Saturday, December 31, 2011

Spam? Affiliate is a 4 Letter Word

Google Hates Affiliates

Years before Google broadly torched affiliates operating inside the AdWords channel I highlighted how much Google hated affiliates in their ecosystem.

How was I aware of that?

2 ways:

  • If you read any of Google's older guidelines that leaked over the years you would see a consistent disdain toward affiliate sites. This was also reflected in official advice at search engine conferences & whatnot.
  • A friend of mine went to Google's campus & Google offered to "optimize" their AdWords account. As soon as the word affiliate came up it was like spoiled meat. Replacing the word "affiliate" with some other idiotic made up phrase (I think it was "regional online distributor") suddenly made everything O.K. again. Other friends had similar stories.

Note that the difference between "affiliate" and "regional online distributor" is for all intents and purposes linguistic crap, however it can be the difference between life and death for an online business.

To be fair, the ready availability of feeds to quickly generate sites means that most affiliate sites will be garbage. At some point Google gets sick of fighting the same battles over and over again. Then again, most websites are garbage & only the top x% of anything is going to be great.

At Affiliate Summit last year Google's Frederick Vallaeys basically stated that they appreciated the work of affiliates, but as the brands have moved in the independent affiliates have largely become unneeded duplication in the AdWords ad system. To quote him verbatim, "just an unnecessary step in the sales funnel."

It is worth noting that Google doesn't consider itself "just an unnecessary step in the sales funnel" when they insert themselves as an affiliate.

Should information empires be allowed to discriminate based on nothing more than the business model of competitors?

Spam vs Not Spam

The most recently leaked Google rater document stated

Spammers create spam pages to make money. Sometimes, they make money directly, by placing moneymaking links on the spam page. Here are two types of moneymaking links:

  • Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads: Spammers get paid each time ads are clicked on their webpages. Another term for PPC ads is ?sponsored links?.
  • Thin Affiliates: Spammers make money when a transaction is completed after the user has clicked through to the merchant?s site from their webpages

PPC ads appear on many, many webpages. Some pages with PPC ads are spam, but many pages with PPC ads are not. Pages should not be assigned a Spam flag if they are created to provide information or help to users. Pages are spam if they exist only to make money and not to help users.
Sometimes, spam pages do not have moneymaking links. These spam pages are created to change search engine rankings or even to do harm to users? computers with sneaky downloads.

So in essence, the difference between spam & not spam is if the page is helpful to users.

The rating document takes 130 pages to clearly articulate the difference between what is spam and what is not spam.

But the core ethos in categorization is if it is original & helpful it is not spam unless it is doing something deceptive.

A Minor Exception*

Google's rater guides also arbitrarily sneaked in the "what the hell, if it is affiliate, it is spam" card:

Note: Major cosmopolitan cities are preferred targets for spammers, especially hotel affiliates. Such results should be flagged as Spam, even if they are related to the query and helpful to users. For example, a hotel affiliate page with a list of Chicago hotels may be assigned a rating Relevant, but also receive a Spam flag.

Google is directly going out of its way to attack competing business models.

Even if the site is quality - any way you slice it - they still tell raters to label it as spam if it is a hotel affiliate.

Once again it is worth pointing out that the label "affiliate" is just an arbitrary label. It could just as well be a "commissioned salesperson."

An Example Market: Books

In our forums one of our members quoted a brilliant book by Karl Polanyi from 1944 which was full of gems like "A so-called self-regulating market economy may evolve into Mafia capitalism ? and a Mafia political system"

I searched for that quote & guess what ranked #1?

Google Books of course.

Google's owned & operated affiliate offering in the niche.

The stolen version hosted on Google.com ranks #1...everything else is either spam, unneeded duplication in the marketplace, and/or conjecture that can float up and down as they tweak the algorithms.

To say that the book publishing industry is undergoing pains would be an understatement. But maybe in some weird way Google promoting Google helps the book industry by giving it more avenues to be seen? Maybe they are trying to help out book authors?

The structure of the book industry prevents the book author from getting anything but a small slice of the book's revenues (unless the author is well known and/or they self publish). Markets being what they are, most authors live in obscurity on the long tail. To help supplement their low cut of the revenue pie, some book authors use affiliate links to link to Amazon.com as a purchasing option on their official book websites.

Recently in our forums a member created a thread about a client site being blocked from AdWords because there was an affiliate link on the page for their own book!

Google is The Biggest Online Affiliate

So the author is not allowed to advertise his own work to give you multiple buying options & highlight options which offer her additional compensation, however...

  • Google is free to steal the copyright work & promote their looted version first
  • Google can run an affiliate network
  • Google can double dip in the AdWords auction
  • Google can give itself affiliate ad units in the SERPs (all their lead generation offers & the CPA-based product ads)
  • Google can invest in start up affiliate networks (like VigLink) that automatically inserts affiliate links without any editorial discretion from the publisher
  • Google can invest in networks of similar sites (like Whaleshark Media) that are primarily driven by affiliate links
  • Google can create paid placement affiliate-driven sites like Boutiques.com & then fold them into Google Product Search without disclosing what is happening to those affiliate placements
  • Google can become the ultimate online affiliate

And yet the word "affiliate" is a bad word.

The word affiliate is arbitrarily tarnished in the same way that SEO is.

Use another label & if you do the exact same thing it is clean. Craigslist or eBay are not affiliates as they are marketplaces. Wal-Mart & Amazon.com might do drop shipping & have some affiliate promotions on their sites, but they are retailers.

These arbitrary label differences make a big difference to the stability of an online business.

Machine Learning vs a Small Business Killing Machine

Google can claim that they use artificial intelligence and machine learning and are unbiased, but their ranking systems need training sets. And if upon this alleged independent rating affiliates come up as "spam" then how can an affiliate build a sustainable business model?

I know what you are thinking: "Well, Aaron, they can stop being affiliates and move up the value chain."

The problem with that is that as an affiliate I can compare a lot of products in a condensed space, but if I accept payments for products then I likely need to have a page for each product. The issue there is that if you do not have a strong brand and you have lots of pages on your site there is a great chance that the Panda algorithm will torch your website.

At the same time, if you try to go big & thick you have to worry about competing against Google as they buy out vital pieces of the supply chain, create their own affiliate partnerships, steal your content & outrank you with their copy of it, and launch their own affiliate channels & affiliate stores on their websites.

Brand Sites Become Affiliates

One of the things Google mentioned to identify thin affiliates from other merchants is this:

Check to see if the address of the image is the same as the address of the page or if it is the address of a ?real? merchant?

Small businesses are getting squeezed out of the search results by Panda. Affiliates are getting torched for not being a "real" merchant.

What is "real"?

At the same time, some of the biggest branded websites that Google promotes are now BECOMING AFFILIATES:

The new items on the website will mostly get to consumers through third-party sellers, which means B&N won?t have to carry the expense of inventory. The bookseller will just take a sales commission of 8% to 15% on each item.

What's worse, when brands come under review for spamming, Google says that they already ranked #1 so there is no reason to penalize them. Which is precisely why you can now buy rugs on Barnes & Noble. And it is precisely why you can find dating offers, education offers, jobs, and automotive sections on Excite.com. There is no SEO risk in brand extension for large brands that can do no wrong.

Google puts weight on domain names then suggests that domains can be a spam tool. So in a sense, if you invest in whatever Google trusts and are small you are a spammer. Whereas if you invest in whatever Google trusts and are large you deserve the benefit of the doubt & further promotion.

Sometimes the only difference between the brand and spammer labels is that the brands spam harder.

Brand + Money = Not Spam

For those with money, brand is another SEO tool to buy, and Google will proudly run the affiliate program for your duplicated site if you buy a bankrupt brand & slap a product feed on it.

Google literally ties their relevancy signals to their ad units. Recall that:

So if you have brand & money you can just flat out buy the "relevancy" signals. Yet if you try to create similar signals without paying Google & without owning a billion Dollar brand you are shunned & labeled as a spammer.

This subjective circular nonsense is getting a bit out of hand.

In summary, we are not SEOs and we are not affiliates.

We are a brand & we will buy retargeting AdWords ads + up our AdWords budget appropriately.

If we rebrand to remove "SEO" from the domain name can we please be added to Google's whitelist? ;)

Categories: 

Source: http://www.seobook.com/brand-vs-affiliate-vs-spam

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Social Media Campaign Manager / XL Marketing / New York, NY

XL Marketing/New York, NY

XL Marketing has become one of the leading online customer acquisition businesses the marketplace today and delivers high quality prospects to their clientele through a mix of high quality products and traffic sources.

Our interactive division is one of the fastest growing performance-based marketing businesses in the country and is leading the way in innovative strategies to generate high quality leads across social media and search.
We are looking for a highly talented campaign manager to specialize in social media lead generation. We work with leading companies in a variety of sectors including education, financial services, B2B, consumer brands, and high growth venture-backed corporations.

The Social Media Campaign Manager will work closely with other campaign managers, technologists, and management team to manage some of the most innovative social media lead generation campaigns in the business.

Position is based out of New York City

Desired Skills & Experience
- Graduate of top university looking for a great opportunity in the social media world. Must have passion for social media and marketing.
- Strong analytical skills, understands and uses metrics that are relevant, highly detail oriented. Must have high quantitative SAT scores.
- Proven ability to solve problems with creative solutions
- Excellent communication skills at all levels of an organization
- Identifies and analyzes problems; distinguishes between relevant and irrelevant information
- Proven ability to perform under pressure
- Willingness to learn, demonstrates growth mindset


Apply To Job

Source: http://jobs.searchenginejournal.com/job/social-media-campaign-manager-new-york-ny-xl-marketing-7fec882f58/?d=1&source=rss_page

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Online Media Buyer / Acquinity Interactive / New York, NY

Acquinity Interactive/New York, NY

Who We Are:
A team of interactive media professionals who are obsessed with optimization and conversions. We design promotions and products that turn online users into real-time buyers.

Our IDEAL Candidate:
YOU are a focused, diligent individual who combines creativity, marketing and analytics with a passion for maximizing profitability. As an Online Media Buyer, you will be a key driver in developing our performance-based display network. Through leveraging our high volume of targeted in-market consumers, you will set up retargeting campaigns on brands including Sweepstakes.com, HealthProfessor.com and AmericanCreditReport.com. You will also be required to develop and test online media campaigns with specific performance-based objectives, and expand them into high-volume/large-spend buys. Expert knowledge of online media campaign design, testing, optimization across multiple online channels �?? including display, retargeting, portal (MSN/Yahoo), PPV and content networks �?? is a big plus. This position is 100% ROI-focused and metrics-driven, which means you will be rewarded when a campaign is successful. As the media buys grow, you will be analyzing larger volumes of campaigns and generating and negotiating key business decisions in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.

You'll be responsible for:
�?� helping to drive AI's online media buying and customer acquisition strategy by developing and managing profitable buys for multiple brands and advertisers
�?� leveraging creative and marketing knowledge to develop new creative, landing pages, and campaigns for specific brands and publishers
�?� managing the creation and execution of campaigns that exceed business goals
�?� driving and optimizing key traffic and revenue metrics �?? including CTR and conversions �?? through targeting and creative optimization
�?�prospecting for new publisher and media buying opportunities
�?� managing CPM, CPL, CPA, CPC, and CPV campaigns, and reviewing backend performance to ensure specific eCPA and profitability goals are being met
�?� developing strong relationships with publishers to continually test and optimize programs
�?� having the desire to constantly learn and expand your knowledge from leading minds in the online marketing world!

Your Must-Haves:
�?� a Bachelor's Degree
�?� strong analytical abilities
�?� a self-starter who thrives under pressure in a fast-paced, changing environment
�?� a passion for media buying and online marketing, pride in your work and a drive to succeed
�?� exceptional communication skills and a �??team-first�? attitude


Please move to the front of the line if you also have:
�?� 5 to 7 years' online marketing-specific experience, with a minimum 3 years' demonstrated success in performance-based online media buying
�?� 2+ years of lead generation and/or ecommerce experience
�?� experience managing an advertising budget of at least $1M/Month
�?� demonstrated success in managing high-volume media buys for consumer audiences
�?� exceptionally-detailed knowledge of metrics, specifically A/B, multi-variant testing and ROI analysis
�?� expert knowledge of top display, retargeting, and online media publishers, networks, DSPs and exchanges including AppNexus, RightMedia, DoubleClick, AdBrite, AdMeld, Rubicon, OpenX and Facebook
�?� knowledge of SEM and SEO optimization
Please note: If you don't have the �??dream candidate�? experience listed above, please include in your cover letter why you would make a great candidate for this position, including previous
experience and what your passions are �?? if you've got the raw talent, we're willing develop it!

About Acquinity Interactive:
AI was created by a group of individuals with a passion for online marketing and a belief that there's a better way to do it. With a little savvy and a whole lot of passion, we've created a proprietary technology system that works, and we prove it to our very satisfied customers every day. How did we reach that level of success? By finding creative, dedicated individuals like you, who are just as passionate about getting it right �?? and willing to go the extra mile to make it happen. Plus we play as hard as we work, with regular team-building events, fun contests and a whole lot more!

Compensation:
Competitive salary commensurate with experience
Individual & family medical insurance, dental insurance & vision care option

Additional Comments:
Acquinity Interactive is an Equal Opportunity Employer


Apply To Job

Source: http://jobs.searchenginejournal.com/job/online-media-buyer-new-york-ny-acquinity-interactive-f6d33b8f1e/?d=1&source=rss_page

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AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success, Part 8

This is the eighth in a series of interviews we're conducting with AdWords advertisers who got unusually high scores using our AdWords Performance Grader. We're reaching out to high scorers to find out what strategies contribute to their strong AdWords performance. For more in this series, see:

This week?s interview is with Antonia Matthews, Online & Offline Media Strategist at Quarry.

Tell us a bit about yourself. How long have you been using AdWords? Are you an Agency or an Advertiser? What is your primary goal for AdWords marketing?

At Quarry, I?m responsible for both digital and traditional media strategy, including PPC advertising. I?ve been using AdWords since 2005. A lot has changed since then, and the tools available have become better and more numerous. Because I work at an agency, our goals change depending on the client and campaign ? and defining those goals and what success looks like in each situation is key to producing meaningful results. Two of the goals we work with most often are to increase website traffic, and to generate leads. 

There are tons of metrics in AdWords ? What are your top 3 key performance metrics in AdWords and why?

My top three:

  • CTR ? CTR has to be number one. It means that our keywords and ads are relevant and users want to find more from us. In every campaign there will be variance in CTRs between keywords - a great CTR for one keyword may be a poor CTR for another, but both are valuable ? so we need to be paying attention to CTR over time, with benchmarks, to focus on improving it. Paying attention to CTR also means that we know when optimizations just aren?t making a meaningful improvement in relation to our goals ? it happens ? so we can disable those underperforming terms (and/or ads) and focus on what?s working.
  • Conversion Rate ? If we?re measuring conversions, this is an obvious one (although not all of our client campaigns have conversion tracking goals). Conversion rate demonstrates how each ad and keyword performs against a defined, measurable goal ? and we really find out which keyword terms and ads drive users to take a desired action. I?ve found that a high CTR doesn?t always mean that those visitors convert well, so having conversion tracking set up helps us to understand at a deeper level what?s working best. If we?re hoping for visitors to sign-up, to buy something, to request information, it?s definitely beneficial to create ads that explicitly encourage that action (and also adhere to best practices for ad copy).
  • Quality Score ? There is a lot of emphasis placed on quality score in the industry. It?s because QS is one of those very important metrics that is less visible within a campaign, and more elusive than other metrics, but very important. A great quality score means that Google (and users) have deemed our keywords and campaign highly relevant. When we have good quality scores, I can be confident that we are bidding on the right keywords, our ad copy is meaningful to the search query and our campaign has been structured well. In turn, my clients get better ad positions and pay lower CPCs.

Can you describe your AdWords management strategy? How do you set your campaign objectives, and how do you know what?s realistic or not?

We have conversations with the client to understand what they?re hoping to achieve through a PPC campaign. Often we?ll recommend a key objective or two based on the keyword research, allocated budget and our knowledge of their business. And we also have clients who come to us with predetermined objectives, so it?s our job to ask the right questions, make sure the goal is reasonable, and build a campaign around it.  

The approach tends to be different for each client, but I ask the same set of questions and follow a similar process in determining what to recommend in each situation. Budget is a big factor in determining what we can realistically hope to achieve ? share of voice is important ? sometimes we need to recommend a narrower keyword focus or fewer targeted regions in order to be successful. Once we?ve determined the basics (budget, region, audience), a key step is to figure out which networks and devices we?ll target. If our client doesn?t have a mobile-enabled site, there?s no point in targeting mobile devices. If we decide to include the display network, I need to do separate keyword and placement research and consider different campaign structure than if we?re running a search network only campaign.

In addition to keyword research, I try to find out what competitors are doing, what differentiates our client from them, and who our audience really is. I need to break through any preconceived notions of who the audience is and what matters to them ? for example, just because we use a specific term to refer to the product, does our audience? Those sorts of questions should come up during the research phase.

Campaign structure is obviously important, and it?s something I keep in mind early ? your keywords (and networks, if you?re using both) need to drive that structure. It?s a lot harder to retrofit structure into a campaign at the last minute during set up in AdWords.

It?s also essential to keep in mind that PPC is always a work-in-progress. There are times that we?ve had a campaign running, and realized that users just aren?t willing to convert post-click despite optimizations that should have helped, then it?s figuring out what else we need to do and if there are alternatives ? in one case we?d asked for users to buy an expensive product online, although we knew almost all sales were occurring offline, so we re-grouped and came up with a different conversion point (a coupon) and saw success quickly. 

Describe your AdWords management workflow. When you?re doing your account optimization work, how do you decide what to do next in your account? How do you prioritize your work?

At Quarry, we work with clients who have highly engineered products and services ? they have long purchase cycles and are in niche industries. Because of this, our campaigns often have many keywords with low search volumes and it takes longer to get enough data to meaningfully evaluate our results.

The first thing I do when working on campaign optimization is take a look to see if there are any notable changes that I need to pay attention to ? CTR, conversion rate, CPC, ad position. And if so, review what optimizations I most recently made that caused the change, and see if I can I mirror it elsewhere in the campaign. I try to compare several different date ranges (including the same time period last year, if available) to make sure it?s not just a potential seasonal change.

I review the ?search terms? report often and add negative keywords based on that report. It?s one of the quickest ways to improve campaign relevancy.

My workflow does change depending on which client campaign I?m working on. It?s easy to be distracted by the available data and the possibilities in AdWords, so I try to focus on smaller methodical changes. I don?t change everything at once. For instance, I may choose to focus on changes to ad text and ad testing one week and see how that impacts our results before making changes to CPCs the next.

Any advice or tips for AdWords marketers that didn?t score as well as you?

  • Use negative keywords, nothing improves campaign relevancy faster and with as little work as reviewing the actual search terms report and adding negatives to your campaign.
  • Structure your campaign well. You should have as many ad groups as necessary for each to be filled with very similar terms from your keyword list. I shoot for each keyword within an ad group sharing at least two of the same words. And there?s no such thing as an unnecessary ad grouping ? I have ad groups with as few as two keywords in them. And ad groups must have unique ads that are highly relevant to the keywords in that group.
  • Explore everything that AdWords has to offer, there are a wealth of tools and information available for you to use in optimizing your campaign. For instance, the Search Funnels report can be really valuable to better understand the path leading to conversion (beyond last click conversion).

What did you think about the categories we included in the AdWords Grader ? were they fair? Anything missing?

I was really impressed with everything that the AdWords Grader took into account in evaluating campaign performance. I expected something that brushed the surface of our account setup and performance ? but instead I got a really comprehensive report that took into account a lot of factors that are important to a campaign?s performance but don?t get a lot of press. In particular, including account activity, long-tail keywords and impression share made me feel that the ?grade? was meaningful beyond the standard metrics (QS, CTR and ad optimization) that I?d anticipated would be included.

The diagnostics were really in-depth, and I?ve actually used them as a benchmark for my optimization efforts. Although I scored highly, there were still lots of areas for improvement, and the report gave me insight on areas that I needed to focus on. I?m not sure that there?s anything missing ? with the inclusion of the best practices it seems like you guys thought of everything!

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Source: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2011/11/22/adwords-experts-8

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On your mark, get set, GOMC!

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Small Business Advertising

Social buttons: 
Add social buttons (Google +1, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook) at the top of the content.

Small business online advertising can often be difficult for small businesses still getting on their feet. Small businesses looking for online advertising ideas have numerous options available to them.

One of the best and most profitable ways for small businesses to advertise online is through pay-per-click marketing (PPC), a branch of Search Engine Marketing (SEM). PPC continues to grow in popularity as an effective online advertising method because it serves as a relatively easy, cost-effective way to get your advertisements in front of a huge pool of potential customers using Google AdWords and other search engine marketing platforms to display your message.

Advertising Small Business

WordStream has been featured in USA Today as an aid in helping small businesses use Google AdWords to their greatest advantage.

The article reports on the trend of Big search engine platforms (Google AdWords, Microsoft AdCenter, etc.) whose bottom lines depend on selling ads linked to search results.

These search engine platforms pour millions of dollars into initiatives to help small and medium sized advertisers make the leap to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Unfortunately, many small business struggle to get a handle on PPC.

As WordStream's founder Larry Kim notes, in USA Today article:

"It's all too common for small advertisers to waste money on poorly executed campaigns. Typically, they don't re-evaluate and they miss out on the opportunity to leverage a powerful marketing channel to grow their business."

You can read the full article, "Big search companies woo small businesses," in USA Today.

WordStream has been recognized as a key asset in producing high-performing PPC campaigns. Learn about how WordStream's PPC Software and Traffic Express service can revolutionize how you advertise on Google and drive relevant, valuable traffic to your business while saving you time and money.

Small Business Advertising Tips : Using PPC

So what's the "correct" way to use PPC as part of your small business advertising strategy? Implementing a few best online advertising practices will ensure that your small business succeeds with PPC. Here are some tips for effective small business advertising: 

  • Begin with solid keyword research: Keyword research is the core component of effective online marketing and using keywords in advertising. Make sure your research is data-driven.
  • Organize and group your keywords: Keyword grouping allows for more strategic online marketing for both PPC and SEO campaigns.
  • Commit to Advertising Online: To see continuous benefits, you should regularly test, update and improve your small business online marketing campaigns.

The best small business online advertisers continuously research and improve their keyword lists.

While small businesses can easily be overwhelmed by the intricacies of how to use Google AdWords, WordStream offers comprehensive online advertising services for small businesses wanting help with PPC online advertising.

Learn how WordStream, a leading online advertising company with unique PPC management solutions, can play a role in your search marketing strategy.

Marketing Strategies for Small Business

small business advertising company, small business advertising marketingA small business marketing strategy can help you identify who your customers are, measure your company?s position compared to competitors, and track the performance of your marketing actions.

When marketing your small business online, ask yourself:
  • What are your customers searching for online?
  • How could you reach your targeted customers?
  • Which online marketing techniques will help you increase traffic and differentiate your product from competitors?

Small Business Online Advertising Advice from WordStream

Using WordStream's Keyword Research Suite to find the keywords that will help you reach your customers should be a key element of your small business marketing plan.
 
Effective keyword research ensures that your business can be found by those looking for your products or services via search.
 
The Keyword Research Suite is a comprehensive small business marketing tool which includes five effective keyword tools for discovering your most profitable keywords and putting them to work in search marketing campaigns:

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These tools will help you find the keywords that you should integrate in your small business marketing plan to reach your customers online.

Effective Small Business Advertising Solutions

 
Google AdWords is great at providing ways for you to spend money, but the vast array of features and data can be difficult to analyze. WordStream's Ad Software for Google PPC helps you make sense of your AdWords account and control your spend. Discover AdWords success with our sophisticated tools that can help you:
  • Build effective PPC campaigns from scratch
  • Create new ad groups
  • Expand your keyword opportunities
  • Cut wasteful spending with negative keywords
  • Analyze your search queries for insights

WordStream for PPC allows you to manage your budget efficiently and effectively. With more relevant ad groups, you can attract more customers. And with higher click-through rates, you'll earn higher Quality Scores, which lowers your bid price and improves your rankings and visibility!

No Time for PPC? Leave It to the Experts

Our goal at WordStream is not just to help you attract more paid or organic traffic; we strive to help you generate more quality leads which you can cultivate to transform into sales. WordStream can provide you with tailored suggestions for your unique online advertising needs, proving personal attention without the high costs of hiring an online marketing agency.
 
As a small business advertiser, you have a lot of balls in the air. If you're struggling to control costs and realize ROI from pay-per-click marketing, you may need a hand to break through the challenges you'll encounter while creating and implementing your small business advertising plan.
 
WordStream can help! Our team of Google AdWords Certified professionals can guide you and show you the best way to market your small business online. We can teach you PPC, give your account a tune-up, or even take full control of your AdWords campaigns, making sure you get the maximum return on your PPC investment.

 

Source: http://www.wordstream.com/small-business-advertising

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Tips for hosting providers and webmasters

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Web Mobile Producer & SEO Specialist / Mlive Media Group / Ann Arbor, MI

Mlive Media Group/Ann Arbor, MI (Grand Rapids)

ESSENTIAL PURPOSE OF THIS POSITION

The Web/Mobile Producer and SEO Specialist is responsible for ensuring that the home pages of MLive.com reflect the best content available in all markets and that they are in synch with audience interest. This person also has primary responsibility for ensuring that all content produced across our markets adheres to best practices for SEO. As part of this function, this person is also charged with developing training materials for the local markets and conducting periodic training sessions with content producers to ensure they are aware of and following the latest best practices. The Web/Mobile Producer and SEO Specialist leverages content and audience metrics to inform website updates and track trends relative to SEO and communicate them in a timely fashion to local markets to allow for quick execution.

REQUIRED EDUCATION, EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS
Bachelor's degree in Journalism or Communications or related field requiredMinimum of 1 - 2 years of journalism experience with a proven ability in reporting and writing requiredProven experience building, maintaining and engaging an active audienceAbility to work independently under deadline pressure and prioritize tasks Demonstrated writing and organizational skillsSolid understanding of the news industry and local marketsMastery of search engine optimization practices and familiarity with Google trends, insights and other SEO and SEM toolsExperience with using social media to source and promote content a plusProven experience with basic HTML or equivalent web language

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Duties and Responsibilities, work schedules and/or location may change based on evolving business needs1. Continuously monitor the flow of content from markets and proactively highlight the strongest content in appropriate content areas, writing accurate, clean and engaging tease to the content.2. Coordinate with the Advance Digital night/weekend desk to plan updates to home page elements and other needs as assigned during off hours.3. Learn and leverage best practices for SEO to boost referrals from search engines to mlive.com. Champion those best practices within the local markets and provide training as needed on a continuing basis.4. Proactively monitor search trends and translate data into actionable feedback for the local markets. Collaborate closely with the Content Data Analyst, Performance Data Analyst and Developmental Specialist to track content trends related to search and develop benchmarks for success in the local markets.5. Ensure that mobile sites and apps reflect best experience for users and seek opportunities to shape content for the mobile platform.

WORKING CONDITIONS AND PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS General Office Environment. Extensive computer use required. Flexible hours required.

The Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, physical or mental impairment, or any other category protected under federal, state or local law.

Apply To Job

Source: http://jobs.searchenginejournal.com/job/web-mobile-producer-seo-specialist-ann-arbor-mi-grand-mlive-media-group-7ad5879837/?d=1&source=rss_page

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Guide to Google AdWords Bidding & Budget Settings

This is the latest in a series of posts on Google AdWords campaign settings. In the first installment, we talked about how to name and organize your Google AdWords campaigns and in the second post we focused on locations and languages settings within the AdWords settings tab. The topic for this post is bidding and budget settings for AdWords campaigns.

Google AdWords Bidding Settings

The bidding options offer advertisers a variety of ways to manage bids:

Focus on Clicks

Focus on Clicks

This bidding option allows you to manage your bids at the cost per click (CPC) level. When focusing on clocks you can make use of a few different options.

  • Manually setting bids for clicks means you can control your bids at the keyword level and set the maximum cost you?re willing to pay for clicks.
  • You can also cede control of this setting to AdWords and allow them to ?maximize clicks within your target budget? but that will let the AdWords platform simply bid to generate as many clicks as possible to your budget without any actual intelligence about your budget.
  • Enhanced CPC takes into account proprietary data that only Google has access to, such as the user?s geographic location, Web browser, network partners, and past performance to create an enhanced CPC. You can use the enhanced CPC in conjunction with your own bid management tools and processes.

Conversion Optimizer

Focus on Conversions

Here you can set a maximum cost per acquisition that you?re willing to pay per conversion. You can use Google?s recommendation, which will target your historical average CPA, or you can create your own target CPA. Conversion optimizer does turn control of your campaign?s bids over to Google, but in many instances it might be more effective ? from a time and efficiency perspective as well as a CPA perspective ? for managing bids in your campaign.

Focus on Impressions

Focus on Impressions

This bidding option moves away from paying for clicks and conversions and focuses your spend on impressions. This can be a bit risky because you?re not guaranteed either conversions or visitors to your site with this option, but if used properly and monitored closely you can sometimes get traffic more cheaply by bidding by CPM, particularly on the content network.

Budget & Delivery Method

These options are fairly straightforward ? budgets should be set per campaign based on your overall account strategy (which we covered in the first post in this series). Delivery has to do with whether you serve your ads as standard or accelerated. Standard delivery means your ads will show throughout the day. Accelerated ad delivery means Google will show your ads as quickly as possible. This method can sometimes better expose opportunities to be increasing budget and getting more qualified traffic from AdWords.

About the Author

Tom Demers is co-founder and managing partner at Measured SEM, a boutique search marketing agency offering search consulting services including pay-per-click account management, SEO Website auditscontent marketing strategy and services, and a variety of link building services and packages such as guest posts and blogging strategy.

You can learn more about how Measured SEM can help your business by getting in touch with Tom directly via email at tom at measuredsem.com, or by following him on Twitter.

This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.

Source: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2011/12/19/adwords-bidding-budget-settings

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Reorganizing internal vs. external backlinks

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/amDG/~3/gbGy47yUC-Q/reorganizing-internal-vs-external.html

seo experts search engine marketing sem experts search engine optimization internet marketing

MARKETING MANAGER II / Cleveland Clinic / Beachwood, OH

Cleveland Clinic/Beachwood, OH

Responsible for the development and implementation of Marketing strategies for the following areas:  Heart & Vascular Institute, Respiratory Institute and Critical Care Transport. 

 

Summary: Develops, coordinates and monitors comprehensive marketing strategies. Serves as liaison and consultant in the implementation of Foundation marketing objectives. Assesses and develops new programs and services. Analyzes and evaluates marketing performance outcomes and recommends changes to optimize competitive position.

Job Responsibilities: Formulates strategies based on environmental analysis, market research, competitive analysis, and operational availability. Provides marketing vision, innovation and leadership to product line medical staff and management. Plans and develops product line marketing budgets linked to key tactics. Initiates public relations tactics with the Department of Public and Media Relations and provides key department information upon request. Manages and directly supervises Marketing Associates, Coordinators, Specialists, Fellows and Interns. Mentors and provides growth and learning opportunities for staff. Collaborates with Department of Communication to develop communication tactics and acts as the product line liaison. Provides customer service assistance to product lines. Other duties as assigned.

Education: Bachelor's Degree in Marketing or related field; Master's Degree preferred.

Experience: Minimum of five years in-depth product line marketing experience. Health care preferred. Experience with marketing principles, research, policy analysis and program development required. Experience with complex medical tertiary care delivery systems, primary care and managed care preferred. Strong financial analysis, problem solving and communication skills required.

Licensure/Certification/Registration: None

Physical Requirements: Requires frequent sitting, standing and walking. Manual dexterity to operate a computer. Requires the ability to walk and drive to other hospitals and facilities to attend meetings. Must have normal or corrected vision.

Work Hours: Full Time
Other Pay Info: Benefits: Medical, Dental, Disability, Prescription, Vision, Life, Hol

Note: Applicants must be eligible to work in the specified location. No sponsorship is available unless noted in the description above.

Apply To Job

Source: http://jobs.searchenginejournal.com/job/marketing-manager-ii-beachwood-oh-cleveland-clinic-a050d0c094/?d=1&source=rss_page

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Friday, December 30, 2011

Government Contracting Insights: Marketing To Government

Government Contracting Insights: Marketing To Government

From American Express OPEN:

Your company is ready to sell to the federal government. You’ve worked through the General Services Administration (GSA) seminars on Multiple Award Schedules (MAS), and you’re on a schedule. You have the NAICS codes for your products...

Source: http://www.openforum.com/articles/government-contracting-insights-marketing-to-government

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Making the most of improvements to the +1 button

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/amDG/~3/k3n7LUzYB0o/making-most-of-improvements-to-1-button.html

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Junior Web Producer/Content Manager. / Adecco Technical / Alpharetta, GA

Adecco Technical/Alpharetta, GA

Adecco Engineering and Technical, a division of the world leader in the recruitment of engineering and information technology professionals, has an immediate opening for a Junior Web Producer/Content Manager. on a Contract opportunity with a leading company in Alpharetta, Ga.

Job Description

Junior Web Producer/Content Manager. The applicant will be responsible for content publication and HTML production. The position calls for close collaboration with content providers, web developers, product managers and client services associates. Applicants will be responsible for updating and maintaining content and links across a number of sites. Applicants must possess a strong background in HTML and web site graphic production. Must also possess a clear understanding of web publishing environments.

Responsibilities:

Create and update content.

Optimize web site graphics

Collaborate with product managers, designers and content providers to continually refine the user experience.

Maintain a tight working relationship with other members of the development team and assist in the development, schedule, coordination, maintenance, and quality of the web site.

Sharepoint experience is a must.

To collate and sub material, maintaining high editorial standards

To source and edit images, ensuring web standard guidelines are adhered to

To update and maintain content and links across a number of sites

Sound understanding of the web publishing environment and the opportunities it offers

Experience of working with stakeholders to produce websites

Experience of briefing designers and coders

Experience of creating and editing websites using SharePoint or other authoring tools

Proven editorial experience including editing, copy-writing and proof-reading with an eye for creative copy and good design

Ability to create and manipulate images using Image editors

Able to demonstrate up-to-date understanding of, and interest in, WWW trends and techniques

Sound understanding of accessibility, usability and navigation issues

Experience of working within web guidelines

Ability to prioritize and remain unflappable under pressure

Accuracy and attention to detail

Excellent communication skills including the ability to explain technical issues to non-technical people

If you are interested in this opportunity available through Adecco Engineering and Technical, please apply online or email directly.

The Adecco Group is a Fortune Global 500 company and the global leader in HR services. Our group connects over 700,000 associates with our business clients each day through our 6,600 offices in over 70 countries and territories around the world. We offer employment opportunities at any stage in your professional career. Adecco Engineering and Technical offers benefits including Holiday, 401(k), Insurance Benefit Plans and Anniversary Bonus opportunities.

Adecco Engineering and Technical is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Overtime: straight time

Employment Type: Contract
Duration: Contract

Note: Applicants must be eligible to work in the specified location. No sponsorship is available unless noted in the description above.

Apply To Job

Source: http://jobs.searchenginejournal.com/job/junior-web-producer-content-manager-alpharetta-ga-adecco-technical-f8a0a53e70/?d=1&source=rss_page

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Google Offers a New Definition for Doorway Pages?

In the past doorway pages could be loosely defined as "low-quality pages designed to rank for highly targeted search queries, typically designed to redirect searchers to a page with other advertisements."

The reason they are disliked is a click circus impact they have on web users as they keep clicking in an infinite loop of ads.

This would be a perfect example of that type of website:

However, ever since Google started to eat their "organic" search results, the definition of doorway pages has changed significantly.

A friend of mine told me that the reason CSN stores had to merge into a "brand" was not just because that was the direction of the algorithm, but also because they were hit with the "doorway page" penalty. I don't know if that is 100% accurate, but it sure sounds plausible, given that... (UPDATE: SEE COMMENTS BELOW)

  • recently multiple friends have told me they were hit with the "doorway page" issue
  • on WebmasterWorld there are multiple threads from small ecommerce players suggesting they were hit with the doorway page issue
    • "Today we received messages in our webmaster tools account, for all but 1 of our 20 domains, indicating that Google considers them doorway pages. We have also lost all of our SERP's for those sites." - Uncle_DK
    • "I was rather disappointed to see that before banning the site the rater visited a very drab and ordinary page on my site. Not a smoking gun of some incriminating evidence of a hacker break-in or some such I was looking for. Also disappointing is the fact that they visited one page only." - 1script
  • another friend today told me that one of their clients runs numerous websites & that ALL of the sites in the Google webmaster tools account blew up, getting hit with the "doorway page" label (and ALL the sites that were not in that webmaster tools account were missed by the Google engineers)


Like almost anything else Google offers, their webmaster tools are free, right up until Google changes their business objectives and one of their engineers decide that he should put you out of business.

I *knew* the point of the Panda update was not to kill content farms, but to use content farms as a convenient excuse to thin the herd of webmasters & consolidate markets. A couple obvious tells on that front were:

  • the update taking so long to happen
  • the first version of the Panda update embarrassingly missing eHow
  • the update hitting so many small ecommerce websites, even as it somehow missed eHow

Part of the brand bias in Google Panda allowed corporate branded doorway pages to rank higher than ever. Google's solution to this problem is, once again, to punish the victim - wiping independent webmasters off the web.

What is the new definition of doorway pages?

Pages on non-brand websites, that are not owned by a fortune 500 company, which aggressively monetizes web traffic without giving Google a piece of the action.

If you are not a brand you can be wiped out at any time with absolutely 0 recourse unless you can damage Google's brand or harm their standing before market regulators.

If you want to be an independent webmaster you better study public relations. Start here, with Edward Bernays.

Wal-Mart has received a bad reputation for how their dominant control of the supply chain sucked most the profits out of some markets & drove some of their suppliers into bankruptcy:

Young remembers begging Wal-Mart for relief. "They said, 'No way,' " says Young. "We said we'll increase the price"--even $3.49 would have helped tremendously--"and they said, 'If you do that, all the other products of yours we buy, we'll stop buying.' It was a clear threat."
...
Finally, Wal-Mart let Vlasic up for air. "The Wal-Mart guy's response was classic," Young recalls. "He said, 'Well, we've done to pickles what we did to orange juice. We've killed it. We can back off.' " Vlasic got to take it down to just over half a gallon of pickles, for $2.79. Not long after that, in January 2001, Vlasic filed for bankruptcy.

Such strong-arm business negotiation tactics might be sleazy, but you know one thing Wal-Mart does do? They tolerate multiple brands from a single manufacturer. In fact, many leading manufacturers are creating down market brands to compensate for the economic malaise we are going through:

P&G's roll out of Gain dish soap says a lot about the health of the American middle class: The world's largest maker of consumer products is now betting that the squeeze on middle America will be long lasting.

As far as publishing business models go, if Google starts calling ecommerce sites that are part of a network "doorway sites" then Google isn't really allow that sort of testing, unless the content comes from a fortune 500 or is content conveniently hosted on Google.com. As a publisher or merchant, how do you ever grow to scale if you are not allowed to test running multiple projects & products in parallel & keep reinvesting in whatever works best?

Even the biggest publishers are breaking some of their core brands into multiple sites (eg: Boston.com vs BostonGlobe.com) to test different business models. If you have scale that is fine, but if you are smaller that same strategy might soon be considered a black hat doorway strategy.

Meanwhile...

Categories: 

Source: http://www.seobook.com/redefining-doorway-pages

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Ho-ho-hold the phone: Santa?s on the line

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/TRt5CFh0ZYk/ho-ho-hold-phone-santas-on-line.html

seo experts search engine marketing sem experts search engine optimization internet marketing

Online Marketing Coordinator Internship / Sustainable Life Media / San Francisco, CA

Sustainable Life Media/San Francisco, CA


Online Marketing Coordinator Internship


Who you are:
�?� Bachelor's or Master's degree in marketing, communications or related
�?� Strong written and verbal communication skills
�?� Self-motivated, detail-oriented and excited about working at a rapidly growing company
�?� Experienced in using web analytics and social media tracking tools
�?� Demonstrated skills and/or experience in marketing campaign tracking and analysis
�?� Excellent problem-solving and organization skills, and ability to multitask
�?� Experienced with the use of social media to reach out to people
�?� A team player who communicates with all departments and views social media success as a team effort
General Description:
Web Analytics:
�?� Track record of analyzing websites to increase conversion and visitor participation
�?� Funnel and Event Tracking on Google analytics
�?� E-mail usage analysis (open rates, click rates, bounce rates) and optimization
�?� Conduct A/B, usability tests, etc. to ensure best messages are being promoted
�?� Monitor social networking conversations and generate reporting with key insights
�?� Create weekly reports based on Google Analytics, E-mail Campaigns and Social Media campaigns
Social Media:
�?� Monitor and participate in online conversations and events
�?� Monitor and track the latest community platform trends and capabilities
�?� Engage and motivate SLM's most active online influencers and advocates to ensure that their input is acknowledged
�?� Implement strategies that address our social media goals and measure results against them
�?� Manage day-to-day social media channel presence (e.g., Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc.) and blog response activity
�?� Identify influencers and create/maintain a program to proactively nurture these groups
What we can offer:
In addition to the opportunity to plug in with a terrific team of media and sustainable business experts, this position offers full admission to the Sustainable Brands Conference 2012 for the opportunity to meet and interface with some of the top innovators on the global sustainable business landscape. We can also offer a flexible work schedule and part time telecommuting.

Please send your resume via email, along with a cover letter detailing your interest in this field and in this role, as well as how you feel you can contribute to:
Nikos Sarilakis, Online Marketing Manager

This is an unpaid internship with the opportunity to be hired full time at its conclusion.


Apply To Job

Source: http://jobs.searchenginejournal.com/job/online-marketing-coordinator-internship-san-francisco-ca-sustainable-life-media-1d97631294/?d=1&source=rss_page

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Some Home Based Business Secrets and techniques From The Authorities

Website Marketing Articles Sponsored by Moe Tamani, the Search Engine Optimization Consultant


Perhaps you are among the many Us citizens who constantly thinks about opening a home-based business There are several people just like you, who could have a great idea but they are unclear about the best carry out it This article contains some advice and tips for individuals that are curious about a home business


Web Design

When you have a home-based business, you can get your family to assist you When your youngsters are home for summer bust, they will help you bundle and postal mail your merchandise If you have a family member that is very good with web design, they may be able to help you pattern your web site

That you just have text menus on your home business net if you're employing javascript or flash menus as part of your web pattern Allowing you to bing and yahoo catalog your web site and additionally making it available to anyone on a mobile phone which doesn't enable scripts or flash

You could not be able to justify employing full-time assist instantly, so consider whether or not you should prepare and are capable of doing every little thing at your business You will need to address bookkeeping, web site design, laptop servicing, producing phone calls, running marketing and advertising tactics campaigns, you-title-it As some designs is not entirely inside your skill set, be open to getting classes at a residential district university

A person might not be able to justify hiring full-time aid instantly, so think about whether we should and is able to do all the things at your group You'll have to address accounting, website design, computer system upkeep, generating calls, running marketing campaigns, you-name-it As some challenges is not entirely in your set of skills, be accessible to taking classes at a community college

The thing you don't want very own happen constantly get burned up with any technique you choose to try When opening your home business, be sure that your at all times applying rock solid data like what you could just learned here Without it, your starting on your up for breakdown as a beginner rivaling the wolves

Source:
Some Home Based Business Secrets and techniques From The Authorities

Article By:
Hettler Milillo

Source: http://www.internet-marketing-cafe.com/Art/294457/52/Some-Home-Based-Business-Secrets-and-techniques-From-The-Authorities.html

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The Growing Interest In Pinterest

Pinterest is a website that allows users to create their own virtual bulletin board. On this bulletin board, users can post pictures, either with a certain theme or randomly. Users can also browse the pinterest boards of other members to get new ideas and to share their thoughts. Pinterest takes social networking to another level.

Getting Started

Pinterest is currently by invite only, which means that you either need to know someone who has invites available or request one on the Pinterest website. To request an invite, click on the red "Request Invitation" button on the Pinterest homepage. On the next page, enter your email address and click "Request Invitation." You will then need to wait to receive an invite. When you do, you can set up your account. All accounts must be attached to a Facebook or Twitter account. After you enter your account information, you can set up individual boards for yourself. Each board can have a theme so you can pin relevant pictures to the proper board. Accounts can have more than one board.

How It Works

Once you set up your Pinterest account, it is time to create your boards. You can assign a different theme to each of your boards so you can pin up relevant pictures onto each board. For instance, if you want to create a wish list to give friends and relatives gift ideas for you, start a board entitled "My Wish List" and send the link to family and friends. After you create a board, you can then pin relevant pictures onto your board to display them for others to see. You can also begin following others, as well.

To follow others, you must find their boards or search through pins until you find one you would like to follow. When you click on follow, you will then follow that person and have easy access to their pins and boards. If you decide you no longer want to follow, you can click on the follow link again and you will no longer follow that person. To ensure you can easily follow any pins you encounter, always make sure you are logged in before searching through pins. When you locate a pin you like, you have the option of commenting on it, repinning it to one of your boards or liking it. You can complete any combination of these actions.

Interesting Uses

While some people use Pinterest to simply draw attention to pictures they found entertaining or they simply liked, Pinterest can be used for a wide variety of things. Some people use Pinterest to plan their vacation. They pin pictures of places they want to see or items they need to purchase for their vacation. Likewise, you can use Pinterest to plan your wedding, pinning pictures of food, clothing, venues and other wedding-related items you want for your own wedding. If you need to make a gift registry for a wedding, birthday, graduation or other major event, Pinterest provides you with the venue to place wish list items from multiple retailers. In your description, you can tell people exactly where to find what you want. Those who are crafty or enjoy making new recipes can use Pinterest to show off their latest creations. You may even find that you can sell your products to people through pinning pictures onto Pinterest. The possibilities for using Pinterest are limited only by your imagination.

Pinterest is still a fairly new website, but shows plenty of promise for the years ahead. Users can only sign up by invitation, either through a friend or family member or through requesting an invitation from Pinterest itself. However, once you become a member, you can easily share images with your family and friends for various reasons, including planning major events, providing a wish list or even selling your products.

Source: http://www.deepripples.com/blog/the-growing-interest-in-pinterest

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AdWords Grader Helps You Optimize Your PPC Campaign

AdWords Grader Helps You Optimize Your PPC Campaign

From Stacey Politi:

Many marketers place a great deal of time and money into proper AdWords campaign organization, careful keyword selection and prudent daily budget management, but then quickly recognize that if too much time is spent on pay-per-click...

Source: http://www.openforum.com/articles/adwords-grader-helps-you-optimize-your-ppc-campaign

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Scripting SEO: 5 Panda-Fighting Tricks for Large Sites

Posted by Corey Northcutt

For anyone that's experienced the joys of doing SEO on an exceedingly large site, you know that keeping your content in check isn't easy. Continued iterations of the Panda algorithm have made this fact brutally obvious for anyone that's responsible for more than a few hundred thousand pages.

As an SEO with a programming background and a few large sites to babysit, I was forced to fight the various Panda updates throughout this year through some creative server-side scripting. I'd like to share some with you now, and in case you're not well-versed in nerdspeak (data formats, programming, and Klingon), I'll start each item with a conceptual problem, the solution (so at least you can tell your developer what to do), and a few code examples for implementation (assumes that they didn't understand you when you told them what to do). My links to the actual code are in PHP/MySQL, but realize that these methods translate pretty simply into most any scenario.

OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: Although I've been successful at implementing each of these tricks, be careful. Keep current backups, log everything you do so that you can roll-back, and if necessary, ask an adult for help.

1.) Fix Duplicate Content between Your Own Articles

The Problem

Sure, you know not to copy someone else's content. But what happens when over time, your users load your database full of duplicate articles (jerks)? You can write some code that checks if articles are an exact match, but no two are going to be completely identical. You need something that's smart enough to analyze similarity, and you need to be about as clever as Google is at it.

The Solution

There's a sophisticated measure of how similar two bodies of text are using something called Levenshtein distance analysis. It measures how many edits would be necessary to transform one string into another, and can be translated into a related percentage/ratio of how similar one string is to another. When running this maintenance script on 1 million+ articles that were 50-400 words, deleting only duplicate articles with a 90% similarity in Levenshtein ratio, the margin of error was 0 in each of my trials (and the list of deletions was a little scary, to say the least).

The Technical

Levenshtein comparison functions are available in basically every programming language and are pretty simple to use. Running comparisons on 10,000 individual articles against one another all at once is definitely going to make your web/database server angry, however, so it takes a bit of creativity to finish this process while we're all still alive to see your ugly database.

levenshtein distance function

What follows may not be ideal practice, or something you want to experiment with heavily on a live server, but it gets this tough job done in my experience.

  1. Create a new database table where you can store a single INT value (or if this is your own application and you're comfortable doing it, just add a row somewhere for now). Then create one row that has a default value of 0.
     
  2. Have your script connect to the database, and get the value form the table above. That will represent the primary key of the last article we've checked (since there's no way you're getting through all articles in one run).
     
  3. Select that article, and check it against all other articles by comparing Levenshtein distance. Doing this in the application layer will be far faster than running comparisons as a database stored procedure (I found the best results occurred when using levenshteinDistance2(), available in the comments section of levenshtein() on php.net). If your database size makes this run like poop through a funnel (checking just 1 article against all others at once), consider only comparing articles by the same author, of similar length, posted in a similar date range, or other factors that might help reduce your data set of likely duplicates.
     
  4. Handle the duplicates as you see fit. In my case, I deleted the newer entry and stored a log in a new table with full text of both, so individual mistakes could later be reverted (there were none, however). If your database isn't so messy or you still fear mistakes after testing a bit, it may very well be good enough just to store a log and later review them by hand.
     
  5. After you're done, store the primary key of the last article that you checked in the database entry from i.). You can loop through ii.) - iv.) a few more times on this run if this didn't take too long to execute. Run this script as many times as necessary on a one minute cronjob or with the Windows Task Scheduler until complete, and keep a close eye on your system load.

2.) Spell-Check Your Database

The Problem

Sure, it would be best if your users were all above a third grade reading level, but we know that's not the case. You could have a professional editor run through content before it went live on your site, but now it's too late. Your content is now a jumbled mess of broken English, and in dire need of a really mean English teacher to set it all straight.

The Solution

Since you don't have an English teacher, we'll need automation. In PHP, for example, we have fun built-in tools like soundex(), or even levenshtein(), but when analyzing individual words, these just don't cut it. You could grab a list of the most common misspelled English words, but that's going to be hugely incomplete. The best solution that I've found is an open source (free) spell checking tool called the Portable Spell Checker Interface Library (Pspell), which uses the Aspell library and works very well.

The Technical

Once you get it setup, working with Pspell is really simple. After you've installed it using the link above, include the libraries in your code, and this function to return an array of suggestions for each word, with the word at array key 0 being the closest match found. Consider the basic logic from 1.) if it looks like it's going to be too much to tackle at once, incrementing your place as you step through the database, logging all actions in a new table, and (carefully) choosing whether or not you like the results well enough to automate the fixes or if you'd prefer to chase them by hand.

pspell example

3.) Implement rel="canonical" in Bulk

The Problem

link rel="canonical" is very useful tag for eliminating confusion when two URLs might potentially return the same content, such as when Googlebot makes its way to your site using an affiliate ID. In fact, the SEOmoz automated site analysis will yell at you on every page that doesn't have one. Unfortunately since this tag is page-specific, you can't just paste some HTML in the static header of your site.

The Solution

As this assumes that you have a custom application, let's say that you can't simply install ALL IN ONE SEO on your WordPress, or install a similar SEO plugin (because if you can, don't re-invent the wheel). Otherwise, we can tailor a function to serve your unique purposes.

The Technical

I've quickly crafted this PHP function with the intent of being as flexible as possible. Note that desired URL structures are different on different sites and scripts, so think about everything that's installed under a given umbrella. Use the flags that it mention in the description section so that it can best mesh with the needs of your site.
canonical link function

4.) Remove Microsoft Word's "Smart Quote" Characters

The Problem

In what could be Microsoft's greatest crime against humanity, MS Word was shipped with a genius feature that automatically "tilts" double and single quotes towards a word (called "smart quotes"), in a style that's sort of like handwriting. You can turn this off, but most don't, and unfortunately, these characters are not a part of the ASCII set. This means that various character sets used on the web and in databases that store them will often fail to present them, and instead, return unusable junk that users (and very likely, search engines) will hate.

The Solution

This one's easy: use find/replace on the database table that stores your articles.

The Technical

Here it is an example of how to fix this using MySQL database queries. Place a script on an occasional cron in Linux or using the Task Scheduler in Windows, and say goodbye to these ever appearing on your site again.

smart quotes mysql

5.) Fix Failed Contractions

The Problem

Your contributors are probably going to make basic grammar mistakes like this all over the map, and Google definitely cares. While it's important never to make too many assumptions, I've generally found that fixing common contractions is very sensible.

The Solution

You can use find/replace here, but it's not as simple as the solution fixing smart quotes, so you need to be careful. For example "wed" might need to be "we'd", or it might not. Other contractions might make sense while standing on their own, but find/replace by itself will also return results that are pieces of other words. So, we need to account for this as well.

The Technical

Note that there are two versions of each word. This is because in my automated proofreading trials, I've found it's common not only for an apostrophe to be omitted., but also for a simple typo to occur that puts the apostrophe after the last letter when Word's automated fix for this isn't on-hand. Words have also been surrounded by a space to eliminate a margin of error (this is key- just look at how many other words include 'dont' on one of these sites that people use to cheat in word games). Here's an example of how this works. This list is a bit incomplete, and leaves probably the most room for improvement in the list. Feel free to generate your own using this list of English contractions.

That should about do it. I hope everyone enjoyed my first post here on SEOMoz, and hopefully this stirs some ideas on how to clean up some large sites!


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