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our search engine marketing methodology

I guess my only comments on this are the following:

•  Some of the decision will rest on the company’s culture – there are some firms that just don’t have the intent to get involved with the technology nor will they bill willing to invest financial resources to build that competency
• Some firms may start out with an agency relationship and then leverage that experience and knowledge in migrating to their own inhouse agency
• I, like Sara, still think there will always be a need for SEM agencies, like Out of Bounds, in the same way that there are advertising agencies, direct marketing firms or even lube and oil change outlets.  The services industry is here to stay in my opinion.  I could learn to change my own oil and filter and invest in that equipment but does it make sense for my business?

What do you think?

I  hate to name names but one of the worst systems I have seen to date is Miva Merchant.  Several developers I have worked with absolutely hate the software, saying it is ‘a bunch of crap…’ and basically they are not even able to add a basic Google analytics sitewide tag, and asking them to add the commerce tracking tag or even the basic Google conversion tag (which is so so basic) was simply impossible to do!

How do these vendors expect their customers to run ecommerce business using a software platform that doesnt even allow for web analytics and tracking?  I have basically had to tell several clients that I couldnt help them, as much as I wanted the business, I cant really conduct online marketing programs if I cant even have analytics in place.

Other clients have come to me with inhouse/homebuilt commerce systems, again with some real fundamental problems like not being able to have customized page titles or meta information for each page!  Or using session ID’s in the URLs….

I guess I am just upset that these customers basically are SOL and will likely have to migrate to a new platform..

Some examples of these rich media ads can be found at: Gadget ad examples .

I am so excited about all the opportunities becoming available for online advertising.  These gadget ads are just another example of how Google continues to innovate and push the marketplace further along.

• Hey, this article is almost three years old but many of the directory ideas are still good – some are free and some you have to pay a yearly fee. In all cases you have to watch out for the quality of the directory: “56 directories to submit to“
• Another dated but I found still useful article on “how to find directories to link to“
• Great article by Rand Fishkin on “What Makes a Good Web Directory“
• Rand again has some great ideas on what makes a good directory in his article “The Wisdom and Folly of Directory Link Building“
• 131 link building strategies (another way old article but still relevant)
• Andy Hagan & Aaron Wall’s article on “101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website“

Case in point, I have been using www.keywordmax.com lately and I do love the new version they came out with a few weeks ago. You can now simultaneously manage multiple instances of the same keyword/match type across multiple campaigns! Before this release, what happened is that the first instance of the keyword that keyword max found was managed, the others being ignored. Not a very good situation if you are running 25 identical versions of the same keyword but differing in geotargeting (e.g. “keyword A” in kansas, “keyword A” in nebraska, etc…).

I have also found that having a good methodology and system for selecting what keywords to manage really helps as well. I have been using database technology and simple formulas based upon conversion rates, minimum impressions and overall competitiveness of the keyword to come up with my selection of keywords to manage using keyword max. I then run the query and save the results as a table, labeling as this month’s keyword max selections.

Give keywordmax a try and let me know what you find out! Its alot of work but will pay off with lower conversion costs and more effective spending of your advertising dollars!

I guess we can’t expect Google to programatically replace us search engine marketers just yet. I tried out the campaign optimizer on a few client campaigns and found out the following:

• It seemed to suggest raising the bids quite a bit of the time (imagine that!)
• The suggestions for optimizing the text ads were really weak – all I ever saw was a revising of the display url to show the ‘www’ subdomain (which i dont want to do anyway)
• The google optimizer did however have some good ideas for new keywords

Frankly, on first glance, a search engine marketer may have been worried, thinking that Google was going to eliminate our business by building an automated tool to do our PPC work. However, on first glance, it looks like it will be a while before you can replace your human search engine marketing analyst!

What are your thoughts on the new tool?

I am going to try using some of the Google analytics parameters to help me evaluate that in some sort of quantitative sense as follows:

• Segment keywords by page view per visit
• Segment keywords by % exit ratio

My theory is that keywords that consistenly show a small page view/visit ratio (say <1.5:1 or so) probably are not relevant to my offerings. If the keyword intent was correct, why didnt they view more of the site? The same argument could be made with the exit ratio. If a keyword consistently shows a high exit ratio (assuming I have selected the most relevant landing page I can), then again, probably the searcher intent is not matching with my offer.