Five Reasons Why Marketing Should Manage Web Content

Marketing professionals are responsible for the overall communication of products, services and brands. Because your Web site is such an integral part of your communication strategy, doesn't it make sense to put more content control into the hands of marketing experts?

Increasingly, companies are realizing that to maximize marketing effectiveness, it's mandatory to give some level of control of Web applications to marketing professionals. The rise of new job titles is one indication that many companies are getting it; directors of interactive marketing, directors of Web content and other professionals are bridging the divide between marketing strategy and technology.

1. Control online brand and message
2. Satisfy site visitors more effectively
3. Distribute responsibilities to the right people
4. Leverage knowledge of the customer
5. Enable marketing to drive ROI

Measure What's Happening on Your Website!

Measurement and accountability - is that the first thing that comes in mind when you hear search engine strategies?

As a matter of fact, the more sophisticated search engine marketing is getting, the more advanced the main themes of the industry's premier conference, the Search Engine Strategies conference and expo, are getting too. One of the main themes of the recent Search Engine Strategies conference in New York was the accountability and measurability of search engine marketing.

Submitting your site to search engines, making sure your URLs have been added to search engines and improving their ranking is only the very first step. Any pay-per-click campaign is only half-finished if you don't have the appropriate monitoring tools in place to see how your paid search campaign is performing. And not only that - with click fraud being a real possibility, you need to be able to identify any anomalies in your pay-per-click campaigns.

In order to justify any investment you make in search engine marketing, be it buying the services of a search engine optimization firm or spending money on buying clicks through your pay-per-click campaigns in Google and Yahoo!, you need to be able to measure the results of those online marketing projects. And if you are asking for more money to spend on search engine marketing, you will have to provide convincing analysis showing how the return-on-investment compares to other Internet advertising options.

It is no longer about simply getting any type of Internet traffic to your site, the focus is more and more on the quality of visitors that come to your website. Highly advanced targeting technologies enable you to communicate specifically with the target groups you want to address while keeping your advertising costs down. More advanced targeting needs to be matched by more advanced reporting and analysis. This sentiment was shared by AOL's Gerry Campbell: "The value of metrics is transforming other marketing disciplines, which are placing more emphasis on using data to target consumer intent and deliver relevant messages in all forms of advertising."

Use Google Analytics to Increase Adwords ROI

If you buy keywords on Google AdWords, you will want to focus your spending on the keywords that drive the highest quality traffic to your site and provide the best return for your business. By looking at a single report in Google Analytics, you can see the ROI for each keyword you buy, spend confidently on the keywords that perform, and drop the ones that do not. Here's how?

Link your AdWords account to your Google Analytics account.
Once you have linked your Google Analytics account to your AdWords account, you will begin to see your spending for each keyword, as well as other cost metrics, appear in your Google Analytics reports. By linking the accounts, you have basically allowed yourself to compare your keyword spending with what happens after visitors click on your AdWords ads. Behind the scenes, Google Analytics starts importing the clickthrough and spending data from your AdWords account while tracking all the associated visitor activity.

So, if you haven't done so already, link your AdWords account to your Google Analytics account now. It's also a good idea to make sure that autotagging has been automatically enabled. This allows each click on your AdWords ads to be automatically associated with the appropriate keyword and AdWords campaign.

One additional benefit of linking your accounts is that you can access Google Analytics simply by clicking the Analytics tab in your AdWords account.

Do your goals have values?
Wait! Before you decide to skip this part because you do not sell anything, let me remind you that this is an article on ROI. If your goals do not have values, you won't be able to measure the return on your investment. Your investment is your AdWords spending. So, where does your return come from?

Of course, if you have an e-commerce site, your return comes from your e-commerce revenue. But, even if you do not have an e-commerce site, you can probably come up with intelligent values for your goals. For example, if you know that 1 out of every 100 PDF downloads results in a $500 sale, you can assign a value of $5 to that PDF download.

If you haven't already assigned values to your goals or set up your e-commerce shopping cart to report revenue, this Help Center article will walk you through the steps.

Analyzing AdWords
The best report for tracking keyword ROI is the CPC Program Analysis report, under Marketing Optimization: Search Engine Marketing. In this report, the "google[cpc]" line item summarizes your overall AdWords ROI. Click the + sign to the left of "google[cpc]" and you will see ROI for each keyword you buy on AdWords.

If you are not getting any cost data (i.e. if Cost is 0) make sure you have linked to your AdWords account and that you have enabled autotagging. If Revenue is 0, make sure that you have either set goal values or that you have enabled your shopping cart reporting.

Which keywords lose money?
Click the + sign to the left of "google[cpc]" to see each of the keywords you buy. To identify the losers, click the ROI column header twice so that the lowest ROI keywords are at the top of the list. Do you have any -100% ROI keywords? These are keywords on which you lost all of the money you spent. But before you delete or pause any of these keywords in your AdWords account, consider how much you spent and whether you have enough data yet to make a decision. Very often, -100% ROI keywords are those that have only received a few clicks. You might want to wait until you receive more than one or two clicks on a keyword before you decide to cut it. And if you've only spent a few cents on a keyword, it's probably worth waiting to see if the keyword pays off. But, if you've received a large number of clicks and spent real money on the keyword, you will be able to instantly increase your overall AdWords ROI by deleting it.

An ROI of 0% means that you earned in revenue the same amount of money you spent. An ROI of 100% means that you spent, say $5, and made $10. In other words, you spent X and received 2X in revenue. It is not uncommon to get 300% or 400% or even 1000% ROI. These kinds of numbers simply indicate that your Revenue is many times greater than your Cost.

How popular are my keywords and ads?
The Impressions column shows the number of times your ad was displayed. The Clicks column shows the number of clicks the ad received and for which you paid. CTR, or clickthrough rate, is the percentage of time that a searcher clicked on the ad. These numbers give you a good idea of how frequently people search on a particular keyword and, when presented with the search results, how likely they are to click on your ad. If you want a higher clickthrough rate, you might consider bidding for a higher position and/or rewriting your ad so that it is more relevant to the searcher.

Which keywords drive revenue?
Click in the Revenue column header (you may have to click twice) so that the highest revenue keywords are listed first. The high revenue keywords may or may not be your highest ROI keywords. If your ROI shows that you are losing or making no money on a high revenue keyword, you may wish to try lowering your bid. Although you will probably receive less traffic after lowering your bid and probably decrease your Revenue, the decrease in CPC (cost-per-click) will increase your ROI.

Google Analytics is your feedback tool.
By keeping your eye on the CPC Program Analysis report, you will be able to see how effectively you are using AdWords to drive your bottom line. By making small changes to the keywords you buy, the amount you bid, and your ad text, and tracking the effect of these changes, you will be able to optimize your AdWords campaigns for maximum ROI.

Bigdaddy: Big changes on Google to come

Google has announced a major update that will affect the ranking of web pages in Google's index. In contrast to the usual algorithm updates, this update will be much bigger because it changes the way Google works behind the scenes. Google has given the update the name "Bigdaddy".

The BigDaddy is Google's next "dance datacenter" that they have been working on. When it's live, it will be the "BigDaddy Google Dance". Matt said on Jan 4th that it'll go live in a month or 2. As Matt said:

"...I do expect Bigdaddy to become the default source of web results. The length of the transition will depend on lots of different issues. Right now I'm guessing 1-2 months, but if I find out more specifics I'll let you know..."

What is Google's Bigdaddy update?

Google uses a network of data centers with different IP addresses to answer search queries. These decentralized servers share the workload of indexing web sites.

The upcoming Bigdaddy update is not an algorithm update but a change in Google's data center infrastructure. It contains new code for sorting and examining web pages. According to Google's search engineer Matt Cutts, the update will be live in February or March.

Less spam, more content and a new Google spider?

Google is updating the data center infrastructure to handle potential spam problems such as 302 redirections or canonical URLs more efficiently. In addition, the new infrastructure will allow Google to develop more advanced algorithms and larger databases.

Another reason for the new data center infrastructure is that Google wants to be able to index different content types. Google is now testing a new search engine spider that is based on the Mozilla browser.

The new spider should be able to index more than traditional search engine spiders, possibly links within images, JavaScripts or Flash files.

How can you test how Bigdaddy will affect your rankings?

Some Google data centers that use the new Bigdaddy system are already online. For example, if you go to 66.249.93.104 you can test Google's new data center.

Can online press releases really increase your search engine rankings?

What are online press releases?

Online press releases are normal press releases that are distributed through the Internet. Popular online press release services are PRWeb and PRLeap. These services list your press release on their web sites and on a number of partner web sites.

Some people think that the links in these press releases can help the link popularity of a web site and thus increase the search engine rankings of a site.

What does Google say about online press releases?

Matt Cutts is the person in charge for fighting search engine spam on Google. He says the following about press releases and high rankings in his blog:

"A legit press release can get you written up by reporters, or editors/sites may subsequently choose to link to your site. But the actual content of the press release itself does not directly affect a site. For example, those hyperlinks do not help [the web site in the press release] in Google."

What does this mean to your web site?

Online press releases do not hurt your search engine rankings. However, they also do not increase your rankings (if no one writes about your business). The press release alone and its distribution on various web sites has no effect on your placement in search engines.

If you do not have something people really want to hear then do not send a press release. You should only use press release services if you have something newsworthy to say. If you have an interesting press release then your web site can be mentioned on many other sites.

What can you do if you do not have any news for a press release?

Press releases are not the only way to attract links to your site. The best links to your site are links from related sites that recommend your web site in the normal text.

25 Things Danny Sullivan "Hates" About Google

Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan is regarded by most as the senior search journalist. Here he writes as to why he hates Google.

"25 Things I Hate About Google"

Keyword Research : : An effective tool for Search Engine Optimization

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword Research can be defined as choosing the words, which describe your product or service as, seen from the viewpoint of your target market is the most important step in the optimisation process.
Keyword Research is the process of defining the right mix of keywords, which are most likely to be used by potential customers at search engines and directories.

This Keyword research consists of a variety of inputs, both qualitative and quantitative, both creative and analytical. Keyword Research plays a crucial role in assuring that your prospective customers will find you when they are looking for your specific products and services.

Top Tips for Effective Keyword Research

Tip 1 - Start with a goal in mind

As with all marketing efforts you should have a goal for what you are trying to achieve. Whether it is to increase sales, gain newsletter subscribers, or get new prospect leads, this goal will help to set priorities keyword phrase selection and impact the overall success of your Search Engine Optimization efforts. Take the time to discuss and establish goals and priorities at the start.

Tip 2 - Think like a Prospective Customer

When it comes to search sites, it is the prospective customer who initiates the dialog (query) so it is important that you select keyword phrases that reflect what a prospective customer will enter in at the search site. Users often enter phrases are the legal or proper terms for a product or service, and sometimes the phrases they enter may be totally outside industry jargon. In either case, be sure to select keywords that are naturally intuitive to the customer.

Tip 3 - Brainstorm

Brainstorming is a great way to start generating a list of possible keyword phrases. The brainstorming group should include those with direct customer access (sales reps, customer support representatives, product/content experts, and marketing - do not forget to review your own log files for additional data). Try to generate as many words as possible and then narrow your list quantitatively using industry tools and qualitatively using your industry knowledge. When you brainstorm, remember to step out of yourself and into the mindset of the prospective customer.

Tip 4 - Check your Content for Keywords

If the Keywords you optimize for are not used within the copy of your site, you will not be able to get rankings for those terms. Once you have established a list of keywords, review your site. Be prepared to add new content to your site that can be optimized to support the new mix of Keywords.

Tip 5 - Goal is Conversions not Traffic

The goal of Search Engine Optimization, and your keyword research, is not to just get traffic, but to get valuable, 'qualified' traffic that can lead to actual conversions. You will find the different keyword phrases have a large difference in conversion rates and value for your site. Do not forget that increased revenues will be the ultimate measure of your success.

Tip 6 - Avoid short, common phrases

Short phrases (1 or 2 words) that are also common phrases can be too general and are not the best to optimize for. Common phrases can lead to a large portion of the traffic that is searching on similar terms but not looking for your product or service. The amount of time and effort needed to gain valuable rankings and traffic for those phrases will also be much greater than the time required for more targeted keyword phrases. Targeted keyword phrases may generate slightly less overall traffic, but with targeted keywords you will achieve 'qualified' traffic - leading to increased revenues.

Tip 7 - Keyword Research is an ongoing process

Keyword research is a continuous process. Whatever you do, do not stop. As your SEO program progresses, examine what words perform best, enhance your keyword list based on what you learn, go back and review old keyword ideas against current data and usage trends, and continue to review your site content for synergy with your keyword list. Ongoing keyword/Keyword research will uncover new keyword phrases, while keeping you abreast of your competition, and shifts in the search site industry.