From Search Engine Land: Finally! Yahoo Search Weather Report : January 2010 The Yahoo Search Blog dusts itself off to announce a search update happening right now. The last “weather report” Yahoo announced was in September 2009 – typically, Yahoo would announce these updates monthly. We actually expected this to be announced. I was tracking […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Beats Estimates With Very Strong Q4: $6.67 Billion Google posted a very strong Q4, given the recession, with $6.67 billion in revenues. This beats financial analyst general consensus estimates. Here […]
If you asked some of the best online marketers in the business what one piece of advice they can give you to help make your site better, stronger or more profitable, I bet most would say “test your pages, test your techniques, and test your theories.” The one constant in search engine marketing is change. […]
Content marketing is one of the most powerful tools for B2B marketers, most of whom likely have content development as a substantial part of their 2010 marketing plans. But before you get started with developing more content marketing assets, take a step back to assess your efforts to date. Below are six steps to help […]
I’d like to humbly offer three steps to becoming a conversion rate optimization guru and a better person into the bargain. At first I thought I might like to write this post as a semi-comic (if I wrote it right) Glengarry Glen Ross style rant “A-B-C…A-always, B-be, C-conversion rate 0ptimizing,” but I decided that might […]
Paid search landing pages matter. Picking the wrong pages -- as machines usually do -- hurts conversion rates which forces down bids, which shrinks the size of the paid search program.
If you’ve been around me you’ve probably heard me say this, but it bears repeating: As soon as you, the marketer, pay for a search click, someone will want to know what you got for it. This means that you will need effective ways to both optimize and report out results on your campaign. This […]
Website owners and search professionals alike often overlook finding behaviors after a searcher clicks on a link to a website from a search engine results page (SERP). One of those finding behaviors is called orientation or orienting. Orientation is a search behavior that no SEO professional, search engine advertiser, or website owner should dismiss. Quick-and-easy orientation contributes to a positive brand experience, increases conversions and sales, and makes content easier to find.
Day three is just about complete of PubCon Vegas 2009, at least the conference sessions. I thought I share many of the session coverage I found written on the various blogs throughout the day. Here is PubCon Vegas day three coverage: Best of PubCon 2009, Managing Greatness Competitive Intelligence: Know Thy Competitor Well, outspokenmedia.com Holiday […]
Google AdWords announced two updates including new alerts and place pages in performance reports, let me explain both in more detail. The new alerts are designed to help you stay on top of your campaigns. In addition to the billing alerts, they added alerts for new keyword and budget ideas in the Opportunities tab. Also, […]
Data driven anticipatory bidding can turn an ordinary holiday bump into something extraordinary. Here are some tips for how to take apart and act on the data.
As explained in my last article -- search engines can tell you a lot about your customers. Specifically I shared a few tools that enable marketers to identify buyer needs, emerging market trends, and competitive threats. Today I’ll cover another (free) tool that can help you understand your customers’ entire search process, and the best ways to capitalize on this data to improve marketing results.
Can an ecommerce store’s product detail pages bog a visitor down in too much detail? Can you provide the wrong information and leave people with unanswered questions? My friend and occasional client Michael runs Greek For Me, an apparel store for Greek fraternities and sororities. He recently asked me for usability consulting to help him […]
The importance and impact of online testing on your conversion rates cannot be understated. Yet as powerful as testing can be, it is a double-edged sword that can actually set you back if you are not careful. Poorly designed tests can take years to complete, and even worse, they might not provide concrete insights to […]
Link building tends to be viewed as on off-page activity – you’re not messing with title tags or site architecture and you don’t actually have to touch the site itself or write new content. However, if all you are doing is building more inbound links to your site without doing any analysis of on-page factors, […]
Ah, the holidays—the most wonderful time of the year for retailers. Even though the uncertain economy has retailers only cautiously projecting an uptick in sales this holiday season compared to last year’s dismal downturn, the truth still holds that most will make 25-40% of their yearly sales in November and December. What is unique for […]
For all its faults, Wikipedia has a lot to teach us about usability. Here are three things that Wikipedia does right that I think websites should emulate to better engage users, boost time on site, and hopefully lead to more conversions. Summary sections Wikipedia offers summaries at the top of its feature-length articles. While I […]
Read the search marketing press today and you’ll find abundant information on the importance of bid management strategies, as well as tools to maximize campaign ROI. However, as anybody who’s managed a search campaign recently knows, bid levels are only part of the equation. Effective search marketers know that search engines are looking to maximize […]
We’ve all experienced it at some point; the sneaking suspicion that those we’ve chosen to trust may not be entirely worthy. Take web sites, for example. We visit a web site, look around and like what it has to offer. We want to believe that the site—and the company behind it—has our best interests at […]
Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist, posted some pretty interesting details on how the conversion rate of an ad differs based on the position of the ad in Google. Google’s data shows that overall the conversion rate does not vary all that much based on the ad position. Hal said, if “an ad that had a […]
In a new report by Harvard professor Ben Edelman shows how he believes Google and its partners inflate conversion rates and, in turn, increase advertising costs. From his report: Google and its partners systematically inflate advertisers’ conversion rates by interceding in transactions advertisers would otherwise have received for free. This conversion-inflation syndication fraud overstates the […]
Many B2B marketers use web forms to facilitate registrations, generate leads, or to acquire customers. Improving implementation of online forms can have a dramatic, positive impact on increasing conversion rates and maximizing ROI associated with B2B marketing programs. In my last article, Six Usability Tips to Maximize B2B Website Conversion, I briefly touched on one […]
In the past, SEO success was measured by rankings of target keywords; then the focus moved to traffic; today we have moved into the bottom-line era: organic traffic should be measured by its impact on revenue. This post is based on a presentation delivered at eMetrics San Jose 2009. It is about ways to integrate […]
You have probably heard multiple pitches from advertising agencies and SEM firms looking to take over the search engine marketing campaign for your company. When was the last time one of these firms offered to pay for all of the ads up-front and be paid only for the sales and leads generated? Not too often, […]
With more products, features and prices available in comparison to physical stores, the sheer time and transportation savings are making the Web an increasingly preferred shopping venue. In fact, according to the latest Forrester research, online shopping is growing five times faster than brick and mortar stores, with a projected growth of 14 percent by […]
Dylan wrote, “When you ain’t got nothin’, you got nothing to lose,” but when you’re spending real dollars on search engine marketing you have plenty lose. And yet, according recent survey of 500 marketers, most search marketers still use the most basic metrics in evaluating the performance of their programs. How basic? While marketers picked […]
There’s no question that the vast majority of brand loyalty is created post click—once consumers are brought to a landing page with relevant offers and other brand messaging. However, what happens in that 2-3 second window prior to the click? A lot more brand building than you think. First impressions count Search marketers spend countless […]
Most books on search marketing focus on either the technical aspects of SEO or paid search, or on how to adapt traditional marketing strategies to the web. Web Design For ROI, by Lance Loveday and Sandra Niehaus, is unique in its sharp focus on making your web site accomplish what should be its primary goal: […]
I have been fascinated watching how the search ad space has been impacted by the current global recession. Rimm-Kaufman has posted early first quarter PPC data showing the weak trends in retail for search advertisers. Let me summarize his retail client data: Approximately 20% reduction in sales from search ads from last year Approximately 20% […]
Google has added claims to its Google Checkout Merchant homepage that having Google Checkout as part of your AdWords ads will lead to higher conversions and a better click through rate. Google specifically writes that conversions will increase by 40% and the click-through-rate on your ads will increase by 10%. Here is a screen capture […]
B2B marketers invest a substantial amount of time, effort, and money driving visitors to websites. Making sure the site adheres to basic usability principles is critical to maximizing online marketing results and alleviating obstacles that prevent prospects from taking the desired actions. Below are six, easy to implement usability tips to ensure that visitors get […]
In The Trenches is a spotlight of tips, tricks, and news about the tools search engine marketing professionals use to give them a leg up on the competition. My SEM Wish List: All I Want For Christmas is the Perfect Search Tool, Continued In my last column, I explained how much I want a new […]
Have you ever heard a search engine optimization (SEO) professional use the term user experience during a presentation, in an article or as part of a sales pitch? On the web, user experience (commonly abbreviated as UX or UE) is a term used to describe the overall perception, experience, and satisfaction that users have as […]
Why is it that some web sites are golden, compelling visitors to buy while similar web sites, perhaps even offering the same products at similar prices, fail to make the grade? It may be dumb luck on the owner’s part, but a more likely explanation is that the golden site is the result of careful […]
More than 100% ROI. 31% increase in brand awareness. 30% increase in web site traffic. 22% increase in online conversion rates. Does your search marketing agency hit those milestones? If so, you’re a “best in class” company according to a new Aberdeen Group study, What Does it Take to Create Best-In-Class Search Engine Marketing? Aberdeen […]
The holiday season is almost upon us. It’s time to start looking over the inventory, keywords, and offers to make sure you’re ready for Cyber Monday. In today’s column we offer several things to do and important don’ts that will help you have a successful holiday season. Don’t… Blindly test Traffic in December is unlike […]
It’s remarkable that in 2008 there are still many bidding systems in use by SEMs and in-house PPC managers dedicated to “finding the right position” for each keyword. These position crawling systems guarantee inefficiency and lost opportunity; to put it concisely: they’re playing the wrong game. Here’s why:
These days, you can’t go anywhere without hearing about multivariate testing so I thought I’d walk through a landing page test. Along the way, I’ll provide testing pointers and leave you with several testing considerations. I’ll highlight the importance of multivariate testing and show it can yield significant improvements in pay per click (PPC) accounts. […]
B2B sites tend to be more difficult for visitors to find what they’re looking for. Perhaps it’s because things don’t always fit neatly into more intuitive consumer categories. Perhaps it’s because B2B sites are often laden with so much diverse information. While site owners can engineer enhanced usability, better optimize and structure content, or create […]
Quick question: how do you think of your landing pages? (a) As part of your site. (b) As part of your ads. When you reflect on it, the answer probably should be a little of both. For most online marketing campaigns, landing pages are transitional — a bridge from the ad to the site, or […]