The Best SEO Tools You Haven?t Used Yet

Over the last couple of years, I have invested a lot of time and money into developing the processes that make a great SEO company. Fundemental to these processes are accurate, reliable tools. The amount of money we've spent on SEO software that just didn't work out ranges in the thousands, and the amount of money spent learning to use said software that (eventually) didn't work out ranges in the tens of thousands. By no means am I claiming that our list of best SEO tools is comprehensive, or even that these are the right tools for another agency. These are simply the tools that have either withstood the test of time, or have met a specific, sophisticated set of needs.

 

Market Samurai

Query Google for “Keyword Research Tool” and you’ll get more than 6 million results. For those of us who have spent countless hours digging through data from google, wordtracker and the rest, the bad news is there is no perfect tool. The good news is that Noble Samurai has developed one of the best tools I’ve used to date. Market Samurai pulls data from a variety of google data sources, as well as commercial data from Microsoft ad center. Add in keyword filters, competitive analysis, and estimates on SEO traffic volumes and values, this has become one of our frontline tools for every project.

 

Get Clicky

Google Analytics are great, and is probably the most used traffic-tracking tool on the web. But sooner or later you’ll want to know more about your users. That’s where Clicky comes in. Among all the great real-time data and custom reporting, Clicky allows you to track individual visitors, either unique or repeat. For agencies, there is multiple account management and even white labeling a user portal on your own subdomain! Add to that download, video and social media tracking, this is the best analytics solution we’ve found to date. You can register a single domain for free, but you’ll want to upgrade to Pro for access to the auto-reports and advanced segmentation.

 

Sheer SEO

To be honest, until recently I hadn't heard of Sheer SEO. During our introductory phase with Get Clicky we came across an integrated ranking feature that looked promising. Turns out Sheer SEO is a great web-based SEO app for tracking rankings, backlink volume, social media, etc. It even has a “Backlinks Watchdog” to ping your most valuable inbound links and notify you if they get broken or removed. As I mentioned, our favorite feature is the Clicky integration. Not only can you track and report rankings within the Clicky dashboard, it also reports the visitors through your ranked terms and allows you to review their pathing on an indvidual level. The combination of Clicky and Sheer make for the most awesome analytic tool we’ve ever worked with.

 

SEOMoz

SEOMoz doesn’t deserve to be on this list for two reasons: (1) If you’ve been involved in SEO for more than a week, then you have heard about the Wizards@Moz, and (2) They don’t actually offer a tool - they offer a whole suite of web-based tools that are second-to-none. Over the last 6 years SEOMoz has developed a stellar reputation for educating and arming search engine optimizers and marketers. Having used their Pro toolset for over a year now, and having attended my first Advanced Training in August 2010, I can say that at least a few of the successes we’ve had (and many of the mistakes we’ve avoided) are due in part to the great community and resources at SEOMoz.org.

Source: http://www.deepripples.com/blog/the-best-seo-tools-you-havent-used-yet

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Pagination with rel=?next? and rel=?prev?

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Sr. SEM Specialist / Confidential ($500 Referral Reward)

Confidential/Winston, NULL
$500 Referral Reward

Are you an SEM guru who is looking to work for an exciting and growing company?  If you answered, �??YES�?, then this is the position for you!

This Senior SEM position requires someone who has experience managing full campaign cycles while maintaining client requirements.

***Out of state candidates will be considered and relocation offered***

Requirements:

�?�Bachelor's Degree

�?�2-5 years experience with Search Marketing (SEM), keyword research, and managing quantitative/qualitative data to improve campaign performance

�?�Experience with Dart Search and knowledge of Web Trends is a huge plus!

JT123

Apply To Job

Source: http://jobs.searchenginejournal.com/job/sr-sem-specialist-winston-null-bbd5fdfbbc/?d=1&source=rss_page

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Personal Injury Law Case Summary

Deep Ripples had the opportunity to assist a personal injury firm.

Discovery
Deep Ripples discovered the client had very few organic listings on local or regional search terms, and was doing nothing to improve its position. A new client was valued at $500,000.

Goals
The goal of the campaign was to achieve 1st page listings for the clients’ top 20 keywords. An online conversion goal of one new customer per month (equaling significant revenue for the law firm) was established to guide return on investment.

Solution
Deep Ripples built and promoted a handful of micro sites designed to capture and refer traffic for individual keyword channels. Content development for the micro sites and client blogs provided fresh material for the engines to index. Targeted social and article promotion was used to point to the client as an authority in its market.

Results

• After 6 months, unique visitors per month had increased by 48%
• Client achieved 80% first page listings among top keywords
• New client calls up 70%

The success of the campaign was defined early by search engine visibility and increased business. In addition, the client was pleased to be competitive with companies spending millions of dollars in traditional advertising channels.

Source: http://www.deepripples.com/results/personal-injury-law

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

New Google "Search Results" Bar

I recently got put in a test bucket for Google's new layout with a "search results" bar near the top of the page. Generally this impacts the search results in a couple ways:

• First off, it is a much better looking design. In the past when the search results would move up and down with Google Instant it really felt like a hack rather than something you would see on the leading internet company's main website. Now with the results fixed it feels much cleaner & much more well put together.
• The more stable basic layout of the SERP will allow Google to integrate yet more vertical data into it while making it still look & feel decent. Google may have localized search suggestions & the organic results for a significant period of time, but the combination of them with this new layout where the search results don't move feels much more cohesive.
• To get the white space right on the new layout Google shifted from offering 5 Instant suggestion to 4. The Google Instant results don't disappear unless you hit enter, but because the interface doesn't change & move there isn't as much need to click enter. The search experience feels more fluid.
• The horizontal line above the search results and the word "Search" in red in the upper left of the page is likely to pull some additional attention toward Google's vertical search features, helping Google to collect more feedback on them (and further use that user behavior to create a signal to drive further integration of the verticals into the regular organic search results).
• On the flip side of this, in the past the center column would move up & down while the right column would remain stationary, so I would expect this to slightly diminish right column ad clicks (that appeared at the top even when the organic results moved downward) while boosting center column clicks to offset that.
• In the past, when Google Instant would disappear from view, that would pull the center column organic results up a bit.
  • This always-on bar shifts the pixels above the first search result from about 123 to 184...so roughly 60 pixels downward.
  • As a baseline, a standard organic listing with no extensions is about 90 pixels tall, so this moves the search results down roughly 2/3 of a listing, which should drive more traffic to the top paid search ads & less to the organic results below them (offset by any diminished clicks on the right column ads).
  • This is a much cleaner way of taking advantage of white space than some of the cheesy & ugly-looking stuff they recently tested.

I tried to line up the results pretty closely on the new test results to show what they look like with Google Instant results showing & after you hit enter. Scroll over the below image to see how the result layout doesn't really change with Google Instant hidden or extended.

And here is an example image showing how the location is sometimes inserted directly into both the organic search results and the search suggestions.

Here is an image using Google's browser size tool to show how end users see the new search results. Note that in this example I used a keyword where Google has comparison/advisor ads, so in markets where they do not yet have those you would move all the organic results one spot up from what is shown below.

Categories: 

google

Source: http://www.seobook.com/new-google-search-results-bar

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Celebrities Killed The SEO Star

As the co-founder of an SEO Consultancy, my biggest hurdle in business is finding more staff. Clients are lining up at our door, we have no trouble there, it's finding the staff to work with them that becomes the issue. This may not sound like the worst dilemma for a business to face, especially during the current global economic decline, but the causation is a matter of great concern to me as both an SEO and a businessman.

Ayima's company structure is such that only highly skilled SEOs make it through to our interview stage and yet even then, less than 5% meet our skill requirements. This isn't me being picky, misjudging characters or sourcing bad candidates - this is a knowledge pandemic that is spreading through our industry. We've started apprenticeship programs to teach eager candidates from the ground up, but this can take several years to generate the finished article.

After looking back at our past 30 interview candidates, my opinion for the reason behind this issue may not be a popular one. I believe that celebrity SEOs, brands and blogs are feeding a generation of untested and poorly trained search marketers, who pass themselves off as SEO experts. I will of course explain my positioning?

The Pander Update

Some high profile SEO bloggers recently ceased client work and personal projects, in order to appear impartial and trustworthy to their community. This makes sense at first, after-all, who wants to use a link building tool operated by someone working for one of your client's competitors? It does however bring to light 2 much larger issues;

1) a reliance on tertiary information for SEO analysis, and
2) a reliance on search engineers to provide fresh and exclusive information/data.

Some SEO information sites may argue that they have access to the Web Analytics accounts of their partners and that they do study index changes, but nothing replaces the value of following a handful of websites every single day of the year. An absence of "boots on the ground" leads to misinformation and a distancing from the SEO practices and concerns that really matter. This in turn results in an information churn which newbies to the industry naturally perceive as important.

Moving away from servicing clients or running in-house/affiliate projects also causes a financial flux. Revenue no longer relies on problem solving, but on juicy search engine spoilers and interviews. Search Engines are businesses too though and it's in their best interest to only reward and recommend the publishers/communities that tow their line. A once edgy and eager SEO consultancy must therefore transition into a best practice, almost vanilla, publisher in order to pander to the whims of over-eager search reps.

How do we expect the next generation of SEO consultants to analyse a website and its industry competitors, when all they've read about is how evil paid links are and how to tweak Google Analytics?

I could directly link the viewpoints and understandings of some recent SEO candidates back to a single SEO community, word for word. They would be horrified to see the kind of broken and malformed SEOs that their community has produced.

OMG, Check Out My Klout

It's true that social media metrics will become important factors for SEO in the future, but this certainly does not negate the need for a solid technical understanding of SEO. Getting 50 retweets and 20 +1's for a cute cat viral is the work of a 12 year old schoolgirl, not an SEO. If you can't understand the HTML mark-up of a page and how on-page elements influence a search engine, pick up a HTML/SEO book from 2001 and get reading. If you don't know how to optimise site structure and internal linking, read a book on how the web works or even a "UNIX for Dummies" manual. If you're unable to completely map out a competitor website's linking practices, placement and sources, set up a test site and start finding out how people buy/sell/barter/blag/bate for links.

You may be thinking at this point, "Rob, I already know this - why are you telling me?". Well, the sad fact is that many SEOs, with several years of experience at major and minor agencies, fail to show any understanding of these basic SEO building blocks. There are SEOs who can't identify the H1 on a page and that seriously consider "Wordle" and "Link Diagnosis" as business-class SEO tools. It used to be the case that candidates would read Aaron Wall's SEO Book or Dan Thies' big fat Search Engine Marketing Kit from cover-to-cover before even contemplating applying for an entry level SEO role. These days, major agencies are hiring people who simply say that "Content is King" and "Paid Links are Evil", they have at least 50 Twitter followers of course.

"Certified SEO" is NOT the answer

In most other professional industries, the answer would be simple - regulate and certify. This simply does not work for SEO though. I die a little, each time I see a "Certified SEO" proclamation on a r�sum�, with their examining board consisting of a dusty old SEO company, online questionnaire or a snake-oil salesman. A complete SEO knowledgebase cannot be taught or controlled by a single company or organisation. No one in their right mind would use Google's guide to SEO as their only source of knowledge for instance, just as no self-respecting Paid Search padawan would allow Google to set-up their PPC campaigns. Google's only interest is Google, not you. Popular SEO communities and training providers have their own agendas and opinions too.

I do however concede that some learning should be standardised, such as scientifically proven or verified ranking factors. Just the facts, no opinions, persuasions or ethical stances.

My Plea To You, The Industry

I plea to you, my fellow SEOs, to help fix this mess that we're in. Mentor young marketers, but let them make up their own minds. Put pressure on SEO communities to concentrate on facts/data and not to be scared by controversy or those with hidden agendas. Promote apprenticeship schemes in your company, so that SEOs learn on the job and not via a website. Encourage people to test ideas, rather than blindly believing the SEO teachings of industry celebs and strangers.

An experienced SEO with, what I perceive to be basic skills, isn't too much to ask for is it?

Categories: 

internet

Source: http://www.seobook.com/celebrities-killed-seo-star

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Win of the Week: Holiday-Appropriate Language Boosts CTR by 66%

With Halloween right around the corner, I thought it would be fun to feature a Halloween contest for the Win of the Week.

With that in mind, which ad would you click on if you were looking to get some Halloween cookies for a party ... or as a substitute for trick-or-treat candy?

 

PPC Ad #1

PPC Ad #2

 

There is no difference in the title text or in the URL. The only differences are in the body of the ad. Made your decision?

The winning ad is ad number two. It was written by "wordisborn," and it increased CTR by 66%. Where the original ad was getting 1 click, the new ad is getting 1.66 clicks.

Why did the new ad win? Let's take a look...

1. The original ad wastes space by using the word "Smiley." Indeed, the cookies do have a "smiley face," but that detail is somewhat irrelevant for a person who's searching for Halloween cookies. The expression on the cookie is not a detail worth including. (Not to mention the phrase "Halloween Smiley Cookies" is a little bit awkward. "Halloween" and "Smiley" just don't seem to go together.)

2. The winning ad uses language that's appropriate for the Halloween season. The word "Scary" is an excellent tie-in to just about any Halloween product. Plus, the question "Want Cookies So Good It's Scary?" gets searchers to nod their heads in agreement.

3. The winning ad closes the body copy with a strong call to action that includes the primary keyword phrase. "Order Sweet Halloween Cookies Now!" gets searches to click and take action.

4. I like the phrase "Fresh Baked Cookies" in the losing ad, but it's not enough to overcome the winning ad's strength. The winning ad is nicely divided between the two lines: one line ends with a question mark, the other with a call to action and an exclamation point. The losing ad has a sentence divided between lines one and two, no call to action, and only uses periods -- all indications of an ad that will produce lower CTR.

The bottom line: The new ad wins because it uses language that?s appropriate for the Halloween season (?scary? instead of ?smiley?). Plus, the structure of the winning ad is better. It keeps each sentence on its own line, uses a strong call to action, and ends the ad with an exclamation point.

There's one more thing I'd like to point out about this contest...

Whenever I'm writing a new ad to compete against a control ad, I always review the landing page and pay close attention to the language and offers that appear there. The writer of the winning ad above -- "wordisborn" -- apparently uses the same technique. Here is what's currently on the landing page:

 

 

Notice the copy that says "So Good, It's Scary!" The author of the winning ad took this idea and used it in his ad -- very smart. This not only improved CTR, but I bet it improved conversions as well because of the consistency between the ad copy and the landing page.

Next time you're writing PPC ads, make sure you closely examine the landing page. The winning idea may be hiding in plain sight!

What's your takeaway from this contest? Feel free to leave a comment below.

By the way...

The BoostCTR writers have collectively spent thousands of hours improving pay-per-click ads on both Google and Facebook. They increase CTR and conversions by 30% on average. Go ahead and put 'em to work ... risk-free for 30 days!

About the Author: Ryan Healy is a direct response copywriter and BoostCTR writer. Since 2002, he has worked with scores of clients, including Alex Mandossian, Terry Dean, and Pulte Homes. He writes a popular blog about copywriting, advertising and business growth.

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/2011/10/26/holiday-appropriate-language-boosts-ctr

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A new, improved form for reporting webspam

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SEM Rush Review & Free Trial SEMRush Coupons

SEM Rush has long been one of my favorite SEO tools. We wrote a review of SEM Rush years ago. They were best of breed back then & they have only added more features since, including competitive research data for many local versions of Google outside of the core US results: UK, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Brazil.

Recently they let me know that they started offering a free 2-week trial to new users.

Set up a free account on their website & enter the promotional code "6M53-4165-0N3W-F3D5"

For full disclosure, SEM Rush has been an SEO Book partner for years, as we have licensed their API to use in our competitive research tool. They also have an affiliate program & we are paid if you become a paying customer, however we do not get paid for recommending their free trial & their free trial doesn't even require giving them a credit card, so it literally is a no-risk free trial.

What is SEM Rush?

SEM Rush is a competitive research tool which helps you spy on how competing sites are performing in search. The big value add that SEM Rush has over a tool like Compete.com is that SEM Rush offers CPC estimates (from Google's Traffic Estimator tool) & estimated traffic volumes (from the Google AdWords keyword tool) near each keyword. Thus, rather than showing the traffic distribution to each site, this tool can list keyword value distribution for the sites (keyword value * estimated traffic).

As Google has started blocking showing some referral data the value of using these 3rd party tools has increased.

Normalizing Data

Using these estimates generally does not provide overall traffic totals that are as accurate as Compete.com's data licensing strategy, but if you own a site and know what it earns, you can set up a ratio to normalize the differences (at least to some extent, within the same vertical, for sites of similar size, using a similar business model).

One of our sites that earns about $5,000 a month shows a Google traffic value of close to $20,000 a month.
5,000/20,000 = 1/4 = 0.25

A similar site in the same vertical shows $10,000
$10,000 * 0.25 = $2,500

A couple big advantages over Compete.com and services like QuantCast for SEM Rush are that:

• they focus exclusively on estimating search traffic
• you get click volume estimates and click value estimates right next to each other
• they help you spot valuable up-and-coming keywords where you might not yet get much traffic because you rank on page 2 or 3

Disclaimers With Normalizing Data

It is hard to monetize traffic as well as Google does, so in virtually every competitive market your profit per visitor (after expenses) will generally be less than Google. Some reason why..

1. In some markets people are losing money to buy marketshare, while in other markets people may overbid just to block out competition.
2. Some merchants simply have fatter profit margins and can afford to outbid affiliates.
3. It is hard to integrate advertising in your site anywhere near as aggressively as Google does while still creating a site that will be able to gather enough links (and other signals of quality) to take a #1 organic ranking in competitive markets...so by default there will typically be some amount of slippage.
4. A site that offers editorial content wrapped in light ads will not convert eyeballs into cash anywhere near as well as a lead generation oriented affiliate site would.

SEM Rush Features

Keyword Values & Volumes

As mentioned above, this data is scraped from the Google Traffic Estimator and the Google Keyword Tool. More recently Google combined their search-based keyword tool features into their regular keyword tool & this data has become much harder to scrape (unless you are already sitting on a lot of it like SEM Rush is).

Top Search Traffic Domains

A list of the top 100 domain names that are estimated to be the highest value downstream traffic sources from Google.

You could get a similar list from Compete.com's Referral Analytics by running a downstream report on Google.com, although I think that might also include traffic from some of Google's non-search properties like Reader. Since SEM Rush looks at both traffic volume and traffic value it gives you a better idea of the potential profits in any market than looking at raw traffic stats alone would.

Top Competitors

Here is a list of sites that rank for many of the same keywords that SEO Book ranks for

Most competitors are quite obvious, however sometimes they will highlight competitors that you didn't realize, and in some cases those competitors are also working in other fertile keyword themes that you may have missed.

Overlapping Keywords

Here is a list of a few words where Seo Book and SEOmoz compete in the rankings

These sorts of charts are great for trying to show clients how site x performs against site y in order to help allocate more resources.

Compare AdWords to Organic Search

These are sites that rank for keywords that SEO Book is buying through AdWords

And these are sites that buy AdWords ads for keywords that this site ranks for

Before SEM Rush came out there were not many (or perhaps any?) tools that made it easy to compare AdWords against organic search.

Start Your Free Trial Today

SEM Rush Pro costs $79 per month (or $69 if you sign up recurring), so this free trial is worth about $35 to $40.

Take advantage of SEMRush's free 2-week trial today.

Set up a free account on their website & enter the promotional code "6M53-4165-0N3W-F3D5"

If you have any questions about getting the most out of SEM Rush feel free to ask in the comments below. We have used their service for years & can answer just about any question you may have & offer a wide variety of tips to help you get the most out of this powerful tool.

Categories: 

seo tools

Source: http://www.seobook.com/sem-rush-coupons

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Regional Restaurants Vie For Autumn "Leaf Peepers"

From Lisa Kaplan Gordon:

For six weeks from September through mid-October, hundreds of thousands of people spend hundreds of millions of dollars to view the glorious foliage across the nation's northeast corridor. Winning their patronage is a small window of opportunity that can color a restaurant's financial performance for the year.

According to Boston Magazine, "leaf peepers" in Vermont alone spend almost $100 million annually on food, and more than 300,000 international visitors come through Boston's Logan Airport for the sole purpose of looking at local leaves.

So how does a restaurant rake in its share of customers?

Answer: Any way it can.

Leveraging social media for restaurant traffic

The Common Man Family of Restaurants, based in Ashland, N.H., leverages social media to attract tourists to its 22 establishments throughout the state. The company's Facebook page recently invited its 10,000 friends to submit their favorite fall foliage photos. (The company's Twitter account has 2,000 followers.)

“We’re a little ahead of the curve in our social media, and that helps get people in the door," says CEO Jason Lyon. "That's our competitive edge. We started using it five years ago but really ramped up our fan base in the last nine months. It’s been highly successful and continues to grow.”

"October is our largest month of sales," Lyon says. "We attract a wider variety of tourists—not only from across New England, but a lot of Europeans come over for foliage season, too.”

Catering to tourists

Jay Foster, owner of the 1761 Old Mill Inn in Westminster, Mass., said he does a third of his annual business during the six weeks at the height of New England's fall-foliage season. He increases his competitive advantage by marketing his scenic landscape—duck pond, covered bridges, waterfall—to bus tours catering to senior leaf peepers.

"We're a good destination place," says Foster, who estimates the restaurant attracts about 50 bus tours during the foliage season, usually scheduled for mid-week at lunchtime.

"It's a real good pickup for us," he says.

To add to the ambiance, the inn recently built and elaborately landscaped an arbor that faces the foliage. The arbor provides an unforgettable backdrop for autumn weddings, a new source of income for the restaurant.

"We picked up a lot of new business for weddings because of our fall foliage," says Foster, who also considered planting an apple orchard or "doing something with pumpkins" to attract tourists when the leaves begin to turn in late August and early September.

"We're always looking for new ideas," Foster says.

The Vanilla Bean Cafe in Pomfret, Conn., takes advantage of its location on Route 169—dubbed one of the country's most scenic byways—to grab customers, feed them a good meal at a rapid pace and then speed them back on their way in search of color.

"There are very few cafes directly on Route 169," says co-owner Barry Jessurun. "You can be in and out of here quickly. You're not waiting for your waitress or check or change."

Jessurun also makes sure his cafe supports the area's promotional guides that herald the Last Green Valley, a swath of lush and quiet land between northeastern Connecticut and south-central Massachusetts, including Pomfret.

"Anything that helps to promote this area, we help promote them and ourselves," Jessurun says.

Creating seasonal cuisines

Most restaurants augment their fall-foliage menus with seasonal dishes that take advantage of fall produce or add autumn colors to the plate. The Vanilla Bean Cafe serves pumpkin French toast, ham and apple omelets and autumn salad with butternut squash. The Common Man serves hot apple cider (spiked with apricot brandy upon request).

Some restaurants present entire menus that are niche and unusual to attract generations of fall-foliage motorists.

Since 1954, Hart's Turkey Farm in Meredith, N.H., has specialized in everything turkey: white meat, dark meat, stuffing and gravy.

"It's a fall, feel-good meal," says Russ Hart, a second-generation owner of a restaurant that serves more turkeys in one day than many restaurants roast all year. "We’ve been here since 1954. For many, it's a tradition to stop at Hart's during foliage season. We've had some people come for 50 years. Hopefully, we're bringing along new generations."

Lisa Kaplan Gordon is a reporter whose 20-year writing career has earned three National Headliners Awards and two Pulitzer Prize nominations.

Source: http://www.openforum.com/articles/regional-restaurants-vie-for-autumn-leaf-peepers

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SQL Parser

Package:

SQL Parser

Summary:

Parse SQL files and extract query statements

Groups:

Databases, Parsers, PHP 5

Author:

Orazio Principe

Description:

This class can Parse SQL files and extract query statements from them...

Read more at http://www.phpclasses.org/package/7192-PHP-Parse-SQL-files-and-extract-query-statements.html

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/phpclasses-xml/~3/qXKw9hc2qG4/7192-PHP-Parse-SQL-files-and-extract-query-statements.html

improve google rankings search engine search marketing web 2.0 experts backlink building

You DO know what to say in social media

by Mike Moran

I talk to folks about social media all the time. One of the things that I notice right away is the fear. Most people are worried that they don't know what to do in social media. They are afraid that they will make a mistake. That they will say the wrong thing. Or, they fear that they don't know what to say at all--even that they have nothing to say. All these fears are real and you might be experiencing some of them yourself, but you don't need to. I'd like to convince you that you really�do know what to say in social media.

Let's take a real example. I know it's real because it happened to me. When Twitter first came out, I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to know what I was doing. I mean, we all think of ourselves as kind of boring and unsure as to why anyone would want to pay attention to what we do each day. I was no exception.

But, over time, I started to realize that I could share things in much the same way that I already do outside of social media. You see, when I saw an interesting article, I used to send an e-mail to a few people that wanted to know about it. Instead, I started sharing those things on Twitter. I have also recently began taking quick tips that I have written in my books and in blog posts and sharing those.

And a funny thing happened. Some people started to follow me. It's not a huge number, but that's OK. And they started to talk to me on Twitter. And I started following other people and retweeting some of what they said, and talking to them. It all happened gradually, but I realized that I do know what to say on Twitter.

But maybe you have a more difficult situation. Maybe you work for a company that fields its share of complaints about its products, and you are starting to notice customers bad-mouthing you in social media. Now, you are really nervous. What do you say to those angry people?

I believe that you already know what to say--you just need to overcome your fear to actually say it.

To channel your inner social media person, play this mind game with yourself. Imagine that whatever you see in that angry blog post or tweet or message board comment was said to you in person. Conjure up an image of that person standing in front of you and saying that to you to your face. Got it? Now think of what you would say back to them.

For one thing, you probably would not turn on your heel and walk away. You likely would not ignore what the person said completely. You wouldn't act as if they weren't there. Yet that is always our first impulse in social media--to ignore the conversation because we think we don't know what to say.

When we do that, we are doing so because it is more comfortable for us, but not because it is the right thing to do. So, think about what you would say if that person was standing in front of you. You probably wouldn't feel the need to know how to solve their problem right then and there--your first impulse would probably be something like, "I am so sorry that happened to you. I can see why you are upset. I can contact the people in that department for you and see what can be done." Or maybe something like, "Wow! That doesn't sound good at all. We pride ourselves on happy customers and you are understandably far from that right now. I am obviously not familiar with the details of your situation, but what could we do to make things right?"

You've probably got other things you thought of to say, also. That's because you really�do know what to say in social media. You just need to let yourself act like a human being towards other human beings. They will appreciate it.

Originally published on Biznology

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Source: http://www.searchengineguide.com/mike-moran/you-do-know-what-to-say-in-social-media.php

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When Should You Pause Google AdWords Keywords?

Sadly, not every keyword you attempt to target in your AdWords accounts will work. The good news is, because PPC offers a fountain of immediate feedback in the way of data points, it?s possible to identify poor choices in your initial targeting and take swift action.

In this post, we?ll walk through the two major examples of keywords you?d be better off pausing, as well as some potential pitfalls to consider in thinking about actually shutting down these keywords.

Keywords that Spend Money but Don?t Convert

This is probably the most immediately obvious and intuitive example of a keyword that should be paused: keywords that are costing you money but not converting into a lead or a sale. But even within this classification of keyword, there?s a bit more nuance than meets the eye.

Let?s imagine we sell paid search software and every lead is worth $100 to us based on both the number of those leads that turn into sales, and our company?s margins. Obviously once a keyword spends something like a thousand dollars it seems pretty clear that keyword should be paused, but what if:

• The keyword is sending visitors to a poor landing page?
• The keyword could convert better with a different (lower) bid?
• The keyword has poor, untested ad text associated with it?
• The keyword has spent and not converted in the last 30 days, but generated a lot of business for us in the past at an acceptable cost?
• The keyword is an informational term that drives a lot of later stage conversions?

Any of the above could mean that you?re leaving money on the table in pausing a keyword, so before you decide that a keyword is something that spends but doesn?t convert, you want to look at:

• Different Date Ranges ? Even though the term hasn?t performed in a 7- or 30-day window, it might have done well previously. If this is the case: what changed (bids, ad text, landing pages, something in your market/niche?)?
• Landing Page Effectiveness ? How effective is the associated landing page overall? This is something you can drill into on the AdWords dimension tab, and what you want to confirm is that the landing page this keyword drives to performs well when paired with other keywords.
• Ad Text Efficacy ? The same holds for ad copy ? does the associated ad copy convert well from a CPA standpoint overall? This may well be a reason for a recent drop in effectiveness ? maybe the ad copy you initially wrote has become stale and a new test would jolt your ad performance.
• Assists ? Google?s new multi-channel funnel reports allow you to drill down to see not only last click attribution but also whether a term is driving a lot of conversions by acting as an earlier touch in the conversion process, so you can avoid cutting off a term that is helping to drive conversions that are being attributed to other keywords or channels.

As you can see there are a lot of moving pieces to analyzing all of the pertinent data points before deciding to ?kill? a keyword. This is a lot of work and analysis to perform if you?re looking keyword-by-keyword in even a mid-sized PPC account, so it?s probably more practical to either restrict this type of deep dive to higher-volume terms you?re looking to pause, or to apply automation to the process.

Keywords that Don?t Spend Much, Don?t Convert, and Have Low Quality Scores

?Hard costs? in a PPC campaign aren?t the only costs ? keywords that underperform on other metrics can also have ?soft costs? in the way of negative account-wide Quality Score impact.

While it?s true that low Quality Scores don?t mean you can?t advertise profitably on a keyword, there may be keywords that have low Quality Scores and click-through rates, don?t convert well, and slipped through the cracks of our analysis as we attempted to find good candidates for keywords that spend but don?t convert.

Extending the example above, let?s imagine we have a handful of keywords that are all driving very little spend but not converting ? call it $10 per keyword over an extended period of time. In theory these keywords probably wouldn?t be ?pause ready? as they haven?t yet demonstrated that they aren?t profitable (if conversions are worth $100 to us, they could spend five times the current amount for a conversion and be extremely profitable), but these keywords ? particularly in aggregate ? may be costing us money indirectly.

Among the factors in determining Quality Score is your historical, account-wide CTR and Quality Score, so having keywords in your account that aren?t helping drive your business directly (via conversions) and also hurt your account-wide CTR has a very real soft cost in that it drives down Quality Scores and subsequently drives up costs and makes it expensive to push out new keywords and ad groups.

But, not unlike with keywords that spend but don?t convert, these terms may also be suffering from low Quality Scores due to factors you could potentially correct, such as poor ad copy and keyword segmentation.

If you?re not sure of whether you should be pausing keywords to help improve Quality Scores, one good approach is to run your account through the AdWords Grader to see how your Quality Scores are in general (you?ll see this as part of your report), and assuming your Quality Scores need work account-wide you can start to home in on keywords that are in groups with otherwise reasonable Quality Scores.

Developing a System for Pausing AdWords Keywords

Ultimately, over time and as you?re managing a campaign, you?ll want to develop a process that takes all of the above into account and leads you to the right keywords to pause (keywords that have been given a fair shot to perform but are still dragging down your pay-per-click ROI and your account-wide Quality Scores).

Alternatively, WordStream just released a new feature ? Pause Keyword Alerts ? that runs a lot of these calculations and analyses for you, taking care of the heavy lifting and bubbling up paused keyword candidates on a weekly basis.

About the Author

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

You can learn more about how Measured SEM can help or get 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/2011/10/13/when-to-pause-keywords

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The Value Of Client Debt

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


Allow's discuss shopper debt You realize, the sort you rack up since you in reality want stuff


Your sofa is taking a look lovely nasty It is covered with Kool-Help stains,and throw pillows are hiding threadbare spots the place the tufting peeks through You even had to throw down a few plywood to stay the pillows from sagging

Time to go out and purchase a brand new one, right?

Not if you happen to wouldn't have the cash

Here's why that new settee goes to cost you much more than the $800 decal price in case you move into shopper debt to shop for it

Let's assume you purchase the sofa in addition to matching loveseat and end tables for a grand total of $2000 You finance your acquire through the furniture retailer for 3 years at an interest rate of 21 45% (let's leave out the "no hobby for 2 years" deal for a minute)

Your monthly payments might be drum roll, please $75

"Wow", you think "That's lovely affordable " Sure it is

Until you rely the true value of that sofa

Let's consider you are 30 years vintage and you're going to retire at 65 Let's also think you might have get admission to to a 401(okay) that your organization fits at 50%, you'll earn a ten% reasonable go back on investments, and your mixed federal and state tax brackets are 20%

When you pay to your furnishings with money and invest the $seventy five a month on your 401(okay) for 3 years as an alternative, you'll have $4,330 more for your account at the end of the three years (plus your sofa) Now stay that $four,330 in your 401(k) without any further investment and in another 32 years, at retirement, it'll have grown to $eighty three,112

So, basically, your sofa cost you $2,000, plus $seven hundred passion, plus $83,112 that might have grown over 32 years on your retirement account

Final sticky label price: $eighty five,812

Yikes

Here's an alternate plan: cling on for any other two years, store $eighty a month in a cash marketplace mutual fund or financial savings car that earns no less than 4%, and use money to pay in your new living room set

Ultimate sticker value: $1,920

This is an excellent better selection plan: grasp on for some other years, retailer $eighty a month, and once you buy the settee, put $eighty a month in your 401(k) instead (you were already living without it for 2 years)

Ultimate sticky label value: $1,920, plus an extra $815,699 in YOUR bank account via age 65

Now what approximately the ones "no hobby for 2 years" deals? Neatly, you'll surely make the most of the ones, if you are disciplined enough to pay off the stability in less time Most of the people aren't

You can use this technique for each leading purchase you make

The cost of client debt is a large deal, when it's compounded via time, passion and 50% business enterprise matching

So subsequent time you hit the furniture store and the salesperson is telling you, "It is only going to price you $seventy five a month", you'll recognise better Tell him or her, "Nope! It is actually going to cost me around $eighty five grand See you in years "

Avoid consumer debt, and you're neatly to your strategy to a miles more potent monetary long run

Source:
The Value Of Client Debt

Article By:
Kirk A Ruck

Source: http://www.internet-marketing-cafe.com/Art/246063/52/The-Value-Of-Client-Debt.html

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Google AdWords Reporting Guide: AdWords Dimensions Tab Tips & Tutorials

We recently concluded our series on AdWords ad extensions, and thought we?d take a similar approach to a series of reports that live under the Google AdWords Dimensions Tab. Many people rely on the main AdWords tabs for their standard reports ? at the campaign, ad group, keyword, and ad level ? but there are a series of reports that offer a ton of great data all rolled up under the dimensions tab.

In the coming weeks, we?ll be breaking out each of these reports and showing you:

• How to pull the report and manipulate the data
• Why this report is (or in some cases isn?t) important
• When the data will be helpful and actionable (and in some cases: when it won?t be)

Available Reports in the AdWords Dimensions Tab

Below is a brief explanation of each of the reports ? we?ll be updating this page with links to each specific post over time:

• Time ? This is dayparting information ? the drop down allows you to slice and dice your data by day of the week, hour, etc. to gain insights about when your campaigns are the most successful. Click here for more information on the time report and dayparting.
• Conversions ? This gives you some additional information around your conversions ? specifically a break down by conversion name or purpose.
• Destination URL ? This report shows you how specific destination URLs within your campaign are performing.
• Demographic ? This applies to certain sites on the content network that collect demographic data, and shows you the breakdown of how different demographics are responding to your campaigns.
• Geographic ? This report lets you slice and dice data by geography so you can better allocate your funds across different countries, states, etc.
• Search Terms ?  This is effectively a search query report, and shows the same data you would get via a query report in the keywords tab.
• Automatic Placements ? This report shows you the placements your site is being placed on on the content network ? it?s a bit like a search query report for content and display campaigns.
• Free Clicks ? The free clicks tab is something Google calls the ad interactions report, and shows you how people interact with different components of your ad, such as ?get directions? or the product extensions ad plusbox.
• Call Details ? This report shows you actual data from the call metrics feature assuming you?ve enabled it, such as durations and area codes of calls.

Again we?ll walk through each of these in greater detail as the series continues. Stay tuned!

About the Author

Tom Demers is co-founder and managing partner at Measured SEM, a boutique search marketing agency offering SEM services including pay-per-click account management, SEO audits, content marketing services, and a variety of link building services such as guest post placement packages and blog strategy.

You can learn more about how Measured SEM can help or get 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/2011/10/11/google-adwords-dimensions-tab-guide

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Submit URLs to Google with Fetch as Googlebot

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/amDG/~3/tyYb-oayJyQ/submit-urls-to-google-with-fetch-as.html

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SEO is Like [Insert Analogy Here]

by Stoney deGeyter

SEO is like a car. You can't just ask "how much does SEO cost?"

SEO is like food. Quick, cheap SEO and has little long-term value, while healthy SEO costs more but has a better long-term effect.

SEO is like a chair. It's something you don't want to collapse underneath you. (via @mflem25)

SEO is like ice cream. There are a lot of different flavors of SEO strategies that bring satisfaction, and you usually want to try more than one.

SEO is like music. The foundation hasn't changed since the beginning, but the application of SEO evolves with time.

SEO is like kids. A lot of work goes into it and you can't be guaranteed of the results.

SEO is like a surgeon. Sometimes you have to do a lot of website surgery in order to cut out the sickness.

SEO is like a doctor. If you don't follow the advice of your SEO, you'll never have a healthy site.

SEO is like a diet. It's easy to know what to do. Not so easy to do it successfully. (via @mflem25)

SEO is like getting in shape. There are no shortcuts to good results. (via @mflem25)

SEO is like exercise. If you don't keep at it, you lose the benefits of it.

SEO is like gravity. What goes up eventually comes down.

SEO is like the Jones's. If you are only keeping up, you're falling behind. (via @PaschenM)

SEO is like Inspector Clouseau. Even the most bumbling SEOs can still stumble across a solution.

SEO is like a lawn. Paying lawn mower-kid prices doesn't get you beautiful SEO results, just a chopped budget.

SEO is like gardening. You can't plant your SEO recommendations this week and expect a rankings harvest the next. (via @CraigGeis)

SEO is like the weather. When traffic is hot everything is cool. When traffic disappears, temperatures rise.

SEO is like global warming. Just because you say it's true doesn't mean your soapbox strategy is really viable.

SEO is like art. You can theorize about it all day long, but it's the end result that matters.

SEO is like a video game. You want a top 10 score to show off to your friends, but you can't be sure you'll keep it. (via @rhcerff)

SEO is like a dog. If you feed it right, it can be your business's best friend, specializing in fetching ROI.

SEO is like a cat. Just because you optimized your site to call traffic to you doesn't mean the search engines will comply.

SEO is like Lady Ga Ga. Even average looking SEO can appear "sexy" if you dumb down your audience enough and dress it with outlandish claims.

SEO is like a supermodel. It's something you want to [censored due to violation of company social media policy]. (via @mflem25)

SEO is like Michael Jackson. It doesn't matter if it's black (hat) or white (hat) if you're riding high at the top.

SEO is like Anthony Weiner. Exposing yourself to the wrong audience can have disastrous results. (via @PaschenM)

SEO is like John Grisham. A strong start can overshadow a decade of laziness that follows.

SEO is like a Michael Bay movie. It can look pretty, but if you're just throwing a bunch of crap at your audience, they'll just shrug and walk away.

SEO is like Highlander. There can only be one number one ranking (per keyword).

SEO is like the military. A good strategy can do some serious damage and dominate your competition in the SERP's theater.

SEO is like government. No matter how many years you've been at it, there always seems to be more to do.

SEO is like taxes. You can keep pouring money into your SEO, but if the bastards aren't managing it properly, you start looking for ways to opt out.

SEO is like 24 Hour news. There are lots of people giving their opinions, but very few have any solutions.

SEO is like politics. There are lots of people giving their opinions, but very few have any solutions.

SEO is like religion. There is only one way to do SEO right. The rest of you are idiots.

SEO is like Jesus. It's not dead.

Follow me at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Source: http://www.searchengineguide.com/stoney-degeyter/seo-is-like-insert-analogy-here.php

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