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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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April 30th, 2008 |
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Keep the Tribal Algorithm by Jason Prescott (below) contains musings on search marketing, web analytics and why we don’t just feed the dog.
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We hear from newbie clients: Their web analytics tell them “this” and “that.” As we hear it, analytics are full of business wisdom, dictating advertising and search marketing decisions … which key word is Good, what distribution network is Better, and what PPC bid strategy is Best.
Take a closer look. Sure, web analytics offer valuable input for trend spotting, understanding user behavior and help measuring marketing success. But the operative word is HELP. Analytics are one tool in the marketing kit bag. And it’s a touchy tool, at that. Web analytics software can be very sensitive programming built on proprietary metrics. The huge data stream that analytics dumps into slick graphic reports demands interpretation, especially when you compare one company’s analytic apples to another’s pomegranates.
Am I saying ignore Google Analytics? Was Yahoo! foolish to play analytical catch-up buying IndexTools in early April to measure web behavior and paid search ROI??
Absolutely not.
All I’m saying here is that there is a Tribal Knowledge Algorithm you can’t ignore: It’s the collected knowledge of people who know your industry or product line, because they’ve worked it. It’s where Gut Instinct meets By-the-Numbers. It’s what still matters in successful business decisions.
Some in the search marketing biz dare to question 3,000-pound gorilla Google because Google relies on tech voodoo and search algorithms. Translation: Google depends on its proprietary search algorithms to go broad, horizontal and massively comprehensive, rather than organize around its users through their interests and their industries. (verticalizing)
Jim Meskauskas, director of online media for ICON International, observed that advertisers need not fear The Google after it acquired ad-serving network DoubleClick. Because marketing and advertising relies on ideas … and only humans have those. Successful campaigns don’t come from a another ad-buying auction technology or yet another intermediary in the ad-buying process. It’s still about the creative tribe and human strategy.
Because we don’t just feed the dog. ??
Says Jim: “If technology and engineering were the answers to all the questions, most businesses would consist of a machine, a dog and a man. The man would be there to feed the dog and the dog would be there to keep the man away from the machine.”
We run a lot of analytics here at TopTenWholesale. But we keep tribal knowledge and experience in the mix. We don’t just feed the dog.
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Tags: Business Verticals, Search Marketing, Web Analytics|
January 2nd, 2008 |
It’s extremely important to build links to your site. Links tend to help your web site rank higher in search engines. Links promote your site as trustworthy enough for others to endorse. And most of all, you build links in the hope that the links will send traffic. I like to build as many easy links as I can.
My Favorite Easy Link for a Web Site
My favorite easy link to build a link is at AboutUs.org, whcih lets you quickly create or edit a page about your site.
Write a Press Release About Your Site
You can do this continuously, and should especially if your business picks up an accolade or an honor. Top Ten Wholesale has issued several press releases if you are looking for an example. Or you can check out this recent blog post about writing effective press releases.
I’ll publish a guide to writing a press release in an upcoming blog post. But, once you have written the presser (that’s what “industry insiders” call a press release), how do you distribute it?
PRWeb is the biggest player in this space. And they have a great free distribution service - although I find that giving them $80 for a better distribution virtually guarantees a number of links to your site that will stick around for a long time.
There are a lot of really good press release distribution services where you can submit for free in addition to PRWeb, like PRNewsWire and URLWire Here’s a reasonably recent list of Free Press Release Services.
Of course, if you submit the same press release to all these sites, some of these will get flagged for duplicate content. Google tries very hard to screen out multiple pages with the same content and is partially effective at it. When I have time to maximize the amount of links from a presser, I will pick 6-10 services to submit to and literally rewrite the press release sentence by sentence. But, that’s the kind of obsessive behavior that I don’t endorse for others.
Quick ways to make multiple unique press releases.
- Write one and hire somebody to write one for you. Hire a pro like the one Top Ten uses, David Oates of Stalwart Communications or do it the Joe Preston El Cheapo Grande Way, and advertise to find a copywriter on Craigslist or a copywriters forum
- Target a local area or region with 1 press release and then write one for general national distribution.
- All the press releases I write have a quote. Change the quote, and change where you place the quote within the press release.
Comment on Blogs
This is really the easiest way to build links. Go to blogs, find posts where you have something to say. Make comments and include your link in the space provided. Don’t worry about only going to blogs related to your business. For the most part, and as long as you aren’t being shady, a link is a link is a link. For example, I don’t blog about football or have any football related sites, but I leave a lot of incredibly insightful comments (at least I think they are) at The Jets Blog Good blogs pay a lot of attention to the comments and screen them heavily, but if you have something to say this is one of the best ways to build quality links and its very easy.
More on this subject tomorrow…
Related Posts on Other Blogs
Writing Effective Press Releases
Tags: press releases, link building
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October 10th, 2007 |
As an online marketing specialist, I’m PO’d. I like to be surprised from time to time and wish I could slap my palm to my forehead and yell, “I still don’t agree with this clown, but that’s a new wrinkle in this dirty street fight. It even makes a tiny bit of sense.”
Instead I get snores and zzzzzzzzz. On the subject of net neutrality, which affects Internet fairness and the ability of all but the hugest eCommerce businesses to operate profitably online, the elites who want to kill off the Internet Golden Goose have zero imagination. They don’t come up with surprising or logical or reasonable or even moderately interesting objections to a free, open, fair and NEUTRAL Internet. Zip. Bupkiss. Nada.
It’s S.O.S. – Same Old “Stuff.”
Who are these S.O.S. elites who want to take away the “superhighway” lanes of the “Information Superhighway?” Who are these boring macaws, who simply repeat the same old opposition to Net Neutrality, over and over, without defending their point of view? Bad Polly; No Cracker.
Opponents of a fair and neutral Internet that gives everyone equal access and the same roads, without bribes (premium prices), now include the Bush Administration Department of Justice. Add the DoJ to the original Neutral-Net-Haters who lobby government regulators for favors, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.
Yawn. I’m too bored by this unsurprising link between U.S. Regulators and the Mega-Bucks Industry Associations Who Lobby Them … against the interests of all the rest of us. In petroleum markets, that’s called a “cartel.” If you want to see a quick overview of the Net Neutrality issue – complete with impacts on marketers, plus links to the Pros (Save The Internet) and the Con Artists cited above – see Jason Prescott’s “The President’s Lounge” perspective at this page link:
When I’m done being bored by foxes guarding the hen house who co-opt the coop owners, I’m going to keep writing my Congressional reps and senators, asking them to support Net Neutrality and to oppose a TeleCom Industry-controlled Internet. Especially now that the issue of Net Neutrality is all mixed up with illegal wiretapping of Americans’ phones and email. (The same old solid citizens of the TeleCom Industry Association who oppose Net Neutrality also helped the Bush Administration illegally wiretap Americans without required FISA warrants … and without a peep about the laws they were breaking. Now they want a get-out-of-jail-free card: Immunity from prosecution for breaking U.S. law. See this activist social media site for details and links on that S.O.S.
It’s over, baby. The surprise and bubbles are gone from our relationship. I get no high from Monopoly TeleCom Champagne, Registered Origin: Greed-ville USA. Let’s tip a few to Net Neutrality.
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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 7th, 2007 |
Just last year North American advertisers spent $9.4 billion USD on search engine marketing (SEM), a 62% increase ov