Orange County Internet Marketing Advice by Darby Works, Inc.

Use Google Analytics Keywords To Expand Your Pay Per Click Marketing

Just a quick tip on this Saturday morning. Go into your Google Analytics program or whatever you use and grab all your keyword phrases that send you traffic from the search engines. Dump them into their own Google Adwords campaign. Many of them may bring you great traffic!

You might be thinking, "I am already ranked organically for the those terms. Why would I want to pay for them?" Studies have shown that in this scenario, you get a  greater bang for your buck. In other words, 1 organic listing + 1 paid listing does not equal 2. Instead, it's more like 1 + 1 = 3. I would surmise the reason for this is visitor perception. They see you ranked well organically. They see your paid ad. Many of them don't know the difference between the two. All they think, "Wow, this company is everywhere. They must be good. I should click."

Have a great weekend!

8 Content Development Strategies

I currently work with a number of freelance writers who produce keyword rich content for my clients' sites. I thought I’d pass along some content development tips I’ve discovered over recent months. As you probably know by now, creating new content on your website gives you more “real estate” online. It’s another way to broaden your influence and attract new visitors.

Write Quality Content!
People like to read good articles on the web. Solid advice can ingratiate you to your visitors, help build your brand equity, and create new customers. Don’t get sloppy, people!

Avoid Lousy Writers At All Cost.
Just a corollary of what I said above, but it must be said. You may be able to get people to your site, but if your content is lousy, you’ve not only lost a visitor, but you may have damaged your brand. That visitor may never come back. Worse, they may tell others never to visit your site.

Avoid Automated Content Creation Tools
There are a number of software packages out there that claim to create instant content. I would think twice about using any of those. Google will eventually catch on and filter that stuff out. Why waste your time for a flash-in-the-pan solution? Instead, write your own original, evergreen content, and attract visitors for months and even years to come.

Consider Writing Content for “Influencers” Instead of Your Normal Website Audience.
Here is what I mean. Would you rather your article get noticed by the L.A Times or the Ghost Town Herald? Get to know the “influencers” in your niche on the web. You’ll probably discover a number of bloggers in your industry who really carry some weight with their readership. Get to know their blogs. Become a contributor. Consider writing an article mentioning the blog or blogger by name. Tailor the flavor and style of your article to the blog itself. The basic idea is to get noticed by this “influencer.” If this blogger picks up your article or mentions it, you suddenly get instant exposure to his or her entire blog community. Now imagine doing that 5 or 10 times over.

As an example, I wrote a post a couple weeks back on Pay Per Click Marketing Tips. Someone picked it up on Digg, and I got 800+ visits to that post in one day.

Choose Your Content and Keyword Phrases Based on Your Company Goals and Resources.
This may sounds obvious, so let me unpack it a bit. Content is all about keywords. The keyword phrases you choose or don’t choose are critical to your success. If you think you are going to write a quick article about “music downloads” or “stock trading” and suddenly get a ton of web traffic from your instant #1 Google rankings, guess again. Now if you have the time to build links to those articles, blog about them, get them circulated and ranked well on StumbleUpon, Digg, and some of the other big social networking communities, then yes, maybe it’s possible. The key, however, is to write rich, compelling content that has the possibility of going “viral” and get distributed widely across the web.

Consider Keyword Trends
Google Green Bars: Use the free Google Keyword Suggestion Tool, and only write articles using keywords that have lots of green bars (good traffic, strong trends, and advertisers.) If you are going to spend time carefully crafting an article, why waste it on a topic that has little or no interest?

I’ll digress here by saying that, yes, some people purposely go after hundreds and hundreds of topics that get just a little traffic. They write lots of articles and get a little traffic to each one. Unless you have lots of time, money, or already have  access to rich compelling content, this approach is long haul.

Use the other tools like WordTracker, Keyword Discovery, and Google Trends.

Keep Your Articles Short or Long
Confused huh? After reading dozens of opposing views about this topic, I have come to the conclusion that it simply doesn’t matter. Length is not the issue. Good content is good content. If a 500 word article works brilliantly to cover a topic, then so be it. If 3,000 words are needed, then that’s fine too. The reality is that people will read it IF it’s a good article! Are you getting the point here?

Consider Outsourcing Your Content Development.
Here are a few companies I have worked with directly or have heard good things about:

• Constant Content - worked with directly
• WeWriteIt - worked with directly
• Associated Content - worked with directly
• CKMG - have heard good things

And the last tip?

Write Quality Content Always!

Cheers!

New SEM Tools From Microsoft adCenter Labs...

Microsoft now offers some interesting internet marketing tools with their Microsoft adCenter Labs. I haven’t done any testing yet with these tools, but I wanted to let you know about it. The writing is on the wall. Behavioral marketing is here to stay. Let the battle begin between privacy and marketing.

Here is the text from Microsoft’s website:

Ad Text Writer
Attempts to automatically generate ad text for your ppc ad based on what it sees from a URL. It’s not perfect, but it gives you some interesting ideas.

Content Categorization
Classify websites into categories.

Detecting Online Commercial Intention
Does your customer intend to buy, sell, or complete another kind of transaction? Predict such intention from his or her search queries or recently visited URLs.

Demographic Prediction
Predict a user’s age, gender, and other demographic information based on his or her online behavior.

Keyword Forecast
Forecast the impression count and demographic predictions using one or more search terms.

Keyword Group Detection
Given a word or phrase, find a set of similar words.

Keyword Mutation Detection
Detect frequent misspellings or alternative spellings of the same keyword in search query logs.

Search Funnel
Analyze and visualize user search sequences in the form of funnels.

Search Result Clustering
Cluster a set of documents, such as search results, into semantically related groups in real time.

Seasonal Keyword Forecast
Forecase the seasonality patterns of search queries.

Sensitive Web Page Detecting
Detects whether a web page contains sensitive content.

Social Video
Adds and shares comments on video frames.

Video Hyperlink
Interactive video tool.

DarbyWorks Search Engine Marketing Conference

In December, DarbyWorks will be offering a Search Engine Marketing Conference in the Orange County area. The conference is ideal for business owners, executives, and Internet marketers. The focus will be on the online marketing strategies which have the highest potential for largest return on investment.

Read more about the Orange County SEM Conference here.

My Trip To Google

Back in January of this year, I had the opportunity to visit Google. I had some Adwords and Adsense business up there. Sergey and Larry wanted to pick my brain and chat. LOL. Anyway, Google's main headquarters was actually a lot like a college campus. Segways, electric scooters, and bicycles zipped between buildings.

Google does not allow you to photograph anything behind closed doors, but I did get some nice shots. Rather than blather on, I'll just show some photos I took:

Cool 3-wheeled car parked in front of main lobby.

The name we've come to love and hate and love and hate and love and...



Google front doors.



Inside the main lobby. Note the real time Google queries on the wall...



Checking in. Google colors abound with fun lava lamps.



Left: Free chilled drinks, and a telephone booth.



Googleplex outside the main cafeteria. This is just ONE of the cafeterias - all free, of course.



Gourmet lunch. The cafeteria was amazing and free. Cuisine from all over the world. Lunch hour is truly a melting pot of people from all over the world. I could hear at least 4 different languages being spoken while I ate. And all-you-can-eat Ben & Jerry's ice cream! On this day there happened to be Belgian chocolates too. YES!



Lovely parting gifts - hat, notebook, pen, and a Google towel.

The trip was a blast. The energy was infectious.



Yahoo! Google's arch nemesis, just down the road as we drove back to the San Jose Airport...

SEOmoz.org Seattle SEO Conference Review

A good time was had by all in Seattle at last week’s SEOmoz.org Premium SEO Training Seminar. I had never been to Seattle so I was really looking forward to the trip. I arrived Sunday night for the Monday conference, and stayed at a fantastic hotel called the Watertown – A Unique Urban Hotel. If you are ever need a place to stay, I recommend it highly.

The conference venue was on campus at the University of Washington inside Kane Hall. The fall colors were already on display, and a beautiful blanket of ivy was in its full glory up the entire side of one of the buildings.

The conference itself was a series of eight sessions that Rand Fishkin had developed. Rather than bore you with every little detail, I’ll just recap and tell you briefly what I learned.

One of the coolest things I enjoyed was how Rand explained how a story goes viral and the “The Digg Effect.” Basically you write a really good article that is deemed worthy by fellow Diggers. It gets lots of votes, and from there the rest is history. It was great to hear it from the horse's mouth.

When 37 top SEO gurus were asked, “What factors matter most at Google to get your pages ranked well?", here is what they said:

#10 - Topical relationship of inbound linking page
#9 – Global link popularity of linking site
#8 – Keyword use in body text
#7 – Link popularity of site in topical community
#6 – Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site
#5 – Link popularity within the site’s internal link structure
#4 – Age of site
#3 – Global link popularity of site
#2 – Anchor text of inbound link
#1 – Keyword use in title tag

Top Social Media Marketing Sites

1. YouTube
2. Wikipedia
3. StumbleUpon
4. Yahoo! Answers
5. Yelp
6. LinkedIn
7. Flickr
8. Craigslist (Get into “Best Of” if possible.)
9. Facebook
10. Amazon
11. MySpace
12. Technorati
13. Newsvine
14. CitySearch
15. Wikihow

Write content for “influencers - the linkerati” in addition to your normal audience.

In order to reach the linkerati, you have to play in their space. If you want to get exposure on the social bookmarking sites, you need to be an active participant, contribute, and get known.

Get a blog NOW. Rand said he recommends getting a blog to 90% of his clients.

Be careful if you decide to try the paid blogger services like PayPerPost, ReviewMe, and SponsoredPosts. Many of the blogs there tend to be low quality and really won’t do you much good. Be sure to be very particular about who you select.

Search for good blogs at Google’s Blog Search Engine.

And last but not least, SEOmoz’s superfood to keep them ahead of the SEM curve -  tasty Seattle donuts:

The after party at Gillian's bar was a blast, I stood on my feet for 3.5 hours and talked and talked and talked to some really amazing people who just love what they do. I left around 10:30pm and rushed over to the Seattle Space Needle for the last elevator up to the top, but alas, I just missed it.

Here are some great people I met. (There were many more, but these are the only ones I remembered to get cards from.)

Scott Willoughby - campaign coordinator at SEOmoz.org

Garth House – an independent web development and marketing guy from Korea Town in Los Angeles.

Amanda & Anand from At Large, Inc. – a sharp, boutique interactive agency in Sarasota, Florida.

Miguel and Farukh from Solid Cactus, an amazingly fast growing e-commerce firm who has a strong alliance with Yahoo! Stores.

Jeremy Dearringer, partner from Slingshot SEO out of Zionsville, IN. Where the heck is that? Do they actually do SEO in Indiana!? LOL. Seriously, Jeremy is a brilliant guy and an expert at product channel distribution, SEO, and spotting new trends in the market.

Matthew Franklin, a passionate marketer and programming guru from Captures – online solutions for small and medium size businesses.

Carlos del Rio, founder and creative director of New Media Northwest, LLC – an expert and AB Testing and optimizing your website to sell more effectively.

All in all, I really enjoyed the conference, the Seattle area, and the new friends I made at the conference. I look forward to next year!

Thanks SEOmoz for a great time!

10 Tips For Optimizing Your Landing Page

Great article by Lee Odden over at Top Rank Blog. He offers Ten Tips for Lead Generation Landing Pages.

Seomoz.org Conference in Seattle...

Hi,

I just got back from a great 1-day conference by Rand Fishkin from Seomoz.org in Seattle. I'll be sharing my thoughts in detail in a day or so. Stay tuned...

The Lazy Adwords Marketer's Way To Losing Thousands of Dollars

I'll just be blunt here. You leave lots of profits on the table when you make the critical mistake of not AB testing your marketing efforts.

What Is AB Testing?
AB Testing is simply the process of comparing two marketing approaches with each other to see which one performs better. The fancy term is called multivariate testing, but for the sake of this post, let's just stick with AB testing. For this discussion, let's talk about 2 kinds of testing:

1. Ad copy AB testing
2. Website landing page AB testing.

Why You Should AB Test?
Let's say you are running a Google Adwords campaign selling magic carpets. You write your one ad, then load up your keywords and wait. A few days go by, and voila, you make a sale. You run the numbers, and the good news is you are profitable. You think, "Hey, this is great! I am making money!"

AB Test Your Ad Copy
Let's use a VERY simple example. Let's say over a period of 7 days, your ad gets 100,000 total impressions for your keywords. And let's say your ad is gets a 1% click through rate (CTR), with an average cost of 35 cents per click. So you'd get 1000 clicks at a total cost of $350.00. With a website conversion rate of .05% you sell 5 rugs at $100 each for a gross profit of $500, and a net profit of $150. A 43% ROI. Not bad at all!

Now you say, "Hey, I want more traffic!" So now what? Bid more per click? Up your budget? Look for more keywords? You decide to up your bid per click to 40 cents. That increase sends you 1500 clicks and more exposure, but at a higher price. Total cost is $600. You sell 7 rugs. Gross profit is $700. Net profit is $100. ROI is still a solid 17%. Even though your net profit is lower, let's say you are happy for the additional 500 clicks for branding your name and the additional marketing data you gathered.

You decide you want even more traffic so you keep increasing your cost per click, your budget, and adding more keywords. However, at some point you hit a ceiling. You can't afford to bid more because that will eat too much into your profits. You budget is also maxed out. So what to do, what to do?

Now let's step back and try this. Instead of increasing your click cost, or adding more keywords to get more traffic, let's just increase your click through rate on your Google ad to 1.5%. Now here are the new numbers:

Now you'd get those 1,500 clicks @ your initial 35 cents. Total cost is $525. With the same website conversion rate, you sell 7 rugs. Gross profit is $700. Net profit is $175. ROI is 33%.

Ponder This...
Simply by reworking your ad copy and increasing your CTR by a half a percent, you achieved a 16% higher ROI than you would have if you had raised your maximum PPC cost. You can imagine how many thousands of more dollars you'd earn as you scale this up to larger business numbers. That is why you want to AB test.

AB Test Your Website Landing Page
You can also dramatically increase your profits without spending more money on additional advertising just by improving your sales conversion rate on your website landing page itself. This is perhaps the most overlooked, but powerful strategy by online marketers. From the example above, if you increase your sales conversions   only by one tenth of one percent - I will say that again - if you increase your sales conversions only by one tenth of one percent - this is what the numbers would look like:

Total cost remains the same at $525 for those 1,500 clicks at 35 cents per click. With the new website conversion rate of .75%, you sell 9 rugs! Gross profit is $900. Net profit is $375. ROI is now a whopping 71%.

Enough said. :)

How Can I Easily AB Test My Ads?
A fast way to AB test is through Google Adwords. When you setup your Google Campaign, instead of writing just one ad for your Adgroup, write two immediately. Then go into your Google "Edit Campaign Settings" choose "Optimize Ads." this way, Google will begin serving up the more successful ad as it gains a higher CTR.

Keep an eye on your CTR. After 100 or so clicks, check it. Ignore the CTR on the content network since that tends to be lower. Focus on your Search CTR. Delete the poor performing ad, write a new one, and try to beat your winner. Of course, you can always increase your budget, and add keywords, but always have 2 ads running no matter what. It may shock you when you see what kind of ad copy really performs best.

How Can I AB Test My Landing Page?
Google to the rescue yet again. They offer a relatively robust multivariate tool called Website Optimizer. It allows you to test multiple variables simultaneously. For example, you might test two different headlines, two photos, and two offers. What’s great is that Google serves up all different variations. Based on your conversion success Google arrives at the best combination of page elements. Installation may be a bit tricky, so you may need your programmer, unless you already know how to install scripts and code on your pages. Learn more about Google's Website Optimizer here.

Conclusion
The reality is that when it comes to marketing, it really matters very little about what you think will work. Your customers determine what works and what doesn’t. That’s why you need to test, test, test!

May increased profits fill your pockets!