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Paid Search: Developments in the field

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Paid search evolves continually

Barb Young of PPC Strategies and Matt Van Wagner of Find Me Faster deliver tips to SEMNE members.

Google has created many new ad innovations

  • Google Local use to be Places, but now it’s melding everything: formerly Biz local now Places
  • Google Sitelinks and Google Product Extensions are two other ad venues

AdWords Extensions

  • Makes your advertisements more useful and relevant
  • Includes a brief intro
  • Enable Ad extensions in campaign settings
  • More dynamic whether user is mobile or desktop, know which location
  • More flex, scalable, work with multiple locations
  • Excellent how-to video

AdWord Extensions allows you to

  • Connect ad to biz places, multiple locations permitted
  • Use ad extensions live, be sure you haven’t messed up prior work
  • PPC ad with a map in it, how local advertising is changing: dynamic and relevant
  • Google Places now supports a service area, don’t have to list your address necessarily
  • Display up to 4 additional links in one ad

Ad Extensions Benefits

  • Branded campaigns and e-commerce: links get 2-4% higher CTR than headline
  • Conversion rate up: 6%, gets visitors to the aspect of site they want to be
  • Make sure you have auto-tagging enabled in analytics

Enabling product ad extensions

  • Displays 6 images within 1 ad
    • Feeds both PPC and organic
    • Be sure to verify and claim URL

Plus Box ad extensions

  • Gives more information on search results
  • Shows 6 images relevant to query
  • Use same images and product in PPC and organic
    • Powerful, allows to bid down PPC a bit
    • Datafeed: every product needs unique titles and descriptions
    • Plus Box Show Rate: when shown is 6.5% – people still getting used to it

Plus Box extension benefits

  • Avg 30% click through rate, in some cases 90%, increase 13% conversion rate

Search Engine Optimization: Boost your site’s popularity

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SEO tips to use to increase traffic on to your site and enhance visibility and marketability, from the Boston SEO meetup Search Engine Optimization tips.

Title

  • Make it descriptive
  • Use keywords

Use Keywords

  • 2-5 distinct keywords per page
  • Use keywords in headline
  • Get your keywords off your site as well: Build links with videos, articles, press releases

Use Metatags

  • These are a summary for result pages
  • 50% of time, searchers decide to click on site due to metatags

URL structure is the page filename

  • Write it to be unique

Internal and external linking

  • Link building is marketing not a science project
  • Link building is about building brand and reputation
  • Pick your battles, don’t create 500 mirror pages = poor user experience
  • Make a unique description for each external site, titles should have 1 keyword

Image tags should contribute to page

XML sitemaps: All search engines to index page

Market your website

  • Go after major markets first
  • Use PPC for targeting
  • Get biz listed in as many directories as possible
  • Merchantcircle, CitySquares
  • Marketing should be integrated

Top 10 FAQs or what they should be asking, according to Trafficgeiser

Track your page often

  • Track everything
  • Analytics
  • Add a tracking phone number
  • Create promotions to help track
  • Measurement shows what’s working
  • Keep up with webmaster guidelines, review everything at least every 2 months

Social Media for Competitive Intelligence: A strategy for success

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By Alexandra Smith

At Podcamp 5 Boston, Michelle Wolverton’s  “Using Social Media for Competitive Intelligence” provides tips to find out your competitor’s self perception and weaknesses to use for your business’ development.

Start your computers and get ready to rumble…

Round 1:  Take data and analyze it to obtain competitive intelligence

  • Data: information put on social networks about services and products.  You need three sources of data to confirm a fact.
  • Competitive intelligence: putting puzzle pieces* together to find out how to make your product and its features grow.
  • Puzzle pieces = new technology, new products and services, new markets, mergers, and acquisitions.

Round 2: Use social media networks

LinkedIn, various job boards, etc. – to find out what companies are looking for in their candidates. This will help you determine what kind of products they need to do their jobs.

  • Look at key terms – what market is the competitor trying to attract?
  • How does the competitor view itself? Who do they think they are? How do they want to be searched?
  • Look at the social media profiles of competitors’ employees (i.e. disgruntled employees’ Facebook posts) – it will tell you what the competitor is doing wrong internally.

Social Media provides an advantage on your competition

  • You must have a system to collect this information from social media – get a dashboard, listening platform, etc.
    • Have a list of your competitors and sift through all of their employees’ SM posts
  • With Google Research, you can see who is using what keywords. This is valuable internally.
    • What are your company’s keywords?
  • Use Twiangulate.com to find out what competitors are following your company’s moves and posts. Use this for business intelligence.
  • RSS feeds can be valuable to help you gather information, but you need people who are responsible purely for analyzing them.
  • A daily Google search for all of this information would take way too much time.

And some final things to keep in mind before entering the competition

  • Like any skill or sport, this will not have good ROI at the beginning: It takes time.  Practice makes perfect, right?
  • Understand that you missed important information in the past, but you can be prepared to respond the next time.

Which tools are you using? Or what’s keeping you from utilizing social media in this way?

Can you future-proof your website? Tips for minimizing effects of Google’s search algorithm evolution

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Reacting to the Google Mayday update Eric Covino of Creative Signals offers tips for minimizing effects of Google’s algorithm alterations at the June 7 SEO Meetup.

Create websites that withstand search engine updates

First, are you in a market you can compete in? If so:

1. Focus on links

2. Interact where users may be

  • Promote your site in various places, wherever your audience may be hanging out:
    • Once you get traffic, capture attention or get them to fill something out.
  • Pursue what’s new and how it can help clients.

Personal search, mobile, social media fill the future

  • Personal search going to matter more and followers will matter more, try to be in as many spots as possible
  • People searching within social applications will become a bigger part of Search
  • Have to be sure you’re in directories and social sites
    • The longer it goes, the more fragmented it’ll get
  • Yelp app gets more hits than the website
  • Apple says iAds expected to serve 48% of mobile ad market

Is search doomed?

  • As long as search engines exist, it will be important to understand how they work
  • Title tags and metatags have already started dying
  • Bookmarking sites in a browser will end
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