Head of Google’s crime spam fighting team, Matt Cutts, put the cat amongst the pigeons last month when he answered an audience question at the SMX Advanced conference about the value of using rel=”no follow” for PageRank sculpting purposes. When asked if it was a good idea to use nofollow when linking around within your site, Matt said no.

NoFollow is a method to annotate a link to say to search engines “I don’t want to vouch for this link.” In Google, nofollow links don’t pass PageRank.

According to Matt, more than a year ago, Google changed how the PageRank flows so that links WITHOUT nofollow would flow lesser points of PageRank than before and that links WITH the nofollow attribute would count toward how PageRank is divided up amongst all links on a page.

Seems SEOs and webmasters were getting a little bit trigger happy with their use of rel=”no follow” for Google crawl prioritization and were accidently blocking Googlebot from indexing important parts of their site.

Matt later clarified the issue with his blog post PageRank Sculpting:

“[We] noticed some sites that attempted to change how PageRank flowed within their sites, but those sites ended up excluding sections of their site that had high-quality information (e.g. user forums)… I wouldn’t recommend [PageRank sculpting], because it isn’t the most effective way to utilize your PageRank. In general, I would let PageRank flow freely within your site. The notion of “PageRank sculpting” has always been a second- or third-order recommendation for us. I would recommend the first-order things to pay attention to are 1) making great content that will attract links in the first place, and 2) choosing a site architecture that makes your site usable/crawlable for humans and search engines alike. For example, it makes a much bigger difference to make sure that people (and bots) can reach the pages on your site by clicking links than it ever did to sculpt PageRank. “

Danny Sullivan has a great follow up post that goes into more detail here.

So the short story is this: PageRank sculpting is no longer effective as a SEO technique (if it ever was). For the most part, the more links on a page, the less PageRank each link gets. Keep that in mind whenever you’re optimizing your site and when you build new pages.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Google PageRank Sculpting is Dead

Darren starts by stating that 6 million tweets a day are going out on Twitter at the moment. He began as a skeptic towards Twitter and is now an addict [sounds familiar!].

Benefits of Twitter for Darren:

• Networking and collaboration
• Research - Darren received 50 responses in 2 mins and 100 responses in 10 minutes to a research question. Therefore he says the potential to capture data from an audience is incredible. He gave an example of a poll he ran on Twtpoll.com “Have you ever tweeted from the toilet?” 59% of respondents hadn’t but scarily 41% said they had!
• Branding
• Driving traffic - Twitter is the #3 referrer to Darren’s blogs
• Water cooler
• Humanizer
• Deepens relationships
• SEO

The Twitter Opportunity:

• Twitter is fastest growing community site on web
• Twitter has had 1,382% growth in the 12 months to Feb 09
• The largest user group on Twitter is 35-49 year olds

Twitter has tweaked their title tags in past week or so. News agencies are talking about Twitter all the time these days.

Twitter Usage by Top 10 Countries:

United States = 47.9%
Germany = 9.2%
United Kingdom = 6.8%
India = 5.9%
China = 2.9%
Australia = 2.9%
Canada = 2.7%
South Africa = 2.0%
Japan = 1.6%
Netherlands = 1.2%

Twitter is the 85th most popular site in Australia at the moment but the trend is increasing.

Business are using Twitter too. They’re letting employees tweet or even making them do so. There are pros and cons to this. The pros are that it makes the business seem more personal and more approachable. The cons include the risk of fallout if the employee managing the Twitter account leaves.

Businesses are also using Twitter as an Internal communications tool, for promoting internal news, mentoring, project status updates, social interactions etc. Similar tools for this include Yammer and Present.ly

We’re seeing more businesses use Twitter as a monitoring reputation management tool as well - watching keywords, tracking brands, reputation management and damage control. Twitter usage by businesses deepens and reinforce relationships and it’s also an opportunity for sales and marketing. Savvy businesses are using Twitter alerts to track mentions of their brands etc. Now some businesses are monitoring their target keywords to see who’s talking about them and then sending them suggestions and tweets that are targeted directly to their interests etc.

Tips for businesses on Twitter (via @pistachio):

• use manners
• dress nicely
• be a good conversationalist

Darren recommends creating a purpose-built Twitter landing page that introduces you and your brand to Twitter followers. Don’t link to your home page, he says.

Before You Start on Twitter:

• Reserve your Twitter accounts NOW
• Learn the culture and language
• Find a tour guide who speaks “twitterese”
• Identify key players
• Listen/ monitor
• Identify objectives

Smart companies have multiple channels on Twitter, says Darren e.g. Dell has 34 Twitter accounts

Tips for Finding Followers:

• Provide value, solve problems, fill needs
• Leverage other profiles and networks
• Ask questions
• Be conversational
• Be active (especially at peak times)
• Offer incentives

Darren uses some automated Twitter tools to auto-tweet while he’s asleep to reach his US audience, but is careful how he uses these. As an example of incentive offering on Twitter, Sitepoint offered a free ebook to anyone who followed them on Twitter and raised 20,000 followers in a short period.

Other Tips:

• Use direct messaging where possible (can damage your brand otherwise)
• Re-frame questions for your followers instead of the one word answer - adds value to your followers, brings everyone into the conversation
• Be playful
• Work with rhythms of your followers
• Be careful of automated tweets because some people unfollow those who use automated “thanks for following” type messages
• Be a thought leader
• Leave room in your tweets for ReTweeting by others (room to add your @handle and “RT”)

Recommended Twitter Tools:

• TweetDeck (Twitter platform)
• CoTweet - (Twitter platform)
• Bit.ly (URL shortener)
• Monitter (monitoring service)
• Twends (monitoring service)
• Twitter Search (Twitter’s internal search service)
• Twitter Hawk (monitoring service)

Good Use of Twitter by Aussie Businesses:

- BigPond

- Commonwealth Bank

- Dominos Pizza

- EMI

- Fairfax Digital

- Jetstar

- RioTinto

- VirginBlue

- Vodafone

Darren says that Twitter are open to being approached if someone is squatting your brandname as a Twitter account.  See Darren’s Twitter blog Twi Tip for more Twitter tips.

[Added by me: If you have an issue with spam on Twitter, direct message @spam with the name of the account doing the spamming. If you have an issue with impersonation, TOS violations, TM violations, etc. on Twitter, file a ticket rather than messaging @spam. You can file a ticket by visiting help.twitter.com and clicking on "submit a request".]

* Photo courtesy of Andrew Ballard of ReBusiness

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

SMX Sydney: Twitter Tips and Etiquette

Stephen calls his session “How to use the Internet to get to know your customers intimately”. He kicks off with a graphical description of a conversion and explains that your conversion goal can be different things including :

- Order placement

- Newsletter subscription

- Something else

Stephen talks about Conversion Domination as being a vicious circle in a good way, where Revenue = visitors x conversion rate x lifetime customer value. Increased volume leads to cost savings and efficiency.

The 9 Stages of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO):

1) The rules of the game (and how to win at it)
2) Understanding (and tuning) existing traffic sources
3) Understanding your visitors (particularly the non-converting ones)
4) Advanced market intelligene
5) Spotting the hidden wealth in your business
6) Creating your experimental strategy
7) Designing your experimental web pages (your “challengers”)
8 ) Carrying out experiments on your website
9) Transferring your winning campaigns into other media

Stephen says that increasing conversions starts with improving usability and persuading people to take the action you want them to take. He says that the *Quick Guess, Best Practice* strategy (what he calls the *monkeys writing Shakespeare* approach) doesn’t work. This approach usually involves testing:

- Headline

- Call to action

- Buttons

- Images

- Offer

- Guarantee

- Testimonials

This is the “let’s throw stuff at a wall and see what sticks” strategy.  Stephen says it’s too time-consuming and has a low success rate, therefore it’s not recommended. He says a more sophisticated approach is needed.

Objection / Counter Objection (O/CO) Approach

The O/CO tactic involves determining the objections that non-converting visitors have to your site/service/product and making changes that address these objections:

• If they don’t trust your company –> Build trust elements
• If they don’t believe your product is better –> Show advantages over competitors
• If they don’t believe your product works –> Show proof it does
• If they don’t understand what you’re offering –> Use techniques to improve comprehension
• If you aren’t offering enough incentives –> Make more offers
• If they see any risk in the decision to buy –> Use risk reduction strategies

What You Should Be Measuring:

- What visitors want
- Why they’re abandoning your website

14 Tools That Help You Understand Web Site Abandonment

There are 14 tools Stephen recommends that can help you understand why people are abandoning your website and what you can do about it:

1) Google Analytics

2) Crazy Egg heat map data

3) ClickTale.com

4) Google Talk Chatback

5) SurveyMonkey

6) 4Q.iperceptions.com

7) Usability Testing e.g. UserTesting.com and Steve Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think

8 ) Ethnio.com pop-up surveys

9) Your ears and mouth (listen and speak to customers)

10) Tell a Friend King

11) Kampyle.com feedback analytics

12) Google Site Search

13) Serph reputation monitoring

14) Google Website Optimizer

Face-To-Face Selling

- Use face-to-face selling to research objections.

- Go through your website with salespeople.

- Listen to customer calls.

- Read FAQs coming in from customers.

- Ask salespeople to create a table of objections and counter-objections

- Seek out an opportunity to sell face-to-face.

Psychological Methods to Use When Designing Your Experimental Web Pages:

• Tackle objections head on e.g. “Buy shoes online? No way!” was the headline of an advertorial by an online shoe store in the local newspaper. It was highly effective at removing the common objections people have to buying shoes online.
• Add a reason why people should buy
• Establish authority
• Create urgency
• Promote scarcity
• Create exclusivity
• Use Advertising In Disguise (AID) e.g. a *free* call your friends in the UK phone card which later became an upsell to a paid service. Another example is the *free trial* AOL Online CD that used to come with new PCs and magazines.
• Reverse inertia e.g. home delivered DVD rentals
• Use product demonstrations
• Use customer and media testimonials to say stuff you wouldn’t be game to say yourself (e.g. legal implications)
• Use evidence of your success
• Produce a cost-benefits analysis for them e.g. “You’ve just saved another hour of typing using TextExpander, when you consider the value of your time, our product is a bargain. Register Now!”
• Use an apples/oranges comparison chart
• Use bargain appeal
• Show commitment and consistency e.g. the VistaPrint business card / website upsell technique
• Use risk reversal methods e.g. Domino’s pizza delivered in 30 mins or your money back
• Use simplicity, make it easy to sign up, easy to use, easy to upgrade
• Play on human emotion and a desire to belong e.g. the iPhone set
• Mention the common enemy e.g. tax office, criminals etc.
• Create involvement and ownership
• Use storytelling as a tactic

* Photo courtesy of Andrew Ballard of ReBusiness

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

SMX Sydney: Conversion Rate Optimization

Rand believes there are a few important ethical tenets that we should be thinking about when we’re marketing online:

1) Don’t break the law e.g. don’t link to wikileaks.org

2) Don’t hurt people or organizations. This includes

- hacking

- malware

- misdirection

- financial fraud

- email spam

This doesn’t include:

- Anonymity (You are entitled to hide behind a sock puppet account. Rand’s view that this does not break the law).

- Omitting relationship details (It shouldn’t be an obligation to share all your relationship details, says Rand.

- Promoting content to benefit a person or organization

- Promoting content on contract e.g. paid reviews etc.

Rand says that an oft-overlooked tenet is to create value for the client and apply that to Social Media Marketing (SMM). Yes, we should promote good content. Yes, we should expose it to the Linkerati. Yes we should be participating in social networks.  Brands are scared about participating in the social media space but they shouldn’t be. Yes, we should recruit Social Media Marketing experts for help.

What do YOU think?

Should Marketers be upfront about Who/What/How/Why they market? Rand asked the audience - how ethical are you? Is there value in full disclosure? Should disclosure be obligational?  Most people in the audience answered no to that question. Rand showed an example of full disclosure on Digg and on Facebook e.g. “I’m just using this account to make friends so I can one day send marketing messages to you” and on Twitter: “I’m only posting interesting things to gain followers and build a personal brand because I’m an egomaniacal, cash-hungry asshole.”

What Professional Social Media Marketers Do:

- Stay under the radar

- Build diverse networks

- Adopt paranoia as a lifestyle (they’ve had one too many Digg accounts banned, says Rand)

- Rely on the strength of content

- Stay pragmatic

Rand then quoted George Carlin: “Some people see things that are and ask why? Some people see things that never were and ask why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that shit.”

Four Relevant Examples of Social Media Campaigns:

1) Sean Tevis who ran for local political office in Kansas built a comic where he related the corruption and dishonesty in local politics in the style of the XKCD comic. “Running for office: it’s like a flamewar with a forum troll, but with an eventual winner”.

2) Nike picked up on a local soccer game between professional soccer player Wayne Rooney and local players where he was “nutmegged” (the ball was kicked straight between his legs and into goal). Rooney said “don’t put it online” and of course they did. The result was fast-spreading viral content.

3) Russell Investments put together an online graph chart called  What’s the State of the Economy? which included key economic and market indicators to help businesses talk to their clients about the economic downturn. The result was great link bait.

4) The Baby Name Wizard is an application that allows you to see how popular a certain name has been over an historical time period. Another great piece of link bait that went viral in a short space of time.

Rand’s 10 Tips for Social Media Marketing Success

1) Build simple stuff. The simpler it is, the more successful it will be.

2) Make it look authentic.

3) Expect 3/4 of viral efforts to FAIL.

4) Don’t let too many cooks into the kitchen.

5) Funny sells.

6) Funny is hard. Interesting is easier.

7) Consider microsites.

8 ) Hire professional pushers.

9) Don’t try to help push.

10)  Use social media to accomplish business goals.

* Photo courtesy of Andrew Ballard of ReBusiness

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

SMX Sydney: What is Ethical Social Media Marketing?

Understanding the Purchasing Funnel

Steven showed the purchasing funnel graph and how it applies to Pay Per Click advertising (PPC). He says 79% of searchers use the internet to research the purchase of products and services, while 42% of searchers are actually seeking a local business to buy something offline. Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SME’s) should be using this information when planning PPC campaigns.

Get your business ready for paid search advertising:

- Are you ready and able to handle increased deamnd from prospective customers?

- Can your processes and infrastructure scale?

- How will you handle overflow?

- When do people shop online?

- Prepare before you start Pay Per Click

Steven then discussed a case study for Auto Lift Garage Doors where they tried PPC for the first time and couldn’t cope with the influx of inquiries that resulted.

Work out what success looks like:

- What are you trying to achieve?

- Are you trying to generate qualified enquiries?

- Are you trying to focus on a particular product or service

- What is a good return on your marketing investment?

What does success look like for you? Are you prepared to spend more? Steven then showed a graph of what success looks like for different SMEs:

1) 24 new customers $72,000

2) 2 new patients $16,000

3) Sales from campaign $50,ooo

4) 10 new customers $200,000

PPC is particularly effective on a Cost Per Customer basis, but it’s also effective on a Cost Per Lead basis.

Define your target audience:

- How far are your customers willing to drive? E.g. would you drive 30 mins for a dentist? (probably not) What about a brain surgeon? (probably)

- How wide is your service area?

- Where is your target audeicnce?

- How may locations do you have and where are they?

- What types of advertising do you use now?

- What is your average transaction value?

- How much business can you support?

Review your web presence

- Do you have an existing website? Offer page? Coupon page?

- What sort of property do you need to do PPC?

- Does your site reflect your business today?

- Is it an info site or a sales site?

Case Study for BMW Precision Automotive where a Flash landing page worked well.

Product or Service:

- What are you tryiing to sell?

- Do you want to focus on a high margin line?

- Will separate landing pages be more effective?

Geographic Coverage:

- What is the geographic service area that you want to cover?

- Do you have local market credibility?

Contact and Key Information:

- Is it clear and easy to contact your biz? Is contact info on every page?

- Does your copy have a call to action?

Key Images:

- Is your web site visually appealing?

- Does it encourage potential buyers?

Easy Navigation:

- Is it easy to find key information and use the features on your web site?

PPC Budget:

- Make sure your budget adds up

- What can you afford to spend per lead?

- What are you currently paying per lead?

- How do you calculate ROI?

- What about lifetime customer value?

- Use the available online budgeting tools

- Think like a searcher

- It’s an iterative process

- Monitor performance and manage your list

- Understand the value of each keyword in your bid management strategy

Test measure learn and improve, says Steven. Ask the question: “can someone help me manage my PPC campaign”? Steven says that many SMEs spend too many hours managing their PPC campaigns and they should be outsourcing that. But make sure that you use companies endorsed or certified by the search engines.

* Photo courtesy of Andrew Ballard of ReBusiness

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

SMX Sydney: PPC for the SME

Bill is the author of the book Click which is about people’s behavior patterns online. Bill starts by asking the audience a range of questions about the search market. The audience guesses correctly that in Australia, Google has the majority market share. Hitwise data is drawn from 25 million internet users worldwide. Search market stats for 2009 show:

• In the US, 70% of all searches are being executed on Google, then Yahoo 16%
• In Australia, 90% of searches are being executed on Google, then MSNLive
• In New Zealand, 92% of all searches are being executied on Google, then Yahoo

In March 2008, Google’s market share in the US was 67%. In March 2009, it was 73%. In March 2008, Google’s market share in Australia was 88%. In March 2009, it was 90%. In March 2008, Google’s market share in New Zealand was 90%. In March 2009, it was 92%.  So much for Bill’s prediction last year of Google reaching their market saturation point!

In the US in 2009, 14.9% of people used 4 words per search query, while 8.7% used 5 words per search query. This is a marked increase in long tail search query usage over 2008.

Search term length in Australia is different. Of the top 10,000 queries, the search term length is actually lowering. Bill thinks this is because people are searching for short terms like Facebook, YouTube and other brand related terms. When comparing search query success rate and query length, it shows that there is some dissatisfaction amongst Australian searchers with their SERPS.

Top Search Terms by Market

Australia

1) Facebook

2) eBay

3) YouTube

4) MySpace

5) BOM

New Zealand

1) Bebo

2) Trademe

3) Facebook

4) YouTube

5) Trade me

United States

1) Craigslist

2) MySpace

3) Facebook

4) eBay

5) YouTube

There is so much search data available to us and it’s very powerful information to help your business.

Adult Entertainment and Cognitive Dissonance

PPC = Porn, P and Casinos

Australia is more porn free than the US based on share of visits, says Bill. Adult vs. social sites trends are different in the US and Australia [I find this quite surprising!]

Power of Observed Behavior

- Marketers often rely on gut instinct or research influenced by cognitive dissonance.

- Observed behaviour often provides a more realistic view of what we do

- Search term data is a valuable proxy for timing consumer interest

Just for fun, Bill takes us through the top “Fear Of” queries.

What Are You Afraid Of?

• Traditional survey research around phobias differ from online observed behavior
• Social fears show prominently in online behaviour
• Long-tail fear searches reveal some bizarre fears unlikely to surface via traditional research methods

Top fear in Australia based on the stats is a fear of crowds.  Not so in the US. Other common fears included things like:

- fear of flying

- fear of heights

- fear of long words [huh?]

- fear of clowns [understandable]

- fear of the dark

- fear of spiders

- fear of sex [what?]

- fear of commitment

- fear of success

AND… (wait for it)

- fear of being followed by a duck. True!

Predictions for Next 12 Months

Bill thinks that over the next year:

- Words/queries will continue to increase

- Search success rate will continue to degrade

- Long-tail searches will continue to grow as the amount of content on Internet grows exponentially

- Current search algorithms will become less effective in helping us find content online

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

SMX Sydney : The Australian Searchscape

Cindy starts by listing some things to consider when structuring your site for international markets:

- Design and development costs
- Maintenance costs
- Server configuration and location
- CMS system
- Order fulfillment
- Email and direct marketing
- PPC
- SEO

Three Site Architecture Options for International SEO:

1) One Site (Server Side Translation or Sub-domains / Sub-directories)
2) Multiple Sites
3) Blended

1) One Site

The single site solution involves using location detection software to determine where a user is coming from then serving the user data in the appropriate language. Another idea is to put the most likely language on the home page and keep other languages in optimized sub-domains or sub-directories. This approach uses:

- Server side language translation (and/or)
- Sub-domains and Sub-directories

Pros of the One Site Server Side Translation Approach:

- Home page ranks in multiple languages (possibly)
- Robust translation software = lower overhead and more scalable
- Can work with CMS, Back End, XML feeds and DHTML
- Best user experience
- [added by me] Link popularity is channeled to a single site and not diluted over several sites

Cons of the One Site Server Side Translation Approach:

- Harder to set up
- Risk of inaccurate location detection
- Risk of mistranslation
- Risk of duplicate content
- Natural inbound links could be in the wrong language

Tips for One Site Server Side Translation Strategy:

• Always check the work of the translation software.
• Redirect country-specific domains to the appropriate language translation of the home page.
• Allow users to change or specify their location.
• Set a cookie to remember the user’s language of choice.
• Include links to different languages in the footer.
• Buy the country specific domains, set a cookie and redirect them to the appropriate language translation on your single site.
• On the fly translation takes longer so use software to generate static pages instead.
• Consider www.worldlingo.com for translation options.

Pros of the One Site Sub-Domains / Sub-Directories Approach:

- Easy to set up
- Same content in different languages is never duplicate
- Put top keywords in your domain or URL
- Target by country or language
- Country specific hosting option

Cons of the One Site Sub-Domains / Sub-Directories Approach:

- Bad for targeting multiple countries that speak the same language (duplicate content potential)
- Home page only ranks in one language
- Extra click for users / confusing

Tips for One Site Sub-Domains / Sub-Directories Strategy:

• Spell the name of the subdomain or the subdirectory in the appropriate language. For example, www.espanol.website.com NOT www.Spanish.com
• Consider using your top keyword for each language as the name of the sub-domain or directory e.g. www.autovermietung.site.com
• Use location detection software to redirect to correct subdomain or subdirectory.
• Optimize all META data and on-page tags in the appropriate language.
• Avoid things like “choose a language” on home pages
• Use the Regional tool in Google Webmaster Tools to inform Google what regional markets each of your sub-domains and sub-directories are targeting.

2) Multiple Sites

The multiple sites solution involves purchasing regional domains and using a different site for every country, e.g. .com.au, .co.uk etc.

Pros of the Multiple Site Approach:

- Incrementally low start up costs
- Rank better in country specific search engines faster???
- More chances to rank better in SE’s
- Potential link benefits
- Country specific hosting options

Cons of the Multiple Site Approach:

- High maintenance costs
- Harder to rank in .com search engines
- Forced to target countries instead of languages
- Must compete with .coms
- Potential link and duplicate content risks

Tips for Multiple Site Strategy:

• Specify the specific country for each site in Webmster tools
• Interlink different sites carefully & logically
• Use *IP sniff and suggest* to link users to other contry sites

3) Blended

The blended solution involves a combination of one site and multiple sites. Generally you put your international site on the dot com and you have some languages and country specific content on the main site, with the rest on country-specific domains. This can be a transitional situation or strategic.

Pros of the Blended Approach:

- Most realistic for worldwide presence
- Allows testing
- Creates flexibility
- Allows you to strategically segment by region or root language

Cons of the Blended Approach:

- It’s inconsistent and confusing
- Could be perceived as unprofessional

Tips for the Blended Strategy:

• If multiple country specific domains are unavailable, make them part of the .com rather than compromise branding
• Use country specific domains for highest traffic countries and group other countries on single sites by language
• Evaluate countries /languages by traffic and conversions
• Put countries / languages with similar aesthetics on the same site

Cindy’s final advice: *Do Not Distub* signs should be written in the language of the hotel maid!

* Photo courtesy of Andrew Ballard of ReBusiness

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

SMX Sydney: International SEO

Tim says PPC advertisers need to structure their ad campaign effectively. How much time do you have to manage your campaign? Plan effectively BEFORE launch. There are limitations to an AdWords campaign but generally you can use a single campaign to manage hundreds of keywords.

Within your campaign you can use the targeting and then within the Ad Group is where you get specific.

Targeting options

Campaign targeting =

- search / display /
- geo / time / demographics
- start / end dates
- daily budgets

Ad Group targeting

- keywords and sites
- CPM / CPC bids
- Ad creative - text, display

25 campaigns per account
100 ad groups per campaign
2000 kw’s per ad group
50 ad creatives per ad group
spend $$$ and limits can be increased manually

Keep in mind when planning that relevance is key. It leads to high click through rates.

Why be concerned with Click Through Rate (CTR)?

- direct impact on your CPC
- it’s a metric of ad/keyword effectiveness
- impact on your quality score
- if little or no relevancy, ads may not show
- high CTR = more visitors/better ROI

Showed an example search query for “richmond real estate” where PPC ads lead to specifically targeted landing pages for the query.

Best AdWords Account Structure

- no single structure is best
- make it granular + manageable
- clustered keyword themes
- test and adapt

Tim also recommends using few keywords per Ad Group, which I always agree with, but when he suggested using 30 separate AdGroups for 30 different keywords, he kinda lost me at that point. From a management perspective, I’ve found that grouping together keywords via specific themes is much more logical than creating a new AdGroup for each and every keyword.

Tim says to consider separating:

- brand & high performers
- content / display
- Head vs long tail
- keyword match type
- keyword topics / themes

Tim recommends breaking out high performers from Ad Groups and putting them in their own Ad Groups so they have their own budget rules. Break out search and content ads into different ad groups to allow easier management and ad type display. Also consider breaking out separate keyword match types (exact / broad / phrase etc)

- Isolate exact match keywords

- Use phrase / broad match for keyword discovery

- Use negative keywords

- Don’t rely on AdWords to show you the “best match”. Do your own keyword research

- Use search query reports in your analytics to dig deeper

Content Network Recommendations

- Separate Content Network-only campaigns

- Fewer keywords per Ad Group

- Use Broad Match

- Separate bids for content audience

- Consider top-performing placements

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

SMX Sydney: PPC Ad Group Management

Lucas starts by saying think about how you write. It doesn’t just apply to ad copy.

Google’s Guidelines for Writing Ad Copy

1) Use the keywords in your ads. Use of keywords give your ads 50% more clicks

Lucas then presented a case study showing an ad using a keyword and an ad without and the conversion rate difference.

2) Use prices and promotions

This sets a pricepoint for your users and lets them know what to expect.

3) Use a strong call to action e.g. get more information / buy now / subscribe today

That’s not all there is. Capitalize the first letter of each word in your ad, this apparently works. [I was really surprised to hear this.  I'd have thought AdWords editorial guidelines wouldn't allow that and even if they did, I don't think it's the most effective strategy].

Understand Your Audience

Who else is influencing the searcher? e.g. does the wife have the final say in the purchasing decision? Write the ad for the purchaser, not necessarily the searcher. Think about age, gender, geolocation.

For example, the day that Steve Irwin died, people were searching for:

1) Crocodile Hunter’s Deadly Dive

2) Crocodile Hunter Dead

3) Crocodile Man Killed

4) Steve Irwin dead

Fairfax’s competitor used headline 4), with Steve Irwin in the title, while Fairfax didn’t consider search trends for persons who knew his name and used the more generic headlines. Result was that their competitor became the #1 news site in Australia for the first time in 2 years.

Killer ad copy differentiates in two ways:

1) it uses a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) - is it faster? is it cheaper? was it first? etc.

2) it’s highly relevant to your landing page

Great ad copy:

1) appeals directly to the audience

2) uses a USP

3) uses one or more psychological triggers (there are 30 of them!) e.g. a sense of urgency, a desire to collect, a desire to belong (brand association), exclusivity, instant gratification etc. Type *psychological triggers* into Google to see more.

4) filters clicks (qualifies your leads automatically)

5) differentiates

6) is a continual process of testing and refining. Try changing slight things e.g. question mark, capitals, different URL etc.

Test,  refine and test some more. For best results, you must always be testing new ad copy. You’ll need to write new ads and gradually phase out the ones that don’t work. Ad constipation occurs when you just can’t write a new ad. Ask people and get new ideas. Look at your competitors and do the opposite. Steal from your sales team, use Twitter, look at magazine covers for inspiration.

* Photo courtesy of Andrew Ballard of ReBusiness

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

SMX Sydney: Writing Killer Ad Copy

Greg Boser says he is a Google Tool. This got a big laugh and tweets in stereo from the audience.

The 301 redirect is the greatest SEO tool EVER invented he says. Why? because it’s the only redirect that passes link “juice”. Understanding and properly using the 301 is all about making sure you always get proper credit for your hard work.

When to use 301s?

- domain migration
- canonicalization
- site architecture changes
- type-in, misspelled and marketing domains (to redirect any misspelled or related domains)

Although I’m a big fan of 301 redirects, I hadn’t really given the issue much thought beyond the fact that you should use them when you switch domains to help Googlebot find it’s way home, so Greg’s session was a bit of a wake-up call. Apart from being hard to pronounce, domain canonicalization is the type of issue that seems to strike fear into the most tech-savvy of webmasters. It’s also an issue that splits the industry, destroys friendships and sorts the geeks out from the nerds or something.

Greg recommended that the audience use the www where possible because most people will link to that version of your site rather than the non-www so you might as well take advantage of the default link juice rather than having to find and redirect the bad links. He also couldn’t resist a light-hearted dig at Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) for using the non-www URLs on all his sites. Which I couldn’t resist tweeting immediately to Danny because I’d always wondered the same thing.

Greg says it’s very important to set up your domains carefully. He gave the example of his old company name Guerilla Marketing vs Gorilla Marketing. He found that searchers would often type in the second, more common spelling but he didn’t own that domain. He couldn’t purchase that domain from the owner so he eventually threw in the towel and his company became 3 Dog Media. Greg said he made sure that he bought all potential versions of the domain this time (e.g. ThreeDogMedia.com, 3DogMedia.com etc)

What is a Conditional Redirect?

A conditional redirect is one that takes place only IF one or more pre-determined conditions are met (user agent, IP, referral source, country of origin etc.) When are they used? Conditional redirects are typically used when what is best for users conflicts with what is best for SEO.

Example Situations:

- Marketing domains
- Near duplicate content
- Self-hosted partner content
- Affiliate programs
- Session tracking removal
- Traditional A/B split Testing
- Bad SERP Correction

What about Robots.txt / Noindex?

Noindex/robots exclusion can be used to deal with indexing related issues but it is important to understand that excluded URLs do not pass link juice. So how does Google feel about conditional redirection? They hate it, says Greg, looking pointedly at Greg Grothaus from Google sitting on the podium next to him.

The Canonical Link Element (which Greg calls *RelCan*) helps a lot. From Google’s perspective, it’s much better than conditional redirects because they don’t have to trust you as much. From a Webmaster / SEO perspective, it has promise. It’s certainly easier to use.

What Else Has Google Been Doing Regarding 301s?

They’re a lot smarter about 301s now. Juice transfer via a 301 used to be automatic with no questions asked. Greg says that juice passage is now becoming more conditional. Redirection strategies that don’t create a normal looking footprint aren’t getting the credit they used to.

Some of the best technical examples on how to actually setup 301 redirects can be found in Stephan Spencer’s presentation).

* Photo courtesy of Andrew Ballard of ReBusiness

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

SMX Sydney: 301 Redirects, Why are They Important?