Search Engine Marketing... Amplified

PPC Campaign Domination - Quality Score & You

2009-07-09T18:31:31Z

This is part of my series of posts that I’m putting together about how we approach PPC campaigns for our clients.

My planned PPC Campaign Domination topics:

Landing page optimization
Campaign organization
Why cost per conversion isn’t ALWAYS the best metric
Aligning your efforts with business goals

Today’s topic is…

Google AdWords Quality Score Optimization

Before you yawn or leave because you don’t know what Quality Score is - you should realize that the success of your PPC campaign may in fact hinge on quality score. So it’s kind of important to know what it is and how to make it work for you!

I recently did a presentation “Google AdWords Tips You Can’t Live Without” at the Portland Online Marketing Summit where I had 4 minutes to give a couple of Google AdWords optimization tips. Most of my content was based on quality score but 4 minutes isn’t much time - so I wasn’t able to finish all of my tips for the crowd. What follows is an extended presentation of my AdWords Quality Score tips plus a few bonus tips for you loyal readers.

(note - the presentation isn’t visible in the feed if you’re reading via email/rss/facebook)

A summary of the Google AdWords Quality Score tips in the presentation:

Improving your Quality Score will drive down your cost per click and ultimately your cost per acquisition/lead/sale
You can’t succeed at AdWords unless your search terms (keywords) are grouped into many, very tightly aligned ad groups
Your campaign settings are critical to AdWords success and will have a huge impact on your Quality Score - see slide 5 & 6 in the presentation for my tips
Always be testing ad copy - I give specific advice about how to structure your ad copy testing (slide 7 & 8 )
Keep your keyword list pruned - eliminate zero & low impression keywords that could be dragging your quality score down and add keywords that could improve your targeting & cost per click (slide 8 )
If you aren’t using conversion tracking - you’re sucker. I also give tips on how to implement conversion tracking even if you can’t track “real” conversions (slide 9)

And - a few bonus AdWords management tips for you:

Budget allocation: Optimize your impression share by fully funding the campaigns/ad groups that are giving you the best performance.
Pay attention to the Geographic Performance Report and look for geographic areas (countries/regions/cities) where you get higher impressions/clicks/conversions and create separate campaigns for targeting those areas specifically. This can help you allocate budget to top performers (see below)
Use AdWords Editor and make spreadsheets for campaign planning that you can import directly into AdWords editor. It will save you HOURS of campaign management time.

Got any other AdWords tips you’d like to share or ask us about? Comment below.

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PPC Campaign Domination with Landing Page Optimization

2009-07-09T00:02:00Z

I’m putting together a series of posts about how we approach PPC campaigns for our clients.

I plan on writing about:

Quality Score & You
Campaign organization
Why cost per conversion isn’t ALWAYS the best metric
Aligning your efforts with business goals

Today however - I’m going to talk about why landing pages are so important to success and how testing with Google Website Optimizer makes it easy to get more bang for your buck.

First - let’s start with a little statistic that comes from looking at our own PPC clients Amplify Interactive. The clients who use dedicated landing pages/sites for their PPC program get conversion rates in the double digits. The clients who don’t - get single digit conversion rates. So, in our experience - sending your PPC clicks to on-topic offer-oriented landing pages with good content and an obvious call to action essentially doubles your conversion rate. Seems like an obvious choice right?

What if I were to tell you that not only can you double your conversion rate by creating dedicated landing pages, but you could substantially improve on that conversion rate improvement again by running some simple tests using a FREE testing platform? Not surprisingly, our clients who do dedicated landing pages also embrace testing. In every case that we’ve done landing page optimization - we’ve acheived AT LEAST a 20% conversion rate lift - even when they’re already getting double-digit conversion rates! Seems like a pretty worthwhile investment right?

But here’s the amazing part - despite the evidence, we still have a hard time convincing clients that they should dedicate the time & energy to creating landing pages and running conversion optimization experiments! Despite all the progress that we’ve collectively made in our thinking about Web marketing - many Web marketers are still more obsessed with sending more traffic instead of converting more of the visitors that they are already getting.

Here’s the other thing about testing - we’re always surprised about the things that influence conversion. Whether it’s size and position of call to action, images on the page, wording of the page & headlines, etc. But the number one lesson is - you don’t have to know what is going to work best. With testing, your visitors will tell you what works best. So try testing some simple things - images, buttons & headlines - and find the magic combination for converting your visitors and substantially improving your conversion rates!

Let’s also consider the impact that landing pages have on quality score. PPC vets know that quality score determines how much you pay per click and where your ad can appear. Along with other factors, landing page “quality” has a direct impact on your quality score (see Google’s own landing page guidelines). So basically - if your landing page is ‘better’ - you’re going to have a better quality score which translates directly to cost per click and ad position. All of which help to drive down your cost per conversion/acquisition/sale/lead.

I hope I’m making the case for PPC landing pages & landing page optimization here.

For more information:

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SMX Advanced Seattle 2009 Highlights

2009-06-08T18:13:25Z

SMX Advanced Seattle 2009 ended up being a great educational & networking experience. While I go to a lot of search engine marketing conferences and educational events, my primary goal isn’t usually to learn something entirely new. In my book it’s a success if I pick up a couple of useful takeaways, a new way of explaining or thinking about a particular search marketing tactic, or uncover a new tool. This year’s show didn’t disappoint.

Rather than try to give you a complete conference recap - I’m just going to give you my notes & links from what I thought were the best takeaways at this year’s show. Hope you find them useful.

Before I get started - I will point out. SMX was great - but MANY of the speakers I saw at SMX also participate in our SEMpdx events - including SearchFest - at a fraction of the cost…

Social Media & Search Engine Marketing Session

Moderator: Rae Hoffman, Owner, Sugarrae Internet Consulting

Speakers:

Brent Csutoras, Social Media Marketing Consultant, Brent Csutoras, Inc
Jen Miller, Manager, Delta.com Onsite Marketing & Content, iProspect
Dave Snyder, Co-Founder, Search & Social
Michael Gray, President, Atlas Web Service

IMPROVING SEARCH WITH SOCIAL

Social Media is having an impact on SERPS – as represented by cases where content distributed via Social Media gets indexed & ranked faster than without. Google & the rest using engagement & influence (social media) signals to determine relevance, popularity & priority when it comes to what to index & rank.

GAINING INFLUENCE

Utilize appropriate Microformats in your page markup
Add “retweet” functionality to your content (easy Wordpress plugin)
Influence tagging of your site (suggest tags in your del.icio.us widget etc)
Engage users with content like video, which encourages longer visits & more ‘bookmarking’ of your site

REVISITING STUMBLEUPON

Stumbleupon redesign = better usefulness & more influence. Instead of stumble & forget, better integration, fb, etc = more users, traffic, better sharing & LINKS!

StumbleUpon is now capable of driving a lot more traffic.
StumbleUpon is giving you links now
Stumbling is no longer so ‘random’

Success in StumbleUpon requires full, legit profile & real friends. Must build out & become a full “persona”… Speaker recommends building a “Persona” not a Person. The distinction? Choose a niche that you’re trying to target and build your persona accordingly– don’t try to be all encompassing with your persona (ie – if you’re a tech gadget persona don’t try to push sports equipment)

StumbleUpon Content Submission Tips for Success

Obviously - the key is genuine participation… But here are some tips for better results.

Use “hot” tags (see stumbleupon.com/submit instead of toolbar) to get better visibility
ADD YOUR OWN CATEGORY to your submission (don’t use current quick submit – you don’t have category choice) otherwise others / algo will choose for you
Tags are a big deal
Sharing = use the toolbar “send to” functionality
Avoid patterns – don’t stumble only friend’s stuff, discovering too much from one or group of friends section = getting flagged/banned
Add friends in your categories (seek out top stumblers in the categories)
Post to your stumbleupon blog (not your pers blog)
Spend time going to the video & photo sections of StumbleUpon specifically – they aren’t automatically shown to you

USE FLICKR TO BUILD LINKS

Tips:

Write proper title, tags, filenames (don’t use camera file name because the picture’s name = anchor text)
Make pics creative commons so that others will use them
Interesting photos count - duh
Build links to your pics ON Flickr: (put photo gallery on & link to your sets & images – there’s a wordpress plugin)
Find relevant groups & submit
Post pics on a limited basis – stick with your best pics
Put links back to your site in the description - but sparingly (for example – if you posted a review of a restaurant on your blog. Put the picture on Flickr & link to your review)
Use Creative Commons pics on your site/blog & let those photographers know. They may link to you.

DELTA AIRLINES - SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING EXAMPLE

Primary takeaway is that focus helps

Delta uses their blog as the central launching point, then they use other channels (Facebook/YouTube/Flickr) to echo the content
- Blog links to YT & Flickr
- They don’t build posts around specific keywords, but they do review after the fact for anchor text linking opps based on their keyword list
- They produce more content based on what gets the most comments (example – people really interested in wifi rollout, so they produce more details about it)

MY THOUGHTS

Social media is not about the link - it’s about the eyeballs that’ll give you links. While you must truly participate with your social Web, you can think of these various sites/tools/communities as distribution channels for your content. Reminds me of Tom Bennett’s quote from our WebVisions session earlier this year “It’s not about the container - it’s about the content”. It’s the old “fish where the fish are” mentality. While getting visitors to your site is obviously important - it’s highly likely that their first experience with your brand will probably not be on your site.

Twitter Tactics & Search Marketing Session

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speakers:

Michael Gray, President, Atlas Web Service
Craig Greenfield, VP of Search and Performance Media, Performics
Joanna Lord, Co-Founder & CMO, TheOnlineBeat

GROW YOUR FOLLOWERS

Tweet interesting things & links – don’t be self-serving
Have some interaction – most can’t get away with just robotic style content (except cnn)
Be helpful, friendly & aggressive
Set up pre-programed searches for questions that you can answer quickly & easily
Talk with peeps in your vertical who are leaders or have more followers – talk with who they talk with
RT your vertical’s leader’s self-serving content and get noticed

PRACTICAL MANAGEMENT TIPS

Answer @ replies when you can, no need to be real time.
Use scheduled tweets
Ask questionss, use surveys & polls
Hold contents give away related to market (don’t giveaway something just anyone would want)
RT’s are gold
Leave extra characters for people to RT
Ask followers to RT (”please RT”)
It’s OK to Tweet the same thing multiple times per day (same content – people are in different time zones)
Shorten URLs on your own so you can track… which shortener to use? (see this post at searchengineland)

TWITTER TOOLS LIST

tweetdeck: the cadillac of twitter clients
twittermail: good for scheduling
EasyTweets: add a continuous search, manage multiple accts

Automating Twitter:

Find & follow:

Wefollow: directory of twitter users
Mrtweet
Chirpio
#followfriday

Auto-follow/unfollow/dm:

Researching the conversation:

Search.twitter.com
Hash tag trending (on your twitter dashboard)
Tweetbeep.com

Track & Quantify:

Tweetmeme.com - hot links on twitter
Backtweets.com - search for links on twitter
Twitt(url)y.com - top twitter links

For Marketers:

Twibs: business directory
Twitterfeed: link your blog to twitter
Grouptweet: tweet as a team
CoTweet: group tweets as one user
Twitterhawk: local marketing tool
HootSuite: full-service for marketers

SEO Ranking Factors 2009 Session

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speakers:

Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz
Laura Lippay, Dir. Technical Marketing, Yahoo
Marty Weintraub, President, aimClear

SEOMOZ RANKING FACTORS SURVEY - PRESENTATION

We’ll probably examine the SEOmoz survey more in-depth in a later blog post. This was one of the more interesting sessions from a straight ahead SEO standpoint.

* Note - correlation just means that people who do X tend to have better rankings… Correlation DOES NOT = causation

Factors, Correlation & Comments

Low: Markup – h1,2,3 = pretty low correlation with ranking
High: Keyword in the URL has very high correlation
High: Alt text w/ images = high correlcation with ranking
High: Title Tag has high correlation between ranking & keyword POSITION (1st word is better than 10th word)
High: Unique content is very high (duh)
Low: Validation doesn’t matter that much
High: Number of domains linking to a URL is important in ranking (not the number of links – the number of linking domains – domain diversity)

Other Notes:

Toolbar Page Rank is a poor predictor of rankings
Sub-domains are treated partially as part of the primary domain – so they don’t inherit all of the ranking benefits of the root domain – but they aren’t completely separate
“NEW SIGNALS” = some impact: Traffic & CTR data, social graph, registration & hosting
Be careful with that optimized anchor text on every page footer

International Factors

TLD of root domain
Location of the host IP
Links from other sites w/ same root domains
Manual review
Google Webmaster Tools - Geographic Target Settings

OTHER TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS SESSION

Your product / service has to be worthy of a better ranking… SEO is not a band aid for a crappy product (you can’t polish a turd)
You need a user friendly site w/ compelling offers
Site Architecture paper: http://www.netconcepts.com/learn/site-architecture.ppt

Conducting An SEO Audit Session

Moderator: Vanessa Fox, Contributing Editor, Search Engine Land

Speakers:

Adam Audette, Founder, AudetteMedia, Inc.
Vanessa Fox, Contributing Editor, Search Engine Land
Derrick Wheeler, Senior SEO Architect, Microsoft

TAKEAWAYS & TOOLS

Off Page Factors to Consider When Auditing SEO for a Site:

Backlinks
Social Media Signals
Cache Date(s), Indexed Pages
Toolbar PageRank (it’s the best we have)

Interesting On-Site Factors

URLs – maybe the biggest/best/most valuable?
Site Architecture & Navigation
Product-level Pages
Duplication? Orphaned pages?
Site Latency - Slow loading pages?

Tools:

“Site:” searches (add inurl product ID and/or intitle to find dupes)
seo-browser.com: see your website like a search engine sees it
yslow (firebug)– diagnose site latency probs (sits between browser & server & documents activity)
wave toolbar - web accessibility evaluation tool
seobook toolbar – comparison feature – compare 5 URLs
linkscape – look at internal links
semrush - competitive research
Microsoft IIS SEO toolkit

Sitemap xmls for large sites

You can actually create multiple sitemaps (products or categories) then a sitemap file that links to all of them. Then – you’ll be able to better determine which areas of the site are not being indexed and why

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Top 10 reasons why Google Webmaster Tools is my BFF

2009-05-27T17:36:20Z

When it comes to SEO, Google Webmaster Tools and I are Best Friends Forever.

Fist Bump - courtesy Time

I know at the end of the day, dude always has my back. He’s fluff to my peanut butter, Hutch to my Starsky, my broheim. He’s brutally honest; he’s one of those friends that tells you like it is, even if it’s bad. And I admire that!

Let’s get down to it: 10 reasons why Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) is my BFF (if you can’t follow this, there’s a list of straightforward reasons why I like GWT after this list):

He helps me rep-re-zent. All I want is a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T. I want to be known! GWT tells me (”Index stats”) whether or not I can be found in his index. He should be braggin’ about me! If not, then there’s something awry.
Mo Pages, Mo Problems. GWT lets me know if he’s having problems getting to know me. Am I slow in getting back to him (”URLs timed out”)? Did I tell him I was going to meet him somewhere and not show up (”HTTP Errors” and “Not Found”)? He’s a guy that keeps a journal so he knows exactly how many times he’s expected me to be somewhere only to not find me there.
He has has his ear to the ground. He tells me what people are saying about me (”Top Search Queries”).
Helps spread the word if I want to be called “Christian” or “Chris” (”Preferred Domain”). I mean, calling me both names is technically the same.. but what name would I prefer to be called?
He wants to know all. about. me. So, instead of relying on our conversations for him to piece together what I’m all about, I just can say hey, can I just give you this full biography of who I am (”Submit a sitemap”) and just call that good? He’s a crazy cat though - he only likes this biography in a certain format (.xml)… he’s weird like that (just playin’ GWT!). He also is somewhat of a grammar snob, letting me know if there are any problems with the biography.
He’s detail-driven. He’ll let me know if I have any issues (”Content analysis”). So I didn’t have a title tag here and I had a long META description there - he gets up all in my grill and tells me about it! Lay off, my man!
Dude is a n.e.r.d.! We’re not talking about manga or anime or anything: he loves statistics (”Statistics Overview”). I mean, it’s cool and all… but sometimes he starts talking about who craves my attention and (”Subscriber Stats”) even channels his ‘inner-self’ (”What Googlebot sees”) and really opens up about what he sees in me. I mean, it’s flattering… but dang, he can be harsh!
He loves gossip. He craves it, in fact. And he will tell me whenever someone happens to talk about me (”Pages with external links”). He’ll even note when I’m talking about myself (”Pages with internal links). “Why would Christian steal from the Yankees?”
When people ask about me… GWT lets me tell him what I would like him to say about me (”Sitelinks”). So, say someone asks about me… I can tell GTW that I would like him to let that individual know about my funny personality, perhaps a small synopsis of who I am, or otherwise.
Sometimes, I like to keep some details of my life private… like my love for Mandy Moore. Or my liking of the Los Angeles Lakers. I can tell GWT to never tell anyone of these certain aspects of my life (Generate robots.txt). Well, I guess they’re not very private now..

And there you go. That’s a short list of why Google Webmaster Tools and I are BFF. Now, for the more serious readers - here’s the list again, but without all the BFF stuff

Index stats - says if your site is included in Google’s index. Also if Google has accessed your home page.
Web crawl errors - tells you if Google is having trouble crawling and indexing your site.
Top search queries - gives you an quick synopsis of the top search queries people are searching on that access your site.
Preferred domain - specify your canonical here to tell Google if you would like your site to be http://www- or http://-.
Submitting a sitemap - submit your xml sitemap and see if there are any errors Google has found.
Content analysis - lets you know if any of your pages lack title tags or have long (or short) META descriptions.
Statistics - gives you some stats such as how many subscribers your site has, crawl stats and even “What Googlebot sees”.
Links - lets you know how many reported external links are pointing to your site (and which specific pages are being linked to) as well as your inlinks.
Sitelinks - you can somewhat control what sitelinks Google shows for a branded result of yours that has sitelinks.
Robots.txt generation and analysis - you can generate a robots.txt file on GWT and also analyze it to check if there are any errors.

Google Webmaster Tools is an invaluable tool that allows you to really see in-detail what Google thinks of your site. If you have problems - don’t fret! Start correcting them one-by-one and before you know it, you’ll have a website in good standing with virtually zero crawl or sitemap errors. That will make it a lot easier to get great results from Google.

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Amplify Interactive May Update

2009-05-05T03:03:57Z

Amplify Interactive News

We had our biggest Q1 ever - and we worked a lot. To celebrate, the team wanted to go to the gun range & blow off some steam. Seems like a weird activity - but it’s a lot of fun. Check out the pics of the carnage. Plus, with one of our newest clients Crimson Trace Laser Grips on board - we wanted to get a little insight into their customers and their product. Yep - lasers are cool. In case you’re wondering - Christian is the best shot of the group.

New Clients

We’re excited to be providing SEM services for the following new clients!

Real Pro Systems
Hinds Instruments
YRG - We’ve partnered with YRG to provide SEO services on a couple of joint projects
R2C Group
Castor & Pollux
Crimson Trace Laser Grips

Upcoming Events

SEMpdx Presents Online Marketing Summit 2009

Online Marketing Summit Whistle Stop Tour - Portland - June 29
The premier educational event for marketing professionals is coming to Portland as part of its 18 City Whistle Stop Tour. From Boston to San Francisco, join 4,000 of your marketing peers as they share ideas, hear from expert practitioners, and learn best practices in the areas of: Social Media, Search, Email, Analytics, Behavioral Targeting, and Website Strategy.
Request a discounted seat today with discount code SEMPDX20

We’re Also Doing the Following

5/6: Portland Communicators Conference (If you’re an SEMpdx member - use your discount code )
5/12: SEMpdx Event “SEO, Meet User Experience”
5/20 - 5/22: WebVisions
5/20: WebVisions Workshops: Tips for Using Search Engine Tools to Increase Site Traffic and Performance Optimization for Web and Mobile. (If you’re an SEMpdx member - use your discount code )
6/2-6/3: SMX Advanced Seattle (If you’re an SEMpdx member - use your discount code )
6/29: Online Marketing Summit

More Amplify Interactive Stuff

Client Testimonial

“Amplify Interactive handles all of our search engine marketing needs and we couldn’t be happier. Coming from a direct marketing background, I firmly believe in constantly testing and refining campaigns to optimize effectiveness and the team at Amplify excels at just that. I have come to appreciate their disciplined approach to managing every aspect of our SEM campaigns, from key word evaluation to copy tests. I don’t worry about the search component of my marketing mix. Amplify expertly manages a complex set of campaigns and makes it look easy.”

Mark Pennington Director of Marketing - SawStop

Our most popular blog posts last month

I think that’s it for this update. Thanks for reading this far about our little Portland Oregon SEM Agency!

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Hello My Name is Robots Dot Text (Robots.txt)

2009-04-17T21:35:50Z

Greetings humans! My name is Robots Dot Text. You can call me robots.txt (ah hah! Clever, eh?). As you can see, I am mainly part text document (hence my bland-looking figure; apologies for not being part Word document or Photoshop image), part “dot” (it is hard finding suits that fit a dot-like figure) and part robot. I am quite a character!

Think of me as a liaison between your website and a search engine robot/spider. I am like your website’s personal butler: I greet web robots at the door and give them directions as to where they may proceed within your site.

Usually, when you humans have guests over, you do not necessarily like others to go into your human bedroom (unless you are into that thing… not that there is anything wrong with that!). In the same way - you can instruct me as to where you want me to keep the web robots from visiting on your site. You do not want them to see a page for some reason? I can make sure that happens.

First and foremost, you may be asking yourself, “Why do I need a personal butler for my website?” Well, then I may offer a retort of: “Why do aquatic vertebrate animals need water?” Hah hah hah hah! Best practice-wise, every site owner needs a personal butler to greet web robots at the door and tell them to not spider specific pages. Pages that you should typically tell me to not let robots access are your privacy policy, terms of use and contact form fillout pages. I would think having your “money” pages show in search results would be much better than your boring privacy policy, yes?

These web robot guests are quite the fickle bunch. They only seem to respond to a particular greeting. Think of it as a secret “bro-shake” that we do before they know they should comply with my requests. It goes like this:

User-agent: *

That is my universal greeting to all web robots. I can also greet individual web robots if you would like me to. Here is my personal greeting to my ‘brother-from-a-search-engine-mother’ Googlebot:

User-agent: Googlebot

If I were to say this, only my web robot friend Googlebot would respond to the directions that follow.

If you were to say, “Hey Robots Dot Text, I do not want any web robot guests visiting (and consequently indexing) my bedroom,” or a single-page on your site, I would then instruct the “User-agent: *” this way:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /upstairs/bedroom.html

Web robots are totally cool with me telling them where they can visit in your website and where they can not. They are quite proper, like me, and will not look down on you if you only want them to see a section of your site.

Let us say, for example, that you do not wish for your web robot guests to see your bedroom… but thinking about it, you do not want them to visit the entire upstairs which includes your “man-cave” (hey, that is what you call it, not me!) and guest bathroom. This is acceptable as well; I can tell your web robot guests not to visit (and subsequently index) upstairs, or an entire sub-directory of your site, I would then instruct the “User-agent: *” this way:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /upstairs/

If I tell your web robot guests this, they know that visiting upstairs (i.e. your ‘upstairs’ sub-directory) is most definitely not allowed!

I can also promptly tell all web robot guests who come over to turn away and come back at a better time. This is best when you are performing any maintenance at your place (like a redesign). Do not feel bad about turning away your web robot guests during this time; it is best for them to see your place when you have everything organized and looking sharp! If you would like me to tell your web robot guests not to visit (and subsequently not index) all of your pages of your site, I would instruct the “User-agent: *” this way:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Those are the basics of my butlerly-duty. I am hoping that the word I created in the previous sentence makes sense for you since it is not a real word in the English language. Entschuldigung! Hah hah hah hah!

Well, I am off to greet some more web robots. I tell you: some of these guests come back almost daily! It is tough work being me. But it is quite rewarding!

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Don’t short-change your analytics

2009-03-31T20:56:26Z

At Amplify Interactive, we look at statistical history when drawing comparisons to current analytic and pay-per-click numbers. The search behavior of the world populace is a wild and wacky one; there are dips and gains. Most of the time, you can predict lower or higher search volume for any given month for an industry-set of search terms by looking at the previous years’ data (I stress “most of the time” here because sometimes it does not line up that way).

Comparing Last Month to This Month Doesn’t Give You the Big Picture

That being said, it’s nothing new for a client of ours to request a comparison of data of this month to last month. So, for example, we would get a request to compare March numbers to February. While I understand the desire to see this comparison (”Did we improve month-to-month?”), this measure doesn’t tell us a whole heck of a lot about whether we’re seeing improved site traffic / PPC numbers / etc. Why doesn’t this month-to-month comparison work very well?

Yearly search trends for “homes for sale” - follows a fairly close yearly pattern

Look at the example above. If you were to compare November to December without looking at yearly data comparisons, you’ll wonder why December looked more positive for your PPC and analytics numbers. Looking at things yearly, you can see that almost every year that’s quite a search volume increase for “homes for sale” from November to December.

Obviously, a lot of other factors may come into play about why you had gains / losses for your site analytic key performance indicators (KPIs) or your PPC stats. These factors may include:

Organic search rankings
Paid search rankings
Offline marketing initiatives (look for increases / decreases in ‘direct traffic’ referrals)
Click fraud instances effecting your PPC campaign, boosting your bounce rate and lowering your average time spent on site / page views per visit metrics
Other elements (your site traffic may dip during the NCAA basketball tournament, perhaps major news events affect search behavior, news about more help for first-time home buyers may boost real estate-type search queries, etc.)

Look at the Big Picture

To sum it up, don’t short-change your site analytic or PPC performance comparisons. If you’re providing month-to-month comparisons, that’s fine - but look at the big picture when providing analysis. Look at historical performance and compare time frames from year-to-year to see if there’s a upward (or downward) trend. Think about other factors like whether their organic search ranking presence improved or if an offline marketing initative was launched. Simply put: short-sighting your comparisons is limiting your effectiveness to provide a detailed analysis for statistical comparisons.

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SEMpdx SearchFest 2009 - Impressions

2009-03-17T19:25:59Z

As I alluded to last week with my post “SEMpdx SearchFest 09 Rawked!“, I asked the team to give me their impressions from SearchFest 09. The SEMpdx board put together a similar post on the SEMpdx blog and you can read all of our SearchFest 2009 Reflections impressions over there. We’re biased though because we’re too close to SearchFest, so I wanted to see how the team felt about their experience and what they learned. Here’s what they had to say:

BLU

In my opinion SearchFest ’09 knocked it out of the park! It was great to see such a high caliber of speakers and can very well be the point where we look back and say this was the event that put Portland on the Search Marketing map. Seeing Danny Sullivan (the Godfather of search) kick-off the festivities at a SEMpdx event was a big indicator that SEMpdx has arrived as an organization.

But it wasn’t just the speakers that made the event it was also the topics that were discussed. The level of diversity for the different sessions was impressive providing value for everyone, from the novice to expert. I especially enjoyed the analytical session where Eric Peterson, Ian Lurie and Bob Garcia discussed the future of online measurement and services that are readily available today that can make a big difference when it comes to increasing the bottom line.

SPENCER

Searchfest 2009 was my first Searchfest, and I can honestly say is, “nerds, nerds as far as the eye can see, and even some lady nerds.” But in all seriousness it was great. The information served up was almost overwhelming in its quality and quantity. It had everything for everyone no matter the experience level. The speakers not only had a lot of brand cache (see: Yahoo, Microsoft, SEOmoz, Search Engine Land, etc), but they were entertaining and personable.

My highlights from the event:

Best speaker: Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Land) – Almost most entertaining, but got edged out. Loved his dismissal of white hat vs. black hat debate. Basically, do not be a scumbag, not cheating and down with the spammers. Being fairly green in the industry, I enjoyed his “historical perspectives” on search.

Most Entertaining Speaker: Marty Weintraub (aimClear) – He could have filled the whole hour, and no one would have noticed.

Best Session: SEO Beyond Theory: SEO Tips From the Trenches – Marshall, Laura, Jeff and Derrick presented great tips for SEO noobs and vets, and featured my favorite stats.

Favorite Session: Online Reputation Management – Really good tips about how to set up your own monitoring program with feeds, and how to participate with your consumers online effectively. Plus, swearing, slandering and social media always make for a good time.

Best/Favorite Stat (tie): Derrick Wheeler (Microsoft) – Microsoft.com has over 2 billion+ unique URL. Marshall Simmonds (NYT, About.com) - The New York Times had 591 duplicate versions of a news story. They both better get paid well.

Person Who Learned the Most: Me (Amplify-Interactive)…long way to go before I can present.

Best Room Monitor: Me (Amplify-Interactive) All I can say is I rocked.

CHRISTIAN

1) Favorite presenters / presentations: I really enjoyed the social media session with Dawn Foster, Neil Patel and Matt Inman. Sure, Neil’s presentation might have been more gray area than it should have been… but out of any of the sessions I attended, this one got me thinking the most. Also - Matt’s presentation got me thinking about potential linkbait ideas for my clients; his examples showed that, really, you can create engaging linkbait for any client.

2) Best new tip or trick I learned: there were a couple of key takeaways for me. I gained a great deal of knowledge during the Local SEM session about what’s important when optimizing a local business. There were some ideas presented that got me thinking about optimizing a local website in ways I never even thought about previously. I also learned a couple of tips from the Technical SEO session, namely which pages you should block with your robots.txt file that I didn’t even think about.

3) Best stat: in the PR session - 2/3rds of the “internet population” visit social media sites. That’s a whole lot of Facebook / Myspace / LinkedIn / Twitter people. Todd also mentioned that 91% of people use Google’s standard search to find articles or research something in the middle of a sales cycle.

4) Most interesting industry person I met: Todd Freisen of PositionTech. Funny presentation and he was sitting at my table for awhile and we talked a bit. Funny and nice guy.

5) Etc.: I really enjoyed the sessions I attended. The local session, technical SEO and social media sessions were definitely my favorite.

So - did you go to SearchFest 09? What did you think?

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Are Search Engine Users Getting Smarter?

2009-03-12T17:47:01Z

Hitwise recently published a study on search query length that showed that longer search queries are getting more & more popular. In layman’s terms - search engine users are typing more words into the search box than they used to.

The major takeaway from the study is that people still primarily use two-word queries in search engines, but searches that contain four or more words are getting a lot more popular.

Impact on the SEO Process?

A colleague at one of our partners actually forwarded me the article and asked me how it would effect our approach to search term research. I replied:

We were actually talking about longer search query length at lunch today… yeah, our days are pretty exciting around here! We do our research real time - so [longer searches are] basically accounted for. By and large - this is good news. more sophisticated searchers = better site traffic and less frustration when trying to optimize & get ranked so we can focus on the really targeted stuff (the long tail of search)

Then, I turned to the team and said we needed to write a blog post on the subject! But rather than do it all myself, I thought it might also be interesting to get feedback from members of the Amplify Interactive team to see what their thoughts were on the article as well. Luckily, I don’t have to do all the thinking around here. Here’s what the team had to say - in all our poor-grammar and over-punctuated glory:

Search Query Length - Our Impressions

BEN

Personally - I think it’s obvious why people are typing in longer searches:
1. avoiding spam and off-topic results
2. auto-complete & search suggestions from search engines
3. higher degree of sophistication and level of experience using search engines (kind of the same as #1)

I also think that it’s extremely encouraging. It’s so much easier to target and get ranked for ‘long tail’ type search queries with SEO. if more people are searching this way, the search term research will support it as well.

CHRISTIAN

I think people are becoming more familiar with how to use search engines. I think they’re starting to learn that specific search queries bring specific search results which are generally more favorable than any super-general searches. For example, if I have a problem with my Mac, instead of typing in something like, “Mac startup problem,” I’ll simply copy and paste the exact error notification sentence into the search box and I’ll find specifics about that exact problem that other users have encountered.

The predictive search box tool that Google debuted the middle of last year has certainly helped searches “type-in” relevant long-tail searches easier. I’m fairly certain this has contributed to the percentage increase of longer search queries.

SPENCER

My initial response to these data is that of “well duh”. I know that when I am search for something and I use 4+, I know what I am looking for, and the results will be targeted to my query.

Consumers get smarter and smarter every year, as they adapt to new and changing technology. They are becoming more and more comfortable with it and the rapid pace in which it develops. I believe the more comfortable they get, the more savvy and sophisticated their search queries will become. These data reflect at least the second part of my statement. Great stuff and good news for intelligent, strategic minded people in the industry, as poor guidance will inevitably lead to poor results quickly.

Moving forward, data like these should prompt Google to fix the “other unique queries” as it will help their advertiser create better ads and more relevant landing pages which leads to more sales, more competition for phrases, and most likely more revenue for Google. Marketers should take heed of findings like these and really dig into keyword and phrase research. So they can develop their landing pages and target their consumers more effectively during the entire buying cycle.

BLU

Users are becoming more savvy and are entering in longer tailed searches to find what they are looking for but I also think a huge reason why long tail searches are growing so rapidly is because of “search assist” features being used by the major search engines.

So - that’s what our impressions from the study were. What are yours?

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SEMpdx SearchFest 09 Rawked!

2009-03-11T22:50:34Z

We’ll be posting the team’s thoughts shortly, but I wanted to seize the opportunity today to put down a few links and leave a few of thoughts of my own.

As president of SEMpdx, I was really proud of the quality of the event. Having had to plan SearchFest on my own previously - I know it’s not easy and takes a lot of extra time & effort to pull together. I had the luxury of not having to worry about a thing this year and I really want to thank SEMpdx for all their hard work. We had some top speakers from around the country and even a few folks from town (special thanks to local heroes Kerry McClenahan, Rick Turoczy & Dawn Foster… I’m sure I’m forgetting someone).

Some interesting stuff here:

Twitter was absolutely BLOWING UP with tweets about SearchFest (Did Janet Johnson lead the pack?) - see SearchFest 09 tweets here
Lots of blog posts - there will be more. See SearchFest 09 blog posts here
Fox News stopped by to cover SearchFest 09 (thanks Amy Rosenberg!) - here’s the SEMpdx SearchFest 09 story along with the short video

We’ll follow up soon with more on SearchFest

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