I attended a couple of great sessions this morning, most of which were focused on web analytics and how they can provide actionable data. Here are some key takeaways:

1. Keep your enemies closer, but keep your friends close too.

When you start an SEO campaign, the focus is usually on competitor research: what are your competitors optimizing for, where are they getting links, and how can you do a better job at it than them? But through Google Analytics you can also see what sites you are already getting traffic from. Well, a lot of the time, the users that come in through those referring sites ended up there because of a previous search query. Why is the referrer ranking, and what can you do to get your site on that SERP too?

2.  Exploring site search

(more…)

We’ve talked before both about making your paid search ads stand out from the crowd, and about using microformats to help organize content on your website. It appears that Google’s new “rich snippets” announcement has implications for paid search as well, giving advertisers the opportunity to leverage the new policy to differentiate their ads.

In this example, Google includes a plus-box below a Newegg.com ad, with product images and information pulled from microformatted tables on their product pages:

(more…)

PriorTax.com: Reaching Out to Users — on a tight deadline

Some businesses are seasonal. But few can compare to the tax business. So how does an online tax preparation service use a multi-month marketing campaign to get results over just a few days?

Simple:

• * A long-term SEO strategy to lay the groundwork.
• * A rigorous, analytical paid-search strategy.
• * Lots of community involvement, accelerating during tax time.

Before SEO:

(more…)

Hi everyone,

Alhan and I just got back to the office after three days at the Search Engine Strategies New York Conference and Expo. We’ll be writing more about the takeaways from that experience a little later. But first I wanted to point out something I noticed this morning:

One technique to avoid unwanted clicks and the charges associated with them is to write ad copy which will “filter” unqualified users by discouraging them from clicking. Above, on our own AdWords creative, we use the filter “$5K+”, which gives users a clue about the level of our services.

Another New York firm, Avatar, has been doing the same thing (“$20,000 and up”), but now they’ve added a second filter on the same ad: “Currently NOT Hiring”.

(more…)

This is a quick post to exemplify why most methods of marketing, especially online, simply do not match the effectiveness and longevity of search engine optimization (SEO). The important factor to remember is that it is measurable, like pay-per-click advertising and banner ads, but unlike these, the effects of SEO last far beyond the length of the campaign and cost-per-conversion plummets with SEO as time goes by.
(more…)

It’s amazing how many poorly researched, poorly written, and poorly targeted paid search campaigns I’ve come across on the major search engines without even really looking for them. It’s obvious why Google runs those $25 free AdWords credit promotions for new users; if you don’t know what you’re doing, that money goes pretty quickly.

Whether they’re using Google AdWords, Yahoo! SEM, or Microsoft adCenter, here are some of the dangerous thoughts that seem to go through the minds of PPC users:

(more…)

The NYT recently published a story, “Stuck in Google’s Doghouse,” about Sourcetool.com owner Dan Savage who sent a 4,000-word letter to the antitrust division of the Justice Department to fight against the Yahoo! – Google PPC deal.  Sourcetool is a free directory for industrial product websites. Mr. Savage was using Adwords to target relevant keywords and attract visitors who would then click on his Adsense ads to pay his bills. He used to make around $115,000/month from $653,000 in revenue.

(more…)