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!

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
  

Why I Wear Graph Paper Shirts: Fashion & The Business of SEM

Previously a fashion choice made only by engineers and MIT students, graph paper shirts are now all the rage in the hot, young, explosive search marketing industry.  Coincidence?  I think not. 

 

Graph paper shirts symbolize everything that's right and good about the business of Search Marketing. 

I'm going to tell you why:

1. Aren't Graph Paper Shirts Nerdy?  Yes.  And that's a good thing!

Good SEM is analytics-based.  Analytical people like order.  Does anything say "I'm organized and logical" better than a shirt with lots of parallel and perpendicular lines?  Graph paper requires thinking inside, alongside, and through the box. 

Is there an "outside the box" in SEM?  Yes, but it's inside some other box. 

Sorry, you visionary freaks!  Think of something new.  We'll categorize it and assign metrics to it and define the process for doing it optimally.  Then you'll be in another box to think outside of.  We'll keep you visionaries on the run, and you'll love it, because you define yourself in opposition to us.

Alternative Lifestyle Indulgences: Wear mock turtlenecks or your old Metallica Ride The Lightning t-shirt and talk about "conversations" and "engagement".  Watch the facial lines of worry stay stubbornly etched into the faces of executive decision makers handcuffed by a recession economy.

Best Solution: Wear graph paper shirts, talk analytics, talk metrics, talk bottom line.  Use charts and graphs.  Project profit.  Get more clients.  Make lots of money.

Taking it Too Far: Drawing 45 degree upward ROI lines on your graph paper shirt with those big sharpie markers is kind of unnecessary ...Rob.  ...Duh!

2. Professional?  Yes.  Clients like it.

SEM, like most new computer things, is an unknown quantity (scary) for the traditional businesses we're trying to help. 

Your prospects and clients don't understand PageRank Sculpting, Quality Score, or Information Architecture, but they do understand charts, graphs, and metrics. 

Even if they haven't used KPI's adequately in their own businesses, your evangelizing of ROAS while wearing your graph paper shirt speaks reassuringly to their bottom line. 

And they do understand the bottom line.

Fun Alternative Business 2.0 Lifestyle Choices: "Hey, we're new and wacky, we're business 2.0, we wear hawaiian shirts and birkenstocks and tattoos- we are new and powerful and weird, respect us!"  Cool, may work for getting small SEO contracts for surfboard shops, but take that to a posh real estate development company in the South, and... um... nuh uh, see ya!

Best Solution:  Wear graph paper shirts, talk analytics, talk metrics, talk bottom line.  Use charts and graphs.  Project profit.  Get more clients.  Make lots of money.

Taking it Too Far: Creating your own graph paper pants. That's common sense, guys.  Just say no to graph paper pants.  Yes to graph paper shirts.

3. Changes Your Attitude?  Yep!  Use it!

Don't get me wrong, it took me 34 years to darken the doorstep of a Brooks Brothers store.  I'm the ultimate cool casual clothing sorta guy.  I used to work at an outdoor gear retail company where business casual was a The North Face fleece, convertible khakis, and Merrell hiking shoes. 

But dang it I'm in the South, and I'm in management.  Have you read the research that shows that one of the biggest determinants of who gets to be the leader is the one who most looks like the leader?  Studies also show that the taller you are the more money you make.  I'm not a tall guy so I have to impress people with my stunning good looks, my mind-blowing intellect, my cantankerous obsession with results, and my ridiculously hilarious sense of humor. 

But all of that would fall apart without my graph paper shirts and Italian dress shoes.  Why?  Because I think and act differently in different clothes.  Are you so different?  Try it and see what happens.  I act more professionally, more conservatively in dress clothes. 

Conversely, I'm more lax and self-centered in casual clothes.  I call it being "creative", being "me", etc. but the measure of my value at work is the potentiation of my internal resources (knowledge, decision making ability, analytical ability, creativity, everything) in a team framework- and I'm simply a better team member in dress clothes.  Weird, but true. 

Self perception affects behavior, behavior affects self-perception.  Classy clothes stimulate classy behavior, classy behavior creates a classy person.

This from a guy who used to say "it shouldn't matter how I dress- you should accept me for who I am".  But if it doesn't matter how you dress, then dress respectfully- and if you won't do that, that says something about who you are, doesn't it?  Noncomformity is disrespectful, because other people have limits in their perception of value- we use external cues to guess at truth- and if how I dress changes my own behavior, then I'm optimizing my work value by wearing different clothes... as an SEO I understand that clearly.

Alternative: Wear whatever you want, and witness yourself starting emails to clients with phrases like "hey dude..." and "hey man!"  Sure there's a place for that, but it shouldn't be the default.  Try an experiment- measure your productivity from client perspective, what you got done for them, and alternate your dress on different days for 6 days- analyze the results of your productivity in your different get-ups, and let me know what you find.

4. Morality?  Yes, Clothing Affects and Creates Business Morality

Everybody in SEM knows morality is an issue.  At the recent SMX Advanced conference, Danny Sullivan asked Matt Cutts how it felt to be the moral compass of SEM.  SEO professionals must decide whether to and when to use gray and black-hat techniques. 

Fundamental to this decision are questions like:

• Is this truly not a white hat technique?  (Discernment)
• Will this technique put my client at risk? (Altruism)
• Will this technique put my reputation at risk? (Vision)
• Is there truly no better white-hat alternative to this (Creativity)

It may be argued that gray and black hat techniques don't jeopardize an SEO's career, especially if they only do it on their own sites- some may even posit that usage of these techniques increases SEO savvy.  However, if your use of these activities could injure your client and could directly or indirectly injure your career, I'd argue that your attitude is immoral, instant-gratification-oriented, unwise, and more importantly: un-American, and you probably support the euthanizing of homeless people.

Is there less chance you'd engage in gray or black hat activities if you were wearing a graph paper shirt?  Of course!  Read on...

Alternative Amoral Clothing Choices: Everyone knows that the Enron executives got tattoos and road Harley motorcycles to work and wore leather boots just before defrauding their investors of millions of dollars, right?  Just kidding.   But Enron executives did not wear graph paper shirts, and they should have.  They wore black suits and ties, and that may have been a problem, but more research is needed.

Best Solution: Wear graph paper shirts, go to church, feed the homeless, write down your SEM ethics, and follow them.

Taking it too Far: Using a red marker to check a box on your graph paper shirts every time you beat the temptation to take gray or black hat action.  We don't need to know, buddy.  Keep it to yourself.

Bottom line?  The clothes make the man or woman.  And if you disagree, you're wrong.  I know, because I wear graph paper shirts, so I'm right.

More reading on Clothing, Self-Perception, and Business:

• BusinessWeek: Leaders Must Look the Part
• The Influence of Appropriateness of Dress and Gender on The Self-Perception of Occupational Attributes
• Clothing interest, clothing satisfaction and self perceptions of sociability, emotional stability, and dominance
• Search Google Scholar for more!

 

 I thought it was interesting at SMX Advanced how much more attention was given to SEO than PPC, and how some of my social media/SEO friends knew little or nothing about PPC, so here's a start at some info for them:

Do you ever inherit clients' AdWords accounts?  They can be a mess, right?  Where do you start?

Wouldn't you like an organized way to sort through everything?

I'm building a quickly growing SEM department, so I spend a lot of my time mapping efficient SEM business processes.  One of these is how to take an AdWords account that's new to us and transform it into a shining example of the kinds of best practices that get stellar business results. 

Sometimes clients have been running an account for years in what we'll diplomatically call a very simplified form: one campaign, one adgroup, no match types, no conversion tracking.  They want to lower their cost per click because that's the only metric they can measure. 

So we start educating about better metrics, and we transform that account into an AdWords machine that can get optimal results.

BTW you may apply these steps to whatever degree to other PPC engines- Yahoo, MSN, etc. - but I'm AdWords-centric... Do I have to explain why? ;-)

The 4 Step Emergency Fix for Dying AdWords Accounts:

1.    Check Conversion Tracking

Is there any conversion tracking?  Is it adequate? 

This is the most important thing to do first, because you can't optimize without using a metric to optimize with... and CTR and CPC are not the right ones to use.  What should be your key performance indicator (KPI)?

Naturally, our star this time is not Ramses, but Moses... (Charlton Heston style)

If you read about my SEM 2.0 Pyramid, you may have noticed the references to and picture of Yul Brenner from the classic movie, The Ten Commandments.

It hit me a few days after publishing that, that there's a perfect way to extend the theme of the post and go into more detail.

That's right, it's...

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF SEM 2.0

1. Thou shalt test everything everywhere; test thy messages, offers, and appeals in social media, on thy site, in thy ads, and in thy search listings.
2. Thou shalt win friends and influence people via Social Media; thou shalt turn competitors into allies via networking and SM.
3. Thou shalt not beg, cajole, or threaten people to give you links for thy networking and value surely shalt bring thee more links (blessed are the poor in links who deserve more links)
4. Thou shalt create valuable content and useful tools that people will want to use, link to, and share.
5. Thou shalt use analytics to discover which keywords, placements, ads, offers, and audiences get thee the results thou needest most.
6. Thou shalt use lessons from each of these three channels: social media, SEO, and PPC to doest better in the other two.
7. Thou shalt use thy seo wisdom on landing pages to increase thy PPC quality score.
8. Thou shalt re-optimize and re-strategize based on clues provided to thee by thy analytics.
9. Thou shalt monitor what people are saying about thee, stay up to date on thy competition, and watch for new competitors.
10. Thou shalt attain wisdom from pre-internet marketing and PR books and teachers and test them in thy SEM efforts.

And finally, thou shalt not argue about whether there is any sense to the order of these 10 commandments.  Because there ain't.

SMM, SMO, and ORM hath heaved up my SEM department. 

As I wrote elsewhere, web 2.0 messed up my job title.  The crazy thing is how much SEO (search engine optimization) and SMO (social media optimization) and ORM (online reputation management) overlap.  Throw into the mix the PR department at our sister traditional agency, and you've got a logistical juggernaut.

So I went to the cocktail napkin, actually the back of a printout of my previous best visual representation of our services, and started sketching out something new.

The more I thought about it, the more I saw that SEO, SMO, and PPC form an interdependent triangle, or pyramid, since pyramids are generally cooler (see Matt McGee's SEO pyramid). I thought, hey, that was a really successful concept, so I created...

The SEM 2.0 Pyramid:

(I threw in an Egyptian, which Matt somehow forgot, because I thought it was funny- well, at least Yul Brenner as an Egyptian is funny.)

I left out ORM, because I don't see ORM as marketing exactly, and it's a more occasional service- or you could look at SMM as the proactive part of ORM, so that takes care of it- and while you're doing SMM, you may notice ORM issues. 

Besides, the SEM 2.0 Square wouldn't be as cool as the SEM 2.0 Pyramid.

The serious explanation of the SEM 2.0 Pyramid:

It's all about relationships, and what each strategy/channel contributes to the others:

Search engine optimization is foundational, because the keyword approach you learn there penetrates everything;

• PPC uses keywords, and usage of keywords in SMO leads to SEO benefits. 
• Understanding of inbound links, keywords, and anchor text also helps SMO create more SEO value.
• SEO also can help determine which audiences, keywords, and messages lead to business results
• Analytics associating keywords with conversions gives you converting keywords to retarget, and
• Copywriting tests of meta descriptions also provide intel about which messages resonate with warm prospects. 
• These converting keywords and messages can then be tested in SMO and PPC.

Social media optimization is an educational process; conversing with your prospects and interested parties in various audiences leads to

• Discovery of placements you can target in PPC, and
• Alerts you to ORM issues. 
• SMO may also tip you off about why various keywords and messages do and do not work in PPC and SEO. 
• Good SMO inevitably leads to more backlinks for the sites you SEO.

Pay per click advertising:

• Placement targeting research may alert you of important domains to do SMO on- that is, blogs to have conversations on.
• And PPC provides a powerful test laboratory in which to try out messages, keywords, and audiences, which can then be tested in SMO and SEO.

Together these three strategies almost form Voltron, but not really.  They do create an incredible synergy in this new SEM 2.0 paradigm. 

Haha, I had to say synergy, didn't I?  Couldn't help it :-)

Long tail schmong tail.  I'm sick of the long tail! 

It's one of those industry concepts that comes out of nowhere one day and

• Everyone gets excited, and
• Seth Godin writes a book about it, and then
• Everyone says it all the time, and
• Yadda yadda yadda.

Yeah, long tail is cool and it's valid.  Yes, it's key to niche marketing and it's great for SEO.

But let me tell you where I think the long tail can get you into trouble... where we need to snip that long tail off:

Pay Per Click.

That's right, long tail can really mess up your pay per click marketing.

Now, don't go telling me that you need long tail keywords for your niche searches and that by segmenting adgroups and providing different ad messages to people, you can reach more people and get more conversions...

I know. That's true, to an extent.

But the dirty little secret of PPC is that 95% of your conversions come from 5% of your keywords.

Really.

The others keywords either

• Don't perform (100 clicks and no conversions), or
• The clicks roll in so slowly that you won't have the statistical confidence to delete them until the year 2112 (yay, Rush!).

So what percentage of your clicks are long tail clicks that haven't converting, aren't providing ROI?  What percentage of your money is leaking down that long tail?  (Yuck, that sounds gross!)

(And by the way, what is this animal in the analogy for a long tail?  We had quite a debate about that here at Fuel... is it a rat?  A cat? An armadillo?  A whale?  We discovered that giraffes have the longest tails in nature, but their long necks totally mess up the analogy.  If it has to be a big head and a long tail... well I don't know, what do you think?)

If you're not careful, you could spend 30% or more of your click money on these unproven long tail keywords.  That drags down your overall ROAS.

I'm not saying STOP doing ALL longtail.  What I suggest is simply

1. Measure the % of your spend that's going to long tail keywords,
2. Compare that to your account's overall current profitability, and
3. Evaluate whether that ratio makes sense.

In other words, make a conscious decision what % of your PPC spend you want to go to unproven long tail keywords.

And if you need to really maximize ROI in the short-term you can pause these long tail terms completely.