Archive for July, 2006

Link Building is so important for SEO success, I’m surprised that it’s overlooked so much. Below are some tips for anyone who’s interested in starting a link building campaign.

1) Make a daily effort to get as many Inbound links as possible to your website. Set aside some time everyday.

2) Keep the Inbound links growing at a natural & steady cadence so as not to raise a red flag to the Search Engines.

3) Make sure the link is a static text link, and not being redirected thru someone else’s server.

4) Make sure your Keyword is contained in the text each Inbound link.

5) Make sure all the links don’t say the exact same thing. Create some variety in the text. But, make sure to include your keyword and Query Seeds.

6) Try to get the Inbound link higher placement on the referring webpage.

7) Try to use Sitewide links & links within content ( like presell pages). Some call these Presell pages: hosted content, sponsored content, hosted marketing page, hosted marketing content or, advertorial content.

If buying some Inbound links, make sure they don’t have a nofollow tag, or anything else that eliminates SEO value.

9) Get listed in Web Directories like DMOZ, BOTW, and the Yahoo Directory.

10) Use linkbaiting methods to get Inbound links from Authority sites.

11) The Domain Age of the referring website is an important “value factor”. The older the site, the better.

12) Make use of Pyramid Linking Strategies and/or Triangular Linking.

13) Use search query operaters to find relevant websites to get links from.

–That’s the Baker’s Dozen. Although I just gotta list one more thing though. Consider it a bonus tip:

14) Comment on blogs, participate in forums, and use social networking sites like Digg, and Del.icio.us.

And here’s a cool Link Calculator Tool.

The Wall Street Journal published a story that stated all the good domain names have already been taken.

So, what’s a cyber-squatter to do? In recent years, Cyber-squatters have received a lot of money from holding for ransom the trademark name of large companies and/or product names. Has Cyber-squatting come to an end?

Not at all. Cyber squatting is alive and well. Cyber-Squatters are buying domains that contain trademarked terms in foreign country codes.

Recently, The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) published a report trying to establish a standardized (and voluntary) best practices for all countries to follow regarding domain name registration. Kinda like an international Whois. One of the main purposes of these best practices, was to resolve Trademark infringement. However, trademark owners will find it extremely difficult enforcing their rights in foreign countries because each country has it’s own policies regulating buying and selling domain names ( ccTLD ).

China has the newest and fastest growing bunch of cyber-squatters. They are pirating everything from pharmaceutical brands, celebrity names, consumer product brand names, and just about anything else they think they can hold for ransom.

So, what if someone bought a Trademarked name ccTLD, developed an affiliate marketing website, and did a ton of SEO for it? They’d probably get noticed real quick.

Ask.com typically has higher CPC’s than all the other Search Engines. Why is this so? I believe it’s mainly for 2 reasons.

1) Ask.com requires a “Minimum CPC” for each keyword.

Min CPC’s serve two important functions. First, in order to be considered in the auction for a specific keyword, your Max CPC must be greater than the keyword’s Min CPC. While the system will allow you to enter a Max CPC that is below one or more of your keywords’ Min CPC, these keywords will not be active in your campaign. Additionally, the Min CPC represents the minimum price of the keyword.

They calculate the keyword Min CPC by how the keyword has performed historically, and the “market rates”. “Market rates”…meaning the CPC’s are based on the positioning, and competitor prices, then taking into consideration a handful of other factors. Seasonality of keyword cost is also a consideration, and could artificially inflate the minimum cpc’s.

If an advertiser bids less than this minimum cpc, then their ad is not served. This can be very tricky for advertisers using bid management software. You can bid up, but not down on certain keywords. Otherwise, the ads will just not be served, and you won’t receive any notification that your ad stopped serving. FYI: Ad Rank is calculated by Bid multiplied by CTR.

2) Ask.com requires a minimum CTR of 1.48%. If the CTR falls below that, then your ad will NOT be served on Ask. It will only be served on their Syndication sites. Also, if the CTR is not at least .75, the ad is not getting shown anywhere. So, besides the Min CPC, advertisers need to bid high enough so not to drop below the minimum CTR threshold.

Furthermore, their reports don’t show Impressions. So, it becomes very difficult to optimize. If advertisers could see Impressions, then they could see better how to fix the ad.

IMHO, the 2 reason’s above explain the higher CPC.

Something else that’s notable about Ask.com is their Keyword Inventory. Their Keyword Inventory is much less than Google, Yahoo, or MSN’s. Therefore, Ask.com works well for some advertisers (verticals), and horribly for others. As opposed to Google which has such a large Keyword Inventory.

Although, all in all, Ask’s quality of traffic is very good.

Brick-and-mortar stores that want to track sales from search engines certainly have a challenge. The search engines are quickly and robustly developing Local Search. Pay-per-call is also an option for retailers.

However, it still remains a challenge for local retailers to connect the dots from search-to-store sales. Specifically for tracking their offline conversions from their PPC search campaigns.

Here’s a couple of solutions:
1) How about creating a coupon or other search specific promotion that is only redeemable in the store? Offer special codes that the customer needs to either write down, or print a webpage coupon and redeem it in-store.

2) Customer Tagging by examining each purchase, then correlating an online cookie with a customer number or their credit card data.

Many marketers make the case to use the intelligence learned in SEO to put into a PPC campaign. Such a strategy could be revising content on landing pages, changing title tags and description tags, long tail keywords, etc. Implementing these changes could have an effect on Quality Score, CTR, Avg CPC, Ranking, etc.

But, I say how about doing it the other way around also? Why not use the performance data from Paid Search for SEO purposes to lower your total CPC cost?

For example, if there is a high traffic keyword, and/or a very expense keyword, why not optimize one of your webpages for that term? That way, you’ll end up saving a lot of money from Paid Search because of your SEO.

Rather than going after the “head terms” first, you might want to give this a try on your Long Tail Keywords. Once your chosen webpage has been optimized for that expensive keyword, sit back, relax (not too long), and watch all that “free” traffic from that once-upon-a-time expensive keyword.

Revenue Science has a great behavioral marketing product called Search Re-Targeting.

Here’s how it works:
First, Advertisers need to place tracking code on the landing page and confirmation page.
Then let’s say someone searches for “cellphones” on Google. And, they click on your Google Ad, and are taken to your website. They are instantly “tagged” (cookied). Then, they leave your website without converting. And, they continue to surf around the internet. Then, they land on a website within the Revenue Science network of hundreds of sites representing 30 billion impressions per month . They are show your text ad on that webpage. Maybe you decide to offer a special discount for these re-caputured customers. Just write it in the Title of the Ad. When that visitor comes back to you from that “search re-targeted” ad, they are much more likely to convert.

The visitor to your website is cookied for about an 8-week period. If they surf around your website and leave without converting, then once they go to another website that is within the Revenue Science network, they are “remembered”, and served a text ad based on their prior surfing behavior. More specifically, they are served one of your ads.

Search Re-Targeting ads are Text only. The ads look similar to Adsense. The creative requirements are:
Headline: 50 characters
Description: 250 characters (maximum)
Display URL: 80 characters (maximum)
Destination URL: No limit

Pricing is based on a fixed PPC model. The CPC is determined by calculating 50% of the average CPC in your industry. Optimizing campaigns can be done thru writing compelling Text Ads, testing landing pages, and testing category buckets.

Think of Search Re-Targeting as kinda like insurance for your Paid Search (PPC) campaigns. You can extend the reach of your Search Marketing dollars to an additional network of sites.

Search Re-Targeting has higher conversion rates than traditional PPC Search Marketing. One of the reasons for this is because advertisers can “re-message” their ad during the most pivotal time of a target audience’s decision cycle to a “pre-qualified” audience. Eg: offering a special discount.

Oh, and a last thought….
I would think that Search Re-Targeting is a way to minimize click fraud by only showing ads to a pre-qualified audience.

User generated content, and more specifically user-generated internet video is exploding at a rapid rate. In less than a year, YouTube went from 0 to 20 million visitors per month. At this point, online marketers need to get serious about optimizing video.

So, I figured I’d write a post about optimizing Google Video.

Personally, I find the video search results not always relevant to what I’m searching for. That’s probably for at least two reasons. One, Google hasn’t perfected the algorithm for data retrieval regarding videos. Although, they do look at the metadata encoded within the video. And second, marketers aren’t as saavy in optimizing video as they are in optimizing websites.

So, here’s the basics of optimizing video.
When uploading your Google Video, include an optimized transcript that contains your keywords, and write a descriptive Title which contains your keywords. Then, tag your video accordingly with your chosen keywords. Basically, in Googlespeak…add a “label”.

After the upload, don’t forget to Rate your own video. I’m not sure if this is taken into effect for the search results, but it can certainly have an effect on users choosing your video to play, or Clickthough Rate.

BTW, one of my favorite Google videos is of Lions & Hyenas fighting over a kill in the serenghetti.