Archive for July 20th, 2009:
Movado Men’s 800 Series Watch for $387 + $5 s&h
Fisher-Price Little People Fire Truck Ball Pit for $25 + $7 s&h
HubSpot TV – Inbound Marketing Smackdown
Episode #49 – July 17th, 2009
Episode Length: 23 minutes, 38 seconds
Intro
- How to interact on Twitter: @mvolpe, @karenrubin or www.HubSpot.tv in your tweet.
- Subscribe in iTunes: http://itunes.hubspot.tv/
Mailbag
- @HeatherMargolis: Shut Up! @BostonLogan is on twitter? How cool is that?
- HubSpot Announces Blog Grader Free Marketing Tool
- Blog Grader
- Baby Got Leads: New Music Video
- Baby Got Leads on YouTube
Headlines
Should Google Be Regulated?
- The Time Has Come To Regulate Search Engine Marketing And SEO
- “…well known executive at one of the largest sites on the Internet. The author has requested to remain anonymous…”
- “Imagine,
if you will, that the entire Internet is contained within a single
continent. That continent is filled with countries, states and cities.
Each jurisdiction is autonomous, relying on visitors to cross on to
their turf to engage in commerce. Now, imagine if the only way to get
into this continent involved just two methods: SEO and SEM. Let’s
further imagine that the borders to this continent were controlled by a
single company….The only real solution is disclosure. Transparency.
Those traffic generators that use rule-based algorithms to determine
result sets must publicly disclose their methodologies. That is the
means by which all businesses can compete freely in the organic and
paid search marketplaces.” - Should Google Be Regulated
- Marketing Takeaway: Google is not regulated, brush up on your SEO and deal with it*.*
Best Buy Values 250 Followers
- http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/150048,follow-this-twitter-emerges-as-job-qualification-for-major-us-retailer.aspx
- “Best Buy put out a job advertisement recently for a marketing graduate with at least 250 followers”
- “Usocial
leads the web as the premier Twitter for hire market. At Usocial, the
going price for 1000 followers is $87, meaning a potential Best Buy
candidate could turn up for work having only invested $25 to help their
chances.” - How many Twitter followers does it take to get a job?
- Marketing Takeaway: In terms of hiring, influence or authority is a better measure than raw number of followers.
The Social Influence Marketing Report
- How many Twitter followers does it take to get a job?
- “six out of 10 consumers don’t bother to seek out opinions of brands via social media”
- “Consumers view TV ads as more trustworthy than ads on social networks.”
- Marketing Takeaway:
Outbound marketing is not totally ineffective. In 1900 horses were
still the main mode of transportation, but I wouldn’t want to rely on
them for my business for too long.
Is Social Media Easy, Free and Cheap?
- Debunking Social Media Myths
- “a
fundamental truth to social media that many organizations
underestimate–being social means having real live people who actively
participate in your initiatives.” - Marketing Takeaway:
Encourage everyone at your company to get involved in social media on
behalf of the company and reduce the need to build a social media army.
Should You Spend Your Time on Link Exchanges?
- Link exchanges: The poor man’s SEO
- “Large
Internet companies spend millions on consultants and technology trying
to get their sites to rank among the highest results on Google.
Everyone else has to rely on the poor man’s search-engine optimization:
the link exchange.” - “Google’s official advice: “The best way
to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create
unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the
Internet community.”" - Marketing Takeaway: Spend your limited time creating and promoting great content and the links will come!
Forum Fodder
- Inbound Marketing.Com Forums: Need Help in Keywords
- Fran: “I’m in desperate need of help to find keywords for my business. I sell attachments to go on to liquor bottles.”
- Pete:
“I’d recommend that you step back from trying to find keywords for the
product you sell, and ask yourself, “What content will attract my
buyer?”If your buyer is a bar manager, than you need to create content
that will attract that type of person. for example, you might write an
article, “10 Ways to Save Money Running your Bar” or “Most Common Local
Bar Startup Mistakes”.” - Anthony: “You definitely need to
figure out who your buyer and demographic is before proceeding and what
type of valuable content you will need to attract, inform and convert
them.” - Wordtrackr, Google Keyword Tool, SemRush.com, HubSpot Trial, SEOMoz, Microsoft AdCenter
Marketing Tip of the Week
- Buy a video camera and give it to the craziest employees you have and see what they come up with.
Closing
Missed last week’s episode on July 10, 2009? View it here: Make Content Creation Your Super Power
Webinar: How to Use Online Video for Inbound Marketing
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How do you get started with YouTube, video podcasting, live streaming, or viral videos. Download the free webinar to learn how to use online video to grow your business with inbound marketing. |
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Quality Score Surprise! #1 Ad Position Doesn’t Improve QS
What I love about being an Advanced Experienced AdWords Expert as I have been for years now (and I am using the word LOVE sarcastically here) is that I keep finding out things that I have assumed for years are wrong. And that if I read Dave Barry too much- and I am not making this up- I start to write like him.
It is only because I have teachers in the form of AdWords Dedicated Account Representatives that I have these frequent stunning realizations.
So here’s another myth by the wayside:
If you bid more, your cost per click will go down because your CTR goes up and your Quality Score goes up because QS is so dependent on CTR.
Ok maybe you didn’t follow that- so here’s the myth in visual form:
NOT TRUE!!!
Here’s what the AdWords Lady said:
CTR is normalized in regard to quality score so ads in top positions which usually have a high CTR don’t have an unfair advantage. While higher positions tend to have a higher CTR, we expect higher positions to have a higher CTR.
For example, we know that when an ad appears in position 4 it has an x% CTR. When that same ad moves up to position 1, with no other change, that same ad has a CTR of x+y% CTR. When we calculate quality score, we remove the impact of the y variable so that we just have the intrinsic CTR of the ad, independent of position. Therefore, while increasing bid may increase CTR, that increase alone should not improve the advertiser’s quality score.
The below blob posts give more insight into this topic as well.
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/10/improvements-to-ads-quality.html
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/11/update-on-improvements-to-ads-quality.html
That really got my goat- not only does it appear that my myth may have been true up until October of 2008, but it also appears I should be reading the Google AdWords blob more carefully. And that got my goat even more- I didn’t know Google had blobs. There’s a chance she meant “blogs” but since Google has Waves now, I think they really could also have Blobs. Or maybe I’m just making a stupid joke about her being dumb because I felt dumb. I don’t know, I’ll ask my therapist when she gets back in town.
So, since AdWords shows ads at a variety of positions and really only tells you the average position, they somehow gather a normalized CTR via some statistical magic I’m not educated enough to understand, and use THAT as that CTR to multiply your bid by. Voila!
Very cool. And smart, because if they didn’t normalize CTR, whoever was in the top position would have an unfair advantage.
It also means that you have to care more about the effectiveness of your ad copy again. Because THAT’s what determines your normalized CTR and quality score and required bid for a given position.
Ta da.
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
Quality Score Surprise! #1 Ad Position Doesn’t Improve QS
10 Steps to Advanced Keyword Research
Posted by randfish
Some keyword research is surface-level, fire and forget type stuff. If you just need to see relative volume levels, then a basic keyword research tool is all you need. If, however, you want to really dive deep and get the full skinny on your keywords, I’d recommend having each of these data points.
#1 – Relative Search Volume from 3 Sources
There are three sources on the web that I’ve found to work best for comparative numbers research. These are:
- Google Adwords: Keyword Tool – enter any term or phrase and get back data about both the average search volume and the volume from the previous month.
- MSN AdCenter: Research Keywords Tool – you need to be logged in to use this, but the data is solid and shows actual counts.
- Wordtracker: Keyword Tool – although the numbers Wordtracker shows are frequently less accurate than the two above, they are reasonably decent for estimating comparative search volume. Unfortunately, due to the declining share of Wordtracker’s data sources (the Infospace owned search engines – Metacrawler, Dogpile, DoGreatGood, etc.), niche and long tail term volume estimates can be way off.
Here’s why I don’t use Yahoo!:
From there, rather than build a spreadsheet just showing raw numbers, I like to work in comparative sizes (the real numbers rarely prove accurate anyway). Thus, rather than having a graph of data like this:
I can have one like this:
Note how, in this view, I’m showing the relative volume percentage of the demand for keyword "SEO" made up by "seo services" and "seo tools." This graph tells me that while Google thinks "seo tools" and "seo services" are tiny fractions of the volume that comes in for the broad term, "SEO," Microsoft & Wordtracker both say these phrases make up a more substantive percentage. Since keyword targeting is really about choosing one keyword over another and much less about trying to estimate exact traffic, the latter system makes much more sense to me.
#2 – Temporal Fluctuations
When are your queries in highest demand? Knowing the answer can help you predict when competition may ramp up and additional SEO efforts are needed as well as provide insight into your market overall (if demand has been dropping steadily over the last few years, you might want to target some different terms, or even shift product focus). Two sources of data are solid on this front:
MSN AdCenter Labs: Keyword Forecast Tool
#3 – Top Ranking Domains
In order to get a full understanding of the competitive landscape, it’s essential to know who’s ranking for the terms you’re targeting. A basic query is a great start, but I like to append those with a bit of extra data, as I’ve visualized below:
Those three are my favorite pieces of link data to append, not because they alone are predictive of rankings, but because the range so perfectly illustrates what’s necessary, on both the URL and domain level to be competitive. Nick’s been pushing hard to get this functionality automatically included with the SEOmoz Toolbar, so hopefully we can make that happen in the next few months.
#4 - Fresh Web (News, Blogosphere, Tweetosphere) Activity
The fresh web (aka social media sphere) can help to show how often keywords are appearing in content and conversation in blogs, forums, feeds and more. It’s particularly valuable for identifying emerging trends which may not yet have search volume (but will if the conversational content acceleration continues). There’s a few tools I like on this front:
There appears to be some correlation between "party tonight" on Friday and "hangover" on Saturday
I’d love to see some of those 19th century SEO tools!
The real value (and reason for spending time in these sectors) is to:
- A) Identify patterns or trends indicating a keyword/product/concept is on the rise/fall
- B) Find content that in the past has attracted large amounts of attention around these keywords (an excellent starting point for viral content development)
- C) Locate portals on the web or in social communities where your topic may be hot, and opportunities for promotion or links exist
They’re not universally valuable for every part of keyword research, and you shouldn’t trust the volumes to predict keyword demand (some things get written about more than they get searched), but a good SEO leaves no opportunity un-investigated.
#5 – Vertical Results (and Vertical Opportunities)
It’s wise to be aware of where and how your keywords can cross over into vertical search results. The best way to do this currently is, unfortunately, manually. You’ll want to:
- Search for your target terms at the major search engines
- Identify any vertical results that appears in the top 10-20 listings
- Employ strategies to reach into the applicable verticals
The most common and highest value are typically:
- Local
- Product
- News
- Images
- Blog
- Video
#6 - Searcher Intent
What are the goals of the individuals searching for your targeted keywords? What phase of the decision process are they in? Answering these questions can give you an excellent idea of the potential ROI from drawing in traffic on a given term/phrase. Many times the highest volume keywords are not bringing in the best traffic.
Some good resources on this front include:
- Segmenting Searcher Intent – from SEOmoz
- Two Part Series on Intent Targeting - from Jon Mendez
- Understanding User Data to Measure Searcher Intent – from SearchEngineLand
- MSN AdCenter Labs also has their Online Commercial Intention Tool which predicts, based on activity, whether a keyword is commercial or informational in intent
Your goal should be to narrow down the potential tasks a visitor who has just performed the query wants to accomplish. This can dramatically boost your site’s performance when coupled with delivery of those paths upon arrival.
#7 – Potential Relevance
The best way to determine the relevance between a keyword and the content/service/product you offer is to test. Run a PPC campaign or dig into your analytics and choose only those visitors that have come via the search query. Pull out data like browse rate, time spent on site, conversions, etc.
The majority of visits who come into SEOmoz for the keyword "SEO Blog" stick around to read at least a couple of pages
Relevance is highly actionable data because it does such a good job predicting which keywords are going to bring valuable traffic. While branded terms often perform highly (and are typically easy to rank well on), longer tail and more specific queries also have this tendency to be more relevant (and, again, are easier to achieve).
#8 - PPC Advertising Data
Even if you’re not planning on bidding for keywords through paid search campaigns, it’s wise to know what the competition is doing and how much value they’re getting from it (and what they’re willing to pay). A few good resources for this information include:
MSN AdCenter’s Keyword Estimate
I really like what AdCenter does with this spiffy graph – showing the cost and estimated clicks in an easy-to-read graphic. Just remember that MSN is the engine with the fewest advertisers, which often means pricing is less aggressive than on Google or Yahoo!
Google AdWords Traffic Estimator
I’m a bit less fond of Google’s standard take on the data, but their pricing is the gold standard, as AdWords has the highest number of advertisers and the most traffic by far.
A solid tool with a lot of uses, particularly for competitive keyword analysis, SEMRush shows some decent numbers around the average CPC and competition levels for most keywords at the head of the demand curve.
Take the cost-per-click data and competition levels into account when you’re considering things like relevance, potential conversion rates and visitor value. Most companies aren’t dumb – if they’re bidding high dollar values for potential visits, they’re converting those visits into dollars and that means you can both learn from them and find strategies to outperform.
#9 – Top Related Queries
Related queries is an easy metric to understand – you want to know what other terms searchers who used these keywords also employed. It’s a no-brainer to then add these to your list of potential keyword targets. Many good sources for this data exist:
- Google shows related searches in both their AdWords Tool and through web search (you’ll want to click the "show options" link at the top followed by the "related searches" link in the sidebar)
- Bing, Microsoft’s new engine, shows related searches by default in their web search interface
- Yahoo! Search has their "also try" list and clicking "more" will give you an interface just below the search box that finds lots of great, relevant keywords
- The aforementioned SEMRush shows great data on this (though you’ll need to sift through as there can be a lot of junk) if you’re a paying member
- Compete.com’s Search Analytics has good information by query and website, though you’ll need to subscribe to their service to get the full value
Get the related queries, dig into the data about them and target those that have enough volume and relevance to help you get increase valuable traffic from SEO.
#10 – Legal Issues
Last, and probably least in most cases, it’s wise to do some research into the legalities surrounding the keywords you’d like to target. Using trademarked terms and phrases on your site can cause attorney trouble, and no one likes that. The place to start, at least in the United States, is here – USPTO Trademark Electronic Search System.
Whew… That’s a lot of work for keyword research – now you can see why some firms charge hundreds of dollars per hour for this type of deep dive. Put these recommendations to good use, though, and you’ll have an impressive set of terms to target – and that can be a serious competitive advantage.
I’ve undoubtedly left out a few metrics and, as always, appreciate any ideas or suggestions you’ve got on this topic.
18 High-quality FREE Wordpress Themes Releases IN May 2009
Those who use WordPress for at least 2-3 years knows that the
evolution of the WordPress themes is simply amazing, more and more
themes are coming like mushrooms after the rain.
In this article
I want to showcase best 18 free Wordpress blog templates (themes)
released this month. I hope these themes will fit your needs.
Don’t forget to come back if you want to get greatest free premium Wordpress themes.
1. Magasin Siete Wordpress Theme | Demo | Download
2. Wmag Wordpress Theme | Demo | Download
