Archive for May, 2008

Below is some “Google Internal” data. About a year and a half ago, I asked one of my Google reps if she had Average CTR’s by Industry for Google Only. I was going thru some old files, and I found this ppt slide. It doesn’t tell me what companies were used in the accessment, and whether or not the PPC Keywords were more brand-related than generic keywords. Obviously, brand-related keywords would skew the results with higher CTR’s.

In a previous post, I discussed Methods To Increase CTR on PPC Ads. For example, things like position, keywords, ad copy, dynamic keyword insertion, etc. have an impact on CTR.

Campaign objectives make a difference. It depends on each advertiser’s campaign objectives. If they are Conversion-Oriented, then their Clickthrough Rates are most likely lower. Because, those are the advertisers that can have their ad in Position #7 and that’s their sweet spot for conversion rates.

As opposed to the Brand-Oriented campaign. In which case, findability is crucial to their campaign success. That means a Position-based success metric. Hence, higher CTR’s. Some of these brand campaigns use CTR as an Analytic Metric, so their is a heavy emphasis on optimizing CTR.

I was told that these are from large comprehensive PPC campaigns from industry leaders. I don’t think this can really be used as representative data for the Avg CTR for each of these industries. But, it’s interesting data anyway.

Do a google search for the term “budget“. Budget Rent-a-Car is #1 natural result.

Look at the title tag on the screenshot below. It says, “Budget.com Outage“.

Rule #1: Never put that the site is down in a title tag. Or that the site is down for maintenance because that could get crawled & indexed, show on the Search Results, and impact your Clickthroughs and Conversions! In this fast food economy, people with no loyalty might just try Hertz, or Dollar Rent-a-car.

It’s important that when Search Engine’s spider your site when it’s down, that they don’t pick up textual cues that will negatively impact indexing.

Site going offline for 10 Hours? Google recommends returning a 503 Service Unavailable Response.

Optimizing Title Tags is not just about getting the right keywords in your title tag, but about making sure the WRONG ones don’t get in there!

Hat tip to: FireBoy

I’m not a fan of reciprocal linking. The way to build trust & authority with Google is through 1-way inbound linking, and the judicious use of outbound linking to topically related sites.

Reciprocal linking was a technique used a few years ago as an easy way to build link popularity & search engine ranking. A common technique was to build a web directory within your site for the sole purpose of reciprical linking. But, with the sophistication of search engine algorithms today…reciprical linking is not worth the effort. Here’s why…

Reciprocal linking could be like shooting yourself in the foot. Especially, if you’re identified as being in the wrong “neighborhood” of related sites and/or low quality sites. If that’s the case, then don’t count on ranking for your keywords anytime soon. Here’s how you can see what neighborhood you’re associated with: Do a Google search for [related:www.yoursite.com] without the brackets. Do you see anything unrelated. If so, you’ll probably want to fix that.

Some people say that it depends how valuable the reciprocal link is.

Reciprocal linking isn’t really dead. But for what it’s worth, I highly discourage the time & effort for reciprocal linking unless the site is topically related to yours, and/or for the social networking relationship.

Related Posts:
Criteria for Link Effectiveness.
Link Aquisition vs. Content Creation.
Getting Nowhere in Google.
Problems with some Link Networks.

Once in awhile, I like to write a post that is unrelated to an SEO Consultant. You guessed it. It’s time once again for the Gourmet SEO (that’s me) to whip up another mouth-watering post. Side note: I think I’m gonna get a barbecue apron that says, “Gourmet SEO”.

This past weekend, I was invited to a friends house for a barbecue. And, one of the many things he served was a Spicy Chili. It was perfect! Just the right amount of zing to leave a burning, flavorful taste in your mouth. My forehead broke out beading sweat after eating a half bowl of this stuff. My nose became a little runny. The cold Corona beer he served tasted so good with this. Also, I was especially ravenous after a good workout pumping some iron, so I felt like I could eat bowlfuls …but I didn’t.

This recipe is NOT in any book. My friend created it himself. It’s not like he is a chef. He is a NJ Real Estate Appraiser. So with his permission, below is his recipe.

Spicy Chili Recipe:
2 lbs ground beef (not lean).
2 six oz cans tomato paste.
4 medium onions - chopped.
2 green peppers - chopped.
8 cloves garlic - chopped.
2 Tbsp chili powder.
1 Tbsp cumin.
1 Tbsp. oregeno.
1/2 Tbsp basil.
1 can diced tomatoes.
1 can black beans.
1 can real kidney beans.
Salt - to taste.
2 Jalapeno Peppers.
1 can hot pepper mix (10 oz).

Instructions:
Saute Onions & Garlic in Olive Oil.
Brown meat in Olive Oil.
Add everything to pot & simmer for 2-3 hours.

Related Posts:
Gourmet Meatloaf for Hungry SEO’s.
Dairy Kugel recipe.

You just launched your PPC Campaign. Now what?

It’s time to follow your PPC Strategy document, and make all the day-to-day tactical executions and implementations necessary to optimize the campaign to the success metrics.

Post-Launch PPC Optimizations:
1) Daily Bid Management / Bidding Strategies.
2) A/B Split testing (Ads, Landing pages).
3) Ad optimization / Ad creation.
4) Create customized Landing pages.
5) Keyword expansion / Keyword Bucketing.
6) Search Engine Expansion & Contraction (possibly using 2nd Tier Search Engines). Consumer behavior will dictate how to manage & optimize budget allocation based on traffic/performance metrics on each search engine.
7) Measuring. Testing. Reporting.

Client Meetings/Phone Calls:
Schedule weekly “real-time” campaign status meetings to discuss campaign performance, optimizations, and recommendations. Send the proposed agenda to your client, and ask them if they would like to add anything to the list.

Sample PPC agenda:
1) Improving landing page quality.
2) Brainstorm session to discover new keywords.( 25% of all searches on Google have never been searched for before).
3) Discussion of campaign performance in relation to campaign objectives (PPC Goals).
4) Discussion of Web Analytics & Conversion Tracking.
5) Click Fraud Management / Philosophy.

Related Posts:
PPC Campaign “Kick-off” Templates.
PPC Strategy document.
How to Upload an Adwords Bulksheet.
Monthly PPC Performance Report Template.
Methods To Increase CTR on PPC Ads.
4 Steps To Optimize Google Adwords Content Targeting Campaigns.
Integrating PPC search ads with online display ads.
Google MCC Accounts - Generating Invoices.

Here’s a short post that’s meant to help you save time, and increase productivity.

For those of you that manage a Google MCC, there’s no need to click into every single account to generate a monthly invoice. Depending on the amount of accounts you manage, this exercise could take quite a long time.

So, here’s an easier method to grab all of your monthly invoices, broken out by specific accounts.

1) Log into your Google MCC Account.
2) Click on “My Account” tab.
3) Use dropdown to select Date Range.
4) The Billing Summary will appear on the next screen sorted by Month/year.

On that screen you are given several hyperlinks from which you can grab information. The choices are consolidated (.pdf) | spreadsheet | account-level (.zip) .

I prefer to use the account-level (.zip) which contains every invoice by account for that month.

That’s it. Hopefully, this post has saved you time and energy.

Related Posts:
Google MDS - Manager Defined Spend.
How to Upload an Adwords Bulksheet.