SEO

Paid Search Campaigns: Focus on What Matters

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Fortunately for us, we frequently get contacted by potential clients to perform our free search evaluation service.  Recently, we’ve seen a uptick in the amount of requests for reviews of paid search campaigns, as opposed to a review of a website’s organic search results. That’s inspired us to write a short series of tips about the most common paid search mistakes companies make.

Our most recent article focuses on a very common occurrence we see with companies that manage their own paid search campaigns – focusing on being ranked #1 more than the fundamentals that make up a successful campaign.

I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read the article. But for those of you really crunched for time, here’s the Cliff Notes version: out of the allotted time you have to run your campaign (and I believe you should be running your company, not your campaign), stop spending it on increasing your bids so that your ad is ranked #1 all the time.  While being at the top of paid results is great and probably gets you more looks, it doesn’t guarantee you more business. Getting higher click-thru and conversion rates is where you need to focus your time. That means you need to constantly tweak you ad text, calls to action, and landing pages until you feel like you’ve reached optimal levels of conversion. And when you reached that rate, keep tweaking and improve it some more!

Bottom line: stop worrying about the fact that your competition might be ranked #1 and you are ranked #2. Let them drive up their price per acquisition while you increase your margins.

Google’s Next Gen Search–What SEOs Are Talking About

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There’s been some really interesting stuff happening in search over the last 24 hours. Here’s a quick recap:

First, Facebook’s acquisition of Friendfeed and subsequent immediate launch of live search has led to lots of speculation that, together, the two might make a formidable team that will challenge Google in real-time search.

Second, what Google is calling their Caffeine Update was unveiled. This is the news SEOs are talking about today. According to Google’s search wizard Matt Cutts, Google Caffeine is not going to be obvious when you test it out.

“This update is primarily under the hood: we’re rewriting the foundation of some of our infrastructure,” said Cutts on his blog. “But some of the search results do change, so we wanted to open up a preview so that power searchers and web developers could give us feedback.”

You can test Google’s new search index yourself by going to http://www2.sandbox.google.com and doing some searches. You can even leave feedback for Google by clicking the “Dissatisfied” link at the bottom of the results page. Just be sure to include “Caffeine” in your message.

Here’s the key point to remember about Google’s update: no one knows what’s new. Google has said they’ve made changes and has given you a way to try and find those changes, but has not said what exactly is different. Let the speculation begin!

Anytime Google even hints about tweaking their algorithm or the way search results are displayed, SEOs everywhere take notice. Caffeine will, undoubtedly, have SEOs trying to find the difference (subtle or otherwise) between current search results and what they see on caffeine. I’m sure over the next few weeks the blogosphere will be buzzing with theories and findings about what’s different.

I’ve tried caffeine a few times, but only for searches we manage for clients. Other than seemingly faster results, I didn’t see any obvious differences.

Search is BIG Business. It’s cool to see that competition seems to be alive and that Google is trying to get better.

So…How Does SEO Work?

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I’ve said this before, but these days practically every business owner I meet wants to talk about SEO.

Most of the time, the conversation is spent talking about their pain. Either they are frustrated with a current provider that’s not producing, or they have recently come to the realization that their website’s performance in search engines is lacking and they need help. And they need help fast.

Inevitably, the conversation will turn to our approach to search engine optimization. It’s a great question. People want to know what it is we do to get results. I always tell them that we didn’t write the book on SEO. And our methods are hardly a secret. At the end of the day, we follow a proven method that utilizes white hat technologies. In other words, we don’t cheat.

So the answer is a mix of experience, ethical practices, and hard work. All of that usually equals  success.

You can read more about our process. There’s an overview on our website.

Need Links? Here’s a Way To Get Started.

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Check out our latest article in out free SEO Resources – “A Simplified Look at Acquiring Links”.

Like many of the articles we make available for business owners, this one is born out of a very common issue we see with business owners looking to get started with search engine optimization. Most of the business owners we talk to know they need to increase the number of quality inbound links. Many have been confused by some long-winded proposal from another SEO company about how exactly to get that done.

Bottom line: business owners want to at least know the basics before they make an investment (no matter the size) in improving their search engine positioning. Here’s hoping this article makes it a little easier to understand where to begin.