Internet Marketing Blog by WordStream

WordStream Takes News Media By Storm: CEO Ralph Folz on Fox, BBC

2012-05-25T06:22:03-07:00

Last week, when we released data revealing Facebook’s shortcomings as an advertising platform, we didn’t know how timely it would be. Then GM announced it was pulling its $10 million Facebook campaign, claiming the ads weren’t working. Coming right before the IPO, the news was a shock – but we were able to step in with an explanation for GM’s move. For example, despite its incredible reach, Facebook delivers lackluster results – the average Facebook ad has a click-through rate (CTR) of about 0.05%, which is half the average CTR for banner ads across the Internet, and just 1/10 as high as the average ad on the Google Display Network.

Because our research provided some answers, it led to some great opportunities to speak about the findings in the media. In the course of a few days, our intrepid CEO Ralph Folz appeared on Fox Business News and shared his expertise on both NPR and BBC radio. You can watch Ralph talking to Dennis Kneale here:

And here’s a clip where Dennis Kneale talks a little more about GM’s decision and Ralph’s take on why Facebook advertising as a long way to go:

Here’s a bit of their conversation (I'm not sure of the women's names, unfortunately):

Anchor 1: I thought this was one of the most interesting stories of the day because it goes against everything else we’re hearing on every network today about Facebook. What was behind GM’s thinking?

Dennis: So GM comes out and says, you know what, we’ve got our Facebook page, and that’s free, and we’ve got millions of fans we talk to, but why should we be spending money – and extra $10 million a year – on Facebook ads when we’ve decided they don’t sell cars? Why don’t we instead just work on Facebook as a presence? And someday you wonder whether Facebook should start charging companies to put those friendly pages up as part of a marketing expense. But then I talked to Ford and the global head of social media for Ford, Scott Monty, comes out and pointed out that click-through rates – you know a search ad, you click on 1 in every 40 ads. On Facebook, you click on 1 in every 2,000 ads, and that’s probably just a mistake that someone clicked on that one! So what do you do about that? And yet the Ford guy said that’s an idiotic way to look at it. He said it’s such a great environment, and you’re able to talk to people about their interests, and therefore they’re going to be increasing their ad spending. Over 20% of Ford’s global ad budget goes online.

Anchor 2: This just opens the floodgates, I think, for other companies to follow GM’s lead, though.

Dennis: Yeah you know what, the Journal has been on this, and they ran a story a month or so ago saying hey, big advertisers are starting to question this value. Now here’s the thing, Facebook says, We’re display not search. You know when you search for ballet slippers, and you click, and then an ad shows up for ballet slippers, on your way to buy it, that’s perfect. On Facebook it’s like, Oh, I see you’ve been to the ballet recently and so we’ll run an ad for ballet slippers. It’s less direct.

Anchor 1: What made GM think that it wasn’t working, though? What made them come to the conclusion that it’s not selling cars?

Dennis: I mean, here’s the thing: Online, more than ever before in the history of advertising, you can metric it. You know if they clicked on the ad. If they then went to a site and they then bought it, you can track that entire stream. You know, when you run a TV ad, you have no idea who saw it and whether anyone bought based on it. And clearly they’ve been watching the data and decided it’s not paying off.

Anchor 2: I can’t even see those ads on my mobile.

Dennis: This is the thing Facebook would have to do though, they have to become a good advertising service company. You know when Carol Bartz when in to run Yahoo, she told me they didn’t even have a SWAT team to serve the 10 biggest advertisers responsible for the vast majority of their advertising. They were a tech company, not an ad company. Facebook has to get an infrastructure in there to take great care of advertisers and to give them a good platform. We had an expert on who graded them, and he gave them a D+ for their advertising platform, for how hard it is to use, for how ineffective it is.

Ralph also made an “appearance” on BBC radio show The World Today, speaking with Linda Duffin:

Linda: Facebook, Mr. Folz says, trails behind because up to now it really hasn’t tried very hard.

Ralph: If I’m on Google, and I advertise today, I can choose a square banner, I can choose a long rectangular banner, I could put a video in front of a YouTube video, I could do mobile advertising, I can even do in-video game advertising. In Facebook I have one or two choices. I can have a simple display, a simple image and one line of text. It’s just not the engaging options. You’ve heard about General Motors. General Motors wants to sell cars, they’re sexy, it’s an emotional purchase – it’s hard to do that in very basic ad types.

Linda: Yet Ford is, on the other hand, actually spending more with Facebook. So it must think there’s a future in it.

Ralph: I think there’s a future in it. I find it interesting. I fall more on the side of GM than I do Ford. I think it’s great to experiment with these new media types and these new ad networks, but if I had $10 million I was going to spend, and I needed to drive people into my showrooms, I would probably use Google rather than Facebook today.

Click here to download an audio clip (MP3) of the show. Ralph was also on The Takeaway last week speaking on the same topic.

We’re famous!

More Web Marketing Highlights

Via Kerry Jones on the Blueglass blog, here are 13 Ways to Make Idea Generation a Daily Habit, including reading blogs outside your niche (I’m a big proponent of leaving your filter bubble!) and scheduling uninterrupted time.

If that’s enough ideas for you, Ken Lyons describes how to mine your analytics and Q&A/how-to sites for common questions you can turn into content.

Brad Geddes names 8 Features Advertisers Really Need From Google AdWords, such as true ad rotation and extensions at the ad group level.

Via Angela Stringfellow at Unbounce, smart ways to market your startup, including word of mouth, partnerships, and a little pro bono work.

Rand Fishkin reminds us that correlation is not causation – even in marketing!

And a couple non-webby links for your fun and betterment:

Comic artist and graphic novel author Greg Rucka is often asked why he writes such strong female characters. He answers that question for io9, both in brief (“I don't. I write characters. Some of those characters are women”) and at length.

And, as long as I’m showing off my Rolodex, here’s Bryan Safi, “media personality” and old friend from my hometown, on why it’s so annoying when celebrities pretend they were ugly children (audio).

Have a good weekend, folks.

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Quick Guide to the Google AdWords Contextual Targeting Tool

2012-05-24T06:20:57-07:00

This is the sixth post in a series that focuses on using the various tools located within the Google AdWords tools and analysis tab. Previous posts have focused on:

In this post we’ll walk through how to get the most out of the Google AdWords Contextual Targeting Tool.

What Is the Contextual Targeting Tool?

In much the same way that the placement tool allows you to find websites that would be good targeting candidates for your display campaigns, the contextual targeting tool allows you to identify good groups of keywords to target within your display network campaigns.

How to Use the AdWords Contextual Targeting Tool

A good way to start with the AdWords contextual targeting tool is to look at a really broad theme and get back some initial suggestions from the tool:

The thing that makes this tool really powerful is that, as you can see in the above screenshot, it’s not just suggesting keywords: its recommending pre-grouped ad groups complete with a proposed keyword list.

As with the other keyword and placement suggestion tools, the tool offers some advanced options that allow you to designate location and language:

Once you’ve executed a search you can drill down on a suggestion by either expanding the suggestion or viewing a predicted placement. When you expand a group by clicking the plus button pictured, you can basically create a sub-group out of one of the terms contained in the initial group:

In the example above the dog 101 group has had the term “dogs 101 beagle” broken out and turned into its own, more specific grouping. In some instances you can continue to drill down from here to create more and more specific groupings from the tool.

The predicted placements can be called by clicking the ellipsis (…) in the picture above, and you’re then presented with a list of the types of sites this keyword group would likely trigger your ad on:

This is some really valuable information, and as we can see in the case of our beagle group there are some very irrelevant sites that our ads may be showing on (unless aspiring car boosters are also beagle enthusiasts, I guess).

Once you have a group that looks pretty good to you, you can make some last minute edits to the specific keyword list (add one or two, modify existing keywords, remove terms) and the suggested bids:

From there you can either add the new ad groups directly into an existing display campaign or export them as an AdWords Editor friendly file:

Before you add these groups to your campaigns, you need to look at the specific terms they’re including and consider the potential placements, and you should be incorporating any suggestions as part of a larger display strategy. Often these grouping suggestions can be a great starting point and can give you some excellent ideas, but you definitely want to pay careful attention to the structure of the groups that are being generated for you and edit the groups before you turn them on within active campaigns.

About the Author

Tom Demers is co-founder and managing partner at Measured SEM, a boutique Boston SEO and PPC agency offering search marketing consulting services including pay-per-click account management, comprehensive SEO audits, content marketing strategies, reputation management for SEO and link building services for a variety of specific niches such as B2B SEO.

You can learn more about how Measured SEM can help your business by getting in touch with Tom directly via email at tom at measuredsem.com, or by following him on Twitter.

How to Advertise eBay and Etsy Products via Google AdWords

2012-05-22T15:18:58-07:00

We recently had an interesting question from a reader:

Can I run an AdWords campaign for my products listed on eBay? If yes can I link it directly to eBay?

The answer to this is a little bit tricky: eBay sellers are no longer able to submit products via their own merchant feed to Google product listings. eBay sellers have to rely on the eBay product feed to have their products pushed to the Google merchant feed. The same goes for Etsy and similar marketplaces. Assuming your products are showing within the marketplace in question’s merchant account, you can submit those products via AdWords product listing ads (PLA).

The way this works is that each marketplace is required by Google to have a multi-client account and create sub-accounts for sellers (more information on Google’s policies on this here). To actually link your product listing ad to a sub-account, you need to contact eBay (or any marketplace) to have them create a sub-account for you, which you could then link up to your AdWords account.

If you have the ability to list products on your own website, of course, you can avoid these issues entirely and create your own merchant account, and then simply link that account to your product extensions.

For more on product extensions, check out our Google AdWords Product Extensions Guide.

Quick Guide to the Google AdWords Placement Tool

2012-05-20T15:51:18-07:00

This is the sixth post in a series that focuses on using the various tools located within the Google AdWords tools and analysis tab. Previous posts have focused on:

In this post we’ll walk through how to get the most out of the Google AdWords Placement Tool.

What is the Google AdWords Placement Tool?

The placement tool is very similar to the search-focused AdWords keyword tool with the major exception that it’s focused on helping you locate placements to target on Google’s Display Network.

How to Use the Google AdWords Placement Tool

To leverage the AdWords placement tool, you can get information from three main inputs:

Word or Phrase – As with a keyword tool you can insert one or a few relevant terms and get back recommended placements.
Website – Input a URL of the type of site you’d like to advertise on.
Category – Input a category of sites you’re interested in advertising on.

Assuming we want to start with a word or phrase, we simply type that in and then set your advanced filters and options (click to enlarge):

Here we can look for specific sites based on:

Placement Type – Drill down by excluding traditional sites, videos, games, mobile apps, etc.
Locations & Languages – Return only the countries and demographic populations you want to advertise in.
Ad Sizes – If you have trouble creating an image ad in the various formats you may only want to return sites that you have ads created for.

You’re generating suggestions here, so you want to think about the type of results you want to get back. If you’re looking for specific types of placements, you probably want to make use of the word or phrase and website options; if you’re looking for a broader list of sites, the category option may be a better fit. Executing any of these options is fairly straightforward.

A few things to note in determining whether to use words, website, or categories as an input include:

In using the “words” input, by entering a single two-term keyword you may get back highly irrelevant results (for instance entering search marketing returns a number of site searches from websites that have nothing to do with SEM).
In choosing websites, if you input a specific site you’ll get a very limited set of results back.
In leveraging the category option, you can use very broad or more specific categories, depending on the volume and variety of sites you’re looking for.

Ultimately, it’s often best to create display campaigns grouped around keyword themes and then to monitor placement performance, and use exclusions and specific bids to find the best placements for your display campaign. But if you are running a managed placement campaign, the placement tool can be very useful in uncovering sites that are running AdSense and give you an opportunity to advertise to your target audience.

About the Author

You can learn more about how Measured SEM can help your business by getting in touch with Tom directly via email at tom at measuredsem.com, or by following him on Twitter.

Why I Dumped My Facebook IPO Shares at the Open Today

2012-05-18T09:57:16-07:00

In a final, epic victory of reason over complete and utter pandemonium, I dumped my Facebook IPO shares at the open today.

This may come as a surprise to some, given that I wrote a pretty bullish case about the future of Facebook just yesterday, which in itself was probably surprising given that on Tuesday we published research that basically said Facebook advertising is awful.

So why did this confused and conflicted internet marketer sell shares of The Social Network?

As in PPC management, buy and hold is for suckers

While I still strongly believe everything I wrote about the long-term future of the company, timing still matters and it’s going to take a couple of quarters (or years even) for FB to figure out how to monetize its audience.

Damn it, Jim, I’m a marketer, not a financial analyst

I have no clue if Facebook is a good investment or not. And really, you shouldn’t trust a marketer for advice on stock valuations. The one thing I’m sure of is that Facebook’s advertising options are a big disappointment (for now), particularly for small and medium-sized businesses.

I Have Real Work To Do

Last night, as I was collecting clippings of all the press coverage that our Facebook vs. Google Display Network Study generated this week, I got the sense that Facebook felt less like an investment and more like a lottery ticket. As the founder and CTO of WordStream, I’m busy developing new features for PPC Advisor, the AdWords Grader, and the 20-Minute PPC Work Week, etc. Given the extreme volatility, it dawned on me that I ought to get off this roller coaster and instead focus my time on the work at hand.

So yes, It’s been quite an exciting week. And I fully admit it: I’m the financial equivalent of a flip-flopper. I bought into the Facebook IPO hype, and then sold out. And, who knows, maybe I’ll buy it back later!

P.S. While you're waiting for Facebook to figure out its advertising model, why not give Google advertising a try?

P.P.S. Sorry for all the Facebook content this week. Next week, we will return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Case Study: How One Crazy Poet Raised $10K in 12 Hours with Social Media

2012-05-18T06:18:19-07:00

Last week, I shared the story of a guy who convinced the Internet that Abe Lincoln invented Facebook – pretty impressive linkbait, but not exactly heart-warming. But those of you with cold hearts need not fear – I’ve got a doozy for you this week. (As Woody Allen would say, there’s nothing like hot cockles.)

This story starts with poetry. Several years ago I became acquainted with a poet named Patricia Lockwood, affectionately known as Tricia. Tricia had a blog, but she was less likely to post about poetry per se than the strange things her mother says ("There were very bad storms here all week, you know. Later on, maybe tomorrow, I'll take you out and we can go see all the devastation") or the disturbing illustrations on the covers of young adult books (see here and here).

What becomes clear, once you’ve read a few of her blog posts, is that Tricia is a crazy person – not the kind of person you would necessarily assume has been published in The New Yorker, and about a hundred other high-profile/high-prestige poetry venues. (Not that I’m jealous, nope, not even a little bit.)

Very close to a year ago, Tricia realized her brand of wit would be an excellent fit for Twitter, and lo, she started tweeting. As she put it in an interview with Matthew Simmons, “Twitter is the perfect way to disseminate the kind of writing that comes most naturally to me … 140 characters is just about the right length to get inside your head.” Her blog banner has long proclaimed “Poems are jokes” – and tweets are jokes, too.

And it was a particular genre of tweet-joke, which she appears to have invented, that put her on the Twitter map: the faux-sext. With a bizarre and very unsexy series of tweets beginning with the word “Sext,” she got notice from places like Rhizome, The Huffington Post, and, again, The New Yorker (though it must be said, she was called a “Twitter genius” in Slate months earlier). Here are some examples of her sexts (NSFW? I don’t even know):

Sext: I am a mushroom in a forest. There are drops of dew all over my tip. Nabokov reaches down a hand to pick me

Sext: A leprechaun sits in a pot o gold. He removes gold pieces 1 by 1 to reveal his nudity. At the end he tears off his beard. It's a woman

Sext: I am a living male turtleneck. You are an art teacher in winter. You put your whole head through me

She also got the attention of comedian Rob Delaney, who has over 400,000 Twitter followers and seems to beg his fans to pay more attention to Tricia on a near-weekly basis. The upshot is, she now has over 10,000 followers. (Not that I’m jealous, nope, not even a little bit.)

This large and devoted fan base came in handy earlier this week – and this is where it starts to get weepy – when Tricia’s husband was diagnosed with a rare eye condition that required elaborate, expensive, and near-immediate surgery – a procedure that wouldn’t be covered by their insurance. As described by her husband, who she charmingly refers to on her blog as “Elegant Choice”:

I began to notice significant deterioration in my vision in both eyes a couple weeks back, so I scheduled an appointment with an ophthalmologist. By the time I went to see him, my right eye registered little more than the shape and color of my surroundings, while my left eye was still functional for basic tasks like driving and reading, though increasingly blurry…

The ophthalmologist found posterior subcapsular cataracts in both eyes … These cataracts can develop in a matter of weeks or months, and they're famous for quickly getting worse, which is why I need surgery as soon as possible.

The good news: My DESCENT INTO BLINDNESS is reversible through a series of four surgeries, two per eye, starting with the right. The surgeon opens the eye, then slips in a little tool to shatter the existing lens and cataract. The shattered lens is sucked out and replaced with an implant called an intraocular lens … If all goes well, I'll see like a 50-year-old with bifocals for the rest of my life …

The bad news …The procedures cost about $5,000 per eye, for a total of $10,000.

Says Tricia:

I posted about it on Twitter because I was basically losing my mind with worry and the outpouring of support was astonishing; people suggested that I do this so I am doing this because they wanted to help, which made me cry.

The “this” she refers to is starting a Kickstarter to raise funds for the surgery. Amazingly, thanks to her extensive network and the power of retweets, she raised the money in about 12 hours.

How awesome is that? The moral of the story is, I guess, BE A CRAZY WEIRDO and people just might love you for it. And people are generous toward the weirdos they love – even if they only know them from the Internet.

More Web Marketing Highlights

Another week, another big-deal Google announcement. This time it’s the Google Knowledge Graph, which will (supposedly) go a big step beyond personalization to deliver exactly what searchers want when they look up ambiguous terms like “Apple.” Lance Ulanoff at Mashable says this will make Google “1,000 times smarter.” Danny Sullivan says it will “massively increase the number of direct answers shown” in the SERPs – which is sure to worry publishers.

Michael Martinez has a lot of complaints about Bing and its marketing plan.

Patrick Altoft notes that in a post-Penguin world, SEOmoz and Majestic link data are no longer 100% reliable for link cleanup purposes.

42 Content Writing and SEO Ranking Tips for Small Business Owners, via the great Tom Demers.

A report from RJ Metrics shows that user engagement on Google+ is pretty piss-poor – for example, “30% of users who make a public post never make a second one.”

Have a good weekend, kiddos.

Why I Bought Facebook IPO Shares Today

2012-05-17T08:40:26-07:00

In a dramatic triumph of hope over experience, I bought into the Facebook IPO hype today.

I just got off the phone with my broker at Morgan Stanley and placed an order for 1000 shares of Facebook. (Morgan Stanley is one of the major underwriters of the Facebook IPO, and if you’re a client of theirs, you can actually place an order to stock at the IPO price before the company goes public tomorrow.)

It’s a pretty big investment for me and might come as a surprise to some, given that I recently published research on Tuesday morning that basically concludes Facebook advertising is awful. The research was picked up early on by Jim Edwards at Business Insider, and John Letzing at the Wall Street Journal, and Laurie Sullivan at MediaPost.

As if to validate the research, a mere 6 hours later, the Wall Street Journal announced that GM was dumping all advertising on Facebook, and our research – seen as a possible explanation for GM’s move – got picked up by Mashable, ABC, CBS, Fox Business, PC Mag, PC World, the Washington Post, USA Today, AFP, CNN, The Register, Fast Company, The Economist, Forbes, etc., etc.

So why is this internet marketer sinking up to $35k+ (depends on price and final allocation) of his own money into what he views as a terrible internet advertising venue? Here’s why:

Facebook brought in $4 billion last year. In spite of our research showing that Facebook ads leave a lot to be desired – dopey ad formats, hopeless targeting options, no ads at all on their mobile platform and questionable ROI – the flip side is they still pulled in $4B last year. Imagine if they actually figured out how to monetize their audience! This may just be a matter of rolling out more engaging ad formats, helping advertisers better target to people who are likely to buy what they’re selling, and offering more support for advertisers.
Or they could just give up entirely on ads. GM is dumping $10M in Facebook advertising, but will still invest millions growing their Facebook fan page, which is currently free for advertisers. (The money is spent mostly on content creation efforts and managing engagement.) The current model is that Facebook is giving that very valuable platform away for free, and charging for ads that nobody clicks on. They may be better off switching that around.
Or they could charge the users. Facebook could charge for premium features, similar to LinkedIn. Heck, why not? If they charged users $3 a month for premium features, they’d be a $33 billion dollar company. Is it possible? Given that I spend about $10 a month buying “bombs” for Draw Something (a popular mobile game), I think that’s definitely possible.
The people at FB are no dummies. Yes, their ads currently suck by any objective measure, but it’s always been a question of will. I think that the pressures of being a publicly traded company will result in them having to focus on revenues, and I’m confident that they will figure it out. Key to fixing their horrible ad relevancy is that they need to support remarketing – the ability for advertisers to tag their website users with a cookie – so that advertisers can continue the conversation, and engage with prospects after they leave their website and then go spend 20 minutes a day on Facebook. Currently, Facebook advertisers can only really market to people who are already their fans. Remarketing would let them market to people who are on the fence, those potential fans who are interested but maybe haven’t converted yet.
1 trillion page views per month. Facebook got an A+ in our study for advertiser reach. Even if they haven’t quite figured out how to monetize their insanely huge and active user base yet, having that captive audience is a powerful thing. It’ll be exciting to see what they do with it.

So yes. I bought into the Facebook IPO hype today – even though a few months ago I was telling everyone at the office not to. But I’m not buying Facebook stock for the company it is; I’m buying it for the company that I, as both an internet marketer and a Facebook user, want it to become.

P.S. Earlier this week I neglected to thank two people who offered their valuable advice to make our infographic better – Gab Goldenberg and Tom Demers. Thanks for your time and insight.

Read the Surprising Follow-up Story: Why I dumped my Facebook IPO Shares at the Open Today

Poll: Do You Use Facebook Advertising?

2012-05-16T07:46:47-07:00

Yesterday the news broke that General Motors (GM) is pulling its Facebook campaign, to the tune of $10 million, claiming the ads don't work. As Pamela Parker at Marketing Land said, "It couldn’t have happened at a worse time for Facebook, which has its initial public offering of stock later this week." According to the Guardian, this move, coming "days before stock market sale" is "seen as an embarrassment by analysts."

The infographic we launched yesterday comparing the value of Facebook advertising to the Google Display Network goes some way toward explaining GM's move. We found that average click-through rates on Facebook were just half the industry average for banner ads, at 0.051%. Average CTR on the Google Display Network, on the other hand, is 0.4% (almost 10 times higher!). According to a study by Periscopix, that increases to 36 times higher CTR if advertisers use remarketing. (Remarketing works, folks!)

We're curious to learn from our readers if the results we found have borne out for you. Please take a moment to respond to this quick poll!

How Much Is Facebook Really Worth? Facebook Advertising vs. Google Display Network [Infographic]

2012-05-15T06:28:19-07:00

Is Facebook really worth +$100 billion?

That's Facebook's market capitalization, based on where the stock is priced for its upcoming IPO – currently scheduled for this Friday, May 18.

I’m no investment analyst, but here at WordStream, we are experts on online advertising. Facebook’s valuation of $100 billion puts it at half the worth of Google. Since both Google and Facebook generate most of their revenue through advertising (advertising accounts for 96% of Google’s revenue vs. 86% of Facebook’s), we can definitely weigh in on the worth question from an advertising perspective.

So we decided to do a comparative analysis of the world’s largest online display advertising networks: Facebook vs. the Google Display Network.

To be perfectly clear, we’re not comparing Google vs. Facebook as companies per se. Google is a search engine, and Facebook is a social network. This is a specific comparison of the display advertising capabilities of Facebook against only the display advertising component of Google's business (The Google Display Network), which makes up roughly 20% of Google’s total advertising business. The Google Display Network allows advertisers to place contextual ads on a network of sites across the Internet (including Google properties like YouTube, Blogger and Gmail as well as over 2 million other participating sites), rather than in the search results.

So here’s what we found. Click the image to enlarge.

Facebook vs. Google Display Advertising: What We Found

For now, we believe that the Google Display Network (GDN) provides advertisers with significantly more value than Facebook advertising in terms of the five key areas outlined below. As yet, Facebook’s advertising platform hasn’t kept pace with the explosive growth of its social network.

We compared Facebook and Google Display Network (GDN) in these five advertising categories:

Advertising Reach: Both companies have astounding reach. The Google Display Network (GDN) has more expansive reach (it has the ability to reach more unique people across the world), but Facebook has more pageviews (fewer people spend more time on Facebook, meaning it can hit the same people on the head more times with ads).
Advertiser Adoption/ Growth Rates: Facebook's advertising growth has been strong – but it hasn’t kept pace with growth in its user base.
Ad Performance: Facebook ads have very low click-through rates (CTR) – at less than 0.05%, just half the industry average for banner ads. Why? It may be Facebook’s relatively slim offerings in terms of ad formats and targeting options, which are the key for driving ad relevancy and CTR. Google has industry-standard analytics tools, whereas Facebook is very thin in terms of reporting. Another possible explanation is intent – people may be less responsive to banner ads within a social network than when using other types of websites. Click through Rates on Google Display Network were nearly 10x higher than Facebook Advertising.
Ad Targeting Options: Facebook doesn’t offer mobile advertising (a huge hole, especially with mobile use growing so fast), retargeting (or remarketing), advertising on partner sites, or keyword-based contextual targeting options for display ads. Google Display Network offers all of these.
Ad Formats: Facebook has just two options: the standard Facebook ad (text plus an image) and a relatively new, sponsored stories. This is paltry compared to Google’s display network ad format options: text ads, image ads, flash-based image ads, in-video ads, as well as ads for mobile web and mobile games.

From an advertiser’s perspective, Facebook currently falls short in all five areas when compared to the Google Display Network.

To put it another way, Facebook (currently valued at half as much of Google's entire business) offers advertisers less advertising value than what’s offered in the Google Display Network, which makes up just a quarter of Google’s total business, makes 3x more revenue than Facebook and is growing faster, too.

Will Facebook Live Up to its Promise?

Now, to be sure, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was the Google Display Network – it was originally called the Google Content Network and was for a long time considered painfully inferior to the Search Network by most AdWords advertisers. But the GDN has come a long way.

Given its impressive global reach, Facebook has the potential to be as much of an advertising behemoth as Google. But the question remains – does Mr. Zuckerberg even want Facebook to be an advertising-based company? In his 2,500+ word letter to shareholders, he only mentioned advertising once. He’s been quoted as saying:

Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected ... Simply put: we don't build services to make money; we make money to build better services.

I think Mr. Zuckerberg is in denial here – he wants to be this cool company that’s all about "connecting people," but 85% of his revenue is driven from internet advertising. Advertising is his business model. The sooner he figures this out, the higher the chances that Facebook is actually worth +$100 billion.

For Facebook to prove its worth to shareholders, they need to change this nearly hostile attitude toward advertising. Mark Zuckerberg has said that he doesn’t want advertising to "ruin Facebook" – but it really doesn’t have to. They need to embrace advertising’s potential to build value for both advertisers and end users. This means helping businesses connect to the most relevant audience possible, deliver their message in more engaging ways, and manage and report on their advertisements more easily and completely.

Only then will Facebook be as much as it's believed to be worth – we’re easily looking at 5+ years of work here, based on how long it took Google to get where they are today.

Will Facebook be able to deliver?

The New AdWords Rotation Settings: More Information from Google

2012-05-14T06:44:53-07:00

On the heels of Google’s sunsetting of ad rotation in AdWords I had some additional questions about how, exactly, the “new ad rotation” would work, so I connected with our Google AdWords rep to get answers to my questions.

Here’s what Google had to say about the change:

AdWords currently offers three ad rotation settings: optimize for clicks, optimize for conversions, and rotate evenly. Using the “rotate” setting for ad rotation is helpful for testing new creatives, but when run indefinitely can inhibit advertiser performance and deliver less relevant ads to our users.

Starting next week, the “rotate” setting for ad rotation will change. Instead of rotating creatives for an indefinite period of time, this setting will only rotate for a period of 30 days. After that, the setting will then optimize to show the ads expected to generate the most clicks. Every time a creative is enabled or edited, the ads in that ad group will rotate more evenly for a new period of 30 days.

My questions were mainly around how this 30-day period of time would actually be implemented, and specifically I wanted to better understand how the setting worked so that I could understand how to create good split tests moving forward. I thought other advertisers might find the answers to my questions useful, so here’s the back-and-forth from that email exchange:

My Initial Email

I saw the way ad text rotation is being handled is changing and had a couple quick questions:

If I set an ad campaign live and then pause it after say 10 days, then unpause the ad a month later, does it still have 20 days left of "ad campaign" or will it switch right to optimize for CTR?
If I run an ad on rotate for 30 days then pause it and create an identical ad, I'm assuming that doesn't impact how the other ads in the ad group are treated? In other words, will the ads rotate for 30 days from when the ads within a given ad group are created, or will they run for 30 days from when the campaign is created/set live? And how do new ads being incorporated into an ad group with this setting impact how long the ads run on rotate, if at all?

The Response from an AdWords Representative

It allocates for 30 days of run time, which means it still requires the remaining 20 days.
The ads will rotate for 30 days for when they run for 30 days (similar to the above question). New ads are still incorporated into rotation (this hasn't changed), but it will prioritize certain ads based on CTR.

A follow-up from me

So just to make sure I'm understanding correctly here:

If I have ads A, B and C and they run for 30 days, then I pause A and create ad D, the ads may run on rotate for 30 days but if B or C has an exceptional CTR it may actually get shown more frequently. And the same would be true if there were only two ads (i.e. if ads A and B were running for 30 days, I paused A and created a single new ad, it may not rotate evenly against B for a full 30 days if B had an exceptional CTR).

Is that correct?

The final response from Google

Yep, that's correct. The definition for "exceptional CTR" is also not a set amount, but more along the lines of being significantly higher than whatever CTR exists for other ads.

In conclusion…

So in setting up ad tests, it’s important to note that Google is effectively “reserving the right” to promote a winner based on exceptional click-through rate (in other words: creating copies of an existing ad and introducing a new ad to the auction isn’t a workaround for extending the length of a test), and if you’re setting up an ad and then you pause it, it requires the full 30 days active to move from rotate to optimize for CTR.

About the Author

Tom Demers is co-founder and managing partner at Measured SEM, a boutique search marketing agency offering search consulting services including pay-per-click account management, comprehensive SEO site audits, content marketing strategies and services, and a variety of link building packages such as guest posts and blogging strategy.

You can learn more about how Measured SEM can help, get in touch with Tom directly via email at tom at measuredsem.com, or by following him on Twitter.

Linkbait Case Study: Why Nate St. Pierre Claimed Abraham Lincoln Invented Facebook

2012-05-11T06:48:00-07:00

Did y’all hear about Abraham Lincoln inventing the internet (or something like that)? It was the meme of the week, an owl in a box for our time – Nate St. Pierre, a blogger and consultant, told the (long-winded) story of his recent trip to Springfield, Illinois, and how he discovered a patent application filed by Abraham Lincoln in 1845 – for a product that looks and sounds a lot like an early version of Facebook:

Lincoln was requesting a patent for “The Gazette,” a system to “keep People aware of Others in the Town.” He laid out a plan where every town would have its own Gazette, named after the town itself. He listed the Springfield Gazette as his Visual Appendix, an example of the system he was talking about. Lincoln was proposing that each town build a centrally located collection of documents where “every Man may have his own page, where he might discuss his Family, his Work, and his Various Endeavors.”

He went on to propose that “each Man may decide if he shall make his page Available to the entire Town, or only to those with whom he has established Family or Friendship.” Evidently there was to be someone overseeing this collection of documents, and he would somehow know which pages anyone could look at, and which ones only certain people could see (it wasn’t quite clear in the application). Lincoln stated that these documents could be updated “at any time deemed Fit or Necessary,” so that anyone in town could know what was going on in their friends’ lives “without being Present in Body.”

That was it. Pretty much just a simple one-page overview of how his system would work. After we read it, we both sat there quiet for a long time. It was so obvious what this was, guys.

A patent request for Facebook, filed by Abraham Lincoln in 1845.

He even provided photographic evidence of Lincoln’s prototype, the Springfield Gazette.

Sounds great, if broadly implausible. But it was implausible for a reason – Nate St. Pierre made it up. Jason Kottke writes:

Update: Ok, I'm willing to call hoax on this one based on two things. 1) The first non-engraved photograph reproduced in a newspaper was in 1880, 35 years after the Springfield Gazette was alledgedly produced. 2) The Library of Congress says that the photograph pictured in the Gazette was taken in 1846 or 1847, a year or two after the publication date. That and the low-res "I couldn't take proper photos of them" images pretty much convinces me.

Update: And the proof...the original Springfield Gazette sans Lincoln. (via @zempf)

Now we all get to shame Nate St. Pierre, right? Not so fast – he’s already published a (long-winded) explanation of why he pulled this hoax on America. Here are his top four reasons “in order of importance”:

I wanted to do something fun that would make me (and others) laugh
I was tired of all the same old boring blog posts rolling past me that day
I was officially launching my consulting services the next day, so I wanted a bigger audience
I wanted to illustrate one of the drawbacks to our “first and fastest” news aggregation and reporting mentality, especially online

Do I buy his ordering of these reasons? Not really – I’m pretty sure #3 was overwhelmingly the driving motivation. This is classic linkbait! He even pulls the double-classic follow-up linkbait move (hey, we’re not above it).

He claims that all he did to get the ball rolling was “put out one tweet, facebook, etc.” and “a dozen or so DMs to friends” – I don’t really buy this either; I think he probably worked harder than that to make sure this thing would go viral. He also claims he didn’t expect it to blow up as huge as it did, but he’s certainly not humble about the success of his scheme:

Between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, I did an interview and a podcast with CNN, a phone interview with The Atlantic, and another one with the Washington Post….

Pretty much the whole internet picked this thing up and ran with it … In addition to social media and bloggers, it ran as fact on a lot of big-name sites and news aggregators. That’s the thing that surprised me the most. I knew it would happen, but I thought only one or two would run it without fact checking, and the rest would shout it down. But only one or two actually caught the joke, and the rest just kept promoting it! It was crazytown for a good long while … In terms of numbers, it’s pretty staggering.

At the end of this post, he writes:

The Point

Amazing content sells.
You can create it.
I can help.

It was all a sales pitch, guys!

Pretty astounding results for a linkbait post, but is it really – as he implies – that easily recreatable? Whenever we think we’ve figured out what makes a piece of content go viral, we try it again and get disappointing results. There’s one element of a successful meme that you can’t reliably generate, and that’s luck. What’s more, hoaxes are not a great business model. Nate St. Pierre certainly got a lot of attention and links this week, but he sacrificed trust to do so, and I’m willing to bet he also pissed a lot of people off. Will the benefits outweigh the costs? I guess he’ll find out!

More Web Marketing Highlights

Danny Sullivan speaks with Google about the Penguin update, two weeks later. Matt Cutts deems the algorithm change a success. He also addresses negative SEO, calling it “rare and hard.”

Aaron Wall, however, likens anyone who thinks negative SEO can’t harm them to “Stuporman” saying “Bullets can’t hurt ME!”

SEOmoz published a couple of good posts about linkbuilding this week: a Noob’s Guide to Link Building and some tips on creative link building for e-commerce sites.

Frank Reed postulates that Facebook will be a victim of the move to mobile, and wonders if their inability to monetize mobile could even leave a hole open for Google+ to succeed.

An evidently brilliant 13-year-old named Mallory Kievman has invented a new cure for hiccups.

Have a great weekend, all.

5 Quick Tips to Increase Referral Traffic

2012-05-09T07:05:07-07:00

Generally speaking there are three kinds of website traffic: direct traffic, search engine traffic, and referral traffic. All are valuable and serve different purposes, but this post focuses on the third kind, referral traffic.

Referral traffic is valuable in online marketing because it sends interested readers and qualified potential customers to your site from new domains. It also provides added SEO benefits, since by definition referral traffic is driven either by an inbound link or social activity, both of which send positive signals to the search engines about your site.

Need some of that sweet ol’ referral traffic? We’ve got you covered with five simple referral traffic strategies to help.

Guest Posts

Guest posts are a great way to build up referral traffic. Especially in light of the Penguin update, it’s best to focus your guest posting efforts on sites that are related to your business, which means your content will be in front of a relevant audience providing top-notch referral traffic. If you can set up a regular guest posting schedule, all the better, because that allows you to keep your referral traffic from those sources steady over time.

The first step in guest posting is getting a feel for the blogs you’d like to post on: Are the blog posts professional and formal or more relaxed and laid-back? Is their reader base advanced or beginner? Many blogs have strict guidelines for guest posts with specific word counts and a certain number of links you are allowed to embed, so always read the guidelines first and keep those restrictions in mind while writing.

Pinterest has been all the rage lately and it’s no surprise why – Shareholic recently released a new study showing that Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Twitter. Heck, Pinterest beats Google Plus, LinkedIn and YouTube combined for referral traffic.

If you’re not pinning yet, you better get to it! Check out our new Pinterest Guide for Marketers to get started.

Press Releases

Press releases are a quick and easy way to get a wave of fresh referral traffic. It’s a great idea to do a press release for an event you’ll be hosting or to announce milestones like executive changes, earnings releases, acquisitions, and product launches. But to be honest, if you are paying for a press release, you can write about pretty much anything and pretend it’s newsworthy. Some businesses even send out press releases whenever they get a new client.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking sites, or sites that allow you to bookmark and tag various online resources, are another easy fix for your referral traffic cravings. We get a ton of referral traffic from Stumble Upon, which lets you stumble about the internet like a drunken college student out at 2am on a Friday night. Stumble Upon allows visitors to serendipitously discover your awesome content and share it easily with others.

Reddit is another great social bookmarking site ideal for sharing compelling content. With over 2 billion page views a month, Reddit has incredible social bookmarking potential, but marketers should be warned that only truly unique, interesting content will be welcomed. Posting on Reddit is playing with fire—submit spammy or overtly sales-focused content and your business could get berated by this extremely tech-savvy community.

If you have content you believe the Reddit community (majority is young, geeky, liberal, and internet-obsessed) would enjoy, you could reap tremendous benefits and earn valuable referral traffic. I’d recommend trying funny cat videos—works every time.

Social Networks: Facebook, Linked In, and Google+

Social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ are also natural contenders for bringing in referral traffic. Just remember your platform—Facebook and Google+ tend to promote a more casual, friendly atmosphere while LinkedIn is more professional.

Share your latest blog posts, events, or even favorite blog comments. It’s fine to share a link to a page that simply needs a bump in traffic now and again, but be aware these attempts can sometimes appear spammy – your followers’ tolerance may vary.

Do you have any additional tips for building up referral traffic? We’d love to hear them!

Does Remarketing Make You a Creepy Stalker?

2012-05-08T06:33:11-07:00

Remarketing is an interesting online advertising technique that involves tracking and displaying ads to users after they have left your site.

This can be an effective way to get more conversions out of your web visitors – but if you go too far, it can also be incredibly creepy.

Part of why remarketing is successful is that many people don’t really know what it is. The average internet user is completely unaware that they are being digitally stalked across the web-a-verse.

Did They Forget About You or Do They Just Not Like You?

In a video advocating remarketing and explaining how it works, Google claims that remarketing is useful because people get distracted easily (what do you expect with twenty open tabs?) and when something unexpected comes up, they might leave your site and forget to return later.

And yes, that is possible ... but it’s also possible (and probably more likely) that they left your site because they just didn’t like or want what you were offering. In which case continuing to shove your ads in front of them seems obnoxious. As Stephanie Tanner from Full House would say, “How Rude!”

Remarketing thrives off the general idea that the more present a brand is across different parts of the web, the more trustworthy that brand must be. As a brand, you certainly gain street cred as more people see your ad. However, people are under the assumption that they just happen to be seeing your ad across the web, not knowing that you are, in reality, digitally stalking them like the stealthy cougar that you are.

Most users don’t realize you are actually paying to extend your engagement with them; they simply see your ads everywhere and assume you must be a popular and therefore trusted brand, which is a bit misleading.

People are hardwired with the idea that the more they see your advertisement, the more your value or worth must be. In the physical, off-line world, seeing a company’s ad plastered everywhere really just means they have heaps of money, and they probably wouldn’t have such endless piles of the green stuff if they weren’t doing something right, so that connection between brand exposure and reliability makes sense.

Web users are still thinking with that mindset, so seeing your ads all over the web leads them to believe that your company is well known and successful. The problem is that with remarketing, that link between number of ads and trust is no longer valid—you don’t have advertisements all over the internet, you’re just a creepy stalker!

Let's Remarket Role-Play for a Moment

The absurdity of remarketing is hilarious when you apply ad retargeting to a real-life scenario:

Imagine that you walk down to the local bakery in town for a donut, but you never end up purchasing it...

1. In one scenario, you get a phone call and rush outside to take the call and not disrupt other pastry-eaters (you are very considerate). Finished with your call, you start to walk away when the store owner pops his head out of the shop. “Hey friend, didn’t you want a donut?” asks the hefty baker with a jolly smile. “Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me!” you say, and then enter the bakery, get your snack, and everyone is happy thanks to remarketing.

2. In the other scenario, you leave the bakery because the donuts look old and nasty, or you remember that you’re trying to go on a diet for your upcoming college reunion. Except now when you leave the bakery and the baker is peeping around corners and following you down the street, you are getting panicky. You walk quicker, and just when you turn the corner, there he is, shoving bread in your face. “Buy it! You know you want to!” screams the maniacal baker. That’s harassment. And in a way, that’s remarketing.

The kind of behavior that you’d wind up in jail for in the off-line world translates to a successful marketing tactic in the online world.

Before We Gang Up on Remarketing…

In defense of remarketing, most forms of advertising are a bit creepy to begin with. Remember the whole lets-equate-everything-to-sex advertising phase? As consumers we’ve become too meta to fall victim to that tactic quite so easily, but it still occurs.

There’s also the strategy of playing refreshing liquids-pouring-over-ice sounds as you sit in a cramped, humid, and sweat-filled Ryanair plane, offering desperate flyers mini cans of Coke at $6 a pop (experienced firsthand naturally). In a way, the ethical obstacle course is something advertisers must always struggle to maneuver through. It’s all part of the advertising game.

Remarketing Works! And When it Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix it

The truth is, when it comes down to it, remarketing works. Loads of advertisers have discovered that people respond positively to remarketing. Honestly, we use remarketing and it’s performed pretty well for us.

Remarketing also gives you a chance to better match a visitor’s specific need. Once you know someone has visited your bikini swimwear page, you can present them with an ad tailored to this need, coupled with some additional incentive that might change their mind, like a “20% off” offer. And that does seem like a reasonable use, because your visitor might reconsider buying from you once they see an offer like that or for free shipping, etc.

What do you guys think? Is remarketing a valid web advertising technique or just plain creepy? Any words in defense or against remarketing?

4 Tools for Pinterest Analytics and Monitoring

2012-05-07T05:37:28-07:00

I have to assume that by now you know what Pinterest is. If you don't, I have only one question for you: How long have you been living under that giant rock? Because Pinterest is one of the fastest growing sites and trends on the web, with people going crazy over it.

Where once the major addiction was Twitter and Facebook, now there are users constantly pinning images to their Pinterest board and sharing pictures with friends.

Pinterest has been announced as the #1 traffic referral for many image-friendly sites. While being an effective buzz marketing tool, it's yet that effectively tracked.

1. Google Reader

More than for just subscribing to blogs and site updates, Google Reader can also be used to monitor your reputation and social media progress. All you have to do is import Pinterest "source" page for your site into it and start accumulating data.

Since Pinterest doesn't have a traditional feed system, it may be not that easy to subscribe to it. But you can create an RSS for any website, Pinterest included, through Feed43. It is free and doesn't require a registration. Here's a detailed instruction on how to feed your Pinterest "source" page using Feed RSS.

Then let it gather in Google Reader to check over whenever you need to. This will give you a good way to track what is being pinned from your site and when:

Use Google Reader's search option to filter your site pins by keywords.
Use Google Reader's "Trends" option to track when is the highest "pin-friendly" time for your site.

2. Cyfe

This program doesn't just cover single site analytics. It monitors all of your business and social media profiles for data, and puts them all in one place for real-time reports. They have a very basic version for free that has five widgets and unlimited dashboards. From there, you get more features, such as users, real-time sharing and custom branding for $9, $29 and $49 per month.

The free option is a good way to go if you want to try it out and see if you like it before committing to spending any money. It is one of the few dashboards that have been created with Pinterest as a monitoring option, but it has a number of others like Pingdom, Constant Contact, SalesForce, Add This and dozens of others.

Two ways to monitor your Pinterest activity using Cyfe:

Add "Pinterest" widget to track your pins, likes and following numbers.
Create an RSS feed of the Pinterest "source" URL (see the above section for instructions) and feed it into Cyfe.

3. Google Analytics

An obvious tool that many use for their site referral monitoring is Google Analytics. But it might not have occurred to you to put it to use as a social media monitor.

Here are detailed instructions on how to set Google Analytics to track your website referrals from Pinterest.

4. Pinerly

Pinerly is your Pinterest account analytics tool.

This dashboard is specifically designed for Pinterest. It allows you to follow and unfollow pinners, schedule pins on your own board, find popular pins and get stats on what is being pinned right now, or involving you and your brand.

Conclusion

Pinterest is becoming an ever more important part of social media marketing. If you have thought of using it, these tools will allow you to monitor your progress and get real data to help you along the way.

This is a guest post by Ann Smarty, the pro blogger and self-funded entrepreneur running My Blog Guest, the free platform for guest bloggers. Check out our link tracking tool as well.

Ch-Ch-Changes! How to Deal with Recent Flux in Google Rankings, AdWords Settings

2012-05-04T06:37:56-07:00

Color me not surprised at all: I get back from vacation to find that Google has announced yet another change that seems designed to increase profits in Mountain View, not improve results for advertisers.

Ad Rotation Wears Out its Welcome

On Tuesday, Google announced that the ad rotation setting will only be available for 30 days. As Larry wrote earlier this week:

Using the "rotate" setting for Ad Rotation is helpful for A/B testing of ads – especially because the automated "optimize for clicks" and "optimize for conversions" ad delivery options have a tendency to declare a winner rather early, particularly for small and medium sized advertisers … As usual, Google claims that the change is to improve the system for both advertisers and users.

Once again it seems that Google is trying to enforce a one-size-fits-all approach to AdWords accounts. As Kristin Pribble commented on Larry’s post (emphases mine):

This will make it even more difficult to conduct an accurate A/B test - especially for small to medium sized accounts. There are adgroups that don't have enough data after 30 days to declare a winning ad text. It's even more frustrating that Google isn't giving advertisers a choice to decide what works best for their account.

Alan Mitchell has outlined exactly how these changes will benefit Google at the expense of advertisers in a post on Search Engine People. True PPC nerds will want to check out all the graph porn and follow the exact calculations, but here’s a high-level overview of what Alan’s post communicates:

There’s a point after which clicks cost you more than you make (i.e., where cost per click, or CPC, exceeds revenue per click, or RPC)
Profits (for the advertiser) are maximized where the marginal CPC meets the marginal RPC
Google’s “improvement” to exact and phrase match means that revenue per click becomes an average of multiple keywords (close variants, plurals and so forth), and some of those keywords (which are outside your control) might have different levels of advertiser competition and conversion rate
This change tends to reduce profits for the advertiser, even at the same click volume, while increasing Google’s profits from those clicks: “Google has essentially increased the average CPC, without increasing the average CPC. Very clever.”

In sum (emphases mine):

By rolling out their 'improvements' to exact and phrase match, Google has essentially removed the opportunity for PPC advertisers to take advantages of differences in CPCs caused by varying levels of competition of closely related keywords, and removed the opportunity for PPC advertisers to take advantage of differences in revenue caused by varying conversion rates of closely related keywords.

Instead of being able to set higher bids for high-performing variants, and lower bids for poor-performing variants, with this new feature PPC advertisers can now only set one bid for the entire group of keyword variants. The opportunity to take advantage of differences between close variants is now removed, and Google's revenue increases as a result.

Kind of a dick move, Google.

Luckily, you can opt out of these changes, though they will become the new default. For now, you can keep running your exact and phrase-match keywords the way you were running them before, if you’re aware of the changes and know to alter your settings.

For more on this change, see Martin Roettgerding’s tips on predicting the impact of “exactish match” using your search query report.

Penguin Is the New Panda

The algorithm change that SEOs internally dubbed the “OOPS” update (for over-optimization penalty) has been given an official name, which seems designed to confuse everyone: the Penguin update. The two are related – both Penguin and Panda, aside from being adorable zoo animals, are designed to reduce spam and other low-quality sites in the SERPs.

Has your site been affected by the Penguin update? Are you worried that it might be in the future? Here’s more information on preparing and/or recovering from Penguin:

Penguins, Pandas, and Panic at the Zoo – Dr. Pete reviews the changes, the impact, what to do and what not to do in the wake of the update.

Penguin 1.0 Initial Findings – Unnatural Inbound Links Heavily Targeted, Other Webspam Tactics Await Penalty? – Glenn Gabe takes a look at some of the tactics that seem to have been penalized by Penguin and makes some recommendations and closing points. (Note: You can’t file a request to have your site reconsidered. If your rankings have dropped, you’ve been penalized algorithmically, not manually.)

Google Penguin Update Recovery Tips & Advice – Danny Sullivan goes over some of the main talking points and questions whether this update has helped or hurt searchers and small businesses – more on that here: “Did Penguin Make Google’s Search Results Better Or Worse?”

The Google Penguin Update: Over-Optimization, Webspam, & High Quality Empty Content Pages – Aaron Wall points out that this update has seemingly affected a huge number of sites, given the number of complaints and the petition to stop it. He also calls attention to some of the weirder results of the change, such as Viagra.com no longer ranking for its branded search, and an empty blogspot site coming up #1 for “make money online.”

Penguin Pain and Forward Planning – Luke Masters at Distilled explains how to assess the damage to your own site and lists some key points to check, especially surrounding links (link velocity, quality of linking sites, etc.).

Did your rankings and/or traffic drop as a result of the Penguin? Have you noticed any funny business in the SERPs?

More Web Marketing Highlights

I saw a few interesting posts this week about the effects of social activity on search results, including:

AJ Kohn on “Social Echo,” or the aftereffects of social sharing: “In truth, it’s not about those specific Tweets, Shares, +1s and Likes. It’s the echo of those events that is meaningful. It’s the fact that someone sees that Tweet, goes and reads your content, finds it valuable and then decides to save, comment, share or link to it.”

Bill Slawski on PostRank, which Google acquired last year as part of its strategy to “move towards looking at more social signals for the potential ranking of content shared by others.”

Wil Wheaton is pissed that Google is forcing YouTube viewers to G+ videos instead of just giving them the thumbs up or down that was native to YouTube for years. (It looks like it was a test versus a permanent change.)

Have a good weekend, folks.

Don't Get Deleted: Applying SEO Lessons to Email

2012-05-02T09:08:07-07:00

Across the planet, over 300 billion emails are sent every day. That's over 2.8 million emails every second, and 90 trillion over the course of a year. No wonder the U.S. Postal Service can't keep up with the competition.

And neither can we. Corporate workers send and receive an average of 225 messages per day. If we gave each email coming through our inbox our full attention, we'd be hard-pressed to get any other work done.

Most of us have adapted to the deluge with a "first cut" strategy. Before even opening an email, we glance at the sender and subject line and determine if it's worthy of our time. If it's a sender that often sends us marketing material we haven't found especially useful, it becomes instinctual to click delete before ever looking at these messages.

Although our personal process of determining a message's value isn't nearly as complicated as Google's search result algorithms, the same principles apply. Your key words, title tag, and links within your message can all mean the difference between being read and being deleted, even if you make it past an email program's automatic spam blocker.

Whether you're sending out a marketing email or just reaching out with an important inquiry, your effort is wasted if the recipient never even reads your message. To avoid being hit with an impulsive delete, remember these strategies.

Perfect Your Subject Line

If you don't get your email subject line right, it's the only thing your recipient will ever see. Of course, if you're emailing a colleague, a title like 'Quick question about Friday's meeting' will suffice.

We're talking specifically here about emails to people that you don't personally know and do not already have a working email relationship with.

Think about what your message is saying. Perhaps you work for a plumbing supply company, and you're reaching out to regional companies to encourage them to upgrade to new water-saving fixtures in their bathrooms.

First of all, don't try to sell anything in the subject line. Words like "Buy" or "Deal" in the email header will immediately prompt resistance (see Ryan Healy's recent post on attention to detail). We're so accustomed to being marketed to that when we have the power to shut it off, like in email, we take advantage.

If you were looking for your own product online, what would you search for? Most likely, you'd key in words like "environmental," "water saving," and "faucet."

Most likely, a straightforward subject line that reads "Local, eco-friendly water fixtures" will get more reads than one that says "Great deal on plumbing supplies."

Personalize Your Message

Let's assume you've gotten past the "click before reading" cut. Perhaps your recipient is even using a program like Outlook, Thunderbird, or Apple Mail, where messages appear without having to individually click to open.

Address your recipient by name. If you're sending a mass-produced, HTML-style email, the program will likely give you this option when you're adding contacts, but the downside is that most intelligent recipients will recognize this as an automatic feature.

If you're actually writing an email (and perhaps pasting it into messages to a handful of recipients), don't skip the quick personalization. A "Hi" or "Hey there" won't grab someone's attention nearly as well as "Hi Adam."

Likewise, close your email in the same way (even if the content is cut –and-pasted in between). Something like "Thanks for considering this, Adam, and don't hesitate to call me any time if I can answer any questions," will work wonders. Adam may even feel guilty if he doesn't reply.

Apply Keywords Throughout Your Message

Many people have elaborate folder systems set up to sort their email. If you get filed away in a "read later" folder, at least make your message easy to find. Going back to our plumbing analogy, throw those "water saving" and "eco-friendly" keywords wherever they'll fit, and if your recipient goes looking for you, you'll pop back to the top.

Even more important, these keywords are the crux of what you're selling. Using them strategically reinforces your message. (Here's more on keyword research for email marketing.)

Apply the Golden Rule

Spam constitutes 81 percent of email traffic, meaning over four out of five messages sent are generally unwanted. Even emails between colleagues can bog down our workflow, tossing tasks back-and-forth for feedback instead of actually taking action.

Some companies are responding to this by phasing out email entirely. It's not unlikely that "conversation flow" online dialogue will largely replace traditional email in the near future.

With this in mind, think about your own email habits. Check your inbox in the morning, and make a quick note of the emails you opened and those you deleted. Of the messages from recipients you don't regularly correspond with, what was it about their email that led you to read it?

Follow your own intuition. Only send emails that you would read yourself, and you'll find that your messages receive far more replies than when you haphazardly send out marketing email.

This is a guest post by Christopher Wallace, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Amsterdam Printing, has more than 20 years experience in sales and marketing. At Amsterdam Printing, a leading provider of logo pens and other promotional items such as imprinted apparel and customized calendars, Christopher is focused on providing quality marketing materials to small, mid-size and large businesses. He regularly contributes to Promo & Marketing Wall blog.

RIP Ad Rotation in AdWords

2012-05-01T08:13:52-07:00

Ad text testing and optimization constitute a key element of PPC optimization and as such, they're a big part of the 20-Minute PPC Work Week, our guided workflow for AdWords advertisers.

AdWords currently offers three ad delivery methods – the ad rotation settings are illustrated here:

Optimize For Clicks - AdWords automatically picks the ad that appears to be generating the most clicks
Optimize For Conversions - AdWords automatically picks the ad that appears to be generating the most conversions
Rotate Ads Evenly - AdWords will distribute your ad impressions equally among the ads in your Ad Group

Ad Rotation to be Discontinued in AdWords

Starting next week, the "rotate" setting for ad rotation will be discontinued. Instead of rotating creatives equally, this setting will only rotate for a period of 30 days. After that, the setting will then revert to the "optimize for clicks" setting. Every time creative is enabled or edited, the ads in that ad group will rotate more evenly for a new period of 30 days.

Read our Article: Rotating Ads vs. Optimizing Ads: Which Is Better?

As usual, Google claims that the change is to improve the system for both advertisers and users - in their words: "because the Ad Rotation when run indefinitely can inhibit advertiser performance and deliver less relevant ads to our users" and that "This change will enable us to provide users with the most relevant ad experience and should help advertisers improve the performance of their AdWords accounts."

(... Or maybe it has to do with increasing Google Revenues?)

This change will forced on all AdWords advertisers in the next week. At that time, ad groups with ads that haven't been added or modified in the past thirty days will be changed to the new ad rotation behavior. Otherwise, this change will begin 30 days after your last creative was enabled or edited.

Do you use the "Rotate" option for ad delivery in AdWords?

What do you think of Google's decision to (practically) eliminate Ad Rotation in AdWords? Do you agree with the way AdWords roll out these changes? Let me know in the comments fields below.

Pinterest Marketing Guide: How to Use Pinterest to Boost Your Brand

2012-05-01T06:18:17-07:00

The potential marketing advantages of Pinterest have been well documented recently, as the fledgling social sharing site boosts traffic and sales for niche retailers like Etsy.

Regardless of your personal feelings for Pinterest (huge time waster or glorious godsend?), it’s impossible to deny the marketing opportunities ripe for the picking! Read on to find out why.

Why Developing a Pinterest Marketing Plan is Worth Your Time

Pinterest has shown remarkable marketing potential as some sites begin to receive more referral traffic from Pinterest than social media heavyweight Twitter.

Some quick Pinterest marketing statistics and facts as we get started:

Pinterest is dominated by women, with 90% of users being female
21% of users have purchased something they found on a Pinboard
The most popular categories are Home (17%), Arts & Crafts (12%), Style/Fashion (12%), and Food (10%)

How Can Pinterest Work for Marketing?

The most obvious industry to benefit from using Pinterest is retail—show all the people pretty things they (should) want! Pinterest has driven impressive spikes in traffic for online retailers like Etsy, Martha Stewart Home, and Anthropologie, specializing in stylish goods.

Pinterest can work wonders for businesses outside of retail as well. The key is in focusing on images that promote the ideal end result of using your business’s product or service. If you sell lawn care services, seeds, or gardening supplies, pin images of lush flower gardens, ripe tree-bearing fruit, and other images of the Eden-like utopia customers could experience if only they would get your help. You’re selling the dream!

When using Pinterest as a marketing tool, the goal should be to use images to spark the viewer’s thought dialogue. You want viewers to think “How do I get there? How can I make that? How can my kitchen look that nice?” and then proceed to show them how to transform that visual image into a personal reality.

Pinterest Marketing Strategy: Advantages of Posting in the Craft & DIY Section

The problem with some “selling the dream” Pinterest pictures is that a single image can speak to a variety of different dreams. For example, I was scanning Pinterest the other day and saw a spectacular image of a boat. Actually, it was this image:

Now someone might be pinning this image in hopes that seeing it will activate the urge deep within my soul to buy a sailboat. That probably is true for many people, but when I see this image, I think instead of sea-faring adventures and exciting vacations rather than purchasing a boat.

Images may be worth a thousand words, but you don’t have control over those words, unlike with other areas of online marketing, such as PPC, where you are selecting literal key words to present to searchers.

You also lose control to some degree about where Pinners go after seeing your image. Some may follow the original link and see where the image came from. Others may just see a bed of flowers and then start Googling “flower seeds.”

You can scroll down below the image to learn about the picture’s journey across Pinterest.

Pinterest Marketing Ideas: Creating Tutorial How-To Images

This problem about user intent doesn’t exist when it comes to posting in the DIY Craft section of Pinterest because you have more detail about what a Pinner is doing there – they are specifically trying to make something.

The danger is that you might be dealing with a bunch of cheapos who would rather spend hours tying together old ties to make a cloth necklace than buy yours. Or, hopefully, you are encountering an audience that loves to create and experiment, with an undying adventurous spirit (as a crafter myself, I like to say I’m in the latter category, but most likely it’s a mix of both). If you can provide these crafty spirits with the tools and materials they need to create unique works of art, they will certainly buy.

To grab a hold of this audience, you’ll want to post an instructional how-to image. Remember, YouTube tutorial videos are immensely successful, and the same logic passes over to Pinterest as well.

Imagine you are a business that primarily sells handmade jewelry, but you also sell jewelry making supplies. You might try creating a tutorial image that shows viewers how to make a beaded bracelet.

You’ll want to make a detailed step-by-step guide with clear, bright, attractive images. The folks over at SEOMoz have dubbed these image-oriented tutorials “instructographics,” existing as a species of instructional infographics.

Creating a thorough tutorial is ideal because it allows you to use a longer image, which takes up more prime Pinterest real-estate. Here is a perfect example:

At the end of the image, remind viewers they can get supplies from the original website link. It’s also a good idea to include a logo or short web address on the image in case folks are unable to locate the original URL.

Once Pinners click that link, they’ll be taken to your site. It’s crucial at this point to remember the importance of relevancy. When conducting PPC campaigns, relevancy between keywords and landing pages is essential because you want people who click on your advertisement to be taken exactly to what your text ad promotes. With Pinterest, relevancy is still paramount, but your image becomes your keyword.

With the example image we are using above, you would want to take viewers to a page where you sell jewelry making supplies – specifically the supplies required to make the image they saw on Pinterest. Also post the same image on your landing page that you posted on Pinterest to reassure users that they are in the correct location.

If you sell jewelry, this is also a great chance to showcase other bracelets and necklaces you offer (maybe ones more complicated that aren’t quite so easy to replicate). Just make sure any offers you add don’t interfere with the reason why Pinners are at your site, which is to purchase those jewelry making supplies.

Using Pinterest to Develop Business Identity

Pinterest is also a great tool for building your brand identity. Some businesses might already know the personality they want associated with their company, in which case you can browse through Pinterest and ask yourself, “does this image connect with the lifestyle we are trying to promote?” If so, pin away!

If you’re a small, growing business, take some time to think about your ideal clientele and what personality traits would appeal or match with them. If you sell rafting trips, then you will want to pin all sorts of outdoor activities and photos of rugged adventures. Consider what would appeal to your audience, and reflect those wants.

Pinterest Marketing Tools and Articles

I could spend more time talking about other aspects of Pinterest, but those areas have already been covered by some great existing articles. If you’re looking to learn more about the latest social media mongrel, check out:

Introductory Guide to Pinterest—Mostly basic information, addressing Pinterest marketing tips about how to use hashtags, dollar signs, etc.

7 Useful Pinterest Tools — Includes Pinterest marketing tools for measuring Pinfluence and tracking Pinterest analytics.

5 Pinterest Marketing Campaigns – Some cool examples of creative marketing campaigns using Pinterest. Some ideas include Pinboard manipulation, contests, and Pinterest lotteries.

SEO Optimizing for Pinterest— KissMetrics presents some compelling evidence for Pinterest’s growing influence, and gives an overview on how to SEO optimize for Pinterest.

SEO Strategies for Pinterest – Search Engine Journal offers some in-depth link building strategies for those ready to launch a complete SEO campaign focused around Pinterest.

Informative Pinterest Infographic – Because information is always more fun when it’s a pretty picture!

WordStream's Best of the Month: April's Greatest Hits

2012-04-30T06:40:12-07:00

Hello from New Mexico!

I’m on vacation today, probably somewhere between Taos and Santa Fe at the moment. Technically, I’m speaking to you from the past. I’m like light from a dead star. How’s your Monday going? Probably not as relaxing as mine.

Why not take a break from the Mondays and catch up on our blog’s most popular posts of the month?

RIP Exact Match & Phrase Match: Google AdWords Announces Big Changes to Keyword Match Type Options – Exact match, now less exact! Larry reviews Google’s recent decision to change the way the phrase and “exact” match type options work.
10 SEO Reasons to Add Facebook to Your Content Strategy – This guest post from our friends at gShift Labs explains why Facebook matters for SEO.
Earth Day 2012: Memes Are Destroying the Planet! – If you missed it last time around, take another look at our Earth Day infographic, which examines the impact of the Internet on the environment.
7 Simple Things You Might Be Overlooking in Your AdWords Account – Tom reviews seven basic tactics that will help get more leverage out of your paid search account.
What Is Negative SEO? The Rise of Competitive Google Bombing – There’s been a flurry of discussion around “negative SEO” this month, the slimy tactic of tanking your competitor’s Google rankings. What is it and is there any way to protect your business?
Split Testing Ideas for PPC Advertising [Infographic] – This nifty cheatsheet of ideas for ad testing came to us via the folks at AdChop.
Google Alerts: How to Use Them, Why They're Not Working – In theory, Google Alerts are a handy tool for reputation management, link building, ego stroking and more. There’s just one problem: they don’t always work.
How to Use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool in Your PPC Campaigns – Learn the pros and cons of Google’s own keyword tool and how to put it to good use in your AdWords campaigns.
AdWords Conversion Tracking & Reporting – Learn what you can do in the conversions tab in AdWords.
Top 10 Google Update Codenames – Old Possum? Cosmos Newsy? What’s your favorite?

Image via Betsy Weber

It's My 3-Year Anniversary at WordStream: Look How Far We've Come!

2012-04-27T06:35:49-07:00

My first day at WordStream was three years ago today. A lot has changed since I started this job. For example, this is how our PPC software looked in 2009:

Check out the column headings in that “Keyword Group Segmenter”:

“%v”!
“%k”!
“!”!

I’d tell you what they mean, but ~~I don’t remember~~ I don’t think I knew what they meant in the first place. o_O

Luckily, at some point we figured out that prospects and customers wouldn’t understand that stuff either. We have completely overhauled our UI in the past year or so, and here’s what the software looks like now:

Much, much better, right? It helps that we have a (stellar) user experience designer on our team! When I started, the design of the product was up to our engineers. We wouldn’t be here without our great engineers (some of whom have been around even longer than me!), but thank God for Tara DiMaggio.

What else is different? Here’s just a smattering of the changes I’ve witnessed:

We have a real office. We went from a Panera to a sea of empty soda cans to the fancy office space we currently occupy, which we are very quickly outgrowing!
We have a blog. And you’re looking at it! I’ve written over 300 blog posts here. Guess I average about 100 per year!
We have a much more robust executive team. More VPs with more experience. An advisory board too!
We dabble freely in the freemium model. It started with a keyword tool. Now we have several keyword tools as well as the AdWords Performance Grader.
We provide services. No longer just a product company.
We’re, well, better. I’m not going to lie, we’ve been through some dark times. I remember a month that we lost more customers than we gained. I don’t have an MBA, but I’m pretty sure that’s bad business. Luckily those times are behind us; we’ve been beating our goals consistently for months.

There’s one thing I do miss – we used to have a weekly company meeting every Monday, and the CEO would bring in lunch. That was possible because with 10 or 15 people in the office, we all fit around a conference table, and we could afford to feed everyone! Now we don't even have enough desks to go around. All this glorious empty space along the window?:

Empty no longer.

When Is a Startup Not a Startup?

The question is, are we still a startup? There are differing opinions on that. Some say you’re not a startup anymore after a year. Others say you’re only a startup until you’re profitable, or until you IPO, or get acquired by Google. I still tell people that I work at a software startup, but many would disagree. What do you think?

Incidentally, I just googled “when are you not a startup anymore” and got a first-page result called “30 Signs You’re a Booty Call” – which appears to rank because Google is interpreting “booty” as a synonym for “startup”:

Google has changed a lot in the past three years too, and not necessarily for the better, but that’s a topic for another post …

Web Marketing Highlights

Google rolled out a new algorithm update this week, in an attempt to address “black hat webspam” (AKA over-optimization). Glenn Gabe wonders if exact-match domains will be punished by the new algorithm update.

Also this week, Google rolled out AdWords for video and Google Drive, a Dropbox competitor.

Bill Slawski reports that Bing might be working on its own version of Search Plus Your World.

Is Google+ dead? Aaron Lee argues that any social network is worthless if you don’t dedicate time to it. (“Some of my post gets better visibility and engagement than Facebook. That is because my network on Google+ is more targeted while my Facebook is more towards friends and acquaintances. Whenever I share something more personal, it has better engagement.")

Avinash Kaushik says you are what you measure, so choose your KPIs wisely.

Internal links: the other links! Former WordStreamer Ken Lyons has nine tips for developing a killer internal linking structure.

Viperchill breaks down the future of blogging in 11,000 words or so.

Also, check out the post I wrote after I'd been here a year: Seven Things I've Learned in a Year at a Search Marketing Startup. All still true, except maybe for #4 (now that I work from home, I'm usually the first one in my office ...)

Have a great weekend!

Announcing the WordStream Internet Marketing 150: The Top Internet Marketing Software/SaaS Providers 2012

2012-04-25T05:24:46-07:00

The Internet marketing industry is a vast sea of companies of different types and sizes, operating in areas from email marketing to crowdsourcing to SEO.

It’s virtually impossible to operate a business in 2012 without engaging in Internet marketing, and it’s very easy to get lost in this sea of providers. So we’ve created a map to guide you on your journey through the Internet marketing landscape.

The WordStream Internet Marketing 150 compiles the top software and SaaS providers currently doing business in 10 major business categories, including content marketing and blogging, conversion rate optimization, crowdsourcing, email marketing, marketing automation, pay-per-click (PPC) marketing, search engine optimization, social media management, video hosting and management, and web analytics.

To conquer Internet marketing, you must develop a strategy in these 10 key areas. Here is your map to help you navigate these rocky waters! (Click the map to enlarge.)

Below you’ll find our full list of the 150+ market leaders in the Internet marketing space. We chose companies that represent innovation, value, and proven results. Offerings and services from the companies in the WordStream Internet Marketing 150 will help you save time, be more productive and grow your business.

Congratulations to all the companies who made the list! If your company was a winner, don't forget to collect your winner's badge to display on your website or blog.

Top Content Marketing & Blogging Applications

WordPress
Typepad
weebly
Posterous Spaces
Joomla
Drupal
Blog.com
SquareSpace
Acquia
Sitefinity
Alfresco
Textpattern
Kapost
Compendium
Ektron
Moveable Type
CrownPeak
Ceros

Best Conversion Rate Optimization Tools

Google Website Optimizer
Adobe Test & Target
ThomasNet Navigator Platform
Unbounce
Visual Website Optimizer
Invesp Pii Conversion Optimization
Optimizely
Ion Interactive
Monetate TestLab
Maxymiser
sitespect
Traffiliate
Vertster
Amadesa
Hiconversion Pro
Wingify Visual Website Optimizer

Top Crowdsourcing Platforms

Amazon Mechanical Turk
oDESK
Elance
99designs
Guru
PeoplePerHour.com
CrowdSPRING
Trada
IdeaScale
Telligent
CrowdSource
Accept360
Spigit
Chaordix
evly

Best Email Marketing Software

Constant Contact
AWeber
MailChimp
iContact
CheetahMail
Vertical Response
ExactTarget
Bronto
MadMimi
Campaign Monitor
Lyris
SendBlaster
NetProspex
EmailBrain
Responsys
Pinpointe On-Demand
Mailigen
Arial Software

Best Marketing Automation

Marketo
HubSpot
NetSuite CRM+
Eloqua
Silverpop Engage
Pardot Marketing Automation
Vocus
IBM Unica
Optify
SiteCore
Aprimo
LoopFuse
Genius.com
SalesFUSION 360
Alterian
Net-Results
eTrigue DemandCenter
Neolane Leads
PlanPlus CRM
Genoo Marketing Automation

Best Pay-Per-Click Marketing (PPC) Tools

WordStream
Acquisio
Marin Software
Kenshoo
Efficient Frontier
BoostCTR
Clickable
Apex Pacific BidMax
Podium adCore
ClickSweeper
Digital River KeywordMax
WordWatch
BidRank

Best Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools

SEOmoz Pro
Google Webmaster Tools
SEO Book
SEOQuake
MajesticSEO
Raven Tools
Searchmetrics Suite
Sistrix
DIYSEO
Web CEO
Conductor Searchlight
Ontolo
Linkdex
GShift Labs
FlamingoSoft SEO Administrator
Trend Metrix SEO Studio
Apex Pacific SEO Suite

Best Social Media Management Platforms

HootSuite
Wildfire App
Sprout Social
Radian6
Seesmic CRM
Vitrue
Adobe SocialAnalytics
Buddy Media
Awareness Social Marketing Hub
Shoutlet
Sendible
Spredfast SCRM
Crowd Factory
Crimson Hexagon
Postling
Engage121
Syncapse Platform
Mzinga

Top Video Hosting & Management

Vimeo
Brightcove
Viddler
Brainshark
Wistia
Kaltura
Ooyala
vzaar
Pixability
thePlatform
Visible Gains

Best Web Analytics Tools

Google Analytics
Adobe SiteCatalyst
IBM Coremetrics
AWStats
Clicky
KISSMetrics
Crazy Egg
Piwik
WebTrends Analytics
VisiStat
ClickTale
Woopra
Net Applications HitsLink
GoStats
OneStat
Deep Log Analyzer

Should You Raise Bids on Keywords with High Quality Scores?

2012-04-24T07:22:05-07:00

Recently a customer asked us, “Why should I raise bids on keywords that already have high quality scores?”

I answered this question via email, but I thought I’d post the answer here too so everyone can benefit from this bid management best practice. Here’s my response:

We’ve analyzed thousands of AdWords accounts and found a strong correlation between Quality Score and cost per conversion.

Meaning, if you were to look at the cost per conversion across the different keywords in your account, comparing the CPA of the keywords with a Quality Score of 1 to the CPA of Quality Score 2 keywords, Quality Score 3 keywords, and so on, you would see that on average, the lower your Quality Scores, the higher your average cost per conversion. (We compared these findings with our partners at Google and they confirmed this is indeed the case).

The best practice, therefore, is to raise bids on keywords with higher Quality Scores (e.g., 5-10) and lower bids on lower Quality Score keywords (0-4), thereby allocating more clicks (and therefore budget) on the more productive and cost-effective keywords in your account, and fewer clicks (and budget) on the less productive keywords in your account. This allows you to increase the number of conversions that are costing you less.

Keywords with low Quality Scores have higher costs per conversion on average due to various factors:

The actual CPC paid by an advertiser for a keyword is inversely proportional to the Quality Score of a keyword. Meaning, low Quality Score keywords can have a very high cost per click (CPC). (To see how this works, check out our infographic on How AdWords Works, which explains the relationship between CPC and Quality Score.)
A keyword with low Quality Score likely has a low click-through rate (CTR), and therefore may be relatively less relevant to your account than those with higher Quality Scores.

However, we strongly believe that Quality Score is just one of many factors that should be taken into consideration when doing bid management. Ultimately, if a target CPA isn’t being met, then it really doesn’t matter what the keyword Quality Score is! That’s why our different bid rules have an order of precedence – meaning, the primary factors used by our bid tools are the available budget, cost per conversion, and keyword competition metrics if they’re available, but we’ll also consider factors like click-through rate and Quality Score as secondary, supporting metrics.

Additionally, our bid management software has a high degree of flexibility via optional customization (such as target CPA, Bid Cap, etc.) to ensure that the bid recommendations meet the particular needs of your business.

Quick Guide to Google AdWords Traffic Estimator: How to Estimate Traffic With Google

2012-04-23T05:22:18-07:00

This is the fifth post in a series that focuses on using the various tools located within the Google AdWords tools and analysis tab. Previous posts have focused on:

In this post we’ll walk through how to get the most out of the Google AdWords Traffic Estimator.

What is the AdWords Traffic Estimator?

Not unlike the Google keyword tool, the AdWords Traffic Estimator is a tool designed by Google to give advertisers information about specific keywords before they create an AdWords campaign. Unlike the Google tool, the traffic estimator is giving more specific data points focused around not only expected traffic, but also expected costs per click and spend data.

As with the traditional keyword tool, an important thing to keep in mind in making use of the AdWords traffic estimator is to use the data with a grain of salt – the information you’ll be getting will consist of very rough estimates, and of course doesn’t give you any insights into whether the term you’re looking at will actually convert for you and help you grow your business.

How to Use the AdWords Traffic Estimator Tool in Your PPC Campaigns

Again, as with the Google Keyword Tool, there are a few input fields that represent your options for getting data back from the Traffic Estimator Tool:

As with most keyword tools you can start with a seed keyword to get ideas back, and then you can also set the Max CPC you’d like to pay for a keyword and can optionally set a daily budget (this will be based on your campaign’s daily budget where you’re considering adding the keywords, or to get a sense of the maximum potential traffic for the term you can leave the daily budget field blank).

You can also add in advanced filters for country, language, and match type:

And finally you’re returned a series of estimates around traffic and costs:

From there you can add keywords or take the keyword data to Excel or Google Docs to help you estimate the performance for certain terms before you add them to your account. Again this data is often inaccurate and can only give you a quick snapshot of what your average position and estimated costs would be – AdWords is an auction environment and your competitors may be constantly changing the search landscape for your target term.

Ultimately you’ll want to take this information with a grain of salt, be sure not to be over-reliant on estimates, and implement tests and iterate on any keywords and bids within your campaigns to get a true sense of the right amount of traffic and the right bids for your keywords.

About the Author

You can learn more about how Measured SEM can help, get in touch with Tom directly via email at tom at measuredsem.com, or by following him on Twitter.

What Is Negative SEO? The Rise of Competitive Google Bombing

2012-04-20T06:33:17-07:00

Negative SEO – have you heard this term before? To be perfectly frank, it’s new to me as of this week. “Google bombing” has been around for years, a kind of hack using links and anchor text to manipulate the search results as a prank – the famous example being a biography of George W. Bush returned as the first result for the query “miserable failure.”

But negative SEO is a slightly different animal. It’s the practice of trying to destroy your competitors’ rankings in the SERPs – for example by purchasing large amounts of spammy links to the site, damaging their link profile. (You may recall that some people suspected JCPenney was the victim of just such a scam.)

Is this possible? Are nefarious SEO tricksters pulling it off? Yes, according to a case study featured in the forum TrafficPlanet. Poster “Jammy” writes: “Pixelgrinder and I conducted a little experiment on whether negative seo was possible in the current climate - we felt it was important to know whether it was possible for a site to be negatively affected completely by outside influences.”

The targets were seofaststart.com (run by “self proclaimed ‘seo guru’ Dan Thies,” targeted because he’s “a suck-up-brown-noser, smugly bad mouthing everyone … we don't like him”) and (ironically) negativeseo.me, a site “selling services for negative seo under the tagline ‘destroy your competitors’.”

He then posts a timeline of the case study:

15th March - Dan Thies posts smug tweets to Matt Cutts and pisses off the entire internet.

18th March - seofaststart.com - blog posts started - anchor text "seo" "seo service" and "seo book"

22th March - seofaststart.com - 1 million scrapebox blast started - 100% anchor text "Dan Thies"

24th March - negativeseo.com - 1 million scrapebox blast started - 100% anchor text "destroy your competitors"

26th March - Dan Thies posts in Twitter that he has received an unnatural links message.

Note: 18th March - seofaststart blog posts started. This was NOT US. We had previously decided that it would be risky to 'out' the blogs that links were getting placed on and agreed not to include blog posts in our experiment. We don't know who did this, how many links they built or what network/s they used. We discovered these links in ahrefs and have estimated that about 5000 links where built, probably with ALN between the 18th-23rd March.

As well as the results after a month:

seofaststart.com
dan thies - number 1 (still number 1)
seo - not in top 1000 (down from number 11)
seo service - not in top 1000 (down from number 34)
seo book - number 34 (down from number 3)

negativeseo.me
negative seo - number 6 (down from number 2)
destroy your competitiors - number 13 (down from number 1)

And follows that up with a “personal message” to both Matt Cutts (“Negative SEO is possible. Sort it out!”) and Dan Thies (“Next time you want to smugly throw your holier than thou 2 cents into the ring, think before you speak.”) Ahem. These are some guys you don’t want to piss off.

But did it really work? At a post on Hobo Web, Dan claims the results are inconclusive. In fact, he thinks the additional links may have helped him slightly.

Aaron Wall Speaks Out Against Outing and Negative SEO

We talked a little about the practice of “outing” a few weeks ago as it relates to the ethics of SEO. Aaron Wall clearly falls on the same side of the line as Joe Hall, who said SEO outing is immoral. Here’s Aaron (we can assume the blanks stand in for something he is too polite to say):

Anyone who outs or link bombs smaller businesses (small enough that Google punishing them destroys their livelihood rather than just giving them a bad quarter) is a _______. Anyone who advocates outing or link bombing such businesses is an even larger _______.

Any of the ________ who promote competitor smoking or competitor outing as somehow being "ethical" or "white hat" never bother to explain what happens to YOU when someone else does that to you.

Building things up is typically far more profitable than tearing things down & if SEOs go after each other then the only winner is Google.

Some interesting questions are raised in the comments. For example, “Kokopoko” asks, “How can you protect your site from a negative SEO campaign? Is it impossible?”

How would it be possible? Can there be any definitive way to determine if a bad link profile came from inside our outside your company? When JC Penney was outed for bad links, they claimed to know nothing about it. Of course, that’s what you’d expect them to say in a PR cover-up if they were responsible. But maybe it was a case of negative SEO? Maybe they really didn’t have any clue what was going on?

What do you think? Should Google address negative SEO, and if so, how?

More Web Marketing Highlights

At Search News Central, Mike Wilton says Pinterest is a search engine, not a place where people “socialize or catch up with old friends.” What’s more, “21% of Pinterest users have purchased an item they found on the site.” So start optimizing your site for Pinterest search.

Facebook advertising rates are apparently skyrocketing. In other ad news, Tumblr is getting ads soon, though the CEO said “We’re pretty opposed to advertising” in 2010.

Looking to beef up your blog reading? Unbounce offers 75 great marketing blogs “to make your RSS reader fat”!

And just for giggles: Read about a physicist who used his nerd power for good (to get out of a traffic ticket).

Also: the Web Economy Bullshit Generator (thanks to Larry for that one!).

Have a good weekend (and stay positive).

Earth Day 2012 Infographic: Memes Are Destroying the Planet!

2012-04-19T11:57:36-07:00

This Sunday is Earth Day 2012, when us earthlings devote the entire day to planting trees and recycling plastic water bottles in retribution for the havoc we’ve been inflicting on the planet for centuries.

(Almost) everyone knows how pollution has affected the Earth and the disastrous consequences of relying too heavily on fossil fuels rather than migrating to renewable, alternative energy sources (I’m looking at you big oil).

You probably already know that it’s important to buy local rather than encourage supermarkets to ship exotic out-of-season fruits across the country in refrigerated units, resulting in huge carbon emissions. Maybe you even ride your bike across town to get to work, recycle every slice of unwanted paper, unplug all electrical units at night, and scoff at factory farm meat.

But there is an anti-green culprit lurking among us – the internet! Our greatest friend and foe.

That’s why we created the Earth Day 2012 Infographic to illustrate the negative impact our internet usage has on our beloved planet Earth. But there’s an upside! The Internet has some positive effects on the planet too. Read on to find out what they are.

Here are some creative ways to use this Earth Day 2012 Infographic:

Show this Earth Day infographic to your boss and maybe you can start telecommuting. Come on, it’s for the environment! And it will make you $40,000 happier!
A reason to be productive—every time you procrastinate by googling pictures of goofy cats or laughing babies, you’re slapping a tree in the face. Trees help you breathe, so show some respect by staying on task.
We get one more reason to hate spammers. You may be selling incredible Viagra discounts, but you are also destroying the planet, you monsters!

Click on the image to see the full-size infographic.

How to Use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool in Your PPC Campaigns

2012-04-19T07:02:38-07:00

This is the fifth post in a series that focuses on using the various tools located within the Google AdWords tools and analysis tab. Previous posts have focused on:

In this post we’ll walk through how to get the most out of the Google Keyword Tool within your AdWords campaigns.

What Is the Google Keyword Tool?

Google’s keyword tool is designed to give advertisers information about which keywords they can add to their campaigns. The Google Keyword Tool has some important advantages and disadvantages to understand before acting on the data.

Pros

It Leverages Google’s Own Data – One of the big advantages to using Google’s keyword tool is you have access to Google’s massive data set. This is an advantage for the Google tool because no single source has access to the amount of search query information that Google does. However, this advantage is mitigated somewhat because Google makes its keyword tool data available via an API, so keyword tools like WordStream’s which aren’t Google property can actually leverage a combination of Google’s own data and additional, third-party sources to create a more comprehensive keyword database.
It’s Google-Specific – If you’re optimizing for multiple campaigns or looking to leverage keyword data in your SEO efforts this can be a disadvantage, but as we’re covering AdWords tools specifically this can be useful – you’re getting data specific to AdWords.
Integration within AdWords – The Google Keyword Tool allows you to quickly add keywords to your AdWords account because it is integrated within your Google account.

Cons

Google Suggestions Often Benefit Google – As is the case with many default settings, specific services for small businesses, and optimization suggestions, Google’s tools often make recommendations that favor Google more than they favor your business. Google’s keyword tool doesn’t always show you every possible variation people are searching for – often the data skews towards more commercial and higher competition terms and fails to show you better, more specific opportunities you could add to your account that would actually be more profitable for your business. Third-party keyword tools such as WordStream’s Keyword Research Suite are designed specifically to bridge this gap and get advertisers this actionable information, as their concern is just building tools for advertisers (not maximizing Google’s revenue and profits).
Estimations are Very Rough & Often Inaccurate – As is the case with any keyword tool, the numbers you see in AdWords are just rough approximations of the traffic available for a specific search term. It doesn’t show you how different positions get traffic for the term, and obviously the tool can’t tell you how a keyword will actually convert for your business, which is why using and reacting to your own data is extremely important.

While the tool is obviously far from perfect, there are still insights to be gained by leveraging it for your AdWords accounts.

How to Use the AdWords Keyword Tool in Your PPC Campaigns

When you turn to the AdWords keyword tool for keyword ideas within your campaigns, you have a few options, which are represented by the input fields below:

You can look for keywords based on:

A Word or Phrase – This allows you to input a specific keyword into the keyword tool and get a list of suggestions based on a seed keyword (such as “pet supplies” above).
A Website – Here we could give Google our own site’s content and get keyword ideas based on that information – alternatively we could input a competitor’s URL and get information on the terms Google deems relevant for that site.
A Category – Google has a number of pre-set categories that we can drill down into to get topical keyword suggestions.

Typically your best results will be from inputting a keyword or keywords to get results back – categories will frequently give you suggestions that are far too broad to be really actionable (though if you’re completely at a loss for how to structure your campaigns, this might be an OK starting point for different broad-level campaign ideas).

Within keyword selections as you can see we can further filter results based on:

Ideas Closely Related to Search Terms – This will give you highly related terms rather than a broader array of different ideas: if you’re looking to create a tightly related ad group around a specific term, this filter is very useful, but it will exclude some variations that you might find useful if you’re looking to get a wider array of ideas for keywords to target.
Advanced Filters – You can also filter based on the areas and devices you plan to target; country, language, desktop vs. mobile, etc. as well as filtering out terms that don’t meet a certain threshold of search volume.

Once you’ve settled on an actual term to get information about, you’ll be presented with a number of possible keywords to add to your campaign – you can add the keywords directly or export them to develop your keyword lists outside of AdWords before adding them to the appropriate campaigns later:

As you can see you have several options for what to do with these suggestions across the top row of options, as well as some metrics to help you evaluate the keywords:

Competition – This is a rough metric showing you how many advertisers there are on a given term and how aggressively they bid for the term.
Global Monthly Searches – The global monthly average based on the last 12 months of data for each term you’re looking at.
Local Monthly Searches – This shows you the local monthly average for each search term based on countries you selected (so in our case, this would be the data for US only searches).

In addition to the standard keyword tool, AdWords now also offers a beta version of an ad group ideas tool to help make suggestions for clusters of keywords you might want to group into specific ad groups:

From here you could incorporate these lists into already existing ad groups, or use them as a starting point for creating a new ad group.

Ultimately these keyword suggestions can be a nice starting point and directionally indicative of which keywords may be a fit for your campaigns, but it’s important to take the recommendations with a grain of salt and constantly be monitoring your campaigns, pausing keywords, adding keywords, and adjusting your bids at the keyword level over time.

About the Author

Tom Demers is co-founder and managing partner at Measured SEM, a boutique Boston SEO and PPC agency offering search marketing consulting services including pay-per-click account management, comprehensive SEO audits, content marketing strategies, SEO reputation management and link building services for a variety of specific niches such as B2B SEO.

You can learn more about how Measured SEM can help your business by getting in touch with Tom directly via email at tom at measuredsem.com, or by following him on Twitter.

RIP Exact Match & Phrase Match: Google AdWords Announces Big Changes to Keyword Match Type Options

2012-04-18T09:14:20-07:00

AdWords has announced changes to how the Exact Match and Phrase Match keyword match type options works. Previously, a keyword set to exact match in your AdWords account would only trigger ads for user search queries that exactly matched the keyword you specified (hence the name: exact match), and similarly, a phrase matched keyword would be triggered by search queries containing the phrase that you specified.

Soon, Google will be changing the definition of these keyword match types to behave more like Modified Broad Match. It will serve up ads for a far more diverse set of search queries, including:

keyword misspellings
singular/plural forms
stemmings (word endings such as "ing", "ed", etc.)
accents
abbreviations

As is always the case, Google claims that the motivation for the change is user benefits: "Based on our research and testing, we believe these changes will be broadly beneficial for users and advertisers," though they disclaim: "Keep in mind that results may vary by advertiser."

(It's not like they're just trying to grow Google Revenues ...)

Can I Still Use the Old Exact Match and Phrase Match Types?

If you're not completely enamored with the changes to the keyword match types, there's a way to undo the change, though it's a bit hidden in the advanced settings. In the following screenshot you can see how it's possible to choose "Do not include close variants" in the Keyword Matching Options. The default option is set to "Include Plurals, Misspellings, and other close variants":

All of these Match Type changes will go into effect sometime next month and it will definately impact performance (probably not in a good way), so keep an eye out for that!

Learn more about Google Keyword Match Types

AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 15

2012-04-17T06:18:31-07:00

This is the latest in a series of interviews we're conducting with AdWords advertisers who got unusually high scores using our AdWords Performance Grader. We're reaching out to high scorers to find out what strategies contribute to their strong AdWords performance. For more in this series, see:

This week’s interview is with Christian Hinze. Visit his website at www.oppars.com.

Tell us a bit about yourself. How long have you been using AdWords? Are you an Agency or an Advertiser? What is your primary goal for AdWords marketing?

I am a web designer, advertiser and on-page optimizer from Munich. I have been using AdWords for my own business and clients for several years now.

My primary goal for AdWords marketing is high rankings in search engine results for low prices.

There are tons of metrics in AdWords – what are your top 3 Key Performance Metrics in AdWords and why?

Conversion Rate - The primary goal of advertising is that users take a certain action on a website, so we have to do our best not just to optimize the ad-text in AdWords but also the website the customer will visit after clicking on the ad.
Quality Score - You should do everything you can to reduce spending without lowering rankings. Quality Score is more than just a number from 0 to 10, it’s like an internal rating system for your ads, so it is very, very important!
Return on Ad Spending - One of the most important key performance metrics for me is finding out if the campaign is worthwhile or not. When the campaign isn’t profitable, you either improve it or delete it.

Can you describe your AdWords management strategy? How do you set your campaign objectives, and how do you know what’s realistic or not?

Listen to the client and have some discussions about the goals they want to achieve. Prearrangement is everything.

We put the 3 most important goals together and align our strategies with those goals.

No one can really say what is going well and what’s not without testing.

It’s clear that nothing works at the same level forever, especially in our business, you’ll have to change your strategy from time to time to be effective.

Care about your clients and their needs and then the rankings!

Describe your AdWords management workflow. When you’re doing your account optimization work, how do you decide what to do next in your account? How do you prioritize your work?

Actually, I don’t have a strict workflow. I ask myself every morning, Which 5 things are so important you have to do them today? It doesn’t always work out, because on some days you have more or less to do, but it gives you the opportunity to concentrate on the most important things.

I normally check all the clients’ campaigns once a week to find mistakes or poorly performing keywords, but as I said, if you did the prearrangement well, you won’t have to do so much afterwards.

Any advice or tips for AdWords marketers that didn’t score as well as you?

Keep it up! If you don’t make mistakes, you won’t get better. It’s important to learn from mistakes and then make it better the next time.

Google Website Optimizer: How to Use the Website Optimizer Tool in AdWords

2012-04-16T07:26:04-07:00

This is the fourth post in a series that focuses on using the various tools located within the Google AdWords tools and analysis tab. Previous posts have focused on:

And in this post we’ll be walking through how to leverage Google Website Optimizer within your AdWords account.

How You Can Use Website Optimizer within Your AdWords Account

Website Optimizer allows you to set up split tests and multivariate tests to measure the impact of different landing page designs within your AdWords campaigns. Implementing Website Optimizer requires adding some code to the pages you’re including in your test.

The first (and most important) step in making use of the tool is, of course, creating multiple versions of your landing page to test. Most of this post will focus on the mechanics of using the tool to test the creative you’ve put together, but obviously there’s no real value in a tool to test landing page variations if the variations themselves aren’t well thought out and valuable. If you’re looking for ideas for tests and/or conversion optimization best practices, the Unbounce blog has some amazing resources. (Check out their recent post with 35 examples of great landing pages, plus critiques on how they could be even better.)

Once you have your variations in place, setting up a Website Optimizer test is actually fairly straightforward. Open up the Website Optimizer and click “Create a new experiment”:

Then you’ll be asked to choose between a split test and multivariate test:

The type of test you want to set up depends on multiple factors, but for most small to mid-sized AdWords accounts a key consideration will be the amount of traffic you’re sending to the page: if you’re not doing a large amount of PPC volume it’ll likely be very difficult to get to statistical significance with a multivariate test. We’ll walk through setting up an A/B split test.

First you simply input the following pieces of data:

Name your experiment – Choose something clear that will be easy to remember and to identify for people new to the test.
Identify the original page (the page you’re currently pointing ads at) and the variation (the test you’d like to set up).
Identify the conversion page – This will typically be the thank you page that is displayed after the user completes the action you want them to complete (filling out a form, making a purchase, etc.).

You’ll then be given the code to install on your site. You can select the “Your webmaster will install and validate JavaScript tags” and get a URL with instructions for your tech resource to install the code on the appropriate pages, but if you have access to the CMS or HTML pages you’re looking to use in the test, it’s not that difficult to get the code yourself and install it on your site:

If you choose to do it yourself, you’ll be presented with very specific instructions on where to install the code within the source code on your website. You can also validate that the code is installed properly on your pages before moving past this stage:

Finally, you’ll be able to track the progress of your tests within the Website Optimizer dashboard and even drill down to the daily breakdown of the test performance over time. Once you’ve enabled your test, Website Optimizer will not only track progress, but let you know when one of your tests has reached statistical significance and point out the “winner.”

There are a lot of different landing page software options that offer varying feature-sets and plusses and minuses in terms of ease of integration, and if you’re looking for things like more user-friendly GUIs, pre-designed templates for landing pages, and more advanced testing options some of the paid options below might be a better fit:

But for many advertisers Website Optimizer is a highly useful free tool for launching landing page tests.

About the Author

You can learn more about how Measured SEM can help, get in touch with Tom directly via email at tom at measuredsem.com, or by following him on Twitter.

Split Testing Ideas for PPC Advertising [Infographic]

2012-04-13T07:57:29-07:00

We're often on about the importance of testing multiple versions of your ads as a means of seeing what messaging really works with your audience and thereby maximizing your clicks and conversions. It's one thing to acknowledge the importance of testing, but it's another to implement that strategy if you're not sure what to test.

The folks at AdChop have put together an infographic with a bunch of ideas for things to test in your ads, including text ads and image ads (these principles also apply to landing pages, your home page and anywhere else you're looking to drive conversions and engagement). Check it out!

AdChop – More Profitable Ad Campaigns