Denver SEO Blog: Web Development, SEO & Marketing

For those of you not currently signed up with MSN adCenter, you may want to give it a look(starting tomorrow).

On April 26, 2007, we’re upgrading Microsoft adCenter with the improved navigation, reporting, and campaign management features from our beta site…

While I currently like some of the MSN adCenter demographic targeting and PPC keyword bargains, I think they have room for improvement. Will this be MSN’s “Panama” upgrade that catches it up to Google? We’ll know soon enough!
Also from the email:

Additional feature upgrades will also occur on April 28, 2007. During this upgrade, adCenter will be unavailable for up to 24 hours starting at 12:00 P.M. Pacific Time. Your ads will continue to run as scheduled during both adCenter upgrades.

With these upgrades, you’ll experience new features that will allow you to:

• Search within your campaigns. Use full text search to easily find ads, keywords, ad groups, campaigns, and accounts. Please note that orders are now called ad groups.
• Save important items in Favorites. Tag your campaign items for follow-up using Favorites.
• Quickly navigate your accounts. Use the improved navigation to quickly navigate to any campaign or ad group in your account.
• Easily access help content. Hover over the green question mark icons for pop-up help tips.¹
• Manage keywords faster. Bulk edit keyword settings and delete low-performing keywords.
• Save time importing campaigns. Directly import your campaigns from other search advertising programs.
• One click downloads. Download your datasets into Excel with one click.
• And more! View our blog and watch the webinar for tips and training on these new features.

If you have any questions, please contact our adCenter support team.

Sincerely,

The Microsoft adCenter Team

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are you upgrading Microsoft adCenter?

Over the past few months, we’ve been running improvements on the adCenter beta site, which has been available to customers in our U.S. Content Ads pilot. Now, it is time to share these new and improved features with all advertisers.

Will my campaigns be affected?

Your campaigns will continue to run as scheduled. With this upgrade, using adCenter is now easier and more efficient. The updates provide you with improved campaign management, navigation, and reporting.

Where can I learn more about the most recent updates to adCenter?

Our webinar, walks you through the features that will be included in this upgrade, and additional information can be found on our adCenter blog.

¹ This feature will be available after the April 28, 2007 upgrade.

Tags: seo, website design, website development, denver web development, denver web design, search engine optimization

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Google Adwords opens your advertisement up to a vast audience. Sometimes it’s an audience that is a little too vast. You can save tremendous amounts of money on adwords by excluding the wrong audience:

1. Exclude surfers during the wrong time of day
If your product or service is primarily marketed to businesses, be sure to turn off your ads during off hours. Business products and services are only sought during business hours, and there is little need to show ads in evenings and on weekends.

2. Never use broad match
Broad match can be a horrible waste of money. If your broad match is for red widgets, your ad will come up in searches that include the word red, and searches that include the word widgets. With so much of the wrong traffic – searching for red gadgets, red ipods, etc. – there are bound to be costly clicks upon your ad. Instead of using broad match, use phrase and exact match. This will help save your clicks for visitors that might actually buy your product or service.

3. Exclude keywords that are unrelated
For most any product, you can exclude some keyword. If you sell boats, you should exclude the word “toy” from most of your ads. Be creative, search Google and look for negative keywords.

4. Exclude other countries
Make sure you are not showing ads in other countries. Some continents are also notorious for being involved in PPC fraud.
More tips to save money with Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing! Get Joy Milkowski’s “Amazing Results with Google AdWords” course – it pays for itself! Or you can continue throwing extra money to Google.

Tags: denver web development, seo, denver web design, website design, search engine optimization, website development

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If you are using Pay Per Click advertising with Google or Yahoo, you are probably aware of what it feels like to light money on fire. If you have a limited amount of money, you get a bad feeling in your stomach.

Google and Yahoo have two main ways on displaying the advertisements you are paying for: to searchers, and across their content network. The content network consists of web pages that may have articles containing your keywords, and it is the focus of our five tips.

You see, these content ads are shown to a completely different audience than search ads. Search ads are usually shown to visitors actively engaged in the buying process. Whether they are doing preliminary research, evaluating features, or comparing prices, search visitors are on a completely different wavelength than the group being shown your content ads.

Here are some tips to make sure your Content ad campaign is as effective as possible:

1. Treat your content ad completely different from your search ad
First of all, consider placing your content ad in a new campaign. You want to keep it separate from your search ad, and let it evolve in it’s own direction over time. Don’t let it get too close to your search ad – keep them separated! Be sure to use different ad copy and ad titles: Everything about your content ad should be different than your search ad.

2. Setup Google link alerts to see where your ads are showing
Want to know where your ads are showing? Of course you do – It tells you where your money is being burned spent! Sign up for Google Alerts for the search term “domain.com”

Using this service, you’ll receive email alerts whenever Google comes across your ad. Sometimes, you will see your ad has shown up on a page that you don’t necessarily want it to. Google’s guess may sometimes be wrong. After all, “Pad Printing” doesn’t always refer to printing on notepads. You should log back into Google AdWords – or Yahoo Search Marketing – and exclude that site from your list of allowed sites on which to show ads.

3. Use different display URLs to split test

Your display URL is part of the advertisement. Google recognizes this, and so allows you to choose a URL different from the actual location to display to your prospective visitors.

Try different display URLs and watch the results: Is one getting a better “Click Through Rate”? Improve the worst of the two, and test some more.

4. Split test your landing pages, too

It might also be that traffic from certain content ads converts better than others. Set up a split test with two identical content ads, but send visitors to two different “landing pages”. These landing pages are just the destinations that your ad leads visitors to. They might be named “Contact-Us.html” and “Contact.html”, if you are selling a service. Using Google Analytics, you can sometimes see which landing page converts best into a visitor clicking your “contact us” form.

5. Make sure display URLs also redirect
Google crawls through javascript links, and we’ve seen several cases where links from AdWords get into Google’s index. The URL that you choose for Google to display may actually direct traffic right to your site! We call this effect “PPC leakthrough”, because these links are leaking out of the adwords system and into Google’s main index.
For example, on our myKarateStore.com advertisement for “Wing Chun Dummies”, we use “http://www.myKarateStore.com/dummy/” as the URL displayed in the ad. Even though that page is not the exact location Google’s AdWords system directs visitors to, we make sure it goes somewhere meaningful.

More tips to save money with Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing! Get Joy Milkowski’s “Amazing Results with Google AdWords” course – it pays for itself.

Tags: search engine optimization, website development, seo, website design

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I recently say another analysis showing that bidding for the number 3 spot  is the best use of money. Brandt Dainow, CEO of ThinkMetrics, after reviewed three years worth(1500 keyword sets!) of click-through trends and found the click-through rates (CTR) were virtually identical between ad positions 1-3 in his campaigns.

Others disagree, but in our testing (limited, not 1500 keyword sets!) we have found the same result: positions 3 and 4 are your best use of money. (In most cases. Your mileage may vary. Other standard disclaimers here. Banned where prohibited.)

Tags: seo, website development, search engine optimization, website design

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Microsoft is increasing personalizing ads given to it’s users. Microsoft says privacy is kept intact, and advertisers using Microsoft’s new Adcenter Pay-Per-Click(PPC) service are indeed seeing higher click-through rates(CTR). So, what’s the problem? It sounds like a win-win, and behavioral targeting will certainly be seen with increasing emphasis at Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and other PPC advertising providers.

In a discussion of the article on Slashdot.org, one user writes:
Microsoft and friends are going to push ads at us either way, I would just as soon see ads for stuff that I am actually interested in. When I go to a store and the salesman knows me well enough to actually be helpful I chalk that up to good service. Why should a website be any different?

Has anyone noticed the behavior targeted ads – rolled out in September in the United States? Do you prefer them? Let us know what you think.

Tags: search engine optimization, website design, website development, seo

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Keyword research should be the beginning of every web page placed on the web. Instead of dumping the same old text from the brochure you created in 1987, rewrite your content from scratch with an eye toward your best keywords and keyphrases! Here are steps to help you in your search for your very own keyword niches:

1. Define your target market(s)

Every target market is going to have their own way of thinking, but you should also be sure to have a unique area of your site for each target market. You might want a section for investors, a page for community members, and another section for prospects.

2. What would they search for on the internet?

Think like your audience. What would they search for? Would they mispell a keyword? Would their terms be more sophisticated than the terms you use to describe yourselff around the office? Maybe they would be less sophisticated.

a. Brainstorm keyword phases
Now look at those phrases and try to think about any possible variations. Are there more descriptive variations needed to really pinpoint the right searchers? Maybe you need to be less specific to increase the potential traffic to your page.

Remember:
Less words in the phrase will help broaden your possible audience.
More words in the phrase will help target the best.

Would you get better prospects with a targeted phrase?

b. Look keyword phases competitors are targeting on their website

What are your competitors targeting? Look at competitors you know about, but also look at who is competing for spots 1-10 in Google. What are they targeting? What niche might they be leaving out?

c. Look at keyword phases competitors are targeting using their link partners

(We have an automated tool we use for this – email us at sales@hyperdogmedia.com for more information!)
3. Existing keyword phases you are being found for

What better way to figure out which keywords are already working in some way?

a. Web hosting visitor log files

If you don’t have decent stats, install Google Analytics ASAP. On most hosts, the free package awstats is available. Also free are webalizer and analog. Any of these will tell you what keywords your site is being found under.

b. Analytics and/or Paid campaigns
Look at existing analytics and paid campaigns. The keywords from your paid campaign can yield very valuable information. Keywords that result in clicks and convert into actual sales are like gold. These “converting keywords” are some of the best you can target.

4. Expand the list

a. Geographic

Especially if you are targeting local business, think about where you are. Are you in a certain metropolitan area? What cities are nearby? What smaller communities? Be sure to include local nicknames like “bay area”, “front range”, etc. What county and state are you in? Include any other pertinent information – are you on a major street or thoroughfare?

b. Thesaurus / Ontology
Use a thesaurus to increase possiblities for your list. Do not judge keywords just yet – keep an open mind. You’d be surprised what searchers type in!

The ontology or category in which your person-place-or-thing keywords exist can lead you to new possibilities. For example, a book has to do with publishing, printing, authors, etc. What “has to do with” your keyword phrases?

c. Incorrect spelling:typos, phonetic

Bad spelling and phonetic misunderstandings can also lead you in the direction of new keywords. In a recent conversation, an acquaintance told me he can see that his best prospects always spell a certain keyword incorrectly: It is for a disease that the propects have. Doctors never buy the product directly, but always know how to spell it!

d. Aggregate lists(like AOL’s leaked search data)

Giant lists of keywords can give insight into how visitors query a search engine. AOL released acontroversial amount of searches by their visitors. Third party sites like http://www.aolsearchdatabase.com/ allow you to look through the data. While it isn’t complete, it can yield valuable information about search behavior, and maybe about your keywords!

e. Google Suggest / Overture

Yahoo tells you what keywords visitors searched for a month or two ago. Visit their site at:

http://inventory.overture.com

Google offers some search numbers and keywords with their suggest tool, too:
http://labs.google.com/suggest

f. Survey of automated tools

(We have several automated tools and services we use for keyword research. Contact us at sales@hyperdogmedia.com for more information.)

g. Repeat the process

Did you get several new keywords? Now be sure to add on your geographic and other variations. Did your list just get MUCH bigger? Good!

5. Find the least competitive terms
Of course, it is always best to go after the least competitive keywords. To figure out which keywords have the best ratio of searches to competition, figure out the KEI. We have automated tools that figure this out, but try the manual method for a few of the keywords you think might be real gems:
a. KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index)

KEI = (# of monthly searches) / (# of exact results in Google)

Gather (# of monthly searches) from the overture tool above
(http://inventory.overture.com)

Gather (# of exact results in Google) by searching for the your “keyword phrase” in the titles of possible competitors:

allintitle:”keyword1 keyword2 keyword3″

b. Examine PPC bids

Looking at bids – especially in overture, but also with Google’s AdWords estimator tool – can tell you which keywords are the most competitive. So easy to see, and look – no math required!

This article contains many of the tips we give for keyword research. Have other tips? Leave a comment! We’d love to add your tip to the list!

Tags: Keyword research, keyword research, keywords, link partners, Google, Google Analytics, target market, competitive terms, Overture, search engine optimization

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Site Reference has a new article on Google’s new semantic indexing in it’s algorithm. While search engines have traditionally focused on keyword density and link popularity, the semantic web promises relevancy based on natural language. The article is a great introduction to the concepts of semantic indexing.

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Terry Semel, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Yahoo warned that ad sales were growing in two key sectors, but not growing as quickly as they had hoped. Semel’s warning was about the Auto and Financial services sectors. He added: “But Yahoo was careful to note that it cannot tell whether the current slowdown is a sign of broader trouble or is limited to ads from the auto and financial sectors.“

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A couple of high profile lawsuits against Google and Yahoo Search Marketing have made smaller advertisers stop and think about how much fraud might be happening in their PPC campaigns. After stopping and thinking, however, many search advertisers are willing to live with click fraud.

How to investigate click fraud
Several AdWords consultants we work with will not even investigate click fraud for clients without a certain minimum of AdWords business (think thousands per month). It just isn’t worth the effort, unfortunately.

To investigate, precise traffic measurements and testing procedures must be enacted. This is beyond most AdWords consultants, as it is more of a technical process than a marketing one.

Who are these PPC clickers / fraudsters?
A few reports have appeared in the news the last few years highlighting houswives in India making $300/month extra income by clicking ads.

A Black Hat SEO technique is to click your competitor’s ads until their daily budget is expended. While Google and Yahoo Search Marketing do make efforts to prevent click fraud, obviously more could be done.

As long as money is to be made in Google Adwords, most advertisers are going to be too busy honing their campaigns instead of focusing on click fraud.

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