Making the Case For SEO in a Social Media World
Sometimes we get to doing something for so long and are so involved in telling people how to do something, that we forget that there are still people who need […]
PPC News – +1, Call Metrics and Smartphones
In an effort to improve relevance on the web, Google is utilizing searcher’s relationships. A new button in search results enables signed-in searchers to get recommendations on search results pages and websites from the people they are connected to through their Google profiles. Google is saying it won’t affect how quality score is calculated. But, it does affect quality score because if the recommendations improve CTR, then your quality score improves.
Why You Should Never Duplicate Your Competitor's SEO Strategies
Engaging in competitive research before and during your SEO, PPC, Social Media, and Link Building campaigns is smart business. As they say, “information is power.” But, too much information can […]
PPC News and Notes – Mobile and the Future of Display Advertising
Wow, mobile is evolving fast. AT&T introduced location-based “ShopAlerts” in NY, SF, Chicago and LA. People can opt-in to receive offers and promotions via SMS or MMS when they physically enter a designated area defined by the advertiser (e.g. a mile from their store). This can help drive in-store traffic and reach mobile users in very specific markets. This is even more targeted than web-based and app-based advertising, but it is opt-in.
PPC News and Notes – Twitter’s New Ad Platform
Although in beta and only open to VIP advertisers that are invited, Twitter has finally released their ad platform called Promoted Tweets. The general format is that you can use tweets you’ve created or that have been retweeted by someone else as “ads” that are promoted in certain environments. The way the ads are served are analogous to both search and contextual advertising in AdWords, where you pick keywords that are searched on to have your tweet shown or it is matched to a stream of tweets given the contextual nature that you choose in your account. You pay on a cost per engagement which include clicks, favoriting, retweets and replies. There is also Promoted Account where you can essentially buy followers and Promoted Trends where you are shown on hashtags.
Six Easy Ways to Eliminate Pesky Duplicate Content
Yeah, yeah, the search engines are getting smarter about duplicate content… blah, blah, blah. It’s no longer the problem it once was… yada, yada, yada. Google will get it all […]
What I Want for Christmas from the Search Engines: The Franchise!
Here we are again, two years after What I Want for Christmas from the Search Engines: The Sequel and eight years since the original, What I Want for Christmas from […]
Everything I Know About SEO I Learned in the 80s
There was no commercial internet in the 80’s, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t reach into the recesses of our past to see that, everything we know now about […]
Everything I Know About SEO I Learned in the 80's
There was no commercial internet in the 80’s, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t reach into the recesses of our past to see that, everything we know now about […]
Try a Little SEO Romance
I was thinking the other day about how influencing search engines is like influencing people. Short of brute force and absolute control, you can’t force anyone to do your bidding. […]
How to Turn a Negative SEO Experience Into Success
Over the last dozen plus years, unscrupulous SEO’s have given the entire search engine optimization industry a bad rep. It seems like every few months some high profile person in […]
Google Instant Isn't Instant Gratification
Over the past few days, I’ve been playing around with Google Instant and reading a lot about it. There is a pretty broad range of opinion, and I’ve been drawing […]
Smart Web Business Decisions Made Easier
Here is an absolutely delightful new little (but really huge!) feature in Google Analytics that should make anyone interested in improving their web business results smile from ear to ear. It’s called Weighted Sort.
The problem:
You want to find out how your keywords are performing for a particular metric, say bounce rate, because you want to improve the relevance of the visitors to your site. You jump into analytics to take a look at the Keyword Report, click on the bounce rate heading to sort bounce rates from worst to best, and you find this…
Google Improves Control of PPC Exposure With Modified Broad Match
If you manage a PPC account, you know that for several years now AdWords has had three match types: exact, phrase, and broad. You also know what they mean and how your keywords are matched to search queries. Up until a couple of years ago, broad match meant that the keywords in your phrase were matched to queries that had all of your words in any order.
Then, broad match became “expanded broad match” where Google’s algorithm was given free reign to decide if search queries were a close enough match in search intent to show your ad. Many of the results were not even close. Your keyword could be business cards and your ad would show on state ids and business plans.
PPC Testing Made Easier with AdWords Campaign Experiments
If you take your PPC campaigns seriously (why wouldn’t you?), you’re always testing. Always. It’s the only way to accomplish long-term growth and gain insights that will translate into all of your other marketing channels. One problem that has been inherent since the beginning of PPC is the inability to do true A/B split-testing with variables like keywords, bids, ad text, ad groups, match types, dynamic keyword insertion, etc.