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May 25th, 2008 |
Talk about being herded onto the reservation!!
John Federman (CEO of Guidester, an e-commerce ad network for “major brand manufacturers”) recently warned online marketers in E-Commerce Times about Google’s Search-Within-a-Site feature launched this past March.
In brief, Google’s search-within-a-site is supposed to help users who want more drilled-down info from their first search attempt. A searcher types a company name – maybe yours – into the search field, which pulls their selected vendor – you again – into top results. Sounds terrific on the Brand Awareness Meter, doesn’t it?
Then, it gets kinky: a SECOND search bar appears under Google’s site descriptions to help the user narrow a search query to specific types of products. (We know how lazy searchers are. So anything that minimizes clicks, refines queries or pushes lots of related results is presumed Good.)
But, what’s good for the user is “dangerous” for the e-tailer, according to Federman. While that user is getting narrowed search results and abundantly helpful similar offerings, he or she has yet to get into YOUR web site. Even after typing YOUR company name in the search box.
The searcher is being held in Google second-search-box limbo. Just to rub salt in your search marketing wounds, at the same time, the user is bombarded with many vendors or products that compete with you. Thanks to AdWords.
So much for establishing brand awareness for your company and its products. Your reward for snagging potential customers – who even typed your company name into the search box – is having your carefully architected web site firewalled from your brand aware customer. Your branding efforts helped launch the AdWords fleet of competitor search advertising ships. And, you get to watch traffic, sales and page views sink from your own optimized web site. Such a deal??
Just Say No, says brand manager Federman. (Meaning: Give Google the Opt Out.) Even Bob Tedeschi, who has covered online issues since Internet Bubble 1.0 in the late 1990s for The New York Times, declared the bottom line results of Google’s NEW IMPROVED site search to be “egalitarian” in spirit, but “messy at best.”
What do you think?
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February 1st, 2008 |
Ask Jason Prescott, I have long predicted that Microsoft would make a bid for Yahoo!, but it still was a strange surprise to wake up to this morning. In the above story, there’s a bit from an analyst that claims this is all about advertising revenue from search:
“This deal is mainly about advertising, and mainly about search-based advertising,” said the 451 Group, based in Boston. “It combines the second and third players in that market to take on the number one, Google. The main thing this brings Microsoft is a profitable advertising business, something it has not managed to achieve with its own online services business, which loses money.”
…that’s a pretty shallow look at things, probably they just had an early reading in on the memo that Ballmer sent to Microsoft employees, which is nothing more than a leak to the blogs and the press directly from Ballmer. It’s definitely not just about search. Microsoft has been making a sustained effort to drive entertainment and lifestyle options over a Microsoft software and increasing hardware platform platform. Yahoo is certainly more than just search advertising. Yahoo! Games, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Finance, Flickr, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Personals are all powerful competitors in their space. It fits in seamlessly with Microsoft’s powerful Xbox platform and gives it a much broader userbase to compete against Google’s Gmail and the other Google Apps like Google Docs. Google is still really just getting started in terms of taking on Microsoft’s dominant office productivity software, but it is definitely part of their mission, leveraging the super appealing Gmail and trying to wedge it and their improving online office suite into the picture for business customers.
Where’s Bill?
Maybe its a coincidence but I think it’s interesting that this comes immediately on the heels of a press offensive to celebrate Bill Gates’s retirement. Especially since the public celebration comes 6 months before his real departure in July.
Is This the Front Lines of Microsoft’s Endless War Vs. Open Source
One of the things, most people don’t know about Yahoo! is that they are one of the big champions of open source software, the free community developed applications that are like garlic to Microsoft’s software sales and licensing vampire. Yahoo is mainly deployed on FreeBSD, and a Microsoft takeover would be a crushing blow to many open source initiative, including Yahoo acquisition Zimbra, which has been emerging as a worthy alternative mail server to Exchange. Read more in this thread at Slashdot
No surprise YHOO closed up 47%
Yahoo’s Story About Microsoft Trying to Buy Yahoo
Funny Bitterness: An Ex-Yahoo Employee’s Advice to Microsoft
I have contacted a few mid level management people at Yahoo who could be described as, ‘Yahoo Purple Lifers”. They have intimated that they will stay and work to make any cultural changes to the organization, and I quote, “as painful as possible for the new Microsoft directors and division Veeps, short of insurrection”.
I’ll try and write something up on this attitude that seems pervasive, on my blog, over the weekend. There has been plenty of bitterness over the layoff’s already.
They are very different companies; although one could reason that this acquisition is the lawful and logical harvest of equity for Yahoo’s long term investors and employees with stock. But it takes more than a mere decision to make such a gargantuan move work.
They are Very Different cultures.
Hey! There’s one reason you might not want to buy the stock…
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January 14th, 2008 |
This post is about increasing traffic to your blogs. I’m surprised about how lame and lousy answers you get from searching Google about this crap. You will get much better advice at bloggerunleashed.com but that guy is drunk all the time, he’s like the Boris Yeltsin of SEO.
Sharp-eyed reader Justin P. left a comment:
I’ve been dying to learn more about effective blogging and link building…what’s the deal?
I’m happy to disclose that Justin is a member of the Top Ten Wholesale team, but this is not a plant. I’m pretty sure he does want to know about this stuff, and I didn’t solicit this question in any way. And, I consider publicly answering your readers question part of the best practices for effective blogging. The great thing is even though that’s a pretty expansive question, blogging and link building go hand in hand. In that, posting to your blog is an outstanding way to build links.
1) RSS Feeds - If you use your RSS Feed right you can gain links. The audience of people subscribing to feeds are hard core information consumers. I have my own linkblog just of posts I read that I share. Lots of bloggers, marketers, and web publishers. But, all those people are making websites designed to go out to a general audience and they always need content. It’s very nice when they reference your content and provide a link. In fact that’s great when they do that. Sometimes, they may not do that, sometimes they may not send a link back and just republish your work. People get really upset about these guys and start talking about how they hate “content thieves” with lots of capital letters and exclamation points, but I don’t waste time with getting mad at invisible people and their web sites. I try to do what I can to make it work better for me. One of the keys to maximizing the links you get from your content is to use a footer on your posts with your links in it. I use a wordpress plugin called Feed Footer, and there is another good one called RSS Footer. RSS footer is super simple and very effective. Feed Footer offers granular control of what you do with your footer and is a very powerful tool in the hands of the right person. It’s entirely appropriate in my opinion to add other related sites to your footer. If you are writing great posts, this will really help you generate more links.
2. Blog Directories
When you are starting the marketing process for a new blog. Blog directories like BlogCatalog are a tempting prospect, but getting backlinks with a wordpress blog is cake, so what’s the point of it? Meaning is there traffic for you? I think there is if you are targeting them precisely. Trackbacks are going to get heavily discounted based on the pagerank value of the referring site soon, so I wouldn’t bother too much with them. I think you have to write comments on big blogs, and get them past moderation. At this point I say avoid the larger directories like mybloglog and bumpzee. I get a little bit of seo traffic so sphinn does ok.
3. “SEO 2.0 is about link love” — Dofollow=Groovy
So you gotta give me a dofollow..
That means install the dofollow plugin. Try to enjoy it while it lasts. What will kill it is organized rings of dofollowers, who start to moderate there posts ruthlessly throwing out people from the wrong side of the tracks like me. Those guys will grow like mold in pligg sites, or BloggingZoom, which you should not run on your blog! It is unsafe, I had it checked out by the somber titans of the toptenwholesale.com technical staff. By the way if you don’t pay attention to your programmer’s technical review of your easy-to-install plug-ins, you are an idiot, begging to be fired.
Posts I Like But Aren’t Super Related to this Because Who The Hell Writes Posts Like This One?:
A Valuable Tip - Use Pligg sites to get good longlasting backlinks.
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September 11th, 2007 |
While perusing through my SEM news feed this afternoon I was struck by a link that asked “Are You A Newbie, A Novice, A Master or A Dark Lord of SEO?” “How curious and clever,” I thought to myself. I had to take the bait. When I clicked on the link I was directed to an SEO quiz. I took the quiz and was bummed to find that I scored newbie status—but hey, at least I’m not a novice, and that’s really not bad considering I had no clue what SEO was a year ago.
In any case, the quiz had excellent entertainment value with its share of silly multiple choice questions, like “Why are absolute URLs better than relative URLS for on-page internal linking? D) They’re filled with vodka.” But despite the sillyness, it was pretty informative. After completing the quiz you are taken to page that displays all of the previously answered questions plus which ones were answered incorrectly and why they are incorrect. It’s a great little tool for discerning which areas you are weakest in. You might want to give it a try when you have free time. You can find it at http://www.seomoz.org/seo-expert-quiz. Have fun! I know I did. 
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September 5th, 2007 |
Personalize Pay-Per-Click Ads with Dynamic Keyword Insertion
The sweet spot of successful pay-per-click (PPC) search advertising is personalizing search results to an audience of one.
Steps from Online Searcher to Click-through to Customer Sale or Conversion are straightforward:
Search marketers write the “right” paid-ad text headlines and targeted descriptions, within their keyword bids. Their paid ads display in top positions on search engine results pages. Sponsored ad results that are most relevant to a searcher’s request are the SE ads that get highest click-throughs … and potentially higher conversions for sign-ups or sales.
Perhaps the only marketing mystery in those steps is how to mass customize your PPC ads, how to personalize paid search ads to talk to that audience of one.
Dynamic Keyword Insertion is one such bit of magic.
What Is DKI?
Normally, a PPC search marketer bids on targeted keywords to trigger its pay-per-click ads, which display somewhere on search results pages.
With Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI), a searcher need not enter ALL of the search marketer’s keywords, or in the exact sequence, in order to trigger the ad in search results. More important for personalized results, searchers see their own search phrase in the marketer’s ad title with DKI.
Better: If the savvy DKI marketer repeats that keyword in their PPC ad title and ad description, then the searcher’s own entered keyword will display in boldface letters on the search engine results page listing.
Dynamic Keyword Insertion is how you customize your search marketing ads to talk to that individual search audience of one, drawing attention, eyeballs and a likely click-through.
Let’s say you’re Hot Stuff, a wholesaler/retailer of hot pepper spices and condiments to the online world’s “chile heads.” The keywords chile, chiles and chile peppers have become highly competitive (expensive bids) among spice marketers. However, you have a new line of dry chile rubs that market research says will light a fire under the barbeque crowd.
Here’s what your pay-per-click text ad might look like:
TITLE: BBQ Chile Spice and Rubs (25 characters)
DESCRIPTION: Try dry spice on your next barbeque. Chile Spice Rubs for no-drip BBQ. (70 ch)
DISPLAY URL: www.hotstuff.com/chile_rubs
Searchers who enter “BBQ,” “spice” or “chile” (from your purchased keyword list) into a search box will undoubtedly pull up your PPC ad … though the ranking, position and page number on which your ad appears are all question marks.
Let’s Try That Again, with Dynamic Keyword Insertion
At the stage at which you enter your PPC text ad into a Google AdWords or Yahoo! Panama or Microsoft Live Search paid-ad account, you would enter your keywords in DKI format like this:
The following example is from a Google AdWords console. Syntax and data entry fields are similar for Yahoo! and Microsoft ad campaign set ups. (Microsoft Live Search calls the DKI entry fields “parameters” and lets search marketers set up three different dynamic insertion fields.)
The DKI insertion is in braces – { } . You’re bidding on keywords: BBQ, spice and chile.
Headline: {KeyWord:BBQ Chile Spice And Rubs} Max 25 characters
Description line 1: Try dry spice on your next barbeque Max 35 characters
Description line 2: Chile Spice Rubs for no-drip BBQ. Max 35 characters
Display URL: http:// www.hotstuff.com/chile_rubs
What A Searcher – Your Potential Customer – Sees
A searcher who enters “BBQ sauces and spice” into a search engine search box may get over 50,000 search results, both organic and sponsored.
Your DKI pay-per-click (entered in the Title/Headline field above) will display like this:
BBQ Sauces And Spice
www.hotstuff.com/chile_rubs Try dry spice on your next barbeque Chile Spice Rubs for no-drip BBQ.
Your dynamic keyword insertions (BBQ and spice) returned the searcher’s exact search phrase in displayed results.
Note that if the searcher entered more than the 25-character maximum into a search box – “BBQ sauces and spice and mixes” – then your default DKI title is inserted in boldface letters.
BBQ Chile Spice And Rubs
www.hotstuff.com/chile_rubs Try dry spice on your next barbeque Chile Spice Rubs for no-drip BBQ.
How To DKI Personalize Your Paid Search Ads
• If you manage your own PPC accounts, major search engines with PPC Programs have intuitive interfaces and help tutorials to guide you through dynamic keyword insertion and data entry fields.
• Ask an expert. Contact your online ad network site publisher – specialized industry sites, vertical search engines, local search site publishers – for DKI personalization services for your account.
• Price such custom copywriting services from your SEM or Online Advertising vendor, agency or account representative.
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August 31st, 2007 |
Search engine marketing guru Mike Grehan, also the founder and CEO of SmartInteractive Ltd. in England, did a session at ad:tech New York called, “Linking and Optimization for Better Ranking and More Traffic” where he reportedly discussed his notion of the four P’s of online marketing.
Most marketing students learn that the four P’s of traditional marketing are product, price, promotion and place, but according to Mr. Grehan, the rules are slightly different on the worldwide Web.
<!– Begin TopTenWholesale.com Contextual Ads –>
<script src=”http://www.toptenwholesale.com/cgi-bin/searchapp/rem_ads.cgi?q=Products&fmt=468_60&ch=1013&aff=8&bc=336699&bg=FFFFFF&tc=0000BB&dc=000000&uc=008000&new_page=1” language=”javascript”></script><!– End TopTenWholesale.com Contextual Ads –>
“The four P’s of marketing are positioning, permission, partnership and performance,” Mr.Grehan said.
Positioning is all about using paid and organic search to drive ads.
Permission is opening a dialog with potential customers and customer retention management.
He said performance is measuring the success of your Website and online marketing strategies.
Finally, partnership is affiliate marketing, co-promotion and joint venture, Mr. Grehan said.
“To prepare a campaign there are certain key questions that marketers need to ask themselves,” he said. “Who are we? What do we do? What are we known for? What message are we trying to get across?”
After answering these questions, marketers should list the top ten phrases which cover the content of their site. Each phrase or search term should be at least two words.
“Talk to people within and outside of the organization,” Mr. Grehan said.
Marketers need to make sure to have a unique page of good quality content for each search term.
“One of the most important things to remember is search engines return Web pages, not Websites,” Mr. Grehan said.