Back in early 2008, Google changed its philosophy on broad match and introduced expanded broad match.  At the time, this had many advertisers upset, as Google’s expanded broad match had many disadvantages to an advertiser looking for quality traffic from their broad match keywords.  Google insisted that its expanded broad match was to give more traffic to advertisers.  Expanded broad match led to many broad keywords mapping to very irrelevant keywords.  Many advertisers began using broad match as a way to increase their negatives.  For example, if your broad keyword was formal footwear, Google would map your keyword to women’s evening footwear, and men’s dress wingtips.

Google recently introduced a new match type called modified broad match.  This new match type gives an advertiser more control over their broad match and with similar high quality targeting than phrase match offers.  Google’s new modified broad match allows you to put a “+” sign in front of your broad keyword.  This can be considered an anchor of sorts for your keywords.  If you now put a + sign in front of your broad keyword formal shoes (+formal +shoes), Google will now map your keyword to close variants of these two words.  These variants include misspellings, singular/plural forms, abbreviations and acronyms, synonyms and closely related variants to those keywords.  Now +formal +shoes can map to frmal shoes, or even formal evening shoes.  Modified broad match makes sure that your keywords are the main keywords in the user’s search query.

According to Google, the new match type should not be a 100% replacement for any current broad match keywords, as you might lose some traffic, but used in the right situations this can be extremely effective.  For example, if you were using phrase match with geographic modifiers within your keywords, such as “orange county charter”, your ad would only appear when the search query contained those 3 keywords in that order.  If you were to use the modified broad match, your ad would now show for any order of those keywords, plus, it would also show for close variations and variations of those keywords along with other keywords a user would search for.  This means that these keywords are effective in picking up long tail traffic, and not wasting money on Google’s expanded broad match.

What would a television be without the internet?  What would the internet be without television?  These are the types of questions we will be asking ourselves in 5 to 10 years.  Google recently announced a new platform called Google TV.  This mega merger of entertainment will bring all kinds of web content right into the family room.  A concept that has been dreamed about for a long time by many different electronics and software companies.  This concept is nothing new, there are many devices on the market today that attempt to merge this concept, but what’s different here is that it’s not just Google, its Intel, and Sony all working together to bring this to fruition.

Why would Google want to bother mixing what they do best with the family room television?  Google has recently been on the forefront of developing applications (apps) for both the computer and smartphones.  The software platforms are Google’s chrome software and Android technology.  Both open software platforms will allow many different types of apps to function in a media environment.  This combination of super power companies will allow the regular TV user to enhance their viewing experience.  Google’s motto has always been to enhance the users’ experience.  Imagine now the possibilities of an internet technology company dominating the viewing experience in the living room.

Google TV in a majority of homes has many different advertising, marketing and data mining applications.  Google has the opportunity to become the largest ratings and data provider, surpassing an industry monopolized by Nielsen.  This advantage of being a ratings and data provider will give Google a large advantage over the Nielsen ratings which have a mystery to within their own.  The Nielsen ratings have never been able to prove how accurate these ratings are due to the fact that it’s such a small sampling of the population.   If a major media player were to own this important piece of entertainment data, the financial possibilities are endless.  Could we see AdWords and product placements during actual TV shows?  Could there be advertising on top of commercials?  Could you opt in to certain advertisers, such as movie trailers and products of interest?  Google has the potential to become a market maker and own a very large piece on the ground floor of a new and innovative advertising platform.

Imagine a travel company is offering its website visitors deals about tropical Caribbean destinations.  These visitors look through the travel company’s offers, but end up not booking a trip.  Later on in that same visitors search to other travel websites, they see travel deals from competitors.  Because of new innovations from Google, this travel company has the opportunity to reach these web visitors across the internet on a variety of related websites targeting the travel company’s past visitors.

This new ad innovation from Google is called Remarketing!  Any AdWords advertiser is able to use remarketing to reach users as they’re searching the web, allowing you to show ads to users who’ve previously visited your website as they are browsing through sites within the Google Content Network.  Remarketing is a simple way to connect with users, based on their past interactions with your website.

What’s great about remarketing is the ability for businesses to reach past users who are more likely to be receptive to your businesses previous ad campaigns and special offers.  Remarketing helps advertisers and websites receive a higher return on their investments.  It also is a way to have more relevant and useful ads for specific users, with more opportunities for your customers to receive discounts and special offers that may be of interest to them.

Over the past couple of years, Facebook has emerged as the leader when it comes to social networking.  Originally a community designed for college students, Facebook has expanded its user base to allow any individual or business to join.  Many companies are hesitant in promoting their business on Facebook because they feel that their target market “isn’t using it”.  This might have been true during the first few years of Facebook’s existence, but any company who is not on Facebook is missing out on a great marketing opportunity.  Facebook advertisements, in particular, offer a great opportunity for a business to reach the specific demographic that they wish to target.

What are Facebook Advertisements?

Facebook advertisements, to put it simply, are those rectangular advertisements that you see on the right side of the page (see screenshot below).

All of these advertisements are implemented by an actual Facebook user which means that you need a Facebook account to be able to create one.  The advertiser is able to create their own ad copy, determine their budget, include a call to action (in the form of a link), and select the specific target market that they wish to reach.

Designing Your Advertisement

To access the Facebook advertisements page, you will need to visit this URL (http://www.facebook.com/ads/create). This link will direct you to Facebook’s advertisement page.  The first step is to create your advertisement copy.  This should reflect the particular destination URL that you are promoting.  It is also highly recommend that you incorporate an image within your advertisement as ads that contain a picture tend to gain more exposure.

As you are creating your advertisement, Facebook will allow you to preview your ad.

Reaching Your Target Market

One of the benefits of using Facebook advertisements lies in the ability to reach a very specific target market.  Taken from Facebook users’ profile data, an advertisement can target a particular demographic that would be relevant to your ad (see screenshot below).

Think about all of the advertising opportunities this presents.  If, for example, you sell men’s soccer shoes in New Jersey, you can target males in New Jersey who list soccer as one of their activities.  If you are opening a sushi place in Miami, you have the ability to target people in Miami who list “sushi” as one of their interests.  The possibilities are almost endless.  The key is to first assess who would have an interest in your website, product, or service and use that information to select your target audience.

If you are planning on targeting a very specific demographic, you might think that your advertisement will not be reaching enough people.  As you are selecting your target audience, Facebook will tell you how many potential users you will be reaching.  Taking the two aforementioned examples (sushi and soccer shoes), we can now determine that the sushi restaurant can potentially reach 31,600 people on Facebook who like sushi and live in Miami.

The person selling soccer shoes to individuals in New Jersey can potentially reach 63,820 people by using Facebook advertisements.

Setting Your Budget

The last step is to set your budget.  Facebook provides the option of paying per impression (CPM) or paying per click (CPC).  The pay per click option is often the most cost effective as an impression doesn’t necessarily translate into someone actually viewing or clicking through your advertisement.

Make sure that you monitor your campaign on a daily basis as the “suggested bid” tends to fluctuate regularly.

With Facebook advertisements, much like any other form of advertising, it is imperative to test different strategies to see which is the most effective.  Eventually you will find the ideal ad copy, target market, and budget combination that will help you to maximize your success on Facebook.

Now that the holiday season is winding down, it’s time to reflect on what worked and what didn’t for your online store so that next year can be even better. As we head into 2010, make it your New Year’s resolution to improve your conversion rate and user experience. Here’s 21 quick best practices that you should strive to achieve in the New Year:

1. Make sure you have unique product descriptions – Each product should have a unique description – Not just a list of feeds, specs, etc., but actual benefit-driven copy that’s unique to your store
   
2. Have a tight keyword focus on every page – Every page (products, categories, etc.) should have a laser-tight keyword focus, and should have unique copy, title tags, meta tags, etc. Be sure to perform keyword research to see what people are actually typing!
   
3. Use static URLs – This is crucial for SEO, and semantically nicer for users who bookmark your pages. Try to include the product name in the URL (i.e. www.MyStore.com/nikon-digital-slr-camera.aspx)
   
4. Show multiple product images – A picture is worth a thousand words! Show us multiple images of the products, from different views, zoom angles, etc. For products that have attributes such as color, show us each color and variation!
   
5. Mine your internal search data – This is crucial! You need to look at what your customers are trying to find but can’t. Mine this data for each of your category pages – Your customers may be calling your products something different than you are.
   
6. Offer a variety of filtering options – Be sure to give your users the ability to search/sort thru long product lists by price, most popular (crucial – takes the risk out of the decision about which products are best), alphabet, etc.
   
7. Be sure to include a value proposition in the header – Tell us what makes you better than the 10,000 other retailers that sell the same thing. Low price guarantees, in business since 1950, free shipping, etc. all add credibility and a reason for the user to shop with you!
   
8. Include ONE primary CTA per page – If your goal is to sell products, the primary call to action on the product page should be the add to cart button – Not a webinar signup or a newsletter form. It’s OK to have multiple CTAs, but prioritize with color, size, shape, etc. to place emphasis where it belongs.
   
9. Have a functioning, updated XML feed – This is crucial for getting all of your pages into the engines. This should be sent to Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer, and Bing Webmaster tools
   
10. Insure that your Google Base Feed is up to snuff –This is a great source of free traffic in Google’s product search and in universal search. The feed should be generated every 30 days, and automatically FTP’d to Google base.
    
11. Categorize your HTML sitemap – Crucial, not only for search engines, but for users that use this as well (yes, people do use these). Break out your sitemap by product category, with no more than 50 links per page
    
12. Make registering for an account optional – Why add friction to the conversion process?
    
13. Offer multiple payment options – Don’t limit users to just credit cards – Offer PayPal, Google CheckOut, BillMeLater – Give me choices!
    
14. Try “Add to Cart” Instead of “Buy Now” – We’ve multivariate tested this extensively – Add to Cart works better because it implies that the user has an option to remove the product from the cart if they decide not to go thru with the checkout
    
15. Clarify your checkout, and don’t always assume that One Page is the answer – Despite what you may think, one page checkout isn’t always better. Regardless, be sure to tell me how many steps there are from the onset, and don’t ask users to repeat information that I just gave you.
    
16. Limit the options during checkout – Get rid of distractions including header navigation – Keep it zoned in on just getting people thru the process.
    
17. Make sure discount coupons actually exist – If there is an option during your checkout, make sure coupons actually exist; otherwise you’re just frustrating the user and basically telling them to leave to go find a coupon!
    
18. Use breadcrumb navigation – This is simple enough to set up and a major convenience to users and Search Engines
    
19. Use related products strategically – offer them on the product page, not during the checkout – Don’t distract me when I’m ready to give you my money!
    
20. Get your security seals in line – Place them on the checkout, right under the “proceed” button – Verisign, SSL verification, BBB, etc all add credibility.
    
21. Test, Test, Test – And then test some more – This is the most important suggestion. Don’t be afraid to try new things. The great thing about the web is that you can learn to be wrong quickly. Just because your conversion rate has improved doesn’t mean it can’t be better still. Use free tools such as Google Website Optimizer to try new designs, page copy, and images to improve your conversion rate.
    

So there you have it – 21 things to keep in mind for the New Year. If you are diligent about seeing that these best practices get implemented, you’ll not only improve your site’s user experience, you’ll also improve your bottom line.

Think about what happens when you drive down the highway – Your eye (and your dollars, most likely!) gravitate to the stores and establishments that have the most convenient location, without you having to go out of your way. Life on the internet is the same – Users will click over to the websites that are easiest for them to find on the search engines. 97% of Internet users won’t go beyond page 1 of the engines, and with 10 listings per page, having prime real estate is key. Wouldn’t it be nice if you had not just one listing, but 2, 3, 4, or more? Owning the SERP is actually quite realistic. Here are a few techniques to increase your digital footprint:

1. Leverage subdomains – The major engines will show no more than two results per SERP page, per domain. Subdomains (the part before the .com in your URL) are considered another domain, so if you are using optimized subdomains, you can actually get up to another 2 listings per SERP per subdomain. The subdomain must have real, unique content, and should be keyword-enriched. It’s OK to optimize the subdomain for some of the same keywords as your main domain

2. Add videos to YouTube – With the advent of Universal Search, the SERPs are no longer just a simple collection of HTML links. Images, news stories, and videos are now part of the mix. Just as you can optimize a website, you can also optimize a YouTube video for prime exposure on YouTube.com, as well as on SERP pages. Be sure to include your keywords in the title of the video, in the description, and in the video’s tags.

3. Create keyword-enriched microsites – Having a microsite with 5-15 pages on a keyword-enriched domain gives you another opportunity to get 2 more listings on the SERP. The microsite must have unique, compelling, and link-worthy content, and should be tightly focused around a single keyword theme. Be sure to create unique titles and metadata for each page on the microsite, and submit to directories, social media sites, and article sites to generate backlinks. Contrary to popular belief, microsites aren’t just for service sites anymore. With the right multi-store E-Commerce platform, you can create multiple online stores with unique content from one product database.

4. Get your Social Media profiles up to snuff – LinkedIn profiles, Facebook pages, Wiki articles, and even Twitter accounts are now being indexed by the search engines. Build up your accounts with fresh content, and be sure to include your primary keywords in your posts and submissions.

Increasing the amount of digital real estate that you own on the search engine takes time and work – But if you’re diligent about capitalizing on the opportunities mentioned above, you’ll not only start to “own” the page, you’ll see your traffic and revenues increase as well

Just to show how quickly that things change in the SEO industry.

Earlier this morning I read on Search Engine Land that Google caffeine would be rolling out soon.  Which likely sent waves of panic through out the SEO community.

Here is a snippet of the original article:

That is right, the long anticipated new Google index, code named Google Caffeine, is coming soon to a data center near you. That means, Google will slowly roll out the new index in the live Google.com results. Depending on the searcher and their location, they may or may not see those new results. It totally depends on which of the many Google data centers they hit at the time they visit Google.

I actually saved the article to send out later.

Several hours I reread the article and noticed that it was updated to say that Google was giving everyone a nice holiday present by not rolling out the Google caffeine update until after the holidays.

Soon? And what’s one data center mean in terms of how widely the new search index might appear?

To answer — and help calm the nerves of site owners with bad memories of the famed “Florida Update” of 2003 — Google spam fighting chief Matt Cutts posted that Google would show Caffeine to only a small number of people until after the holidays:

Read the full article here:

http://searchengineland.com/google-to-deliver-caffeine-after-holidays-29479

Also, view Matt Cutts’ blog post:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-caffeine-update/

A PPC campaign can be a valuable way to drive qualified traffic to your website if done properly.  One way to avoid unqualified traffic, unqualified clicks and most importantly unnecessary spending is through the use of negative keywords.  Adding a negative keyword to your ad groups and campaigns will ensure that your PPC ads will not show for search queries containing that term.  Negative keywords are a core component of any successful PPC campaign.  The negative keyword list should include keywords that are unrelated to your product and services and filter out unqualified clicks.  There are also many negative keywords you should consider at the outset of any PPC campaign.  These include keywords to avoid your ads from showing for career related searches, reference purposes, research, education, and Do it Yourselfers.  By filtering out unwanted impressions, negative keywords can help you reach the most appropriate searchers, reduce your Cost per Click, and overall increase your Return on PPC Ad Spend.

It is very nice when you leave your desk at the end of the day knowing that everything is running smoothly on your PPC campaigns. Decent number of clicks, good CTR and of course CONVERSIONS! But haven’t you come back to work after a long weekend or even the next day and found out that all of the sudden, the numbers dropped dramatically? Is it time to panic? I say no… if you know where to look for answers.

I always check first if there are any disapproved ads. There are many reasons why this could happen like trademarked terms, non working destination URLs or display URLs mismatches.

Lucky us, we have a place where we can find those disapproved ads (if any) under the “Tools section” on Google Adwords:

You will get a well detailed screen showing the disapproved ad, the campaign and ad group it belongs to and the disapproval reason. You’ll be able to identify immediately the problem and hopefully fix it.

But what if there are no disapproved ads? Well, then it is time to dig a little deeper and look at your keywords.

Google recently added the “First Page Bid Estimate” which basically tells you how much you should bid in order to be at least on position 10 on the first SERP:

If your bids are below this amount, your ads could not be shown within the first page of search results. It depends also on how many competitors are bidding on the same term. If it makes sense to your goals, you should always keep your keywords above the first page minimum bid.

By performing these two quick checks ups, you could fix the issue in no time and dedicate your time to improve that particular account.

You’ve heard all about Social Media and how it is the “next big thing”. Everyone’s doing it, your competitors are doing it, so you figure you need to be doing it as well. You create a company Facebook and Twitter account and are tweeting / posting on a daily basis about incentives and general information relating to your business. After about two months, you haven’t noticed any significant change in your business. Most companies will write this off as Social Media being “overrated” or “not for them”. However, there is a LOT more to social media than just Facebook and Twitter. That’s not to say that these two websites can’t be extremely valuable to your business..you just need to utilize them properly.

Before you put an end to your Social Media campaign altogether you should take a step back and analyze whether or not you are doing everything you can with your campaign. Below is some advice that will help steer your Social Media campaign in the right direction.

Do you have a set “Social Media goal” in place? – A lot of companies will rush into starting a Social Media campaign because of all the hype surrounding it..which is why most companies fail. You need to establish reasonable goals and end objectives otherwise you will never achieve desirable results. Are you looking to increase brand awareness? Drive traffic to your website? Generate new customers? Whatever your goals are, clearly outline them before the start of your Social Media Campaign. Think about how you implement all of your other marketing strategies. You wouldn’t send a direct mailer or run a television advertisement without some sort of end goal. Why should Social Media be any different?

Have you clearly outlined a set strategy? – A set strategy isn’t setting up a Facebook profile, submitting a piece of content to Digg, or tweeting about every single page on your website. There must be a “why” factor with everything you do related to Social Media.  You are submitting content from your page to Digg, but why? If your answer is “because Digg is extremely popular” you are missing the ponit of Social Media altogether.  Your strategy should be based on the what you expect to get out of your Social Media campaign. If you are stricly an e-commerce website selling clothing items, do you think anyone on Digg is going to care about the fact that you are selling t-shirts? Social Media is about communicating with your customers (both current and potential) and building up your brand.  All of your strategies should reflect this is some compacity. Keep in mind that there are millions of different social media websites in existence.  In order to outline a set strategy, you might need to test a few to see what works for the best for your business.

Who is Communicating on Behalf of Your Company? – You might have a solid Social Media strategy in place, but if it is implemented improperly you will fail.  As mentioned earlier, communicating with your customers should represent a big part of your Social Media strategy.  People want to communicate with other people…not a business.  In order for a Social Media campaign to be truly effective there needs to be some sort of human element.  That being said, the person representing your company should be well-versed in regards to most (if not all) areas of your business.  A person who misrepresents your business could compromise all Social Media activities.

Are You Implementing On-Page Elements? – People tend to to neglect utilizing their website as part of their Social Media camaign.  Keep in mind that your website is where you are most likely driving people with your online (and sometimes offline) marketing campaigns.  How many “Social Media elements” are incorporated on your website?  Do you have a Facebook and Twitter buttons linking to your Facebook and Twitter pages?  If you don’t have a design team to create these buttons, you can easily grab them for free here: http://www.socialmediabuttons.com. A blog is also very easy to implement and can be very beneficial to your business.    Having a blog provides the opportunity to create interesting and informative content, is great for branding, and can drive a lot of traffic and sales to our website.  Already have great content on your website? Consider using http://www.addthis.com to help provide additional exposure.  Addthis.com allows website visitors to easily submit a piece of content to dozens of Social Media websites.

How Are You Measuring Results? – It’s not just about the number of Facebook fans you have, the amount of traffic you received, or the number of Twitter followers exist; when it comes to Social Media you need to look at the big picture.  People often mistake quantifiable numbers such as fans, followers, and visits as direct measurements of Social Media success, but that really is just a small piece of the puzzle.  Has your target audience’s perception of your brand improved? Has brand awareness increased? Is the traffic you are getting from the right audience? In terms of brand perception, it is important to analyze what people are saying about your business from a positive, negative, or neutral perspective on a regular basis.  Search for your company regularly on search engines, Twitter, Facebook, and Blogs (blogsearch.google.com) to see if brand percpetion has improved overall.  For an increase in brand awareness, Google has a keyword tool that allows you to assess monthly search volume related to any keyword phrase.  Analyze the search volume related to your business name on a monthly basis to see if people are increasingly searching for your company.  Additionally, you can always check your analytics to see if business-related keyword traffic has seen an increase.

As with any campaign, it is imperative to test for an adequate period of time and adjust your strategy based on your results.