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Archives for June 2013

Enhancing AdWords for a Constantly Connected World #enhancedcampaigns

Consumer behavior is evolving as customers become more comfortable with the Internet.  Smart SEO managers are adapting their content to meet these changing market dynamics.

Google’s AdWords is also changing and adapting to customer needs.  Hopefully, these changes will be useful in the long run for both users and marketers.  Known as Enhanced Campaigns, these changes mark Google’s efforts to bring more users into contact with websites that meet their needs.

The new Google Group, marked by hashtag #enhancedcampaigns, that carries a continuing conversation of Google’s changes in this regard.

The Realities of AdWords and Marketing

Every day, people use phones, tablets and other devices to connect with those they want to meet, including businesses.  This trend will not change; in fact, the user-friendliness and ubiquity of devices of all types will only continue to grow.  Users can now move between devices effortlessly, and these devices are becoming a necessary part of most people’s lives.

However, users do not simply morph magically into device users.  At least 90 percent of users research across multiple devices before making a purchase as they continue to familiarize themselves with the capabilities of their new technology.  As they engage in this research, they learn for themselves which devices are convenient and lend themselves to certain types of searches and uses.

The Intersection of Intent and Context

Where intent and context meet is where you find users searching for information.  Enhanced Campaigns uses a context-based approach to help websites reach customers across devices.  The development of new ads incorporates both the intent of the user and the context in which the user searches to specifically target users.

Google AdWords allows you to bid for contexts with adjustments.  The information available includes device, location and time to determine the bid adjustment.  For example:

Device: +10% on phone
Location: +20% in Palo Alto
Time: +5% 7:30 PM Friday
1.39x bid

You can also improve your results with location-based optimization on your bids.  When campaign performances differ by geography, location details can be used to vary bid distance.

Ads and extensions should also be selected for mobile context.  The extensions, both local and general, for a mobile device are available in the “Device Preferences” box so that you can see where someone is browsing from.

Group level extensions can be even more targeted than individual extensions.  Group extensions can be created for ads that allow you to schedule them for different times of the day.  This can come in very handy for timed sales or new product launches.

Offer extensions can be used to drive traffic to bricks-and-mortar stores and encourage offline purchases.  However, AdWords is not yet equipped to report in-store purchases as conversions, although Google has promised that it will happen eventually.

Google is also offering advanced reporting measures such as alls, digital downloads, and cross-device conversion in the future.

If you want to use Google AdWords optimally, consider the following tips:

1)    Embrace the multi-device phenomenon.

2)    Optimize bids for location and time.

3)    Take advantage of improvements in ads and extensions.

 

Can an Upgraded Account Help Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile?

Have you thought about trying LinkedIn’s free 30-day premium account?  If you decide to upgrade, you can gain several important benefits and features.  Upgraded accounts can be a great asset to job seekers who can use the upgraded accounts to be “featured applicants” and for recruiters who can use the system contact those outside their own network groups.

Upgraded accounts also offer several features designed to give you more insight into your own engagement and the engagement of others with you.

Benefits of Upgrading

When you upgrade to a premium LinkedIn account, you get the opportunity to display your gold “In” badge and the “OpenLink” badge, notifying others that you are a premium member.

You also get expanded search results, permission to contact users outside your network and tools that allow you to bookmark and annotate others’ profiles.  An upgraded account also gives you the option to join the OpenLink network that allows others to message you at no cost, even if they are not in your group.

Another great tool is the “Profile Stats Pro” that allows you to see a list of who has viewed your profile in a certain period of time.  You can also show views of your profile by industry or by location, and monitor the keyword searches that have featured your profile.  You can see views by any of these categories easily and even find other helpful viewer information.

The Profile Stats Pro tool provides a better understanding of who is searching for you and how they are searching.  You may be able to tailor information in your profile to make you stand out in these types of searches.

For example, if you live in Atlanta and you see that people in that area are looking for technical writers, it might pay to spend some time brushing up your profile from a technical writing standpoint.  This might include optimizing your profile for keywords related to technical writing as well as keywords for cities around the Atlanta area where large technical writing firms are established.  It might also mean that you want to request endorsements from those who have worked with you as a technical writer in the past.  LinkedIn suggests common endorsement types; in the technical writer example, it might ask your colleagues to endorse you for technical writing as well as editing, composing, proofreading and other similar skills.

Cost of Upgrading

While LinkedIn offers a free 30-day trial of the upgraded account, it will cost you after the trial period.  The total cost depends on what type of premium account you choose and the features it contains.

There’s No Harm in Trying It

As long as you cancel before your 30 days are up, there is no cost to try the LinkedIn profile upgrade.  Try it out and see if the features work for you as you attempt to push yourself and your brand out to others who are looking for people like you.

Business Blogging: How to Hit the Sweet Spot of Social Engagement and Revenue Driver

You’ve heard your SEO or marketing consultant recommend a blog, and you get it. After all, a blog allows you to do lots of great things for your business:

  • Put a face on your company.
  • Do reputation management, to deal with negative feedback.
  • Strengthen the focus of your site with new ideas and content.
  • Publish funny, entertaining or otherwise “viral” content that will get you attention online.

You know that blogging for your customers will build trust in your brand and improve users’ experience with you, making them more likely to associate themselves with you in the future. But you still have questions. Like, what can I expect the blog to contribute to sales? And if not directly connected to sales, how will I measure the blog’s success?

Blog KPIs

First understand that blogging is an awareness channel, positioned at the top of the conversion funnel. Conversions assigned to the blog should be things that create another connection between you and the audience, like a newsletter sign-up or Facebook like. The goal of the blog is to have people actively choose to connect with you elsewhere, a position that will put you at the customer’s top of mind when a need for your product or service surfaces.

A 2011 State of the Blogosphere report from Technorati Media surveyed bloggers, and the results of the question, “How do you measure the success of your blog?” saw a variety of responses:

 

In 2011, personal satisfaction, unique visitors and number of comments were reported as the top 3 ways bloggers measured the success of their blogs.

Along with the metrics listed above, today it’s generally recommended that businesses engaged in social media track the search volume of branded terms — a good indicator of the effectiveness of social media efforts and the share of market voice.

Conversion Tracking on Your Blog with Google Analytics

Now that you know a few things to measure your blog with, here are some basic steps for putting in place tracking with Google Analytics.

Before you get into GA to set your goals, outline what your blog success metrics will be. Everything from clicking through to social accounts like Facebook, Twitter and Google+, to form completions to signing up for your email list or newsletter, time spent on site and pages per visit might align with your business goals.

With that straight, use Google Analytics set up tracking for those conversions with a variety of goal types:

  1. URL destination: When a user hits a page that signals a conversion, like a thank you or confirmation screen, that’s a goal.
  2. Visit duration: Time spent on a page is a type of goal that aligns well with the engagement role of a blog.
  3. Pages per visit: Here again, your blog will be doing its job if it causes visitors to hit multiple pages on your site.
  4. Event: Actions like downloads, video views, specific links and buttons that get clicked — these may line up with conversion goals you have for your blog.

With an understanding of what your blog is doing for you and GA set up to measure and track those actions, you’ll know why you’re blogging and how the investment is contributing to your business.

Google Chrome Goes Dark

SEO marketers and webmasters have an unpleasant surprise coming in the form of Google Chrome.

The new Google Chrome 25 uses SSL to encrypt searches through Omnibox, the search tool used to type URLs, even if the user is not logged in.  Previously, searchers were encrypted only for logged-in users.  The keyword is no longer passed through analytics software, so this cuts down on the site owner’s ability to track keyword performance.

More (not provided), Fewer Keywords

Firefox made the decision to offer secure search in July 2012, surprising beating out iOS6, which jumped on the bandwagon in September 2012.

Since 2011, when the idea was first implemented, the (not provided) results have been steadily increasing.  Currently, SEO experts report rates between 20 and 39 percent of this message and the numbers are rising consistently.

What can you do about this growing issue?

Fortunately, there are ways to reclaim some of the lost ground.  The keyword data you are searching for does not pass through the referrer but it is still aggregated in Google Webmaster Tools and in AdWords, so look there.  It may not be as simple as using a referrer but you can still get a feel for keyword performance.

Another option is to use other search engine’s data such as Bing or Yahoo.  These two still send information through, so a “spot check” with these search engines may be enlightening.  However, you must understand that it will not be equivalent to Google results.  In other words, there is not necessarily a linear relationship between the number of Google users searching for specific keywords and those on Bing or Yahoo looking for the same keywords.  Bing and Yahoo users tend to be in different demographics than Google users, so they may have different search parameters.

You can also set up filters in Google Analytics to extract keyword position from the referring string, then append it to “not provided” or the landing page in question.  You can also simply look at “not provided” and the land page data.  This is not 100 percent guaranteed to give you good results but it is often useful as you think about common keyword strings.

Implications of Dark Data

What does dark data mean for SEO analysts and webmasters?  Although it is not the end of the world, it is something that must be considered when planning organic search strategy, if only because you no longer have access to the same analytic information as in the past.  Here is a summary of the implications of Google’s decision to “go dark” with Chrome 25:

  • – The new version of Google Chrome 25 will encrypt all search data, meaning that all requests via the Omnibox will be hidden from analytics. 
  • – Keyword data will not be passed to your analytics software from Chrome’s Omnibox, so you will receive a “not provided” code. 
  • – Tracking search traffic by referring keyword is, therefore, becoming increasingly difficult. 
  • – It is very likely that these (not provided) codes will appear at an increasing rate in the future.
  • – You can use other available data to estimate the lost keyword data from the (not provided) codes.  Possible tools including Webmaster Tools, AdWords, landing pages and Google Analytics.

BACK TO BASICS: What Are Keywords, and Why Do They Matter?

Keywords are a foundational part of Internet marketing, but some of us may have lost sight of their purpose.  Knowing why keywords matter will help you utilize them more effectively in your Internet marketing strategies.

What Are Keywords?

Keywords are single words or phrases that are incorporated into text and information in a subtle, natural manner.  If keywords are used correctly, they should flow with the sentence and paragraph structure so as to be unnoticeable.  If readers are consistently tripped up by keywords, they are probably used too heavily or in unnatural ways.

What Keywords Are Not

Keywords are not meant to be stuffed into content at a high rate or to be misleading about article or page content.  Hiding keywords through the use of colored fonts to make them invisible is also a no-no.

Google takes keyword misuse very seriously.  As the spiders look for quality content, they note instances of keyword abuse and can penalize a page for doing this.

Why Do SEOs Use Keyword Phrases?

Keywords ultimately help researchers understand how users in their market describe their products and seek information.  This allows them to use those words to describe page content to both human users and to Google.

Keyword research benefits marketing in two ways.  First, it improves the Search Engine Results Page or SERP rank.  This is the information that Google uses to rank your website among others that are like it.  Exact matches garner a higher search engine ranking than near matches.

Second, understanding how your users are searching for information about a topic helps you to better understand their needs.  This information can be used to create content that better serves the customer.

What Are Long-Tail Keywords?

Long-tail keywords are strings of three to five words that are targeted for a particular group.  Searchers often use long-tail keyword phrases when they want to limit the number of hits they get from Google.  For example, a searcher might look for “gluten-free cranberry bread recipes” as opposed to “cranberry bread” to eliminate all non-gluten-free options.

The more specific your long-tail keywords are in your meta title, description and copy, the more likely it is that these users will find your page.  However, if you make your long-tail keywords too discrete, you may lose customers who are looking for related themes.

Ideally, you should use several strings of long-tail keywords to hone in on various markets.  This requires keyword research to see exactly which terms people are using when they are searching for particular products through Google and other search engines.

The Final Analysis

Ultimately, keywords are just words, but they are words that have a particular power to induce others to find your webpage.  Observe the rules regarding keyword misuse, do your research on your target market, and you will find that keywords boost your SERP rank as well as drive more qualified customers to your site and ultimately give you a higher conversion rate.

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