I spoke to our main Google contact today about the imminent AdWords Quality Score changes.  These changes have only been rolled out to a small percentage of accounts so far, but will go system-wide soon (she didn't give me a specific date).

Here's a summary of what I discovered.  No, it's not in interview format, what she told me is written up in summary form.  Less reading for you!

Quality Score Rating Quantified!
We're going to see a 1-10 scale for quality score, along with the same old poor->great continuum... but quantified now!  You'll be able to see room for improvement with keywords that are Great but not the Greatest.  You could get them even Greatester if you work on it.

Micro-microsites are BAD!
Lead generation sites with only one page are BAD and have been for a long time, but this is going to get worse.  If you do lead generation in the future, do not created isolated new microsites or you'll pay much higher cost per click.  Instead, create new pages on existing sites that have other information on them.  Give it some semantic weight and something searchers can benefit from immediately.

The "Ad Display Frequency Algorithm" is Complicated
AdWords has a sub-algorithm that I've never read about that determines how often ads are shown when keywords are searched for (how many impressions they get)- I'm calling it the Ad Display Frequency Algorithm.  It's complicated.  (That's me being confused on the left.)

Automated CTR Optimization, Time of Day, and Geotargeting
Even our Google rep, who's quite smart and in the know, is not clear on all the details- but this display frequency algorithm will now be affected by historical data on click time of day and CTR in various geographic regions.  The geo-part is key for our local clients, but she said the differences we'll see will be small. 

STILL, the implication is we might want to relax some of our geotargeting to allow for better auto-optimized performance in locations we're not sure of either way- and we're going to have to watch state by state metrics before and after to see if anything important changes.

Google Cares About Their Clicks, Not As Much About Your Conversions
All of this is CTR and relevance based, and we also care about conversion rate and booking amts, etc., so we still have to watch for high CTR low CR situations.  I questioned her about why Google doesn't incorporate conversion rate for customers that track it, and she mentioned customer concerns about privacy- I said those who use AdWords conversion tracking probably aren't as worried about that- even an opt-in would be cool.  I also said I understand Google gets paid based on CTR and that's their business model- so we still have to watch the conversion rate, ROAS, average revenue per conversion, etc. 

We already have to keep CTR vs CR in mind when optimizing- an automated optimization of CTR makes that a bit more complicated.

Advertising on Not So Relevant Keywords Will Be Virtually Impossible
AdWords will be more harsh on irrelevant keywords.  For example, one of our clients recently requested a test of the "myrtle beach" keyword which isn't highly relevant to their exact offerings- only 10-20% of people searching MB are interested in that product/service.  We weren't surprised to see them get 10% their typical CTR and much higher cost per click.

These sort of attempts to place ads on irrelevant keywords will be more expensive and get fewer impressions.  Basically, learn that AdWords is all about relevance, or suffer zero results.  And that's good.

Summary
Our rep said they would roll these changes out cautiously- and that advertiser reaction could destabilize things temporarily, but over time it should result in improvements.  Still, I'm uneasy about automated CTR optimization- it could be great, but then again, sometimes a really high CTR results in lower CR... so I'm going to wait until the results are in.

I’m a big fan of the “Now Discover Your Strengths” series of books, including “StrengthsFinder 2.0”, and “First Break All the Rules”.

If you’re not familiar with these books, the big idea is:

It makes more sense to do what you’re really good at, what you’ve always been a natural at, than it does to try to perfect your weaknesses. 

This goes contrary to common business organizational practices.  And that may be one reason why so many businesses are mediocre.

Why Focus on Strengths?

Strengths are

• Things you do naturally do...
• Things you love to do…
• The ways you tend to think, and
• They lead to you perform excellently. 

On the flip side, no matter how good you get at your weaknesses, you’ll never excel by doing them.  You’ll never beat a person who’s natural at those things.

Don’t misunderstand: you can’t be incompetent at certain things, and you should manage around your weaknesses, but you should spend most of your time doing what you do best. 

Enough italics?

Organizationally speaking, there are enough humans with varying talents for you to focus on yours.  Find your spot.

This isn’t just some neat-o-keen idea to sell business books… it’s based upon the Gallup organization’s research on 1.7 million employees at 101 companies in 63 countries.

What Are Your Talents, or “Strengths”?

Gallup discovered 34 strengths or talents… things like: Competition, Relater, Learner, Input, Deliberative, and Ideation.

It takes a while to learn what these strengths all are and identify which ones really are your top strengths.  The first two books I mentioned above each comes with an online test to find them, but as they explain, these tests aren’t perfect, and you really need to understand the definitions and then watch yourself for a while to accurately diagnose.

For example, I would have denied that I was a competitive achiever until I read these books- then the more I watched myself the more those strengths explained stupid things I did like having to pass other cars on the freeway.  It’s stupid, but I think I’m winning and achieving when I do that.  Just so you know: if I pass you on the road, I win!  Deal with it.

Is There Just One Set of Key Strengths for SEO or PPC?

Even more complicated for this particular article: there probably isn’t one set of best strengths for PPC and SEO.  For example, a recent article about SEO’s pointed out the difference between technically-oriented SEO’s and copywriting-oriented SEO’s.  Each requires different talents.  You might have both.

The point of this article is to figure out how to get people who are naturals at the talents required for SEO and PPC.  Some companies hire neophytes and train them from the ground up.  Skills and tasks can be trained but, alas, talents cannot.  Although you could probably train many people to be mediocre SEO’s or PPC’s, my hope is that you’re looking for potentially excellent ones, or wondering if you could be an excellent one.

I’m going to take a stab at which strengths are required.  I assumed that SEO and PPC would require a different set of strengths, but upon review, I found the talents to be quite similar.  Naturally, many talents are required in business, but I’ve tried to include the ones that are most unique to SEO and PPC job functions.

How to Criticize My List of SEO/PPC Strengths

Feel free to discuss and disagree, especially if you’re familiar with the 34 strengths system!  I may have shaped these potentials to fit just our company’s vision- let me know if yours is different and requires something else. 

The other thing to keep in mind is that all strengths look good- it's like looking at some dessert menus- you want everything.  As you read them you may say "of course we should have this, too!"  But everyone can't have every strength- and any job candidate may have a few of these along with others that aren't as critical for SEO and PPC.  So the question to ask of each strength in the list below is "is this talent really essential to excelling at SEO or PPC?"

I tried to put these in order of importance, yet I feel all are indispensable.

The 7 Essential Strengths of An Excellent SEO/PPC Employee

1.    Maximizer – Obsession with making good things excellent.  Optimization.  This one’s a no-brainer for all analytics-based marketing.

2.    Achiever – Relentless need for achievement.  Key for making consistent improvements and getting more and more results.

3.    Focus – Need goals and clear destination.  Filter actions based on effectiveness and efficiency.  Key for getting things done.

4.    Individualization – Tendency to look at how things, people, websites are unique.  Key for dealing with unique niches, varying semantic spaces, and current client’s website situation.  Key for writing ads that are highly relevant to the keywords and landing pages in an AdGroup.

5.    Arranger – Loves complicated challenges.  Productively configures countless variables and factors.  Key for dealing with the number of things that affect search rankings and indexing, and working on all those things at one time.  This is also key for creating tightly focused AdGroups in PPC.

6.    Strategic – Sort through the clutter and find the best route.  Ability to see what would happen if you did this or that.  Key to anticipating possible results of any optimization.  Also important for thinking through the ramifications of interconnected PPC factors like CTR, bid, and quality score.

7.    Analytical – Prove it.  Show me the data.  Key for results-oriented SEO.  Without this you can have lots of fascinating conversations but you need this to get the best results.  However, there’s a lot of mystery in SEO, and if you’re too analytical you might not be able to tolerate that- for this reason, this is probably a better PPC strength than SEO.

Strengths for the SEO Team

Just after publishing this, @DerrickWheeler an SEO at Microsoft told me to check out his comment on this Bruce Clay blog post... it's his summary of the strengths you should have somewhere in your overall SEO team (scroll down to the comments).  I'm reserving my comment for now on the specific strengths he chose until I've had a chance to think about it, but that's another good angle to look at when checking your resources... if you're adding to your team, you can inventory existing members for strengths, find out where your strength gap is, and emphasize your talent search in that direction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#5. Barack already is mentioned in the #1 google result for "presidential candidate".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The number of new articles on these topics per day is at least 50... 50 good ones.  How do you keep up?  How do you know which ones to read?  How can you filter the god from the bad?

You don't have to.  We do that for you.

Josh Williams, Shannon Sell, and I (Brian Carter) post the best of the best SEO, PPC, social media, and online marketing articles in a special FriendFeed "SEM, SEO, PPC, social media, media placement links, articles" room.  (If you don't use FriendFeed, check that out too- it's a way to aggregate all your most important social networking feeds in one place.)

Get most useful, most relevant-to-the-real-business-world info there.  Check it out!

Fuel Interactive begins its series of man on the street interviews with Lauren, asking her about the perils of RSS, and how she feels about the government invading her privacy through blogs, logs, and twitter.

xx

 

It might be cliche, but I have to say it - web analytics is a dirty job, but someone has to do it.

When I say "dirty," I am referring to dirty data. There's a lot of it out there, and it is the web analyst's job to decipher the clean data from the dirty data and to figure out just what level of filth is acceptable.

What we sometimes encounter within any given web analytics tool are numbers that don't add up, don't make sense, and, sometimes, just don't exist.  Why is this?  There are a variety of tools available out there to help analyze web sites, such as Omniture's SiteCatalyst, Google Analytics, ClickTracks, Visual Sciences' HBX Analytics (recently bought by Omniture), WebTrends, Urchin, and many more.  The issue is that every tool has a different way of calculating the same basic metrics.

For example, one of the most common differences in calculations is in user sessions, or visits. What's the maximum length of inactivity in a session before a new session is counted?  If a user enters the site multiple times in a given time period, how many visits are counted?

Yes, my actual presentation had a much funnier name...

Five (5) "POWER" Tactics for POWERful Local/Mobile Marketing Campaigns that Give You Super-POWERful Results... A Cheezy Presentation On Purpose from Brian Carter, Director of Search Marketing @ www.FuelInteractive.com for SMX Local

And I'm presenting it here to you in a variety of ways, since I know some of you like video, some like slideshows, some just like blog posts... for the blog post only, keep scrolling down.  Best way to get it all?  Watch the video in a separate window while skimming the blog post notes below.

Disclaimer: the presentation starts with a rather controversial tip, which I'm going to be blogging about in more detail later this week, and that is my advice that agencies use only AdWords, not all three major PPC engines.  Turns out I need to justify that a bit better for some people... ;-)

First up is my video narration of the "5 Powerful Local Search Marketing Tactics" PowerPoint:

Next is the slideshare version:

Finally, here are the blog details:

Tactic #1: Put All Your Money in Google AdWords!

• Yes, Seriously.
• No, I don't work for Google.
• Cost vs Return of Other Engines
• Search (60%+ of global share), search partners, content network, media placement, local business ads, and mobile ads...
  

I'm a little biased.  Doing PPC in an agency...

I've found that dealing with lots of clients and little resources - it can be overly complicated to do three or more PPC engines at once.  If you do AdWords well, there's no need to do Yahoo or MSN.  I'm not convinced the extra time in the other engines is worth it. 

It's impressive for salespeople to be able to say your search firm can advertise them in lots of engines, but considering that AdWords itself allows you to do search (60% of global share), search partners, content network, media placement, local business ads, and mobile ads... that's a pretty strong one-stop-shop, and it's really efficient for us right now. 

No I don't work for Google.

Tactic #2: Learn & Use the 4 Methods of AdWords GeoTargeting

1. GeoCampaign + Broad Keywords
2. Broad Campaign + Geomodifier KWs
3. Locally-focused Placements
4. Local Biz Ads (Local biz profile)
   

#1 Campaign targeted, keywords general: works well for something like a vacation destination- targeting people who drive down from NC or other parts of SC with an offer for gas reimbursement, we've gotten some good mileage from that

#2 Campaign broad, keywords geospecific: is the no brainer but also the best volume and effectiveness.

#3 Locally focused placements: can work but depends on how good the locally-focused sites are in that area

#4 Local profile + local biz ad: can work but click volume is lower, so takes more time to optimize the right ads- so far, the results are mediocre, but we're still testing it for clients in several verticals

Case Study: U-SAVE Car Rental in Myrtle Beach Airport

• Metrics for local- showing promise
• Need to optimize with more ads
• Best results from #2 (geomodifiers in keywords nationally targeted)

Read more about the 4 AdWords GeoTargeting Methods here.

Tactic #K: Measuring Success: the KPI Spectrum

The best key performance indicator (KPI) is your goal- whether that's ROAS, ROI, Cost per conversion, or even sheer profit numbers- you should have an ultimate KPI in mind.  But work toward it. 

• If you aren't spending enough, spend is your KPI. 
  
• Once you're spending enough, if you can't optimize based on conversions, CTR is your KPI. 
  
• Once your conversion data is coming in, move to your target KPI.

Tactic #3: Spend the Budget & Spend it Well

• Client Expectations
• Optimizing Requires Data   
• Targeting vs. Volume
• Campaign Optimizer!

Clients' Advertising Spend Expectations: clients are used to advertising channels where it's never a problem to spend the money.  "What do you mean you couldn't spend the whole budget?"  They're also not used to variable spends.

Targeting vs Volume: Sometimes too much targeting yields low click volume.  That's one reason I like to use all four methods I just described.  I suppose if you're an AdWords newbie and happen on the right settings, you might not run into this problem- you're more likely to run into high cost per conversion and low ROAS... but when you get a little sophisticated and start targeting, you can sorta turn off the faucet. 

Optimization Requires Data: You can't optimize something without data- so sometimes you have to focus on click volume before you can hone in on your preferred KPI. 

Campaign Optimizer: low spend problems are the one time I use AdWords' Campaign Optimizer, the main purpose of which seems to be to make Google more money.  There are two phases to growth: expansion and optimization.  This is about expansion.

Tactic #4: Avoid Local Tunnel Vision

• Destination vs. Origin: Origin-specific Offers
• Competing Locales: Not There, Here!
• Competing Offerings: What else meets prospect needs?

Local businesses sometimes can get business by advertising to people a bit beyond their locale; this is thinking about customers both near and far in location and interest.

Destination and Origin: Is your locale a destination?  Where do people come from?  Can you target them there?  What different kind of ads can you use for that?  Example: The previous example of the gas credit for driving to the vacation destination.

Competing Locales: Are your competitors just other businesses, or also other locales?  Do people go to nearby cities and regions for what you offer?  Can you intercept them? Example: Golf Holiday "Are you crazy?" ad.

Competing Offerings: What business are you in?  If people don't choose your type of offering, what else meets their needs?  Can you intercept them there? 

Example: we're very close to getting the fairly new Hard Rock amusement Park as a client- their prospects aren't just looking for roller coasters, they're looking for entertainment and family fun, so we could also find those people searching for restaurants and water parks, maybe even movie theaters, and convince them to come to the park instead.

Tactic #5: Apply PPC Best Practices to Local Marketing

• Segmentation- Locale vs Brand
  Myrtle Beach Hotel vs. Beach Cove Resort
  
• Testing Beats Common Wisdom
  e.g. Content Network
• Never Stop Testing Offers
  #1 Driver of AdWords Excellence

Testing Trumps Common Wisdom

• Landing Pages: most people say deeper more targeted landing pages convert better, right?  Wrong, not always e.g. myrtlebeach-resorts.com homepage converted better than individual hotels.
• Content Network: Dictums like "the content network is a waste of money and converts poorly" don't always serve the client, because they're not always true.  Plus you may need the content network and other options for narrow niches as discussed earlier
  

 
Segmentation Case Study: Endless Fun Resorts

• Brand keywords get the best ROAS
• Separating the brand-naïve into the MB and NMB campaigns allows us to focus on the right message for noobs- and optimize to get more new business
• This is a key test of PPC's persuasive muscle- brand aware customers are more warmed up, conversion rate can be 3-4x as high; so getting good ROAS from colder prospects was the real work
  

Ad Testing Drives AdWords Excellence

• Best practices keep you from getting crappy performance, but
• Constantly testing new ads, offers, copy, and punctuation lead to the highest, most winning results
• Wining at AdWords is ultimately about scientific copywriting
  

  As a recent college graduate and someone who is brand new to the world of email marketing, I found out quickly that simply “sending out a few emails” can be a little demanding.  Why?  Every day is a deadline.  Every email that gets sent out is different and every client has their own revisions and input as to how they would like it to look.  The goal is to get the proof done perfect and on time.  Depending on the design, amount of text, and whether or not a template is available, this can take anywhere from ten minutes to two hours (or more!).

Keeping the “creative-building” time down to a minimum is a key part of keeping clients satisfied with the work being done which, in turn, keeps your business growing strong.  However, it’s important to note the old saying from mom…“Haste makes waste”.  How do you keep your emails rolling in and out in a timely fashion, without sacrificing simple mistakes (ie spelling errors, missing links, etc).

The answer is obvious and simple – put a system in order, and stick to it.  If you are new to email marketing, using the system pictured here may be a step in the right direction for you.  If you are a veteran, using this general idea may help you to install a working system that will allow you to double-check your work before sending the proof onto the client.  Whatever the case, installing a system in your every-day email tasks will allow you to pick up better on mistakes, both minor and disastrous.
 
In looking at this chart, you’ll notice that I follow a system of putting text in before adding images.  I find that this is easier because it allows you to see the space that is left once the text has been added.  This will tell you what you should resize your images to, and will keep your email looking clean and in order.  Also, make sure that all of the links to the images are correct and if possible, link all of the images.  The more links you have in an email, the more click-throughs and hopefully, the better the return.
 

    

These are a couple of SEO women who had a major fictional fight over a guy and ended up having to resolve it on the baseball field in Sumo suits.  Because that's the best way to resolve an imaginary guy fight - fake-sumo-fighting in front 3600 baseball fans and 20 of your fellow employees who are drinking beer in a suite at a Minor league baseball game in a Southern U.S. beach town!

 I did the pre-fight interview and the post-fight smack talk about Tennessee (hey, Katie's a fellow former buckeye... what can I say?)

Kudos to Brandon Tucker (funny golf blogger and video man from worldgolf.com) for filming it (in HD no less) and the killer editing, music, and slo-mo replays.

Of course we put it on YouTube... so it can go viral! 

• Tell your friends,
• Email your sumo buddies, or
• Send a carrier pigeon to your grandma with this video on an ipod tied to the pigeon's itty bitty bird feet...
• DO IT NOW!

Here are some preview images:

Last week, Fuel Interactive's CEO Will McIntosh and I spoke to a small group of association executives at the South Carolina Society of Association Executives' 3rd Annual Conference about how they can use social networking to bring their communications with their membership into the 2.0 era.

Listen to the Social Networking and Web 2.0 for Professional Associations presentation mp3 (which is funny and fun with lots of laughs and learning too- and way better than this description of it) and view the PowerPoint while you listen.

I wasn't too aware of the whole "professional associations" world (also called professional bodies) before we were asked to speak at this conference, but every profession from lawyers to doctors to asphalt industry professionals has an association, they all have memberships, and they're perfect to make use of web 2.0- they already have people, they just need to connect them.

Here are some of the things we discussed:

• Web 2.0, Blogging, bunches of web 2.0 tools
• Blogs vs. forums vs. listservs

 

Sites and Services:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Ning- Overview and Features
• Examples of Ning networks, some of which are associations
• Blogger, Wordpress

Social Networking and Web 2.0

• The best 2.0 sites for associations with limited resources
• Matching your social networking platform and your membership demographics
• Age and demographics issues with usage of 2.0 networks
• Quantcast demographic data on social networking sites

Making Your Association More 2.0

• Incentivizing members members to use 2.0 sites and services
• Using your existing email list to get people involved
• Leveraging membership to do the work for you!

Issues Associations May Have with Web 2.0

• Privacy Issues with blogs, Ning, and LinkedIn
• Comment moderation, spam filtering
• Professional discussions, discussion of legislation

Listen to the Social Networking and Web 2.0 for Professional Associations mp3 (which is funny and fun with lots of laughs and learning too- and way better than this description of it) and view the PowerPoint while you listen.