Here’s an article by Oli Gardner who makes a very clear case for why optimizing your lead conversion process/funnel is more important than focusing solely on traffic generation.
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Joseph Kershbaum at SearchEngineWatch penned two great articles on Automated Rules for Google AdWords. Everyone should use automated rules, but getting started is kid of intimidating. Here are two articles that can help break the ice:
Part I: http://searchenginewatch.com/3641760
Part II: http://searchenginewatch.com/3641909
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I love WordPress. Everyone should use WordPress. It’s typically one of the first things I recommend to clients.
Here’s a great article compiled by Matt Krautstrunk at Six Revisions listing eight WordPress plug-ins that focus on SEO. Use them!
http://sixrevisions.com/wordpress/seo-plugins/
Early today I gave a lecture on SEO to a interactive marketing team about how to refine and improve their current SEO efforts. Needless to say, many of these tools will help!
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Rob Chant at SearchEngineWatch.com penned an article on SEO and the role of keyword ranking and why you shouldn’t worry too much about micro-managing this… instead, focus on long tail and other SEO practices.
Today (Monday), I spent part of my President’s Day holiday giving a short (30 minute) lecture on SEO, discussing both the technical side and content side. While the info was high-level, one of my main points was the value of long tail search and optimizing pages for this.
Here’s the article: http://searchenginewatch.com/3641912
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I just read Seth Fiegerman’s article on Yahoo entitled, “The New, New Rich: Wealth After the Recession” and there’s a quote by Diane Saatchi:
“I’ve noticed more wealthy people talking about shopping at Costco and bragging about deals they found on Groupon… And by wealthy, I mean the kind of wealthy people who own two or three private jets.”
I’m calling bullshit on this. And to lead in an article with this statement is ridiculous.
I know people who are wealthy to a far less standard. These people will spend $500 on a dinner out. These are not people who worry about where gas is the three cents cheaper, or waiting to stock up on TP at the Costco. These are people who purchase $350 bottles of wine like you and I order diet Cokes.
Articles that classify or portray the ultra rich as “victims” of the recession are completely ludicrous.
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If you are an AdWords user, you need to read this article ASAP:
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=145284
Basically, if your advert appears in position #1, and consists of a headline in a proper sentence, then your 2nd line of text may be automatically moved up to the first line to produce a longer headline.
One of my colleagues experienced this which dramatically increased the CTR rate (Google’s goal), but without producing a material increase in quality traffic. Thus, all the additional traffic produced proportionately fewer conversions, resulting in a massive increase in CPL and total cost. This was not a good result, so the ad needed to be reworked (or the bid lowered so it would not appear as #1).
So, you should run an audit of your campaigns to see if ad copy should be updated. You may not want a full sentence to appear – or may want to change what it says so it is more accurate as a headline.
The reason more people click it is most likely related to the fact that it more closely resembles organic results.
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Imagine shopping for furniture at a store like Pottery Barn and instead of going to the counter with the info of the couch you want to purchase, an associate comes over to you, scans the couch with their iPhone or iPad, orders it, enters your shipping info, and then swipes your credit card. No lines, no hassle.
Sandeep Bahanote at Mashable describes such an experience in a recent blog post: http://mashable.com/2011/01/12/social-mobile-retail/#
Dan Soschin 