Posts Tagged google
In Case You Missed It: AdWords Campaign Experiments
Posted by Matt McWilliams in Pay Per Click (PPC) on June 11th, 2010
Last month Google gave some good news to Canadian and UK affiliates with their Broad Match Modifier which was only available to advertisers in those countries.
I felt a little slighted being here in the good ole US of A though. Google made it up to me Tuesday when they announced the new AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE) Beta, their new split testing tool currently only available by request to US residents.
For the first time through AdWords (so easily and free) you can split test various factors in your bids, from the individual keyword bids to group bids, adding new keywords to campaigns, etc. Below is a video from Google that explains ACE in depth.
As they point out, previously advertisers were forced to “test” changes like this by raising or lowering bids, adding new keywords, etc. and then seeing what happened. Results were never accurate as we know that too many factors can influence campaign results like holidays, economic factors, new reports and even Oprah Winfrey.
It’s probably a good idea to go ahead and apply quickly so check out the video and apply here.
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Five SEO Tips for Page Titles
Posted by Matt McWilliams in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Web Design on June 2nd, 2010
Page titles are one of the single most important factors used by search engines when determining rankings and a clearly important factor in determining whether a searcher will click your link or not.
Here are some basic simple tips for writing page titles.
1. Make it short. Google only looks at the first 70 characters so make the first 70 count. This is important for both SEO and appearance to the searcher. Who wants a word cut off in the middle? NOTE: See below for an edit made based on a comment from Geno Prussakov.
2. Don’t keyword stuff and don’t repeat the same word over and over. Nothing says lame like “Learn Guitar with Guitar Lessons from Guitar Teachers.”
3. Use specific titles for each page. Simply put, don’t use the same title across your site. Make each title about the specific topic of the page. “Beginner Piano Lessons on DVD” is much better than “Piano Lesson Reviews” on each page.
4. Sell them on the click. Don’t forget the searcher. Sure you rank #5 but will they click your page? Make sure the title is attractive enough to a human as well.
5. Forget branding. Don’t put your site name or company name at the beginning. See rule #1 for one reason. You are wasting characters. Unless you have a viable brand name (and if you are reading this you probably don’t) leave it off. It’s wasted space.
EDIT: Regarding titles, it seems the more commonly accepted length is a maximum of 66 characters on Google, with an ideal length of 64 characters. Yahoo has a maximum of 120 characters, so it is possible to have a primary title of 66 characters followed by a secondary title (i.e. 66 character title :: secondary title).
Check out the documentation Geno sent me here.
Can More Twitter Followers Help Your Google Ranking?
Posted by Matt McWilliams in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Viral Marketing/Social Media on May 18th, 2010
Can Twitter followers actually help your site rank better?
Well, the answer is “sort of.”
I was doing a Google search today and literally stumbled upon something I have never seen before, even though it has been around since October of last year.
I did a search for “blues guitar” and look what I found:
How is it that I never noticed that before? Long ago, I followed our LandMGuitar Twitter account…the one that hasn’t been posted to in ages. And now, it means our Blues Guitar Spotlight Series course shows up in its own special place. So does our Learn and Master Guitar course on a search for “learn guitar.”
It’s called Google Social Search and apparently I have been under a rock for the past seven months since it was announced on Google’s Blog back in October. So, you may already know about it.
It’s basically a way to personalize the results on a Google search. I will leave it to the following videos from Google to teach you more about it if you want to learn more.
Anyway, back to the original question: do more Twitter followers help your Google ranking? I think it’s possible in a way. The more followers you have, the more likely your site is to show up in the results in that section, so it can’t hurt.
But, keep in mind that it also applies to social media sites like FriendFeed, Google Buzz, connections from your GMail contacts and chat buddies, and sites that you subscribe to in Google Reader.
Here are those videos so you can learn more:
State of Affiliate Marketing Part Two from ReveNews
Posted by Matt McWilliams in Affiliate Marketing News, Revenews Posts on February 8th, 2010
My latest article on ReveNews.com was posted Saturday.
The Way I See It: State of Affiliate Marketing Part Two
covers some of the challenges facing our industry. The three biggest that I cover are the affiliate/advertising tax, Google’s finicky nature, and the emergence of way too many shady programs in the past few years.
It’s not all doom and gloom, but affiliate marketers and managers must be cognisant of the threats to our industry and take action to prevent them for worsening and to fight to remove them.
Feel free to comment on ReveNews and voice your opinions!
About ReveNews: ReveNews is a trusted, unbiased source focusing on Internet related industries such as online marketing, SEM, affiliate marketing, retail (e-commerce), analytics, spyware, blogging and much more. ReveNews authors consist of highly respected thinkers, commentators and business people who have real experience and insight. ReveNews readers include industry gurus, top-level executives and CEO?s, plus many of the industry?s top net-repreneurs; all coming together to create a global Internet community to distribute, discuss and analyze the industry at hand.
How to Avoid Duplicate Content Penalties from Google
Posted by Matt McWilliams in Affiliate Tips, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Web Design on February 8th, 2010
Many of you are undoubtedly using Private Label Rights (PLR) articles or post news on your site that you get from other sources. These could be considered duplicate content by Google. Or perhaps you have printer-only versions of your pages that are duplicate content of your own site. Whatever the reason, duplicate content can land you in serious hot water with Google and lead to big penalties, including having your site banned entirely.
Here are some tips to avoid duplicate content penalties with Google. Many of them are straight from Google.
First, make sure to tell Google your preferred URL (canonicalization). This tells Google that if you have duplicate content within your site, to refer to the main URL and not penalize you (yes, this is a condensed and basic version of what it does on purpose).
Simply put this in the <head> tags:
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.mysite.com">
If the content is a duplicate of your own pages (such as printer-friendly versions), you can tell Google not to index the duplicate pages. Simply include this is in your <head> tags on the duplicate page:
<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="noindex,nofollow">
If you are using Private Label Rights (PLR) material, then you will still have to put in a little effort in order to avoid duplicate content penalties. Change some of the words, especially the high-density keywords, so that:
“The easiest way to learn guitar…” becomes “The best way to study guitar…” or “The number one method for learning guitar…”
OR
“Guitar lessons are often expensive” becomes “Learning guitar can be costly” or “Guitar instruction is generally reserved for the wealthy”
Use a thesaurus and find synonyms for common words.
You can also reorder some of the sentences and paragraphs, or take out a few sentences that aren’t needed, as well as add your own content. Add a sentence of your own to each paragraph or two.
When you are done, be sure to use a copy checker like CopyScape or one of the free tools from Google and Yahoo to check it out.? I hope it helps!
Random Web Design Tips for Review Sites and Others
Posted by Matt McWilliams in Affiliate Tips, Web Design on February 5th, 2010
For some reason over the past week I have been oft asked the same questions by affiliates regarding their review sites, so naturally I decided it would be helpful to share some of the tips that I gave them. These are the things that Google likes and prevents them from slapping you silly. These are the things that site visitors like and prevents them from going back to Google to seek out another review. They lead to more visitors and more buyers.
I have rewritten some of the most useful tips here and hope that help you.
One of the most common themes was the presence of very salesy content. I actually covered this topic yesterday somewhat in this post. Of course, you want to convert them into a buyer, but the more salesy you come across on your review site, the less genuine your review becomes. Trust me, we will try to sell them, so let us do that. Say a few nice things and tell your story…then let them come to us for the sales pitch.
You definitely need a privacy policy, contact page, and the like. I have written about this twice in FeedFront Magazine and I can’t think of anything I would add.
The Five Most Common Missing Pieces to Affiliate Sites and my Top Ten Web Site Design Tips from 2001 articles cover these topics in depth.
Review sites often have a boatload of outgoing links and very few in-site links. This is backwards.
On review sites, for every outgoing link, affiliate or otherwise, you have, you should have at least two or three in-site links. Add a ton of content pages, tips, articles, a glossary of terms, whatever, and link early and often to these pages.
Ultimately, the objective is to come across as what you are presenting yourself as: a review site; a site that reviews products, gives the reader the pluses and minuses of each product, and makes a recommendation.
Good reviewers aren’t trying to sell anything and they aren’t afraid to get asked questions by their readers.
This ended up being a much shorter post than I expected since a lot of it is covered in the other posts I link to, but I do hope it helps!
New Google Webmaster Tool: Ignore URL Parameters
Posted by Matt McWilliams in Affiliate Tools, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on September 18th, 2009
Did you know?
A new tool in Google’s Webmaster Tools allows you to tell Google to ignore up to 15 URL parameters when crawling and indexing your site?
SearchEngineLand has all the latest on it and how to use it.? Check it out here.
Footer Links vs. Paragraph Links on Google
Posted by Matt McWilliams in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Web Design on September 1st, 2009
Which has more value to Google, a footer link or paragraph link (links within the normal text of a page)?
According to Matt Cutts in the video below, Google is giving more and more weight to paragraph links.? Footer links surely still have some value and should be used, if for no other reason, for navigation purposes.? But the in-text, paragraph links are naturally going to carry more weight with Google.
Google Moves AdWords Ads
Posted by Matt McWilliams in Pay Per Click (PPC), Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on August 21st, 2009
| Did anyone else notice that Google recently moved the AdWords ads to the left?
Big deal, right?? Sure, until you consider that it seems to have increased their click through rate (CTR)10%…which translates into millions upon millions of dollars for big G, and more clicks for you?PPC affiliates. |
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Here is a look at the changes.? Where there used to be a huge white space, now there are ads.? Much closer to the natural listings and much more likely to be clicked.
Honestly, I did not even notice it until someone pointed it out to me, but apparently at least 10% of the people noticed it enough to be more likely to click on them.? On our ads, we noticed as much as a 30% higher click through rate on some campaigns, which is amazing.
What have you found?with your campaigns?
Something is Brewing at Google
Posted by Matt McWilliams in Affiliate Tools, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on August 20th, 2009
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As many of you probably know, Google announced that they will soon be changing their infrastructure a bit. The new system, which is called "Caffeine" will be out sometime in the near future and can already be previewed in Google’s Sandbox. |
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Overall, it seems that the changes are minimal.? It is much faster (yeah, because Google was just crawling before, right? haha).? There are some marginally noticable differences in search results though and one of the best tools to view the differences is the Google Caffeine Compare by Facesaerch (not a typo…that is their name).? You can compare side-by-side results from current Google and new Google.
Go check it out and see where your site ranks!
SEO For Bing
Posted by Matt McWilliams in Affiliate Tips, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on July 7th, 2009
| Patrick Hare recently wrote an article on SearchNewz about SEO for Bing that sheds a little light on exactly what Microsoft’s search engine is looking for.? If time permits, it is worth the read, but here are the highlights: |  |
- It’s basically the same as Windows Live Search.
- It is volatile. Positions are changing rapidly so far.
- Bing has (at least temporarily) overtaken Yahoo as #2 to Google, so it is time to optimize for it.
- You need to submit your site to Bing.
- MSNbot is still the name of the crawler.
- Guess what? Updated content is still a good idea.? Imagine that.
- Metatags are important.
Pretty much, the tried and true rules of SEO for Google and Yahoo apply with a few twists it seems so far.
Read Patrick’s full post here.
AdWords for Newbies (and the rest of us) - Part Ten
Posted by Matt McWilliams in AdWords for Newbies Series, Affiliate Tips, Pay Per Click (PPC) on July 6th, 2009
In last Thursday’s installment of AdWords for Newbies (and the rest of us), I wrote about keyword tracking.
The questions are:
What keywords convert?? What ad copy works with this keyword or that?? What landing page works?
But what about: what keywords DON’T work?? Or what keywords do I NOT want to display for?
Before coming to Legacy, I worked as an affiliate manager for an insurance company and I spent a lot of time educating people about negative keywords.? For example, we offered auto insurance quotes.? So ‘auto insurance’ was a great keyword, but if an affiliate was using broad or phrase match (read about broad match verses exact match) he did not want to appear for searches for ‘mexico auto insurance,’ ‘gap auto insurance,’ or ‘auto insurance claim.’
Why?? Because those keywords were not going to convert.? That is not what we offered.
If someone is searching for ‘guitar lessons,’ they are a likely target for buying our Learn and Master Guitar course.? But someone who searches for ‘bass guitar lessons’ or ‘free guitar lessons,’ they are not likely to buy our product.? We do not offer bass guitar lessons (maybe someday I hope though!) and our product is not free, so ‘bass’ and ‘free’ would be negative keywords that you would want to use.
There are four basic ways to get negative keywords and add them to your list.
- Your brain. You can probably think of at least a handful of negative keywords right now for any of our products.? Add those first.
- Google’s Search Query Report.? This shows you what customers are searching for to find your ads.? You should check this report often…at least weekly to see what is working and what is not.? If a keyword is totally bombing, then use it as a negative keyword.? If ‘cheap guitar lessons’ has 400 hits and no conversions, ‘cheap’ should be added as a negative keyword (Actually ‘cheap’ should be added based on #1 above, but you get the point
). - Google Analytics allows you to get even more data about keyword performance.
- Google Keyword Tool.? This is very simply and may be a good way to start off using negative keywords and to optimize your campaign.? Google’s Keyword Tool will give you a list of negative keywords.? You can always edit it if you feel you want to try a particular keyword.? Just go to the Google Keyword Tool and enter your search term.? Make sure to check “Use synonyms” and then choose “Negative” from the “Match Type” menu.
AdWords for Newbies (and the rest of us) - Part Nine
Posted by Matt McWilliams in AdWords for Newbies Series, Affiliate Tips, Pay Per Click (PPC) on July 2nd, 2009
Yesterday, in part eight, I addresses keyword grouping, suggesting that you group keywords into tight groups to be able to best track performance.
In the post I said:
The biggest positive to grouping your keywords into small, specific categories is that your quality score for each keyword will be much higher, resulting in higher click through rates (CTR), higher conversions, and ultimately a much better return on investment (ROI).
It also allows you to truly optimize landing pages and ad copy by more accurately monitoring your ads and making the adjustments as needed to improve campaign performance.
But the question remains to so many…how do I track and what exactly?
Well ultimately, what you are tracking is keyword performance (read: profitability), but there are many subfactors such as ad copy, landing page, time of day (See post on dayparting ads), geography (see post on geotargeting), and more.
Which ad copy works best for each keyword? To which landing page? What is the best combination of them?
I hesitate to post my suggestions for which tools to use to really track this here, so please feel free to contact me personally and I will be more than happy to tell you.
The biggest thing is to make sure you merchant allows you to install your conversion tracking information on their confirmation pages (we do!).? Then you will need to makes some adjustments to your links as Google explains here, since they are leaving your domain in the process of tracking.
AdWords for Newbies (and the rest of us) - Part Eight
Posted by Matt McWilliams in AdWords for Newbies Series, Affiliate Tips, Pay Per Click (PPC) on July 1st, 2009
In yesterday’s post about dayparting your ads, I talked about grouping ads for time zones if you need to really focus your dayparting for a specific timespan to optimize your conversions.
Today, I will address keyword grouping.? By grouping your keywords into tight, highly related groups, you can better target and optimize your ad copy and landing pages.
The biggest positive to grouping your keywords into small, specific categories is that your quality score for each keyword will be much higher, resulting in higher click through rates (CTR), higher conversions, and ultimately a much better return on investment (ROI).
It also allows you to truly optimize landing pages and ad copy by more accurately monitoring your ads and making the adjustments as needed to improve campaign performance.
One word of warning though: Be absolutely sure to avoid duplicate keywords across ad groups.? Google only allows one ad per advertiser on each keyword and your campaigns will end up competing against each other essentially.
The downside is that it is truly time-consuming, but absolutely worth it!
There are some tools out there, some free, some paid, that may help you get started with keyword grouping.? Probably the best free one, and the one I recommend you use to get started is Google’s own AdWords Keyword Grouper.? You can find out more information about it here.? Another that seems to work decently enough and may be worth a try is The AdWords Wrapper tool.? It also does a decent job of grouping them for broad and exact match.? Read more about broad and exact matching in our earlier post.
AdWords for Newbies (and the rest of us) - Part Six
Posted by Matt McWilliams in AdWords for Newbies Series, Affiliate Tips, Pay Per Click (PPC) on June 29th, 2009
Last Friday in part five of this series I blogged about setting an adwords budget.
Since this is a general series about AdWords and not specific to our Legacy Program, I will address geotargeting.? At Legacy, we ship to about 99% of the world’s population, so geotargeting your ads is not of the utmost importance (well at least not on the surface, but I will address that shortly), but with many programs it is.
Does the merchant only ship to the US and Canada?? Is their service based only in the US and therefore all international traffic is useless?? Perhaps even they are even more regional, such as only California and the west coast.
While I think it is certainly harder to promote items regionally and even nationally only in the US, it does not mean you should rule out a program.? You just have to be smart with where you run your ads.? You definitely have to geotarget.
Now, there is a time and place for geotargeting even for a product such as ours and that has to do with things such as economy, pricing, time of day (tomorrow we will address dayparting as well), language, etc.
First of all, with geotargeting you can target the language(s) that apply to the merchant’s site and your ad.? At Legacy, right now at least, we have an English version only (more on that before too long).
Secondly, just because a merchant can ship to a country does not mean people will buy it.? A $200 guitar course may be too expensive for someone in a developing country.
(As an aside, we recently donated over $20,000 worth of our courses to a local mission that uses the courses in Africa.? It was truly heartwarming and I hope to share more with you when I have it)
Because of this it may make sense to geotarget out certain countries…or even regions of the US.? Perhaps Michigan residents are just struggling so much right now that they are not converting.
Additionally you will want to consider how certain areas convert at certain times of day.? Since AdWords is by default set to your time zone (whichever time zone you choose), the times you pick will be based on your time zone.
So, if your highest converting times are during business hours (9:00AM - 5:00PM) and you are on the east coast, your ads will run from 9:00AM - 5:00PM Eastern Time.? They will run from 6:00AM - 2:00PM Pacific time, meaning you will miss out on 3 hours of business time in the west and have your ads running for 3 hours of useless time there.? The solution is either to extend the hours or geotarget AND daypart.? Tomorrow we will fully address dayparting/ad scheduling with AdWords.
Of course, the best solution in this case is to base your geotargeting and dayparting on each other, so that each time zone sees your ads from 9:00AM - 5:00PM.
How do you know ultimately what areas to geotarget out based on these factors?? Testing and data of course!
So get to it!
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