To receive our DAILY (Monday - Friday) latest travel news email FREE simply enter your e-mail address below. Click subscribe only once - if submission is successful you will be redirected to a confirmation page.If you ever wish to unsubscribe simply reply to our Latest Travel News Daily Email with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.Stay updated! Subscribe to our Latest Travel News Daily Email Free of Charge - Simply enter your email address below:See other recent news regarding: Airlines, Airports, Awards, Flights, Codeshare, Lounges, First Class, Business Class, MICE, GDS, Rewards, Miles, Hotels, Apartments, Promotions, Spas, Yoga, Retreat, New Hotels, Traffic, Visitor Arrivals, Cruises, Interviews, Free Deals, Videos.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Content Marketing Optimization Session with Lee Odden – PubCon 2010
If content can be searched, it can be optimized.
What are your customers’ content preferences? How do they discover? Consume? Share? Create a profile of your audience(s).
Use tools to create personas of data
Demographic info from Quantcast, CompeteKeyword info from SEMRush, GoogleEngagement info from PostRankSocial network info from Flowtown, RapleafCreate an editorial spreadsheet to plan all content that includes:
TopicKeywordsMedia TypePlaces Repost/Repurpose Content (Newsletter, Slideshare)Places to Promote (Facebook, Twitter, etc)The SEO Content Cycle
Create & promote optimized contentContent is noticed, shared, & visibility growsExposure attracts more subscribers, fans, friends, linksIncrease links and exposure grows search & referral trafficTraffic & community provides data that you can research, develop to further grow social networks for content & SEORepurposing Content Example
Upload video to YouTubeEmbed in a blog post with show notesPost screen shots from video to FlickrUpload images and text as a story in a PowerPoint or PDF, upload to .docstoc, Scribd, etc.Takeaways
Develop & optimize content with customers personas in mindThink like a publisher and create an editorial planDevelop channels of distribution & social linksLeverage both web & social media analyticsSearch Engine Optimization: Know Before You Go
Many companies decide on a whim to jump on the SEO bandwagon without really understanding the ramifications. While SEO is becoming more and more vital to a successful business model, there are many things that need to be considered before moving forward. Below are a few points to get the juices flowing.
Seems like a simple thing, but you need to know how SEO will fit into the overall marketing objectives of your company. What will it accomplish? What do you want it to accomplish? Don’t just do SEO because everyone else is doing it. Do it for a specific reason.
Why Companies Made Major Marketing Shift in 2010 (free whitepaper)
SEO.com releases whitepaper outlining a radical change in marketing spending across the country, and identifies the return on investment for search marketing.
SALT LAKE CITY – In this ever-changing digital age, marketing has made a momentous change. Companies of all sizes are shifting advertising and marketing budgets from traditional strategies to search engine optimization and other forms of online marketing.
“When we look at the numbers out there, it’s very revolutionary,” said Nelson James, president of SEO.com. “What used to be the main strategy for marketers has taken a back seat.”
Forrester Research said marketers spent $26 billion in 2010 in Internet marketing, which rivals all spending on cable/satellite TV and radio. Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) said nearly half all companies have decreased spending on traditional areas and are investing more in online marketing.
“We started investing in SEO for the first time this year, and the payoff has been tremendous,” said Sarah Huizingh, marketing manager for Spillman Technologies, a company that specializes in public safety software. Huizingh said Spillman took money out of the print advertising budget to invest in SEO.
Traditional strategies that are taking the biggest hit include print and direct mail. A recent SEMPO survey reported that 49 percent of companies are shifting money from their print advertising budget and putting it toward search engine optimization services, pay per click management and social media marketing. In 2010, 36 percent moved money away from their direct mail budget and 17 to 24 percent of companies made a similar shift away from conferences and exhibits, yellow page ads, and TV and radio ads.
So, what are the reasons for this change in behavior?
“It really comes down to three things,” James said. “Especially in a poor economy, people are looking for marketing solutions that target their demographic better, are highly measurable and show how each spent marketing dollar makes money.”
Strategies like SEO and PPC target customers at the moment they want to buy. Social media has the potential to engage millions of customers. Through analytics, marketers can accurately track where customers come from, how long they stay on a site, what campaigns bring in the most sales and more.
On average, SEO.com clients that have been doing search marketing for six months or more, receive an average return on investment of nearly 2,500 percent – or the equivalent of receiving $25 for every $1 spent.
“Online marketing enables companies to track each spent penny and is proven to deliver a really big ROI,” James said. “It’s probably the biggest reason why more are shifting their marketing budgets. As a result, traditional advertising is getting the leftovers of the marketing budget.”
For more detailed information, images, graphs and statistics about this shift in the marketing world, and the average ROI of 2,500 percent, read the whitepaper “Shift: From Traditional to Online Search Marketing” here: http://www.seo.com/Shift_Whitepaper.pdf
About SEO.com
SEO.com is a SEO firm that delivers a big ROI for its clients by driving traffic to their websites through aggressive search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, and social media marketing. SEO.com then turns those visitors into sales through user-friendly design and conversion optimization. Clients range from small startups to Fortune 100 companies.
Tags: internet marketing, marketing spending, Marketing trends, online marketing, Pay Per Click, Search marketing roi, seo, Social Media, traditional marketing
“All These Keywords in my AdWords Campaign Can’t Be Hurting, Can They?” WRONG! They Can!
Posted By WebAdvantage.net on Mar 18th, 2011
When managing an AdWords campaign, one of the most common mistakes people make is piling on too many keywords. Their assumption—that more keywords equals more chances for their ad to be shown and get clicked—seems like a logical one. However, what they fail to realize is that having too many keywords is most likely dragging their Quality Score down.
These so-called “bad keywords” are easy to spot in your AdWords campaigns by checking the Status column:
The quality and relevance of your keywords and ads are the most important factors in your campaign’s ranking and performance. An individual keyword’s Quality Score is determined by its click-through rate (CTR), relevance to its Ad Group, historical performance, and other relevancy factors. Therefore, the higher the Quality Score of your keywords, the less you pay for each click on your ad.
In this light, you can think of your Google AdWords campaign as an equation with the Quality Score being the most important part:
Google’s Quality Score is intended to ensure search users that they will find the information they are looking for quickly and easily by showing only those ads which are most relevant to their search queries.
Here’s the official explanation on Quality Scores from Google:
The AdWords system calculates a Quality Score for each of your keywords. It looks at a variety of factors to measure how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user’s search query. A keyword’s Quality Score updates frequently and is closely related to its performance. In general, a high Quality Score means that your keyword will trigger ads in a higher position and at a lower cost-per-click (CPC).
A Quality Score is calculated every time your keyword matches a search query — that is, every time your keyword has the potential to trigger an ad. Quality Score is used in several different ways, including:
Google recommends that accounts are best organized in the following way:
One campaignSeveral tightly themed ad groups10-35 relevant keywords per ad group2-3 relevant ads per ad groupThe best way to improve your keywords’ quality scores is by optimizing your account. Here are some specific things that you can do:
Make sure that each keyword in each ad group closely relates to the ad(s) and the landing page.Don’t use broad or general keywords since they tend to generate many impressions but very few clicks.Strive to optimize keywords with a low CTR.Vary the match types.Use keywords made up of two or three words.Include relevant variations (plural, singular, synonyms, misspellings, etc.).Get rid of low search volume keywords unless they are: A new productA competitor’s termSeasonalEvent-based keywordsP.S. If you need help optimizing your AdWords campaigns for higher Google Quality Scores, we offer a full suite of PPC Campaign Management services. Give us a call at (410) 942-0488 or submit an RFP to learn how we can help.
Comments(2)How Keyword Research and Competitive Search Fuels Display Campaigns
Posted By Jaime on Mar 4th, 2011
This article by Hollis Thomases originally appeared in ClickZ on February 22, 2011.
Traditionally, the worlds of online display advertising and search marketing have mainly operated in silos. The two tactics may both be part of the bigger online strategy, but the people involved with search generally do not really work in or understand display and vice-versa. Lately however, it feels like there’s a greater interest in fusing the two worlds together, maybe fueled by the diversion of traffic away from search and into social media and/or Google’s rebranding of its Content Network into Display Network. Regardless, when the search and display professionals come together, a lot can be gained from the sharing of information. Today, let me give my media planning brethren some tips from the search side.
Keywords Tell a Lot
For the online media strategist, an existing PPC campaign can be a goldmine of information. Keyword performance can help sculpt various directions of the campaign from its creative concepts, messaging and copywriting to identifying sites to target for placements or new niche opportunities. Don’t have an existing PPC campaign to turn to? Consider a bit of keyword research in the vein of a start-up PPC campaign for all the same insights mentioned previously.
Begin by using the same keyword research tools a PPC specialist would:
Web analytics: Understanding what keywords are already driving traffic to the site and where that traffic travels throughout the site and if that traffic converts into the desired action can be quite revealing. Doing a gap analysis of the advertiser’s objectives versus what they’re actually achieving should provide the media strategist with some informative insights and direction.Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool: The “granddaddy” of free keyword research tools, this tool allows you to gauge the popularity or importance of a keyword or keyword phrase based upon its search volume, while at the same time identifying other related keyword phrases. The tool lets you manipulate your query in all sorts of ways, for example, limiting results by geography, by type device accessing the search, by product category, and more. Once served, you can also manipulate and sort the data. In the below example, limiting results to the Anti-Aging category, I queried for some skincare keywords as searched for on mobile devices within the U.S. and then sorted by the most popular U.S. searches.
You can take your favorite keywords from this list and toggle over to the Traffic Estimator to get some projections on volume and cost, both of which the media buyer might want to use for perspective if you’re trying to deliver a direct response campaign through display advertising and needs to negotiate CPMs on an eCPA basis.
Useful Information From Competitive Search
In addition to datamining existing advertiser and generic public assets, it can be useful to apply the same techniques as above to some of the free and paid competitive search tools. Google AdWords’ Analyze Competition feature, SEMRush, and SpyFu are all free or quasi-free tools. The Search Monitor, a for-fee platform, gives all kinds of juicy information about competitors as well as trademark infringements and affiliate miscreants. AdGooroo, also a for-fee platform, has some similar elements as The Search Monitor along with a “Display Insight” feature which can definitely be exploited by a media planner/buyer.
Another Thing You Can Do With Keywords
I’m a big fan of contextual advertising, much of which is based on keywords, so your campaign may only perform as well as you’ve compiled a sound list of proven keywords to provide to your vendors. Your contextual network representative can tell you not only how many impressions they estimate, but also what related keywords you might have missed and other opportunities to exploit your list.
Want to hear more on this topic? Come hear me speak on the “Crossing the Digital Divide: The Leap from Search to Display” panel at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York next month!
Comments(0)Tools for Competitive Intelligence Session – PubCon 2010
A quick recap of content from a competitive analysis session of PubCon 2010 with Matt Siltala, Michael Streko, Michael Gray, and Andy Beal.
Matt Siltala
Things to identify about the competition:
Hubs. Check PRWeb search, Digg, or article site search to see what’s being said about your competition, what they’re doing, and even which keywords they’re going after. You can make a spreadsheet of keywords that are being targeted by your competitors. Check local review sites to see which specials are being offered.
Tools. Use AuthorityLabs to put competitors side by side with keywords and identify areas to attack.
Social Media. You can use Social Media For Firefox plugin, Knowem, Who’s Talkin, Twitter Search/Lists, Image Search, SEO For Firefox plugin to identify.
Do “link:www.competitor.com” together with the Social Media For Firefox plugin to identify the best content.
Identify competitor keywords. What your competitors may be using may be converting better than your keywords. Test with Adsense. Make sure you’ve got enough good content on your site around your competitors’ keywords.
Michael Streko
Ways to find the “Next Move” of the company you’re looking at:
Search their code.Check out their Robots.txt. You could find a test site, pictures, a new product or domain, etc.Google search for possible partners.Check http://dotheyfolloweachother.com to see who people in your competitors’ organization are close to.Follow their company on LinkedIn.com Fan the Facebook page. If someone leaves, call them right away and find out why.Know Who Links To ThemRead their content, don’t be afraid to email a site linking to a page that has out-of-date content and request a new link to your better version of content. Use incompetence to your advantage.Become an affiliate of your competitors’ sites, find out “earnings per click” to get a good idea of traffic.Non-Internet Bonus Tactic: call your competitor and walk through the process.Michael Gray
Using Blekk0.com – use “/adsense=XXXXXXXX” with the Adsense code or analytics code and get a list of competitor sites.Use Tineye.com to see where an individual has other profiles and whether they are legitimate.Quarkbase will show popularity of content.Use a Google search for “submitted on” OR “submitted by” OR “discovered by” OR “posted by” to determine which content is being submitted and by whom. Identify the pattern of content “sneezers” when new content is being promoted/submitted. Try to get into the circle. TwitterCircles.com will help you identify who competitors are connecting with.Andy Beal
Look for customer rants. Poach clients, promote your alternative, improve your own products and services to avoid these same issues.Look for any negativity coming from competitor employees or clients. Blow on the spark that lights the fuse.Use Twitter. Use custom parameters at search.twitter.com and set up competitive searches. If X employee talks to Y employee about Z keyword, track it. Export as RSS. Take advantage of private Twitter lists.DomainTools.com/Registrant-Alert/ and /Mark-Alert will let you spy on competitors to find out when they’re registering new domains.Oodle.com/job helps spy on job listings. Look up competitors’ name and create an RSS feed then aggregate multiple competitors.Tags: Competitive Analysis, pubcon 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)