Move over, fake news. Columnist David Rodnitzky takes a look at fake facts about online marketing vendors and why Google’s SEO algorithm isn't separating the fake review sites from the real ones.
Search engine marketing is an ever-changing field, and columnist David Rodnitzky warns that agencies that fail to adapt will be left out in the cold.
Ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes with your bid management software? Learn more about how your bids are calculated.
As a general rule, the marketer with the most actionable data wins. There are many types of data but the most useful kind — the GlenGarry data — is first-party data. This article will show you how you can use the data you already have about your best (and worst) customers to improve your online […]
Advertisers frequently tell me, “If you can hit my CPA target, my SEM budget is unlimited!” This is great in theory but often limited in practice — at some point, there simply are no more new keywords, or landing page tweaks, or ad text tests that can increase an advertiser’s SEM spend. Two years ago, […]
I live in a double bubble when it comes to my perceptions of how “America” uses the Internet. The first bubble I live in is Silicon Valley, where the latest venture-funded “SoMoLo” website always seems more important than, say, WalMart.com. The second is my profession of internet marketing, where we obsess about every pixel of […]
Fellow SEM experts, how many times has this happened to you? A newbie joins your company (or a company with which your SEM agency is working) and is convinced that he is an SEM master. He’s read a few SEM books, attended a conference or two, and gone through the AdWords tutorials, after all. It’s […]
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is no longer a “nice to have” for businesses, but rather a “must have.” This wasn’t the case 10 years ago, when SEM got dumped into the “test budget” if there was any money left over after TV, radio, print, out-of-home, display, email, SEO, PR and sponsorships. It turns out, however, […]
This week, I had planned to write an article entitled, “The Five AdWords Features You Should Be Using Daily But Probably Aren’t.” The post was going to expose some of the hidden, advanced features available in AdWords that were often overlooked by even the most senior AdWords pros. That was the plan… until I did an audit […]
As Google continues to look for new monetization opportunities outside of its core AdWords and AdSense traffic, might it consider entering the SEM agency space? Though it sounds preposterous, history suggests that it might not be as crazy as it sounds. But let’s put history aside for a moment and talk about money. Google’s total […]
I guarantee I can reduce your cost-per-acquisition (CPA) on your SEM campaigns. How can I make such a bold claim? Simple: first, I create ad text that says “Get $1,000 free. Apply now!” Next, I create a landing page with a picture of a beautiful woman holding a pile of crisp bills and a simple, […]
I recently got introduced to the Director of Marketing at a very prominent travel company with an equally impressive SEM budget. The director wrote me an email stating that he was “very interested” in talking and wanted me to come to his office right away with an audit of his campaigns, the people that might […]
The amount you make at your job is heavily dependent on two factors: value and scarcity. By value, I mean how much you are contributing (usually financially, but not always) to a company. By scarcity, I am referring to how many people can or will do your exact job. Investment bankers make a lot of […]
I recently saw an incredible presentation by Google Analytics guru/evangelist Avinash Kaushik on “understanding the full value of mobile.” The concept – at least on its face – is simple: to understand the value of a mobile click, you have to look beyond immediate conversions and give credit to all the other ways a customer […]
Search engine marketing’s meteoric rise over the last decade is due, in large part, to the superiority of query-level targeting as compared to other online advertising channels. The targeting edge that SEM once held, however, may be slipping. Indeed, for many advertisers and many verticals, SEM may no longer be the best channel for laser-focused […]
I love benchmarking. I measure the progress of my diet (not going well), the MPG of my car, how my stock portfolio is doing against the market, whether my favorite football team is better than it was last year, and so forth. And, since everyone reading this is a search engine marketer, you are probably […]
The in-house versus agency debate is largely over because for 90% of businesses, it is no longer possible to run a significant (large budget/large volume) online marketing program without agency help. Since I’m an online marketing agency CEO, it’d be fair of you to accuse me of bias and self-interest in making this statement, but […]
The bane of most search marketers’ existence is search query ambiguity. Is a user searching for [one night stand] interested in an illicit affair or a piece of antique oak furniture for his bedroom? Does the query [internet security] reflect the needs of a consumer fed up with viruses or a CIO looking for a […]
I’m writing this from a cruise ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean (well, actually, about 500 yards from Cabo San Lucas). This is my first cruise, and it’s been an interesting experience. My expectation was that this would be an all-inclusive vacation on water; the reality has been somewhere between a crass timeshare […]
Over the last month, I’ve had two clients send me email pitches from other agencies trying to “poach” business away from us. The two pitches were from different agencies, but the message was the same: something is ominously, terribly wrong with the way your current agency is managing your account! Here’s the pitch from the […]
I recently had an AdWords client get blacklisted by Google for policy reasons. Anyone who has worked on AdWords accounts for more than a couple of years has no doubt had this happen to them as well. In this case, I had just launched the client’s account and had bought a total of maybe 20 […]
Targeting in online marketing has gotten really good – scary good, in fact. Think for a moment about the level of granularity that AdWords now provides SEMs. If I wanted to, I could create a targeted campaign that only shows ads to people: In San Mateo, CA Using their iPhone Using WiFi On AT&T Online […]
Imagine doing a search on Google for the word [fuzzy bunny slippers] and seeing a mortgage company touting their wares in the first paid result. Impossible, you say, Google’s Quality Score would crush this hapless mortgage advertiser in just a few impressions, right? Maybe in 2011, but maybe not in 2012. The reason: a new […]
One of the seminal moments in George Orwell’s 1984 occurs when the hero – Winston Smith – is finally convinced by his torturers that 2+2=5. The point of the scene is to show how Oceania (the totalitarian regime in which 1984 is based) has so much control over the mind of its citizens that it […]
B2B SEM often feels like the ugly step-sister of B2C SEM, mainly because the budgets for most B2B campaigns are so much smaller than consumer campaigns. The ‘sexy’ side of B2B SEM, however, is in the potential ROI that a company can get out of a great paid search campaign. Imagine a company that has […]
Imagine you own a restaurant and one day, a couple of big guys in nice suits come through your front door. One of the men introduces himself: “Good evening. My name is Gino, and this my colleague, Salvatore. We’re helping local businesses with their marketing and wanted to see if we could help you.” “Nice […]