Archive for February, 2007

With all the commotion about Dave Pasternack, I thought I’d divert onto a well-known SEO figure; Bruce Clay.

Bruce is a dinosaur in the SEO industry, and he has a great site full of good content, and useful SEO Tools.

Just one question…What’s up with that Flash navigation? Isn’t that a no-no for SEO bestpractices. Almost every SEO will say Flash Navigation is crazy, and not spiderable. Flash Navigation is contrary to SEO. I understand that parts of a webpage may contain flash. But, the navigation?!?

I don’t mean to pick a fight with Bruce. But, I guess it’s just puzzling why an SEO firm would deliberately choose Flash navigation.

One more piece of constructive criticism….
I noticed that many of the webpages are annoyingly long. The content is good. But, who has time to read a super long webpage like that. I might read all the content if those pages were cut into several smaller pages. His long webpage reminds me of the long sales page. Here Bruce violates another basic SEO principle. He can easily make 3 webpages ( or more) of many of those very long webpages.

The godfather of Usability has a website that practices what he preaches. That’s why I’m surprised at Bruce.

I’m certainly not doing an SEO Analysis of Bruce’s website. I’m just wondering why would one of the greats in SEO, have a Flash Navigation?

Search is all about testing and optimizing to achieve the desired campaign success metrics. Testing keywords, Bid management, testing landing pages, testing ad copy, Display URL’s, etc. Changing any of these components affects the overall campaign success metrics. A good Campaign Manager can play the metrics, the way a conductor controls an orchestra.

An Ad Optimization is particularly useful for increasing CTR. The process of Ad Optimization entails a simple A/B Split test.

Make sure you always are running 2 ads. Perform an Ad Optimization by first eliminating underperforming Ad copy. And, then adding additional fresh copy. This is also known as: An ad refresh. To do a continual simple A/B Split test, just make sure you are alway running 2 ads per adgroup, and have each served 50% of the time. Delete the underperforming ad copy based on your own optimization metrics such as CTR, or Conversion data. Measure the success metric by Ad. So, don’t forget to place a tracking string on the destination URL’s, so you can accurately access performance.

Google is finally going to let us see our Quality Score. This has effects on optimizing our campaigns, and determining Ad Position. I received this official email announcement of Google’s recent Quality Score Improvements:

In our ongoing effort to improve the quality of ads that we serve to our users, we’re making improvements to the way that we evaluate the Quality Score to set minimum bids for keywords. First, we will be launching an optional Quality Score column to provide you with more transparency into the Quality Score for your keywords. Second, we made improvements to the way that we evaluate the Quality Score for all keywords. This change will allow us to more accurately set minimum bids for keywords where the system does not have a significant amount of data.

Based on this change, you may notice that the minimum bids for some of your keywords increase, while others decrease. Please keep in mind that you should always bid the value of your keyword to you - if your keyword becomes inactive for search, considering optimizing or deleting that keyword before raising your bid. This improves our ability to set more accurate minimum bids for keywords that are new to our system until we have enough information to set a minimum bid based on that keyword’s performance.

UPDATE: Here is Google’s official post.

I received a question from someone that is ranking in the 2nd & 3rd spots for his keyword phrase. His #3 spot is indented. However, when he checked yesterday, he saw the indented URL to the optimized subpage disappeared.

His question is, “Why did the subpage disappear if that is the more relevant, optimized page for the keyword phrase? Does the reason have something to do with the overall linkpower of the domain? This particular subpage has almost all of the linkjuice for the target keyword going to it, not the homepage. So, why would Google bury the subpage in favor of the homepage?”

This is almost like Google is saying that the domain will rank for the keyword…but not necessarily the exact page you’re optimizing.

Here’s my answer:
The solution is to NOT use the same anchor text in ALL the paid links. There is a need to mix up the anchor text a bit like: SEO, SEO Consulting, SEO Consultant, SEO and PPC, etc. Otherwise, if you don’t mix it up a bit, in the eyes of the Google algorithm, it will appear as if you are over-optimizing, and your subpage will get buried.

Following this strategy should insure you get the Indented listing, AND the homepage listing on Google.

Here is a “heads-up” post from SEMpunch. His recent experience with the Yahoo Panama platform might be useful for other Advertisers.

Due to a bulk submission I’ve made turned off the account, but now comes the best…Customer support cannot turn the account back on. Supposedly it is a known bug on the new Panama platform and a ticket had to be submitted to the tech group, who I was told would “get to this matter as soon as they can.”
UPDATE: I was just told that my account cannot be brought back online and is lost - so be careful about using the bulk upload tool!

Imagine if this happened to an account like Barnes & Noble.

Maybe a lawyer would be interested in hearing how they interrupted his business? What if this happens to a bunch of big spender advertisers? I’m not an expert at law, but could Yahoo be setting themselves up for a class-action lawsuit?

Is it logical to assume that the higher the ad position, the higher the CTR?

For example, what if your overall CTR in Google was 0.15%? And, your average position was 2. Would you consider that a good CTR if you are running both Search & Content? The fact of the matter is, no benchmark can really be applied to content. The 0.15% CTR in this fictional campaign includes content. So, what is the range for a good CTR, for a Google campaign that is running both Search & Content?

There is no true answer to this question as it will vary by industry. When you factor in the Content Network there is not a clean answer to give. The reason why is because:

1. The amount of Content Matching that runs will vary and weigh the results differently.
2. The Content Matching results vary by industry as well.

To get a more accurate picture of your CTR, run a report to separate “Search Only” from “Content Only”. For Search Only you will most likely see an overall CTR that is very favorable. If you are in a niche market, then it’s quite possible that some of your campaigns might have a higher CTR. But, what if they have a lower than 1% CTR? Depending on the niche market, it may not be surprising, and not neccessarily something that can be improved tremendously.

Optimizing CTR:
After you separate the “Search Only” from the “Content Only” you’ll be able to see which campaigns are pulling the avg CTR down. In order to optimize the account, conduct a creative optimization by refreshing the ad copy for those specific campaigns that are pulling the CTR down (I like to use as a benchmark, any campaign with a CTR of .25% or less - gets refreshed). Another optimization after the Ad copy refresh, would be a Keyword Expansion, and possibly even testing a different landing page.

Some logical assumptions:
1. Ad positions at the top of the search results will receive a higher CTR than ads in lower positions along the right sidebar.
2. If you opt into the Search Network…Ads in the top positions can get broader distribution thru Google’s syndication network, which will result in increased impressions and clicks, affecting overall CTR. Although, no guarantee of increasing the CTR.