ShopMaker Blog

SEO Tip #1: Make Google Alerts Your Personal Online Spy

Google Alerts is a great way to let the world’s biggest search engine be your personal online spy. This takes search engine optimization insider info to whole new level. Here’s an excerpt straight from Google….

“Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:

* monitoring a developing news story
* keeping current on a competitor or industry
* getting the latest on a celebrity or event
* keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams”

As you probably guessed, it’s the second one we care about most, “keeping current on a competitor or industry.”

Here’s how it works… Each time Google finds a reference to the query or topic you request you will be sent an email with the details. This is like having an online spy to make sure competitors are not using your protected keywords (trademarked names, company names, etc.) It’s also an instant identifier to know when your site or product is mentioned in a news story or even when a topic is hot so you can take advantage of the situation. It’s the easiest way in the world to stop competitors’ dirty tricks and identify trends that you can take instant advantage of.

It’s fast, free and works every minute of every day. Let Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts) do your most time consuming legwork while you reap the rewards!

SEO Tip #2: Optimize Your 404 Page and Always Be Found

“Error 404: Page Not Found” is a blessing that most Webmasters curse. Why? Getting a visitor on any page of your site is fantastic! Don’t blow the opportunity. Not only can you make your “404″ page a valuable sales tool, you can use the following search engine optimization techniques to attract customers in droves.

A.) Use your main keyword in your title, add a “pipe” (usually above the Enter key) and then use your secondary keyword. Here’s as example for an SEO site “SEO | Search Engine Optimization Tips”

B.) Add some keyword rich content using one to two keywords for the page. If you have less than 250 words on the page, just use one keyword and use it no more than three times total. Bold the first use and italicize the second or third use. Keep in mind this is an “inactive” page so simply tell the visitor what your site is about and whet their appetite with a good description. Something like this works well… “Thank you for visiting SEO (bold) Group, Inc. We are sorry you landed on a missing page but don’t worry, if you’re looking for the very best search engine optimizations tips (bold), you’re at the right place…” This will go on for a couple paragraphs or as long as you’d like then end it with something to the effect of “Please Click Here (link) to visit our site map or click any link to the left.”

C.) Add your site’s standard navigation system (bar, column, etc.) as mentioned above.

D.) Make the look and feel of the customized 404 page match your main site as closely as possible with a template, matched palette, cascading style sheets, etc.

E.) Create a link to the site map page if available, and make the link easy to find. You want your visitor off the 404 page and into your main content as quickly as possible.

Setting up a custom 404 page link usually takes less than five minutes on most major Web hosting companies like Godaddy.com. But whatever it takes, it’s worth the effort.

SEO Tip #3: Get (Even More) Serious About Linking

I saved the most important for last. If you want to do well on any search engine, especially Google, linking is THE single MOST important thing you can do. It’s that simple.

Here are the five things you MUST do to make your site #1 on Google:

A.) Find the highest page rank sites linking to your site AND your competitors’ sites.

B.) Run monthly link campaigns and snatch up the best of the above identified Web sites.

C.) Run regular checks on what pages are still linking back to your site. Also make sure they did not move you from a high page rank page to a lower one (don’t get cheated!)

D.) Eliminate any penalized sites you link to; ASAP!

E.) Check your search engine ranking AND your competitor’s for each of your keywords every week. Do this, at the minimum, for Google, Yahoo, MSN and Alta Vista.

There’s one more very important thing to know; Google was originally a Ph.D. student’s project and was created for the sole purpose of defining a Web site’s value by the sites that link to it. Twelve years later this is still it’s main job. Linking is EVERYTHING to Google.

These few SEO tips are the very best of the best so use them wisely. Best of luck!

1 comment

Alibaba Group is seeking investors to buy the 39 percent stake in the Internet company held by Yahoo Inc, a person with direct knowledge of the situation said on this Tuesday, outlining a plan that could stop Microsoft Corp from getting the Alibaba stock.

Alibaba’s move indicates it thinks Microsoft is likely to win its $42.4 billion bid to buy Yahoo, in which case the Chinese company would prefer increased independence, the person said. The source did not want to be identified because of the sensitivities surrounding the discussions.

Alibaba believes a 2005 agreement with Yahoo gives it a “right of first offer” to buy Yahoo’s stake, which would be invoked if Microsoft buys Yahoo, the source said.

Meanwhile, Yahoo’s top three executives, Chief Executive Jerry Yang, President Susan Decker and Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen, have begun a roadshow to shore up support with major U.S. institutional investors and prove the Microsoft offer is too low, another source familiar with the plan said.

Yahoo declined to comment on the Alibaba talks and Microsoft was not immediately available for comment.

An Alibaba spokeswoman said the company had no comment.

Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares were up 11.5 percent at HK$13.60 by the midday recess, after they lost more than one-fifth of their value to fall below their IPO price on Tuesday, as investors fretted over its exposure to a slowing U.S. economy.

Under a 2005 deal, Yahoo merged its Chinese operations into Alibaba in exchange for the 39 percent stake in Alibaba Group, which Yahoo continues to hold.

Late last year, Alibaba spun off an interest in its core business-to-business e-commerce site, Alibaba.com Ltd, which held a successful initial public offering on the Hong Kong stock market.

No comments

Google’s new Ad Manager (currently in a limited beta) is a free, ad serving platform directed toward small and medium-sized publishers that don’t need a complex, customizable solution such as DoubleClick’s DART platform (which Google just acquired). It’s a product for the broad, middle market intended to bring both greater simplicity but also more control to smaller publishers. It can also be used in combination with other ad serving platforms because Google isn’t asking for exclusivity.
Google says that in creating the new platform it was responding to a market need and explicit feedback from publishers. Here’s how Google officially describes Ad Manager:

Directed at addressing the ad management and serving needs of publishers with small to medium-sized sales teams, Google Ad Manager is a free, hosted ad and inventory management tool that can help publishers sell, schedule, deliver and measure their directly-sold and network-based ad inventory. Google Ad Manager provides an intuitive and simple user experience with an easy tagging process so publishers can spend more time working with their advertisers and less time on their ad management solution. And, Ad Manager helps publishers maximize their inventory sell-through rates by providing detailed inventory forecasts and tracking at a very granular level.
According to Google the chief benefits for publishers are:

* A highly intuitive interface and simplified tools for publishers
* Improved ad inventory management and yield optimization
* Forecasting (how many impressions are available)

Forecasts are provided after the system has been in place for a period of time and is able to collect data on traffic and impressions.

One of the benefits for Google is that Ad Manager makes it easier to integrate AdSense throughout a publisher’s website. It allows all the varieties of AdSense to be served into any of the ad units on a publisher website. And the system will compare, in real time, which ad network or bid will deliver the best CPM for the publisher. It potentially brings AdSense (as well as other ads) more directly into competition for each potential ad unit on a publisher’s site. However Google doesn’t obligate any publisher using the system to show AdSense ads.

Google also says that Ad Manager will also improve page load times:

Google Ad Manager is focused on improving serving efficiencies to make sure that the right ad appears quickly every time. Built on our infrastructure, Google Ad Manager ensures fast serving speed and reliability with fewer reporting discrepancies.

No comments

Chances are if you’re reading this you’re either running a cost-per-click (CPC) advertising campaign or are considering it. So you probably know that CPC advertising involves selecting a set of keywords and writing an ad to appear when someone searches for that keyword in the major search engines. And you’re aware that CPC advertising requires you to set a cost that you are prepared to pay for a click. And you are probably familiar with the benefits of CPC advertising; namely, generating leads, driving sales, and creating brand awareness.

But what you may not know yet are these ten tips that can increase the effectiveness of your CPC campaign, while also helping to keep your search engine marketing budget on track. These tips focus on Google AdWords, but many apply to CPC programs across the board.

Show when it counts. Adjust your campaign to consider user peak times. If your target audience is primarily searching for your products between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on weekdays then only show your ads during these times. Within its “Edit Campaign Settings” Google has a handy option called Ad Scheduling which allows you to automatically turn your campaigns on and off at specific times. What’s more, if there is a peak time of day when your customers tend to search then you can even up the budget at that time and lower it at others.

Choose keywords carefully. Various tools will help find specific keywords or phrases that are being used by your audience. You can pay to use tools such as Keyword Discovery, but a free and easy way to find out is to use Google’s Keyword Tool (accessible when you’re logged in to AdWords). To use it, you type in your term and the tool instantly gives you variations people have searched for, a rough idea of the number of searches, the advertising competition against those terms and, if you add a max CPC, an estimate of the position and cost for each term.

Select longer tail terms. Another useful aspect of the Google keyword tool is that it can help you find Longer Tail terms. Longer Tail terms are ones that appeal to users searching for very niche or specific items. For example, a generic term from the B2B world would be ‘valve’. A Long Tail term would be ‘pneumatic pilot valve’. If your budget is limited, it is worth avoiding the high cost generic terms and trying to pick up traffic from people doing very specific searches. Not only will the CPC be significantly cheaper, but you’ll tend to find that prospects know exactly what they want, and the quality and number of inquiries resulting from the clicks will be much higher.

Go negative to be positive. Staying with Keywords—think negative! A lot of keywords are included in B2B, B2C and general social searches. Appearing in the results for anything other than your target market is a waste of time and potentially a waste of money. Adding negative keywords is an ideal way to exclude your campaigns from areas that are not relevant to you and enquiries you cannot fulfill. For example, if your company sells power tools, but you don’t rent them, then words like “rent,” “hire,” or “lease” would be your negative keywords.

Think seasonal. Some products are going to be more or less popular depending on certain times of the year due to holidays, weather, or major events. If your business sells seasonable products it may be worth upping your spend in the months leading up to these high-demand times to reap the extra traffic…and profits. To the same effect, if seasonal keywords are not part of your core business, focus your energy elsewhere until the excitement (and bid price) decreases.

Ad copy is key. You’ve spent ages picking quality keywords and setting up your campaigns and hopefully now your CPC ad appears high on the Search Engines…you’re there in front of your potential customers so don’t fall at the last hurdle. Ad copy is one of the single most important components in differentiating you from your competitor. To help improve your copy, try Google’s Dynamic Keyword Insertion Tool. Automatically adding the keyword someone searched for into the ad copy is an easy way to ensure relevancy in the eyes of both Google and users, but is no longer the most effective. This is a trick that many people already know and it is therefore overused. Try to use distinctive, even quirky, verbiage to catch your prospect’s eye. Include a major call to action; if you have a unique selling proposition or new offer say so.

Back it up. Don’t think of your other promotions, be they offline or online, as separate entities. People may see your print ad, for example, and remember the creative and the product you’re selling but not your company name. If they typed your latest marketing slogan into a search engine, would a recognizable CPC ad appear for your company taking them to your site for more information? If not then you could be missing out. Likewise, the only thing they may remember from your print ad or trade show booth is your company name, so make sure your ads are appearing when someone is searching for you by name (and don’t just bank on your company appearing on the first page of organic results).

Go vertical. Google AdWords allows you to display your ads across their content and partner networks. However, the content network is not always great for the B2B market as it relies on Google understanding the contextual content of pages and then only bringing your ad back on the pages that are relevant. To make ads more effective you can specify the sites you wish your adverts to appear on by creating a placement targeted campaign.

Another option for reaching a more focused, relevant audience is vertical search engine advertising. Because of their more segmented nature, vertical search engines reach a very targeted audience, and often produce far better quality traffic at the same or smaller spend levels than you’ll find with their general search engine counterparts.

Go local versus international. Is your business local or international? If it’s international then you may need to set up campaigns on a country by country basis, and tailor your keywords and ads to the various languages, time-zones, product variations, specific landing pages, etc. Also, determine your business’s capabilities. If you can only deliver locally then there is no point displaying your ads to the whole US. Google allows you to target your ads (based on users’ IP addresses) to a named state or town, a radius around a specific location, or even a specified geographic area of your choice.

Use CPC management tools (Google AdWords). In addition to Google’s keyword tool, there are two others that are particularly helpful. The first is AdWords Editor. It’s a free tool that offers you great control over multiple and/or large campaigns. The benefits include uploading bulk campaigns and keywords, making multiple changes to any part of the campaign, getting stats across all campaigns, etc. The second tool is Google’s Search Query Performance Reports. These reports show you what people are searching for to trigger your ads, which you can then use to adapt both your CPC words and the content on your site for SEO.

Hopefully you’ve discovered a few new ideas from our list of top tips for effective CPC advertising. Adding these to your repertoire of online marketing tools can help improve your current (and future) online advertising campaigns without expending a vast amount of resources.

1 comment