SES Denver 2008: Search Engine Strategies is coming

SES is coming to Denver early next week. Search Engine Strategies is one of the most important Search Marketing conferences, and the May event seems particularly tuned for small business needs. The two tracks of training are:

Track A:
Local Search Engine Marketing 101
Advanced Keyword Research

Track B:
Search Engine Optimization Workshop
How to Effectively Use Social Media for Search Marketing Campaigns

Of course, the track you should choose depends highly upon your own search marketing goals. I encourage any small business owners to attend SEO training whenever possible. When implemented correctly, Search Engine Optimization can yield a tremendous return on investment.

Denver SEO Meetup is a success!

Less than a year after starting the Denver SEO Meetup, we are pleased to announce that it is quite successful.

The Denver SEO Meetup is a great place for Search Engine Optimization professionals throughout Colorado to network and socialize. Both freelance and agency Denver SEO folks are encouraged to attend. The environment is a very friendly, even laid back. Are you a Denver SEO firm or practicioner? Come on down to our Denver SEO meetup!

If you are a web developer, web designer, webmaster, or business owner interested in learning more about SEO, we highly recommend the training program at the SEMPO Institute instead of the meetup. The courses were created by some of the industry’s leading Search Marketing professionals, and can help you build your online business.

And coming soon: Those professionals belonging to SEMPO will soon have a Colorado SEMPO group available!

Upcoming Denver SEO Presentation: An Excellent Value

Hyper Dog Media is providing Search Engine Optimization tips at the Association of Strategic Marketing’s upcoming seminar. The full agenda includes information from experts in PPC (Pay Per Click), Web Analytics, and more:
Proven Strategies for Improving Your Search Engine Marketing

Are you optimizing your greatest asset? Website content is an essential part of online success. Help search engines see the relevance of your pages, articles, press releases and more. Learn to identify and target ranking opportunities with titles, headings, bolding and additional techniques. Also, HTML can be used to communicate the relevance of your website and content to search engines. You don’t need to be an HTML whiz either!

Once you have the content, you must know how to maximize your search engine exposure. Find out how aggressive search engine submission may harm your ability to get into Google’s listings, as well as modern strategies on how to get your site indexed safely. Learn how to take an active role in getting pages indexed quickly in the major search engines as you add new content. Finally, links from other websites are an important source of traffic and search rankings. Several kinds of links will be discussed and you are sure to leave with new link building ideas!

5 reasons to attend!

• Translate the user experience to all online channels
• Learn about online measurement and analytics tools
• Use your SEM campaign to maximize your ROI
• Ensure you are paying for profitable clicks
• Discover 26 sources of links to target

BONUS! Free manual with registration

Hope to see you there!

AOL’s new advertising platform

AOL could become another internet marketing powerhouse. The company has recently announced it’s new “Platform A”, a mixture of the technological successes of Advertising.com, TACODA, Third Screen Media, Lightningcast, and ADTECH’s global ad serving platform.

Platform A is poised to be a powerhouse of ad distribution through tightly defined niches like mobile advertising, video ads, behavioral targeting, and more. AOL has noticed CPM advertising is requiring more than just selling a bundle of clicks. Internet Advertisers and search marketers are requiring more demographic information before purchasing CPM these days. Without the right targeting, return on investment for CPM can be difficult to track(or realize!).

But Platform A also has the breadth of distribution to compete with Google: Platform A already reaches more than 90% of the domestic online audience, according to comScore. It will be interesting to test the two internet ad networks side by side: Each will likely have their own flavor, but one is going to clearly emerge as the leader. The competition will be good, but I doubt Google will be toppled just yet.

Mobile Search Optimization: About to become obsolete?

Mobile Search Optimization has been a bit of a buzzword this last twelve months. Web sites have long ignored the cellphone-based web surfer, but lately there has been much interest. There may be huge opportunities for websites optimized for cellphones, PDAs, toasters, and all of the other crazy devices visitors might be using to surf the web. More and more consumers are requiring email and even web access on their cellphones. Initiatives are merging local search, coupons, and even GPS. Mobile search optimization surely is the next huge possibility for traffic. Is your website ready?

It may not matter. With Apple’s impending introduction of the iPhone, everything may change. Again. Consider:

1. There will be a whole new set of expectations for how a phone should browse. With the iPod, Apple defined the niche. Competitors were weighed against Apple’s offering. With the introduction of full-featured browsing via the iPhone, consumers are about to demand more from their phones. They won’t demand a better mobile experience. They are demanding the full desktop experience in a mobile phone.

2. Who would visit a .mobi site, when the full featured experience of a .com is available? In most cases, I would be too lazy to attempt a .mobi surf – since I KNOW the .com is available. We all just want to get our data and get on our way. Only hobbyist surfers would want to go check out the .mobi sites. Who wants to look at a dumbed-down webpage?

Was mobile search optimization a waste of time? Having a few major companies optimize their websites for cellphones probably didn’t make much of a blip on the radar. It’s hard to say what the ROI was for their efforts, but it was likely more of a bet for the future. What do you think – Is mobile search optimization worthwhile for your company or clients?

6 PPC Secrets from a $100k campaign

There was an excellent story in the San Francisco Gate in May about Lake Champlain Chocolates, and the lessons they’ve learned with Pay Per Click Advertising. The story title is “PAY-PER-CLICK PROBLEMS: Emeryville gourmet chocolate company has a rough go of it“, but the real value of the article is the PPC secrets it gives away. The article discusses two chocolate retailers: Lake Champlain Chocolates and Charles Chocolates. Lake Champlain Chocolates has experienced successful growth due to their PPC campaign, but Charles Chocolates did see any measurable growth from theirs.

1. Use negative keywords
In the article, words like “cheap” and “free” were used as negative keywords to avoid showing ads to less affluent searchers. Every time you show an ad it’s like holding out a dollar bill for your searcher to snatch away. Be sure to get a prospective customer in return!

2. Refrain from using the content network
Google AdWords users expect that the content network will show ads in all the right places. In a perfect world, new customers would see your ad and keep you in mind for their next purchase. But it isn’t a perfect world(Don’t even get me started!). Consider:

- Visitors probably will not click. Content ads are like billboard ads. How often do you see a billboard and pull off of the highway to make an immediate purchase? It’s highly unlikely. Like the company in the article learned, “The return was never there.”

- Visitors who click your ad won’t buy that day. They were reading, not shopping. At best, they will signup for your newsletter or bookmark your page. Is the landing page converting them into bookmarking or signing up? Probably not. Either fix that, or turn off the content network for now.

- Clickfraudsters will click your ad and keep half. Click fraud is a plague of the content network. Last June, Outsell estimated that click fraud could be as high as 14 percent. The real estimate is probably a little lower, but click fraud does exist.

3. Use large sets of focused keywords
The successful Lake Champlain Chocolate seller had a keyword set as high as 70k at one time, and now has it trimmed down to 30k. That’s  a big keyword set!

4. Use advanced keyword features
One of the issues Internet Marketing Consultant Lael Sturm found with the struggling Emerville Chocolate Retailer Charles Chocolates was that they “hadn’t modified the ad text to match each specific keyword.” Be sure to use the advanced keyword options that PPC engines like Google AdWords provide. In Google AdWords, the code is {keyword: your keyword}. This option shows the keyphrase your user was searching for in the text of your ad.

5. Measure and adjust
Is money being wasted in your campaign? You won’t know unless you are measuring. Lake Champlain saw they spent money attracting a searcher for “Chocolate covered scorpions,” something they didn’t sell, and decided not to let that happen again. Along with measuring what ads are the most effective, be sure to measure what you are paying for and remove/adjust the ads lacking good ROI.

6. Outsource your campaign to professionals to dramatically increase your sales
Even with Lake Champlain Chocolate’s success inhouse, they were able to DOUBLE their sales by outsourcing their PPC management to professionals. You just can’t beat having the right help. Get to your friendly neighborhood search marketing agency today!

Search Marketing Standard: Read it twice

I’m still getting two copies of Search Marketing Standard magazine, but I’m not reporting it. First off, it’s so good that I don’t want to possibly miss an issue by having anyone mess with my subscription. With other magazines, I’ve found that fulfillment centers sometimes get confused, and it’s usually months before I realize a certain issue isn’t coming. I just can’t risk it. Every article is good.

Secondly, I’ll probably read through it twice. Might as well have a fresh crisp copy the second time. I wonder if I’ll even dog-ear the same pages?

Here are four excellent resources for anyone interested in SEO, internet marketing, ecommerce, and the affiliate scene:
1. Search Marketing Standard. If you’ve thought the SEO world moves too fast for print, think again.

2. Practical Ecommerce. Not just for ecommerce store owners. Every web developer creating ecommerce websites should be in tune with the industry.

3. Revenue. Great for affiliate marketers, ecommerce merchants, or any company creating PPC(Pay Per Click) campaigns on Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing.
4. Internet Retailer. Especially important if you are helping larger companies with their SEO, SEM, PPC, and ROI! This publication is best at industry trends influencing larger retailers and online merchants.

It is essential that web designers and web site developers start paying attention to the many facets that can make or break an online business. These publications can help get you serve your clients!

Web designers must factor in the growing impatience of web surfers

Website visitors have never been more impatient, and I’m the worst. Just today, I was looking up the lyrics to a song. I clicked on the site in #1 position(Like 90% of the rest of the world), but it was too slow. Before I even left the Google SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages), I clicked on the link in position 2. I’m going to bet I’m not the only impatient soul looking for lyrics… or even more important things(as if!).

Lucky, mother Google(our gentle overlord) is paying attention. One of the items mentioned in seomoz’s recent survey of perceived ranking factors is the availability of the server hosting a site. In this case lyricbarn, or whatever they were called, lost a visitor and a potential adsense click or two(Ads are fun to click).

Web Designers – Yeah, you – Reduce your page load times and keep visitors!

5 web design & SEO tips from the world of PPC

Many view the worlds of Pay Per Click Advertising and Search Engine Optimization as opposites. While they are certainly very different, the goals are similar: bring eyeballs(with wallets) to your site and make it easy for them to buy.  Here are 5 tips to improve your SEO based on lessons from PPC.
1. Converting keywords
Some keywords convert into sales better than others. Use your analytics to discover which keywords are bringing you sales, then target them with your SEO campaign. PPC(Pay-Per-Click) ads are a wonderful testbed to discover those converting keywords if you are pressed for time.
2. Your title and metadescription are your ad
When composing your titles and metadescriptions, remember they will be shown in the search engine result pages. It’s like having an advertisement to click, but without Google’s AdWords rules. Always remember you are competing against the other pages in the SERPS(Search Engine Result Pages) – who will get the click?

3. Landing pages
It’s great to optimize for your homepage, but setup some (even more relevant) landing pages and be sure they get some of the inbound links you are building.

4. Optimize landing pages for different steps in the buying process
As visitors reach your site, think about what step they might be at in their buying process? Are they conducting preliminary research?  Give them links to bookmark your content, send it to a friend, or signup for your newsletter.  Is their search so specific that they are probably ready to buy? Now is the time to wave the free shipping!

5. Split Test
Internet marketing is measurable. Why not setup split tests when you design your web pages? Create a couple of similar pages(avoid duplicate content) and use your analytics to measure performance. When your sample size tells you which one is better, adjust the worst of the two and measure again. Or create a third page. Hey, why not? HMTL is still free.