The Work Media Internet Marketing Blog

Internet Marketing Update

We have been hard at work for weeks now on a couple of projects that are taking way longer than expected to complete...but that's just life, I guess. We are currently finishing up our newest book, tentatively titled something like "Winning the Pay per Click Game: Scientific Strategies for Maximizing Your Paid Search Return on Investment". How's that for a snazzy title? Unlike our previous books, this one will be published, either on our own with the help of a publish-on-demand company, or through an established publisher, depending on circumstances.

We are still working on our Google AdWords management application. That has definitely turned into a complex, difficult project. We are working with off-shore developers, but the development process is taking quite a bit longer than anticipated. We may end up taking over development and finishing it ourselves. But hopefully it won't come to that.

In the world of Internet marketing, the big news this week is Microsoft pulling its offer to purchase Yahoo!. Yahoo! stock has tumbled significantly on the news. Yahoo!'s largest shareholder, Capital Research Global Investors, says he thinks Yahoo!'s board of directors should be embarrassed. We at Work Media are disappointed at the failure of the merger. A combined Yahoo!/Google search network would give Google some real competition, which would be good for advertisers. As it stands, Google's marketshare just continues to grow, strengthening its dominance. No good ever comes from one company owning a market.

We are scheduled to speak at an upcoming search engine marketing conference in Nashville in August. That should be fun. Hopefully we'll have published copies of our book to give away by then.

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

Labels: google, internet marketing, Microsoft, Yahoo

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Make Sure Your Landing Pages Work!

The topic of today's post may seem obvious. I mean, who wouldn't make sure their landing pages work before launching a pay per click campaign? Well, we do make the assumption that you would test your pages before launching the campaign...but what about afterwards?

You should check your landing pages periodically. Hey, things happen. If your landing page is completely static (straight-up HTML with no server-side code), then chances of it breaking are minimal. But what about your form?

Your landing page probably has some kind of form. If it doesn't, then what's the point? Your form will have to use some kind of server-side component or script to deliver the contents of the form to your site (or to process an order). And that's where things can break.

We have a client whose account recently began performing quite poorly. It turns out that her hosting company had moved her site to a new server. In the process, they had broken the form confirmation page (the page that sends the contents of the form to our client in an email). We spotted this by submitting the form ourselves to make sure it still works. We did this on a hunch after noticing that her site had stopped showing any conversions in her search engine conversion stats.

So...don't let this happen to you. Once a week, check all of your landing pages to make sure your forms are still working. The nickel you save could be your own.

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

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

Monday, April 21, 2008

Lose the Ego - It's About the Keywords, Not Your Name

Get used to being known as a keyword rather than a name. If you're trying to generate search engine rankings, at least. For example, which of the following would make a better signature for an article or blog post response?

www.franks.com - Jackson's pool table retailer.

or

www.franks.com - Jackson's pool table retailer.

Intuitively, you might think the first one is better, since your business name is hyper-linked. However, the second link will help boost your ranking for the specific keyword "pool table". Assuming that that keyword accurately reflects the products you sell (and that you have done some keyword research to make sure the keyword generates traffic), then the second one is much better for your business.

If your goal is to achieve search engine rankings, then you need to put your ego aside, and do everything you can to seed the Web with links to your site that contain your main keywords. Article writing is a great way to do this. Personally, I'm not convinced that making forum posts with links is still a valid method. I feel like the search engines probably discounted the value of those links a long time ago. But there are plenty of other techniques.

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

Labels: article marketing, internet marketing, keyword research, linking, linking campaign, search engine optimization, seo

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Exciting New Blogger Features that Will Bring Your Boring Blog to Life

Google has been working on some new features of the Blogger blogging platform which are really cool. To try them out, you just need a Blogger account. Then, rather than logging into blogger.com like you normally do, you log into draft.blogger.com. The new features include blog post scheduling, which lets you specify a particular date when a post should go live, and a blog list feature to display information about other blogs you recommend.

The coolest new feature we see is the ability to add Google Gadgets to your blog. This now GREATLY expands how dynamic your blog can be. For instance, I am considering starting a new financial blog. Lucky for me, there are already hundreds of Google Gadgets in the Finance category that can do things like display financial market information or stock tickers. So just like that...bam!...my new blog will be able to display information related to stocks that I talk about in the blog.

There are lots of different categories of gadgets that can be added to a blog. Some more examples include sports gadgets that can do things like feed sports news or photos to your blog, and games that you can add to your blog. Another category of gadgets with a ton of useful potential is Communication. This includes gadgets like Google Talk and Skype, which facilitate communication with your readers and friends. There are currently over 1,300 available gadgets in the Communications category, so you have lots of options to choose from.

Google seems to be working hard to make its blogging platform competitive with other platforms, especially by leveraging Google Gadgets, of which there are many, to add excitement and interactivity to Blogger-hosted blogs. We have recommended Blogger on many occasions and continue to do so. We certainly like the fact that it is owned by Google, so maybe, just maybe, you gain a slight advantage in getting your content indexed for inclusion in Google search results.

If you need some help using your blog for marketing purposes, please contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: blog, blog marketing, Blogger, blogging, blogging advice, blogging service, google, internet marketing

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Designing a Pay per Click Management System

In the course of working on our latest book, I have put a lot of thought into the concept of a trading-style system for managing a paid search campaign. There is definitely a correlation between investing in securities and investing in paid search. Every keyword you bid on is sort-of like a stock: you are bidding a certain amount in anticipation of turning a profit on it.

Possibly the investing concept (also a gambling concept) that is the most relevant to pay per click is money management. You want to allocate your budget to the keywords that will maximize your profit and minimize losses. Unfortunately, unlike with securities, you have no historical data to use to test your beliefs except your own. And it costs money to generate your own data.

There's no way around it. If you want to successful in paid search, you have to be willing to pay the price to generate enough data to know what changes you need to make to your account.

Another big difference between trading securities and managing a paid search account is that there are other variables other than just the keyword (the "security") and the price paid for it. With paid search, you have more "touchy feely" things to deal with - namely, your ad copy and landing page copy/design. You can have your account set up just right and your bids set perfectly, yet still not be successful because of your ads and landing pages. There is a complex relationship between the keyword, bid, ad, and landing page. A weakness in any of the elements can greatly diminish the effectiveness of a pay per click campaign.

But again, it all just comes down to generating data, and the way to do that is to test, test, test. With our new book, we hope to give readers a reasonably simple system to use to properly allocate their budget. The rest is just good ol' split-testing and constant revision.

If you need help with PPC management NOW and can't wait for our book to come out. feel free to call us at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

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

Friday, April 04, 2008

Battling Amazon

We have become involved in somewhat of a political movement in protesting recent actions taken by Amazon.com. It has to do with print-on-demand ("POD") books, which are books printed a single copy at a time. Many independent authors use POD services to sell their books through Amazon. When a copy of the book is purchased, the POD company prints it and usually ships it directly to the customer. It's a very smooth transaction. And it provides a reliable marketplace for independent authors.

But very recently, Amazon began contacting authors who use POD to inform them that they would have to use Amazon's own print-on-demand company, Booksurge, for their book printing. Amazon is responsible for over half the market for POD books. An author who wants to sell as many copies as possible needs to use Amazon. So in one swift move, Amazon essentially took over the print-on-demand industry. Where once there were many options, now there is only one.

To make matters worse, the Booksurge service is known for poor quality. Even if Booksurge has fixed its problems, authors should still be free to do business with companies with whom they already have established relationships. Authors will incur considerable expense in switching POD companies; authors will now be paying Amazon a high percentage of their sales, in addition to charging them for the printing. These additional expenses will be passed onto the consumer in the form of higher book prices.

It is clear that Amazon.com is now just a corporate machine; far, far removed from the little online book seller that started a revolution. We're advising people not to do business with Amazon.

We have also been maintaining a blog on this subject, http://www.AmazonBookSurge.com, that we invite you to check out.

As far as how this relates to marketing, how about this:

Never make massive changes to your business overnight that are going to negatively affect a great number of your customers.

Seems pretty obvious. Especially on the Web, where it is not hard to research the opinions of others. For instance, try performing the following search in Google: Amazon.com customer complaints

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

Labels: amazon.com, internet marketing, public relations, publicity

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Technology Problems are Bad for Business

We had some serious trouble with GoDaddy this week. We have recommended GoDaddy on numerous occasions, both in our blog and in-person. But our days of recommending GoDaddy are over. We had a terrible experience with them this week in which a mission-critical application was down, and it took two whole days of repeated calls before we finally talked to someone in their technical support department who knew what he was talking about. Our problem could have been fixed in a few hours, rather than three days (Sunday through Tuesday).

So...GoDaddy is probably fine for registering your domain names, but I would be careful about using them for hosting or running a server. I think they probably just have too much business to handle. The company has obviously been very successful. Too successful.

Who would we recommend? Heck if I know. The hosting companies we have worked with include DataPipe, HostNexus, 1and1, and GoDaddy. With both 1and1 and GoDaddy, we had a dedicated or virtual dedicated server. In both cases, customer support has been pathetic. With HostNexus, we had a bad experience involving the time difference between us and them (they are in Australia). DataPipe is probably be the best of the group.

If it is critical that your site not go down, your email always work, and that customer service be an option, then you should probably look for a local company. You may end up paying more, but we have definitely learned that you get what you pay for. Don't make the same mistakes we have made. Bad hosting can make your company look very bad.

Although this post may not seem like it has anything to do with Internet marketing, it does. You must protect your image, and you must be responsive to your customers and prospects. This means your web site must be up. Your email must work. You must be able to deliver on your promises, but if your technology is bad, that becomes much more difficult. All the search engine marketing in the world won't do you any good if your prospects have a bad experience.

If you need some help with your search engine optimization or pay per click management (or making technology decisions as discussed in this article), please contact us at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: email, internet marketing, technology, web hosting

Monday, March 31, 2008

Monday Morning Update

Okay, we're back in action (as far as this blog goes). My daughter had her surgery Wednesday, and it seemed to go well. I tell ya, babies are tough. If I had had the same surgery, I would have been lying around moaning for days. My daughter, on the other hand, was crawling around, happy as could be when we took her home the next day. Amazing.

Anyway, we have a busy week. We have a new client in the legal industry, Lucius Hawes, an attorney based out of Hopkinsville, Kentucky. We also took on another client who has asked that we not reveal our working relationship. But we're glad to welcome some new clients, even if we can't brag about who they are.

We will be working with our Indian developer to hopefully finish the Google Dominator application this week. I think the app turned out to be more complicated than our developer had anticipated, but we are confident that we'll get it done.

I have also made great progress on our latest book. This one will not be available for free on our site (sorry). It represents the culmination of two years' worth of research and writing, so we will be shopping it around for publication. We may just end up selling it ourselves, depending on what happens with publisher discussions.

That's our company update. Sorry, no lesson today. We're too dang busy! But I'll post again Wednesday and we're get back to the normal business of learning about search engine optimization and pay per click management.

If you could use some help with your search engine marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

That's all for this week...

This may be our last blog post of the week. My 11 month old daughter is having surgery tomorrow, so I will be out of the office the rest of the week. I will be working on some things at the hospital, but I probably won't be blogging. Chris doesn't do much blogging because he's too busy keeping the company going. Hey, we gotta make a living.

I will be working on our newest book which I mentioned yesterday - a systematic, trading-style methodology for managing paid search campaigns.

And work on our Google AdWords management application continues. Hopefully VERY soon that will be ready for beta testing by some of our clients and friends.

So...this is it for this week. If there is anything we can do to help your business be successful in its online marketing, please call us at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing

Monday, March 24, 2008

Thinking Hard About Pay Per Click Management Strategy

I've been reading a lot lately about trading systems - that is, rules-based strategies for making short-term investments in stocks or other securities. So far, most of my personal stock purchases have been made in more of an "investing" mode, as opposed to trading. In other words, I'm buying stocks that I think are undervalued or that have strong future prospects, in order to realize long-term appreciation in the stock prices. Trading is completely different. It is based purely on things like volume of purchases and momentum.

What's the point, you ask? It's that there is a strong correlation between the trading of securities and the management of a paid search campaign. For instance:

When trading, you are buying something at one price in hopes of selling it at a higher price. In pay per click management, you are biding a certain price for a click in hopes of turning a profit on it.
When trading, many, if not most, of your trades will be losers, with the hope that your winning trades outweigh your losers. In pay per click management, most of your clicks will be losers, with the hope that you have enough clicks that convert to outweigh your losers.
Trading involves a set of stocks or other securities. Pay per click management involves a set of keywords or web sites.

One major area of difference between a trading account and a paid search account is that paid search has a strong creative element. Even if you do the math right, if your ads are lousy or your landing pages are lousy, you're still going to lose. But we have some ideas that we think will make the creative side easier even for novices.

We have begun work on our newest book, that will be a rules-based strategy guide for managing paid search accounts. This one will be shopped around to real publishers, rather than publishing it ourselves as we have in the past.

For the time being (until you get a chance to buy our book), the point is to think of your pay per click campaign as an investment. Your keywords are the entities (your securities) that comprise your portfolio of keywords. Some keywords are going to make you money, and some (if not most) keywords are going to lose money. You need to figure out which ones are your winners.

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

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

Friday, March 21, 2008

Breaking Out of Our Shell

For a blogger, I don't get out much. Most successful bloggers spend all kinds of time reading other blogs, posting, being active in blog communities...and I don't know how they do it. How the heck do you do that and still get any work done? We still don't visit many blogs and get into that community stuff too much, simply because of the time required. But we have started doing something that moves us in that direction that i think may be of value to you.

We've been going to "answer" sites and responding to questions that deal with search engine marketing topics. A couple of good examples of the types of sites I'm talking about are:

http://answers.yahoo.com

and

http://linkedin.com/answers

To answer questions on either site, you have to have an account. Signing up doesn't take long, but you might want to spend some time working on your profile just in case people reading your answers want to find out more about you.

You may or may not receive any boost in your search engine rankings from these sites. Linkedin, for example, uses a redirect for your web site link, so it's not a link straight to your site. And Yahoo! inserts a nofollow attribute in links contained in answers. But with Yahoo!, we have seen many links contained in answers appear in search engine lists of links to a site, so we think you are getting some value there.

Even if you receive no search engine ranking boost, you will expose your expertise to people looking for help in your area, so chances are good that you will receive some traffic. It's just another form of on-line networking. You've got to get your name out there, and answering questions is a good way to do it.

You do need to be careful not to use the answer sites simply for promotional purposes. Your accounts will be banned quick if you do that. If you're going to do it, you need to look for questions for which you can honestly provide some insight, and type out complete, well-written responses.

If you could use some help implementing a search engine optimization or pay per click management campaign for your business, give us a call at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, social bookmarking, social media

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

The Latest Things You Should Know About Google

Here are a couple of items of news from the Google camp that we thought were interesting, and that you should know about.

First off, Google now takes the loading time of your landing pages into consideration when determining relevance for AdWords ads. Google requires advertisers to pay more for clicks if it determines that there is low relevancy between the keywords, ads, and landing pages. It wants to make sure that there is a strong sense of congruency - that everything relates and is relevant. But now they have gone a step further and are measuring the loading speed of your landing pages. Advertisers who have pages that load too slowly will be punished by being forced to pay more for clicks.

We don't agree with this move by Google. Economics takes care of this kind of problem. If an advertiser's keywords are not appropriate, or if its ads are not effective, or if its landing pages take too long to load, the economics of the situation will drive the advertiser away. The business will lose too much money to keep doing it. Google's micromanagement continues.

The other Google news item is that an ad purchasing system similar to what Google offers for newspaper and radio is now in beta testing for TV. The new platform lets advertisers purchase TV ad time on the Echostar satellite system. It is currently being tested by a few select advertisers, but early feedback seems to be very positive. The day is fast approaching when Google's advertising platform can be used to manage a completely integrated marketing campaign incorporating search, online content, print, radio, and TV.

Speaking of Google, we are still finishing up the first iteration of our AdWords management tool. We've been fixing bugs for weeks, but hopefully it will be ready to try out next month.

If you could use some help with Google pay per click management or any other online marketing activity, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 of Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay per click management, ppc, sponsored search, TV advertising

Monday, March 17, 2008

Improving Return on Equity with Pay per Click Marketing

The mark of an exceptional company is the ability to generate ever greater returns on equity. For instance, if your company has $1 million of accounting equity, and you generate $200 thousand in earnings (profit), then your return on equity is 20%. Your goal for next year, then, might be to generate a return on equity of 25%. This kind of analysis is particularly relevant to public companies, but it is also valid for private companies as a measure of performance.

One way to increase your company's return on equity is to invest in things that will increase sales and that can be measured so you know how much they are increasing sales. These "things" consist of advertising and other forms of marketing. Unfortunately, most forms of advertising make it very difficult to track how much business you are actually generating in return for your advertising dollars. But you and I know about a form of advertising that does not suffer from this weakness.

Paid search, or pay per click.

Pay per click lets you know exactly what your return on investment is for all of your keywords, ads, and landing pages. Over time, as you generate data and do more split-testing, you should be able to make your return on investment from paid search improve. Improving the ROI on your advertising improves the return on equity for your overall business, all else being equal.

So if you are looking to improve your company's financial performance, look to advertising platforms that are cost-effective, easy to implement, and provide complete transparency with regard to return on investment. Paid search is your best bet.

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: internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay per click management, ppc, roas, roi, search engine marketing, sem

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Work Media - Business Update

Here are just a few happenings from around the office. Not that this stuff is particularly interesting to anyone, but I gotta write about something. I'm not feeling particularly creative today.

We had a fantastic call today with a company in California that is selling some world-changing products. We became enamored with their products as soon as we checked out their web site and are very hopeful of doing a deal with the company soon. More to come about that.

We had a call with Columbia State Community College yesterday and they are thrilled with the performance they are getting from their paid search campaign and instructed us to continue on at least until the end of April.

We continue servicing our hard wood flooring client in Memphis and are having great results. Month after month, his rankings are improving and his natural search traffic is improving. The way the site's ecommerce functionality works, we are unable to accurately track conversions. But all indications are that the business is doing very well..

We have a developer in India finishing up work on the beta version of our Google Dominator application. We hope to go live with that in April.

We did an online press release this week about our Keyword Relative Value concept. Soon you should be seeing something about that in one of the Mediapost publications. In addition to the press release, we've been doing a ton of article marketing for our own purposes and are starting to see some good results. I am a huge fan of article distribution as an SEO technique.

That's all for now. If you need some help implementing a search engine marketing campaign for your business, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Keyword Relative Value: a Simplified Way of Measuring Search Engine Visibility

This week we published an article on our web site discussing a concept we have developed called Keyword Relative Value. The article can be accessed via the link below:

http://workmedia.net/articles/Keyword-Relative-Value.asp

To quote from the article:

We developed a formula intended to attach a numerical value to a web site's search engine ranking for a specific keyword. The resulting number, called the Keyword Relative Value (or “KRV”), places a value on a keyword for a particular web site based on two parameters: the amount of expected traffic for the keyword and a site's ranking in a particular search engine for the keyword.

Here is the KRV formula:

KRV = ROUND(T*(SQRT((1/R)^3)),2)

where T = the expected traffic for a keyword and R = a web site's ranking for the keyword in a particular search engine.

The above formula derives the value for one particular keyword. A much more instructive exercise is to calculate the KRV's for a group of keywords. We call this the Aggregate Keyword Relative Value ("AKRV"). The formula for AKRV is as follows:

AKRV = X(ROUND(T*(SQRT((1/R)^3)),2))

where X is the number of keywords that have search engine rankings.

The point of these formulas is to boil your web site's search engine visibility for a common set of keywords down to a single number. You can then track this number over time and compare it to your competitors to gauge your visibility against your competitors. We believe this concept is a powerful new tool to give web site owners a stronger sense of how well they rank in the search engines, in an easy-to-understand format: a single number.

To learn more about KRV, please read the article linked above.

If you could use some help improving and understanding your search engine visibility, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword relative value, keyword research, keywords, KRV, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search engine rankings, sem, seo

Monday, March 10, 2008

Publicity the Easy Way: Using PRWeb

We just paid to have a press release distributed via PRWeb. PRWeb, if you don't know, is a press release distribution service that is tied into a large network of web sites and people to whom it distributes press releases. PRWeb has four basic levels of service which cost up to $360, although you can also spend more than that depending on what extra features you utilize. One such feature is a podcast feature by which PRWeb staff will call you and record a 4 to 5 minute podcast from the call. This service starts at $100.

After distributing a press release, PRWeb provides the following statistics: Reads (the number of times the press release was accessed via PRWeb), Pickups (the number of times the press release was accessed via a consumer or media person), Prints (the number of times the press release was printed), Forwards (the number of times your press release was forwarded via a link on the press release), and PDF Downloads (the number of times your release was downloaded via PDF). Depending on the level of service you pay for, you can also view information such as visits by country, search engines, and search terms by search engine.

Unlike articles, you can place a true hyperlink in the body of a press release. This has considerable value, as you can load the text of the link with keywords relevant to your business. So unlike articles, where your link has to appear in the author's box, which appears beneath the article, an online press release can contain a link back to your web site at or near the top of the body copy.

One problem with online press release distribution is how glutted the market is. It is no secret that online press release distribution is a fantastic SEO technique. As a result, every day there are hundreds or thousands of press releases distributed that are little more than fluff. So, if you want your press release to stand out, you should have something legitimate to talk about. Think from a reporter's perspective. If you were a reporter looking for something to write about, would the press release issued by your company spark your interest? It better.

This press release we're doing this week is the first one we've done where we have paid for PRWeb's top level of service. We'll let you know how it goes, and if we feel like it is worth the money, or if you're better off sticking to the $200 level.

If you could use some help composing and distributing an online press release to promote your business, please contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, linking, linking campaign, online pr, online press releases, online publicity, pr, PRWeb, publicity, search engine marketing

Friday, March 07, 2008

Our Thoughts On Several Second Tier Paid Search Platforms

We have been experimenting with second tier, or alternative, paid search platforms. Here are our thoughts on these platforms:

Turn. This is a really cool concept. We love the pay per action model, where you specify an amount you are willing to pay for the completion of some action - having the prospect fill out a form, make a purchase, or whatever. Unfortunately, we have had no luck generating leads on Turn. Perhaps we are just not bidding high enough for conversions, but we know what we can pay and still engage in a profitable transaction. So far, Turn just hasn't worked for us.

Miva. This is a content network. We're a little divided on Miva. We used it on one paid search campaign very effectively, but on another...nothing. So you might want to invest a very small amount in Miva and see how it does. If your first attempt doesn't produce anything, abandon this one.

GoClick. Don't waste your money here. Their search marketing interface is pitiful. We burned through our entire budget in a couple of hours, without having any idea where the traffic came from, and without a single conversion.

Enhance. This is a content network with which we are starting to see some nice positive results. The interface is more professional than some of the others as well. This one is worth a try.

SearchFeed. We had mixed results on SearchFeed. It might be worth a try, but start conservatively.

Though not really a "secondary" platform, we should also mention that we have had mixed results with Ask, but we definitely recommend you include it in your marketing mix. It has much wider distribution than the above mentioned platforms and is somewhat cheaper than Google or Yahoo!.

Even though we have not had outstanding results with any of the second tier platforms, we still recommend that you experiment for yourself to see if you can find something that works. Google and Yahoo! are not the only games in town. If you could use some help managing a wide, multi-platform paid search campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: Ask, Enhance, GoClick, internet marketing, Miva, paid search, pay per action, pay per click, pay per click management, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, Turn

Monday, March 03, 2008

SEO Linking: How to Find the Links that Matter the Most

An excellent source of links to your web site are the sites that already link to your highest-ranked competitors. Do you want to really get in-depth in researching what web sites link to your competitors? Then follow these steps:

1. If you don't have the Firefox browser installed, go download it: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

2. Install the SEOQuake plugin. You can download it here: http://ff.seoquake.com/

3. Go to http://search.yahoo.com and search for the links Yahoo! has recorded for your competitor's web site. The search query will be in this form:linkdomain:websiteaddress.com -site:websiteaddress.com -site:www.websiteaddress.com

You will be returned a list of web sites that point to your competitor's site, excluding links from the same site.

4. Turn on SEOQuake if it is not already. This is done by clicking the small SEOQuake icon on address bar on the right-hand side of your browser screen.

5. Sort the links by PR or by age by clicking on the down arrow next to "PR" or "Age" on the line that starts "Sort:" directly above the first search engine result.

Now you will have a list of sites, sorted by age or importance, that link to your competitor. These may be excellent candidates for linking to your site as well. Certainly target the sites that appear to be involved in link swapping, because you can get a link from these sites very easily by just providing a link on your site back. Then go after the ones that may be more picky.

Building up links to a web site can be very frustrating and time consuming. If you could use some help with anything related to SEO or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, link research, linking, linking campaign, search engine optimization, search engine rankings, seo, web site marketing, Yahoo Search

Friday, February 29, 2008

Generating Leads via Paid Search: Sometimes It Just Ain't Easy

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

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Cool New Google Feature: WebCall

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

Monday, February 25, 2008

Warning about Network Solutions

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

Friday, February 22, 2008

Our 200th blog post: Our Very Best Tips for Successful Search Engine Marketing

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

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Allocating Your Advertising Budget: Think Before You Spend

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

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Learning How to Podcast

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

Friday, February 15, 2008

The Simple Secret to Ultimate Online Marketing Success

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

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Search Engine Marketing: Hot Tips for Writing Better Articles

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, a

The Work Media Internet Marketing Blog

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Internet Marketing Update

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Make Sure Your Landing Pages Work!

Monday, April 21, 2008

Lose the Ego - It's About the Keywords, Not Your Name

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Exciting New Blogger Features that Will Bring Your Boring Blog to Life

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Designing a Pay per Click Management System

Friday, April 04, 2008

Battling Amazon

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Technology Problems are Bad for Business

Monday, March 31, 2008

Monday Morning Update

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

That's all for this week...

Monday, March 24, 2008

Thinking Hard About Pay Per Click Management Strategy

Friday, March 21, 2008

Breaking Out of Our Shell

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

The Latest Things You Should Know About Google

Monday, March 17, 2008

Improving Return on Equity with Pay per Click Marketing

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Work Media - Business Update

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Keyword Relative Value: a Simplified Way of Measuring Search Engine Visibility

Monday, March 10, 2008

Publicity the Easy Way: Using PRWeb

Friday, March 07, 2008

Top 5 Article Writing Tips for Making an Immediate Impact

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Our Thoughts On Several Second Tier Paid Search Platforms

Monday, March 03, 2008

SEO Linking: How to Find the Links that Matter the Most

Friday, February 29, 2008

Generating Leads via Paid Search: Sometimes It Just Ain't Easy

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Cool New Google Feature: WebCall

Monday, February 25, 2008

Warning about Network Solutions

Friday, February 22, 2008

Our 200th blog post: Our Very Best Tips for Successful Search Engine Marketing

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Allocating Your Advertising Budget: Think Before You Spend

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Learning How to Podcast

Friday, February 15, 2008

The Simple Secret to Ultimate Online Marketing Success

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Search Engine Marketing: Hot Tips for Writing Better Articles