CAT | FAQ
23
Free SEO Tips and Tricks Blog
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Articles, Blogging, FAQ, FAQ - Analytics, FAQ - PPC, FAQ - SEO, Internet News, Keyword Research, Landing Page Optimisation, Link Building, Local Search, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Marketing Resources, Search Engine Resources
Although we at Slipstream here in the UK, we recognise that some webmasters just love doing search engine optimisation themselves and, for that reason, we make a lot of SEO information freely available in our blog.
However, if you’re looking for free SEO tips on a regular basis, i.e. daily, then I recommend you take a look at the Daily SEO Tip blog.
This blog is dedicated to giving free SEO tips and was founded by SEO specialists, Loren Baker and Ann Smarty.
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
23
Innovation Alive and Well at Yahoo!!
0 Comments | Posted by andy in FAQ - PPC, Pay Per Click (PPC), Yahoo Search Marketing
Yesterday, I received an email from Yahoo Search Marketing explaining how that if you want to target a specific country, you can now do so by selecting that country in your campaign settings.
This is a real time saver compared to the previous way where, if you were building a campaign to target the US, you’d have to select each of the individual States. I’d like to have been involved in that brainstorm.
Who says Yahoo doesn’t innovate. Well done Jerry!
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
23
Is Your Yahoo PPC Budget Disappearing Faster Than Before?
0 Comments | Posted by andy in FAQ, FAQ - PPC, Pay Per Click (PPC), Yahoo Search Marketing
Yahoo has recently updated the terms and conditions of its pay per click (PPC) advertising program to allow it to optimise your account.
I’m not going to repeat what has already been written on this topic but if you’re a Yahoo Search Marketing PPC client, it would be in your interest to read this summary from Econsultancy:
Is Yahoo’s proactive account ‘optimization’ legal?
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
23
Do You Suspect Click Fraud? Here’s a Simple Solution…
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Bing, Click Fraud, FAQ - PPC, Google Adwords, Pay Per Click (PPC), Yahoo Search Marketing
We recently had reason to suspect that one of our client’s Pay per Click campaigns was being targeted by one of their competitors. We suspected that they were clicking the ads to try and use up the daily budget early in the day. The trouble was how to identify who was clicking the Ads.
There are many expensive Click Fraud solutions available but we found a simple and free way of checking who was clicking the ads by using Statcounter.
By putting the Statcounter code on the website pages we were able to easily see the IP addresses of the clickers. This clearly showed that two Competitors were in fact clicking the ads. We then forwarded our findings to Google and hope this will result in a refund for our AdWords client.
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
23
Pay Per Click Fraud Remains Constant at 16 Percent
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Click Fraud, FAQ, FAQ - PPC, Pay Per Click (PPC)
Click Forensics have just released a press release highlighting the fact that pay per click fraud for Q3 2008 was 16%, a slight reduction on the previous quarter and the same period in 2007.
Pay Per Click Fraud Rate by Quarter This data is taken from their Click Fraud Index.
Unfortunately, the UK is listed as one of the PPC fraud hot spots accounting for 3.5% of all fraudulent activity.
If you’re a pay per click advertiser, clearly you need to be vigilant with your traffic. There are professional solutions available for anyone wishing to monitor their paid traffic closely or, as reported last month, there is a simple solution if you do suspect click fraud and want to monitor your traffic.
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Published by SEO Prof Andy
23
Age and Gender PPC Targeting on Bing
0 Comments | Posted by andy in Bing, FAQ - PPC, Microsoft, Pay Per Click (PPC), Search Engine News
One of the advantages of Pay Per Click advertising on Bing is the age and gender demographic targeting.
The Microsoft adCenter has collected data overtime from various sources to create this targeting feature estimating the visitor’s gender and age:
- MSN Messenger
- Previous Search Queries
- Market Research
- Customer Service
- Registration Data from Hotmail
The results are obviously not 100% accurate but various studies in China show that the data collection and algorithms guessed the gender correct 80% of the time and the age of the visitor at least 60% of the time.
The Benefits
Gender
Various products and services that you as an advertiser may be offering, could be better suited to the male or female population. Knowing your target visitors gender allows you to target your ad text and landing pages accordingly.
Age
You can tailor your ad text and landing pages to suit a targeted age group. The system allows you to place incremental bids on each keyword for each age group which will help to limit the amount you spend each month on less targeted traffic.
The Age Groups
There are five different age groups within the Microsoft adCenter demographic targeting tool:
- 18 – 24
- 25 – 34
- 35 – 49
- 50 – 64
- 65 +
Place your Bids
Within each ad group you start with your base bid and then specify a percentage increase that you are willing to pay for each age or gender group. MSN will then automatically raise your bids to gain higher positions when a person within the selected age or gender group is searching for any of the keywords within the ad group.
The targeting can also be done at campaign level which is extremely useful if your target audience is the same for all products and services that you are promoting via your Pay Per Click campaign.
The thought process behind this tool, is that advertisers would be willing to pay more for a click if the searcher matches their target audience as they should in theory be more likely to convert.
When you apply incremental bids to an age group or gender, your ads will still be shown to all searchers but your bids are increased when the ads are displayed to your target audience.
A Quick Example
To explain how the tool works in a little more detail, I thought an example would help:
My website sells ladies lingerie and the bulk of my sales come from females aged between 25 and 50. The age and gender tool should help me drive more targeted traffic to the site but not exclude the other age groups or male customers.
My ad group base bid is £0.20 and I am willing to pay an extra 15% on top of this price per click for my targeted traffic.
This means that if a female searcher aged between 25 and 50 is searching online using one of my keywords, my bid price would increase to £0.23.
If the searcher was male and clicked on my ad my bid price would remain at £0.20.
How to set incremental bids in Microsoft adCenter
Campaign Level (sourced from Microsoft adCenter Help)
- Click the Campaigns tab.
- In the Campaign column, click the campaign whose targeting you want to change.
- On the Campaign selected page, click Change settings.
- Under Target your customers by location, click Edit.
- Click Demographic.
- For one or more of the gender and age groups, specify an incremental bid (A bid that can increase your ad’s exposure to potential customers who meet specific targeting criteria, such as day of the week, time of day, geographical location, age, or gender. A percentage of your keyword bid, the incremental bid is in addition to your bid on a keyword.) by selecting a value in the corresponding base bid + drop-down lists.
- Click Apply.
- Click Save.
Ad Group Level (Sourced from Microsoft adCenter Help)
- Click the Campaigns tab.
- In the Campaign column, click the campaign that includes the ad group you want to edit.
- In the Ad group column, click the ad group whose targeting you want to change.
- To the right of Ad group name, click Change settings.
- Under Target your customers by location, click Edit.
- Click Demographic.
- Clear the Apply campaign settings check box.
If this box is cleared, no campaign-level age or gender targeting will be applied to this ad group.
If this box is missing, there is no campaign-level age or gender targeting. - For one or more of the gender and age groups, specify an incremental bid (A bid that can increase your ad’s exposure to potential customers who meet specific targeting criteria, such as day of the week, time of day, geographical location, age, or gender. A percentage of your keyword bid, the incremental bid is in addition to your bid on a keyword.) by selecting a value in the corresponding base bid + drop-down lists.
- Click Apply, and then click Save.
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23
Ad Exchange Heralds New Dawn in Display Advertising for Google
0 Comments | Posted by andy in FAQ - PPC, Google, Google Adwords, Pay Per Click (PPC)
Having already conquered paid adverts on SERPs, Google is now looking to do the same for display ads to. Ad Exchange is a new initiative that is designed to provide a forum for advertisers and hosts to meet and fill websites with wonderful advertisements.
Based around its already hugely successful DoubleClick display ad that Google acquired last year, this updated resource is set to help the search giant gain a tighter grip on Internet advertising. The trade off between the provision of advertising space, provided by the host website, and the advert itself, provided by a sponsor, will now be done in an auction like programme on Ad Exchange. This opens up rafts of opportunities from both sides, and will doubtless be greeted by groans down in Sunnyvale, California.
Just as DoubleClick has been around for some time, both before and after its integration into the growing Google Empire, so has Yahoo’s own display ad platform – powered by Right Media. Yahoo have slowly grown a core group of advertisers and even beat Google to the punch in providing a universal display ad marketplace, launching My Display Ads back in June.
Whilst Yahoo are still a profitable and hugely successful search engine, they can’t compare with Google on most fronts. Until this point though, they had gained a decent foothold in the display ad field, a foothold which could be looking decidedly shaky with this announcement. The head start that they had may well melt away with the coming of their predominant search rival, although it will be interesting to see how this pans out in the coming months and years.
On paper though Google’s advertising formula is peerless. AdWords is the most successful and widely used paid search format and DoubleClick is one of, if not the leading display ad service. All told, this could be topping up the far from depleted coffers of the Google enterprise in no time at all.
Sourc
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23
Google Trial Local Listing Ads
0 Comments | Posted by andy in FAQ - PPC, Google Adwords, Pay Per Click (PPC)
With the initial Wave furore now settling down, it appears Google are continue to innovate; although this time it’s in one of their key monetising departments – paid advertising.
The Internet search titan is currently trialling a service that will incorporate local search with PPC. Whilst local search results will still be contained alongside a location map in a box near the head of the SERPs, the new Local Listing Ads will appear in the advertising banner immediately above it, with the businesses location still denoted by an alternative numbered pointer within the map itself (shown below).
Whilst trials are happening in San Francisco and San Diego areas, this appears to offer a very logical and interesting leap forward in both paid and local search. The new system though, at least as it stands currently, will require little in the way of management. All businesses need to do is select their location, determine what sector they’re in and just pay the amount Google defines for each click. Even the adverts use just a single uniformed style, with the name, web address and contact details displayed. All very simple.
This could therefore become a hotly contested advertising platform pretty quickly, particularly in business sectors that have numerous individual companies operating in a single area. But as this is still in the developmental stages, we can assume that Google will iron out any creases before the roll it out to the wider world, that’s also if they decide to of course.
For Google this represents another revenue stream, but for local businesses in competitive markets, it could well provide an invaluable source of traffic. Local search is an increasingly popular and important area of search engine optimisation. By targeting searches in your business’ immediate vicinity you can eliminate wider competition and focus on visitors who are more likely to be seeking your services. Local Listing Ads could well add another dynamic to this.
Of course it won’t replace traditional PPC services or Google AdWords, not in its current form at any rate. This is simply an additional option, something that should be used to compliment any PPC or SEO work you’re doing. The main advantage for site owners though is that it requires little or no management, meaning your ads could be created in minutes and left to their own devices. As this is only being trialled currently we will keep you posted on any developments, if and when it does land in the UK.
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What is a Landing Page?
In simple terms a landing page is simply the page on a website that a paid advert or SERPs links to. The key to any landing page is to be instantly eye-catching so as to get the attention of your visitors as well as to be relevant to their initial search.
Landing pages can hold the key to a PPC campaign’s success or failure. It won’t matter how good the wording of your ad is or how regularly people click on it; if the landing page bears no resemblance to what you’ve advertised, people will soon leave.
Each page of a website is potentially a landing page, therefore you need to be aware of design consistencies and the quality of content on each. Of course it may be impractical to go through thousands of individual pages and optimise them to the very highest standards, no matter how beneficial this may be. However, you need to at least ensure that your primary ‘selling pages’ are up to scratch.
A PPC campaign is just as reliant on the landing page as the landing page is on the traffic generated by the PPC campaign. If one fails, both fail; therefore it is imperative that both are of the highest possible standard. If the page that you want to link into doesn’t look appealing, doesn’t include a call to action or doesn’t have emotive content, update it. Don’t simply link in and hope for the best. Yes, people may still be interested enough to explore further and maybe even use your services, but more often than not it will just lead to more clicks, fewer conversions and more cost.
Prioritise which pages on your site are going to be the most likely destinations for a search engine visitor or a paid advert, then go about making any necessary changes. Whilst it may be preferable to have all of your pages fully optimised and looking fantastic, it could be impractical; so, initially at least, keep focussed on what work really needs to be done.
The landing page is integral to the success of your PPC campaign and your website SEO. It doesn’t matter how good your advertising is, if your site’s pages are a letdown visitors won’t hang around to give it a second chance. But point to the wrong page entirely and you’ll be throwing good money after bad.
What is Black Hat SEO?
This is a term used by many industry professionals to describe anything that is deemed to be against the rules of search engines or is otherwise ethically questionable.
Black Hat SEO has been in operation for almost as long as search engines have been ranking sites. Modern algorithms make it far more difficult for websites to achieve a misrepresentative position as a result of underhanded SEO work. However, that wasn’t always the case.
In the past keyword stuffing, where you use the same key terms and phrases in excessive quantities, would have provided sites with a near instant boost in rankings. For those who recognised that it compromised the quality of their on-page copy, you could always implement some hidden text. As the name suggests, this meant using text that was the same colour as the background (quite often white), to stuff as many keywords on a page without being seen by visitors. Cunning, but now no longer acceptable.
Ultimately Black Hat SEO is all about improving rankings at any cost. Due to its unethical nature, search engines treat it with justifiable disdain. So if you’re caught misrepresenting the content or purpose of your site, trying to rack up a few too many keywords or generally trying to hoodwink Google, you can expect to be punished.
Punishments range from a drop in rankings to being excluded entirely. Either way, the outcome is always detrimental to the site and will only serve to achieve the very opposite of what you were hoping for from the outset.
Not only could it have a disastrous effect on your search engine rankings, but it can really impact upon the quality of content on your site. If it is clear that you are repeatedly using the same word or phrase on any single page, visitors will justifiably become more wary. Copy needs to be free-flowing and natural, not truncated and riddled with repetition.
Black Hat SEO should be avoided at all costs. Some may see it as a short-cut to better rankings, but in truth these techniques will only serve to speed your website’s demise.
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