Search Engine Marketing Planning – Saturday Q & A Session

Search engine marketing planning is not always as simple of a task as it might seem to be. Brainstorming and coordinating the right balance of organic search engine optimization (SEO) and the more immediate pay per click (PPC) advertising is a challenge even for those with lots of hands on experience in the business. Today, let’s take a look at a few search engine marketing planning questions and answers…

Question #1: How do I know what keywords to optimize organically and which to invest in PPC with?

Well, it really all begins with accurate keyword research related to your website’s overall niche. Choosing which methods to use for what keywords is impossible without revealing the facts and figures for each individual keyword phrase term being considered. In general, long-tail keyword terms (those with 3 or more keywords in the search phrase) tend to work well either with organic search optimization or with PPC.

You definitely don’t want to use PPC for terms that are not pre-qualified-in other words, using PPC to attract potentially uninterested “tire kickers” to your site is just a way to rack up costs quickly with very little to no return. It’s probably best to save these kinds of more generalist terms for SEO. PPC often works well for very specific keyword inquiries-such as model numbers, product names, and so on.

Question #2: When doing search engine marketing planning for my website, how important is social media?

As things stand right now, building a rock solid base of long-term SEO is probably priority number one. Competition is fierce here, and it does take time to realize great results-so the sooner the better. And of course, setting up per click advertising campaigns can bring immediate results to the table. So this is another high priority search engine marketing planning task. After these two aspects are accommodated, social media would probably come in next (unless you have a cutting-edge social media campaign under development). Social media promises to become more and more important as an overall part of SEM.

Question #3: How can professionals help me with SEM planning?

Let’s preface the answer to this question with another vital question…do you have access to the latest keyword statistics, metrics, and other vital data that goes into planning a search engine marketing strategy from the ground up? As we mentioned earlier, having complete access to this up to date data is essential for planning purposes and designing successful campaigns. There are some consumer resources available out there-such as the Google AdWords Keyword Tool-but that’s just the tip of the iceberg compared to the data that SEM professionals have access to.

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Businesses Maintain a Clear Coordinated Policy of Website Web Hosting Log on Information

It is a fact of life in 2010 that a business lives and dies by its website. Customers do not even look up your phone number or address anymore in the “Yellow Pages”. In most cases by a show of hands people and “your customers” go straight to the internet – that is Goggle, Yahoo or MSN / Bing.

Yet imagine the horror to wake up one fine day and find no web page up. Businesses that pride themselves on their systems – their efficiency, numbers and charts on graphs and even hard hitting sales meetings to get their staff out there pounding the pavement or at least working the sales floor for their quota – all to often leave coordination of their domain names to complete and utter lack of coordination to confusion. It is not unlike living in a family of alcoholics.

Recently one apparently well run business found a symptom that their main sales email was not working. After diagnosis it was determined that the setup and passwords of the email programs – Outlook Express and the like was set up correctly. This was now Friday afternoon and now a weekend was on the way. Try calling some tech support at web hosts on a Friday afternoon. It is easier to find a plumber. The weekend came with all the busy sales, and the non working web mail was quickly forgotten about.

Monday morning it was left to the efficient office comptroller to determine that the problem appeared to be non payment and lapsing of the hosting account. Who controlled and was in charge of the web host? Who knew and knows?

On top of that no one seemed to know who was in charge of the web host, what the account and password was.

Fine and dandy. Once the account for hosting was paid still the web page refused to rise from the dead on the dead. By now the owner of the business was pacing the floor and tearing out his hair. It seemed that the domain names for the enterprise had been scattered one by one or two by two across a whole wrath of authorities, agents and accounts. Lots of luck lol.

Finally with great effort the whole episode was sorted out. The suspended account main domain was paid, was active. Heaven. Still no domain nor working website up on the web. What gives?

Now that the domain had been suspended for a week or so, the domain was not pointed by the DNS Servers (dynamic naming servers). It will take several days for the internet to now find the website of the firm, and perhaps even more time for the website to become fully functional – ordering, online e commerce and emails to be functional.

What is the moral and lesson of the story? The lesson of the story for businesses in 2010 is firstly value your web-page as a basic landmark and “Yellow Pages’ for your customers.

Secondly consolidate your entire logon, web host and domain name providers. Have one person in charge. Keep proper records. Make a policy and procedure is in place for those records, their storage, retrieval and access. If possible have everything with one provider with a 24/7 toll free number with tech support. At the worst you may choose, for reasons of logistics to have domain names with one provider service and web hosting with another. Keep your life simple, yet redundant.

Life is too short.

Terry E. Vostor Search Engine Engineer, SEO Company Services

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Change and Growth – One is Inevitable and the Other is Optional

I just read an interesting article written by Key Erb titled, “Change is Inevitable… But Growth Is Optional.” Her theme was that change happens, but not necessarily growth, and she hit on a few related topics like performance management, wealth management and business growth.

Her Questions
One of her questions struck home to a lot of threads I read every day on different forums, and that was, “Are we properly capitalized to achieve our strategy? Followed by, “Are we properly organized to achieve our strategy?”

My Perception

My perception is that an awful lot of start ups, cross industry, are not properly capitalized or organized. This is especially true in web hosting, where for pennies on the dollar, you can throw a website up against the wall – but will it stick? In reality, many don’t, so we hear horror stories of start up providers (and some well known hosts) on web hosting forums pertaining to lost data and clients – over and over and over. Countless threads begin with rants about this or that provider being deceptive, poorly managed or having excessive down time. Are these all verifiable? Of course not – some are simply sour grapes, but other real issues are brought up. One of my favorites relates to plans that include unlimited space and bandwidth. Do me a favor and purchase one of their plans, then try to upload a 2TB website to their server. Let me know if your site ever goes online – I think probably NOT. Why not? Because unlimited space and bandwidth simply isn’t a reality – it’s a marketing strategy.

If You’re an End User

If you’re an end user searching for a host, select a host based on the value of your own business, and on the value of your time. Not everyone needs 10TB of bandwidth, or servers with 16GB of RAM. Your solution should match your requirements, and be cost effective.

If You’re a Provider

If you’re a provider, stuff like performance management, wealth management and business growth needs to be addressed. Paraphrased, Kay Erb says this equates to opportunities to run your business more effectively, efficiently and profitably.

Steve is an Inside Sales Manager at Hostirian in Saint Louis, MO. He began his writing career many moons ago while stationed in Pensacola, Florida, writing for the Cory Log. Today, Steve writes about business, marketing, search engine optimization, and web design & hosting. You can read or RSS his articles from http://www.WDTalk.com.

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How to Do PPC Advertising Effectively

PPC or Pay Per Click Advertising is considered an aggressive mode of comparatively moderate version of advertising – online marketing. However, real world marketing has earned the reputation of aggressive advertising but due to immediate impact, pay per click also comes under the wrap of assertive advertisement tactics. This is the reason; pay per click is widely implied to give an instant boost to traffic influx of sites. Though it is costlier than other versions of internet marketing, yet most of the growth-seeking entrepreneurs are using it. None can defy the truth that, ‘PPC works wonders to offer a rapid recognition to websites” but a successful PPC project deals with some important nitty-gritty. These nitty-gritty are considered ‘must knows’ of effective PPC campaign. Read on to get a brief of such ‘must knows’ -

• Set a daily budget plan for all the PPC management activities, which you have planned to include in your online marketing strategy.

• Focus on using keywords that are related to major keywords. It is very useful at the point in time when you have to deal with high competition rate. A high competition is generally found in sectors alike, online marketing, tourism service, flight booking, mobile phones and computers. While implementing pay per click advertising service for such sectors, you may opt for keywords that are related to main keywords. This will increase the impact quotient of your PPC management campaign.

• While working on PPC management service, you should focus more on conversions instead of clicks because it is ‘conversion rate’ that matters. Clicks would not give you business until unless, they don’t turn into conversion.

• Coherence between landing page and ad is one of the most important features for successful PPC advertising. You should always pay attention that the landing page is matching with the ad displayed by you on several other web pages. A loophole in it may lead you to lose probable customers.

• Last but not the least, you must test the PPC ad which you going to post. You are going to blow lots of bucks on your ad campaign; hence, it is important to be ensured whether such expense in going to be fruitful or not. Experts of PPC marketing also suggest some other way-out for it. They force on creation of multiple campaigns at the same time. This pulls more customers.

Author is talking about most impactful Internet Marketing Services like PPC Management, SEO Optimization, Online Email Marketing, Article Writing Marketing, Blog Promotions, Banner Marketing and many more.

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Business Email Culture – Manage it Or Watch Your Profits Slide Away

Every time you let your email interrupt your productive work, it takes you an average of 4 minutes to get back on track. If in one day you let 15 emails derail you, you’ve just lost an hour of billable, productive time. Multiply that by every employee every day and you can see how office-wide unproductive email use can be an enormous drain on your profits.

Have you ever stopped to examine how do your employees use their email? How do they manage it, send it, and save it? The habits they adopt, both good and bad, can be contagious. Since email touches all of us several times a day, an office email culture evolves quickly.

Here is an example. A boss calls a meeting with 3 of his department managers. He sends an urgent email, needing a response within 15 minutes. One manager, who is working on an important project, does not have his email on, misses the request, and angers his boss.

This manager has just now learned that he cannot turn off his email, ever. But it doesn’t stop there; it rolls down the corporate ladder. All three managers now have “permission” to use email as an URGENT delivery system. They use it in their departments, and very quickly, the entire organization is infected. No one can turn off his or her email for fear of missing something vital. Employees become slaves to the “brinnng” and stop productive work anytime an email comes in.

This is just one example of email mis-use that plagues businesses. Think of the practices of copying everyone under the sun, just so you don’t miss someone. Or how about using email as a chat room with multiple recipients to resolve dilemmas? Or the slippery slope of using email to critique someone’s performance? One person does it, others do it. Culture is changed.

There are, however, certain practices you can instill into your employees to create a positive email culture. It requires strong leadership and change management efforts, but by following these methods, you and your employees will be able to reclaim more time, and improve your bottom line:

1. NEVER use email as an urgent delivery system. If the matter is urgent, pick up the phone or walk down the hall.

2. Have everyone turn off “Automatic Send/Receive” and set “Receive intervals” to a minimum of 90 minutes. If someone is expecting an email, he or she can always hit receive manually.

3. Move everything OUT OF your inbox. Your employees can manage their work better by putting emails in appropriate folders for easy reference later.

4. Make Subject Lines be VERY specific. By including details in subject lines, you will help others sort and prioritize their work.

5. Copy only the people who REALLY need to receive the email. Each superfluous cc will have to open and read the email, adding unnecessary tasks to their already full days.

Marsha Egan, CPCU, PCC, CEO of the Egan Group,Inc., Reading PA. An ICF Certified Professional Coach, she is an authority on email productivity. She works with forward thinking organizations who want a profit-rich email culture. She is the author of Inbox Detox and the Habit of Email Excellence,available on her website and Amazon.com.The last week in January is International Clean Out Your Inbox Week at http://EganEmailSolutions.com/inboxweek.html.

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The Best Pay-Per-Click Management Company – How to Find Them!

Categorizing Pay-Per-Click Management Companies:

1. The Best PPC Management Companies: Chop Shops? – PPC Management Companies like “Reach Local” and “Yodle” were created to have highly scalable/repeatable business models, which is great for their shareholders, but not necessarily for their customers.  Repeatable/scalable for them translates into impersonal and inflexible for you.  These firms prey on the naivete of Yellow Pages advertisers.  They specifically target small businesses with a presence in the Yellow Pages, since the utilization of this older (rapidly becoming extinct) form of advertising signals a lack of familiarity with newer and more effective forms of advertising such as internet marketing, and specifically pay-per-click advertising.  This puts their sales reps, often former yellow pages salesman, in the enviable position of proverbially taking candy from a baby.

   These “Chop Shops” know that they are able to offer these less sophisticated customers a lower quality of service and charge a higher price due to their ignorance of the market.  They are not necessarily being dishonest or disingenuous, but rather just charging a higher price than others in the market for a less valuable service.  The interesting thing is that PPC advertising is currently so inefficient at the local level that these chop chops are often still able to deliver positive ROI for their small business owner customers despite their poor PPC management techniques and overpricing.  They are literally succeeding despite themselves!  This does not mean you should use one of these firms, unless of course you don’t mind paying more for less.

   One of the biggest shortcomings of these “chop shops” is their total and complete inflexibility.  Their product focus is so narrow that they are unable to make even minor changes for their customers, even if it would translate into a major improvement in the effectiveness of the campaign.  An example would be the fact that they will not make ANY changes to their customers websites.  They do not offer landing pages, which often have major positive impacts on the rate of site visitors converting to customers, or leads at the very least.  They also do not currently have an offering related to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), or other internet marketing strategies like email marketing, making them less valuable as they are not a full-service, turnkey, internet marketing solution.

2. The Best Pay-Per-Click Management Companies: Computer Nerds? – One of the most common types of PPC management companies are “computer nerds”.  They won’t come out and tell you they are computer nerds, the name of their company will most likely not have the term nerds included in it, but you will know pretty quickly if this is who you are dealing with.  Computer nerds are not bad people, and they certainly do have their place.  I use the term “tongue in cheek” as I have many close friends in this category.  The good news is that they are typically a mild step up from the “chop shops” in terms of the ROI they can generate with the management of your PPC advertising campaign. 

   Computer nerds are not typically the greatest business minds, which means they often do not charge as much for their services, but their lack of experience and training in business makes them less than ideal to manage any form of marketing for your small business.  Computer nerd PPC management companies typically evolve from tech support, computer repair, website design firms, or something non-marketing related.  These type of companies typically became involved with pay-per-click management based on customer demand rather than their true interest, experience, or expertise.  They often find that PPC is more profitable for them than their current business so they modify their shingle to include this in their list of services.

3. The Best Pay-Per-Click Management Companies:  Business Minded Marketeers? – Imagine your online marketing presence being managed by an experienced, successful, small business owner like yourself.  Imagine a PPC management company that learns about your business, your customers, and your competitors, and then tailors a custom online marketing program specifically for your small business and your budget.  These companies are rare, very rare!, but they do exist.  So how does one find such a company?

   One of the best ways to find a business minded marketeer to manage you small business’s PPC advertising campaign starts with an interview.  When you are interviewing PPC management companies you will want to query the ownership of the firms to determine their marketing experience, and specifically their online sales & marketing experience in the context of small business.  Have they run their own small business before?  What did they do to market that business online?  Also, looks for companies that have the terms you are looking for in their URL.  If you are looking for “the best internet marketing company”, look for companies that have the terms, best, internet, marketing, and company included in the name of their company’s website.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Campaign Management Tips and Techniques

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is the paid for ads that are shown at the top and sides of search engines search results, they are also placed on lots of websites so webmasters can generate revenue when someone clicks on an ad placed on their website.

PPC advertising is an excellent way to get visitors to come to your site and you can get these visitors within moments of your PPC campaign going live. With this sort of advertising immediacy and the fact that you pay per click, you will want to put in some time to research before creating your ad and submitting it to a search engine, or you could end up wasting a lot of money on an ineffective PPC campaign.

Here are few tips that will help you steer your PPC advertising in the right direction and ensure that you won’t run your PPC campaign without seeing returns on your investment. The goal of most PPC campaigns should be to maximize traffic while minimizing costs.

• Do extensive keyword research for your PPC campaign and ensure the keywords you target are very specific to what your website is actually selling of offering. A lot of PPC budgets are wasted with little to no returns by targeting lots of general keywords that don’t specifically deal with advertisers websites content.
• For every keyword you target for paid advertising, ensure that the landing page for that ad mentions the keyword so visitors will be reassured they have reached the correct page they were looking for. Don’t send them to a page that doesn’t mention the specific keyword or they will just hit the back button and you will have wasted your PPC budget.
• If you don’t have a page that mentions a keyword that you would like to target, then create a landing page specifically for that keyword instead of trying to send the visitor to a general landing page. You will find your conversions will be better if you do this.
• Create different ads and ad groups based on each topic you would like to target with your PPC campaign. Each service or product your website offers needs to have its own highly targeted set of keywords, optimized ads and unique specific landing page.
• Use a call to action in your ads such as “Act today!” or “Join Today!” even better if you can combine your call to action with a benefit for the person viewing your ad such as “Act now and save 20% off” at the minimum include something that tells the viewer they should click on your ad.

By following these steps you will be able to maximize the effectiveness of your PPC advertising campaign while minimizing costs and acquiring highly targeted visitors for your website.

Email List Management – What is List Segmentation?

1.  Prospects vs clients

You always start out with a list of prospects, but in time, most of these prospects will turn into clients. You wouldn’t want to be sending the same promotional email to a client that you would to a prospect. Once a prospect graduates to client status, they should be treated differently and be sent different emails.

2.  Products purchased

If you offer a wide range of products on your website, it would also be a good idea to group your mailing list according to the products that they purchased. This would give you an idea of their interests and would help you decide which promotions and offers they would best respond to.

3.  Amount of sale generated

You could also segment your list according to the average amount that they spend on your site. That way, you can determine which ones to consider as VIPs or major clients. These customers should be acknowledged, thanked, and given better attention. You could offer exclusive deals, gifts, and information. This would make them feel important and will encourage them to spend more on your site.

4.  Demographics

This is one of the more obvious ways to group your mailing list. You can group them according to gender, age, race, occupation, location, marital status, educational status, socio-economic factors, etc.

5.  Survey results

Based on the results of your recent surveys, you can determine the interest levels of your clients. This will help you adjust the frequency of your emails and help you determine the best offerings to send them.

6.  Open rates or CTR action rates

You should pay attention to your mailing list’s open or CTR rates. This will tell you which ones to focus your attention on. Those who open your emails or often click on links are clearly more engaged than those who don’t click on anything. You can send more frequent emails to the more engaged members to increase your conversion rates. You can try to engage the less interested members by sending them more promotions and offers to encourage them to start clicking.

7.  Geography 

Grouping your mailing list according to the countries they come from or even just domestic vs international is also a good idea. You wouldn’t want to be sending emails to your foreign customers that would relate to your domestic holidays. You should send geo-targeted emails that your customers can relate to.

Segmenting your mailing list might be a daunting task at first, but it is a sure fire way to increase your conversion and response rates. It is best to start slow and to start early. You should start segmenting while your list is still not that long and you can start with simple segmentation before progressing to more complicated groupings. No matter which path you choose to take in segmenting your mailing list, it is the best thing to do if you want to increase the success rate of your email marketing campaign.