Jon Clark is a Internet Marketing Consultant specializing in Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC), Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). This search marketing blog serves as a backdrop for educational search marketing conversation as well as a resource for cutting edge (and free) Internet Marketing tools to make all of our lives as search marketers easier!
Importing Existing PPC Campaigns into MSN adCenter
Update: You may find this more recent post on importing Yahoo and Google Campaign into adCenter beneficial as there have been quite a few updates to the adCenter interface since this was written way back in 2007:)
MSN has been making some headway in bringing their paid advertising platform up to snuff with Google and Yahoo in recent months. Arguably, one of the better updates is the ability to import existing PPC campaigns into the MSN interface without first having to copy and paste your exported data into an adCenter template, as previously required.
Now, you don't need to make any formatting adjustments to the file you've exported from another search advertising program – just make sure the key adCenter columns are included (extra columns or data are ignored).
Below is a step by step guide to aid in the import process:
To import a campaign:
Click the Campaigns tab.
Click Import campaigns.
If you are using the template, click Excel or CSV, type or copy data into the template, and save the file. –or– If you are exporting campaign information from another online advertising program, save the exported file as a CSV file.
In the Select a language and market drop-down list box, select the language your ads are written in and the marketyou want them distributed through.
In the Time zone drop-down list box, select the time zone you want to use for this campaign. (Please note that you won't be able to change this selection at a later time.)
Click Import file.
In the Choose file dialog box, select the file, and then click Open.
Your imported campaigns are added to the table.
For your ads to go live, you must submit your imported ad groups.
Select an imported campaign.
If you have not set a budget for your campaign, at the top of the Select an ad group page, click [Edit], type a campaign budget, and then click Save.
Select the check boxes next to the ad groups you want to submit, click Actions, and then click Submit ad group.
Here are two additional articles you may find of interest:
As 2007 quickly comes to a close we have seen a lot of changes, shake-ups, mergers, mix-ups - whatever you want to call it - in the Internet marketing industry. I stumbled upon a great blog post that combines a few of the better stories and articles of the year in review.
There is a lot of good information here, so please take the time read any that you may have not see before now.
You will not be disappointed! Enjoy:)
Andy Hagans’ Ultimate Guide to Linkbaiting and SMM I don’t remember if social media sites were as widely popular in the beginning of 2007 as they are now, but this guide provides almost all of the details you need to start creating link bait for promotional efforts in high traffic’d social media websites. Need more assistance? Here are some more specific link bait and viral marketing examples to get you on your way.
But is it SPAM? I could probably include a dozen posts from SEOBook that I find of value, but the specific examples herein provide a thought provoking discussion on what you should or should not be doing for your own search engine marketing strategy.
Google Local Search Glossary The promise of local search has a bit more luster on Cape Cod than in other places, and this collection of local search terms and definitions is one of the first places to reference when considering how to implement local SEO strategies.
The First Question You Should Ask Your SEO Consultant Brian Provost caused a real stir when he wrote this post about the field of SEO consulting, but it made me think a lot more about why I am an SEO consultant and where I want to be, 1, 5 and 10 (plus) years out down the road.
Google’s Power - The Only Thing to Fear, Is Fear Itself Maybe I am missing the point, but this post provides inspiration and motivation on ways to create self-sustaining business models and depend less on the stability of other entities (or sole entities) for revenue generation. A must read if you are out there forging your way with an online business model.
Blogging Is About Writing Guest authored by Lorelle VanFossen, this post basically sums up about 100 other “how-to-blog” posts out there today, detailing 30 blog writing tips, suggestions and best practices. Of course there is material more detailed out there, but start here to figure out which areas of blog writing you need to improve first.
The SEO Playbook - Welcome to the Rabbit Hole Alice This post on SEO strategy is a must read for those getting into the search engine marketing space or even the fairly experienced looking to touch up their skills and background. Easy to digest concepts with an incredible amount of third party links and reference points to follow.
The First Principle of Social Web Apps and its Implications What interested me most about “First Principles” is the sheer simplicity of the concept. “For each ‘complete’ user interaction”, the user must receive more value than the energy expended, to complete a given task. Basically, this idea needs to be applied to every online marketing strategy recommended and implemented.
Newsflash: You’re Damn Right It’s a Popularity Contest When people started complaining about social media sites like Sphinn, popularity and popular people, Rae Hoffman’s “straight up” way of communicating what really is a key component of search engine marketing was simply a breath of fresh air amidst a lot noise pollution.
“There Are No Secrets” and other SEO Myths Are there SEO secrets? I really don’t know because I don’t know if you know what I know about search engines and search engine rankings. It all sounds so easy in blog format; then you roll up your sleeves and need to determine just how easy, and how many secrets there really are.
Last week, Search Engine Land launched a new column called: Back To Basics.
Back To Basics focuses on the core elements of search engine marketing, from keyword research to analytics, basic search advertising techniques, and more.
There first article on building landing pages that work was an excellent read and provided information that everyone can benefit from!
I would encourage everyone to subscribe to the feed!
"All Google Analytics accounts worldwide now have access to a beta feature that graphs two different metrics against each other and see how they correlate. This new graphing ability enhances the insights available to Google Analytics users about visitor trends on their websites: for example, does a higher number of visitors correspond to a higher bounce rate? Do visitors who come to a website through AdWords spend more or less time on the site than visitors overall?
In addition, Google Analytics now supports ga.js, a new page tag that enables site owners to use the most up-to-date tracking functionality as it is added to Google Analytics. For instance, the ga.js page tag allows the site owner to streamline e-commerce tracking.
To better serve users worldwide, Google Analytics is also available in six additional languages, bringing the total number of supported languages to 25. The new languages are Thai, Filipino, Indonesian, Czech, Hungarian, and Portuguese (Portugal). Users all 25 languages can access the Google Analytics Help Center and receive online support in their supported language of choice."
One of my favorite new bloggers, Shimon Sandler, posted a great top 10 list of optimization techniques for press releases as well as a number of good press release websites to improve your PR marketing efforts. Enjoy:)
Here is a Top 10 List of Bestpractices.
1. Keyword Selection. Keyword selection is a crucial part of press release optimization. Be very careful while deciding on a keyword phrase that is relevant to the release. Optimize the Press Release for only 1 or 2 keyword phrases. Do this based on your business objectives for each campaign.
2. Keyword placement. Be sure to place keyword phrase into the Headline AND the Title of the press release. Try to repeat it nearly 3-5 times for every 100 words within the content of the release. Put two hyperlinks that contain the chosen keyword within the content.
3. Generally speaking, don’t use abbreviations. Write out full keyword text.
4. Use an occasional bold-type for the keyword phrase.
5. Replace pronouns with keyword phrase. Instead of using “their”, or “it’s”, use the keyword phrase.
6. Select the right PR distribution networks. Below is a list of press release distribution services that are search engine friendly and can offer an excellent channel for link building as well as getting your news distributed.
7. Make the effort for substantial media coverage. Eg: Make list of publications, send emails and correspondence emails to journalists for the release. Make sure you don’t send the complete release into the email. Write a concise but short intro, and include the URL to the entire press release with the email.
8. Make it easy for journalists to read. Everyday thousands of press releases are emailed to the journalists. So make the press release presentable and well written to be noticed by them. Journalists usually ignore poorly written releases.
9. Offer RSS feeds. Help journalists by offering RSS feeds specifically for your Press Releases. Many journalists specialize in a specific topic, and categorize their feed reader by subjects. So, make it easy for journalists to find your Press Release. “KISS” (Keep It Sweet and Simple).
10. Publish releases frequently. It’ll benefit your entire domain to have frequent, additional, and unique content crawled by the Search Engines.
Using Yahoo's "Insert Keyword" To Increase Quality Score.
Our friends over at the Yahoo Search Marketing Blog are providing some additional detail on increasing Quality score through the use of the 'insert keyword' feature when you create a new ad or edit an existing one.
Enjoy:)
The Insert Keyword feature, available when you create a new ad or edit an existing one, is useful for speeding the ad creation and editing process. But did you know it can also help increase your ads’ quality?
Here’s how. You’ll notice that when you create or edit an ad, you are shown the prompt “+ Insert Keyword Automatically” when you click into either the Title or Description(s) dialogue boxes:
Click “+ Insert Keyword Automatically” and you get a prompt like this:
In the dialogue box, enter your “default text.” Your default text should be something that can serve as an overall description for all of your keywords in case the actual search term exceeds character limits. For example, if you’re in the wine business, your default text might be, simply, “Wine.”
“{KEYWORD:Wine}” would then appear in the dialogue box.
You then wrap the rest of your title copy around “{KEYWORD:Wine}.” For instance, you might write, “Buy Premium{KEYWORD:Wine}.”
But here’s the snazzy part: Your ad’s title won’t necessarily appear as “Buy Premium Wine.” Rather, once a searcher has entered one of your keywords—”Chardonnay,” for example—the turbines of our mighty engines kick-in and, in an instant, your ad title appears as “Buy Premium Chardonnay.”
That’s probably a lot more clickable to someone shopping for Chardonnay than the generic “Wine,” right? Again, the default text will appear only if our engines determine that using the search term would exceed our character limits.
The same goes for your short and long descriptions, though we’ve noticed that placing the keyword in the title is even better than placing it in the description.
Take advantage of the Insert Keyword feature, as well as other features like ad testing and geo-targeting, to help make your ads as relevant as they can be.
Good-looking, relevant ads can make a big difference to the success of your search campaign. If your ad appears professional and your text matches your keywords and what you offer, searchers will be more likely to click through and visit your site. MSN offers a number of quick tips below for increasing CTR, conversions and ultimately revenue. Enjoy:)
Quick Advice
Match the tone of your ad to your product’s price point and positioning, and include the top benefits your customers are looking for.
Direct your ad to unique landing URLs, so that searchers can easily find your offer.
If you’re targeting a certain geographic area, be sure to include that location in your ad.
Make sure titles are between six and 25 characters, descriptions are between six and 70 characters, and the display URL is no more than 35 characters.
Microsoft adCenter allows you to create up to 20 ads per order and automatically shows the better performing ads more often. Use this to your advantage and test multiple ads at once.
So, I know this post is probably out of date considering Yahoo released it a week or so ago but the information is excellent and Yahoo! is starting to ad the type of usability to their advertising platform that many of us have been demanding since the release of Panama! Enjoy!
When all five sections of the bar are colored in blue, your quality index score is high. When three sections are filled in, your score is OK. When only one is filled in…well, you get the idea.
But what is this quality index thing, why does it matter, and how can you make it better?
It’s All Relative (and Relevant) In a nutshell, an ad’s quality index is a relative measure of how relevant it is to users. In determining your quality index, our system takes into account your ad’s click-through rate compared to its average position in search results, as well as to that of other ads displayed at the same time, other keywords in your ad group, and other relevance factors.
Why Should I Care? You should care because ads with a higher quality index can receive higher ranking in Sponsored Search results. Our system calculates an ad’s ranking based on your bid, your ad’s quality and other relevance factors. A high-quality ad may be ranked higher than a poor-quality ad, even if the poor-quality ad’s bid is higher.
Please note the graphic above is provided for illustrative purposes only
OK, so how do I Improve My Quality Index? Your ad’s quality index reflects its ability to meet the needs and desires of users—that is, how well it helps them find what they want, quickly and accurately. If your ads don’t meet the needs of users, users are less likely to click them. Fewer clicks means fewer customers and conversions.
When this happens, nobody wins: not you, not us and not the user. High-quality ads, by contrast, can help create winners out of all of us. The quality index was set up to encourage advertisers to better meet the needs of users—who are, after all, the reason we are both here.
Here are a number of tactics you can use to improve the quality of your ads, and thus, your quality index:
Use relevant keywords—Make sure the keywords in your ad group are highly relevant to the ads in the same ad group.
Include your keyword in your creative—Using the keyword itself in titles and descriptions of your ad. You can use the Insert Keyword feature to help you do this automatically.
Take advantage of excluded keywords—Use this feature to block certain searches that you think may not be relevant. This can help keep your budget focused on more likely prospects. For example, if you sell portable radios but not ham radio equipment, you can block searches that include the word “ham.”
Use ad testing—You may have noticed that when you create an ad in an Ad Group, you are prompted to create another one. You should do this in all of your ad groups, because when you create more than one ad, our system will test the ads automatically. Ads that perform better then begin to appear more frequently in search results, and you can edit or delete ads that perform poorly. Try different copy, different offers or different display URLs to help determine what works best.
Gather intelligence—Almost all’s fair in love and advertising, so you shouldn’t feel shy about spying on your competitors. And by spying, we mean searching for their products or services so you can look at their ads—not breaking into their offices, tapping their phones or any of that illicit Watergate stuff, OK? Take a look at your competitors’ ads to determine if your offers are as strong as theirs.
Offer specials—Consider including special offers in your ad copy. Take a look at a calendar: It’s chock-full of holidays that you should consider taking advantage of. Limited-time offers, free shipping, two-for-ones, free gifts, contests and so forth can be very effective. Remember, it’s not just about your ad, it’s also about the value that users think you can deliver.
I know I have focused on these topics previously (as well as low quality score, low conversions and more) but I will be passing along a 3 part series on pay per click account quick fixes: low click-through rate (Part 1), low traffic (Part 2), low ad position (Part 3). Enjoy!
Low Click-through Rate
First things first - you need folks to click on your ads. The realty on SERPs is getting more crowded each quarter, and drawing a user’s attention to your ad, and enticing them click on your pay per click ad, is one of the core challenges of pay-per-click management. If your CTR is not performing the way it should, here are some quick fixes:
Write new ad texts! Now, this may seem obvious, but it needs to be said. Take your best performing ad text, pause the rest, and use this remaining ad as your control ad. Ask yourself a few questions: what made your best ad successful; why did the the other ads fail? Do not forget to review your competition! Determine how you can differentiate your message, and call-to-action. Determine which phrases, benefits and headlines work best, then write those new ad texts.
Once you’ve inserted your new ad texts - get to testing! For successful split testing you need to set your ad serving option within AdWords to Rotate (show ads more evenly). Within Yahoo you need to set your match to ‘Advance’ rather than ‘Standard.’ If you do not choose these setting, AdWords and Yahoo will determine and display your best performing ad texts - which would result in an inaccurate test.
The Google Webmaster Central blog has a new video from Matt Cutts on how to properly label your images so that Google Image search can properly rank them for relevant searches.
Friendly Disclamer:) Before I go too much further, I should point-out that there are 200+ factors to be considered when doing a full optimisation campaign. Every industry and website is different, so one technique that might work well for one business may not have the same results for another.
On top of that, it’s also important to understand that whilst applying the steps in this article will help make the search engines crawl and index your site more effectively, you’ll still need to incorporate off-site techniques like link building and utilizing social media and other forms of online and off-line marketing etc. to achieve the best possible results.
1. Content, Content, Content and Content!
The most important part of any website is it’s content. Without interesting and compelling content you won’t be able to gain inbound links and more importantly you won’t be able to make many sales.
The more content you have the more authoritative you’ll appear to your clients and the more information the search engines will have to index.
It may seem daunting trying to come-up with new things to write about and add to your site on a regular basis, but it can be easier than you think. Try starting a blog or a regular newsletter. If you’re really struggling, you can always delegate the task to a staff member or hire a professional copy writer. It will be well worth it in the end.
2. Navigation Structure
Keep your navigation structure as simple and text-based as possible. While shiny, animated navigation buttons might look nice, they can make it hard for the search engines to effectively crawl your site. What’s the point in having a flashy looking website if it never gets indexed and no one can find it. More importantly, why spend the money on a site that cannot be found by search engines and, as a result, humans?
If it’s important in your industry to have a site that has all the ‘bells and whistles’ then at least use a text-based navigation menu in the footer of your pages, try and use bread-crumbs throughout the site and be sure to have a sitemap.
It’s also a great idea (if possible without making it look spammy) to incorporate some of your keywords into the anchor text in your footer navigation menu. For instance, if your site is about blue widgets, instead of making the link back to your index page say ‘home’ you could change it to say ‘blue widgets homepage’.
One final side-note on navigation - when linking back to your index page make it link back to the full URL of your site instead of index.htm as this can help prevent canonicalization.
3. Don’t Flash
As mentioned above, having a Flash website might look very impressive - but what’s the point if no one will ever find it when they do a search.
Title tags are one of the most important on-site SEO tools a webmaster has at their disposal.
Here are some Do’s and Dont’s for structuring your title tags:
Don’t use the same tags on every page
Don’t put your company name (unless you’re main purpose is branding) at the start of your title tag
Do put one or two keywords in your title tag, but don’t overdo it otherwise your site will look spammy to both humans and search spyders - just make sure the tag is both readable and relevant to your site
Strictly speaking, this tag has no SEO benefit - but it is still important. Why? Because a good description can be the difference between someone clicking on your site instead of your competitors that may appear above or below you in the SERPs.
Be sure to include a call to action! I often tell search marketers to think of their meta-description as an Adwords ad with additional character space.
6. Heading Tags
Well optimized heading (H1, H2, H3, etc) tags not only help the search engines determine what a page is about, but it can also help make your page more readable by breaking-up the topics into appropriately titled sections.
Try and mix mix things up so that you don’t have the same keywords mentioned in your Title Tag and Heading Tags.
7. Keyword Density
There have been many statistics thrown around over the years about what is ideal number of times to mention your keywords throughout the body of your text. I personally don’t aim for a certain percentage and instead encourage my clients to come-up with great content that focuses on their business’ core products and services. By doing this, you’ll naturally incorporate your keywords throughout the text without it looking overdone.
If you want to go one step further, you can also highlight your keywords by making them bold or in italics, but once again, it’s important not to overdo this as it can make great content start to look spammy.
8. Image Tags
Use the ALT attribute to apply meaningful descriptors to your images. This can help your site rank for image searches and makes the site more usable if people are viewing your page via a mobile browser and have images disabled.
9. Keywords in Domain and URL
Having your keywords mention in your domain name or in the names of your pages can be a great way to ensure people use your keyword in the anchor text when they link to you, plus they will appear in bold in the SERPs when someone searches for those terms.
With saying that, it’s far more important having a memorable, concise domain than a name consisting of 20 keywords held together with hyphens with a .net at the end (eg. www.this-is-not-an-ideal-looking-domain-name.net).
10. Be sensible about everything
All the points above can help, but you can also easily go overboard by using the same keywords over and over again in your page names, titles, headers, meta tags, in bold throughout your content etc. etc.
Just use your common sense - try and read through your page objectively (or as a customer) and if it flows well and looks good you really shouldn’t have anything to worry about. If you have trouble being objective about your own site, get a friend or family member to have a read and give you feedback.
Google announced the launch of the AdWords Local Plus box. When you conduct some local searches, the sponsored listings may contain a plus sign, which you can click and expand into a map. There have been reports of this 'coming soon' but it is nowofficially live. Here are a couple screen captures:
Here is a picture of the AdWords plus sign closed:
Here is a picture of the AdWords plus sign open:
Advertisers will not be charged for clicking on the plus sign, they will only be charged for clicks on the link that takes the searcher to the advertiser's destination.
How do you get your ads to show up like this? If you are already a local business advertiser with Google, then you won't have to do anything. The only requirement is that the ad be in the top yellow ad position, ads on the right side of the page, will not contain the plus sign.
Being that we work in an industry defined by acronyms (SEO, PPC) and have trouble sometimes determining the difference between SEO and SEM, SEM and PPC, or PPC and CPC; over at DP, KP started a thread listing SEO acronyms which I feel are quite useful (espcially for newbies or prepping before a meeting) and worth sharing. I took the liberty of adding a few of my own as well.
BL = Backlink
CPC = Cost Per Click
CSE = Comparison Shopping Engine or Custom Search Engine (Google)
CSS = Cascading Style Sheet
DC = Data Center
DMOZ = Directory - Mozilla
HTML = HyperText Markup Language
IBL = Inbound Link
IPB9 = Internet Business Promoter
LSA = Latent semantic analysis
LSI = Latent Semantic Indexing
OBL = Outbound Link
ODP = Open Direcrory Project, See DMOZ
OWBL = One way back link
PPA = Pay Per Action
PPC = Pay Per Click
PR = PageRank
RI = Regular index
RSS = RDF Site Summary, Rich Site Summary, Really Simple Syndication
SE = Search Engine
SEM = Search Engine Marketing
SEO = Search Engine Optimization (Optimisation)
SERP = Search Engine Results Page
SI = Supplemental Index
SSE = Yahoo! Search Submit Express
SSP = Yahoo! Search Submit Pro
SWL = SiteWide Link
TBPR = Toolbar PageRank
TR = Trust Rank
VIPS = Visual-block Page Segmentation
WP/WP4 = Web Position/Web Position 4
XML = Extensible Markup Language
TLA = Text Link Ads
GWO = Google Website Optimizer
PFL (Paid For Listings)
P4P (Paid For Placement)
CTR (Click Through Rate)
CPM (Cost Per thousand)
CPA (Cost Per Action)
SMM - Social Media Marketing
SMO - Social Media Optimization
GAP = Google Advertising Professional
LPO: Landing Page Optimization
GWT: Google Webmaster Tools
CMS: Content Management System
Have I missed anything? Be sure to share your favorite SEO acronyms in the coments below:)
This week, the Google Website Optimizer team hosted a two-part webinar series on how to use their powerful testing software. The best part? It's FREE!! In addition to the popular A/B and multivariate tests, Google walked attendees through basic testing methods, then went on to some more advanced techniques.
Here's the "Condensed" version, in case you didn't have a chance to attend:
A/B Test — Allows you to test different versions of the same page. Let's say you want to test the homepage. To indicate which version of the homepage is performing better, a Goal Page is selected, e.g., an order confirmation "thank you" page. So, once a visitor comes to the test page — in this case, the homepage — they're presented with one version ('A') that you created to test against another version ('B') of your homepage. Google Website Optimizer will then record the visit as a success or failure by crediting either version 'A' or version 'B' — whichever one ultimately led them to the Goal Page. Once sufficient data is collected, a winning page variation will be selected.
Multivariate Test — Very similar to the A/B test in that it allows you test different variations of the same page. The main difference is that in an A/B test, you're creating and uploading different files and they're presented as different URLs ("www.homepage.com/A; www.homepage.com/B"), so Google Website Optimizer splits the traffic to different version and tracks the performance of each. Mulitvariate tests allow you to select different sections on your page and create different versions for each section or content element. So, if you want to test different headlines while testing different "add to cart" buttons, a multivariate test can save time when coding. Google Website Optimizer will create different versions of the page, using every possible combination and variation for each page and content element you're testing.
If we're testing three headlines and two "add to cart" buttons, GWO will create six unique pages by combing every possible variation. The winning variation is then selected.
Split-Path Test — This test will split your traffic among different linear paths containing multiple pages for each path. This is different in that you're testing the performance of grouped pages against other grouped pages. For example, you could test a checkout process by splitting it into two variations; one with four steps (or pages), and another with only three steps. Each variation of grouped pages will have the same Goal Page (e.g., order confirmation page). Once the data is collected, the winning checkout process will be the one that converted a higher percentage of visitors.
Multi-Path Multivariate Test — This will test different sections on multiple pages at the same time, all within one experiment. This test is best used after a winning combination from a split-path test is selected. For example, you could test images, testimonials, and contact information on the pages throughout a checkout to find out which combination of the elements across the group of pages is working the best.
"Do Anything" Test — This is a useful testing functionality that allows a test to have multiple Goal Pages, as opposed to only having one Goal Page. For example, let's say you're testing the headline and name of a category page. Now, to determine whether the headline is a success, simply test how many click-throughs you're getting from the category page to any of product pages that it links out to.
Clock — This will register an experiment as a success after the visitor has spent a specific amount of time on the page. For example, let's say you wanted to test variations on the title of a blog post. You can consider a visit from someone who stays on the page, reading the post for at least 30 seconds, a success. So, if you're still reading this, hopefully that means we're successful Google Website Optimizer will collect data on which headline is engaging the most readers to stay on the page for at least 30 seconds and show us a winning title.
Click — This functionality allows you to set the goal for an experiment as not just a page on a site, but a specific event, or click, on a page. An example would be to test which copy is getting the most people to click on your link to an external checkout source, like Google Checkout or PayPal. Since a click on any link brings the visitor to an outside page, you cannot send them to a Goal Page, but you can measure success by defining a specific click.
If you missed the webinar, don't worry. There's a wealth of information on the GWO Help, Forum, Case Study, and Demo pages. Google also said they will soon be posting abbreviated versions of the webinars. And if you decide you'd like expert guidance with your tests, we can help.
