Lately, I’ve been feeling like a grade schooler punished along with the rest of the class for one student’s bad behavior. With Google’s Pandas, Penguins and other pandemonium-producing updates yet to come, we’re all Bart Simpson being forced to write on the SEO chalkboard, “I will not outsource link building to third-world countries that spam blogs.” Sheesh!

It’s times like that that my mind turns to flights of fancy… If I could make Google do whatever I wanted… Well, I can and so can you — just not for the whole Web. We can control search engine performance inside our workplaces or the United Airlines site so that it can find a flight from Seattle to New York that does not take six connections over two days.

Enterprise SEO Rules, Web SEO Drools

With Web SEO, there’s Google throwing the proverbial wrench into site rankings with algorithm changes that drop results from view like stones falling from the sky causing grown SEO strategists to cry and the black hatters to sharpen their stilettos. With enterprise SEO, the strategist or developer is the one to tune the algorithm to the behavior, culture or whims of the users.

Do you like keyword metadata? With enterprise search optimization, you can make that a significant ranking factor because you are the search god and do not have to compensate for spam content. With enterprise search optimization, the strategist can create a relevant landscape that functions for their workforce, not everyone with a copy of Dreamweaver and an FTP connection.

• Not enough linking between internal documents? Not a problem, manually designate authority pages and create number one results by mapping best bets (or editorialized results) to specific queries.
• Worried about spelling and term variations? Stop. Most of the quality enterprise search engines will let you map terms so the same results come up no matter which spelling variation your clueless colleague used.
• Can’t figure out what keywords to optimize? Just ask the users sitting right next to you and all around you, because they are your coworkers and colleagues.

Be the Hero, Not the Goat

International Data Group (IDG) estimates that the average worker spends 2.5 hours a day looking for information needed to do their job. One Fortune 500 company estimated that improving internal search would contribute $2 million a month in productivity gains. There is money to be made from figuring out how to make search within the workplace work as well as search outside of the workplace. And that, my friends, is raise-worthy.

I will be giving out more details on how to design a perfect enterprise search experience  with enterprise-specific data mining and user-centered design at the Enterprise Search Summit this week in New York City.

They were cute until Google got to 'em

Here’s an explainer for all the marketers who are wondering what the hell just happened to their traffic:

What’s an update?

The engineers at Google constantly tune their search software to provide (hopefully) more accurate results. Most of these tune-ups are pretty small, and go unnoticed by anyone except us hardcore search geeks. They’re like thunderstorms: You don’t name them.

Every now and then, though, Google rolls out a humungous change that throws the search world into a state of meteorological higgledy-piggledy (that’s a lot of Gs). Those are named updates. Panda was one. Penguin’s another.

Google rolled out the Penguin update April 24th. It appears to target artificial link acquisition, or ‘link spam’.

What’s link spam?

Link spam is any attempt to acquire lots of links by buying them, trading them, or building your own ‘link network’. The easiest way to describe link spam to talk money: You can go out and earn money by creating something of value, or providing a valuable service. Or, you can print or steal it.

Link spam is the whole printing/stealing thing: Go to a link broker or service, for example, and for a fee you can acquire anywhere from one to thousands of links with a click. Or, launch one hundred blogs, fill them with stolen content or gibberish, and then link them in a network that funnels authority to your own site. It’s a lot easier than writing amazing content, or doing good PR, or (I dunno) marketing or something.

I’m sounding judgmental, I know. The truth is, I don’t see anything morally wrong with link spam. It’s another marketing tactic that taken too far can really screw things up. But compare it to plagiarism on the Evil Scale it barely moves the needle.

Link spam has always been a bad long-term SEO strategy. Google and Bing have fought it for years, and they catch the site networks and companies that use it all the time.

Penguin, though, took it to a whole new level.

What did Penguin do?

It’s hard to know for certain, since Google doesn’t reveal details. But a few things are clear:

• Penguin actively penalizes sites that Google believes engaged in link spam. This is new. Until now, Google generally took away ill-gotten link authority and penalized sites that were selling links. The big G rarely punished sites for acquiring spam links.
• Penalized sites generally plunge out of the top ten for their own brand names, as well as any other meaningful terms.
• Links that are part of artificial link networks will trigger a penalty. Check out this great SEOMOZ article to learn how to detect link networks.
• If a huge percentage of your links use the same, commodity-related anchor text, you’re in trouble. So, if you sell toilet paper, and 75% of the links pointing at your site have the link text ‘toilet paper’, Google will get suspicious. Don’t act surprised. I’ve been warning about this for a couple of years.
• If a huge percentage of your links come from blog comments, forums or site footers (all common places for spammy links), again, Google gets suspicious.
• Google sent out warnings to some, but not all, Penguin-targeted sites.

Penguin focused on offsite factors. Panda, the update that came before, focused more on site quality and onsite factors.

How do I know if I’ve been Penguinized?

If your search traffic suddenly dropped after April 24th, and you got a warning from Google about unnatural links pointing at your site, and you no longer rank in the top 10 for your own brand name, you probably got a Penguin penalty.

Otherwise, though, let your conscience be your guide. If you know you’ve got a lot of link spam pointing at your site, clean it up. Even if you didn’t get penalized under Penguin, chances are you’re due. Fix it before you get hammered.

And, fix it a little bit at a time. Go out and get higher-quality links while removing the spammy ones. Read the SEOMOZ article for info on how to remove spammy links.

Most sites I’ve seen got hit by a combination of factors: Penguin (offsite) plus Panda (onsite) or a screw-up around a site re-launch or similar.

I say this because it’s important that, in the initial Penguin Panic, you still pay attention to SEO best practices: Visibility, authority, relevance. Make sure all three are in good shape.

Other places to go look

If you think you’ve been hit by Penguin, and can’t/won’t hire someone, do some reading. These articles are a great place to start:

• Unnatural link warnings and blog networks, SEOMOZ
• Two weeks in, Google talks penguin update, ways to recover and negative SEO
• Another step to reward high-quality sites. A bit vague, but the post that started it all.
• Panda and Penguin go Sledding. Good for a chuckle when you’re ready to firebomb your own web site.
• Google Panda 3.6 Hit on April 27th

A few years ago I stepped into a role as an information architect and user experience designer at a Portland ad agency. Coming from a background in search marketing, this was quite a bit of a change for me. The first thing I noticed was that SEO & UX should really be a more integrated system in the designing of a site. The second thing I noticed was that SEO really gets a bad rap from the UX and design community.

This was really an invaluable experience for me, as I was able to look at both my former job and my current job in a different light. I got to be removed from my instincts as an SEO, while simultaneously questioning the foundations of UX.

What I learned in the end was that SEO & UX must work together in order for a site to be successful:

• The myths about SEO & UX are false – it’s not impossible to coexist, and neither hinders the other.
• Poor UX will lead to poor SEO. Plain and simple, and the reverse is also true
• SEO should live within and be a part of the user experience

Myth: SEO & UX are like Oil & Water

SEO Myths

Myth 1: All SEOs focus on is traffic, ranking, revenue, and web presence

Well sure, to a degree. SEO is highly focused on generating traffic for your website. SEO helps you rank well, generate revenue and be visible on search engine results pages (SERPs). None of these things are that terrible. In fact, they are good things for websites that advertise online.

However, this isn’t the only focus for SEO. SEO is also concerned with quality content, page load times, and other tasks that affect the user experience (UX).

Myth 2: SEO is just getting links any way you can

This is true, back in 2009 maybe. After 2011’s Panda updates, a site’s sheer number of links isn’t nearly as important as it once was. Today, SEO focuses on superb content in order to obtain quality links over quantity links. Finding 1,000 links on poor quality sites isn’t going to cut it in a post-Panda world.

UX Myths

Myth 1: Everything is about what’s on the site

User experience is definitely focused on your user’s interactions, feelings, and opinions about your website. That being said, keeping your user engaged all depends on why and how they found your site. UX is involved in this process through site designs catered to many users. The site’s content can then be based on the criteria the user used to get to the site and what the user was looking for on the site.

Myth 2: UX is so focused on the on-site experience that it ignores that the first step for many users is a search engine

This isn’t entirely true, but it’s definitely been the case in the past. A lot of UX can be based on best practices, industry standards, and common sense, but UX shouldn’t end there. From creating a landing page tailored to users’ search queries, to conducting user testing – there should be more to your website’s UX project than just the design and layout of your pages.

Examples of Poor UX

Amazon – Busy sites can confuse your user

Tons of actions

• Drop down shopping list on the left
• Promos for the Kindle Fire
• Spring’s Most Wanted
• Camera & Photo shop
• On page ad
• Deal of the Day

Amazon has long been a staple of how to do things right, but of late, they’ve become the opposite example of user experience. Amazon has become a product seller itself with the Kindle line of products, and there lies the problem. Because of this shift in philosophy, Amazon’s site has started to push their products first and foremost. However, they still try to be the online one stop shopping experience for everything and everyone. This creates a very busy homepage, full of roadblocks preventing quality user interaction with your site.

On this page, there are a lot of actions that the user is shown, from the drop down shopping list on the left, to the promos for the Kindle Fire, Spring’s Most Wanted, the Camera & Photo shop, the on page ad, the Deal of the Day, and the various other options that await the user.

All of these are roadblocks to user interaction with your site.

Marc Ecko – Flash, full image sites, and too much interaction

Problematic Interactions

• Site that is difficult to use
• Difficult to see
• Offers no real direction
• Way too much interaction for a user to really take in
• Site doesn’t retain visitors
  • Some users don’t have Flash, some users get overwhelmed, etc.

While the example here isn’t the worst for the site’s demographic, it’s a good example of a site that is difficult to use, difficult to see, offers no action path, and way features way too much interaction for a user to really take in. The site ends up being more like a collage of imagery and interactions which never really draws a user in.

Many sites opt for the big visuals, to really draw their users’ eyes. However, more often than not, these sites don’t retain visitors for multiple reasons – some users don’t have Flash, some users get overwhelmed, etc.

Examples of Good UX

Groupon – Clean & Clear

Groupon is killing it right now, and it’s not just because of everyday amazing deals. They have made smart, eloquent copy a high priority for their daily listings, and designed a simple, clean, and clear website and interface.

Make it easy for users to interact with your site, through an easy-to-use navigation, an obvious reminder to where the user is on the site (current page is highlighted in the top navigation), and a clear call to action.

The proper use of white space, imagery, and buttons goes a long way towards getting users to interact with your site the way you want them to.

Hubspan – Options without the Confusion

In the world of B2B, sometimes you cater to multiple user types. It’s not easy to figure out what a new customer, current customer, or potential partner want to see first when they visit your site.

In this example, all 3 are catered to without experiencing alienation in the design.

SEO within UX

So how can you make SEO and UX work together?

Focus the design using principles of SEO

• Create content for the user and the search engines
• Push for H1 & H2 tags
• Work to improve link equity, menu functionality, and menu names
• Create clear navigation labels
• Use focused product descriptions and names

Personas & User Paths

Personas should be based on the online activities the user is going to take. They shouldn’t follow the old standard persona formula based on demographics, personality, or gender unless those characteristics are inherently important to the website.

User paths through the website should then be created for each persona in order to best suit that user’s needs. Hubspan’s site in the example above was able to cater to 3 different personas by designing different user paths for each.

Creating different experiences for different users opens up different keywords, content, and links for SEO.

Action Items

Calls to action have long been staples of web design and conversion optimization. They are also very important for SEO & UX. Buttons or links with calls to action like “Buy now,” “download,” or “learn more” should lead the user to content and page elements designed for SEO.

Additionally, these can be combined with product names or offers to create highly optimized calls to action, like the one seen below:

Order [product name] Today!

Search Engines Taking Cues from UX

In addition to the importance of SEO & UX working together for the greater good of your website, Google has been slowly shifting focus away from links and keywords for the last few years. While these are still the main ranking factors, they have found some new areas of focus that provide a more full view of a site’s quality.

What’s included in “quality?”

• Page speed
• Ease of navigation
• Internal link structure
• No duplicate content
• Relevant and descriptive content
• Page layout

What Your Website Should Be

Useable

Employ a clean and clear design, with little interference in terms of excess imagery, erroneous functionality, or filler content.

Understandable

Action items and user paths help you develop a site that makes sense. The user needs to understand how to reach their goals when visiting a site. When you build a site around information silos, action items, and user paths, you build a site that is designed for the functionality of the user.

Conversion oriented

Developing personas and using calls to action are a clear way to tell your users what you’d like them to do. Don’t be afraid to tell the user to buy, download, or sign up for something. On the internet, we all respond to calls to action much more directly than in our day to day lives.

Ranking well

There’s no point in having a great site that can’t be found. Content & keyword research will always be the cornerstone of your website’s online presence. Despite Google’s decreasing importance placed on links, links are still important as well. Work to find quality links and your site will rank well.

Generating revenue/conversions

Be sure your site is capitalizing on all the work you’ve put into it. That means focusing on conversion optimization through SEO and UX.

Following these guidelines will be a major first step in the process of developing your site or redesigning a site that needs to focus more on user experience. Similarly, in light of Google’s new focus on quality sites, user experience, and page speed, maybe it’s time you look at the UX from an SEO’s perspective. You’d be surprised what a difference this activity can have on your site.

I’ve written other posts about hiring SEO firms: How to hire good ones. How to hire bad ones. But an update’s in order:

Questionnaire for an SEO agency

Start each agency you interview with 10 points. Add or subtract as indicated.

1. Ask yourself: How did this firm get in touch with you?
   1. They cold-called or e-mailed you.
      No. -1
   2. They answered your ad.
      Sorry, but good SEOs don’t spend their days scouring the internet want ads. Ads are good for comic relief, not smart hiring. -5
   3. You found them.
      Good. That’s a good start. +1
2. Can you give me some references?
   1. No.
      Well, duh. Don’t hire them. -1
   2. Yes, but can we wait until we’re closer to signing a deal?
      Excellent! They’re nice to their clients and don’t want to bug them. +1
   3. Sure (immediately sends you 20 references, all suspiciously located on the same block of downtown Somewhereville).
      Research carefully. These may be friends, not clients. +0
3. What kind of work will you do on my site?
   1. None! We don’t have to touch your site.
      Show them the door. They’re clueless. -1
   2. We’ll need to check your site for technical issues, and we’ll have recommendations around title tags and content.
      Not bad! +0
   3. We’ll need to check your site for technical issues, make recommendations around existing content, and start a content strategy.
      Kiss them. Try not to weep for joy. And for God’s sake, hire them. +1
4. What kind of reporting do you provide?
   1. Rankings.
      Ask them how life’s going in 1999. And don’t hire them. -999
   2. Site traffic from organic search, conversions from organic search and some health metrics. And yes, we track rankings as a diagnostic.
      Good. +1
   3. Everything from answer b, plus time on site, visit quality, and stuff like keyword diversity.
      Awesome. +2
5. Do you guarantee results?
   1. Yes! We’ll get you number one ranking on the Googles!
      Don’t even show them the door. They can undoubtedly teleport back to their office. They’re full of crap. -99999
   2. No. I’d love to, but no one can do that, because the algorithms change all the time.
      Good. They’re honest, or smart enough to pretend they’re honest. Either way, +1
   3. No. Answer b, plus it’s not totally up to us. We’re your partner in this, but we need your help.
      They rock. +2
6. Can I pay you by the link?
   1. Sure! $10/link.
      Does it seem OK to you that they could get 900 godawful, penalty-generating links and charge you for them? Fail. -5
   2. You can, but I’ll charge you based on link quality as determined by…
      Ehhhh, OK. At least they’re trying. Still seems awfully hard to measure, since organically-acquired links may not appear for weeks or months. Which either means they have a link network (bad), or they’re really naive. +0
   3. Sorry, no, and here’s why (reasonable explanation).
      Solid. +1
7. Will you optimize my meta tags?
   1. Yes, keyword and description meta tags.
      GONG. The keywords meta tag is worthless. The description tag doesn’t impact rankings, although it’s worth optimizing for clickthru. Still, they lose a point. -1
   2. Nope, that’s silly.
      A little simplistic, but at least they read occasionally. +0
   3. We’ll remove the keywords tag, and refine the description tag for better clickthru.
      Sweet. +1
8. Will you put keywords in my URLs?
   1. Definitely! Keyword-rich URLs are the ticket to a high ranking!
      Mor. Ons. -1
   2. We can. It can help with clickthru. But barring an exact-match domain, it may not help much with rankings.
      Give them a hug and tell them it’s from Ian. +1
9. Do you need my server log files?
   1. Uh, what’s that?
      Never hire a doctor that can’t take your temperature. Don’t hire an SEO who can’t analyze a log file. -5
   2. I may need it if there are problems.
      A good answer. +1
   3. Yes, we want to check for crawl issues right away.
      Sniff. My hero. +2
10. Can I see a sample recommendations report you give to clients?
    1. I’m sorry, it’s part of our sekrit process.
       OK. Enjoy that. Without me. -1
    2. Yes (and they give you something totally general, or totally incomprehensible.
       If they can’t explain it, they can’t do it. -1
    3. Yes (and they give you something that makes sense).
       Niiice. Hire them. +2
11. How do you build links?
    1. We use our Link Optimizer Replication Energization System to get you thousands of links every month!
       Buh-bye now! -10
    2. We only do 100% pure, white-hat, content-based link acquisition.
       Perfectly good. +1
    3. We do a mix of stuff: Content marketing, social media curation, legitimate directory submission and some nice, useful commenting.
       They get an A! +2
12. Can you contact someone at Google for me?
    1. Sure! We have a former Google employee working with us, actually.
       Congrats, you hired Google’s ex-chef. Which has nothing to do with SEO. -10
    2. We can try through a re-inclusion request. Or I can whine until Matt Cutts answers.
       Not a good idea, but honest. +0
    3. That’s really only a last resort if you’re in deep poo poo.
       I like them. +1

Scoring

21+: Nice! They’re a keeper.
15-20: Solid. Go for it unless you have a 21+.
10-14: OK, but keep an eye on them.
0-10: Any port in a storm…?
<0: Save yourself the money and buy a cheeseburger instead.

It’s your call

This is, of course, a partial list. And it’s (partly) tongue-in-cheek. Bottom line: You have to use common sense. Behind every SEO disaster is a firm or consultant that should have screamed ‘fraud’ to any non-SEO type. Use your brain: SEO is marketing, which means it takes time, and it’s hard work. Hire accordingly.

I remember when I got my first Twitter follower. I was a bright-eyed web surfer with a bushy tail (since birth).

@getfree_ebooks3 followed me, and our relationship blossomed. She was beautiful. I would tell her about what I was eating for lunch and other important Twitter issues, and she would suggest nice pieces of malware for my computer to download.

I eventually discovered that @getfree_ebooks3 was a spam bot. It was heartbreaking. I realized the truth about Twitter.

At that moment, I realized that the best way to create quality relationships on Twitter is to seek out the people in your target audience and engage with them.

At first, I could manage this pretty easily. But once I was following over 150 people (often the magic number for our brains), it was too difficult to manage them all just with Twitter.

Why did it become so difficult so fast?

When you follow someone on Twitter, you are subscribing to their insight and opinions. So here you are, following hundreds or thousands of people because they might say something that’s interesting to you. But unless they tweet at you, retweet you, or happen to tweet moments before you check Twitter, you will miss out on everything they have to say.

And once you’re following +150 people, it’s pretty easy to miss out on everything.

But there is another way!

Enter Hootsuite

You may be familiar with the social media management tool Hootsuite. A free account with Hootsuite lets you monitor your Twitter, Facebook, and other feeds (called streams), as well as schedule updates for your social accounts. I’m sure the premium version does some more neat stuff.

Hootsuite is real swell.

Let’s focus on Hootsuite’s Twitter services. The average Hootsuite user may have a basic tab setup for their Twitter account. It probably looks similar to this:

From the left, you’ve got your home feed (the tweets and retweets of everyone you follow), @ mentions, and something else (I’m keeping track of who is retweeting me here, but this might also be your direct message inbox or favorites).

Not too bad. But there’s another way yet!

Enter Twitter Lists

A seasoned Twitter pro might have a good chuckle at the mention of Twitter lists. Twitter introduced lists in 2009 as a way to segment the people you follow into more specific groups.

You can easily add someone to a list by clicking their name to bring up a profile box, then selecting the “Add or remove from lists” option.

But, I would wager that less than 1% of Twitter users utilize lists.

And I don’t blame people for not using Twitter lists; Twitter lists suck. From the homepage (which already has your regular feed), it takes three clicks just to get to a list. Why would I ever do that when my home feed is right in front of me?

The concept of segmenting all these people we follow is great, though. Twitter just doesn’t let you use lists efficiently. But Hootsuite does.

Lists in Hootsuite

My Hootsuite tabs are made up of a combination of the basic Hootsuite stream functions shown above, and Twitter lists. Adding a list as a Hootsuite stream is easy. Just click Add Stream and select the list you want to monitor.

So What Type of Lists Should I Make?

That depends on what you use Twitter for. Make lists that group types of people that you want to interact with. Here are some lists you might make:

• Real life friends
• Professionals in your industry
• News or daily deals sources
• The blogs you follow
• Your favorite actors or comedians

Add those lists to your Hootsuite tab and you can create the ideal dashboard for monitoring the Twitter users you want to engage with the most. Follow Ian Lurie’s content curation schedule to start engaging with your segmented audiences efficiently.

My Twitter Dashboard in Hootsuite

Each Hootsuite tab will comfortably hold between 3-6 streams. You can have up to eight streams in a tab if you like horizontal scrolling. I use six streams, organized between two tabs. I call the tabs:

The Me Feed

The Me Feed tab is for me (I’m really good at naming things). I monitor:

• My @ mentions. No-brainer, right? If someone tweets at me, I see it. If they’re not a spam bot, I reply (and sometimes when they are a spam bot).
• My real life friends. Real Life > Online Life. Separating my real life friends has been a great way to follow the more @-heavy conversations between my closest friends.
• The people I regularly interact with. These are people I’ve already made a connection with. I know I want to see what these people are tweeting about, but other than Google+, I probably haven’t “hung out” with them before.

The Focused Feed

The Focused Feed tab is for more specific engagement. I monitor:

• Industry professionals. Instead of adding the top 20 internet marketing blogs to my Google Reader, I follow big and small time internet marketers and see what SEO cream rises to the top. When someone tweets out an article I like, I tweet back at them. What an easy way to start a conversation.
• Future friends. When I follow someone new, they often end up in this list. These are people that I think are interesting, but haven’t interacted with me yet. I keep an eye on these tweets, and tweet back if I have something to add. Once I build a relationship, I move them into the Me Feed.
• Favorite tweets. I favorite a tweet if I want to follow the link or reply to it later. I also use favorites to save the best tweets of the week so I have ammo for Follow Friday.

What’s missing from my feed?

• My home feed. I’ve segmented the followers I want to interact with the most, so I rarely need the home feed. If I did, I could just go to old-fashioned twitter.com, or check my phone.
• Hootsuite keyword/query monitoring. Hootsuite allows you to add streams that monitor specific keywords in tweets. This is a great feature, and you should use it. For this post however, we’re focusing on ways to engage the people you already follow.

What’s the Low Fat Version?

You don’t want to go through all that trouble? Well, I can’t make you. I’m not your mom. And I realize that.

If I was going to give you one tip to increase your engagement on Twitter, I would say make a list. Make one list. And fill it with the 25 to 50 people that you want to engage with the most. Add the list to your Hootsuite dashboard.

Watch that list like a hawk, or like another creature good at watching things. If those tweeters ask a question, answer it. If they tweet a link, check it out and let them know what you think. Make them your friends and allies.

Now you’re building a real Twitter following, not just making complex Canadian wedding plans with a spam bot. In related news: I’m single again, ladies!

You remember that episode where Homer Simpson goes into space as a NASA astronaut? He only got to go because Barney Gumble has an alcoholic relapse and Homer was the second runner up.

Scientist: Well, Homer, I guess you’re the winner by default.

Homer: Default? Woo hoo! The two sweetest words in the English language: de-fault! De-fault! De-fault!

Welcome to my big post of de-faults in AdWords and adCenter that will trip you up, cost you money, cause confusion and eventually make you second runner up to an inanimate carbon rod. (And if you have not seen Deep Space Homer episode in the recent past or ever, you need to go do that. After you read this, of course. 5th Season.)

Microsoft adCenter

1. adCenter for small and medium businesses just changed their name to Bing. I should get that out there first. Don’t let the name fool you. You are still using adCenter and you are on Bing and Yahoo. Not just Bing. And it’s still going to be called adCenter for years (You haven’t forgotten what KFC stands for, have you?). It’s just now the “paid search platform formerly known as adCenter.”

2. Locations. Whenever you create a new campaign you’ll be presented with location targeting options. By default, it’s all locations worldwide. Do yourself a favor, hit that dropdown and try and narrow your selections by country at least. Unless of course your customers in Afghanistan shop the same was as the ones in Burkina Faso.

3. Ad Group Settings TRUMP Campaigns settings. This does make sense. If you’re bothering to drill in that far and set up special settings at the ad group level, you’d want those to override the campaign level ones. However, if you don’t know about it, you might end up sad. Right now, adCenter has a great default in place to help you NOT do that.

4. Networks. This is the one that makes me cry inside. By default, new campaigns (no longer at the ad group setting thanks to the above default) are enabled into all 3 networks that adCenter offers: Search (Bing & Yahoo.com), Search Partner and Content networks. Content network works the same way Google’s Display does: it shows your ads alongside content on “relevant” sites that have signed up to show adCenter ads on their sites. Syndicated Search Partner Network shows adCenter ads alongside search results on sites that have signed up to use the Bing search engine on their own site’s search engine.

You want to start with the Search network ONLY, just Bing and Yahoo.com. You can’t see what is Bing.com vs. Yahoo.com, but the behavior is the same: it’s someone who went to a search engine and typed in a query. Don’t be a victim of network settings.

Google AdWords

Yeah, I made you read through the adCenter stuff first.

5. Locations. By default, new campaigns are opted into the USA and Canada together. I haven’t seen this cost the bucketloads of money that some of the other settings have, but if you don’t ship to the Great White North and don’t want to anger any Canuckle-heads with your anti-Canadian shipping policies, best not to advertise to them in the first place.

6. Devices. Again, not bucketloads of cash on this one, but it’s coming. As mobile usage rises and your site still looks like Snooki the morning after, you’re going to want to either start segmenting the traffic by device or exclude devices that aren’t useful for marketing the business on. Want to dump Snooki? Check out GoMo from Google. It’s free.

7. Keyword Matching Options. As of this year, the definition of “exact” match isn’t exactly exact anymore. Be default, new campaigns are enabled into showing plurals, misspellings and other “close” variants. So if there’s a big difference on how much you make between the keywords [wedding invitation] vs. [wedding invitations], and have those keywords separated out, you’re going to want to visit this setting.

8. Networks. Yeah, this one again. This is the default setting I see trip up the most new advertisers and cause the most wasted money. By default, the Display network is enabled on any new campaign. It’s also set to inherit whatever bid you set for the ad group if you don’t specify one for just the Display network.

Go into your Network settings and disable that check box next to the Display Network. Ignore the warning that pops up alerting to you to that fact that you won’t be (gasp!) showing on the Display Network, and move on with your life. If you want to advertise on the Display Network, great. But do it in a new, separate campaign. Visitors/users of Search and Display are just too different to be lumped into one campaign network setting.

9. Display Network’s Automatic Placements. If you do decide to do separate Display network campaigns (first thank you for separating search and content, you deserve a parade), watch out for those automatic placements that will buy you a few thousand impressions, a handful of clicks, and a lot of nonsense. I’m talking about: gmail.com, adsenseformobileapps.com and anonymous.google.com. (OK, so you can’t block that last one yet, but I still hate it.) You might find success with those first two, but do a separate campaign for managed placements and try it there.

10. Optimize for Clicks on Ads. Whoever thought this up as a “recommended” option and as the default for new campaigns sucks. While I’m sure their corner office is very nice, there should be less evil in the world, not more. And now that AdWords is mandating that after 30 days that this setting will automatically kick in as the default (even if you opted out) makes it even more evil.

By default in new campaigns, the ad delivery option is set to optimize for more clicks, not conversions. If you would like to test out different ads based on conversions or clicks in an A/B test, change this setting to “rotate.” Then you’ll have your test. For up to 30 days. If you edit an ad, that resets the 30 days count. If you don’t like this setting, check out this SEW post for suggestions on how to handle the changes.

Thanks for checking out my long ranting list of dangerous defaults: the silent killers of new PPC advertisers and the trolls that live under the bridge for the experienced strategists.

Forbes published an article this week explaining why Google and Facebook could disappear in the next 5 years.

I, uh, beg to differ.

I wrote my thoughts on the subject in an article published on AllThingsD. You can read it here.

Give it a read. I think Google will be around for a long, long time. How about you?

For someone with only one head, I wear a lot of hats.  Most people have jobs they can explain in a sentence (“I’m a doctor / librarian / deep sea diver.”)  But I’m not one of those people: I’m an Account Strategist for Portent.

As such, I find myself in all manner of situations, solving all manner of problems.  Below is a sampling of some of the hats I wear on any given day.

I’m a Relationship Consultant.

I develop relationships with internal and external team members. I get to know what they like, who they are and how to communicate with them. I listen to their desires, ideas and suggestions, converting their wants into actualities.

I’m a Researcher.

Any good client-agency relationship depends on knowing a client’s products, services and customers. Extensive research allows me to help our clients grow their businesses, reach their goals and get to the next level. I ask myself: “Why did traffic go up on this day?” “What caused the spike in conversions?” “Why are visitors spending less than 1 minute on the page?” It is important to anticipate these client questions and prepare answers before they actually ask.

I’m a Teacher.

After gathering research, I explain to the client how we can help.  At Portent, we pride ourselves on articulating our strategies and processes to the client, inviting them to understand every step of what we do.  Educating clients about the reasoning behind the things we are doing helps everyone make better decisions. I’m also a teacher/educator to the internal team, connecting them to the client and giving them better tools to achieve client objectives.

I’m a Task Manager.

By breaking elements of a project into manageable chunks, we deliver high quality work in an efficient and timely manner.  I ensure things don’t slip through the cracks via tracking and regular catch-up meetings with team members. This part of the job is less about “do this task” than focusing our resources to accomplish client goals. Our teams work on a lot of projects, so managing company time and tasks is essential.

I’m an Interpreter.

SEO, PPC, Link Authority, keyword rich text links, non-branded vs organic visits, klout, hashtags, bit.ly, content strategy, and many more. These are in my vocabulary every day. If you aren’t in Internet Marketing, you may not know what these terms are. I have to know. I teach and share these terms with clients.

I’m a Crisis Consultant.

Crisis is defined in Wikipedia as: any event that is, or expected to lead to, an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, community or whole society. It can mean different things to different clients. Be it an all-hands-on-deck, four-alarm fire, or merely an inconvenient bump in the road, my role is to assess the crisis and adjust appropriately.

This “hat” list is hardly exhaustive. It seems that every day brings new challenges – the good kind, and the not-so-good.  But being an Account Strategist is never boring and the payoff of seeing a client grow makes it more than worthwhile.

We’re all talking a lot about content and social media these days. But visibility boils down to technical SEO: Ensuring that search engines can easily find and categorize every page of your site. These are the top 4 I look at first when I’m auditing a site:

1: Check server response codes

You can use our server response code checker for starters. Just make sure your server is delivering a 404 for a broken link, a 200 for a page that’s just fine, and a 301 for a redirect. You can learn about server response codes in this post I wrote a couple years ago.

Really, Microsoft? You got a D?

2: Seek and destroy duplicate content

Duplicate content hurts site quality and crawl efficiency. You need to get rid of it. We have our own crawler for testing this, but you can use Screaming Frog SEO Spider. Distilled has a fantastic article that includes detailed instructions on using Screaming Frog to find duplicates.

3: Find unreachable pages

Site owners find all sorts of ways to make pages on their site vanish. They orphan pages; they break links; they remove all possible ways of reaching a specific page. You need to find those.

There’s no one fantastic way I know to do this. But some of the tricks I use are:

• Search the server log files for every unique URL loaded over a 6-month period. Compare that to all unique URLs found in a site crawl. People have a funny way of stumbling into pages you’ve accidentally blocked or orphaned. Chances are, blocked pages will show up in your log file, even if they’re blocked.
• Do a database export. If you’re using WordPress or another content management system, you can export a full list of every page/post on the site, as well as the URL generated. Then compare that to a site crawl.
• Run two crawls of your site using your favorite crawler. Do the first one with the default settings. Then do a second with the crawler set to ignore robots.txt and nofollow. If the second crawl has more URLs than the first, and you want 100% of your site indexed, then check your robots.txt and look for meta ROBOTS issues.

4: Look for spider traps

Content management systems like WordPress have lots of extra little snippets of code they use to schedule tasks, deliver content via AJAX, handle searches and generate navigation. That’s fine, but if a search bot starts beating the poop out of some of these snippets, they can suck the life out of your server.

Here’s an example: A few weeks ago, RandFish was kind enough to tweet about a post we’d written on this very blog. That same day, I had an article go live on TechCrunch. As a result, we got about 5x our normal traffic. No big deal.

Unless, of course, you’ve already got GoogleBot rattling around between a WordPress AJAX script and a database scheduler every 15 seconds or so. Then your server coughs, sputters and flips over on its back, waiting for a tummy rub. It also locks up so badly that no amount of cursing or talking nice will get it to let you log in and fix it, by the way. In case you were wondering. And I know you were.

When I looked at our log files for the last month, I found two URLs that GoogleBot kept hitting: wp-cron.php and admin-ajax.php

‘Kept hitting’ means ‘latched onto like a leech at a blood bank’. GoogleBot hit these files 4-5 times per minute.

We disallowed them, and voila: No more crashing server.

That was a classic spider trap: Pages or scripts no bot should find, but did.

Check your log file BEFORE your site crashes and you can avoid our embarrassment.

Lots more

These four tips are just for starters. You can check for broken links, work on site speed and clean up your code, for example. But once the really easy stuff is addressed, the four ideas above should keep you busy for a while.

What do you all look for in a technical site audit?

1. Base your campaigns on the ‘average’ customer.
2. Only follow the data.
3. Never follow the data.
4. Skimp on content.
5. Wait for perfection (hint – you’ll never get it).
6. Leave design to designers (hint – you need to know about it, too).
7. Leave development to developers (hint – see above).
8. Micromanage.
9. Use empty controversy as an outreach tool.
10. Ignore the art in what you do.