress.com/2008/09/25/is-pay-per-click-placement-in-your-control-yes-if-you-follow-these-strategies/

http://www.zimbio.com/placing-ppc-ads/articles/2/Pay+per+Click+Placement+Control+Yes+Follow

Labels: AdWords, automatic matching, google, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing

Google has a couple of new features that you should check out. The first is a new keyword research tool that analyzes a supplied web site URL and seed keyword to show keywords that might be relevant for promoting that site (that are not already being used), along with traffic and bid data for each keyword. The main caveat is that you must be an existing advertiser. It's a great way to instantly generate a list of new keywords for a particular landing page along with the data you need to make decisions regarding what keywords to use and how much to bid. It's a great tool for advertisers, and certainly a great tool for Google since it will encourage bidding on more keywords.

The URL to try it out is: http://google.com/sktool/.

Another new feature is that Google has increased the number of unique results returned for a query report. These are reports that show you the actual search terms that are triggering your Google AdWords ads. Historically, the reports have always featured line items labeled "Other queries" that contained a large portion of the total queries. Now, there should be fewer results included in the Other queries line and more unique keyword results. This increases the knowledge that advertisers have about their Google accounts, improving their ability to make adjustments based on performance data.

Google is constantly releasing new features. The better you understand these features, the better you will be able to manage your account and maximize your AdWords performance.

Here are a couple more links to pages devoted to the topic of law firm Internet marketing:

http://lawyerwebsitemarketing.wetpaint.com/

http://marketingforlawfirms.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/lawyer-website-marketing-powerful-search-engine-advice-straight-from-the-source/

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing

You just can't beat good old fashioned person-to-person networking for generating business. We had a booth at a recent networking event hosted by the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, and it was fantastic. We talked to lots of people who were very interested in our services and collected a ton of business cards. We will definitely be doing it again.

The lesson for you? Look, these are hard times. You should definitely continue using the Internet to promote your business, but if you sell a service, you need to get out and shake some trees...see if you can round up some business. Just be aggressive and use lots of different strategies to generate business. In an economy like we have now, businesses that are lazy will falter, while those that work hard and refuse to go down will prosper once we make it out of this recession.

There are networking opportunities out there. Go find them and take advantage of them. Join the Chamber of Commerce (but don't expect the COC to bend over backwards to help you). If you can't find any networking opportunities, create one. Be proactive.

Here are a couple more links for good sites focused on the subject of law firm internet marketing:

http://knol.google.com/k/jerry-work/-/vq7k1h2e94bz/6

http://online-legal-marketing.tumblr.com/post/53845360/lawyer-website-marketing-powerful-search-engine-advice

As you see, one of the links is a Google Knol link. Have you tried Knol? It is another social networking site that allows you to build a page about any subject you want. And since it is a service owned by Google itself, it can result in a nicely valued link to your site that Google will find quickly.

In closing, times are tough, but all you can do is keep working and promoting. Hang in there!

Labels: internet marketing, marketing, networking

Google has added a new feature to Google Analytics that is pretty cool. When you log in now, it will show you a summary of performance data, including the percentage increase or decrease in traffic for the last month, for each site you are tracking. This gives you a quick and dirty thumbnail of how your sites are performing without manually digging into each one. Yahoo! is releasing its own free analytics product, so Google will probably be ratcheting up the features in Google Analytics to keep up. This is a very good thing for the consumer.

Here are a couple more good sites that deal with marketing law firm web sites:

http://marketingforlawfirms.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/lawyer-website-marketing-powerful-search-engine-advice-straight-from-the-source/

http://knol.google.com/k/jerry-work/-/vq7k1h2e94bz/6

If you're in Nashville, come and see us tonight (Thursday) at the Chamber of Commerce After Hours networking event at the convention center downtown.

Labels: analytics, google, Google Analytics, internet marketing, Yahoo

Last night I read an article about American Express. Apparently, it is becoming a bank holding company, which will allow it to take deposits as well as give it access to government rescue programs. Isn't that nice?

They also laid off 7 thousand workers last month. So yeah, American Express is going down the toilet, and based on the way the company treats its customers, I'm fine with it. Like I said yesterday, we will no longer do business with American Express. I advise you to do the same, lest you get screwed like we did.

OK, now we'll talk about something related to Internet marketing.

Most businesses really don't understand the concept of targeting as it applies to search engine marketing. SEM is a science of specificity. Forget about hoping that your web site just magically appears for any search related to your business. You have to choose specific keywords and then do specific things to cause your site to appear for those keywords.

The rule of specificity also applies to paid search. Don't just run your PPC campaigns wide open, all the time, to every possible set of eyeballs. Pick your battles. You have lots of targeting options: by time of day, day of week, by geographic market. For content ads, you can even target by things like age and gender. The more finely you target your paid search campaigns, the better will be your results.

So don't think in terms of generalities. Think in terms of specifics. You will get much better results and a higher return on your investment.

Here are a couple of articles that deal with PPC targeting in relation to the promotion of law firm web sites:

http://targeting-search-marketing-attorney.wetpaint.com/

http://www.zimbio.com/sem-lawyer-targeting/articles/2/Using+Targeting+Improve+Attorney+Search+Engine

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

We normally don't use this blog for personal rants and things of that nature, but something happened today that has us mad enough to let the world know about it. Apparently, last month, American Express terminated our merchant account, despite the fact that we had no chargebacks and have paid them hundreds of dollars in fees every month. When we called them about it, we were told that our account had resulted in a "45% loss." So, of course, our question is "what the hell does that mean?" 45% of what? And how can you be losing money when all we do is PAY you money every month? We were told that they could not tell us any more.

So, our theory is that American Express is losing money like every other financial institution and has decided to cut accounts below some minimum threshold of charge volume. So despite paying out thousands in fees over the last year, we're cut off, with no kind of recourse. We are kicked to the curb despite being a good customer. Which is why we say...

American Express is garbage. We will never again do business with them. If you do business with them, and especially if you rely on American Express to receive payment from your clients, you better watch your back. You could be next.

Labels: American express, credit cards

We just noticed a very cool new Google AdWords feature. For advertisers who use Google Checkout, their ads can now expand to show actual products they are selling. We have not investigated yet to see how the feature works (for instance, if this is something you have to manually configure or if it happens automatically), but this is a great benefit to advertisers who are selling products because potential customers can actually see some of your products BEFORE clicking your ad. This should definitely help lower conversion costs for smart advertisers.

Here are a couple more resources you might want to check out related to law firm Internet marketing:

http://marketingforlawfirms.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/lawyer-website-marketing-powerful-search-engine-advice-straight-from-the-source/

http://knol.google.com/k/otto-larsen/-/39fdtoxydt17x/2

We've done a lot of work on our law firm internet marketing site, so you might want to check it out again.

We have written a new article about PPC search engine marketing positioning that you should check out. This is an area where a lot of beginning pay per click advertisers struggle. To summarize the article: don't get caught up in trying to position your ad at the top of the listings. That is a surefire way to lose your money! Following these six rules is much better guidance:

1. Don't bid overly aggressive just to have the number one spot.

2. Know what you can afford to pay for clicks. Know your numbers!

3. Split-test your ads.

4. Split-test your landing pages.

5. Measure your performance.

6. Understand the workings of your particular chosen PPC platforms.

For much more elaboration, read the complete article.

Labels: paid search, pay per click, ppc, ppc search engine positioning, sponsored search