» Adwords

Many of us ecommerce merchants already know a thing or two about Pay Per Click (PPC). We pretty much know it’s a popular advertising model used on websites and that sometimes it works perfectly and other times… not so much. How can we really make sure that we’re using it correctly? Wondering what are some useful tips and tricks you can use to take advantage of it at its fullest?
 
First, let’s talk about the best approach for writing and formatting the ad text. As a basic rule, use well-written and clear language that revolves around the specific highlights of the product, this is a must! When possible, it’s important to add metaphors or “word pictures” that complement and enhance the ad. Phrasing your text as a question, telling a story with it or emphasizing an immediate or rapid result, works best.
 
Many companies use different techniques to attract customers depending on what they have to offer, for example…If there’s a free trial available, stressing the “try before you buy” proposition is a very good idea. If your ad is destined to advertise your product or service for a short time, challenging the customer to “discover or experience” it before time’s up could be an effective practice.

Here are a few quick tips:
•    Be creative
•    Create trust
•    Compare your product/service to another
•    Offer guarantees
•    Emphasize special offers
•    Use powerful words such as “how to”, “free”, “incredible”, “learn”, “save”, perfect”, “break-through”
•    … Just let your imagination go!
 
To optimize your use of space, whenever its necessary, abbreviate, use symbols and swap out words with a shorter synonym to make room for other text. Also make sure you highlight your special offers, in percentage, money, amount or “Free Shipping (Free S&H)”.
 
Effective ad texts that are proven appealing to customers include:

•    “Do you make this mistake?”
•    “The real truth about…”
•    “How to…”
•    “Tired of…?”
•    “The best kept secret is…”
•    “Are you aware of…?”
As you can see, it’s not difficult to use these texts to create a good-looking ad or even combine some of them to improve your results.  Think outside the box, it will surely pay off!

Some ecommerce sites claim to have lost significant amounts of traffic suddenly. This sudden website traffic drop happened at the end of April, 2010. Reportedly Google made between 350 and 550 changes in its organic search algorithms in 2009. This is one of the reasons it is recommended that site owners not get too fixated on specific ranking factors.

If you tie construction of your site to any one perceived algorithm signal, you’re at the mercy of Google’s constant tweaks. These frequent changes are one reason Google itself downplays algorithm updates.

A good word of advice from Vanessa Fox of Search Engine Land is to “focus on what Google is trying to accomplish as it refines things (the most relevant, useful results possible for searchers) and you’ll generally avoid too much turbulence in your organic search traffic.”

Live Case Study of Google MayDay Algorithm Update for Longtail Keywords

Here is the screenshot of a  client’s Analytics account. You can clearly see two arrows pointing to a server sudden traffic loss from 30th of April to the 12th of May, 2010.

Google Changes The Algorithm every day!

Google likely makes a change per day to the search algorithm. They don’t necessarily release those changes each day, but they will release them in batches. But overall, he hopes to average at least one change per day to the algorithm. Check out this video from Matt Cutts of Google on these daily changes.

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Coming off his talk at ChannelAdvisor Catalyst conference, I got a chance to talk with Bing’s Product Marketing Director. The launch of Bing has successfully revitalized the MSN search experience, with a goal of becoming “THE destination for all commerce-related searches,” what will that mean for retailers?

Raju Malhotra is Director of Product Marketing for Bing, Microsoft’s Decision Engine for consumers. He is responsible for the strategy to make Bing as the starting point for all shopping decisions. He manages the customer experience from finding the right product at Bing to buying it at one of Microsoft’s 1200+ participating merchants.

Raju Malhotra is Director of Product Marketing for Bing, Microsoft’s Decision Engine for consumers. He is responsible for the strategy to make Bing as the starting point for all shopping decisions. He manages the customer experience from finding the right product at Bing to buying it at one of Microsoft’s 1200+ participating merchants.

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While keywords are still crucial, search engine algorithms have evolved. Google treats the trust and authority of your domain, what others think about your content, and the words they use to describe it in links as an important indication of quality and relevance.

Thanks to blogging and social media platforms, more people than ever are able to cast their vote on what’s relevant by linking to it, bookmarking it, and tweeting it. Modern SEO is all about crafting content so compelling that other people want to promote it by linking to it or sharing it, which increases your trust and authority and helps the pages you want to rank well for certain keywords.

This free 28-page report by Copyblogger founder Brian Clark provides you a step-by-step strategy for creating content that scores links, is highly readable and engaging, and ranks well in search engines. You’ll discover:

• Why SEO Copywriting Still Matters
• How Search Engines Work
• Why You Have to Spoon Feed Search Engines
• The 5 Essential Elements of Keyword Research
• How to Create Cornerstone Content That Google Loves
• Five Link Building Strategies That Work
• Five Areas to Focus On for Effective SEO Copywriting
• Why Writing for People Works for Search Engines
• How to Make SEO Copywriting Simple

This free report is yours with no obligation, registration, or email address required. Simply click the button below to download How to Create Compelling Content that Ranks Well in Search Engines (PDF):

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Transcript:
Hey folks. My name is Charles Lumpkin. I appreciate you spending some time with me today. We’re going to talk about common landing page test types. Now, why even test landing pages? What we’re talking about is trying to get the conversion rate up on our pages. More conversion equals more money in the bank, which is what we’re looking for in online marketing.

So, what are the common landing page test types? The two most common are split testing and multi-variant testing. I’m going to get deep into split testing right now and save multi-variant testing for a later video.

In a split test, you have two or more versions of a particular landing page. When you’re initially starting out with a new campaign or a new test you want to make sure that these different variations are as different as possible, as they can be from one another. You really want to go as far out as you can with different ideas. So brainstorm and think of some really cool stuff, but when you put them out there, what you’re going to do is run half the traffic through each lander.

One of those is going to produce results that are better than the others. Again, you need to be tracking this stuff and have the proper analytics in place. At the end of the day, one is going to work better than the other. From that point on, that becomes your control. Then if you want to continue to do more split tests, you bring in more variations. Does this control continue to win? Who knows, you’ve got to do the tests.

Thanks for spending some time with me today. Again, my name is Charles Lumpkin. You can find more of me at CharlesLumpkin.com. Thank you.

Another year has come and gone, and Google is taking a moment to look back at the happenings of 2009—the people, events and memories that made this year unique. Each year, they examine the billions of queries that people around the world have typed into Google search to discover the zeitgeist—the spirit of the times.

The Zeitgeist is a fun tool to look at the most popular terms of the given year. However, Google trends should always be on the radar of bloggers and merchants for ways to use what is hot to drive traffic to the top funnel of your process. Google Trends measures the fastest growing search terms on the web. Businesses should continue to study the top search trends on Google in order to take advantage of popular topics to drive traffic to their sites.

So of course I am mister morbid insanity, so I will reprint the Dead Celebrities top 10 list for you…

Rest In Peace

1. michael jackson
2. billy mays
3. steve mcnair
4. dj am
5. david carradine
6. farrah fawcett
7. patrick swayze
8. marilyn chambers
9. walter cronkite
10. les paul

But go over to the Zeitgeist home page and see some of the other fun stuff you can get there. You can see the top search terms for your city, or in the news, or in sports. It really is some interesting stuff.

One of the key SEO "myths" is normally the importance of good meta tags for search ranking. SEO companies still to this day will call my office and tell me they can rank our site high by "optimizing my meta keywords". Some days when I am bored, I will drill them like I do other so-called "experts" on the bulls**t nature of their selling points. Other days, I get my joys buy just hanging up on them…LMAO

At one point in time the keyword meta tags had an impact on a web site’s position within the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). Now the keywords tag has little impact on where a site will appear in the search results.

Why? Well that answer is simply…Once upon a time, keyword meta was used to rank a site, then soon every webmaster began to OVERUSE them oftentimes. Therefore, the search engines began to place less importance on them.  And now, at least for Google’s web search results currently (September 2009), the reality is that Google could care less. Google doesn’t use the "keywords" meta tag in their web search ranking.

Suppose you have two website owners, Alice and Bob. Alice runs a company called AliceCo and Bob runs BobCo. One day while looking at Bob’s site, Alice notices that Bob has copied some of the words that she uses in her "keywords" meta tag. Even more interesting, Bob has added the words "AliceCo" to his "keywords" meta tag. Should Alice be concerned?

Matt Cutt’s (Google Software Engineer) video explains more…

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As the holiday season will encroach upon us soon, you may have thought about buying some ‘qualified’ traffic for your store. But where to begin? One thing I do is I start at the source.

People will ask me a question about eBay 101, and I respond to them…"Have you read the eBay help page?" And the response 100% of the time is NO!

Now I must admit that when I open the package (usually with electronics) I suck at reading the instructions. I am not a manual reader, but I have my partner who is an avid reader of manuals so I get away with it. I just ask him. LOL…But that is NOT the case when it comes to technology. I am an avid reader when it comes to learning how to use deferent aspects of online technology.

I do not want to be the last one to know about a tool or platform that I am using to make some money. One of the BEST proponents of free resources for using their tools is Google. They have all the bases covered for all the tools they make and how to use them. You can watch videos, read blogs and even get some great PDF how-to’s on it.

So here is one I was reading yesterday and it is FULL of good quality content and it will introduce you to the world of Google Adwords. But even if you are already doing Adwords, this is still a great refresher course. Download it HERE….FREE Adwords Workbook from Google