Both Fred and I were interviewed on the show, Your Book is Your Hook, the top rated show on the Women’s Radio Network. It’s target market is writers – not advertisers – so it was different than a lot of the normal interviews I give which are more marketing focused.

You can listen to the show here.

In addition, Fred and I both wrote articles about AdWords for writers.

Fred wrote 3 Tips to Jumpstart Your Google AdWords Campaign For Your Book.

I wrote one that was more geared towards what writers need to know to write a good ad copy. So many writers are focused on writing long copy, such as a novel where one sentence just doesn’t matter that much. With PPC ads, each word can be a difference, so there’s a bit different of a thought process. That article is here: Writing A Google Ad May Be Harder Than Writing Your Book – Advanced Tips & Strategies.

You can also watch the show host, Jennifer Wilkov talk about the interviews:

If you want to write a book, want to learn a bit more about how I got the AdWords Evangelist to write the forward for me, or just want to hear more about ad copy writing, the interview is a good listen.

Read Brad's Newest Book: Advanced Google AdWords
	Advanced Google AdWords will provide deep insight into AdWords functionality and advanced features, explaining how they work and providing tips, tactics, and hands-on tutorials that readers can immediately use on their own PPC campaigns. $175 in training & AdWords coupons inside Read testimonials from industry experts Learn more about Advanced Google AdWords
Certified Knowledge: Online AdWords Training, Tools, and Community
	Certified Knowledge is an online tools, training, and community site brought to you by Brad Geddes & bg Theory. We are currently accepting beta applications. In interested, please see more at CertifiedKnowledge.org.

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After attending, I’m sure I’ll remember the difference as this show promises to be different than other SESs as there are several new items planned, such as Incisive partnering with other conferences, such as OMS, IAB, and the conversion conference.

I’ve been taking a look through the agenda, and here’s where I plan to be during the week:

Monday

I’ll be getting to San Fran in the afternoon. If you want to chat, I’ll be around and just contact me and we’ll see if we can work something out.

In the evening, I’ll stop by the Connected Marketing Week event.

Tuesday

3pm Book Signing

I’m doing a book signing for Advanced Google AdWords at Wiley’s booth in the exhibit hall at 3pm. If you don’t have a copy, you can buy one at the booth. If you want to stop by and say, “Hi”, I’ll be there for an hour.

4:15 Introduction to Remarketing

I’ve been experimenting with remarketing (you can see how we set up our remarketing campaigns) a lot recently, and want to hear what others are saying about remarketing these days.

Late Webmaster Radio Party – SearchBash

You have to attend – this is the event to be at during the week. I have no idea what Brandy and Daron have planned; but you won’t want to miss it.

Wednesday

1pm Stretching Your Marketing Dollars

Fred Valaeys (Google’s AdWords Evangelist) wrote the forward for my book; and I always like to see him speak. Eli from comScore always gives good stats. Should be interesting to see their creative thoughts on stretching your dollars.

2:30 Offsite Video Interview

Wiley (the publisher of for Dummies, Hour a Day, etc books) is creating a video interview for my book; so of course, I have to be there to give the interview. I’ll be back at the conference after an hour or so.

2:30 Speaking Geek

If I wasn’t going to be offsite; I’d sit in this session. I have a lot of experience in conversing with developers (it helps I know my way around a few code bases); but I’m still not a programmer. If you have issues communicating with developers (and most marketers do even if they don’t know it) this could be a very interesting session.

3:45 Google Ad Innovations

Just admit it – you want to know what’s next at Google too.

Late: IM Charity Party

I’m a big supporter of charity events; and this is both a good networking event that supports a good cause. Nice combination.

Thursday

12 SEM Toolbox

I just launched my own PPC Tool, Training, and Community project, so I need to take a peak at the other tools. I don’t really compete with these companies, and I know several of the panelists – so it’s just good to see their positioning and the reactions to those positions.

2 Speaking: Ads in a Quality Score World

I have to attend this session as I’m speaking on Ads in a Quality Score World. It’s myself, David Szetela, Andrew Goodman, and Nick Fox from Google. Each of these speakers is great. Combined – it’s a must see.

4:45 Advanced Paid Search Tactics

If you read this blog, how could you not want to attend this session? I’ve not met David Rodnitzky before, but he’s on my list of people I want to see speak to see what I really think of him. Thomas Bindl, founder of Refined Labs (and a friend I like to support) will also be talking. As Thomas is based in Germany, its interesting to see a non-US perspective.

Other Events

I’ve not had a chance to look at all the partner events that are happening; so if you see some can’t miss items from the other conferences that are happening – please let me know.

Read Brad's Newest Book: Advanced Google AdWords
	Advanced Google AdWords will provide deep insight into AdWords functionality and advanced features, explaining how they work and providing tips, tactics, and hands-on tutorials that readers can immediately use on their own PPC campaigns. $175 in training & AdWords coupons inside Read testimonials from industry experts Learn more about Advanced Google AdWords
Certified Knowledge: Online AdWords Training, Tools, and Community
	Certified Knowledge is an online tools, training, and community site brought to you by Brad Geddes & bg Theory. We are currently accepting beta applications. In interested, please see more at CertifiedKnowledge.org.

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Advanced Google AdWords (my book on AdWords advertising) has been selling quite well. After a few months in the top 10 advertising books on Amazon, it’s now available in a Kindle format.

If you’ve been holding out to buy the book until it’s in the Kindle format, you can get it from Amazon here.

If you’d like to read more about the book, or customer testimonials, please visit the Advanced Google AdWords Book site.

What I don’t know yet (and if you buy the book in the Kindle version please let me know) is if the coupons are in the Kindle version.

The coupons for Certified Knowledge and the AdWords Seminars will be honored even if they are not published in the book. You can login on the bonuses page to claim those coupons.

However, Google is providing a $25 coupon for new accounts in the print version. We’re working with Google to find out what happens in the Kindle version but there’s no word yet. I’ll post an update when I learn something on that front.

Read Brad's Newest Book: Advanced Google AdWords
	Advanced Google AdWords will provide deep insight into AdWords functionality and advanced features, explaining how they work and providing tips, tactics, and hands-on tutorials that readers can immediately use on their own PPC campaigns. $175 in training & AdWords coupons inside Read testimonials from industry experts Learn more about Advanced Google AdWords
Certified Knowledge: Online AdWords Training, Tools, and Community
	Certified Knowledge is an online tools, training, and community site brought to you by Brad Geddes & bg Theory. We are currently accepting beta applications. In interested, please see more at CertifiedKnowledge.org.

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However, don’t start reading them and then think that’s exactly how you should create and design your site.

There is no magic to SEO. There is rarely just one thing you can change and your site starts to rank number one for your chosen terms.

First Read The Entire Charts for Unknown Factors

The first step you should take is to read the entire charts.

This first read should not be based upon looking for factors that are supposedly the most important in ranking.

The first time you read the chart; look for things you do not understand. When you find factors that you are unfamiliar with – this is a place to learn. Read more about this factor so that you can learn more about SEO.

I can’t stress how important this step is. By understanding the global set of factors, you can start to see how one item can influence another; which will help you make much better decisions about where to spend your SEO efforts.

The Grain of Salt

My two favorite charts are created by ‘experts’. These are generally some of the best known practitioners of their craft – but SEO is opinion.

In fact, according to the SearchKing vs Google lawsuit, the judge found that PageRank is and organic rankings are protected by the first amendment (free speech) because search results are opinions.

These ranking charts are opinions from SEOs about how search engines for them opinions.

The reason I like these two charts is because when they poll experts they ask how important each factor is. Then, they show the importance across these factors as rated by the experts but also show the degree of consensus across those same people.

For instance, if everyone thinks it’s important then the consensus is high. If half think it’s important and half think it’s not important then the consensus will be low. This gives you an overall indication of not just the factors important but also if everyone thinks that factor is important or just a few people.

How to Use These Charts

Once you have read and researched the factors so you understand what all of them mean; then start making checklists.

The first checklist should be the high importance, high consensus items. Look through your website to see how you are doing on these items. Some of these will take a lot of effort (such as link building) and need to be put into an ongoing task list. Some of these factors (such as is your site listed in Google Places) are one time items (and maintaining them is essential; but the bulk of the work can be done quickly) and start there.

Continue to evaluate your site according to these charts to see where to spend your time. By starting with the high importance and one time tasks, you can start to work through these charts overtime.

The Two SEO Factor Charts

If you are working on organic SEO; then my favorite chart is by the folks at SEOmoz: Search Ranking Factors.

If you are working on Local SEO (such as Google maps) then David Mihm’s chart is fantastic: Local Search Ranking Factors.

Other helpful optimization posts:

• Video Ranking Tips
• Product feed optimization
• Google News optimization
• Image SEO

Read Brad's Newest Book: Advanced Google AdWords
	Advanced Google AdWords will provide deep insight into AdWords functionality and advanced features, explaining how they work and providing tips, tactics, and hands-on tutorials that readers can immediately use on their own PPC campaigns. $175 in training & AdWords coupons inside Read testimonials from industry experts Learn more about Advanced Google AdWords
Certified Knowledge: Online AdWords Training, Tools, and Community
	Certified Knowledge is an online tools, training, and community site brought to you by Brad Geddes & bg Theory. We are currently accepting beta applications. In interested, please see more at CertifiedKnowledge.org.

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Please note; this will probably be our last stop of the year on the east coast.

We might do a Philadelphia seminar later in the year; but at present this is our last one planned for the East Coast until next February or March.

When: July 20th & 21st 
Where: Embassy Suites New York
102 North End Avenue
New York, New York 10282

The AdWords Seminar Curriculum has been completely revamped based upon feedback from previous attendees. We’re now offering a two day seminar. Each day is optional; however, we’re offering a discount to those attending both days.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

Before you read the new curriculum, don’t forget the fun goodies you also get for attending:

• $100 AdWords Credit ($50 if you register for a single day) **Must Register 7 Days in Advance
• 2 USB Thumb Drives with Presentation Materials (1 for each day)
• Other Google Goodies

See What Other Attendees Have Said:

Curriculum Day 1

First, I flew down to your conference in Houston not really having any expectations on what I was going to learn in a one day seminar over something that has paralysis by analysis written all over it like Adwords. However, I feel afterwards, it was one of the most positive and understandable conferences that I have ever attended.

You did a great job in explaining and relating the information into a plan that even an amateur like myself can understand. I have taken a lot of the information and began to implement the ideas into actual measurable results.

I just wanted to send you a note in appreciation for your time and thank you for all the information that you provided. I hopefully will get to goto another seminar in the future.

Neal Freeman Catalog/Assistant eCommerce Manager Dallas Cowboys Merchandising

Curriculum Day 2

I flew from Japan just for this seminar, and it was worth every penny. I know there are many people who teach AdWords, but no one is as specific as he is, and he doesn’t mind sharing the information with you. When it comes to AdWords, he is the one to listen.

Taka
President
lpo-consulting.com/

Great seminar. A lot of interesting information. You can tell that Brad knows exactly what he is talking about. Thank you so much.

Valeri Volkov
United City Group Clearwater, FL

Brad I wanted to write and thank you again. My staff and I came away with a lot of very useful information. Having been a long time user, I thought I understood AdWords, Analytics and landing pages well. I wasn’t even close to the level of what I know now. I should have done this long ago. If the ideas running through my head were gears in a machine there would be smoke coming from them. Truly eye opening.

Jay Papineau
IT Manager
Northwest Clinical Research Center

I learned an amazing amount from in the Seminars for Success Advanced Adwords course in two short days early this week. Brad taught us a huge number of you-gotta-know-this Adwords lessons that are turning into money in the bank for us already 3 days later. I think this seminar was probably the best money I have ever invested in a seminar.

Walt Monk
Owner
WebWelcomer.com

You did a great job in the seminars this week. You totally are an expert on the subject and that was great to see. Well worth the money for the seminar and the education I got. I have been working on adwords for about 4 years now mostly part time, took the basic classes two years ago in Dallas and so it was great to move to the next level of knowledge. I feel empowered! Please email me when your new book comes out.

Kenneth H. Butler
Butler Information Technologies, Inc.

Within a few hours my goals for this 2 day Seminar in Toronto had already been achieved, I thought it was a very interesting and helpful Seminar. Brad, I admire your enthusiasm and wide range of knowledge. Keep up the good work! I would recommend this Seminar to anyone who has a basic knowledge about Adwords and Analytics. For Analytics you need to know a bit more about the technical implementation though.

Dennis
Wicked Media NV

The seminar you lead was awesome. My only regret is that I did not fire the consultant I had about 3 months earlier! He was a good guy, but just did not get it. Your course saved me weeks of self study, and I am already seeing much better results than I have ever seen using a consultant.

St. Clair Newbern IV

I attended Brads 301 and 302 google adwords seminar in Toronto this past week and was a little skeptical at first if i would learn anything useful. Well I was quite impressed with his knowledge and actually did learn a lot about adwords and google analytics and how to get to the proper reports that show you how to fine tune your account. I highly recommend the workshop to SEM professional. Brad has a lot of tools and advice that you can don’t find on the standard web sites about how to use adwords. thanks!

John MacKenzie
President
EthicalHost.ca

The seminar was probably worth far more than 10 times the cost. I was astounded to see how much useful information Brad was able to deliver in one day. My only quasi-negative comment: It might have been too much good information. I’m a little overwhelmed just thinking about where to start with all the positive changes I can now make with our internet marketing.

Rick D. from Minneapolis

I attended Brad’s Google Adwords 301 and 302 seminars in San Diego and felt that I must let others know about how much I have gained from it. Let’s put it this way: for 7 hours each day of the seminar, you are so indulged in the important information that you don’t want to even goto the bathroom. The seminar will pay for itself 10 fold within the first few months. Brad will teach you so many money saving and money making tips. Thanks Brad.

Payam

Very informative for me – I was concerned most of it would go over my head but it was about right. Great presentation and question handling; the Adwords ‘tour’ explained the tools available and led to a number of changes to my ads, keywords and website. Excellent value.

Anonymous

Thank you, Brad, for a terrific presentation. Right on target, insightful, and full of strategy.

Debbie Formica
Martindale’s Natural Market

I really enjoyed the 2 days of advanced seminars in Chicago. Brad is obviously very educated in the ins and outs of AdWords. My only suggestion is I would have personally benefited from a little more time spent on more advanced AdWord bidding and advertising tactics.

Bill S.

I attended your AdWords seminar a few days ago in Chicago. I just wanted to thank you for the excellence in the material you have provided to me. I really appreciate your passion for internet marketing as I have similar passions. I have loved designing and developing websites since I discovered them when I was 12… The tools that you gave me will now allow me to cause the websites that I work on for clients truly be successful and not just sit on the web doing nothing. I am also inspired by your story and career. Thank You so much!

Brian Groce
Clear Notions Studio

I think you are going to save me thousands and hopefully one day 100’s of thousands once my campaigns get bigger.

James Bird
marshalfirth.com

I’m an affiliate and this type of training is essential and you guys delivered the best quality in content I’ve even seen about the subject of adwords. I left the seminar feeling more confident about this interface, but I sure would have been glad to pay extra for access to recorded video sessions. Maybe that’s something you guys could offer soon? Thanks very much.

Charlie Perez.

Brad is a genius–and I don’t say that about a lot of people. He knows Google adwords inside and out. I was thoroughly impressed by his presentation.

Anonymous

Brad, great job with the seminar. It was taught well and at a good learning pace. You handled the array of questions from simple to hard with great explainations and analogies. I will probably be calling you for some personal phone consultations for my larger ppc clients. All the best!

Tony Mandarich
Mandarich.com

I attended your Google Adwords Seminar for Success sessions in Austin earlier this week. I just wanted to say I really appreciated the content you offered. Your material was well balanced. I was fearful that because my company is not a product-selling company that we would not benefit from your information. That couldn?t have been further from the truth. Your seminar validated to me that the direction we have taken so far is appropriate. It is good to see and hear from an expert that we have made good decisions about our Adwords strategy. Your information and tips have given me new things to think about and to use when looking for new keywords to use, and as well to examine our existing keyword performance.

Stu Roberts
Director of Information Technology Nelson Architectural Engineers, Inc.
Investigative Engineering & Forensic Technology

The Google Adwords seminar by Brad Geddes was the most informative and enlightening one I have ever attended. The day flew by and the information gleaned was more than most two-day sessions I have attended.

Jeff Cunningham
Cunninghamn Gas Products
CunninghamLiving.com

Brad – GREAT JOB! you managed multiple experience levels beautifully. I learned a lot. Already seeing better results from my Adwords campaigns. I’m sure I’ll attend another session.

Steve Hodgdon

Very informative for me. I was concerned most of it would go over my head but it was about right. Great presentation and question handling; the Adwords tour explained the tools available and led to a number of changes to my ads, keywords and website. Excellent value.

Matt Nelson

I recently attended the 2-day Google Seminar for Success in Houston and I must say, it was extraordinarily helpful! Brad was super thorough with the material and presented it in a way that kept our interest and provoked thought and constructive questions the entire time… and this is no easy task for an intensive, information-jammed course like this one. I was very excited to put this new knowledge to work and I fully expect that my business will see measurable progress as a result of Brad’s seminar. THANKS AGAIN!

Danny Shaftel
Shaftel Diamond Co.

I attended this conference in order to learn the latest Adwords developments, and in this respect, I found it to be most useful. We are using Adwords tools daily, so know more about them than the average user. Still, it is useful from time to time to take a step back and listen to an expert who is obviously plugged into the latest, as well as upcoming, developments. Brad is an exceptional speaker, offers insightful views about marketing theory, and is a technical master. Aside from that he demonstrates during his presentations a willingness to roll up his sleeves and delve into the nuts and bolts of how to manage Adwords to improve ROAS for clients.

Chris Lude
Denver-PPC.com

Read Brad's Newest Book: Advanced Google AdWords
	Advanced Google AdWords will provide deep insight into AdWords functionality and advanced features, explaining how they work and providing tips, tactics, and hands-on tutorials that readers can immediately use on their own PPC campaigns. $175 in training & AdWords coupons inside Read testimonials from industry experts Learn more about Advanced Google AdWords
Certified Knowledge: Online AdWords Training, Tools, and Community
	Certified Knowledge is an online tools, training, and community site brought to you by Brad Geddes & bg Theory. We are currently accepting beta applications. In interested, please see more at CertifiedKnowledge.org.

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• The higher the monetary reward you give an employee, the generally worse their performance becomes?
  • That’s not true of manual tasks
  • It is very true of cognitive tasks

The three best motivating factors for individuals are:

• Autonomy – are you in charge of your destiny?
• Mastery – how can you get better at a skill?
• Purpose – what does your work create

Did you notice that money is not listed?

I once left a job where if I would have stayed another 6 months, I would have received a nice bonus that could have easy been in the six figure range and at minimum it would have been middle five figures.

Why?

Money has never been one of my main motivating factors, and that’s not just lip service – I actually walked away from a nice bonus and comfy job. This decision baffled many of my co-workers, who think money is a motivating factor for everyone.

Why did I walk away?

I like to create. I follow my own rules (sometimes this causes conflicts when I work with someone). I have my own set of ethics and standards which are often higher than many businesses (not a reason I left the previously mentioned job; but I have left another one for that reason, and it was an ethical non-profit).

I’m not alone.

Nothing I’ve said makes me unique.

This is fairly common human behavior. Many people do not have the financial means to leave a job; hence why there is less workplace movement that people desire. However, the same motivating factors still apply.

Wikipedia and Linux were created by non-paid people (who had other jobs); and yet are two highly influential creations.

Digg and YouTube did not become large on their own; they became powerhouses based upon people spending their own time sharing content with the community. Those sharers are not paid individuals.

My degree is in Psychology, with an emphasis on personality theory. Understanding people’s motivations, decisions, and interactions fascinates me (and marketing gives me a great outlet to test theories).

I recently watched a video that expressed these concepts more eloquently that I could ever do in an article. This video is almost eleven minutes long. It’s worth your time.

In fact, if your a boss or have employees report to you – you should watch this.

The video starts off a little slow and basic; don’t let the opening minutes fool you into thinking you understand all of these concepts (and even if you do – this is a great refresher); if you stay and watch the entire video (and think about how to implement these ideas into your workplace) these eleven minutes might alter the way you motivate your employees.

Read Brad's Newest Book: Advanced Google AdWords
	Advanced Google AdWords will provide deep insight into AdWords functionality and advanced features, explaining how they work and providing tips, tactics, and hands-on tutorials that readers can immediately use on their own PPC campaigns. $175 in training & AdWords coupons inside Read testimonials from industry experts Learn more about Advanced Google AdWords
Certified Knowledge: Online AdWords Training, Tools, and Community
	Certified Knowledge is an online tools, training, and community site brought to you by Brad Geddes & bg Theory. We are currently accepting beta applications. In interested, please see more at CertifiedKnowledge.org.

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Considering the average twitter length is 81 characters, roughly 16 words, that is the equivalent of reading 6250 tweets in their entirety every single day.

With so much data overwhelming us everyday; how can one possible read and digest the information that is most important to them?

Every day, I examine more than 300 blogs and pull information from thousands of sources to keep up with what is important to me.

This task takes less than an hour.

One thing I’ve been forced to learn over the years is how to manage thousands of incoming messages each week, and still have time to work. This same discipline can be applied to your industry content so that you can absorb what is necessary each day.

In this blog post; I’ll walk through how I consume content each day to keep up with emerging trends and industry best practices.

iGoogle & Wake-up Coffee

When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is grab a cup of coffee. The second thing is turn to my iGoogle page.

When you first wake up, many of our cognitive skills are not yet fully functioning. So, I do not immediately turn to reading in-depth testing procedures; but instead look at content I find both interesting and useful.

For myself, my first iGoogle page is full of tech news. I’m a tech news junky; and blogs such as Smashing Magazine and Tech Dirt not only fuel my need for interesting content to jump-start my brain; but also contain content that I find both useful and interesting. Using aggregators such as Techmeme to find content, you can have access to thousands of news sources – yet let someone else do the hard part.

The trick when you first wake up is to find content that will help you start thinking; but is not so in-depth or important that if you miss it or do not comprehend everything that it will affect your life. This first page of 15 feeds takes ten to fifteen minutes to absorb. The first cup of coffee is complete and it’s time to move to stage two.

iGoogle & Your Industry News

There is more to news than iGoogle; but iGoogle gives you a quick glance at your news which you can’t get with blog readers. Therefore, my second cup of coffee and day starts with another tab that is focused on search marketing news.

I also have many blogs that I read related to search marketing; so this first glance is to see if there are any major announcements or articles that inspire what you might wish to do that day. While I always have a running to-do list; there are some articles that are so inspiring you might want to implement the ideas (or add them to your to-do list) before you move to the rest of your day. This takes ten to fifteen minutes to scan and read (and for me; often contains a visit to Webmaster World as well). Again, use aggregators such as Sphinn to absorb content that others have found and is relevant to you.

For you, find the news that’s related to your industry or places that you will find inspiration of new ideas and directions.

The second cup of coffee is complete; the brain’s cognitive skills are now functioning; so it’s time to absorb some real news – 200 blogs in 30 minutes.

Your Feed Reader

Google reader happens to be my favorite feed reader; however, feel free to pick your favorite as most readers follow the same rules.

You can organize feeds into folders.

Folders are displayed in alphabetical order.

The biggest mistake you can make is to subscribe to 300 blogs and not have them classified into folders.

The first folder I have is called 1MarkRead. It’s displayed at the top of the reader list and contains about 75% of all the blogs I subscribe to. This folder is for the blogs where you want to glance at the headlines and if something catches your eye; open up the post and read it, but if nothing catches your eye – then you want to put them behind you and move on.

When you have scrolled to the bottom of the list; click the ‘mark all read’ button. For me, this folder contains two to three hundred new posts each day; and it takes about 10 minutes to go through. This way you can find the most important headlines each day without being bogged down by thinking you are missing something.

Next I have the 1SearchCap folder which I’ll come back to later.

Because everything is in alphabetical order, I preface each folder with a ‘b’ so that it comes after the 1MarkRead folder, but before any random tags and other folders.

Each day, I look closely at the bPPC folder as I’m mostly involved in PPC. However, choose one folder that is your most important industry news that you want to look at closely. While you might use the ‘mark all read button’; you’ll know when glancing through this folder that you want to be more judicious about checking the contents of the posts than the 1MarkRead folder.

Finally, each day I choose one or two other folders to glance through. Some days its SEO, other days it’s local search, etc. I don’t examine all of these each day; but over the course of the week I’ll get through each folder. For these folders, I want to glance at the headlines closer than the 1MarkRead folder, but less than the bPPC (or your industry) folder.

By grouping the information together, your brain has an easier time processing the information. You aren’t constantly skipping from analytics to SEO; you can silo things. In addition, it’s common to see a big announcement made; but the major blogs take one to three days to write about the information. By only looking through these other folders once or twice a week, you can easily find multiple viewpoints or arguments and counterarguments to these announcements in a single glance.

Generally, by this time I’ve spent forty-five minutes to an hour absorbing the most important concept and it’s time to go to work.

If you found inspiration during your reading  (and if you’re not; you might want to revisit what you’re reading) then you want to implement those ideas – will your schedule allow it?

Maker vs Manager Schedules

There are two types of schedules that most people follow.

Makers Schedule

Writers, designers, programmers, and creative people do not like a fixed schedule. They like to set aside several hours at a time to be creative and get their job done. Meetings can destroy their schedules.

If you are interrupted, it can take 20-25 minutes to get back to your previous productivity level. If you are interrupted just twice in an hour (the average is 8 times per hour); you have basically worked twenty solid minutes in that hour.

Managers Schedule

Managers are executives, the bosses, and their lives are often controlled by their calendar or blackberry and they live their lives in thirty to sixty minute meeting intervals. As these individuals are usually checking in and directing the Makers, they are generally the interrupters.

However, you need both types of individuals for a business to succeed.

What is you’re both?

Many small business owners in the internet marketing arena are makers; but as they are business owners they also have to be managers. I happen to fall into this category as I’m a creative person who owns a company and many web properties.

Therefore, in the morning (most people’s most productive time) I stick to a maker’s schedule. No meetings allowed until after lunch; and often 2pm. That way I can implement what I learned (or was inspired to create) by the blogs I read and put it into practice. However, as most people’s creativity wanes during the day; by the afternoon I’m open to meetings and phone calls.

During the day, you will come across interesting news that you want to read; but can’t read it at that moment. This is where Instapaper can be helpful. Instapaper is a simple tool to save pages you wish to read later. Instapaper supports RSS feeds, which means you can add your feed to Google Reader. If you’re surfing the web, or see an article that you wish to read but do not have time, save it to instapaper and then when you read your feed reader those same pages will be waiting for you so that you don’t miss them.

Reinforcing the News at a Later Date

Earlier, I skipped a very important folder in the blog reader called 1SearchCap.

Most news is sensationalistic. This makes for great headlines and page views, but often does not inspire productivity – in fact it does the opposite – it inspires gossip or conversations that take time but lead to no meaningful results.

Because of this fact, and that I scan a lot of headlines and do not read them; I need to revisit the news at a later time to see if I missed anything that was truly important.

My favorite SEM daily roundup is Search Cap. Find your favorite daily news roundup site and subscribe to it. The reason I like SearchCap is that it aggregates news from around the web; even on competitor sites; and does not just showcase their own news.

Then, do not read it the day it comes out – wait.

I usually wait about 2-3 weeks after the publication date to read Search Cap. Why? The day it comes out just means the news is new – it does not mean the news is meaningful.

I read it a few weeks later to see if there are headlines or announcements that I’ve heard more than a few times over the past few weeks. If yes, and I skipped over the news when it first came out; then I can quickly read that particular news piece. If the articles have faded and were more fluff than substance; then I can again skip over them.

By using this method, you do not have to worry about missing an item when you are scanning your news the day it occurs. That puts too much pressure on people to not miss anything and ends up wasting time by reading more information that is necessary. By knowing that if you miss something you’ll have a second chance to catch it; you can focus on the most important news to you.

On Friday afternoons the phone stops ringing and email volume drops significantly – that’s a perfect time to read Search Cap. If you leave the office at 5pm, and by 4pm you really are done for the day but you can’t leave yet – that’s a perfect time to read Search Cap. If you just need a break from working; check in on Search Cap. There isn’t a set time to read it – when you need a fifteen minute break; then catch up on the older news.

Working smartly is more important than working hard

Working hard on the wrong thing is a waste of time. Working smartly on the correct thing makes you more productive.

The trick is not to read every blog post every day – that’s impossible.

You are going to consume 100,000 words and 34 gigs of data a day. No one can remember that much information.

By being strategic with your news absorption, you can read and spend time with the news that is important to you; and even more crucial – have a chance to implement what you spent time learning.

Read Brad's Newest Book: Advanced Google AdWords
	Advanced Google AdWords will provide deep insight into AdWords functionality and advanced features, explaining how they work and providing tips, tactics, and hands-on tutorials that readers can immediately use on their own PPC campaigns. $175 in training & AdWords coupons inside Read testimonials from industry experts Learn more about Advanced Google AdWords
Certified Knowledge: Online AdWords Training, Tools, and Community
	Certified Knowledge is an online tools, training, and community site brought to you by Brad Geddes & bg Theory. We are currently accepting beta applications. In interested, please see more at CertifiedKnowledge.org.

Related posts:

1. The SEMMYS, Controversy, and Analytics Blogs You Should Read Matt has taken the best posts from his feed reader...
2. Yahoo Integrates Blogs into News The announcement by Yahoo that they’re integrating some blogs into...
3. Breakdown of Media Content vs Blog Content Topix.net, one of my favorite news sources, is beginning to...

For a very niche marketing book that’s quite an accomplishment.

This book is only for people who:

• Involved in online marketing
• Want to learn more about AdWords
• Are not beginners
• Read English
• Willing to spend money to learn more

When all boiled down – it’s a very small audience, so the fact we broke into the top 2,000 of all books sold across Amazon is quite an accomplishment that we’re proud of.

If you’d like to learn more about the book, you can read more on the Advanced Google AdWords website.

You can buy the book from Amazon.

If you have read the book and enjoyed it; please leave a review.

Read Brad's Newest Book: Advanced Google AdWords
	Advanced Google AdWords will provide deep insight into AdWords functionality and advanced features, explaining how they work and providing tips, tactics, and hands-on tutorials that readers can immediately use on their own PPC campaigns. $175 in training & AdWords coupons inside Read testimonials from industry experts Learn more about Advanced Google AdWords
Certified Knowledge: Online AdWords Training, Tools, and Community
	Certified Knowledge is an online tools, training, and community site brought to you by Brad Geddes & bg Theory. We are currently accepting beta applications. In interested, please see more at CertifiedKnowledge.org.

Related posts:

1. Advanced Google AdWords is Now Available in Kindle Format Advanced Google AdWords (my book on AdWords advertising) has...
2. Google AdWords Remarketing Campaigns: See how we set up our own campaigns Google remarketing campaigns allow you to serve custom ads to...
3. We’re finally on Twitter – Here’s Our Twitter Resource List Like many people, I’ve not joined the twitter revolution mainly...

However, I keep receiving the question: Outside of cost and position; why is quality score so important?

Here’s the answer.

First, take a look at this list of what quality score actually affects in your account:

• If your ad is eligible to be shown in the auction
• What position your ad will be displayed on the search page
• The price you pay for the click
• If products extensions will be displayed with your ad
• If sitelinks will be displayed with your ad
• If location extensions will be displayed with your ad
• If your ad is eligible to be displayed in the top spot above the natural results
• If dynamic keyword insertion will work

Not working on quality score can put a keyword into a negative spiral.

Ad rank (where your ad is displayed in the search results) is a simple formula: ad rank = QS X Max CPC.
Ads are shown in descending order of ad rank (the highest ad rank is position 1, the second highest ad rank is position 2, etc)

Let’s say your paying $2 per click with a quality score of 4. This means your ad rank is 8.

Now let’s say that your competition is bidding $1 with a quality score of 7. This means their ad rank is a 7.

At this point in time your ad appears higher in the search results.

However, with a 4 quality score your ad does not show DKI, it does not show product extension ads, in fact the ad displayed on the SERP is identical to what you see inside your account as none of the ad ‘add-ons’ will be displayed with your ad.

Your competition’s ad, with a 7 quality score, is showing extensions (this could be product or location extensions) and looks nicer on the SERP than your ad. So what happens? Your CTR goes down and theirs goes up.

This causes your quality score to drop even more.
And their quality score to rise.

Over time, their ad starts showing above your ad even through their bid is half of yours.

Then the next advertiser below you has a 7 quality score and their ad is showing product extensions….

The cycle repeats itself until your ad just stops showing because of low quality score reasons.

Spending a little time working with quality score each week might not always result in increasing all of your quality scores; but it will help keep you from falling into a downward spiral.

If you need quality score help; our new training site will have tutorials on quality score as well as a tool where you can quickly see where inside your account you should spend your time optimizing your quality scores.

Read Brad's Newest Book: Advanced Google AdWords
	Advanced Google AdWords will provide deep insight into AdWords functionality and advanced features, explaining how they work and providing tips, tactics, and hands-on tutorials that readers can immediately use on their own PPC campaigns. $175 in training & AdWords coupons inside Read testimonials from industry experts Learn more about Advanced Google AdWords
Certified Knowledge: Online AdWords Training, Tools, and Community
	Certified Knowledge is an online tools, training, and community site brought to you by Brad Geddes & bg Theory. We are currently accepting beta applications. In interested, please see more at CertifiedKnowledge.org.

Related posts:

1. What determines the ‘Keyword Quality Score’ for AdWords? Your keyword quality score, along with maximum cost per click...
2. AdWords Quality Score Ranges I’ve received a lot of feedback for extending Quality Score...
3. Google AdWords Quality Score Factors Demystified There are several different factors that affect Google AdWords Quality...

Since I knew WordPress very well, we used WordPress as our CMS. I took a blog template I liked and spent a day modifying the CSS and other files.

When we first launched, our offers were mostly focused on in-house training and the AdWords Seminars. Over the past two years, I’ve written a book, changed the seminars from a one day to two day product, and we’re adding a brand new AdWords training and PPC tools product.

As we added or changed each product, I just kept adding new custom pages. Our WordPress install became so convoluted that we had:

• 8 page templates
• 2 blog templates
• 3 headers
• 3 footers
• 4 sidebars

In the interest of time, as like most of you, we are overly busy – these templates were calling php includes, iFrames, etc, and just becoming more and more complex to try and keep straight, let alone update properly.

And just like many marketers, we fell into a similar trap. Our work was much better for people we worked with than ourselves.

Some simple rules of conversions that everyone should follow:

• Each page should have a primary goal.
  • A page might have more than one goal, two or three is OK – more than that overwhelms people
  • The most real estate on your pages should be dedicated to your primary goals, the second amount of page space to your secondary goals, etc
• Every page of your website is a segmentation page until someone converts.
• Information should be clear and concise.
  • Easy-to-read and digest information is more important than a gorgeous website design.
  • Easy-to-read also means that your links and content should be easy to read for those who are color blind (color blindness is more common than many people think), or need to view webpages in larger font sizes than your default
• Each page of your site should provide value for your company
  • We have some blog posts which have over 78,000 views, and many with over 10,000 views yet our blog was not well monetized
  • I’m not a hard sell person – I prefer to educate and let the revenue follow (your monetization efforts might be different – that’s OK)
  • However, our blog was not leading to many conversions (the revenue was nice; just not what it should be for our page views)
• Tracking is essential. If you can’t track something then you can’t optimize it.

When I examined our analytics to look at revenue by page and traffic source combination (this examines each page and who sent you the traffic, one without the other is useless) and made sure we had at least 500 visitors for each combination. We had some  combinations where the value was nearly $0.00 and other’s where the value was nearing $50 (and if you filter to only include at least 100 visitors minimum some combinations were nearing $100). That’s a dramatic difference across a site.

It became even worse when examining some traffic sources where their value was nearly $0.00 on some pages, and more than $20 on other pages.

That is too much of a variance. Some of your pages will be worth very little, and some of your traffic sources are worth very little.

A traffic source often shows the quality level of visitors. The pages show quality level of conversion potential. Large variances need to be examined and improved if possible (and some pages will always be low or some always high).

Define Your Company

Not enough marketers really define their primary goals.

Are you:

• An agency
• A consultant
• A full service bid management company
• A design company
• etc..

While we do consulting, speaking, in-house training, etc – our primary mission is to empower as many companies as possible with the information necessary to make their online marketing efforts successful.

Our primary goal is not to get consulting clients, or even in-house training. While those two objectives lead to revenue – it’s not scalable revenue.

Our goal is to empower as many companies as possible. Therefore, we want to highlight the ways we scale PPC learning:

• Advanced AdWords Book
• AdWords Seminars for Success
• The new project about to launch: Certified Knowledge – online, on-demand training & tools

As there are dedicated sites for Certified Knowledge and Advanced Google AdWords, this site serves as our corporate site, our blog, and our seminar promotions.  

How will you reach your audience?

Once you’ve decided what your company does, you need to determine how you will reach your audience.

This step is the coordination of your website and your marketing channels.

For instance, with the seminars, Google links directly to our seminar pages. Since Google is passing some of their credibility to us – the seminar pages do not need to offer as much credibility nor showcase different offers because someone came to the site looking for a specific offer. Therefore, we mostly focus on testimonials.

Coordinating your marketing channel with your design

If you are doing email marketing, are your  landing pages extensions of the email offer?

If you have a blog, which often pulls traffic from various sources, do you show your offers on those pages to try and monetize the traffic? Do you show some credibility items on those pages to showcase why a reader should be engaged with (or even link to) your company?

If you are doing PPC, you have extensive control of the landing page – so are you controlling the message and navigation to increase conversions?

Even for SEO, you might create certain aspects of your pages to ensure that your pages can be crawled and rank; however, traffic for traffic’s sake is useless. Traffic that converts is useful. Even your SEO focused pages should be aligned with your company’s goals.

Credibility Does Matter

There are a lot of affiliate offers in the marketing training space. As many of you have seen, there are promises of internet riches that can be accomplished with a website and a week of work. When an offer seems to good to be true…

Therefore, we need to showcase why we’re different than the other get-rich-quick schemes.

Obviously, if Google is promoting the seminars directly – than we can use some of that credibility.

I wrote a book published by Wiley/Symbex (the publishers of the dummies, hour a day, and mastering series – not some random publishing house); and while it is revenue generation – a published book is also a credibility element (in addition, the foreword is by Fred Vallaeys, the Google AdWords Evangelist).

I have more than a decade of experience, and have worked with many types of companies – so we need to highlight the experience.

Some ways in which you might be able to increase credibility include:

• BBB member
• Association membership
• VeriSign logo
• Reviews & testimonials from your users
• Industry certifications
• Partnerships

Bringing it all together – The New Site

Our new site is not quite finished yet. We will be making a few more improvements over the next couple months; and redesigning our logo sooner than later. However, the main design has changed significantly and built around the rules up top.

First off, you must know the limitations and features of your content management system. While hand coding all your HTML will give you the most control over every aspect of your site – it’s too much work for most people. Therefore, we’re still using WordPress.

Before you should start your design, list your constraints:

• Time: I did not want to spend more than two days redesigning the site
• As I’m personally putting many thousands of dollars into Certified Knowledge (and having a custom design created for the site which will go live in a few weeks); I wanted to do the bg Theory redesign cheaply
• Because of the time limit; I wanted to use the same CMS so that I did not have to import a database into a new system and have to go through the entire site to fix problems
• Because of the money limitation; I wanted to find a basic WordPress template that fit the needs and then I could recode the CSS and pages myself (with a max of two days of work).
• I wanted a different sidebar based upon where someone was in the site.
• I wanted some pages without a sidebar (which I can make happen by changing the calls inside a WordPress page).
• I only wanted one sidebar. Our previous site had two sidebars which lead to too much information on a single page – breaking the rule of a goal per page.
• As our seminar and speaking schedules are always updating, it was imperative that it was very easy to update these schedules.
• The old site had custom pages that were built off of 880px width that we did not want to find and re-code. Therefore, the new site had to be at least 880px wide (in fact, this turned out to be one of the biggest changes for the template as we had to widen everything).

I did some research, picked a theme that I liked (in fact, it’s the placeholder theme for Certified Knowledge); and started customizing.

Here’s the decisions I made along the way in choosing how to layout the custom elements of the design.

Our desktop site (we have a mobile version as well) is broken down into a handful of items that we can customize:

The header: The main links across your site

• We don’t link to all the pages of our site. We choose only a handful for very specific reasons:
  • Home: Everyone wants to see a home page navigation
  • Blog: Our main source of traffic, a nice source of credibility, and the reason many people come back to the site
  • AdWords Seminars: Our top product and top credibility source
  • PPC Tools & Training: Our newest product and one we want to start promoting
  • AdWords Book: Our lowest revenue product, but second highest credibility product
  • Speaking: This one was a choice. We could have put up our consulting or in-house training link just as easily as speaking. However, speaking is both a credibility issue and marketing opportunity.
    • As I personally have more than 600 hours of public speaking experience (and that counts speaking at a single SES or SMX session as only a few minutes – that 600 hours is actual time spent standing in front of a group and actually interacting with them); this seems a natural fit.
  • Contact: Obvious choice; make it easy for people to contact you (also why we have the phone number on every page)
  • About: Learn about why you should choose our marketing products
• We have many more pages we could have added to this navigation. However, we choose to slim down the choices that help fit our main marketing objectives: To educate as many businesses as possible about marketing. So every page is about marketing, credibility, or contacting us. So even pages such as ‘subscribe to the blog’ are not on the main navigation. If someone’s in the blog we will push this, but not when they are in other pages looking up marketing training. In pages like that; the subscribe link is a distraction.
• We wanted the phone number on every page for customer support requests
• We wanted a search box across the entire site that was highly visible as our site is often searched

I’m not a designer; I’m a coder and marketer. Therefore, the logo is not what will be there in a few weeks. It’s a placeholder logo to match the feel of the site; but something else will replace that section of the header.

The Main jQuery

This is the big blue section That links to ‘Certified Knowledge,’ ‘AdWords Seminars’, ‘Advanced Google AdWords Book’ and then has the rotating images; which are also links into those various pages.

The reason I call it jQuery as that’s the JavaScript used to power the system. If you are new to jQuery, there’s a great site, jQueryUI where you can see demos.

• The images within the jQuery are linked to actual pages. The images rotate automatically. Therefore, the images were chosen based upon what we’re trying to promote.
  • We have 4 images for Certified Knowledge – our scalable revenue.
  • We have 1 image of me, for credibility.
  • We have 2 images of our seminars; our current highest revenue and since they are supported by Google – also have credibility.
  • We have 2 images for the book; again credibility and some revenue (and since the book has coupons for the seminars and Certified Knowledge, we can also pull a higher monetization from the book sales)
  • Not all people will realize that you can click on those images to be taken to an internal page. Therefore, in most of the images we added buttons so people would realize they could be clicked.
  • Even the real estate devoted to the jQuery is in-line with our site’s conversion goals.
• Normally, I’d tell someone this is too much. You have three products – pick one that’s your primary, another one that’s your secondary, etc. However, our seminars are location based so not everyone can attend. The book is low revenue; but high credibility. Certified Knowledge is scalable revenue. Therefore, we used the links and images to showcase our various products and credibility across many pages.
• Since the seminars are well known; our main secondary objective (besides revenue) is to increase awareness of these other products.

The question then became: where do we add this big header across our website?

The jQuery appears on the main page; which makes sense as your home page should be a segmentation page that shows what you do and provides easy navigation further into your site. In the case of our site, if we were to count all the links on the homepage; which is 20; 6 are for Certified Knowledge, 4 are for the seminars, 3 are for the book, etc. So even the number of possible paths is in-line with where we want to increase our visibility

It appears on the blog pages so that these previously under-monetized pages will help create additional visibility for the products. The goal of the jQuery on these pages is to increase visibility for our training products. As it’s a blog, the revenue won’t be as high as other pages; however, this will create a lot more awareness for some of our other products. We’ll measure the analytics on these pages to see if it’s successful. If yes, then good. If no, then I’ll work on a different blog page design.

It does not appear on the AdWords Seminar pages. These pages receive a lot of traffic directly from Google’s website. Since the jQuery steals attention away from the page; we wanted the seminar pages to have as high a conversion as possible so decided not to add it to those pages.

It does appear on the other pages of the site at present. As Certified Knowledge and the book both lead to other websites, it made sense to showcase credibility on our other training methods and increase awareness, especially for the book and Certified Knowledge as they are new products. Over time, we’ll measure the effectiveness of the jQuery on these pages and either remove it or change it to be more specific to particular pages.

The Blog Sidebar

• People read blogs for information first.
• Blogs can be monetized, but it’s often a longer process.
• Blogs do increase credibility.
• The top of the sidebar is about sharing information. Make it easy to pass your content around. This is also expected on a blog site; so makes sense to highlight it.
  • Information sharing is also important for credibility. These days, people expect marketers to be on FaceBook and Twitter – therefore, while it’s another conversion type (and we are tracking all social clicks to 3rd party sites); it also helps to increase credibility for someone who is in marketing.
• The recent posts. Make it easy for people to see other content.
• Blogs we like. Blogrolls and featured links are common on sidebars, and there are sites we think deserve some link love; so we kept this to help engage the community and other blogs.
• The blog has more pages than the rest of the site combined – there are 979 posts. I was worried about our SEO efforts as we’re removing a lot of links from our homepage. Therefore, much of the sidebar is still deep links into categories to flatten out the site crawl.
• As the jQuery is on the blog pages, we decided not to feature the other training methods we have. One thing we will test is adding the upcoming seminar

The Page Sidebar

• This sidebar only appears on pages about training, about us, contact, etc. It does not appear on the blog pages.
  • People who are visiting non-blog pages are generally a higher conversion rate for us. They are not just blog readers (not to disparage blog readers – I’m one and the community is essential)
  • We did not want to overwhelm these visitors with a long blog sidebar about posts and categories, etc. These visitors are more interested in being trained through a non-blogging source.
• Therefore, as the seminars are the current highest source of revenue; we highlight that schedule first.
• As we offer a lot of training, and some people skip headers (our jQuery) ; we added a sidebar about ‘How do you liked to be trained’ with the options for reading, in-person, on-demand video. We will test this headline and this sidebar extensively to see what increases conversions and interest.
• Social icons. This is our worst conversion activity – leave the site to increase our social followers. However, it is a much better conversion than absolutely nothing (a visitor just leaving the site). And as social does increase credibility for our industry; we added the social icons and are tracking these clicks separate from the same icons on the blog pages.

The Home Page

• This is the most visited page of our site.
• The page needs to easily convey what we do and how someone can get more information on that training type
• We wanted a very clean page that removed just about everything on the page that did not increase revenue
• The page is dominated by the jQuery; which has links and features of our training abilities
• The bottom of the page showcases our top products we want visibility for (our Seminars and Certified Knowledge)
  • As many people come to our site for the blog; and this use to be highlighted on the main page, we decided to showcase the new blog posts over the book. The book is in the jQuery; so it is already being showcased to some extent.
• Buttons. Most of the images in the jQuery are buttons, but for those who scroll down further on the page, we added buttons (which often lead to higher CTRs than links) underneath these featured products. However, bloggers are more willing to hunt for information, so the links to the recent blog posts are plain links and not buttons.
• The footer. Basic information.

That’s it. A clean, sparse,, information-packed homepage. We removed a lot of information that use to be on our homepage. We’re tracking every single click on this page to see it’s effectiveness. If an individual element is not effective, then I’ll change it.

The Search Results Page

• Search is used a lot on our site; therefore, we needed to make sure there was a custom search page
• As the vast majority of our search results lead to blog pages; and almost all searches originate on the home page or blog page – we wanted to have this page look like the blog results with the jQuery on top.
• As we measure the profit potential of each page, the jQuery might be removed from this page so that the search results are highlighted without other distractions.

The 404 page

A 404 page is what someone sees when a page cannot be found on the website

No matter how hard you try, on a large website (ours is more than 1000 pages, so medium size) you will have people arriving at broken pages. The trick is to tracking these pages so you can clean up your URLs over time.

• One of the cardinal rules about SEO is that not found pages should return 404 results and not 200 (which means the page exists) OK results
• Therefore, the first aspect was to make sure when someone gets to a not found page is that they see a custom 404 page
• The default WordPress 404 page is not very usable. Therefore, we added a search box and some custom text to the page to make it more friendly
• We’re tracking all 404 results so we can see if it’s an internal link issue or other reason people arrive at these pages

Top Product Pages

We have a significant amount of testimonials both in written and video formats for our seminars. These pages sometimes run at greater than a 10% conversion rate. We’ve tested layouts and messages with them over the past two years, so we really did not want to mess with these pages at the moment.

Therefore, these pages do not call our sidebars or the jQuery. These pages are focused around conversions.

Some interesting stats on the event pages:

• When someone watches at least one video at the top of the page, they generally watch more than 6 minutes of information (which is testimonials and other interviews, etc that we’ve done).
• As the benefit message (in the videos) and the registration form are above the fold; but the page is very long; we have the same signup process at the bottom of the page. Adding the signup at the bottom of the page increased conversion rates. Adding the signup form in the middle of the page did not significantly impact conversions.

For the main seminar page:

• We currently have three instances where someone can click from the overview page to an individual event page. We originally had two; and after testing we found that the third even listing increased conversion rates.
• On the actual seminar pages; we have two different places where you can start the ordering process. We tested having three instances on the individual event pages; but having a third ticket box did not affect conversion rates at all.

Everything is still a work in progress

Because we’re tracking all the links clicked across the website, and can then measure which links are effective and which are not – this design is a work in progress. The new template system I set up across our website (each of these elements, sidebars, jquery, top nav links, etc) are very easy to change for an individual page or for a series of pages.

Once we do enough testing that we’re comfortable with the final concept; then we might engage an actual designer to clean up the site, images, etc.

The Page Templates

To make the site easy to change, I simply made several templates:

• Home page – self explanatory
• Blog post page without jQuery and blog sidebar
• Blog post page with jQuery and no blog sidebar
• Page with jQuery and sidebar
• Page with sidebar and no jQuery
• page with no jQuery and no sidebar
• Page with jQuery and no sidebar

This is very simple to do in WordPress. You just change the template to not call the sidebar, or to call a section of a site – and then that section will not (or will) be called.

Now every time we create a page, we can just decide which page template we want. Do we want the jQuery shown on the top of the page? If yes, then use that template. Do we want a very wide blog post with no sidebar? If yes, then we use that template.

While most of the pages and posts are based upon only 4 templates, the others exist to make it very easy to manipulate pages going forward, and we can even test some small changes to individual pages and posts by manipulating which sidebar or jQuery is being called to the page.

What’s next?

We’re not done with the site yet, we still have a handful of things to finish:

• Removing all PayPal processing and integrating another payment processor
• Keeping all conversion activity on the site for tracking (we’re using an easy-to-use simple integration for our seminar pages, but as these occur offsite we can’t see all conversions)
• Redesign the logo. I know what I can’t do – and image design is not my strength. We’ll do a redesign of the logo that matches the new color scheme and focus of the website.
• Increase the content on Leslie’s about page. Leslie’s page is in the top 50 pages viewed on the site; and yet much of her experience in event marketing, traditional media, project management, etc are not really called out.
• Add a ‘top post’ feature to the blog section to showcase some of our best content.
• Test which pages lead to each conversion type
• Change more calls to actions into buttons
• On the blog post pages, institute a jquery tab at the bottom of each post so you can choose what you want to do:
  • Leave a comment
  • See related blog posts
  • Share this information
  • Subscribe to the blog
  • Currently, the bottom of most blog posts are messy with too many options. We’ll still give the users options, but we’re going to consolidate them into an easy to navigate system.
• Others we don’t yet know as we don’t have the metrics yet

The Total Cost of the Redesign

• 2 days (define as you will for your own time)
• WordPress (the CMS) – free
• Blog template $49
• FileZilla (for FTPing) – free
• PowerPoint  for image creation (I’m really not a designer; I made every image on the site except for a few of the buttons in PowerPoint). Already owned – so free. However, I could have used GIMP which is an open source image program.
• Cool Text for button design.
• $100 – the cost we’ll pay a designer to redesign our logo (which I could have done in GIMP; but it’ll look better done professionally).

2 days and $149 is the entire cost of this redesign. A 0.05% (that’s one conversion per 2000 visitors) increase in conversion rates (for a book sale, Certified Knowledge subscription, or AdWords Seminar signup) will make the time well spent. A 1% to 2% increase in conversion rates for just a single AdWords Seminar (let alone across the entire website) will pay for the cost of a high priced designer.

I can also say a semi-techy without design skills can make a decent site with freely available web tools.

The Final Result?

I have no idea on the effectiveness – yet.

We launched this design less than two weeks ago, so we definitely do not have enough data yet to make any decisions.

While the reasons for each decision (at least I believe) are sound, design creativity only brings you so far. The metrics have to tell you if you were right or wrong and then will give you the data to make adjustments accordingly.

We are tracking everything – so we’ll know small details like the CTR of each jQuery image so that we can add and remove images based upon their effectiveness.

If it seems that we’re on the right track with conversions, then we’ll probably have someone come in and do a nice pretty design based upon what is working. If it doesn’t work, then we’ll try again with a different layout scheme.

However, I can finally say as marketers we’re finally putting our skills together for ourselves – even if it’s just small changes. If it raises conversion rates, then it’s all worthwhile.

We are only the designers and owners of the site; not necessarily the users of the site. What really matters is your opinion. What do you think of the new design?

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