Owner: Epiphany Search Marketing Blog URL:http://www.epiphanysolutions.co.uk/blog/ Join Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 05:51:40 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Search Marketing blog form Epiphany Solutions, Northern Englands leading search marketing agency. Topics covered include search engine optimisation, pay per click advertising, blog marketing, social media and online crisis management. Site statistics:Click here
Adwords 102 - Getting Up And Running 2007-05-14 18:01:23 So, you’ve read Adwords
101, and decided you want to give it a go - what next?
Well, you’ll need a few things before you switch your campaign on, primarily a budget, a list of keywords, some adverts, an idea of the sort of bids that you’re going to be making, and a credit card.
Well, I can’t help with the credit card, but here are some thoughts on the rest of it…
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Adwords 101 - How To Start An Adwords Campaign 2007-05-11 12:37:08 So, you’ve decided you want to start a campaign in Adwords
, have you?
And you’ve probably heard the horror stories of people blowing thousands of pounds in a few days?
Perhaps people have been talking about the ‘Content Network’, ‘Quality Scores’ and ‘Sweet Spots’?
And you’ve no idea how to arrange your keywords into adgroups, write good adverts, or even which keywords you should or shouldn’t be bidding on? And what about the different matching types?
And those e-books, telling you how to make millions of pounds/dollars/euros/whatever - are they any good?
Well, to be honest, setting up a campaign that’s at least reasonably good is quite simple - there aren’t many real ‘tricks of the trade’, you just follow the basic rules, and you’ll find out quite quickly, and cheaply, whether PPC (Pay-Per-Click) is for you…
(more…) Read more:Start
, Campaign
Is Adwords Fundamentally Flawed? 2007-05-04 13:00:47 So Adwords
measures an advert’s quality primarily on its clickthrough rate, then? And the objective, therefore, is to get as many virtual people through the virtual door as possible, then?
But isn’t there a bit of a conflict here? If I was running a shop, and I had to pay people to walk through the doors, I’d try to be as selective as possible, and yet Google is rewarding you for doing the opposite.
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Managing A Small PPC Budget 2007-04-25 11:09:08 OK, so you’ve only got a little bit of cash to advertise on Google, and you’re not sure how to make the most of it - your sweet spot means that you run out of cash by lunchtime, and you don’t know what to do about it…
Well, it’s actually not as difficult as it sounds - in fact, having a restrictive budget can simplify things quite a lot.
(more…) Read more:Small
Web Accessibility and SEO - The most important visitor to your website is blind and his name is Larry. 2007-04-19 14:16:20 Seems like a bold statement to make doesn’t it? Well I don’t think it is and in this article I hope to explain why, to both business owners and website
developers alike.
Let me explain. Roughly 80% of all UK search traffic originates from Google. In the majority of cases, your long term website traffic (& conversions) will originate from a search engine (insert your own Social Media caveat here). Before this online behemoth and others can begin sending you those potential customers it has to visit, ‘read’ and ‘understand’ your website, not just once, but hopefully time and time again. How else can Google decide on which pages to recommend to its users? ‘The machine’ (or rather several thousand servers) that does this is know as the Google Bot.
(more…) Read more:Accessibility
, SEO
, Larry
The Hidden Cost Of Increasing Your Bids To Move Up The Search Results 2007-04-02 18:07:33 I wrote the other week about how to find the sweet spot for your advert, the position that generates the most profit for you.
But it’s a long and slow process, if you are just interested in making a small change to your bids (maybe as a result of a change to your quality score or conversion rate). There’s a shortcut that you can take, but only if you’re careful…
(more…) Read more:Hidden
, Increasing
, Search
PPC Earthquake: Chinwag Event in London 2007-03-28 19:56:25 Chinwag’s PPC earthquake event on tuesday night was entertaining. Hosted by Mike Butcher, as per his usual style, discussions cut to the chase immediately. This was a welcome break from the normal sanitized chat on PPC that occurs at these types of events. Panellists included three agencies, Blue Barracuda, Latitude and Neutralize and Nigel Leggat from Microsoft Adcenter. (names updated)
Firstly, i liked to say that most PPC events tend to be pretty dull for anyone who knows about the industry becuase typically what happens is the agencies tow the line and refuse to get drawn into opinionated discussions whilst the search engines play a game of diplomacy. Which all leads to a rather luke warm discussion on what is now a more mature industry. Nonetheless, there were lots of things to nod at or mumble under your breath about.
(more…) Read more:Earthquake
Search Engine Optimisation and Babies. 2007-03-21 15:30:10 As a bit of a departure from my normal technical heavy SEO ramblings, I have decided to assess if the new wireless, paper-free, mobile office and all the gizmos involved will allow me to successfully monitor, manage and maintain my clients SEO projects and my team while on maternity leave.
(more…) Read more:Search
, Engine
, Optimisation
, Babies
, Search Engine
, Search Engine Optimisation
Pay Per Action 2007-03-20 21:10:43 Google breaks another barrier in advertising!
After its achievements in Pay Per Click, Google is now pushing the boundaries of advertising even further by introducing a pay for performance model called Pay Per Action
.
You decide what to pay based on what action you want your site visitors to perform. Whether that be to fill in a sign up form, visit a particular page or even purchase a product.
Its only in beta testing in the US right now but it sounds like it should break some serious barriers to entry for small firms.
Read the full story here:
Google’s Pay Per Action
How Adwords Uses The Quality Score To Decide Your Advert’s Position, And Why It Matters 2007-03-15 09:58:47 Most people understand that Google AdWords assigns a QualityScore
to your keyword and advert, and that this is combined with the cost per click to somehow decide how much you have to pay per click, and what position your advert appears in.
But few actually understand exactly how it happens, and quite how important your quality score really is. If you’re one of these people, then read on, and I’ll explain…
(more…) Read more:Adwords
, Advert
5 hot tips to turn the heat up on your AdWords campaign 2007-03-13 22:10:30 To bid or not to bid, that is not the question
A short time ago in a city not so far away (from Leeds anyway) i came up with what i felt was the Killer App for AdWords. This was a long time before i’d come across the long tail concept, chris anderson’s blog and my favourite Keyword Research tool of 2007, Hittail. Basically, the Killer App was a log file analyser that primarily focussed on the search terms that delivered traffic to your website. This tool would look at exactly what query delivered traffic to your website and tell you how unique it was.
Why would i build a tool solely to do that? Simply becuase with the help of other pay-per-click bid management tools you can report on the ROI per keyword. Google, and now Yahoo and MSN, allow you to choose exactly what keywords and search term combinations you are bidding on and the ROI that each one, individually, is delivering.
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PR is Dead, Long Live SEO! 2007-03-09 10:04:56 These days, the lines between search marketing and public relations are blurring. Sure, the PR world will always rule the traditional media because of long standing journalistic relationships, but online is becoming more and more important. Any PR agency that denies that simply has its head in the sand.
This leaves us with a big question, “Who should handle online brand reputation management, Crisis Management and press release distribution - SEO
professionals or PR consultants?”
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Google drops the bomb on googlebombing. 2007-03-02 05:20:59 Backlinks backfire
I’ve been hit by it. You may have been too. February 2007 saw a massive index change as far as a lot of SEOs are concerned. Personally I lost 4 really competitive positions (top 3 on high traffic terms) on one website. These positions were literally buried in the results. Another was totally unaffected. Others are complaining too in the discussion forums
Really takes the wind out of your sails… You work and work and then it feels like Google
just takes the rug right from under your feet.
Personally I’d been working a year on my site, and almost feel like i’m back to square one.
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AdWords Secrets Revealed 2007-07-11 05:00:12 Many of you here may have been reading Steves blog posts about Google AdWords and how to get the most out of it. His posts have been very informative and extremely popular so we decided to give him even more work to do and ask him to put an interactive guide together about everything he knows of the Adwords world!
And here it is Adwords Expert Guide
Please pop over and have a look, ask as many questions as you like, we really want to keep him busy! Read more:Secrets
Getting Down and Dirty with Social Media Optimisation 2007-09-25 04:46:10 Social Media Optimisation
SMO is something you can expect to hear a lot more about over the coming year as Social Networks increasingly come to dominate the web landscape. As part of an over arching Search Marketing Campaign for many it is no longer going to be good enough just to be on the front page of Google and have a professional adwords campaign. There is a new player in town and whilst you can ignore SMO today if you wish, tomorrow it may be crucial to your online success.
It’s important to remember that the web is still relatively young as an industry. Whilst I think we’re beyond the automobiles industry benchmark of the the Ford Model T, we’re nowhere near the deterioration of Detroit! The longevity of Search Engine Optimisation is less clear, but you can be guaranteed that as the web moves out of pubescence / young adulthood its evolution will have an effect on the way Search Marketing operates. Social Media Optimisation could be only the first of many exam Read more:Social
Google Adwords CPA model launches 2007-09-24 15:33:19 Tonight Google
have launched their new CPA model
that we have been hearing about so much.
The new ‘conversion optimizer’ tool as they are calling it will ask you for a maximum bid and attempt to optimise your adwords campaign to hit this target. It will only work on campaigns that are seeing at leasts 300 conversions per month but it sounds interesting.
The only downside we can see is that we can all hit low cpa’s by dropping our bids and only bidding on very specific keywords, how it takles volume conversions is another thing!
Let us know your thoughts….
Google announcement here: CPA Targetting Read more:Adwords
, Google Adwords
RIP Overture Keyword Suggester ? 2007-09-17 03:41:05 The fact that Yahoo have ceased to update their Overture
keyword suggestion tool has been known for several months. Overture US was last updated in January 07 and the UK data was last refreshed in May 07 and Yahoo have officially commented on their termination of support for the tool.
This morning however, it seems that the tool has become completely defunct as no terms return any search results. Does this mean the tool is officially dead ? Either way this throws a serious issue for the little guys who relied on the fact the Overture tool was free.
So what now ?
With Wordtracker now using UK data there is now a solid alternative at a cost. £15 per week / £29 per month / £149 per year. Having now used this tool with the UK data (I wouldn’t have recommended it to the UK market prior) I can say it is a sound investment and the billing structure makes it accessible to both big and small whether you want to cram all your Keyword
Research into a single week or have the tool on hand
The Search Marketing ‘Remix’ 2007-10-22 10:47:46 Having sat on both sides of the fence it can be easy to see why many marketing agencies offer faux search marketing services, white labeling third party suppliers for the ‘greater good’ of the client. The attitude of we control media spend, ergo we control you…’Let’s not confuse things’
The question that begs to be answered is what are the benefits of this white labeled lip service over open relationships, where the search marketing company is brought in as a trusted supplier alongside the media buyer?
(more…) Read more:Search
, Marketing
Why should I use a SEO Agency? 2007-10-26 05:58:37 Many a time, companies large and small ask themselves… why do we need to use an SEO
agency; we have a web development team - why not get them to do it?
Asking this question is usually a result of a marketing manager’s lack of knowledge. They assume that because SEO involves the website, the web development team must be able to do it. This is certainly not the case; many areas of the website may require the input of an external company. There are 2 areas that I strongly feel should be performed by an external company:
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A little extra help from Google Webmaster Tools. 2007-12-14 09:26:16 Yesterday (14 December 2007) saw a nice addition to the data available through the GoogleWebmasterTools
application. Content Analysis shows issues relating to content and meta data that might deter Google from crawling or indexing your site including long page titles, short meta description, duplicate meta data, non-indexable content.
(more…) Read more:little
Google is Coogle 2007-12-12 08:00:40 We all know that when people think computers that they think Geek! Nerd! Swat! Wedgy! Well let me tell you computers are cool, in fact they're Coogle!
(more…) Read more:Google
Split test your way to perfection 2007-12-19 07:18:52 Test, test and test again!
It is no longer enough to get hundreds or thousands of visitors a month to your website it's the action your visitors take when they get to your website that's important.
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Handling Canonicalisation and Multiple Domain Forwarding via IIS 2008-02-19 09:05:49 One technical issue that we identify at the start of most SEO projects is Canonicalisation (Canonicalization for the USA). For those who don’t already know, Canonicalisation is basically having your site rendering as and
Ideally a site should only render under a single domain to avoid any problems with duplicate content. Although Google claims [...] Read more:Handling
, Multiple
, Forwarding
Stretching your marketing budget that little bit further. 2008-01-24 07:52:01 I have just read a blog post on Sphinn about social media and how it can be a cheap and easy addition to any marketing strategy. As I am fairly new to social media and SMO (social media optimisation) I regularly read Sphinn to keep up with the latest discussions and am starting to [...] Read more:Stretching
, budget
, little
Google challenge students to Adwords competition 2008-01-18 10:47:57 Working in collaboration with University professors Google
have come up with “The Google Online Marketing Challenge”, an opportunity for students to get real practical experience of Online Marketing, specifically Google Adwords
campaigns. Read more:competition
Cold Hard Cash to use our Search Engine! 2008-05-22 04:32:08 Good old Microsoft, always the bridesmaid never the bride in the field of innovation have taken to extraordinary measures to pull some business from online advertising giant, Google. With the recent bid to take over Yahoo resulting in failure, the usual tactic of embrace, extend and extinguish which Microsoft has enjoyed much success with in [...] Read more:Search
, Engine
, Search Engine
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