You just know your blog is incredibly valuable, but how can you prove it?

To help measure the ROI of your blog, we put together 8 metric areas you can track. These metrics will enable you to track the value and costs associated with your blog, and compare results to other online marketing efforts such as pay-per-click advertising and SEO.  This cost and value comparison is very helpful when determining marketing budgets and resource allocation.

1)      Traffic. Easy to Track.

It’s easy to track traffic generated by your blog inside Google Analytics and other analytic applications. This chart tracks the traffic numbers from your blog along with the percentage of total traffic that it represents.  It’s important to compare the cost to attain this traffic, to the other methods of pursuing online traffic such as PPC and SEO.  If you know your SEO and Blog cost of work, you can pretty easily get to a cost per click.

2)      Traffic Engagement. Easy to Track.

This chart compares traffic engagement indicators including bounce rate, time on site, pages per visit and contribution to repeat visits across the different online marketing strategies.

3)      Links. Some Effort to Track.

This chart tracks inbound links to your blogs, along with anchor text and the “link juice” each link is contributing.  It compares inbound links to your blog with other website links attained through the more traditional SEO.  The goal here is to get down to the cost per link level to help compare the tactics.

4)      Keyword Rank & Click Share. Some Effort to Track.

This one can be a bit more challenging depending on the depth of your analytics system.  This one also assumes you are targeting keywords in your blog posts (which if you aren’t, you should be.)  This chart compares the rank of your blog posts, web pages and pay-per-click ads for target keywords, along with the % of clicks that each brings in.  Often times the CTR of blog posts in the natural search results is much higher than other listing types.

5)      Social Buzz.  Easy to Track.

This chart tracks the social buzz generated by your blog posts including retweets, social bookmarks, likes and social mentions.  While this chart is not a direct comparison to other online marketing efforts, it does help to articulate the value of your blog.

6)      Twitter Followers. A Bit Tricky to Track.

This chart measure the number of Twitter followers and quality of those followers achieved from your blogging compared to other social efforts.  You can do the same type of analysis for other social media venues in which you participate such as Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn.

7)      RSS Subscriptions, Newsletter Subscriptions. Easy to Track.

This chart tracks how many site visitors from your blog signed up for an RSS feed or your newsletter, versus sign-ups you receive from other organic and paid traffic.

8)      Conversions. Easy to Track.

This chart tracks conversions from visitors who visited a blog post, or came to you via a blog post.  It includes the number of conversions, the percentage of total conversions, the conversion rate and the cost per conversion.  It’s also really important to track conversion assists and not just leave it all to last-click attribution.  You’ll be pleasantly surprised by how many conversion assists your blog contributes.

These metrics will help you articulate the value of your blog. This type of reporting also helps to focus your blogging efforts so you can continue to improve the value it provides.  It is quite rewarding to see the value, rather than just continuously creating content and hoping for the best.

How to Overcome a Significant Competitive Deficit

One of the major touted benefits of Google AdWords’ Quality Score system for advertisers is that the “little guys” should be able to compete with the “big guys” on a level playing field.

However, 99 percent of the small and medium-sized business that we work with come to us with such low quality scores, they are the ones being punished by the very system that is supposed to help them out.

Many small businesses don’t even know about Quality Score.  Of the businesses that do know about it, most are only familiar with the high-level requirements that keywords, ads and landing pages should all be relevant.  In the mind of the small advertiser, they have created a relevant ad campaign.  Small advertisers lack the time and resources to figure out quality score on their own, and also lack the budget to pay an expert to get them a great quality score.

Big advertisers know about Quality Score, and pay someone to take care of it for them.  So the big advertisers end up with the winning combination of great quality scores and large budgets.

So: how much does Quality Score matter? A ton. Quality Score is a direct factor in determining:

If your ad is eligible to be shown. Keyword / ad combinations with very low quality scores are not always shown.

What position your ad will appear in. Ad Rank = CPC bid × Quality Score

How much you pay per click. Actual CPC = (Ad Rank to beat ÷ Quality Score) + $0.01

What’s Quality Score should advertisers be striving for?

First, make sure you are keeping track of your quality score.  Quality Score are actually based on keyword and ad combinations, but in AdWords they are shown at the keyword level   The Quality Score column is hidden by default, so you’ll need to click on the columns option and to add it in.

Google shows a simplified score within AdWords based on a scale of 1-10, 1 being the worst rating and 10 being the best.  They do add some qualitative descriptors to the scores “Poor”, “OK” and “Great.”

You should strive to have all of your keywords show a quality score between 7-10.

For any keywords with a quality score of 1-3.  You’ll need to give some long, hard thought as to how important these are to your advertising campaign.  Most of the time it’s easiest to just delete these and start fresh with new variations.  Keywords with quality scores of 4-6 are usually pretty easily repaired.

The Fastest, Easiest Way to Improve Your Quality Score

Don’t advertise on any single-word keywords. These are too vague, get them out of your account.

Create super small ad groups, so that you can repeat the keywords inside of your ad copy multiple times. Here’s an example:

Getting the picture?  It’s not rocket science, but it is a data entry nightmare.

Check the call out button next to your quality score within AdWords to see if it says anything about your landing page.  If it does, the landing page issue (often speed) needs to be fixed.  If not, don’t worry about your landing page.

Start to use negative keywords.  This will weed out unwanted ad impressions.  Here are two great resources for getting started:

In AdWords, select the Keywords tab, set the date range to view a couple months worth of data.  In the menu select to sell all of the search terms.  Look through this list and add any words that aren’t relevant to your website as negative keywords.

Think about all of the basic types of searches done that include your target keywords, but aren’t relevant: (1) People hunting for jobs (job, jobs, employment, resume, salaries, etc.); people hunting for pictures or presentations (pic, pics, pictures, ppt, etc.); or people hunting for reading material (news, industry, market, blog, blogs, forum, forums, etc.)

So if you are a “little guy” we recommend you start to monitor your quality score and make steps towards having a great quality score to help level your playing field.

Goldilocks Syndrome or How to Find the Porridge that is Just Right

Most companies we talk to spend their time coming up with keyword lists and writing ads.  But when it comes time to setting bids, they either don’t have the time or knowledge to come up with the best bids.

A typical account we look at has set the same bid for almost all of their keywords (with maybe a handful of higher bids for super important keywords).  They randomly pick how much they think a click should cost and then wait for Google to perform.  Usually anger ensues if performance does not occur immediately.

Let’s analyze what happens to accounts that don’t have an optimal bid established for their keywords.

What is the cost of a bid that is too low?

Interestingly enough, a bid that is below its optimum is much more detrimental to your account than a bid that is too high.  Bidding too low can actually end up sabotaging your entire account if you let it.

Here are the negative repercussions of a bid that’s too low:

Lost impressions due to rank. If your bid can’t get you into a reasonable rank on the first page, your ad won’t appear every time a searcher is looking for what you have to offer.  You can add this column to your Campaigns view in Google AdWords to see if you are losing impressions due to rank.

Quality Score Death Spiral. Your ongoing CTR is one of the biggest drivers of your quality score.  While Google technically says it tempers its expectations by ad position, we find that it can have pretty outrageous expectations for lower positions.  Almost every time we see a campaign with keyword running in the lower ad positions for a length of period of time, we usually see quality scores of 2-4 throughout the account.  Which is a truly horrible hole to dig yourself out of.  Quality scores this low, make it almost impossible for an advertiser to get into the higher ad positions without forking over a lot more money.

Not the best position for conversions. When thinking about your bid, think about the ad position that gets you the best results.  This is where you want your ad to appear.  For most advertisers we work with, this is above the fold on the first page of the results.

Losing leads to competition. When your bid is too low, odds are your competition is out there with higher bids.  So, not only are you not getting found, but you are losing business to your competition.

What is the cost of a big that’s too high?

While a bid that is too low is quite damaging, we are not by any means suggesting that you overspend!

Paying for unnecessary clicks. Lots of searchers are known to just click on the top result if it looks anywhere near relevant.  If your ad position is too high, especially for broad head terms, you are likely to pay for a bunch of clicks that will just turn into bounces.

Not the best position for conversions. Same story as with a bid that’s too low, you need to determine the ad positions where you perform best as related to your bottom line.  That might not be ad position #1.

Double high presence. We usually find that having a double presence (a paid and natural search listing) on a page has a strong benefit.  However, if you have a very high natural search presence, you might not need to be bidding for the very top paid search position as well.

Paying too much per click. Do you get as good of performance (CTR and conversions) in ad position 3 as you do in ad position 1?  Then no need to overpay!

Lost impressions due to budget. If you have all of your bids set too high, many times your budget won’t be able to support all the possible clicks your campaign might receive.  In this case, your ad won’t be able to appear all the time for your keywords since it will be limited by the budget.  You don’t want to miss out on impressions for top performing keywords, so it’s not good to lose impressions due to your budget.

In summary, it’s a little like what poor Goldilocks struggled with: how to find that bowl of porridge that is just right.  In terms of your PPC bids, too low is very bad and too high is no good either.  You literally need a bid that is just right.  Having bids that are just right can be a key determining factor in whether or not your PPC campaigns deliver ROI.  How to manage that?  You can start to review your analytics and adjust bids yourself, you can try out some of the bid optimization capabilities built directly into the search engines, or you can sign-up for a third-party bid management software like Yield Software, which does all the work for you.

But don’t stop there.  It’s very easy these days to set up advanced bidding, especially with the much better AdWords reporting now available inside of Google Analytics.  You can very quickly get a feel for days of the week and day part performance without having to create custom reports.

In AdWords, pause or lower your bids for lesser performing segments and increase your bids for the days and times that bring you the most benefit.  Give it a try – you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to set up!

If you have some positions that you know work to bring you the best results, you can also use the campaign position preference settings to fine-tune where your ads will appear.

Happy Just Right Bidding!

13 Truly Useful Tips!

Everyone has gone social: you, your competitors, your partners, your customers, your leads, your friends–everyone.  So now what?

It’s time to set up a system to mine all of the qualitative data that is floating around out there and put it to good, practical use.  Try using this list of 13 truly useful things you can actively learn from monitoring social media:

1. Who’s in bed with the competition?

Who’s blogging favorably about them?  Who’s providing them with good reviews?  Who’s following them on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and active in their community?  Who’s presenting with them on webinars and co-sponsoring collateral with them?

Get some good monitoring going on around your competitors names, and keep an eye on their online reviews and their social media account followers and activities.

Find their biggest fans and start to court them away.  Everyone knows how big a competitive win is – but a competitive win who is loud in the social media world is the biggest competitive win of all.

2. Who loves you?

Similar to above, who’s blogging about you? Tweeting about you? Commenting about you on Facebook? Giving you positive reviews?

It’s standard practice to reward someone who refers you new business, so make it standard practice to reward those who are essentially referring you to the masses.  Provide these “fans” with some appropriate reciprocal love.  Perhaps it’s a link back, or a coupon or some other offer.  But make sure you let anyone who speaks positively about you know that you are listening, you really appreciate it and you’d love it if they do more!

3. What do people love the most about you?

Monitor trends in positive mentions about you in reviews, blog posts and other social media channels such as Twitter.

Sometimes what we may think are our biggest selling points are not what people love us  for most.  Pay attention to what people like  best about you, and start to actively promote those.  One technique we like is to actively call them out in your search ads using quotations.  Quotations lend more trust than just touting yourself, plus it will be in your audience’s own words.

4. What do people dislike the most about you?

While you’re poring through all of your praise, also start to document trends about any negative comments, or “if they only had….” comments.

Use “if only they had” information to inform your product development, road map and / or inventory adjustments.

5. What are your competitors hiring for?

Keep an active query in your reader (i.e., TweetDeck or HootSuite or Seesmic) that monitors job postings for your competitors.

One of the biggest hints about what they are up to next can be inside of those job postings.  Many companies are surprisingly candid about direction and weaknesses inside of their postings.

6. What are your competitor’s future plans?

Along those same lines, keeping an active query in your reader that includes your competitors name along with the word plans or powerpoint or pdf docs.

Many companies are surprisingly lax about what gets out into the web, you’ll be surprised about how much free competitive intelligence will flow your way.

7. Negative keywords for PPC campaigns.

Keep a query of your head keyword terms inside of your reader and monitor the headlines and themes of blog postings and news articles that are coming in.

Add anything and everything that isn’t relevant to you as a negative keyword in your ppc advertising campaigns.

8. New target keywords for PPC campaigns.

Same query as above, but this time monitoring for new ways people are talking about your space, or new needs and reasons that are rising up.

Take advantage of these by adding them in as new target keywords to always have your PPC campaigns on top of current trends.

9. Who are the influencers and thought leaders in your space / area?

Same head terms query – both of blogs and also of Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Use this to identify who the big influencers are online in your space.  Then, make them your best friends and court them to talk about you.

10.  Hot topics for blogging

With that same head terms query, you can easily get a pulse for what is trendy.

Use trends to write blog posts about with your own opinion, expertise, and helpful information.  When you promote trendy blog posts, they will garner you the most value.

11.  Audience profiling

Where is your audience and how do they participate?  Do they blog? Do they write reviews on local sites? Do they attend webinars?  Do they download podcasts? Are they active on FourSquare, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo Questions or other communities?

Monitoring your audience’s activities and where they are most prevalent will help you figure out where to spend your precious marketing dollars and dedicate your marketing content and time.

12.  What should your Sales Tools & Collateral address?

What don’t they like about you? What is your competition promoting as their biggest advantages?  What are the current hot topics and needs?

Develop sale collateral around these so your sales force is always armed with the latest and greatest sales objections they are likely to run into and the most prevalent ways of discussing the current market climate and needs.

13.  Link building opportunities

Did someone mention you, but forgot to include a back link?

Reach out to them and kindly request that they add a link!

It’s all free data, so start to make social media one of your best sources of information today!

… On a First Date?

Let’s face it: it’s typically not recommended! Though it may happen once in awhile, for most people it just doesn’t — usually for good reason.  And yet many businesses treat first visits to their websites as if they’re expecting to go all the way on a first date.

Since we all need that little thing called revenue in order to stay in business and be profitable, many businesses just focus on tracking their one main revenue-generating action as a conversion event for online activity.  Whether it’s a product purchase or generation of a lead, all online campaigns and keywords are judged by their ability to immediately result in this one conversion.

However, in this day and age of information abundance, reviews, referral sources, and the like, many searchers do lots of poking around before they are ready to take that conversion step.  There are four generally-accepted steps in the sales cycle you should keep in mind:

Ignorance — This is the phase when a person is unaware of their need of a particular product or service that might make their lives or their own business somehow better or more efficient or less expensive.

Awareness — When a customer has become aware of a need and the means of addressing it, but is still learning, investigating and preparing.

Engagement — A customer-prospect has selected your company as one that might address their need.

Investment — Success! A prospective customer becomes a paying customer.

Most people these days go through these four stages of the sales cycle.  So rather than throwing all of your eggs in one basket, hoping to convince your visitor to “go all the way” on that very first visit, we encourage you to offer different avenues to make a connection on that first visit.  This will enable you to foster the relationship and be the one the searcher comes back to when they are ready to convert.

For prospects in the “ignorance” phase, it’s important to speak to a particular pain point.  Call out that pain and the clear cure for it.  For instance, say you sell solar panels.  You may want to run PPC ads like this one:

Energy Bills High?

Solar is more affordable

than ever – learn how.

solarxyz.com/lowermybills

(Hopefully, this is a fake company… we intended it to be!)  In this instance, the ad is addressing a common customer pain point: high household energy bills.  They point out why an alternative could be viable for the searcher.  And they entice the searcher with an answer to their pain (”lower my bills”).

Next, during the “awareness” phase, think about why your searcher is likely to be hunting around gathering more information:

Are they looking for the best price?

Do they need reviews / ratings / referrals before selecting?

Are they researching a gift for someone else?

Are they sure about the exact product accessory they need?

Did they simply get interrupted in the middle of their search?

Are they not currently using the right device or computer that they intend on converting from?

Do they need to run it by someone else?

We could go on and on — there are so many different reasons why people aren’t ready to commit on the first click.  After you figure out the likely scenarios for your particular offering, you can start to think about the types of valuable information for a connection that will enable you to stick in the mind of the visitor and leave a lasting presence they will return to.

The content that you offer to make the connection will need to be unique, valuable, helpful and just plain irresistible.  Following are some additional “connection” ideas that you can try out:

Newsletter sign-up.  You’ll need to say more than just “sign up” though – for instance, does the newsletter contain offers?  What type of content is in it that will entice them or be useful to them?

Facebook / Twitter following.  Again –why would they want to do this?  Is there some enticing content from your community that you can use as a teaser?  Are there special offers you have for your social following?

Webinar sign-up.  Do you have any relevant upcoming webinars that might be of interest that you can encourage them to sign up for?

Conference sign-up.  Any upcoming conferences that you will be attending?  Perhaps you are going to have some form of a giveaway that they can sign up for.

Notification sign-up.  Can you entice them to sign-up for an email notification if there is a price changes in the future?  Or would they like to be notified of future reviews that are posted, or stock level notifications?

Third-party data.  Do you have valuable industry or market data that you can share with them – any analyst or third party reports, or review aggregations that would help guide them?

Personalized information.  Can you provide them with any information that is personalized to them?  The ROI on a purchase, help finding the right solution through a series of questions, previewing how something will look for them, analysis of something that is theirs, any form of a calculator, etc.  Make sure to capture the results so you can also email them to them.

Personal response to questions, or personal review of something.  If an expert can help guide them in a personalized, non-salesy way, this is often attractive.

Contests.  Everyone loves to win things!

Polls.  Ask them for their input on something about what you offer.  This will usually require a strong incentive – but even showing the results of an ongoing poll that you have, that they can participate in can often times be enough.

A product brochure, white paper, recent use-case video, etc.  Any content that can help them learn more about you after they go away from your website.

After you are able to make the connection, you’ll want to spend some time nurturing it.  This gets you to the “engagement” level.  Continue to reach out to the visitor on a regular basis with more unique, valuable content along the lines of the connection they made with you.  Whether it’s an updated analysis, a new notification, some interesting community content from Twitter, or some new poll results, keep the conversation going and stay fresh in their mind.

Once you’ve gotten your additional connection points in place on your landing pages and throughout your website, you’ll want to make sure you are tracking their success.  Track all the meaningful events for your online campaigns, realizing that any connection made carries value – so if you have keywords that are bringing in lots of new connections, but no immediate revenue you’ll want to keep them alive to see if your nurture-rate to revenue is high.  For each of these connection points, you’ll want to monitor how often they bring about return visits and eventually generate revenue.  This will help you know where to focus your efforts as you go forward.

All of which gets you to that “all-the-way goal”: investment.

Fancy Nancy vs. Redundant Rhonda

When looking to hire or partner with someone to help with your search marketing, the traditional ideas of a fancy advertising agency tend to pop into people’s heads –fancy glass office, dressed fancy, talks fancy, creates fancy messaging and images, etc.  However, when it comes to search marketing, Fancy Nancy isn’t likely to get you very far.

Her sophistication and wit will likely mean that her content won’t reach, attract or convert the average searcher you are seeking out.   For online marketing, you should be thinking about working with Redundant Rhonda.  Qualities you really want are redundant, simple, monotonous and patient.

Why am I advocating for Redundant Rhonda?  Who in their right mind wants a boring person to handle activities related to marketing and advertising?

Here’s why…

Quality #1: Redundant

Being successful online is all about keywords.  From search to social, SEO to paid, from your home page to your landing page, keywords (in your audience’s voice) are the heart and soul.

Keywords are not fancy.  These are basic phrases that your leads use to research your offering and find you.  Long tail keyword generation is helpful – there is nothing fancy about this – which is just different combinations of the exact same words or plurals, singulars, prepositions, etc.

Once you know your keyword targets, these keywords and their variations must be redundantly used everywhere you are online:

Pay-per-click keywords

SEO keywords

Website copy

Blog titles

Blog copy

Landing pages

Pay-per-click ads

Website URLs

Google Local profile

Twitter profile

Twitter handler

Facebook profile

Tweets on Twitter

Internal anchor text

Inbound link anchor text

Press releases

Videos

Photos and images

Getting the picture?

Just to clarify: I said redundant usage – which should not to be confused with spammy usage!  Redundantly use your keywords in natural ways that any average person reading the English language would expect to see.

Quality #2: Simple

While Fancy Nancy is likely to come up with some very catchy tag lines, online searches are less about award-winning copy and more about helping people weed through information overload to find you, quickly comprehend what you do and contact you. Fluff need not apply.

Your PPC ad copy (in addition to being redundant) needs to simply state what you do, why it’s better than anything else, and inspiring a click-through.

Your website copy (again, in addition to being redundant) needs to very simply state in easy-to-read copy what it is you do – and why it’s better – with a clear call to action indicating what the visitor should do next.

You only have a few seconds to get a searchers’ attention and turn them into something valuable, so simple words lead to the fastest possible comprehension and action.

Quality #3: Loves Monotony

For managing and optimizing your search marketing, you will need a data geek who is happy with monotony.  My guess is Fancy Nancy would like to jump off the building at this point.  You’ll need someone who is happy pouring over tons of data, slicing and dicing it in oodles of formats, making some optimization adjustments based on the data, and then reviewing all of the metrics again.

The process goes like this: analyze, slice, dice, adjust, analyze, slice, dice, adjust, analyze, slice, adjust… there is no end game. (In the world of consumer products, it’s called “lather, rinse, repeat” — check your shampoo bottle!)  The world of search marketing is constantly changing, so the monotonous process will repeat itself again and again and again.

Quality #4: Patient

While some aspects of search marketing, like pay-per-click, carry with them some instant gratification, the process of getting to great results whether on PPC, SEO, landing pages or social takes time and patience.  Fancy Nancy is likely to want some immediate accolades for a campaign that is launched, but in the world of search, great downstream benefits can take quite a bit of time and stick-to-it-ness.  It can take quite a while to find pockets of great success – which may not last long before the world changes and you need to find new pockets of success.

So, as you think about your search marketing support system, remember this: forget the glamour, the glitter and the fluff and seek out someone who understands how to get you found, keep attention and create real results online.

A Little Knowledge Goes a Long Way

A big blocker to an integrated search engine marketing approach is simply lack of knowledge about the different areas.  Commonly, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising guys don’t really “get” search engine optimization (SEO), while SEO guys are kind of put off by PPC campaign work.  But rich rewards await those who stretch beyond their comfort zones and embrace something new or unknown within the realm of search marketing.

What follows are some tips to help you take the information and knowledge you may currently have and start to expand your search engine marketing efforts in an integrated fashion.

PPC for the SEO Guy

If you are used to SEO and are starting PPC, be prepared for a fast pace game, and get ready to spend money on those clicks.

• Use what you already know – start off with your SEO data

1. Actual search queries.  Look at your keywords list in your analytics system.  Use the keywords that are relevant as your target keywords and use any terms that are irrelevant as negative keywords.
2. Look at the geographical source of your visitors and compare the bounce rate, average time on site and conversion rate.  Target the most effective regions for your PPC campaign geo-targets.

• Here’s your PPC blueprint:

1. Organize your keyword list into very tiny ad groups.  The keywords within the ad group should be almost identical with only plural or other very minor variations.  For example, the following keyword list:

Blue shiny widget

Blue shiny widgets

Pink widget

Blue widget supplier

Would be organized into ad groups as follows:

Blue shiny widget ad group with keywords: blue shiny widget, blue shiny widgets

Pink widget ad group with keywords: pink widget, pink widgets

Blue Widget Supplier ad group with keywords: blue widget supplier, blue widget suppliers, blue widgets supplier and blue widgets suppliers

2.  Write ad copy for each of the ad groups that includes the keywords (multiple times), your unique value and a call to action.

Always try more than 1 ad in each ad group:

Blue Shiny Widget Ad Group:

Blue Shiny Widgets

50% Off Blue Shiny Widgets.

Buy Today for Free Shipping!

www.DomainName.com/BlueShinyWidgets

Blue Shiny Widgets

Blue Shiny Widgets – 50% Off!

Order Now for Free Shipping.

BlueShinyWidgest.DomainName.com

3.  The destination page on your website for ads in this ad group, should take the visitor directly to the blue shiny widgets page.

SEO for the PPC Guy

If you are expanding from PPC into SEO, you’ll need to develop some patience.  Changes can take a very long time to happen, but once day do you’ll love the free clicks!

Here are some baby steps to get you on your way:

Use what you already know.  Keywords are also the name of the game here.

Put your keywords to work.  Keywords with high impressions and strong conversions.  This will be your target keyword list for SEO.  Make sure to target the most relevant keywords for each individual page of your website.  If you have a high volume of candidate keywords, start off with those with the least amount of natural search competition first.

Use geographic information.  Review your geographical performance of your visitors to see if you should be targeting any geographic names along with your keywords.

Page optimization.  Make on-page optimizations to ensure your page is relevant to your target keywords.  For example your Page Title should include your most important keywords.  Use your best-performing ads and landing page copy for hints about what effective SEO copy will be.

Page configuration.  Make sure your web page is properly configured and in good overall shape – for example, fix broken links, trim down excessive outbound links, and make sure your page loads fast – ideally in around 2 seconds.

Page content.  Now for the big one – create truly valuable and unique content on your page that emphasizes your keywords.  This one can take some time so leverage any resources you can,

Links.  Set up the internal linking structure throughout your site to point to your content using variations of your target keywords.

Promotion.  Now go market your page’s content to build links.

Your content placement report from PPC can include some clues for good link sites.  Look for other high authority sites in your space – industry organizations, partner sites, etc. that also rank well for your top terms.

One Word to Always Keep in Mind? Balance

At the heart of every Web marketing strategy should be a website that’s highly optimized to perform in the ways in which you require in order to hit your key objectives.  Unfortunately too few companies are able to prioritize the design and upkeep of their most important marketing asset.

There are three essential elements that you can focus on, though, that shouldn’t be a huge time sink and will help to ensure you rank well for each of your keywords in natural search results.  These tips can also help to keep your pay-per-click advertising campaigns focused through the integration of keywords into your website content, which should also help conversion rates after folks click on your links no matter where they may find them.

Most websites are at work selling something — goods, services, a call to action.  So a good question to ask about your website is: what can I do to keep the sales cycle as short as possible? Deploying a well-designed website that’s composed correctly is a great way to answer that question. But how?

Finding the right balance between text, white space and graphical elements will ensure you have a visually appealing website that is nevertheless informative and moves your visitors to take the actions you’d like them to.

Text

The first — and most important — element of your website composition strategy is the text, or content, in your website.  Striking a balance between all the information you may have about your product or service and what is most essential in order to motivate a conversion (or sale) is critical.  Too many websites include everything a company knows in some form or other on their site, which requires a lot of time to read and may exhaust the typical visitors limited time before they get to the essential information they need.

Focus a web page on the one key product differentiator (smarter! better! faster! less expensive! more convenient!) that is the focus of that page and then use three-to-four bullets as proof points.  For companies with multiple products under one roof, be sure to group your products or services into sensible buckets so someone looking for something specific can intuitively navigate from (a) the bucket to (b) the product group to (c) the product page in three easy clicks.

The focus of every page should be:

1. The headline (which, ideally, includes the name of the product or service)
2. The key differentiator
3. Three-to-four proof points
4. The call-to-action (which triggers the conversion event)–i.e., “Buy Now” or “Act Now” or “Add to Cart”

White Space

A huge mistake of too many websites make is over-crowded pages.  The importance of white space can’t be overstated.  A good web designer can help with this, but it’s also a mind-set: white space is your friend.  Finding the right balance between the text and graphics on each of your web pages such that the visitor can easily see…

1. the point of the page;
2. why they should care; and
3. what action to take

…is absolutely critical to the success of your website.  Crowding a page with too many words or too many images or too many other pieces of content such as videos or animation only makes it difficult for the human eye to discern the point of the page.  If you’ve ever visited New York City, it’s the difference between a quiet West Village neighborhood with a single destination restaurant and Times Square.  In the former, the restaurant is the point.  In Times Square, there’s so many things flashing and moving and speaking and singing and… well, so much everything, it’s hard to find the one single thing to focus your attention on.  So: white space — it’s your friend!

Graphical Elements

The third element, then, is the visual energy you bring to each of your web pages.  If you sell a product, visually compelling photos are important.  If you have multiple photos, consider using a slideshow application and group all your photos into a single pane that users start by hitting a “play” button.  This means your page isn’t cluttered with too many photos, but provides enough visuals to help a would-be buyer to make a decision.

If you sell services or ideas, then it’s important to feature the people behind them.  It can also be useful to feature the output of those services or ideas — for instance, the cover a whitepaper or book.  Or perhaps you could feature a short video clip of a team member speaking to the point of the services or ideas you’re selling — for instance at a conference.

Flash animated visuals can be impactful but should never be the sum total of the page; these are graphical elements that should live in a balanced way with the text and white space on the page.  Too often, people publish web pages that contain only a flash animated graphical element, which can make it difficult for search engines to properly index the page and which may obscure a clear call-to-action that would lead to a conversion.

A Final Note

By focusing on the three key elements of web page composition — text, white space and graphical elements — you’re sure to build a website that serves your visitors well while keeping that all-important sales cycle to its absolute minimum.  But there’s one more thing to focus on: consistency.  While many have argued that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, it’s critical to good website design.

As visitors navigate your website, they should feel it flows sensibly from one page to the next.  Visually speaking, they shouldn’t feel like they’re jumping from one website to another completely different website.  There should be a visual consistency from one page to the next because the human eye very quickly discerns repeating patterns.  This will help your visitors consume information quickly and efficiently, and also enable them to instantly identify the call-to-action buttons you want them clicking on to begin or complete a transaction.

Use these quick tips as you build or remodel your website and you’ll be in good shape to attract, retain and convert visitors to your website.

Thanks to customer feedback and suggestions, you will now see two improvements.  First, we have updated our cross-search engine budget allocation algorithm to consider additional statistics including click-through-rate (CTR) and stay rate. As a result, you will see a more optimal allocation of spend across search engines. All existing and new campaigns will automatically leverage this enhancement as they will be set to Automatic Budget Allocation in the Advanced Campaign Settings page.

Second, for those of you wishing to have more control, we have introduced Manual Budget Allocation, which gives you the ability to explicitly set your spend for each search engine in any campaign with this beautiful piece of GUI goodness:

Campaign Settings showing Manual Budget Allocation

This combination of settings of new features provides you maximum flexibility in achieving your targeted spend across search engines.  Keep the feedback coming — we really appreciate it — and enjoy the new features.

Crush Your Competition!

Fantasy sports continue to attract more interest each year. The concept of assembling a dream team of elite players, watching them outperform and raking in the profits is very appealing and addictive to many.

Since there are never enough sport analogies in the business world, let’s apply these fantasy team concepts to SEM. If you were to assemble your own SEM fantasy team, what would it look like?

The Fantasy SEM Team Roster. You can’t play any sport without a full team. What does a full team for SEM include? You need team members to both attract visitors to your website and then convert them once they get to your site.

Here’s what your starting lineup should include:

The Offense: Get them to your site.

Paid Search Keywords. Star keywords are short tail enough to get great volume and make a competitive stand, but yet specific enough to get you real results. You’ll need to think in terms of the search refinement path and the buying cycle so that you have all the necessary assist impressions and clicks as well as those that actually convert. The dream team keywords often come with a steeper price tag, but frequently contribute far superior rewards.

Paid Search Ad Copy Unique Offer Descriptors. These are the snippets in your ad that make your ad stand out from the competition. These grab searchers and say “hey- look at me and this amazing thing I have.” You’ll need a couple of different ones so you aren’t always showing the same line to searchers as they head down the search path.

Paid Search Ad Copy Calls to Action. These ad copy snippets motivate searchers to click and act. Create a sense of urgency and be specific about what they can expect and what you want them to do.

SEO Keywords. These are the keyword searches that would enable you to crush your competition on the natural search side. It’s important for these keywords to have great chemistry with the paid search keywords. When you’ve got a presence in both the paid and natural results on a page, your click-through rate will skyrocket.

SEO Link Bait. Your link bait can come in many different forms – original and valuable content is key here. It’s especially important for your link bait to play well with your SEO keywords, to give your rank the boost it needs.

The Defense: Stop visitors from leaving your site before converting.

Website Smack Talkers. No fantasy team would be complete without some smack. Highlight your benefits over the competition on your web pages. Make it as easy as possible for searchers to understand how you line up and what you have to offer that’s unique and better.

Website Credibility Givers. Showing awards and including reviews are good ways to make yourself shine and provide credibility.
Website Calls to Action. Without a score, even if you play great, it just doesn’t pay off. This is one of the spots where you can even use a player to play both offense and defense. If you have a call to action that’s working in your paid search ads or website, don’t be afraid to use the same one in both locations.

Remarekting ads. Rebounding is always important. If someone gets away from your site without converting, get back out there and try to lure them back in. Don’t give up because you didn’t make a score on your first try.

Fantasy SEM Tips for Success:

Here are a few tips for assembling and managing a winning Fantasy SEM Team:

Create Team Chemistry. Not only do they have to be great stars themselves, but it’s important that the members of your team have good chemistry between them and be on the same page. Consistent keywords, while providing broad coverage and consistent messaging without being repetitive to death are important. Your team members should create a cohesive tightly woven message.

Foster Team Competition. Even star performers can get a bit lazy if there isn’t some competition continually pushing them to do their best. Always have a set of backup players practicing every day and giving your stars a run for their money.

Reward Consistent Performance. Nothing is more frustrating than a great click here and there, but otherwise dismal performance. This is your dream team, not the minor leagues, if a piece of your team can’t perform consistently it should take the bench.

Keep Scouting. Don’t miss out on a hot new keyword, rising pain point or new critical feature. You need to continually keep tabs on the market place to make sure you spot and incorporate sleepers into your team to stay on top.

Monitor Competition. Keep an eye on all of your competitor’s moves. Do they have new messaging? Are they showing up for new keywords? Have they retired anything that wasn’t working? Are they copying any of your techniques? Always stay a step ahead and stay unique. Never be caught off guard.

Be Prepared for Challenges. As with any stars, your fantasy SEM team will likely have high drama associated with them. They will be in high demand, people will try to steal them from you, copy their techniques, etc. They also don’t come with ease, don’t come for free and don’t stay unless they are continually nurtured.

Become Addicted to Stats. As with any fantasy league, watching your star performers work in action is half the fun. Luckily reporting is easily available for much of SEM, so you can kick back on the couch, crack open a cold one and watch you fantasy SEM team work wonders – getting clicks, having visitors spend quality time on your site and bringing in “the Quan.”

Don’t Let Gut & Emotions Rule. There are going to be some offers and some keywords that in your gut you really want to be star performers, but when you look at the data, they just won’t be. Don’t let your emotions take over and put your non-performers on the bench.

Keep Your Eye on the Prize. It’s not free to play and the stakes are high, so you better stay focused on winning. Keep focused on how you are performing against your goals and in comparison to your competition. You might decide that second or third prize has enough cash for you, but you’ll need to monitor where you are in line, not that one of your competitors goes out and adds in some new messaging or keywords that crushes you.

Keep a Consistent Strategy. There is a lot of hype around SEM and people with new strategies and schemes every day. It’s important to tune out the noise and stick with your strategy until you are sure (based on the facts) that it needs tweaking.

Staying focused on an elite fantasy SEM team, can be a great strategy for achieving these 3 main SEM goals:

1. Make a name for yourself
2. Crush your competition
3. Make money

And there’s nothing wrong with those outcomes, right?  So assemble your team and take your league by storm today!