A while back I wrote about on-site SEO tactics. In that piece, I promised to continue the exploration of search engine optimization with a solid look at off-site SEO and how these factors impact search optimization. By search optimization, I mean the position of your web site in the major search engines on a specific keyword phrase. Well, the time has come for us to dive into this often controversial topic and see what we can learn.
The first point is to recognize the relative importance of off-site tactics. There is wide agreement that the number and quality of links to your site is the single more important factor in your search optimization strategy. After all, it is a publicly stated tenant at Google that a link is a vote. Therefore, it should not be surprising that their process for determining what web sites to show (often called their algorithm or rank calculation) is built around this notion. And to be clear, this entry is in no way an attempt to reverse engineer what's happening at Google. Rather, I am simply trying to summarize what the leading SEO folks are saying about what factors are most important for search optimization.
And after spending quite a bit of time looking around, one of the best sources I found was at SEOmoz. Here is what they came up with after completing an extensive survey of experts in the search optimization field:
1) Keyword use in the Title tag
2) Anchor text of inbound links
3) Global link popularity of linking site
4) The age of your site
5) Linking within your site (in-site linking)
6) Relevance of inbound links to your site
7) Link popularity of site in specific topic
8) Keyword use in the body of the page
9) Global link popularity linking site
10) Topical relationship of linking site
Again. This list was developed by polling huge number of experts in search optimization to try and develop a consensus of what off-site tactics are simply most important for ranking. But remember, this is not science. These are opinions. And when you read through some of the comments you can clearly see how funny the results can sometimes be. There is one story of how a site went from ranking 419 to 1 in Google based on a single link changing. There is another about a site that got to page 1 rankings with onsite links only. To be sure, search optimization is a really complicated thing. As such, the calculations that are made by the major search engines are likely to remain somewhat mysterious.
Also keep in mind that there are about 45 million active web sites currently (I think - citation needed). I also read that the average number of pages per site is like 1,500. If each page has an average of 4 outbound links (that's a pure guesstimate), you can do the math to determine how many links are out there. It's in the billions for sure. And somehow you wanted to come here and read how simple search optimization would be? Fat chance. But at least you can follow the top 10 list above to make certain that your off-site search optimization and link building strategies are focused correctly.
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Wednesday, December 17, 2008
PPC How To - Beginner Campaign Structure
In this inaugural post in our PPC How To series, I will start with the reason behind providing PPC How To instructions when our primary business is having clients hire us to setup and manage their PPC accounts. Some might say we are giving away the farm. As I tell many of our clients, you should blog about what you known and we know PPC. I will blog about beginner and expert topics and welcome any input on questions to answer… just use our contact us form.
Adam and I been investing a significant amount of resources in building our own PPC Management tools with short-terms plans to release a self-service PPC Management tool. Our plan is to couple the tool with PPC How To video and text content to give our clients the information they need to build and manage successful PPC Campaigns.
One of the first PPC How To issues we work with is how to the search engine campaign structure features. When new clients come to us one of the first issues we work on is aligning the campaign structure with the goals of their PPC campaign.
So, what is campaign structure? All of the engines have adopted the same general approach. Here is quick overview of the structure they provide:
* Account – this is the highest level of the campaign structure and typically holds the information about your business and the billing instructions. If you are using an agency, they may run your search accounts through their account or you can open your own.
o Campaign – The campaign is the next highest level and is the only structure that lets you allocate budget within an account. You cannot tell Google/Yahoo/MSN that you want to spent $100 on a certain keyword rather you must put that keyword or a group of keywords into a campaign and assign budget. In our experience, controlling budget and measuring return is one of the most important uses of campaign when building an account.
+ Adgroup – Adgroups are the lowest level of the hierarchy but hold all of the keywords and ad creative (text / display / mobile). Adgroups are most important because they allow us to closely match the ad creative to the keyword.
Now that we have established the hierarchy, now we’ll review the PPC How To issues that we run into most often:
* PPC How To Issue: Only Using 1 Campaign – for the simplest campaigns you may only need one campaign, but almost every campaign we have reviewed would be more efficient if they used campaigns to allocate their budget more efficiently. Let’s take the simplest example, Branded Terms vs Category Terms. I always recommend that clients keep their branded terms in its own campaign so that they can more precisely control budget and measure return on different terms. I’ve seen too many campaigns that look great when everything is together only to find out that many of the keywords are dragging down the average.
* PPC How To Issue: Only Using 1 AdGroup – if a client is only using one campaign, they are most likely only using 1 AdGroup as well. Why? Well Google (and Yahoo / MSN) want to make it easy to setup an account so their account setup wizards try to keep things simple. They accomplish the goal of simplifying sign-up but it isn’t the best way to run a PPC campaign. Most campaigns cover several different themes and offers. Ideally, you will want targeted ads for each of these groups.
* PPC How To Issue: Mixing Head Terms and Tail Terms – most campaigns will naturally evolve in a way that you’ll get about 80% of your success from 20% of your terms. Those 20% of your terms are the head terms. I recommend that you pay special attention to them and consider how to use campaigns and AdGroups to structure your campaign such that you control your budget and measure your return.
It is impossible to cover all of the ways to use campaign structure. Our clients use campaign structure to solve geographic service areas, hours of operation, internal budget allocation and many other issues. You can sign-up for our newsletter if you’d like to receive upcoming additions to the PPC How To series. Or, if you’d like us to review your campaign structure and provide actionable recommendations
Adam and I been investing a significant amount of resources in building our own PPC Management tools with short-terms plans to release a self-service PPC Management tool. Our plan is to couple the tool with PPC How To video and text content to give our clients the information they need to build and manage successful PPC Campaigns.
One of the first PPC How To issues we work with is how to the search engine campaign structure features. When new clients come to us one of the first issues we work on is aligning the campaign structure with the goals of their PPC campaign.
So, what is campaign structure? All of the engines have adopted the same general approach. Here is quick overview of the structure they provide:
* Account – this is the highest level of the campaign structure and typically holds the information about your business and the billing instructions. If you are using an agency, they may run your search accounts through their account or you can open your own.
o Campaign – The campaign is the next highest level and is the only structure that lets you allocate budget within an account. You cannot tell Google/Yahoo/MSN that you want to spent $100 on a certain keyword rather you must put that keyword or a group of keywords into a campaign and assign budget. In our experience, controlling budget and measuring return is one of the most important uses of campaign when building an account.
+ Adgroup – Adgroups are the lowest level of the hierarchy but hold all of the keywords and ad creative (text / display / mobile). Adgroups are most important because they allow us to closely match the ad creative to the keyword.
Now that we have established the hierarchy, now we’ll review the PPC How To issues that we run into most often:
* PPC How To Issue: Only Using 1 Campaign – for the simplest campaigns you may only need one campaign, but almost every campaign we have reviewed would be more efficient if they used campaigns to allocate their budget more efficiently. Let’s take the simplest example, Branded Terms vs Category Terms. I always recommend that clients keep their branded terms in its own campaign so that they can more precisely control budget and measure return on different terms. I’ve seen too many campaigns that look great when everything is together only to find out that many of the keywords are dragging down the average.
* PPC How To Issue: Only Using 1 AdGroup – if a client is only using one campaign, they are most likely only using 1 AdGroup as well. Why? Well Google (and Yahoo / MSN) want to make it easy to setup an account so their account setup wizards try to keep things simple. They accomplish the goal of simplifying sign-up but it isn’t the best way to run a PPC campaign. Most campaigns cover several different themes and offers. Ideally, you will want targeted ads for each of these groups.
* PPC How To Issue: Mixing Head Terms and Tail Terms – most campaigns will naturally evolve in a way that you’ll get about 80% of your success from 20% of your terms. Those 20% of your terms are the head terms. I recommend that you pay special attention to them and consider how to use campaigns and AdGroups to structure your campaign such that you control your budget and measure your return.
It is impossible to cover all of the ways to use campaign structure. Our clients use campaign structure to solve geographic service areas, hours of operation, internal budget allocation and many other issues. You can sign-up for our newsletter if you’d like to receive upcoming additions to the PPC How To series. Or, if you’d like us to review your campaign structure and provide actionable recommendations
Happy Holidays!
As we head into the holiday season, we wanted to give you a few things to think about after you are done playing with your new toys. 2009 is just around the corner and with it a whole new set of personal and business goals. We have big plans for 2009 and we'd be privileged to be your partner in achieving yours.
As we close out 2008, we would especially like to thank our clients, advisers, friends and website visitors for the support they have provided in getting us off the ground.
As we close out 2008, we would especially like to thank our clients, advisers, friends and website visitors for the support they have provided in getting us off the ground.
HubShout PPC Management
We are specialists not generalists and we think that is the best way to deliver results for our clients. To help us deliver the best PPC services, we have completed development of our own PPC Management Tool.
We use HubShout PPC for our internal clients and starting in January we will open the tool to a select group of agencies. HubShout PPC allows us to review all of our client's accounts on a daily basis and make update as needed to meet the client's objectives. It's great and we are proud.
Take a look at our product demo. We would appreciate any feedback.
We use HubShout PPC for our internal clients and starting in January we will open the tool to a select group of agencies. HubShout PPC allows us to review all of our client's accounts on a daily basis and make update as needed to meet the client's objectives. It's great and we are proud.
Take a look at our product demo. We would appreciate any feedback.
Search Engine Marketing Assessment
HubShout is a search engine marketing firm that increases your web site traffic by improving your placement in major search engines. We also create and manage mesaurable pay-per-click (PPC) search marketing campaigns using our HubClick PPC Management tool. Our services are technology driven to ensure the highest levels of consistency in driving qualified traffic to your web site. Sign-up today for a FREE Search Marketing Assessment for your SEO or PPC campaign. We will discuss:
* SEO Best Practices - we will evaluate your website against the most important SEO factors. We will give you actionable recommendations and resources. We will even set you up with our FREE search ranking tracker.
* PPC Best Practices - we will review your Google Adwords campaign (or Yahoo / MSN). We will provide actionable recommendations for campaign structure, conversion tracking, keywords and bidding.
* CRM Integration - we will provide recommendations on getting the most out of your CRM platform (Salesforce.com or NetSuite) by integrating those platforms into you online marketing program.
Schedule a FREE SEO or PPC Assessment
Book a FREE online marketing assessment with one of our seasoned. Get actionable recommendations for your SEO or PPC campaign.
* SEO Best Practices - we will evaluate your website against the most important SEO factors. We will give you actionable recommendations and resources. We will even set you up with our FREE search ranking tracker.
* PPC Best Practices - we will review your Google Adwords campaign (or Yahoo / MSN). We will provide actionable recommendations for campaign structure, conversion tracking, keywords and bidding.
* CRM Integration - we will provide recommendations on getting the most out of your CRM platform (Salesforce.com or NetSuite) by integrating those platforms into you online marketing program.
Schedule a FREE SEO or PPC Assessment
Book a FREE online marketing assessment with one of our seasoned. Get actionable recommendations for your SEO or PPC campaign.
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