Search Engine Optimisation and PPC Training

Just a quick reminder that I am teaching two courses that might be of interest:

Search Engine Optimisation: 31 March 2008
Learn how to improve your rankings in the search engines, and get more visitors to your website.

Pay Per Click Training for Small Businesses: 4 April 2008
Learn how to spend less money on Google AdWords advertising, and get better results.

Pay Per Click Training: Google AdWords PPC

How to spend less money on Google AdWords, and get better results.

Friday, 4 April - book your place now

A one day seminar for small businesses managing their own pay per click (PPC) campaigns, or for businesses who want to better understand the service their PPC agency is providing.

This is not a workshop for absolute beginners; we're assuming you have already have set up a Google Adwords account, and may have tried setting up adverts with varying degrees of commercial success.

New Internet Marketing Training Courses

I am teaching two new courses which may be of interest:

Pay Per Click (PPC) for Property Developers
How to spend less money on Google Adwords advertising, and get better results. Find out how landlords, BMV buyers and sellers, and property investors make more money by using successful Pay Per Click advertising on Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Learn How to Optimise Your Website
A one day Intermediate level course showing you how to improve your website rankings in the search engines. 22 February. Loughborough Innovation Centre, just 2 miles from the M1.

Google Goofs

Even Saintly Google has a bad day, sometimes.

Google demands high standards for its AdWords advertising: it has it's Editorial Policies, it's strictures against Repetition of words, and promises that all ads "are reviewed by our support staff to make sure they meet Google's guidelines."

Nevertheless even Google can goof up when despicable Pay Per Click Ads like this one appears:


What rock did these advertising idiots crawl out from under?

But it did make me laugh!

Internet Marketing Grants

• Could the use of Internet Marketing transform your business performance?
• Do you want grant assistance to help to pay for training, consultancy, or equipment?
• Are you looking to develop new markets, implement online marketing technologies, or improve your overall business efficiency?

Business Link are offering the Business Transformation Grant which is available to small businesses across the East Midlands region. The grant can provide 50% funding for both consultancy and capital projects up to a value of £10,000. The capital grant will usually be in conjunction with mentoring, training, or consultancy.

Of course the grant funding isn't limited to Internet marketing. But this is my company marketing blog, after all. And as a Business Link Quality Assured supplier, you may be able to get grant funding for my consultancy and training services.

The process involves meeting with a Business Link Business Support Adviser. After an initial review, if your business is likely to qualify, then you will carry out an in-depth diagnostic which results in an Action Plan. Appropriate elements of your Action Plan can generally be funded on a 50/50 basis.

Get in touch if you want to discuss your project with me.

You can contact Business Link East Midlands:

phone: 0845 058 6644
web: www.businesslink.gov.uk/eastmidlands

Google Adwords Qualified Professional

I'm pleased to say that I am now a Google AdWords Qualified Professional.

Having passed the Google AdWords exam with flying colours, and having demonstrated a track record of building and managing AdWords campaigns over a 90 day period, I'm now truly certifiable.

This means Google knows I'm competent to provide Pay Per Click (PPC) AdWords marketing and consultancy services.

I have to say the exam was quite rigorous, and it assessed knowledge of:

• AdWords Policies
• Ad Distribution
• Keyword Matching
• Site Targeting
• Keyword Performance
• ROI and Conversion Tracking
• Advanced Conversion Tracking
• Cross-Channel Conversion Tracking
• Driving Improvements with Analytics Data
• Keywords, Ad Text and Ad Groups Optimisation

If you are interested in some help in setting up a Google AdWords campaign, then get in touch (and I can offer you a free £50 voucher towards your first campaign that I set up for you!)

Which is better: PPC or SEO?

I have a new client that has come to me with a website that is under performing. Where should she put her scarce resources - into search engine optimisation (SEO), or pay per click advertising (PPC)?

Her objective: she needs clients now. But she also wants to grow her business over the medium term.

SEO and PPC have their relative strengths, and as always this is a case of weighing up the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.

I'd recommend she kicks off with PPC:

• it's immediate: she'll instantly start ranking well in the search engine results
• it's a great learning tool: she'll have evidence of specific phrases that are working well for her business, and she can use these phrases to guide her SEO strategy
• it's measurable: she can track which clicks have converted to enquiries
• it's flexible: she can tweak her ads, turn them on, turn them off, test and learn
• it's dynamic: she can test phrases that she doesn't have time to incorporate into her website

But of course, there are drawbacks to PPC:

• it's expensive: she'll need relatively deep pockets to compete in her market space
• it's ephemeral: turn off the ads, then her rankings disappear in a puff of smoke
• it's advertising: how many of you actually click on the little ads on the right in Google?
• it's subject to click fraud: (ed: allegedly subject to click fraud)

And we are working on her SEO campaign in tandem with her PPC, and I'm confident it will all workout well.

The benefits of SEO:

• After initial investment, the dividends in improved rankings are virtually free
• Searchers trust the organic results more than the paid-for ones
• Creating SEO friendly content delivers the additional benefit of human-friendly content, indeed also should be more accessible content

And the drawbacks of SEO:

• It's a lot of work. And I mean a whole lotta work
• If you have an existing site, it may mean a significant rebuild which costs time and money
• There are no such thing as a guarantee. All your work may lead to disappointing results if you operate in a highly competitive market.

It's all a matter of balance to meet her business objectives.

eBay, Google, Dummies, Prams

eBay has pulled all its sponsored advertising off Google in the USA.

What a shame; that means Americans won't be seeing adverts for idiots for sale on eBay (this link shows adverts still operating in the UK)

The alleged cause of this drastic action? Cheeky Google planned a big party promoting Google Checkout on the same day and in the same city as eBay's premier seller event, eBay Live.

And at the root of it all is eBay's refusal to negotiate with Google over the use of Google Checkout as a mechanism for buyers or sellers. Google Checkout, of course, is a direct competitor to eBay's own PayPal. Google Checkout is banned for use on eBay.

eBay's position is that Google Checkout is unproven, and eBay expresses concerns over Google Checkout's fraud and security issues.

Perhaps it really has something to do with keeping competitors off the PayPal turf?

The upshot is that removal of PPC advertising has cost eBay a 7% drop in traffic from Google. Google is the number one source of traffic for ebay.com. I would have expected a more dramatic drop, but the Hitwise analysis of the spat reveals the top search terms in Google are for the eBay domain name or eBay brand.

As for Google, the value of the lost advertising is estimated at $25 million, and eBay is Google's largest AdWords customer.

So, big money is involved. As is usually the case money talks, and no doubt they will kiss and make up soon.

Reverse Psychology and PPC Advertising

How do you feel about a "reverse psychology" or shock advertising for your Pay Per Click campaigns?

This Google AdWords advertiser describes his product as Rubbish and uses the strap line "Poor Service and Horrible Staff but Great Prices and Free Samples too!"



Your ad needs to differentiate you from your competitors, and catch the eye of your potential customer.

This is a sensational ad that might get clicks, but will it get the right clicks that then convert to sales?

This particular advert forms part of a series of Ad Variations that enables the advertiser to test the effectiveness of different ad styles. Ads might take the style of:

• benefits led copy: why your product is perfect for the customer
• testimonials
• discount offers
• free trial
  

Special thanks to Sharon Weston for bringing this ad to my attention.

Support for Women Owned Businesses

I'm pleased to be involved in the Women 4 Women programme, offering women-owned businesses in the East Midlands free mentoring and subsidised marketing support. The programme aims to boost women's enterprise for start ups, new businesses, or women seeking to further develop their business.

To be eligible you must be located in an Objective 2 area and you can check your postcode eligibility here. The business must be at least 50% woman owned, and fit the usual SME requirements.

I'll be mentoring women in the Lincolnshire area, but my Internet marketing training and support is eligible for support across the entire East Midlands Objective 2 region.

Get in touch if you'd like to know more.

Experian flexes Internet muscle

Nottingham based Experian has acquired Internet marketing intelligence company Hitwise. Hitwise collects and aggregates data about how consumers use and search the Internet.

Take a look at the type of reports Hitwise is able to produce about people's online behaviour:

In this example, Hitwise is reporting on the Travel sector for the period ending March 2007:

Not many of our small businesses can afford this kind of data, but from time to time Hitwise produces a freely-available report which can provide us with invaluable information:






This acquisition strengthens Experian's offering for it's clients who are switching their advertising pounds into online ads and the Internet:

"Hitwise strengthens Experian's position in market research by bringing new, unique data to Experian on how consumers behave online, to complement our existing knowledge of how they behave offline. Hitwise's services are also complementary to other Experian products. For example, Hitwise will leverage the sales and distribution network of CheetahMail, our email delivery and analytics company."

Old Blog Content

One of the problems with blogging is that your best content might be buried away in the archives of old articles. Oldies but goodies, but nobody can find them.

But your web statistics will show you your most popular postings. It's been a year since the launch of the new website, and I've had a chance to review my most popular postings.

I'm going to add them as a side bar to my blog in my forthcoming update, but in the meantime:

Susan Hallam's Top 10 Blog Postings

1. Writing for the Web: web readability tests
2. Internet marketing trends: local search
3. Internet usage in the UK
4. Search engine "findability" index
   
5. Top tips for your Title tag
   
6. Social bookmarking and search engine optimisation
   
7. Pay Per Call: Touch Nottingham
   
8. Internet marketing myths: Googlebowling
   
9. Internet marketing toolbox: iWebTool
   
10. Personalising PPC campaigns using Microsoft AdCentre
    
    

Click Fraud Update

For those of you using Pay Per Click advertising as part of your online marketing mix, here is some required reading.

Take a look at Business Week magazine's cover story on Click Fraud (hint: the "Print Friendly" version gets rid of all the annoying advertising)

For the more visually-inclined amongst you, Business Week have also published an interesting click fraud slideshow illustrating how the scams and deceptions works.

But if you want to rest your weary eyes, then listen to Business Week's clickfraud podcast interview with the journalists who wrote the story.

Google experimenting with AdWords positioning in search engine results page

Do you click on Google's AdWords advertising, or do you ignore the ads?

I ignore the ads. And Google knows I ignore the ads based on my browsing history.

Google appear to be experimenting with the positioning of its Google AdWords advertisements based on your personal ad-clicking history. They know your propensity to click, of course, through cookies or even through your Google personalised account.

If you're not a clicker, then they are not displaying the ads at the top of the screen, but moving them to the panel on the right.

One explanation might be that users will be better served if ads are not pushed at them that they just don't want. Another explanation is that we're getting blind to the ads, and a bit of variety might spice things up.

I did an experiment: I searched for "solicitors Nottingham" using a computer without any cookies on it (so they didn't know who I am) and then repeated the search logged onto my own personal Google account.

The assumption is a "stranger" might click on ads, but Google knows for a fact that Susan never does.

The "stranger" receives the blue sponsored ads horizontally at the top of the search results.

Non-clicking-Susan receives all the ads in the vertical panel on the right.

"Stranger" results:





The identical search, this time logged on as "Susan the non-clicker"'s ; note there aren't any horizontal AdWords across the top of the results, and even the top ads are over on the right



So, if you're advertising on Google AdWords, what might this mean to your campaign? Fewer clicks? Fewer, better clicks?

Watch this space....

Google Adwords Feedback: Was This Ad Good for You?

"Was this link useful to you?"

I was quite surprised to see this question appear in Google after I had clicked on an Adwords advertisement and then immediately clicked the back button.

The question appeared beneath the Adwords advert with "Yes" and "No " radio buttons.

I would assume Google are collecting data which could be used as part of the pricing mix for advertisers - with penalties being given to advertisers who are given negative feedback by searchers.

Unfortunately, I did not get a screenshot of my feedback, but take a look at Google Blogoscoped's Google Adwords Feedback screenshot.

Personalising PPC campaigns using Microsoft AdCenter

I'm at the Search Engine Strategies conference in London today, catching up on latest news and trends in the world of search engines.

It was particularly interested to see a demonstration of Microsoft AdCenter's beta curently available in America, where you can target your PPC campaigns to display your ads to specific searchers, segmenting by gender, age group, city. In America, quite scarily, there are also options to display ads depending on "Lifestyle" factors, but that won't be available at the launch of the service here in the UK at the end of this year.

The targeting is based on information contained in the searcher's Microsoft Passport, so I'm not completely persuaded its usefulness, but time will tell. There is quite alot of extrapolation and assumptions being made to generate the predicted results. Folks on the Microsoft stand had been trained to say "statistically significant." I smell something, but I'm not sure what.

The service also includes day parting - the ability to define when you want your ads to display: show my ads Monday to Friday only, turning them off for an hour over lunch, and no ads Friday afternoon.

It's been an interesting day - I'd suggest you pop along to the conference next year if you can.

Where to spend your PPC pounds

If you are using Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising to promote your business, you are probably focusing on the biggest search engines with the most "eyeballs": Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL.

Neilsen's MegaView Search Report (Dec 2004) analyses how users respond to and click on PPC advertising as a measure for success for UK search engines. When a searcher types in a keyword or phrase and look at the results, how often do they click on the advertising?

The results might surprise you.

Google has the highest number of searchers, and the highest click through rate, so no surprises there. But how about Tiscali? It is number 4 in terms of PPC performance, AltaVista is 3, and that rank outsider My Way Search is number 5. Yell doesn't appear until unlucky number 13 and Kelkoo is way down at 16.

What does this mean? Just because the search engine is big doesn't mean it is attracting the right audience for your product or service. The performance of your PPC on a search engine will vary according to a wide range of factors

The top 10 UK search engines ranked by number of click throughs per searcher:

1. Google Search
2. Yahoo! Search
3. AltaVista Search
4. Tiscali Search
5. My Way Search
6. MSN Search
7. Wanadoo Search
8. Lycos Search
9. Ask Jeeves Search
10. Dogpile.com Search