Out of Bounds Communications

Google and Paid Links

Jay Wilner — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:59:00 +0000

Recently, there has been alot of talk about Google’s PageRank update and paid links. Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal’s article, Google Page Rank Update and Link Selling, talks about how some directories and web sites were losing one or even more units of PageRank in a recent Google update and that Danny Sullivan in his post at Search Engine Land, talks about the Stanford University Newspaper and how it’s prior PR of 9 was suddenly dropped to 7, likely due to Google’s recent update to account for sites that are selling links. Apparently, the Stanford Daily was selling links on their site for $350/month! A pretty good deal for a .edu domain and PR9! Danny pinged Google and confirmed this update for paid links was true.

It just seems like its getting harder and harder to obtain good quality links for our clients. I am recently running a link acquisition program for US Patriot Store, a retailer of law enforcement and military gear and clothing. At times, I spend half or all day and have a handful of links to show for it, or even worse, simply some database entries indicating potential link partners. It is slow going at best. Sounds like link acquisition is only to get harder and require more methodical yet creative approaches.

How goes it for you?

In-house or Out-source Search Marketing?

Jay Wilner — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:42:26 +0000

I recently read a good article by Sara Holoubek at DM News entitled “The buy vs. build argument for SEM” where she talks about whether an advertiser should develop the inhouse SEM capabilities or outsource to a search marketing agency. She debunks some of the current, as she says, “misconceptions” about building an inhouse SEM competency, in which she states that inhouse competency can be achieved, that “once-proprietary only” agency technology is no longer the case (e.g. bid management tools, analytics freebee tools) and that even an inhouse agency can keep up on the ever changing technology.

I guess my only comments on this are the following:

Some of the decision will rest on the company’s culture - there are some firms that just don’t have the intent to get involved with the technology nor will they bill willing to invest financial resources to build that competency
Some firms may start out with an agency relationship and then leverage that experience and knowledge in migrating to their own inhouse agency
I, like Sara, still think there will always be a need for SEM agencies, like Out of Bounds, in the same way that there are advertising agencies, direct marketing firms or even lube and oil change outlets. The services industry is here to stay in my opinion. I could learn to change my own oil and filter and invest in that equipment but does it make sense for my business?

What do you think?

Why can’t E commerce software be more SEO friendly?

Jay Wilner — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 19:13:26 +0000

I cant tell you how many times I have worked with clients whose ecommerce platform is either totally incapable of being optimized for SEO or is severly limited. Heck, in some cases, we can’t even get basic Google analytics tags installed!

I hate to name names but one of the worst systems I have seen to date is Miva Merchant. Several developers I have worked with absolutely hate the software, saying it is ‘a bunch of crap…’ and basically they are not even able to add a basic Google analytics sitewide tag, and asking them to add the commerce tracking tag or even the basic Google conversion tag (which is so so basic) was simply impossible to do!

How do these vendors expect their customers to run ecommerce business using a software platform that doesnt even allow for web analytics and tracking? I have basically had to tell several clients that I couldnt help them, as much as I wanted the business, I cant really conduct online marketing programs if I cant even have analytics in place.

Other clients have come to me with inhouse/homebuilt commerce systems, again with some real fundamental problems like not being able to have customized page titles or meta information for each page! Or using session ID’s in the URLs….

I guess I am just upset that these customers basically are SOL and will likely have to migrate to a new platform..

Google Gadget Ads

Jay Wilner — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 16:08:57 +0000

Google recently expanded their beta program for their Google Gadget ads to a limited number of their adwords advertisers. Unfortunately, none of my clients have been invited to join yet. These gadget ads are rich media ads that can contain a large number of interactive, interesting features such as data feeds, flash and other multimedia tools. The ads run on Google’s content network and can be cpc or cpm based.

Some examples of these rich media ads can be found at: Gadget ad examples .

I am so excited about all the opportunities becoming available for online advertising. These gadget ads are just another example of how Google continues to innovate and push the marketplace further along.

SEO Linking Building Ideas - Thoughts on Directories

Jay Wilner — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:36:16 +0000

There are millions of lists out there for building links but I actually wanted to capture some recent articles and postings about web directories and their usefulness for search engine optimization and link building.

Hey, this article is almost three years old but many of the directory ideas are still good - some are free and some you have to pay a yearly fee. In all cases you have to watch out for the quality of the directory: “56 directories to submit to“
Another dated but I found still useful article on “how to find directories to link to“
Great article by Rand Fishkin on “What Makes a Good Web Directory“
Rand again has some great ideas on what makes a good directory in his article “The Wisdom and Folly of Directory Link Building“
131 link building strategies (another way old article but still relevant)
Andy Hagan & Aaron Wall’s article on “101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website“

Pros and Cons of PPC Bid Management Tools

Jay Wilner — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:01:03 +0000

Its easy to be lured into thinking all you have to do is set up some automated bid management toolset for your paid search campaign (PPC) and sit back and watch the money come in. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case. Nonetheless, with a little planning, you can use these various ppc tools to your advantage, freeing up your time to do more important, less routine things than managing bidding.

Case in point, I have been using www.keywordmax.com lately and I do love the new version they came out with a few weeks ago. You can now simultaneously manage multiple instances of the same keyword/match type across multiple campaigns! Before this release, what happened is that the first instance of the keyword that keyword max found was managed, the others being ignored. Not a very good situation if you are running 25 identical versions of the same keyword but differing in geotargeting (e.g. “keyword A” in kansas, “keyword A” in nebraska, etc…).

I have also found that having a good methodology and system for selecting what keywords to manage really helps as well. I have been using database technology and simple formulas based upon conversion rates, minimum impressions and overall competitiveness of the keyword to come up with my selection of keywords to manage using keyword max. I then run the query and save the results as a table, labeling as this month’s keyword max selections.

Give keywordmax a try and let me know what you find out! Its alot of work but will pay off with lower conversion costs and more effective spending of your advertising dollars!

Google Adwords New Campaign Optimizer Tool

Jay Wilner — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 22:09:58 +0000

Google came out around a month ago with another new PPC tool for their adwords advertisers - called “Optimize Campaign” (see snapshot below).

I guess we can’t expect Google to programatically replace us search engine marketers just yet. I tried out the campaign optimizer on a few client campaigns and found out the following:

It seemed to suggest raising the bids quite a bit of the time (imagine that!)
The suggestions for optimizing the text ads were really weak - all I ever saw was a revising of the display url to show the ‘www’ subdomain (which i dont want to do anyway)
The google optimizer did however have some good ideas for new keywords

Frankly, on first glance, a search engine marketer may have been worried, thinking that Google was going to eliminate our business by building an automated tool to do our PPC work. However, on first glance, it looks like it will be a while before you can replace your human search engine marketing analyst!

What are your thoughts on the new tool?

SEO and Information Architecture

Jay Wilner — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 17:07:45 +0000

I have been reading a great classic book on information architecture - “Information Architecture for the World Wide Web” - by Morville and Rosenfeld. The book is filled with wonderful concepts and ideas about how to ‘architect’ information for a web site based upon various criteria such as:

Organization schemes - organizing by topic, task, audience
Organization structures - hierarchial, database driven, hypertext, social classification
Labeling systems - labeling of links, headers, content areas, contextual links
Controlled vocabularies/Thesauri

It occurred to me that this is exactly how we do search engine optimization work here at Out of Bounds. I talk alot about architecting the web site according to consumer search behavior, carefully labeling links with descriptive names, organizing content tightly into related content areas, navigation areas.

They also have a wonderful chapter on Navigation systems that talks about ’supplemental’ navigation systems such as site maps, indexes and guides. We can build site maps not only to help search engines understand the site information but also provide another navigation aid to our users. Another SEO idea would be to build various ’shopping guides’ or tools to help browsers or other shoppers in the early buy phases to find what they are looking for.

The book talks alot about ‘findability’ of information. I can see now how proper information architecture is really the key to both solid web site design and seo design!

Measuring Consumer Search “Intent” with Analytics?

Jay Wilner — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 22:06:58 +0000

I have been thinking of better ways of figuring out what the ‘intent’ of the search visitor is. What has always been hard for me in search engine marketing is making that leap of faith when matching a keyword to a client’s product or offering. Is the customer really searching for what we are selling? For example, if the query is for “chemical warning labels”, is the searcher’s intent to buy warning labels for their hazardous chemicals or are they simply searching for information about warning labels on their child’s medicine?

I am going to try using some of the Google analytics parameters to help me evaluate that in some sort of quantitative sense as follows:

Segment keywords by page view per visit
Segment keywords by % exit ratio

My theory is that keywords that consistenly show a small page view/visit ratio (say <1.5:1 or so) probably are not relevant to my offerings. If the keyword intent was correct, why didnt they view more of the site? The same argument could be made with the exit ratio. If a keyword consistently shows a high exit ratio (assuming I have selected the most relevant landing page I can), then again, probably the searcher intent is not matching with my offer.

Tracking SEO campaigns versus PPC Campaigns

Jay Wilner — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 14:43:26 +0000

Tracking search engine optimization ‘campaigns’ or results is not even close to being as easy as tracking and monitoring paid search advertising results. Why? Well, just think for a minute. With PPC, you define exactly which keywords you want to advertise, what matching options, etc. then you define what search engines and even what campaign and ad group names. And you can insert tracking codes into the query strings on the ad URL’s to provide your analytics engine with exactly where that visitor came from and what their actual keyword query was. The beauty of PPC is that you have already defined up front what campaign or category that keyword belongs to. Thus, instead of looking at each keyword and how it is doing, a daunting task, you can monitor at a more macro level, the campaign or ad group level, then troubleshoot and go down to more detail from there.

But, what about SEO? You get thousands of inbound organic keyword searches a month, with visitors using phrases you never, ever optimized for. How do you even ‘allocate’ or define what campaign an organic keyword belongs to? With SEO, you optimize specific pages on your site for a handful of keywords but what keywords organic visitors use if never known until you view your web logs or analytics tool. The difficulty is then sifting through these thousands of organic keywords and figuring out what ‘campaign’ or keyword category they belong to so you can have a more macro view to analyze. Otherwise, how do you determine how you are doing with your SEO?