Your Search Advisor, LLC » SEM Industry

Landing Page Quality Matters More Than Ever

Andrew Miller — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:43:46 +0000

A Basic Lead Generation Page

Anybody involved in Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing will tell you that landing pages matter as much, if not more than keywords and ads.

What’s the point of bidding on different keywords if you don’t give your site visitors easy access to the information, products, or services that they searched for?

Google announced this week that landing pages can now positively influence a keyword’s Quality Score. Previously, landing pages would only count against you.

From SearchEngineLand:

Landing page quality has long been a factor in Google AdWords, but more as a negative signal. If an advertiser’s landing page was particularly terrible or misleading, advertisers could have their ads rejected or their accounts suspended or revoked — depending on how bad the policy violation was. The new change will assign landing page quality a positive value, incentivizing advertisers to make sure the landing page’s keywords and content are closely aligned with the keywords for which they’re bidding.

Hooray for Landing Pages

This is great news, especially as the intractable problem of PPC squeezes out smaller advertisers with rising click costs. The only way to compete effectively is to test, measure, and refine your landing page strategy to improve conversion rates and convert more visitors to customers.

I’ve been in favor of this all along, and I’m extremely glad to see Google is finally doing the right thing for its users and advertisers.

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Spend (Wisely) Through The Economic Downturn

Andrew Miller — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 01:48:46 +0000

What’s the best way to weather an economic downturn? For most businesses, the answer usually falls somewhere between “cut expenses” and “grow revenue”.

Just like a household budget, business owners must pay more attention to where, how, and why we spend our money if we hope to survive and emerge from the slowdown in a position to grow and prosper.

The Role of Digital Marketing in a Down Economy

If the previous 10 years have taught us anything, it’s that digital technologies have enabled massive shifts in consumer behavior. As advertisers, we must follow the consumer and adapt to their needs and media consumption habits.

Your customers have more technology, more ways to share opinions, and more influence than ever before. Thanks to these same omnipresent and “always on” digital channels, marketers have more ways to reach the right people with the right time with the right message. Fortunately, for each new medium that emerges, there are ways to measure, refine, and optimize the message in nearly real-time.

In a down economy, the direct, targeted, measurable nature of digital marketing takes on increased importance as it allows us to save time and money compared to more traditional advertising channels.

Pay Per Click Advertising: Direct, Targeted, Measurable

Given the range of advertising options available, PPC represents the purest, most efficient way to reach your potential customers at the exact moment they are researching or searching for your products or services: when they type what they are looking for into a Google (or Yahoo or Bing) search box.

Thanks to the real-time nature of PPC auctions, multiple ad messages can be tested simultaneously to determine which offers generate the best response. Campaigns can be “optimized” for greater efficiency simply by turning off or tweaking the underperforming ads and allocating more budget to the ads that are most likely to result in a sale, lead, or other conversion event.

Finally, PPC campaigns generate a lot of data. This data should not just be viewed and thrown away, it needs to be analyzed to determine which combinations of keywords, ads, and targeting options generate the best return for each dollar spent. For example, AdWords campaign results can be merged with Google Analytics data to identify more lucrative audience segments. For example, searchers on mobile devices may respond differently than their desktop counterparts and should be treated differently.

Tying It All Together

Unfortunately there is no quick fix for a slow economy. It’s going to hurt some people more than others, but all of us are affected one way or another. But a slow economy does not stop people from using technology or engaging in digital activities.

The best we, as marketers, can do is find ways to “spend less” and “earn more”. By investing at least some of your marketing dollars in a direct, targeted, measurable advertising medium such as Pay Per Click, your business can reap the benefits of improved efficiency and effectiveness while saving money.

If you would like to know whether or not your business is a good candidate for a PPC campaign on Google, Yahoo, or Bing, try searching for the products or services that you offer. Do you see your competitors’ ads showing up? Chances are not all of them are blindly throwing money into Google’s already deep pockets. They must be realizing some quantifiable level of return, right?

CC Photo Credit

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Illustrated History of Google’s Evolving Algorithm

Andrew Miller — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 15:23:10 +0000

We know that search engine rankings change (a lot). We know that each update moves some sites up in the rankings while others fall from grace.

But even though this is old news, Aaron Wall at SEOBook.com frequently rants against algorithm changes that affect large numbers of sites (especially his own) while leaving some other offenders unscathed.

Regardless of your opinions, his point is valid. The algorithmic updates sometimes seem to arbitrarily affect some sites more than others with similar characteristics.

But, as Google has always said, it’s their algorithm and they can do whatever they want with it.

Rankings Don’t Matter

The smart marketer doesn’t rely on rankings alone to determine if their SEO efforts are successful. In fact, I recommend NOT relying on search rankings. Check out this post on the SEO metrics that I feel are more relevant than rankings.

Collateral Damage from Algorithm Changes

Aaron’s infographic gives an idea of the “collateral damage” caused by Google’s algorithm changes. Again, you may not agree with everything in it (I sure don’t), but it’s a great visual representation of how the algorithm has evolved.

(click for full-size version on SEOBook.com)

Infographic by SEO Book

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Hidden Text Rumors Refuse to Die

Andrew Miller — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 18:26:44 +0000

Can you see me now?

It’s easy to get caught up in the “state of the art” SEO world when you do it for a living. I got this email from a friend and was instantly catapulted back in time about 5 years:

I’ve been told that KEY words that search engines use to find our site can be hidden. Meaning that these words are not visibly seen on our website, but the’re still recognized by the search engines. The key words that I would want listed are the names and addresses of all our competing dentists.

After I regained my breath, I quickly fired back an email that said, “And I heard that cavities are caused by worms,” and included a link to the history of dentistry Wikipedia article.

I couldn’t resist a little professional humor, but also included the following, which hopefully will help dispel the rumors about hidden text on a website and reinforce that it is a BAD IDEA. Hidden text used to improve a web page’s ranking by tricking search crawlers into thinking the page contained more content than users could actually see.

There’s a lot of misinformation floating around the internet about Search Engine Optimization. Hiding text was effective until about 5 years ago, then the search engines “got wise” about how people were using it to manipulate search results. Google’s guidelines are pretty clear, and the penalties are too severe to risk testing it:

From Google’s official guidelines (emphasis mine):

If your site is perceived to contain hidden text and links that are deceptive in intent, your site may be removed from the Google index, and will not appear in search results pages.

More here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66353

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Five Web Tools That Triple My Productivity

Andrew Miller — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 04:00:39 +0000

Feast or famine.

When it rains, it pours.

Make hay while the sun shines.

No matter which idiom you want to apply, I’ve been thankful for the recent uptick in new clients and expanded roles with existing clients.

For no other reason other than that I haven’t blogged in a while, here’s are the tools I’ve been using to dow the work of 3 people without having to add to the payroll:

AdWords Editor – PPC Management

Google’s wonderfully powerful tool for creating and managing AdWords accounts in a desktop application. The AdWords web interface is great for generating reports and minor changes, but nothing beats AdWords Editor‘s bulk edit and copy/paste capabilities.

I launched a new AdWords campaign for a client last week with over 600 keywords in 100+ ad groups. After a solid week of keyword research and writing ad copy, it only took me 3 hours to actually create and upload the campaigns using AdWords Editor. I don’t even want to think how long this would have taken using the online interface.

Freshbooks – Online Invoicing

Invoicing clients is a necessary evil. Yeah, it’s fun to watch the money roll in but Quickbooks was nightmarishly clunky, slow and manual. It took about 10 minutes to fire it up, log in, create an invoice, save it as a PDF and email it to a client.

About 5 months ago I switched to Freshbooks, an online system for generating and tracking invoices. Now, creating a new invoice takes less than 2 minutes and my clients get them instantly via email. Instead of logging in to see who might be delinquent (or close), I can track who has viewed their invoices and automatically send a reminder before it becomes overdue.

It even handles time tracking and expense tracking by client to make task-level invoicing really, really easy. And kind of fun.

Unbounce – Landing Page Testing

There’s nothing worse than knowing your landing pages are not converting as many visitors as possible. You’re leaving money on the table, plain and simple.

Unbounce is an idiot-proof system for designing and A/B testing multiple landing pages at once. As more conversions take place, the winning combinations of images, text and calls to action become clear.

Use the learnings to create smarter, more efficient landing pages that convert increasingly more visitors into buyers, email subscribers or downloaders. Best of all, you can directly add new leads to many major CRM and email marketing programs (like MailChimp).

MailChimp – Email Marketing

Staying in touch with customers is a must. They are more likely to respond to offers from companies they’ve dealt with before, so why not reach out to your previous or current customer base with a new offer or information that adds value to their day?

There are a lot of ways to communicate with people online these days, but nothing is more efficient or effective than email marketing. MailChimp is the best solution I’ve found for building and managing lists, designing email templates and analyzing the results.

Take the time to reward your best customers. They’ll reward you back many times over.

ActiveCollab – Project Management

I’m not a big fan of recurring monthly subscription fees for web-based software unless there are simply no other suitable options. Many people love BaseCamp for online project management but I actually chose ActiveCollab because it offers 80% of the features at a one-time fixed cost.

It’s not perfect and not nearly as sexy as BaseCamp, but it works just fine for small teams and agency/client collaboration. It’s certainly worked to keep me on task and on schedule. And after only a year, it has basically paid for itself in saved monthly subscription fees.

Help Me

What tools/services/software do you use to improve efficiency and generate better results for your company or clients? I’m always looking for ways to save time or money. With a new baby and lots of new client work, it’s getting harder and harder to find the right balance between the two.

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My Take on Google Instant

Andrew Miller — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 19:26:51 +0000

I have been flooded with questions from clients, colleagues and friends since Google’s announcement of Instant search. If you’re not familiar with Instant search, check out this quick video I shot before the official announcement. Or, of course there’s always a highly polished video from Google:

The new reality of SEO and PPC?

Personally, I found Google Instant distracting at first. After a couple of days, I am pleasantly surprised that it seems useful in a lot of cases where I’m not quite sure what I’m looking for. The general use case is somebody starting with a broad search (i.e. “flowers”) that will benefit from seeing suggested search queries based on their predicted intent (such as “flower delivery in richmond, va”).

That being said, the implications for SEO and PPC marketers are currently being discussed and analyzed throughout the industry. Here are the key themes that I believe are becoming the new reality:

1. More concentration on “head” terms. These high search volume, highly competitive, expensive keywords are likely to show up more often in Google’s suggested or predicted queries. Our keyword research needs to take these suggested or predicted queries into account so that we can optimize websites and PPC campaigns accordingly.

2. Long Tail keywords will be less productive. As Jeremy indicated, I believe most searchers will be distracted or tempted to click earlier as the search results change in real-time. This will likely lead to more clicks on head terms and more search query refinements.

3. Ultimately, relevance is still key. Organic and paid search rankings have not changed with Instant. No matter how the User Experience of search evolves, a well-thought out SEO strategy will include tactics to improve a site’s relevance to the keywords people are most likely to search for. Even if you rank #1 for a popular query, a poorly written Title tag or call to action are going to diminish the likelihood of people clicking on your organic search result or converting on your site.

4. Google will get richer. The logic behind this is obvious, since the head keywords are typically more expensive on a Cost Per Click basis. When it comes to their golden goose, Google really only makes UX changes like this that will improve their bottom line.

5. Brands matter more than ever. Large brands stand to gain considerably because Google inherently trusts them more. Over the last year, we’ve seen Google start to rank well known brands higher than lesser known but potentially better-optimized sites. This evolution is not debated in the industry, but the pundits and experts disagree on whether or not this actually improves search results and the search experience for the average Google user. I tend to believe that less variety and choice leads to lower quality search results.

6. Instant doesn’t mean permanent. Google is well known for launching a major UX change or search feature only to roll it back if user acceptance is not high and/or it doesn’t have the intended outcome (higher profitability for GOOG, better user experience, ease of use, etc.) Remember how short-lived Google Wave and real-time search results were?

7. The proof is in the analytics. We won’t know the full impact of Instant on SEO and PPC until marketers and analysts have had time to gather and interpret any changes in site analytics or campaign metrics. I expect to see preliminary results being reported as early as next week but a full understanding may take weeks or months, especially when seasonality is considered.

8. Remain calm. We’re on the leading edge of this change and word travels fast in the SEM industry. We are better off taking a wait-and-see approach to making changes rather than jumping into the unknown. Even waiting a few weeks or months to modify an SEO or PPC strategy will still likely give you an advantage over the vast majority of competitors that will be slower to act (if they act at all).

I hope this puts your mind at ease. It’s an exciting change to keep an eye on, but the end result will ultimately depend on whether or not the average Google user accepts the changes or not.

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Google Streaming Search Results

Andrew Miller — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:40:29 +0000

Just for fun, I thought I’d post a screen capture of Google’s new “streaming” search results that update in real time as you modify your search query. It’s best viewed in full screen or HD mode.

As with the search suggestions that all the major engines use now, this will likely change SEO for most marketers as we are going to have to contend with more “eye candy” that could distract searchers from our desired search results.

While real-time search suggestions may add some value to people searching for broad terms, real-time search results are distracting and confusing at first. I’m not sure if I’ll get used to them or not, but it does seem to add some amount of unnecessary distraction.

What do you think? Have you seen these results in the wild yet?

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