SEM Best Practices

Too often we (Search Marketing dudes) are being asked what the New Marketing methods can do for any given business. Too often we discover that the people we are talking to do not understand the rules of the new economy which creates some kind of an awkward situation. How can we say that their organization is not suited to fit with the New Marketing (and that there is not much we can do about it)? Seth Godin in his Book the Meatball Sundae answers this question and explain in details the new trends (14 in total) that define the new economy (or New Marketing) and how search marketing, among other things, is especially bad at interrupting people (old marketing). According to Seth, it is all about creating organizations that are in sync with the New Marketing. He provides countless amount of examples that will help you understand his point and how you can transform your business according to these new rules. Failing to do this will end up in a meatball sundae, a real sundae, with meatballs in it - first degree. Yikes.

That being said, this is not a book that I simply suggest or recommend. You MUST read it if you want to re-align your business in order to make sure you can capitalize on the new Marketing tools that are extremely powerful at generating revenues and profit. Buy The Meatball Sundae on Amazon.com.

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Listen to Katie Donovan of the SEMPO Institute discuss the history of the Institute, the details of the courses—including topics, authors and frequency of updates—and why the Institute courses are right for you.

http://www.webmasterradio.fm/Search-Engine-Optimization/Webcology/Sphinn-Sphamm.htm

More on SEMPO Institute: SEMPO Institute is THE Source for Search Marketing Training

Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO) launched SEMPO Institute to meet the challenges facing businesses as Search Marketing grows from a niche to a critical marketing player.

Search Marketing has gone mainstream. The industry is expected to double between now and 2011. In the United States and Canada the expected spends in organic and paid search will reach $11.6 Billion in that year. Search Marketing is becoming an integral part of every business’ marketing efforts. SEMPO’s 2006 research shows that more than half of the companies in the survey created and/or expanded their Search Marketing budget by shifting funds from other marketing initiatives. As this trend continues to grow, every marketing professional will need to have a basic understanding of Search Marketing just to keep up-to-date with the best marketing practices.

Supported by SEMPO, SEMPO Institute has been able to tap into the knowledge and experience of SEMPO’s members and sponsors to deliver courses which have developed best practices and standards. Our course authors consist of more than 35 industry leaders. Additional experts have peer-reviewed the courses to ensure that all the information is accurate and truly is a best practice.

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Boris Mann

Boris is a great man. Last weekend, while he was part of the stellar organizing committee of Northern Voice Conference 2008 on Personal Blogging, he celebrated his birthday. Of course we sang happy birthday, although I must admit, all these personal bloggers gathered for the occasion are better in blogging than singing. Nevertheless, we all appreciated the intense presence of Boris during the conference. He is so generous of his knowledge of everything that happens online. A quick get together with him and you will see that his passion is contagious. You will want to do more online just because he said so.

I had the pleasure you celebrate my last birthday with him. Boris was kind enough to give me the best gift an SEO guy can ask for: a Link. Of course I would do the same for you bud. You know how much I like you. So for those who are wondering what Boris does, please take a look at Boris Mann Consulting Services: Vancouver Internet Marketing Expert, Social Media Blogger, Drupal Specialist & Entrepreneur. Is this link love or what? You can also find a lot on his personal & professional blog about Social Software, VoIP, Home Networking, Web Development and Mac related items. Please let me know how much you like the packaging of your birthday gift. I could do a little more wrapping if you like. Enjoy responsibly.

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Every time Gord Hotchkiss, President of Enquiro based in Kelowna (BC) Canada, write an article, you can be confident that he is going to hit the nail right on the head. In his most recent article on Ad Agencies and Search Marketing, Gord mentions that Ad Agencies are far from “getting” search and follow search marketing best practices. Even when they include search, for as little as they do, they miss the mark by a mile. It is especially dramatic when it comes to budgeting for it. Media plans & budgets are based on arbitrary numbers which are not a reflection of comprehensive business objectives. According to Gord, “Search dollars should be the first ones in, not the last. Take as much search inventory as you can get. Judge your costs per acquisition not against your top performing keywords, but against your other channels, both online and offline. If even the marginal search traffic is generating a lower CPA, beg, borrow and steal as much budget as you can and top up search. Only then should you move from “pull” (prospects holding up their hands to purchase through search) to “push” (trying to persuade latent prospects to purchase). Only put restrictions on your search campaign if you’re absolutely certain that another channel can exceed its effectiveness.”

Gord Hotchkiss, Enquiro

For a review of all the benefits for doing Search Marketing, budgeting for it as well providing a perspective on the utilization of search to reach branding objectives, take a minute to read the article.

If you are still up for it, take a minute to read this: Search And the Digital CPG Shelf. It is about the utilization of Search Marketing for Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), an area that has historically never used Search Marketing. The findings of the study are quite revealing and will convince the most skeptics. 

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You may have heard the news last month about Facebook opening profiles to search engine indexing. It may be a good time to take a second look at your profile and polish it to make sure it won’t offend anyone.

Now, since I saw my Facebook profile indexed in Google as well as in Yahoo over the weekend, I can confirm that it is likely that your Facebook profile may have been indexed as well. Don’t wait a second and Google yourself right now and see if it is there. It should appear on the first page of search results.

What does this mean to you?
Since your Facebook profile is now indexed, anyone can Google your name and access it. Because of Facebook popularity, it is likely that your Facebook profile may appear on the first page of search results and thus get a fair share of the traffic from Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). But, unlike your LinkedIn profile, which is generally speaking more professional & polished, your Facebook profile contains a wider variety of content that is prone to interpretation. There are elements in most Facebook profiles that I would not want prospective clients to know for instance. Therefore, it would be helpful for you to review it carefully and remove any controversial items that may have been posted by you and/or your friends or any information that may be wrongfully interpreted. Tell your friends to be careful when they post content on your wall as well as pictures of you in different contexts or settings that you do not appear at your best (!) or for a business-type audience.

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6 years ago, I was starting my Back to Basics Search Marketing seminars with the top 10 mistakes in developing an online presence. I have not presented this seminar in a long time but I realize that I should because business people are still clueless on how to allocate their funds in developing their online business. Here are the common mistakes: 

• 94% of companies are losing money with their sites because they are invisible in search results
• 97% of Fortune 100 companies do not market their websites and consequently lose millions in potential sales
• Business owners are not aware how to make their websites search engines friendly
• Business owners trust their web designers / tech people to take care of their Search Marketing but those people don’t care about getting more traffic / generating more sales
• Most companies pay 95% too much for their hosting plans: they don’t know how much they should be paying considering their traffic level
• Most companies ignore the real cost of maintaining their sites: they lose precious time and money because they fail to effectively promote them
• Most companies are unaware of the traffic level they should be getting if they were marketing their sites properly
• Most companies invest their marketing dollars in efforts that do not produce good ROI (Return on investment)
• Business owners don’t realize they are publishing their brochures (online) and thus they fail to « distribute » them
• Most business owners don’t take time to learn about making more money from the Web

If you see yourself in any of these common mistakes, you are not alone. But, if you want to do something about it, feel free to get in touch with me. Stepping out of the invisible web is quite an experience.

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It took me some time to fully appreciate the impact of the new Google Universal search. In my last post, I talked about a friend of mine who made a nice video of Vancouver on a Francis Cabrel song (La Corrida). Dan was basically experimenting & learning the functionalities of his new camera and a new video editing software called Vegas. In any case, the video was uploaded last week on Youtube and as it could have been expected, made its way to the top of Google Search results for obvious search queries such as “Francis Cabrel Vancouver”. As a result, for some people that are more comfortable producing video content, basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) methods do apply quite well. Make sure you give your video a keyword-rich title like Dan did and you will soon rock the place. 

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As presented in an earlier post on the rant made by Gord Hotchkiss on why Ontario Tourism does not “get” Search Marketing, I want to present to you today what they should take a look at from time to time to measure up against other major provincial travel websites, such as Quebec and BC. During my days at a major ad agency, I was taking care of a important Paid Search Advertising budget for Tourism British Columbia - HelloBC.com - and one of the things I really liked to measure was my improvement on the Alexa ranking scale. Despite issues with accuracy that this tool has, since Alexa rankings are calculated based on the people who have installed the Alexa toolbar, it gives somewhat a good indication of the overall traffic to the site, compare to competitors. It is the proportion that we are interested in, not sheer numbers.  Alexa ranking is easy to track over time and this is what I am using this SEO tool for. The lower the Alexa ranking means the more heavily visited the site is. That being said, when I started working it, the Alexa ranking for HelloBC.com was near 90,000. Check where it is today, compare to Quebec and Ontario:

As you can see, BonjourQuebec.com (red) has the lead in terms of traffic, followed closely by HelloBC.com (blue). Ontario Tourism is not yet in the race according to this graph, which correlates with the comments made by Gord last week about how poorly constructed Ontario Tourism’s Search Marketing plan is. Also, as traffic goes up, your Alexa ranking goes down. In this case, HelloBC.com’s new Alexa Ranking is 69,038. In the same time period, Alexa Ranking for BonjourQuebec.com went from 65,000 to 57,144. Ontario Tourism is way behind at 187,583. Therefore, if you are actively involved in Paid Search Advertising (PPC) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), take a minute or 2 per month and check your Alexa Ranking. It is fascinating what you can find over time and how you can beat your competitors and bring more qualified customers your way.

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I have been wanting to talk about this for some time. A few months ago, I came across a great Search Engine Marketing Introduction Video by SEMPO Canada Co-Chair and Co-Founder Ken Jurina from epiar.com and I want to share what he did. I found this introduction to Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) extremely well done, to the point & simple to understand. So, if you are new to the field, are launching your first SEM program and want to have a few insights about it, take a minute to watch the video. 

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A long time ago, I got certified by John Alexander and Robin Nobles from Search Engine Workshops in the advanced Search Engine Optimization (SEO) course. That was in 2004. I have been receiving their newsletters for as long as I can remember and I strongly recommend everyone that gets started in the Search Marketing field to start reading their material. Here is the latest from John Alexander on how you pinpoint the real SEO experts.

Here is a short list of 6 Tips to help you build your career in SEO.

1. You MUST be able to “deliver” and make a difference to your
clients. Do whatever it takes to get your SEO skills and lateral
thinking skills up to speed.

2. Consider taking a live SEO workshop which can kick start your
professional SEO career in just a few days of hands-on
training followed my a 6 month mentoring program.

3. Run a balanced business. Are you charging for what your
services are worth? There are some folks who charge steeply
and don’t even know how to get the results.

If you’re good at what you do, make sure you are charging
well for your services. You DESERVE fair reward if your
considerable SEO skills are helping other business owners
to prosper. (Some folks are afraid to charge for their work)

Note:
The ones that charge steeply but DON’T know how to deliver may
make a few dollars initially, but they won’t enjoy the
customer loyalty, the referral business, and the repeat
business that you do. They won’t have a “customer life” like
you will because you took time to actually build your skills.

4. Don’t forget to recognize and be thankful for the progress
you’ve already made. Be sure to benchmark your victories
but even more important, celebrate your client’s victories
too! After all, you helped bring it about for them.

5. Give something back to your community (with gladness.)
Look for opportunities to help others who genuinely need help
and avoid those who are only after your talents to exploit them.
(Trust me, when your SEO talents and success stories increase,
you’ll have strangers coming out of the woodwork to take you
to dinner and pick your brain). Proceed with wisdom.

6. You must be willing to continually grow and take action!
Performing the way you perform now has delivered a certain
result, right? So if you’re happy with this result, carry on
exactly the same way and you should get very similar results.

However, if you are NOT happy with your results now, then
you must change the way you do things.

You need to take new action!

Some people go all their life complaining that they would like a better
career or a better position in life and yet they continue taking the same
actions and getting the same results year after year.

Think of it like this…

Same action = same result
Different action = new results

So are you ready to take your SEO career to the next step?

Here is the complete SEO Workshop Agenda.

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I have to admit, I have never been a big fan of SEO Tools because none of them can actually do the work for you. They help in some ways but since you have to write all your content yourself in most cases, these SEO tools can only help you identify what you already know (intuitively) or what you can find out from Google Analytics. Nevertheless, a few people have asked me to talk a little more about my SEO tools arsenal and what I like to use and I promised I will make an effort to find out more about SEO Tools what I think is worth your attention. The first one I want talk about is called Free Ranking Monitor for Google.

What I like about this tool is that it is intuitive, simple and very easy to use. And it is free. You include all the search terms you want to be found in SERPs (search Engine Result pages) in Google and it tells you from one round of report to the next if you have increased or decreased your position and which position you currently holds for each of your targeted search term. The software needs to be downloaded from cleverstat.com and I have not encountered any glitch yet. Try it and let me know what you think.

Here is what the interface looks like:

For those of you who likes to try (SEO) stuff, I am giving you THE link to ALL the 136 SEO Tools out there. Feel free to try some of them and give me your comment. I will try these SEO tools one at a time and post my comments here. If you agree or disagree, express yourself so everybody can learn. 

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So you found yourself with a few minutes on your hands to optimize your site. Now, I honestly believe there are only two MAIN things which support the Search Engine Optimization process and reward your website with high rankings you desire. Put simply, these two things are Keyword Rich Content and Targeted Back Links (with proper anchor text). You have to do both in order to earn your way to the top.

Here are 7 powerful steps you can use to optimize your site (SEO) in order to reach (earn) high search engine rankings:

Step 1: Determine Highly Searched Keywords
Determine highly searched and targeted keywords/keyword phrases related to your site and put them into a list. Here are the free tools to use:
Google External Keyword Tool
Yahoo Keyword Inventory Tool
Wordtracker

Step 2: Register Keyword Rich Domain Names
While there have been contrasting arguments about whether having keywords in your domain helps, I strongly feel it does. The same goes for dashes between words in the domain. As long as you have a domain name that represents what you do, even partially, it will work.

Step 3: Use Your Targeted Keywords In Your Copy
Use the list of keywords in step 1 within your website copy, especially in the title, headline and first paragraph. The important thing is to make them flow smoothly within the context of the copy so prospects will not find it weird.

Step 4: Insert Keyword Rich Relevant Content
Next, build up your site’s content with relevant topics containing your keywords.

Step 5: Aggressively Acquire Targeted Back Links
This is the second most important (some say it’s the first) factor to note after targeted and relevant content. If you are not sure where to start there, I suggest you go here: 131 Legitimate Link Building Strategies

Step 6: Hand Submit Your Site To The Top Directories and Search Engines
There’s no point in using those ‘submit to millions’ services as only a few search engines really matter. Using those automatic services may actually cause your site to be penalized by these major engines. Do you really need a list of search engines to submit to? I suggest you start by Google Add URL page. Please note that as soon as you have a few links pointing to your site, Google will find your site anyway, so there is no point submitting it. This may speed up the indexing process though.

Step 7: Tune Your Site For Maximum Optimization
The final step would be to constantly monitor your traffic and analyze your website traffic against rankings. This assumes you have Google Analytics in place. If you don’t, you should. It is free. This is so you can review and tweak for further improvement in your rankings.  I found a great free tool to get this done and monitor your rankings: try Free Ranking Monitor For Google

Let me know if this process works for you. These are the same steps if you want to Optimize your blog and corresponding blog posts for search engines. 

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You will love this. Read this carefully and it will help you climb the ladder to the top paid search results listings while dropping your cost dramatically. As far as I know, most search marketers fail dramatically at writing great Paid Search Advertising ads (aka. Google Adwords). I was asked a question today by a Client to basically justify the rationale for ad copywriting for a display ad network (ie. non-search). The campaign is basically aimed at people who are about to move and how ACME (fictitious name) can help the move process with all the telecommunication services new arrangements. Here is what I had to say.

First, here is the ad, according to Google Adwords Editorial Guidelines:

Moving? ACME Can Help!
Move Phone & Services in 1 Click.
Save Time on Moving Using ACME
acme.ca/moving

And now, here is the explanation. Apparently, everyone who read this today, including Steve Kellas, online copywriting genius, thought it was pretty bang on so I am glad to share this with you.

Explanation:
In a nutshell, we are using the same kind of copywriting rationale & style as if we were talking to the users through paid search engine results. We first need to establish relevance with the users which is why we use self-selecting expressions such as Moving?. People who are not moving will most likely skip the ad completely which is not a bad thing when we are using a pay per click format that online users are used to deal with.

Once relevance is established, we can then proceed with stating the benefits of ACME’s offer, which is to offer *help* in the moving process. Since we all know how any form of help is appreciated during moving time, we thought this would be the best verb to describe what ACME can do for them. This has also a great branding effect as it conveys a strong and positive emotion. (thanks for helping me out). We can only use the exclamation mark once in the ad. We then decided to put it on the headline as this is where it makes the most sense. We also need to repeat the same word (move, moving) a few times in the ads (4), on each line preferably, as online users may only read the headline or the first line of text or the second and so on. They may also read the ad vertically which is why the strongest word is often at the beginning of each line. Even if you read the ad vertically, you would still understand what the offer is. Clever hey?

We also need to capitalize the first letter of every word as it reads better, in case online users will actually take the time to read the ad completely. On line 1, we use obvious terms such as phone & services since these are the topics we are talking about and the use of the words “in one click” says how quickly we can help solve this problem. On line 2, we decided to actually states the benefit “Save time”, again to reinforce what the offer is and describe what the offer can do for them. The repetition in the ads while using synonyms and playing with images and emotions for each word is a standard practice in online copywriting. Please note that the text ad characters limit is very restrictive which is why we are trying to find words that say a lot in terms of meaning but that are in fact quite short: help, save, time, move, click are good examples. 

Removing www in the display url (acme.ca) is also a great little improvement as it cuts unnecessary elements (www) which does not help understanding the meaning of the ad. Check out how often you see *www* in Google Adwords. Did you know you can take them out? Please do! Nobody says World Wide Web anymore. If you know anyone who still uses this expression, please publish their names in the comment box below.

If you use this methodology for writing your Google text ads, you can be sure your Google text ads will be more relevant to the users. As a result, this will lead to greater qualified visitors and better ROI.

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Last week I met with Jenny Brown, a brilliant professional marketing copywriter based in Vancouver (BC), to discuss her business, her clients and how we could collaborate. Despite the fact that I did most of the talking (Jenny asks a lot of questions and really likes to know who she is talking to) we both agreed that copywriting, especially web copywriting, is not being taken seriously by most businesses.

Jenny Brown, Copywriter

In the wake of the new Web boom and the increasing importance of having great site content, I urge you to give her a call and improve your site’s copy. According to Jenny, there is a world of difference between writing and concise & persuasive copywriting that leads to results. If you want to know more about how she can help your business generate more results, either from the web or traditional channels, please feel free to get in touch with her: jennybrown.ca. You will learn a great deal on how better writing can contribute to your bottom line.

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O.k. here comes the juice. I have been working for the last few months on a new project that I can not disclose here but I will share the results I have been getting. Let’s just say that this kept me excited for quite some time as I see the traffic going up dramatically from one campaign after another that I have been optimizing. This is a case study that I am hoping to present to the next CaseCamp Vancouver, the tech marketing non-conference that happens twice a year. 

In Search Marketing, especially paid search, you need to have a really deep understanding of your keywords, your ad copy, your bidding rules and it must be well supported with strong web analytics in order to provide a good, great or outstanding ROI (Return on Investment). If you are not sure about what I mean by targeting the tail of search queries, may I suggest you read my article: Targeting the tail: how to get the most out of every marketing dollar. This will give you an overview on how important this topic is. This morning, I also came across a great article on this, called: Marketing to the long tail, which also focuses on the same topic which is worth the read. As the average click cost is constantly increasing as more competitors are getting into it, most business owners have no choice but to be smarter on how they invest their budget online, and this is one aspect they can use to get more value for their dollar. 

So, I took over a project 4 months ago on a major online advertiser who spends about $1.2 Millions per year. They are in the travel business and they have winter, summer and specific campaigns. We are using all 3 main search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN.

By simply adding the ALL the keywords included in the long tail of search queries for each ad group (and a few other tricks in my arsenal), here is an overview of what happened:

That’s right. The Client gets on average 4 times more value for every dollar they invest online. Whereas the average page view per visitor used to be $0.25 before I jump on board, it is now more like $0.06. Please note that the user engagement actually increased while the average cost per click dropped dramatically. As a result, the combination of the search term contained within the tail with a corresponding ad copy defines more of the quality of the user that the keyword itself. 

What most people underestimate is the time it takes to actually provide this kind of added value. In this case, it took me 4 months solid, but with 1 Million more page views per month, it is well worth the effort. If you are not sure if your paid program is actually providing what you expect, feel free to get in touch with me, I will make your paid search campaign, not good, not even better, I will make it stellar. And the beauty is that I only charge a small fraction of the cost to manage it. 

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