Archive for the ‘sem’ category
Watch Your Capital Letters
Here is something most people reading this probably don’t know because it doesn’t make a lick of sense: Google treats duplicate keywords as separate if they have different capitalization. For example:
PPC
ppc
These two words would be considered different keywords even if they were both in the same ad group. So you might say…what’s the big deal? Here’s the problem. It has been our experience that there are times when Google seems to greatly favor keywords that are all lower case. It would not be unusual for the first keyword above to have a quality score of 5 while the lower case version had a quality score of 10.
Given that you don’t really know which keyword will trigger your ad, it is best to always use the version which might give you an advantage in ad positioning. So even if you decide to experiment to see what happens with capitalized versions, always test the lower case version as well.
Another problem with having keywords in your ad groups that are the same except for capitalization is that it aids in making your account more unwieldy and difficult to manage. Accounts that are fine-tuned to the best (and smallest) set of keywords are much easier to manage, so we suggest only using lower case keywords, but have each in your account as both exact and broad match.
This is just one example of how something that seems very insignificant can have an impact on your overall paid search account performance. It is important to pay attention to the details.
Got questions about search engine marketing? Feel free to contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.
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
Early AdWords Campaign Awareness
Quick Tip: For the first couple of weeks after launching a new AdWords campaign, watch your keywords every day to make sure they are still online.
It’s easy to feel like you’ve accomplished something after setting up an AdWords campaign and beginning the process of driving paid traffic to your site. But you can’t take your eyes off of the situation. Even if Google begins sending a stream of traffic to your site, it is highly likely that very soon it will begin shutting off your keywords. What seems to happen is that AFTER your account is up and running, the Google system begins an audit of your campaigns to see how closely your keywords match your ad content (and possibly even your landing pages), the kind of click rates your keywords and ads have, etc. While it’s going through this process, it will probably be shutting off many of your keywords and insisting that you bid more (MUCH more in some cases) to turn them back on.
So if you’re not paying attention, the traffic you started receiving at the beginning of your Google campaign will dry up to a trickle until you adjust your bids. So being aware of what’s going on with your campaigns early on is critical to keeping your ads running.
You can avoid this situation by bidding very high early in your campaign. The problem is you could end up paying more than you should in order to have a profitable account. It is probably best to start low and adjust your bids up as needed, rather than starting high and adjusting down.
Call us if you need some help monitoring your pay per click campaign.
Measure Your Life’s ROI
I was having a conversation with my brothers this morning, and a thought popped in my mind that I thought I would share. Much of what we do here at Work Media is based around the idea of maximizing our clients’ ROI, or return on investment. Our clients give us money, and we try to return that much money plus more.
But the concept of ROI is much more globally relevant than in just figuring out the value of financial transations. Everything you do, say, and think has an ROI.
For instance, if you stay up late and get up in a tired, hurried state the next morning, then your ROI might be a chaotic, unorganized day. If you plan your day the day before and get a good night’s sleep, the return on investment will be that you feel good and have a productive day.
Every moment in life is a choice, and there are usually numerous options. When you sit down for dinner in a restaurant, you have many choices for your beverage. You can have beer, wine, cola, tea, or water, among other choices. Over time, which one do you think will provide the highest return on investment?
And of course, the classic: you can spend all your money, or you can set 10% of everything you make aside for saving and investing. It’s easy to figure out your ROI on this one, because it can be measured in dollars.
So my advice to you is to estimate the ROI of every decision you make. Noone can be good all the time, but if you make more choices that have a positive outcome than those that have negative consequences, you will get a much greater return on your life.
We don’t really do much in the way of life consulting, but if you need some help maximizing the return on investment on your web site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.
Does Your Search Engine Marketer Know What He’s Doing?
These days, anyone can set up a paid search account and call himself a pay per click expert. But there is a big difference between knowing how to set up an account and knowing how to maximize the profitability of that account. Before you hire anyone to manage your pay per click account, ask the following questions:
1. Are you certified by the major search engines?
2. Do you have any references?
3. How many accounts have you managed?
4. Do you do other things, or only search?
5. How long have you been managing pay per click accounts?
I know it’s tempting just to let your ad agency or web designer do this stuff for you. But the cold, hard fact is that most web designers don’t know that much about search engine marketing, either paid or natural. And most ad agencies don’t really know what they’re doing when it comes to online advertising.
My advice? Hire professionals who only do search engine marketing! In the long-run, it will save you a lot of time, money, and frustration.
Work Media is a search engine optimization and pay per click firm in Nashville. That’s all we do, and we would love to talk to you!
Have Patience with Pay per Click
You have to have patience when running a paid search campaign. Here is a real world example, from our own Google AdWords campaign. We are running a promotion right now whereby we are doing free optimization analyses. We’re using AdWords ads, targeted to our local market, to advertise the promotion. Obviously the benefit to us is that we would collect local leads…if it worked.
The campaign had run for several days without much success. It was costing us a little money, but not much. I was on the verge of cutting it to try something else, when all of a sudden we got two good leads two days in a row, from companies based in Nashville looking to promote their web sites. The cost of these leads? Maybe $20 each, if not less. Compare that to the cost of a lead generation service where you are competing against several other companies for each lead, and it’s a real bargain.
So have patience with your paid search campaigns. Don’t pull the plug until you have enough data to know for sure that what you’re doing is not going to 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.
Beware of False Promises
If you are thinking of working with a search engine optimization company and they tell you they can have your site ranked on the first page of Google within a week…you need to step back and ask yourself what you are really getting. Yes, it is probably possible to have a site highly ranked in Google within one week…
…for a keyword that no one is using!
Here’s the deal. It does not matter if your site is number one on Google, if that number one ranking is for a keyword that no one is using to search for your type of business. The point of a search engine marketing campaign is not to achieve rankings…it’s to drive traffic. That is the reason we really don’t have any kind of package deals right now where we promise X number of rankings for Y keywords. Every web site is different. Every situation is different.
We may end up marketing our services via such packages before it’s over with (if that’s what we have to do to stay in business), but we definitely prefer to take it on a case-by-case basis. It may be the case that for your web site, for your industry, you only need to be ranked for one keyword to generate a ton of traffic. If that is true, then we focus our efforts on that one keyword. Or there may be five different keyword that, collectively, would drive a ton of the traffic you need. In that case, we will focus on those five keywords.
So don’t be fooled by the claims of some SEO firms. Sure…they can probably have you ranked on the first page of Google within a week…but they won’t put any money in your bank account.
Please contact Work Media is you need any help with your search engine optimization or pay per click management. We won’t make any grand promises, but we will give it to you straight. And we will work our butts off to get you ranked for the keywords that will actually result in customers for your business.
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.
An Introduction to the Kelly Formula
Today we’re going deep. We’re going to examine a mathematical equation created years ago by a guy named J. L. Kelly. Kelly was a brilliant man who devised a formula that is so rudimentary, yet so critical, it is the foundation for many systems in the world of finance AND gambling. Here is the formula:
Fraction of bankroll to invest = Edge / Odds
Edge means any information you have that gives you better than 50/50 odds. For example, if you have a quarter that is weighted in such a way that heads should come up 60% of the time, then your edge would be 10%. On any one flip of the coin, you would have a 10% edge if you bet on heads. In the world of finance, an edge can be any information you receive that gives you an advantage over other investors.
Odds are odds. It is the payout from winning the bet or gamble. For instance, going back to the coin flip example, the odds would likely be 1:1, or even money. In the formula, this would just be represented as 1. If you guess the coin correctly, you would win an amount even to your bet. If the odds were 2:1, then a 2 would be used in the formula.
So using the above edge and odds in our formula gives us:
Fraction of bankroll to invest = 10% / 1, or 10%.
The formula tells you that you should invest 10% of your total bankroll on every coin flip.
If the odds were 2:1, then the formula would look like:
Fraction of bankroll to invest = 10% / 2, or 5%.
So…what does this have to do with search engine marketing? Everything.
To be as successful as possible in your search engine marketing, you need to allocate your funds to those keywords, ads, and campaigns that generate the highest return on ad spend. If you had enough information, you could use the Kelly formula to allocate your budget. If you don’t have enough information, it is still a good mental model for you to follow. Put more of your money on keywords that have proven to be most effective.
We will be discussing these types of concepts more in later blog posts. I just wanted to introduce you to Kelly and get you thinking about the process of maximizing the return on your paid search ad spend.
If you need some help with your search engine optimization or pay per click management, please contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.
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.