Posts Tagged ‘Search & Marketing’

Now that you’ve chosen your keywords to create ad group themes, you want to have ads that will move targeted users from whatever they’re doing online to being aware and interested in your product or service. Remember, since the Display Network operates by completely different rules and the users are in a completely different state of mind, the ads should be different than Search Network ads.

With Search, users are somewhere in the buying funnel; whereas with Display most of the users are likely not in the buying funnel at all. Therefore, the goal of the ads in the Search Network is to persuade the user that your solution is the best choice out of all of their options to make their life better; whereas the goal of the ads in the Display Network is to make users aware that you have a solution that could make their life better.

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The increasing interest in architectural and document presentation standards for the WWW has produced a variety of fascinating research studies from various sources, primarily in academic communities. In particular the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab of Stanford University has presented the Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility; this report is the result of an extensive research project spanning over 3 years and 4,500 participants. The report proposes 10 essential qualities or guidelines that contribute directly to the credibility of a web site.

The problem addressed by this report (web site credibility) directly concerns search engine marketing as all such campaigns are essentially an effort directed towards increasing the perceived credibility (and therefore visibility) of a given web site. I have summarized the Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility below:

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When performing a site architectural review, one of the first things I look at is the site’s main navigation elements. This includes top, side and footer navigation. Together, they all play an important role in both the ability of the search engines to properly spider your website, as well as allowing your visitors to find important areas and information quickly and efficiently.

Site navigation can come in many different flavors. There isn’t just ONE way to do it correctly. If there were then every site would have navigation that looked exactly the same. So while navigation can vary greatly between sites and industries, there are certain navigational elements that should be implemented to ensure solid usability and effective website architecture.

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Many years ago I put my site through a re-design. I worked hard to make sure everything was done just right, including the images and navigation. But one thing I failed to consider was internal linking, separate from the navigational elements. It wasn’t until much later that I realized how much traffic I was losing because my internal linking was (or lack thereof) wasn’t benefiting my visitors.

In-site link implementation can make a considerable difference in how effective your optimization campaign is. Or isn’t. While your site’s primary and secondary navigation is extremely important, you shouldn’t make that the only way for visitors to get around your website.

Building a website gives you a lot of options when it comes to how to set up your internal linking structure. Different areas of your site or web pages may require different linking strategies, but regardless on what kind of internal linking strategy you implement, you want to make sure that it helps you achieve your search engine optimization goals. I’m going to break internal linking into three categories: The search friendly, search un-friendly and search meh-friendly link.

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• May 2008 Most Popular Articles
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• How to Speak at a Conference Without Getting Skewered on Twitter
• 7 Tips for Amateur Type Designers
• Not Sure Where to Start in Google Analytics? Here Are 5 Stats to Begin Analyzing Your Performance
• Site Clinic: Crafting Persuasive Web Content
• How to Avoid Marketing to Yourself
• 8 Steps to a Successful SEO Campaign – A Synopsis
• Developing a SEO Strategy – Part I (Back To the Basics Series)

If you’re new to working with PPC, you may be like every other newbie in the world and be confused by the jargon often used. PPC, CPC, CTR, DKI … It doesn’t take long to figure it all out, but in the early beginning it would have been nice to have someone lay out the soup for me, so I thought I’d lay it out for you. The obvious ones are: PPC = Pay Per Click; CPC = Cost Per Click; CTR = Click Through Rate; and lastly and maybe not so obvious, DKI = Dynamic Keyword Insertion.

Dynamic Keyword Insertion
When I was first learning PPC, I had no idea what DKI referred to, so as part of Boot Camp, I hope to help others understand. Essentially what DKI does, is insert the searcher’s keyword into the ad text. With search terms bolded in the ad text, your ad stand out among the other advertisers. Because the search phrase is actually displayed in the ad, exactly as the searcher entered it (well, almost exactly), it also makes text more relevant to the searcher. They see your ad written and advertising exactly what they’re looking for! In finding this, the searcher is more likely to click your ad.

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• Strategic Collaborations: A Powerful Way to Promote Yourself
• What You Need to Know About Google Automatic Matching
• 17 Principles of Building Good Relationships With Bloggers
• 5 Great Marketing Blog Lists And What You Can Learn From Each One
• Linkbuilding Using Fiction

Last week I was privileged to conduct a webinar on the topic of Website Architecture. Unfortunately I was only able to get to two of the three main topics due to time and my inability to not talk so much! Overall I think we covered the two areas we got to, URL & Domain Structure and Link Structure, pretty sufficiently.

Over the course of the hour I was told that over 16 pages of questions were submitted, yet we only had time to answer a few during the hour. I’m hoping to be able to go through those and answer as many as I can, but I’m still making my way through the pile of questions sent before the webinar. So without any more yapping, let’s jump right in and answer some more…

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