How to do Effective PPC by Marc Macalua of SEO Philippines September 11, 2008
Posted by seonotes in Search Engine Marketing, marketing.Tags: Google Adwords, paid campaign, paid marketing, Pay Per Click, pay per click marketing, PPC, search network, SEM
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I’m saving this last blog post for the best presentation I’ve liked in the SEMCON 2008 – How to do Effective PPC. Marc Macalua’s PPC presentation was a good blend of points for both business owners, and search marketers. I like the way he pointed out that non-traditional marketing continuous to be traditional marketing because of its wide use in the Philippine setting. Over the top display ads, event sponsorships, blogger parties, mobile marketing are the likes.
His SEMCON 2008 presentation challenges businesses to set themselves apart by doing pay-per-click marketing as their advertising game. The pros?
Advantages of PPC Marketing
- Highly measurable
- Cost efficient than offline advertising
- Brings more targeted traffic – since people who search for particular buys have qualified intentions of purchase
- You have near absolute control
Just like me, Marc believes his favorite pay-per-click marketing platform is Google Adwords, with:
- 62% Market share in July 2008
- Best ROI rating of 4.2%
One can be as profitable as you wish with Adwords, as long as you refrain from committing the common deadly mistakes.
Top 4 PPC Mistakes
- size-fits-all ads – very poor customization of ad copies for each ad group
- Bad Landing Page experience – like pointing specific visitor traffic to a very generic page (like your home page), and leading visitors to dead-end pages.
- No negative keywords
- You are not tracking results – you don’t know your maximum Cost per Click or CPC!
Of course, one cannot have a complete report on pay per click without the tricks!
Tips on PPC Marketing
- Build good campaign history – start off with your most important keywords. Check which are giving you profits, then bid for these good keywords at a higher price.
- Target low-hanging keywords – those with significant traffic volume but has less competition
- Increase CTR or click-through-rate via creative ads – also, make creative display URLs
- Segment keywords and Networks – separate keywords in the search and content networks. You can use your Analytics Tool to identify converting keywords
- Learn to throttle your campaign – take note of time zones, holidays, and seasonality
Some SEOnotes on ROI/ROAS for PPC
* If your target is 400% ROAS,
- 100-200% ROI – consider changing match type
- Less than 100% – pause the keyword
- 400% – just okay, work on lowering CPC.
Successful PPC Campaigns have high:
- Clicks
- Impressions
- CTR or Click-through-rates
- ROAS or return on Ad Spend (ROI)
* while keeping CPC low
* ROI is usually higher in PPC than other paid channels
SEO Copywriting by Damien Kelly of Netbooster Asia September 10, 2008
Posted by seonotes in On-page Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing, marketing.Tags: copywriting optimization, optimized content, search engine optimization copywriting, seo copywriting
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Damien Kelly of Netbooster Asia, where I once worked in talks about Search Engine Optimization Copywriting.
Check out his main points for effective SEO Copywriting:
Create effective landing pages
- Make use of images
- Emphasize call to action
- Short statements work (like what I’m doing with this blog
) - Length of Pages to consider
- Logical Sequence
Take note of Web Content Tips for Optimization
- Scannability – highlight keywords
- Navigation – move detailed info ro secondary pages
- Writing to be read: Headlines and subheads; lists, captions, and hyperlinks
- Writing to be Found – use of Meta Tags
- Terms to Avoid – Don’t call attention to web artifacts. Writing “click here” do not say anything to the search engines.
- Work with your designer to convey overall message.
- Don’t think of quantity all the time. Quality counts.
- The more words you have in a page, the less people will read. 16% of people in websites read word-by-word. Shorter content gets more recall.
Following these guidelines make killer content – indexable, linkable content
PS: Google penalises you for bad content – i.e. duplicates, spammy ones
Social Media Optimization by Kevin Leversee by Design Mesh Philippines September 10, 2008
Posted by seonotes in Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing, marketing.Tags: optimization, smo, social media, social media optimization, social networking, social networks
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Learn how to crowd-optimize your campaigns to reap traffic and branding benefits of a socially optimized Internet Marketing presence… in other words, Social Media Optimization
Social Media Optimization
- Kevin notes that it’s not just gaining traffic from social media sites, but also from search engine results, as well (thanks to, tags!).
- The Internet is a Sea of conversations. Markets are conversations.
SMO is about conversations, the desires of the users. People do not talk about your brand – they talk about their experience with your brand.
- Also, start paying attention not just to big social media sites, but consider the smaller, more targeted ones.
- The best way to gain benefits from social networks is to make them participate: Participate and do not Dictate.
- In social media optimization: It’s all about DESIRE – you can’t configure users!
Social Media Optimization: Context and Purpose
Come from a user-centric design or plan.
Domaining: Domain Monetization by Emil Avancena of DotPh September 10, 2008
Posted by seonotes in Search Engine Marketing, marketing.Tags: buy and sell domains, buying domains, domain auctions, domain monetization, domaining, earning from domains, monetizing domain names, selling domains
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The purpose of domain names, and how to make the most of it are what this presentation is all about. Read how your online real estate address impact your business, and how you can earn from selling/buying domains
DETERMINING VALUE
- what’s a good domain name worth to your company? Simple – it’s your BRAND
- the choice of a domain name is an impt decision – a MARKETING decision.
Criteria for choosing a domain name:
- Shorter is better – easier recall and easier to type
- Most .com names are taken. No more 3 to 4-letter.COM domains are no longer available.
- It should accurately reflect your brand. Your domain = your brand
- Your brand is who you are, your most valuable asset. So don’t confuse your market.
The Right domain can drive traffic. Why?
- Google considers (puts heavy weight) on IP and regional relevance on SERPs.
- SE’s deliver country-specfic search results via: IP location, server location, and Domain name
- Most Phil websites are hosted in the US. With a .ph domain, Google identies your site as Phil-based.
- Safe to say: .ph domains are likely to show up in Phil search results rather than .com domain.
Protecting your Brand:
- buying the domain is also a way to protect your trademark
- registering variations = greater protection and more traffic
Summary:
- Shorter domains are better in recall
- Get domains that fit your brand
- Registering the domain protects your trademark
- Register variations of your brand names (domain names) to protect you and drive more traffic to your site.
Earning from domain names:
- Domaining is the business of buying, developing, and selling domain names
- the value of domain names has grown steadily increasing
- Domain Parking: the easiest way to get started
- Parking companies will provide ads relevant to your domain name, when sombody clicks on the ad, you earn bucks.
- Generic domain names make the most money (i.e. beaches.ph)
- Auctions can help you earn from selling domains
Domaining Tips:
- Anticipate trends
- Anticipate buyers
- Price it well – realistic
- leran to let go – no feelings/sentiments attached
Seasonality in Search January 28, 2008
Posted by seonotes in marketing.Tags: online business seasonality, search behavior, search seasonality, search trends, Seasonality in Search
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Factoring Seasonality in Search: What is the best approach?
Seasonality will almost always has something to do with the traffic a website receives from the search engines, regardless if your business will or will not click online. Search behavior varies in certain seasons, in certain industries. When talking of seasonality of search, 3 things come into consideration:
1. Industry/Product/Service
2. Period or season
3. Online Marketing Tactic
Nature of Industry
There are certain goods and services that follow their respective industry’s seasonal trends. Online selling Christmas-themed gifts will garner the peak of its traffic during the holiday season. As well as hotels and vacation properties, there will be off-peak and peak seasons of search in accordance to their busy and non-busy business months.
The Period or Season
Just like any business online or offline, to research on the peak seasons and those months where you have less sales must be identified in strategizing your traffic initiative on specific seasons.
Online Marketing Tactic
The top metric to consider when strategizing seasonal market initiatives online would be traffic. Knowing the nature of your product or service, and the industry it is under provides insights regarding the level of demand for your product or service, and the competition it faces. Considering the historical traffic data per season helps you decide as to when you will allocate your best resources: time and effort. You plan the specific initiatives that will work best per season.
For example, in handling hotel websites, it is best to pump up your marketing initiatives during the hotel’s peak season, so as to maximize ROI (return on investment). During off season, it is advisable to coordinate with the client about doing more offline activities, creating more affordable service packages, and have these communicated online, to boost interest and therefore, improve searchability of the hotel in the Internet. Campaigns about upcoming events and hotel amenities are also great to capitalize on during low travel season so as to prepare the potential guests in booking in that hotel.
In summary, you can categorize traffic initiatives with seasonality in consideration into two:
1. Off-peak/low season – Create campaigns/initiatives that will boost interest and search about your product/service. This will also make your website ready for the coming of the peak season
2. Peak season - Be more active in doing updates, building networks online, featuring the best assets of your product or service.
Seasonality in search is a good indicator in terms of allocating resources for both offline and online initiatives for a business. Getting the right information, particularly historical data on search behavior, and traffic are definitely useful in any search engine optimization campaign.
Top Ways to Get to Your Target Market August 22, 2007
Posted by seonotes in Search Engine Marketing, marketing.5 comments
Every webmaster of an Adsense site has one main goal – it’s to profit from conversion. And there is only 1 secret in achieving the goal – traffic.
It is a given fact in the search engine marketing world that the most profitable Adsense sites cater to the aged and non-techie market. These people don’t mind exploring on links without having to think if these are paid or not. They’re after the information they need. Now the question is, how do you get to them? If traffic is the means to conversion, here are the means to traffic:
1. Blog and allow comments
Let your site be interactive where people can feel at ease and involved. That way, they’ll be coming back to your site
2. Try your best to rank on the first page of search engines
Since most people who have less of the tech-savvy side are more prone to just looking at the first page of Google and other search engines, you should aim to be part of the prime list of the first page. This has been the very essence of search engine optimization through the years.
3. Be picky in joining social networks. Choose those were the fishes are.
Although there are so many people of all age range joining social networks, you have to do your research and observation of where they usually make profiles of themselves. This way you’d be saving time and energy in making bulletin announcements and making friends.
4. Join forums where they can be found
Almost all sorts of niche has its own forum. Choose where your topic is god, and observe if the treasure (target market) can be found there. You’d have to check who are actively participating.
5. Share your content
In most social content sites, networking using relevant tags to your topic can be done. Utilize this by saving other people’s posts and then sharing what you have to say. Exchange bookmarks, in other words.
In any niche marketing venture, the most important task is to position yourself where the target market is most abundant. You save on time and effort. You gain in conversion.
