Use the AdWords Dashboard

Use the AdWords Dashboard: "

This post is focused around outlining some of the free tools and features that Google AdWords offers but people often don’t make full use of because they forget or don’t know they are available. In the past many AdWords campaigns were monitored from within Bid Management platforms or from within Google Analytics but the new AdWords home tab is seeking to change all that.

The past problem with running your campaigns within the AdWords interface was the limited ability to get a quick snapshot of account performance and quickly identify problems to resolve. The old platform was next to useless and most people quickly starting using the campaigns tab as the default page for their reporting and analysis even when using Google Analytics for discovering actionable insights has issues due to a 24-48 hour delay in importing data.

Benefits of PPC Dashboards?

The biggest benefit of the new AdWords home tab is that the your dashboard can be customised so you are able to focus on the campaign metrics that matter to each member of the team. It can be setup so your account manager, marketing manager and CEO can have a unique dashboard they are able to quickly view and monitor the top level details. While the new dashboard feature has been around for a about 2 months in most accounts it’s likely that most people have failed to notice the update as their default tab is campaigns or they never bother to login to their AdWords account.

One of the better parts about the new dashboard feature is that it can re-use your existing filters that you have created and been using to refine data showing in your campaign dashboard. The other benefit of the new dashboard interface as you don’t have to deal with the limitation that the old keyword performance module was not available for accounts with more than 10,000 keywords which made the previous module fairly useless for most large accounts.

So How do I create new modules?

You can use the AdWords interface to create and save filters that can then be added as modules to display on your home tab which give you a lot more control over what information is contained on your dashboard. Some of the important filters I think most accounts should have are:

• Keywords over your Average CPC Rates


• Keywords over your Average CPA Rates


• Keywords with a higher than average conversion rate


• Keywords with a lower than average conversion rate


• Keywords that have a lower than optimal ad position


• Keywords that have a lower than optimal CTR


• Keywords that changed status to limited, issues or not eligible to run

While these are just a few filters I have created that should help you focus on attaining a better ROI but also insure that your AdWords campaigns remain conversion focused. The dashboard modules work best when they are tailored to suit your campaign metrics and it is typically better to use multiple rules for your filters to get only the necessary information. You have the ability to quickly see just the keywords that are driving a bulk of your traffic, those giving you the most exposure via impressions or those making the cash register win via conversions.

What about information overload?

Probably one of the best features of the AdWords dashboard is that if you label your filters well you can minimise the modules and you can see in the screenshot below that the count of items that qualify for that filter are shown in brackets.

What about mobile dashboards?

A growing number of businesses need to have someone checking the campaigns when they are on the road or out of the office and credible mobile solutions are becoming increasingly important for both small companies and agencies using AdWords but is extending to the C-level with an always connected global work force. The new dashboard does load on mobile devices such as iPhone, Android and even WindowsPhone7 but besides quickly checking stats it doesn’t offer the full functionality people expect from mobile apps.

The full mobile version offers a bit more functionality as you can view your saved filters and view any custom alters for key accounts events but is not yet available for all mobile devices such as the Windows Phone 7.

While AdWords for mobile does offer a fairly limited level of functionality it’s likely the functionality will be vastly improved as Google seeks to move it’s platform into the hands of marketers so they can access it anywhere they can get a mobile signal. Outside of the update AdWords mobile dashboard there is only a limited number bid management platforms like Acquisio that have mobile apps for management of your PPC campaigns, so it’s hoping that Microsoft AdCenter rolls out a mobile application soon otherwise if you use platforms outside of Google AdWords you may have to consider a Bid Management platform if you spend a fair bit of time out of the office or at conferences.

What is the limitations of AdWords dashboard?

The downside is the information contained in the modules is not placed into context as you could in the previous version where you could see the top level performance of a particular campaign. The screenshot below shows the ease that you could see how individual campaigns were performing against a previous period of time but was limited as it could not be broken down by AdGroup, Keyword or even select multiple active campaigns only.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Use the AdWords Dashboard

"

Propaganda offline casada com publicidade online potencializa resultados

Propaganda offline casada com publicidade online potencializa resultados: "Uma matéria da Folha de São Paulo informava que o anunciante que veicular uma mensagem na mídia tradicional e estendê-la ao site dos mesmos veículos terá uma propaganda mais eficaz. A conclusão pertence a um estudo criado pela agência Euro RSCG, feito com 53 veículos sobre sobre hábitos de mídia em São Paulo e no [...]"

Sage Advice From A Twitter Strategist: Q&A with Hollis Thomases

Sage Advice From A Twitter Strategist: Q&A with Hollis Thomases: "

Hollis Thomases (@hollisthomases) is referred to as, among other things, an award-winning entrepreneur, accomplished author, and total Twitter powerhouse. To me, she’s all of those, as well as a friend. Founder of WebAdvantage.net, a digital media strategy agency, Hollis has been a familiar face on the search marketing circuit for well over a decade. Seasoned and sharp, you’ll often find her (hard to miss with trademark red hair) on an array of industry conference panels, from Holistic Twitter Automation to deep-dives into display marketing.

On the advent of Search Engine Strategies New York (#SESNY), I had the opportunity to share a candid interview with Hollis. Topics spanned the pains & pleasures of social network evolution to work as a writer and upcoming speaking gigs. Fruits of our chat live below the fold.

| aimClear: Hollis, thanks for your time today! You’re a savvy citizen of the online marketing galaxy, with a finger on the pulse of social networking sites, their exponential growth and evolution. What, to you, has been the most remarkable and/or teeth-gnashing aspect of social media’s permeation in mainstream culture?

Hollis Thomases: Given the times, I would have to say the most remarkable thing is how social media has literally helped topple governments. In this instance, we’re not talking evolution, we’re talking revolution and that’s incredibly powerful.

Teeth-gnashing-wise I’d have to say there are several: the proliferation of gurus, experts and consultants who have all suddenly cropped up to take advantage of the times (and who are all too often praying on the ignorant) — this deeply disturbs me because I think it also harms those who are trying to do legitimate good work. These folks are right up there with used car salesmen and ambulance-chasing attorneys, in my humble opinion.

I’m also disturbed by the depth to which people post so much personal information on the Web, blind or ignoring the fact that nothing they post is truly protected or private. I do wonder if they’ll be some kind of ultimate backlash or negative impact with all of this.

Lastly, though I truly do value social media for how it brings people together and helps people re-connect, I often feel that people are losing the ability to connect face-to-face or that small tokens via social media (a tweet hello here, a Facebook birthday wish there) sufficiently replaces commonplace human social interaction. I’ve started to feel like people expect me to read everything they’re posting on a routine basis to know what’s going on with them as opposed to talking with me by phone or in person and sharing that information. Frankly, I don’t have the time to do that for everyone and it’s not how I want my social relationships to be. I think that social media is de-personalizing relationships just as they may be fostering them — just like not everyone’s learning style is the same, nor are their relationship preferences either, and fewer people are mindful of the diversity of people’s needs in this regard as a result of the ease with which social media “makes” communication happen.

| aimClear: Fine points, Hollis. Let’s switch gears. Picture this: a B2C company hopped on the “bandwagon,” got a Twitter account, and tweets daily. They’re hosting promotions, proactively following relevant people, and truly engaging with them– but no real lead generation comes as a result. When, if at all, would you say, “Move on- it’s not the platform for you”…? Or is it worth spending the time and money simply for branding & friend-making?

HT: I would have to back-up and first ask, “Why did you get on Twitter to begin with, and what were your goals?” If the goal was lead generation and that’s not happening for them, I’d probably want to scrutinize the content of their tweets as it relates to the type of audience they’re seeking to attract. I think too many companies vainly or ignorantly generate content — be it tweets, blog posts, promotions, etc. — that they think would be worthwhile for their audience when in fact, it may provide no added value whatsoever. I highlight “added” because the content may be interesting, but if the audience can find the same content elsewhere, the company’s not really generating or showcasing anything that makes them stand out in the reader’s mind.

Another correlation I make for companies that really don’t understand social media is to compare it to public relations. With PR, you could be doing all the right things — issuing press releases, being interviewed by journalists and mentioned in news articles, getting awards and recognition for your company, etc. — and yet feel or see that nothing concrete is being gained by it. But the reality with PR is that every little piece of press helps to raise your company’s visibility and the market’s awareness. The market (prospects) may not respond the first, second or even third time they see your company mentioned, but over time, all of these efforts will certainly help your company have a presence in its market. You could choose to abandon ship just because you’re not seeing direct fruits of your labor, but then again, how will you know that you’re not in the right place at the right time and actually miss an opportunity? And is any of this important or more important to you than other initiatives you could be spending money and time on?

So it’s really a situation of what’s important to the company, how well they executed or are executing their plan, and if continuing to do so aligns with their overarching marketing and communications goals.

| aimClear: Sound advice. On the topic of Twitter, your tweet-tribe/“twibe,” the Hollis Thomases Army (#htarmy), has been on my radar for quite some time. What was your motivation for creating that clan?

HT: Ah, Lauren (@beebow) and my faithful #HTArmy “Lieutenant”! I have to smile at your question. My original motivation for creating #HTArmy was both admittedly selfish and experimental. Selfish in that I was setting about to write my book, Twitter Marketing: An Hour a Day, in a very tight timeframe and I had hoped to develop a network within Twitter to help me with my book’s research (mission accomplished, by the way — several of my book’s case studies and tools mentioned came from efforts by members of the #HTArmy). The process was also experimental because I was curious how crowdsourcing the production of a book might work. Ultimately, that too was a great success with several members of the original #HTArmy like Carlos Hernandez (@carloshernandez), Tom Rowe (@thefrontrowe), Gini Dietrich (@ginidietrich), Nancy Cawley Jean (@nancycawleyjean) and Mike Merrill (@mikedmerrill) contributing to portions of the book. An unexpected gain from forming #HTArmy was the support and friendships I have developed from the process. The #HTArmy lives on today with a great group of old- and newcomers, and I couldn’t be prouder. I would be honored if from reading this post, other tweeps want to join our ranks, because we really do have a special thing going!

| aimClear: Right on. Matter of fact, a copy of your book sits on my work desk as we speak. You also write a biweekly column for ClickZ, and contribute to Social Media Marketing Magazine. From the collection of your authored online marketing writings, what are some of your favorites?

Wow, that’s a hard question. I’m definitely proud of #TMHAD as writing it was a huge accomplishment and task — at 478 pages, in seven or eight point font, it really is an amazing feat that I was even able to get it done in six months! I’m also very proud of my six years as a ClickZ columnist, for which I write about online media planning and strategy. Looking back at all my columns, I can see that a lot of what I wrote about was ahead of the curve. For example, I wrote about Google as a media network back in 2006! I recently wrote a ClickZ article about “How Keyword Research and Competitive Search Fuels Display Campaigns” that I think is a growing yet untapped trend. And for Success magazine back in 2000, I wrote about my concerns about the narrow-mindedness of ad and content targeting based on user profiling, a concept that’s now being re-visited today. So I suppose I am just most proud that after 13 years in the business, I’m still able to crank out new fresh content that keeps ME interested and engaged!

| aimClear: Well done! Your company bio highlights that in 2008, you were named “Enterprising Woman of the Year.” Ours is an industry that’s often stereotypically male-focused… what did this recognition mean for you?

HT: Awards like this do have meaning to me, but they are still not industry awards. I try not to let awards go to my head because unless my agency and I do good work and serve our clients, I could have a bunch of awards that have far less meaning to me. The best recognition I can receive is when our clients tell us how good we are to work with and how much better our campaigns perform for them than before they worked with us. At the end of the day, I’m just an entrepreneur trying to do right by people who pay us to deliver upon or exceed their expectations. If I/we can do that, I don’t need any special awards.

| aimClear: Nice perspective. Okay, so on day two of SESNY, you’ll be on the panel of Twitter 2.0: Creating & Distributing the Message. What can audience-members-to-be expect from your upcoming presentation?

HT: I’m actually on two panels that day! “Crossing the Digital Divide” is the second one I’m on. As it relates to the Twitter panel,we’re going to focus on best practices and lots of tools. I think that a lot of Twitter newcomers don’t even realize how many different ways they can vary their tweets and value-adds they can provide with all the apps and tool features out there!

| aimClear: Well now! I aim to sit in on both. Lastly… favorite guilty-pleasure celeb or spoof Twitter account you follow? (For me, it’s @bettyfckinwhite).

HT: Mine used to be @shitmydadsays…though I have to confess that lately I don’t even have time to monitor these kinds of accounts. I have to rely on my tweeps to keep me laughing (and they do a darn good job of that, I must say!) #asinwetalkinhashtagstoomuchbeebowhinthint!

| aimClear: #NoIDeaWhatYouAreTalkingAbout. Many thanks for your time & insight, Hollis! See you at #SESNY. And, despite what you may think, drinks on me .

"

I Disagree with Fred; Marketing is for Companies that Have Great Products

I Disagree with Fred; Marketing is for Companies that Have Great Products: "

Posted by randfish

One of the people I admire and respect most in the technology, startup world is Union Square Ventures' Fred Wilson. A little more than a year ago, I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Fred in his New York offices, just as SEOmoz was ending a failed fund raising attempt. The writer I'd come to know and love through his blog and tweets shone through - he's affable, humble, smart and considerate. And his firm employed (at that time anyway) an analyst with professional SEO experience, who also sat in on the meeting.

Today, Fred wrote a post on his blog titled "Marketing."

I strongly disagree with the statement "marketing is what you do when your product or service sucks," and I mostly disagree that it only pays to use marketing when profit margins are insanely high. As I read it, part of me wondered , "Isn't the goal of venture capital to help a company scale faster than it could without funding?"

To be fair to Fred, what he calls "marketing" is what I believe many of us in the startup/tech space would call "advertising" or "paid customer acquisition channels." Later in the post, he says:

I disagree less with this point. For some startups, "free" customer acquisition in early stages certainly makes sense as the primary channel, though I'd question whether the right amount to spend is always $0.00. That strikes me as both extreme and rarely correct. At the very least, startups should be experimenting with paid acquisition channels that look compelling - ignoring them simply because they aren't free could really hurt your growth potential.

My Perspective on Startup Marketing

I've helped a lot of startups in various stages with marketing - through SEOmoz's old consulting business, through lots of personal relationships, through our Q+A and through events and conferences. Last year, YCombinator's Paul Graham invited me down to their Silion Valley offices for a pizza party where I talked about SEO for startups. I gave a similar talk at Seattle's Techstars a few months ago and a brand new one that I presented at Twiistup in Los Angeles just a couple weeks ago. I've embedded that presentation below:

Inbound Marketing for Startups in 2011

View more presentations from randfish

I'm a huge believer in inbound marketing, which includes social media, content marketing (blogging, whitepapers, research, infographics, etc.), SEO, video, Q+A and comment marketing and loads of other free (or mostly free) channels. Inbound marketing is a powerful way to make consumers aware of your business and your products, and in my opinion, it's one in which people don't invest nearly enough. I'm worried that Fred's post will re-inforce a harmful stereotype that I see a lot in the tech startup world.

Product is All That Matters?

For the first few years that I was in the "web world," 1997-2001, there was a dangerous and obvious bias in startups toward sales and marketing - and branding in particular. But, in the past few years, that pendulum has swung to the equally dangerous paradigm that product is everything.

Don't get me wrong - I think a product-bias in a startup is an extremely healthy thing to have. SEOmoz's focus is ~65% product, 35% everything else, and that ratio is likely to be more product-biased in the future. But I see so many great startups who need, more than anything, to GET THE WORD OUT.

Let's look in Union Square's Ventures portfolio:

• Zemanta - one of USV's companies that everyone who reads this blog should probably know about, yet I'd guess that <10% do. Certainly, Zemanta has cool product opportunities that it can and should execute, but they also seriously need to better reach the search marketing community. I've seen them doing so somewhat actively - sponsoring and speaking at events, some content marketing and outreach, case studies and networking (and that's just what I've personally observed).
• Clickable - another USV-backed venture that's in the marketing space; Clickable helps advertisers manage all their account on Google, Bing, Facebook and more in one place (which is awesome). Again, I think a 70/30 product/marketing balance makes sense, but there's no way they shouldn't be using the power of inbound marketing to build awareness and bring their market to their site. No offense intended, but the Clickable blog, with its anonymous icons and erroneous Facebook integration (note that the same number of people "like" every post) could use some marketing TLC.
• Etsy - back in 2009, when SEOmoz had a small consulting arm, we helped Etsy on some SEO and community outreach features. From what I've heard and seen, that effort paid off. Here's some Google Trends data (which, granted, is far from perfect):
  

Some of USV's companies - Twitter, Foursquare, Meetup and, to a slightly lesser extent, Stackoverflow - may indeed have product built around natural marketing. The very act of using the services creates an incentive to share, to participate and to discover. But, quite honestly, this is not the reality for most startups, especially those who are B2B focused.

In fact, there are a ton of great startups that need at least as much marketing as they do product growth. For example:

• Trunk.ly - already a phenomenally useful and addictive product. My understanding is they're seeking investment to help grow/scale and, more than anything, they need a few dozen to hundred more evangelists and articles extolling their virtues. I think even Fred would agree that marketing is a "must."
• Namesake - a very cool conversation and opportunity platform, Namesake is another example of a startup that could benefit from significantly more brand-awareness and participation. Whatever dirt Quora has on TechCrunch's editors - yeah, they should get some of that.
• The Resumator - following several years of successful operation and growth, Resumator has a lot of customer feedback and a fairly mature product that's truly useful and powerful. Awareness among HR professionals and SMBs who struggle with the inefficiencies of hiring, however, is low. It's possible some unique product features would skyrocket Resumator to the moon, but I'd guess that marketing (both inbound and through paid channels) is one of the best investments they can make.
• Markup.io - this seriously slick and useful app could certainly benefit from additional features and product maturity, but it's already solving a big pain for web workers of all stripes. More people who have this pain need to know about Markup - marketing is the answer (at least, to that problem).

I'm not a believer that a market will simply flock to a great product. Many great products have died due to obscurity; only a few great products have succeeded in spite of rejecting marketing. Fred uses the examples of Twitter and FourSquare; Google could be another reasonable example. Those are outliers, and while they might be the types of companies Fred is seeking to invest in, they're the exception, not the rule, and thus I worry that the advice and perspective will have the wrong impact.

An Update from Fred

As I was writing this post, Fred published an update he called "The Bug Report." Unfortunately, in my opinion, there's still a lot of bad advice.

Ack! Fred is, whether intentionally or not, one of the startup world's most influential marketers and that carries over to the companies he invests in as well. When Zemanta's team reached out to talk to me, they had only to mention Fred's backing to get my attention. When Fred first started writing about Disqus, using their plug-in on his site and evangelizing their value, he became one of their biggest marketing channels.

Fred Wilson is, undeniably, a powerhouse of an inbound marketer. When I saw that he was writing about marketing, I hoped to hear his perspective on the incredible channels he's built through content and social media. I wanted to know how he helped to bring legitimacy and media attention to New York as an emerging startup epicenter. I was curious about how he built a following on his blog, how he picked topics to write about, how he coached his companies to build their own inbound marketing. I was hoping for the same transparency on his clearly strategic and well-planned marketing campaigns (e.g. the startup visa) that he offers with his MBA Monday series.

And reading his posts, I felt let down. Perhaps I've just been so impressed with the rest of his written work that my standards are too high.

The final point of contention between us is Fred's view on marketing professionals:

Being not only a marketing professional, but someone who's done work to help Fred's portfolio companies with marketing, it's hard not to take personal offense. I don't know if he'd loop in the consulting efforts we provided to Etsy or the small amounts of pro bono assistance I've given to Zemanta in that group, but I know that any attack on marketing professionals of this magnitude is going to cause ripple effects.

So, instead of engaging directly, let me just point out some examples of amazing marketing professionals who've had dramatic, positive impacts on our businesses and others:

• Probably no one is more famous for startup marketing than Sean Ellis, who's helped companies like Dropbox, Xobni, LogMeIn, Eventbrite and many more with early stage, inbound marketing. I've spoken to founders from several of those companies and they've raved about him.
• The team at Unbounce has built a great product in a somewhat crowded space, and while their engineering differentiation is quite remarkable, it's been the efforts of Oli Gardner, Director of Inbound Marketing, who's gotten them onto the radar of the web marketing community (at least, from my perspective).
• UK-based Conversion Rate Experts has showcased a lot of their incredible work, which needs little introduction here. They helped SEOmoz scale from a business that focused almost entirely on product to one that finally took some pride in its conversion funnel and ability to sell. I rave about them every chance I get.
• SEOmoz's own marketing team, under the direction of Jamie Steven, has accelerated the business in a way that can't be underestimated. Yes - we've got a fantastic engineering team, we built some uniquely useful products in Linkscape, Open Site Explorer, the Web App and the mozBar, but without our marketing efforts, we'd probably be a much smaller, more niche company and the amazing efforts of our product and engineering teams could impact only a fraction of the customers we serve today.

There's many, many more examples I can and should showcase, but reflecting on it, I don't need to. I think this is a great opportunity to use the comments to showcase what you - as inbound marketers - have been able to accomplish. Let's take Fred's assertion that "marketing professionals do a lot of damage" and prove it wrong, example by example.

I can't wait to read what you've got to share, and as an added incentive, the moz team will send a nice care package to the comment (or comments) exemplifying the power of inbound marketing with the most thumbs up.

Do you like this post? Yes No

"

Keyword Research: Analyzing the Important Factors that Contribute to Online Marketing Success

Keyword Research: Analyzing the Important Factors that Contribute to Online Marketing Success: "

One of the most important initial steps in any search engine optimization endeavor is keyword research. Without the right keyword research, you can pretty much count out any success in an SEO project. Keyword research can mean the difference between sub standard and exceptional performance of a marketing campaign. So, I would like to go through the steps that I utilize and factors that I consider while performing comprehensive keyword research for a website.

1. First, brainstorm and determine the keywords that you will target based on industry information.

It sounds more simple than it really is. If you’re targeting travel, which keywords do you want to focus on? What competition level are you prepared to go after? How many conversions can you reasonably handle? How much link building can you reasonably handle? Well, one might surmise that the travel industry, for example can include travel related keywords. To target a group such keywords and find out search data behind them, you could try brainstorming a list like so:

Travel

Airplanes

Bus

Train

Car

Travel by airplane

Travel by Bus

Travel by Train

Travel by Airplane

Travel by Plane

Resort

Hotel

2. From here, we can plug these keywords into the Google Adwords Traffic Estimator to determine Global Monthly Search Volume, among other stats, to help us determine the best keywords to target for our purposes:

Keyword: travel

Global Monthy Searches: 37,200,000

Keyword: airplanes

GMS: 2,740,000

Keyword: bus

GMS: 30,400,000

Keyword: train

GMS: 30,400,000

Keyword: travel by airplane

GMS: 12,100

Keyword: travel by bus

GMS: 135,000

Keyword: travel by train

GMS: 165,000

Now that we know our Global Monthly Search Volume, we can look at other factors to choose the best keywords to target. The keywords travel, airplane, and bus are all way too general. Are we looking for information on how to travel, or airplane tickets? Are we looking for information on buses and airplanes, or the best priced tickets for these methods of travel?

Depending on the exact focus of your website, you will want to narrow down your keyword list even further. These could be keywords like bus travel tickets, bus tickets, or train travel tickets, or train tickets. But, the keyword research process doesn’t stop there at the brainstorming level. Other factors influence how long it will take to see results, and how much effort you or your marketing specialist needs to put into the campaign.

Searching Google, we can find that the keyword “travel by bus” is heavily saturated. You have about 179,000,000 (million) search results to compete against. THAT is A LOT!! Before I go further, no legit white hat online marketing techniques are going to get you quick results. The whole point of the game is to develop a website and establish yourself as a long term player in the marketplace, and if you get caught using black hat techniques, your site can most likely get penalized or banned, depending on the level of offensive techniques involved, which will destroy all of your efforts up to this point. So, having said this, let’s go back to our 179,000,000 search results. How does this factor into our determination on which keywords to use?

Well, saturation is rather important. The more saturated a market is, the more effort that you will require in order to compete against those that already have a following, and so that you can reach the clients who will plunk down money for your travel services. A market that’s not so saturated means that you have much less competition and therefore even better chances at developing a market following and making some money. That’s what SEO is all about – making sure that once you get the right keywords based on a group of market factors, that you can then go after those keywords with all the knowledge in the world what your efforts will bring to the table.

Let’s take a look at some better keyword factors that can help increase your odds of success.

travel by plane – GMS 14,800

Saturation Level: 69,400,000 results

Obviously we have a lower search volume and lower market saturation, so this can be a better choice to target. But wait, what’s another factor we should consider when we are analyzing our competition and market budget? Links. The first site that comes up in the organic results is travel.yahoo.com/flights. Preliminary backlink analysis reveals 38,089 backlinks. Can you compete against this? Yes. Do you have the budget and manpower to obtain even more valuable links and develop a site that will dominate Yahoo Travel in the SERPs? Do you have the moxie required to go after such a market with such wide-reaching competition? If not, then it’s time to consider less competitive keywords.

Keywords with a competition level of less than 1,000,000 and around 5-10,000 Global Monthly Search volumes are good places to start. I AM generalizing here, so this may be rather different depending on your industry, but those are good competition levels to aim for in the beginning. If, however, you decide that it’s time to go after the ultimate keywords with the best traffic and overall conversion opportunities, be my guest. And, if you want to be rather ambitious and take on Yahoo Travel, well, feel free to do so – I’d love to be the inspiration for you to get going on a large undertaking such as this.

You may say “But Brian, I have no time for exhaustive keyword research and determining these factors that will influence my success. I want to get to the top of the SERPs quickly and easily by just picking and choosing randomly. What do I do?” Well, sir, you drive a hard bargain. You can pick and choose randomly. But, when you discover that your keywords have no search volume and you’ve been building links and doing on site optimization based on random words with no traffic, what then? Wouldn’t you rather have maximized your keyword research efforts from the beginning with traffic-laden options like in the above examples? No online marketing campaign should be embarked upon without at least ensuring that the keywords you’re targeting will deliver some substantial conversion opportunities.

Keyword research is so important, both from a strategic advantage and developing a course of action. You wouldn’t want to set out on starting a business without a business plan in place would you? The same can be said for any website that you start as well. Do the right keyword research in the beginning with the factors that are important, and you’ll see your results soar.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Keyword Research: Analyzing the Important Factors that Contribute to Online Marketing Success

"

10 Tips for Building Your Online Business and Keeping It Alive

10 Tips for Building Your Online Business and Keeping It Alive: "

Obviously, you want your online business to succeed instead of flop. Like most business efforts, you have to learn what to do – very few people succeed by jumping in with both feet. What usually happens is they jump in, find out the water is over their heads and they’ve forgotten how to swim.

Instead, learn how to swim before you jump; the waters of online marketing and online business are really deep. Here are a few swimming lessons, in no particular order:

1. Link from your site to your blog. If you have a blog and a site, make sure your content is easily accessible to visitors. Don’t make them hunt for your updated content.


2. Set up social networking. Make your social networks easy to see and follow – don’t hide the buttons somewhere. While most people include social network buttons on their blog, consider putting them in your contact page as well.


3. Set up social bookmarking. If you don’t already have a way for people to share your content, get some! If you use WordPress, there are tons of social bookmarking plugins available. You can also use something like ShareThis, for regular sites.


4. Provide a place on your main site for white papers or in depth articles. Blogs are… well, blogs. If you use article marketing as a tool, use your site as one of the article submission areas. Call it “White Papers” or “Long, In-Depth Industry Articles” or “Where We Put Our 2000+ Word Books”. Call it whatever you want, but providing a place like this will help turn your site into an information hub for your industry.


5. Make sure you have a sitemap. You can pretty it up and have it convenient for visitors to read, or you can just have a plain old XML sitemap. However, sitemaps help search engines crawl your site, so don’t forget to build it and link to it.


6. Use your keyword analysis and track your usage. We use an Excel sheet, but a Word document works just as well. For each main site page, record what key terms you used, your title and meta description. If you change something, record that as well. This way, you have a steady record of changes and can more easily track how those changes affected your site ranking and traffic.


7. If you use javascript, create an actual file and link to it in the header of your site. Many people use the header of the site (the part in between <head> and </head>) to put their javascripts. This is the equivalent of stuffing your closet full of crap. Since you don’t want the search engines to open your website closet and have a whole bunch of script fall on them, use files instead!


8. Don’t ignore content audits. Set a period of time (say, every six months) to do a content audit. A content audit can help you find non-performing pages, identify topics your readers really like and what pages you can get rid of, among other things.


9. Create a content strategy. You could write up whatever comes to mind, send it out into the waiting black hole of the Internet and wait to see if something comes back. Or, you could create a comprehensive strategy for:
   
   
   
   • what type of content you’ll send out (images, blogs, white papers, videos, etc.)
   
   
   • where you’ll put your content (your site, your blog, guest post, YouTube)
   
   
   • how you’ll track your efforts (a content tracking program, manual search, etc.)
   
   
   • the main (and sub) goals of your content strategy (conversions, more traffic, better engagement)
   
   
   
   


10. Share the link love. If you have 15 social networking accounts and each allows you to link to the others, do so. If you’re writing a blog about XYZ and you come across a relevant, supporting article, link to it. If ABC company has a good white paper about your industry, share it with your readers. In other words, don’t keep the links to yourself out of fear for your competition. The confidence you have in your company’s product/services will show.

As a final tip, understand that online and offline business is not the same. You may be trying to reach the same target market, clients, customers, whatever you call them, but the methods you use are often quite different. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can take offline lessons and apply them online without taking additional measures.

How has your online business experience worked for you? Did you find it easy to jump in, or, like most, did you need swimming lessons? Share your number one lesson with others in the comments!

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

10 Tips for Building Your Online Business and Keeping It Alive

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