My biggest problem with spam and hackers is 90% of the time they are just putting in crappy links that Google doesn’t value anyways.  Google is smarter than all the lame spammers out there.  If you’re really going to span do it legit.  There are tons of ways to build legitimate spam.  Build links to a LEGIT site.  At least act like it’s a legit site.

At least spam in your niche

This is something that’s recently become a big factor in the SERPS is legitimate links on sites that are in your same niche.  If I’m building links to a snowboard site on a quilting site, it’s not a very legit link and Google isn’t going to give me any credibility out of the link.  They are most likely going to devalue the link and your site at the same time.  It’s not relevant.

Spammers should at least only spam sites that are in their same niche.  Heck, if there is a legit site behind the spammy link I would question if I put it there or not.  Really, 99.999% of webmasters never go back to old posts and check links.  Put 1 or 2 links in the post… don’t spam the WHOLE friggin site with your links.  I’ll just remove all of them.  Vary your links up!

Stop Spamming in general

Alright, the last paragraph was a little lame into spamming in your niche.  I don’t believe that you should spam at all.  Google will just devalue your site. You will NEVER rank anymore.  Who is building these links?    Who is buying these links?  If you buy things on Fiverr you know that you’re buying junk… STOP

Automation  =  Spam

Anything that can be automated I count as spam when it comes to building rankings.  I recently talked to a guy that was building links automated through a very tricky linking scheme, I’ve told him that he’s going to get busted.  It’s going to kill his business.  He’s got 40 employees and risking all his rankings by spamming the world.  He’ll get away with it for a while and then be slapped.  He’s screwed when Google catches him.

Bottom line, stop spamming… we all hate it!

John Rampton on our team was made Search Engine Journals managing editor this past week.  John’s been amazing at working with sites like SEJ and SEW.  He’s become one of the webs leading experts when it comes to search marketing.

Search Engine Journal is one of the top 5 most influential sites in search engine marketing on the web.  John has been writing for them for the past 2 years.  SEJ loves John because of his expertise in PPC, SEM and online marketing.

If you’re a coffee drinker here in the Great White North, you were likely raised on the Tim Hortons bottle from a very early age.  Tim’s rather bland but comforting blend is entrenched in Canadian culture and has been the “go to” coffee for we Canucks for years.  Our coffee drinking options have expanded in recent years with major players like Starbucks planting its flag in urban and rural centers across our frozen tundra.

Starbucks recently added a new roast to its brewers that they’ve positioned as:

A Starbucks coffee for Canadians who don’t think they like Starbucks coffee

Clearly they’re attempting to make a play to the Canadian masses who find their coffee too strong, burnt and bitter.  In an effort to engage the market socially, Starbucks launched the “Name Your Blend, Canada” contest.

I was cautiously intrigued when I saw a lonely Starbucks staff giving away free coffee on the corner of Richmond and Spadina this morning and decided to give the contest a shot when I walked in to the internet marketing office.  Here were my impressions of the contest from an internet marketer’s perspective and what I believe Starbucks could do better.

Contest Landing Page:

The landing page is clean and simple with one obvious call to action, the registration button.  Starbucks opted to only have Facebook registrations which could potentially limit their entries and exclude non Facebook users, but the social connection and reach that a Facebook post can have outweighs the possible exclusion of non-Facebook users.

I like the display of other entries in a scrolling bar along the bottom.  It shows the possible entrant some real people who’ve participated and gives some example ideas to inspire.

The prize of winning is clearly illustrated and connects to the brand.  The contest winner will receive a trip anywhere in Canada to have coffee with a friend.  Simple, on brand and large enough to make anyone want to enter.

When you connect your Facebook account, you’re not giving Starbucks reems of personal information.  You’re simply allowing access to your Facebook wall (should you choose to post your idea), revealing your email address and location.  The Facebook login pop-up also shows you a list of your friends who are using the app and there by provides an element of trust.

Possible Improvements:

• None

Contest Entry Page:

Another great example of simplicity can be found on the entry page.  Two simple form fields to use, only one is required (the name).  The entry page includes a tag cloud of terms that have been used to describe the name’s others have submitted.  It also is personalized, grabbing your Facebook name and using it in the title of the page.

As you enter your Blonde Roast name, it simultaneously appears on the product packaging.  This is a simple but effective way for the user to “see their name in lights”, an element of any contest that furthers engagement.  We’re all fascinated by “celebrity” and subconsciously seem to strive for fame.  This programatic element helps the entrant flirt with that notion.

Possible Improvements:

• None

Successful Completion Page:

Once a user submits their entry, they’re taken to a confirmation page.  Again, we see this page and headline are personalized for the user.  They’re given an option to share their entry with others through Facebook and Twitter.  Finally, Starbucks delivers on their promise of a free coffee for the your troubles… a Blonde Roast (go figure).

Possible Improvements:

• I believe they should encourage more social sharing of the posts.  I would stop short of encouraging users to share in exchange for a “vote” for their idea but incentivising users to share socially with an additional coffee would likely increase social traffic.
• Ideally showing the user what their tweet or Facebook post would look like could help steer them towards sharing.
• Here’s where Starbucks “missed the boat”… the free coffee coupon.  Starbucks should have made this easier for the end user to receive their coffee.  They chose to partner with a third party coupon provider and force the user to download then print their coupon.  This doesn’t “fit” with Starbucks’ target market and is a disconnect from Starbucks’ very mobile friendly approach to commerce (They have a GREAT app).  Ideally, Starbucks should either email you a coupon that can easily be displayed on your phone, text the coupon or even connect this to their app to automatically add the free coffee to ones account.

Conclusion

I’ve seen many online contests try way to hard to “do everything” as all to often, contest creators clutter a contest with to much choice.  The Starbucks approach is simple and effective and delivers a positive user experience and positive brand experience.  I’m a fan, well done.

Oh… my entry – “Maple North”

Start Today - Don’t wait till a couple days before Valentine’s Day to start getting traffic. People are searching right now for those terms.  Bid on them and win the accounts!

Write New Ads - Yes, you actually should mention Valentine’s Day in your ads.

Be Specific with Locations - Geo-target ads regionally and use dynamic text… so a searcher in Cardiff knows cupid’s arrow can land on their doorstep, not a 2 hour train journey away! (Try targeting your ads in different demographic locations, this will help you narrow down what parts of your local area will work the best. Use this information for all major holidays.)

Mobile -  70% of all searches for restaurants will be through mobile phones.  Are you advertising to this traffic?

Calls to Action - First of all, if you aren’t doing this normally you’re missing out on actually getting a conversion.

Pay Attention to Long Tail - Don’t forget about all the little things out there that people are searching on and relating them to Valentine’s Day.

When you’re setting up your campaigns you always need to make sure you’re setting up event tracking.  If you have any questions on how to set this up you can check out this post by Adam Green on how to track mobile.  It explains how to set up tracking on mobile and you can figure out how to do it on regular.

If you want to increase interactions and conversions on long tail keywords you need to be pushing traffic to those pages.  If you’re not delivering ppc traffic down to the individual pages of your products you need to re-evaluate what you’re doing as a so called ppc expert.

Increasing Long Tail Conversions starts in the beginning with a ppc account.  You need to be optimizing your clicks for long tail pages if you want to have them work.  You need to be setting up longer tail keywords to bid on and directing traffic to those pages.  Even if you’re only getting a few clicks, you can still take advantage of the long term clicks by bidding on the lower searched words.

Conversions should start with tracking, make sure you’re tracking everything. Once you know that you’re tracking everything make sure that you’re actually driving clicks to those longer tail pages.

Over the past couple months I have been putting up tons of posts about different PPC accounts that I see that are struggling. I dive deep into the accounts (actually, this isn’t deep at all) it’s just going off on the accounts from what I can find.  Get’s me to a bigger question, what makes a PPC expert?  We have several different PPC experts on the Maple North team but what qualifies us?  In this post I will have a PPC Experts round up where I talk about some things to look for in a PPC expert.

Experience

When you looking for an expert in paid search, you’re going to want someone with experience.  Depending on how much money you’re spending will determine how many years he or she should have.  I personally say, beyond one year of experience… Each additional $50K that you spend you should have 1 additional year of service.  So if you’re spending $150K a month you should have someone with at least 4 years of experience.  1 year upfront then 3x years for $150K (50×3).  This isn’t a standard rule but something I like to follow.

It will also depend on what type of experience the person has.  If the person has 3 years managing mom and pops print shop, he may not have the experience necessary to manage your account.

Conferences

I like to hire people that have been to industry conferences, not only because they learn a lot but they get to meet other people in the niche.  This helps build relationships with other PPC managers.  When you network and connect with them, you’ll typically read their articles, chat with them and grow more in the community to which you’re working.  This will help in pretty much any niche out there.

Reputable Company

You know those agencies that pop up like clockwork?  Make sure that when you find a person that is going to do your paid search that they have worked for a reputable company.  If they haven’t worked for a big company that’s fine, but you still want someone that’s worked on a legit companies account.

Above All

Above all, make sure the person is a good person.  This is a key to good online marketing and paid search people. They have to be good people, this goes with any position at any company.  If you have good people, you’re going to do honest work and be alright.  You can always train the right person for the job as long as they have some skills.  Good people sometimes are worth training.  But always make sure you have good people on your team!

This year us at Maple North would like to wish all our customers a Merry Christmas!

The year is almost gone and I’ve learned a ton about PPC.  As many of you know, I’m one of the account managers at Maple North for PPC.  This post will go over some of the PPC lessons I learned in 2012 that should help you with your PPC campaigns!

Over the past couple years I have been upping my skills on PPC.   I didn’t know PPC that long ago.  Adam Green, the CEO of our company taught me while managing an account that I was over.  He taught me everything and I’m very glad for everything he’s taught me.

Some of this things that I’ve learned I have shared on here including getting local, the importance of CTR,  getting higher Quality Scores, and improving Holiday PPC with our clients.  All of these lessons that I have learned have helped me come to one point:  There is so much more to learn, and I’ve only started!

My goal over the next year would be to dive deeper into social and connect it more with all of our clients ads.  This is something that we already do but we don’t manage a lot of the social networks.  I’ve noticed that when we connect ads to a G+ community that isn’t doing anything that they aren’t converting.  We want to work much closer with out clients in establishing a much deeper relationship with social networks and the PPC ads.  I think that hand-in-hand you can have them work together to achieve much better results.

Quality Scores is also something that I really want to focus on this next year.  I want to optimize everything as much as possible.  Our clients and potential customers buying our clients products deserve 10/10 quality scores and we’ll do everything possible to make this happen.  Across all our account we manage to have a 5.5/10 quality score….which isn’t that bad, but it’s not good enough.  I want all 10/10′s.  Realistically if we bumped that number up to 7/10 I would be happy.

I personally am not as strong on the Display Network side of things.  I want to up my game with all clients in this area.  We have some clients that are ROCKING in this space and I want it to rock for all clients.

Mobile is the last area that I really want to get good at.  I’ve already almost mastered this (I work on it daily) but I’d like to become much more of a master for local mobile ad deliveries and get that rockin.  I love mobile and think that it’ll take over search in the next 3 years.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my PPC lessons that I’ve learned in 2012.  I sure hope that 2013 will be amazing and I can accomplish everything I’ve set myself out to do.

BingAds is awesome and I’ve been using them for several different clients.  I want to get all our clients pushing BingAds, cause they really do have good quality traffic.  This would be one of my top goals considering how much success we have with them!

One of the best ways to do this is to just do it! Brilliant huh! The best ideas out there take time, and the majority of people are buying their Christmas presents now. I’m not sure where I read it (think it was the Wall Street Journal) but they did a poll. 80% of people that make over $200K a year have all their Christmas shopping done before December 5th. What does this mean for you as a retailer? It means that the richest people in America (and I assume all over the world) have all their Christmas shopping done in a weeks time.

Time to prepare now. Get your sales up, have the promotions running. This year you will not have orders after the 21st of December. Heck, I doubt you’ll be able to get it shipped to the person if they don’t have it ordered before the 17th or 18th. That means that you should be pushing people for the sales right now.

Sales mean a lot to people. My wife will not buy anything unless it’s on sale. You ever wonder why Macy’s is doing so well. It’s cause they have a sale EVERYDAY and 24/7/365. Sales help people to let go and think that they are getting a deal.

Structure and tell people about your sales through PPC. Mention it in your 1st sentence or your headline. Also, when you’re running remarketing ads, make sure that you mention the sales in your ads. People who are seeing your remarketing ads have already come to your site. It’s up to you to get them to come back. Running powerful sales with your remarketing ads will help them to come back.

Setup a seperate Adgroup for your holiday promotions. When you do this you will seperate it from your other campaigns. This will help you next year to evaluate if it worked beter than your normal ads or not.

Setup new landing pages for your holiday promo. People love to see Santa and other Christmas characters, so use them.

Bottom line, do something!

For those of you that didn’t know, I’m not the biggest Christmas music fan. The Christmas is blaring downstairs as the fiancee and her mother bake a cake for a friends b-day tonight. Got me thinking about Christmas and everything that you have to do to get ready for it in the online world. This post will go over little Christmas PPC management tips for small to large businesses to take over the online world in 2012.

Realistically Christmas shopping season starts on November 25, better known as Black Friday. But you should be prepared weeks in advance from that. In other words, you should be ready today. Cause next Friday is black friday. Be prepared.

Make sure that landing pages are all setup and working a week before. Make sure all campaigns are all set to go live at least a week before. Have a deal and email everyone on the list. Release the page to all your email list a day early (everyone is home on Thanksgiving and browsing the internet) Let’s be honest, we don’t want to be with our family after preparing that huge meal together. They are all on the internet. Give all your peeps 1 day early notice and deals.

Release to the public 4 hours early with your PPC ads. These ads will take a couple hours to start and get approved anyways. If you really want to jump the gun, unpause your ads a day early so they all get approved and are ready to go the second you unpause them. Your PPC ads should be cleverly worded to deal with Black Friday. I like to borrow adcopy from well know clever advertisers in a different niche, then apply it to what I’m doing. Then make tweeks as necessary.

Make sure to point out the obvious deals. People love a good deal, but even the crappy deals make good money. You don’t think Best Buy looses money giving away a free wii to the first 5 people in line do you…. no way. They know they are going to go into the store and buy 5-10 games because they just got a free console. You don’t have to give away free crap but do have good deals and make money on everything else.

Hope these Christmas tips for 2012 will help you to optimize all your PPC campaigns and businesses in general.