The Work Media Internet Marketing Blog

You have to have patience when running a paid search campaign. Here is a real world example, from our own Google AdWords campaign. We are running a promotion right now whereby we are doing free optimization analyses. We're using AdWords ads, targeted to our local market, to advertise the promotion. Obviously the benefit to us is that we would collect local leads...if it worked.

The campaign had run for several days without much success. It was costing us a little money, but not much. I was on the verge of cutting it to try something else, when all of a sudden we got two good leads two days in a row, from companies based in Nashville looking to promote their web sites. The cost of these leads? Maybe $20 each, if not less. Compare that to the cost of a lead generation service where you are competing against several other companies for each lead, and it's a real bargain.

So have patience with your paid search campaigns. Don't pull the plug until you have enough data to know for sure that what you're doing is not going to work.

If you could use some help with your pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, pay per click, pay per click management, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, sponsored search, web site marketing

If you are thinking of working with a search engine optimization company and they tell you they can have your site ranked on the first page of Google within a week...you need to step back and ask yourself what you are really getting. Yes, it is probably possible to have a site highly ranked in Google within one week...

...for a keyword that no one is using!

Here's the deal. It does not matter if your site is number one on Google, if that number one ranking is for a keyword that no one is using to search for your type of business. The point of a search engine marketing campaign is not to achieve rankings...it's to drive traffic. That is the reason we really don't have any kind of package deals right now where we promise X number of rankings for Y keywords. Every web site is different. Every situation is different.

We may end up marketing our services via such packages before it's over with (if that's what we have to do to stay in business), but we definitely prefer to take it on a case-by-case basis. It may be the case that for your web site, for your industry, you only need to be ranked for one keyword to generate a ton of traffic. If that is true, then we focus our efforts on that one keyword. Or there may be five different keyword that, collectively, would drive a ton of the traffic you need. In that case, we will focus on those five keywords.

So don't be fooled by the claims of some SEO firms. Sure...they can probably have you ranked on the first page of Google within a week...but they won't put any money in your bank account.

Please contact Work Media is you need any help with your search engine optimization or pay per click management. We won't make any grand promises, but we will give it to you straight. And we will work our butts off to get you ranked for the keywords that will actually result in customers for your business.

Labels: keywords, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search engine rankings, sem, seo

The topic of today's post may seem obvious. I mean, who wouldn't make sure their landing pages work before launching a pay per click campaign? Well, we do make the assumption that you would test your pages before launching the campaign...but what about afterwards?

You should check your landing pages periodically. Hey, things happen. If your landing page is completely static (straight-up HTML with no server-side code), then chances of it breaking are minimal. But what about your form?

Your landing page probably has some kind of form. If it doesn't, then what's the point? Your form will have to use some kind of server-side component or script to deliver the contents of the form to your site (or to process an order). And that's where things can break.

We have a client whose account recently began performing quite poorly. It turns out that her hosting company had moved her site to a new server. In the process, they had broken the form confirmation page (the page that sends the contents of the form to our client in an email). We spotted this by submitting the form ourselves to make sure it still works. We did this on a hunch after noticing that her site had stopped showing any conversions in her search engine conversion stats.

So...don't let this happen to you. Once a week, check all of your landing pages to make sure your forms are still working. The nickel you save could be your own.

If you need some active, professional help with your pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, landing page, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, sem

Today we're going deep. We're going to examine a mathematical equation created years ago by a guy named J. L. Kelly. Kelly was a brilliant man who devised a formula that is so rudimentary, yet so critical, it is the foundation for many systems in the world of finance AND gambling. Here is the formula:

Fraction of bankroll to invest = Edge / Odds

Edge means any information you have that gives you better than 50/50 odds. For example, if you have a quarter that is weighted in such a way that heads should come up 60% of the time, then your edge would be 10%. On any one flip of the coin, you would have a 10% edge if you bet on heads. In the world of finance, an edge can be any information you receive that gives you an advantage over other investors.

Odds are odds. It is the payout from winning the bet or gamble. For instance, going back to the coin flip example, the odds would likely be 1:1, or even money. In the formula, this would just be represented as 1. If you guess the coin correctly, you would win an amount even to your bet. If the odds were 2:1, then a 2 would be used in the formula.

So using the above edge and odds in our formula gives us:

Fraction of bankroll to invest = 10% / 1, or 10%.

The formula tells you that you should invest 10% of your total bankroll on every coin flip.

If the odds were 2:1, then the formula would look like:

Fraction of bankroll to invest = 10% / 2, or 5%.

So...what does this have to do with search engine marketing? Everything.

To be as successful as possible in your search engine marketing, you need to allocate your funds to those keywords, ads, and campaigns that generate the highest return on ad spend. If you had enough information, you could use the Kelly formula to allocate your budget. If you don't have enough information, it is still a good mental model for you to follow. Put more of your money on keywords that have proven to be most effective.

We will be discussing these types of concepts more in later blog posts. I just wanted to introduce you to Kelly and get you thinking about the process of maximizing the return on your paid search ad spend.

If you need some help with your search engine optimization or pay per click management, please contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: bid management, Kelly formula, paid search, pay per click, pay per click management, ppc, search engine marketing, sem

In the course of working on our latest book, I have put a lot of thought into the concept of a trading-style system for managing a paid search campaign. There is definitely a correlation between investing in securities and investing in paid search. Every keyword you bid on is sort-of like a stock: you are bidding a certain amount in anticipation of turning a profit on it.

Possibly the investing concept (also a gambling concept) that is the most relevant to pay per click is money management. You want to allocate your budget to the keywords that will maximize your profit and minimize losses. Unfortunately, unlike with securities, you have no historical data to use to test your beliefs except your own. And it costs money to generate your own data.

There's no way around it. If you want to successful in paid search, you have to be willing to pay the price to generate enough data to know what changes you need to make to your account.

Another big difference between trading securities and managing a paid search account is that there are other variables other than just the keyword (the "security") and the price paid for it. With paid search, you have more "touchy feely" things to deal with - namely, your ad copy and landing page copy/design. You can have your account set up just right and your bids set perfectly, yet still not be successful because of your ads and landing pages. There is a complex relationship between the keyword, bid, ad, and landing page. A weakness in any of the elements can greatly diminish the effectiveness of a pay per click campaign.

But again, it all just comes down to generating data, and the way to do that is to test, test, test. With our new book, we hope to give readers a reasonably simple system to use to properly allocate their budget. The rest is just good ol' split-testing and constant revision.

If you need help with PPC management NOW and can't wait for our book to come out. feel free to call us at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: bid management, internet marketing, keywords, paid search, pay per click, pay per click management, pay-per-click, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, web site marketing

I've been reading a lot lately about trading systems - that is, rules-based strategies for making short-term investments in stocks or other securities. So far, most of my personal stock purchases have been made in more of an "investing" mode, as opposed to trading. In other words, I'm buying stocks that I think are undervalued or that have strong future prospects, in order to realize long-term appreciation in the stock prices. Trading is completely different. It is based purely on things like volume of purchases and momentum.

What's the point, you ask? It's that there is a strong correlation between the trading of securities and the management of a paid search campaign. For instance:

• When trading, you are buying something at one price in hopes of selling it at a higher price. In pay per click management, you are biding a certain price for a click in hopes of turning a profit on it.
  
• When trading, many, if not most, of your trades will be losers, with the hope that your winning trades outweigh your losers. In pay per click management, most of your clicks will be losers, with the hope that you have enough clicks that convert to outweigh your losers.
  
• Trading involves a set of stocks or other securities. Pay per click management involves a set of keywords or web sites.

One major area of difference between a trading account and a paid search account is that paid search has a strong creative element. Even if you do the math right, if your ads are lousy or your landing pages are lousy, you're still going to lose. But we have some ideas that we think will make the creative side easier even for novices.

We have begun work on our newest book, that will be a rules-based strategy guide for managing paid search accounts. This one will be shopped around to real publishers, rather than publishing it ourselves as we have in the past.

For the time being (until you get a chance to buy our book), the point is to think of your pay per click campaign as an investment. Your keywords are the entities (your securities) that comprise your portfolio of keywords. Some keywords are going to make you money, and some (if not most) keywords are going to lose money. You need to figure out which ones are your winners.

If you need some help with your pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: bid management, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay per click management, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, web site marketing

The mark of an exceptional company is the ability to generate ever greater returns on equity. For instance, if your company has $1 million of accounting equity, and you generate $200 thousand in earnings (profit), then your return on equity is 20%. Your goal for next year, then, might be to generate a return on equity of 25%. This kind of analysis is particularly relevant to public companies, but it is also valid for private companies as a measure of performance.


One way to increase your company's return on equity is to invest in things that will increase sales and that can be measured so you know how much they are increasing sales. These "things" consist of advertising and other forms of marketing. Unfortunately, most forms of advertising make it very difficult to track how much business you are actually generating in return for your advertising dollars. But you and I know about a form of advertising that does not suffer from this weakness.


Paid search, or pay per click.


Pay per click lets you know exactly what your return on investment is for all of your keywords, ads, and landing pages. Over time, as you generate data and do more split-testing, you should be able to make your return on investment from paid search improve. Improving the ROI on your advertising improves the return on equity for your overall business, all else being equal.


So if you are looking to improve your company's financial performance, look to advertising platforms that are cost-effective, easy to implement, and provide complete transparency with regard to return on investment. Paid search is your best bet.

If you could use some help with your pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay per click management, ppc, roas, roi, search engine marketing, sem

This week we published an article on our web site discussing a concept we have developed called Keyword Relative Value. The article can be accessed via the link below:

http://workmedia.net/articles/Keyword-Relative-Value.asp

To quote from the article:

We developed a formula intended to attach a numerical value to a web site's search engine ranking for a specific keyword. The resulting number, called the Keyword Relative Value (or “KRV”), places a value on a keyword for a particular web site based on two parameters: the amount of expected traffic for the keyword and a site's ranking in a particular search engine for the keyword.

Here is the KRV formula:

KRV = ROUND(T*(SQRT((1/R)^3)),2)

where T = the expected traffic for a keyword and R = a web site's ranking for the keyword in a particular search engine.

The above formula derives the value for one particular keyword. A much more instructive exercise is to calculate the KRV's for a group of keywords. We call this the Aggregate Keyword Relative Value ("AKRV"). The formula for AKRV is as follows:

AKRV = X(ROUND(T*(SQRT((1/R)^3)),2))

where X is the number of keywords that have search engine rankings.

The point of these formulas is to boil your web site's search engine visibility for a common set of keywords down to a single number. You can then track this number over time and compare it to your competitors to gauge your visibility against your competitors. We believe this concept is a powerful new tool to give web site owners a stronger sense of how well they rank in the search engines, in an easy-to-understand format: a single number.

To learn more about KRV, please read the article linked above.

If you could use some help improving and understanding your search engine visibility, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword relative value, keyword research, keywords, KRV, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search engine rankings, sem, seo

We have been experimenting with second tier, or alternative, paid search platforms. Here are our thoughts on these platforms:

Turn. This is a really cool concept. We love the pay per action model, where you specify an amount you are willing to pay for the completion of some action - having the prospect fill out a form, make a purchase, or whatever. Unfortunately, we have had no luck generating leads on Turn. Perhaps we are just not bidding high enough for conversions, but we know what we can pay and still engage in a profitable transaction. So far, Turn just hasn't worked for us.

Miva. This is a content network. We're a little divided on Miva. We used it on one paid search campaign very effectively, but on another...nothing. So you might want to invest a very small amount in Miva and see how it does. If your first attempt doesn't produce anything, abandon this one.

GoClick. Don't waste your money here. Their search marketing interface is pitiful. We burned through our entire budget in a couple of hours, without having any idea where the traffic came from, and without a single conversion.

Enhance. This is a content network with which we are starting to see some nice positive results. The interface is more professional than some of the others as well. This one is worth a try.

SearchFeed. We had mixed results on SearchFeed. It might be worth a try, but start conservatively.

Though not really a "secondary" platform, we should also mention that we have had mixed results with Ask, but we definitely recommend you include it in your marketing mix. It has much wider distribution than the above mentioned platforms and is somewhat cheaper than Google or Yahoo!.

Even though we have not had outstanding results with any of the second tier platforms, we still recommend that you experiment for yourself to see if you can find something that works. Google and Yahoo! are not the only games in town. If you could use some help managing a wide, multi-platform paid search campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: Ask, Enhance, GoClick, internet marketing, Miva, paid search, pay per action, pay per click, pay per click management, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, Turn

We have been involved in a project that is very different from the way we typically work with our clients. Rather than funding their own paid search accounts and then paying us a management fee (generally figured as a percentage of the ad spend), our client arranged for a special affiliate program that pays us a certain amount for each lead. We normally don't agree to such arrangements, but we have done enough work for this client in the past with good results that we thought we already had a good feel for what to do. We expected to make more money this way.

You just don't know how something is going to work out until you try it. Even though the site and service we are promoting is very similar to what we have done in the past for this client...something is different. We are driving traffic, but that traffic is not converting into leads. No one is filling out our client's form. We are on our third different landing page design, and still no luck. People just don't seem to trust our client.

If you are in this situation (spending money to drive traffic to your site that is not converting), you need to take a hard look at your situation. Do people trust you based on your web site? It may be helpful to get one of those Better Business Bureau logos for your site. Are there certifications in your industry (and corresponding logos) you can get that can prove your level of expertise? Do you have a phone number placed prominently on your landing pages?

Speaking of phone numbers, it is also useful for you to get a separate number specifically associated with the paid search campaign. This way you will know exactly what calls resulted from your paid search ads.

All you can do is test, test, test. It is impossible to predict what will work, and every situation is different. Based on our experience with a similar campaign, we thought we had a good idea of what would work for this particular client. But we were wrong. The lesson? You can never stop testing. Never.

The negative aspect of this is that it will likely cost you some money to do adequate testing before you start making any money. But paid search is much more cost effective than any other type of marketing, and it gives immediate feedback. It can provide you with critical data that can be carried over to other forms of marketing.

So...generating leads via paid search ain't easy, even for experienced Internet marketers like us. But if you are patient, systematic, and willing to absorb some losses in the short-term, you can make it work.

If you could use some help with your pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: copywriting, internet marketing, landing page, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, web site marketing

Well, well...here we are...200 blog posts. Please excuse us while we give ourselves a pat on the back...[pat, pat, pat]...

We thought we would use this occasion to give some of our very best tips for promoting your web site:

• Pick one keyword for which to optimize the front page of your site. Make that keyword the first words in your title. Use it twice in the copy, once in a header, and once in bold. Use it in the alt attribute of the first image on the page. Use it in the text of every link throughout your site that links to your home page. And, if possible, use it in the text of links on other web sites that point to your site. Speaking of links...
• Get lots of external links pointing to your home page. I don't care what some "experts" say - we have seen time and time again that linking still works as an SEO technique.
• Write articles. This may be the single best way to acquire one-way, keyword-rich links to your site. Do it often. If you do one a week, in a year's time you will have a TON of links. If you can't write, there are companies you can hire to do it for you. Or hire a smart local high school kid to do it.
• Publish a blog. Search engines love content that changes often. That's exactly what a blog is - content that you update often. But you need to post at least twice per week.
• Use paid search. Sure, it delivers targeted traffic to your web site. But possibly even more importantly, it generates mission critical data. It will tell you things like what keywords generate the most traffic, what keywords generate customers, what web page copy converts at the best rate, etc.
• Use your analytics. You need to have a strong understanding of what is going on on your web site. For example, are your visitors using a particular screen resolution that doesn't work well with your site? Is there a particular location where a lot of your visitors come from? Is there a particular page on your site where most visitors leave? Google Analytics can answer all these questions for you, and it's free.
• Never stop trying to do better. Using the data from paid search and your analytics, you should constantly be looking for clues as to what changes to make to improve the performance of your site.

If you do these things, you will be successful. But is it work? Of course. That's why we're able to be in business. Because it takes time to implement a search marketing campaign and get a feel for what the data means. So if you could use some help with your search engine optimization or pay per click management, call us today at 888-299-4837 or email us at Info@WorkMedia.net.

See ya in blog post number 201!

Labels: article marketing, blog, internet marketing, pay per click, pay per click management, ppc, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, sem, seo, web site marketing

Think before you spend. That is today's lesson. We're talking about spending with regard to what you spend on advertising, especially online advertising. We have a large client who inquired about advertising on the front page of Yahoo!. Before we even looked into what it would cost, we knew this was a bad idea.

Yahoo! has massive reach. The home page gets nearly 2 billion impressions PER DAY. That is a lot of eyeballs. It's fairly analogous to advertising during the Super Bowl, both in terms of reach and expense. So yes, advertising on the front page of Yahoo! would give you an incredible amount of exposure and probably drive a lot of traffic to your web site.

But even if you are a big enough company to afford Yahoo!, is it the best use of your money? Probably not. For a fraction of the cost, you could run ads on dozens or hundreds of web sites much more closely aligned with your target market. For instance, if you are a financial services company, you could run your ad on many financial-related web sites, where people are already interested in your type of service, for pennies on the dollar of what the Yahoo! ad would cost.

You should apply this kind of thinking to all of your marketing. Ask yourself: am I spending my money on an advertising forum that will expose my message to the maximum number of people who are good prospects for my service at the best price? If you have lots of money to spend on marketing, we still think you should apply this kind of thinking. Spend your money on targeted advertising first, and then if there are funds left over, you can use those funds on a more broad, branding-oriented campaign.

If you could use some guidance with your pay per click management or search engine optimization, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: advertising, business advice, internet marketing, marketing, paid search, pay per click, pay per click management, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, Yahoo

You probably don't realize it, but you have the ultimate tool for business success right in front of you. Assuming you sell a reasonably high quality product or service, all you have to do to be successful is get people to your web site and then use the words on your site to convince your visitors to do business with you. Fortunately, there is a marketing technique that can accomplish both of these objectives:

Pay per Click!

Or, as we usually refer to it, paid search marketing. With paid search, you can find the marketing copy that turns visitors into customers. You can run multiple ads for sets of keywords (ad groups), with each ad linking to a different landing page. You can then use the landing pages to test different copy. Make sure you set your ad groups to display the ads an even number of times (turn optimization off). After a few days or weeks (however long it takes to generate a few hundred clicks), you will have some very solid data showing which landing pages (and which copy) generate the most sales or leads.

Once you have figured out what copy converts visitors into customers or clients, it is time to get more aggressive with your campaign. Direct all your traffic to the best landing page. Increase your budget. Increase your bids (although keep an eye on your return on ad spend - you don't want to bid too high).

One critical component of making this technique work is to make sure you have conversion tracking in place. This is very easy. All you have to do is place a snippet of code supplied by the search engine on your conversion confirmation page. This will allow you to make the connection between specific keywords, ads, landing pages, and conversions.

Many times in life, the things that work seem too simple to believe. Success is not about carrying out some complicated plan - it's about doing the simple things very well. Create a plan for your business based on the technique discussed in this article, and you are guaranteed to succeed. Just don't rush the process. Be patient, and make sure you have enough data to analyze before making any big decisions.

If you could use some help implementing a data-based pay per click management plan, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: ad writing, advertising, copywriting, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, web site marketing

We are in discussions to provide search engine marketing services to a company with a very significant presence in numerous Latin American countries. One of their primary competitors has been making extensive use of Google's content network to distribute its marketing message to the same countries, so our potential client wants to do the same thing. In the course of a conversation yesterday, we discussed something which may be something you should think about for your own search engine marketing. And that is:

Should you go wide or go deep?

Here's what we mean. We don't want to launch an all-out marketing blitz in all of this company's market countries at once. We want to start on a fairly small scale, generate some data, and then start expanding. But is the best approach to take a single country and saturate it with search and content ads (going deep), or should we pick just a few target content sites and run ads on those sites in many countries (going wide)?

Each approach has its advantages. The deep approach will generate a lot of country-specific data related to lots of different sites and search queries. Chances are pretty good that what works with one country will work with another. So if we can generate enough data, we can probably create somewhat of a template that could be applied to the search marketing campaigns in the other target countries.

The wide approach makes sense if the advertiser already has a very good idea about what specific sites are effective for its marketing message. Our prospective client believes it knows at least one site that will be very effective, although we won't know for sure until we run ads and see if they result in converting customers.

Ultimately, like everything else to do with Internet marketing, it just comes down to testing. We don't know which strategy is best until we try some different things to see what works. Our suggestion in this case is to do both. By aggressively marketing in a single country AND marketing cross-country via a few select sites, we will learn very quickly which approach is best and can start doing more of it.

So ask yourself...should you go deep or go wide? The only way to find out may be to do some testing on your own.

If you could use some help with your pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: ad networks, advertising, internet marketing, local search marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, sponsored search, web site marketing

I read over the weekend that Microsoft is trying to buy Yahoo!. They are willing to pay a nice premium over where the stock is at right now (having been beaten down by disappointing earnings), so it would represent a nice profit for Yahoo! stockholders. Will the deal go through? Who knows.

As search marketers, we would like to see the deal go through. We have tried to use Microsoft's search network and marketing platform (and continue to try) but Microsoft just doesn't have enough traffic yet, and its ad serving platform sometimes just doesn't seem to work very well. There are some features of Microsoft's ad center control panel that we really like, and some that we don't like.

The same with Yahoo! There are some features of its control panel we like, and some we don't. If the merger does happen, we would hope Microsoft would combine the best features of the two platforms into something really useful. The keyword inventory of the combined companies would also come closer to rivaling Google, and would exceed Google worldwide.

Frankly, we would just rather have to only deal with two major search marketing platforms than three. We like a lot of the things Microsoft has tried to do. Combining Microsoft's technology with Yahoo!'s Web positioning would create something new that could really be a boon to search engine advertisers. It would also set up an even more competitive situation between Google and the combined company, which should result in an increased pace in innovation and a better situation for advertisers. It seems counter-intuitive to think that a decrease in competitors from three to two would result in more competition, but it would. Microsoft just does not have the search engine traffic to be a real threat to Google or Yahoo!. But the new merged Microsoft/Yahoo! would be able to give Google a real run for its money. And that would be good for all of us.

If you could use some help with your pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, Microsoft, Microsoft adCenter, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, sponsored search, web marketing, Yahoo, Yahoo Search Marketing

Local businesses are losing sales by not taking advantage of the Web as a sales tool. No, this is not based on any kind of poll or data analysis. It's based purely on my own experiences. It is usually the case that for every one person who experiences a problem, or expresses dissatisfaction about a situation, there are many more people who feel the same way. So I am going to make the assumption that there are many people who have the same frustration I am about to discuss.

Businesses at the local level just don't seem to get it when it comes to online marketing. They will spend thousands of dollars on TV ads, print ads, radio ads, etc., but give no attention to their web sites. Here is a cold, hard fact: more and more people use the Web to do product research and find local businesses with whom to do business; and that trend is only going to continue. So why would ANY business not have a strong Web presence that shows what products or services it sells, and that makes it easy to do business with it?

Here is an example of what I am talking about. I am researching gas and electric fireplaces for my house. One large retailer in Nashville who I thought sold fireplaces (since there is a fireplaces page on its site) has ZERO visibility and almost no information about its fireplaces. If I did not already know about the company, I would not have looked at their web site to start with since it is not possible to find it in the search engines. As it turns out, I found out that this business stopped selling fireplaces two years ago...despite the fact that they are still shown on its web site. I mean, come on...in TWO YEARS you couldn't update your web site?

So I continued my search. I only found a single local business online that had a reasonable number of the kind of product I was looking for. The business' web site was not very good. There is very little information about specific products. It is an ecommerce-enabled site, but there is so little information about the products that I don't think any user would feel very comfortable placing an order online.

I cannot find a single business in Nashville that sells fireplaces that has a well-crafted web site with adequate information about its products. And that can be found in the search engines. There is probably a retailer in Nashville with exactly what I want. But I can't find it. So I am reduced to physically visiting random stores in hopes of finding what I want. Wherever that perfect store is, it is probably going to lose a sale.

If you own a physical business that sells products locally, all you have to do to have a MAJOR advantage over your competition is put up a high quality web site where visitors can get lots of information about your products. If they can buy the products online, that's even better. And PLEASE have the web site built in a search engine-friendly manner so your site can be found. Ask your web site developer about this. If he is not experienced in SEO, either hire another designer or bring someone onboard who can work with your designer. Yes, it will cost some money, but it will be a very, very good thing for your business.

If you need help promoting your local business via search engine optimization or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 615-263-2811 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, local search marketing, marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, sem, seo, web site marketing

I'm still working on the specs for our Google AdWords management application. I have to say...even just doing specs for something like this is a laborious task. Trying to get everything out of my head and onto paper that I want the application to do is difficult. If I were a better programmer, I probably would have creates specs from the start for my own purposes. But it really helped me to get a feel for what we could do with the AdWords API by writing code and building the thing organically.

I'm now trying to work out the logic of how the application should make automatic bid adjustments. I have read where some applications of this type use complicated Wall Street-style algorithms to make adjustments. These applications tend to be very expensive. And I really don't think we need to worry that much about it. The situation is sort-of similar to stock trading - you can obsess over charts and technical analysis to make just the right trades, but in the long run, a steady and consistent investment plan will likely do just as well.

One problem with a single magic algorithm to make adjustments is that it does not take into account the goals of the advertiser. For purposes of our application, I don't see any way around letting the user set his own account parameters to meet his specific goals. Some advertisers may just want lots of volume, regardless of conversion rates. For those situations, obviously, a wide open, aggressive bid attack is called for. More often than not, cost per conversion is a major consideration. For those advertisers, it is critical not to bid too much. Different objectives require different strategies.

So how does this relate to you? We just want you to think about your goals while managing your paid search campaign. Do you just need the visitors? Is there a a major branding component to your campaign? Do you need to turn a profit on the campaign right away? Or are you in a position to lose money initially in order to get new customers in your system? It is important that you decide early on what exactly you want to accomplish with your paid search campaign.

Your goals will have a major impact on how you manage your campaign. If volume, branding, and name recognition are your major goals, then you will want to be aggressive, bid high, and try to position your ads as high as possible. Likewise, if you are trying to get customers into your system even at a loss, you will want to be aggressive, though possibly less so than with a branding strategy. If immediate profitability is your main concern, then you need to be much more concerned with the price you are paying for clicks and conversion rates.

If you need some help withpay per click management so that it accomplishes your goals, please contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: advertising, Google Adwords, internet marketing, MSN, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, sponsored search, web site marketing, Yahoo Search Marketing

Friday afternoon...and we've not made a single blog post this week. Not good. I don't really even have any knowledge to impart today, so I figured I would just use this post to let you know what's going on around the Work Media offices.

We have been working with a company called Student Loan Financial Group for a couple of months. We were doing paid search,which was really cool because they had a big budget and (at first) just needed as many leads as we could get. The closing rate of the leads turned out to be low, so as the campaign went on the priority shifted from volume to unit cost. Toward the end, we really had the thing humming, generating a strong number of leads at a very reasonable cost per lead. The student loan business is very cyclical, so that campaign has ended. The kids are all in school now so not too many people are still looking for student loans. We are also engaging in an SEO campaign to generate free traffic. That is going well. The whole student loan industry is in a crunch right now (as are most things to do with credit), so we're not sure what the future holds but hopefully we'll get a chance to take what we have learned in the first round of paid search and kick some major ass in round two.

We are in discussions with a few very large companies to run search marketing campaigns. Large companies are definitely our focus these days, as far as our marketing efforts go. Our guy here Jim Reams is making some great contacts that hopefully will pan out in the weeks ahead.

The Google AdWords management application that we've been working on for many months got stalled toward the end of last year because we just got so dang busy. I have decided that the quickest way to finish that thing is to pay somebody who is a lot better programmer than I am to finish it. So I am working on specs that lay out exactly what it is supposed to do, then I will begin searching for a programmer to finish the thing up.

We have developed a proprietary method for analyzing a web site's search engine competitive situation. Rather than post it here, I have written an extended article and am seeking publication in a legitimate magazine or newsletter. More about that later.

Finally, we are just about set to record the first episode of our long-awaited podcast. We finally bought some podcast recording/broadcasting equipment for the office. In fact, I think this afternoon Chris and I are going to take a stab at doing one. We'll let you know how it goes.

That's about it. Busy, busy. But that's the way we like it. As usual, I leave you by suggesting that if you need any help with your company's search engine marketing, please call Work Media at 888-299-4837 (615-263-2811 if you're in Middle Tennessee) or email us at Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search marketing, sem, seo, web site marketing

Microsoft has released a new tool for use by advertisers on its search engine - adCenter Add-in for Excel 2007. Microsoft describes it as:

"...a keyword research and optimization tool that can help you understand keyword popularity and trends, and gain valuable insight on the demographic and geographic information of actual searches."

Now, we are all the time doing keyword research in various tools, exporting the data, and opening up it up in Excel to do whatever type of sorting and filtering we need to get down to a list of keywords we can use for our purposes. So we were very interested in a tool that would allow us to do keyword research directly from Excel, even if all the data comes Microsoft's own search network.

To download the tool, go here:

http://advertising.microsoft.com/advertising/adcenter_addin

It is easy to install and it even worked the first time we tried it. One disadvantage is that you have to have Excel 2007, which a lot of people probably don't have yet. Obviously Microsoft would like everyone in the world to upgrade to their latest version of Office, which may be one reason it only works in the 2007 version. But it did not seem to cause any problems with Excel's functionality, so if you have Excel 2007 and have need to do keyword research, you should definitely try it out.

After installing it, it places a new tab on Excel's main menu labeled "Ad Intelligence". Clicking the Ad Intelligence tab reveals a whole new sub-menu of really big, colorful buttons:

Keyword Wizard - generates a keyword list from seed keywords.
Keyword Extraction - generates a keyword list based on the copy in a particular web site.
Keyword Suggestion - suggests keywords based on three possible criteria: advertiser bidding behavior, keywords which contain the original keywords, and by keyword category similarity.
Search Buzz - suggests keywords based on top spikiness or frequency.
Monthly Traffic - provides historical and forecast traffic for selected keywords.
Keyword Categorization - identifies categories for selected keywords.
Geographic - provides location information for keywords.
Demographic - provides demographic information for keywords.
Monetization - provides keyword monetization data, such as CPC, CTR, impressions, etc.
Advanced Algorithm - lets you customize the parameters used to create keyword lists.
Options - lets you set system options for the keyword tool.

To try it out, we typed in three seed keywords in successive cells, clicked the Keyword Wizard button, selected the cells, selected the algorithms to use (campaign association, keywords that contain the seed keywords, or keywords that are similar - we selected all three options to bring back the most keywords), set the maximum results to return and the minimum confidence, and then let it run. It returned a list of keywords directly in our Excel workbook that contained lots of traffic-related data for each one.

The whole problem with Microsoft's search platform is that it just doesn't have enough keyword inventory. We recently gave up on Microsoft for a search campaign we were running because we were actually doing much better generating traffic in second tier search engines like Miva (and of course, Google and Yahoo!). But purely for purposes of generating keyword data to be tried in various search engines, Microsoft's adCenter Add-in for Excel is a very cool tool.

If you need help running paid search ads in Microsoft or any other search platform, please call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, keywords, Microsoft, Microsoft adCenter, MSN, MSN Labs, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, web marketing

If you are driving traffic to your web site through paid search, but that traffic is not profitable, then you may need to re-examine how you are targeting your ads. Chances are your targeting is too broad. Remember, you don't just target with your keywords - you target with your ads and you target with your landing page copy.

For your keywords, you should use a wide package of keywords that includes broad, high volume keywords as well as more specific, low volume keywords. Make sure you have tracking in place so you will know exactly which keywords generate sales or leads. After a few weeks, you should have a very good idea which keywords you should be spending your money on.

If your keywords are driving traffic but no sales, then you need to look deeply at your ad copy. Are you attracting the right prospects? If you attract a lot of traffic that is not converting, then you need to tighten up your ad copy to attract the right prospects. You will generate less traffic, but it will be much more profitable traffic. Ask yourself this: who is your ideal prospect? What industry does he work in? Does he drive a truck? Does she have good credit? Whatever characteristics make up your perfect prospect, you can use that information in your ad copy. For example, if your ideal prospect is a deer hunter, maybe your ad copy should mention deer hunting. If your ideal prospect is disabled, maybe you should try an ad header like "Disabled? We can help". These are just hypothetical examples, but you get the idea.

The same thing applies to your landing page copy. You need to make it clear who you are looking for and write your copy with that person in mind. Think of this whole process like a big funnel, and you are doing everything you can to apply filters so that the prospects who arrive at the end of your funnel are very eager to do business with you. By fine-tuning ads and ad copy for specific groups of people, you should greatly improve the performance of your paid search campaign.

If you need some help better targeting your paid search campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: ad writing, conversion strategy, copywriting, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, sponsored search

Earlier this week I was trying to import a Google campaign into Yahoo!. Yahoo! has this tool that is supposed to convert a spreadsheet with Google campaign data into the correct format to work with Yahoo!. Well, that thing seems to be a piece of crap. We ended up having to manually move lots of columns around, change column names, and add lots of data that Yahoo! needed. It was a pain in the butt. And then it still didn't work...at first. If you are trying to do this same thing, here is what we had to do to make it work.

1. We had to first create a campaign in Yahoo! to hold the new campaign data. Unless I'm wrong, you can't actually create a new campaign by importing the data - you can only add data to an existing campaign.

2. We had to specify our newly created campaign ID in the import spreadsheet.

We had also originally specified IDs for our new ad groups (which we made up), but Yahoo! did not like this. So...you DO specify a campaign ID in the import file, but you DO NOT specify ad group IDs.

There was a lot of work that had to be done on the import file (which was created by doing an export from Google AdWords Editor, which we have blogged extensively about), but the frustrating thing was when we got to the point of importing the file and it still didn't work. That is until we took the above steps.

If you need help managing your Google or Yahoo! campaigns (or any other search engine), feel free to contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: AdWords Editor, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, sem, web site marketing, Yahoo Search Marketing

Like all of the major search engine ad platforms, Microsoft's AdCenter has some nice features as well as some not-so-nice features. One feature we like is its bulk keyword editing feature. For one of our accounts, We imported a data file that contained both broad and exact match keywords. For some reason, the exact match keywords didn't get added. But using the bulk keyword editing feature, it was a simple matter to also set the keywords as exact match. Unlike Google, which requires that the same keyword be added twice in order for it to be in your account as both exact and broad match, with Microsoft, you only add the keyword once, but you can then set it as exact, broad, phrase, or any combination of the three.

For maximum coverage, we recommend you add your keywords as both exact and broad. Keywords set to exact match receive preference over broad match due to increased relevancy.

Microsoft requires a privacy statement or link to a privacy statement page on ad destination URLs that collect visitor contact information. This is a very minor, easy-to-account-for detail, but if you forget it, Microsoft may shut your ads down and it could take 24 hours to get them running again.

One thing we don't like about Microsoft's ad platform is that it takes much longer for your ads to enter rotation. With Microsoft and Yahoo!, your ads can begin being displayed in a matter of hours or less. With Microsoft, it seems to be at least a day. Also, for some reason, it seems that search ads go online much slower than content ads.

Another thing we don't like is that Microsoft places a credit threshold of $50 on new accounts.This means that every time the advertiser spends $50 on ads, Microsoft will send a payment request to its credit card company. So, for example, if you are investing $1,000 per day in MSN ads, Microsoft will be making 20 payment requests to your credit card company on the same day. We have found that some credit card companies are resistant to allowing that many charges from a single vendor. If a payment is declined, it can cause your ads to go offline. Once you're offline, it can take 24 hours to get back online. So we recommend having a conversation with your credit card company so that they know to expect many charges every day from Microsoft.

So above are a few tips to keep in mind when setting up a Microsoft AdCenter account. The Microsoft search network doesn't have nearly the total keyword inventory (search traffic) of Google or Yahoo!, but you may find that you can generate cheaper leads. It's definitely worth your time to give it a try.

If you would like to try out MSN ads for advertising your web site but just don't have the time or patience, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net. We'd love to hear from you.

Labels: internet marketing, Microsoft, Microsoft adCenter, MSN, paid search, pay per click, ppc, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, web site marketing

Google has changed the name of its "site-targeted" AdWords campaigns to "placement-targeted." We're not sure of the reason behind the name because it's the same thing it was before - a way for advertisers to advertise on specific web sites that are part of Google's content network, rather than on Google's search results pages. Perhaps the name change relates to Google's ongoing efforts to expand its advertising platform beyond just web sites, into areas such as radio and newspaper. Who knows.

The only difference, as far as we can tell, is that you are now allowed to bid on a cost per click ("CPC") basis for content ads, in addition to the existing method of bidding per thousand impressions ("CPM"). There have been occasions when our effective click cost for CPM campaigns was less than CPC, and there have been times when it was more. We like the fact that Google now gives you the option of bidding either way. It gives the advertiser more flexibility to try different bidding strategies and see what works best.

On a related note, we have noticed that Google's pay per action platform has been down for quite a few days now. We have one client using PPA (it is only available to select large advertisers), and we are beginning to see some very nice results with it. Our cost per acquisition is substantially lower than with pay per click. We aren't generating nearly as many total conversions as with pay per click, but we'll take a cheap conversion any way we can get it. But what is the deal with it not working? Is Google shutting it down already because they're not making enough money with it? We'll see.

If you need some help managing your Google paid search campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per action, pay per click, ppa, ppc, search marketing, sem, sponsored search, web marketing, web site marketing

Yes, yes, development of our proprietary Google AdWords application is still ongoing. We just finished a section of the application that I am excited about it because it will be a major time saver in setting up Google campaigns. What we've done is give our keyword research page the functionality to create multiple ad groups at once. The list of keywords returned from a keyword search has a textbox next to each keyword where you can specify the name of an ad group for that keyword. Keywords for which you type the same ad group name will be added to the same ad group. This is a continuation of our plan to break away from the 1.2.3. approach to setting up ad groups that is used in the AdWords interface.

The next step will be finding some way to add some automation to the ad creation process. This may involve setting up a global ad template that will apply to all ad groups within a campaign. We're still trying to work out the logic in our heads and haven't really coded any of that yet.

We are running up a decent bill in Google API fees. We learned too late about using Google's sandbox AdWords API classes, which would have let us do our testing for free. But I did not want to go back and have to recompile all of our classes again. We had to add some custom code to the classes to get them to work anyway because of a bug (not really a bug, just a bad feature) of the .NET platform involving the way it communicates with Web Services. So it just seemed easier to pay the Google API fees than go back and have to re-do a bunch of work. Dealing with the API fees just from our testing certainly has shown us that we will need to be careful to price use of the application to cover the fees we'll run up once we open the application up to our clients. By the way, the trick to using Google's sandbox API is that you use a different URL for each Web Service when compiling your classes that make the Web Service calls.

Development of the application has slowed the last couple of weeks due to client demands. The thing has come a long ways - but it has a long way to go. We hope to be ready to launch by January.

If you could use some help with pay per click management or search engine optimization, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: api, application development, google, Google Adwords, internet marketing, paid search, pay per click, search engine marketing, sem